Truth-telling at Harvard

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The president of Harvard speaks out against the spread of anti-Semitic actions on elite campuses.

When Lawrence Summers became the president of Harvard last year, not even his greatest admirers predicted how resolutely he would make the university's motto -- "Veritas" -- his own. Almost from the day he was inaugurated, Summers has insisted on speaking unpopular truths: about the disrespect shown to Americans in uniform, about the rot of grade inflation in Harvard's classrooms, about the absence of "mainstream values" among "coastal elites" -- even about the failure of a celebrity professor like Cornel West to do serious academic work.

Last week, voicing another unpopular truth, Summers spoke out against the spread of Jew-bashing -- not only in Europe and at UN conferences, but at American universities.

"There is disturbing evidence of an upturn in anti-Semitism globally, and also... closer to home," he said on Sept. 17. "Profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent."

Actually, even anti-Semitic intent can be found on American campuses these days. At San Francisco State University, for example, pro-Palestinian demonstrators recently confronted supporters of Israel with signs reading "Jews = Nazis" and chants of "Hitler should have finished the job." Earlier this month, anti-Israel rioters at Concordia University in Montreal smashed windows and hurled furniture to protest a scheduled speech by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Fortunately, such naked Jew-hatred is still rare in academia. What Summers had in mind was something less blatant but no less disgraceful.

"Some here at Harvard and some at universities across the country," he said, "have called for the university to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university's endowment to be invested. I hasten to say the university has categorically rejected this suggestion."

The divestment campaign Summers was referring to demands that Israel be treated as a pariah, a country so toxic that American universities shouldn't even own stock in companies that do business there. It is modeled on the anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s and 1980s, and its planted axiom is that there is no important moral difference between Israel -- a free and tolerant democracy at war with dictatorial enemies bent on genocide -- and the former white-ruled South Africa. That is a position only a moral idiot could endorse.

Supporters of the divestment effort at Harvard and elsewhere were quick to condemn Summers for his "McCarthyesque" attack. "This is the ugliest statement imaginable," fumed John Assad, a neurobiology professor at Harvard's medical school, "to paint critics as anti-Semitic."

But Summers didn't "paint critics" as anti-Semitic or anything else; he characterized their actions as "anti-Semitic in their effect." He was not ascribing base motives to those who support the divestment campaign. He didn't presume to read their hearts. Rather, he was pointing out the impact of their behavior. One who supports a campaign that singles out Israel for demonization and obloquy is taking an anti-Semitic action, whether he intends to or not.

It is not "criticism" to accuse Israel of apartheid, when it is the Arab world that preaches "Kill the Jews!" and dances in the street when terrorists do so.

Are Israeli policies fair game for criticism? Of course. But it is not "criticism" to falsely smear Israel as racist -- not when the Arab world seethes with a hatred of Jews more rabid even than the Nazis'.

It is not "criticism" to portray Israel's lawful presence in Gaza and the West Bank as an illegal occupation, yet never murmur a word of objection to China's occupation of Tibet, or Syria's of Lebanon, or Turkey's of Northern Cyprus, or Russia's of Chechnya.

It is not "criticism" to lay the blame for the violence of the Middle East at Israel's doorstep while ignoring the immense risks that Israel has taken and the sacrifices it has made in pursuit of peace with the Palestinians.

It is not "criticism" to accuse Israel of apartheid, when it is the Arab world that preaches "Kill the Jews!" and dances in the street when terrorists do so.

This is not criticism -- it is calumny. It butchers the truth and subjects Israel to an outrageous double standard. It abets the cause of the world's foremost Jew-haters -- people whose explicit goal is the liquidation of the Jewish state. A professor who signs his name to something so grotesque is committing an anti-Semitic act.

"In our own day," Norman Podhoretz once wrote, "Israel has become the touchstone of attitudes toward the Jewish people, and anti-Zionism has become the main and most relevant form of anti-Semitism." Anti-Semitism used to express itself in demanding that good Aryans boycott Jewish shops. Today it demands that good universities boycott the Jewish state. It may look different on the outside, but it's the same old poison underneath.


A Challenge to House Master Hanson

By Alan Dershowitz

September 23, 2002

In my 38 years of teaching at Harvard Law School, I don't recall ever writing in praise of any action by
a Harvard president, but this time I must congratulate
President Lawrence H. Summers for his willingness to
say out loud what many of us in the Harvard community
have long believed: namely, that singling out Israel,
among all the countries in the world, for divestment,
is an action which is anti-Semitic in effect, if not
in intent.

A recent open letter by one of the signatories
made it clear that he regards Israel as the "pariah"
state, a word historically used by anti-Semites to
characterize the Jewish people. As an advocate and
practitioner of human rights throughout the world, I
can confidently assert that Israel's record on human
rights is among the best, especially among nations
that have confronted comparable threats. Though far
from perfect, Israel has shown extraordinary concern
for avoiding civilian casualties in its half-century
effort to protect its civilians from terrorism. Jordan
killed more Palestinians in a single month than Israel
has between 1948 and the present.

Israel has the only independent judiciary in the
entire Middle East. Its Supreme Court, one of the most
highly regarded in the world, is the only court in the
Middle East from which an Arab or a Muslim can expect
justice, as many have found in winning dozens of
victories against the Israeli government, the Israeli
military and individual Israeli citizens. There is no
more important component in the protection of human
rights and civil liberties than an independent
judiciary willing to stand up to its own government. I
challenge the proponents of divestment to name a court
in any Arab or Muslim country that is comparable to
the Israeli Supreme Court. Israel is the only country
in the region that has virtually unlimited freedom of
speech. Any person in Israel whether Jewish, Muslim or
Christian can criticize the Israeli government and its
leaders. No citizen of any other Middle Eastern or
Muslim state can do that without fear of imprisonment
or death.

Israel is the only country that has openly
confronted the difficult issue of protecting the civil
liberties of the ticking bomb terrorist. The Israeli
Supreme Court recently ruled that despite the
potential benefits of employing non-lethal torture to
extract information, the tactic is illegal. Brutal
torture, including lethal torture, is commonplace in
nearly every other Middle Eastern and Muslim country.
Indeed, American authorities sometimes send suspects
to Egypt, Jordan and the Philippines precisely because
they know that they will be tortured in those
countries. Nor is Israel the only country that is
occupying lands claimed by others. China, Russia,
Turkey, Iraq, Spain, France and numerous other
countries control not only land, but people who seek
independence. Indeed, among these countries Israel is
the only one that has offered statehood, first in 1948
when the Palestinians rejected the UN partition which
would have given them a large, independent state and
chose instead to invade Israel. Again in the year 2000
Palestinians were offered a state, rejected it and
employed terrorism.

There are, of course, difficult issues to be
resolved in the Middle East. These include the future
of the settlements, the establishment of Palestinian
self-governance and the prevention of terrorism. These
issues will require compromise on all sides. Members
of the Harvard community must be free to criticize
Israel when they disagree with its policies or
actions, as they criticize any other country in the
world whose record is not perfect. But to single out
the Jewish state of Israel, as if it were the
>worst human rights offender, is bigotry pure and
simple. It would be comparable to singling out a black
nation for de-legitimation without mentioning worse
abuses by white nations. Those who sign the divestment
petition should be ashamed of themselves. If they are
not, it is up to others to shame them.

Among those who signed this immoral petition was
Winthrop House Master Paul Hanson. I wrote to Prof.
Hanson challenging him to debate me in the Common Room
of Winthrop House about his decision to sign the
petition. He refused, citing "other priorities." I can
imagine few priorities more pressing than to justify
to his students why he is willing to single out Israel
for special criticism. Accordingly, I hereby request
an invitation from the students of Winthrop House to
conduct such a debate, either with Hanson present or
with an empty chair on which the petition which he
signed would be featured. Universities should
encourage widespread debate and discussion about
divisive and controversial issues. A House master who
peremptorily signs a petition and then hides behind
"other priorities" does not serve the interests of
dialogue and education. I hope that Hanson will accept
my challenge, and that if he does not, that I will be
invited by his students to help fill the educational
gap left by the cowardice of those who have signed
this petition and refuse to defend their actions in
public debate.
>

Let me propose an alternative to singling out
Israel for divestment: let Harvard choose nations for
investment in the order of the human rights records.
If that were done, investment in Israel would increase
dramatically, while investments in Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Jordan, Philippines, Indonesia, the Palestinian
Authority and most other countries of the world would
decrease markedly.

Alan M. Dershowitz is Frankfurter professor of law at
Harvard Law School.

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