Have you no shame?

Law students graduating from CUNY Law School enter a hostile world. The curriculum is all about standing up for the poor and oppressed in society, using one's legal skills to speak truth to power.

But the powerful in our society have learned to use their influence and money  to make such goals difficult indeed. Our representatives in government rarely stand up for the powerless. Our media has no interest in home grown oppression. And our colleges have become dependent on the very rich to fund them. There is hardly room for idealism in the neoliberal world we have created.

So when a young CUNY graduate has the courage to give a speech about the victims no one wants to hear about, all hell breaks loose. Five million Palestinians suffer under a ruthless apartheid occupation, and our country pays for the whole human rights catastrophe. But that subject is taboo, especially in the minds of all the politicians who are generously funded by the Israel Lobby. For ours is a democracy hanging by a thread. The very richest get to speak for us all. How else to explain the obscene disparity between the billionaires and everyone else?

Maybe Fatima Mohammed's commencement address to her class will be the tipping point. Perhaps the American people will finally ask the right question of the Israel Lobby: "Have you no shame?" 

Fred Nagel

I'm a U.S. Army veteran (101st Airborne) and I am Jewish

 

Dear Marc Molinaro, 

I'm a U.S. Army veteran (101st Airborne) and I am Jewish. I have been to the West Bank in Palestine twice, with other veterans, including IDF veterans. We have seen with our own eyes and experienced with our bodies just some of the horrors that Palestinian children and their families experience under Israeli occupation. I knew people who fought against the Nazis in WWII and also  Holocaust survivors who are equally appalled at what the Israeli's are doing – with support from  the U.S. government! 

AIPAC, the lobby that encourages support for what most of the world sees as a blatant apartheid state must be resisted. Palestinian children must be allowed to live without the fear of Israeli soldiers breaking down their family doors and dragging them off in the middle of the night or of having their homes bulldozed, or being beaten, imprisoned or killed.  

I am writing as a constituent and as a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Action to urge you to become a cosponsor of Congresswoman McCollum’s Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act.

This critically important legislation would ensure U.S. taxpayer funds are not used by the Israeli government to detain and torture Palestinian children, steal and destroy Palestinian homes and property, or further annex Palestinian land. 

The bill could not come at a more critical moment. At the end of 2022, Israelis elected the most far-right and extremist government in the country’s history. Israel’s systemic violence and apartheid rule has denied Palestinians their human rights for decades, and it has only grown worse under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government. 

The U.S. sends $3.8 billion in military funding to Israel every single year and it is long past time for Congress to take action to prevent this funding from supporting human rights violations against Palestinians. 

I urge you to become a cosponsor of this important legislation.

Thank you.

Tarak Kauff
NYC Veterans For Peace

Dear Editor,
As a former university professor I want to thank Bard College for offering the course: “Apartheid in Israel-Palestine,” as I thank them for all the classes in their various programs that tackle difficult and controversial issues. That is what a good institution of higher learning is mandated to do around the many political and social contentions in our world – past and present. Ignoring, denying and shutting down a discussion of what’s happening on the ground in Israel and Palestine, is closing the door on dialogue and discussion, the bedrock of a Liberal Art’s university experience. 

 

Should we not talk about the silence and complicity of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust; the near genocide of indigenous people in the Americas; the role of Africa’s elites in the slave trade; the way the United States cherry picks human rights abuses in countries around the world and completely ignores them in others? I hope not, despite the fiery content. Leon Botstein should be applauded for not caving into the Ulster County Jewish Federation’s hollow and desperate charge of anti-Semitism. 

 

To brand a course anti-Semitic because it examines the social constructs of Zionism, Apartheid, Occupation, Democracy, and Colonization is dangerous, and runs the risk of tempering and diluting the very real forms of anti Semitism that threaten our social order. This course is NOT one of them. 

Jim Savio
Woodstock, New York

May the Bard College students study and learn the truth

Thank you to Fred Nagel of Rhinebeck for his letter "Defending Racial Hatreds," outlining efforts by David Drimer to shut down the Bard College course on apartheid in Israel-Palestine. For me, the fascist takeover in Israel raises questions about what sort of person would not only support it but also try to silence anyone who speaks out against it. May the Bard College students study and learn the truth.

Naomi Allen

Defending racial hatreds by attacking higher education

 Florida has its Ron DeSantis, and the Hudson Valley has its David Drimer. Both seek to defend racial hatreds in their attacks on higher education. DeSantis wants to make it illegal for Advanced Placement courses to talk about the role of Black people in our society. Drimer wants Bard College to shut down a course on apartheid in Israel-Palestine.

These disputes are decades if not centuries old. The US has been subjugating its Black population since 1619, first as slaves and then as tormented minorities at the bottom of a rigid caste system. Israel has employed racism and ethnic cleansing since its very beginning. Both DeSantis and Drimer wrap themselves in their respective flags, the stars and stripes and the star of David, to protect the very worst in their societies. And rather than trying to cleanse their nations of this racism, they attack any manifestation of the truth.

Both DeSantis and Drimer present themselves as defenders of a racist status quo. DeSantis has worked hard to protect white people from the "discomfort" or the "guilt" they might feel when exposed to the history of Jim Crow discrimination or hate. Drimer has an equally difficult task. In an article he wrote for the "Jerusalem Post," he calls his lobby, the Zionist Organization of America, an "uncompromised voice for Israel's security." For Drimer, any study of ethnic cleansing or racism in the Holy Land must be rooted out, even if it is taught by a world renowned human rights scholar.

Fred Nagel

The course “Apartheid in Israel-Palestine”

 

The course “Apartheid in Israel-Palestine” recognizes a reality accepted by most of the world and opens it up to discussion. Isn’t that what we expect from institutions of higher learning? Fact #1: Israel has been condemned as an apartheid state by Human Rights Watch; Amnesty International; Israel’s own human rights monitor, B’Tselem; members of the EU Parliament; and last year the Presbyterian Church (USA); among others. Fact #2: The International Criminal Court is investigating Israel for the crime of apartheid. 

What prevents more public outcry? Several myths—that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East,” that the Occupation is temporary (56 years and counting), and that a ”peace process” will soon bring an end to abuses. If Bard’s course allows reality to depose those dangerous myths it will be an educational landmark.

Prof. Lisa Mullenneaux

Collapse of our corrupted two party system

Political parties in the United States change over time. Sometimes the issues are so monumental that old parties die and new ones are born. The abolition of slavery is one example. The Whig Party disappeared before the Civil War and the Republican Party emerged.

We have overarching issues of the day in 2023. There is the enormous gap between the very rich and the rest of us that has plagued our nation for the last 40 years. Rich people buy politicians of both parties to make sure that our laws favor only the obscenely wealthy. Working people haven't had a break since Jimmy Carter.

Another issue is war. Both parties are enthusiastic supporters of our endless wars abroad. Both parties mouth the same platitudes about fighting for democracy, freedom and human rights, all the while shoveling enormous profits to the nation's major weapons makers. We have over 800 military bases around the world, and our soldiers and advisors are involved in wars in Africa, the Middle East, and now Eastern Europe. Both parties are fine with that, despite the fact that we are risking a nuclear annihilation.

A third issue is our unending support for tyrants and genocidal states. From Saudi Arabia to apartheid Israel, we reward the worst of human rights abuser, and both parties seem to like it that way, as long as the bribes keep coming. Most of our Congress is paid off by the Israel Lobby.

May the New Year bring the collapse of our corrupted two party system.

Fred Nagel