Larry Summers on anti-Semitism

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

I submit the following speech by Harvard University President (and former US Secretary of the Treasury) Lawrence Summers for consideration:

Address at morning prayers
Memorial Church
Cambridge, Massachusetts
September 17, 2002

I speak with you today not as President of the University but as a
concerned member of our community about something that I never thought
I would become seriously worried about -- the issue of anti-Semitism.

I am Jewish, identified but hardly devout. In my lifetime, anti-Semitism has
been remote from my experience. My family all left Europe at the beginning
of the 20th century. The Holocaust is for me a matter of history, not
personal memory. To be sure, there were country clubs where I grew up
that had few if any Jewish members, but not ones that included people I
knew. My experience in college and graduate school, as a faculty member,
as a government official -- all involved little notice of my religion.

Indeed, I was struck during my years in the Clinton administration that the
existence of an economic leadership team with people like Robert Rubin,
Alan Greenspan, Charlene Barshefsky and many others that was very
heavily Jewish passed without comment or notice -- it was something that
would have been inconceivable a generation or two ago, as indeed it would
have been inconceivable a generation or two ago that Harvard could have a
Jewish President.

Without thinking about it much, I attributed all of this to progress -- to an
ascendancy of enlightenment and tolerance. A view that prejudice is
increasingly put aside. A view that while the politics of the Middle East was
enormously complex, and contentious, the question of the right of a Jewish
state to exist had been settled in the affirmative by the world community.

But today, I am less complacent. Less complacent and comfortable
because there is disturbing evidence of an upturn in anti-Semitism globally,
and also because of some developments closer to home.

Consider some of the global events of the last year:

There have been synagogue burnings, physical assaults on Jews, or
the painting of swastikas on Jewish memorials in every country in
Europe. Observers in many countries have pointed to the worst
outbreak of attacks against the Jews since the Second World War.
Candidates who denied the significance of the Holocaust reached the
runoff stage of elections for the nation’s highest office in France and
Denmark. State-sponsored television stations in many nations of the
world spew anti-Zionist propaganda.
The United Nations-sponsored World Conference on Racism -- while
failing to mention human rights abuses in China, Rwanda, or anyplace
in the Arab world -- spoke of Israel’s policies prior to recent struggles
under the Barak government as constituting ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity. The NGO declaration at the same conference
was even more virulent.

I could go on. But I want to bring this closer to home. Of course academic
communities should be and always will be places that allow any viewpoint
to be expressed. And certainly there is much to be debated about the
Middle East and much in Israel’s foreign and defense policy that can be
and should be vigorously challenged.

But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have
traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing
populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in
progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are
advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their
intent.

For example:

Hundreds of European academics have called for an end to support
for Israeli researchers, though not for an end to support for
researchers from any other nation.
Israeli scholars this past spring were forced off the board of an
international literature journal.
At the same rallies where protesters, many of them university students,
condemn the IMF and global capitalism and raise questions about
globalization, it is becoming increasingly common to also lash out at
Israel. Indeed, at the anti-IMF rallies last spring, chants were heard
equating Hitler and Sharon.
Events to raise funds for organizations of questionable political
provenance that in some cases were later found to support terrorism
have been held by student organizations on this and other campuses
with at least modest success and very little criticism.
And some here at Harvard and some at universities across the country
have called for the University to single out Israel among all nations as
the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the
university’s endowment to be invested. I hasten to say the University
has categorically rejected this suggestion.

We should always respect the academic freedom of everyone to take any
position. We should also recall that academic freedom does not include
freedom from criticism. The only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong
alternatives vigorously advocated.

I have always throughout my life been put off by those who heard the
sound of breaking glass, in every insult or slight, and conjured up images of
Hitler’s Kristallnacht at any disagreement with Israel. Such views have
always seemed to me alarmist if not slightly hysterical. But I have to say
that while they still seem to me unwarranted, they seem rather less alarmist
in the world of today than they did a year ago.

I would like nothing more than to be wrong. It is my greatest hope and
prayer that the idea of a rise of anti-Semitism proves to be a self-denying
prophecy -- a prediction that carries the seeds of its own falsification. But
this depends on all of us.

Link: http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2002/morningprayers.html

Be well!

ssv

 

[Rae]

Well, when Israelis are ensuring that another people live without any right to self-determination, build settlements in their lands, and keep them from being able to move from one place to another, they should expect some protest of their anti-human actions. Oppression of the Palestinian people is real. Over three times as many Palestinians have died by Israeli actions than Israelis have by Palestinian actions.

The Israelis can keep from being treated poorly for their poor treatment of the Palestinian people, though. Give the Palestinian people their own contiguous country with its own roads that they control and let them make their own rules. Then there would be no outlash at Sharon for having his troops murder innocent Palestinians under the guise of "looking for terrorists." Is this Harvard president working for Palestinian independence? If not, I would argue he's being as "anti-Arab" as he says those of us who see the Palestinian plight HONESTLY are being "anti-Semitic."

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

Here are 2 follow-up op-eds from today's Boston Globe:
_____

Where to draw the line?

By Cathy Young, 9/30/2002

IS CONDEMNATION of Israel in the current Middle East conflict often
tainted with anti-Semitism? The discussion of this sensitive issue has
generally focused on anti-Israeli sentiment in Europe. Recently, it was
brought close to home by Harvard University President Lawrence
Summers, whose Sept. 17 speech expressing concern over the resurgence
of anti-Semitism drew national attention, both positive and negative.

Among the domestic manifestations of this worrisome trend, Summers cited
anti-Israeli rhetoric at antiglobalization rallies and the campaign, at
Harvard and more than 50 other college campuses, urging universities to
divest from corporations that do business with Israel.

While Summers was careful to note that ''there is much to be debated about
the Middle East and much in Israel's foreign and defense policy that can be
and should be vigorously challenged,'' some have accused him of seeking to
stifle legitimate debate on these issues by equating criticism of Israel with
bigotry. Pro-divestment activist Maryam Gharavi, a senior at the University
of California at Berkeley, has lamented that it's ''intellectually dishonest''
and ''dangerous'' to label ''a campaign for Palestinian rights'' as
anti-Semitic. Certainly, one can criticize Israeli policies without being
anti-Semitic, just as one can criticize US policies without being
anti-American, or the Catholic Church's position on abortion without being
anti-Catholic. But where does one draw the line between criticism and
racism?

Several points are worth pondering. One is the sheer hatefulness of much
anti-Israel rhetoric - which, in much of the Arab and Palestinian press, has
morphed into overt anti-Semitism indistinguishable from Nazi propaganda:
references to Jews as animals or vermin, recycling of grotesque myths
about Jewish conspiracies and use of gentile blood in Jewish rituals, crude
ethnic caricatures of the hook-nosed Jew. Anti-Israel commentary in
Europe not only winks at this virulent anti-Semitism (and refuses to
consider it as the context for Israel's actions) but sometimes stoops to
hateful language of its own. British poet and Oxford professor Tom Paulin
has said that American-born Jewish settlers on the West Bank ''should be
shot dead.'' Sometimes, this rhetoric unabashedly substitutes the term
''Jews'' for ''Israelis'' or ''Zionists.''

Even on college campuses in the United States, the anti-Jewish ''blood
libel'' has resurfaced in posters of cans labeled ''Palestinian children meat,
slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license.''

Far more common is the ploy of equating the Israelis with the Nazis:
posters depicting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a swastika
armband, comments about ''the Zionist SS,'' comparisons of Israel's
treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust. One can disagree with Sharon's
policies, but comparing the head of the Jewish state to Hitler, who sought to
exterminate the Jews, is beyond obscenity. Israel-bashers lambaste a
''Holocaust industry'' that exploits the Nazi murder of the Jews to justify
Israeli imperialism - a tactic New York Observer columnist Ron
Rosenbaum calls a ''polite form of Holocaust denial.''

Anti-Israel attitudes overlap with anti-Semitism in yet another way: Jews
who live in Europe or America are commonly seen as a knee-jerk - and, in
the case of America, inordinately powerful - pro-Israeli lobby.

Responding to Summers's remarks, UC-Berkeley education profession John
Hurst, who supports divestment from corporations that do business in
Israel, has told the Contra Costa Times that the campaign is not anti-Semitic
because attacking Israel is not the same as attacking Judaism. But it's naive
at best to reduce anti-Semitism to anti-Judaism. Hitler viewed Jews as a
race, not members of a religion. Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, where
Jews were almost universally nonobservant and culturally assimilated, also
focused on Jewishness as ethnicity.

Whether anti-Semitism plays a central role in hostility toward Israel
(especially in Europe) is a complicated question. Sympathy for the
Palestinian struggle - even when it takes the form of violence targeting
civilians - stems largely from the knee-jerk instinct to romanticize the
''wretched of the earth,'' the ''oppressed'' of the Third World. Perhaps, too,
as Rosenbaum argues, demonizing Israel is partly a way to assuage
Europe's collective guilt over letting the Holocaust happen. And some may
use Israel-bashing as a respectable smokescreen for socially unacceptable
anti-Semitic bias.

But ultimately, motives matter less than consequences. ''Traditional''
anti-Semitism, too, often involved motives other than simple hostility
toward Jews as Jews - including anticapitalism, since the Jews were seen
as the epitome of the money-grubbing bourgeoisie. For whatever reason,
extremist anti-Israeli rhetoric today has become, all too often, a vehicle for
the kind of Jew-bashing that one might have hoped was extinct in the
civilized world. For drawing attention to this issue, Summers deserves
praise.

Cathy Youngis a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column
appears regularly in the Globe.

This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 9/30/2002.

Link: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/273/oped/Where_to_draw_the_line_+.shtml
_____

A familiar ring to Israel criticism

By Robert Leikind, 9/30/2002

HARVARD UNIVERSITY President Lawrence H. Summers recently gave
a speech in which he decried the emergence of anti-Semitism and argued
that some ''serious and thoughtful people'' are ''taking actions that are
anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.'' His comments aroused
indignation from a broad spectrum of people who accused him of stifling
open debate by threatening to call Israel's critics bigots. They missed the
point.

Honest people ought to be able to disagree with Israeli policies without
being labeled anti-Semitic. Yet, over the last year, the tenor of that
criticism has sometimes assumed an unsettling ring.

Before World War II, intellectual and popular currents across Europe
supported views that held Jews responsible for societal ills ranging from
communism and capitalism to economic decline and moral corruption. In
the wake of the Holocaust, however, the demonization of Jews lost much of
its respectability. Now, there is evidence that this restraint may be fading.

When the United Nations hosted the Third World Conference Against
Racism in Durban, South Africa, last year, the world community had an
opportunity to address the hatred that afflicts hundreds of millions of
people. Instead, the conference focused almost exclusively on allegations
of Israeli wrongdoing. When protesters compared Israelis to Nazis and
called for the killing of Jews, the silence from all but a few delegates made
it evident that anti-Semitism was losing its capacity to evoke outrage.

Since then, that dynamic has repeated itself many times. It has three
elements. First, in the name of ''human rights'' or ''justice,'' advocates decry
Israeli actions, while also depriving them of any context. In their view,
Israelis are wanton occupiers, who violate Palestinians' rights and impose
cruel conditions on a subject population. The fact that the occupation is a
product of a relentless, half-century campaign to destroy Israel, that Israelis
have sustained thousands of casualties from terrorism and are involved in a
desperate effort to save the lives of their citizens, or that the Palestinians
and many of Israel's other neighbors continue to foment a hatred of Israel
and Jews that serves as a solid barrier against efforts to arrive at a just and
lasting settlement, seldom enters into their narrative. It is this absence of
balance, not the criticisms (which sometimes may be warranted), that has
been so troubling.

Second, Israel is held to a standard of conduct to which no other nation in
the world is held. Half a million people are murdered in Rwanda. The
Chinese annihilate Tibetan culture. Two million Christians and animists are
killed in the Sudan. Tens of thousands of civilians are killed in Chechnya.
These tragedies dwarf the most outlandish accusations against Israel, but
fail to garner the moral outrage that Israel evokes among some of its critics.

How can one make sense of this imbalance? Suspicions that there is a
desire to paint Israel as a pariah state were substantiated this past April
when Israel went into the West Bank city of Jenin in search of terrorists
who had killed and maimed hundreds of Israeli civilians. News reports
around the world screamed that Israeli soldiers had massacred as many as
3,000 civilians, poisoned the water supply, and dumped bodies into mass
graves. Representatives of the UN and governments from across the globe
called for an investigation. A bishop in Copenhagen compared Sharon to
Herod. Newspapers across Europe substantiated the allegations with
reports of grisly deeds of Israeli soldiers. Accusations of Israeli war
crimes poured in.

The only problem was that there was no massacre. Instead there was
overwhelming evidence that the Israeli army had gone to extraordinary
lengths to avoid civilian casualties. How could the truth have been so
distorted?

It has become difficult to ignore the possibility that some people wanted
there to be a massacre. They did not want to see Palestinians killed. They
just wanted their old Jews back. The ones that they can hate and demonize.

This brings us to the third component of the Durban dynamic. Under the
cover of seemingly rational critiques of Israel, anti-Semitism is taking root.
Palestinian clerics call for the killing of Jews without eliciting protest.
Media in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt report on Jewish
conspiracies to destroy Islam, but there is no outcry. French President
Chirac denies there is anti-Semitism in France, despite nearly 400 incidents
against Jews in April alone.

Evidence is mounting that demonization of Jews is gaining respectability
and that the struggle in the Middle East is providing cover for the
expression of such hatred. This does not justify reflexively labeling all
criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. It does, however, compel us to ask why
some critics seem interested in investing all their moral capital in attacking
embattled, democratic Israel. Asking this question is not intended to chill
honest debate. It is intended to create it.

Robert Leikind is the New England regional director of the
Anti-Defamation League.

This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 9/30/2002.

Link: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/273/oped/A_familiar_ring_to_Israel_criticism+.shtml
_____

Be well!

ssv

 

[Rae]

Riiiiiight.....

I guess it's okay for Jewish people to oppress others, as long as the others are poor Arabs. Okay. Got it now.

 

[Caffeine Socialism]

It's like Hitler and the Jews.

Oh, the irony and offensiveness abounds. But I'm not omitting this. It's been said before, and it's an important and accurate comparison.

 

[seebs]

I think it's more along the lines of "if people regularly attack your civilian population, you may defend yourself". I suspect that, if the Palestinians had any kind of central authority able and willing to do something about career terrorists, they would rapidly find their "self-determination" back in working order.

Oddly, even here, when someone conspires to kill someone else, he sometimes loses some of his freedoms.

 

[tericl2]

Originally posted by Rae
Well, when Israelis are ensuring that another people live without any right to self-determination, build settlements in their lands, and keep them from being able to move from one place to another, they should expect some protest of their anti-human actions. Oppression of the Palestinian people is real. Over three times as many Palestinians have died by Israeli actions than Israelis have by Palestinian actions.

The Israelis can keep from being treated poorly for their poor treatment of the Palestinian people, though. Give the Palestinian people their own contiguous country with its own roads that they control and let them make their own rules. Then there would be no outlash at Sharon for having his troops murder innocent Palestinians under the guise of "looking for terrorists." Is this Harvard president working for Palestinian independence? If not, I would argue he's being as "anti-Arab" as he says those of us who see the Palestinian plight HONESTLY are being "anti-Semitic."

You should really look up some proper casualty numbers. 80% of the Palestinian deaths have been combatants. Also included in the PLO death totals are those that went to their own deaths, the suicide bomber/terrorists. This tends to skew accuracy a little bit! Well, over 60% of Israeli deaths have been civilians. Yeah, you know, all those people sitting down to an innocent lunch in a diner? They aren't Israeli military, just in case you were confused.

Just last month the Israelis went through a terrorist, oops! I mean freedom fighter (ROTFL), garrison and walked it on foot, from house to house in order to minimalize casualties. And before you think they were protecting themselves, ask someone in the military what the most dangerous type of combat to engage in is. That's right!! Urban warfare, clearing an area house to house and door to door. Israel did this just to protect the few "innocent" Palestinians living in the area. And in the course of this Israel lost 16 of its own soldiers. They could have easily dropped a bomb and called it good, but they didn't. I guess they could have sent in some suicide bombers like the PLO terrorists do. I mean if they did that then apparently, no one would care how many innocent people were killed. Unless of course we have a double standard in judging the Israelis. Hmmm, I wonder....

 

[tericl2]

Oh, and did you know the ?Israelis actually let these people vote in Israeli elections? Oh, the horror!!!

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

I thought that I'd add this to the pile:
_____

A Challenge to Professor Hanson
By Alan M. Dershowitz
The Harvard Crimson | September 25, 2002
In my 38 years of teaching at Harvard Law School, I don't recall ever
writing in praise of any action by a Harvard president, but this time
I must congratulate President
Lawrence H. Summers for his willingness to say out loud what many of
us in the Harvard community have long believed: namely, that singling
out Israel, among all the
countries in the world, for divestment, is an action which is
anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent. A recent open letter by one
of the signatories made it clear that he regards
Israel as the "pariah" state, a word historically used by
anti-Semites to characterize the Jewish people.

As an advocate and practitioner of human rights throughout the world,
I can confidently assert that Israel's record on human rights is
among the best, especially among nations
that have confronted comparable threats. Though far from perfect,
Israel has shown extraordinary concern for avoiding civilian
casualties in its half-century effort to protect its
civilians from terrorism. Jordan killed more Palestinians in a single
month than Israel has between 1948 and the present.

Israel has the only independent judiciary in the entire Middle East.
Its Supreme Court, one of the most highly regarded in the world, is
the only court in the Middle East from
which an Arab or a Muslim can expect justice, as many have found in
winning dozens of victories against the Israeli government, the
Israeli military and individual Israeli
citizens. There is no more important component in the protection of
human rights and civil liberties than an independent judiciary
willing to stand up to its own government. I
challenge the proponents of divestment to name a court in any Arab or
Muslim country that is comparable to the Israeli Supreme Court.

Israel is the only country in the region that has virtually unlimited
freedom of speech. Any person in Israel whether Jewish, Muslim or
Christian can criticize the Israeli
government and its leaders. No citizen of any other Middle Eastern or
Muslim state can do that without fear of imprisonment or death.

Israel is the only country that has openly confronted the difficult
issue of protecting the civil liberties of the ticking bomb
terrorist. The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled
that despite the potential benefits of employing non-lethal torture
to extract information, the tactic is illegal. Brutal torture,
including lethal torture, is commonplace in nearly
every other Middle Eastern and Muslim country. Indeed, American
authorities sometimes send suspects to Egypt, Jordan and the
Philippines precisely because they know
that they will be tortured in those countries.

Nor is Israel the only country that is occupying lands claimed by
others. China, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Spain, France and numerous other
countries control not only land, but
people who seek independence. Indeed, among these countries Israel is
the only one that has offered statehood, first in 1948 when the
Palestinians rejected the UN partition
which would have given them a large, independent state and chose
instead to invade Israel. Again in the year 2000 Palestinians were
offered a state, rejected it and employed
terrorism.

There are, of course, difficult issues to be resolved in the Middle
East. These include the future of the settlements, the establishment
of Palestinian self-governance and the
prevention of terrorism. These issues will require compromise on all
sides. Members of the Harvard community must be free to criticize
Israel when they disagree with its
policies or actions, as they criticize any other country in the world
whose record is not perfect. But to single out the Jewish state of
Israel, as if it were the worst human rights
offender, is bigotry pure and simple. It would be comparable to
singling out a black nation for de-legitimation without mentioning
worse abuses by white nations. Those who
sign the divestment petition should be ashamed of themselves. If they
are not, it is up to others to shame them.

Among those who signed this immoral petition was Winthrop House

Master Paul Hanson.

I wrote to Prof. Hanson challenging him to debate me in the Common
Room of Winthrop House about his decision to sign the petition. He
refused, citing "other priorities." I
can imagine few priorities more pressing than to justify to his
students why he is willing to single out Israel for special
criticism. Accordingly, I hereby request an invitation
from the students of Winthrop House to conduct such a debate, either
with Hanson present or with an empty chair on which the petition
which he signed would be featured.

Universities should encourage widespread debate and discussion about
divisive and controversial issues. A House master who peremptorily
signs a petition and then hides
behind "other priorities" does not serve the interests of dialogue
and education. I hope that Hanson will accept my challenge, and that
if he does not, that I will be invited by his
students to help fill the educational gap left by the cowardice of
those who have signed this petition and refuse to defend their
actions in public debate.

Let me propose an alternative to singling out Israel for divestment:
let Harvard choose nations for investment in the order of the human
rights records. If that were done,
investment in Israel would increase dramatically, while investments
in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Philippines, Indonesia, the
Palestinian Authority and most other countries
of the world would decrease markedly.

_____

Be well!

ssv

 

[Lacmeh]

I want to address various points in this discussion.

Israel is held by higher standards of conduct and rightly so.

This is because of various reasons:

First:
Israel claims to be a democratic nation. Therefore it is measured by the standards according to democracy.

Second:

Israel is a country, populated by Jews. Jews experienced a wave of hatred and destruction across Europe and in smaller effectr in America during WW2 and destruction of life and property. So one should think, that the peopel of this nation would not wish to do to tohers, what has been done to themselves.

Now, where does Israel fail in ist conduct according to points one and two:

First of all, torture was an accepted method of getting confessions well till the 1990s.
Second, a war criminal is leading the country.
Third, Israel ignores rulings of the UN.
Fourth, Israel is still using torture to press confessions, various official politicians even want to reinstate torture as a legal method again.
Fifth, Israel ignores Human rights.
Sixth Israel destroys installations and vehicles of the International Red Cross.
Seventh, Israel Supreme Court, which allegedly is so high repsected and just, rules against Human rights.
Eigth, Israel drops bombs in full daylight into populated areas, not exactly something, that I would call avoiding civilian csualties.
Ninth, Israel destroys schools and sports arenas built by foeign donations. This is clearly an attack on noncombat infrastructure.
Tenth, Israel denies emergency care for those people who need it.

Those actions, especially destroying schools, droppinmg rockets and bombs into populated areas, ignoring Human rights, torturing prisoners clearly contradict, what anyone would expect from a democracy.

Today Israel government whines about the Islam schools and their hatred speech. Well it is entirely the fault of the Israeli government, that these schools exist and are so popular. The terrorism now abound in Israel could have been reduced and lessened, but Israel government was not really interested.

Go to the forums of the Jerusalem Post, there you can read some really rich comments of Israeli citizens. Like kill off those Arabs. They don´t deserve to live and so on.

On the conception of the Israeli nation, there were many errors. Espically in the laws, that govern election and representatives in the Knesset. There are no percentage hindrances for political parties. Each radical group will be in the Knesset, as long as it can get one mandate. Therefore, each reigning party has to concede to some of those extrmists, which want the same thing as extremist Palestinians, only for the toher side. That surely doesn´t help the peace process either.

The clear violations of human rights and democratic principles is not connected with anti Semitism. I detest people agreeing to those actions, regardless of their faith, be it Jews,Christians, Atheists, Wiccans, Buddhists or whatever.

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

I saw this in yesterday's Boston Globe:
_____

Why Israel and not Sudan, is singled out

By Charles Jacobs, 10/5/2002

HARVARD PRESIDENT Lawrence Summers recently criticized those on
his campus who speak in the name of human rights but selectively censure
Israel while ignoring much greater problems in the Middle East. He
described the divestment campaign against Israel on his campus as
anti-Semitic ''in effect if not intent.'' But human rights (and media) attention
is often disproportionate to the severity or urgency of human conflicts.
What determines their focus is not mainly anti-Semitism. Nor is it the level
of horror. It is the racial, religious, and cultural character of the
perpetrators, not the victims, that determines the response of Westerners.

An instructive case is Sudan. Atrocities there exceed every other world
horror. For 10 years the blacks of South Sudan have been victims of an
onslaught that has taken more than 2 million lives. Colin Powell calls it
''the worst human rights nightmare on the planet.'' Yet with the important
exception of the black Christian community here, there has been a
disturbingly muted reaction from well-known American human rights
champions. The media cover the deaths in Sudan only occasionally.

Do rights activists and editorialists care more for Palestinians than for
blacks? Surely not. It is the nature of the conflict, I propose, not the level of
horror, that determines the response of Westerners.

In Khartoum, a Taliban-like Muslim regime is waging a self-declared jihad
on African Christians and followers of tribal faiths in South Sudan.
Non-Arab African Muslims are also targeted for devastation. Two million
people have been killed - more than in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti,
Rwanda, and Burundi combined. Tens of thousands have been displaced,
and 100,000, according to the US Committee on Refugees, forcibly starved.

Western lack of interest is all the more stunning as Khartoum's onslaught
has rekindled the trade in black slaves, halted (mostly) a century ago by the
British abolitionists. Arab militias storm African villages, kill the men, and
enslave the women and children. Accounts by journalists and others depict
the horror. In these pogroms, after the men are slaughtered, the women,
girls, and boys are gang raped - or they have their throats slit for resisting.
The terrorized survivors are marched northward and distributed to Arab
masters, the women to become concubines, the girls domestics, the boys
goat herders.

It is hard to explain why victims of slavery and slaughter are virtually
ignored by American progressives. How can it be that there is no storm of
indignation at Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, which, though
they rushed to Jenin to investigate false reports of Jews massacring Arabs,
care so much less about Arab-occupied Juba, South Sudan's black capital?
How can it be that they have not raised the roof about Khartoum's black
slaves? Neither has there been a concerted effort by the press to pressure
American administrations to intervene. Nor has the socialist left spoken of
liberating the slaves or protecting black villages from pogroms, even
though Wall Street helps bankroll Khartoum's oil business, which finances
the slaughter.

What is this silence about? Surely it is not because we don't care about
blacks. Progressives champion oppressed black peoples daily. My
hypothesis is this: to predict what the human rights community (and the
media) focus on, look not at the oppressed; look instead at the party seen as
the oppressor. Imagine the media coverage and the rights groups' reaction if
it were ''whites'' enslaving blacks in Sudan. Having the ''right'' oppressor
would change everything.

Alternatively, imagine the ''wrong'' oppressor: Suppose that Arabs, not
Jews, shot Palestinians in revolt. In 1970 (''Black September''), Jordan
murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians in two days, yet we saw no
divestment campaigns, and we wouldn't today. This selectivity (at least in
the United States, does not come from the hatred of Jews. It is '' a human
rights complex '' - and is not hard to understand. The human rights
community, composed mostly of compassionate white people, feels a
special duty to protest evil done by those who are like ''us.''

''Not in my name'' is the worthy response of moral people. South African
whites could not be allowed to represent ''us.'' But when we see evil done
by ''others,'' we tend to shy away. Though we claim to have a single
standard for all human conduct, we don't. We fear the charge of hypocrisy:
We Westerners after all, had slaves. We napalmed Vietnam. We live on
Native American land. Who are we to judge ''others?'' And so we don't
stand for all of humanity.

The biggest victims of this complex are not the Jews who are obsessively
criticized but the victims of genocide, enslavement, religious persecution,
and ethnic cleansing who are murderously ignored: the Christian slaves of
Sudan, the Muslim slaves of Mauritania, the Tibetans, the Kurds, the
Christians in Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt.

Seeking expiation instead of universal justice means ignoring the sufferings
of these victims of non-Western aggression and making relatively more of
the suffering of those caught in confrontation with people like ''us.'' If the
Israelis are being ''profiled'' because they are like ''us,'' the slaves of Sudan
are ignored because their masters' behavior has nothing to do with us.

In the United States it is not predominantly anti-Semitism that causes the
human rights community to single Israel out for criticism. It is rather our
failure to apply to all nations the standards to which we hold ourselves.
The effect, as Summers correctly said, is anti-Semitic. But it is also the
abandonment of those around the world in the worst of circumstances
whose oppressions we find beside the point.

Charles Jacobs is president of the American Anti-Slavery Group.

This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 10/5/2002.

Link: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/278/oped/Why_Israel_and_not_Sudan_is_singled_out+.shtml
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Be well!

ssv