Israel Matzav: Irony alert: Beinart appearance in Berkeley canceled, Jewish Voice for Peace charges 'McCarthyism'

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Irony alert: Beinart appearance in Berkeley canceled, Jewish Voice for Peace charges 'McCarthyism'

The American Left gets more shrill by the day.

When we last talked about Peter Beinart's scheduled appearance in Berkeley (or Beserkeley as some of my friends call it), it was to tell you that the East Bay JCC had canceled its sponsorship of the event, because they felt that the 'moderator' was biased. (Some of you may have even noticed a comment in that thread from the person whose article about the moderator I quoted, claiming that I had taken the quote out of context).

The result of that withdrawal of sponsorship is that the event has been canceled. And the Jewish anti-Semites at Jewish Voice for Peace are seething about... McCarthyism?

While many Bay Area supporters of Jewish Voice for Peace have been or are also supporters of the East Bay JCC, we recognize that withdrawing sponsorship at this late date is likely one more result of an increasingly McCarthyite atmosphere in the Jewish institutional world. In the Bay Area especially, more and more, Jewish institutions are required to police speakers and events based on the narrow requirements of a handful of influential funders.

Dr. Penny Rosenwasser, author of several books including Voices from a 'Promised Land': Palestinian & Israeli Peace Activists Speak Their Hearts" and co-instructor of San Francisco City College course “Anti-Semitism/Anti-Arabism” said:

It’s exactly this guilt by association accusation that I think is one of the most destructive aspects of these kinds of guidelines. They try to keep disparate Jewish groups from joining together to present events that allow us to examine huge ethical and social justice issues. I’m proud to be an active Jewish Voice for Peace member, I’m proud of our advocacy for human rights and justice for all the peoples of the Middle East: including Israelis, including Palestinians.

In 2010, an ad in the Jewish Daily Forward warned about new, vaguely written funding guidelines instituted by the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation which said that the Federation would not fund groups that “advocate for, or endorse, undermining the legitimacy of Israel… including through participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement,” nor would they support programming that is co-sponsored or co-presented by such organizations.

The Forward ad, signed by 73 rabbis, professors and other Jewish leaders in the Bay Area, warned that these guidelines, which were preceded by similar ones implemented by the highly influential Koret/Taube Foundation, would “…curtail freedom of speech and artistic expression by declaring certain opinions and organizations out of bounds. This policy does grave damage to the vibrancy of the American Jewish community. The language that describes excluded organizations is vague and open-ended—those that “advocate for or endorse undermining the legitimacy of Israel as a democratic Jewish state.”

Jewish Voice for Peace’s current Advisory Board members include luminaries such as Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and Eve Ensler. JVP actively supports nonviolent efforts to pressure Israel to be accountable to international law through the We Divest campaign which demands that retirement giant TIAA-CREF divest from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Because of this, we presume that our Advisory Board members would also be ineligible as participants in a talk sponsored by the East Bay JCC, other Bay Area JCCs, and other Federation and Koret/Taube grantees.

It's been about 30 years since I took Constitutional Law, but unless things have changed drastically in those 30 years, the right to free speech does not include the right to have the costs of disseminating that speech paid for by those with whom you disagree.

But this whole story is rich in irony even without the free speech issues. Boycott advocates are upset that they “may be boycotted by Jewish institutions due to the pressure by a handful of funding sources” because boycotting “curtails freedom of speech and artistic expression”?

Divestment advocates oppose those who would cut off those advocates' financial support because the “dynamic of policing by funders, especially acute during times of economic difficulty, has already had a destructive impact on Jewish institutions that would otherwise be committed to open dialogue”?

Sanctions advocates claim that sanctions against themselves are “disheartening” and constitute “polices that explicitly cut off honest conversation and critical thinking”?

I always thought that if it was sauce for the goose, it was sauce for the gander. Silly me.

Labels: BDS, Jewish Voice for Peace, Peter Beinart