Natan Sharansky: why Zionism is flunking on campus
November 2, 2003

This is a remarkable article from Natan Sharansky, a Soviet émigré to Israel who spent years in a Siberian gulag and the infamous torture chambers of Moscow's Lefortovo prison for his calls to allow Jews to leave Soviet Union. He is now a powerful politician in Israel.

Pro-Israel students on campus will easily identify with Sharansky's observations about feeling under constant attack from administrators, professors, and other student groups. At UCSB, no other country is the object of such hostility than Israel -- not the Syrian mafioso-state, genocidal Sudan, totalitarian China, not Saudi monarchies where woman can't drive or repressive Egyptian dictatorships, not Taliban Afghanistan, not mass-murdering Baathi Iraq, and not the Stalinist gulag-state North Korea.

One example says it all: on March 5th, 2003, an editorial was published in UCSB's paper, The Daily Nexus, calling Israel a "repressive regime," and stating, "If the university administration is truly concerned about peace and security, we demand it...divest from companies doing business with Israel." The author was a member of the Maoist International Movement, a group that, like most Marxists, has campaigned tirelessly to vilify Israel and proffer intellectual support for terrorist attacks. But amazingly, it was also signed by two Asian-American student groups, a Muslim student group, two Hispanic students groups, a gay and lesbian student group, the Green Party, and Students Stopping Rape. How can this be? If you approached the leaders of these groups, how much would really know about the Arab-Israeli conflict? Where exactly do issues of rape and Israel coincide?

That editorial was signed because hostility to Israel has become part of the campus left orthodoxy. For some, it's just accepted as naturally as being in favor of protecting the environment. (Actually, I wrote an article criticizing this. Later that day, the head of Student Stopping Rape stormed into the paper's offices and denied that they had signed anything like that. I knew they would, and the editor had copy of the original letter in hand. They had forgotten that they signed it. It just goes to show how routine and mindless the anti-Israel animosity is).

The problem begins when the hostility doesn't limit itself to issues like occupation or security barriers but instead dives into history to convince us that Israel's very founding was illegitimate, or that it∫s colonialist, apartheid, fascist or racist, which are attacks on its fundamental legitimacy. This has important implications: for if, as they claim, Israel is the Third Reich or an agent of Satan, then Israel is inherently evil and there can be no political solution to the conflict. If they believe Isra el is a Western colonial implant, it follows that its existence should be understood as temporary, alien, and worthy of de-colonization. If Israel is a state terrorist, it is deserving of international sanction and no less morally blameworthy than Palestinian terrorists. As long as this remains the case, Israel's existence to them will remain unnatural, offensive, and unaccepted. It makes it acceptable to hate Israel, and unacceptable to make peace with it.

It is the brutality of some pro-Palestinian advocates that differentiates their cause from others, like the Tibetan freedom movement. At our school, professors don't give lunchtime lectures "objectively" explaining how terrible China is; there's no divestment-from-China movement; no one wears "Free Taiwan!" t-shirts; and casual anti-China remarks aren't thrown out during class by professors in the Dramatic Arts or English department. Even at Tibetan freedom concerts, rare would be the attendee that declared China a fundamentally illegitimate country and demanded its abolition.

What they forget (or deny) is that the two conflicting nationalisms -- Zionism and Palestinian nationalism -- are mutually justifying, for underlying them both is the principle that each and every people has the right to self-determination. If Jews do, then so do Palestinians; if Palestinians have the right to a state, then so do Jews. When partisans on either side deny the rights and aspirations of the other side, including criticisms of fundamental legitimacy, like that Israel is apartheid or that any Palestinian state would be a terrorist-state, they work against the cause of peace. Because we understand terror-states and apartheid-states are wrong and should not exist.

Constant demonization of Israel and a belief that Palestinians are the sole claimants to justice in this conflict have fos tered an immoderate self-righteousness that makes students on campuses thousands of miles away in sunny Santa Barbara feel that decrying the millennial idea of Zionism makes the world a better place; it also allows politically conscious grocery stores in San Francisco to feel good calling for boycotts of Israeli products; and it tells women's groups that they're on the right side of history when they declare their solidarity with misogynist Islamic radicals. But fortunately, on each campus there are more moderates than hateful radicals, they're just more silent. And it is the vision of the moderates -- two states, side by side -- that will eventually prevail. History is on the side of Israel's vision of a democratic and peaceful Middle East, not Hamas' 7th-century theocratic fantasy, Syrian Baathist dreams of a new Arab empire, Iranian mullahcracy, or Wahhabi Saudi kingdoms.

Read "Tour of U.S. Schools Reveals Why Zionism Is Flunking on Campus," by Natan Sharansky in The Forward, October 24th, 2003.