Another Anti-Zionist Professor Punished for His Views (Updated)

“If Salaita had limited himself to expressing his hostility to Israel in academic publications subjected to peer review, I believe the appointment would have gone through without difficulty,” he said.

Is Nelson saying that any speech other than through academic channels puts academic careers at risk? Sure sounds like it….

If Professor Steven Salaita had said the same thing about the Palestinians, I’m sure there would have been no problem.

First rule of Israeli war crimes: Don’t talk about Israel’s war crimes!
~

I am also outraged, especially since the offending tweets can at most be accused of a failure to tone it down. They do not even compare to the kind of stuff one sees on social media every day, including of course from academics. (I will resist the admitted temptation to send the chancellor numerous examples of what I consider blatant sexist and racist hate speech on social media by members of the faculty at UI campuses.) It is entirely obvious that what motivated this decision by U of I was the political content of Salaita’s speech, and not the way it was expressed.

A very quick glance through Salaita’s twitter and publications suggests to me that he’s saying things that are anti-Zionist, but I don’t see anything that’s out-of-line for what anti-Zionist *Jews* say — or think. e.g. from the summary of Israel’s Dead Soul: He argues that endowing nation-states with souls is a dangerous phenomenon because it privileges institutions and corporations rather than human beings. Bingo, exactly what I’ve been thinking.

Do you know, Cary, if Chancellor Phyllis Wise or Cary Nelson are Jewish? Are they Christian Zionists? — the default position for many soi-disant Evangelicals.

I ask about their religions, because I wonder who’s pressuring them — whether it’s their personal religious communities, or Zionists in the academic community, or deep-pocket donors.

I assume (possibly incorrectly) that Salaita is *not* Jewish. I can easily see how a scholar of Native American Studies could draw some connections between the US and Zionism that would make lots of people *really* uncomfortable, but I figure that *should* be his job.

I have the impression that we give fellow Jews a lot more leeway on anti-Zionism than we do goyim. For instance, Emily Hauser can tweet:Israel is well on its way to being just another in the long list of Jewish disasters & it has only itself & our (Jewish) community to blame.without getting a huge amount of blowback, only some.

Why should we feel sorry for Steven Salaita but not for Brenden Eich?

This is indeed, a difficult question. After all, all opinions are the same, right?

“George Tiller is a baby-murderer, and he attends this church at this address every Sunday!”

“That’s a lovely cat picture, Cloudia!”

Same thing, eh?

To be more specific about the opinions in question:

1) Condemning Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians citizens.
2) Condemning the sexual orientation of people who are different from himself (including those who report to him at mozilla).

Same thing…if you’re a comfortable glibbertarian asshole. (Pardon the redundancy.)
~

Looks like another unfortunate victim of the word police. This stuff stinks all over.

I have mixed feelings about the Mozilla case. If he can be fired for his (stupid and immoral) views on gay rights, could he be fired for his views on other issues? What if he offends Jewish or Arab-American workers with his views on the I/P conflict? Was he imposing his views on people at the company or was it just his own private activism? (I didn’t pay close attention to the issue). But that’s a corporation and whatever one thinks of free speech rights at corporations, free speech at universities is supposed to be a core value.

A right wing professor recently got in some hot water at my university for writings in a non-academic medium. The arguments on either side made in that instance were basically identical to those made here, so it’s not immediately clear that this is necessarily a pro/anti Israel thing (though it certainly could be). I wouldn’t be surprised if these sorts of issues start to crop up more frequently – “your time, your computer, your speech” would seem to be a reasonable starting point (though those lines, particularly “your time” are blurry).

“I was heartbroken in the first 20 mass murders. Now I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.” Erik Loomis

Neither was Salaita (afaict)..he just wasn’t hired(seems identical to the Eich case in that respect) Although I accept there might be legal or professional differences here(so I, personally, am only really making a normative argument)

There is, of course, a significant difference under American constitutional law between a private corporation forcing out an officer for his offensive speech, and a government agency like the University of Illinois doing the same thing.

The point of political correctness

My eyes glaze over.

excusing anti semitism for seconds

Shove it.

My tolerance for “if you’re so tolerant, how come you won’t tolerate my intolerance, Harf! Harf! Harf!” was exhausted long ago.

There is power, and there are the people who it is used against. You don’t get fired for supporting Israel’s war crimes in this country. In fact, you’re more likely to get a job offer from Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post.

As for the guys who used to freely condemn (and discriminate against) gays, blacks, women, etc. and now feel that their rights are being trampled on? They can take it up with their local Men’s Rights Association.

“In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread.”

– Anatole France
~

““In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread.”

– Anatole France”

Exactly. I actually find some of this guys tweets really offensive, however I don’t think they should be used as a reason not to fire him.

To be more specific about the opinions in question:

1) Condemning Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians citizens.
2) Condemning the sexual orientation of people who are different from himself (including those who report to him at mozilla).

In other words, we should feel sorry for Salaita not because he was fired for following his conscience and speaking out about an issue of great importance to society, — a violation of his freedom of speech — but simply because he’s on our side.

Eich on the other hand (whom you mischaracterise: the issue IIRC was not that he publicly condemned “the sexual orientation of people who are different from himself”, but that he privately donated money to campaigners against gay marriage) is not, and so shouldn’t expect the same sympathy.

If that’s your position, I don’t see that you can properly have any argument with Salaita being fired — people found his (publicly expressed) views offensive, and they sacked him for it. That’s just as arbitrary as what happened to Eich (perhaps even less, by some measures, since Eich was not fired for his public statements but his private opinions).

Eich’s “private opinions” (wait, I thought political donations were “speech”?) called into question his ability to treat LGBT employees of the Mozilla foundation fairly. Said employees, upon learning of his hostility toward same-sex marriage, had a very real reason to fear material harm to their employment situation had Eich taken over as CEO. All the slippery slope arguments in the world don’t change that, so there was nothing wrong with people expressing their opinion that Mozilla go a different direction, and, ultimately, Eich stepped down, and while Mozilla could have fought for his right to have his opinions, they chose not to. The system worked as it should.

The obvious difference is that the University of Illinois is a state actor, so the First Amendment applies to it. The First Amendment does not apply to Mozilla.

Ah, the distemper and tendentiousness on display in this thread should be absolutely splendid to behold…

I recall Mr. Salaita from his book reviews read way back in the day.

“The First Amendment does not apply to Mozilla.”

On the other hand, in Eich’s case a much more fundamental freedom was violated, his freedom of conscience. He didn’t advertize his opinion of the definition marriage in California law.

matt w – i agree it was abysmal behaviour on the part of the university

Eich was not fired for his public statements but his private opinions

I’m not sure whether it makes a difference to the matter at hand, but he lost his job over giving money to an anti-gay cause, not just for holding anti-gay opinions. Just because the Supreme Court pretends that money is speech doesn’t mean we should too.

“On the other hand, in Eich’s case a much more fundamental freedom was violated, his freedom of conscience. He didn’t advertize his opinion of the definition marriage in California law.”

Of course he did. ‘Money is speech’, so we’re told, and he used his money to fund advertising intended to dehumanize gays. Advertising it is precisely what he did.

The obvious difference is that the University of Illinois is a state actor, so the First Amendment applies to it. The First Amendment does not apply to Mozilla.

On the one hand: Do you think employers, generally, should be able to dictate one’s political views and expression?

On the other: How does the First Amendment limit the state as an employer from regulating employee political activity or expression? Do you know?

I’m not sure what I think about the general principles, if any, involved, so I won’t make any declarations of my own. I can empathize with the scary business of finding one’s self suddenly without a job, and possibly branded in a way that might make it difficult to find another, in a timely fashion. And, it is frightening to imagine that some activity — a hyperbolic tweet or a donation to a cause — is elevated by the internet from a semi-private expression to broadcast public act, with consequences. Most of us are not public figures, or used to acting with the circumspection of public figures.

Denis Diderot: “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

Because the French Revolution was such a calm considered affair?

Corey@37: done.

“Zionists: transforming ‘anti-Semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948”

That is way out of line. Anti-semitism led to millions of people being gassed and then burned in giant furnaces. There is nothing honorable about it.

That doesn’t mean that the university should have rescinded their offer of employment.

When he gives us this definition–“Zionists: transforming ‘anti-Semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948″ he crosses a line into hate speech.

That absolutely is hate speech, to the point where I’d be concerned as to whether he’d mistreat any openly Jewish students. And I’m going to guess that if there was a white professor blocked from teaching a race relations class because he’d openly espoused the idea that black people are inferior and lynching an acceptable response to their “crimes”, you wouldn’t be going to bat for that guy in the way that you’re going to bat for your friend here on free speech grounds.

The chancellor of the university of Illinois must be under a whole lot of pressure.

Consider — if she decides that one guy’s off-the-job talk crosses the line a little bit too far, but somebody else’s is not quite far enough to take action, she’s going to have a whole bunch of cases to judge among the untenured staff. One after another, with potentially a great big public controversy each time.

She has to be under a whole lot of pressure to take action against free speech that sets her up for that to happen.

“If that’s what he’s saying, is it such a terrible thing for him to say it?”

No, however being a professor of the humanities he should have been able to say it in a clearer, less offensive way.

Right?

“I haven’t even seen the whole tweet, much less the context.”

Do you know what tweets are?

Donald Johnson 08.06.14 at 4:29 pm

” I have mixed feelings about the Mozilla case. If he can be fired for his (stupid and immoral) views on gay rights, could he be fired for his views on other issues?”

Since you are either ignorant of the facts or lying, why don’t you STFU?

For example there is no doubt in my mind Wise or Nelson would not object to hiring Benny Morris. Who actually applauds genocide and ethnic cleansing as indicated by Donald above.

#59 Brett

“It isn’t completely illogical because in a way if you do anything that helps the victims of Zionists that must hurt Zionists, and if Zionists are Jews then you are hurting Jews”

There’s a major difference between “attacking someone holding an ideology who also may or may not be X” and “espousing an ideology hating all X people because some of them believe in an ideology.”

Yes. And Zionists regularly try to get people confused between the two. When someone disapproves of the policies of the Israeli government, often Zionists call them antisemitic.

“re is no doubt in my mind Wise or Nelson would not object to hiring Benny Morris. Who actually applauds genocide and ethnic cleansing ”

Darn, that’s a great point. Should have thought of that myself. I’ll put it in my email to the chancellor.

Another difference is that this case is not hiring someone to be the head of an organization. For instance, I’d expect a candidate for pres or chancellor of a university to have their public statements combed thoroughly for any hint of possible controversy because they’re basically fundraisers. Part of their job description is to be inoffensive to practically everyone.

Ali Abuminah actually interviewed Nelson and this happened: “When asked if he would oppose the hiring of a person who said that “someone who defends Hamas firing rockets towards Tel Aviv is an awful person,” Nelson answered: “No.””

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/university-illinois-fires-professor-steven-salaita-after-gaza-massacre-tweets

Maybe Nelson should be fired for demonstrating lack of judgement?

“I am still not sure that J Thomas knows what tweeting is.”

I don’t do it myself. It’s messages limited to 140 characters, that fit into a network of other messages. People who follow your messages see them in order, so they fit together that way. They can be hashtagged to fit into an extending conversation, and I understand there’s at least one other way to set up a topic that people can respond to. People have conversations with twitter.

So the message length does not require people to send short messages into the void with no context.

The particular tweet we were discussing was 100 characters long, leaving room for another 40 characters in that same message, plus it was wrenched out of its context.

Academic “freedom” issues always make my head hurt. as a general principle you shouldn’t get fired (or rescinded or forced to resign) for outside opinions that don’t strongly impact your job. But I’m not willing to make the perfect the enemy of the good so it turns out that academics have such a protection lets work with it.

So on this case he shouldn’t have his job rescinded. But it is really weird knowing that Corey also vocally supports the BDS movement which may not be an attack on academic freedom if you draw the definition really tight (though I would say even then, it is). But it is absolutely an attack on ideology and discourse in a way to try to limit debate of the same style as more classic attacks on academic freedom.

A story of two professors

So professor A goes and lies down in the street to protest his cause. The cops treat him to a ride downtown but he’s home in time to sip a latte and blog about it. The next day he’s a teachers lounge hero for his valiant stand. He’s tenured after all, so what can the University do. No one doubts the sincerity of professor A’s view and he’s rightly praised for taking a stand – a little ventured, a little gained.

Professor B tweets his view in no uncertain terms, occasionally using harsh language. Professor B isn’t taken for a ride downtown, but whist sipping his latte and contemplating just the right riposte for another blistering tweet he’s advised he’s been sacked. Professor B has no tenure, indeed he’s not even signed into a job. No one doubts the sincerity of professor B’s view and he’s rightly praised for taking a stand – apparently much more ventured, probably little gained.

Seems like tenure is what makes all the difference, not what was said, the rightness of the cause or how it was said.

Seems like tenure is what makes all the difference, not what was said, the rightness of the cause or how it was said.

TJ at #75
hmmm, it isn’t clear that tenure makes *all* the difference. Key words in your sentence are ‘seems like’. If what you say is true, then that makes it normative to punish academics for saying whatever is out of fashion. In that case all academics ought to have rhetorical tenure..AKA freedom of speech.

It is my occasional professional obligation to handle First Amendment cases involving academics, so I have to be careful what I say here. In general, however, faculty (or prospective faculty) at public universities are protected by both the First Amendment and general principles of academic freedom from suffering adverse action (other than having people think they’re assholes) for what they say on matters of “public concern.” (“the Dean is a f*****g moron” doesn’t count as “public concern”) (Administrators have different responsibilities and the scope of their protected speech varies accordingly.) At private universities, the First Amendment does not apply and many private institutions, such as religiously-oriented ones, do restrict what their faculty can say. For most other private universities, however, general principles of academic freedom, usually embodied in a contract or collective bargaining agreement, give a kind of First Amendment-Lite protection to faculty, which is usuallly good enough. I say that because I doubt that even the most politically engaged academic considering offers from, say, the (public) University of Buffalo and the (private) Syracuse University would bother about the difference. Whether the prospective professor prefers chicken wings or salt potatoes would probably weigh more heavily than the First Amendment.

I agree w Christian h (above) that Salaita exercised rather poor judgment in his tweets, but the job offer should not have been rescinded. Some professors really care that their students come to see things the way they do. I don’t like that style of teaching (it smacks too much of dogmatism for me) but it does exist. It should be distinguished from indoctrination and/or silencing or downgrading of students with contrary views, neither of which has any place in the classroom. Without evidence that Salaita has done the latter in the past, I don’t think Nelson’s speculations about Salaita’s future conduct, based solely on Salaita’s tweets, are persuasive.

If that’s your position, I don’t see that you can properly have any argument with Salaita being fired — people found his (publicly expressed) views offensive, and they sacked him for it.

—

People get fired all the time when they embarrass their employer. Jimmy the Greek got fired from CBS for talking about how Black athletes became dominant because of breeding under slavery. Nobody in their right mind would argue that Sailita was going to embarrass U. of Illinois because of his tweets. This happened for the same reason Communists lost their jobs in the 1950s. There is a widespread effort by the Israel lobby to silence professors and students who are opposed to Zionism. If you have tenure, there is probably not much to worry about–at least for the time being. But Sailita got snookered in between jobs. This is going to be an important case for freedom of speech. I hope that you people can do a better job on this than you did with Ward Churchill.

The university should be understanding of the idea that, however prickly he was, he was prickly over people getting slaughtered. It is what it is. (Eich was worried about…what? Boys kissing?)

It’s fine for academics (in a safe position) to recognize when a great crime is being committed. It should also be time for an institution employing historians, political scientists and so on to acknowledge that people are being crushed to steal stuff. Divestment around South Africa did happen way back when, and it was a reasonable stance.

Yes, the Eich comparison is stupid.

but I don’t see why a boss should be protected while workers are not

Additionally, Eich was in the position of being the face of this thing he was trying to distribute. I heard of Salaita yesterday and he wasn’t going to run the U of I or anything.

Both Corey and Steven support boycotting scholars based on affiliation (BDS). Welcome to the slippery slope as predicted.

sigh. It is you, T at 84, who is deliberately creating a slippery slope with your slippery language. BDS doesn’t ‘boycott scholars’. One uses the ‘slippery slope’ argument because it imputes an arbitrary result, which is alarming. But BDS is not arbitrary.

I will say this for people like Benny Morris and others like that: they do come right out and say it. It’s repulsive, but at least you can deal with it for what it is; all the euphemizing it in the ‘civilized world’ (esp. the US) enables this tragedy in a crucial way.

Louis Proyect @83
It’s not clear whom your comment is addressed to.

“I hope that you people can do a better job on this than you did with Ward Churchill.”

Who the hell are you addressing here w “you people”? There are all kinds of different people on this thread. Your mode of address is insulting.

Ward Churchill was repeatedly ridiculed and accused of bigotry “here”, not to mention nationally. I was “here” and saw it. Anyone who defended his right to say what he felt was ridiculed and accused of bigotry. Heaven forfend someone should try to defend the actual content of his statements.
Any thread that touched on Israel/Palestine quickly devolved into that dynamic. It wasn’t anywhere near equally weighted, the abuse and viciousness was virtually entirely on one side directed at the other. It would get pretty inflamed, unless the beleaguered minority just up and left the field.
That led to quite a long time of zero-nada threads on the issue.
That was also the root problem that resulted in the infamous abb1 getting banned, though it was superficially about his instigation and intentional triggering of nasty responses generally. “Trolling” I believe is what the kids are calling that these days.
The seemingly inevitable procession was pretty visible. And it was tacitly sanctioned, though I think that had more to do with ethical confusion and polite timidity, and recognition of the futility of seeking resolve at that time, than any one-sidedness on the part of the site’s “owners”.
Proyect also was seriously mistreated “here” himself, repeatedly subject to the same barrage of scorn and vicious ridicule. I saw that as well. Which may explain the comment some.
You probably find that insulting because you have no operant sense of local history.
If you do, it’s facetious and specious to pretend there isn’t a massively disproportionate power dynamic on display, still, especially in the larger public arena.
That disproportion is point of fact the very thing Corey Robin’s put out the call to arms on.
The tide has shifted, at last.
Somewhat.

just for T and others who won’t bother to click on The Temporary Name’s link, here is a sentence from the document: “We are expressly not endorsing a boycott of Israeli scholars engaged in individual-level contacts and ordinary forms of academic exchange, including presentations at conferences, public lectures at campuses, and collaboration on research and publication. “

I asked Corey in an earlier tread if Jacob Frenkel…would be allowed to speak at an ASA conference while still in his role as Governor. He said no. … It’s not meaningless.

If it were meaningless, why would anyone do it?! If he is an Israeli government official, then…?

Proyect expressed his boiling rage (JOKE!) about getting banned here. Hope he doesn’t mind the link.

Corey –
I recall a post w/Chris(?) where you each wrote a paragraph about the boycott, you pro and him con. My comments were limited to this point. I’ll look for it.

Forget about it LFC….. it’s roy town.

I’m very careful to avoid charges of anti-Semitism.

Whenever I see horrible crimes against humanity, I pause before voicing outrage just in case the perpetrator is a Zionist, doing only what comes natural to him.

Zionists can’t help it because of the way they were raised.

Some poorly educated White people still want to treat Blacks the same way.

“He sounds Jewish,”

And what exactly do Jews sound like?

J Thomas:

The fact that Nelson says “For many Israelis, Judaism is a fundamentally land-based religion” actually makes me doubt that he is Jewish. Judaism hasn’t been “a fundamentally land-based religion” for millennia.

whoops, I’m wrong. He *is* Jewish — he’s also completely full of it about this “land-based religion”, imho. His biography leads me to suspect that he’s the kind of left-wing Jew with little respect for or knowledge of Judaism as a religion.

Oddly enough, it appears some unknown but seemingly motivated individual edited Cary Nelson’s Wikipedia page in order to affix Zionistto the beginning of his description as professor of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—that jaundiced (and unsourced) term was elided yesterday, but not quickly enough to have escaped Google’s cache for a spell.

It’s a weird world we live in…

Just sent my email to Chancellor “Wise.” I do urge everyone to write, just somethinganythingintelligent, need be nothing fancy (if you’re inspired, fine, but not necessary). Emails to administrators work. Think of it from their point of view. They’re busy busy busy (they really are) and are just trying to “manage” things. Path of least resistance, that sort of thing. Chancellor Wise probably got pressure from various places (I hate to think of all the possible whences) and just tried to minimize conflict in her own world. Let her know that her decision will not minimize conflict, and she’ll pay attention. Your email can help make it EASIER for her to change her decision.

“At this point, if Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised?”

Well, I would be, of course, and so would be anyone who is not completely insane. How can an allegedly intelligent person write such drivel? The other tweets are not much better. And they are all obviously hate speech.

But more generally – nobody who lacks such basic control over his or her emotions should be allowed on a position of responsibility like a professorship. It doesn’t matter if he talks that way about Israel, Gays, Libertarians, even the Islamic State, etc. My opinion, anyway.

““Stephen Salaita is an Arab, Cary Nelson is a Jew.””

Sounds like the beginning of a pitch for a remake of The Odd Couple.

“The atrocities are committed on behalf of and in the name of the Jewish people: this is the stated position of the Israeli government and many of its high-profile media supporters.”

It’s curious how a common negative response to Salaita is “Professor Blames Jews For Anti-Semitism”, thus in effect re-stating that ‘Zionist’ is synonymous with ‘Jew’, and thus confirming Salaita’s point. Weird.

The tweet about the necklace of children’s teeth is quite different from the other two. It’s dog-whistle anti-semitism.

I don’t know whether the public use of coded racist language should cause one to be unhired from an academic post.

@ 113
learn to read
it is *Israelis* who treat their religion as fundamentally land based
yes, the majority of jews – those in the diaspora – are not land based; however, it is clear that the ultra orthodox of the state of Israel are really different then people like me; you would know htis if you knew anything about jews

(and I have to get moderated for politeness to appear in a thread on censorship; the irony, it burns)

Embarrassment all the way around. The University of Illinois has made a big error. Both Salaita and Nelson should issue public apologies.

Salaita should apologize for being an emotional twitterer. He should also promise to avoid any further attempts at expression at only 140 characters at a time. He is not up to the task.

As should everyone else avoid it. What the hell is wrong with all of you? Just because Twitter exists, you have to twit? Cognition isn’t atomized enough for you already? Why do we have to deal with adults as if they are children?

SALAITA SHOULD GET THE JOB, but he should immediately be fired if he continues to demonstrate that he cannot think clearly.

Nelson should apologize for wearing those horrible ties, but especially apologize for being a craven hypocrite about the effects of a boycott on Israel, and for splitting hairs to defend himself on the subject. I mean the real world usually expects university professors to be unreal idiots, but that story is just pathetic.

You should be having a boycott of Israel in support of making them get it right. You think “mowing the grass” every 5 years is a just, humane, or strategically intelligent policy? Nelson, what in hell is wrong with you? I mean Jesus Christ.

Embarrassments, all the way around.

You should be having a boycott of Israel in support of making them get it right. You think “mowing the grass” every 5 years is a just, humane, or strategically intelligent policy? Nelson, what in hell is wrong with you?

I have read only two essays he wrote about the issue, but here’s what I hear him say:

1. Israel should withdraw from most of the West Bank and let Palestinians have their own nation. (I agree with that, except that it isn’t an end-point. If Israel did that tomorrow, then day after tomorrow Israel would accuse Palestine of committing acts of war and would invade and re-take the whole thing. So I don’t see it as a solution.)

2. He says that both sides are victims so we shouldn’t blame people. Especially we shouldn’t blame Israelis. They just want to live their lives. There is no just, fair solution. since we can’t make it fair we have to find a solution people can live with. (He means by this that we have to find a solution Israelis can live with.)

3. There can’t be a solution that Israelis and Palestinians can both live with, so there will be war that will continue for at least the rest of Nelson’s life. Israelis will just have to live with that and try to arrange that they can live their lives without too much disruption from it.

4. There are a lot of people who don’t like Israel who want it to go away. This is wrong, Israel deserves to exist because of the Holocaust. They are wrong to blame Israel or Israelis. Israelis are victims who do not deserve blame.

5. Israel deserves to have the 1967 borders but does not deserve to have the West Bank. We should put pressure on both sides to make sure that Palestinians agree they deserve nothing more than “most of” the West Bank, and that Israel gives it to them. But this pressure is there to get that result, not to blame anybody. We don’t want to use pressure that hurts innocent Israelis.

6. Anything that affects Israeli academics, hurts innocent Israelis and disrupts academic freedom. That’s wrong and bad. What we should do to pressure Israel into releasing the West Bank is BDS only against products made in the West Bank. If we refuse to buy anything from the West Bank, that will not hurt innocents, only the bad guys who try to export products from the West Bank. That’s the pressure that Israel needs.

I did not see him say that “mowing the grass” was good. Only that there is no fair solution so there will be war for an indefinite but long time.

I agree that boycotts and sanctions do hurt innocent people. Like, when we wanted to stop Saddam from making poison gas we didn’t let him buy chlorine. So Iraqi cities couldn’t purify their water and a lot of children died of water-born diseases. Usually the argument in favor of sanctions is the same as that in favor of war — if the enemy will just surrender and do the right thing, then all the bad stuff we do to his people will stop. So it’s entirely his fault and not our fault that we are forced to hurt innocents.

Even when we tried to do pinpoint airstrikes on places we thought Saddam was, we wound up killing lots of innocent people and not Saddam. Similarly, when Israel tried to use pinpoint airstrikes to kill Arafat in Lebanon. They’d get a tip that he was at some particular hospital so they’d bomb it, and then they’d get a tip that he was at a school so they’d bomb that, and so on. They kept missing him by minutes. If Arafat had only let them kill him instead of hanging out in places he shouldn’t, they wouldn’t have had to bomb the hospitals and schools so it was all his fault.

I figure that Nelson is a zionist whose heart is in the right place. He wants Israel to set the Palestinians free to have their own nation in most of the West Bank.

And since he’s a Zionist he wants to make sure that innocent Israelis never have to suffer. Regardless what Israel does, they should not suffer bad consequences because they are innocent Israelis who after all have very little influence on the Israeli government. He thinks we should pressure Netanyahu but only in ways that do not affect innocent people.

Corey, I really think you have this one wrong. Guy resigns before he has his new gig finalized. Guy proceeds to act the a$$hat on the internets. People at new gig decide they don’t want to hire an a$$hat. Pretty simple. Not a test case for some expansion of academic freedom protections. He resigned before he had new gig sewed up. He acted the a$$hat. Some people didn’t feel compelled to hire him. What am I missing?

#133 Lee Arnold

J Thomas #131: “…there is no fair solution…”

And that is Nelson’s p0orly examined criterion?

Here you go.

What happened to Palestinian families in 1948 was unquestionably a tragedy. So too was the Holocaust. There is tragic history on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Americans, however, seem to prefer an absolute oppressor/victim dichotomy. They appear to think either that history is irrelevant and only present-day power differentials matter, or that only one group’s history counts. If you consider the multiple stories that bear on the conflict, it is clear that no perfect solution that compensates for all the relevant violence and injustice is possible.

I think he’s right. With a one-state solution Palestinians will have to live among Israelis who have oppressed them for generations, and those Israelis will be relatively rich and will control most everything, while Palestinians are poor.

With a two-state solution Palestinians will be restricted to a small poor land (stuff that Israel mostly didn’t want the first time around) and live in poverty while Israel next door continues to suck away their water and lives in luxury.

I say they could make it “fair” in three generations with a single nation if Israelis and Palestinians thoroughly intermarried. If one of my great-grandfathers killed another of my great-grandfathers and stole all his possessions, it isn’t unfair to *me*. But currently it is hard for Israelis and Israeli-arabs to marry.

He implies that it would not be fair if Israel went away. (Like to America.) Israel belongs to Israelis because of the Holocaust. So that would not be fair to them.

By his reasoning there is no possible fair solution.

@134: Are you claiming that there is a possible fair solution by your reasoning? Because your additional possibilities involve inducing two populations that largely hate one another to throroughly intermarry and breed, and I don’t see any non-incredibly awful way to make that happen, and on the other hand, ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the river to the sea, which, if you actually think that is ‘fair’ you have found a new low for evil opinions expressed over here.

“ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the river to the sea”

Hmm. Being downgraded from privileged to equal rights and having to pay compensation for stolen land and property hardly qualifies as ethnic cleansing. Some might even call it ‘justice’.

I don’t see that their mistreatment by Germans gives them a right to land Palestinians were living on.

That is not an argument that makes sense, practically or historically. Try answering “does their mistreatment and dispossession by their Arab neighbors give them a right to some land that Arabs were living on” . (Remember that the majority of Israelis previously lived in the Middle East, not Europe.)

#142

If people only having a right to land that their ancestors have lived on sense time immemorial we are going to have a very, very hard time making peace anywhere in the world

Agreed. Similarly, if we agree that they have a right because their ancestors once lived there, that will prevent peace too.

You have to deal with the situation as it is now. Are you really willing to send around trains to forcibly collect millions of Jews and take them somewhere against their will for the second time in less than 80 years?

No. I sure am not. On the other hand I don’t want my government money spent to help them push around other people who live there.

Sometimes I think maybe when people in one place just won’t get along, that we ought to blockade the area and don’t let people or products in or out until they learn better.

Just for a mental exercise, to reach an Israel/Palestine agreement I’d propose we agree that Israel gets 27,000 square kilometers and Palestine gets 6,200 square kilometers, borders to be determined later.

But before the agreement is complete, every time an Israeli kills a Palestinian, we give 10 square kilometers of Israel to Palestine, and the Palestinians get to choose them anywhere they want. And everytime a Palestinian kills an Israeli, we give 10 square kilometers of Palestine to Israel and the Israelis get to choose it wherever they want.

I imagine that might reduce the death rate considerably.

And if Israel killed 2,700 more Palestinians than Palestinians killed Israelis? Then we evacuate Israel. But more likely the death rate would go way way down and the knee-capping rate would go way way up.

As long as we’re throwing around fantasy scenarios, how about giving the Israelis (and diaspora Jews who might want to go) Texas? We’d have a friendly power sitting on oil, no beef with the Arabs, and the Jews would civilize Texas.

If we’re just getting completely ridiculous here, I too have sometimes fantasized about taking Texas or some other place with a high concentration of Christian Zionists and giving it to the Zionists. One would need a time machine and some way to convince the Woodrow Wilson that a Balfour Declaration awarding a chunk of the US to the Jews as a homeland was no big deal, but after that, things should work out fine. I can’t imagine Texans 100 years ago or so being anything but welcoming, unless you’re a Mexican.

Great use of your time and erudition, Johnson.

Actually, that idea (a Texas Balfour declaration) was inspired by someone I know in real life, from Texas, who was sneering at the Palestinians for their pogroms in the 1920′s. Given what the Texans were doing then, the sneering seemed inappropriate.

Inappropriate sneering? The Palestinian actions were pretty much ineffective. Can we say as much for the Texan ones?

International guarantees for Palestinian security and aid for economic development. And do it without shoveling money to Hamas or Fatah. Don’t forget, the state of Israel was an international creation. This isn’t something that accidentally happened. The UN should be on the hook for solving this problem.

Why not give them Alaska?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yiddish_Policemen's_Union

/interesting book

I know that’s just your little revenge seeking, Roy, but I had a semi-serious purpose. Americans (particularly Texans) who look down on Palestinians for being violent in the 1920’s ought to think twice about that, given what was happening in the good ole USA in roughly that time period. In Oklahoma in 1921 the local whites also bombed out the black district in Tulsa
link to wikipedia article

It was a massive pogrom, not the term usually used in this country, but that’s what it was, aimed at blacks.

I find this sort of thing useful to think about, whenever some bigot makes a crack about Palestinian violence. So you’re welcome, Roy.

Americans (particularly Texans) who look down on Palestinians for being violent in the 1920′s….

Ah! I thought they were looking down on Palestinians for being so thoroughly *incompetent* at violence.

Like, if it was Texans fighting to keep invaders from getting control of Texas, there would not be any invaders in positions of authority in Texas afterward.

“But the topic is a defense organized by an international force”

Oh is that the topic?

Donald Johnson,

“One would need a time machine and some way to convince the Woodrow Wilson that a Balfour Declaration awarding a chunk of the US to the Jews as a homeland was no big deal ”

There were proposals to make some sort of a Jewish homeland in Australia and also New Guinea (as well as other places). I do not think the proponents asked the Indigenous people of the areas at all, and the proponents also sometimes thought it a good idea because Jewish settlements in the north would be a defence and a bulwark in the soon to begin WW2 (I think Jewish people would not have liked to settle as bulwarks). But the government decided that Jewish people were aliens and also that they likely would move to the major cities instead of staying in the specified lands, and did not implement most of the various schemes proposed – one in Shepparton, Victoria, did work fairly well for some time.

” Daunted by the seemingly insurmountable political and agricultural obstacles [of settling in Palestine] which confronted Zionist idealists , pragmatists like British novelist Israel Zangwill, head of the Jewish Territorial Organisation, believed that the foundation of a Jewish state in a more hospitable and less-contested part of the world was a more feasible objective.
…
In the 1930s, a number of organisations and individuals approached the Federal Government about the possibility of settling groups of Jewish refugees in unpopulated or under-populated regions of Australia – partly as a safeguard against the invasion of an unguarded north should hostilities break out
…
a bid by J H Catts, of Australian Business Services, to establish a Jewish national home in New Guinea (an area, according to Catts, larger than Palestine and having ‘better possibilities’ without the difficulties ‘besetting the Balfour experiment’) failed to find support.

http://guides.naa.gov.au/safe-haven/chapter2/kimberley-scheme.aspx

“Write Chancellor Wise!”

Agreed. I did already.

Sure, PGD @124. And all Jefferson Davis did was organize a vigorous defense of property rights that had recently been held by the majority of Americans.

Your brilliant analogy between the rights of gay people living in San Francisco in 2008 and the rights of enslaved blacks in the antebellum south has certainly helped me see the error of my ways. Don’t you have any shame in making this kind of comparison?