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President Obama vs. the LA Times on anti-Semitism

The Obama White House and the opinion page of the Los Angeles Times are usually in sync—but not always.
[additional-authors]
May 27, 2015

The Obama White House and the opinion page of the Los Angeles Times are usually in sync—but not always.  Take for example the recent conflict between President Obama and Palestinocentric UCLA Professor Saree Makdisi on anti-Semitism and how to combat it.

In a much-discussed recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, the President argued that his Iran policy was our best chance of curbing not only the Iranian nuclear threat, but the mullahs’ support of a global jihad preaching and practicing Jew hatred. Some of us were not convinced. However, when it came to recognizing the linkage between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel carried to the extreme of questioning the Jewish state’s right to exist, the President was right on. This is what he said:

“I think a good baseline is: Do you think that Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people, and are you aware of the particular circumstances of Jewish history that might prompt that need and desire? And if your answer is no, if your notion is somehow that that history doesn’t matter, then that’s a problem, in my mind. If, on the other hand, you acknowledge the justness of the Jewish homeland, you acknowledge the active presence of anti-Semitism—that it’s not just something in the past, but it is current—if you acknowledge that there are people and nations that, if convenient, would do the Jewish people harm because of a warped ideology. If you acknowledge those things, then you should be able to align yourself with Israel where its security is at stake, you should be able to align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not held to a double standard in international fora, you should align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not isolated.”

Without using the term, President Obama was essentially embracing the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” The definition specifically includes as examples accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust, and  accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.

The State Department’s definition is currently in the news because University of California President Janet Napolitano gave it her personal endorsement, prior to a UC Regents Board meeting, scheduled for July, which will debate adopting the definition as a new guideline for U.C. campuses.

Here in the LA Times (May 26 issue) comes in Professor Makdisi who ignores President Obama but frontally assaults UC President Napolitano for the effrontery of disclosing that—like the U.S. State Department and the U.S. President—she believes there is an inherent linkage between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel’s right to exist: criticism which Makdisi considers a benign and sacrosanct form of “anti-Zionism.”

According to Makdisi, to call out anti-Zionists who urge the destruction of the Jewish state for “delegitimizing” and demonizing” Israel is an attempt to “stifle academic freedom and “pre­empt crit­i­cism of Is­raeli poli­cies.” This is patent nonsense. Criticize Israeli government policies—including settlement policies—all you want. Just don’t cross the line by demanding that Israel, a UN member state with six million Jewish and two million Arab citizens, commit national suicide because it “has no right to exist.”

Makdisi has no problem with shutting down forms of campus advocacy that threaten the status and self-esteem of students on the basis of their gender or sexual orientation. Earlier this year in another LA Times’ op ed, he even questioned the right of Paris’ murdered Charlie Hebdo cartoonists to satirize the Prophet Mohammed.  But when it comes to campus advocacy—and actions—that marginalize Jewish students by charging them with “dual loyalties” and by tauntingly raising the specter of another Jewish genocide in the Middle East, Makdisi believes that “anything goes, and that free speech provides an impenetrable suit of armor to protect  toxic forms of speech and conduct on campus.

A case in point about the linkage between verbal incitement against Israel’s right to exist and actions meant to intimidate Jewish students is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which Profess Makdisi endows with a halo as a hero of the academic free speech crusade. The real track record of the SJP and its campus bullies includes shouting down or disrupting pro-Israel speakers, beating up Jewish students who dare to speak up against anti-Israel incitement, presenting Jewish dorm residents with mock eviction notices because of Israeli policies, and demanding at UCLA that Jewish candidates for student body office sign “loyalty oaths” that they have never made a trip to Israel sponsored by a Jewish organization. 

The colleges and universities where the SJP, Makdisi’s folk heroes or martyrs for free speech, have been investigated or sanctioned for actions—not just words—verging over into anti-Semitism include Northeastern University, Vassar, and Loyola University-Chicago.

Makdisi also cites in support of his position the dismissal by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of complaints against Berkeley UC Irvine, and UC Irvine for allowing groups like the SJP to create a hostile learning environment for Jewish students, in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In fact, the UC Santa Cruz complaints—which were copiously documented—were dismissed by OCR higher ups against the advice of their own regional office and contrary to their own internal rules.  The anti-Zionist lobby’s “victories” at UC Berkeley and elsewhere were also hollow because the cases against them were largely dismissed on narrow procedural grounds, not because groups like the SJP were really vindicated.

President Napolitano and President Obama are on spot-on regarding the issue of when “Anti-Zionism” crosses the line into anti-Semitism.  And we applaud them for calling out anti-Semitism when it masquerades, with righteous indignation, as anything but.

Rabbi Meyer H. May is Executive Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; Historian Harold Brackman is a consultant to the Center.

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