Does NYU have a Jewish problem? By Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith. New York Daily News, June 1, 2014.
Articles about Lisa Duggan at Legal Insurrection.
Adkins:
Despite
the torrential downpour that unleashed itself over downtown Manhattan Monday
evening, nearly 100 students and members of the general public gathered at New
York University for an inspiring event that brought together business experts,
disruptive artists, media revolutionaries, journalists and jazz musicians.
Innovation
Israel, a project spearheaded by TorchPAC at NYU and the Stern Political
Economy Exchange (SPEX), proved to be a tremendous opportunity for those in
attendance unfamiliar with Israel to experience the incredible spirit and
passion of a tiny country in the Middle East, but was also a chance for
pro-Israel activists to engage in conversation face-to-face about the
challenges facing the pro-Israel community today.
The
Innovation Israel showcase was one of the more visible efforts of NYU’s
Pro-Israel community this year, but readily visible relationship building and
showcasing of Israeli innovation is only one small, small part of the important
work being done to defend Israel on US campuses.
Far too
often in recent times, extreme voices have made a presence for themselves in
the intellectual (or often, pseudo-intellectual) arena; earlier this year, NYU
faced strongly anti-semitic activities from NYU professor Lisa Duggan
culminating in the form of an Anti-Israel Conference.
Much has been written, most notably by Forbes Contributing Editor of Investigations
Richard Behar, that more than adequately elucidates the troubling event and
hijacking of the American Studies Association by Duggan and her extreme
colleagues in painstaking detail.
Notable
Israel detractors Max Blumenthal and Ali Abunimah also spoke at NYU earlier
this year, at an event brimming with hatred and rife with factual inaccuracy,
including repulsive allusions to the Holocaust.
In his
speech, Blumenthal described a place called “Saharonim,” a facility on the
border of Israel and Egypt where African refugees seeking refuge in Israel
first live, and painted a tale of holocaust-esque roundups and mass starvation.
As Josh Voss, NYU Freshman and former IDF soldier who attended the Blumenthal
speech recounted:
I’ve seen the facility; my unit prevented smuggling on the the exact border where it is located. I’ve met with Africans who lived there, as they walked into the nearby village Kadesh Barnea to buy groceries, the same grocery store where I used to buy hummus and apples. If Israel was starving them, it was definitely doing a horrible job. No one, especially not the Sudanese and Rwandans that live there will tell you they’re being rounded up and starved to death.
How
does one even begin to counter these foul distortions of reality?
Organizations
such as CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) do
an incredible job of countering bias in the mass media, though this fight is
one that unfortunately requires vast resources as well as constant vigilance.
In
order to counter the smear campaign against Israel taking place through Duggan
at NYU, TorchPAC organized meetings with the NYU administration and authored an open letter to NYU President John Sexton that called for the administration to
“begin to take a serious look at… the policies and practices of the ASA.”
Pro-Israel
organizations can be generally divided into two camps: those that primarily
work towards relationship building and promoting Israel’s modernity as well as
strategic importance, and those that primarily work to correct historically and
factually inaccurate depictions of Israel in the public narrative. These
different arenas are traditionally thought to require very distinct strategies.
But what if we were to question the narrative that these aims could not be
accomplished concurrently? What if Pro-Israel groups formulated their 5-year
plans around making strides in both vital arenas?
Let me
be frank: ideas being used in the battle raging on our campuses and across the
world concerning the legitimacy of the state of Israel, as well as the outright
lies perpetrated by the likes of Duggan and Blumenthal with the express purpose
of delegitimizing the state of Israel, are laced with far-too-much emotional
venom to be effectively countered with either relationship building or sterile
cerebral arguments alone.
Our
movement is stuck in the defensive, with no fully coherent strategy; today’s
consumer is assailed by misinformation and hard-hitting emotional arguments
from the anti-Israel camp in too many arenas for disjointed efforts be
adequate.
This
generation’s challenges will require a reinvigorated effort in the Jewish
community that results in a revamped strategy which many people on either side
will be uncomfortable with, but which represents our only hope of defeating
anti-Israel sentiment on today’s campuses. If we are to expect people to take
Israel seriously, we have to show them that Israel is serious; with such an
uneven playing field, we need to step up our game and pull ourselves into the
real world, where facts are always considered along with feelings.
A
campus charm offensive where we avoid facts will be futile, but as much as it
pains me as an intellectual and truth-seeker to say, so too will even the most
meticulously executed correction of the anti-Israel movement’s distortions of
fact if anything beyond the purely “factify-able” is ignored. In the words of
Jackie Retig, NYU Senior and Co-Chair of Campus Relations for TorchPAC:
Torchpac strives to find a balance between political activities, such as meeting with members of Congress to discuss issues pertaining to the U.S.-Israel relationship, with events that reach a broader student body through showcasing Israel’s unique opportunities and innovation. In this way we hope to strengthen our ties with Israel across different communities and through new avenues.
As a
Pro-Israel community, we have allowed ourselves to become complacent and
self-polarized; many of us choose to treat our Israel either as a doting mother
would her child, ignoring the flaws while showcasing every success, or as an
aloof professor would treat a sloppy essay, shaking his head as he slashes
through inaccuracies with his red pen and adds painstaking commentary, never
realizing that his pupil will take one look at the returned assignment and toss
it into the trashcan.
This is
my generation’s task: not only to redefine the narrative on campus, but to
revamp and revitalize our Pro-Israel organization and way of thought. We will
only be remembered as a compelling and proactive generation of advocates for
Israel if we are able to reunite facts with feelings and execute a strategy
which always considers both.
