Target of a witch-hunt for opposing Israel

May 4, 2007 | Page 5

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN is the target of a witch-hunt that could cost him his job teaching at DePaul University in Chicago.

An outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights as well as a renowned scholar with a reputation for exceptional teaching, Finkelstein is being considered for tenure at DePaul. He won strong support from the political science department and the personnel committee of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, but DePaul’s dean refused to back his application for tenure.

Finkelstein’s longtime adversary, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, has publicly campaigned against Finkelstein getting tenure at DePaul. DePaul’s provost will make his decision before June, and the university president has until June 15, the last day of the quarter at DePaul, to issue his final word.

Students and faculty have come to Finkelstein’s defense. Hundreds signed a petition of support, and pickets and meetings were organized to draw attention to the case. Students began wearing armbands this week to show their solidarity, and plans are in the works for a week of support events starting May 21, culminating in a demonstration and town hall meeting on May 24.

Here, Finkelstein talks to Socialist Worker’s KATHRYN WEBER, a student at DePaul who has helped to organize the support campaign, about how and why he is still fighting for tenure, nearly 20 years into his academic career.

What you can do Sign a letter of support and find out more information on this case at the Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign Web site. E-mail finkelgate@gmail.com for more on what you can do to help. Finkelstein’s Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict is a careful documenting of the history of the conflict and Israel’s apartheid system. His recent Ariel Sharon is a biography of Israel’s former prime minister and leading warrior against the Palestinians.

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HOW DIFFICULT has it been for you to make a space for yourself in teaching in the current political environment?

I GOT my doctorate in 1988. Until 2000, I taught as what is called an adjunct, where you get paid per course. I lived in New York and taught at various universities and colleges. I was paid about an average of $3,000 per course and taught five to six courses a year, so I lived in New York for about 12 years on a salary ranging from $15,000 to $18,000 a year.

Eventually, I got a ”visiting professorship,” which is a yearly position. I was paid substantially more, but those were exceptional years--I think three years out of the 12. My entire teaching career, I have only once been interviewed for a job.

My dissertation was on the theory of Zionism. I don’t want to bore people with the details--just let’s say it was very difficult for me to get a job, because it’s considered a prerequisite that one of the letters of recommendation required for work, if not two, are from your thesis advisors--and none of my thesis advisors would support my candidacy.

HOW DID you recover from that?

WELL, I never got a job! I was working as an adjunct and non-PhDs get adjuncting jobs. It’s the equivalent of substitute teaching.

WHAT HAS been happening at DePaul?

I THINK that had the tenure process been allowed to go along according to basic protocols and procedure, I would have sailed through tenure, but external pressures were applied to the university, which have corrupted the process and derailed my tenure application.

There are two factors, really. One is vindictiveness and revenge--to “get” me for my public opposition to Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories. The other is to transmit the message that if you step out of line on this question, you’re going to face the same penalties as Finkelstein faced. It’s a way of silencing others for coming up behind me.

Finally, the hope is that if I’m denied tenure, it will de-legitimize me. The claim will be made that this Finkelstein guy, because he couldn’t get tenure at what these people consider a “ninth-rate Catholic university,” doesn’t know what he’s saying. That’s not me speaking about DePaul--that’s what they say.

CAN YOU describe the development of this fight with Dershowitz?

I FIRST met Professor Dershowitz on a program called Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman’s nationally broadcast program. I had read his book The Case for Israel as soon as it came out, and it was plain to me that large parts of it had been plagiarized, and also large parts of it were sheer fabrication and falsification of the documentary record.

When I was on the program I effectively told him as much. He was furious when he left the interview. Amy actually told me to watch out.

I felt obliged, having leveled incendiary allegations, to document it all, because otherwise, it would seem as if I was speaking in an irresponsible manner. I went on to document the allegations and produce a manuscript.

When Professor Dershowitz got wind of the manuscript, he embarked on a huge campaign to suppress publication of the book. He wasn’t successful, and now he’s embarked on a new campaign to deny me tenure.

Basically, I think there’s elements of vindictiveness, but also a desire to discredit me--and hopefully, in his mind, to repair some of the damage done by my book and my public allegations.

TO WHAT extent do you think he’s been successful in framing the debate over your tenure?

I DON’T think he’s been very successful. I think he’s looking very foolish. Even mainstream publications like the New York Times, which are very much in his corner and very much not in my corner, didn’t give him a write-up that he can be particularly proud of. He’s not been very successful. He’s behaving at this point in a very self-destructive manner.

WHAT DO you think the state of academic freedom in the U.S. today?

I’M NOT as hysterical about these issues as other people. Mine is kind of an unusual case, because I don’t confine my activity to academia. I speak before large numbers of audiences and I’m a known quantity outside the ivory tower, and so I pose many more problems to the powers that be than most academics.

I could be wrong on this subject, but I don’t think that academic freedom is being threatened. There are some cases, but my case is simply unusual because I’m a political activist outside the ivory tower of academia.

DO YOU think that professors have an obligation to engage in political activity?

THEY DON’T have an obligation as professors; they have an obligation as citizens. They have the luxury of devoting their working life to trying to ferret out the facts and the truth about what’s going on.

For most other working people, their working lives are devoted to jobs which have minimal levels of personal gratification and have very little to do with mental activity of the sort that creates informed citizens. So since you have the luxury of sitting around and reading books, you do have an obligation as a citizen to pursue and expose the truth.

Lunch with the FT: Tony Judt - Israel critic

By Graham Bowley

Published: March 16 2007 16:30 | Last updated: March 16 2007 16:30

Wistfully, Tony Judt admits he misses Europe. That seems to be one reason why he chose Cafe de Bruxelles in New York's Greenwich Village for our lunch. It is on a street of British shops where nostalgic expats can munch on fish and chips, or sip cups of tea. The cafe itself is a long, low, slightly grubby sun-washed place, where a sign outside lists mussels specialities. Inside, pictures on the walls evoke the Palace of Justice and various other Brussels sights.

At just after midday, Judt, who is 59, walks through the door and shuts the police sirens of Greenwich Avenue behind him. As professor of European studies at New York University, he is one of the most prominent liberal academics in the US. Yet he appears an unassuming, bookish man, wrapped up against the Manhattan cold in a lumpy, unstylish coat and cap. He has a beard of greying stubble, a broad balding head, an intelligent pale face, a precise handshake and smile - an intellectual. Not at all, I think, the incendiary figure who has recently drawn the ire of some Jewish groups in New York City by arguing that an “Israel lobby” influences US policy towards the Middle East and shuts down proper debate about it.

Judt wanted an early lunch because he has to meet some of his students in the afternoon, just around the corner on Washington Square - where he works and also lives with his second wife and two sons, aged 12 and nine. At this hour, we have Cafe de Bruxelles to ourselves. The polite waiter points to a table set in the middle of the room and warns us that a party of 10 will arrive soon. With a nod, Judt picks his way to a small table tucked away in the furthest, quietest corner.

“In the worst moments I have had death threats, and much worse, threats against my family,” says Judt, after he sits down opposite me and begins to describe the reactions to his writing and his talks. “These people would call up my office and they would say, 'Tell Tony Judt he had better not let his kids out on the street,' or 'Tell Tony Judt this is Hitler calling and he says, Congratulations.'” He winces and shakes his head. “I didn't think I knew until then just how deep and how uniquely American this obsession with blocking any criticism of Israel is. It is uniquely American.” Not European, not Israeli.

He adds: “People accuse me of wanting to see the abolition of Israel, which is nonsense. Israel exists. The question is what kind of state is it going to be in future years, what kind of laws is it going to have for first- and second-class citizens?”

Judt, who is Jewish, grew up in a stoutly middle-class family in London. In an impressive academic career, he went to King's College, Cambridge, Paris's Ecole Normale Superieure, Berkeley and Oxford. He moved to New York in 1987 to teach European history and French studies, when, he says ruefully, “the study of France was still a fashionable and desirable activity and not something you had to hide your head in shame about.”

His last book, Postwar, is a fluid history of Europe since 1945. It tells of the continent's rise from the ashes and the emergence of the European Union, which he is rather bullish about. The book was nominated for a Pulitzer prize, and was one of The New York Times top 10 books of 2005. Part of his job in New York, he says, is to explain Europe to Americans - people accuse him of forever trying to “sell” Europe to Americans, he says - as well as to explain America to Europeans. It is a tough job, Judt says, when, in their worldviews, the two are growing further apart.

Judt seems to be concerned with divisions. As well as the “vertical” separation between Europe and the US, he says, there are widening “horizontal” chasms within countries - between wealthy jet-travelling elites and the rest of the population.

“We probably face a world that is divided much more horizontally than vertically. We have a class of world travellers - as the medievals might have called them, 'clerks' - who speak Latin, or English, and feel at home in Tokyo, New York or Singapore. Underneath are the 'villains', the serfs, who don't speak English, who don't travel - beyond the occasional cheap vacation flight abroad - and who are still very much in a national, local cultural world. They are as much separated from their own airport people as from serfs of other countries.”

It is the gaps between cultures that concern Judt most, and especially the division between America and Europe.

One aspect of that rift is their attitude to Israel. On October 3, Judt was due to give a talk to an independent think- tank, called Network 20/20 about the “Israel lobby” in the US. The event was being held at the Polish Consulate in New York. Hours before he was scheduled to stand up, the consulate cancelled the talk, under pressure, Judt alleged, from influential Jewish groups in New York such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.

The cancellation brought outraged support from a roster of Judt's fellow academics and intellectuals. They said there had been an attempt to intimidate and shut down free debate - seeming to prove the point that Judt had wanted to make. A 114-signature letter was written to Abraham Foxman, the prominent national director of the Anti-Defamation League, and published in The New York Review of Books. But it is still not clear who telephoned whom, when, and to apply what sort of pressure during the incident, which The New York Observer called “l'affaire Judt”.

The ADL and AJC said they did not force the consulate to call off the talk. Still, they openly welcomed the outcome. For his critics, Judt is part of a worrying and dangerous trend, one of a number of liberal intellectuals, many of them Jewish, whose outspoken criticism of Israel, and whose support for Palestinians, they argue, provides ammunition for far more dangerous opponents. This, they believe, comes at a time when Israel's existence is probably as precarious as it ever has been.

Sitting at our table, Judt throws up his hands and says the debate at times must seem like “a weird inter-Jewish dispute about Israel”. But it has had personal consequences. He has lost two close friends, including Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, a magazine for which Judt used to write.

“Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life,” Judt says, quite sadly.

It has made his domestic life more difficult, too, because his wife, Jenny, a former ballerina, is The New Republic's dance critic. “The editor calls up and says, 'Jenny, we would like a piece and give my regards to Tony,' and she feels kind of squidged.”

In Cafe de Bruxelles, the party of 10 arrives. Around us the room fills with laughter and loud voices. Judt comes to the restaurant quite regularly. But this lunchtime one of his favourite dishes, carbonade de boeuf, is not on the menu. He looks disappointed. The waiter says he will consult the kitchen anyway. We order two Belgian blonde beers. Sipping them, we wait in suspense until the carbonade, heavy in gravy and cabbage, is laid on the tablecloth.

“I shall enjoy this as you can't imagine,” Judt says with a laugh. His critics “think I am some sort of weird far-out, provocative figure”, he says. “But this is down the line, mainstream, winter Belgian food.”

I wait for my chicken crepe. As we pick at a shared cup of frites in the middle of the table, Judt tells me more about his past.

His mother was a hairdresser. His father came from Antwerp. Members of his father's family had been killed in the Holocaust. His father, he says, “was talented at many things but making money was not one of them. Eventually he discovered a talent for bookselling - just at the point that Barnes & Noble and the like were sweeping away smaller booksellers.”

As a teenager, Judt became involved in leftwing Zionism. In 1967, he travelled to Israel as a volunteer during the Six Day War. He worked as a translator of French and Hebrew, and drove captured Syrian trucks. “Up on the Golan Heights, I met and heard officers talking, and for the first time I was seeing a side of Israel I had managed to turn a blind eye to,” he tells me. “Until then, the dominant rhetoric in Israel had still been that you didn't disparage the Arabs, you believed in socialism and equality. Now it was straightforward anti-Arab sentiment. What began in 1967, and accelerated in a great tumble through the mid-1970s, was the rise of a different Israel: hard-line, rightwing, very often religious, believing they had a real-estate pact with God. It was very ugly, at least I found it very ugly.”

In those years, he says, America didn't care so much for Israel. France was the great friend of Israel, he says, providing jets for the Israeli air force. But that changed, he says, due in part to the rise of identity politics in the US. This, he argues, eventually had an effect on American foreign policy.

“America at that time had a very low collective public consciousness of the Holocaust,” he says, eating the carbonade carefully. “People were not reading Primo Levi. They were not even reading Anne Frank. It became possible, fashionable and in the end almost necessary to identify yourself - Irish-American, Italian- American, Native American, Asian-American. Part of it was because of the rise of the culture of the victim but also because it was a way of being part of the new multicultural space.”

You couldn't just be Jewish-American, however, he says. To create an identity, he says, Jewish people instead tied themselves to the Holocaust and to Israel. “So it became very much a threat to American-Jewish identity to unravel one of these.”

The party of 10 has gone. The restaurant is quiet again. There is only a single diner next to us, reading The New York Times.

Judt says he doesn't lie awake at night worrying about his critics. But, still, he seems to me to carry a sense of anger and despondency about him. He admits that although he likes many Americans, he does not altogether like America. “Tom Friedman is talking through his hat. The world is not flat at all. The world is shaped still in many ways as it was in my generation by culture, by the place you grew up, by the assumptions you make about the place of religion in public life, about the relative importance of the state and the individual.”

Judt says he really has to make his student meetings. His next work projects, he tells me, include a book about 20th-century thought, and a theme likely to keep him clearer of controversy - a history of railways. When he was growing up in London, he loved riding the train into the countryside.

We drink our espressos and march out east across the traffic- clogged avenues towards Washington Square.

As the breach with Europe widens - “Now we are passing through a period of America's simultaneous withdrawal and resentment at the world,” he says - he knows for sure which side he wants to be on.

“I am tempted at least twice a day to go back to Europe,” he says.

With a bang, not a whimper: "rebellion goes global"

A final summing-up on the Independent Jewish Voices debate from one of the signatories.

February 12, 2007 9:45 AM

Brian Klug

At the end of a week of intense debate on the Guardian's Comment is Free website, I shall try to take stock of how the launch of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) has been received.

Not with a whimper but with a bang, it would be fair to say. When a number of us got together with the idea that it was time to stake a claim for the principles set out in the IJV statement, we hoped we would have an impact. We even expected that our initiative would not fall entirely flat. But we did not realise that the tinder of public opinion was quite so dry and that news of our ideas would spread like wildfire.

"The rebellion goes global" is the headline of the lead article on the front page of this week's Jewish Chronicle (JC), which prides itself on being the "world's oldest and most influential Jewish newspaper". "International drive to challenge communal leaders' 'unquestioning support' for Israel reaches Britain" explains the strap line. The article reports that in just three days over 1,000 entries on the subject were posted on the Comment is Free site. This is not to say that the JC is sympathetic to IJV, as it makes clear in an editorial [subscription only]. But its extensive coverage reflects the extent of public interest, not least in Jewish circles, in the issues raised by the launch.

It's the issues, not the IJV as such, that count. As one email writer put it: "Judging by the enormous response, it is clear that these issues have been smouldering beneath the surface for some time". He thought that the launch of IJV has "catalysed the debate".

Another wrote: "You have said openly what many of us have felt for a very long time but have lacked a vehicle for expressing our views."

These sentiments, which have been expressed in abundance over the last week, provide part of the answer to an objection raised frequently - in the threads of comments on this site and elsewhere - during the week. We stand accused of being a clique of marginal Jews who have ample opportunity to express our views in the media; who have invented or imagined the figment of censorship; and who simply cannot bear the heat of vigorous debate.

It would take a while to unpack this accusation in full. Briefly, there is no clique. The two email writers I just quoted are not members of the glitterati. They do not have automatic access to the comment pages of newspapers. Like many signatories to the IJV statement, they are individuals who feel alienated by the prevailing climate of debate over Israel and Zionism within the Jewish world.

Numerous Jews in Britain fit this description. They are at the heart of our initiative. We are seeking to enfranchise people who are effectively disfranchised by the current ethos, whether the lives they lead are within an organised Jewish community or not. Some negative responses to IJV seem to suggest that people who are not in the Jewish mainstream have less right to a voice as Jews; as if living on the margins of "the Jewish community" makes you a marginal Jew. This idea is as invalid as it is offensive.

Furthermore, contrary to the construction put on our words by some critics, none of us is suggesting that there is an unofficial censor who prevents individuals from expressing unpopular views about Israel or Zionism. It's what happens after people speak out - how their words are received - that is the point. Moreover, individual dissenting voices get lost or drowned out when weighty bodies (like the Board of Deputies or the Chief Rabbi) appear to speak on behalf of all Jews in Britain. It is the combination of these two factors that closes down a debate that should be open.

An open debate on a controversial subject is bound to be vigorous. But vigour is one thing, vilification another. The difference can be seen in the range of reactions to the launch of IJV. There have been reasoned objections and legitimate questions. But there has also been an extraordinary amount of abusive language, ridicule and attacks on our character or motives.

Who are we? We are a network of Jews in Britain who share a commitment to certain principles, especially with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in mind: putting human rights first, rejecting all forms of racism, and giving equal priority to Palestinians and Israelis in their quest for a peaceful and secure future.

We believe that these principles, rather than group loyalty, should determine the parameters of legitimate debate. What is there to hate? Yet the vitriol is ubiquitous. One leading commentator refers to us as "Jews for genocide". Nothing could offer a clearer illustration of the climate we are describing than an epithet like this.

There is a larger context. Domestically, the IJV statement bears on the current public debate in Britain about the nature of a plural society: Sunny Hundal makes the connection in his article on the Comment is Free website. And there are initiatives like ours abroad, as the front page article in the JC reports. Developments in America are described by Richard Silverstein in his piece on this site and by Gaby Wood in Sunday's Observer.

At the end of the launch week it is clear that IJV has struck a chord - hence the degree of support we have received - and hit a nerve - hence the scale of the hostility. Things are changing, at home and abroad, and this is just the beginning.

Click here for a full list of articles in the Independent Jewish Voices debate.

Dr Brian Klug is senior research fellow & tutor in philosophy at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford and member of the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University. He is an honorary fellow in the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton, associate editor of Patterns of Prejudice and a founder member of the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights. He has published widely on race, antisemitism, Jewish identity, Zionism and related subjects. Books include, Children as Equals: Exploring the Rights of the Child (co-editor) and Ethics, Value and Reality: Selected Papers of Aurel Kolnai (co-editor).

Stop Him Before He Gets More Experience: FRANK RICH - Obama Got It Right

Reposted

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE WITH ALL HYPERLINKS

The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Stop Him Before He Gets More Experience

By FRANK RICH

Published: February 11, 2007

If time in the United States Senate is what counts for presidential seasoning, maybe Barack Obama’s two years’ worth is already too much.

As the official Barack Obama rollout reaches its planned climax on “60 Minutes” tonight, we’ll learn if he has the star power to upstage Anna Nicole Smith. But at least one rap against him can promptly be laid to rest: his lack of experience. If time in the United States Senate is what counts for presidential seasoning, maybe his two years’ worth is already too much. Better he get out now, before there’s another embarrassing nonvote on a nonbinding measure about what will soon be a four-year-old war.

History is going to look back and laugh at last week’s farce, with the Virginia Republican John Warner voting to kill a debate on his own anti-surge resolution and the West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd seizing the occasion for an hourlong soliloquy on coal mining. As the Senate pleasured itself with parliamentary one-upmanship, the rate of American casualties in Iraq reached a new high.

The day after the resolution debacle, I spoke with Senator Obama about the war and about his candidacy. Since we talked by phone, I can’t swear he was clean, but he was definitely articulate. He doesn’t yet sound as completely scripted as his opponents — though some talking-point-itis is creeping in — and he isn’t remotely defensive as he shrugs off the race contretemps du jour prompted by his White House run. Not that he’s all sweetness and light. “If the criterion is how long you’ve been in Washington, then we should just go ahead and assign Joe Biden or Chris Dodd the nomination,” he said. “What people are looking for is judgment.”

--MORE--

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Transcript of Obama campaign speech

Barack Obama's Full Announcement Speech — On Video

Stop Him Before He Gets More Experience: FRANK RICH - Obama Got It Right

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE WITH ALL HYPERLINKS
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Stop Him Before He Gets More Experience

By FRANK RICH

Published: February 11, 2007

If time in the United States Senate is what counts for presidential seasoning, maybe Barack Obama’s two years’ worth is already too much.

As the official Barack Obama rollout reaches its planned climax on “60 Minutes” tonight, we’ll learn if he has the star power to upstage Anna Nicole Smith. But at least one rap against him can promptly be laid to rest: his lack of experience. If time in the United States Senate is what counts for presidential seasoning, maybe his two years’ worth is already too much. Better he get out now, before there’s another embarrassing nonvote on a nonbinding measure about what will soon be a four-year-old war.

History is going to look back and laugh at last week’s farce, with the Virginia Republican John Warner voting to kill a debate on his own anti-surge resolution and the West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd seizing the occasion for an hourlong soliloquy on coal mining. As the Senate pleasured itself with parliamentary one-upmanship, the rate of American casualties in Iraq reached a new high.

The day after the resolution debacle, I spoke with Senator Obama about the war and about his candidacy. Since we talked by phone, I can’t swear he was clean, but he was definitely articulate. He doesn’t yet sound as completely scripted as his opponents — though some talking-point-itis is creeping in — and he isn’t remotely defensive as he shrugs off the race contretemps du jour prompted by his White House run. Not that he’s all sweetness and light. “If the criterion is how long you’ve been in Washington, then we should just go ahead and assign Joe Biden or Chris Dodd the nomination,” he said. “What people are looking for is judgment.”

--MORE--

See comments

Related

Transcript of Obama campaign speech

Barack Obama's Full Announcement Speech — On Video