Saturday, December 23, 2017

Update on Eliade and fascism

I've just posted an update to an old post on Mircea Eliade and fascism, with links to three interesting articles or books that deal with the question of Eliade's connection to Rumanian fascism.
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Support progressive young Jews on campus!

Creating a Home for Next Gen Liberal Jews Through The Third Narrative

Joshua Schwartz
Northwestern University, class of 2015

Dear Rebecca,

As I know you’re interested in the work of The Third Narrative (TTN), I’d like to share my personal TTN story and the impact I know it can have on young progressive American students across the country.

Like many others in my generation, I experienced the 2014 Gaza war between Israel and Hamas as a traumatic watershed moment. Studying at Northwestern University, I remember my mother crying over the phone when we heard that Hamas had kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens – Eyal, Gilad and Naftali. I was further shocked when I learned that Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager, had been burned alive by Israeli settlers. During those terrible days, each side unleashed sadness, pain and rage on the other. I asked myself, “Where do I fit into all of this? What should my generation do? What is our role?”

I was a college student who passionately loved Israel, and considered peace with the Palestinians to be the only way to justly resolve the conflict and ensure Israeli security. I knew I needed to find a political home that would enable me to live out my values, but I didn’t yet know that it would be Ameinu and its initiative The Third Narrative.



But before discovering Ameinu, I would face a major challenge on campus.

Students at Northwestern assembled a coalition – NUDivest – demanding that the university divest from companies profiting from the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. While clearly these companies helped sustain Israel’s military control, I rejected NUDivest and its support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS, like the Israeli right and settler movement, refuses to distinguish between Israel and the Occupied Territories and sees the conflict as a simplistic choice between good and evil.

On campus, I advocated that pro-Israel and pro-Palestine activism are not mutually exclusive, and that the only way to fight BDS is to also fight the occupation and support justice for Palestinians. While I sought nuance and compassion, both sides rejected this approach. The Jewish coalition refused to include opposition to occupation in its written communications, and NUDivest pushed its resolution through the student government, giving BDS a victory.

When I graduated a few months later, I didn’t know where to turn.

It was then that I discovered Ameinu and The Third Narrative -- a home where I could strengthen the American Jewish community by ensuring peace, justice and the two-state solution remained a part of its advocacy agenda. At Ameinu and TTN, I was given a chance to organize a national network of academics focusing on Israel, Palestine and academic freedom; develop a curriculum for student-led learning on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and progressive Zionism; and engage students and Hillel professionals on numerous campuses to include the nuance that was missing from the BDS debate at Northwestern.

Through my experiences with Ameinu, I was inspired to go to Israel to study Arabic and spend a year working to promote shared society for Jews and Palestinians in Jerusalem.

"Right, Left, and Center Seek a Political Agreement" - Women Wage Peace

Upon my return to the United States, Ameinu continued to nurture my progressive Zionist leadership, inviting me to join the Board of Directors. I am honored and excited to give back. While many young liberal American Jews reject all Jewish communal organizations as contrary to their progressive values, I believe we must find a place to re-engage with the institutions that provided our foundational connection to Judaism and Israel. For me, Ameinu is that place.

Through Ameinu, I am now working to activate my generation. I’m writing today to ask you to support Ameinu and help us launch The Third Narrative on Campus. This initiative will organize peer education programs on progressive Zionism, bring Israeli social justice and peace advocates to campus, and offer progressive volunteer programs with Israeli counterparts to build a cohort of well-informed young Jewish leaders who are passionately committed to American Jewish life and Israel.

We are seeking to raise $25,000 before the end of the year in order to pilot The Third Narrative on Campus at five schools starting in January 2018. This is just the beginning.

I know how Ameinu and The Third Narrative can change the life of a young progressive American Jew -- and the impact it can have on their involvement with Israel and the Jewish community. With your help, we can engage many more young progressive American Jews and make a profound difference in the next generation of Jewish leadership. Please join us today with a gift of $36, $50, $100, $500, or whatever you can afford.

Donations can be made online through TTN.

Thank you for your support of the next generation of Jewish leaders.

Joshua Schwartz
Northwestern University, Class of 2015
Ameinu Board of Directors

P.S. If you would like to support this initiative by check, please make it out to Ameinu, a 501c3 tax exempt organization, and send it to Ameinu, 25 Broadway, New York, NY 10004. Note “TTN on Campus” on the memo line.



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Sunday, December 17, 2017

Jerusalem and environs in photos in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif in 1877
Temple Mount - Muslims leaving for Nebi Musa festival, 1910

Damascus Gate in 1870
Outside Damascus Gate, 1860

German Colony (in Jerusalem), 1900. 

Germany Colony in Jerusalem, 1900

Hezekiah's Pool in Jerusalem, 1862.

Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem, 1898

Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem, 1898
Valley of Jehoshaphat with Absalom's Tomb (just to the east of the walled Old City), 1877


Main road from Shechem (Nablus) to Jerusalem, 1913

Rachel's Tomb, 1900


 Source of the photographs: First Photos of Eretz Yisrael.

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Thursday, December 14, 2017

Growing Antisemitism in Sweden

Anti-Semitism in Sweden now mostly comes from Muslim extremists and the left-wing, not from right-wing extremists.
STOCKHOLM — This past Saturday, a Hanukkah party at a synagogue in Goteborg, Sweden, was abruptly interrupted by Molotov cocktails. They were hurled by a gang of men in masks at the Jews, mostly teenagers, who had gathered to celebrate the holiday. 
Two days later, two fire bombs were discovered outside the Jewish burial chapel in the southern Swedish city of Malmo. 
Who knows what tomorrow may bring? 
For Sweden’s 18,000 Jews, sadly, none of this comes as a surprise. They are by now used to anti-Semitic threats and attacks — especially during periods of unrest in the Middle East, which provide cover to those whose actual goal has little to do with Israel and much to do with harming Jews. 
Both of these recent attacks followed days of incitement against Jews. Last Friday, 200 people protested in Malmo against President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The protesters called for an intifada and promised “we will shoot the Jews.” A day later, during a demonstration in Stockholm, a speaker called Jews “apes and pigs.” There were promises of martyrdom. 
Malmo’s sole Hasidic rabbi has reported being the victim of more than 100 incidents of hostility ranging from hate speech to physical assault. In response to such attacks, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel warning in 2010 advising “extreme caution when visiting southern Sweden” because of officials’ failure to act against the “serial harassment” of Jews in Malmo. 
Today, entering a synagogue anywhere in Sweden usually requires going through security checks, including airport-like questioning. At times of high alert, police officers with machine guns guard Jewish schools. Children at the Jewish kindergarten in Malmo play behind bulletproof glass. Not even funerals are safe from harassment. 
Jewish schoolteachers have reported hiding their identity. A teacher who wouldn’t even share the city where she teaches for fear of her safety told a Swedish news outlet: “I hear students shouting in the hallway about killing Jews.” Henryk Grynfeld, a teacher at a high school in a mostly immigrant neighborhood in Malmo, was told by a student: “We’re going to kill all Jews.” He said other students yell “yahoud,” the Arabic word for Jew, at him..... 
Historically, anti-Semitism in Sweden could mainly be attributed to right-wing extremists. While this problem persists, a study from 2013 showed that 51 percent of anti-Semitic incidents in Sweden were attributed to Muslim extremists. Only 5 percent were carried out by right-wing extremists; 25 percent were perpetrated by left-wing extremists. 
Swedish politicians have no problem condemning anti-Semitism carried out by right-wingers. When neo-Nazis planned a march that would go past the Goteborg synagogue on Yom Kippur this September, for example, it stirred up outrage across the political spectrum. A court ruled that the demonstrators had to change their route. 
There is, however, tremendous hesitation to speak out against hate crimes committed by members of another minority group in a country that prides itself on welcoming minorities and immigrants. In 2015, Sweden was second only to Germany in the number of Syrian refugees it welcomed. Yet the three men arrested in the Molotov cocktail attack were newly arrived immigrants, two Syrians and a Palestinian. 
The fear of being accused of intolerance has paralyzed Sweden’s leaders from properly addressing deep-seated intolerance. 
Some of the country’s leaders have even used Israel as a convenient boogeyman to explain violence. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, explained radicalism among European Muslims with reference to Israel: “Here, once again, we are brought back to situations like the one in the Middle East, where not least, the Palestinians see that there isn’t a future. We must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence.” 
In an interview in June, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven was askedwhether Sweden had been naïve about the link between immigration and anti-Semitism. His response was typical of the way in which leading politicians have avoided giving straight answers about the threat against the country’s Jews: “We have a problem in Sweden with anti-Semitism, and it doesn’t matter who expresses it, it’s still as darn wrong.” 
But the problem has grown so dire that it finally forced Mr. Lofven to admit in an interview this month: “We will not ignore the fact that many people have come here from the Middle East, where anti-Semitism is a widespread idea, almost part of the ideology. We must become even clearer, dare to talk more about it.”.....
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Why I signed the Jewish Studies scholars statement on Jerusalem

I signed this statement criticizing Trump's decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel and move the American embassy to Jerusalem. I signed not because I think that Jerusalem isn't the capital of Israel (the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and most government ministries are there - it's obviously the capital of Israel, no matter what other nations say), but because Trump's announcement does not acknowledge that Palestinians also have a legitimate claim to Jerusalem. I believe that Jerusalem should be the capital of both Israel and a future Palestinians state. 

Jerusalem is one of the central issues to be decided in any peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and predetermining its status forecloses upon the possibility that the city could be a capital of both states.

We write as Jewish Studies scholars to express our dismay at the Trump administration's decision to reverse decades of bipartisan U.S. policy by declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and authorizing the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv, outside of a negotiated political framework that ends the legal state of occupation and ensures respect for the rights of all Israelis and Palestinians to Jerusalem. 
Jerusalem is of immense religious and thus emotional significance to Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. It is the focus of national aspirations for both Israelis and Palestinians. We hope one day to see a world in which all inhabitants of the land enjoy equal access to the city’s cultural and material resources. Today, unfortunately, that is not the case. 
As the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem* has documented, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem endure systematic inequalities, including an inequitable distribution of the city's budget and municipal services, routine denial of building permits that are granted to Jewish residents, home demolitions, and legal confiscation of property for Jewish settlement. In addition, Palestinians in the West Bank, unlike Jewish Israelis resident in that territory, require a special permit to visit Jerusalem’s holy sites.

In this context, a declaration from the United States government that appears to endorse sole Jewish proprietorship over Jerusalem adds insult to ongoing injury and is practically guaranteed to fan the flames of violence. We therefore call on the U.S. government to take immediate steps to deescalate the tensions resulting from the President’s declaration and to clarify Palestinians’ legitimate stake in the future of Jerusalem.
*http://www.btselem.org/jerusalem 
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Monday, December 11, 2017

Kayla Moore - "One of our attorneys is a Jew"

At a campaign rally for Ray Moore tonight in Midland City, AL, Kayla Moore spoke about accusations of antisemitism against her husband.


I will face this problem next semester.

Kayla Moore said:
"Fake news will tell you that we don't care for Jews. I'm telling you all this because I've seen it and I just want to set the record straight while they're here. [waving to reporters] [cheering from the crowd]. One of our attorneys is a Jew. [cheering and clapping]."' 
Kayla Moore's expression when she said "is a Jew."
"We've had very close friends who are Jewish, and rabbis, and we also fellowship with them. [more cheers and whistles."
Jews! and rabbis!

And they "fellowship" with them. I didn't realize the word was a verb as well as a noun.

From an article, "Fellowship is a verb!" by Ray McDonald (a Methodist minister):
What do you think of when you hear the word fellowship? According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, fellowship can be a noun or a verb. As a noun, it might mean companionship or company. It might mean a community of interest, activity, feeling or experience, a company of equals or friends. As a verb, it seems to be exclusively used by churches as in; to join in fellowship especially with a church member. 
I like looking at fellowship as a verb. It is active! It is doing something – being together – enjoying each other’s company. We come together on Sunday mornings to praise and worship God together. In doing so – we are fellowshipping together. We are being involved with one another’s lives.
Does Kayla Moore mean that they meet together with their Jewish friends to pray and worship God together? (And if so, who do they all pray to?). Or just that they're involved with each others' lives, as friends? And who are these friends? Could we have a few names?

Somehow I don't find Kayla Moore's words particularly convincing. If she really had close Jewish friends, I doubt she'd be making speeches about them. And if she wants us to think that she and her husband are free of anti-Jewish animus, talking about their Jewish lawyer is hardly the way to go about it, since it's such a stereotype.

I hope that Roy Moore will lose the Senate race tomorrow.
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Sunday, December 10, 2017

"We want 48" - Anti-Israel and anti-semitic demonstration in Times Square

Many of the protests around the world against Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli's capital and his decision that the U.S. Embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem have been marked by open antisemitism, including here in the United States.

A rally in Times Square on Friday, December 8, loudly proclaimed that the goal was one state - Palestine, not two states beside each other, and demanded a third intifada and revolution. They want an end to Israel and its total replacement by Palestine.

These were some of the chants:
"We don't want no two-state, we want 48" (Israel was founded in 1948; the problem isn't just the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem).

"With spirit and blood we'll redeem Al Aqsa" (in Arabic)

"There is only one solution: Intifada Revolution."

"Khaybar Khaybar Ya Yahud Jaish Muhammad saya'ud" - "Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews: Muhammad's army will return." This refers to a battle in the early 600s, when a Jewish tribe in Khaybar, Arabia, was defeated by the troops of Muhammad.

"Intifada Intifada. Long live Intifada."
"From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free." 
"When people are occupied, resistance is justified." 
"Palestine is ours alone." 
The rally was organized by Palestinian American Community Center in New Jersey, New York City SJP, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, NY4Palestine, and Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, but the speakers also came from other organizations, including the International Action Center and the Palestinian Youth Movement in New York (the speaker from this organization referred to the "Zionist Entity" not to Israel).

 If you watch the longer video, you'll see a Jewish man wearing a streimel - the token representative of Neturei Karta, I assume, who makes it possible for the demonstrators to claim that they are not antisemitic.

For a longer video of the rally:



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Saturday, November 25, 2017

On not normalizing Nazis






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Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Review of "Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left"

Jeffrey Herf. Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967-1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Illustrations. 493 pp. $29.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-107-46162-8; $99.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-107-08986-0.

Reviewed by Philipp Lenhard (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Historisches Seminar Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur)

Published on H-Judaic (November, 2017)
When the German terrorists Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann hijacked Air France Flight 139 on June 27, 1976, and separated Jewish and Israeli from non-Jewish hostages, the Nazi past seemed to resurge in a new, left-radical disguise. Since 1969, German leftists had maintained close contacts with Palestinian terrorist groups, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Fatah, the two largest groups forming the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). As a result of this collaboration, a series of anti-Jewish attacks were carried out in West Germany throughout the 1970s in the name of a so-called resistance against US imperialism and Zionist racism. The hijacking of the Air France flight and the “selection” of the Jewish passengers represent the zenith of German left-wing anti-Zionism that declined in the 1980s and has been increasingly challenged by leftist supporters of Israel since the 1990s.[1] However, the fine line between criticism of Israeli politics, hatred against Israel, and antisemitism remains an urgent issue today.[2] 
Historical research takes on an important role in uncovering the history of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in their manifold forms. Scholars of Jewish history have long argued that both Jewish and non-Jewish anti-Zionism prior to the Holocaust cannot easily be equated with antisemitism because the rejection of Zionism often stemmed from a universalist critique of nationalism as it had evolved from the ideas of the European Enlightenment. [3] At the same time, late nineteenth-century antisemites already used anti-Zionist ideas to denounce Jews as being incapable of running a state.[4] After the extermination of European Jewry and the foundation of the state of Israel, anti-Zionism was directed not only against an ideology but also against the existing Jewish state of Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren. Thus, any attempt to critique Zionism before the mass murder has to at least face the accusation of historical blindness. Socialist and Communist movements and parties as well as the Communist regimes after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, including the German Democratic Republic (GDR), founded in 1949, only one year after the foundation of the Jewish state, had to face this conflicted heritage. In most cases, pre-Holocaust anti-Zionism was perpetuated or even radicalized under the influence of Joseph Stalin’s anti-cosmopolitan and anti-imperialist doctrines. 
Notes 
[1]. Despite its overall pro-Palestinian agenda, the Far Left party Die Linke emphasizes that “Israel’s existence and the history of its foundation are irrevocable consequences of the Shoah and the extermination of European Jewry, a historical consequence of a centuries-old antisemitism that predates Nazi Fascism and that encompasses more than the European-Christian history of persecution. This world-historical emancipation is worth our unrestricted solidarity, and this possibility will be defended in all future” (translation mine). Die Linke, https://www.die-linke.de/detail/eine-friedliche-zwei-staatenloesung-muss-ziel-bleiben/ (accessed October 12, 2017). Compared to other European leftist parties, this statement shows a profound transformation of the German left wing’s diction over the course of the last decades. 
[2]. In a recent book about Operation Entebbe (Legenden um Entebbe: Ein Akt der Luftpiraterie und seine Dimensionen in der politischen Diskussion [Münster: Unrast, 2016]), edited by the Far Left activist Markus Mohr, antisemitism from the left is systematically downplayed, which has aroused a heated debate in the left-wing weekly Jungle World. 
[3]. See for the transition Léon Poliakov, Vom Antizionismus zum Antisemitismus (Freiburg im Breisgau: Ça Ira, 1992).
[4]. See, for example, Eugen Dühring, Die Judenfrage als Racen-, Sitten- und Culturfrage (Karlsruhe, Leipzig: H. Reuther, 1881), 110n. 
For the rest of the review: Herf.
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Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Academic boycotts and the Society of Biblical Literature

I just noticed that the SBL recently posted a statement opposing academic boycotts. It doesn't mention any particular boycott, but I suspect it has something to do with the BDS movement.
Statement on Academic Boycotts 

SBL’s mission statement enumerates the core values of the Society, including respect for diversity, openness to change, and critical inquiry that reflects SBL’s full international context. In order to fulfill this mission, SBL considers academic boycotts an obstacle to the free exchange of ideas, a bedrock principle for scholarly discourse. SBL’s statement on academic freedom elaborates the principles supporting critical inquiry and participation. Both the statement on academic freedom and this statement on academic boycotts are in accordance with the positions of AAUP.

Rather than engaging in academic boycotts, the Society provides opportunities for organizing academic sessions, including those that address controversial issues. Such sessions, as with all sessions and panels at SBL conferences, relate to the scholarly mission of the Society, are open to all of its members, and provide analysis of complex and sometimes competing points of view. The Society recognizes that members, individually and in groups, exercise their right to participate according to their conscience and interest. 
The Society furthermore provides procedures for making public statements that are directly related to its mission or to the professional interests of its members.
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Monday, November 20, 2017

Why I oppose the academic boycott of Israel; why the AAR should not support BDS

Because there are people starting to organize for support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement at the American Academy of Religion (whose annual meeting is happening right now in Boston, in conjunction with the Society of Biblical Literature; for some details, see this article in Haaretz: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-1.823743), I thought it made sense to republish my letter against the academic boycott of Israel. I wrote it in 2014, when the American Studies Association voted to support the academic boycott, and a pro-boycott speaker, Professor Eric Cheyfitz came and spoke at Ithaca College in support of the boycott.
When I saw the poster (for Cheyfitz's talk at Ithaca College), I began to reflect how my academic work has been immensely enriched by my studies in Israel. When I was a graduate student at Harvard, I went to Israel for two years, 1987-89, to improve my Hebrew and take courses at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Studying there gave me the opportunity to learn from some of the most prominent scholars in several fields of Jewish Studies. I took a course on early Jewish mysticism with Professor Rachel Elior, and found my dissertation topic. I took many other courses in Jewish Studies that were not, at that time, offered at Harvard, including a course on the Zohar, another one on the range of interpretations of Genesis 38 (the story of Judah and Tamar) with Yair Zakovitch (Bible) and Avigdor Shinan (Midrash), a course on the Septuagint with Emanuel Tov (one of the world experts on the study of the Septuagint), a reading course with Michael Stone on 3 Baruch, a course on Midrash with Avigdor Shinan (a world expert on Midrash), a course in Biblical Aramaic, etc. I had originally intended to spend only a year in Israel but I was so interested that I decided to spend a second year at the Hebrew University. 
I returned to Israel for the 1992-93 academic year to do research for my dissertation. I consulted with Professor Elior frequently and audited another class of hers on the Hekhalot literature. If I had not been able to go to the Hebrew University and the National and University Library for research, I probably could not have finished my dissertation. The National Library houses the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, and it was there that I learned how to read medieval manuscripts from others in the community of scholars who also used the library.

I went to Israel again for the 1998-1999 academic year, benefiting from a Lady Davis Fellowship given to me by the Hebrew University. While there, I worked on research topics that arose out of my dissertation and explored new areas. I took a course at the university with Joseph Naveh on ancient Jewish amulets - we learned how to read, translate, and interpret them. I also participated in a year long seminar at the Hartman Institute on messianism and mysticism in Judaism. I gave a presentation there on Metatron as a messianic figure in 3 Enoch.

In the spring of 2012, when I was on sabbatical, I spent seven months in Jerusalem working on my second book, Angels' Tongues and Witches' Curses: Jewish Women and Ritual Power in Late Antiquity.

Since my first stay in Israel in 1987-89, I have visited almost every year to do research. Since the summer of 2006, I have gone every summer for up to two months. In terms of my research, Israel is really my academic home. I use the National Library and participate in the community of scholars and scholarship there. In the last couple of years I have met graduate students at the library who are working on their dissertations and I have been able to be helpful to a few of them in their research. Since I teach at a primarily undergraduate institution, I don't teach any graduate students, and I value the opportunity to be able to advise current students.

The US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) has issued guidelines for how people should boycott Israeli academia. They include "refrain[ing] from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions." Participation includes "Academic events (such as conferences, symposia, workshops, book and museum exhibits) convened or co-sponsored by Israeli institutions." The events include events held both in Israel and abroad that are sponsored by Israeli institutions. They are also opposed to study abroad programs in Israel, under the reasoning that "These programs are usually housed at Israeli universities and are part of the Israeli propaganda effort, designed to give international students a “positive experience” of Israel." In addition, official representatives of Israeli academia who give talks at international venues should be boycotted, as well as special honors given to these recipients. They also oppose any Palestinian/Arab-Israeli collaborative research projects or events. The boycott campaign opposes any events and projects that bring Palestinians and/or Arabs and Israelis together, "unless based on unambiguous recognition of Palestinian rights and framed within the explicit context of opposition to occupation and other forms of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians." The boycott campaign also calls for not publishing or refereeing articles for academic journals based in Israeli universities.

While USACBI says that the boycott is aimed at Israeli academic institutions (on the pretext that they support the Israeli occupation), and not at individual Israeli scholars, it is difficult for me to see how this caveat really protects individuals. For example, my research at the Hebrew University in 1998-99 was financed by a Lady Davis grant. If I hadn't received the money, I wouldn't have been able to go for the year. In addition, Israeli scholars who go to international conferences are usually supported by travel grants from their institutions, as are academics in other countries. (It should be noted that the endorsement of the boycott by the American Studies Association states explicitly that "Routine university funding for individual collaborations or academic exchanges is permitted").

Every four years the World Congress of Jewish Studies is held at the Hebrew University. Scholars in Jewish Studies from Israel, Europe, the US, and other parts of the world give papers. Since USACBI maintains that events convened by Israeli institutions should be boycotted, this means that one of the primary conferences in the field of Jewish Studies would be able to function only for Israeli scholars. Again, boycotting this conference would have a direct effect upon individual scholars, both Israeli and from other countries. Despite the claim of the ASA that the boycott "does not seek to curtail dialogue between U.S. and Israeli scholars," it would actually have this effect, in that it would prohibit US scholars from going to conferences in Israel sponsored by any academic institution.

If scholarly organizations and academic institutions in the US decided to support the academic boycott, it would have a seriously deleterious effect upon the field of Jewish Studies, since it would prohibit American scholars from going to any conferences in Israel (which are usually sponsored by Israeli universities). Israeli scholars who headed institutes at Israeli universities would not be permitted to speak at American universities. I suspect that the boycott would also prohibit foreign scholars from receiving grants or fellowships at Israeli universities. Since the boycott campaign opposes study abroad in Israel, foreign students, on the undergraduate or graduate levels, would not be able to study at Israeli universities, or do dissertation or other research in Israel, and would therefore be cut off from the knowledge and connections they could gain from collaboration with Israeli scholars. When I went to the Hebrew University as a visiting graduate student in 1987-89, I enrolled in the university through the Rothberg International School. The academic boycott would have prevented that, directly impacting my academic career.

In addition, USACBI states,
While an individual’s academic freedom should be fully and consistently respected in this context, an individual academic, Israeli or not, cannot be exempt from being subject to boycotts that conscientious citizens around the world (beyond the scope of the PACBI boycott criteria) may call for in response to what is widely perceived as a particularly offensive act or statement by the academic in question (such as direct or indirect incitement to violence; justification — an indirect form of advocacy — of war crimes and other grave violations of international law; racial slurs; actual participation in human rights violations; etc.).
This means that USACBI (in agreement with PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) supports boycotting individuals who, in its judgement, engage in incitement to violence, justification of war crimes, etc. How does USACBI define war crimes? What if a scholar wrote an article supporting retaliatory Israeli strikes against Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists who had just fired missiles into Israel (while at the same time cautioning against any strikes that could harm civilians)? Would that count as a "justification of war crimes"? 
If I wrote an essay for this blog maintaining that the separation wall had stopped many suicide bombers from entering Israel from the West Bank, would that count as justifying a "grave violation of international law," given that the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion in 2004 stating that the wall is illegal under international law? This part of the call to boycott could justify the boycotting of scholars in political science, international affairs, Middle Eastern politics, history, and other fields who write articles and books that justify any actions that USACBI consider to be war crimes, incitement to violence, etc., therefore also directly impacting individual scholars, Israeli or not.
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Thursday, November 16, 2017

"Alt-right" woman unclear on the concept

Unclear on the concept. "Wife with a Purpose," a Mormon ex-feminist, now supporter of the alt-right, "Trad Life," white supremacy, and antisemitism.


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Steve Bannon Is Bad for the Jews - Bret Stephens

Bret Stephens: Steve Bannon Is Bad for the Jews
The Zionist Organization of America feted Stephen K. Bannon at a gala dinner in New York on Sunday night. What a disgrace.

What a mistake, too.

It’s a disgrace because no organization that purports to represent the interests of the Jewish people should ever embrace anyone who embraces anti-Semites. Jews have enemies enough. To provide those enemies with moral cover for the sake of political convenience or ideology corroborates the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes and strengthens the hand of those who mean us harm.
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Thursday, November 02, 2017

Tariq Ramadan's violent attacks upon women

What is the relationship between open disrespect of women and rape? Let's examine the case of Tariq Ramadan.

In 2009, the American Academy of Religion invited Tariq Ramadan, a professor at Oxford, and the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to give a plenary address at the Annual Meeting. He spoke at the meeting in November, which was held in Montreal (and Canada permitted him to enter). The AAR fought to bring Ramadan to the US, against the opposition of the US government. They sued, along with the ACLU and another organization. In 2010, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "issued orders that appear to end the exclusion from the United States."

A couple of years later (April 12, 2011), the Egyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy engaged in a debate on BBC Newsnight on the question of whether the burqa should be banned. Ramadan continually talked over Eltahawy to try to prevent her from speaking.


Ramadan: And we are alway trying to come with new rules and reducing the freedom of expressions of Muslims against the minarets, against the hijab, against the burka. We don't - what does it mean? Does it mean that the only right way of being a Muslim in Europe today, a good European Muslim is an invisible Muslim, who don't want to see them, don't want to see them in the street, don't.... 
Moderator, asking Eltahawy: Why are you shaking your head? 
Eltahawy: I'm shaking my head because I disagree with just about everything that Tariq just said. It's interesting that he used the word invisible, because that's what the niqab does. 
Ramadan, interrupting: That's because you are working with the neocons in the States. 
Eltahawy: I'm working with the who?! Can you prove that? This is libelous what you are saying. I am not working with the neocons! 
Ramadan, interrupting: We know who you are working with! 
Eltahawy: Did you hear what he just said? This exactly the problem that a Muslim and a feminist actually faces. 
Ramadan, interrupting: You are, you are! Of course, you are working in exactly the same direction. 
Eltahawy: You have to stop talking now, because it's my turn. (Ramadan, interrupting: Yes, a feminist). This is exactly what happens when a Muslim and a feminist speaks out - she is silenced. They are trying to silence me by saying that I'm a neocon. That is absolute nonsense! 
Ramadan, interrupting: I'm not trying to silence you. Don't play the victim, don't play the victim! 
Eltahway: This is what you're supporting. I'm not a victim, I'm no one's victim! You are supporting the very thing you claim to be attacking. You support the invisibility of women. The niqab renders women invisible. And let's be real here. Feminist organizations on the ground will tell you that women have no say in this. 
Ramadan, interrupting: I'm all for freedom. I'm supporting women wearing whatever they want. 
Eltahawy: Stop talking! I'm talking! (Ramadan guffaws). Women on the ground have no say in this, because when they start to talk, you silence them. People like you silence them. The Muslim right wing has been encroaching on women's rights gradually, and no one has said anything! 
Ramadan, interrupting: No, no, you don't want to hear them, you don't want to hear the women. 
Eltahawy: Other groups have said nothing. The left wing has been silenced while Muslim women have been disappeared, all for the sake of fighting Islamophobia. I fight Islamophobia. I was standing outside of that mosque in New York. I wrote opinion pieces against the minaret ban. 
Ramadan: Stop talking about yourself.... 
Eltahawy: You cannot sit there and try to libel me.
In the last few days a series of extremely nasty stories about Ramadan's sexual abuse of women has come out. A report in the New York Times states that a French activist and author, Henda Ayari, filed a police complaint accusing him of sexually assaulting her in 2012. A second woman (unnamed) has accused him of rape and assault in 2009. (The same year that he was honored by the AAR). The assault accusations have been highlighted by Mona Eltahawy on Twitter.
The second woman, whose name has not been published by the news media, gave an account of an extremely violent assault to two French newspapers, Le Monde and Le Parisien. 
A 45-year-old Muslim convert, she said she had also corresponded with Mr. Ramadan on Facebook and met him in his hotel on the sidelines of a conference to discuss religion. When she went to his room, she said, she was raped and beaten. 
She said she suffered months of threats afterward to keep her silent.
Another article, in the National (published in the United Arab Emirates), shows that French officials knew about Ramadan's violent attacks upon women, and did nothing.
A French official has admitted knowing Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan was “violent and aggressive” sexually, but denied hearing anything about rape. 
Bernard Godard, who was considered the “Monsieur Islam” of the French Ministry of the Interior between 1997 and 2014, was well acquainted with Mr Ramadan, a prominent Islamic scholar and grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. 
When asked whether he had any knowledge of the rape and sexual assault that Mr Ramadan is now being accused of, Mr Godard insisted he had “never heard of rapes” and that he was “stunned.”
"That he had many mistresses, that he consulted sites, that girls were brought to the hotel at the end of his lectures, that he invited them to undress, that some resisted and that he could become violent and aggressive, yes, but I have never heard of rapes, I am stunned," he told French magazine L’Obs.
In Tweets today, Eltahawy wrote:
"I have twice argued w/Tariq Ramadan on BBC TV.This is 1 of the times. Many of us have long known him 2b a misogynist." 
Leta Hong Fincher wrote in reply: "Jesus, Mona, I would have just been struck dumb in that situation. So chilling given what we now know about him. Bravo!" 
Eltahawy replied: "Thank you @LetaHong - it was astounding then in 2011 when it happened & astounding now. He is a misogynist shit."
So why hasn't Oxford already suspended Ramadan? Three professors at Dartmouth (in psychology and brain sciences) have been put on paid leave while there is a criminal investigation into allegations of "sexual misconduct." In Ramadan's case, criminal complaints of rape have been filed against him. Shouldn't he also be suspended while the accusations are investigated by the French legal system?
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Monday, October 30, 2017

Education and the Pitfalls of Purity

Professors like me can’t stay silent about this extremist moment on campuses

An atrocious story from Reed College about the anti-intellectual and anti-free speech actions of supposedly progressive students. This article is an opinion piece by a Reed faculty member, Lucía Martínez Valdivia, who describes herself as an "untenured, gay, mixed-race woman with PTSD" - the kind of professor that one would hope progressive students would support.
At Reed College in Oregon, where I work, a group of students began protesting the required first-year humanities course a year ago. Three times a week, students sat in the lecture space holding signs — many too obscene to be printed here — condemning the course and its faculty as white supremacists, as anti-black, as not open to dialogue and criticism, on the grounds that we continue to teach, among many other things, Aristotle and Plato.
In an article on Reed in Inside Higher Ed, she described herself as "female, mixed race, American and Peruvian, gay, atheist and relatively young. I study poetry that is basically the opposite of me: male, white, British, straight, God-fearing, 500 years old. And I love it."
Saying that Hum 110 “perfectly captures the importance of origins and instability to what we do as scholars and students, regardless of the disciplines we pursue,” Martínez Valdivia asks students to “say yes to the text.” In other words, she says, one “should read things in good faith, understanding the distance, the strangeness from our own historical moment. If we get distracted by Plato’s misogyny or Lucretius’ imperfect mastery of physics, we miss the point, the bigger pictures of these works -- the way Plato structures his arguments, for example, or the fact that Lucretius was driven to theorize about the nature of the physical world when that just wasn’t something people did.” 
Martínez Valdivia notes that the course is technically called Introduction to Humanities: Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean, not Western Humanities, “in part because much of it is drawn from geographic areas not traditionally considered Western areas,” such as Iraq, Iran and Egypt. She says she’d be hard-pressed to eve n define “Western” and that the concept is challenged through course. 
Everything that is now canonical was once innovative, she adds. “This doesn’t mean that we can’t acknowledge problems, weaknesses, inaccuracies, that we can’t question these works; rather, it means that we should do so productively, in good faith. Don’t write Plato off as a misogynist. Instead, try considering how it is that misogyny is a logical result, for him, of his reasoning.”
To go back to the protest: she wrote that the faculty and administration allowed the protest to continue all year, "In the interest of supporting dissent and the free exchange of ideas." The course is taught by a wide range of professors who teach about their areas of expertise. She taught the poetry of Sappho. But others found the circumstances far too intimidating: "Some colleagues, including people of color, immigrants and those without tenure, found it impossible to work under these conditions. The signs intimidated faculty into silence, just as intended, and these silenced professors’ lectures were quietly replaced by talks from people willing and able to carry on teaching in the face of these demonstrations."

During the first class of Fall 2017, the protesting students escalated. The first lecture was going to be a "panel introduction of the course." Before the professors even had a chance to introduce the course, "the protesters seized our microphones, stood in front of us and shut down the lecture."

She wrote: "The right to speak freely is not the same as the right to rob others of their voices."
No one should have to pass someone else’s ideological purity test to be allowed to speak. University life — along with civic life — dies without the free exchange of ideas.
Her teaching philosophy expresses what I also think of as the crucial strength of humanistic study:
I ask one thing of all my first-year students: that they say yes to the text. This doesn’t mean they have to agree with or endorse anything and everything they read. It means students should read in good faith and try to understand the texts’ distance, their strangeness, from our historical moment. Ultimately, this is a call for empathy, for stretching our imaginations to try to inhabit and understand positions that aren’t ours and the points of view of people who aren’t us.
The students who are protesting Hum 110 and trying to shut it down are doing the exact opposite: they are reading in bad faith, they refuse to try to understand the texts in their distance and strangeness, and instead try to force them into the straightjacket of the present. They show no empathy either for the texts or for people who disagree with them. They have chosen to limit their imaginations rather than widen them, all in the name of anti-racism.
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Sunday, October 29, 2017

Muhammad's journey to Jerusalem

Attributed to `Abd al-Razzaq by Jahangir, black and white sketch attributed to Bihzad by Dust Muhammad, probably by Qasim Ali (pupil of Bihzad), like most of the other 22 paintings in the 1494/5 Khamsa. In the collection of the British Museum. 
This image is of Muhammad being flown from Mecca on his wondrous steed Buraq to Jerusalem. He is still in the skies of Mecca, above the Ka'ba.
This next image is of the same stage in the mi'raj - Muhammad above the Ka'ba in Mecca.

The Mi'raj (Night Journey of the Prophet) with the Ka'ba in Mecca Below, Page from an unidentified Manuscript (image 2 of 3). Iran, Shiraz, circa 1600.

 The Edwin Binney, 3rd, Collection of Turkish Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.85.237.44)

Plate showing the Night Journey (Mi'raj) of the Prophet Muhammad on the mythical steed Buraq with the archangel Gabriel and two Prophets, Noah and Idris, in the Second Heaven. 

One of 60 miniatures in Mir Haydar, Mira‘j-nameh, Timurid illuminated manuscript from Herat in Afghanistan showing other episodes in the Journey. 

The texts are in three languages: Turkish in Uigher script (main text), also Arabic titles and Persian and Arabic captions. Bibliothèque Nationale de France. 

"The Mi'raj or The Night Flight of Muhammad on his Steed Buraq", Folio 3v from a Bustan of Sa`di. From Wikimedia Commons.

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Saturday, October 07, 2017

More from Charlottesville






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