Wellesley College President Paula Johnson has pushed back on faculty pressuring her to condone certain anti-Israel rhetoric on campus, stating in an open letter that the Massachusetts school interprets “some” anti-Zionist speech as harmful to Jewish students.”
Johnson, who has served as college president since July 2016, made the declaration on Saturday in response to a faculty letter demanding that she go on record saying that no criticism of Israel or Zionism should be described as antisemitic.
The faculty “demands”? It sounds like the Soviet purge trials of the 1930s. Andrey Vyshinsky, Chief Prosecutor, “demanding” that the Old Bolsheviks such as Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev admit to their crimes before their inevitable execution. “Paula Johnson, we the faculty of Wellesley College, DEMAND that you declare that ‘no criticism of Israel or Zionism should be described as antisemitic.'” Really? What about those who chant “from the river to the sea/Palestine will be free,” which everyone understands to be a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab state? Is denying the Jewish people, uniquely, the right to have a state of their own not antisemitic? What about the call for “Jews to the gas,” which has been heard at pro-Palestinian rallies in Europe? Gosh, sounds antisemitic to me. What about those who after October 7 have been telling us at rallies that they “stand with Hamas” and, keffiyeh-scarved, wave the flag of Palestine? Remember, they are expressing solidarity with, and support for, the terror group that sent 3,000 of its operatives surging into Israel on October 7, where they proceeded to behead babies, burned children alive, gang-raped, tortured, and murdered young girls, sliced off the breasts of women, gouged out the eyes and cut off the genitalia of men, murdered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children? Surely praise of Hamas, after what it did on October 7, must count as antisemitism. What do you say to that, faculty members of Wellesley, by Zoom or in solemn conclave assembled?
“I want to be clear that Wellesley will not make such a statement,” Johnson said. “Some anti-Israel and anti-Zionist speech can, in fact, create a hostile environment for many of our students.”
Thank god for the no-nonsense reply coming from President Paula Johnson, a Daniel come to judgment by the shores of Lake Waban. She said what all sensible people know: of course anti-Israel speech can be so hideous in its endorsement of Hamas killers, or in its call for the destruction of the tiny Jewish state, as to create a “hostile environment” for Jewish students and, come to think of it, for all students who have retained their moral sense.
Johnson added that the faculty members’ own statements in their letter, which accused Israel of committing a “genocidal assault on Gaza,” are part of the problem….
When those faculty members accuse Israel of a “genocidal assault,” they are doing two intolerable things. First, they are saying something that is idiotic. It was Hamas that committed the “genocidal assault,” wanting to murder Jews, any Jews of any age or condition, whom they came across in their rampage on October 7. Although the faculty members won’t admit it, the IDF goes out of its way to minimize civilian casualties by warning those in or near buildings that are soon to be hit to get out, get away. The IDF does this through leafletting, messaging, telephoning, and the “knock on the roof” technique. When it wanted to warn Gazans to leave the north of the Strip because it would soon become a battlefield, the IDF dropped 1.5 million leaflets telling them to move south. It’s no wonder that Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded the British forces in Afghanistan, has described the IDF as “the most moral army in the world.” Furthermore, the UN has said that since World War II, the average civilian-to-combatant ratio has been 9 to 1. The American and British armies have recently done better: in Iraq the ratio was 3 to 1, in Afghanistan between 3 and 5 to 1. But in Gaza, Israel has managed to keep the ratio down to an unheard-of civilian to combatant ratio of 10 to 7. This testifies to Israel’s success in minimizing civilian while Hamas tries always to maximize them. And as for the charge that Israel supports “genocide,” let’s remind the Wellesley faculty that in 1967, when Israel won Gaza by force of arms in the Six-Day war, the Strip’s population was 410,000. In 2005, when every last Israeli was removed from Gaza, the population of the Strip was 1.3 million. Does that sound like “genocide” to you?
The Wellesley faculty — that is, that portion of it that, filled with anti-Israel animus, that demanded that President Johnson declare that “no criticism of Israel is antisemitic” — has met a immovable and immutable object: Paula Johnson’s moral sense. They have been foiled by her clear-eyed answer, and In their ranks, confusion worse confounded reigns. That’s the consummation that was devoutly to be wished. May other university presidents go and do likewise.