Columbia University’s Law Review was taken offline Monday after its editors published an article that said Palestinians are living under a “brutally sophisticated structure of oppression” by Israel that amounts to a crime against humanity. As of Wednesday night, the Review’s website said only that it was “under maintenance.” By week’s end, the website was back online, with the complete fall issue including the article, titled “Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept.” It was accompanied by a statement from the review’s Board of Directors, complaining that not everyone had a chance to read the article before it was published. The Board said for now it would “memorialize” its concern with the process, and continue to review it.
This was the latest iteration of a story that has been going on for decades. In 2012, after the Occupy Wall Street protests, I wrote about it, offending some people. But 90 percent of what I wrote then is relevant today — and more important than ever. At the certain risk of offending more people, I invite you to read “Across the Barricades 2: The Israel Lobby.” originally published here in January, 2012.
Occupying Wall Street, 2011
Last year’s occupiers of Wall Street included protesters against not just the financial and banking lobby, but other powerful interest groups that dominate political life in America.And the harshest criticism from across the barricades was directed not at people like me denouncing corporate greed, but against a lone fellow with a sign protesting U-S aid to Israel – billions of dollars in annual aid to a modern, prosperous country, far more than anything we give to any of the world’s poor nations. He was subjected to long, heated lectures from passersby offended by the idea that the U.S should not provide such extraordinary support to its special friend in the Middle East.I sympathized with him, and told him so, because I’ve been through it.
In fifty years as a journalist, I learned that criticizing Israel is a risky business in America – it can cost you friendships, reputation, career, or political office.For example, in the current presidential campaign, no candidate including the President has questioned U.S. support for Israel, even as Israel has repeatedly threatened to ignite a disastrous war by attacking Iran’s nuclear program.They haven’t because to do so would guarantee a storm of protest from one of the most powerful interest groups in America, known as the Israel lobby.
Columbia University’s Nanny Police State -- cracking down on some students in order to comfort others -- collapsed and died last week. The cause was contradictions.
When Columbia president Minouche Shafik called in the NYPD to arrest more than 100 peaceful protesters because opponents said they felt "unsafe," it galvanized the university in support of the protest. The occupation mushroomed in size, doubled down on its demands, and spread to Yale, NYU and campuses across the country.
No violence or injuries have been reported, but Shafik said “students across an array of communities have conveyed fears for their safety“ amid “too many examples of intimidating and harassing behavior.” Meanwhile Shafik is being harassed and intimidated by members of Congress demanding a crackdown on campus protests. Behind it all: Big-money donors to politicians and schools.
Students, faculty and staff are protesting US and university support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. As of Monday their demands were for Columbia to divest from companies with ties to Israel, bar police from campus, grant amnesty to all protesters, and end seizures of land and displacement of people, “whether in Harlem, Lenapehoking or Palestine.”
Just a walk through or past the occupied lawn would let anyone know there is little to fear. It’s a different demo from 1968, when Vietnam war protests were led by fiery activists like Mark Rudd and Stokely Carmichael. This occupation is mostly female and/or non-binary, and organized co-operatively, with no hierarchy of leaders. This afternoon, in the area set aside for press interviews, all the media-trained representatives were women and most were women of color. Many were from Barnard, the Columbia women’s college which has suspended and evicted students for protesting. I interviewed a Barnard student, a third-year Psychology major, of Asian ancestry. She called Palestine a “compass” — pointing the way for all kinds of intersecting liberation movements, including feminism. The struggle, she said, is against the “violence of the patriarchy.”
Monday night, as observant Jews marked Passover in homes and dorms. about 100 students and faculty gathered on the occupied lawn for an improvised seder. Earlier I asked a group of Jewish students gathered in front of their tent if they’d seen any evidence of anti-Semitism among their fellow student protesters. They all said no.
Meanwhile, the protests were spilling over into the street outside Columbia’s gates at 115th and Broadway. Students with bullhorns inside the gates led supporters on the sidewalk in chants which inluded: “One two three four, Apartheid no more!” and “Genocide no more; “ And then — “five, six , seven, eight, Israel is a racist state.” A few feet away, separated by police barriers and cops in riot gear, a much smaller pro-Israel group called the protesters “terrorists” and “Hamas lovers,” and one woman yelled, “Go home! Go to Hell!” Police surrounded the entire campus and a police helicopter hovered noisily above.
Most of the nastiness is on the street, outside the closed campus. Recently I was walking up Broadway with a friend when a large young man wearing a Nazi-style helmet came careening down the sidewalk on a motorized scooter. As he veered past, we both heard him say “Sieg Heil!” Then there was a guy outside Columbia’s gates draped in Israeli colors, marching up and down before the pro-Palestinian crowd, with a sign advising them to behead their children.
So far, the only casualties have been the truth, twisted by both sides — the lawn, trampled by campers — and the public, which is indefinitely barred from the campus. I talked my way in as a member of the press.
The encampment covers one of Columbia’s many lawns. Across the path, workers were preparing another field for a graduation tent. Commencement comes in May, and protesters say they’ll stay put until Columbia divests. President Shafik is pleading for peace, dialogue and “respectful engagement.”
Columbia could re-arrange the seating and and let the students hold their ground. The students could agree not to disrupt the ceremonies. But can anyone hold their tongue?
On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at the UN and in the Middle East, it has become impolitic to talk of Peace. Nobody wants it -- it would just get in the way of the new Mother of All Battles, the bloodbath underway between Hamas and Israel. Round Two is due to begin after Israel flattens most of Gaza, in preparation for a suicidal mission to "uproot" and "eliminate" Hamas. That's the same Hamas which has been allowed and encouraged to flourish for years by Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu, because it shares his distaste for Peace.
Both sides are out of their minds. Hamas thinks it can reclaim the entire land of Israel and Palestine. Israel thinks it can occupy that land forever, or steal what remains in such small increments that no one will fight back.
Forget it, people. It doesn't work and it never will.
"One. One & One" Vertigo Dance Company Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York March 6, 2019 -- By Tom Phillips
Except for a neat row of dirt at the front of the stage, the opening section of “One. One & One” by Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company looks much like the closing elegy of George Balanchine’s “Serenade.” It’s a solemn communal idyll, to sonorous cellos in a minor key, with a motif of dancers leaning on each other for balance and support. They seem to be a close-knit group, working out complex tasks together –- as when three men braid the hair of a woman while she uses her long tresses to pull them across the stage.
The communal spirit stays as more dirt is spread in the rectangular, closed space. But the mood changes suddenly with the sound of a cannonade -- big guns, firing in the distance. After that, the dirt and the dancers start to fly, and the communal idyll is transformed into what looks like an army boot camp, whipping troops into combat readiness. The motif here is “bring it on,” with dancers lining up on each side of the stage and charging at their opposite numbers, trying to breach their defenses. Every charge is repelled!
So much for “Serenade.” This looks more like socialist realism, the kind of state-sponsored art that Balanchine came to America to get away from. And if it reminds you of the modern history of Israel, as seen by the State of Israel, that’s just what it looked like to me.
