by Phyllis Chesler, Israel National News
A very gallant Dr. Charles Asher Small just delivered an important lecture at the 92nd St Y. in New York.
Yes, this is the same Dr. Small who, in 2004, founded the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), which he housed at Yale University from 2006-2011–until the Yale Corporation decided that the Center’s work on Islamic Judeophobia and specifically on Iranian genocidal Judeophobia threatened Yale’s “scholarly commitments” in the region.
Who could make this up? This was the first time that Dr. Small spoke about this publicly.
But, he first wondered whether “Israel,” which is being blamed by everyone for every conceivable wrong, is really also to blame for whatever problems American Jews are having in terms of communal identity or “renewal.” He also wondered how different American Jews and Jewish leaders are today when compared to the American Jewish leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, as economic problems worsened and a virulent anti-Semitism arose. Sound familiar? He asked:
“Were the American Holocaust-era leaders trying to save European Jews? Or were they nervous about bringing over shtetl, Yiddish-speaking people who might increase anti-Semitism in America?” Were their efforts too little and too late and were their efforts also met with great resistance?
His point: Is Israel the new shtetl? Are Israelis the new “Yids” who will ruin it for the American Jews? How can so many academics, journalists, human rights activists—and American Jews blame Israel for its imperfections while refusing to even note how dangerously totalitarian, intolerant, and religiously extreme its Muslim neighbors happen to be?
Dr. Small noted that anti-Semitism is different from all the other isms such as racism and sexism. “It is inherently genocidal.” It was “genocidal during the religious era when “Jews were the wrong religion” and were accused of holding back the Messianic age by both “refusing to convert to Christianity” and for having committed “deicide.”
In an era of rising nationalism and ethnicity, once again, European Jews were suddenly seen as strangers. In order to save one’s nation, the Jews had to be exterminated.
Finally, in our “contemporary context,” Israel is the Jew of the world, the scapegoat for the world’s ills. Now, the entire world wishes to annihilate the Jewish state—in order to save the world.
“No one is looking at radical Islamic ideology.” Everyone, (that means all the educated Ivy League professors and their students who grow up to become senators and presidents) is a “postmodernist,” a “cultural relativist,” a non-judgmental “multi-culturalist.” By definition, anyone who has been formerly colonized and anyone who is a person of color is a victim whose customs and traditions cannot be “judged.”
Charles and I agree that this is really a rather new and rather clever form of racism and paternalism. Universal rights for me and thee—but not for the female victims of honor killing, forced child marriage, female genital mutilation, and forced veiling. Religious rights for Muslims in the West but the lethal persecution of Christians, Hindus, and Jews in “Muslim lands.”
About 3 ½ years into Dr. Small’s Institute at Yale, a philanthropist offered five million dollars if Yale would raise 15-20 million dollars. Dr. Small delivered a strategic business plan. The Development Office said it was “wonderful.”
But the Iranian regime suddenly listed Yale as an “enemy of the revolution.” People—powerful people—on the Yale Corporation blamed Small and his Institute for having gotten Yale in trouble. He was told to cease, desist, and recant, so to speak.
Charles thought: Not bad if our work has gotten the attention of the genocidal Iranians who are busy devouring their own people too.
One of the members of the Yale Corporation who is in charge of Ethical and Financial Investments for Yale is CNN correspondent Fareed Zakaria. Dr.Small played a CNN tape titled “Hizbullah Supports Beirut Synagogue.” Zakaria presented Hizbullah and Lebanon as “open to religious expressions” and the power behind the reconstruction of the Magon Adom Synagogue in Beirut. Zakaria chided the American state department for having classified Hizbullah as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
We watched the CNN clip which Charles showed us.
Hizbullah was behind the heinous bombing of the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, bur whose mastermind leader could not be prosecuted because Amadinejad had appointed him Defense Minister of Iran. As such, he has diplomatic immunity.
I listened to this Argentinian prosecutor who presented his careful documentation at the 2010 global conference at Dr. Small’s Institute and it was chilling. Hizbullah was definitely behind this murderous atrocity,
This was the kind of faculty, administration, and Corporation that Charles Small was up against.
Charles was actually told, point blank, that if he would only stop dealing with radical Islam, radical Islamic Judeophobia, and Iran that he could enjoy a long and happy career at Yale.
In August of 2010, Dr. Small convened the largest world conference on global anti-Semitism at Yale. One hundred and seven speakers from 23 countries came: Jews, Muslims, Christians, leftists, rightists, feminists. His parents had saved a seat for him. When his mother saw how many important scholars were present, she beamed with pride. He assured her that this “is the beginning of the end.”
Indeed, no sooner were the words out of his mouth when the exceedingly hostile Provost, Frances Rosenbluth, welcomed the gathering with a warning. They were “not to engage in Islamophobia.”
A young Palestinian blogger (and I believe Yale law student) was live blogging during the 2010 conference. He characterized the speakers as “racists” and “Islamophobes” and kicked off a firestorm which resulted, three days later, in the newly appointed PLO “ambassador” to write to Yale President Levin charging Yale with “racism.”
Tell the truth about radical Islam or Islamism and you will be branded a racist. Dare expose the Muslim practice of slavery, imperialism, colonialism, religious intolerance, and gender apartheid and you will find yourself branded a “conservative racist” and therefore demonized.
It happened to me early on, between 2003-2005. It has happened to every single truth teller ever since, including Dr. Charles Small.
Small was attacked on NPR. The stellar gathering of the world’s scholars on anti-Semitism were likened to “the equivalent of having the Black Panthers run an institute on racism.”
As Small put it: “The leading scholars were viewed as a bunch of murderers.”
This was the first time that Yale had evaluated a Research Center and kept their Report “confidential.” Dr, Small has not seen it to this day. Yale “confiscated the film of the conference. Yale also forced Dr. Small to work only with their own PR person, rather than the firm he had hired. Yale’s PR person said: “I don’t have to take directions from you and I am friends with a faculty member in Middle East Studies at Columbia and I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.”
And he walked out.
Soon, Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt attacked Charles and his entire Institute as unscholarly, as having crossed the line into “advocacy.” Three weeks later, President Obama appointed her to a special position at the U.S. Holocaust Museum which is part of the State Department.
At another public meeting, Hannah Rosenthal, another Obama appointee and former J Street honcho, ran across the room to publicly condemn Small for daring to criticize American policy makers for their failure in terms of looking at anti-Semitism.
Several Yale scholars attacked Dr. Small for not being “nuanced enough” about the Muslim Brotherhood, (Hamas in Gaza), whose program is the destruction of Israel. The Hamas Charter is modeled upon the forgery known as the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
The White House just happily hosted the Muslim Brotherhood. No human rights groups raised an outcry. Neither did the ADL.
President Obama chose to appoint Stephanie Powers the head of a new American initiative to combat genocidal atrocities. Powers is the very woman who, in an interview, did not recommend an American military invasion of Syria, Sudan, Rwanda, or Bosnia—but she wanted American boots on the ground in Israel/Palestine to enforce…what? The world view that Israel should not exist. (That is not how she said it but in my view this is exactly what she meant).
On the very day President Obamas appointed Powers, he also appeared with Elie Wiesel at the Holocaust Museum.
With some pain, Dr. Small noted that Wiesel had also come to Yale. “He said that the times are urgent—no it is an emergency.” Wiesel was talking about Iran’s genocidal intentions towards Israel, towards Tel Aviv, not merely towards the “settlements.”
And what was Wiesel most concerned about? That another six million Jews (G-d forbid) might be murdered? That Holocaust survivors have lived to see the possibility of a second Shoah, one that I predicted in 2004 and which Guilio Meotti has since pursued with valor and determination. No. Wiesel was bothered most by the silence of the human rights community, and by the Jewish community most of all.
In a quiet voice, Dr. Small said: “We thought that at Auschwitz, anti-Semitism has died, but no, only the Jews died.”
Dr. Charles Small wishes to remain a scholar and in an era of Big Lies and the demonization of the truth that is a laudable goal. True scholarship has now been exiled entirely from our universities which are mainly indoctrinating our students into anti-Semitism and America-hatred.
And yet, if, as Wiesel has said, “we are facing an emergency,” we may also need advocates, activists, soldiers, a cyber-defense team, a black ops team, and much more along these lines.
Charles Smalls challenges us all to start holding risky conversations with liberal-left Jews, even in our own families, conversations that are considered “beyond the pale.” We must ask:
Is Obama the best or the worst president for the Jews and for democracy? (He who has not intervened in Iran or Syria).
Will Obama every really stop Iran’s bomb?
Will he?
@ BlandOatmeal:
I don’t believe he is cognizant of your existence, do you believe you are that special?
They say the cure for ignorance is acquiring knowledge. So ignorance can be cured. Stupidity on the other hand is probably genetic and so far no cure has been found except one.
While immersion is water Mikvah or baptism may seem similar to the ignorant only the stupid would make a statement such as yours.
Mikvah and Baptism, the difference.
Bland I laughed at your remarks on “saved”…We talked about saving the hay and that was it!!
The Media are selling Obama. there is no left. Bill is pushing a Jews with Christians crusade, forgetting that Hitler emerged out of Christianity and thereby grew close to Islam.
We need to make an intellectual leap here. Trotskyism has a role.
But not sure if you people will go there.
@ goldi steiner:
Hi, Goldi
You sound like a Fundamentalist Christian, with this talk of being “saved”. I was raised in a Catholic household, and never heard the word “saved” mentioned, not even once. We were taught to obey the Ten Commanments, in addition to observing commandments of the church. All men were to be judged, and it seemed only a handful would be spared from some sort of punishment. The concept of “grace” (“chesed”) wasn’t taught, as far as I could see.
I first encountered the term “salvation” (“yeshua”, the Hebrew name for Jesus) as a young adult. I wasn’t really looking to be “saved”; I just wanted to get into right standing with God, to know Him and to be His friend. I had no idea what being “saved” meant, and neither, it seems, did most of my “born again” friends. All I know, is that through the preaching of the gospel and reading and believing the Bible, I came to believe that God loved me, that He forgave me all my sins, that He wanted a relationship with me, and that He was the God talked about by Jesus in the gospels.
Through further reading of the scriptures, I have found the term “salvation” presented in such a word that it made sense. One verse in particular, was when John the Immerser told some Pharisees that came to be baptized,
“You breed of vipers! Who warned you to flee the wrath to come? Bring forth fruit, therefore, worthy of repentance!
Those Pharisees WANTED TO JOIN THE SECT OF JOHN; for that’s what “baptism” (mikvah) was all about. I imagine they wanted to become talmidim of John, just as haredim today become disciples of rebbes in the various yeshivas. John let them know that his “yeshiva” was not of their kind, a place where people stuffed their heads with knowledge and became puffed up. His yeshiva was a place where men instead EMPTIED their hearts of sinful attitudes, and changed the direction of their lives. This would eventually, on the day of judgment, bring about salvation from wrath; because the wrath of God is poured out upon us mainly because of our proud hearts and stiff necks.
There’s nothing in all this, that prevents a Jew from being “saved”.
I hope, and believe and expect the unexpected.
Something that will shake the world, and awaken the not so deserving Jews to be saved.
It will take a miracle, I know. But miracles do happen even in our times, albeit we don’t see them.
Am i dreaming? Maybe.
But one HAS to have dreams, to have dreams come true!!!!!!
@ yamit82:
That’s Obama +11% and Romney -4% since September, seven months previous. At this rate, it will be Obama 73% vs Romney 24% by election time.
What has made US Jews increase so quickly in their ardor for BO? Call me an antisemite, and let me guess it had something to do with money. Then, o pro-semites, please tell me what it really DID have to do with. Please prove me wrong. Stand up for the Jews! Tell me their hearts and their pocketbooks don’t reside in the same part of their anatomy. Honestly, I would like some proof of this, even some flaky evidence.
Obama 61-28 Over Romney In New AJC Poll; Wide Gender Gap In President’s Favor
Monday, April 30, 2012
President Barack Obama would receive 61 percent of the Jewish vote compared with just 28 percent for former Gov. Mitt Romney if the election was held now.
Most religiously observant Jews (weekly synagogue-goers) said they plan to re-elect Obama. Two-thirds of Jewish women plan to do the same, compared to 55 percent of Jewish men.
Those were the findings of the latest national American Jewish Committee poll, which the group commissions annually. The survey also found that 80 percent of American Jews listed the economy as the most important issue in this election, compared to 57 percent who cited health care, 26 percent who said national security and just 22 percent who said U.S.-Israel relations. Although Romney, a former businessman and Massachusetts governor, has been campaigning on his economic prowess, 62 percent of Jews who cited the economy as their top issue favored Obama to Romney 62 percent to 28 percent.
Obama’s figure is an improvement over a previous AJC survey in September, when Obama scored 50 percent and Romney 32 percent (with other viable candidates still in the race).
Obama came out ahead in the latest poll among Jews who cited health care as their top concern, with 72 percent saying they would vote for the president compared to 19 percent who favored Romney.
In addition, 58 percent of Jews approved of the way Obama is handling U.S.-Israel relations, compared to 40 percent who disapproved. On the other hand, Romney nudged out Obama (45 percent to 42 percent) among Jews who cited national security concerns as their top priority.
Interestingly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a resounding 70 percent approval rating when it comes to his handling of U.S.-Israel relations, compared with just 28 percent who disapproved. And although 55 percent of Jews believe the prospect for Arab-Israeli peace have stayed the same, 37 percent said they have decreased in the last year.
“Our survey confirms a politically active and yet diverse American Jewish community that has strong views on the pressing issues confronting the Unites States,” said David Harris, the AJC’s executive director.
The survey found that Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon is of concern to 89 percent of Jews questioned, and that 64 percent would support U.S. military action should diplomacy and sanctions fail — and 75 percent would support Israeli military action. Fully 60 percent believed the Democratic Party is more likely to make the right decision in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program.
The survey found also that 71 percent of respondents said that caring about Israel is a very important part of being a Jew, but 59 percent said they have never gone, 48 percent of them because they never had the opportunity, 32 percent said it is too expensive, 13 percent said they were afraid to go and 31 percent said they had no interest in going.
The survey of 1,074 American Jews was conducted by Knowledge Networks from March 14-27 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percent. In last year’s poll, 45 percent of Jews polled said they approved of the president’s overall job performance.
The pacifism of the Jews when directed at the world augurs a less Darwinian planet. When this same pacifism of the Jews is directed at themselves it augurs the end of the Jewish People. In the minds of these pacific Jews, only complete acceptance by others can justify their continued existence. They have forgotten the simplest of the rules that has sustained Israel through the millennia: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me!” Only later does it does it state: “If I am only for myself, who am I!”
As in the Mishna from Avot, these two principles are the guiding lights of the the nation of Israel only when they are tied together by action.
No. Next question?
No. The American Jewish community has lost its mind. Israel didn’t do this; they did it to themselves. You know, Hashem loves the Jewish people, but He let the Nazis zap most of the European Haredim because _______. Fill in the blank. I won’t even go there. What matters, is that Hashem essentially wiped them out. He loves the American Jews too, but He might do the same to them; because they are pursuing and attitude and a program that makes a mockery of His word and His name. A few Haredim have survived in Israel, and a few of these others might too; but I don’t hold forth much hope for American Jews. They are Jews. God loves them. Say goodnight, Jake.