A blip on the record
An increasingly popular trope among liberal Zionists is that ‘BDS
Is Pushing Jewish Students Out of Social Justice Activism’. What
they mean is that when social justice organisations decide to support
Palestinian freedom by embracing their call to boycott, divest from,
and sanction Israel, those who support The Jewish State™ may feel
uneasy, offended, even threatened. Such feelings can only arise when
they strongly identify with the Jewish state and feel personally
responsible for its actions and safety. If the BDS movement
articulated the view that Australian Jews were personally responsible
for the terrorism and ethnic cleansing that brought Israel into
existence, or Israeli home demolitions and extrajudicial executions
in the here and now, the
same liberal Zionists
would likely be apoplectic in condemning the blatant antisemitism.
But if Jewish ‘progressives’ pack up their principles and flee
progressive movements on that basis, they
are somehow construed
as
the victims.
In
his article on this very subject in yesterday’s Forward,
Seffi
Kogen, ‘the
American
Jewish Committee’s Assistant Director for Campus Affairs’,
attests
a single example of such victimisation.
Last
December, Barnard Art History sophomore, Julia
Crain, wrote
an opinion piece in the Columbia
Spectator,
demanding that Barnard’s
Student Government Association decline to support a petition
presented by the anti rape group, No Red Tape.
According
to the No Red Tape
website,
We
fight to end sexual and domestic violence on college campuses and
empower survivors. We use direct action to push for improved policies
on campus and beyond; we create education programs to prevent
violence and eradicate rape culture; and we provide direct support
and resources for survivors of all identities.
Crain claims,
It publicly denounces Israel on social media and collaborates with
anti-Israel student groups, such as Columbia Students for Justice in
Palestine.
Now it’s
altogether possible that No Red Tape has systematically removed the
offending denunciations, but the only post on their Facebook page
last year that had anything to do with Palestine prior to her op ed
was a link to the report on ‘The
Palestine Exception to Free Speech’.
For the record, I
personally don’t think it’s crucial for a rape crisis centre to
take a position on Palestine, but since No Red Tape ‘envision a
world free of violence and oppression’, it seems sensible and
consistent to support BDS. It would make more sense to me if they
couched it in terms of solidarity and antiracism rather than
‘intersectionality theory’, but that’s just me.
That said, if their
support for BDS extended to denying support to Zionist rape
survivors, that would be reprehensible. But they claim to,
affirm and actively support every survivors’ right to seek justice
and healing in the way that they choose. The work we do is always
centered in the needs and experiences of survivors themselves.
While I freely
acknowledge that what they claim on their website could be
unadulterated bullshit, it’s virtually inconceivable that Crain,
and Kogen, would have declined to emphasise any restriction like
that. Rather than documenting actual cases of exclusion, Crain
asserts, ‘In elevating its political agenda over the needs of
survivors, it’s reneged on its promise to be “survivor-centric”’
and ‘overt alienation of countless students’.
Parenthetically, use
of countless always arouses
suspicion. At one level, any
subset of Barnard University students is inherently countable. While
the obvious and intended interpretation
is that the number is too large to count, more often than not, what
it actually means, as here, is that they couldn’t be bothered to
count.
A
perusal of the No Red Tape
website reveals that the group is far more invested in the campaign
to divest
from
‘Columbia's endowment from fossil fuels’ than
in BDS. But
Crain is unconcerned that climate change denialists might feel
uncomfortable in such a group.
So Crain feels
alienated from No Red Tape because they have taken a stand on
Palestine and uses her bully pulpit on Spectator’s editorial
board to appeal against their ‘petition’, presumably for funding.
It’s hard to see her as the aggrieved party.
Columbia/Barnard
Hillel claims their ‘quest is to help students, regardless of
their origin or destination, find their own interpretation of Jewish
values...’ But they also insist that they ‘provide a nurturing
environment for Jewish students to grow...in a love for Israel’.
By insinuating this pernicious Zionist sentiment among their ‘Core
values’, Hillel excludes those Jewish students who object to
Zionism. The liberal Zionists are curiously silent on this atrocity.
Kogen magnanimously
concedes that, ‘Jewish students...are not persecuted or under
assault.’ ‘But they suffer nevertheless as their peers make it
clear to them that their Zionism disqualifies them from the
progressive activist community’.
One unnamed student
told Kogen, ‘I want to be a part of the progressive fights my
generation is currently waging, but I am deeply troubled and
challenged by the anti-Israel sentiment rising amongst the far left.’
In other words, they want to be ‘Progressive Except Palestine’
(PEP). But that is not a thing. There is no way to justify the
permanent exile of the Palestinian refugees without reference to the
racist ‘demographic threat’. There is no way to justify
privileging Jews in access to land, water, education, employment, not
to mention less concrete ways, like the Israeli flag and anthem,
without descending into racism. Zionism is a fundamentally racist in
conception and manifestation. There is no progressive form of racism
and there is consequently no progressive form of Zionism. It’s
preposterous to claim that social justice movements need to adopt
measures that racists won’t find confronting just so they’ll be
more comfortable.
But Kogen remains
optimistic that, ‘...this moment of progressive antipathy toward
the Jewish state will be remembered as a blip on the historical
record of liberal support for Israel.’
