Hillel International’s 'red lines' on Israel are the real problem

By Lily Gellman

I actually have met Slav Leibin. We’ve conversed extensively in English and Hebrew, and he’s a great guy.

As Tehila Wenger observes in her op-ed, Leibin was only doing his job when he pointed out that the Center for Jewish Life bars Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions at its gates. Leibin is not the problem here, Max Weiss is not the problem and the CJL is not the problem; Hillel International’s Israel policy is.

Hillel used to be welcoming in its policies to all Jews, and not just to Zionists. Two weeks ago, I attended theOpen Hillelconference, ahistoricnexus of dialogue unhampered by Hillel’s “red lines” on what Jews are free to discuss. At one of the workshops there, I learned that Hillel took no stand on Zionism when it was founded, and not even for years after the State of Israel was founded. Hillel’s function was simply to be there for Jewish students—as a place to celebrate Shabbat and the holidays—and as a haven from anti-Semitism. In the 1950s and early 1960s, for instance, Harvard Zionists was a totally separate organization from Harvard Hillel.

According to conference organizer Lex Rofes, it wasn’t until the 1967 War that Hillel and other Jewish organizations manufactured Zionism as a Jewish consensus, and even then, Hillel did not yet espouse “Israel advocacy” as part of its written platform. 2010 is actually the year that brought about Hillel’s current “Standards of Partnership,” which bar not only speakers who support BDS but also anyone demonstrating “a pattern of disruptive behavior toward [Hillel] campus events” or threatening to “demonize, delegitimize or apply a double standard to Israel.”

If these guidelines—these red lines—sound vague to you, that’s because theyareintentionally so. Thanks to the magical “3 Ds” of Natan Sharansky, executive chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Hillel has wiggle room to construe anything it wants as an attack on Israel unfit for sponsorship.

Back at Princeton’s CJL, which is emblematic of Hillel’s surface-level “pluralism,” Wenger suggests that we do a fine job of representing “a broad spectrum of positions.” She cites as an example the CJL approving Ghaith al-Omari of the American Task Force on Palestine to speak on the Gaza panel it is co-sponsoring. But this is misleading.

He might make an interesting addition to the panel, but his affiliations reveal that he does not broaden the panel’s spectrum of opinions.

It iswell documentedthat ATFP has accepted thousands of dollars in funding from the virulently Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian Klarman Family Foundation. The organization also associates closely with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a right-wing Israel lobby that Hillel partnered itself with last year.

If Wenger had exercised due diligence, she might have known this. She (and Rabbi Julie Roth in the CJL’s response to Weiss’s initial piece, for that matter) also might have known that the academic boycott that the American Studies Association calls for is not “a boycott of Israeli professors” generally. It is only a boycott of the institutions themselves complicit in the occupation.

Just to make that totally clear, I’m going to quote from the ASA academic boycott resolution’sFAQ section: “[Q:] Would Israeli scholars be ... invited to my campus to speak in general, even if they relied on Israeli university funding? [A:] Yes. This boycott targets institutions and their representatives, not individual scholars, students or cultural workers.”

The alleged “crowning irony” that Wenger attributes to Weiss’s position falls apart somewhat.

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Roth and Wenger also choose to ignore that the ASA boycott is a response to a broad call from Palestinian civil society to act in solidarity as the United States continues to bankroll Israel’s military with billions of dollars. Let’s also remember that backing Israeli government institutions comes at the expense of Palestinian’s academic freedom and reinforces Israel’s ongoing settler-colonialism. Academics like Israeli-British scholar Oren Ben-Dor argue this very point.

People concerned about academic freedom in Israel-Palestine should note that Palestinian universities get bombed, scholars get deported and sometimes killed, their access to opportunities gets curtailed by arbitrary permits and they cannot fly to conferences from the airport in Tel Aviv.

This is why we need to open our Hillel and every Hillel—so we can talk aboutthese issues. As the most effective means of non-violent resistance that Palestinians have left, BDS is deserving of Jewish discussion. Opinions on the far right also deserve to be discussed in Hillel’s spaces.

The CJL named its forthcoming panel “The Way Forward After Gaza.” One way forward for American Jews will be to stop with the pro-Israel versus anti-Israel dichotomy that Hillel encourages. I serve on the board of the Princeton Committee on Palestine, and I am also co-president of LGBTQ*J and a soprano in Koleinu (Jewish a cappella). I have lived in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for four years of my life, and I love Israel. I am Jewish and pro-Israel and pro-Palestine and pro-BDS. This is not a contradiction in terms, as much as Hillel would like you to think so.

Open Hillel, and the beautiful academic freedom that comes with it, will keep campaigning.

All the way back in 2007, Roth toldNew Jersey Jewish News, “I think the time when the Jewish community insisted on speaking with only one voice has passed.” I couldn’t agree more.

Lily Gellman is a sophomore from New York City and a member of the Open Hillel movement. She can be reached atlgellman@princeton.edu.