The UC Santa Barbara sociologist, who is Jewish, sent images from the Holocaust and from Israel’s Gaza offensive to students in his class. He has drawn denunciation and support.

By Duke Helfand

Controversy has erupted at UC Santa Barbara over a professor’s decision to send his students an e-mail in which he compared graphic images of Jews in the Holocaust to pictures of Palestinians caught up in Israel’s recent Gaza offensive.

The e-mail by tenured sociology professor William I. Robinson has triggered a campus investigation and drawn accusations of anti-Semitism from two national Jewish groups, even as many students and faculty members have voiced support for him.

The uproar began in January when Robinson sent his message — titled “parallel images of Nazis and Israelis” — to the 80 students in his sociology of globalization class.

The e-mail contained more than two dozen photographs of Jewish victims of the Nazis, including those of dead children, juxtaposed with nearly identical images from the Gaza Strip. It also included an article critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and a note from Robinson.

“Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw — a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians,” the professor wrote. “We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide.”

Two Jewish students dropped the class, saying they felt intimidated by the professor’s message. They contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which advised them to file formal complaints with the university.

In their letters, senior Rebecca Joseph and junior Tova Hausman accused Robinson of violating the campus’ faculty code of conduct by disseminating personal, political material unrelated to his course.

“I was shocked,” said Joseph, 22. “He overstepped his boundaries as a professor. He has his own freedom of speech, but he doesn’t have the freedom to send his students his own opinion that is so strong.”

Robinson, 50, who is Jewish, called the accusations and the campus investigation an attack on academic freedom. He said his former students, the Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League had all confused his criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism.

“That’s like saying if I condemn the U.S. government for the invasion of Iraq, I’m anti-American,” he said. “It’s the most absurd, baseless argument.”

Robinson said he regularly sends his students voluntary reading material about current events for the global affairs course, and that no one raised questions when he subsequently discussed his e-mail.

“The whole nature of academic freedom is to introduce students to controversial material, to provoke students to think and make students uncomfortable,” said Robinson, a UC Santa Barbara professor for nine years.

As the dispute over his e-mail plays out, UC Santa Barbara has become the most recent U.S. university to confront campus unrest over issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In recent years, Jewish and Muslim groups have quarreled repeatedly at UC Irvine about the Holocaust and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Professors and students at Columbia University have also argued over issues of intimidation and academic freedom amid debates on the Mideast.

In Robinson’s case, reaction has been strong — on both sides.

Shortly after hearing from the two students in January, the Wiesenthal Center produced a YouTube video titled “Jewish Students Under Siege from Professor at UC Santa Barbara.” The clip shows one of Robinson’s former students, her face obscured to protect her identity, reading from his e-mail.

The head of the ADL’s Santa Barbara region sent Robinson a letter in February calling on him to repudiate his statements about Israel. Last month, the ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, in a meeting with faculty members at the campus, urged the university to conduct an investigation into Robinson. He was told that an inquiry was already underway.

“You can criticize Israel; you can criticize the war in Gaza,” Foxman said. “But to compare what the Israelis are doing in defense of their citizens to what the Nazis did to the Jews is clearly anti-Semitism.”

Robinson’s supporters say the professor is being maligned for exercising his right to challenge his students to think critically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Students on campus have formed a group, the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB, which is chronicling the saga on its website.

Letters of support also have arrived from academics across the country, including one from California Scholars for Academic Freedom, which says it represents 100 professors at 20 college campuses. The group argues that the allegations have been raised against Robinson to “silence criticism of Israeli policies and practices.”
Some UC Santa Barbara faculty members also are speaking up for Robinson. History professor Harold Marcuse, who attended the March meeting with the ADL’s Foxman, said the pictures e-mailed by Robinson were “well within the bounds of appropriateness on campus. It’s something I could have used in a course.”
Marcuse, who is Jewish and teaches about the Holocaust in his world history and German history classes, said he would not have injected his own views into such a message to students, but added: “I don’t think Bill Robinson’s e-mail is anti-Semitic in any way. I think criticism of Israel is OK.”

One UC Santa Barbara official has already looked into the allegations against Robinson, and a faculty committee is being formed to decide whether to forward the case to UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang. A university spokesman declined to comment on the case.

Robinson has hired an attorney, and the student committee supporting him has scheduled a May 14 campus forum on the matter. Joseph and Hausman, the students who filed the original complaints, said they plan to attend. So do Hausman’s parents from Los Angeles and Rabbi Aron Hier, director of campus outreach for the Wiesenthal Center.

“I just want to bring awareness,” said Hausman, 20. “I want people to know that educators shouldn’t be sending out something that is so disturbing.”

duke.helfand@latimes.com

11-20

By Nilofar Suhrawardy, MMNS India Correspondent

NEW DELHI: It is indeed ironic that key politicians have chosen to play on highly sensitive communal issues, linked with Ayodhya and Gujarat, during their campaign for ongoing Lok Sabha elections. Why? This demands analysis of possible factors, which have tempted rival politicians to highlight these issues to convince voters of their “secular” as well as “political” credibility. Without doubt the Ayodhya-issue cannot be de-linked from the period (from late eighties) marked by communal conflict across the nation, demolition of Babari Masjid (December 6, 1992) claimed to be birth place of Hindu deity-Rama, decline in the political importance of Congress and the new political significance gradually assumed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the political wing of Hindu extremists’ saffron-brigade (who played a key role in demolition of Babari Masjid).

Would it be correct to assume that hype raised after nearly two decades have passed, over the Ayodhya-issue can prove politically beneficial for either the Congress or the BJP during these elections? When the Congress draws attention to Ayodhya-issue, it also amounts to reminding the Indian electorate of the communal havoc raised by BJP and its saffron associates during that period. The BJP’s reference to issue is supposed to be understood as its “commitment” to build the temple at the disputed site if it assumes power to form single-party government. It would be pertinent to recall that Congress government headed by Prime Minister P.V. Narsimha Rao was in power when the mosque was demolished. Those years were also a period of political instability. Before the mosque’s demolition, between 1989 and 1991, the country had three prime ministers. This also suggests that political instability played a crucial role in helping saffron brigade to excite communal frenzy over the disputed Ayodhya issue.

During the 1989 elections, the BJP won 86 seats, forming roughly 20 percent of then Lok Sabha. Equally significant is the fact that in none of the elections, following the mosque’s demolition was BJP able to form a single-party government. In 1996, Atal Behari Vajpayee (BJP) took over the reins as Prime Minister from his predecessor, but was not able to remain in office even for a month. He was succeeded by H.D. Deve Gowda, who was followed by I.K. Gujaral, both of whom remained premiers for less than a year each. Vajpayee returned as the premier in 1998 to stay in power for the entire term. But with BJP lacking sufficient number of seats to form a single party government, to step into prowess by leading National Democratic Alliance – which included several secular parties also – it had to put its Hindutva-agenda in the backburner. These political developments suggest that political instability along with people’s desire for change and lack of a strong leader within the Congress played a greater role than Ayodhya-issue in helping BJP assume power in 1998. If demolition was the one and only issue responsible for BJP’s political rise, it would not have taken it six years to assume power at the center, that too after agreeing to abide by what its secular NDA allies demanded.

The BJP-led NDA government stayed in power for the entire term (March 1998 to May2004) with Congress in opposition. The period was also witness to Gujarat-carnage (2002), in which Muslims were victims in a state led by BJP Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Equally noteworthy is the fact that despite BJP being at the center, communal violence remained confined largely to Gujarat. Besides, the party also faced strong criticism from its own allies over the Gujarat-case. To date, the BJP has not been able project its image as purely “secular” primarily because of it being communally tainted because of the Ayodhya-issue and Gujarat-carnage.

Ironically, despite BJP being confident of returning to power in 2004 elections, it failed. The anti-incumbency factor linked with the negative image earned by it because of the Gujarat-carnage apparently played a major role in preventing its return to power. The Indian voters, of whom Hindus form the majority with Muslims constituting less than 15 percent of the total population, certainly did not want repetition of Gujarat-like communal frenzy in any part of the country. It may be noted, over the past few years, India has been witness to many blasts, for which largely Muslims have been held as “suspect-terrorists.” Neither of these “terrorist” incidents have provoked communal violence anywhere in the country. Rather cutting across religious barriers, people have joined hands, lit candles and helped the victims, displaying the secular spirit that binds them.

Against this backdrop, there is no denying that politicians are trying their hands at using the Ayodhya-issue and Gujarat-carnage to polarize the vote-banks along communal lines. Sadly, the politicians guided by communal illusions about Indian voters’ attitude have not paid due attention to the reality, that is the strength of Indian secularism at the grassroots. Not surprisingly, politicians making noise about Ayodhya and Gujarat have succeeded so far only in gaining some media coverage, a little criticism and practically no attention from the common Indian voter!

11-20

The reality is that Pakistan has never had authority over the tribal areas

By Adrian Hamilton, a.hamilton@independent.co.uk

It’s gang up on Pakistan time. The US Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton, has declared it “poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world” and now Gordon Brown has joined the party, flying to Kabul and Islamabad to show that he too regards the two neighbors as one region and making that the centerpiece of his so-called “new” Afghan policy in the Commons yesterday. There was, he claimed, a “chain of terror” stretching from the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan to the capitals of the world.

If this reminds you of the language of the Raj, when the North-West Frontier obsessed our administrators and took up a disproportionate part of our military resources, so it should. Just as the British failed to control the area in Victorian times, so we are back in the same exercise again, only this time we’re demanding that the Pakistanis act as the redcoats bringing order to the wild tribal lands. Now leave aside the question of whether this really does amount to a new strategy and whether Brown needed to use up his carbon allowance by flying for the day to the region. It’s his headlong rush to join up with the US Af-Pak approach, however, that is so worrying.

In a geographic sense, of course he is right. You cannot divorce the insurgency in Afghanistan from the safe havens of Pakistan any more than you can divide the Pashtun tribes that straddle the border. If the Taliban have now been able to come back with such force in Afghanistan, it is because they can arm, equip and draw men from across the border. It is also true that, in terms of terror, the major part of activity here – three-quarters according to Brown – originates from this area.

Even if you accept the recent diagnosis of Hillary Clinton that Pakistan is basically a failed state without the will or means to exercise control of its own country, however – and the view is far too simplistic for so complex a country – it is difficult to see how it helps beating the Pakistan government over the head and demanding that it acts to reassert central control over the country, any more than it helps accusing the Karzai government in Kabul of failing in its duties of democracy and security.

The reality is that the Pakistan government and military has never really exercised authority over the tribal areas of the north-west. It has tried far more than anyone outside has been prepared to credit it and reached only stalemate at heavy losses to its own forces.. Its hope in the Swat deal was that it could contain the problem to one area.

But the other part of the truth is that Pakistan isn’t a failed state in the full sense of the word. It has a functioning judiciary, an open press (more open than India, arguably), an educated middle class and a population that, provided it is not faced with the appearance of outside interference from the West, wants nothing more than to get rid of the external forces which have helped deprive it of the economic take-off enjoyed by India.

The challenge for the West is to help the forces of change without making their lives more difficult by intervening openly in a way that brings up all the old distrust of colonial intervention. Pakistan needs support, but it also needs understanding of the predicament that the stumbling democratic government is in.
Which is precisely what Brown’s latest flurry of “initiatives” failed to do. Ignoring Pakistan sensitivities over the arrest and then judicial release of the 12 Pakistani students in the UK, which has played so badly back in their home country, he proceeded to lecture his hosts on their failed obligations to the West on security. It should have been no surprise that the Pakistani president refused to appear in a press conference by his side.

The trouble with this “new” policy is that it bundles ever more issues into one over-arching theme. That’s the opposite of what should be happening. If it is terror in the West and Al Qaeda that is the problem we should be concentrating on that, pressing the Pakistan authorities to cut off entry to the Swat camps and helping them finger anyone who has been to the training centers or the more extreme mosques.

Instead we refer to the Taliban and Pashtun with Al Qaeda as if the were one (they aren’t) and confuse an aim of counter terror with an ambition in Afghanistan to stamp out narcotics production, impose gender quality and root out Islamic fundamentalism all out the same time.

Yes, Pakistan is part of the problem. But the real difficulty of our policy is that we have no real definition of aims. And Gordon Brown yesterday only increased the confusion.

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By Lily Galili, Haaretz

Four days before Pope Benedict XVI embarks on his trip to the Holy and, the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, is one of the most worried people in the Middle East. In an exclusive interview with Haaretz yesterday, Twal concluded with a personal confession.

“The thing that worries me most is the speech that the pope will deliver here. One word for the Muslims and I’m in trouble; one word for the Jews and I’m in trouble. At the end of the visit the pope goes back to Rome and I stay here with the consequences.”

In advance of the visit, in advance of the speech that will be delivered here, the local patriarchate sent the Vatican a document enumerating the bleak situation from its perspective with warnings of possible complications. All that remains for Twal is to pray that the words are heeded.

Twal’s frank admission embodies all the difficulty of the position he holds. Even at the best of times, it is complicated for the important but shrinking Roman Catholic Church to navigate in this quarrelsome region between Jews and Muslims; it is immeasurably more difficult to do this in advance of the visit by Pope Benedict, from which all sides expect to benefit, when the visit is taking place such a short time after the bloody war in Gaza.

“The tension that the this war has left behind is making the necessary organization and coordination between the Israelis and the Palestinians even more difficult,” said Twal, “but it is also making things difficult for me personally. During the war, the faithful wondered what the patriarchate was doing for them, and there was nothing I could do to stop the death machine. I was helpless and I felt humiliated. This is a feeling that I experience here often. Even the Vatican could do very little. It, after all, has to be cautious and to maintain balance.”

Indeed, not everyone in the Arab community agreed with Twal, who has the authority to approve the date of the pope’s visit, and chose a time just four months after Operation Cast Lead. The patriarch deliberated the matter, but eventually decided that now, of all times, his flock needed spiritual guidance and encouragement, and Benedict should come and pray with them.

Church officials said that even so, critical voices were few and far between.

If not now, when?

In advance of the visit, Twal has a list of expectations and wishes that have to do with agreements between Israel and the Vatican that have not been concluded. Most of them have to do with tax breaks, the issuing of visas to clergy and greater freedom of movement for them, issues which has been under discussion since the upgrading of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican in 1993.

The implementation of these agreements, as well as the final formulation of the church’s material assets here, could make the life of the Christian community in Israel easier. Twal expected that these things would have been resolved as a goodwill gesture in advance of the visit. Since this has not happened, he expects that this will perhaps be the outcome of the visit.

To put it differently, Twal is wondering if agreements aren’t finalized in honor of the pope’s visit, when exactly will the right time will roll around?

Nevertheless, it appears that at this stage the main thrust of Twal’s prayer is that the visit goes peacefully.

It was only less than a year ago that Twal replaced the legendary Latin patriarch Michel Sabbagh, an Israeli Catholic who, to the distress of the Jews in Israel, adopted a Palestinian identity for himself.

Twal, 69, who holds a doctorate in law, is a Jordanian, a member of the large Al-Uzaizat tribe. He says that in the first century C.E. the tribe accepted Christianity, a fact that earned them a mention in the New Testament. For generations his clan led a nomadic life, until 150 years ago an energetic priest settled them in the town of Madaba, which Pope Benedict XVI will also visit during his journey through the region.

At the age of 14, enchanted by the personality of a priest who became his “teacher for life,” Twal chose the priestly life.

“The church has brought me back to a life of wandering,” he jokes, summing up a diplomatic career that took him from Latin America to Cairo and from Germany to Tunis. None of those assignments was as difficult and challenging as the one with which he is grappling with in the Holy Land, where he heads the Catholic community in Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan.

When Twal is asked to indicate the main problem the papal visit could solve to make his life easier, he says instantaneously, “The roadblocks.”

The difficulties in mobility are embittering the lives of the Palestinians in general and weighing heavily on the functioning of the church, he says.

“It is hard to move priests, it is hard to move nuns among hospitals. It is hard to get to funerals, it is hard to come to weddings. The entire functioning of our priesthood is hampered,” he said.

However, Twal acknowledges that there is another aspect to this difficulty, which is even more distressing.

“I have a hard time with the total distrust that the government of Israel evinces towards us,” he said. “You can trust us and you can even get help from us.”

Twal is aware of what are seen as improved Jewish-Christian relations. He listens patiently to a description of Jewish claims that in contrast to Muslims, “It’s possible to live with Christians,” while the Muslims in the territories and in Israel are envious of the Christians “who have a big brother in the Vatican.”

He listens, but rejects this outright.

“We don’t derive any benefit from what the two sides see as preferential status,” he said. “At the roadblocks, even priestly garb doesn’t help.”

Twal does not agree with the claim that all the open complaints by the Christian community are always directed at the Jews while troubles with Muslims are swept under the rug.

“I say openly that we have serious problems with the Muslims and with the strengthening of Islam in the region,” he says. “Christian families in Bethlehem are suffering quite a bit. However, this too is a result of the weakening of the central government in Palestine. When Islam gets stronger we suffer. When the regime gets weaker, we suffer. Look at what is happening to our people in Iraq.”

Safe in Gaza

Surprisingly, the situation of the Christians in Gaza under Hamas rule (only 286 Catholics) is in fact just fine. “We aren’t a threat and we’re also not an electoral asset,” laughed Twal. “We are simply too few for it to be worth opening another front because of us. The children of Hamas families attend our schools. Apart from that, they too know that we have a voice that echoes in the world. You could call this propaganda.”

Now he is partner to an effort to obtain exit visas for as many Gazans as possible to allow them to take part in the ceremonies for the pope’s visit. This is a complex reality, especially for someone who has also seen better situations for his coreligionists. Christians constitute only about 3.5 percent of the total population of Jordan, but they are prominent in all walks of life “as though we were 30 percent,” he said.

They have always been close to the Hashemite dynasty and now Twal is observing the ease with which the pope’s visit to Jordan is being organized, in contrast to the difficulty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Alongside the practical achievements the patriarch is hoping to reap from the visit, he is well aware of the Jewish expectation of hearing some sort of diplomatic statement, perhaps in the matter of Jerusalem or, in quite a different area, in the matter of the Holocaust-denying bishop. If you read between the lines of what Twal has to say, apparently neither sort of statement will be made. Bishop Richard Williamson, according to Twal, “is an insignificant nobody” and the pope’s attitude toward him isn’t a significant criterion for evaluation.

As for Jerusalem, the patriarch reiterates the Vatican’s position to the effect that the city must remain open to adherents of all religions in a arrangement that will be anchored in international law.

He himself would like to hear words of encouragement for the Christian community in the Holy Land, a call for peace, a condemnation of violence and an explicit statement of support for a two-state solution for two peoples from the pope.

At the end of the conversation, the patriarch again wonders about the Israeli government’s wisdom.

“We need you, but you also need us,” he says. “It isn’t clear to me why the government of Israel doesn’t understand that it cannot separate its attitude towards the local Christian population from its relations with the Vatican. The local church and the Vatican – it’s one entity. Maybe this is the opportunity to internalize that.”

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