Support for divestment does not equal anti-Semitism

October 10, 2002

BY SHERRI MUZHER

In the face of the upcoming University of Michigan Conference on Divestment from Israel, the debate about what defines "anti-Semitism" is being resurrected. Setting aside the fact that the Arab people are 100 percent Semitic -- Semites are merely the people of the Near East and northern Africa -- there are still many reasons people should refrain from throwing around labels designed to conjure up images of the World War II period, when Jews were persecuted and systematically killed because of who they were. That was then, and this is now.

Do Israelis expect to deprive Palestinians of their liberties without criticism? We prefer nonviolence in the Middle East, so why are academic conferences raising such ire? If we are a nation that believes in the First Amendment, why is free speech seemingly stifled when it comes to the issue of Israel? Even more important, why are people upset that university students are exercising their right to free speech in order to make a peaceful change in a region that has seen little of it?

The divestment campaign began nearly two years ago in Berkeley, Calif. Its goal is to end universities' financial links to Israeli occupation or, as South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others refer to it, Israeli apartheid. Divestment campaigns helped to end apartheid in South Africa, and students and professors hope to accomplish the same with the new divestment push.

How are the situations similar? Well, in a 2002 speech in the United States, Tutu said he saw "the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about." Back in 1999, former South African statesman Nelson Mandela told the Palestinian Assembly: "The histories of our two peoples correspond in such painful and poignant ways that I intensely feel myself at home amongst my compatriots."

In a nutshell, South Africa's white Afrikaners discriminated against blacks as Israel is discriminating against Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

But do these statements make Tutu and Mandela "anti-Semitic" or anti-white? Perhaps some Americans thought so back when the United States supported the apartheid regime until "it wasn't cool anymore."

But we shouldn't wait to support divestment until supporting Israel "isn't cool anymore." People should cease to throw around the anti-Semitic label so readily that it loses its weight.

When the first President George Bush suggested that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's influence would hinder his request to delay loan guarantees to Israel, an Israeli minister called him anti-Semitic. In his book "They Dare to Speak Out," former Congressman Paul Findley lists a number of colleagues who were called anti-Semitic whenever they voiced concerns about Israel, including popular Congressmen Paul McCloskey and Charles Percy. Media mogul Ted Turner has been called an anti-Semite for accusing Israel of waging terror against Palestinians. And at Harvard, President Larry Summers has shamefully classified respected professors as being part of an "anti-Semitic" drive to urge the university to divest its endowment of investments in Israel.

Now an important conference on divestment from Israel takes place at U-M, and people are jumping on the students, forgetting that the pocketbook was an effective weapon when it was used against South Africa. Because peace in the Middle East has been unattainable for many decades, switching strategies to divestment might be just the key to getting Israel's attention, and giving both Palestinians and Israelis the peace they deserve.

So it is unfortunate that many pro-Israeli organizations are taking cheap shots at a conference that hasn't even taken place yet. Ultimately, conference organizers should be applauded for their courage and vision, because divestment is a tool of peace not racism.

SHERRI MUZHER is a writer and media analyst from Mason, Mich.