Friday, November 04, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Clearly, the right to identify oneself as one wishes is important at the law school, and anyone who chooses to ignore those wishes and tell students and staff that they refuse to address them as they self-identify would be marginalized as a bigot, and probably censured.
There is one exception, though.
This fall there has been a controversy at Berkeley Law when nine student organizations will not host events or invite speakers who have expressed views in support of Zionism. Many Jews protested, saying that this effectively discriminated against them as Zionism and Judaism are tightly bound.
The lawyer defending the student organizations, Liz Jackson of Palestine Legal, who is herself an alumnus of the school, defended the discriminatory bylaws in a most curious way:
“Some students say that their Jewish identity is so deeply identified with Zionism that this effectively discriminates against them," Jackson said. "But that’s their subjective view and choice about how they understand their own Jewish identity.”
According to Palestine Legal's lawyer, Jews do not have the right to say that their Judaism includes love of Israel. Self-identification is not a right for Jews, rather, Jewishness is defined by others and Jews must adhere to the definition that anti-Zionists impose on them.
This doesn't sound very progressive. But this is the argument of the Berkeley Law student organizations to defend their blocking any speaker for whom Israel is a central part of their Judaism, which includes the vast majority of Jews.
Jackson herself says she is Jewish. According to her own standards, I can declare that this is only her subjective view and that she is in reality not Jewish. How do you think that argument would go over at Berkeley? Yet that is exactly what she is saying about 95% of all Jews.
Jackson's hypocrisy doesn't end there.
Not only does she deny the right of Jews to define Judaism, she denies the right of Zionists to define Zionism!
In an Oct. 3 statement released by ASUC Senator Shay Cohen addressed to LSJP and student groups that adopted the bylaw, student groups alleged that the bylaw was “a deliberate attempt to exclude Jewish students from the community,” and likened anti-Zionism to antisemitism.“When we say ‘Zionism,’ we mean the Jewish right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, which is Israel,” said Amir Grunhaus, campus senior and president of Tikvah, a Zionist student group that signed the statement. “This does not say anything about the self-determination of Palestinians.”Jackson expressed disagreement with this definition of Zionism, alleging that it was “colonial ideology” and that it is “problematic” to believe that a religious group has a right to a state of their own as it “requires discrimination” against people outside of that group.
This is "1984"-level thought police stuff. This lawyer defines what her political opponents believe.
Note also that Jackson here is defining Jews as a purely religious group, not as a people. According to her words, atheist Jews aren't Jews, either.
Jewish and Zionist identity can only be defined by those who oppose Jewish and Zionist identity.
And this is still not the height of Liz Jackson's hypocrisy.
She wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times against the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act where she falsely claimed that the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, which is incorporated in the Act, makes criticism of Israel illegal on campus. She's lying - the IHRA definition explicitly says that criticism of Israel similar to criticism of any country is not antisemitic.
Jackson wrote:
The State Department standard is highly controversial because it conflates criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Jewish hatred, shutting down debate by suggesting that anyone who looks critically at Israeli policy is somehow beyond the pale. It has no place on college campuses in particular, where we need students to engage in a vigorous exchange of ideas.
Jackson claims she supports a vigorous exchange of ideas on campus. No Zionist I know of disagrees. But at Berkeley, she has taken the exact opposite stand, and defends organizations making bylaws that ban not only speech that supports Zionism, but they ban Zionist speakers from speaking on any topic whatsoever!
To anti-Zionist hypocrites like Jackson and her organization Palestine Legal, these are the rules:
The right to self-identify is sacred - except for Jews.
The right to define your own beliefs is sacred - except for Zionists.
The right to free speech is sacred - except for nearly all Jews.
And calling out this obvious hypocrisy is anti-Palestinian racism.
