Terra Incognita: The (ir)responsibility of the academy

Seth Frantzman
JPost
15 November 09

(Thoughtful with interesting points)

Recent debates surrounding politics at university have usually juxtaposed two different political viewpoints against one another. The Right argues that the academy is overflowing with extreme-leftist professors who work to undermine the existence of the state at home and abroad. The Left argues that its freedom of expression is being threatened by the Right and that its campaigns for "justice" or "human rights" are part of making the state more humane.

The Left believes that if a few of its extremist voices call for boycotts of their own universities then that might be "misplaced," but it is part and parcel of a democratic society. Perhaps both sides are right. The academy is at the forefront of anti-Israel intellectual extremism. It is also a bastion of freedom of expression in a free society.

But what both sides are missing is a third view of the academy, namely one that sees it as enshrining certain values, three of which should be responsibility, decency and maturity. The extreme-leftist antics of some faculty members should not be curtailed by laws or by dismissal from the academy. Instead there should be an inculcation of self-control.

Instead of crying "Nazi" every time the IDF does something an academic disagrees with, one could hold his tongue. Instead of requesting the boycott of one's own university, one could have some restraint. Instead of signing petitions encouraging soldiers to desert their units or calling on European powers to immediately intervene to "save" the Palestinians from a "genocide," one could show some self-control.

It is apparent that the central problem with too many of Israel's academics is that they are unsure of their place in society, they misunderstand their relevance and they are embittered and hysterical in their pronouncements to the point of having a childlike "crying wolf" mentality when discussing the conflict in the Middle East.

Consider a few examples. Prof. Ada Yonath, fresh after receiving a Nobel Prize, instead of saying a few words of praise for a society that gave her the opportunities to succeed and excel, immediately launched into a barrage of opinions about Gilad Schalit. She declared that Israel should release all its Palestinian prisoners and that holding them was the real source of all Palestinian attacks on Israel.
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Another Tack: Uri's beloved Ada'le

Sarah Honig
JPost
29 October 09

Most of us Israelis were literally dumbstruck by the imbecilities which our latest Nobel laureate, Ada Yonath, spouted. No sooner had she made us proud, Yonath proceeded to slap us hard across our collective face. We're still smarting from the supposed smart one's slurs, which is perhaps why it's better to pretend that she never advised we forthwith liberate all convicted terrorists - regardless of Gilad Schalit's ongoing captivity and certainly regardless of whatever atrocity they committed and were duly tried and convicted for.

"It's unclear to me why we're holding these Palestinians - the ones we call 'terrorists' - instead of releasing everybody from the outset, without any link to a deal for Schalit," Yonath opined in an Army Radio interview. Her incisive scientific logic continued: "It's in our power to change the present situation. When one is incarcerated for years, friends and family around him grow angry. That's how we create terrorists.... If no terrorists sat in our prisons, nobody would abduct Israelis to effect their release. By holding terrorists, we give the other side an appetite to launch kidnapping operations. Once we no longer imprison terrorists, they'd have no reason to kidnap."

If taken seriously, the implications of the above babble are staggering. It's akin to suggesting that the surefire crime stopper is to empty all prisons, halt all law enforcement activities, desist from arresting, prosecuting, sentencing and punishing miscreants - no matter how heinous their felonies. A free-for-all will safeguard our freedoms.

FOR A state like ours - the only one worldwide overtly threatened with genocide - the implications are altogether scary. They plainly mandate we stop defending ourselves.

If, as Yonath contends, hopelessness is the mother of conflict, then it might well be asked why well-off British-born youths of Pakistani extraction chose to detonate themselves at a beachfront Tel Aviv club. Were they so hopeless in the Labor-led UK that they decided to take it out on us?

If, according to Yonath, violence is triggered by sending murderers to prison, how is it that Arab massacres began many decades before we gained sovereignty and attendant authority to apprehend anyone?

How did Jews nettle Palestinian idol Haj Amin al-Husseini to induce him to join Hitler in Nazi Berlin and became an active accomplice in the "final solution?"

Does Yonath believe the masterminds of the Park Hotel, Sbarro Pizzeria, Maxim Restaurant and many more suicide bombings deserve no reckoning? Would she let off scot-free executioners, like those who shot (at point-blank, one-by-one) expectant mother Tali Hatuel and her four tiny daughters (as well as the fetus she carried to nearly full-term)?

If even legal action is illegitimate, how do we safeguard ourselves? By surrendering?

The so-called political right and center fear vocalizing their indignation, lest they thereby amplify Yonath's delegitimation of Israeli self-preservation. The embarrassment caused by so honored an Israeli echoing enemy rhetoric is too bitter a pill. Even our ever-voluble left-of-center crowd seems embarrassed. There's no exultant crowing, no "we told you so."

Yonath isn't even on the fringes of our consensus. Unbeknownst to most Israelis, who hadn't heard of her until the Nobel committee lifted her from anonymity, she is one of Uri Avnery's loyal sidekicks, a true disciple, even a quasi-protégée.

Read what he himself wrote: "Our table celebrated with Ada Yonath. This 'table' just had its 50th anniversary. It started by accident in California, the café established at the time by Abie Nathan, who later became famous as the Peace Pilot. Afterward, we met for many years at the legendary artists' café Cassit." Then "the table wandered to several other places and became known as the 'Cassit exiles' table." The "House of Lords," one newspaper nicknamed it.

"The habitués of the table come from different walks of life. There is a former director of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, several senior journalists, a linguist and Bible expert, a film producer, a professor of medicine, a psychiatrist, a town planner, an industrialist, a translator of literature, a radio program producer. And a scientist." The latter is Yonath.

AVNERY CONTENDS that "the table is not political. But all its habitués tend, as it so happens, to lean toward the Left. For years, Ada Yonath has been our candidate for the Nobel Prize. I recount all this not only in order to boast about the fact that Ada 'belongs to us.'"

In radio interviews, Avnery was downright fatherly and called Yonath "our Ada'le." He couldn't stop boasting that she indeed "belongs to us." In this context it's instructive to note that Avnery asserted in a recent op-ed that Schalit wasn't kidnapped, that he's a POW, that Israeli government propaganda claims otherwise to foil a swap, that it's wrong to classify "Palestinian candidates for release" as "terrorists with blood on their hands, criminals beyond the law, lowly murderers." Doesn't Ada'le sound like her mentor?

Said mentor, it needs be stressed, had long ago crossed the lines - physically, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally. He identifies with the enemy and subscribes to its perspective. Nevertheless, Avnery parades as the preeminent freethinking Israeli and is the darling of Israel-bashers for doing their dirty work. He's incidentally the single most popular Israeli in his native Germany.
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