Letters to the editor
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Pitt’s response to antisemitism: Genuine action or political compliance?
Could it be that the University of Pittsburgh’s administration formed its antisemitism working group for the same purpose as did Columbia University and Harvard, as a pro forma body, with the only real goal of demonstrating compliance with Trump administration requirements in order to maintain federal funding? (“Pitt’s Antisemitism Working Group begins to take shape,” April 4.)
I see that the number of the group’s administrators has grown, with the original co-chairs now demoted to vice chairs. The current single chair, newly appointed by the chancellor’s office, Kathleen Blee, the former dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, is well known for her writings on antisemitism. Those writings, however, are exclusively from the unipolar perspective of the KKK kind of racism rather than the current prevalent — and specifically relevant to academia — form of the conjoint progressive-Muslim antisemitism. Meanwhile, there is nothing new in that form, drawing its origins from Marx himself and the Soviet antisemitism/anti-Zionism and its anti-Israel alliances with Muslim terrorists, from Arafat to Russia’s support today for Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad and Iran’s regime. That is why the pro-Hamas Pitt “protesters,” who harass and attack Jewish students, are adorned with keffiyehs, today’s progressive-Muslim substitute for Nazi swastikas.
The antisemitism group’s goal of “an even more inclusive environment,” as stated by a Pitt spokesperson in the University Times, sounds rather like a standard Soviet plan to “even more improve the quality of life of the citizens” in the destitute moribund USSR. It’s hard to expect positive results on that illusory background. Nor does it sound promising when, instead of dealing specifically with progressive campus antisemitism, it is bundled with “all forms of hate”: In Kathleen Blee’s words, “We are looking at this as a holistic phenomenon, not parceling it out and only studying one particular kind.” Considering how prone to violence this particular kind of antisemitic “protester” has lately become, are we waiting for a pogrom to happen at Pitt, once the Hamas sympathizers get triggered by another terror act, perceived “persecution” of a student Hamas supporter, or Israel’s defending its citizens from genocidal savages?
Michael Vanyukov, Ph.D.
Pittsburgh
Netanyahu’s reforms stir deep debate
Two op-eds in the Chronicle’s March 27 edition, “The relentless protests against Netanyahu’s policies” by Fiamma Nirenstein, and Guy Lurie’s “The government vs. the rule of law,” are diametrically opposed. Nirenstein claims that Benjamin Netanyahu is relentlessly attacked in protests by Israel’s secular, European-rooted leftist elites, whereas Lurie claims that by firing of the Shin Bet’s service chief, Ron Bar, preparing to dismiss the attorney general and passing a new law to restructure the judicial election committee’s work, Netanyahu is undermining the fundamental rule of law.
Nirenstein also claims that although the PM is secular, he represents a broader public largely composed of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews.
The large rallies — some of which are called “rage rallies” — against the government for firing the Shin Bet chief, preparing the dismissal of the attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara and reforming the court again, consist of people of all ages, and Ashkenazi and Sephardic Israelis. They also consist of people from every section of the country.
Although Bar was calling for a national inquiry and also for the arrest of two officials in the prime minister’s office for taking gifts, bribes and money laundering in relation to Qatar, Netanyahu claimed that he lost confidence in Bar and fired him. He is also now in the process of firing his attorney general, who had her sights on the PM for corruption.
The new law changing how the Supreme Court judges are chosen will politicize the process (unlike in the past when competent lawyers and judges nominated them), as now the coalition and the opposition will pick one of the three judges who are internally presented. This change is seen by the public and competent critics as another of Netanyahu’s “reforms.” It is perceived as undermining the democratic foundations of the law.
Finally, a large majority of the country does not believe that he has prioritized the freeing of the hostages.
Historically, Israelis have been constantly divided. In the 1930s, Ben-Gurion and Weizmann argued at the World Zionist Congress about how hard to push the British Mandate officials to grant us a state. Weizmann later became Israel’s first president while Ben-Gurion became the first PM.
In 1982, while fighting in Lebanon, there were deep divisions in Israel as to how quickly to withdraw from Lebanon. One Friday evening in 1982 in kibbutz Nachal Oz, two army reservists, who had been in Lebanon, debated that very issue. In the middle of a war, Israelis strongly debated issues.
As to Nirenstein’s point about Netanyahu dealing with a wider population, from 1949 to1952, Israel had to absorb hundreds of thousands of Sephardi Jews from North Africa and the Middle East as well as Holocaust survivors. Ben-Gurion’s Socialist coalition accomplished that task. It was a difficult time as the state was in its infancy. Israel did quite well while having the foundation of the rule of law which included a well-respected, active Supreme Court.
Ivan Frank
Pittsburgh
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