Deferring debate: The politics of anti-Semitism

First and foremost, I would like to thank the writers, editors and contributors of the Gonzaga Bulletin for making the Opinion section an open forum for "controversial" topics that encourage debate and discussion among the students and faculty of the university.

I am writing today concerning a response that was written in regard to my Nov. 10 article "Obama's Greatest Challenge," by Dr. Hugh Lefcort of the biology department entitled "‘Obama's challenge' is Logically Challenged" (Nov. 17). I would like to encourage everyone to read both articles, so that I may address some accusations that Dr. Lefcort has made against my article and myself. I initially would like to concentrate on Lefcort's point that I was somehow illogical in my conclusion that an Israeli attack on Iran seems imminent. On Nov. 10, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that he is "cautioning Israel not to take military action against Iran," while remarking that "a military strike could have severe economic consequences around the world." Moreover, Israeli media has been preparing for war, as displayed on Nov. 3, when the three major news channels "dedicated several minutes of air time to covering a drill simulating an attack on central Israel." The next day, Israel's Ha'aretzreported, "the military preparations against Iran had indeed been upgraded."

Although I could write an entire piece simply defending the logical argument behind my analysis, I will not burden the reader with information that is widespread in mainstream media, political science journals and is well known by U.S. and Israeli military leaders. Thus, I shall move on to the more concerning accusations made in Dr. Lefcort's article: my "anti-Semitism," and his notion that I forgot to quote Adolf Hitler in my article concerning "the complete annihilation of the Jews."

I would first like to make the distinction between a legitimate criticism of the foreign policy of a government and anti-Semitism. Criticizing particular governmental or leadership policies should not be considered an attack on Zionism or Judaism. This has long been a distinction that has attempted to be blurred in order to silence or divert critiques of Israeli governmental policies. One of the major themes of Dr. Norman Finkelstein's book "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History," is that some supporters of Israel employ accusations of anti-Semitism to attack critics of Israel, with the goal of discrediting the critics and silencing the criticism.

In order to summarize my views on this blurred distinction, I would like to reference Dr. Noam Chomsky, leading intellectual and professor of linguistics at MIT. In 2004, he said, "If you identify the country, the people, the culture with the rulers …then yeah, it's anti-Semitic to criticize the Israeli policy, and anti-American to criticize the American policy, and it was anti-Soviet when the dissidents criticized Russian policy." Chomsky's statement adequately conveys my belief that criticizing an Israeli leader and his policies does not in any way represent anti-Semitism, just as criticizing U.S. policies does not mean that someone hates America. Thus, by utilizing Dr. Lefcort's logic, I along with Meir Dagan, the former Israeli Mossad chief that I cited in the original article, would both be labeled as anti-Semites for our legitimate policy concerns.

Finally, I would like to come to perhaps the most disturbing accusation by a Gonzaga professor toward an undergraduate student, which was his implication that I had somehow forgot to quote Hitler in my article. I believe that anyone who has read my article would be hard-pressed to find a point in which I could quote Hitler in my analysis of what an Israeli war with Iran would entail for the U.S. There is no place that would implicate that I proposed "a complete annihilation of the Jews." In fact, I noted the opposite: that a war with Iran would be detrimental to the U.S., other countries in the Middle East, and would "threaten the existence of the state of Israel." I found it rather upsetting that Dr. Lefcort, a professor at a Jesuit university that promotes open discussions and healthy debates, would resort to such fallacious arguments as to attempt to equate me with Hitler and his genocidal remarks. I found this to be a very disingenuous misrepresentation of both my writing and myself. Therefore, I believe that Dr. Lefcort has attempted to defer the dialogue away from the important issues and critiques that I have risen in my article, toward his misguided perception of my "anti-Semitism" and "hate speech."

In conclusion, I would like to encourage the discourse on this topic to shift back to the real world issues at hand, instead of the attack on my personal integrity in an attempt to discredit legitimate criticisms of current Israeli leadership, its policies and their global implications.