The “Palestinization” of Brandeis University?
(Moshe Phillips is the National Chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.)
Why is the Hamas war against Israel being described by the Israel Studies Center at Brandeis University as merely the “suffering of Israelis and Palestinians”?
Why is the same center boasting that it “brings Palestinian scholars” to campus?
Why is it calling the biblical heartland of Israel “the Palestinian Territories”?
These are among the many troubling questions that arise from the new catalogue of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University, which describes the center’s recent activities and makes an impassioned pitch to prospective donors.
Before any members of the Jewish community reach for their checkbooks, they should take a long, hard look at what the Schusterman Center has been saying and doing about Israel in recent months.
The catalog opens with an appeal from the center’s director, Prof. Alexander Kaye. “Since October 7, 2023,” teaching about Israel is “particularly challenging,” Kaye writes. “Witnessing the scale of trauma and suffering of Israelis and Palestinians is overwhelming…”
That’s his entire description of October 7. He doesn’t call it a Hamas terrorist attack. He doesn’t describe it as a Hamas assault. In fact, he doesn’t mention Hamas or terrorism at all. It’s just “trauma and suffering” of both “Israelis and Palestinians” alike.
There is a kind of both-sides-ism that has become almost an epidemic in the academic world and beyond. Sure, it’s technically correct to say that some Palestinian Arabs in Gaza have suffered—but they’ve suffered as a result of Hamas’s actions, like storing its missiles in kindergartens. The suffering experienced by Israelis is just the opposite—they are victims of Arab terrorist aggression. For Prof. Kaye to say only that both “Israelis and Palestinians” have suffered, without any indication of who or what is responsible for their suffering, is outrageous.
In the next paragraph, Prof. Kaye writes about the integrity of Israel studies and the Schusterman center’s mission. He emphasizes the importance of “guarding against those who would subordinate it to ‘us vs. them’ politics.”
Who exactly is it that’s doing the “subordinating”? Who is he claiming is trying to promote “us vs. them politics”? Kaye doesn’t spell it out, but it’s not hard to decipher that particular dog whistle. He’s obviously talking about pro-Israel Jews, whom left-wing academics consider to be too pro-Israel. This wink-and-nod to the Jewish far-left seems to be an assurance that Kaye won’t let those overly pro-Israel types steer the Schusterman Center.
Prof. Kaye proceeds to tick off activities of the Center that he thinks will attract potential donors. The first one is: “We have assembled expert panels, brought Israeli and Palestinian scholars…to campus.”
I’m all for scholarly discussions, but is there some kind of shortage of colleges inviting Palestinian speakers, that Brandeis, which was created as a Jewish-majority, pro-Zionist university, needs to bring them in, too?
Do we not hear the Palestinian Arab perspective enough on CNN and the op-ed page of the New York Times? Must Brandeis University, too, provide a platform for Palestinian advocacy?
Page 8 of the Schusterman catalogue returns to the topic of October 7. Once again, however, there is no mention of Hamas, and no mention of the Palestinian Arab war against Israel. Instead, this: “Many of us have close personal connections to Israel and the Palestinian Territories.”
The large staff of historians at Brandeis, including at the Schusterman Center, know full well that there is no legal, historical, or moral basis to refer to Judea and Samaria as “the Palestinian Territories.” They have been Jewish territories for thousands of years, since biblical times. Ancient Jewish cities in those areas, such as Hebron, Shechem, and Shiloh are not “Palestinian.” The Cave of the Patriarchs, where the forefathers and foremothers of the Jewish nation are buried, is not part of “Palestinian territory.”
On Page 10, the reader learns that the Schusterman Center has a course called “Cultural Contact Zones in Israel-Palestine,” and on page 13, Professor Kaye quotes himself talking about “what is unfolding in Israel and Palestine.” The term “Israel-Palestine” appears yet again on page 19.
As a historian, Kaye knows there is no state called “Palestine,” and there never has been one. He may favor creating one; but that does not give him the right to pretend that it already exists. Political partisans use that tactic all the time—pretending something exists in order to get people used to the idea that it should exist. It’s a sneaky way of trying to normalize it. It would be extremely irresponsible for a historian such as Prof. Kaye to be doing that.
The catalogue concludes with a memorial notice about the son and daughter-in-law of a Brandeis faculty member who were murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7. But the reader is told only that they were “killed on October 7, 2023,” with no mention of who killed them, or how they were killed. Those are strange and troubling omissions.
Deborah & Shlomi Mathias were killed right in front of their 16yr old son Rotem. I just met him in the hospital ward. His mother’s body landed on him, and he had to lay still while terrorists stalked the house
They were happy, musical people. That’s them with the guitar
@GMA pic.twitter.com/NLxHvF3qbw
— James Longman (@JamesAALongman) October 11, 2023
Of course there are some pro-Israel professors at Brandeis, and there are some worthwhile activities taking place under the auspices of the Schusterman Center. But there are also disturbing signs that a kind of creeping Palestinization may be underway, in which the Schusterman Center’s leaders are absorbing and regurgitating parts of the pro-Palestinian narrative that has been poisoning the academic world.
Adopting the language of the Palestinian Arab advocacy movement contravenes the reason Brandeis University was founded, and it dishonors the memory of the great Zionist leader Louis Brandeis after whom it is named.
(Moshe Phillips is National Chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.)
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