Monday, September 18, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
Fair Fight
I’ve talked a number of times about how unfair the fight is
between Israel and her defamers.
Those defamers, after all, have a militant goal: the elimination
of the Jewish state. With that goal as
their North Star, strategies to weaken that state or make its destruction
appear noble and just become clear, as do tactics to achieve those strategic
aims (such as BDS). In addition, the sociopathic
nature of Israel’s enemies gives them the power to manipulate others while
feeling no guilt over their own destructive, ruthless behavior.
In contrast, nearly all Israelis and friends of Israel do
not want to see enemies eliminated. In
fact, our greatest dream (i.e., our
goal) is not to see Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims destroyed, but rather to live at
peace with them (or at least be left in peace by them). With such
non-militant goals driving our enterprise, it’s no surprise that we cannot gin
up the kind of hatred needed to drive decades-long hostile
counter-campaigns. And our unwillingness
to use others as means to an end means we are not ready to manipulate neutrals
in order to use them as weapons in our political campaigns.
While I still hold to this analysis, some recent events also
got me thinking of another way to look at “the fight,” one in which the odds
can seem stacked in Israel’s favor.
The first event was the opening of the Jacobs
Technion-Cornell Institute in New York, a two-billion dollar facility that
anchors Cornell’s Tech education and research initiative. This mammoth joint effort won out in fierce
competition between some of the most prestigious science and engineering
schools in the country. And the success
of Cornell’s bid was largely in recognition of the value of that school’s
partnership with one of the world’s most successful schools of scientific
learning: Israel’s Technion Institute.
Given that decades of harassment by academic boycotters has
led to little more than marginal professors occasionally engaging in cowardly
furtive boycotts and sputtering on Twitter, the opening of Cornell-Technion –
remarkable in itself – sends an important message to the world: that linking
arms with Israel brings success and progress, while shunning the Jewish state
leads nowhere.
Speaking of going nowhere (as well as sputtering on Twitter)
the event I’d like to use as a contrast to the opening of Technion-Cornell took
place in Dublin last week where Israel haters from around that nation gathered
to say the same things they and others have said at Israel-hating events for
more than half a century. And their star
attraction was that failed academic whose Twitter id rivals that of America’s
president: Steven
Salaita.
Mr. Salaita’s been on a roller coaster ride since being
hired to join the faculty of the Native American Studies department at
University of Illinois (despite having no qualifications for the job), followed
by his u n-hiring by school leaders unwilling to give lifelong employment to
someone advocating violence on Twitter, followed by a lawsuit and boycott of
the university (which, among other things, destroyed the department he was
going to join), followed by his decamping to American University of Beirut in
Lebanon, followed by his being let go from that university as well.
And who is to blame for this string of disasters that have
left him academically homeless (although not bereft of speaking gigs, it
appears): the evil Jews (whoops! I mean
“Zionists”) whose power apparently extends to academic institutions in nations
at war with the Jewish state.
For all his attempts to make his story come off like an epic
struggle of right against might, the Salaita tale is ultimately about someone
who never grew out of adolescence now demanding rewards (like tenure) he doesn’t
deserve, someone ready to whine and blame/punish others for his failings.
While there might be a market for such self-pity within
marginal groups (like the lame boycotters of the American
Studies Association – another field Salaita announced himself an expert
in), I can’t imagine that the professors staffing the new Technion-Cornell
Institute got to their positions by behaving in such a manner. In fact, the string of achievements on both
campuses would indicate that they have much better things to do than bitch that
no one is offering them a paid perch to spout politics that can’t be taken away.
Every few years, our Temple is blessed by a visit from young
Israeli soldiers traveling through Boston, and I’ve always been stunned by the
seriousness and maturity of kids not much older than my recent high-school
graduate. And it is these serious young
men and women who then go on to university and from there become the next
generation of Technion professors, business leaders, or successes in a thousand
other fields (all the while continuing to contribute to the defense of their
homeland).
In a contest between such serious people and freaks and
weirdos like Steven Salaita, who has the upper hand?
