The Academic Boycott and the Failure of the American Jewish Diaspora

The venerable American Studies Association (ASA) announced Monday that it would boycott Israeli universities and academic institutions. This is a coup for the BDS movement, as the ASA has 5,000 members and calls itself “the nation’s oldest and largest association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of American culture and history.” It is also another sign of the failure of the American Jewish diaspora. 

Jewish philanthropy to universities is massive. According to the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, 42% of mega-gifts in Jewish philanthropy go to private and public higher education. Learning, scholarship and education are Jewish values paramount above all else, reflected in the Jewish contributions to medicine, science, and technology, and the sheer number of Jewish Nobel Prize winners (in comparison to the tiny number of Jews worldwide). For the American Studies Association to boycott Israeli universities and academic institutions is like holding a chocolate fair and banning chocolate.

The ASA declared in a statement: “The resolution is in solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and it aspires to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians. The ASA’s endorsement of the academic boycott emerges from the context of U.S. military and other support for Israel; Israel’s violation of international law and UN resolutions; the documented impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian scholars and students; the extent to which Israeli institutions of higher education are a party to state policies that violate human rights; and finally, the support of such a resolution by a majority of ASA members.”

If the resolution were in solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom, then it would oppose these academic boycotts of Jewish scholars and academics. The ASA’s condemnation of U.S. military and other support for Israel exposes its vicious agenda. U.S. military and other support of Israel is an impediment to the annihilation of Israel. This boycott mimics the Nazi purge of academics and scientists.

Israel has not violated international law or UN resolutions, and if these so-called academics had even a rudimentary knowledge of history -- the San Remo resolution, Balfour, the White Paper, and Islamic Jew-hatred -- they would apologize and retreat with their heads hung in shame. The ASA ought to issue a resolution that Islamic anti-Semitism is a violation of human rights, and that calls for a Jew-free “Palestine” are a human rights violation, and the repeated “Palestinian” calls for the destruction of Israel are a monstrous human rights violation.

This boycott should also be a grim wake-up call for those swashbuckling Jewish philanthropists who give over their wealth to colleges and universities -- families like Tisch, Stern, Steinhard, Silver, Kimmel, Wasserman, Levy. What is their legacy? They have built the structures and the machinery that are serving the agenda of the annihilationists and Goebbels-inspired hate propaganda. 

Yet even Jewish students are being taken in by this machinery. Philly.com reported last Saturday that “Jewish students at Swarthmore College have become the first in the nation to break with the global student association Hillel and agree to open their doors to groups and speakers who do not support Israel.”

This is more of liberal Jews’ pernicious influence on the next generation of self-hating Jews. As if the Jewish people didn't have enough enemies, reckless and godless Jews are giving birth to our enemies. Clearly, these Jewish kids lack Jewish education and are sorely lacking in truth and history. 

These little dupes don’t want to work with the non-partisan AIPAC because they said it “didn't seem to be the way to build the diverse political community that we wanted,” according to Swarthmore student Joshua Wolfsun. Genocide and Jew-hatred are now under the aegis of “diversity.”

Where are the calls from Muslim students for speakers at Muslim Students Association meetings who will speak in support of Israel and against jihad, clitoridectomies and honor violence?

All too many Jewish leaders are more concerned about making sure that Jews don’t speak out too strongly for freedom. In the summer of 2012, I was scheduled to speak for the Zionist Organization of America in Los Angeles – until the Jewish Federation, where the event was scheduled, caved in to the demands of the Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood front group the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). 

And last April, wealthy liberal Jews at the behest of Islamic supremacists managed to intimidate the Great Neck Synagogue on Long Island into canceling a scheduled talk by me (I spoke to an SRO crowd at Chabad Great Neck instead). The Jewish Week, instead of supporting free speech and my message of freedom, ran an op-ed by two vicious leftist reformed rabbis who aligned with the Islamic supremacists in their jihad to shut down my talk. In a shocking violation of their spiritual obligations as clerics, Rabbis Michael White and Jerome Davidson defamed my work and me, while falsely claiming that I was “defaming fellow Americans of a different Abrahamic religion.” They have obviously never read my work — my columns or my books. They falsely accused me of hate speech and had the chutzpah to invoke Jewish teachings. 

When did these rabbis ever show the same indignation they are showed about my talk when leaders of groups linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and even the convicted murderers of Jewish children, have spoken on college campuses and at mosques in the United States? No wonder Jewish students on college campuses nationwide are so confused.

White and Davidson are cut from the same cloth as the Toronto Board of Rabbis, which issued a statement last June expressing that “profound disappointment” with the Jewish group that brought me to Toronto to speak. In condemning me, they didn’t cite one quote from me: not one. I have written two books, hundreds of articles, and nearly 30,000 blog posts, and they couldn’t find one quote. But they will give chum to the sharks by pitting Jew against Jew. It is the mission of the yehudim to speak the truth. Yet those traitorous quislings attacked a fellow Jew who is working in defense of the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and individual rights. 

Their loyalty to the Jewish people resembles that of Jacob Bender, the Jew who heads up the Philadelphia office of Hamas-tied CAIR. Jews of the American diaspora like Bender and Rabbis White and Davidson (as well as their friends to the north of the Toronto Board of Rabbis), by validating the narrative of the enemies of the Jews, have paved the way for the ASA’s academic boycott of Israel. They have done their work well.