A Columbia Professor Worries that Jews Will “Infest” the Government

In a recent radio interview, Rashid Khalidi—a distinguished professor of Arab studies at Columbia University—voiced his fear that Jewish supporters of Israel would “infest” the Trump administration, using that verb not once but three times. Dore Feith, a former student of Khalid’s, responds:

[Khalidi’s] remarks may not be the ugliest comments along these lines that ever emerged from the Middle East-studies faculty at Columbia. . . . But the “infestation” theme is nasty enough to warrant special notice. What makes it nasty is its historical resonance. To be sure, not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism and not all anti-Semitism is Nazism. But there’s no getting around the fact that in his memoir Mein Kampf, Hitler over and over again described the Jews as an infestation of vermin. That was one of the book’s main metaphors. And that’s why Nazi officials made a point of saying their Jewish policy aimed not to “kill” but to “exterminate” (vernichten), a word more appropriate for bugs or lice than human beings. . . .

In [a statement given to the Forward in response to criticism of his words, Khalidi] acknowledged “infelicitous phrasing,” but that’s even less of an apology than the classic non-apology “I’m sorry if anyone took offense.” In an e-mail to me, he then renewed his attack on “these people” as having “a racialist disregard for Palestinians” and using “anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, and anti-international-law rhetoric.” In other words, Khalidi doubled down on his insult when he should have simply said “sorry.” Rather than granting that both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have points worth hearing, Khalidi painted Israel’s supporters as crazy extremists who lack rational arguments and who don’t deserve serious consideration.

Many good people are puzzled at how the Arab-Israeli conflict can fester and rage for more than 100 years. A key reason is that Israel’s enemies are so passionate in their hatred that they pass it down through the generations. Rashid Khalidi’s uncivil words demonstrate the problem. They damage the very people he favors. After all, the Palestinian people would benefit from mutual accommodation and peace with Israel. And his words also harm the interests of Columbia students who hope to have mutually respectful exchanges of ideas about controversial subjects.

Read more at National Review

More about: Academia, Anti-Semitism, Arab anti-Semitism, Israel & Zionism, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Rashid Khalidi

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society