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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Elliot Resnick</title>
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		<title>&#8220;Tony Kushner Is Disingenuous And Dissembling&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/elliot-resnick/tony-kushner-is-disingenuous-and-dissembling/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=tony-kushner-is-disingenuous-and-dissembling</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/elliot-resnick/tony-kushner-is-disingenuous-and-dissembling/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2011 04:04:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Elliot Resnick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[argument]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bernstein global wealth management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bronx]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jewish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[member executive committee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[playwright tony kushner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Press]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[yiddish theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[yiddish theatre]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=93073</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An interview with CUNY Board of Trustees member Jeffrey Wiesenfeld.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Kushner600.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-93079" title="Kushner600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Kushner600.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="253" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/">JewishPress.com</a>.</strong></p>
<p><em>The decision last  week by CUNY&#8217;s Board of Trustees to deny playwright Tony Kushner an  honorary degree sparked an uproar in the media, and Jeffrey Wiesenfeld  has been at the center of it.</em></p>
<p><em>Wiesenfeld, a  longtime outspoken Israel supporter and a member of CUNY&#8217;s board of  trustees, convinced four of his colleagues that honoring Kushner &#8211; who  believes Israel&#8217;s founding was a mistake and resulted from ethnic  cleansing &#8211; would be inappropriate. Kushner needed nine votes out of 12  to receive the degree. He got only seven.</em></p>
<p><em>But then,  responding to public pressure, the board&#8217;s seven-member executive  committee &#8211; which does not include Wiesenfeld &#8211; overturned the decision  Monday night and voted to grant Kushner the degree.</em></p>
<div><em>The Jewish Press  recently spoke with Wiesenfeld, a principal at Bernstein Global Wealth  Management, about the &#8220;Kushner affair&#8221;; Israel activism; the revival of  Yiddish theater (Wiesenfeld heads the National Yiddish Theatre); his  experiences working for the FBI; his years in the service of New York  politicos Ed Koch, Alfonse D&#8217;Amato and George Pataki; and his memories  of growing up in the Bronx.</em></div>
<p><strong>The Jewish Press:</strong> In various newspaper interviews  over the years, Tony Kushner has &#8220;deplored [the IDF's] illegal and  brutal tactics&#8221; against the Palestinians; argued that Israel is engaged  in &#8220;a deliberate destruction of Palestinian culture and a systematic  attempt to destroy the identity of the Palestinian people&#8221;; and stated  that Israel&#8217;s founding &#8220;was a mistake.&#8221; And yet, he now claims to be  &#8220;dismayed by [your] vicious attack and wholesale distortion of [his]  beliefs.&#8221; How do you make sense of that?</p>
<p><strong>Wiesenfeld:</strong> Kushner is disingenuous and dissembling.  If his libelous statements against Israel were made by anyone outside  the Jewish community, that person would be labeled an anti-Semite. When  you hold the State of Israel &#8211; a nation in a struggle for its survival  from the beginning and a target for the misogynist, racist,  anti-western, dictatorial regimes that surround it &#8211; to a standard you  would hold no other nation under normal circumstances, let alone under  such exigencies, and when you spew libel against our sole regional  democratic ally for &#8220;crimes&#8221; concocted by delegitimizers, you&#8217;re an  anti-Semite.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a tragedy to tell you that we could do without  80 percent of the Jews. It&#8217;s the good Christians who stand up for Israel  and for us. It&#8217;s a very sad thing for me to say.</p>
<p><strong>The Jewish Press: </strong>Some people argue,  though, that politics should be irrelevant when deciding whether to give  a famous playwright an honorary degree.</p>
<p><strong>Wiesenfeld: </strong>As I wrote in my letter to the editor of The New York  Times: If Kushner were a CUNY student degree candidate, no trustee or  administrator would have the right to deny him a degree if he fulfilled  his requisite requirements.</p>
<p>But an honorary degree is wholly within the  discretion of CUNY&#8217;s board to grant. It identifies the university with  accomplished, generous citizens or public figures. It is also a tool  that highlights the university and enhances its image in the educational  marketplace. Kushner is an extremist. And no extremist from any quarter  is a good face for any university &#8211; from the far left or from the far  right.</p>
<p><strong>The Jewish Press: </strong><strong></strong>This &#8220;Kushner affair&#8221; is not the first time this year  you&#8217;ve fought for Israel&#8217;s reputation at CUNY. In March you were  responsible for arranging security so that conservative pro-Israel  speaker David Horowitz would be able to lecture at Brooklyn College and  provide an alternative view during Israel Apartheid Week.</p>
<p><strong>Wiesenfeld: </strong>Every year the situation for Israel&#8217;s reputation and  Jewish students on campus around the country gets worse and worse. As  David Horowitz has said, the left can&#8217;t win the argument with normal  people. They can only win the argument with their fellow radicals. So  how do they try to win the argument with regular folks? They shut them  down. They win with hooliganism &#8211; there&#8217;s no other word for it.</p>
<p>So they&#8217;ll find out about an event where a pro-Israel  speaker is lecturing &#8211; it could be Michael Oren, Benjamin Netanyahu,  David Horowitz, or Daniel Pipes &#8211; and they will disrupt the event until  the college relents and says, O.K., everyone has to leave, we&#8217;re  canceling this event. That has been the predominant response in this  country.</p>
<p>Here, at CUNY, thanks to Chancellor Matt Goldstein,  our view is that if there&#8217;s an anti-Israel event, there has to at least  be an opportunity for a student or professor who wants to arrange a  pro-Israel event to be able to do so without disruption.</p>
<p><strong>The Jewish Press: </strong>What can Jews do to counter increasing anti-Israel sentiment on American college campuses?</p>
<p><strong>Wiesenfeld: </strong>For one, Hillel must undertake the obligation to  instill in our students Jewish pride and educate them on how to defend  Israel. For decades it has been sufficient for Hillel to be like an  identity center where kids can be with other Jewish students, shake a lulav, have some challah,  and light a Chanukah menorah. That&#8217;s not enough anymore. I&#8217;m not  attacking them; I&#8217;m just saying they&#8217;ve been a little slow to react to  this new reality.</p>
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