Time to Choose: Liberalism or Zionism? By Dov Waxman. Haaretz, April 23, 2014.
Waiting for the Palestinian Godot. By Ari Shavit. Haaretz, April 24, 2014.
Discard the false visions of a binational state. By Salman Masalha. Haaretz, March 19, 2014.
Waxman:
It’s
not easy being a liberal Zionist. Denounced by right-wing Zionists for being
insufficiently pro-Israel and disparaged by left-wing anti-Zionists for being
insufficiently universalist, liberal Zionists have long been on the defensive.
How can they square their commitment to Jewish statehood with their commitment
to liberal democracy? How can they support Israel when it oppresses
Palestinians? How can they criticize Israel when it is the victim of terrorism,
rejectionism and anti-Semitism? How can they align themselves with Israel’s
enemies?
Challenged
with such questions from the left and right, liberal Zionists have defended
Israel’s claim to be a Jewish and democratic state (often conveniently
overlooking the fact that Arabs make up almost 20 percent of its citizens). They
have also championed the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied
territories. For liberal Zionists, a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only morally and strategically necessary
for Israel, it is necessary for them. It is the only way to reconcile their
Zionism and their liberalism; their support for Israel and their support for
equality and human rights.
As long
as the two-state solution is possible, liberal Zionism makes sense, at least to
its adherents. This is why liberal Zionists have placed such high hopes on the
U.S.-backed peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. While most
Israelis and Palestinians — and many disinterested observers — long ago gave up
their expectations for the peace process and now regard it with a mixture of
skepticism and cynicism, liberal Zionists, especially those in the United
States, still fervently believe in it. They have enthusiastically thrown their
support behind American Jewish organizations like J Street that lobby for it.
The peace process offers the tantalizing prospect of the realization of the
liberal Zionists’ dream — two states for two peoples living peacefully side by
side. As long as there’s a peace process, the dream lives on.
The
failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace initiative, therefore, is
a bitter blow for liberal Zionists. Over the past nine months, they set aside
their doubts and invested their hopes in the slim chance that Kerry would
somehow be able to cajole, entice and pressure Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud
Abbas into making the difficult decisions and compromises necessary for a peace
agreement. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, liberal Zionists
desperately tried to convince themselves that this time things would turn out differently.
Although every previous U.S. administration that has tried to broker peace has
failed, the Obama administration could succeed; although Bibi has never
demonstrated bold leadership, now he would; although Abbas has already turned
down a previous Israeli offer, this time he wouldn’t.
It is
now brutally clear that the current peace process will not end the conflict.
Even if peace talks continue, there is no real prospect that a comprehensive
final-status agreement can be reached, let alone implemented. Without such an
agreement, the two-state solution is impossible to achieve since it can only be
accomplished through mutual consent, not unilateral actions (such as an Israeli
withdrawal from parts of the West Bank or Palestinian membership in the United
Nations).
The
apparent demise of the peace process forces liberal Zionists to confront a
painful question that many wish to avoid — if a two state solution is now
impossible, should they support, however reluctantly, a one-state solution?
Must they concede that the only way to end the occupation is to endorse the
principle of equal rights for Jews and Palestinians in all of Israel/Palestine?
While granting citizenship to Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the
West Bank effectively spells the end of the Jewish state, how much longer can
liberal Zionists uphold Jewish self-determination at the expense of Palestinian
self-determination?
To be
sure, a one-state solution may be just as impossible as a two-state solution,
if not more so — civil war and even ethnic cleansing are more likely outcomes
than peaceful coexistence. Perhaps this long, interminable conflict cannot be
resolved, at least not for the foreseeable future. In that case, liberal
Zionists much accept that there is no easy way for them to reconcile their
liberalism and their Zionism. Instead, they must either abandon their
liberalism or their Zionism, or just learn to live with the constant tension
between them. Whatever they choose, it will only become harder to be a liberal
Zionist.
The Closing of the Academic Mind. By M.G. Oprea. The Federalist, April 21, 2014.
Let’s Give Up on Academic Freedom in Favor of Justice. By Sandra Y. L. Korn. NJBR, February 26, 2014. Published in The Harvard Crimson, February 18, 2014.
Oprea:
Harvard
student Sandra Y.L. Korn recently proposed in The Harvard Crimson that academics should be stopped if their
research is deemed oppressive. Arguing that “academic justice” should replace
“academic freedom,” she writes: “If our university community opposes racism,
sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our
goals simply in the name of ‘academic freedom’?”
In
other words, Korn would have the university cease to be a forum for open debate
and free inquiry in the name of justice, as defined by mainstream liberal
academia.
Unfortunately,
this is already a reality in most universities across America, where academics
and university administrators alike are trying, often successfully, to
discredit and prohibit certain ideas and ways of thinking. Particularly in the
humanities, many ideas are no longer considered legitimate, and debate over
them is de facto non-existent. In
order to delegitimize researchers who are out of line, academics brand them
with one of several terms that have emerged from social science theory.
The
first term, “hegemonic,” is frequently used in history courses, literary
criticism, and gender studies. Hegemony, of course, is a legitimate word that
is often useful in describing consistency and uniformity. However, most people
outside academia are unaware that being called “hegemonic” is the insult du jour. It strongly implies that you
are close-minded and perhaps even bigoted. This term may be applied to offences
ranging from referencing the habits or dress of a cultural group to discussing
the views held by a religion (and daring to question them—so long as the
religion in question is not Christianity).
To do
these things is to “essentialize” those people by speaking about them broadly
and being so bold as to imply that they may share a practice or belief in a
general sense. It is the insult of those who would have every department in
academia broken down into sub-departments ad
infinitum in order to avoid saying anything general about anything,
resulting in verbal and intellectual paralysis.
This
strategy of labeling has been particularly successful in its application to
middle-eastern and Islamic studies. Any author, or student, who does not join
in the liberal narrative about Islamic culture—which includes unwavering
support for Palestinians, the absolute equality of men and women in Islam, and
an insistence on the peaceful nature of the religion despite any violent
tendencies in its foundation— will find themselves labeled an “orientalist.”
Edward
Said popularized this term in his 1978 post-colonial work Orientalism. According to many of my colleagues, an orientalist is
a person who writes about the Middle East from a “western perspective,” which
is when one does not unquestioningly support and affirm Middle Eastern and
Islamic culture. This does not mean that westerners are excluded from writing
about the Middle East and Islam. A westerner can do so successfully so long as
their research is void of criticism. Write anything else and you will find
yourself labeled an orientalist and no graduate course will touch your work
with a ten-foot pole.
Sadly,
this is precisely what has happened to the work of Bernard Lewis, one of the
world’s most renowned Middle East scholars. Because he has written about
clashes between Islam and the West, and is willing to look at the Middle East
outside the utopian academic optic, Lewis has been “dis-credited” and replaced
with authors like Tariq Ramadan in college or graduate course syllabi.
Similarly, Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and
visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown universities, has been
dismissed as “not a historian” by some academics, presumably because of his
pro-Israeli stance. Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri, an associate professor at Reed
College, strips the scholar Daniel Pipes of his status as a historian, writing
that he is a “historian of Islam turned pro-Israel activist,” implying that the
two are mutually exclusive.
The
effect of discrediting one’s opponents in this way—rather than engaging and
debating their ideas—is to create an academia where there is only one right way
to think. If you dissent, you will be blackballed and labeled as hegemonic or
orientalist.
Nowhere
has this been more evident than in Brandeis University’s withdrawal of an
honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently because of her “controversial”
stance on women’s rights in Muslim society, which mostly consists of objecting
to things like female genital mutilation, forced marriages, and honor killings.
Rather than defending Hirsi Ali, or at the very least welcoming the debate that
her presence would bring, Brandeis chose to shut her out. This was done at the
behest of Brandeis faculty, students, and the Council of American-Islamic
Relations, all of whom claim she is Islamaphobic.
The
censorial climate of academia extends beyond tenured professors and touches the
students, both in undergraduate and graduate school. They are being taught what
is and is not an “acceptable” way of thinking rather than being encouraged to
think through difficult questions on their own.
(I
recently met a fellow graduate student from a Muslim-majority country who
confessed that she is disgusted with the way women are treated in her home
country. She finds the inequality unacceptable. However, she felt the need to
make a caveat: “I know as an academic and a Muslim I shouldn’t say this…”)
The
trouble is, very few in academia will even engage supposedly orientalist and
hegemonic views. How can one argue against a room full of graduate students—and
a professor—who dismiss such views out of hand and label dissenters with
epithets that are tantamount to “racist” in academic parlance?
Korn’s
dream of a “just” academic utopia is already being realized. But like many
utopian visions, there is a dark underbelly. Anyone who does not ascribe to the
dogma of “academic justice” can expect to be shunned and muzzled—as Brandeis
demonstrated recently. The irony is that in its effort to eliminate allegedly
close-minded and bigoted views, the university itself has become illiberal,
dogmatic, and intellectually hegemonic.
If we
shut the doors on academic freedom, the acceptable territory of research and
discourse will continue to shrink over time, and the self-censorial dogma of
the academy will inevitably trickle out beyond the boundaries of the university
campus, threatening freedom of speech—and thought—in society at large.
