New Film Exposes Northeastern’s Radical Holocaust Program
Americans for Peace and Tolerance has released a documentary on Northeastern’s Holocaust Awareness Week, and Charles Jacobs has published a column in the Jewish Advocate summarizing his criticisms of it. In response, Northeastern Provost Stephen Director has complained that Jacobs “cherry-picked his examples”:
The present-day facts are clear: Northeastern is a vibrant academic community where people of all backgrounds and faiths come together in pursuit of knowledge.
In dismissing a dozen examples of intellectual and moral abuse of the Holocaust program at Northeastern as “cherry-picked,” Director expresses either a lack of awareness or a dishonesty about the nature of the intellectual and moral stakes. That Jacobs could “cherry-pick” any examples of people using this venue at Northeastern to make the morally sadistic comparison of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians with the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews represents a failure of judgment on a colossal scale.
How can an occupation which systematically exterminated millions of innocent civilians in a matter of three years be compared with one in which the “target” population both grew in number and in prosperity over the course of 40 years?
How can one make such a comparison without including a comparison of how Israel treats its “occupied” Palestinians with how the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war have been treated by their Arab hosts? They have been and continue to be far more ruthless and cruel with their own people than the “Nazi-like” Israelis are with the Palestinians.
Comparisons of Israelis with Nazis are not sober assessments of empirical reality — the hallmark of good history and journalism. They are wild and intentionally debasing accusations — Israel-baiting — made in a moral and intellectual fugue. This represents a disorientation of empirical reality so radical that its prominence on campus needs to be addressed, explained, and corrected, and not covered up with claims of “academic freedom.”
Academics are not “free” to make things up, and universities are not required to give those who do a pulpit. That, as Stephen Director should in principle know, is a crucial component of the “pursuit of knowledge.”
Instead, in his apologetics, he sounds like the FBI after Waco: “We didn’t do anything wrong, and we won’t do it again.” We can’t learn from mistakes we don’t admit.
Far from an example of “academic freedom,” this situation is actually the opposite. The radical voice that compares Israel to the Nazis and tars as “right-wing” those Jews who object has essentially driven the entire political spectrum off-kilter. What Northeastern calls diversity and vigorous debate “in pursuit of knowledge” actually represents the shutting down of precisely the kind of debate that must take place, replacing it with unchallenged intellectual and moral abuse.
Moderate vs. extremist. Left vs. right. Dove vs. hawk. None of these ranges mean anything anymore as a result of the skew those running the Holocaust program at Northeastern bring to the university community. This skew is reflected in many places, including the news media. A “moderate” in the Palestinian system (e.g., Mahmoud Abbas) does not translate into a moderate in ours; and a “hardliner” in ours is a (way too) soft-liner in theirs. Someone who promises his people the land from river to the sea, who demands the ethnic transfer and cleansing of a religious minority from territory he rules, who wants to keep his own people stateless, whose “authorities” bully and intimidate the press, who uses torture against his own opposition? This is not a “moderate.” Any Israeli leader with such a record would be immediately branded — by Jews and other Westerners alike — as a vicious fascist. Of course, in comparison with the genocidal Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Abbas is at least willing to say he’s willing to (maybe) negotiate, and therefore appears on our current skewed political register as a “moderate.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, who allows a much wider range of dissent and lives by far more demanding democratic principles, is branded a “hawkish” right-wing extremist when he resists pressure to compromise with foes. But since holding Palestinians responsible for their choices — suicide bombing, hate propaganda, river-to-the-sea ambitions — would be blaming the victim, it’s so much easier for the politically correct to blame the “hardliner” Netanyahu for the failure of negotiations rather than the “moderate” Abbas.
As a result of this skew of the political spectrum, for nearly a decade Northeastern’s hijacked Holocaust program repeatedly invited highly politicized, intellectually dishonest, morally hysterical people who demonized Israel and who tried to exclude, silence, and intimidate anyone who defended her.
I refer the readers to a ‘Letter to the Editor’which my son penned when he attended MIT.(2003-2007) It was called, ‘When History Becomes Hijacked’. I will link it, but if the link does not work, I urge the posters to google – Chaim Kutnicki and it will pop up.
tech.mit.edu/V124/N6/_[LTE]The_.6l.html
It dovetails completely with this important op-ed. Read it and weep. It is THAT important.
Just so we’re being objective and empirical…
In a press release, the APT laid out three, specific actions that it is calling for in reaction to the video coverage that has been released:
1. The University should apologize and launch an independent investigation into how such demonization of Israel and the Jewish community could have occurred on campus.
2. The University should form a new Holocaust Awareness Committee composed of faculty sympathetic to Jewish peoplehood.
3. Professors who claim that Jews act like Nazis are engaging in hateful bigotry. To prevent such bigotry in the future, the University should extend its existing minority sensitivity training programs to include the Jewish people.
I support Israel. The behavior at Northeastern is disgusting. The APT’s first demand above is righteous. The last two demonstrate a disturbing version of their own Progressivist mindset toward reality.
Do we really need to be made aware of the Holocaust? Those who deny it occurred will continue to deny it regardless of whatever facts you present. I hope most people are already aware that the Holocaust occurred. “Awareness” is usually the hallmark of a Progressive (Leftist/Statist) belief system, or agenda.
Demand 3 seems to support my last paragraph – Minority Sensitivity Training?!?! They’re calling for that? Oh, sure…these folks are freedom-loving Americans who also support Israel, is that it? No, they’re not. They’re Statists who want to force other human beings to think like they do, and to shut down the voice of their opposition.
Americans for Peace and Tolerance/On Campus just flushed their credibility down the toilet. They’re engaged in EXACTLY THE SAME tactics they decry in their opposition.
If you’re going to present the facts, then you need to present all of the facts. This is really a battle between two different groups of Progressives who’re jockying for total control of their enemies.
Richard, BTW, your daughter travels in the same circles as my son(s). Last time I saw her she was radiantly pregnant.
Best of luck.
You’re exactly right: academic freedom doesn’t mean the freedom to provide either no context and proportion or wildly inaccurate comparison’s, as if any voice is a valid voice.
People hide behind notions of partisanship to hide the most ignorant portrayals of history. I understand Left versus Right but there is and should be a limit to partisanship by lining everything up on one side and saying, “That’s history.”
The Left has mutilated history according to the tenets of Political Correctness until it’s all but unrecognizable, preferring to make it a race and gender war when there is no evidence the world ever overarched in that manner, or if it did, only one way.
No surprise that, alongside our own history, right and wrong have similarly become all but unrecognizable.
Sadly, we have several generations of work to undo. Since the late fifties and early sixties the campuses of the elite universities have been mugged by the progressive movements. I don’t know how this can be overcome but by parents deciding NOT to fund a child’s education at these institutions. And I’m afraid that even this may not be enough, what with the huge endowments (into the billions) these schools have.
It will not occur through self introspection, as these people KNOW they’re right. And it certainly will not occur through the very slow process of stealth candidates being brought in. The intellectual elite know who is and who is not of their ilk. The apathy of the purse string holders condemn us to years of this. The pathetic part is that a complete reversal is not necessary. Just a leavening of conservative scholars throughout the various schools.
It goes back much further than the late ’50s; the communists had a firm grip on humanities departments by the late ’30s and Roosevelts diplomatic recognition of the USSR made universities a playground for the Comintern and KGB/GRU. By ’67, when I started college at a small rural Georgia college, virtually all my humanities instrutors/professors were marxists.
“How can one make such a comparison without including a comparison of how Israel treats its “occupied” Palestinians with how the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war have been treated by their Arab hosts?”
Easy, because you’re dealing with modern acedemia. Our colleges are a joke today. You’ll notice colleges never, ever, suggest that the Palestinians go back to their real homeland, which is Jordan. Nope, they never seem to force that issue. And you don’t see the Israeli’s forcing that issue, either. Israelis are perfecting willing to co-exist with the Palestinians, something the Palestinians have chosen not to do since 1948.
As another academic antagonist of Israel said recently, “There is no such thing as truth, there are only narratives”. The Left has a ‘narrative’ of Israel, so the truth (which they don’t believe exists) hardly matters. What matters is that their ‘narrative’ is the one planted in people’s minds.
“When History Becomes Hijacked” indeed! I see that a couple of days ago on palestinian tv (paid for with our tax $$$), the imam claimed that the slaves liberated from Egypt were actually Muslems; that Moses was a Muslem; that Saul, David and Soloman were Muslem; etc. Yuch! What people need to steal somebody else’ patrimony, history, and pretend it is their own? I guess we can expect a repeat of this at all US universities under the heading of “narrative.” Happy Pesach.
On that first point, are you sure that he wasn’t describing a very similar incident a few thousand years later, when an early Moslem Sultan drove the Banu Hillel out of Egypt? (They headed west, though, not east.)
On the other point, that is the sort of distasteful retrospective thing that the Mormons do to make the long dead into Mormons. It isn’t an ignorance that all those people were Jews, it’s someone acting out of misguided good intentions to count them as Moslems since they met the requirements of submission to God even though they hadn’t heard Mohammed’s message.
The private universities can teach whatever they like and can get students to take because constitutionally protected freedom of speech really is an issue at private universities. We who don’t like what they teach are free not to send our kids there or to not hire their graduates. Certainly any Republican governor or mayor should think twice before hiring an Ivy or other “elite” private university grad. Why on Earth would a Republican governor or mayor want to hire an attorney who likely is an Alan Dershowitz clone? In many degree programs, especially all the “Studies” programs, the only potential employers are governments and non-profits that do work for governments. While it is true that the massive endowments many of these places have insulates them from economic pressures, it becoming common knowlege that a degree from these places essentially disqualifies you from employment in many places might have some effect on their behavior.
In the publicly funded universities, free speech and “academic freedom” are creatures of contract or policy and Constitutional protections do not obtain to the instructors/teachers/professors. The 1st Am. protects one for government interference with speech, but in the case of a government employed professor, s/he IS the government speaking. The 1st Am. protects a student from being silenced by a professor, but does not protect a professor from being silenced by the Dean or the Governor.
We on the right side of the ditch control the governments of over half the states and those governments exercise significant control over their state’s university system. In my experience, appointments to state boards of education and boards of regents are mere afterthoughts for Republicans. We should put as much effort into selecting university officers and appointees to boards of regents as we do into cabinet officers. In those states where such officers are elected, we should involve ourselves in vetting those candidates as thoroughly as we vett candidates for the house and senate. And I’m as guilty of slacking on this as the next one; we had a school board election yesterday and I didn’t know jack about any of the candidates, so I found out which ones the NEA was endorsing and didn’t vote for them, but I really don’t know much about the people I did vote for. In my state, these are nominally non-partisan races but that is only a fig leaf, though it does serve to let public employee run for these offices though they’re prohibited from running for partisan offices such as legislative seats. That is commonly the case around the Country and I think we should take a look at it. Perhaps even local government offices should be formally partisan which would have the effect of keeping public employees out of them. This is especially important in the Western state in which federal employees form almost an occupying army in some states – like mine, though the Hatch Act was so thoroughly gutted under Clinton that I don’t know that it prohibits much political activity by federal employees anymore.
I notice they make no other WWII comparisons – like the Palestinians to the Prussians. The German Prussians were unceremoniously kicked off their land and out of their country by the Soviets. Instead of spending the next 6 decades as refuges, terrorists, and general losers, the expelled Germans got on with life and rebuilt the richest country in Europe (once the Communists had finally left).
one of the german scholars i got to know last year made exactly this point, and said Israel shd emphasize the contrast. he remembered going to school with the children of these refugees who were integrated fully. shows a level of solidarity that apparently the arabs (even the “palestinians”) don’t have. their only solidarity is their effort to regain arab honor by destroying israel, even if it means sacrificing powerless arabs (palestinian refugees) on the altar of their hatred.
Now come on. The comparison of the Holocaust with modern Israel is valid. First, Palestinian leader Mufti Al-Husseini collaborated with Hitler during World War II because both shared the goal of Jewish genocide. So, there is a direct historical link between the Nazis and Palestine. Second, Palestinian factions still strive for Jewish genocide. The only reason they haven’t succeeded is the diligence and preventive actions taken by Israel.
Just an observation from someone who attended N.U. many years ago. This stuff began and has increased, ever since N.U. began to take in foreign-born students. There was a time when you would never have had such things on that campus.
Just sayin’.
when did you go? write them. this needs to go viral before they’ll be sufficiently embarrassed.
Early 1980s, when it was a much smaller, commuter-oriented college.
abbas should have been hanged by the neck until dead years ago. any nation, other than israel, would have seen to that. this miscreant has the gall to continue his vicious slander and lies only points to the vapid ignorance of the history of the middle east and the creation of the state of israel. abbas, in particular, is the mastermind behind the murder of the israeli olympic athletes at munich, the murder of leon klinghoffer, wheelchair bound and thrown over the side of a hostage cruise ship, the massive suicide bombings of innocent israeli civilians on busses and the brave suicide bombers who murdered teens hanging out at a pizza parlor.
these academic slime who are determined to spew their hateful protocols of the elders of zion bullsh*t, are the same ones who wrung their filthy hands when israel built the security fences that kept out the fakenstinian suicide murderers.
those who use the holocaust, the shoah, to denigrate the jewish state of israel should have their tongues ripped out and thrown in the gutter, where their vacant souls and their despicable lies already reside.
“Meanwhile, no one at Northeastern is exposed to anything that is not “peace” oriented.”
You’re probably being sarcastic here, huh, Richard? I can tell, as you placed the word “peace” in quotes.
What continually amazes me is how the Left (and I am including everyone who does not believe in the Source of Love, Who is God) makes every claim to be ‘peaceful,’ yet shows no Love for anyone. They claim to be “educated,” yet refuse to acknowledge the Truth. 2 Tim 3:1-9.
What they refuse to acknowledge is the Truth that only Love leads to real peace; and that requires believing and loving the God of Creation and Israel.
Winston Churchill said it best: “Meinkampf was the new Koran”…The Gathering Storm 1948
The holocaust is a historical fact a tragedy that affected the entire globe. There are still people alive today who suffered and survived the holocaust – they lost everything – their families, homes and cultural histories have been demolished. If that does not merit “remembering” a devastating part of history I don’t know what does. How can anyone forget?
‘He, who does not learn from history, is doomed to repeat it.’
George Santayana
Because it was a major event in history when millions of Jews and others were murdered. We need to remember the Holocaust so that we remember the horrors that innocent people were put through.
However, I do think the main reason it should still be taught and thought about is to remind us of why it should never happen again. Even more so because the world we live in today is far more complex, which would make it even easier to build such mass killing machines. Our history can help us learn from our past and live for a better future.
I an adamant that everyone should have the opportunity to learn and discover about the holocaust because it is the biggest known genocide ever. We should not forget about the innocent people who were murdered because Hitler didn’t agree/hate them. People should always learn from mistakes, and it makes things a lot less painful if they are not your own.
We need to remember TRUTH about the Holocaust so that we remember the horrors that innocent people were put through, and so this can’t happen again.
We should remember the holocaust exactly as it really happened, so we can make sure that nothing like this will ever happen again. If this would happen again we would know what to do because the holocaust educated us on these major events in history. We all always keep in memory all those Jews and non Jews that were murdered.
Why? Many reasons…we should do it out of the respect of the millions of innocent men woman and children who were killed together in the most evil way you can ever image. They died in a long torturous way by depraved beasts, often watching the ones they loved most suffer unspeakable pain and horror. Each and every single one of these people had friends, family, etc they were ordinary people. Why were they killed? Just because they were Jews. Another reason to remember the TRUTH IS TO ENSURE that it can be passed on to the future generations about the true horrors of racism so evil and unspeakably evil that it never, ever happens again.
To say that Israel’s committment to protecting its own territory from Palestinian terror is likened to the hideous acts of the Nazi regime of hateful Hitler, is the height of idiotic nonsense
This movie is a mockery of history!!`
Number, yes, prosperity, no.
I think the point here is that the the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war are not “their own people”, as seen by those “hosts” – they are identified as members of another people, the Palestinian people. This is a “second order disagreement”, where the two sides don’t even agree what it is that they disagree about. Here, the other side does not accept that these are “their own people”. It’s not analogous to (say) Pieds Noirs and Harkis in Algeria fleeing to France, a country that had indeed acknowledged them as its own citizens or eligible to become such (there were second class citizen things that caught the Harkis). Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, on the other hand – these mostly affirmed their separation and lack of obligation. Imagine if a disaster drove U.S. citizens into Canada; they couldn’t claim entitlement as Canadians’ “own people” despite a certain amount of remote common origin; in fact, the split from that common origin came from the very rejection of being the same.
Understand, I am not agreeing or disagreeing with either position in this, I am pointing out that to accept this description is to accept the very thing at issue. It does not help in understanding the issues.
So far, that could be Hillel Kook, almost any of the Stern Gang, or even David Ben Gurion in his less guarded moments (so “Any Israeli leader with such a record would be immediately branded — by Jews and other Westerners alike — as a vicious fascist” is plain wrong – apart maybe from Kook, but then again he lost a power struggle and didn’t get to write the histories, and even he got ignored more than condemned). It’s only the “who wants to keep his own people stateless” part that gave it away that it isn’t. But then again, none of the Palestinian leaders want that for Palestinians either – like the early Zionists, they too want a state of their own, that they can rule.
What concerns me most about this article is that it isn’t asking “what are they talking about?” and then rebutting that, it’s simply saying “they are wrong” without ever bringing out what they are saying. Whatever the truth of the matter, that is no service to truth.
Holocaust survivors came out of Hitler’s death camps in a terrible condition, living starving skeletons on the point of death
Palestinian prisoners who are released from Israeli prisons come out healthy, in fact more educated and healthy that when the first went into prison
To equate Israel treat of Palestinians is the very height of idiotic nonsense