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Jewish World Review Nov. 8, 2002 / 3 Kislev 5763
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
If a visitor from a far
away galaxy were to
land at an American or
Canadian university
and peruse some of
the petitions that
were circulating
around the campus,
he would probably
come away with the
conclusion that the
Earth is a peaceful
and fair planet with
only one villainous
nation determined to
destroy the peace and
to violate human
rights.
That nation
would not be Iraq,
Libya, Serbia, Russia
or Iran. It would be Israel. There are currently petitions circulating
on most North American university campuses that would seek to
have universities terminate all investments in companies that do
business in or with Israel. There are also petitions asking
individual faculty members to boycott scientists and scholars who
happen to be Israeli Jews, regardless of their personal views on
the Arab-Israeli conflict. There have been efforts, some successful,
to prevent Israeli speakers from appearing on college campuses,
as recently occurred at Concordia University. There are no
comparable petitions seeking any action against other countries
that enslave minorities, imprison dissidents, murder political
opponents and torture suspected terrorists. Nor are there any
comparable efforts to silence speakers from other countries.
The intergalactic visitor would wonder what this pariah nation,
Israel, must have done to deserve this unique form of economic
capital punishment. If he then went to the library and began to
read books and articles about this planet, he would discover that
Israel was a vibrant democracy, with freedom of speech, press
and religion, that was surrounded by a group of tyrannical and
undemocratic regimes, many of which are actively seeking its
destruction.
He would learn that in Egypt, homosexuals are
routinely imprisoned and threatened with execution; that in
Jordan suspected terrorists and other opponents of the
government are tortured, and that if individualized torture does
not work, their relatives are called in and threatened with torture
as well; that in Saudi Arabia, women who engage in sex outside
of marriage are beheaded; that in Iraq, political opponents are
routinely murdered en masse and no dissent is permitted; that in
Iran members of religious minorities, such as Baha'is and Jews,
are imprisoned and sometimes executed; that in all of these
surrounding nations, anti-Semitic material is frequently broadcast
on state-sponsored television and radio programs; in Saudi Arabia
apartheid is practised against non-Muslims, with signs indicating
that Muslims must go to certain areas and non-Muslims to others;
that China has occupied Tibet for half a century; that in several
African countries women are stoned to death for violating sexual
mores; that slavery still exists in some parts of the world; and
that genocide has been committed by a number of countries in
recent memory.
Our curious visitor would wonder why there are no petitions
circulating with regard to these human rights violators.Are the tactics used to combat terrorism by
Israel worse than those used by the Russians against Chechen
terrorists? Are Arab and Muslim states more democratic than
Israel? Is there any comparable institution in any Arab or Muslim
state to the Israeli Supreme Court, which frequently rules in
favour of Palestinian claims against the Israeli government and
military? Does the absence of the death penalty in Israel alone,
among Middle East nations, make it more barbaric than the
countries which behead, hang and shoot political dissidents? Is
Israel's settlement policy, which 78% of Israelis want to end in
exchange for peace, worse than the Chinese attempt at cultural
genocide in Tibet? Is Israel's policy of full equality for openly gay
soldiers and members of the Knesset somehow worse than the
policy of Muslim states to persecute those who have a different
sexual orientation than the majority? Is Israel's commitment to
equality for women worse than the gender apartheid practised in
Saudi Arabia?
Our visitor would be perplexed to hear the excuses made by
university professors and students for why they are prepared to
delegitimate Israel while remaining silent about the far worse
abuses committed by other countries. If he were to ask a student
about the abuses committed by other countries, he would be told
(as I have been): "You're changing the subject. We're talking
about Israel now." This reminds me of an incident from the 1920s
involving then-Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell. Lowell
decided that the number of Jews admitted to Harvard should be
reduced because "Jews cheat." When a distinguished alumnus,
Judge Learned Hand, pointed out that Protestants also cheat,
Lowell responded, "You're changing the subject; we're talking
about Jews."
It is not surprising, therefore, that as responsible and cautious a
writer as Andrew Sullivan has concluded
that "fanatical anti-Semitism, as bad or even worse than Hitler's,
is now a cultural norm across much of the Middle East and
beyond. It's the acrid glue that unites Saddam, Arafat, al-Qaeda,
Hezbollah, Iran and the Saudis. They all hate the Jews and want
to see them destroyed."
Our intergalactic traveller, after learning all of these facts, would
wonder what kind of a planet he had landed on. Do we have
everything backwards? Do we know the difference between right
and wrong? Do our universities teach the truth?
These are questions that need asking, lest we become the kind of
world the visitor would have experienced had he arrived in Europe
during the late 1930s and early 1940s.
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Alan M. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard and author of, most recently,
Why Terrorism Works. This essay is based on a speech made to the United Jewish Appeal of Toronto.
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Treatment of Israel strikes an alien note
By Alan M. Dershowitz
