by Mitchell Plitnick
In his speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Professor Steven Salaita, who was “de-hired” quite suddenly after the university’s chancellor faced strong pressure from major donors objecting to Salaita’s tweets about Israel’s massive military campaign in Gaza, issued this warning: “As the Center for Constitutional Rights and [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
In his speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Professor Steven Salaita, who was “de-hired” quite suddenly after the university’s chancellor faced strong pressure from major donors objecting to Salaita’s tweets about Israel’s massive military campaign in Gaza, issued this warning: “As the Center for Constitutional Rights and other groups have been tracking, this is part of a nationwide, concerted effort by wealthy and well-organized groups to attack pro-Palestinian students and faculty and silence their speech. This risks creating a Palestinian exception to the First Amendment and to academic freedom.”
At Ohio University, the disturbing reality of the different treatment accorded to pro-Israel, as opposed to pro-Palestinian views supports Salaita’s statement. Of course, the treatment of Salaita is, itself, rock-solid evidence of this point. That is especially true since the university’s chancellor, Phyllis Wise, has backed off her initial claim that Salaita’s de-hire was caused not by his views but by the allegedly “uncivil” way he expressed them. She has since admitted that she faced pressure from influential figures around the university, i.e. major donors.
But a report today in Ha’aretz on an incident at Ohio University offers an even clearer view. The president of the student senate at OU, Megan Marzec, used the opportunity of taking the ALS Ice-bucket challenge to make a statement about Gaza. She wore a shirt that urged divestment from Israel, stated that the blood in her bucket (which was, of course, fake) represented the Palestinians that Israel had “murdered and displaced,” and dumped the bucket over her head.
The response from the organized Jewish community on the OU campus was swift and quite typical. Ha’aretz quotes the leader of a pro-Israel campus group, Becky Sebo: “Her video has kind of torn the campus apart. My initial response was complete shock. We’ve never had any BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] movement on our campus, have always had a very open, welcoming community.” Now, she said, “Jewish students in particular are feeling very singled out by the video. Many Jewish students are feeling concerned about their safety and how other students will respond to these accusations against Israel.”
This hyper-sensitivity represents a complete reversal of reality, among other things. There is not a single report of Jewish students being harassed, much less assaulted, as a result of Marzec’s video. But Marzec herself has drawn death threats and hate mail. So much so that Homeland Security has gotten involved on campus. Of course, the pro-Israel groups, no doubt quite sincerely, condemned and called for an end to such acts. But let us ask the question: who has legitimate reason to fear for their safety?
There are also other dimensions to this story. Consider the words of Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism. “The students who want to present a non-biased pro-Israel view have their work cut out for them because there are going to be a lot of efforts to delegitimize their point of view. I anticipate we’ll see more anti-Israel activities than ever before.”
Just read those words, and the thinking is revealed. “A non-biased pro-Israel view.” That is an obvious oxymoron. If the view is pro-Israel, or if it is pro-Palestinian, it is, by definition, biased. What Segal implies here is that any unbiased view would be pro-Israel and any other conclusion can only come about as the result of bias.
And then there’s this whole argument about “de-legitimizing,” whether it is about Israel or of points of view. The working definition of this “de-legitimization” seems to be centered around any argument against Israeli policies, against Zionism, or against any kind of support for the Palestinians. The point of debate, of argument, is to establish that your view has more merit than the opposing one. That should be encouraged (as, indeed, Jewish tradition does), not feared. And certainly, it must not be stamped down.
The shallow arguments get even better. The Director of the OU’s Hillel (a national Jewish student organization), Rabbi Danielle Leshaw, demonstrated just how far the so-called “pro-Israel community” has departed from Jewish traditions and more universal values of open discussion and debating difficult issues.
“Your video marginalizes and isolates students,” Leshaw wrote in an open letter to Marzec published in The Post. “It makes Jewish parents want to bring their kids back home to the safety of the Jewish suburbs …. you need to step down, and give somebody else the chance to lead our Ohio University student population. Somebody that won’t polarize, or divide, or marginalize, or ‘other,’ or cause hysteria, or make students feel unsafe.”
Leshaw, it must be noted, is far from a conservative voice, and she is, herself, no stranger to criticizing pro-Israel programs. She also strongly disagrees with Marzec’s view of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her call for Marzec to resign as student senate president is “Not because of your politics, but because of your lack of awareness, compassion, and mostly, because of your lack of vision.”
Let’s unpack Rabbi Leshaw’s thinking. Just how does Marzec’s video “marginalize and isolate students?” She presents a political statement, at a time when the Israeli military was acting in so brutal a manner that even their American colleagues, who are themselves quite familiar with killing civilians, were shocked. One wonders: If someone had done the exact same video during Russia’s aggression against Chechnya 15 years ago, would anyone have been concerned that Russian students were marginalized and isolated? Of course not, mostly because they wouldn’t have been and because everyone would have been applauding the strong statements against the massive damage being done to civilians, and rightly so.
Marzec’s video, Rabbi Leshaw says, “…makes Jewish parents want to bring their kids back home to the safety of the Jewish suburbs?” That is a familiar and tired argument, one that got badly worn out during the battles for school integration and during the civil rights movement. Just substitute “White” for Jewish, and the sentence says the very same thing. It is irrational fear of the other, something that needs to be confronted, not accommodated.
Rabbi Leshaw also says that Megan’s video makes “alumni want to pull their funding.” I wonder if she thought about that complaint before putting it in her letter. An apparently liberal woman believes that donors should have the ability to stop students from making controversial political statements? Would she have said the same about protests against the Vietnam War or for women’s rights back in the 1960s and 70s? Because surely there were those alumni who took similar offense to bra-burning demonstrations back then. No, it is only opposition to Israeli policies that merits such kowtowing, I suspect.
Rabbi Leshaw also says that Megan’s video “makes people threaten” the university and its programs, a disturbing echo of Israel’s self-serving and unsellable (outside of the US and Israel, that is) claim that all those Palestinian deaths were Hamas’ fault. Defying such bullying is why Rabbi Leshaw thinks Marzec should step down, rather than seeing it for what it is: precisely the sort of action that a student leader must take if they are to ever be leaders for social change outside the university. The same would be true if this was a pro-Israel statement. Those who support Israel’s policies or feel they must defend Israel should also not give in to any attempts to intimidate them into silence. It is not the opinion that matters, and on that point, Rabbi Leshaw claims to agree. So would she have the same objections if the issue was not Israel? Given her professed values, it seems doubtful.
Megan Marzac sees the Israeli occupation and then the shockingly brutal onslaught on Gaza. She believes that these should be opposed and future incidents prevented, and believes that the global Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement is the best way to achieve that. She lacks neither awareness nor compassion. Her statement was one of condemnation of repeated and ongoing human rights violations. That demonstrates considerable awareness and compassion, whether you agree with her views or not.
Is it Marzac’s lack of vision then? Well, it is fair to say that her identification as student senate president gives the impression that she was doing this with some sort of sanction from the senate, which apparently was not the case. That’s an error, but such a mistake is hardly grounds for her removal, especially since she subsequently made it clear that this was her own action.
In any case, the notion that strong support for the Palestinians and even harsh criticism of Israel is somehow threatening to Jews has to be challenged. It is a false accusation, but more importantly, it is one in a long list of bullying tactics that seek to silence support for the Palestinians on campus and more broadly, in the public discourse. Those tactics include attempts to legislate against boycotts of Israel (all of which have failed thus far), manipulating organizations by threatening their funding, harassing media outlets when they give space for pro-Palestinian views, and claiming victimhood when they themselves are the victimizer.
Megan Marzac did what student activists should do: she made a bold statement. The response from the allegedly pro-Israel community has been nothing short of the worst kind of bullying, even aside from the extremists who have threatened her with physical harm. Do these people believe that Israel’s case is so weak that it cannot withstand public debate? It seems so, but that is only true because they are making the wrong argument. They are working to make Israel an exception to international laws of war, and supporting Israel’s regular violation of Palestinian rights through Israel’s occupation regime (as thoroughly documented by many Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Gisha and others). These so-called pro-Israelis are trying to defend Israeli military actions that regularly kill far more civilians than combatants, leave infrastructure devastated and make already impoverished people even more desperate.
What if they tried making the honest case that what is really needed is, quite simply, equal rights for all and a homeland where Jews and Palestinians can flee to if they are facing persecution and where both peoples can express and live their national identity, in whatever political configuration? Maybe then they wouldn’t resort to bullying tactics because they’re so terrified of an honest, open discussion in the public arena.
Photo: Megan Marzec, president of Ohio University’s student senate, at a Sept. 1o meeting.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
According to reports, Egypt has given both Israel and Hamas a take-it-or-leave-it plan for ending the current round of violence. It bears examination, not only for its intrinsic worth, but also for the implications it holds. As of this writing, Hamas has indicated it does not find the proposal [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
According to reports, Egypt has given both Israel and Hamas a take-it-or-leave-it plan for ending the current round of violence. It bears examination, not only for its intrinsic worth, but also for the implications it holds. As of this writing, Hamas has indicated it does not find the proposal “sufficient” in addressing their demands, and Israel has yet to respond directly. As reported:
At first glance, one might think that Israel would reject these terms. Almost none of Israel’s demands are included. Hamas, and the other Palestinian factions in Gaza, would not be disarmed, contrary to Netanyahu’s latest goal, which was not on the table when the fighting began (remember when Bibi was saying that all he wanted was “quiet for quiet”). And yet, while Israel certainly has shown no enthusiasm about this offer, it has not dismissed it either.
Israel is not, of course, going to accept the Egyptian terms, but its lack of outrage over what it certainly views as a one-sided deal speaks volumes. The fact that first Spain, then the United Kingdom and finally the United States all put temporary brakes on their usually consistent flows of arms to Israel was a serious message. And that message was heard loud and clear in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Make no mistake: Spain, the UK, and most certainly the US will all resume the normal flow of weapons to Israel soon enough. The reviews and procedural changes that the countries made will not impede that flow and they certainly are not affecting Israel’s military capabilities either now or in the future. That wasn’t the point.
The point was to send Israel a message. That message was that the excesses of the current right-wing government in refusing peace, ignoring the boiling crises in the Occupied Territories, needlessly torturing Gaza and now finally killing far more civilians than could be explained away was more than the West was prepared to tolerate. That message coming from Spain meant little. Coming from London, it meant more. Coming from Washington, it set off alarm bells in Israel.
So, Israel will not reject the offer out of hand, but Netanyahu is counting on the belief that Washington will not press him to accept these terms. He may be right about that; the terms do not offer Israel anything Washington will see as balancing the relief it grants Gaza. But something similar to this arrangement could well be on the horizon.
This is the case because both the Obama administration and the Egyptian government recognize this proposal for what it is: a death sentence for Hamas as a resistance movement in control of territory. Although the wording above was edited for space in this piece, the absence of not only any mention but any implied role for Hamas in Gaza’s immediate future was just as stark in the reported wording. The deal is intended to bring the people of Gaza relief while handing over rule of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority.
Of course, if Netanyahu was really interested in the “quiet” he routinely insists on, he would accept this deal. To be fair, though, if he did so, his right-wing flank would revolt and so would much of the center and even the center-left that has been backing him throughout this misadventure. That fact, however, only strengthens the crucial point that the Israeli right-wing, which is in firm control of the country and will be even more so if Netanyahu’s current government falls, is much more afraid of a unified Palestinian body politic than it is of Hamas.
The Islamist resistance group is in a difficult position with this Egyptian offer. Obviously Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has a passionate hate for Hamas, and they are well aware of that. But here he has been very clever; the deal is virtually everything Hamas has been demanding: the opening of border crossings, the easing of offshore restrictions, the elimination of the so-called “buffer zones” inside Gaza, and reconstruction in the wake of the recent destruction. Even the more ambitious demands of a seaport and airport are at least acknowledged. But it all happens between Israel and the PA, not in any kind of coordination, much less partnership, with Hamas.
In effect, this means that Hamas will cede control of Gaza to the PA. This was, of course, the ostensible goal of forming a unity government with the PA in the spring. But things have changed since then. The PA’s cooperation with Israel during the Gaza fighting has shattered what little faith Palestinians had and whatever shred of trust Hamas might have had in Mahmoud Abbas’ “government.” Hamas cannot possibly be certain that if they do cede power they will not suffer a fate similar to that of the Muslim Brotherhood in al-Sisi’s Egypt.
Even if that scenario doesn’t materialize, there is no guarantee elections will be held any time soon, and so the technocratic PA, still under control of Mahmoud Abbas, will continue to run both the West Bank and Gaza. What Egypt has done is to include in that possible future the chance for Gazans to finally see the end of the siege, and to start rebuilding their infrastructure and growing their economy.
No doubt, the PA, as well as Egypt and the United States are very interested in that idea. You would think Israel would be as well, as this is the best path to obtaining the “quiet” Netanyahu claims this was all about. But his government loathes the idea of a PA with even the slightest shred of power.
If Abbas is able to convince Hamas to agree to something like this (a very big “if”), he should at once tell Israel that he will not pursue war crimes charges in the international legal system if the Israelis support the move. That could almost certainly buy Netanyahu off, despite his bluster that war crimes charges are meaningless. They aren’t, and he’s quite desperate to prevent them from being leveled at anyone inside Israel, especially himself.
The fly in the ointment for Abbas, al-Sisi, and the Obama administration is that, even if the terms of the proposal don’t spell it out, there is an assumption that a PA government in Gaza would move to disarm Hamas and the other factions. The goal would be to reduce them to the much less powerful position they hold in the West Bank. That was tried before, in 2007, and the Fatah forces were routed. There is no reason to believe they would not suffer a far worse defeat now, as many of their security people would be even more reluctant to take up arms against the force that just stood up to Israel. Abbas would have to come to some sort of understanding with Hamas in Gaza, which won’t sit well in Washington and Cairo.
Yet this sort of deal is exactly the kind that makes sense in terms of relief for the Palestinians. It also gives Israel a commitment to quiet and to Hamas’ refraining from building a new tunnel network. International monitors could certainly be put in place to ensure such things. It could work. But it’s not likely that Netanyahu will allow it, Hamas will just give up everything it has, or that Abbas has enough legitimacy in Gaza to take over there.
As so often happens, then, while nothing can be worked out by those with some power, the Palestinian people will continue to suffer the most — especially in Gaza.
Photo: Palestinian residents walk beside a damaged UN school at the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip after the area was hit by Israeli shelling on 30 July 2014.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The fighting in Gaza will continue for some time, as a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt fell apart. Despite the bellicose language Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has employed over the past week, it was Hamas and not Israel that rejected the proposal. This was, to be [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The fighting in Gaza will continue for some time, as a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt fell apart. Despite the bellicose language Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has employed over the past week, it was Hamas and not Israel that rejected the proposal. This was, to be sure, the direct result of that proposal not meeting any of Hamas’ demands for a ceasefire and, because as one Israeli official put it, “…we discovered we’d made a cease-fire agreement with ourselves.” The dynamics of this turn of events are important and tell us much about how the ground has changed in the region. We first must ask why Hamas rejected the Egyptian proposal. They have been rather clear about their reasons:
Those reasons may show a certain rationality in Hamas’ refusal to accept a ceasefire. Wisdom and real concern for the innocents suffering under Israel’s bombings are far less apparent, however. In fact, Hamas’ refusal to accept the ceasefire completes the process of wiping from the memory of much of the world the fact that Israel initiated this round of fighting.
Rarely has Netanyahu been more accurate than earlier yesterday, when he said “[If Hamas] doesn’t accept the ceasefire proposal…Israel will have all the international legitimacy to broaden its military activity in order to achieve the necessary quiet.” Indeed, Hamas’ decision does exactly that. There will still be expressions of concern from various quarters, but for the most part, pressure on Israel to stop its onslaught from the US, EU, UN and even many Arab states will diminish essentially to zero. It is hard to imagine that the refusal is going to lead to a better deal. The only thing that might, and only might, do that is a massive uptick in civilian deaths from where the number is at now. Hardly something anyone would wish for. So, while Hamas may have had very good reason to reject this deal, it does not seem that rejection is a better option.
Indeed, one may argue that accepting the ceasefire deal with certain reservations may have put Hamas in a better position. At least the massive uptick in death and destruction in Gaza would have been stemmed, even if temporarily.
Egypt’s New Position
Hamas has issued a statement rejecting further Egyptian efforts to mediate a ceasefire. They will now accept only Turkey or Qatar in that role. Those are, not coincidentally, the only two significant states who support the political goals of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the new Egyptian regime joins Saudi Arabia and many of the Gulf States in despising.
Egypt has now demonstrated that not only has its position on Hamas hardened since the ouster of the Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi, it is even more antagonistic to Hamas than former President Hosni Mubarak. Given this, it is likely that the role Mubarak frequently played as a broker between Israel and Hamas is not one that the current General/President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi can assume, and this was a failed attempt to show that he could.
This will please Netanyahu, who is surely seeing the new Egyptian regime as much more to his liking than anything that ever came before it. But it is going to complicate matters for the United States, all the more so as Israel is not likely to accept Turkey or Qatar as an intermediary. Without Egypt as a broker, the US is going to have a much harder time stabilizing these periodic escalations between Israel and Hamas. This, again, may suit Netanyahu, who believes US President Barack Obama is much too quick to try to end conflicts. But it also makes Israeli decisions as to when to back off more complicated, as the US will not be able to give Israel a way out that shields its leadership at least a little from the political fallout of ending these operations while Hamas is still in control of the Strip.
Hamas’ weakened position
Hamas is facing serious isolation. Egypt was surely never very sympathetic to Hamas, even when Morsi was in office. It is now even more firmly in the US-Israeli camp. Hamas’ support for Syrian rebels and the slow thaw of relations between the United States and Iran has (to Netanyahu’s chagrin) cooled the Hamas-Iran relationship, and Qatar has had to back away to some degree from its support of the Brotherhood and its affiliates like Hamas due to pressure from other Gulf states. This is why, despite the forecasts by many that this latest round will end with the status quo more or less maintained, Netanyahu, and probably also Mahmoud Abbas, believes a severe blow can now be struck against Hamas.
Netanyahu believes, not without reason, that this can be done without resorting to the kind of all-out assault, and even re-occupation, which is being pushed by his right flank in Israel. Consider the Islamist group’s current position. It was already struggling to pay workers in Gaza and had been arguing with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah about who bears the responsibility. Egypt’s harder line has been stifling the “tunnel economy,” which was the only method for bringing many goods and supplies into Gaza that Israel would not permit to pass through its blockade. Hamas seemed to have nothing but rhetoric to offer to deal with the situation, and it was losing standing among the Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Islamic Jihad and other, more radical Palestinian factions, which Hamas was generally preventing from taking violent actions against Israel from Gaza, were accusing Hamas of abandoning its revolutionary ideals. Add to this the loss of much of its support from the rest of the Arab and Muslim world, in the wake of the decline of the Brotherhood throughout the region, and it’s not hard to see why Netanyahu believes that, even if the outcome of the current fighting is merely an agreement to go back to the way things were, he will still come out a big winner.
He may be right. But it is more likely that Israel’s continued attacks will cause the various factions to rally together, as they have in the past, strengthening Hamas’ position. It is also more likely to exacerbate the already dire predicament Abbas is in, as he has cracked down in the West Bank to prevent anti-Israel protests during the fighting, sacrificing what little respect and confidence the Palestinians had left in the PA President.
To Cease or not to Cease
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other factions fighting in Gaza can certainly make the case that they have successfully stood firm under Israel’s attacks while demonstrating that they can shoot their missiles throughout Israel. The rockets being used in many cases were actually made in Gaza, along with what they have been able to smuggle in from outside. The fact that the locally made rockets include some of the medium range ones that have been penetrating farther into Israel than ever before is one reason Hamas is perhaps in less of a rush than one might think to stop the fighting.
The calculus, though, is cold and fails on a number of levels. The most obvious failure is the suffering of the people of Gaza. Over 190 Gazans have been killed, the vast majority civilians. These deaths do raise a great deal of anger among Palestinians against Israel, but to what end? There does not seem to be any victory, or even small gains, on the horizon for which these people are dying. When the fighting dies down, Israel will be the same villain in Gaza it always was, but people are surely going to wonder why the fighting went on for as long as it did with no gains in sight. And that is really the nub of it — there seems to be no hope for Hamas to achieve any of its goals, such as lifting the maritime blockade on Gaza or easing the border crossings. If they are hoping that other forces — such as those in Lebanon, which have lobbed a few projectiles across the border and to which Israel has responded quite forcefully — will be opening another flank against Israel, they are not paying attention to events in Syria and Iraq, which are occupying the efforts of Hezbollah and other parties that might be willing to engage Israel.
There simply isn’t an endgame that represents progress for Hamas. In 2012, when then-Egyptian President Morsi brokered an agreement, Hamas could claim a few minor concessions from Israel (which never really materialized once there was no pressure on Israel to follow through with them). There will be nothing of that sort here, but Hamas seems to be desperately clinging to the hope that it can extract something to base a claim of victory on.
That’s a terrible gamble. It is much more likely that the refusal to agree to a ceasefire is giving Netanyahu exactly what he wants: the chance to deliver a blow to a weakened Hamas regime in Gaza. Hamas has given Netanyahu the means to do this without having to overcome the global opposition that was apparent at the beginning of the current fighting. Their refusal is understandable. Israel has repeatedly failed to live up to prior agreements, and this entire thing does look very much like a setup cooked up by Egypt and Israel.
Still, it seems like the rejection of the ceasefire plays into Netanyahu’s hands even more than going along with it would have. Hamas was faced with two bad options. Some may say they chose the lesser of two evils, but they seem to have opted for the path of salvaging some pride while losing more innocent lives and gaining nothing.
Photo: A school in Gaza after an Israeli bomb attack.
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