Ignoring Inconvenient Facts
Barbara Sofer has a good article on chic academic denial of the Intifada. The Israeli presence in Gaza and the West Bank is regularly trotted out to justify all manner of Palestinian atrocities:
I was recently listening to a European professor, a pacifist with truly impressive humanitarian credentials, as she described the suffering of the Palestinians under "occupation." Suddenly I realized there was no mention of the war they launched in September 2000. We Israelis were cast as the familiar unrepentant evil empire, lacking sensitivity, and the sole source of Palestinian misery. Conspicuous by their absence were even the token recognition that Israel might have security concerns, and the usual nominal condemnation of terror.
Sometimes this scape-goating can become truly mind-bending. I was in a class where I made some glib and not-too-clever comment about Palestinians rejecting Oslo because "they just liked killing Jews too much" (obviously, this statement is enthymematic of a whole host of issues: Arafat's radicalization of the Palestinian street, deep-seated Muslim anti-Semitism, etc - but the point remains). And in response, the professor went on a tirade about "daily humiliation at checkpoints." The irony, not commented on by anyone in the class, is that this professor was essentially blaming Israeli checkpoints for the Palestinians refusing to accept a peace deal to tear down those checkpoints. Oh, those wily Jews - always undermining peace with their daily humiliations!
One of the most significant issues will emerge as the Intifada recedes into the past - and with it the daily Palestinian intransigence that caused it. It's going to be easier and easier for these professors to distort and outright lie to students about the true causes of the conflict. The academic Edward-Said style "Israel started the Six Day War so they could conquer Arabs" fabrications are already so popular and prevalent that, as images of Palestinian terrorism fade, we can be sure another generation of students is about to be raised with the lazy assumption that Israelis are barbarians who abused poor Palestinians as long as they could until something - certainly not Bush (!!) - made them stop.
I was recently listening to a European professor, a pacifist with truly impressive humanitarian credentials, as she described the suffering of the Palestinians under "occupation." Suddenly I realized there was no mention of the war they launched in September 2000. We Israelis were cast as the familiar unrepentant evil empire, lacking sensitivity, and the sole source of Palestinian misery. Conspicuous by their absence were even the token recognition that Israel might have security concerns, and the usual nominal condemnation of terror.
Sometimes this scape-goating can become truly mind-bending. I was in a class where I made some glib and not-too-clever comment about Palestinians rejecting Oslo because "they just liked killing Jews too much" (obviously, this statement is enthymematic of a whole host of issues: Arafat's radicalization of the Palestinian street, deep-seated Muslim anti-Semitism, etc - but the point remains). And in response, the professor went on a tirade about "daily humiliation at checkpoints." The irony, not commented on by anyone in the class, is that this professor was essentially blaming Israeli checkpoints for the Palestinians refusing to accept a peace deal to tear down those checkpoints. Oh, those wily Jews - always undermining peace with their daily humiliations!
One of the most significant issues will emerge as the Intifada recedes into the past - and with it the daily Palestinian intransigence that caused it. It's going to be easier and easier for these professors to distort and outright lie to students about the true causes of the conflict. The academic Edward-Said style "Israel started the Six Day War so they could conquer Arabs" fabrications are already so popular and prevalent that, as images of Palestinian terrorism fade, we can be sure another generation of students is about to be raised with the lazy assumption that Israelis are barbarians who abused poor Palestinians as long as they could until something - certainly not Bush (!!) - made them stop.
