Did Berkeley Jewish Community Silence Peter Beinart? Nonsense.
Jewish Voice for Peace advocates boycott, divestment, and sanctions. JVP calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement by a unitary state that will absorb four generations of Arab “refugees.” Dr. Penny Rosenwasser, the named JVP moderator of the Beinart event, is well known for her strong and passionate anti-Zionist advocacy.
Blumenthal presents none of this history. Instead, he focuses on an alleged member of the Jewish Federation Board, Jonathan Wornick, as the initial source of the pressure on the Jewish Community Center to withdraw its support for the Beinart event.
Again, Blumenthal is getting bad information. Wornick has not been a Federation board member for the last two years.
By way of disclosure, I have met Wornick twice. I am on his Facebook page, as I am on hundreds of others. Wornick did put a notice about the Beinart lecture up on Facebook. This, for the hyperbolically inclined Blumenthal, was “the beginning of the pressure.” However, Wornick was just another voice of outrage amid a popular groundswell, within a community where many have become tired of their institutions sponsoring events that threaten the existence of the Jewish state.
Someone in Germany hacked into Wornick’s Facebook account, and some of Wornick’s pages appear in Blumenthal’s column. Where Blumenthal got this material is an issue, for most certainly Wornick and Blumenthal have not “friended” each other.
With a large dose of spin and manipulation of context, Blumenthal transformed Wornick into some sort of crazy racist, the very prototype of the Zionist leader that Beinart warned us against. This is a Wornick that perhaps Blumenthal’s “source” will recognize, though no one remotely familiar with Wornick will take this portrayal seriously.
No one, especially if they carry an anti-Zionist message, needs the imprimatur of the JCC or the Jewish Federation to speak in Berkeley. There are plenty of groups, on- and off-campus, which would welcome Beinart’s discredited narrative. As Blumenthal’s correction revealed, Beinart pulled out not because of the JCC, the Federation, or even its phantom board member Jonathan Wornick, but because — in Beinart’s own words — even he did not want to be sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace.
Professor Miller, I very much appreciate your essay. Writing from the other end of the United States and also a member of academia, I have fought, completely unsuccessfully, the anti-Semitism of administration and faculty at several local institutions of “higher learning”, and the utter indifference of individual Jews and the Jewish communal “establishment”, whose top priorities appear to be government-provided contraception and the like. In their newsletters, the Jewish federations print pro-J Street columns and censor rebuttals; print ads for Christian day schools while announcing the closure of Jewish day schools; and print invented citations from Torah and Talmud to justify radical leftism, while censoring correct Torah citations in rebuttal.
When all other alternatives have been ruled out, the remaining alternative must be the truth. I have come to the conclusion that the Jewish communal establishment, like academia, is a threat to the survival of Judaism and of the Jewish people. I urge all concerned Jews to boycott the mainstream Jewish organizations (and academia); think outside the box; network with observant, Zionist Jews; and speak up. Thank you for your courage, professor.
@ Surak: Thanks for writing. Thanks for being part of the fight. I know the problem well. When I moved here, I was shocked to hear some of the activists refer to the people in the Jewish organizations as the “Judenrat.” The more moderate activists refer to them as “the paid Jews” or the “matzoh balls.” Of course, the characterizations are extreme, and there are many on the professional staff who are good people and have no say about a self-destructive policies orchestrated by people behind the scenes. Such sobriquets are, however, unobtrusive comments about the depth and extent of the conflict. Ultimately I fear leftist Jews more than I fear Iran. Leftist Jews run our community organizations and still promulgate the now unpublicized New Jewish Agenda. They are a fifth column that is unable to see that their policies are corrosive and ultimately destructive. Here the pro-Zionist students meet off campus at the home of a Chabad rabbi, while the most vicious anti-Zionists are openly welcome at Berkeley’s Hillel. Activist Natan Nestel wrote about this in the Jerusalem Post. Caroline Glick had a column on the subject a year ago, and I am told she got muzzled. I also wrote. But nothing changes. The big tent mentality means shoving the Zionists off campus and bringing in the Students for Justice for Palestine. What other ethnic group would behave this way? Jews have been in the diaspora so long they have come to see themselves as the “other,” replete with all the nasty stereotypes being absorbed into the gene pool. We are our own worst enemy.
John Fund spoke in Berkeley. Here is another portrayal of the place.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295199/president-petulant-john-fund
This was an enlightening and informataive piece. How ironic that the Left/anti-Israel side is presented by Beinart’s proponents as the victim of a campaign to impose silence on their views, when in reality, it is the opposite. Anti-Israel speakers aren’t the ones who need bodyguards on campuses, but speakers represting Israel do.
Professor Miller’s essay speaks about the Bay Area but what he writes about is rampant across the country, demonstrated by Surak’s comment. I would be interested in hearing about others’ stories like this. I appreciate the article and hearing from those like Surak who are showing that this is not just a Bay Area phenomenon.
I think that most Jews in this area are analogous to most Muslim, they do not agree with or support the radical Jews, but are afraid to speak out or write about their differences for fear of creating “problems” or antagonism. Some think it is for fear of losing their Jewish leftist friends, but I suspect it is more than that. I think the majority of American Jews are, like me, followers of Reform Judaism who support Israel and have adapted their religious practice to the American scene. Many have recently withdrawn from various virulent Jewish mainstream organizatons precisely because of the anti-Israel ( it is really anti Israel, not just anti-Zionist)leadership. It far easier to withdraw than to take a position which may create problems for family and children from those who oppose. I do not know how much this pattern is confined to the Bay area, due to the proximity of Berkeley and its obvious influence.
It is hard for me to write on this issue, Abe. I can’t believe, that with the
Holocaust in our history, and with all we have had to survive as Jews, that
Jewish people would even think of embracing a liberal policy, one that is
sympathetic to muslims. This goes against their own people and makes it easy
for the enemy. My view of Jews who are such liberal “peaceniks”, they are
self-hating or have had an easy life, not had to work too hard; they latch onto
an idea – I’ll never understand it. You are to be credited for taking this
issue on.
One big reason these Jewish anti-Semitic Israel-bashers identify themselves as Jews is that doing so lends credence to their hateful message among non-Jews.
Very true.
Also, in the Bay Area, and in universities across the country, some Jewish faculty won’t stand by Israel for fear of violence, being ostracized by fellow faculty, or, if they’re junior faculty, getting turned down for tenure.
Outstanding description of the problem.