Open Letter to Harvard Students

By Dr. Ruth Wisse of Harvard  University

Although bashing Israel has been a popular campus activity 
since the rise of student radicalism in the late 1960s, 
during the past year some Harvard students have noted an 
increase of  anti-Israel bias inside the classroom.
A professor calls Israel an  "apartheid" country, perpetuating 
the Zionist-racist calumny that corrupted the  United Nations 
for fifteen years.  A professor helps to prosecute the Arab war 
against Israel by holding Israel responsible for the aggression 
against it. Teaching assistants routinely manifest their bias 
instead of presenting a critically balanced analysis. These are 
only some of  anguished laments I have been hearing from Jewish 
and other students who  identify with Israel's cause.

As citizens of the free world, let alone members of the university
community, students ought to do everything possible to challenge
systematic prejudice and bias.  But what can they do? The right 
of free speech is so rightfully enshrined in our  culture, most 
especially at the university, that one hesitates to complain 
about faculty that may be abusing its privilege.  Students, 
having less information than their teachers, feel handicapped 
in arguing for what they know  to be true.  With a stake of many 
tens of thousands of dollars in their education, students often 
hesitate to challenge those who determine their grades.
Nevertheless, students are never powerless; indeed, they have 
the responsibility to seek out the truth and to affirm it.  
Let me suggest some ways they may begin correcting distortion --
within the classroom and also beyond  it.

Maps: 

1. Have a  reliably scaled map of the entire Middle East in 
view during any discussion of the Arabs and Israel. You may 
ask for such a map to be provided by the teacher, and if it 
is not forthcoming, distribute it on your own.  Since the map 
shows that Israel takes up about one percent of the region -
about the  proportion of Rhode Island to the United States - 
the complaint against Israel is easily turned back against 
those who question its expanse: how much less land do the Jews 
deserve compared to the vast holdings of the Arabs?  The Arabs  
have 21 countries, Islam rules in 40.  Why then accuse the Jews 
of having too much when the Arabs consider all they have is 
still too little?  Why does their obsession with the tiny Jewish 
enclave prevent them from attending to the manifold problems 
of their own societies?

2. Have on hand a 1921-23 map of Great Britain's division of 
the mandated area of  "Palestine." (I put Palestine in quotation 
marks because at the time, most Muslim and Christian Arabs 
considered the whole area called Palestine to be part of Arab 
Syria, and recognized no separate national identity among Syrian,  
Jordanian, or Palestinian Arabs.)  The area assigned by Britain 
to the Hashemite rulers of Jordan was twice as large as that 
originally designated for the Jewish national home, but whereas
Jews were barred from settling in Transjordan, Arabs remained 
free to settle in Eretz Israel.  This map makes it clear that 
Jordan represented the lion's share of historical Palestine;  
indeed, the majority of Jordan is still made up of Palestinian 
Arabs, just as  the majority of Palestinian Arabs reside in 
Jordan.  How is it, then, that those who question the Jews' 
right to their part of Palestine do not simultaneously challenge
Jordan's right to the Arab part of Palestine?  The map highlights 
the scandal that Arab refugees were not settled in that abundant  
land just as Jewish refugees from Arab lands were resettled in 
Jewish Palestine.

3. Have in view a  political map of the Middle East that is color-
coded according to levels of democracy and autocracy. That tiny 
blue patch of Israel hemmed in by shades of purple will show 
that the war against the Jewish State is simultaneously a war 
against the only democracy in the region.  Of course, a professor 
may want to present the case against democracy as well as for it.  
Arab governments' opposition to democracy within their borders 
is for them to determine.  But any criticism of Israeli democracy 
within the context of Middle East politics is subject to strict 
comparative standards, or else it is merely an excuse for 
delegitimating the Jewish people.

4. Have on hand a map of the world.  See how many lands Christians 
and Muslims consider themselves entitled to, while the (older) 
religious civilization of the Jews is still expected to justify 
its claim to a small part of its ancient homeland.

Demographics: 

Keep on hand a chart of the population statistics to register 
the preposterous imbalance of the so-called Arab-Israel conflict.
There are presently about 13  million Jews in the world, 
4 or 5 million fewer than there were in 1939, while there are 
over 250 million Arabs with ties to over a billion Muslims 
worldwide.  Since Judaism predates Islam by some 2,200 years, 
this asymmetry obviously attests to opposing religious 
priorities-self-limiting in one case, expansionist in the other.  
The Jews' concept of election puts enormous pressure on them to 
try to live up to the measure of God-a moral  outlook that 
does not tempt many converts, and has made Jews notoriously  
susceptible to political defeat.  By contrast, Islam is a religion 
that affirms itself through conquest.  Along with its humanitarian 
and spiritual teachings, the sword is one of its proudest symbols, 
and the current effort to increase its numbers, including in 
America, is part of this drive for universal reach.  Is there
anything wrong with that?  Perhaps not. Cultures are different, 
which is undoubtedly why this university places such emphasis on 
diversity, so that we may learn to recognize differences among  
people without seeking to destroy them on account of their 
difference.  But why then should Islam's drive for hegemonic 
rule be credited over the Jewish  people's struggle for survival?  
Thanks to the lopsided ratio of the two  parties, only the Arabs
can bring peace to the Middle East, and only if and when they 
accept that Jews are also entitled to their land.

Historical timetables:  

While history cannot be summarized in charts, a reliable chronological 
timetable helps to counter disinformation by keeping the sequence 
of events firmly in  view.  History records that the United Nations 
voted the partition of  Palestine on November 29, 1947: the Jews 
accepted it, the Arabs did not.  Israel declared its independence 
on May 14, 1948.  Five Arab countries invaded Israel, vowing in 
the words of the Secretary-General of the Arab League, that 
"this will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre 
which will be  spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the 
Crusades."  The Palestine Liberation Organization formed under 
the auspices of the Arab League in the  summer of 1964, when the 
west bank of the Jordan was under Hashemite control. Its purpose 
must have been to "liberate" all of Israel, since the west bank
was then under Arab control.  Since Israel's conquest of what 
was formerly the west bank of Jordan in 1967 was the result of 
the Arab war against the Jewish state, the so-called occupation 
of those disputed territories cannot retroactively have become 
its cause. The Arab refusal to settle the Palestinians, or to 
let part of Jordan evolve into a Palestinian state cannot be  
recycled as a charge against the Jewish people except by willful
distortion of the historical record.  While there may be legitimate
disputes over the interpretation of one or another event, there 
can unfortunately be no dispute about the escalation of Arab 
violence against the Jews of Palestine between 1921 and the 
present.

Sources: 

Although  teachers may assign books exclusively hostile to Israel,
you are always free to explore the other side of the story.  
To see how widespread is the problem Harvard students may be 
facing, see Martin Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure 
of Middle Eastern Studies in America.  Bernard Lewis' most recent  
book, What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Responses 
offers a terse, deeply knowledgeable historical analysis of his 
subject.  The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Middle East Conflict 
also serves the needs of intelligent and knowledgeable readers.  
Its bibliography and list of  websites encourages further 
independent research.

Students who wish to defend Israel sometimes think that they are 
engaged in a parochial cause that concerns them only because 
they are Jewish, or because they have Jewish sympathies or Jewish 
friends. But in fact, their fellow students may be afraid to 
stand up for the Jews because of the enormity, intensity, and 
ubiquity of the propaganda against them.  This is as true today 
as it was in the 1930s and for many of the same reasons.
Aggression against the Jews is the common denominator of many 
of the greatest tyrannies of the modern age, and the epidemic of 
anti-Semitism among the Arabs is all too disturbing evidence of 
the drift of their political culture. Anti-Semitism is one of 
the world's most powerful ideologies because of the way it 
unites otherwise warring and opposing factions, such as radical 
Islamists and Arab nationalists, just as it united Communist 
and Arab regimes during the period of the Cold War. Yet the more  
intractable the war against the Jews, the more some tender-hearted 
people are tempted to pressure Israel to yield to its enemies, 
since they feel certain the Arabs will never yield, and they
therefore see no other solution to the problem  but to ask for 
Jewish concessions. The ultimate outcome of such pressure on 
the Jews would be the destruction of their polity and population.  
And those who join in the assault, for whatever reason, bear 
responsibility for its acceleration. 

To be sure, those who blame Israel for the aggression against it 
usually deny that they are  anti-Jewish.  They say that they are 
merely anti-Israel and anti-Zionist, not against the Jewish 
people as such.  But as Hillel Halkin sums it up in the latest 
Commentary, "Israel is the state of the Jews.  Zionism is the  
belief that the Jews should have a state. To defame Israel is to 
defame  the Jews. To wish that it never existed, or would cease 
to exist, is to wish to destroy the Jews."  This syllogism 
should be borne in mind by those who help to prosecute the Arab 
war against the homeland of the Jewish people,  for unlike 
Christianity and Islam, the Jews claim only a single land, 
and that one of the smallest on the globe. Modern anti-Semitism 
since the 1860s attacks the Jews because they are the emblem 
of democratic freedoms.  Hence, by the logic of politics, 
defenders of Jewish rights, whether against the  political Left 
or Right, are invariably defending the causes of liberty and  
toleration.