freedom and reason

Counterpunch published a story today, “Bush, God, Iraq and Gog,” by Yale professor Clive Hamilton, about George W. Bush, lobbying leaders to put together the “Coalition of the Willing” in 2003, telling French president Jacques Chirac that Yahweh’s will was at work in the world, and that mythical apocalyptic creatures of the ancient Hebrews, Gog and Magog, were rising to threaten Israel. Bush was on a mission from God to vanquish them. “This confrontation is willed by God,” Bush told Chirac. God, Bush said, “wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.” Bush told Chirac that “the biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.”

Gog and Magog are mentioned in both Genesis and Ezekiel of the Old Testament, and famously in Revelations 20:7-8: “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.” (By the way, George H. W. Bush’s nickname in the Skull and Bones at Yale was “Magog.”)

Élysée Palace turned to a theologian at the University of Lausanne, Thomas Romer, and find out what Bush was talking about. It’s Romer who provides the first account of this revealing movement, published in an article by Jocelyn Rochat, “George W. Bush et le Code Ezéchiel,” in Allez Savoir! (No. 39, September 2007). Since the account was written in the French language, it long escaped scrutiny by US observers (much like Zbigniew Brzezinski admission in Le Nouvel Observateur, Jan 15, 1998, that the Carter administration played the key role in turning Afghanistan into a cesspool to destabilize the Soviet Union and that he had no regrets about being responsible for the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist networks operating today). Chirac has corroborated Romer’s account in a book by Jean Claude Maurice, Si vous le répétez, je démentirai, published in March of this year.

In his article, Anderson writes, “There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfillment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.” Indeed. It was a crusade in Bush’s mind. But we didn’t need to wait for this new piece of evidence to know this. Readers familiar with my work will recall that I exposed Bush’s motives to an international audience in my article “Faith Matters: George Bush and Providence,” published in The Public Eye on March 18, 2003, two days before the Iraq invasion.

(This article landed me a interview with public radio and the first invitation to speak at the United Nations University in Amman Jordan. There was a funny moment in the discussion period following my 2006 presentation in Amman, Jordan, at the United Nations University. I shared the stage with, among others, Shlomo Avineri. For those of you who are not familiar with Avineri, he is the famous Israeli political scientist noted for landmark works on Theodor Herzl, Moses Hess, and Zionism, and the political and social thought of Hegel and Marx. He also did considerable political work in negotiations in the Middle East countries on questions of science. It the work on Marx that first introduced me to Avineri. When I finished discussing the role of Christian Zionists in the Middle East, Avineri quipped, “This is help we don’t need.”)

I am happy to see Professor Hajjar defend Robinson’s academic freedom (and thus hers) even though she would not herself have made the comparison. She provides a model for all to follow. If we prize an open democratic society, we should all defend academic freedom, as well as the freedom of speech we all enjoy, even for relevant speech with which we disagree.

However, I don’t agree with her statement, “You don’t evoke Nazis unless you’re talking about Nazis.” That’s a poorly formed thought. The email evokes the Nazis for the purpose of comparing oppressive state tactics carried out against marginalized peoples. This is a legitimate exercise.

What are the reasons for not evoking Nazis unless you are talking about the Nazis? Because it is mistaken? Should we then stifle a social scientist who compares Iran to Nazi Germany even though such a comparison is rather obviously erroneous?

It is quite obvious that we can’t debate whether the comparison is erroneous if we are not allowed to evoke it. This is the purpose of the classroom (and other academic fora). Should the comparison be disallowed because the Jewish holocaust is a sacred case? Are we going to make a list of sacred cases disallowed in historical comparison? Who will make this list—this “Index of Prohibited Historical Comparisons”?

Doesn’t making exceptions run contrary to the goal of objectivity in science? The Catholic Church allowed Galileo to discuss many of the things he was discovering about our solar system. But when it came to the question of geocentrism, which the Catholic Church felt delegitimated its dogma, the Church drew the line. We all recognize now that was inappropriate. We should all understand the motive of the Church. We cannot similarly make an exception for arguments comparing the tactics of the Israeli regime against the Palestinians to the German Nazi tactics against the Jews.

The dangers of artificially constraining comparisons should be obvious. The Nazis were not the only regime in history to have perpetrated genocide. The Jews were not the only victims of genocide. Yes, the Nazi case is unique. But all genocides are unique cases taken in terms of their own particulars. Taking cases in themselves doesn’t help us fully explain them and, crucially, prevent them from happening again. Many observers, including many of Jews, have suggested something like the Jewish holocaust could happen again.

The point of comparison is to identify similarities and dissimilarities and generalize patterns to theorize common causes and dynamics. There can be no science without comparison, and science is inappropriately limited when certain cases are for non-scientific purposes excluded from analysis. Here’s the article to which I commented: Panel Defends Robinson.

Bill Robinson’s case prompted a discussion of anti-Semitism on NPR Talk of the Nation. Here’s the blurb from the program dateline May 18, 2009:

A California professor stirred up a backlash when he compared Israelis to Nazis. Monday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Obama, Neal Conan talks with guests and callers about the question: What is anti-Semitism? Guests are: Nicholas Goldberg, deputy editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages, whose article “What Is Anti-Semitism?” appeared last week; John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago political science professor and co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy; and Walter Reich, the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial professor of international affairs, ethics and human behavior at George Washington University, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Goldberg is the journalist who wrote the op-ed “What is Anti-Semitism?” discussed here on this blog (recall that the experts he consulted were Abraham Foxman, Alan Dershowitz, and Daniel Goldhagen). Mearsheimer was the only one who had anything worthwhile to say. But many things are revealing when the event is examined with a critical eye. Neal Conan kicked off the program with this claim:

After Gaza and the Bernard Madoff scandal, many Jews perceive a significant and disturbing increase in anti-Semitism. For example, some [two] students [in a class of 80] at the University of California Santa Barbara complained after a professor there distributed an email that compared Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto, and implicitly Israelis with Nazis.

Conan provided neither evidence nor sources for his claim. Both Mearsheimer and Reich agreed that anti-Semitism was not dramatically on the increase. Here’s Reich’s answer:

Anti-Semitism has been fairly stable during the last several years. There’s been a bit of an upsurge probably in the last months following both the economic crisis and the activities in Gaza, but in general it’s been fairly stable and has not increased markedly.

Mearsheimer took the opportunity to get to the point:

I see occasional instances of anti-Semitism, but it’s hardly commonplace. I mean, the problem that we’ve come to in the United States is that it’s almost impossible to criticize Israeli policy or to criticize the US-Israeli relationship without being labeled either an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew. And the reason that defenders of Israel use this charge so liberally is because it is deadly effective at silencing critics and deterring other potential critics from leveling criticisms at either Israel or the special relationship that exists between the two countries.

On the question of whether Robinson’s email crossed the line, Goldberg noted that the shared view of Foxman and Dershowitz was that the claim that Israeli aggression against Palestinians is comparable to Nazi aggression against Jews is “absurd because it’s inaccurate, but it’s particularly insensitive and particularly hurtful to compare you to your own persecutors.” A reasonable follow up query would have been whether there is something remarkable about the victims of oppression using similar tactics against other peoples. Conan asked Goldberg to define anti-Semitism. He admitted it was hard, but then said this:

One of the best definitions I found was the European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia. This organization back in 2004 tried to come up with a working definition of anti-Semitism, and some of the things that they came up with were calling for the killing or harming of Jews in the name of an extremist ideology, making dehumanizing or demonizing stereotypical allegations about Jews, accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for wrongdoing that was in fact committed by a single Jewish person or group, trafficking in Jewish conspiracy theories, denying the Holocaust and accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel then to their own nations. And one of the other things that the organization talked about is they said that anti-Semitism could also target the state of Israel, and they did say specifically that comparing Jews to Nazis was a form of anti-Semitism.

I want to talk about this document, produced by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (really the work of its predecessor the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia). The report, Report on Racism and Xenophobia in the Member States of the EU, list several examples of what constitutes anti-Semitism. The part that the program focused on was this: 

Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel taking into account the overall context: … Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

You will note that these statements cannot simultaneously be true. The premise of the second statement is that one cannot hold Jews collectively responsible for actions of Israel. To do so is anti-Semitic. Blaming Jews for the actions of Israel would be like blaming Muslims or Arabs for the actions of Saudi Arabia. Israel doesn’t represent all Jews, even if it claims to be a Jewish state, any more than Iran represents all Muslims, even thought it claims to be a Muslim state. Saudi Arabia does speak for all Arabs even though it’s an Arab state. Etc.

The claim made by Zionists that the movement speaks for all Jews does not mean that it actually does. Indeed, it’s rather self evident that it doesn’t. So then how can it possibly follow that comparing Israeli policies with the policies of Nazi Germany is anti-Semitic? It cannot be because Israel claims to be a Jewish state, since the report already establishes that Jews cannot be held collectively responsible for what Israel does. Israel does not represent Jews as a people. Israel cannot speak for Jews as a people. Israel is not coextensive with Jews as a people. If it were, then it follows that we could hold Jews responsible for the acts of Israel. No?

The same EU report says “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” In other words, the report makes an exception for one country. That’s unethical.

Reich criticized Robinson’s use of the photograph by singling out a photo he said that, contextualized, proved the fallacy of the e-mail. 

One is a German soldier, one of the Einsatzgruppen, behind the advancing German forces in the former Soviet Union, and he’s aiming a rifle. All you see is him aiming a rifle. He’s aiming a rifle at the head of somebody who’s not in the photo because that part of the photo was cut off. He was shooting a woman in the head holding a baby. Probably it killed both of them with the same bullet. Paired with that was a picture of an Israeli soldier holding a rifle. The appearance is that they’re both doing the same thing. One was part of a murder operation that eventually killed, in that particular part of the Holocaust, one and half million Jews by executing them or gassing them. The other one was part of a war.

Reich began this by suggesting Robinson doesn’t have the requisite analytical training to know that he committed a fallacy. Ironically, assuming he isn’t being dishonest, Reich doesn’t know that Israeli soldiers have created a T-shirt glorifying the killing of an Arab mother and fetus. The image is of a pregnant Arab woman in the crosshairs. The caption reads “1 SHOT 2 KILLS.”

This evidence is devastating to Reich’s argument. It’s the equivalent to a clean knockout blow in boxing. The referee doesn’t even bother to count. Reich demonstrates his superficial understanding of these issues in another moment. A caller named Steve called in with a powerful point:

My mom was raised in racist Texas in the ’40s. And you know, she used to comment to me how she was afraid of what drinking fountain to use being a Jewish girl, you know, whether to use the white or the colored fountain, and she was called all kinds of racist names, anti- Semitic names. She taught me that to be a good Jew was to be a good person. It was basically to follow the Golden Rule. And I feel like being a Jewish person who loves people from all walks of life and all nationalities and religions, to not speak out against the collective punishment against the Palestinians, to not speak out against these brutalities, is anti- Semitic because Semites—not only the Jewish people, they are our Arabic brothers and sisters as well. And I find that when I’m speaking out against these injustices to be called a self-loathing Jew is in and of itself anti-Semitic as well. And that is my comment.

Conan asked Reich whether it is fair to call Steve a self-hating Jew? Reich responded with this bit of jazz:

I don’t like that term at all. And, you know, we tend not to know everything about everything at all times. So we act and do and believe things for the purpose of trying to feel as if we’re good people. People are demonstrating, including Jews, many Jews, against Israeli activities based on what they know, based on what they see in the media and so on. For example, last week I was in London. And there was a piece, probably an anticipation of the Pope’s visit… And it was in a Palestinian woodworking shop, and there was a close shot of a figure of Christ and I think was Christ with thorns, crown of thorns, and it moved to the Christian Palestinian. And he talked about how it was hard for him to get across checkpoints to sell his goods, as I recall. What – so there was an equation of Christ with the crown of thorns and the Palestinian—both are suffering. What the BBC reporter didn’t talk about, probably didn’t even know about, was that the percentage of Palestinians who are Christians keeps on going down. Bethlehem is now primarily a Muslim city. And they’re going down largely because they’re being intimidated and having to leave Palestine, having to leave the Middle East because of this kind of intimidation by Muslim Palestinians. He also – probably, he didn’t talk about—may not have even known why there were checkpoints in the first place. It’s very complex. But if all you see is that, if I were a Christian, I would be very upset and I would react because that was what I would think I know.

How about that for insulting Steve? First, Reich doesn’t address Steve’s point at all. He can’t because it is morally unassailable. So he changes the topic with an anecdote the purpose of which is to suggest that Steve only clings to this moral perspective because he is ignorant of what is actually happening. This style of responding to the moral argument is highly similar to the way Eliezer Wiesel answers questions like this. It is a typical tactic of defenders of Israeli brutality to change the subject and treat the questioner as a child who doesn’t know what’s going on. When the subject of the “new anti-Semitism” was suggested, Mearsheimer responded:

[I]f you look carefully at the debate about anti-Semitism today both in the United States and in Europe, I think that what you see is that the old-fashioned kind of anti-Semitism is kind of gone by the boards. And the new anti-Semitism – and that’s a phrase that’s frequently used by organizations that are fighting anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States – the new anti-Semitism has a lot more to do with Israel than it has to do with criticizing Jews. People who criticize Israel and equate Israeli behavior with Nazi behavior is seen as the main problem today. People who talk about the Israel lobby and argue that it is a powerful interest group in the United States that influences policy towards the Middle East, are oftentimes labeled as anti-Semitism. This is the new anti-Semitism. And the reason that people talk about the new anti-Semitism is that it’s very hard to find much evidence of the old-fashioned anti-Semitism that Nick was talking about before.

Finally, there is this interesting slip by Goldberg. 

I talked to Danny Goldhagen, who’s the author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, and he said that what he listens for is—he says again, there’s nothing wrong with criticizing Israel. You can say that the aggression—I’m sorry, the Israeli incursion into Gaza earlier this year, you can criticize it, you can say it was wrong, you can say that too many civilians died, but what he listens for is, well, are you criticizing Israel exclusively?

In case you missed it, Goldberg apologizes for characterizing the Israel attack on Gaza as “aggression.” He corrects himself and uses the term “incursion.” Israel bombed with war planes a country with no anti-aircraft defenses, no air force. Israel attacked with the most advanced weaponry on the planet—tanks, helicopters, machine guns—a civilian population trapped behind walls topped with razor wire. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, hundreds of them children. White phosphorus rained down on human beings who were burned alive. Hospitals, schools, apartments, and houses were pulverized. An incursion is a raid, a surprise attack by a small armed group. This was no incursion. This was aggression. It was a massacre.

In a story in the Daily Nexus, which is UC-Santa Barbara’s student paper, the myth that Robinson sent the email to private student accounts is repeated. A third-year history of public policy and sociology major is quoted as saying, “While professors do have much free range to discuss the topics they may discuss, they aren’t allowed to use private email list serves of students to propagate their own agenda, like [Robinson’s] e-mail which had nothing to do with the syllabus.”

First, most of the content of a course is not on the syllabus. This is obvious. Second, the e-mail was entirely and unambiguously relevant to the course. You have to be thick or willfully ignorant to not see this. Robinson was teaching a sociology class concerned with global issues and processes. The major global issue unfolding in January was Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Robinson introduced the Gaza invasion into a sociology class concerned with global issues. It would have been ideological for Robinson to have avoided in a class of this character introducing materials to prompt discussion about the major global issue of the day.

It is the nature of social science to engage in comparison (all science, in fact, proceeds by comparison). By identifying similarities across historical cases, comparison allows the social scientists to reveal common sociological processes at work. One can see how political economic projects of a similar character at a given point in historical development and shared cultural understandings use parallel tactics to achieve their goals. So the manner in which Robinson presented the material, in the form of a historical comparison, is entirely appropriate.

Robinson’s attached commentary is designed to provoke discussion. The comparative analysis leads to a discussion of motive, effect, and justice. There are legal questions of mens rea and actus reus that pertain. Is this genocide? Is the claim that the invasion was self-defense legitimate? What is the Israeli project in Palestine? What does international law say about this? As a sociologist of globalization, Robinson is well-versed in the character of international law.

Given that the United States is heavily involved in financially supporting the Israeli project, and the United States is the global hegemon, these questions are crucial to explore in a class with the title “Sociology of Globalization.”

Third, students are automatically enrolled in the course distribution list, which every course at the university has (mine has a similar system). Robinson is not reaching into private emails. His students are enrolled in a course distribution list through which they receive course materials. If they don’t want the materials, then they can not enroll in the course. If they want to cherry pick materials, then they can delete what they don’t want to see.

If there are persons who will contest a received opinion or who will do so if the law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we had any regard for the certainty or the vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labour for ourselves.

This quote is from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. Right-wing goons are after Bill Robinson, one of my mentors at the University of Tennessee, now teaching at the University of California-Santa Barbara. His sin? He criticized Israel’s brutality against Palestinians in Gaza. Two students accused him of anti-Semitism, which they said, following the State Department, is defined as the demonization of Israel and the vilification of its leaders. The State Department claims there is a distinction between criticisms of Israeli policies and behavior, on the one hand, and “commentary that assumes an anti-Semitic character,” on the other hand. Then the State Department erases the distinction between them by writing,

The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy concerning a controversial issue.

Is the demonization of Iran anti-Muslim? Iran is an Islamic state. Is using Nazi symbols and metaphors to caricature Iran and its leaders anti-Islamic? It is commonplace to compare Iranian leaders to Nazis. Are we to avoid vilifying Ahmadinejad because this is anti-Muslim or anti-Persian? Is the demonization of Iraq and Saddam Hussein anti-Arab? Saddam Hussein was constantly compared to Hitler. Was this anti-Muslim, since Saddam was a Muslim? What sort of anti is it to compare Bush to Hitler?

Obviously, it’s patently absurd to claim that demonization of Israel or vilification of its leaders is antisemitic or anti-Jewish. The State Department’s definition is designed to intimidate defenders of human rights into making an exception when it comes to Israel. But Israel cannot escape criticism by proclaiming its Jewish character anymore than Iran can escape criticism—even demonization and vilification—because of its Islamic character.

Israel, as is the United States, Saudi Arabia, or any other country, is a nation state. As such, criticism of it cannot constitute a form of racism. Just because many of Israel’s representatives characterize the country as a Jewish state does not transform criticism of Israel into anti-Jewish speech. Racism is a policy of systematic discrimination against and/or a system of structural inequality affecting a racially defined group. Antisemitism is prejudice against Jews. It is typically defined as antipathy or hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as an ethnic or racial group. Jews in Israel are not an oppressed ethnic or racial group in Palestine, therefore criticism of them cannot be racist anymore than criticism of the white minority of South African under Apartheid can be racist.

Now, if Bill Robinson had said that Jews are racially inferior (or superior), or inherently evil, or should be exterminated or segregated, then he would be guilty of antisemitism. But Bill, who happens to be Jewish, hasn’t said anything like this. I know Bill. He doesn’t believe such things.

It’s a curious thing when Jews call other Jews antisemites for criticizing Israel. Another term often used to malign Jews critical of Israel is “self-hating Jew,” a classic psychological ad hominem. However, the authority to determine what antisemitism is does not lie with those Jews who accuse other Jews of it.

In this context, the attack against Robinson is for allegedly being anti-Israel. There is nothing ethically problematic about being anti-US, anti-Russia, anti-France, and so forth. So why is this an issue? Because the university that employs Robinson is moving to charge Robinson with misconduct. Here is Robinson’s web site: http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson/. Here is an article about the controversy: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/23/ucsb, Here is the petition to sign to support Robinson against the witchhunt: http://sb4af.wordpress.com/.

I just read Nicholas Goldberg’s Los Angeles Times piece from yesterday. He cites Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, who argues that, “if a person repeatedly singles out Israel for attack without subjecting other countries to similar scrutiny, that’s questionable.” Can you imagine the defense in a murder case arguing, “Yes, well, the crime allegedly committed by my client was indeed heinous, but have you taken a look at all these other heinous crimes my client didn’t perpetrate? Your Honor, the prosecutor is biased against my client because he has failed to even mention these other cases!” What other point can there be to this argument than to distract the jury with irrelevancies?

The argument is furthermore drenched in hypocrisy. For years, Goldhagen was singularly driven to expose an alleged anti-Semitism inherent in German national culture. Every German was a “willing executioner.” Did Goldhagen “balance” this obsession with numerous random atrocities and injustices perpetrated by other state actors? Was there ever any expectation that he should? The thought never occurred to me. Suppose I specialize in the history of apartheid in South Africa. Am I supposed to discuss unjust arrangements in other countries to avoid being accused of bias? (If so, I should probably avoid mentioning the situation of one of South Africa’s closest allies during the height of the apartheid system.)

Goldhagen makes an equally ridiculous argument when he claims that opposition to Zionism suggests anti-Semitism. Am I really now compelled to be a Zionist lest I be an anti-Semite? Am I not free to refuse to consent to or participate in some ethnic group’s nationalist project? What if I am ethically opposed to embracing the assignment of an ethnic or religious character to any state because I subscribe to a secular and pluralistic conception of the nation-state (which I do)? This is a serious matter. If anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism is grounds for investigation of and possible disciplinary action against me, then I could be punished for failing to support what I regard as an injustice—let’s say a movement to establish an ethnically German state. Should I publicly announce my allegiance to Zionism to avoid persecution, or at least suspicion? The absurdity of these arguments exposes their purely ideological character. Goldhagen, Dershowitz, Foxman and their ilk simply do not get what a free and open democratic society is supposed to be. They are authoritarian minds are at work.

Nicholas Goldberg, writing in the Los Angeles Times has decided to tackle the question: “What is anti-semitism?” I want to go through the key parts of the essay and provide commentary.

Goldberg begins by noting that “today, determining what is or is not anti-Semitism is generally a more nuanced business, at least in the West.” Part of this ambiguity stems from the term’s ideological value by those who smear others with the label. For me, the definition of anti-semitism is still clear, namely, anti-semitism is prejudice towards or discrimination of persons on the basis of perceived or real Jewishness.

Goldberg poses several questions to illustrate what he sees as nuanced character of the term. He asks, “Is it anti-Semitic or merely factual to say that Hollywood is controlled largely by Jews?” We might answer this with an analogy: Is it anti-Christian to say that a given institution is controlled by Christians or by white Europeans? Sounds like an empirical question. If Hollywood is indeed controlled by Jews, then observing this fact can’t possibly be anti-semitic anymore than noting Christian or white European control over a given institution is anti-Christian or anti-white European. Goldberg himself notes that “[m]ost of the big studio chiefs are Jewish.” Is this anti-Semitic?

According to Goldberg, some have noted “that many of the neoconservatives who helped devise the war’s intellectual rationale were Jewish—and possibly harbored a dual loyalty to Israel?” It is true that many of the policymakers behind the Iraq war were Jewish. More importantly, it isn’t merely a possibility that they harbored a dual loyalty to Israel. As I have shown in my work on the Iraq War, many of them worked for the right-wing Likud Party of Israel and openly formed policy they perceived to advantage Israel (see Christian Neo-Fundamentalism and US Foreign Policy). Some of them have been found guilty of improperly transmitting classified information to Israel. There’s nothing ambiguous about that.

Goldberg continues wondering along these lines by asking if it is anti-Semitism to “point to the existence of a powerful ‘Israel lobby’ that wields substantial influence on Capitol Hill?” Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer have been accused of anti-semitism for writing about the Israeli lobby. Is there a powerful Israel lobby that wields substantial influence on Capitol Hill? Is there is, saying so is not anti-semitic. This lobby is also wielding substantial influence in higher education. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Goldberg writes that, for some, “comparing Israelis to Nazis is, in the final analysis, anti-Semitic because it is so demonstrably untrue and so patently disingenuous.”

Even Israel’s fiercest critics, they argue, ought to concede that the country’s actions have been taken in its own defense—even if one believes that defense was misguided or disproportionately violent or even criminal. Further, they say that the number of Palestinian deaths during the 60-year conflict can’t begin to compare to the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust. To suggest a moral equivalency is anti-Semitic because it’s so absurd.

Israel’s fiercest critics should not concede that Israel’s actions against Palestinians are taken, at least no solely, in the defense of Israel. Many of Israel’s claims to be defending itself amount to an Orwellian redefinition of what Israel is actually doing: occupying and annexing land that is not theirs, ghettoizing Arabs, pushing the indigenous residents off the land, confiscating their property, and killing and making refugees of them. Pro-Israeli historian Benny Morris simultaneously admits and rationalizes these actions:

The great American democracy could not have been achieved without the extermination of the Indians. There are cases in which the general and final good justifies difficult and cruel deeds that are carried out in the course of history.

Is this anti-Semitic? Morris even uses the term “exterminate.” What is the character of his analogy? While Goldberg understands Robinson’s argument that deeply held beliefs are there to be challenged in order to develop skills in critical thinking, he feels the need to point out that it’s the way Robinson said it that brought him trouble. “There are acceptable ways to criticize Israel, while others cross the line into anti-Semitism, says Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Oh boy. Here we go.

For instance, if a person repeatedly singles out Israel for attack without subjecting other countries to similar scrutiny, that’s questionable, Goldhagen says. Or if he opposes Zionism – and therefore, Israel’s right to exist as an explicitly Jewish state – altogether.

For years, Goldhagen specialized in the argument that ordinary, everyday Germans made the Holocaust possible because anti-semitism was fundamental to the German national character. Goldhagen was driven. He was on a mission. For years, I defended Goldhagen’s thesis. Does that make Goldhagen anti-German? What about me? No, I’m anti-Nazi. Does that make me anti-German? If a person specializes in studying the injustices perpetrated by a group, why should she make room to arbitrarily denounce another group? Does this not often carry a ulterior motive: to suggest to an audience that what the first group is doing isn’t as bad as you think because other groups do the same or similar things? I can’t count how many times in discussing how bad Hitler and the Nazis were, people respond with, “Yeah, well, Stalin was worse.” I’m forced to make two responses to this: First, “Stalin wasn’t worse.” Sorry, but he wasn’t. He was bad. But he wasn’t worse. Second, “Stalin is irrelevant; we’re talking about Hitler.”

How is opposition to Zionism is anti-semitic? Suppose as a matter of principle that I don’t believe any state should have an ethnic character? Suppose I don’t believe there should be a Jewish state for the same reason that I don’t believe there should be a Christian state or a white racial state. Does this make me anti-Christian or anti-white? Zionism is an ideology shared by some Jews and non-Jews that a Jewish state should exist. I can’t be coerced or shamed into sharing that belief from fear of being labeled an anti-semite. Don’t force me to be a Zionist.

Anarchists believe no states should exist. Is anarchism by definition anti-semitic? 

“Another way to cross the line,” Goldberg writes, “is to compare Israelis to Nazis.” He quotes Dershowitz, who writes, “Any comparison between Israeli efforts to defend its citizens from terrorism on the one hand, and the Nazi Holocaust on the other hand, is obscene and ignorant.” He quotes Foxman who says, “The moment you compare the Jews to those who consciously and systematically determined to wipe them off the face of the Earth—that’s anti-Semitism.”

Note how Dershowitz frames Israel policy for us. It would seem to be problematic to compare efforts to defend one’s citizens from terrorism to fascist atrocities, but then we would need to first accept as true the assumption that Israel is acting to defend its citizens. If Israel is in fact acting to occupy and annex Palestine for the creation of a larger Jewish state, and in the process was ghettoizing, killing and making refugees of Arabs, then the comparison isn’t so problematic anymore, is it? This disposes of Foxman’s point, as well.

Goldberg writes that Robinson “says he tells his students that there can be no double standard when it comes to human rights, and that the targeting of one Iranian or Palestinian or Jew or Rwandan is equally condemnable.” To the ridiculous demand that he mediate his criticism of an injustice by an actor under discussion by identifying other injustices by other actors, he responds: “it’s unreasonable to suggest that each time I critique one state for a human rights violation that I must also, in the name of balance, run off a litany of all the other human rights violations in the world.”

Worse, as I have already noted, it’s often an attempt to diminish the significance of what the state actor in question is doing by diluting it with discussion of other injustices. It’s an attempt to distract the observer with irrelevancies. Can you imagine the defense in a murder case arguing, “Yes, well, the crime allegedly committed by my client was indeed heinous, but have you taken a look at all these other heinous crimes my client didn’t perpetrate?” What other point can there be in this other than to distract the jury with irrelevancy?

The LA Times asks Robinson where he draws the line between what’s acceptable and what’s not.

It’s fine, he says, to criticize Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe for driving his country to the brink of collapse, but it would be unacceptable to say that he has done so because he is a biologically inferior black African. Similarly, it is acceptable to argue that Israel’s offensive in Gaza was wrong—but it would be anti-Semitic to criticize Israel on the grounds that Jews are dirty, greedy or sinister.

“What does Robinson say to the idea that comparing Israelis to Nazis is simply out of bounds?”

First, he defends the comparison of Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto. He says that, like the ghetto, Gaza is sealed off. As in the ghetto, the delivery of food and medical supplies is controlled by the hostile power outside, so that poverty and malnutrition are building. As in the ghetto, he says, rebellions are put down with disproportionate force. According to Robinson, it may not be an exact comparison, but it’s hardly ridiculous. Moreover, Robinson insists that such analogies are essential to understanding history. Would it be wrong, he asked, to compare the apartheid regime in South Africa to the Jim Crow laws in the American South, even if the situations were not identical? As for whether it’s OK to compare contemporary figures to the Nazis, he notes that President George H.W. Bush once likened Saddam Hussein to Hitler and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has compared Iran to Nazi Germany.

The LA Times tries to steal the thunder of these points by noting that “those are not cases where victims are compared to their persecutors.” Robinson gives this response:

comparing victims to their persecutors shouldn’t be off-limits. In fact, that’s the very irony that makes the analogy so important. “I’m saying that the people who suffered the most nightmarish crime of the 20th century are now using tactics and practices that are eerily similar to what was done to them,” he says. But he acknowledges that the analogy has its limits: “Extermination,” he says. “Obviously that’s the key difference.”

Not according to Benny Morris! At any rate, can you imagine a situation where we could not ask black South Africans why they were setting up an apartheid system that oppressed white South Africans merely because the black South Africans were the historic victims of the white South Africans? Isn’t there something called the “Golden Rule”?

The pro-Israel and Orwellian named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), asks, “Was Professor Robinson’s email an attempt at political indoctrination of his students?” Answer: No. Robinson shared information from the world journalistic community with his global sociology class. This is the method of class.

Question: “Did he invite student discussion and critical evaluation of other information and alternative views?” Answer: Yes, he asks students to discuss and critically evaluate everything in his classes. That’s his teaching method. He covers this the first day and emphasizes it throughout.

Question: “Does Professor Robinson have academic expertise regarding the issues in the email, specifically, the conflict in the Middle East and the life and beliefs of Martin Luther King?” Answer: Definitely. He is an expect on conflicts throughout the world, including in the Middle East, and he is, and anybody who studies the history of social justice, qualified to speak on the life and beliefs of Martin Luther King. If Martin Luther King Jr. would have said the same things about Israel, would SPME would have labeled King an anti-Semite, too.

Question: “Did Professor Robinson’s email meet standards of scholarly competence in that the text was factually accurate?” Answer: The e-mail comprised of interpretations of current events within a historical-comparative sociological framework. Academics are allowed to present sociological interpretations of current and historical events. So, yes, the email met standards of scholarly competence.

Question: “Was Professor Robinson’s email anti-Semitic?” Answer: Of course not. He was criticizing the state of Israel. He neither said nor implied anything prejudicial about or discriminatory towards Jews. As if it were relevant, SPME went on to quote the US Department of State in its Report on Global anti-Semitism and the US Commission on Civil Rights in its Public Education Campaign to End Campus Anti-Semitism: 

An important issue is the distinction between legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel, and commentary that assumes an anti-Semitic character. The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy concerning a controversial issue.

Unfortunately for SPME, neither the State Department nor the US Commission of Civil Rights owns the definition of antisemitism, which is here rationalized specifically to level the charge of antisemitism against critics of Israel.

Writing in Town Hall today, David Limbaugh made an error. He said, “People will produce more when they are allowed to retain more of the fruits of their labor.”

This is obviously wrong. Under capitalism, 9/10s of labor has been denied substantial control over productive property by state and laws permitting minority monopolization of material and intellectual means of production. If it is true that people will produce more when they are allowed to keep more of the fruits of their labor, and, conversely, people will produce less if they are allowed to keep less of the fruits of their labor, then one would expect productivity to have declined sharply with the expansion of capitalism.

This did not happen. It did not happen with slavery either. Slaves were not less productive because they weren’t allowed to keep the fruits of their labor. Nor was it true that serfs were less productive because they weren’t allowed to keep the fruits of the labor. This is because any system that permits a minority to monopolize the means of production and thus compels the majority to either be owned by the minority or by necessity rent themselves to the minority makes productivity a requirement of the relationship.

If it were true that keeping the fruits of one’s labor maximizes productivity, then communism, wherein everybody owns and controls the means of production, and distributes goods and services based on need and self-actualization, would be the most productive system possible.

The problem is that communism distributes the fruits of labor equitably and eliminates all but necessary work and thus people work less because their needs are met more easily and more completely. In others words, all people work less and enjoy life more.

That’s the capitalist’s worst nightmare.

At the forefront of apologetics for Israel is the US-based group StandWithUs, a thoroughly obnoxious lobby that harasses students and professors critical of Israeli policy and US participation in it. StandWithUs is deeply involved in the persecution of William I. Robinson at University of California-Santa Barbara, and, I understand, one of the students who instigated the affair is an operative for StandWithUs.

Those who support the persecution of Robinson have made arguments to which I want to respond. Exploding these exposes the real agenda here. The international president of StandWithUs, Esther Renzer, says, “This case is a litmus test of whether professors can exploit their positions of authority to impose their political prejudices on students or whether the university truly will remain a place where all points of view can be comfortably and responsibly discussed.”

First, all students imposed views on students in the sense that failure to answer a question declared true in relation to a point of view results in negative outcome. These are often political charged truths. Suppose a students decides to skip all questions pertaining to natural selection on a biology test because she is a creationist. Should she be allowed to pass on those questions without consequence because of here theological beliefs? Is she being punished because of her point of view? Or do we say that she suspends her belief in the supernatural in order to answer questions the premise of which she rejects just so she can have a positive outcome? Is this not imposing views on students? Damn straight it is. It’s called education. She agrees to this by remaining enrolled in the class.

In social science class, which is no less scientific than the natural and physical sciences, professors nonetheless take great care not to impose their political prejudices on students because they recognize that they are held to a different standard. In any case, Robinson did not connect his email to any possible negative consequences in terms of evaluating the students. When a student asked the question, Robinson reassured her that the e-mail carried on consequences. This has been twisted into a claim that Robinson admitted that the email was irrelevant to class. No, he said the e-mail was for her interests, therefore she did not have to do anything with it, and therefore there was no consequences for dismissing the claims in the e-mail.

Here’s the real world: Professors present political and other positions in class, germane to the subject at hand, that students can either agree or disagree with, or dismiss altogether. Part of a university education, specially learning how to become an informed and engaged citizen, is learning that one routinely confronts political opinions with which one either agrees or disagrees or is indifferent and that one is free to openly disagree with opinions with which they do not agree or ignore them altogether. It’s called life in an open society.

The e-mail over which Robinson’s opinion was sent was open to all participants in the class to use how they saw fit. It was for their interests in the context of a sociology class on global issues. All students had an equal opportunity to debate the merits of the email. Two students chose not to debate the merits, but instead to participate in a campaign to suppress academic freedom, thus harming the interests of the professor and the other students who enrolled in the course. They did not sign up for a class the content of which was constrained by outside forces. They signed up for a sociology class on global issues.

Israel’s invasion of Gaza is a global issue or great interest to the American college student. The comparison of any current state policy to the policies of past oppressive regimes is the bread and butter of historical social science, which rests on a comparative methodology. Second, it is not possible in a sociology class on global matters to comfortably discuss all points of view on account of the obvious fact that certain points of view will inevitably make some persons uncomfortable. There has never been a requirement that only those points of view with which every participant is comfortable may be discussed. If this were a requirement then the university classroom would have no purpose.

Christians who believe in creationism who attend biology classes have to participate in judgments premised on the truth of natural selection, a point of view diametrically at odds with the biblical account of life on our planet. Those who believe a supernatural being compels objects to fall confront in physics class judgments which operate on the theory of gravitation. The demand that we only discuss things with which we are all comfortable forces off the table any discussion the origins and development life or the reasons why objects fall. Yet, even in times where such matters were taken off the table, those who wanted to know but couldn’t were made to feel uncomfortable. Those who knew from other sources but were not allowed to speak up were made to feel uncomfortable. The curious were silenced, misdirected, punished.

Not discussing the killing of Palestinian civilians by Israeli military forces makes a lot of students who know what’s going on feel uncomfortable. Why is their discomfort any less important than those who defend such oppressive policies? Life is not about always feeling comfortable, especially in intellectual and political endeavors. Pursuing knowledge and justice often requires afflicting the comfortable. Life is about disagreement over things. If disagreements can’t happen in the context of a college classroom, then can we realistically expect them to happen elsewhere.

Roberta P. Seid, StandWithUs education and research director says that Robinson’s e-mail was anti-Semitic because it “demonized Israel, its founding, and its history. The university should be concerned about the degradation of academic standards when professors present such polemics as reasonable analyses.” Demonizing Israel is not anti-Semitic (and the State Department asserting that it does has no bearing on the truth of the matter).

Anti-Semitism is prejudice or especially discrimination against Jews based on their real or perceived Jewishness. Demonizing a nation-state, whatever its alleged ethnic character, does not inherently involve prejudice or discrimination against one ore more ethnic groups living within those borders. Was opposition to apartheid in South Africa demonstration of prejudice against the white ruling class? No, it was opposition to its oppressive public policies that caused the horrible treatment and conditions of the blacks who suffered under its control. Did people demonize the state of South Africa? Yes, for good reason. Seid said, “But that is not the case against him. [So why bring it up?] The case is that he inappropriately used university resources to impose and promote his personal political prejudices, stifling students’ ability to critically examine controversial issues. I’m sure he would be glad that the Code of Conduct safeguards are in place if a homophobic or racist professor took the liberties he took to influence students.” Note how the language is almost identical to that used by Renzer, so the same points I made above apply.

But let us examine the analogy Seid tries to draw about the homophobic or racist professor. Suppose that a biology professor states that she does not believe that homosexuality is genetic, that after a careful review of the evidence, she concludes that homosexuality is a learned behavior. Some students might find this uncomfortable for political reasons, namely, the desire to construct homosexuality as biological in order to legitimate identity. Some would suggest that even saying this is itself homophobic. But why should any of these statements be homophobic? A person can be strongly pro-gay and lesbian, believe that human beings should be free to be homosexual, even believe that the claim of genetic origin stigmatizes homosexuals as having defective genes from the point of view of heteronormativity, but that nonetheless the question it open to exploration—a person can be and believe all this and still argue the position that homosexuality like heterosexuality is learned behavior. If I were a biology professor making this argument should I be persecuted? If I am a professor who exposes the racist policies of any country, including my own, am I to be persecuted for being a racist? I say a lot of uncomfortable things about whiteness. Am I a racist? Should I be persecuted for discussing the history and consequences of whiteness in the United States?

Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs’ international director, said that StandWithUs launched the petition to provoke UCSB to persecute Robinson “to protect the right of students to register grievances against faculty without fear of hostile faculty reactions.” Speaking about those who are defending Robinson, Rothstein said that “’Robinson’s supporters’ assault on the students’ complaints could disempower other students with grievances and intimidate them into silence.” Talk about twisting oneself into knots. Rothstein said, “The politicization of academia is a serious problem today. We applaud the UCSB administration for trying to uphold standards of academic freedom and responsibility. They are under a lot of pressure, and our petition lets them know that tens of thousand of people support them and their commitment to ensure that the university remains what it should be—a place for the critical examination of ideas, facts, and values.”

What Rothstein wants is the depoliticization of science, a form of political correctness that will stifle critical examination of ideas, facts, and values. Life is political. The classroom, a place where life happens, is political. The academy is political. This is a welcome fact of social reality. The attempt to remove politics from academia is guided by a desire to render the university classroom a sterile environment where “truths” learned outside the classroom cannot be challenged in the classroom. The attempt to remove politics from academia is guided by a desire to reinforce indoctrination via a conspiracy of silence in the one place where critical examination fo ideas, facts, and values can take place.

Is it not ironic in some way that Americans who participate in StandWithUs’ witch hunt trample upon their own Bill of Rights to silence their fellow citizens who would criticize Israel? Why would any American tell another American to shut up about Israel? I have found that those who object most strongly to criticisms of Israel have no problem with criticism of US foreign policy, except where it pertains to US’s participation in Palestine. 

This is the United States of America. Here we allow free and open discussion and debate about ideas, facts, and values. At least we’re supposed to. We could do a lot better job if those who represent StandWithUs engaged the discussion and debated Robinson on the substance rather than organize campaigns to suppress his academic freedom. If ever the defenders of Israel are silenced in the classroom, what will they be able to say about this? If they are consistent, they will have to take their medicine. But, for them, free speech is not the principle in operation here. For them, I am free to say whatever I want, just so long as StandWithUs agrees with me.