Marty Levine
January 13, 2025
In the American Jewish Community, it has always been difficult to speak in favor of the rights of the Palestinian people and in opposition to the state of Israel. And since the October 7, 2023 tragedy, this has become even more true.
Scholars and Politicians have always been flash points when they use their stature to speak out to challenge the orthodoxy of America’s support for Israel at all costs. And in the last year even more so.
Consider Dr. Cornell West, currently on the faculty of the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, holding the prestigious Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair and independent Presidential candidate on the 2024 ballot. He has been a loud voice for Palestinian freedom and has been vilified for it.
In February 2024 he said this in a speech to a Detroit audience:
Ceasefire is a minimal step. Ending the occupation is a requirement. For me, that is non-negotiable in the Middle East as it relates to our Palestinian and Israeli brothers and sisters. There’s got to be Palestinian dignity, equality. We don’t want the massacre and genocide of any people. But you can never have your security predicated on the occupation of Gaza.
Just a few months earlier in Dearborn, Michigan, Dr. West had this to say about the events taking place in Gaza.
Yes, it’s a vicious Israeli occupation. Yes, it’s 75 years of vicious ethnic cleaning and an apartheid regime, but it’s also spiritual and psychological,” West said about the Israel-Palestine conflict. “We all know if there was a Palestinian occupation of our precious Jewish brothers and sisters and nearly 8,000 Jewish babies were killed in 50 days, the U.S. government, the corporate media, would be crying out. Well, I’m here to tell the world, and especially straight to Gaza where they are dealing with a genocidal assault, we believe a Palestinian baby has the same value as any baby in the world. I don’t care what color.
Taking this position so publicly has, according to Dr. West, cost him consideration for a tenured position at Harvard University and brought him public identification as an enemy of the Jewish people. The Canary Mission, an online arbiter of those deemed to be evil because they support Palestinian rights, put it this way:
Cornel West has spread anti-Semitism, justified Hamas war crimes and promotedhatred of Israel, America and the police. West spokeat the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia University (Columbia) in April 2024. He has also shown support for other anti-Israel protesters and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Also consider Angela Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
As a loud and confrontational voice who has spoken out in support of economic, racial, and gender justice, she has been controversial but seen as a righteous advocate. So much so that the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, in 2019, chose her to receive its Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award. But her vocal support for Palestinian rights and of the non-violent BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement makes her persona non grata in many parts of the pro-Israel Community.
Here’s how the Jewish News Service described the reaction in the local Jewish Community to Davis’s being honored
A piece in Southern Jewish Life chronicling Davis’s extensive history of left-wing activism may have contributed to the decision. That includes supporting BDS and Palestinian terrorists such as Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted by an Israeli court for her role in the 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, killing two students in their 20s. Odeh was later released in a prisoner swap between Israel and the PFLP in 1980 for an Israeli hostage held in Lebanon.
The Jewish community applauded the decision with Richard Friedman, of the Birmingham Jewish Federation, stating …[he]…was disappointed with the initial selection…
So, you may be asking, why would I choose to highlight West and Davis?
I was challenged by this question during a recent Shabbat service. In front of me were selected comments from various men and women who are seen as having the wisdom to deepen our understanding of the complex and challenging world we live in. Week after week the words from great minds help bring the ancient words and stilted translations to life and allow lessons to resonate.
And these two slides were flashed before me.
Other prominent thinkers who have their words heard as we pray include Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr., Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. So, we logically must consider West and Davis to be wise.
But when these same people dare to criticize Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people somehow these same voices are no longer considered worth listening to.
They become enemies; they are seen as antisemites.
Why is it that wise people cannot be heard when they speak against Israel and its policies?
Heard is the important word and not to be confused with agreed with.
Within so many Jewish spaces, it is not possible to hear the perspective of those we may not agree with when it comes to Israel/Palestine. The subject is not open to debate.
This intolerance has been magnified by the effort to transfer the disagreement from focusing on Israel’s harsh treatment of its Palestinian citizens and neighbors or Israel’s right to exist as a state that treats it Jewish citizens preferentially, but rather to a challenge to Jews’ right to exist at all. Labeling oppositional voices as antisemitic silences them in many Jewish spaces.
And in the case of people like West and Davis, this means that however wise or progressive they are on other issues their teaching about Israel/Palestine must be blocked out.
I guess I should be pleased that in my Congregation we can benefit from at least some of their wisdom. I can consider how it helps me navigate life. But I cannot shake my sadness that for so many people there is only one wisdom when it comes to Israel/Palestine.
And because of that myopic view, we can see the thousands of innocent men, women, and children who have been killed and the many more who have had their society destroyed as they struggle to live on while we do not speak a word on their behalf
