Hating Israel at New York University

October 19, 2011 By 47 Comments

The recent call by NYU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for TIAA-CREF to divest holdings in targeted companies doing business in Israel is part of a troubling trend that exposes dangerous radicalism on campuses disguised as efforts at achieving social justice. In 2010, for instance, student-led groups at both UC San Diego and UC Berkeley introduced initiatives to demonize Israel once again in the court of world opinion. One effort, disingenuously named “UCSD Divest for Peace,” was aimed at divesting university funds from U.S. companies which benefit Israel and which take a “non-neutral financial stance in the occupation of Palestinian territories.”  The Berkeley initiative, endorsed by 41 student groups in March 2010 and cynically named “A Bill In Support of UC Divestment From [Israeli] War Crimes,” was promoted by a broader anti-Israel effort named the “U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.”

The latest NYU effort, an “Open Letter to TIAA-CREF CEO and President Roger W. Ferguson from NYU Faculty and Staff,” signed by over 70 members of the NYU community, has as its purpose “to pressure TIAA-CREF into divesting its holdings in 5 key companies which profit from the illegal Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians.” It has at its core the same baseless accusations and libels against Israel, namely, that Caterpillar “sells the bulldozers used by the IDF to destroy Palestinian homes, infrastructure, and fruit and olive trees;” Elbit Systems provides “drones used to kill Palestinian and Lebanese civilians;” Northrop Grumman builds weaponry that “Israel needs to defend itself from crowds of children throwing stones;” Veolia “operates a light-rail system linking Israel’s illegal settlements to Jerusalem;” and Motorola “manufactures surveillance equipment for Israeli checkpoints” [emphasis added].

These companies, it is asserted by SJP, are not only complicit in the slaughter and oppression of the completely innocent Palestinians, but the firms profit, in an immoral and rapacious way, from the suffering caused by their occupation and dispossession. Clearly, there is no historical context to these outrageous claims, no moral balance, no acknowledgement of Israel’s existential threats from Hamas, Hezbollah, and its other genocidal neighbors–only condemnation for being an oppressive, racist, murderous colonial settler state, illegal, in the view of activists, under international law.

This core sentiment has come to define the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement; the notion that the repeated defamation of Israel will result in its eventual expulsion from the supposed civilized community of nations. But the call for divestment is merely a tactic through which Israel will be marginalized, and eventually extirpated, as a pariah state with no moral justification for existing. Thus, Students for Justice in Palestine — which gives public expression to notions of “social justice” for everyone in the Middle East but actually means justice for the Palestinians alone, and not to Israelis — admit, when pushed, that the sole underlying purpose of their calls for divestment is not, as is frequently though falsely described, to create a Palestinian state that will exist “side by side with Israel in peace,” but actually as a new entity that will either economically, militarily, or demographically subsume Israel.

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About

Richard L. Cravatts, PhD, Professor of Practice at Simmons College, is the author of "Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel & Jews" (a David Horowitz Freedom Center publication) and President of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

  • http://www.contextflexed.com Flipside

    You bogusly assert here and to Alice Walker that supporting Palestinian self-determination necessitates the weakening and destruction of Israel. You also have a lot of nerve challenging the BDS assertions about Caterpillar. I seem to recall only recently the publication of books like "Hitler's Willing Executioners," "Nazi Gold," and "IBM and the Holocaust" in a series of muckraking attempts to shakedown companies for money. You yourself work at universities while writing books attacking universities in similar fashion. You also weaseled out of you argument in your last sentence by qualifying it.

    • Jerry

      Flipside could just as easily seen Caterpillar as defending Israel as the state that will suffer most given Arab repression of minorities and their perennial regressive tendencies.

      • http://www.contextflexed.com Flipside

        No, because I’d have to stand on my head to agree with you. You need only stand on a Palestinian’s head to agree with yourself.

        • UCSPanther

          And I'll do exactly that if that is what it takes.

          Oh, and Caterpillar rules. One of the world's largest manufacturers of heavy equipment, especially tracked machines since 1925.

        • Jerry

          Made no sense. Negation of the Israeli complaints about the Palestinians simply stands as prejudice.

          • http://www.contextflexed.com Flipside

            Or just being sick of hearing them.

          • Jerry

            Dear John,

            Same thing as being prejudiced!

  • http://www.mostatlantic.com George

    Palestinians are terrorists and evil parasites, and our elites are nurturing them. Real Americans support Israel and their fight for their very existence, against the savages. Palestinians danced and cheered on 9/11. Are we to support these barbarians? NO WAY!

    • John Smith

      Just to clarify your comment: All 6 million Palestinians, including women, children, and the elderly, are terrorists and evil parasites, and our elites are nurturing them by providing $3 billion dollars in military aid to Israel so that Israel can kill and oppress them more effectively during one of our worst economic downturns in the past century. Real Americans support Israel, which has the 4th-ranked military force in the entire world as well as nuclear weapons, in their fight for their very existence, against people who have stones and crude home-made unguided rockets. According to a long-discredited video which I'll refer to anyway, Palestinians danced and cheered on 9/11. Are we to support Israel? Why not, I don't think they've killed enough Palestinian children yet.

      • Jerry

        John Smith wrote, "All 6 million Palestinians, including women, children, and the elderly, are terrorists and evil parasites…"

        Dear John, the proper metric is the PROBABILITY OF SOMETHING GOING WRONG TIMES THE DEVASTATION OF THAT EVENT. If one percent of a peculiar population can destroy all that has been built, then it behooves a moral society to restrict the potential for devastation. That is why every society pursues murderers more aggressively than petty thieves. Indeed, both sides can use this reasoning and it is up to you, Dear John, to decide which side you prefer. That will reveal the metal from which you are made.

        • John Smith

          Jerry, are you saying that because more than 1% of the Israeli population consists of settlers, who shout "Death to Arabs" and are responsible for numerous "price tag" attacks, and because these settlers may get their hands on the nuclear weapons (estimated at 200 warheads) that Israel possesses, we should act to destroy Israel now? Surely not. I don't think we can justify wiping out an entire population, simply because a minority MAY someday do something regrettable. That would be collective punishment, Jerry, which is a crime against humanity. I know that you wouldn't want to punish Israeli babies any more than you'd want to punish Palestinian babies by, say, denying them medical treatment and restricting their food sources (see: Gaza), right?

          • Jerry

            Dear John,

            You apparently misread my response. I am perfectly willing to admit that the logic runs both ways. It all depends upon who you would much rather live your life with – Arabs or Jews. Since the Arabs are genocidal by most accounts, I would choose the Jews. My guess is that you have not been to Israel and that you know only a few Jews upon whom you would personally impose death. Yet you have condemned the entirety of the Jewish People to suffer Arab "justice." Sorry, John, you are a coward for not thinking about the implications of your viewpoint and accepting personal responsibility for your unreasoned opinions.

          • John Smith

            "the Arabs" and "the Jews"? Sorry to break it to you, Jerry, but you're a racist, just as much as someone who lumps "the Blacks" together is. You should get that checked out before it starts to affect your karma.

  • Shalom Freedman

    The imposition of the 'Palestinian agenda' takes many forms in the university world. It has undermined objective scholarship in many Middle Eastern Studies departments. It has led to intimidation of pro- Israel students on campuses. It has set a new standard for silencing free speech on campuses. It is in other words in direction contradiction with fundamental values of a free society, and of a world of free inquiry and research. It is the Jihad mentality imported to America from the world of Radical Islam, and adopted by the Radical Anti-American extreme Left portion of university faculties. Richard Cravatts is to be commended for exposing here another instance of this ugly and evil mentality.

  • aspacia

    Cravatts will probably be targeted by his liberal peers. He has guts.

    • http://www.contextflexed.com Flipside

      I would imagine that if he attacks his peers, they will respond.

  • tagalog

    Many years ago, we NYU undergraduates, when we didn't refer to NYU as "Ennui U." sometimes also referred to it as 'N.Y. Jew" because of the size of the Jewish enrollment there. It's true that the term was somewhat unkind, but it wasn't particularly cruel, just insensitive. But it was also true that NYU had a large segment of Jewish students.

    I guess the term, however off-putting, is no longer descriptive of the student body makeup at NYU in these latter days.

    • Dr. Dave

      This does not reflect demography. NYU's numerous Jewish students have been put on the defensive and to the great joy of NYU's resident Jew-haters many Jewish student have been recruited into the tent of Self-Loathers. Nothing makes a Christian Jew-hater happier than for Jewish kids assume the stereotypical role of "Judas". And nothing makes Muslim Jew-haters happier than to see Jewish kids self destruct. All it takes is peer pressure & brainwashing with lots of baseless arguments.

      • John Smith

        As we're well aware, it is only a "self-loathing" Jew who tries to stand up for the rights of others … you know, like we're taught to do by the traditions of Judaism. All proper Jews fully support the many atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinians, because if you don't support Zionism, you're not a Real Jew.

        • tagalog

          Could you (1) define your intended meaning of the term "atrocity" and (2) give an example or two of Israeli "atrocities"?

          • tara

            Hm… Lets see to start with Israel is a country that was founded no longer than 60 years ago , it was founded on OTHER people's land. You took over other people s land, you kicked them out of their homes, you ve murdered thousands of women and children you ve built walls to put them inside as big giant prisons and now your even building homes inside the only territories they have left.

            How would you feel if someone came and took your home just becausue their stupid religious book says that this land belonged to them? How would you feel if the great powers supported people to take your hhome and kill your children

          • tagalog

            Israel was founded three thousand years ago. I learned that in Christian Sunday School when I was a kid.

            Israel was not founded on other peoples' land. It was a British Protectorate, mostly unexploited and unoccupied desert, and belonged to no one. It was settled by Jews and Arabs, mostly along the coastline and in the river valleys and other wet areas. Jews had occupied the Holy Land for thousands of years. It was a Jewish state at the time of Christ, although occupied by Roman imperialists. The Holy Land became subject to Arab colonization during the late 7th and early 8th Centuries A.D., when Islam was on its great march. At that time, the Holy Land had been ruled by the Jews for about 2000 years and was predominantly Christian and Jewish, with its people being diverse, Aramaic, Jewish, Samaritan, Arabic, etc., but subject to Jewish rule. The Byzantines probably exercised some influence at that time until the Muslims installed it into the Caliphate.

            I would need to know more about the history of the establishment of Israel in the 1940s in order to reach a judgment on the part about kicking people out of their homes and taking over their land. I know that some of the people who have come to call themselves "Palestinians" abandoned their property and homes when Israel was established. I know that Ben-Gurion and the Knesset passed legislation acknowledging full and equal citizenship in Israel for the non-Jewish people who lived there, but some of them, the Muslims, rejected that offer.

            I also don't know about any walls to keep people in "giant prisons," and would ask for some concrete account of that incident.

          • John Smith

            Well, if you learned that "Israel was founded three thousand years ago" in Christian Sunday School, I guess that must be right, and we can ignore the majority of 1500+ years of scholarship on the subject. Which side did you say were the religious fundamentalists again?

          • tagalog

            What does the scholarship say? If it says the state of Israel was first founded in 1948, it's way wrong. The Kingdom of Israel was founded in 1020 B.C., with Saul as its first king, followed by David. At the time of Christ, 2000 years ago, the Holy Land was interchangeably known as Judea (the southern part of Eretz Israel) or Israel, and was at least nominally ruled by the Jewish king Herod as part of the Roman Empire. In addition to learning that in my History of the Near East course in college (and in other readings during my maturity), I also learned THAT in Sunday School. We Presbyterians don't screw around; it wasn't all flannel boards and "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know."

            Have you had a chance to produce any examples of those "many" Israeli "atrocities" you so cavalierly refer to in an earlier post?

      • B white

        Christian Jew hater? That my friend is anti- Christian. Just because you call yourself a Christian does not make you one! When a person calling them self a Christian engages in anti-Jew behavior they must be called out that the behavior is anti-Christian per the Gospels and corrected!

        • tagalog

          I don't think it's necessarily anti-Christian to call a person a "Christian Jew-hater." Sadly, Christianity has a centuries-long history of hating Jews. First there was the movement of Christians to make Christianity separate from Judaism so that it wouldn't be seen as a Jewish sect. That got out of hand with an early Church father, Marcion of Sinope, who eventually was denounced as heretical. He wanted to eliminate the Old Testament from Christianity because it was too Jewish. Then, later, in medieval times, we had the Inquisition (which was intended and organized to look into Christian lapses) pushing its nose into the issue the sincerity of the conversos, Muslim and Jewish, in Spain; then we had the barbarian take on Christianity and the barbaric slant adopted by rulers in Europe persecuting the Jews. Finally, Western Christians stepped back from persecuting the Jews a couple of hundred years ago with the rise of democracy and the Age of Reason. But the term "Christian Jew-hater" is an apt term and describes a truth.

          Obviously, not all Christians hate Jews. But some do.

          Fortunately, Christians are beginning to hold a hand out to Jews as fellow believers in republican democracy and as their predecessors in monotheism, and brothers in faith and reason, in ways that Muslims never will be.

  • downtowndave3

    It is amazing to me how people can look at both sides of the issue and be so one sided. It appears to me as nothing more than insanity.

    God is the God of Israel. He has chosen Jerusalem as the place to put His Name. He has given the land of Israel to the Jews. He says to not divide Israel up. The Jews are fighting for their survival, and sometimes this means collatoral damage.

    The land of Israel belongs to the Jews, not the Palestinians. There is no two state solution that will bring peace. And God will bless those who bless Israel, and those who curse Israel God will curse. http://483years.blogspot.com/

    • John Smith

      And people have the gall to say that it's the Palestinians who are the religious fundamentalists! Astonishing.

      • tara

        yea isnt it disgusting that they think they have the right to take over an entire country , including other people's homes and kill their children JUST BECAUSE OF THAT STUPID BOOK that says this land belonged to them.. these palestinians have lived there for thousands of years and now with the support of the great powers they lose their homes because " GOD CHOSE THAT ISRAEL BELONGS TO PALESTINIAN"

        • tara

          sorry i mean because god chose that israel belongs to jews hehe

        • stern

          Actually, you have it completely backwards. To begin with, if you look at the historical demographics of the area, you will discover that the Arab population increased hugely only with the influx of Jews in the late 18th and early 19th century. Before that, the land was mostly empty, unwanted and unclaimed. What's more, the Jews paid exorbitant prices for the land, which they worked their butts off to make arable – and that's what attracted so many Arabs. Without the Jews, the entire area would still be a wasteland.

          Jump ahead to the War of 1948 and do some real, genuine research (i.e. not just in the pages of The Guardian and the shows of the BBC) and you will find actual documentation demonstrating that 99% of the Arab population left of their own free will or at the urging of their leaders, who had promised they could return after they Jews had been pushed into the sea. For proof of this, see Efraim Karsh's latest book, Palestine Betrayed. It provides solid proof, drawing on recently British and Arab archival documents.

          Finally, take a look at UNWRA's definition of "refugee": any Arab who lived in the area for a minimum of 2 years before 1948. TWO EFFING YEARS!!!! So much for your "thousands of years" garbage. UNWRA gave the Arab's a free pass and free access to the world's charity, for absolutely nothing and, it seems for eternity! Must be nice never to have to worry about working for a living, as long as you can blame those damned Joos.

          Get your facts straight, Tara, or go away. Jew-hating history-revising bigots have no place here.

          • John Smith

            Can't… stop… laughing! That's rich, it really is. Look, aside from actual scholarly books like "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" (or if you don't like Leftist Ilan Pappe, try some Zionist Benny Morris, who documents the rapes, mass-killings, and other atrocities used by Zionist terrorists), how about I just ask you this one question: do you really think that the land around Jerusalem, one of the most contested areas in the Middle East for centuries, was "mostly empty, unwanted, and unclaimed"? Does that make any sense to you?

            Kudos for reviving "Land without a people, for a people without a land", though. I haven't seen that old canard used seriously for many years.

        • Kathleen

          “these palestinians have lived there for thousands of years”….wrong, Tara.

          Jews have lived there for thousands of years. The Arabs invaded (hint: they speak Arabic, they are Muslim, now where do you think they came from originally?) quite a bit more recently. And BTW, prior to 1947 “Palestinian” meant anybody who lived in Palestine, never a nation but a colonial outpost first of the Ottoman Turks and then the British. It was only the Arabs who re-appropriated the term for their own use in the 1960s. Today’s “Palestinians” are a completely invented people. Hey, even their leaders admitted it! Most of them are descendents of people who never set foot in what is now the land of Israel before the Zionist movement actually started to build an economy and an infrastructure there. Most of them came from Syria or what is now Jordan (which BTW takes up over 75 percent of the former land of Palestine.) , . The only reason they’re not there now is those countries refused to take them back, preferring them to be Israel’s problem. In the late 19th century the majority of the population of Jerusalem was Jewish. So don’t give us that c**p about it being the Arabs’ land. Why aren’t you fighting for the rights of all the ethnic Germans expelled from Russia and eastern Europe after the war, where they had lived for generations? It was a war, stupid, and they lost. BTW the Palestinian Arabs were allies of the Nazis. It’s all part of the historical record. As you’d find out if you were able to read.

    • tagalog

      In addition to that, Israel is a republican democracy; the only one in the Middle East. Israel should be supported by the U.S. for that reason alone.

  • BS77

    Leave it to the left: If they had their way, we would all live like rats in garbage dumps, in countries like Zimbabwe or Somalia, North Korea or Pakistan….if the leftist idiots have their way, progress would stall, ….The libtard morons in colleges and the universities, teachers and students alike, have no idea what they are doing. They are playing with fire.

  • StephenD

    Here we are with our next door neighbor vowing to destroy our children and take over our land which has been in our family for nearly 4000 yrs. He has attacked and killed our women and children. His leaders have called them "Holy Warriors." He has exploited every resource provided to give him a helping hand and instead concentrates his efforts on his stated goal of destroying us. We have obliged him and given some of our land to him only to be bombarded immediately after. This is the thanks; this is the effort toward peace we get. We give him back 1000 of his killers of innocents for one of our own and he celebrates their return, never acknowledging their dastardly deeds but rather extolling them as virtuous in open and joyous celebration! It is obvious that no matter what we do, our neighbor will not abandon his stated goal of destroying us. Hell, he won't even acknowledge our right to exist. The rest of the neighborhood tells us we should negotiate for peace with him.
    Has the world gone insane?!?

    • John Smith

      I wish you'd stop recounting what happened in 1948. What the Zionist terrorist militias did to the native Palestinians was terrible, yes, but let's move forward and maybe we can agree on 1967 borders, or a one-state solution. Wouldn't you agree?

      • tagalog

        Whatever else is true, it's a certainty that wherever Muslims can point to some point in the past when some geographical area was part of the umma, that area is claimed for Islam forever. The Muslim attitude toward that part of Spain and Portugal that was once al-Andalus is that it's still Muslim territory and open to Muslim reconquest at any time. Muslims also adhere to the idea that once an area has been conquered in war, that area belongs to the conqueror.

        So Israel, having won certain territories in the Six-Day War, is entitled to keep them against all contenders, as its own territory, by Islam's own standards, as well by Arabic standards.

      • StephenD

        What happened in 1948 that you refer to? What 1967 borders are you talking about? What would you call this one-state that you seek? I must say, I am profoundly pleased that you have no say whatever in the affairs of humanity. Go on now and give thanks for your life and make use of it instead of trying to be clever and insulting. You at last become droll at best and annoying at least.

  • Marty

    Another pity party for the oppressed palestinians on a dysfunctional college campus. Israel supplies gaza with electricity and foodstuffs and free medical care and receives in return rockets aimed at schools and hospitals. palestinians are pathetic. All they know how to do besides hate Jews is to subsist on welfare, most of it funded by the American taxpayers. palestinians try to murder Jews and then run and hide behind their own children and spouses. They have no dignity or purpose and simply delight in their own misery. It's no wonder they have a leadership that is characterized by violence and incompetence. Sometimes people really do deserve the leaders they have.

    • John Smith

      Yes, Palestinians are entirely unlike us civilized people. They're predisposed towards violence, and their culture is violent, and they hate without reason. That happens to be the same doctrine that was historically fed to the masses when an elite wanted to oppress the blacks, and the Native Americans, and the Chinese, and the Aborigines, and any other group that got in the way of the colonial enterprise. But in THIS case, I'm sure it happens to be 100% true, right?

  • xlent

    Liberal hate is a cancer that needs controled radiation or maybe a strong dose of chemotruththerapy, lobotomies for liberals could possibly help. There's a couple of folks here that are obviously beyond help.

  • Jim

    Where is the Southern Poverty Law Center or the ADL and the ACLU?

  • dave

    BREAKING NEWS…….Humanitarian Crisis………Hurry, Hurry everybody, the international welfare parasites are wanting their welfare check. Their running low on suicide belts, rockets, mortars, and nails. Again, I plead with the international community, this is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions we are witnessing here. Just today, I had to witness the disturbing scene of a man in Gaza having to put cheap marbles in his suicide vest instead of brand new shiny galvanized steel nails………oh, the collective punishment of Israel is to much to witness……..It would be funny………if it wasn't so true….

  • Zeke

    There are psychological conditions that render people unable to distinguish the truth from lies. Unfortunately,many of these bleeding hearts for Palestinians refuse to acknowledge history. Some are blatantly antisemitic while others are nonJewish Jews(those who separate themselves from judaic teachings for whatever reason and try to destroy anything Jewish). Most, however, are closet antisemites who use the Palesstinians as an excuse for condemning Israel and encouraging a 2nd Holocaust—like the leadership factions within the mainstream churches.
    An objective history tells us that the UN voted to approve a partition of the formefr British mandate into a Jewish State and a Palestinian state. The Jews accepted the resolution while the Arabs rejected it and invaded Israel. The Arabs lost and have been trying to destroy Israel since that time. There was no stealing of land equivalent to what the Europeans did to Indian territory, the Australians did to Aborigine territory, or the Nw Zealanders did to Maori territory.

  • Dennis

    Israel- and hence Jew-hatred is endemic at certain universities, mostly liberal ones, including some major U.S. campuses. A panel discussion on Israel/Palestinians about 7 years ago was so skewed that only Christopher Hitchens, himself an avowed anti-Zionist, was pointedly reminding fellow panelists and audience of HAMAS's true terrorist/genocidal nature; and the lone Israeli voice was a thoroughly self-hating far-left HaAretz columnist. Shockingly to me, my fellow audience members did not even see how badly skewed was the panel, lacking even a modicum of representation of mainstream Israeli or American thought. The BDS movement is part of the "lawfare" effort by Arab/Muslim/far left Israel/Jew haters to win the propaganda front of the war to destroy Israel. It has nothing to do with social justice, and is in fact antithetical to any Western conception of justice, when examined with any reasonable degree of sophistication.

  • Dennis

    A quick example of information that proves the point (about the inefensibility and essential monstrousness of the BDS movement): Murderous terrorism against Israeli civilians was going on full-tilt in the decade and a half *before* the 1967 war, when Israel took land (Gaza and West Bank and Golan Heights) from which it was attacked. Palestinian and Arab "fedayeen" crossed easily-penetrable borders and slaughtered Israelis — probably 500 to 1,000 — particularly women and children, the method comprising mostly knives and bombs (just less powerful and less suicidal than nowadays). This simple fact puts the lie to the myth that it is the "occupation" [sic] that compels Palestinian terrorism (as do the nonstop terror rocket and mortar attacks coming from Gaza ever since Israel removed every citizen and soldier in Sept. 2005). Why was there so much pre-'67 terrorism? Because in fact no matter where the borders are, Israel is an "occupier" that can be violently attacked? Answer, please, those confused about Israeli "oppression" [sic]. (BDS supporters are Israel-/Jew-haters, pure and simple; we already know their motivations and M.O.s.)