Editorial Article
Hebrew University - The Leftwing McCarthyism of Prof. Itzhak
Galnoor (Dept of Political Science)
by Prof. Steven Plaut,
University of Haifa
13/10/2009
Itzhak Galnoor is a
left-leaning (generally non-extremist) professor of political
science at the Hebrew University, and he also has long been
associated with the semi-Marxist “Van Leer Institute,” a think tank
in Jerusalem. He has a PhD in political science from Syracuse
University. For much of his career, Galnoor was a high official in
Israel civil service, and from 1994–96 he served as Head of the
Civil Service Commission. One of the things he did in this capacity
was to introduce broad affirmative action preferences for Arabs and
women in Israel’s civil service. He has also been an official in the
Israel Science Foundation. Many of his publications concern civil
service questions; some are about the history of Zionism.
Prof. Galnoor thinks Israeli
academic freedom is being threatened by Israel’s non-leftists. In
his view the ultimate manifestation of academic freedom is when
far-leftist academics can build careers on political advocacy of
extremist ideology without anyone being allowed to criticize them.
In particular, Galnoor thinks that leftist academic extremists are
entitled to unlimited freedom of speech, but watchdog monitoring
groups like Isracampus.org.il and Campus-Watch.org should be
prohibited from citing and documenting the public political activity
of academic extremists in a critical manner. Galnoor insists that
such monitoring groups are themselves “McCarthyist [sic].” He
writes: “This is the first step to apparently “clean” the
universities from academic saboteurs who are capable of treason.
This is not very far from the blacklisting practices in the United
States during the McCarthy era.”
Galnoor recently published a non-academic ideological article
attacking the exercise of academic freedom by critics of leftists in
Israel. The
article now appears in a semi-academic journal
called “Social Research.” That journal/magazine is published by the
leftist “New School for Social Research” in New York. The magazine
is ideologically driven and it openly advocates political positions,
such as its issue denouncing the United States for incarcerating so
many criminals, and it has run articles sympathetic to suicide
bombers.
In the most recent issue of
“Social Research,” Galnoor publishes an article entitled, “Academic
Freedom under Duress: Israel.” In large part it is an ideological
attack against the exercise of freedom of speech by critics of
Israel’s tenured radicals and its far-leftist anti-Israel faculty
members. Galnoor evidently thinks such people should be exempt from
public and private criticism. Expressing criticism and denunciations
of the anti-Israel political activities of such radicals is itself
an intolerable assault against academic freedom, insists Galnoor in
his article. Academic freedom should be defended for those who
attack Israel and seek its destruction, but not for anyone
criticizing such people or questioning their motives.
Galnoor’s article is devoted
to “proving” two things: that “political intimidation originating
from extreme nationalistic and religious groups aimed at silencing
‘nonloyal’ voices inside as well as outside the universities;” and
that Israeli education is undergoing “commodification,” by which
Galnoor seems to mean adopting some cost-benefits decision making in
institutions of higher education, including some changes in
management.
The article is 19 pages in
its final published form in the journal. It begins by retelling the
history of the development of institutions of higher education in
Israel. But the main theme of the article is that non-leftists in
Israel are terrorizing and suppressing academic freedom in Israel.
Galnoor’s evidence? Well, it consists mainly of Galnoor’s mentioning
the bomb that was left outside the home of far-leftist professor
Ze’ev Sternhell, which injured the latter lightly. The Israeli Left
has been banging away at that incident ever since it happened to
prove how anti-democratic the Israeli Right and religious Jews are.
The only problem is that there is not the slightest bit of evidence
that a Rightist Jew, or for that matter any Jew at all, was behind
the attack on Sternhell.
The ready willingness to jump
to the conclusion that Jewish Rightists were behind the attack is
illustration of Galnoor’s complete lack of serious argument in his
article, and frankly is itself little more than leftist McCarthyism.
If Sternhell is a leftist, it must be that the attack on him came
from Jewish rightists, believes Galnoor. Just how Galnoor knows it
was not an attack by Arab terrorists is unclear, since such
terrorists had reasons to target Sternhell, the recipient of the
Israel Prize just before the attack. But Galnoor is a master of the
non sequitur and requires no evidence for his analysis. Galnoor
writes: “No group took responsibly, but leaflets found on the scene
indicated the right-wing ideology of those who did it.” Actually
Rightwing political leaflets were found on bulletin boards in the
neighborhood near the attack and these did not take credit for it.
Galnoor adds: “The police issued a statement saying that they
believed the attack was ideologically motivated.” Note the missing
words “by Rightwing Jews” in the tendentious citation from the
police.
From non sequitur, Galnoor proceeds to demonizing Israeli
non-leftists in general. The attack on Sternhell proves that the
Israeli Jewish Right has declared war on academic freedom and
academic institutions, insists Galnoor. So what other evidence does
he have of such a Rightist cabal? Well, a student magazine claimed
to have found that 28% of the courses taught at the Hebrew
University have anti-Israel content. Galnoor offers no evidence that
this student claim is incorrect, although he clearly resents
non-leftist students exercising THEIR academic freedom
when they make such a claim. Who are they to have a point of view?
And then to drive his point
home, he takes a few quotations from a web site that monitors and
exposes Israel’s anti-Israel academics. Galnoor presents the
existence of such web citations as proof that academic freedom is an
endangered species in Israel. He denounces the web campus monitors,
including Campus Watch in the United States.
Here are the three citations
taken from the monitoring web site that Galnoor waves as stigmata,
proving academic freedom is under attack by the Israeli Right:
* Israeli university campuses may be more politicized and contain
larger numbers of extremists than universities in other democratic
countries, people working to support the enemies of their own
country during a time of war.
* Academic colleagues get used to it - yes, you are being watched.
Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the
Internet . . . your syllabi will be scrutinized, your websites will
be visited late at night. . .
* [D]uring the Intifada, professor [full name appeared in origin
and deleted by author] from Ben-Gurion University illegally entered
Ramallah to serve as human shield for wanted murderers and to show
his solidarity with terrorism.
Now as it turns out, every
single sentence in those three citations is factually correct. But
Galnoor is part of a new movement in Israeli academia, one insisting
that it is anti-democratic to cite verbatim what anti-Israel radical
faculty members say or to cite news stories in the mainstream media
about the public political activities of anti-Israel radical
academics.
Galnoor also has a tantrum
over accusations that some radical Israeli faculty members foment
mutiny and insurrection among Israeli soldiers. But the role of
hundreds of such faculty in promoting and celebrating refusal by
soldiers to serve in the army out of political ideology is very well
documented and familiar to all Israelis. Galnoor also gets indignant
at claims that some Israeli leftist faculty collaborate with
anti-Israel groups, and especially objects to the word
“collaboration.” Yet scores of Israeli leftist faculty participate
in anti-Israel activities around the world, including the movement
to boycott and divest from Israel, and scores have openly called for
Israel to be annihilated altogether. Anti-Israel radical faculty
routinely write articles for anti-Israel and anti-Jewish web sites
and magazines, and in a few cases have collaborated with Neo-Nazis
and Holocaust Deniers. Just what does Galnoor find inaccurate in
such characterizations?
Galnoor’s main objection?
“’Collaborator with the enemy’ also was used against Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin before he was murdered by a fanatic in 1995.”
So here Galnoor implies his agreement with the discredited leftist
McCarthyist “theory” that Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated because
non-leftists dared to exercise THEIR freedom of
speech. Who is the real McCarthyist here?
Galnoor then dismisses the
criticism of leftist anti-Israel academic extremists thus: “The
irony is that all of this is done in the name of ‘free speech’ and
such sites claim that democratic transparency and accountability are
the goal of their efforts at exposure.” I am afraid I am unable to
see any irony. If academic freedom protects the right of academic
extremists to support terrorist atrocities and rocket attacks
against Jews, why does it not also protect the right to criticize
those who express such opinions?
Galnoor only sees political
violence when it comes out of the political Right. The weekly
leftist hooliganism and violence directed against soldiers and
policemen in Bil’in and elsewhere in the West Bank, where some of
the hooligans are themselves tenured academics, is just not on his
radar screen. Neither are the statements by Israeli academics
endorsing violence and terrorism. Galnoor mentions the grenade
attack against the leftist non-academic Emil Grunzweig, but not the
espionage activities by Israeli leftist extremists (one convicted
spy now teaching at Israel’s Open University) nor the acts of law
breaking and violence by leftist “protesters.”
Galnoor denounces politicians
from the Israeli Right when they complain about the overwhelming
hegemony of leftists in many Israeli university departments. Here is
Galnoor: “Consequently, many of their leaders have a general
negative disposition toward ‘professors’ (especially in the
humanities and social sciences) when it comes to allocations from
the state budget.” Now someone as devoted to diversity and academic
freedom as Galnoor might have conceded that those politicians are
indeed onto something. If diversity is something good, then why not
ideological diversity? There are dozens of academic departments in
Israel in which no non-leftists teach and in which no religious Jews
teach. Since it is arguably the case that Galnoor’s most enduring
achievement when he was head of the Israeli civil service was the
wholesale implementation of “affirmative action” preferences for
women and Arabs, why is he so opposed to a bit of affirmative action
for non-leftists to achieve some ideological diversity in these
university departments?
Besides battling against the
“McCarthyism” of non-leftists who dare to criticize leftists,
Galnoor’s other bogeyman in his article is “privatization” and “new
forms of management” in Israeli universities. His concern is that
Israeli taxpayers, who cover the lion’s share of the budgets of
Israeli universities, may demand accountability and a say in what is
being done with their money. But this section of his article need
not concern us here and can be debunked elsewhere.
Galnoor sums up his case:
“The emergence of threats to HE (higher education) coincided with
the emergence of potential threats to Israeli democracy and they
come from the same ‘extreme groups on the far right’—a combination
of ultranationalist and ultramessianic groups.”
Let us translate this for
you. Itzhak Galnoor is alarmed that the leftist hegemony over so
many departments at Israeli universities is being publicized,
scrutinized and challenged these days. Galnoor is himself
anti-democratic, someone whose real fear is that non-leftists might
actually come to enjoy freedom of speech in Israel and - Heavens to
Betsy - perhaps even on Israeli campuses. Galnoor’s version of
freedom of speech is where academic extremists build careers out of
turning out anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate propaganda, but where
no one should be allowed to criticize or denounce them for doing so,
or even mention it.
Criticizing an anti-Israel
hatemonger is itself the worst violation of democracy and academic
freedom in Itzhak Galnoor’s Orwellian little world.
Postscript: There is a chat list for
Israeli academics in the social sciences called "Social Science
List," run by the leftist Prof. David Faur-Levi,
http://poli.haifa.ac.il/~levi/, an anti-democratic political
science academic in the same department with Galnoor. Faur-Levi ran
Galnoor's article on his chat list but refused to run my commentary
and response to Galnoor, printed above. The Hebrew University's
First Amendment strikes again.
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