Isi Leibler: 'Exorcising’ Israel bashers from the Jewish mainstream

[Israel Insider]

Despite initially refusing to provide me with a right of reply to the Haaretz articles by Bradley Burston and Carlo Strenger misrepresenting me, following a further exchange of correspondence Haaretz.com have now published my response.

Although no stranger to controversial encounters, I was nevertheless taken aback by the extraordinary misrepresentation of my views by Bradley Burston (Dovish Jews? They love Israel? Excommunicate them) and especially Carlo Strenger (Memo to Jewish haters of Liberals: The Middle Ages are over).

I have written a number of columns criticizing extremist Israeli and Diaspora Jews whose principal political activities are geared toward delegitimizing the Jewish state and who currently occupy leading roles fuelling global anti-Israeli campaigns (Why Make a Fuss about JStreet? and Marginalize the Renegades).

I referred in particular to a number of Israeli academics who abuse academic freedom by exploiting their universities as launching pads to vilify Israel, identify with Israel’s enemies and even call for global boycotts of their own institutions. It would be inconceivable for the authorities to adopt a laissez-faire approach toward racists or radical right wing extremist academics behaving in this manner. In a nation under siege and facing existential threats, people exploiting academia for such purposes have crossed the red line and should not retain tenure at institutions funded by Israeli taxpayers and Diaspora Zionist philanthropists.

I also related to a small but increasing number of Diaspora Jews who share a one-dimensional global agenda of demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. I am not referring to “doves” or critics of Israeli policy but those who exploit their Jewish antecedents solely in order to demonize Israel. For example, those who partake in demonstrations with groups supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. Or those responsible for disseminating what was subsequently proven to have been malicious libels against the IDF which created the climate for the global campaign depicting us as war criminals - as embodied in the Goldstone report.

In this context, I was also critical of J Street not because of their views but their preposterously false attempts to portray themselves as pro-Israel. J Street has never endorsed any substantive Israel government policies and their principal objective is to lobby the Obama administration to exert more pressure on Israel to provide additional unilateral concessions. They opposed Israel’s role in the Gaza war, lobbied Congress to oppose sanctions against Iran and recently urged Congress to water down a resolution criticizing the Goldstone report. The “pro-Israel, pro-peace” pretensions of J Street are reminiscent of the Jewish communists who sponsored state sponsored Soviet anti-Semitism in the guise of promoting bogus “peace” campaigns.

Their right and that of other Israel bashing groups to express their views are not being challenged. But that does not mean that establishment Jewish groups should indulge in kumbaya with those systematically trying to undermine the Jewish state.

I stand by my view that those whose primary goal is to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state - such as radical right wing extremists or racists - should be marginalized from the mainstream Jewish community. That is not fascism. It is common sense.

I observed that self loathing Jews are not a new phenomenon in Jewish history. During the Middle Ages, Jewish apostates were exploited by the church to promote the most obscene libels against their kinsman. That paved the way for subsequent pogroms and massacres. I noted that during that period, such renegades were excommunicated. To suggest as did Burston and Strenger that I seek to reintroduce “excommunication” to deal with “doves” or critics of Israeli policy is an unconscionable misrepresentation of what I wrote.

More disturbingly, Carlo Strenger joins those exploiting the memory of Yitzhak Rabin to cynically intimidate and silence their opponents. But he goes further. He implies that my views “could be taken seriously by someone like Yaakov Teitel,” the alleged fiendish deranged Jewish terrorist. I will not dignify such an obscene assertion by a response.

On a broader level, Strenger’s references to Rabin are symptomatic of an increasing trend by those on the far left to invoke the memory of our assassinated Prime Minister in order to suppress public criticism of their agenda.

I was privileged to know Rabin and met with him on numerous occasions. I remember how he repeatedly reiterated his hope that “the gamble for peace” as he described the Oslo Accords, would succeed. Alas, in the absence of a genuine peace partner, his gamble failed and became the incubator for our current problems.

But even after the Oslo Accords proved to have been an absolute disaster, most of us recognized that Rabin’s sole motivations were to promote the interests of the Jewish state and achieve a genuine peace settlement. Rabin was above all a consummate Israeli patriot and a true Zionist.

It is thus disturbing to observe post-Zionists and extremists, whose views Rabin utterly detested, abusing his memory in order to promote their discredited policies and silence their opponents. I can just visualize the expletives he would have uttered had he been asked to send an Israeli ambassador to participate at a convention of American Jews like J Street whose principal objective was to persuade their president to exercise “tough love” on Israel because they decided that the Jewish state needed to be treated like a parent who treats a drug addicted child.

Israel and the committed global Jewish community encompass a wide range of opinions on matters relating to the future of the Jewish state. However, I have no doubt that had Rabin been alive, he too would have endeavored to “exorcise” (Thesaurus “disentangle” or “remove”) from the mainstream, those Israelis and Jews who actively seek to demonize the state, defame the IDF, lobby foreign governments against Israel or oppose a Jewish democratic state.

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This column was originally published in Haaretz

[RonaldH]

I totally support the sentiments Mr. Leibler expresses in this column. J Street and many other left-wing organizations to which some Jews belong are harmful to Israel and all of the Jewish people. Stupidity abounds in many of the conversations in which Jews engage. Rahm Emanuel proclaimed to the United Jewish Congress that peace between the Palestinians and I'srael can come 'only from negotiations'. How many times and for how many decades have we heard this bromide repeated? Peace through negotiations'. 'Land for peace.' It is just not true because there is nothing Israel can offer the Palestinians that will mollify them short of suicide. The true, and only path to peace for Israel is through strength. Peace through strength is historically PROVEN. That was Reagan's mantra when he guided the US during the dissolution of the Soviet empire. I don't believe there has ever been an instance in history in which a true peace was achieved through negotiations. The reason for that should be obvious to most people with common sense. Nations do not seek peace with other nations because they are innately good. They seek peace because it is in their interest. Nations at peace can trade, learn from each other, mutually advance their cultures, science, and economic growth. People don't die needlessly. Peace oftentimes makes sense and peace is what G-d commands us to pursue.
However, the conditions for peace have to be defended. If a nation perceives that it can grow economically and militarily by invading another country, many times in history this is the choice that leaders make. Negotiations are not going to stop and invasion, if 10% of the worlds resources are at stake.

[Campbell Randt]

RE : Academics (Israeli and Otherwise) . . .


In an old field journal from another place and time, I recorded by hand the following quotation :

"Universities, like lawyers, have never been ashamed to aspire to what even the Gods do not : namely, to alter that which has already happened, in accord with the spirit of the age."

Such aspirations do indeed surface intermittently amongst certain of my colleagues in academia.

I have had the personal experience of academic departments at university wherein some faculty members would REFUSE -- quite LITERALLY refuse -- to speak to one another on a routine, day-to-day basis.

My references here are to a Department of Anthropology in the United States, and to a Department of Political Science and Public Administration, which is also in the USA; . . . but comparable cases have occurred elsewhere, especially within the behavioural and human sciences.

I am familiar, in a somewhat more indirect manner, with other such instances throughout Divisions of Education, and Divisions of Arts & Sciences.

The memories are still painful ones; . . . and some of my recollections bring with them a sense of personal betrayal.

Purges within academia have claimed many victims, . . . of whom one, in particular, was my own mentor, . . . as well as my best and dearest friend in North America.

His plight turns my thoughts to Shakespeare’s TITUS ANDRONICUS, which contains the following lines :

"O heavens, can you hear a good man groan,
And not relent, or not compassion him ? . . .
[He] that hath more scars of sorrow in his heart
Than foemen's marks upon his batter'd shield,
But yet so just that he will not revenge."

[Campbell Randt]

And furthermore :

Isi Leibler "referred in particular to a number of Israeli academics who abuse academic freedom by exploiting their universities as launching pads to vilify Israel, identify with Israel’s enemies and even call for global boycotts of their own institutions. . . . In a nation under siege and facing existential threats, people exploiting academia for such purposes have crossed the red line."

Sad and true. Academia has been the scene of many vile and disgusting things.

I know because I've been there. I have seen it. Up close. Personal experience. Direct observation.

The despicable behaviour of certain professors is beneath contempt.

And some Israel-bashers are indeed found amongst academics, both Israeli and otherwise.

Hence, the original post, with which this discussion begins, is on target in terms of certain rather high-profile scholars from university, who have used their positions as platforms from which to attack the modern nation of Israel.

[Mark Storm]

I fully support the comments made by Mr Leibler and the responses of RonaldH and Campbell Randt. A teacher in a high school myself, I am well aware of the intrusion of anti-Judeo-Christian philosophies into the curriculum. Further, how such philosophies, being delivered by the 'authoritative' voice of teachers, lecturers, guest speakers, tutors and so forth, engender a mind-set in those who hear (but do not think for themselves) that is fundamentally opposed not just to the policies Israel must adopt for her preservation but to the very idea of a Jewish state at all.
It is our responsibility to offset this tide of opinion that so smugly sits in academia. It has been suggested that vigorous debate with free discourse will establish the fuller picture, such that all parties concerned might make honest decisions about how to deal with the situation at hand. This method has long-since degenerated into a mud-slinging match where one 'authority' is pitted against the other - the spectators enjoying the circus, but leaving with their minds being made up for them from strategies other than full facts access, logic and reasoning.
I have long argued that Israel's response to attacks against her must begin to favour targetting people's emotional sense, not their logic facilities. Most people are either exhausted by the debate, confused and disenchanted by the rhetoric and outright lies... mostly from the anti-Israel side. It is for Israel to consider showing the world what her attackers do to her; the bloodshed, the sufferings of those Israelis whose lives have been physically damaged or destroyed; the plight of those Israelis whose credibility has been unjustly vilified. Simultaneous to this approach is a counter-to-Hollywood/Television Media where Israel provides to the world information of what she is and what she stands for - the best of the Judeo-Christian ethic. An Israeli equivalent to CNN, BBC, Al Jahira and the like - in short, an international broadcasting media service - be established. In a world of channel surfing, twitter, sound bites, information overload and 10 second attention spans, the way to win the Public's mind must be through the heart - not the brain. Further, one should never harp on the "same-old, same-old". The target is the heart, but the method must change to suit the occasion.
The truth will out... eventually. That Truth being; that Israel is unjustly vilified and eternally misrepresented by those who hate Jews and the Judeo-Christian god. But we are all too aware now of how many have polluted the ability and even opportunity for freedom of thought to occur. We must reconsider the truths that lie in the heart.