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Colonizing Barnard

[New York Sun] Editorial - Barnard College has granted tenure to an anti-Israel anthropologist, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who has accused Israel of being a colonial project. Martin Kramer, the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote in remarks published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: "The tragedy of the academy is that it has become home to countless people whose mission is to prove the lie that Zionism is colonialism. Thus research is undertaken, books are written, and lectures delivered to establish a falsehood." He called the idea that Zionism is colonialism "the root lie." This is the lie that El-Haj is dedicated to promoting in her book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. The Jews of Israel are no more colonizers than the Indians were in America. They lived there thousands of years ago. They never left, except for brief periods during which they were expelled by actual colonizers. What concerns about El-Haj's skills is her ability to understand the plain meaning of the word "colonial" and how it does not apply to Jews returning to Israel from exile elsewhere. The fact is that the Zionist movement that created the Jewish state in the Land of Israel is the 180-degree opposite of a colonial movement. It was a national liberation struggle. So when one is confronted by those who side with every national liberation struggle save for the one in respect of the Jews, it's no surprise that people start to wonder about underlying motives. The real colonizers right now are the oil-rich Arab potentates that are pouring funding into American universities, hoping to brainwash our students with claptrap about Zionists being colonizers.
2007-11-08 01:00:00
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