Anatomy of a scandal: Unraveling the myth of ‘Jewish-free zones’ at UC Berkeley
JVL Introduction
Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP) launched campaign urging other groups at the law school to adopt an anti-Zionist pledge in their bylaws “to not invite speakers who have expressed and continue to hold views or host, sponsor, or promote events in support of Zionism; the apartheid state of Israel; and the occupation of Palestine”.
The ante was upped when the dean of the law school wrote that this “singling out the state of Israel for special condemnation, or questioning the very legitimacy of its existence, is considered by many Jewish students to be a form of Antisemitism.”
It was rapidly further upped when Kenneth Marcus (who had been appointed by Trump to lead the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education), wrote about this under the wilfully inflammatory heading “Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones”.
It was, of course, no such thing.
Nate Orbach takes up the story.
This article was originally published by +972 Magazine on Wed 26 Oct 2022. Read the original here.
Anatomy of a scandal: Unraveling the myth of ‘Jewish-free zones’ at UC Berkeley
The manufactured controversy surrounding a student group pledge underlines the dangers of legal attempts to conflate anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
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I just have one comment on this article which is that we have to stop referring to the IHRA as the ‘controversial definition of antisemitism’. The IHRA is not a definition of anything. It is a misdefinition.
The 38 word actual ‘definition’ is not a definition either since it is open ended and in Stephen Sedley’s words indefinite.
Whoever has heard of a 500+ spiel as being a definition of anything. It is a badly formed ramble whose sole intent is to shoehorn anti-Zionism into anti-Semitism
I will probably regret this – I expect the fires of hell to descend on me – but . . . . . .
While I think the designation of universities or their departments or their student societies as ‘Jew Free Zones’ is clearly outrageous and untrue, I am very uncomfortable regarding this description of the student action around which this article is built: “At the end of August, Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP), a student group at Berkeley Law, initiated a campaign urging other groups at the law school to adopt an anti-Zionist pledge in their bylaws. These organizing efforts provoked fierce backlash, above all regarding the provision calling on groups not to invite pro-Israel speakers”.
Banning ‘pro-Israel speakers’ is very different from banning fascists or overt racists. Zionist organisations happily ban (or, more often, avoid) debating with us. We should be wanting to debate with, at least, some Zionists – for some of them are capable of change. I’m not sure exactly where he stands now, but it certainly wasn’t so long ago that Peter Beinart still described himself as a Zionist, even as he was moving further and further to the left.
Thank you for your comment and sincerely hope there are “no fires of hell”; we fully encourage different points of view, nuanced observations, etc, so thank you for contributing to that.