Academic Freedom at Risk on Campus

The article claims:


they have severely disrupted academic processes, the free
function of which once made American universities the envy of the
world.

During the McCarthy Cold-War era many profs. were blacklisted because of real or imagined connections to communism. My own university (Brandon University) in Manitoba was able to hire an economic prof. graduate of Oxford to teach economics. He was blacklisted in the US and had gone back to farming. He was an expert on Soviet agriculture. In his case he had actually been a member of the US Communist Party. US campuses were anything but free during the cold war and were not the envy of anyone in terms of freedom. They were the butt of many jokes worldwide.



Academic freedom at risk on campus
By SAREE MAKDISI
GUEST COLUMNIST

"Academic colleagues, get used to it," warned the pro-Israel activist
Martin Kramer in March 2004. "Yes, you are being watched. Those
obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the
Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you've also
posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be visited late at
night."

Kramer's warning inaugurated an attack on intellectual freedom in the
U.S. that has grown more aggressive in recent months.

This attack, intended to shield Israel from criticism, not only
threatens academic privileges on college campuses, it jeopardizes our
capacity to evaluate our foreign policy. With a potentially
catastrophic clash with Iran on the horizon and the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict spiraling out of control, Americans urgently
need to be able to think clearly about our commitments and intentions
in the Middle East. And yet we are being prevented from doing so by a
longstanding campaign of intimidation that has terminated careers,
stymied debate and shut down dialogue.

Over the past few years, Israel's U.S. defenders have stepped up
their campaign by establishing a network of institutions (such as
Campus Watch, Stand With Us, the David Project, the Israel on Campus
Coalition, and the disingenuously named Scholars for Peace in the
Middle East) dedicated to the task of monitoring our campuses and
bringing pressure to bear on those critical of Israeli policies. By
orchestrating letter-writing and petitioning campaigns, falsely
raising fears of anti-Semitism, mobilizing often grossly distorted
media coverage and recruiting local and national politicians to their
cause, they have severely disrupted academic processes, the free
function of which once made American universities the envy of the
world.

Outside interference by Israel's supporters has plunged one U.S.
campus after another into crisis. They have introduced crudely
political -- rather than strictly academic or scholarly -- criteria
into hiring, promotion and other decisions at a number of
universities, including Columbia, Yale, Wayne State, Barnard and
DePaul, which recently denied tenure to the Jewish American scholar
Norman Finkelstein following an especially ugly campaign spearheaded
by Alan Dershowitz, one of Israel's most ardent American defenders.

Our campuses are being poisoned by an atmosphere of surveillance and
harassment. However, the disruption of academic freedom has grave
implications beyond campus walls.

When professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer drafted an essay
critical of the effect of Israel's lobbying organizations on U.S.
foreign policy, they had to publish it in the London Review of Books
because their original American publisher declined to take it on.
With the original article expanded into a book that has now been
released, their invitation to speak at the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs was retracted because of outside pressure. "This one is so
hot," they were told. So although Michael Oren, an officer in the
Israeli army, was recently allowed to lecture the council about U.S.
policy in the Middle East, two distinguished American academics were
denied the same privilege.

When President Carter published "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" last
year, he was attacked for having dared to use the word "apartheid" to
describe Israel's manifestly discriminatory policies in the West Bank.

As that case made especially clear, the point of most of these
attacks is to personally discredit anyone who would criticize Israel
-- and to taint them with the smear of "controversy" -- rather than
to engage them in a genuine debate. None of Carter's critics provided
a convincing refutation of his main argument based on facts and
evidence. Presumably that's because, for all the venom directed
against the former president, he was right. For example, Israel
maintains two different road networks, and even two entirely
different legal systems, in the West Bank, one for Jewish settlers
and the other for indigenous Palestinians. Those basic facts were
studiously ignored by those who denounced Carter and angrily accused
him of a "blood libel" against the Jewish people.

That Israel's American supporters so often resort to angry outbursts
rather than principled arguments -- and seem to find emotional
blackmail more effective than genuine debate -- is ultimately a sign
of their weakness rather than their strength. For all the damage it
can do in the short term, in the long run such a position is
untenable, too dependent on emotion and cliché rather than hard
facts. The phenomenal success of Carter's book suggests that more and
more Americans are learning to ignore the scare tactics that are the
only tools available to Israel's supporters.

But we need to be able to have an open debate about our Middle East
policy now -- before we needlessly shed more blood and further erode
our reputation among people who used to regard us as the champions of
freedom, and now worry that we have come to stand for its very
opposite.

---

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at
UCLA and a frequent commentator on the Middle East.

Backlash over book on the Israel Lobby

Again an attempt to avoid publicity for critics of the Israel lobby. The reaction is a good illustration of the power that the lobby has in the US. It is rather ironic that in Israel a newspaper such as Haaretz can criticise Israel without any problems it seems.


New York Times - August 16, 2007

Backlash Over Book on Policy for Israel
By Patricia Cohen

"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" is not even in bookstores,
but already anxieties have surfaced about the backlash it is
stirring, with several institutions backing away from holding events
with the authors.

John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of
Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University, were not totally
surprised by the reaction to their work. An article last spring in
the London Review of Books outlining their argument — that a powerful

pro-Israel lobby has a pernicious influence on American policy — set

off a firestorm as charges of anti-Semitism, shoddy scholarship and
censorship ricocheted among prominent academics, writers,
policymakers and advocates. In the book, published by Farrar, Straus
& Giroux and embargoed until Sept. 4, they elaborate on and update
their case.

"Now that the cold war is over, Israel has become a strategic
liability for the United States," they write. "Yet no aspiring
politician is going to say so in public or even raise the
possibility" because the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful. They credit
the lobby with shutting down talks with Syria and with moderates in
Iran, preventing the United States from condemning Israel's 2006 war
in Lebanon and with not pushing the Israelis hard enough to come to
an agreement with the Palestinians. They also discuss Christian
Zionists and the issue of dual loyalty.

Opponents are prepared. Also being released on Sept. 4 is "The
Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish
Control" (Palgrave Macmillan) by Abraham H. Foxman, the national
director of the Anti-Defamation League. The notion that pro-Israel
groups "have anything like a uniform agenda, and that U.S. policy on
Israel and the Middle East is the result of their influence, is
simply wrong," George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state, says in
the foreword. "This is a conspiracy theory pure and simple, and
scholars at great universities should be ashamed to promulgate it."

The subject will certainly prompt furious debate, though not at the
Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center at the City
University of New York, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a
Jewish cultural center in Washington and three organizations in
Chicago. They have all turned down or canceled events with the
authors, mentioning unease with the controversy or the format.

The authors were particularly disturbed by the Chicago council's
decision, since plans for that event were complete and both authors
have frequently spoken there before. The two sent a four-page letter
to 94 members of the council's board detailing what happened. "On
July 24, Council President Marshall Bouton phoned one of us
(Mearsheimer) and informed him that he was canceling the event," and
that his decision "was based on the need 'to protect the
institution.' He said that he had a serious 'political problem,'
because there were individuals who would be angry if he gave us a
venue to speak, and that this would have serious negative
consequences for the council. 'This one is so hot,' Marshall
maintained."

Mr. Mearsheimer later said of Mr. Bouton, "I had the sense that this
phone call pained him deeply."

Mr. Bouton was out of town, but Rachel Bronson, vice president for
programs and studies at the council, said, "Whenever we have topics
that are particularly controversial or sensitive, we try to make sure
someone from another point of view is there." In this case, she said,
there was not sufficient time to set up that sort of panel before the
council calendar went out. There are no plans to have the authors
speak at a later date, however.

"One of the points we make in the book is that this is a subject
that's very hard to talk about," Mr. Walt said in an interview from
his office in Cambridge. "Organizations, no matter how strong their
commitment to free speech, don't want to schedule something that's
likely to cause controversy."

After the cancellation Roberta Rubin, owner of the Book Stall, a
store in Winnetka, Ill., offered to help find a site for the authors.
She said she tried a Jewish community center and two large downtown
clubs but they all told her "they can't afford to bring in somebody
'too controversial.' " She added that even she was concerned about
inviting authors who might offend customers.

Some of the planned sites, like the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, a
cultural center in Washington, would have been host of an event if
Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt appeared with opponents, said Esther
Foer, the executive director.

Mr. Walt said, "Part of the game is to portray us as so extreme that
we have to be balanced by someone from the 'other side.' " Besides,
he added, when you're promoting a book, you want to present your
ideas without appearing with someone who is trying to discredit you.

As for City University, Aoibheann Sweeney, director of the Center for
the Humanities, said, "I looked at the introduction, and I didn't
feel that the book was saying things differently enough" from the
original article. Ms. Sweeney, who said she had consulted with others
at City University, acknowledged that they had begun planning for an
event in September moderated by J. J. Goldberg, the editor of The
Forward, a leading American Jewish weekly, but once he chose not to
participate, she decided to pass. Mr. Goldberg, who was traveling in
Israel, said in a telephone interview that "there should be more of
an open debate." But appearing alone with the authors would have
given the impression that The Forward was presenting the event and
thereby endorsing the book, he said, and he did not want to do that.
A discussion with other speakers of differing views would have been
different, he added.

"I don't think the book is very good," said Mr. Goldberg, who said he
read a copy of the manuscript about six weeks ago. "They haven't
really done original research. They haven't talked to the people who
are being lobbied or those doing the lobbying."

Overall Mr. Mearsheimer said he thinks the response to their views
will be "less ferocious than last time, because it's becoming
increasingly difficult to make the argument in a convincing way that
anyone who criticizes the lobby or Israel is an anti-Semite or a self-
hating Jew." Both Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt pointed to the growing
dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, criticism of Israel's war in
Lebanon and the publication of former President Jimmy Carter's book
"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" as making it somewhat easier to
criticize Israel openly.

"This isn't a cabal; this isn't anything secretive," Mr. Walt said.

American Jews who lobby on Israel's behalf are not all that different
from the National Rifle Association, the anti-tax movement, AARP or
the American Petroleum Institute, he said, "They just happen to be
really good at it."

"It's the way American politics work," he continued. "Sometimes
powerful interest groups get what they want, and it's not good for
the country as a whole. I would say that about the farm lobby and
about the Cuba lobby."

To the authors, dual loyalty is as American as Presidents' Day sales
and "Law & Order" reruns. As Mr. Mearsheimer explained: "People are
allowed to have multiple loyalties. They have religious loyalties,
loyalty to family, to an organization and you can have loyalty to
other countries. Someone who is Irish can have a loyalty to Ireland."

"The problem," he said "is when you raise the subject of dual
loyalty, many people tend to think of it in the context of the old
anti-Semitic canard and making the argument that Jews are disloyal to
the U.S."

In print and in interviews both authors have stressed that they hold
no animus towards Israel or Jews. "We think Israeli policy is
fundamentally flawed," Mr. Mearsheimer said, "just as we think
American policy is fundamentally flawed."
_____________________

James Petras on the Israel Lobby and failure of the anti-war movement in the US

Certainly Israel is influential in promoting the war in Iraq and also one might add in the mission to destroy Iran's nuclear capability. However, Big Oil certainly is working behind the scenes to influence policies such as the Oil Law benchmark and also influenced the very language of the law. The US wants control over Iraq's oil resources insofar as it can achieve it. It needs the resources for its continued hegemony and to fuel its economy and military. The relationship between Israel and US policy is not simply straightforward support by the US for Israeli policy, Israel also gives support for imperialist US policy that is the hallmark of US neo-conservatives in general not just the Zionist neo-cons. Neo-conservatism in turn is an ideology that supports the hegemony of US based global capitalism with other centers of global capital relying upon US leadership in extending global capitalism.
Aside from the reasons Petras gives for the lack of a stronger US anti-war movement I think there are probably numerous other reasons as well. When demonstrations are held they are not well covered by the media and seem to achieve little so that people are discouraged. No doubt many are discouraged by the failure of the Democrats to adopt an antiware program. People may be too busy with their daily life and private concerns to devote the time needed to mount an effective anti-war movement.
I am not sure the US is unique in the failure of its anti-war movement. THe UK anti-war movement did not change Blair's policy.


US Middle East Wars: Social Opposition and Political Impotence
Everywhere I visit from Copenhagen to Istanbul, Patagonia to Mexico City, journalists and academics, trade unionists and businesspeople, as well as ordinary citizens, inevitably ask me why the US public tolerates the killing of over a million Iraqis over the last two decades, and thousands of Afghans since 2001?

By James Petras

“You cannot win the peace unless you know the enemy at home and abroad”
US Marine Colonel from Tennessee.

07/08/07 "ICH" --- - Why, they ask, is a public, which opinion polls reveal as over sixty percent in favor of withdrawing US troops from Iraq, so politically impotent? A journalist from a leading business journal in India asked me what is preventing the US government from ending its aggression against Iran, if almost all of the world’s major oil companies, including US multinationals are eager to strike oil deals with Teheran? Anti-war advocates in Europe, Asia and Latin America ask me at large public forums what has happened to the US peace movement in the face of the consensus between the Republican White House and the Democratic Party-dominated Congress to continue funding the slaughter of Iraqis, supporting Israeli starvation, killing and occupation of Palestine and destruction of Lebanon?

Absence of a Peace Movement?

Just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 over one million US citizens demonstrated against the war. Since then there have been few and smaller protests even as the slaughter of Iraqis escalates, US casualties mount and a new war with Iran looms on the horizon. The demise of the peace movement is largely the result of the major peace organizations’ decision to shift from independent social mobilizations to electoral politics, namely channeling activists into working for the election of Democratic candidates – most of whom have supported the war. The rationale offered by these ‘peace leaders’ was that once elected the Democrats would respond to the anti-war voters who put them in office. Of course practical experience and history should have taught the peace movement otherwise: The Democrats in Congress voted every military budget since the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. The total capitulation of the newly elected Democratic majority has had a major demoralizing effect on the disoriented peace activists and has discredited many of its leaders.

Absence of a National Movement

As David Brooks (La Jornada July 2, 2007) correctly reported at the US Social forum there is no coherent national social movement in the US. Instead we have a collection of fragmented ‘identity groups’ each embedded in narrow sets of (identity) interests, and totally incapable of building a national movement against the war. The proliferation of these sectarian ‘non-governmental’ ‘identity’ ‘groups’ is based on their structure, financing and leadership. Many depend on private foundations and public agencies for their financing, which precludes them from taking political positions. At best they operate as ‘lobbies’ simply pressuring the elite politicians of both parties. Their leaders depend on maintaining a separate existence in order to justify their salaries and secure future advances in government agencies.

The US trade unions are virtually non-existent in more than half of the United States: They represent less than 9% of the private sector and 12% of the total labor force. Most national, regional and city-wide trade union officials receive salaries comparable to senior business executives: between $300,000 to $500,000 dollars a year. Almost 90% of the top trade union bureaucrats finance and support pro-war Democrats and have supported Bush and the Congressional war budgets, bought Israel Bonds ($25 billion dollars) and the slaughter of Palestinians and the Israeli bombing of Lebanon.

The Unopposed War Lobby

The US is the only country in the world where the peace movement is unwilling to recognize, publically condemn or oppose the major influential political and social institutions consistently supporting and promoting the US wars in the Middle East. The political power of the pro-Israel power configuration, led by the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), supported within the government by highly placed pro-Israel Congressional leaders and White House and Pentagon officials has been well documented in books and articles by leading journalists, scholars and former President Jimmy Carter. The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) has over two thousand full-time functionaries, more than 250,000 activists, over a thousand billionaire and multi-millionaire political donors who contribute funds both political parties. The ZPC secures 20% of the US foreign military aid budget for Israel, over 95% congressional support for Israel’s boycott and armed incursions in Gaza, invasion of Lebanon and preemptive military option against Iran.

The US invasion and occupation policy in Iraq, including the fabricated evidence justifying the invasion, was deeply influenced by top officials with long-standing loyalties and ties to Israel. Wolfowitz and Feith, numbers 2 and 3 in the Pentagon, are life-long Zionists, who lost security clearance early in their careers for handing over documents to Israel. Vice President Cheney’s chief foreign policy adviser in the planning of the Iraq invasion is Irving Lewis Liebowitz (‘Scooter Libby’). He is a protégé and long-time collaborator of Wolfowitz and a convicted felon.

Libby-Liebowitz committed perjury, defending the White House’s complicity in punishing officials critical of its Iraq war propaganda. Libby-Liebowitz received powerful political and financial support from the pro-Israel lobby during his trial. No sooner did he lose his appeal on his conviction on five counts of perjury, obstructing justice and lying, than the ZPC convinced President Bush to ‘commute’ his prison sentence, in effect freeing him from a 30 month prison sentence before he had served a day. While Democratic politicians and some peace leaders criticized President Bush, none dared hold responsible the pro-Israel lobby which pressured the White House.

The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) – numbering 52 – and their regional and local affiliates are the leading force transmitting Israel’s war agenda against Iran. The PMAJO, working closely with US-Israeli Congressman Rahm Emmanuel and leading Zionist Senators Charles Schumer and Joseph Lieberman, succeeded in eliminating a clause in the budget appropriation setting a date for the withdrawal for US troops from Iraq.

In contrast to the successful vast propaganda, congressional and media campaigns, organized and funded by the pro-Israel lobbies for the war policies, there is no public record of the big oil companies supporting the Iraq war, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon or the military threats of preemptive attacks on Iran. Interviews with investment bankers, oil company executives and a thorough review of the major Petroleum Institute publications over the past seven years provide conclusive evidence that ‘Big Oil’ was deeply interested in negotiating oil agreements with Saddam Hussein and the Iranian Islamic government. ‘Big Oil’ perceives US Middle East wars as a threat to their long-standing profitable relations with all the conservative Arab oil states in the Gulf. Despite the strategic position in the US economy and their great wealth '‘Big Oil' was totally incapable of countering their political power and organized influence of the pro-Israel lobby. In fact Big Oil was totally marginalized by the White House National Security Advisor for the Middle East, Elliot Abrams, a fanatical Zionist and militarist.

Despite the massive and sustained pro-war activity of the leading Zionist organizations inside and outside of the government and despite the absence of any overt or covert pro-war campaign by ‘Big Oil’, the leaders of the US peace movement have refused to attack the pro-Israel war lobby and continue to mouth unfounded clichés about the role of ‘Big Oil’ in the Middle East conflicts.

The apparently ‘radical’ slogans against the oil industry by some leading intellectual critics of the war has served as a ‘cover’ to avoid the much more challenging task of taking on the powerful, Zionist lobby. There are several reasons for the failure of the leaders of the peace movement to confront the militant Zionist lobby. One is fear of the powerful propaganda and smear campaign which the pro-Israel lobby is expert at mounting, with its aggressive accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ and its capacity to blacklist critics, leading to job loss, career destruction, public abuse and death threats.

The second reason that peace leaders fail to criticize the leading pro-war lobby is because of the influence of pro-Israel ‘progressives’ in the movement. These progressives condition their support of ‘peace in Iraq’ only if the movement does not criticize the pro-war Israel lobby in and outside the US government, the role of Israel as a belligerent partner to the US in Lebanon, Palestine and Kurdish Northern Iraq. A movement claiming to be in favor of peace, which refuses to attack the main proponents of war, is pursuing irrelevance: it deflects attention from the pro-Israel high officials in the government and the lobbyists in Congress who back the war and set the White House’s Middle East agenda. By focusing attention exclusively on President Bush, the peace leaders failed to confront the majority pro-Israel Democratic congress people who fund Bush’s war, back his escalation of troops and give unconditional support to Israel’s military option for Iran.

The collapse of the US peace movement, the lack of credibility of most of its leaders and the demoralization of many activists can be traced to strategic political failures: the unwillingness to identify and confront the real pro-war movements and the inability to create a political alternative to the bellicose Democratic Party. The political failure of the leaders of the peace movement is all the more dramatic in the face of the large majority of passive Americans who oppose the war, most of whom did not display their flags this Fourth of July and are not led in tow by either the pro-Israel lobby or their intellectual apologists within progressive circles.

The word to anti-war critics of the world is that over sixty percent of the US public opposes the war but our streets are empty because our peace movement leaders are spineless and politically impotent.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). Visit his website http://petras.lahaine.org/index.php