Kesher Talk

Letter to the editor, cont. Last week I sent this letter to the Jewish Week criticizing their coverage of the Columbia U Conference on Academic Integrity and the Middle East. They didn't print my letter but they did print these:

Different View

Liel Leibowitz’s article “Weiner: Disband Columbia Bias Panel” (March 10) leaves everything to be desired. His article in no way conveyed how grave and dignified the conference was, and how thoughtful and soulful the speakers were. They mounted a serious intellectual and moral challenge to the Palestinization of the academy.

Scholars for Peace in The Middle East recorded 783 registrants who were not all able to sit together. Leibowitz describes a “man” who “rose to ask a question.” He did no such thing. This man interrupted the speaker (it happened to be me), and he did so continually, as did others from his group. When I returned to my seat, he also cursed me. This man (I am not sure whether he represented Jews Against the Occupation or the Palestine Solidarity Movement) came to disrupt, not to listen or to dialogue respectfully. He and his group kept hissing and booing; they raised the tension in the room considerably. In response, the very attentive and respectful audience finally had had enough.

Indeed, this is precisely the kind of audience that has been forced to be quiet (in the interests of “free speech”) for the last five years as pro-PLO academics and operatives described Israel as a “Nazi” and “apartheid” state. For the first time they felt safe enough to respond verbally to the taunts and defamation. Their self-defense, like Israel’s, was seen by your reporter as surly, ugly aggression. The man and his group left, not because they were silenced, but because they could not disrupt the conference, and because this was their planned visual-action for the media.
Phyllis Chesler
New York, N.Y.

Verdict Is In

Apparently your reporter at the Columbia seminar on March 6 was very uncomfortable with the strong pro-Israel crowd (“Weiner: Disband Columbia Bias Panel,” March 11). Personally, I was ecstatic by the strength of the pro-Israel contingent as I listened intently to each speaker.

Your reporter obviously was looking for more “balance” on the issue at hand. However, this conference was not organized in order to open up the floor to debate as to whether or not the Columbia campus has been hijacked by Arab extremist professors. The verdict is already in. The urgent issue now is what is to be done about the propaganda being taught as “scholarship” and the intimidation of dissenting students to the professors’ Arabist worldview.

While the student organizers were indeed trying to strike a more conciliatory tone (who can blame them, they have to practically live with these people for the rest of their college careers), the problem has become a lot more complex than student intimidation. Whether your reporter and your publication is happy about the direction that Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and their attendant activists are taking is beside the point. These valiant pro-Israel activists are determined to rid our college campuses of the Arab hegemony over the Israeli-Arab conflict. Deal with it.
Adina Kutnicki
Ridgewood, N.J.

posted by Judith @ 3/26/2005 08:00:00 PM