Monday, May 16, 2011

SPME Taps Out

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East is a group that, by all appearances, has laudable intentions: speaking up against the BDS movement and in favor of genuine engagement and peace between all parties in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it looks like there is much less than meets the eye.

My suspicions were originally raised by this review essay they published, which inaccurately labeled J Street and J Call as supporters of the BDS campaign and appeared to lament the "consensus among Israeli intellectuals in favor of a Palestinian state." But I assumed that it was a one-off, not an officially sanctioned position.

Unfortunately, it looks like the group really is going out of its way to pander to the right. They just released a letter urging CUNY to reverse-its-reversal regarding the honorary award to playwright Tony Kushner. One does not have to agree with Kushner to find this difficult to swallow -- particularly given SPME's anti-boycott focus on academic freedom. One also has to note the naked dishonesty of calling Kushner a BDS advocate -- a position he has repeatedly rejected (and whose rejection has become well-known in the wake of this controversy). And I was so excited at how "the system worked".

Worse, SPME also makes a specific point to defend instigating trustee Steve Wiesenfeld -- he who labeled Palestinians "not human", which is perhaps the clearest evidence to date that their concern is not about creating the conditions of mutual respect required for peace, but simply provincial partisanship on behalf of putatively "pro-Israel" speakers. Just as Kushner deserves criticism for his positions on Israel (and he does), Wiesenfeld deserves everything that's come his way as well. Creating space for peace in the middle east means undermining all those who demean the worth and dignity of others -- whether the speakers identify as "left" or "right", "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestinian".

It is all deeply unfortunate. The center I occupy is holding fine, but it is always frustrating when one finds out someone you thought might make for a suitable ally -- isn't one. Tragically, SPME has come out on the wrong side of this issue -- and done so in a way that seriously damages their credibility as a true force for peace and reconciliation.

8 comments:

Vera said...

Love the false equivalency of comparing what appear to be Kushner's whitebread criticism of Israel with Wiesenfeld calling Palestinians "not human." A fair and balanced approach, no doubt.

David Schraub said...

I don't think Kushner's positions, e.g., that it was a mistake for Israel to be created in the first place, is particularly "whitebread" -- "it'd be better if you had never existed" being rather harsh in normal circumstances; accusations of "ethnic cleansing" also generally lying somewhat beyond Marquis of Queensberry rules. Even if one agrees with those critiques, "whitebread" hardly seems the best descriptor.

That being said, I find Wiesenfeld's statement to be more personally repulsive, to the extent I think it's a useful project to rank such things. One could retort that Wiesenfeld's statement was a one-off, while Kushner has a long paper trail of comments respecting Israel that many think are worthy of critique -- but what's the point? I have moral priors regarding the proper resolution of the conflict, both Kushner and Wiesenfeld violate them,* and I hardly think it is a good use of time to focus on whether we use the precisely proper ordinal ranking of adjectives in describing just how grave their deviation is.

* Wiesenfeld also violates my norms regarding academic freedom and honesty, which is a separate concern and why I agree with Ed Koch that he should be sacked.

Vera said...

"It'd be better if you had never existed" has a huge difference of meaning when "you" is a state as opposed to talking about people or a group of people. Not even the most devoted caricature of a statist pretends governments = people. Stating that some person or group is not human is qualitatively different from saying (even incorrectly) the net effect of some government on the world is a negative one, because governments actually AREN'T human beings with "worth and dignity".

Anonymous said...

I hardly think it is a good use of time to focus on whether we use the precisely proper ordinal ranking of adjectives in describing just how grave their deviation is.

Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal—of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideisticfoundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psychosomatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacywithin its ontic dual; of the analytic….

David Schraub said...

Quite right -- it is far worse to suggest a person ought to have never come into being than to suggest that of a state. That does not make the latter "whitebread", any more than accusing a state of ethnic cleansing is.

Kushner's critiques are quite harsh. Obviously, there are things one can say (about people, about states, about anything) that are far worse than what Kushner has said about Israel. And, as is evident, I don't think Kushner's criticisms (even though I disagree) are of the sort that justify CUNY withdrawing the honor. But pretending like Kushner is being attacked because he complained about inefficiencies in Israel's bus network is just obviously false. Accurate or inaccurate, justified or unjustified, what Kushner said was not "whitebread".

My feeling is at this point there isn't anything productive being added to this discussion, so I think we'll let it lie here.

Cycle Cyril said...
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Cycle Cyril said...
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