Glick:
This week we caught a glimpse of the advanced state of the disease in an email sent by a Syracuse University professor to an Israeli filmmaker in June.
The
cancer of Jew hatred has taken over the body of US academia.
This
week we caught a glimpse of the advanced state of the disease in an email sent
by a Syracuse University professor to an Israeli filmmaker in June.
As The Atlantic reported, on June 24, Syracuse professor Gail Hamner
disinvited Israeli filmmaker Shimon Dotan from screening his film at the university’s
film festival, scheduled for March 2017.
Hamner’s
decision had nothing to do with the quality of Dotan’s work. She admitted as
much, writing, “Obviously, my decision here has nothing to do with you or your
work.”
Dotan
was disinvited because he is Israeli and because the title of his film, The
Settlers, does not make it immediately apparent whether he reviles the half
million Israeli Jews who live in Judea and Samaria sufficiently.
Hamner
explained, “My SU colleagues, on hearing about my attempt to secure your
presentation [at our upcoming film festival], have warned me that the BDS
faction on campus will make matters very unpleasant for you and for me if you
come.”
She
then elaborated on the harm his participation would cause her, personally.
“My
film colleague... who granted me affiliated faculty [status] in the film and
screen studies program and who supported my proposal to the Humanities Council
for this conference, told me point blank that if I have not myself seen your
film and cannot myself vouch for it to the council, I will lose credibility
with a number of film and women/ gender studies colleagues. Sadly, I have not
had the chance to see your film and can only vouch for it through my friend and
through published reviews.”
Hamner
added, “I feel caught in an ideological matrix and by my own egoic needs to
sustain certain institutional affiliations.”
Hamner’s
letter to Dotan provides us with a rare opportunity to see something that
people generally go to great lengths to hide. Hamner demonstrated how boycott,
divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists have enmeshed Jew hatred into the
fabric of academic life in America.
The BDS
movement is qualitatively different from all other groups that operate on
campuses today.
Unlike
even the most radical, fringe groups, the BDS movement isn’t seeking to advance
or protect the rights of anyone. All it works to accomplish is the obliteration
of Jewish rights, and indeed of Jewish existence in Israel.
Like
Hamas and Iran, BDS activists seek the annihilation of the Jewish state. Like
Hamas and Iran, the BDS movement does not strive to bring peace or to protect
the rights of anyone. Rather, like Iran and Hamas, the goal of the BDS movement
is the genocide of the largest Jewish population in the world and the
annihilation of the only Jewish state in the world.
Bullying
is the BDS movement’s preferred tactic.
They
bully faculty, administrators and students into becoming anti-Semitic by
harassing, ostracizing and persecuting everyone who refuses to actively promote
Jew hatred.
To
force everyone into line, BDS groups have adopted two complementary tactics.
First, they try to banish Israeli Jews entirely from their campuses by bullying
their institutions into adopting and implementing anti-Israel boycotts.
Second,
they enforce partial bans on Israeli Jews by requiring Israeli and non-Israeli
Jews to behave in manners no one would never think of requiring of Israeli
Arabs, or Italians or Japanese for that matter.
BDS
activists achieve both aims by bullying non-activists into enforcing their
anti-Semitic positions – as Hamner did when she disinvited Dotan.
These
actions are a clear violation not only of the civil rights of Israeli and
non-Israeli Jews. They are also an indisputable violation of the civil rights
of all students, administrators and faculty at US universities. They deny
everyone the right to hear viewpoints and receive knowledge from Israeli Jews
and so limit the academic freedom of everyone.
BDS is
a postmodern version of the pure, unrefined Jew hatred of Medieval Europe. Five
hundred years ago, the only Jews permitted to enter the public square were
Christians. Jews were rejected, ostracized, expelled and killed unless they
could enthusiastically and soulfully recite the catechisms.
On
university campuses throughout the US today, Jews – Israeli and non-Israeli –
are ostracized, silenced, harassed and humiliated unless they enthusiastically,
soulfully and contritely declare their support for the annihilation of the
Jewish state.
Non-Jews
who do not require them to do so are similarly ostracized and otherwise
punished.
Case in
point is the fate of Milan Chatterjee.
Chatterjee
is an Indian-American law student and a Hindu. Last year he was elected
president of UCLA’s Graduate Students’ Association. Last week he announced his
resignation from the post and his transfer to New York University Law School to
complete his degree.
In a
letter to UCLA chancellor Gene Block, Chatterjee explained that his decision
was the result of relentless attacks, harassment and bullying he has suffered
at the hands of BDS activists and their enablers in Block’s administration.
Chatterjee
wrote Block: “Your administration has not only allowed BDS organizations and
student activists to freely engage in intimidation of students who do not
support the BDS agenda, but has decided to affirmatively engage in
discriminatory practices of its own against those same students.
“Whether
you choose to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that the UCLA campus has
become a hostile and unsafe environment for students, Jewish students and
non-Jewish, who choose not to support the BDS movement, let alone support the
State of Israel.”
Chatterjee
got on the wrong side of UCLA’s anti-Semitism enforcers in November 2015 when
he adopted a student government policy of strict neutrality on BDS.
Under
his leadership, the graduate council would neither support nor oppose BDS. To
this end, he allocated funds for a “Diversity Caucus,” with the stipulation
that the caucus remain neutral on BDS.
It was
for his refusal to actively endorse BDS – rather than any action to oppose BDS
– that Chatterjee became a target for the BDS mob. They submitted a bid to
impeach him based on frivolous claims.
To its
shame, rather than stand by Chatterjee, the administration joined the mob.
Chatterjee was censured by the university and subjected to disciplinary
proceedings. UCLA’s administration claimed that he had “violated university
policy” for refusing to fund BDS groups.
Following
Chatterjee’s decision to transfer to NYU, Kenneth Marcus, president of the
Louis Brandeis Center, which supported Chatterjee throughout his year of
anti-Semitic persecution, issued a statement. Marcus noted, “It is disgraceful
that anti-Israel extremists have managed to drive out this courageous and
conscientious student leader for failing to capitulate to the demands of the
anti-Semitic BDS movement. The Milan Chatterjee affair reflects the
insidiousness of the anti-Israel movement’s new strategy, which is to suppress
pro-Israel advocacy and intimidate not only Jewish pro-Israel students but
anyone who remains neutral.”
Back at
Syracuse, the ironic aspect of Hamner’s disinvitation of Dotan is that Dotan
actually recites the catechism both personally and in his film. His only
mistake was that he failed to make his convictions clear in the title of his
movie.
The
university administration was embarrassed by the publication of Hamner’s
statement. As a result, last Friday Syracuse University provost Michelle
Wheatley issued a mass email stating that Dotan had been reinvited to the
conference and that Hamner had apologized for her letter.
The
most notable aspect of Wheatley’s letter is that it contained no commitment to
investigate her allegations of anti-Semitic intimidation on the part of faculty
and student BDS goons. It contained no commitment to purge bigoted intimidation
from campus or invite Israelis with Zionist views to speak at Syracuse or
participate in university events. It contained no mention of any plans to
discipline Hamner for engaging in bigoted actions.
Rather,
it simply reinvited Dotan, whose anti-Israel credentials were belatedly sorted
out.
For
nearly eight years, US President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has refused
to investigate the flagrant civil rights violations carried out by BDS
activists, groups and their faculty and administration allies and enablers. So
there is no reason to think that any federal investigation will be conducted
any time soon.
Rather,
we can expect anti-Jewish prejudice to become ever stronger and more brazen. We
can expect Israeli Jews to be shunned to greater and greater degrees and for
pro-Israel students, faculty and administrators – Jewish and non-Jewish – to
become less and less free to voice their views.
And we
can expect the US higher education system to speed up its slide into moral
dystopia and intellectual corruption.
