When Did Loving Israel Become a Crime?
When did loving Israel become a crime? When did Judaism become something to apologize for?
Dr. Mark Braverman recently gave a speech at the UIUC Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. In it, as Julie Levitt described in a February 12th Letter-to-the-Editor in the Daily Illini, Dr. Braverman equated Zionism with racism and accused Jews of secretly controlling the United States.
Dr. Braverman’s allegations are as false as they are insidious. For millennia, anti-Semites have tried to displace Jews from land that is lawfully theirs. And for millennia, anti-Semites have accused Jews of disproportionate power and influence in a nation to try and stir up hate against them. But here at a modern university shouldn’t we be learning how to expose such tactics, instead of learning how to celebrate them?
The U.S. is a land of individuals, and spitefully claiming that all influential members of a religious minority are banding together for a sinister common cause assumes a level of group-think not seen outside of totalitarianism. Additionally, Israel is home to people of many different races and histories, hailing from Ethiopia, Europe, the U.S., Iraq, etc., making it anything but “racist.”
If Zionism is racist, why did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. support Israel, saying: “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.”
Students cannot use such facts to repudiate anti-Semitism if they are only supplied with a steady stream of propaganda.
The people who attended this talk may have silently acquiesced to Dr. Braverman’s destructive statements, but I refuse to do so. There is too much at stake. Dr. Braverman’s ideas extend not only to the Arab-Israeli conflict happening a continent away; they extend to every Jewish person on this campus, and to everyone (Jews and non-Jews alike) who supports Israel.
He is telling Jews that that their heritage is something to be ashamed of. And he is telling everyone that affection for the Jewish state of Israel is illegitimate and destructive.
Instead of placing a megaphone in the hands of an anti-Semite, our University must invite speakers who have at least a modicum of understanding about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and who champion human dignity instead of promulgating destructive stereotypes.