History Repeats Itself

[Valin]

The Weekly Standard:

The radical historians lose again.

RONALD RADOSH

Jan 19, 2015, Vol. 20, No. 18

 

At the annual conference of the American Historical Association in New York City this month, anti-Israeli activist historians suffered a rare double defeat. Calling themselves Historians Against War (HAW), the group pushed first for an academic boycott of Israel, then for condemnation of alleged Israeli violations of academic freedom. But a handful of AHA members led an effective fight against them—in an admirable echo of the great confrontation of 1970, when, thanks to the remarkable intervention of a then-Marxist historian, the AHA fended off a fierce challenge from the New Left.

 

Last week’s drama seemed to culminate when outgoing AHA president Jan Goldstein ruled that HAW’s boycott resolution lacked the requisite signatures. Goldstein’s objections, moreover, were not only procedural. She argued that the AHA, as a scholarly organization, had no purview over any Palestinian “right of return,” whose denial by Israel had been said to justify the boycott.

 

Goldstein had been lobbied intensely by historians Jeffrey Herf and Sonya Michel (University of Maryland), David Greenberg (Rutgers), Sharon Musher (Richard Stockton College of New Jersey), and others. They had warned her that many of the claims made by HAW to bolster its case against Israel were false. HAW maintained, for instance, that during the Gaza war, Israel had intentionally sought to destroy an oral history center at the Islamic University. Herf showed Goldstein evidence that the Israeli target was actually a facility where rocket components were manufactured for Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades. Similarly, HAW maintained that Israel refused to allow Gaza students to study abroad, even in the West Bank, when in fact the restriction applied only to students supporting terrorist groups. Herf also warned Goldstein against further politicizing the AHA: The effect of endorsing HAW’s resolution would be to “support the right of academics to aid in a terrorist war waged against Israel.”

 

Undeterred by its initial defeat, HAW pushed its agenda again at the AHA business meeting on January 4. This time it sought votes on two resolutions that stopped short of calling for a boycott—but that had been submitted for consideration after the relevant deadline.

 

(Snip)

 

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Have no fear...They Will Be Back. There's always the next fight.