Pro-Palestine Speakers Discuss their Portrayal in the Press

By Alex Ellefson

In response to allegations that their lectures promoted anti-semitism, the speakers at last week’s pro-Palestine events spoke with the Kingsman about misrepresentations they see in the media regarding Israel and Palestine.

The controversy comes after a much larger debate about academic freedom, when the political science department voted to co-sponsor an SJP event that advocated for boycotting Israel to end the occupation of Palestine. Several politicians threatened to pull funding from the Brooklyn College if the co-sponsorship was not removed. They said that the department was supporting an event that promoted anti-semitism and was offensive to many Brooklyn College Students.

Less than a year later, three academic departments, including political science, voted to co-sponsor two SJP events featuring journalist Ben White and Author Josh Ruebner. Both speakers argued that Israel is an apartheid state because it privileges its Jewish residents over the Palestinians.

In an op-ed published in the Daily News last Thursday, columnist Tammi Rossman-Benjamin wrote that the academic departments were sponsoring a lecture that unfairly targets Israel and its policies.

“No other country on Earth has had its very existence challenged,” she wrote. “The fact that only Jewish self-determination is open to such threats underscores the deeply hypocritical and anti-Semitic nature of calls for the elimination of the Jewish state.”

The article makes a point, Kosovo’s struggle to form it’s own state after many years of violence with neighboring Serbia, has not drawn the same criticism that has been directed towards Israel.

But Ruebner told The Kingsman that Israel was actually the one asking for special treatment. He argued that Israel should be held to the same international standards as the rest of the world.

“Why can [former Serbian president] Slobodan Milosevic be tried by for violating the Geneva Conventions but Israel gets a free pass?” said Ruebner, who argued that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank violate article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that an occupying power cannot “transfer parts of its own population into territories it occupies.”

Ruebner added: “Israel should be held to the same standard [as other countries], but the Israel lobby says: No.”

Another reason Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza deserves to be questioned, Ruebner said, is that Israel receives more U.S. military support than any other nation.

He pointed out that the white phosphorus artillery shells used by Israel during a three week offensive in Gaza, were produced in Arkansas and Louisiana.

“This is why we [the U.S.] need to focus on our responsibility to end Israeli oppression,” he said. “We are not arming the Assad regime.”

White said that the accusations of anti-semitism leveled at the SJP events were meant to stifle the discussion about Israel and Palestine.

“I think it comes out of a desire to want to project onto people a motivation of hatred,” he said. “You can’t conceive that there is a genuine struggle if your whole idea of Palestinian human rights is offensive.”

White said that the accusations made in the media that he was an anti-semite were based on articles he wrote, which were taken out of context.

He argued that Israel advocates like State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who called White’s lecture a “hatefest,” have overplayed their hand.

“There is an increased desperation and shrillness from Israel apologists who see that power is no longer there, even within the Jewish Community,” said White. “People are so tired of hearing the same thing that they are starting to investigate on their own.”

Both he and Ruebner said that the discussion about Israel and Palestine had opened up in the last five years, largely due to the work of Palestinian solidarity groups like the SJP.