Guest post by Andrew Pessin
Anti-Israelism and the
Ph.D.
1.
One doesn’t often get such
delightful emails as this:
Do not
contact me again you deranged, perverted, genocidal freak. Please save your
poorly composed genocide denialism delusional fascist essay for your substack
audience of 5 like-minded brain rotted sociopaths. Please know this pathetic
email does not intimidate me, you and your creepy zionist alumni friends do not
intimidate me, all of Israel, and all of their weapons, and their international
impunity, and their corrupt imperial power do not intimidate me. I pity you.
Your life must truly be so miserable and meaningless for you, at your big
retired age, to be wasting your final days harassing young women you do not
know and who do not wish to know or engage with you. How embarrassing!
Though it wasn’t actually me
who received this, it might as well have been. I wrote an article
refuting the current libel that Israel is perpetrating a “genocide” in Gaza,
and a reader of that article forwarded it to the author of that email and was
treated to this response. Not wanting to hog it to himself, he kindly shared it
with me.
One might be tempted to
chuckle were it not all so tragic and, ultimately, perhaps even deadly.
The author of this email is a
graduate student at an elite university. I shall call her “H” (for Hamas and
Hezbollah, whose side she takes in the current conflict) and call the
university “Ivy.” In H’s response we see everything wrong not only with the
general anti-Israel hatred present on so many campuses, including (or especially)
elite campuses, but everything wrong with the academy in general over the past
number of years.
2.
Of all the many lies
regularly told about Israel, the “genocide” allegation is currently the most
important. If Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza then (a) Israel is evil
and (b) all measures must be taken to stop it. Never mind its justification for
being at war with Hamas, or the fact that Hamas is actually fighting back, or
the prospects for some form of long-term peace: if it’s not just a bilateral
war (with the tragic, if inevitable, civilian casualties) but a unilateral
“genocide,” then Israel must unilaterally stop its military activity.
Nor should one imagine that labeling
this activity as “genocide” is a measure of perfectly admirable concern for
Gaza’s suffering civilian population. That suffering would, after all, be more
quickly and permanently alleviated by the surrender of Hamas and return of
hostages, which would end the war instantly and allow Gaza to be rebuilt for actual
peace and prosperity. The “genocide” label in fact aims to delegitimize
Israel’s war effort, to stop Israel with Hamas still in power and still holding
the hostages, and thus to advance Hamas’s actually genocidal agenda toward the
Jews. The allegation of “genocide” is in fact a weapon in the longstanding war
against Israel.
Assuming, that is, that it is
false.
Of course it is false. In
fact it is demonstrably false. It is not even remotely true. Gaza may be
experiencing significant destruction and Gazan civilians great suffering, but,
regrettably but true, that is an ordinary (if tragic) consequence of war.
Though you might not know it from the hyper-focus on Israel, there are well
over 100 military conflicts occurring in the world right now, and there isn’t one
of them that doesn’t involve significant destruction and civilian suffering and
casualties. Many involve destruction and civilian casualties far exceeding
those in the current Israel-Hamas war and even in the wider
Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim conflict. Unless all wars are
“genocides,” Israel’s war on Hamas is not remotely a “genocide,” even if it’s
nearly the only one on that long list of conflicts that ever gets libeled by
that label. My lengthy and detailed article
defending this conclusion examines the reported casualty numbers and offers
extensive evidence and many arguments to demonstrate that, to the contrary,
Israel in its war against Hamas is taking literally unprecedented measures to target
only militants and to spare civilian lives, and largely succeeding in doing so.
To the contrary, too, the side actually seeking, and partially perpetrating,
genocide is Hamas: the evidence for that is incontrovertible, starting with its
never renounced foundational charter, including its four decades of terrorist activity and open
declarations of genocidal intent, and of course its October 7 massacre and
subsequent declarations. In light of all this evidence and these arguments, the
“genocide” allegation can be seen for what it is: a weaponized blood libel that
aims to delegitimize Israel and thus support Hamas’s genocidal war effort.
3.
But I’m fallible. The
evidence I invoke could be problematic. (The problem of obtaining accurate
information in this war is particularly acute.) My reasoning could be
fallacious. I admit that I could be mistaken in sundry ways. God knows I’ve
been mistaken often enough, as everyone from my Ph.D. advisor to my wife seems
to enjoy pointing out. But I’m an academic. So critique me. Challenge my
evidence. Offer alternative sources of evidence. Show me where my reasoning
goes wrong. That is how an academic—or anyone committed to the pursuit of
truth—behaves. Do not read the extensive evidence and argument on offer and merely
shout in response, “But, genocide!” Worse, do not not read the extensive
evidence and argument and just shout, “But, genocide!” That is not how an
academic behaves.
Especially not an academic
affiliated with an elite institution—among the most elite academic institutions
in the world, in fact, dedicated, as every elite institution mentions in their
mission statements and public declarations, to the acquisition and
dissemination of knowledge (and therefore truth). For one is surely not
pursuing knowledge or truth if one refuses to read, or simply dismisses, views
different from one’s own that are accompanied by evidence and argument. To behave
that way is to decide in advance what is true independently of the
evidence and arguments that are supposed to lead one to truth. To behave that
way is essentially to make things up, presumably to further one’s political
agenda. And that is just not how an academic supposedly in the business of
truth should behave.
In more detail now: I shared
my long article against the “genocide” allegation on my substack. A reader
shared it on his own substack, noting (he emailed me) that “I typically forward
my posts to, among others, those at [Ivy] I think might be, or should be,
interested in hearing something other than the standard Hamas/Palestinian
talking points.” And so he did, sending it to, among some seven dozen others, H.
He sent it to H because he thought she was the president of a significant
graduate student group at Ivy that is actively, and publicly, involved in
anti-Israel activity there. He thought she was still president because several recent
student newspaper articles identified her as such, and at least until this past
week she lists herself as “president” on her LinkedIn page. (It turns out that,
as of recently, she is no longer president, which my reader subsequently
acknowledged. No matter.) To get a sense of her public platform, a search of
her name on the Ivy student newspaper site returns 31 hits, many concerning her
work with the group she until recently led. Many of these articles publicly provide
her email address, perhaps as a contact for the public group she led. As for
the group itself, it publicly declares that its members include “researchers,” “teachers,” and “mentors” at [Ivy] (i.e.
academics), that it rejects all forms of discrimination, and that it nurtures
both the personal and the professional lives of its members. Whether the group
fulfills these virtuous claims toward many of its Jewish members is not clear,
given that it has consistently been outspoken against Israel, dating back some
years but especially so in supporting “resistance” (i.e. terror) since October
7, including through its prominent “Palestinian Solidarity Caucus.” So this is
why H was included on the list of some seven dozen to receive my reader’s
email: she was (until recently) the oft-publicly-quoted president of this very
public anti-Israel group, somehow finding copious time for her anti-Israel advocacy
while pursuing her PhD at Ivy in the humanities.
My reader was,
arguably, doing the thing academics should do. This graduate student group publicly
advocates for Hamas’s victory, in libeling Israel as perpetrating “genocide.”
Since H is an Ivy academic, working toward a PhD, shouldn’t she at least
grapple with an academic article contesting one of the fundamental claims repeatedly
made by the group she so publicly represents?
One thing we
can perhaps all agree on, given her response above, is that she didn’t like the
article.
As to how or
why her response is so objectionable, let us count the ways.
4.
Do not
contact me again you deranged, perverted, genocidal freak. Please save your
poorly composed genocide denialism delusional fascist essay for your substack
audience of 5 like-minded brain rotted sociopaths.
On the plus side, that H
calls it “poorly composed” suggests she may have read it, or some, though one
suspects, given the content, that she hasn’t, and, given the tone, that she’s
just flinging insults. But all considered this message comes across as being
from a person who has decided that the current war is a “genocide” and isn’t
interested in actually examining or engaging with the evidence and arguments. Instead
she offers some childish textbook ad hominem fallacy, calling the
competing point of view, and the person endorsing it, “deranged,” “perverted,”
“delusional,” and “fascist.” These are also the first clues that she is not in
fact operating with the same English language that I am, at least. There is
literally nothing in my anti-“genocide” article that conceivably has anything
to do with fascism, for example, so she seems to be simply slapping that word on
any point of view she doesn’t like. Ditto for “delusional,” which is an odd
response to a 4000-word, detailed, heavily documented, and quite sober
engagement with facts and evidence, all of which, though fallible, is about as far
from “delusional” as one could be. If my theory doesn’t fit the facts, as they
say, so much the worse for the facts: dismiss them as “delusional” and you
don’t have to deal with them. Orwell would be proud here: the view that doesn’t
engage with the facts is the truth, in her mind, while the actual facts are
discredited as delusions.
Given this abuse of language,
her use of “genocide” becomes equally suspect.
Indeed, notice how she tosses
in, quite strategically, that word “genocidal” and the phrase “genocide
denialism.” Apparently someone who denies that a “genocide” is occurring in
some particular instance is ipso facto in favor of, or complicit in, that
(non-existing) genocide. That leap of logic is hard to bridge: denying
something is an instance of genocide literally has nothing to do with whether
one is in favor of or in any way complicit in anything. I am myself quite
opposed to all forms of genocide and my writing that article literally
perpetrated nothing, except an article. It’s even quite logically possible to
deny a “genocide” is occurring and still be quite opposed to the way the
Israeli military is conducting its Gaza campaign, as a more honest
anti-Israelist might hold. Her move only makes sense when we realize she isn’t
using “genocide” to mean genocide here. It may just mean, in her mind,
any military activity she doesn’t like, or specifically any Israeli military
activity, period, regardless of whether that activity is, well, actually
“genocidal.” She quite obviously doesn’t like any Israeli military
activity, including, given her public history, even that in the form of
self-defense or that which clearly targets militants while attempting to
minimize civilian casualties. So she calls all Israeli military activity
“genocide” no matter how it is exercised, and any article that seemingly defends
any Israeli military activity—including by denying the genocide libel levied
against it—is therefore in support of “genocide.” Now that makes sense, apart
from the fact that she’s making up her own meaning for the word “genocide.” As
with her use of “fascist” and “delusional,” “genocide” becomes a label she
slaps on everything Israel she doesn’t like. Orwell would again be proud,
though perhaps her elementary school English teachers, and the Webster
dictionary, might be a little disappointed.
Beyond the childish insults
and the flagrant abuse of language, also note the neat rhetorical trick here.
She libels Israel with “genocide,” then labels anyone who questions her libel
as a “genocidal genocide denialist.” This move supplements her textbook ad
hominem fallacy with some textbook “poisoning the well” fallacy (with
perhaps some textbook “begging the question” fallacy and simple gaslighting
thrown in for good measure). To see the problem, imagine I falsely alleged that
your friend was a pedophile, and the moment you began to refute the allegation
I responded by calling you a “pedophilic pedophile-denier.” That would be an
obvious attempt to discredit you in advance, before you can even offer the
evidence or arguments to refute the libel, thus making the libel impossible to
challenge. Your demonstrating that the allegation is false is transformed into
actively supporting the evil activity falsely being alleged! It’s like falsely
charging someone with a crime then charging anyone who offers evidence to
refute the charge with the same crime. It’s called a fallacy because that
strategy obviously doesn’t mean the original allegation is true; it amounts to
refusing even to consider the relevant evidence to determine whether the
allegation is true, thus shows a profound disinterest in truth. But “fallacy”
is too technical, and polite, a term: it’s deeply dishonest and, frankly,
sleazy. It’s political advocacy, bullying, dressed up as rational discourse. It’s
Soviet-style totalitarian propaganda and manipulation, worthy of a Stalinesque
show trial.
It’s not what someone who
cares about truth would do. Yet the person doing this is en route to a PhD at
an elite institution. One would be tempted to share this behavior with her PhD
committee, as evidence of her unsuitedness to the degree, did one not suspect
or fear that many on her committee would behave the same way as she.
Note next the nice little dig
at her antagonist’s allegedly small following, of “5 like-minded brain rotted
sociopaths.” Points for the amusing insults, though once again one suspects
that “sociopath,” like “fascist” etc., is simply a slur here that she flings
against any position or person she does not like. My guess is that she believes
all Zionists are ipso facto sociopaths, which means that for her, those
who believe that Jews have basic human rights, including the right to live in
security in their ancestral homeland, are evil mentally defectives. I believe,
to the contrary, that this reveals far more about her deep-rooted bigotry
against Jews than it does anything about Zionists or Jews.
But I digress. The main point
about this dig is that it is fallacious as well. Since when, in the pursuit of
truth, does the number of followers matter? Truth isn’t a democracy. Sometimes
the minority, sometimes even the single brave individual standing against the
mob, has the truth on their side. The Nazis had massive popular support in
Germany of their time; does that mean they were right in their worldview? In
academia, in fact, one is often encouraged to find one’s own point of view,
one’s own original angle or theory, that differs from others’. What have you
contributed, what use are you as an academic, after all, if you are merely
going to parrot whatever the majority already thinks? On this perspective it
may well be a plus that you have few followers, or even better that you
stand alone, particularly in the humanities. Or perhaps not—because the only
thing that matters, when it comes to determining the truth, is what the
evidence and arguments have to say, not the numbers of people who agree.
All she is really doing here,
with her juvenile insults, is trying to bully my reader into silence by somehow
embarrassing or shaming him. As a PhD in progress her preference for fallacies,
disinterest in evidence and arguments, and now bullying behavior, are all truly
quite alarming.
5.
Please
know this pathetic email does not intimidate me, you and your creepy zionist
alumni friends do not intimidate me, all of Israel, and all of their weapons,
and their international impunity, and their corrupt imperial power do not
intimidate me.
So, then, to present this
person with evidence and arguments that challenge her preconceived opinion is apparently
perceived by her as an attempt to “intimidate” her. People sometimes complain
about the current generation of “snowflake” students; one wonders if this is
what they mean. Indeed, the truth can be intimidating: it doesn’t care what you
think or feel about it, and you ignore it or deny it at your peril. Eventually,
we have to hope, it will get you to comply. But at minimum an academic who is interested
in truth would want to comply. And a truth-seeker would want to
hear alternative points of view and opposing arguments. On what grounds do you
believe whatever you believe to be true, after all, if not evidence and
arguments? And if you want the truth, to avoid being mistaken, don’t you want
to hear all the evidence and arguments? How would you ever determine
that you are wrong about something unless you seriously consider the evidence
and arguments that support the other side?
H’s reply reveals that she is
playing a very different game here. To bring evidence and arguments is, for
her, not a commendable attempt to persuade by rational truth-seeking means but a
condemnable attempt to “intimidate.” See, too, the immediate link she makes
between the emailed attempt to persuade her and “all of Israel, and all of
their weapons”: the attempt to persuade is equated with the force of a military
and its weapons. This person apparently sees no difference between offering
evidence and arguments for a position and coming in with guns blazing. There
are indeed academic theories, fairly popular across various disciplines, that
hold more or less that view, that persuasion should be construed as a form of
intimidation. But now where persuasion is discredited as “intimidation” one’s
opinion becomes divorced from truth. Opinion is no longer based on evidence and
arguments, whose whole point is to “persuade.” Opinion becomes untouchable,
insensitive to evidence and arguments, to be preserved no matter what the
evidence and arguments, the truth, might be. Someone who holds this is simply
not concerned with the truth, since the truth, to the degree that we can
determine it, is closely connected to evidence and arguments.
The opinion matters—having
the right opinion as determined by some scale or persons or political agenda having
nothing to do with the truth—but not the truth.
This is apparently what they
are teaching in this PhD program at Ivy.
This person will soon be a
professor in a classroom near you.
6.
I pity
you. Your life must truly be so miserable and meaningless for you, at your big
retired age, to be wasting your final days harassing young women you do not
know and who do not wish to know or engage with you. How embarrassing!
In case the fallacies above,
the disinterest in truth, and the “persuasion is intimidation” (and now “harassment”)
worldview weren’t enough to have you concerned about higher education today, she
closes with a finale smorgasbord of bigotry and more fallacies.
Yes my reader is an alum of
that same Ivy from some decades back. But why is she invoking his age? In what
universe does that matter? He sent this budding academic an academic article
challenging something she publicly alleges, using the email address she
publicly posts when making her allegations. What matters is only whether what
he (or the article) is saying, or arguing, whether it is true or correct or
persuasive, not who is saying it or how old they are. The gratuitous meanness
(“your big retired age,” “wasting your final days”) reveals what is happening
here: she is attempting to dismiss him, discredit him without having to listen
to him, as a worthless old fogey.
For the record, discrediting
people on the basis of their age isn’t merely an additional ad hominem and
poisoning the well fallacy: it’s also a form of bigotry. It’s called ageism—and
it’s one of the forms of discrimination that her own graduate student group
publicly claims it is opposed to. One only hopes she treats her grandparents,
and maybe her more senior professors, with at least a little more respect than
this. And may she merit that her future grandchildren not treat her the way she
treats her seniors.
And of course two can play at
that game: this young whippersnapper seems awfully sure of herself, for such a
young, inexperienced whippersnapper. She is even arrogant enough to offer
advice to my reader on how he should spend his golden years! That arrogance, incidentally,
violates the standpoint theory quite prevalent in her social circles, according
to which it’s considered offensive to speak to the experience of identities
different from yours. Imagine a white person instructing a person of color how
they should live their lives as a person of color; a man instructing a woman; a
heterosexual instructing a gay. That offensive arrogance makes a truly painful
combination with her simultaneous youthful ignorance. In her view, his interest
in defending the truth—not to mention defending the Jews from the blood libels
relentlessly flung against them—is not among her candidates for well-spent golden
years time. To the contrary, when hate-filled young whippersnappers spread
dangerous lies, I can think of little more meaningful activity than countering
it—however old you are.
But don’t listen to me. I’m
an older guy too.
“Wasting your final days ….”
This is not a serious person.
This is a young bully, self-absorbed
into her echo chamber, slinging mud to shame and to silence.
Because ageism apparently
isn’t bigotry enough she throws in some sexism as well, framing his missive as
an instance of “harassing young women.” She may be a “young woman,” but why,
exactly, is that relevant? As we noted, my reader regularly writes to many
people who publicly espouse anti-Israel or antisemitic views, regardless of
their age or sex, including many of the publicly anti-Israel professors that
fill this graduate student’s Ivy campus and perhaps department. The email in
question, he informed me, he bcc’d to some seven dozen people. Her accusation
is trying to imply something sinister here, as if she were targeted for that
identity, by the older man she has already disparaged for his age. What in fact
was a reasonable attempt to engage intellectually, by challenging her publicly
expressed position, is experienced as targeting her as a young woman. Again,
this is a PhD candidate at an elite institution. Has no one told her that part
of getting a PhD, of becoming an intellectual, an academic, a researcher, one
who searches for truth—is having your claims, your allegations, your arguments
actually challenged? Is every such academic challenge an attack on a “young
woman”? Are men not allowed to challenge what women say? Or just older men
aren’t allowed?
Or are just Jews not allowed?
Or is no one allowed to
challenge her, ever?
Just what, oh what, are they
teaching them in her graduate program?
7.
I try to be fair to the
people I disagree with. That’s part of my own commitment to the truth: you
won’t get at the truth unless you give alternative views the very best hearings
you can give them, which includes giving one’s intellectual opponents a fair
hearing and the benefit of the doubt. So I try to put myself in their shoes, to
the degree possible.
All I know of this person is
this email, and what I’ve read in a half-dozen articles by or about her in the
Ivy student newspaper. Though I share the human inclination to make large, snap
judgments based on partial information, I do my best to resist that here. For
all I know she is a wonderful human being in many ways that I would recognize,
so I take my remarks above to express judgments about that email alone and not ultimately
about the person making them. Plus, I recently published a novel partly about how
different we can become from our college-age (or graduate school age) selves,
so I recognize: she’s a young whippersnapper, and has plenty of time to grow
and change ahead.
I understand she sincerely
believes a “genocide” is occurring. Though I am critical of the grounds on
which she believes that, I recognize that if I believed that, I too would be
deeply emotional, deeply active, and filled with not very nice feelings toward
those I believed were perpetrating, complicit in, or just generally supportive
of that genocide. That is why my feelings toward Hamas, and toward the many on
campuses who either openly or implicitly support Hamas, are not very positive.
So I get that.
The closest example I can
think of for myself might be that of a Holocaust denier. Suppose someone sent
me a long, documented article “demonstrating” that various aspects of the
Holocaust never happened: challenging the numbers, denying the gas chambers,
etc. Many such articles (and books) in fact exist, and are all too easy to find
on the internet, and all too many people fall into that category. I can
understand not engaging with such a person, because there is no point; I can
understand, even, sending an angry email not dissimilar to the one this young
woman sent to my reader (though more likely I would simply not engage at all).
Genocide-deniers, indeed. So I even get that email, too.
In not engaging with the
Holocaust denier, in even contemplating sending a similarly dismissive email to
the Holocaust denier, am I guilty of some or all of the things I have just
levied against her?
The cases seem profoundly
different to me.
But that is a matter for
another article, so I leave it here for now.
Follow Andrew Pessin on substack (https://andrewpessin.substack.com/), twitter (@AndrewPessin), or at www.andrewpessin.com....
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Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
