Reader Responses to An End to the Divestment Question?

Sadly, the anti-Israel movement at Brown follows the strategy of rejection of Jewish sovereignty in Israel. There could have been an Arab state alongside Israel in 1948, in 1967, and at multiple times over the last 75+ years if the Palestinian leadership could confront and suppress those who reject the existence of Israel. Israel and Jordan are the only countries in the region that have broadly granted Palestinians citizenship. About 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian with the same rights available to Jews. There are still refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria populated by descendants of Palestinians who left what was to become Israel in 1948. The Palestinian Authority still maintains refugee camps within the area under its control. Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the rest of the Arab world still treat Palestinians as refugees and allow them to stay as guests, but do not grant them citizenship despite living within their borders for generations. Where is the outcry in the world over this? UNRWA, the agency clearly documented to have participated in the Hamas terrorist plans, funnels money to generations of these Palestinian descendants displaced in 1948, keeping them inflamed with the false hope of soon being able to conquer Israel. This creates a monetary incentive to keep the status of Palestinians as refugees in Arab countries, breeding dependency, anger, and instability. In the meantime, Israelis have despaired with any two-state solution, unwilling to create another hostile, Israel rejecting terror base on its borders. Boycott, Divest, Sanction movements chanting “from the river to the sea,” are hurting the Palestinian cause.

Perhaps the most unfounded suggestion is that what passes for a Brown education on Israel/Palestinians will somehow advance the quality of the discourse on campus. Nothing could be further from the truth. Two of the courses [cited] will be taught by professors Michael Steinberg and Adi Ophir, outspoken critics of Zionism and/or Israel. Moreover, that a course taught by Omer Bartov has “seen an uptick in enrollment” is troubling. Bartov wrote in the New York Times, 34 days after the Hamas atrocities in Israel, that Israel was engaged in “crimes against humanity” and warned that “genocide” was around the corner. Matti Friedman, writing in the Free Press last July, said Bartov “belongs to Israel’s most unfortunate export category—academics who find a home for themselves on an increasingly unhinged Western left.” Professor Katharina Galor of the Judaic studies department, long before October 7, signed open letters urging the German government to fund organizations that “peacefully challenge the Israeli occupation” and accusing Israel of “systematic oppression of the Palestinian people.” To suggest that [these four] are representative of a “flourishing of scholarship on the Middle East” is naive and misleading. If and when there are courses taught by professors whose views are diametrically opposed to theirs, there might be the beginnings of Middle East scholarship at Brown. Until then, Brown will continue to foster pro-Palestinian indoctrination and propagandizing. 

The very first sentence was misleading: “whether…Brown should divest…from certain companies doing business in Israel….” The elephant in the room is the ongoing genocide in Gaza, not divestment. Except for one reference to a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, the word genocide is not used in the article. Around 350 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023, which means maybe 350 Hamas fighters have been killed in street fighting. The accepted death toll of 43,000 men, women, and children is “death from a distance.” Around 70 percent are women and children. Israel has long since depleted its inventory of artillery shells and aircraft bombs. President Joe Biden, whose dementia was apparent to all who met him, kept the resupply going 24/7. BAM’s response is the same old post World War II malarkey. We stopped Hitler from grabbing eastern Europe (yay) then gave it to an equally murderous Stalin (boo). To prevent the domino theory in Southeast Asia (yay), Vietnam’s losses were necessary (boo). Taking out Saddam Hussein in Iraq (yay) destabilized the entire Middle East (boo). This was more of the same.