Resources
In our last blog posting we suggested that, if you’ve run out of things to do, or just want to sit down and learn something, you turn to our list of resources and puruse them. Well, thanks to Israel and Nancy Sushman, today we added three new resources to our “Links for more information…Excellent Resources” webpage. As Siri would say, “Check [them] out.”
ALUMS for Campus Fairness, https://campusfairness.org/
Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) is a non-profit organization that brings together alumni to counter anti-Semitism that is affecting far too many university and college campuses, while also promoting an open and fair dialogue on campus regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. ACF works in partnership with StandWithUs.
ACF mobilizes alumni to press their alma maters to provide: (i) a safe and welcoming environment for students and faculty who feel a connection to Israel; and (ii) a comprehensive education, rather than activist propaganda, especially with respect to Israel.
AMCHA Initiative, https://amchainitiative.org/
AMCHA Initiative is a non-partisan organization whose sole mission is to document, investigate, and combat antisemitism on U.S. college campuses. AMCHA is not an Israel advocacy organization, nor does it take a position on current or past Israeli government policies. AMCHA uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and U.S. State Department definitions to identify incidents of antisemitism.
Zioness, https://www.zioness.org/
The Zioness Movement is a coalition of activists and allies who express their Zionist and progressive values through collective action. They are driven by the belief that the same values of human rights and self-determination at the heart of progressive causes also underlie Zionism, the movement to achieve self-determination for a long-oppressed minority group.
Words Matter
In our last blog posting we also suggested you review Brian Yapko’s listing of archeological proof of 3500 years of Jewish existence in the Land of Israel – Jews, the truly indigenous people.
In the same vein, if you have access to a subscription to the academic journal Israel Studies, check out the Summer, 2019 issue (volume 24, no. 2), which is a series of articles related to “Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” edited by Donna Robinson Divine, professor emerita of Smith College. Her introduction to the issue is open access and therefore free to the public; we’ve made it available to you: Israel Studies – Word Crimes, Introduction, Summer, 2019.
[We wish we could make the whole issue available to SFMEW members, but copyright provisions prevent this unless you have access to JSTOR.]
This issue of Israel Studies looks at how the use of words has changed related to the description of Israel in academia. As Divine states,
Of all the changes that can be documented in the seventy years since the founding of Israel, none is as dramatic and surprising as the country’s status as a topic of intellectual inquiry. Once a trope for self-sacrifice and solidarity, a testament to the redemption of a bruised and battered people, the Jewish state, today, stands accused of practicing apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and of sustaining itself as a remnant of an outdated and thoroughly delegitimized colonial order. The Jewish state has not simply been re-branded; it has essentially been re-named. Once thought distinctive, Israel’s singularity is now presented as an example of horrific bigotry if not savagery.
How the change took hold in academia is best understood by focusing on the vocabulary that purports to show why the establishment of a Jewish State was an international crime that can only be undone by taking command of the language deployed to study Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians. The articles in this issue of Israel Studies explore this lexical transformation and describe how and why it acquired its totemic standing in the academy.
[…]
Today much of the academic discourse on the Middle East Conflict has distorted the truth by transforming even the very idea of what constitutes a “fact”. “Facts” are stitched into a narrative often to effect loyalty rather than to verify assertions.
Also available for you through the link is the final chapter of this volume, “Postscript – BDS” by Miriam F. Melman and Asaf Romirowsky. You’ll recall SFMEW brought Asaf to Santa Fe in January 2019 (see his presentation here). A brief excerpt from their chapter:
Facts find no room in the world of BDS. The goal of social justice, defined as erasing the alleged racist Jewish state and Zionist ideology, shapes everything related to the study of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More and more, only one set of ideas is presented, in which Israel is held up as the greatest evil—not only in the Middle East but in the world; a state which must be singled out and treated uniquely. Intersectionality, the dominant paradigm in many fields of study in the humanities and softer social sciences, advocates treating oppressions as integrally linked, with the result being increasingly impoverished research designs that further defame Israel with preposterous accusations. For example, in the now popularized “From Ferguson to Palestine” meme, Israel and Jewish-American organizations are condemned for conspiring to cause harm to “black and brown” Palestinian and American bodies via alleged racist U.S.-Israel counterterror police exchanges.
SFMEW is a beneficiary of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico.