Eunice G. Pollack, a professor of history and Jewish Studies at the University of North Texas and editor of the interdisciplinary series Antisemitism in America, has collected twenty one articles, almost all focusing on the issue of antisemitism in the United States during the last half of the Twentieth Century. She has grouped the articles under six subtitles: “Antisemitism: The Hydra-Headed Monster”; “Earlier Incarnations, Excluding Jews”; “The Left, Blacks, Jews and Antisemitism”; “Student Associations and Antisemitism”; “Youth Culture and Antisemitism”; “Combating Antisemitism.” Her own preface to the book, though, delineates the issue most troubling to her, “Confronting Antisemitism on the Campus.” It is this issue on which this review will focus, since both Pollack and I feel that behind its academic protective wall antisemitism, particularly in the guise of anti-Zionism, most easily can penetrate the minds of college students, both Jewish and non-Jewish, at an age when they are most vulnerable.
It is on the campus where charges of theological and economic antisemitism have been updated. The “evil Jews” in the current lexicon are Zionists menacing the world from a “white colonist settler state,” one born in sin with the aim of “ethnically cleansing” its true owners, the Palestinian Arabs. From Pollack’s perspective, and that of many of the articles included in this volume, anti-Zionism appears to have become the latest form of antisemitism. Campus activists unite around the thesis that true peace only will be possible when Zionists give up the idea of creating a Jewish homeland.
Edward Alexander, whose article focuses on “Blushing Professors: Jews Who Hate Israel,” feels that Jewish journalists and academics “play a crucial role…in the current upsurge of antisemitism, and have a disproportionate influence, since they ‘demonize Israel precisely as Jews.'”
On the one hand, many Jewish intellectuals have long assumed that Judaism is synonymous with leftist politics, and their support for Israel could continue as long as it was in harmony with liberal ideals. Now that Israelis politics appear to have changed, the lectures, books and articles of these seemingly self-hating Jews lend added credibility to non-Jews’ condemnation of Israel.
On the other hand, Andre Oboler sees the internet as a major source of antisemitism and anti-Zionism on the contemporary college campus. Students spend much of their time online, where even small antisemitic groups can have major impact. The internet, monitored by few trained gatekeepers, allows for both informed and non-informed comments, as well as the dissemination of materials published by well organized groups like JewWatch.com, with sections on “Zionist Occupied Governments,” and “Jewish Mind Control Mechanisms,” a concept straight out of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In addition, these groups often provide links to websites similar to their own, enhancing their authority for often gullible students.
For this reviewer the last section on Pollack’s book, “Combating Antisemitism,” was most useful. Here is where the problems inherent in the use of academic freedom to distort issues related to Zionism and Israel are addressed. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin uses an academic conference that took place in 2007 at her own campus, the University of California Santa Cruz, a conference sponsored by eight university departments and research centers, as a way to explore the dilemmas students face when subjected to anti-Zionist rhetoric both by their own professors and via events sponsored by their departments. “Alternative Histories Within and Beyond Zionism” included papers such as “Racial Palestinization,” claiming that Jews have used Israel to protect the purity of the Jewish “race”; “Hidden Histories of Post-Zionism,” arguing that Israel should be replaced by a bi-national secular state; “Holocaust Film and Zionism: Exposing a Collaboration,” alleging that Holocaust films have propagated and justified a racist Zionist ideology that perpetrates ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians; “A History of Zionism and the Politics of Divestment,” defining Israel as an apartheid state and proposing divestment as a justified strategy in opposing the Jewish state. Although advertised as an academic event, this and similar conferences in the following years, seemed determined to promote an anti-Zionist agenda, using—and abusing–the academic freedom provided within the university environment.
A few concerned faculty members at UCSC established a chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and began documenting the rising incidence of anti-Zionism in classrooms and departmentally sponsored events. Then they brought their evidence to administrators and faculty, including those at the highest levels of governance of the statewide University of California system. Their efforts, however, were repeatedly frustrated and, in the end, rejected. Afterward, they attempted to engage the public, albeit with mixed results.
The problem is not unique to UCSC. Research has documented faculty-generated anti-Zionism at several other UC campuses and at many other universities in the United States and abroad. Clearly university students are the greatest victims of “teaching” which violates their basic right to be educated rather than indoctrinated. My own students report that academic legitimization of anti-Israelism on American, Canadian and British campuses is intellectually, emotionally, and even physically, intimidating.
The last article in Pollack’s volume, Alvin H. Rosenfeld’s “Responding to Campus-Based Anti-Zionism,” not only presents the problem, but also analyzes it and suggests solutions. According to Rosenfeld, the harshest forms of anti-Zionism stem from two groups: politically active Muslims and “progressive” anti-Zionist Jews. The main casualty, he stresses, is not so much Israel’s image, but the campus culture itself, one that has become propagandized and opposed to the spirit of free inquiry and the balanced search for truth which is at the center of every university’s mission. He proposes that coverage of Israel be integrated within a broad range of university activities and that Israel be addressed from diverse points of view, including appropriate critical scrutiny. By providing varied opportunities for exposure to Israel, not only through courses and programs but also via opportunities to spend time in Israel, and by building constructive relations with sympathetic colleagues on campus, Rosenfeld feels that the current negativity towards Zionism can be mitigated and perhaps, in the long run, eradicated.
Now the question is: Will the faculty and administration at the universities on both the West and East Coast, where the antisemitism, a.k.a. anti-Israelism, exists in its most acute form, read Rosenfeld’s article? And will they begin to think in terms of positive, constructive, ways to present coverage of Israel, instead of those that discredit and malign the only current functioning democracy in the Middle East? Only time will tell.
DR. SARAH SCHMIDT teaches courses related to modern Jewish history at the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with an emphasis both on Israeli and American Jewish history.
