Treatment of Israel Strikes an Alien Note

By Alan M. Dershowitz

National Post

11.5.02

 

If a visitor from a far away galaxy were to land at an American or Canadian

university and peruse some of the petitions that were circulating around the

campus, he would probably come away with the conclusion that the Earth is a

peaceful and fair planet with only one villainous nation determined to destroy

the peace and to violate human rights. That nation would not be Iraq, Libya,

Serbia, Russia or Iran. It would be Israel. There are currently petitions

circulating on most North American university campuses that would seek to have

universities terminate all investments in companies that do business in or with

Israel. There are also petitions asking individual faculty members to boycott

scientists and scholars who happen to be Israeli Jews, regardless of their

personal views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. There have been efforts, some

successful, to prevent Israeli speakers from appearing on college campuses, as

recently occurred at Concordia University. There are no comparable petitions

seeking any action against other countries that enslave minorities, imprison

dissidents, murder political opponents and torture suspected terrorists. Nor

are there any comparable efforts to silence speakers from other countries.

 

The intergalactic visitor would wonder what this pariah nation, Israel, must

have done to deserve this unique form of economic capital punishment. If he

then went to the library and began to read books and articles about this

planet, he would discover that Israel was a vibrant democracy, with freedom of

speech, press and religion, that was surrounded by a group of tyrannical and

undemocratic regimes, many of which are actively seeking its destruction. He

would learn that in Egypt, homosexuals are routinely imprisoned and threatened

with execution; that in Jordan suspected terrorists and other opponents of the

government are tortured, and that if individualized torture does not work,

their relatives are called in and threatened with torture as well; that in

Saudi Arabia, women who engage in sex outside of marriage are beheaded; that in

Iraq, political opponents are routinely murdered en masse and no dissent is

permitted; that in Iran members of religious minorities, such as Baha'is and

Jews, are imprisoned and sometimes executed; that in all of these surrounding

nations, anti-Semitic material is frequently broadcast on state-sponsored

television and radio programs; in Saudi Arabia apartheid is practiced against

non-Muslims, with signs indicating that Muslims must go to certain areas and

non-Muslims to others; that China has occupied Tibet for half a century; that

in several African countries women are stoned to death for violating sexual

mores; that slavery still exists in some parts of the world; and that genocide

has been committed by a number of countries in recent memory.

 

Our curious visitor would wonder why there are no petitions circulating with

regard to these human rights violators. Is Israel's occupation of the West Bank

and Gaza -- an occupation it has offered to end in exchange for peace -- worse

than the Chinese occupation of Tibet? Are the tactics used to combat terrorism

by Israel worse than those used by the Russians against Chechen terrorists? Are

Arab and Muslim states more democratic than Israel? Is there any comparable

institution in any Arab or Muslim state to the Israeli Supreme Court, which

frequently rules in favor of Palestinian claims against the Israeli government

and military? Does the absence of the death penalty in Israel alone, among

Middle East nations, make it more barbaric than the countries which behead,

hang and shoot political dissidents? Is Israel's settlement policy, which 78

percent of Israelis want to end in exchange for peace, worse than the Chinese

attempt at cultural genocide in Tibet? Is Israel's policy!

of full equality for openly gay soldiers and members of the Knesset somehow

worse than the policy of Muslim states to persecute those who have a different

sexual orientation than the majority? Is Israel's commitment to equality for

women worse than the gender apartheid practiced in Saudi Arabia?

 

Our visitor would be perplexed to hear the excuses made by university

professors and students for why they are prepared to "delegitimate" Israel

while remaining silent about the far worse abuses committed by other countries.

If he were to ask a student about the abuses committed by other countries, he

would be told (as I have been): "You're changing the subject. We're talking

about Israel now." This reminds me of an incident from the 1920s involving

then-Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell. Lowell decided that the number of

Jews admitted to Harvard should be reduced because "Jews cheat." When a

distinguished alumnus, Judge Learned Hand, pointed out that Protestants also

cheat, Lowell responded, "You're changing the subject; we're talking about

Jews."

 

It is not surprising, therefore, that as responsible and cautious a writer as

Andrew Sullivan, formerly editor of The New Republic and now a writer for The

New York Times Magazine, has concluded that "fanatical anti-Semitism, as bad or

even worse than Hitler's, is now a cultural norm across much of the Middle East

and beyond. It's the acrid glue that unites Saddam, Arafat, al-Qaeda,

Hezbollah, Iran and the Saudis. They all hate the Jews and want to see them

destroyed."

 

Our intergalactic traveler, after learning all of these facts, would wonder

what kind of a planet he had landed on. Do we have everything backwards? Do we

know the difference between right and wrong? Do our universities teach the

truth?

 

These are questions that need asking, lest we become the kind of world the

visitor would have experienced had he arrived in Europe during the late 1930s

and early 1940s.

 

****

 

Alan M. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard and author of Why Terrorism

Works. This essay is based on a speech before a United Jewish Appeal forum in

Toronto.