Middle East Crisis Response
PO Box 614
Shady, NY 12409
December 3, 2019
Elizabeth H. Bradley, President
Vassar College
124 Raymond Ave.
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
Dear President Bradley,
As a community organization, Middle East Crisis Response has been active in protecting human rights, both here in the Hudson Valley and abroad. We were founded sixteen years ago by Joel Kovel, noted environmentalist and professor at Bard College. His seminal book, "Overcoming Zionism" was dropped by his American publisher and he was forced to retire from the college. Things were different back then. Any mention of Palestinian rights ended a writer's academic career, even if he was Jewish.
Human rights have made some impressive gains since then. Black Lives, Immigrant Defense, LGBTQ and Muslim rights have begun to assert themselves locally. The same is true with Palestinian rights. We now have a Hudson Valley Jewish Voice for Peace (in Westchester, Kingston and Albany), a Palestinian Support Project, and a J Street all acting locally, along with strong organizations at several colleges.
None of these human rights organizations confuse a fair criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Jewish Voice for Peace, while strongly condemning antisemitism, rejects that charge when used to cover up ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine.
Your recent statements branding a Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine action as antisemitic is a good example. You have decided that the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is an antisemitic declaration, a threat to the Jewish community on campus.
Left out of your analysis is the fact that Jewish students are members of SJP and JVP. Are you deciding for Jewish students what is antisemitic? Maybe young Jews don't want you to define what their Jewishness means. That was the message of JVP's National Director of JVP, Rebecca Vilkomerson, when she spoke at Vassar in 2011. She strongly refuted the idea that all Jewish people support Zionism, and stated that many young Jews do not want to have their ethnic identity or religion tied to a racist and apartheid state in the Middle East.
The chant lends itself to simplistic assumptions. According to a story about Vassar in the New York Daily News (Dahl, Ziva. "Vassar’s education on anti-Semitism" 20 Nov. 2019), "This rallying cry, first used by the terrorist group Hamas, calls for the annihilation of Israel. It is as racist as was the 'Jews will not replace us' chant by white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017."
The New York Times had a different and more nuanced take on these words. "David Kimche, who was director general of Israel's foreign ministry in the 1980's, noted: 'The old Zionist nationalists' anthem was a state on the two banks of the River Jordan.' When that became impractical, we talked about 'greater Israel,' from the Jordan to the sea. But people now realize that this, too, is something we won't be able to achieve.' " (Bronner, Ethan. "Why 'Greater Israel' Never Came to Be" 14 Aug. 2005)
It looks like your interpretation of the chant follows the reasoning of the Daily News article, written by an employee of the Haym Salomon Center, a Zionist propaganda organization with a troubling Islamophobic reputation.