The Tripod - Opinions
Issue: 4/6/04

Criticism of Israel not Anti-Semetic
By Josie Weldon

In last week's issue of the Tripod, Professors Samuel Kassow and John Elukin co-signed an opinion piece that characterized some members of VOID (though I was the only one bringing up the issue) as bigoted left-wing anti-Semitics. The authors stated that because I sent out emails to VOID on the conflict in Israel/Palestine I was part of an ugly phenomenon of obsessive and selective criticism of Israel from the political Left which they equate with anti-Semitism. In response, I will absolutely challenge the logic of this equation. And I want to point out that Kassow's and Elukin's remarks amount to a slander on students and call into question their own commitment to the principles of open debate for which this college stands.

I am accused of being anti-Semitic. The reality is more benign. I believe in a basic moral principle of activism: that we are only responsible for the predictable consequences of our own actions. As a U.S. citizen who is especially concerned with the struggle for global justice, I therefore focus my attention on issues where I can have some effect, principally the consequences of U.S. foreign policy, from our role in the transition of power in Haiti to our continued occupation of Iraq.

It is certainly true that the world is filled with brutal regimes and that many people in the world suffer under them, but it seems to me quite easy to denounce oppressive regimes in places like North Korea or Iran where the effects of your actions are precisely zero.

Conversely, it takes great courage to determine the violence and oppression for which you are responsible as a citizen of this country and where you can have dramatic effects.

Today, whether American taxpayers know it or not, we are deeply implicated in the actions of the Israeli government and defense forces. The Israeli government is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world, receiving over one-third of total U.S. aid. Over the years Israel has received over $130 billion in military aid from the U.S.

Therefore, the Palestinian people in the territories are being occupied and terrorized by American taxpayer supplied helicopter gunships, F-16 war planes, bulldozers and tanks, just as the Chechens and other refugee communities have been oppressed by states other than the U.S. Finally, those U.S. citizens less concerned with social justice should at least focus on Israel for this reason: the irresolution of the conflict in Israel/Palestine has led to an exacerbation of anti-American sentiment of frightening proportions in the Middle East.

Israel is indeed a crucial exception for us as Americans, as opposed to locations of conflict such as Tibet or Sudan. U.S. power reaches all around the globe and there are steps we can take in almost every situation to limit the suffering of people. Palestine, however, much like Iraq, and Central America and Vietnam in the past, is a case where U.S. actions are decisive and raise the responsibility of all citizens of this country to resist complicity in the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.

I want to assure students who may have been intimidated by Kassow and Elukin's smear tactics that it is not anti-Semitic to support the liberation of the Palestinian people from an unjust, brutal and humiliating occupation funded by the United States.

I am sensitive to the fact that real anti-Semitism, which obscures what it is to be a Jew and allows atrocities to be visited upon Jewish people, really does exist in the world. For this reason, I more strongly denounce the professors' cavalier use of the accusation of anti-Semitism. It was slung in bad faith (for neither has had any personal contact with me) and it was used as no more than a mean-spirited and Orwellian attempt to silence student discussion on a matter of great human suffering in which we are complicit.

I also understand that the situation in Israel/Palestine is immensely complex and that the resolution I advocate, a just peace for Palestinians as well as Israelis, will take careful steps to achieve. Therefore, I have added professors Samuel Kassow and Jonathan Elukin to the VOID e-mail list in hope that in the future they may more directly join our discussion and enlighten our analysis with their concerns. I hope this conversation continues on Trinity's campus and college campuses all over the country.