Divestment Debate

I also am disappointed and disturbed that 76 tenured faculty members at Princeton University have signed a divestment petition against Israel (On the Campus, Jan. 7). In fact, five professors actually drafted the petition, which then was circulated among undergraduates at the University. The names of these faculty members and their departments should be made public, possibly in PAW. Are the majority of the faculty members in one or two departments, or are they spread throughout the University? As an alumnus, I would like a sense as to how these misinformed and biased academics might be influencing Princeton students and the future leaders of our country. I agree with Stephen Tauber *68 (Inbox, March 4) that such anti-Israel rhetoric and discourse is simply anti-Semitism by another name. Some things never change, even at Princeton University.

Editor’s note: The names of faculty petitioners can be found at www.princetondivests.org.

I was struck reading about the Israel-divestment campaign at Princeton (On the Campus, Jan. 7) just as reports were coming in of the terrorist atrocities in Paris, including the slaughter of four Jews at a kosher deli. Apparently, the gunman at the deli felt that the murderous rampage that also struck the offices of Charlie Hebdo was not complete until he could target “some Jews.” Now that the forces of terrorism and anti-Semitism are coming closer to home, it is striking to see some at Princeton attempting to isolate Israel, a prime target of those dark forces.

According to PAW, the supporters of divestment want to press Israel on human-rights violations such as its actions during last summer’s Gaza war. Of course, Israel’s population centers have been bombarded by rockets nearly continuously since Israel evacuated all Jews from the Gaza strip in 2005 (somehow the presence of Jews in the Palestinian territories is always seen as a provocation). After Israel left Gaza, and the residents there gleefully burned down the remaining synagogues, the anti-Semitic terror organization Hamas was popularly elected as the government. Hamas has since exploited increasingly sophisticated methods to murder Israeli civilians, including attempting to tunnel into Israel to catch Jews unaware during their religious holidays. Although BDS supporters may want Israel to passively endure such terror attacks on its civilian population, Israel is not obligated to do so in order to gain their approval.

Finally, it recently was reported that Hamas permitted a demonstration in Gaza by rival Salafi activists in support of the Paris terrorists; it seems that Hamas could not allow the murders in Paris to pass without celebration. That there are those at Princeton who act to support Hamas, either wittingly or unwittingly, is truly disturbing.

The March 4 letters on proposed Princeton divestment from Israel (On the Campus, Jan. 7) point to other nations with terrible human-rights records, distinguishing them from Israel’s  “democracy.” Problem is, only two others are supported – lavishly – by us: Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and Israel can’t fairly be called a democracy.

When I was 5 or 6, my mother – good-heartedly, if illogically – urged me always to clean my plate and think of the hungry DP children in Europe. “DPs” were “displaced persons,” war refugees. At the same time, a million more DPs – Palestinians – were being driven out of Palestine, exiled into refugee camps by Israel’s forces: more than 400,000 by the end of 1947 alone. Europe’s refugees were being resettled, but almost 70 years later, most Palestinians are still in the diaspora, refugees, under military occupation, or without identity in a “Jewish state.” With 80 percent of Palestinians gone, 475 of their villages were blown up, bulldozed, literally wiped off the map. Those who fled are barred from return, their land deeds and even house keys notwithstanding.

This is the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel defines “Jewish” as having a Jewish grandmother, and bars virtually all so-defined non-Jews from immigrating, while its purposeful merger of religion and nationalism attracts support from Jews abroad while inciting hatred of both from its victims. Imagine being bombed by (U.S.-made) fighters with Stars of David on their wings.

Most Palestinians now cannot vote, being exiled or under occupation. Elections? Compare a board meeting with four-fifths of the members locked out of the boardroom.

It’s possible that significant divestment could force Israel to become a secular democratic bi-national state; the status quo can’t be maintained indefinitely. Brute force will always be required to keep the indigenous Palestinians subjugated; ongoing, pervasive human-rights violations are structural, part of the exclusionary nature of the state.

In 1938 the wisest Princetonian, Albert Einstein, wrote with enormous prescience: “My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state ... I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state.”

It is so politically correct to express righteous indignation against Israel in its ongoing struggle with much of the Arab/Moslem world by placing the intellectual spotlight exclusively on “the West Bank and Gaza.” The fact of the matter is that, since the Sykes-Picot carving-up of much of the Middle East approximately a century ago, the vast majority of Arabs/Moslems considered any Jewish sovereignty in that part of the world as an unacceptable (colonialist) intrusion. (They wouldn’t allow that the “Promised Land” was promised to Abraham, and the people of Israel get in the way of their view.) Accordingly, they never were willing to give the Jews any sovereignty, and exercised every opportunity to snuff out the nascent Jewish state.

For a while, Israel was the David, struggling valiantly against the Arab/Moslem Goliath. This was particularly true in Israel’s War of Independence (1948) and the Six-Day War in 1967, when the Egyptian and Syrian armies massed on Israel’s southern and northern borders. There would be no “West Bank problem” if things had been left there. However, at the same time that Egypt’s air force was being wiped out on the ground, Jordan’s Hussein was persuaded to join the fray. The entire eastern border of Israel also was jeopardized. As it was, Israel survived and found itself astride a much greater area. Even then, the Arabs took the position of no discussions and no recognition.

Over time, Egypt made peace with Israel (in return, Israel gave back the entire Sinai – and gladly would have given Gaza also, but Egypt would not agree). Subsequently, Jordan shook off its claims to the “West Bank” – and later signed a peace agreement with Israel, basically alongside the Jordan River. 

This left Israel rubbing shoulders with, and having to worry about, substantial non-Israeli Arab populations to the east and southwest. Brilliantly, the entire conflict was redefined as Israel (now Goliath) against the “Palestinians.” What to do? 

Under UN Security Council Resolution 242, Israel is to withdraw from territories (not the territories) gained in the war. In numerous negotiations on two states for two peoples, Israel has been willing to withdraw from about 95 percent or even more of the territories in dispute in exchange for proper security arrangements, but the interlocutors never have been willing to recognize the Jewish state, insisting that Israel has to take in within its new borders millions of the descendants of the Palestinian refugees who fled around 1948.

Because it is understandably not prepared to be a bi-national state, Israel considers this a nonstarter. I humbly would like to suggest that viewing the context of the issue — and its complications — does not lead to the one-sided perspective of BDS proponents.

If one wishes to take a principled stand against “violations of human rights and international law,” by all means do so (On the Campus, Jan. 7). Start with divestment campaigns against the largest violators such as China (Tibet anyone?) or Russia (Ukraine? Chechnya?). Then move to other heinous actors such as Saudi (“I now pronounce you man and chattel”) Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Pakistan, Myanmar, and terrorist-ruled Gaza itself, to name but a few.

But if you insist on singling out Israel, you must explain how Israel’s offenses are so great as to eclipse those of the other countries mentioned here, particularly when Israel stands out among these as being the only democracy, the only country in which free speech, universal voting rights, and other practices of a democratic society are allowed, the only country with a vibrant free press and public debate, the only Mideast country in which women and all minorities have equal rights, and in which freedom of religion is practiced. 

This is not to say that all Israeli policies are good or even acceptable. Nor is it to say that Palestinians do not deserve their own state and self-determination — they do. However, those who would single out Israel for divestment and sanctions must explain why it is uniquely deserving of such treatment, and how this is likely to lead to any constructive end.

It is difficult to arrive at any conclusion other than that the proponents of divestment either are well-meaning but badly misinformed, or may be acting on prejudice rather than principle.

I’m glad there is a robust anti-divestment movement at Princeton. I’m disappointed at the number of students who signed the BDS petition, but I’m angry that 76 “tenured faculty members” signed it.

I don’t understand how any rational person thinks that if Israel left the West Bank (as it left Gaza), peace would follow. The Palestinians are further away than ever from discussing proposals Israel could accept or its only real ally could honorably ask them to accept. Here’s a topic to ponder: Can a people lose their right of self-determination when the only definition they have of that right is to completely replace another people?

Germany and Japan lost their right to self-determination when they embarked on unprovoked, ruthless wars of conquest. If they had not radically reformed themselves under the enlightened rule of their conquerors, they might never have regained sovereignty, let alone the prosperity and stability that followed fundamental changes in their mindset and social structure.

In a political sense, the same model should apply to the Palestinians preceding any further talk of statehood.

It is amazing that 76 professors at my university have let themselves become enemies of the only democracy in the Middle East. Support for a Palestinian state — given the behavior of Hamas and the PLO, an educational system steeped in conscienceless hatred, and public-opinion poll results among the Palestinians — accomplishes nothing except to incentivize terrorism and genocide against the very existence of Israel, not to mention the threat to the national security of our own country. Shame on such willful ignorance.

An argument that goes nowhere and affects no one. Help in educating both sides would be more useful. The matter is complex, and most people are unwilling to see both sides. I try to do just that, and suggest both groups at Princeton do the same.

The boycott-divestment-sanctions actors are attempting to punish Israel for having the effrontery of having survived 67 years of continual attempts to annihilate it and its citizens. Hamas fires its rockets, stores its munitions, and places command centers deliberately among civilian sites and populations to generate photogenic “atrocities.” The average Arab has far more freedom in Israel than in any Arab country. Do not pretend that ignoring all of the massive atrocities in all of so many Near Eastern countries but focusing exclusively on the results of Israel defending itself is anything other than rank anti-Semitism. J’accuse!