Anti-Israel Marxist Jews at Tel Aviv University

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Western universities are not the only centers of tenured academic extremism. In Israel the most notorious den of Marxist faculty members and radical tenured leftists is Tel Aviv University. Curiously, the radicals there spend a lot of their time and energies bashing one another for not being radical enough.

The leading combatant now attacking other tenured radicals is Yoav Peled [1], a professor of political science at Tel Aviv University, an unreformed Stalinist [2]. His sidekick is Horit Herman Peled, evidently his wife, and in any case someone who teaches art at Oranim College, where her specialty is to design art exhibits and poems that “prove” Israel is a colonialist entity guilty of ethnic cleansing.

Peled is fairly well known [3] for his political extremism. When his own niece was murdered on an Israeli bus by a Palestinian suicide bomber, Peled and his sister, the victim’s mother [4] Nurit Peled Elhanan [5] (who is a professor at the Hebrew University [6]), invited a spokesman from the PLO to speak at the funeral [7] and to denounce Israel for being responsible for the death of the girl.

The Peleds have an article in the January/February 2011 [8] issue of NLR entitled, “Post-post-Zionism: Confronting the Death of the Two-State Solution.” The article is saturated with Marxist rhetoric and impenetrable polysyllables that force the reader to respond to every second sentence with a moan of “Huh?”

It is said that to someone holding a hammer everything looks like a nail. To the Peleds everyone who disagrees with them is a tool of the ruling class. Thus all Israeli “intellectuals” who don’t go along with their views are an elitist Ashkenazi middle class gang who adopt the “state discourse.” The best example they provide is Benny Morris, the one-time anti-Zionist “New Historian” who has since had second thoughts. It is the job of true progressives to denounce such wishy-washy puppets of the Zionist/imperialist ruling class.

The Peleds begin, however, with vicious denunciations against two leftwingers (also husband and wife) Adi Ophir and Ariella Azoulay [9]. Ophir [10] is a colleague of Peled’s at Tel Aviv University and Azoulay is between jobs [11] after getting fired by Bar Ilan University [12]. She was canned because virtually her entire academic record consisted of tendentious photo albums designed to make Israel appear to be a criminal entity.

Ophir and spouse recently published an anti-Israel book [13], but it is evidently not anti-Israel enough for the Peleds. This is because Ophir and Azoulay, while denouncing Israeli “colonialism,” acknowledge that within its 1967 Green Line borders Israel is democratic. Here the Peleds sum up their problem with the book: “Azoulay and Ophir do not argue that a false consciousness of exclusion is covering up the reality of inclusion; rather, they are practicing ‘inclusive exclusion’ in their own analysis by depicting the Israeli system as a ‘dual regime’ that includes and does not include the occupied territories at the same time.” Huh?

What really seems to have raised the Peleds’ ire is that Ophir and Azoulay only demonize Israel for its “occupation” of the West Bank, whereas the Peleds want to demonize all of Israel for the sin of existing. The Peleds conclude that Ophir and Azoulay are actually secret agents of the Zionist enemy: “Azoulay and Ophir will go to almost any lengths to insulate Zionism itself from the occupation and to avoid thinking of it as a colonial project.”

As proof, the Peleds offer the opinions of a handful of Israeli ultra-haters of Israel even more extreme than Ophir and Azoulay, including UCLA’s Gabriel Piterberg, San Diego’s Gershon Shafir, Ben Gurion University’s Oren Yiftachel, and the late Baruch Kimmerling. Write the Peleds: “We believe that the colonial nature of the Zionist enterprise has been persuasively demonstrated in the scholarly literature and needs to be faced without subterfuge.” This is a bit like citing David Irving and Ahmedinejad as the “scholarly literature” that proves the Holocaust is a hoax.

The second target of the Peleds is Boaz Newmann [14], a sometime-communist lecturer in history at Tel Aviv University. Newmann specializes in the history of Weimar Germany, writes novels and, like Ophir-Azoulay, churns out anti-Israel opinion.  But once again this is not enough for the Peleds. For Newmann has had some unforgivably positive things [15] lately to say about Zionism. Newmann’s worst sin is to have positive feelings of nostalgia for the old-time Zionist pioneers who came to the land decades before Israel achieved independence with dreams of socialism blurring their vision. “Trained in the post-Zionist discourse, Neumann aims to transcend it by portraying the ‘pioneers’ as rugged individualists motivated by an almost primal desire for the land, innocent of all ideology or colonialist design. He tries to achieve this through a patchwork of concealment and disclosure, which could serve as a Borgesian map covering the real landscape and history of the Land of Israel in the modern era.” Huh?

The Peleds conclude: “While Neumann does not absolve Zionism and Israel of the injustices they committed against the Palestinians, the political message conveyed by his book, regarding the entire territory under Israel’s effective rule, is: ‘between justice and my mother, I choose to defend my mother.’”

The final target is Prof. Yehouda Shenhav [16], a Marxist sociologist [17] and until recently the editor of Israel’s tiny Marxist journal, Theory and Criticism. Among its notable articles was one claiming that the University of Haifa’s tower was designed as a giant phallus to symbolize the oppression of Arabs.

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  • daniel

    As an israel and jew I think we have to face up to some nasty facts. We can blame the goyim for everything, but as long as we will not clean our own house (i.e. sadly evertime we were genocided their were jewsih cheerleaders chanting on the purpotrtaors of the genocide in the runnin gup to it and other who thougth to make a quick buck out of it (e.g. the rothschild and warburg families were among the first fianciers of the nazis and bolshevicks and the oslo scam was nothing more than a business opportunity for the luck few – never mind where they stood on the political map, e.g. sharon was apartner in the jericho casino which was fiancing the tanzims terror against jews).
    Sad but true, as well as that these professors at the universities here in IL get proposterous salaries from the ourages taxes we pay her

  • Chezwick_Mac

    In a word, scum.

    I say that not because of his views, which are vile enough, but because of how he handled his daughter's murder.

  • Jennifer

    What a scary looking dude. Didn't he play one of the zombies in the B-movie I saw last night on cable?

    • http://www.therepublicrevealed.com/ Victor Laslow

      I think he did. He was the first one shot in the head.

  • Ahmed Jamal

    Academic standards at Tel Aviv University are dead, at least in history, sociology and political "science"!

  • David Gilat

    Evidently Israel is not short of its own wierdos.

  • geez

    Hold your friends close and your enemies closer. That's the only thing that makes sense to me concerning this garbage. Can't be easy to do.

  • PIL

    Self-hating Jews are nothing new. In fact, every group has self-hating people.

    10 Questions for La Raza. http://libertarians4freedom.blogspot.com/2011/02/

  • http://www.therepublicrevealed.com/ Victor Laslow

    They are not only Israel's Worst Enemy they are some of Americas worst enemies
    And it shames me. http://www.therepublicrevealed.com/forums/index.p
    Victor Laslow

  • USMCSniper

    Self hating Jews at home and abroad who conspire with enemies of Israel are without a doubt, Israel's worst enemies..

  • waycoop1

    What is this about obama giving nuclear secrets about Britin away to Russia in return for their signing the "start" treaty?

  • aspacia

    True Marxists hate all nation states.

    • cjk

      All that is except the Soviet Union!

  • waterwillows

    There is one thing I have noticed about marxist lefties. They all have big mouths, but little pockets. While envy is their ruling god, I notice that none of them have donated their large incomes to 'the common cause' they never stop babbling about.
    It can't be much fun living in a perpetual state of green eyed envy because someone, somewhere might have more than you do.
    I am surprised that the academics have not noticed the confusion of mind that they posses to be an indicator of ineptness of ability for teaching.

  • Paul

    I am not Jewish but I am a conservative and frequent reader of Front Page. I am constantly amazed at how some in the Jewish communtiy can support those who call for their disenfarchisement and in some cases their extermination. If we in the West should have learned anything from the world's history over the last 150 years its that when someone states they want to kill you or are going to try and wipe you from the face of the earth, they mean it.

  • jaythehistorian

    Thousands of years of persecution has understandably produced mental deviants such as these traitors. There will always be weaklings who instead of facing and destroying the predators, will attempt to convince the predators (i.e. antisemitic groups) they are "separate" from the potential pray.(Jewish people) . During the holocaust, Jewish traitors were treated as badly as other Jews unless they were the one in one thousand who possessed a special skill the Nazis needed. The Israeli Jewish traitors are exhibiting what has been called the "Stockholm Syndrome". Mental health professionals call this type of behavior "Identifying with the aggressors ".

  • geewhyzz

    Yoav Peled needs to be directly confronted by opposing students and faculty.
    Israel has enough enemies without and should not condone those within.
    He gets away with political murder, which sooner or later will lead to……….
    Stop him. There can be no progress with his "progressivism". His mental
    stability is open to question.

  • whatever

    To undrestand the depth of this pathology
    the book of "History of Persian/Iranian Jews", by Habib Levy
    Two most anti-semite features of book, have been jewish themselves!

  • Canuck

    Typically, these radical left-wing academics are not practically oriented, and they resent those who are. Naturally, they favor redistributive government policies, with themselves as notable beneficiaries. But, why are these people self-haters and why do they seek to stir up revolutions? Talk-radio host Michael Savage best explains this mindset as follows: “Liberalism [he means Leftism] is a mental disorder.”

  • unbeliever1

    Could you imagine a black man supporting the KKK or Neo-Nazis?This couple should move to Gaza Of course these Leftists won't dare raise a dissenting voice against Hamas.They would act as if Hamas were a Utopian entity.

  • john oconnor

    Isreal allows critizism of itself in its own country! Which discredits the whole conspiracy theory!

  • http://www.hhokitsdirect.com/ Bob

    What are these antisemitic radical pieces of garbage doing teaching at Tel Aviv University? I understand we allow these low life's here in American Universities – they have no problem pushing their radical agendas. But In Israel? Come on guys- the whole world is gathering to try and destroy you from the face of the earth (won't happen), you don't need to put up with this filth from within. Please don't emulate our nonsense in the US…kick these reprobates to the street where they and their ideas belong or let them show their true colors and live in Gaza with Hamas…

  • tkellybal

    Why do some people, in an effort to display their open-mindedness and intellectual nature, turn against their own heritage?…why is it cool to hate your people?

    • yam

      this phenomenon is not limited to Israel (jews),USA(Christian) but also to India(hindus).
      Here in India it has become fashion to bash Hindus. you are not intellectual here unless you bash Hindus and praise Islam as religion of peace

  • LizaF

    Wow. I am disgusted by these self hating Jews. Why don't they go to Iran or perhaps Saudi Arabia. The World is up side down.

  • Hank Rearden

    Sounds like Herbert Marcuse missed his moment!!

    I think that one can overcomplicate situations like this. The real question is…do those who are paying the bills – parents in the US, but I don't know who in Israel – want to pay for students to be taught this tripe? Isn't studying Marxism after the experiences of the 20th century like studying astrology? Why waste limited time on a worthless subject?

    Defund these chairs: sorry mate, nothing personal, just a little perestroika. Maybe you'd like to teach matrix algebra instead.

  • Dr. Tony

    I hate dem Joos cause my pecker is so tiny

  • Amos

    Time for scaffolds to be erected?

  • http://www.allenzhertz.com Allen Z. Hertz

    Academic freedom is one thing, but actually "rewarding" prospective or current faculty for discriminating against Jews, Judaism, the Jewish People and Israel is another thing. Are there professors in Israel and other countries who materially advance their careers by ostentatiously discriminating against Jews, Judaism, the Jewish People and Israel? There has to be great care to make sure that public money is not used to reward otherwise mediocre or unworthy professors simply because they discriminate against Jews, Judaism, the Jewish People and Israel. Anti-Semitism can be had for free in the streets. There is no need to spend so much money in order to cultivate anti-Semitism and anti-Semites in universities. Hitler also had his professors and scientists. When it comes to common decency and respect for fundamental human rights, ought professors to have such an unqualified exemption from community standards? I think not.

  • Reid

    I'm Not Israeli nor Am I Jewish so it's even more puzzling to me how anyone who is both Jewish and Israeli can attack their own people and country and have support for murderers like Stalin and support organizations like Hamas and the PLO. I am Just one Puzzled American Christian ??

    • yam

      greed of money and international fame,various awards and recognition to name a few.
      A privilege you wont get if you are a patriot Israeli