Vassar College, which describes itself as “a highly selective, residential, coeducational liberal arts college,” has recently attracted a lot of attention because of the energetic activism of so-called “pro-Palestinian” groups like Vassar’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) who were apparently supported by dozens of faculty members. As I noted in a related post a few weeks ago, the anti-Zionist – and sometimes also anti-Semitic – website Mondoweiss seemed to view the activism at Vassar as a kind of bellwether indicating victory in the “BDS war on campus.” By now, Mondoweiss has published another similarly triumphant report on a Vassar event with the movement’s “rock stars” Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal; according to an announcement on Facebook, the event was co-sponsored by Jewish Studies and the departments of English, Political Science, Religion, Geography, and Sociology. Before addressing subsequent developments, it is useful to recall that the first Mondoweiss report included the acknowledgement that “SJP students can be obnoxious,” though it also suggested that they should be compared to “abolitionists during slavery” who were “dedicated to a principle worth living and dying for.” However, if this comparison is at all justified, it is arguably in the sense that the goal of “pro-Palestinian” activism is the abolition of the world’s only Jewish state – and it is hardly surprising that the pursuit of this goal indeed often results in undeniably “obnoxious,” i.e. anti-Semitic, conduct. Vassar’s SJP chapter seems eager to provide plenty of evidence for this deplorable phenomenon. As Rebecca Lesses documents in a just published blog post, SJP Vassar featured anti-Semitic material on their tumblr page. When I clicked on the link to check out the page, I discovered that additional anti-Semitic material had been posted – or, to be more precise: a cartoon suggesting that Israel can get away with any behavior due to the Holocaust was cross-posted from a site named “neonationalist.” Apparently, Vassar SJP had no qualms about featuring material from “neonationalist,” even though the page is exactly what one would expect: a “white pride” promoter sharing utterly offensive material on topics like “Nationalism,” “Racialism,” “Anti-Feminism,” and, yes, “Anti-Degeneracy.” If this was an isolated case of supposedly left-wing “pro-Palestinian” activists and far-right reactionaries finding their lowest common denominator in their shared enthusiasm for anti-Semitic material, it would perhaps not be worth mentioning. But unfortunately, there are plenty of similar examples, as I have shown when I documented (pdf) the popularity of Max Blumenthal’s work on Israel at racist and neo-Nazi forums. In the meantime, it has become clear that in addition to the sites I mentioned, Blumenthal’s writings were also posted on the neo-Nazi forum used by the arrested suspect in last month’s fatal Overland Park, Kansas, shootings. As William Jacobson rightly emphasizes in a related blog post, this does not mean that Blumenthal should in any way be considered as responsible for the shooting; however, Jacobson is also right to argue that it is time to examine “the intersection between neo-Nazi and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.” Likewise, it is arguably time for colleges and universities to examine the question if the support from faculty and staff for supposedly “pro-Palestinian” activism shouldn’t be matched by support for programs that would educate students about anti-Semitism. If Mondoweiss is right to see Vassar activism as a bellwether, there can be no doubt about the urgent need for improving students’ knowledge and understanding of anti-Semitism.
The anti-Zionist – and sometimes also anti-Semitic – website Mondoweiss recently published a lengthy report by the site’s founder Philip Weiss about a meeting that took place at Vassar in early March. According to Weiss, the meeting had been scheduled by the school’s Committee on Inclusion and Excellence in order to discuss guidelines for activism after persistent protests by Vassar’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) against a trip to Israel planned by Vassar’s International Studies program. Weiss began his report by quoting Jill Schneiderman, the professor who had apparently initiated the trip and who had mentioned the meeting in a post on her blog, where she wrote that she “was knocked off-center by a belligerent academic community dedicated to vilifying anyone who dares set foot in Israel.” Weiss confirmed that the meeting “was truly unsettling,” that “torrents of anger ripped through the gathering” and that “rage against Israel was the theme.” He contrasted this atmosphere favorably with the broad popular support for Israel in the US, asserting that it was very different at Vassar, where “the spirit of that young progressive space was that Israel is a blot on civilization, and boycott is right and necessary. If a student had gotten up and said, I love Israel, he or she would have been mocked and scorned into silence.” But according to Weiss, Israel’s supporters should expect not just more of the same, but worse to come, because in his view, the “battles we’ve seen so far on campus are just preliminaries.” He predicted that “things are going to get much more belligerent” and asserted that “belligerence may be necessary to the resolution.” At the end of his detailed report, Weiss offered something like a declaration of war: “If the SJP students can be obnoxious, their manner is just what feminist Margaret Fuller saw in abolitionists during slavery: tedious, rabid, narrow, prone to exaggeration. And dedicated to a principle worth living and dying for. Expect many more rage-filled meetings in years to come as the left is broken over this question. How long before students occupy administration buildings of liberal arts colleges that work with Israel? How long before students chain themselves to bulldozers at the Cornell-Technion project in New York city?” According to Weiss, this militant conduct is also endorsed by BDS leader Omar Barghouti: (more…)
Earlier today, as we begin the weekend marking the seventieth anniversary of Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency issued a stunning report detailing the extent of anti-Semitism in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This is the best data that we have seen on contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe. And the worst news. The European Union’s headline news are sobering. Two thirds of European Jews believe anti-Semitism to be a major problem in their respective countries, and 76% say the situation has deteriorated in the last five years. One in five European Jews has been subjected to an anti-Semitic physical attack, harassment, or verbal insult over the prior year. While we have long known that European Jews faced a bleak situation, the conditions turn out to be worse than we had thought. It turns out that European agencies have not previously had reliable figures on anti-Jewish incidents for a simple reason. A whopping three quarters of European Jewish victims of anti-Semitic harassment did not report the most serious incident to the police or any other organization. This is also true of two thirds of those who faced anti-Semitic violence or threats of violence. Many European Jews are now understandably uneasy. One sexagenarian Hungarian told the agency that, “Unfortunately, the fight against anti-Semitism is more and more hopeless.” An English woman in her later fifties told the agency, “I feel worried about anti-Semitism now in a way that I did not 30 years ago. Something that should have disappeared from social acceptability is instead becoming stronger.” (more…)
Robert Penn Warren: “We are the prisoners of history. Or are we?” Juxtapose two stories: • At the University of the West Indies, in Cave Hill, Barbados, African drumming, a history lecture, and a song with the chorus, “We cry for the ancestors!” were featured at a ceremony unveiling a monument inscribed with 295 names of slaves who once lived on the plantation where the university now stands. • Elizabeth City State University, a 2,300 student historically black college in North Carolina, is thinking about cutting seven undergraduate majors, including history, because these majors are “low productive.” The first story comes from a New York Times op ed discussing efforts by Caribbean nations to unite around a common agenda demanding reparations for the slave trade and slavery. The question the second story, from Inside Higher Education, raises is: in the future will there still be debates anywhere about reparations for slavery and the slave trade—or for the Shoah—or for other past crimes if history ceases to be taught or taught seriously? Over half of U.S. high school students can’t locate Vietnam on a map—and aren’t sure in which century the American Civil War was fought. What can we expect in the future if historical illiteracy becomes, not merely an adolescent ‘fact of life,” but educationally normative? The 1960s pop song—“Don’t Know Much About History”—may become an understatement. (more…)
Efraim Zuroff When the Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded in 1977, Dean Rabbi Marvin Hier promised Simon Wiesenthal that bringing Holocaust perpetrators to justice would be the number one priority. The famed Nazi hunter died in 2005, but there was no expiration date on that promise to him—nor should that be except for the death or incapacity of the last criminal. Juxtapose these recent international stories, from the U.S. and Europe, involving war crimes and crimes against humanity ranging up to genocide committed from Auschwitz to Africa: • Rwanda native Beatrice Munyenyezi, 43 years old, who lived in New Hampshire for fifteen years, is sentenced by U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe to 10 years in prison for securing U.S. citizenship by lying about her role as commander of one of the notorious roadblocks where Tutsis were murdered by Hutu militia in the early 1990s. • Ukrainian immigrant Michael Karkoc, 94 years old, a Nazi collaborator enjoyed his retirement until the Associated Press revealed him living in Minneapolis. • Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir remains the target of 2009-2010 arrest warrants, issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague indicting him for multiple counts of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide in Darfur. • Hungarian Laszlo Csatary, 98 years old, previously stripped of his Canadian citizenship and deported, finally is facing trial in his native country for helping to deport 15,700 Jews to Auschwitz from a ghetto in occupied Slovakia in 1944, while in Germany Hans Lipschis, 93 years old, a suspected guard at the Auschwitz, has been arrested. (more…)
Palace of Westminster (photo courtesy: Wikipedia) Less than six months after the Liberal Democrat MP for Bradford East, David Ward, was accused of anti-Semitism for the equating the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews with “the Jews” treatment of the Palestinians, yet another Liberal Democrat MP, Sir Bob Russell, has equated the victims of the Holocaust with the ‘plight of the Palestinians’ since the birth of the state of Israel. This happened last week during a debate in the House of Commons on the national school curriculum. Given that English law requires the Holocaust to be taught to all school children as part of the History syllabus, Russell asked the Education Minister, Michael Gove, the following question: “On the assumption that [coverage of] the 20th Century will include the Holocaust, will he give me an assurance that the life of Palestinians since 1948 will be given equal attention?” Bob Russell’s statement, just as David Ward’s, has caused offence to the UK Jewish community and embarrassment to the Liberal-Democrat Friends of Israel, but as yet there has been no apology from Russell and no indication of any censure by the Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. There has even been little, if any, media attention given to Russell’s comments. It’s as if the ‘Nazification of Israel’, the idea that ‘the Jews are to the Palestinians what the Nazis were to the Jews’, has become so commonplace that it is no longer news worthy. Yet the idea that the plight of the Palestinians should be given the same prominence in the school curriculum as the Holocaust is not only extremely offensive, but is also absurd. Russell’s equivalence, just like David Ward’s before him, relies on the re-writing of Jewish history and the misreading of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It represents a misjudgement which, like that of the anti-Dreyfusards whose faith in Dreyfus’s guilt contradicted all evidence to the contrary, can only flow from the willingness to believe the absolute worst about Jews. This is anti-Semitism. (more…)
Yad Vashem Our friends at Yad Vashem are announcing this English language broadcast of the 2013 Erev Yom HaShoah (Holocaust memorial) service: The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) network http://nrb.org/ in partnership with the Christian Friends of Yad Vashem http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/friends/christian/index.asp will for the first time ever be broadcasting the Erev Yom HaShoah (Eve of the Holocaust Memorial Day) state ceremony from Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. The event took place on April 7, 2013 and will be broadcast with an English translation during the month of July. The broadcast is a historic event since this is the first time our friends in the USA will be able to watch the program in this manner. Note that there is also an online watching opportunity for our international friends. (more…)
Seventy years ago last week, President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill sat down for lunch at the White House. As they ate, they reviewed the war effort and exchanged thoughts on their plans for the postwar era. At one point the conversation touched upon the nettlesome question of the Jews. The mass murder of Europe’s Jews was underway–the Allies had already publicly confirmed that–and refugee advocates were pressing for the Allies to do something about it. Meanwhile, the British had shut off Jewish immigration to Palestine, and Zionist groups were becoming increasingly vocal in their protests. What should be done with the homeless Jewish survivors after the war? What would be the future status of Palestine? FDR, it turned out, had a specific plan for what he called “the best way to settle the Jewish question.” Vice President Henry Wallace, who recorded the conversation in his diary, said Roosevelt spoke approvingly of a plan (recommended by geographer and Johns Hopkins University president Isaiah Bowman) “to spread the Jews thin all over the world.” The Wallace diary entry adds: “The president said he had tried this out in [Meriwether] County, Georgia [where Roosevelt lived in the 1920s] and at Hyde Park on the basis of adding four or five Jewish families at each place. He claimed that the local population would have no objection if there were no more than that.” President Roosevelt’s “best way” remark was condescending and distasteful at best. And if anyone else had used such language, it probably would be widely regarded as crossing the line into antisemitism. But more than that, FDR’s support for “spreading the Jews thin” may hold the key to understanding, a subject that has been at the center of controversy for decades: the American government’s tepid response to the Holocaust. Here’s the paradox. The U.S. immigration system severely limited the number of German Jews admitted during the Nazi years to about 26,000 annually–but even that quota was less than 25% filled during most of the Hitler era, because the Roosevelt administration piled on so many extra requirements for would-be immigrants. For example, as of 1941, merely having a close relative in Europe was enough disqualify an applicant–because of the Roosevelt administration’s absurd belief that the immigrant would become a spy for Hitler so that his relative in Europe would not be harmed by the Nazis. (more…)
He may have been one of his generation’s most enthusiastic exponents of American patriotism, and in many ways he was the very symbol of Jewish pride in the United States, but eighty years ago this month, Justice Louis D. Brandeis bluntly told Secretary of State Cordell Hull that he was “ashamed” of his country. Brandeis’s remarkable conversation with Hull takes on new relevance in the wake of recent attempts by some partisans to rewrite the history of President Roosevelt’s response to the Holocaust. * * * The rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, in early 1933, was accompanied by sporadic outbursts of anti-Jewish violence that were encouraged by the new regime. American Jewish leaders such as Rabbi Stephen S. Wise harbored no illusions as to the gravity of the situation: “The letters I have seen and the people who have escaped and whom I am beginning to meet tell me stories which make it certain that the half, nay not even a tithe has been told,” Wise wrote to a colleague. “It is hell, truly worse than hell. Only Dante could have pictured the hell which Germany is become.” Some of this information reached the general press. In early March, for example, the Chicago Tribune ran an eyewitness account of “bands of Nazis throughout Germany carr[ying] out wholesale raids to intimidate the opposition, particularly the Jews.” Victims were “hit over the heads with blackjacks, dragged out of their homes in night clothes and otherwise molested,” with many Jews “taken off to jail and put to work in a concentration camp.” Franklin Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency in 1932 as the self-described champion of “the forgotten man,” a humanitarian who cared about the downtrodden and the dispossessed. When it came to the Jews of Germany, however, FDR showed little interest. (more…)
Rafael Medoff The Brandeis Center Blog is pleased to welcome Dr. Rafael Medoff as our next guest blogger. Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which focuses on America’s response to the Holocaust. A prolific author, Medoff has written numerous books and articles. His most recent book is FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith, which is published by the Wyman Institute. The Wyman Institute has its own distinctive niche in Holocaust education, teaching the history of America’s response to the Shoah. The Institute explores America’s abandonment of Europe’s Jews during the Nazi era, efforts to promote their rescue, and the lessons of those experiences. The Institute tries to make the historical record accessible to a wider audience through exhibits, speakers, educational curricula, and other media, not to mention Medoff’s own prolific writing. FDR and the Holocaust is the latest major contribution to this effort. Among its many disconcerting revelations, FDR and the Holocaust shows that Roosevelt remarked in 1943 that “the complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany” were “understandable” because there were many Jews in law, medicine, and other fields in Germany. FDR also claimed in 1938 that the Jews were too prominent in Poland’s economy, which he blamed for anti-Semitism there. Because of his view that Jews should not be permitted to concentrate in professions, institutions, or regions, FDR promoted a quota on admitting Jewish students to Harvard in the 1920s. He also urged local leaders in Allied-liberated North Africa in 1943 to limit the entry of Jews into many professions. In 1943 endorsed a plan to “spread the Jews thin all over the world” so they would quickly assimilate. FDR and the Holocaust argues that Roosevelt’s private views explain his unwillingness to allow Jewish refugees to enter the United States up to then-prevailing legal limits during the Holocaust years. Appallingly, nearly 200,000 immigration quota places were left unused. We look forward to Dr. Medoff’s contributions to this blog.