America’s Misguided Gender Missionaries. By Martha Bayles.

America’s Misguided Gender Missionaries. By Martha Bayles. The American Interest, March 3, 2014.

Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? By Susan Moller Okin. Boston Review, October/November 1997. Also here.

Putin Invades Crimea: Obama Hardest Hit? By Walter Russell Mead.

Putin Invades Crimea: Obama Hardest Hit? By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, March 3, 2014.

How the Boycott Got Boycotted. By Adam Kredo.

How the Boycott Got Boycotted. By Adam Kredo. Commentary, March 2014.

Countering Israel Boycotts, With Glamour. By Mark Landler. New York Times, February 28, 2014.

Why Liberals Must Repudiate the BDS Movement. By Howard Wohl. The Tower, March 2014.

Don’t Buy the Israel Boycott Hype. By David Rosenberg. Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2014.

Obama to Israel – Time is Running Out. By Jeffrey Goldberg.

Obama to Israel – Time is Running Out. President Obama interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg View, March 2, 2014. Excerpts at The Atlantic.

Obama threatens Israel on the eve of Netanyahu visit. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, March 2, 2014.

For Netanyahu, a bombshell battering by Obama. By David Horovitz. The Times of Israel, February 3, 2014.

The President’s Prophetic Threats to Israel. By John Podhoretz. Commentary, March 2, 2014.

On Israel, Obama Has No Clue What He’s Talking About. By David Harsanyi. The Federalist, March 3, 2014.

Obama’s Scary Mideast Interview. By Elliott Abrams. The Weekly Standard, March 3, 2014.

Surprise: Obama Kills the Peace Process. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, March 3, 2014.

Obama puts Israel on notice. By Hussein Ibish. NOW Lebanon, March 4, 2014.

Obama’s Settlement Construction Lie. By Evelyn Gordon. Commentary, March 4, 2014.


Podhoretz:

In an extraordinary—and I don’t use the word in a complimentary way—interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg, President Obama follows his secretary of state in warning Israel and its leader that a failure to “make peace” now with the Palestinians will have terrible consequences. Israel is “more isolated internationally,” and will become more so; there will be more Palestinians and Israeli Arabs as time goes on, not fewer, so Israel had better move now; and not to move now is to create the conditions for a “permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank. . . . there comes a point when you cannot manage this anymore.”

 

The wild logical contradictions in his remarks expose the degree to which the American approach in the Kerry peace talks is to haunt Israel with the dire nightmare it will face should the talks fail; Palestinian rejectionism plays almost no role in the Obaman calculus here.

 

The Palestinians, in Obama’s view, do not actually need to make changes; astonishingly, he says, they’re ready for peace. “The Palestinians,” the president says, overlooking every piece of polling data we have about the opinions of the Palestinians, “would still prefer peace. They would still prefer a country of their own that allows them to find a job, send their kids to school, travel overseas, go back and forth to work without feeling as if they are restricted or constrained as a people. And they recognize that Israel is not going anywhere.”

 

Ah. So that 2011 poll that says 60 percent of the Palestinians reject a two-state solution is bunk—a poll whose findings have not been  contradicted since. If Palestinians refuse to accept a two-state solution, they do not “recognize that Israel is not going anywhere.” Rather, they are still engaging in a pseudo-national fantasy about Israel’s disappearance or destruction. And they are so eager for peace and coexistence with Israel that they remain the only significant Muslim population that still has a favorable view of suicide bombings, according to a Pew survey.

 

“The voices for peace within the Palestinian community will be stronger with a framework agreement,” the president says. But why would the “voices for peace” need to be “stronger” if they reflect the actual views of the Palestinian people? They should be more than strong enough on their own now. Indeed, if they are so strong, we would not be hearing repeated denunciations of the “framework” process from Palestinian negotiators.

 

The president’s fantasies about the Palestinians also  involve Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. “I think,” he says, “nobody would dispute that whatever disagreements you may have with him, he has proven himself to be somebody who has been committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue.” Nobody would dispute? In 2008, offered a peace deal by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that involved Abbas actually drawing a new West Bank map giving the Palestinians something between 92 and 95 percent of the territory, Abbas basically fled the table and didn’t return. Granted, he didn’t do what Yasser Arafat did after a similar deal at Camp David in 2000 and begin the second intifada, but this hardly demonstrates a commitment to a diplomatic effort—except for one that fails.

 

So the Palestinians, in the president’s view, are all in. It’s really quite wonderful, in fact: “You’ve got a partner on the other side who is prepared to negotiate seriously, who does not engage in some of the wild rhetoric that so often you see in the Arab world when it comes to Israel, who has shown himself committed to maintaining order within the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority and to cooperate with Israelis around their security concerns — for us to not seize this moment I think would be a great mistake.”

 

Yes, the PA is such a partner for peace that even with negotiations going on, it celebrates acts of violence against Israel on a constant basis, as this report details.

 

Not to mention the little wrinkle that Abbas doesn’t speak in any way for half of the Palestinian polity, the half living under the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza. Ah, but that’s no problem, in the president’s view. “There would still be huge questions about what happens in Gaza,” the president says, “but I actually think Hamas would be greatly damaged by the prospect of real peace.” Really! Unlike Abbas, who has not faced Palestinian voters since 2004, Hamas actually won a free election in the past decade and its unquestioned commitment to Israel’s destruction is clearly shared by the people who live under its aegis. They do not want peace.

 

All of this is folderol, anyway, because the president clearly thinks peace is solely Israel’s to make, and basically, Binyamin Netanyahu should listen to Obama’s mother and rip off the band-aid: “One of the things my mom always used to tell me and I didn’t always observe, but as I get older I agree with — is if there’s something you know you have to do, even if it’s difficult or unpleasant, you might as well just go ahead and do it, because waiting isn’t going to help. When I have a conversation with Bibi, that’s the essence of my conversation: If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?”

 

Now that’s some chutzpah right there, because of course the president is invoking the words of Hillel, the ancient Jewish sage, as a rhetorical tool against the Israeli prime minister. Of course, Obama leaves out the key words of Hillel’s famed plaint, which are: “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?” Israel must be for itself, because there is almost no country left in the world that will be for it; while the president says the American commitment to Israel is “rock-solid,” clearly he does not believe it will necessarily be so in the future . . . nor should it be.

 

Says the president of Netanyahu, “if he does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach. And as I said before, it’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible.” That’s ridiculous. A peace deal with the Palestinians is of course the right thing to do for Israel. But if there can be no peace deal, or can be no peace deal that does not pose a severe danger to Israel’s survival, then it is not the right thing to do.

 

The only “plausible” thing to do is to challenge the Palestinians to cure themselves of their psychotic political culture and become a rational actor with whom a true peace can be made. Is that a tragedy? It sure is. Sometimes there are tragedies, and they must be faced realistically, not wished away.

 

One thing that cannot be wished away is the president’s insistence on placing the burdens on Israel. This is something else his apologists can no longer wish away.

Putin Smashes Washington’s Cocoon. By Walter Russell Mead.

Putin Smashes Washington’s Cocoon. By Walter Russell Mead and Staff. The American Interest, March 1, 2014.

Red Lines in Crimea. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, February 28, 2014.


Mead and Staff:

A Politico report calls it “a crisis that no one anticipated.” The Daily Beast, reporting on Friday’s US intelligence assessment that “Vladimir Putin’s military would not invade Ukraine,” quotes a Senate aide claiming that “no one really saw this kind of thing coming.”

 

Op-eds from all over the legacy press this week helped explained why. Through the rose tinted lenses of a media community deeply convinced that President Obama and his dovish team are the masters of foreign relations, nothing poor Putin did could possibly derail the stately progress of our genius president. There were, we were told, lots of reasons not to worry about Ukraine. War is too costly for Russia’s weak economy. Trade would suffer, the ruble would take a hit. The 2008 war with Georgia is a bad historical comparison, as Ukraine’s territory, population and military are much larger. Invasion would harm Russia’s international standing. Putin doesn’t want to spoil his upcoming G8 summit, or his good press from Sochi. Putin would rather let the new government in Kiev humiliate itself with incompetence than give it an enemy to rally against. Crimea’s Tartars and other anti-Russian ethnic minorities wouldn’t stand for it. Headlines like “Why Russia Won’t Invade Ukraine,” “No, Russia Will Not Intervene in Ukraine,” and “5 Reasons for Everyone to Calm Down About Crimea” weren’t hard to find in our most eminent publications.

 

Nobody, including us, is infallible about the future. Giving the public your best thoughts about where things are headed is all a poor pundit (or government analyst) can do. But this massive intellectual breakdown has a lot to do with a common American mindset that is especially built into our intellectual and chattering classes. Well educated, successful and reasonably liberal minded Americans find it very hard to believe that other people actually see the world in different ways. They can see that Vladimir Putin is not a stupid man and that many of his Russian officials are sophisticated and seasoned observers of the world scene. American experts and academics assume that smart people everywhere must want the same things and reach the same conclusions about the way the world works.

 

How many times did foolishly confident American experts and officials come out with some variant of the phrase “We all share a common interest in a stable and prosperous Ukraine.” We may think that’s true, but Putin doesn’t.

 

We blame this in part on the absence of true intellectual and ideological diversity in so much of the academy, the policy world and the mainstream media. Most college kids at good schools today know many more people from different races and cultural groups than their grandparents did, but they are much less exposed to people who think outside the left-liberal box. How many faithful New York Times readers have no idea what American conservatives think, much less how Russian oligarchs do? Well bred and well read Americans live in an ideological and cultural cocoon and this makes them fatally slow to understand the very different motivations that animate actors ranging from the Tea Party to the Kremlin to, dare we say it, the Supreme Leader and Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

As far as we can tell, the default assumption guiding our political leadership these days is that the people on the other side of the bargaining table (unless they are mindless Tea Party Republicans) are fundamentally reasonable people who see the world as we do, and are motivated by the same things that motivate us. Many people are, of course, guided by an outlook not all that dissimilar from the standard upper middle class gentry American set of progressive ideas. But some aren’t, and when worlds collide, trouble comes.

 

Too much of the Washington policy establishment looks around the world and sees only reflections of its own enlightened self. That’s natural and perhaps inevitable to some degree. The people who rise through the competitive bureaucracies of American academic, media and think tank life tend to be those who’ve most thoroughly absorbed and internalized the set of beliefs and behavioral norms that those institutions embody and respect. On the whole, those beliefs and norms have a lot going for them. It would not be an improvement if America’s elite institutions started to look more like their counterparts in Russia or Zimbabwe.

 

But while those ideas and beliefs help people rise through the machinery of the American power system, they can get in the way when it comes to understanding the motives and calculations of people like President Putin. The best of the journalists, think tankers and officials will profit from the Crimean policy fiasco and will never again be as smug or as blind as so much of Washington was last week. The mediocre majority will go on as before.

 

The big question of course, is what President Obama will take away from this experience. Has he lost confidence in the self-described (and self-deceived) “realists” who led him down the primrose path with their empty happy talk and their beguiling but treacherous illusions? Has he rethought his conviction that geopolitics and strategy are relics of a barbarous past with no further relevance in our own happy day? Is he tired of being humiliated on the international stage? Is it dawning on him that he has actual enemies rather than difficult partners out there, and that they wish him ill and seek to harm him? (Again, we are not talking about the GOP in Congress.)

 

Let’s hope so. There are almost three years left in this presidential term, and they could be very long ones if President Obama chooses to stick with the ideas and approaches he’s been using so far.

Northern Exposure: Launching Excavations at Tell Abil el-Qameḥ (Abel Beth Maacah). By Nava Panitz-Cohen et al.

Tel Abel Beth Maacah looking east from the main road

Sheba passed through all the tribes of Israel to Abel of Beth-maacah; and all the Bichrites assembled, and followed him inside. Joab’s forces came and besieged him in Abel of Beth-maacah; they threw up a siege-ramp against the city, and it stood against the rampart. Joab’s forces were battering the wall to break it down. Then a wise woman called from the city, “Listen! Listen! Tell Joab, ‘Come here, I want to speak to you.’” He came near her; and the woman said, “Are you Joab?” He answered, “I am.” Then she said to him, “Listen to the words of your servant.” He answered, “I am listening.” Then she said, “They used to say in the old days, ‘Let them inquire at Abel’; and so they would settle a matter. I am one of those who are peaceable and faithful in Israel; you seek to destroy a city that is a mother in Israel; why will you swallow up the heritage of the Lord?” Joab answered, “Far be it from me, far be it, that I should swallow up or destroy! That is not the case! But a man of the hill country of Ephraim, called Sheba son of Bichri, has lifted up his hand against King David; give him up alone, and I will withdraw from the city.” The woman said to Joab, “His head shall be thrown over the wall to you.” Then the woman went to all the people with her wise plan. And they cut off the head of Sheba son of Bichri, and threw it out to Joab. So he blew the trumpet, and they dispersed from the city, and all went to their homes, while Joab returned to Jerusalem to the king.

– 2  Samuel 20: 14-22.


Northern Exposure: Launching Excavations at Tell Abil el-Qameḥ (Abel Beth Maacah). By Nava Panitz-Cohen, Robert Mullins, and Ruhama Bonfil. STRATA: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, Vol. 31 (2013). Also here.

Abstract:

Tell Abil el-Qameḥ, identified with the Biblical site of Abel Beth Maakah, is an imposing site strategically located on the farthest northern border of Israel, a border in antiquity as well as today. In the Iron Age, this boundary separated - and joined - Israelites, Phoenicians and Arameans. In the Bronze Age, it served as a springboard for relations with the great kingdoms in Syria and Mesopotamia. Despite its prominence and strategic importance, the site had never been excavated. Following a survey in 2012 led by the authors, excavation began in the summer of 2013. Iron Age remains exist just under the topsoil in the two areas explored this first season. In the center of the eastern slope (Area A) a series of Iron Age occupation levels were found and in the southern end of the lower mound (Area F) there was a large stone structure that might be a fortification overlooking the Huleh Valley.

Report: Survey at Tel Abel Beth Maacah – May 2012. By Nava Panitz-Cohen, Ruhama Bonfil, and Robert Mullins. Tel Abel Beth Maacah Excavations.

Tel Abel Beth Maacah Excavations website.

Abel Beth Maacah Facebook page.

Breaking Ground at Tel Abel Beth Maacah—Why Dig at the Gateway to the Arameans. By Robert Mullins and Nava Panitz-Cohen. ASOR Blog.

Mullins and Panitz-Cohen:

Abel Beth Maacah is an imposing 35-acre mound controlling one of the most strategic passes in northern Israel and has the honor of being the northernmost site in Israel (running neck-and-neck with nearby Tel Dan, but winning by a nostril). It was also ancient Israel’s northern gateway to the Aramean world.

 

But this summer, a team of 40 led by Robert Mullins of Azusa Pacific University and Nava Panitz-Cohen of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with Cornell University, began excavations at the largest site in Israel yet to be touched by the archaeologist’s spade.

 

The identification of Tell Abil el-Qameḥ with Abel Beth Maacah (1 Kings 15:20; 2 Kings 15:29; 2 Chronicles 16:4) has been accepted by most scholars, beginning with Edward Robinson and Victor Guerrin in the 19th century and continuing into the 20th century with W. F. Albright, Y. Aharoni, W. G. Dever, and others. But remarkably, despite the site’s size and obvious importance, it has never been excavated.

 

What are we looking for? For one thing, there is Abel’s Aramean connection. References to a political entity called “Aram Maacah” (1 Chronicles 19:6) and to the “king of Maacah” (2 Samuel 10:6, 8) evoke possibilities of Aramean presence at the site, allowing us to examine such an entity in relation to other presumed Aramean sites like Bethsaida, Tel Hadar, and En Gev. Even though the Arameans are specifically mentioned in ancient records, we know very little about them “on the ground,” especially within the borders of modern Israel. Can they be defined in terms of a distinct material culture? The location of Abel Beth Maacah on the northern borders of Israel (then and now) makes this site a viable candidate for the study of Aramean cultural and political influences.

 

Passages in the Hebrew Bible suggest that Abel Beth Maacah became an Israelite town during David’s reign, and it apparently remained so until its destruction by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III in 733 BCE. In the story of the Wise Woman of Abel Beth Maacah (2 Samuel 20:14-22), the city is enigmatically referred to as “a mother in Israel.” Her power and influence is apparent in that she directly negotiates the surrender of the Benjaminite rebel Sheba ben Bichri with Joab, David’s military commander.

 

The Abel Beth Maacah project is also intent on pursuing Phoenician connections in Iron Age II. The city’s location on a branch road of the International Highway leading north to Ijon (Tell ed-Dibbin) in Lebanon’s Marj Ayyun Valley, and roads leading west to Tyre and Sidon, will enable us to study cross-cultural ties with coastal Lebanon during the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

 

A modern illustration of the proximity of Tel Abel Beth Maacah to the Phoenician coast can be found in an exhibit in the local museum at nearby Metulla. An advertisement from the 1930’s invites one to spend their summer vacation in lovely, cool Metulla. According to the ad, the easiest way to get there from Tel Aviv is to take a boat to Tyre and then a carriage from there to Metulla, 35 kilometers away! We dream of the day when we too can take such a ride.

 

Scattered ruins of the small Arab village of Abil el-Qameḥ from 1948 are visible on parts of the tell, particularly on the upper mound. While not part of our immediate research agenda, the remains of the Arab village and the associated strata dating to Late Antiquity are slated for exploration in the future as an integral part of the occupation sequence of the site, emphasizing the longue durée of human occupation on this prominent mound.

 

If the tell is so impressive, important, intriguing, and full of potential, why has it never been excavated? The answer may lie precisely in the element that made the site so important throughout history – location, location, location. The geopolitical situation that drew Canaanites, Arameans, Israelites, Phoenicians, and Assyrians to this “bottleneck” between the verdant Huleh Valley to the south and the lush Lebanese Beq’a Valley to the north also placed it a sensitive zone in modern times – it lies less than one kilometer from the Israel-Lebanon border. Archaeologists may have also shied away from the site due to the extensive excavations at nearby Dan and Hazor.

 

Whatever the explanation, we are extremely fortunate to be the team who has accepted the challenge of this great site, made possible by friends and alumni of Azusa Pacific University in Los Angeles, with additional contributions from Cornell University, made possible by Professors Chris and Lauren Monroe. We have also started a fruitful new partnership with Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and its enthusiastic group of Biblical and Near Eastern Archaeology and Language students led by Professor John Monson. A Harris Fund grant allowed us to purchase a much-needed digital camera. Our excavation has also been granted ASOR affiliation, and academic guidance is provided by Amihai Mazar, Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Lawson Younger of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Ruhama Bonfil, veteran of Hazor and chief surveyor in the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is our surveyor and expert field adviser.

 

Following a preliminary survey in May 2012, we conducted a four-week season in June and July 2013. We focused on two areas – Area F on the southern end of the lower mound and Area A on the eastern end of the connection between the upper and lower mounds.

 

Our choice of areas was guided by finds made during our preliminary survey, including an intact late Iron Age I ring flask at the foot of Area A and three very large stones visible in topsoil in Area F. We were greatly rewarded by a dense Iron Age I domestic occupation in Area A, whose finds included numerous collared-rim jar fragments. We also found an intriguing structure built of massive stones that might be part of a tower in Area F.

 

The date of this structure is yet to be determined. But our prize find in Area F was a small jug containing a silver hoard that sat on a floor abutting the structure. We have tentatively attributed this to very late Late Bronze-early Iron Age I. Much work still needs to be done to better understand our first season’s finds, but the beginning is extremely promising and exciting.

 

Standing on top of this lofty mound, bounded on the west, north, and east by the hills and valleys of modern Lebanon, and the imposing Lebanese/Syrian Hermon massif majestically dominating the scenery on the east, and the expansive Huleh Valley opening up to the south, one has the feeling of being transported to a different land and time. We saw early morning fog rising from the peaceful Lebanese village of Aadaisse to the west, sleepy UN patrols slowly climbing the road on the east, and farmers from Metulla and the nearby kibbutzim working in the fruit orchards surrounding the tell. Horses and cows grazed on the summit, and herons flew low and nonchalantly as they effortlessly crossed the border alongside pink and gray clouds that drifted by. And here we were, this small dedicated group, digging even further to find another link in this chain of everyday life that took place in the shadow of portentous events – just like today. We cannot wait to continue excavating this amazing site and fulfill our research goals – as well as dreams of peaceful coexistence in this border zone.


Abel Beth Maacah: Beneath the Surface of Israel. By Robert Mullins. Azusa Pacific University, September 25, 2012.

’Abel-Beth-Ma‘acah: “Northern Gateway of Ancient Israel.” By William G. Dever. The Archaeology of Jordan and Other Studies. Presented to Siegfried H. Horn. Edited by Lawrence T. Geraty and Larry G. Herr. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1986. Pp. 207-223. Also here.

The Forgotten Kingdom: The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel. By Israel Finkelstein. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013. Also here.

Abel Beth Maacah Excavations Uncover Silver Hoard at an Ancient Crossroads. By Noah Wiener. Bible History Daily, February 26, 2014.

Wiener:

The city of Abel Beth Maacah was located at an important juncture between several ancient Near Eastern cultures. During the Bronze Age, it was a threshold between the Levant and the major empires of Syria and Mesopotamia. In the Iron Age, the Biblical city of Abel Beth Maacah was a crossroads between Israel, Phoenicia and Syria, and it may have served as the capital of the Aramean kingdom of Maacah (Joshua 12:5; 2 Samuel 10:8).

 

The site features an extensive Bronze Age occupation centuries before it became a prominent Hebrew Bible-era city. In 2 Samuel 20:14-22, Sheba son of Bichri took refuge in the city after calling for revolt against King David. Joab’s negotiations with a “wise woman” of the city resulted in Sheba’s beheading. Abel Beth Maacah (referred to as Abel Maim in 2 Chronicles 16:4) was later conquered by Ben Hadad of Aram-Damascus (1 Kings 15:20) and by Tiglath-pileser III in 733/32 BCE (2 Kings 15:29).

 

Despite its early identification as Abel Beth Maacah in the 19th century, Tell Abil el-Qameḥ was never excavated until 2013. Yigael Yadin planned to dig the tell in the 1950s, but opted to investigate Hazor instead. Last summer’s inaugural excavations at Israel’s northernmost site not only uncovered Bronze and Iron Age architectural remains, but also a silver hoard, including five hoop earrings and hacksilber ingots—valued pieces of silver in the pre-coinage era. The precious metal was wrapped in fibrous material inside a small 13th-century B.C.E. jug, though the silver may have been shaped at a later date–the early Iron Age–based on comparisons with other hacksilber finds in the region. While the establishment of an exact chronology at the site will require more than a single excavation season, the 2013 excavation material will surely shed light on the Bronze Age, the period of the Bronze Age collapse and the early Iron Age from the second millennium B.C.E. into the first millennium–an understudied era in what is now northern Israel.

 

Excavations at Abel Beth Maacah are conducted by Hebrew University professor Nava Panitz-Cohen and Azusa Pacific University professor Robert Mullins in conjunction with Cornell University professors Lauren Monroe and Christopher Monroe. The 2013 excavations have already been published by Robert Mullins, Nava Panitz-Cohen and Ruhama Bonfil in the journal Strata. Additional photos of the finds are available on the project’s Facebook page.


3,300-year-old silver earrings found at biblical site. By Ilan Ben Zion. The Times of Israel, February 25, 2014.

The Rebellion of Sheba. 2 Samuel 20.

In Focus: Abel Beth Maacah. Video. Tel Abel Beth Maacah Excavations. YouTube.

Robert Mullins: The Emergence of Israel in Retrospect. Video. Bible History Daily, February 1, 2014. YouTube.

Aboriginal Rights of the Jewish People. By Allen Z. Hertz.

Aboriginal Rights of the Jewish People. By Allen Z. Hertz. Audi Alteram Partem, October 13, 2011.

Forgotten Even By Us: Judaism’s Historic Ties to Israel. By Lee S. Bender and Jerome R. Verlin. The Algemeiner, February 26, 2014.

The Case for Israel and Academic Freedom. By William A. Jacobson.

The Case for Israel and Academic Freedom. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, February 26, 2014. Video at YouTube.

The Force of Exceptionalist Narratives in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict

The Force of Exceptionalist Narratives in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict. By Eric Cheyfitz. Audio. Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, February 5, 2014. Vimeo.

Why I Support the Academic Boycott of Israel. By Eric Cheyfitz. The Jewish Daily Forward, December 17, 2013.

Cheyfitz:

On Sunday, the American Studies Association, of which I am a member, voted to support the academic boycott of Israel called for by Palestinian civil society. Included in their announcement of the vote are the statements of 13 scholars in support of the vote, among which I am included. Here is my statement:

I am a Jew with a daughter and three grandchildren who are citizens of Israel. I am a scholar of American Indian and Indigenous studies, who has in published word and action opposed settler colonialism wherever it exists, including of course the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. It is worth noting in this respect that just as the myth of American exceptionalism seeks to erase the genocide and ongoing settler colonialism of Indigenous peoples here in the United States, so the myth of Israeli exceptionalism seeks to erase Israeli colonialism in Palestine and claim original rights to Palestinian lands. It is from these personal and professional positions that I applaud the decision of the NC to support the Academic boycott of Israel, which I support, and urge ASA members to affirm that support with their votes.

I offer the personal information in this statement so that people will know that I have an immediate interest in a just outcome for the Palestinian people, which would also be a just outcome for the state of Israel. Simply put, I want my grandchildren to grow up in a democracy, not in a state that proclaims itself a democracy while denying human rights to a population under its control — a population that has the right to a sovereign state of its own on territory currently under the colonial domination of Israel. We should remember that Palestinians on the West Bank live under Israeli martial law. I also believe that in the long run Israel cannot survive caught in the vice of this political contradiction. And I want Israel to survive.

 

Professionally, I have my investments as well, to which the statement alludes. As a professor of Native American and Indigenous studies, I am acutely aware of how the agendas of settler colonialism — land grab being the primary one as it is in Palestine — actively decimated the Indigenous population of the United States from an initial estimate of four to five million in 1492 in what would become the lower 48 states to 250,000 by the end of the nineteenth century. While the Native population has been growing since then and since 1924 Native peoples are citizens of the U.S., nevertheless the lasting effects and ongoing forms of settler colonialism are instrumental in making Native peoples the poorest of the poor in the U.S.

 

American exceptionalism, of which Manifest Destiny is perhaps the best known form (the notion that the U.S. has a God-given democratizing mission in the world), has kept the U.S. and its people from facing its own genocidal history, a necessary step in beginning to move history in a progressive direction.

 

Israeli exceptionalism — the notion that the Jews are God’s chosen people, whether this is explicitly espoused as it is by certain settler groups on the West Bank, or implicitly followed as it appears to be by Israeli policy in relation to the Palestinians and their land — functions the same way as American exceptionalism, as an alibi for a history that tries to erase the facts on the ground.

 

There are of course both U.S. and Israeli scholars who acknowledge these facts in their scholarship and offer cogent critiques of the exceptionalist myths that try to erase them. Some of these scholars are no doubt supported by the very Israeli universities that are the object of the boycott, while the institutions themselves remain not only silent about Israeli oppression of the Palestinians but participate in it. But the boycott is not aimed at individual scholars, whatever their beliefs, and thus it does not impact academic freedom, which applies to the rights and responsibilities of individual scholars within institutions — not to institutions themselves.

 

I support the boycott, then, because these institutions need to be held accountable for their part in the ongoing colonization of Palestine. While diplomatic initiatives continue to fail, the boycott is one way of trying to move Israel toward a history of justice.

Why Talk About Israel With People Who Want It to Disappear? By Liel Leibovitz.

Why Talk About Israel With People Who Want It to Disappear? By Liel Leibovitz. Tablet, February 26, 2014.

Palestinian State of Failure. By William A. Jacobson.

Palestinian State of Failure. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, February 25, 2014.

Jonathan Schanzer discusses his book State of Failure with John Batchelor. Audio. Foundation for Defense of Democracies, February 24, 2014. YouTube.

Let’s Give Up on Academic Freedom in Favor of Justice. By Sandra Y. L. Korn.

Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice. By Sandra Y. L. Korn. The Harvard Crimson, February 18, 2014.

Harvard’s Rebel Without a Clue. By Bruce Bawer. FrontPage Magazine, February 21, 2014.

Harvard writer: Free speech threatens liberalism and must be destroyed. By Robby Soave. The Daily Caller, February 23, 2014.

Sandra Korn’s Academic Totalitarianism. By Vic Rosenthal. The Jewish Press, February 21, 2014. Also at FresnoZionism.org.

Educated Mainstream: The Bastion of Western Anti-Semitism. By Evelyn Gordon.

Educated Mainstream: The Bastion of Western Anti-Semitism. By Evelyn Gordon. Commentary, February 25, 2014.

Many in China Can Now Have a Second Child, but Say No. By Dan Levin.

Many in China Can Now Have a Second Child, but Say No. By Dan Levin. New York Times, February 25, 2014.

Vicious and Deceptive Anti-Israel Propaganda Hate Week Starts. By William A. Jacobson.

Vicious and Deceptive anti-Israel Propaganda Hate Weeks starts. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, February 23, 2014.

Incoming ASA President plays “homophobia” card on boycott critic. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, February 4, 2014.

Jacobson:

It’s all part of a pattern for these Propagandists with Ph.D’s.

 

Whether they are making false accusations that Israel is an “Apartheid State” or accusing Israel of “Ethnic Cleansing,” they use epithets in place of reason, and as a mask for their own hate.


Professor Lisa Duggan and the Academic Boycott of Israel. By Donald Douglas. American Power, February 23, 2014.

American Studies Association President-elect holding “secret” anti-Israel conference at NYU. Israel Matzav, February 23, 2014.

ASA’s president-elect hosting SECRET anti-Israel conference at NYU (Zionists not welcome). Elder of Ziyon, February 23, 2014.

It’s Israel Apartheid Week once again. Let’s counter the vicious smear. Anne’s Opinions, February 25, 2014.

Propagandists with Ph.D’s: Month One of the anti-Israel academic boycott. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, January 16, 2014.

Jacobson:

The broad spectrum of mainstream Americans — from liberal to conservative — have nothing in common with this radical fringe.

It has been one month since the American Studies Association announced that its membership — or at least the small percentage who bothered to vote — approved an academic boycott of Israel.

 

We have had great success rallying opposition, but even this first month teaches us some important lessons.

 

The ASA has peddled the line that it only boycotts Israeli institutions and a select few Israeli academic representatives. As if that were not bad enough.

 

In truth, the Resolution approving the boycott agrees to the Palestinian demand, born at the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban NGO conference, for a complete academic and cultural boycott of Israel. The non-binding ASA guidelines purporting to scale back the actual ASA Resolution were just window dressing added late in the process to make the boycott seem less pernicious.

 

Boycotting institutions is boycotting the individuals who work at those institutions — as the emerging boycott of an “Oral History” conference at Hebrew University demonstrates. University presidents — over 200 at this point — were wise to view the boycott as a threat to education and to academic freedom.

 

The pushback from a wide segment of American civil and political society has been breathtaking for so short a period of time. Beyond expectations.

 

But don’t become complacent. You really need to understand who is behind this movement.

 

Researching the numerous articles I have written this past month has been an eye-opener — and that from someone whose eyes were already wide open as to the nature of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement.  The hatred of Israel among the academic boycotters is beyond anything you can imagine.

 

The hatred of Israel is visceral, and beyond reason. Everything good about Israel is turned into a negative.

 

These academics hold “Homonationalism and Pinkwashing” conferences to denounce Israel for making known that it treats its LGBT citizens fairly and humanely, unlike most countries in the world. Yet the Pinkwashing anti-Israel movement is led by LGBT and “Queer” (their word) activists who would be persecuted or worse anywhere in the Middle East other than Israel. You will hear next to nothing from them about how gays in Palestinian controlled areas are abused and flee … to Israel for protection.

 

There is nothing good that Israel can do in their eyes. The existence of Israel is their problem, not where borders are drawn.

 

As I have learned more about these academic boycotters, it is obvious that Israel is just the object of a deep-seated anti-Western anger expressed as “anti-Colonial” or “post-Colonial” or solidarity with “indigenous peoples.” Of course, they deny the Jewish people, whose indigenous presence for millennia in the land of Israel is beyond historical doubt, any indigenous status.

 

Indeed, you can add to “Pinkwashing” other conferences on “Redwashing” — the supposed injustice of Israeli Jews expressing solidarity with other indigenous peoples. [Added – See this article at Indian Country Today taking the ASA boycotters to task, Don’t Mix Indigenous Fight With Palestinian Rights.]

 

It should not surprise you that two of the Brown University professors (here and here) supporting the shout-down protest against Ray Kelly also were anti-Israel BDS supporters.

 

The connection between the radical left (I’m not talking about mere “liberals”) and the BDS movement is deep and feeds off each other.   That is why you will often find avowed international socialist groups teaming up with BDS on campuses, along with Islamists.

 

Just read the excellent Forbes article by Richard Behar about the people on the National Council of ASA, including its incoming President from NYU.  It would be a parody of what some segments of academia have become, except that no parody is needed, just the facts.

 

Victor Davis Hanson correctly puts it in context:

Nazis and racists used to spearhead Jewish hatred using ancient crackpot defamations that date back to the Jewish diaspora into Europe after the Roman destruction of Judea. But lately, anti-Semitism has become more a left-wing pathology. It is driven by the cheap multicultural trashing of the West. Jewish people here and abroad have become convenient targets for those angry with supposedly undeserved Western success and privilege. 

The academics behind the boycott do not represent all or even a majority of academia.  If anything, the ASA boycott will spur even greater cooperation among American and Israeli academic institutions, both because it makes educational sense and because all well-meaning academics know what is at stake.

 

Yet how to deal with the ideology of Israeli hatred that has captured the ASA and some university departments in the humanities and social sciences around the country?

 

The boycotters are crowing about the great ASA victory.  But in fact the ASA victory has revealed that the boycott movement in the U.S. is isolated, unlike in Europe, with few real successes.   It needs to be kept that way; we have avoided the European disease in the past, and we need to as to the BDS movement.

 

But success is not a given.

 

These propagandists with Ph.D’s see themselves as just a few retirements away from true departmental power.  And they are not completely wrong.  American civil society was asleep for a generation as parts of the humanities and social sciences were turned into nothing more than outposts for anti-Western political activism, most prominently manifesting itself as anti-Israeli BDS agitation.

 

Pushing back, as we have this past month, is necessary, although not sufficient.

 

Among other things, it is important to educate the American public as to who is behind this movement and what they truly represent.  All you have to do is quote them.  Their own words are the most damning evidence.

The broad spectrum of mainstream Americans — from liberal to conservative – have nothing in common with this radical fringe.  Their takeover of the ASA does not change that reality.

 

In addition to education, it is important too that universities, businesses and municipalities apply their non-discrimination rules and laws to anti-Israel boycott groups, as they would to any other groups.

 

The University of Texas – Austin would not dream of sponsoring and hosting a conference that excluded academics from Arab universities, yet UT-Austin is sponsoring a conference for an academic boycott group this spring at which Israeli academics would be excluded under the boycott.

 

Hotels would not dream of hosting a conference that excluded people based on national origin, as that would violate public accommodation and discrimination laws, yet that that will happen at the ASA 2014 conference at the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles next fall if the ASA boycott rules are enforced.

 

And so on, and so on.

 

We must insist that ASA and other boycott groups be treated like any other groups engaged in similar conduct — not singled out they way ASA singles out Israel.

 

All we will ask is that the rules and laws be applied equally to anti-Israel boycott groups.  That is why I filed a challenge to ASA’s tax-exempt status under the law of charities and the facts of the boycott. ASA’s response was to do what it consistently has done, play victim, characterizing it as “legal bullying.”

 

But there is nothing bullying about equal application of the law.  There is no legal privilege for BDS boycotters.

 

You will be hearing more about that in the coming months here.

 

At the same time, reacting to ASA and other boycotters is not the ultimate solution, just the remedy for the current manifestation of the disease.

 

There is a positive case to be made for Israel, and it needs to be made better and not defensively.  When some members of the Modern Language Association stood tall and defended Israel in person and with facts, it made a difference.

 

Larger, more organized groups need to engage in vigorous educational efforts to counter the propaganda about “Israel Apartheid” and so on.  You cannot expect university professors to give a balanced presentation on the Middle East.

 

The propagandists with Ph.D’s have created a false narrative on campuses that needs to be countered based on the facts, which are on our side.

 

This needs to be a multi-year project.

 

It is doable and must be done.


NYU Students for Justice in Palestine at New York Protests Against Israel, November 5, 2012. Facebook.

A Political Witch-Hunt in the Name of “Academic Freedom”: In Defense of the American Studies Association. By Alan Wald.

A Political Witch-Hunt in the Name of “Academic Freedom”: In Defense of the American Studies Association. By Alan Wald. Against the Current, March/April 2014. Excerpt at History News Network.

[download pdf when available from Academic Search Complete, FSC]


Boycott supporters plead for Universities to ease pressure on American Studies Association. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, February 7, 2014.

Jacobson:

This is just more of ASA and the boycotters refusing to accept that American civil society rejects its anti-Israel boycott. Playing victim is just a way of trying to turn the debate around.

American Studies Assoc. tells regional chapters not to communicate with me. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, February 24, 2014.

Springtime in Kiev, or Just Another Winter Storm. By Walter Russell Mead.

Springtime in Kiev, or Just Another Winter Storm. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, February 22, 2014.

Five Lessons for Kiev from the Arab Spring. By Juan Cole.

5 Lessons for Kiev from the Arab Spring. By Juan Cole. History News Network, February 23, 2014. Also at Informed Comment.

Yulia Tymoshenko Is Freed as Ukraine Leader Flees. By Andrew Higgins and Andrew E. Kramer. New York Times, February 22, 2014.

A new day in Ukraine: Political uncertainty sweeps divided nation. By Phil Black, Steve Almasy, and Victoria Butenko. CNN, February 23, 2014.

Tymoshenko returns to Kiev after president’s impeachment. Video. Reuters, February 22, 2014. YouTube.

Tymoshenko: “Their blood will not beforgotten.” Video. Reuters, February 22, 2014. YouTube.








Cole:

The dramatic overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Saturday, as he fled the presidential palace and it was occupied by extreme nationalists, recalls events in the Middle East in 2011.

 

The crisis in the Ukraine was provoked last fall when Yanukovych reconsidered earlier moves toward integration with Europe. He is from the east of the country, which has many ethnic Russians and which is economically, culturally and historically deeply entwined with Russia. The offer by Russian President Vladimir Putin of $15 billion in aid helped to make Yanukovych’s mind up.

 

In my view U.S. aggressiveness in the past twenty-three years is part of the problem here. The U.S. insisted on expanding NATO by absorbing former Warsaw Pact members and humiliating Russia. The rise of Putin is in part a reaction against that humiliation. Russia is reasserting itself as a great power, carving out spheres of influence in the old nineteenth-century way. Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Syria are in those spheres of influence. In the nineteenth century, wars often were caused by one country not respecting another’s proclaimed spheres of influence.

 

Both liberal and right-wing youth in the west of Ukraine as well as in the southern capital of Kyiv (Kiev) were upset by the turn away from Europe. They hope for Ukraine to become a member of the European Union and entertain hopes that this step would improve their economic prospects. (Given the sad economic state of Spain, Greece and other EU members, including persistent unemployment of a quarter or more of the youth, this conviction is a little difficult to understand). The more extreme nationalists are reacting against what they see as Russian dominance (a mirror image of right-wing Greek politics, which is anti-liberal and anti-EU).

 

Yanukovych was forced to give up the enhanced powers he had grabbed for himself and to restore the 2004 constitution. Parliament immediately acted with its renewed powers, and impeached Yanukovych. Street politics did the rest.

 

The country is now in turmoil. Formerly jailed opposition leader Tymoshenko has been freed from a seven-year jail sentence (she ran against Yanukovych in 2010 and when she lost he imprisoned her). She had played a role in the Orange Revolution a decade ago, but has high negatives and some charge she is corrupt. She has announced she will run for president in elections now scheduled for May.

 

Here are some parallels to the Arab upheavals of 2011 and suggestions for how Ukraine can avoid another failure in transitioning to democracy:

 

#1. It is good that the Ukraine military has declared neutrality. In Libya and Syria military intervention turned peaceful protests into a civil war. In contrast, in Tunisia, the military declared neutrality, which contributed to that country’s peaceful transition.

 

#2. Geographical divisions such as those in the Ukraine can be deadly to political progress. The grievances of the easterners in Libya have affected oil production. Likewise, in Yemen some of the post-revolution violence and protests have come from southerners unhappy at northern dominance. Despite their victory on Saturday, the western forces would be wise to seek a compromise with the east rather than simply attempting to dictate to the latter.

 

#3. The economy is key. People want employment and they want predictable currency rates for imports. Despite the severe economic problems in the European Union and in the U.S., the latter two must step up to help in a serious way or a limping Ukrainian economy could provoke further turmoil. Whereas in Tunisia modest growth was restored in 2012 and 2013, in Egypt a declining pound harmed citizens dependent on imported goods (including food, since Egypt can no longer feed itself). In Tunisia there was a successful transition to new elections. In Egypt, a vast popular movement challenged the elected president and then the military moved against him. Differing economic performance is part of the reason.

 

#4. Political compromise is necessary. Allies of Yanukovych may wish to run in the May elections. They should be allowed to (I’m assuming that since parliament impeached Yanukovych he won’t be eligible to complete his term or run for a new one.) Tunisia’s elite hammered out and abided by difficult compromises.

 

#5. Extremists can play spoiler. The Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and other extremist groups have made it difficult for that country to move smoothly toward a new Brazil. The equivalent group in Tunisia, by assassinating two left wing politicians, roiled politics in 2013.

 

It turns out that it is easier to get rid of a government you don’t like than to actively acquire a government you do like.