Bard College, Martin Peretz and the Hasbara counter-offensive

Martin Peretz

A few days ago I spotted a reference on the Mondoweiss blog to an upcoming talk by Martin Peretz sponsored by Bard College. It is titled “The Demonization of Israel: Its History and Politics” and will be held on September 16^th at 6:15 at the school’s Globalization and International Affairs offices at 36 West 44th St. The talk is part of The James Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series. Chase was a professor at Bard who died in 2004 and could best be described as an inside-the-beltway master of realpolitik, just the sort of person who would thrive at Bard College.

Our friends at Mondoweiss were resourceful enough to dig up a post from Peretz’s blog at The New Republic Magazine (TNR) bought with his wife’s money (she was an heiress to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune) back in 1975. It is as toxic as his usual offerings and cut from the same cloth as the NY Post, Fox News or the WSJ editorial page.

Mondoweiss singles out these gems:

The State of New York has no need for more mosques, since there are plenty of them. Furthermore, Muslims living in New York do not frequent their mosques on a daily basis; usually they go to them either on Saturdays or on Sundays, due to the nature of their work. Therefore, there is no real need for the building of the Cordoba Mosque; especially as the project has already provoked the sentiments of Americans, by reminding them of the attacks on 9 September, 2001, the Islamic conquest of Spain, as well as the tragic consequences of Islamic imperialism in general.

In my view, the really modest struggle against the mosque is probably the closest thing we’ve had to a genuinely grass roots effort against the casual and elitist First Amendment fundamentalists.

The fact that Bard would give a platform for this kind of rant must be explained. When Leon Botstein told me back in 1987 that the appointment of Martin Peretz to the Bard College board of trustees must not be subjected to a litmus test (I had written him a letter complaining about Peretz’s advocacy of contra funding), it dawned on me years later that he was applying a litmus test. That litmus test consisted of support for Israel obviously and more generally for the right of US imperialism to rule the world.

Some background on Peretz is in order. Back in the 1960s, he was still something of a leftist, enough so that he dipped into his wife’s trust fund and came up with much of the money for a conference organized by the National Conference for New Politics, a group led by left-liberals and “old school” SDS’ers like Paul Booth. In Jacob Heilbrunn’s “They Knew they were Right: the rise of the Neocons”, we learn that Peretz was also a major funder of Ramparts Magazine as well. He had studied with Herbert Marcuse as a Brandeis University undergrad and was not above writing angry letters to the NY Times denouncing the military dictatorship in Brazil.

But something happened at the conference that he had financed with his wife’s grandfather’s hard-earned money that made him turn his back on the left. The conference adopted a motion critical of Israel that had been put forward by Black Nationalists. This made Peretz a raving rightwinger practically overnight, the first manifestations of which was an article titled “Israel and the American Left” that appeared in the November 1967 issue of Commentary Magazine. Seven years later when he took over the New Republic, he would turn the magazine into an outlet for Zionist propaganda and neoliberal social and economic policies associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. When he joined Bard College, he clearly intended to do as much as he could to put the school on a collision course with Palestinian rights even if this was sometimes at odds with more “reasonable” minds in the Bard College power structure.

While George Soros was never a board member (his ex-wife Susan was), he certainly had just as much money to throw around as Peretz and—logically—just as much power to determine the school’s destiny. Soros is somewhat to the left of Peretz, especially on the Middle East, and therefore got on his wrong side. In 2007, Peretz wrote a TNR article titled Tyran-a-Soros that accused Soros of being what amounts to a “self-hating” Jew:

Soros is ostentatiously indifferent to his own Jewishness. He is not a believer. He has no Jewish communal ties. He certainly isn’t a Zionist. He told Connie Bruck in The New Yorker–testily, she recounted–that “I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence–but I don’t want to be part of it.” But he has involved himself in the founding of an anti-AIPAC, more dovish Israel lobby. Suddenly, he wants to influence the character of a Jewish state about which he loudly cares nothing. Once again, he bears no responsibility. Perhaps his sense of his own purity also underwrites his heartlessness in business. As a big currency player in the world markets, Soros was at least partially responsible for the decline in the British pound.

The article also makes the case that Soros collaborated with the Nazis in prewar Hungary, something that appears borne out by a Sixty Minutes interview conducted by Steve Kroft:

Kroft: “And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.” Soros: “Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.”

Kroft: “In what way?”

Soros: “That one should think ahead. One should understand that–and anticipate events and when, when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a– a very personal threat of evil.”

Kroft: “My understanding is that you went … went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.”

Soros: “Yes, that’s right. Yes.”

Leaving aside the question of complicity with the Nazis, which hardly seems to be Soros’s worst attribute, one might assume that Bard’s decision to develop a kind of paternalistic tie to Al-Quds University in Jerusalem reflects much more of Soros’s thinking than Peretz’s, especially since he is a major donor of this neocolonial initiative. Peretz would probably favor dropping white phosphorus bombs on the school while Soros would vote for turning the school into a training ground for accommodationists, thus mirroring the largely fictitious split in Israeli politics between hawks and doves.

Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al-Quds, is just the kind of quisling figure that would recommend himself to Bard College. In 2005, the Palestinian Teachers Union called for his dismissal from that post—probably something that cinched his eligibility for a partnership with Bard. The Electronic Intifada reported:

A Palestinian teachers union has called for the dismissal of Al-Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh for “normalising ties with Israel” and “serving Israeli propaganda interests”.

A statement by the Palestinian Union of University Teachers and Employees (PUUTE), published on the front page of the Ramallah-based daily Al-Ayyam, on Monday accused Nusseibeh of “normalising relations with the Sharon government” despite the Israeli prime minister’s policy of “bullying the Palestinians and stealing their land”.

“This constitutes a strong blow to the Palestinian national consensus against normalisation with Israel,” said the statement.

“We call on all concerned parties within the Palestinian Authority, including President Mahmoud Abbas and the Higher Education Council, to take the necessary measures to put an end to this behaviour, which doesn’t represent the position of the Palestinian university teachers and employees, and dismiss the president of the Al-Quds University.”

The statement also accused Nusseibeh of acting against a recent decision by Britain’s Association of University Teachers to boycott Israel’s Haifa and Bar Ilan universities.

One would imagine that a hawk like Martin Peretz might have also been a bit unhappy with the honorary degree bestowed on novelist Margaret Atwood at the 2010 Commencement ceremonies. This writer, after all, did write this on her blog:

None of this changes the core nature of the reality, which is that the concept of Israel as a humane and democratic state is in serious trouble. Once a country starts refusing entry to the likes of Noam Chomsky, shutting down the rights of its citizens to use words like “Nakba,” and labelling as “anti-Israel” anyone who tries to tell them what they need to know, a police-state clampdown looms. Will it be a betrayal of age-old humane Jewish traditions and the rule of just law, or a turn towards reconciliation and a truly open society?

Time is running out. Opinion in Israel may be hardening, but in the United States things are moving in the opposite direction. Campus activity is increasing; many young Jewish Americans don’t want Israel speaking for them. America, snarled in two chaotic wars and facing increasing international anger over Palestine, may well be starting to see Israel not as an asset but as a liability.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? But action counts for a lot more than words in politics. Just a month before these words were written, Atwood accepted a cash prize of a half-million dollars in Tel Aviv over the objections of boycott organizers. She claimed that it was an issue of “free speech” and offered up this bromide about how the conflict in the Middle East might be resolved:

I sympathize with the very bad conditions the people of Gaza are living through due to the blockade, the military actions, and the Egyptian and Israeli walls. Everyone in the world hopes that the two sides involved will give up their inflexible positions and sit down at the negotiating table immediately and work out a settlement that would help the ordinary people who are suffering. The world wants to see fair play and humane behaviour, and it wants that more the longer the present situation continues and the worse the conditions become.

In my version of Dante’s Inferno, I picture people like Botstein and Atwood living in Gaza-like conditions for all eternity, but then again I confess to being a materialist.

It is difficult to predict where Bard will be going as a willing participant in the Hasbara counter-offensive. Yale University had a conference on anti-Semitism recently that was very much in line with the Peretz speech scheduled for September 16. Once again I recommend the Mondoweiss report on this Hasbara con artistry:

This is disturbing. A Yale University center that purports to study anti-Semitism is holding a three-day conference on “the crisis” of global anti-Semitism (ending tomorrow) that is dedicated to the idea that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.

The flotilla raid, anti-Semitic. Helen Thomas, anti-Semitic. The very idea of Palestinian identity, anti-Semitic.

That last claim–“The Central Role of Palestinian Antisemitism in Creating the Palestinian Identity”–was put forward Monday, shockingly, by Itamar Marcus, a leader of the settler movement in the occupied West Bank. Marcus has connections to the Central Fund of Israel, which raises money here for the settlers, including their “urgent security needs.”

Perhaps the best way to describe Bard’s approach is one of a multidimensional Hasbara. For the people who listen to NPR, there’s the Bard College that forms a partnership with Al-Quds and presents Margaret Atwood with an honorary degree. For the readers of TNR and donors to AIPAC, there’s the Bard College that gives Martin Peretz a platform to spew his racist filth or that allows its Chaplain Bruce Chilton to go on WABC hate radio to support IDF war crimes. In either case, we are not dealing with a college that puts the human rights of Palestinians first and foremost.

For Joel Kovel’s take on Bard College and Zionism, check this interview I conducted with him in July:

UPDATE

NY Times September 11, 2010

Is This America?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider a blog post in The New Republic this month. Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, it asserted: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.”

Mr. Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”

Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms. Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews? How do America’s nearly seven million American Muslims feel when their faith is denounced as barbaric?

This is one of those times that test our values, a bit like the shameful interning of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the disgraceful refusal to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.

It would have been natural for this test to have come right after 9/11, but it was forestalled because President George W. Bush pushed back at his conservative ranks and repeatedly warned Americans not to confuse Al Qaeda with Islam.

Now that Mr. Bush is no longer in the White House, nativists are back on the warpath. Some opponents of President Obama are circulating bald-faced lies about him that are also scurrilous attacks on Islam itself. One e-mail bouncing around falsely accuses Mr. Obama of lying and adds, “His Muslim faith says it’s okay to lie.”

Or there’s the e-mail I received the other day from a relative, declaring: “President Obama has directed the United States Postal Service to remember and honor the Eid Muslim holiday season with a new commemorative 44 cent first class holiday postage stamp.” In fact, it was President Bush’s administration that first issued the Eid stamp in 2001 and that issued new versions after that.

Astonishingly, a Newsweek poll finds that 52 percent of Republicans believe that it is “definitely true” or “probably true” that “Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” So a majority of Republicans think that our president wants to impose Islamic law worldwide.

That kind of extremism undermines our democracy, risks violence and empowers jihadis.

Newsweek quoted a Taliban operative, Zabihullah, about opposition to the mosque near ground zero: “By preventing this mosque from being built, America is doing us a big favor. It’s providing us with more recruits, donations and popular support.” Mr. Zabihullah added, “The more mosques you stop, the more jihadis we will get.”

In America, bigoted comments about Islam often seem to come from people who have never visited a mosque and know few if any Muslims. In their ignorance, they mirror the anti-Semitism that I hear in Muslim countries from people who have never met a Jew.

One American university professor wrote to me that “every Muslim in the world” believes that the proposed Manhattan Islamic center would symbolize triumph over America. That reminded me of Pakistanis who used to tell me that “every Jew” knew of 9/11 in advance, so that none died in the World Trade Center.

It is perfectly reasonable for critics to point to the shortcomings of Islam or any other religion. There should be more outrage, for example, about the mistreatment of women in many Islamic countries, or the oppression of religious minorities like Christians and Ahmadis in Pakistan.

Europe is alarmed that Muslim immigrants have not assimilated well, resulting in tolerance of intolerance, and pockets of wife-beating, forced marriage, homophobia and female genital mutilation. Those are legitimate concerns, but sweeping denunciations of any religious group constitute dangerous bigotry.

If this is a testing time, then some have passed with flying colors. Hats off to a rabbinical student in Massachusetts, Rachel Barenblat, who raised money to replace prayer rugs that a drunken intruder had urinated on at a mosque. She told me that she quickly raised more than $1,100 from Jews and Christians alike.

Above all, bravo to those Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders who jointly denounced what they called “the anti-Muslim frenzy.”

“We know what it is like when people have attacked us physically, have attacked us verbally, and others have remained silent,” said Rabbi David Saperstein. “It cannot happen here in America in 2010.”

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick put it this way: “This is not America. America was not built on hate.”

“Shame on you,” the Rev. Richard Cizik, a leading evangelical Christian, said to those castigating Islam. “You bring dishonor to the name of Jesus Christ. You directly disobey his commandment to love your neighbor.”

Amen.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos videos and follow me on Twitter.

UPDATE #2

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/11/brandeis_repudiates_racist_alum_martin_peretz/

Brandeis Repudiates Racist Alum, Martin Peretz
By M.J. Rosenberg – September 11, 2010, 5:15PM

He’s a little old to lose his BA from Brandeis. Nonetheless, it is still good that Brandeis students are organizing against the most prominent Brandeis-associated racist.

Brandeis, where Eleanor Roosevelt was both a trustee and a faculty member and which was the national headquarters for the 1970 student mobilization against the Viet war is a Jewish-sponsored university, proud of is liberalism and its Jewish values (you know real Jewish values, the ones from the Prophets not the neocons).

In lining up against Peretz, Brandeis students of today indicate that they are at one with their traditions.

Too bad Brandeis grad, Abbie Hoffmann, is not around. He would both do a great job organizing this effort and smearing Peretz with an ephitet Peretz has earned a hundred times over: shanda fur de goyim.

That is what Hoffman shouted from the defendants’ dock at the judge conducting the trial of the Chicago 7 antiwar protesters. The phrase refers to a Jew who makes other Jews cringe and delights anti-Semites everywhere.

That’s Peretz.

Text of Brandeis response follows:

Marty Peretz is a famous Brandeis Alum, and the editor-in-chief of the New Republic. He recently wrote a column with this disturbing conclusion:

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

This is the collective response of the Brandeis community

Please co-sign the letter if you are a Brandeis community member:

From the Brandeis Community:

Dear Marty Peretz ’59,

Your recent remarks are appalling, and do not reflect the values of the broader Brandeis community.

Recently, in your September 4th column, you claimed that Muslims don’t value human life, that they are soft on terrorism, and that you wish to strip them of their First Amendment Rights.

That was unacceptable, irresponsible, and wrong.

Mr. Peretz, your name and likeness is used in our admissions materials, the University lists you among its most prestigious alumni, and not two years ago you accepted a Distinguished Alumni award from us. For better or worse, your actions reflect on us.

Brandeis University stands for love, not hate. Brandeis stands for respecting the truth. Brandeis stands for recognizing the humanity in others. We value our Muslim community members here; they are part of our broad family.

If nothing else, this University was founded to fight back against discrimination, bigotry, and fear of minorities.

Attacking people’s First Amendment rights is un-American, un-Brandeisian, and unethical. You’re hurting us. You’re hurting our Islamic community members, our pride in you, and our good name.

We, the united Brandeis community, respectfully and firmly demand you apologize.