'The campus wars over Gaza suck. But they are not a violent, antisemitic nightmare'

05/01/24 • 45 min

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In her first visit to Israel since October 7, Berkeley-based author and screenwriter Ayelet Waldman made the news carrying a sack of rice on her shoulder, she was arrested with a group of rabbis participating in a symbolic march to the Gaza border to deliver humanitarian aid.

Neither she nor members of the group, Waldman tells Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, were under the illusion that they would actually get through the Erez checkpoint to feed Palestinians - but she felt it was important to her, while in Israel, to take an action in line with her values "and this struck me as an action that would feel personally meaningful, because the news of the famine has been particularly horrific."

Waldman, the parent of two children in U.S. universities, also weighs in on the "obsession" of the American Jewish community - and Israelis - with antisemitism on campuses in the midst of the pro-Palestinian protests taking place in Columbia University and colleges all over the States. "I really do believe that [the antisemitism] is overstated," she says.

Also on the podcast, Haaretz senior defense and security analyst Amos Harel gives a pessimistic view of the chances of progress when it comes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government reaching a deal for the release of hostages and a cease-fire, that would stave off an IDF operation in Rafah.

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'Young U.S. Jews believe Judaism is about social justice. They ask, does Israel stand for that?'

If support for Israel becomes a truly partisan issue and political football in the United States, it will be "a disaster" that the people and the leaders of the Jewish state don't fully comprehend, says Professor Noah Feldman in a conversation with host of the Haaretz Podcast Allison Kaplan Sommer.

Feldman is a Harvard Law School professor and public intellectual who has written ten books on law, politics, religion and Middle East geopolitics. In his new book, "To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People," he applies rigorous thinking to the foundational question of what it means to be Jewish, with a special emphasis on how the founding of the state of Israel fundamentally transformed the religion.

Feldman says much of what has unfolded since October 7 reinforced the thesis of his book as to the key role Israel plays in Jewish religious identity. "I know a lot of American Jews who went from being once in a while, vacation on the beach Zionists to very intensely committed active Zionist because of October 7 – that's one form of engagement."

"And then on the other side, you have people who were kind of trying to put their heads in the sand and never think about Israel, lest they be forced to criticize it, who basically felt after October 7: 'I have to say that what is happening in Gaza is not in my name.'" For Jews around the world, he says, "Israel has become a central part of their Jewishness that they must react to, whether positively or negatively."

In the wide-ranging interview, Feldman, who is also an expert on constitutional and international law, addresses the hot button issue of accusing Israel of genocide, which has gripped college campuses like Harvard.

"There is no evidence that would satisfy an international court engaged in an ordinary criminal evaluation of genocide to support the charge that Israel has engaged in a genocide in Gaza," he asserts. "To emphasize that charge, over time and aggressively, in the absence of such evidence, has the possibility of crossing into a type of antisemitism that imagines Jews as always and everywhere the oppressors, and never as victims."

At the same time, he stresses, "one can hold the view that I just described, of rejecting the genocide charge, and still believe that Israel's conduct in Gaza is excessive, even under international law potentially. But the genocide charge is so richly embedded in a discourse of definitional evil. And it's so associated with the Holocaust, that it's worrisome to me when, for example, the South African government goes to The Hague and says Israel are actually the genocidal actors because I think there's a conscious desire to flip a narrative here."

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'Biden is willing to sacrifice reelection for Israel. That's shocking, heartbreaking and dangerous'

Journalist and public intellectual Masha Gessen is dismayed that the Biden White House has been condemning, not supporting, the numerous tent protests against Israel's war in Gaza on American campuses and worried that this decision will hand the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump.

Speaking with host Allison Kaplan Sommer on the Haaretz Podcast, Gessen said that the fact that "Biden and his administration are willing to sacrifice the election, effectively, to its ongoing engagement with Israel is shocking, heartbreaking and very dangerous for this country."

Gessen is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a senior lecturer in journalism at the City University of New York. In a wide-ranging conversation, Gessen recounted experiences on their recent reporting trip to Israel – including a visit to relatives living in a West Bank settlement – discussed the recent controversy over their comparison between the Gaza and Nazi-era Jewish ghettos and their views on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who they described as "very much in the mold of all contemporary autocrats."

While they expressed "empathy" for the "fear, pain and terror" elicited by their Holocaust analogy, they said "I'm very critical of the way that [the Holocaust] is being used politically," especially by "creating a sort of blindness to everything but that experience of fear and victimhood."

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