In case you’re unfamiliar with the story, Pulitzer Prize winning American playwright Tony Kushner was set to receive an honorary degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Until the degree was abruptly blocked by the City University of New York Board of Trustees during a May 2 meeting, after one trustee accused Kushner of being anti-semetic due to his past criticism of Israeli government policies.
Luckily, many past recipients stood in solidarity with Kushner by saying they would return their degrees if his was not reinstated. This symbolizes a breakthrough given that just a few years ago Norman Finklestien was denied tenure as a result of slanderous attacks based on his criticism of Israeli government policies. The disingenuous antisemite label has been utilized to ruin a number of careers, but Kushner’s situation proves that the tides are changing.
As Amy Goodman lays out, “A campaign grew almost immediately, first calling on previous recipients of honorary degrees from CUNY colleges (of which John Jay College is one) to return them. Within days, what would have been a quickly forgotten bestowal of an honorary degree erupted into an international scandal. The chair of the board, Benno Schmidt, former president of Yale University, convened an emergency executive session of the board, which voted unanimously to restore the honor to Kushner.”
For a more in depth analysis of the story, check out this exclusive interview with Tony Kushner on Democracy Now! However, what I would like to focus on is various statements that Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the trustee who initially blocked the award, made to the New York Times when questioned about the incident:
I tried to ask a question about the damage done by a short, one-sided discussion of vigorously debated aspects of Middle East politics, like the survival of Israel and the rights of the Palestinians, and which side was more callous toward human life, and who was most protective of it.
But Mr. Wiesenfeld interrupted and said the question was offensive because “the comparison sets up a moral equivalence.”
Equivalence between what and what? “Between the Palestinians and Israelis,” he said. “People who worship death for their children are not human.”
Did he mean the Palestinians were not human? “They have developed a culture which is unprecedented in human history,” he said.
If Wiesenfeld wants to toss around the accusation of false moral equivalencies, he is entitled to do so, although I would strongly disagree. I have regularly made the argument that the media promotes a false equivalency between the right and left when they suggest that both sides of the political spectrum are equally crazy, which couldn’t be further from the truth. My point here is that, while I criticize the scoundrels on the far-right, I would never suggest that they are not human. That is a very dangerous mentality.
In my opinion, the most troublesome aspect to these comments is the lack of outcry and condemnation of Wiesenfeld’s views. I realize that dehumanizing arabs has been a common theme in regards to US foreign policy, but Wiesenfeld’s statements are another disturbing reminder that in America, it’s perfectly acceptable to view Palestinians as less than human.
I take exception to the wording used by Mr. Wisenfeld, saying that “People who worship death for their children are not human.” I would express it this way:” People who deliberately and systematically teach their children to kill themselves and others in the path to martyrdom could not possibly be “sane” in the strictest sense of that word. nor could they be considered kind, loving parents. NO PARENT who loved his child would teach hate at such a level. Golda Meir expressed it best:” We can forgive you for killing our children; what we cannot forgive is your making us kill your children.” When will the PROGRESSIVE Liberals in this country, especially in the media, and those parents who teach hate and homicide bombings realize that? How anyone can make a case FOR THE PALESTENIANS PARENTS WHO DO THIS is beyond me. As a mother of a son who was killed in a car accident just prior to his 28th birthday (and burned to death,) I would gladly have traded places with him if I could have. Most parents KNOW that kind of love…to lay down their lives for any of their children, rather than demanding and teaching the precious gifts from GOD, a child, to destroy not only his own life, but the lives of others, as well.
May 15, 2011 at 7:50 pmWhat Palestinian parents are you talking about? The one’s whose children were maimed by bombs and charred by white phosphorous during the 2008-2009 indiscriminate attack on the Gaza strip, which amounted to collective punishment? or the one’s whose children are denied access to medical treatment because Israel refuses to grant them a permit to leave the territory, creating what can only be described as an open air prison?
You are making nasty generalizations about an entire population, based on what? By your choice of words, I would guess you watch a great deal of mainstream media (news, tv shows, and movies) because your idea of Palestinian culture matches the violent, barbaric culture that is promoted in America. However, speaking as an Lebanese-American, I can tell you first-hand, that you are not only severely misinformed, but you sound like a racist, close-minded individual, leaving me to wonder what on earth brought you to this blog in the first place?!?!
PS. replace the word PALESTINIAN(S) with BLACK(S) in your above comment, and maybe you will begin to understand what is wrong with your statement.
May 15, 2011 at 10:56 pmI can tell you first-hand, that you are not only severely misinformed, but you sound like a racist, close-minded individual, leaving me to wonder what on earth brought you to this blog in the first place?!?!
I think we can both guess. She’s probably a Beck/Hannity watcher.
May 15, 2011 at 11:05 pmPalestinian children are deprived of their right to education. There is a shortage of 40,000 classrooms, and it is impossible to obtain permits from the occupation authorities to build new schools. Existing schools are demolished by IDF bulldozers. Most of Gaza’s schools, which were destroyed in operation “Cast Lead”, have still not been repaired.
Over 11,000 children get their education in tents, caravans, or tin shacks, many schools have poor and inadequate water and sanitation facilities. Children have to undertake long and precarious journeys to ill-equipped school. The classrooms fall far short of basic safety and hygiene standards. The schools are under constant pressure and harassment by settlers and Israeli military forces and experience forced displacements and demolitions.
2.4 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, 1.6 million in the Gaza stripe. 40 percent of Palestinians are under 14 years old, 48 percent under 18. That amounts to about 1.6 million children under 14, 1.9 million under 18. These children grow up in a climate of fear, terror, humiliation. They see their classmates shot by Israeli snipers and see them bleeding to death. They experience the terror of missile strikes and bomb raids and they see body parts laying around and blood everywhere. They loose their friends and relatives, they are sickened by malnutrition and polluted drinking water. Many are orphaned.
The infant mortality rate in whole Palestine is 20.6 per 1000 live births, the Gaza Strip has a rate of 23.0 per 1000 live birth. The under-five mortality rate is 25.1 per 1000 live births, the Gaza Strip has a rate of 29.2 per 1000 live births.
Palestinian children, like all children, dream of playing and living normally and safely. Instead, their father may be dead or in prison, their siblings killed, their home destroyed, their mother forced to give birth at an Israeli checkpoint, because she is denied the passage to a hospital. Palestinian children grow up differently, deprived of their innocence and their dreams. They live in constant fear, they grow up under unimaginable pressure in the toughest circumstances, working and helping the family, replacing a killed parent and confronting Israeli incursions.
Under military occupation, Palestinian children are treated like adults. They are arrested, brutally interrogated, and prosecuted in military courts. At age 16, they are considered adults in violation of international law. According to a study published by the Ahrar Center, Israel detained around 3300 Palestinian children in 2010 and around 11.000 in the past three years, including 103 girls. Even children younger than 10 are incarcerated.
On January 31, 2011, 222 Palestinian children were imprisoned, 34 of them aged 12 – 15. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) reports that 425 children are currently jailed by Israel.
About 1.400 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since 2000 (UN rapporteur Falk confirms 1.335 deaths, The Ahrar Center counts 1337 and “remember these children” counts 1,462 deaths).
http://warisacrime.org/content/oppressing-west-bank-palestinian-children
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/children.html
http://www.imemc.org/article/61229
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/14/palestinian-children-rights-violated-israel
http://www.shoah.org.uk/2011/01/11/in-israel-they-shackle-palestinian-children/
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/072110Lendman.shtml
http://www.unicef.org/oPt/FINAL_CAAC_Bulletin_JanFeb2011_FINAL.pdf
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=15796
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/media_56025.html
http://www.pcrf.net/
How would US children act in similar circumstances?
The question is no longer hypothetical, because The USA recently has started another new war. I don’t mean Libya, I mean the war against the poor and underprivileged. The first step is the destruction of public education, with the firing of teachers and the closing of schools, raising class sizes to 60 pupils and resulting in the resegregation of schools and a two tear education system.
How will minority children in Detroit, Cleveland, Camden, Washington, St. Lois, Baltimore and other deprived places grow up under this circumstances? What will their job prospects be? Will juvenile crime rates rise again?
Nearly 100.00 juvenile offenders are imprisoned in the USA, 60 percent are African American and 20 percent are hispanic. 26 percent of juvenile prisoners are released without a 9th grade education, 90 percent are released without a high school diploma or GED. There are more 17 year old black youths in jail than in college. 12 percent of juvenile prisoners report molestation and other forms of sexual abuse.
Does it give any solace to see, that the Americans, the main backers of Israel’s apartheid system, will get a taste of their own medicine?
No, because the future of tens of thousands of children is destroyed.
Will there be some kind of justice in the end, will the planners and executioners of the oppression and the discriminatory policies have to pay in the end? Justice is only an artificial construction in our mind and never guaranteed in real life, but we will do our best to built independent alternative networks and expose the lies and the hypocrisy and the double standards.
May 16, 2011 at 12:20 pmQuoting Golda Meir, someone who denied the very existence of Palestinians, proves that your point of view comes from a place of extreme ignorance. You’re clearly just another Zionist trying to make yourself feel better about the inhumane treatment of Palestinians with baseless accusations against a people you clearly know little about.
May 16, 2011 at 2:22 pmDear Rev Willems:I don’t know why you include the Negev in this list of tiroetrries that you wish Israel had not occupied. It’s been part of Israel since at least 1949.As for establishing a religion with a state, shouldn’t you suggest that Islam be disestablished from virtually all 22 Arab states, not to mention Iran? But this conflict is really ethnic and national, between the Jews as a people (one of the oldest nations in the world read your bible) and the Arab peoples.There generally is a kind of segregation between Arabs and Jews in Israel, but unlike under apartheid, it is not a legally-mandated separation and it is not total. Also unlike apartheid, Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel (as opposed to the Occupied Territories) equally have the right to vote and to run for public office.
May 24, 2012 at 12:30 amI do not own a Television, set, nor do I listen to either of those named individuals. I get all my news and information from OUTSIDE the USA, as there is no true “news” told by our media, it is all biased.
I came to this blog expecting to find what I found; a young, “progressive” interested in “social justice,” just as advertised. To call me a blatant racist, Beck/Hannity watcher and ill-informed is also your sweeping generalization of Americans (speaking to the Columnist and the other poster) as indicated in the Title of your essay. There are NO supporting facts in your essay, only diatribes against anyone who does not believe as you do, which is the “typical” young, progressive, social justice seekers. It is another name for “Socialist/Marxist Liberal Education, idealistic “I CAN Change the World” persona that fit most all of us at your age. This is not the first “armed conflict” in which children and other innocents were caught up in the horror from all sides, including their own. One thing the Israelis DO NOT DO, is to fire rockets or mortars at GAZA STRIP from inside kindergarten classrooms, or use it’s innocent citizen population as a shield, as is done in the Arab countries, without fail in which the children are becoming suicide /homicide bombers because the family gets $25,000 for each child “martyred” in the name of genocide.
Thanks for responding, as I knew that you would, and in the way that I could have written your response myself. Progressive social-justice seeking columnists never fail to disappoint me with their vitrolic diatribes against the many for the sake of so many who are clearly sacrificing their children WILLINGLY!
Any Mother who witnessed her child or any other children being burned by phosphurus bullets or bombs, or any children whose missing limbs were the results of bombing raids, might gladly give HER OWN LIFE if she thought it would STOP the violence, but to use HER CHILDREN to KILL THEMSELVES AND OTHER CHILDREN and PEOPLE, IS WRONG…there is NO WAY I would SACRIFICE EITHER OF MY REMAINING CHILDREN OR GRANDCHILDREN to appease a false god who demands it. Agape must be a foreign feeling to you and yours. What a pity….
May 16, 2011 at 11:10 amYou’re not all believable. Santimonious perhaps best describes you.
May 30, 2011 at 3:12 pmConversation has gone a little astray from the question of the charge “antisemitism” as a tactic to bully any who would disagree with policies concerning Israel’s behavior. My regard for the shallow response given by Ms. Love is that it is indeed misinformed, ill-conceived and says nothing to the question of illegitimately brandishing ‘antisemitism’ (obliquely trading on the real suffering and history of holocaust victims to advance some political agenda) to devalue contrary opinion.
Even if we accept Ms. Love’s argument at face value, her thesis is hogwash. Suppose we accept, for the sake of argument, that Palestinians teach their children to be suicidal martyrs. What is the true moral equivalent of that? One might legitimately offer that it is people who teach their children it is ok to forcibly repossess some bit of land you occupied a few thousand years ago and dispossess (and kill, in substantial numbers) its current tenants because your “god” told you it was ok. God as a landlord with lethal eviction notices would seem to be the moral equivalent of God as avenger for the righteous return of stolen property.
Hopefully Ms Love is in the fractional minority of extremist Israelis who think as barbarically she does; and, is as small a group as the fractional part of extremist Palestinians who believe their god will reward them for their barbaric acts. Maybe we can take both extremes and drop them off in the desert somewhere, where they can work out their delusion on one another as they please, while the rest of us try to figure out how two groups of people with a history of mutual enmity can drop the act and learn to live together (or, at least, as good neighbors).
June 1, 2011 at 4:30 pm