Letters to the Editor: What Stanford’s anti-Jewish bias looked like on campus in the 1950s
A decade ago I interviewed a young rabbi who had just arrived from Israel to take the helm of a liberal congregation in Palo Alto. He told me that, in Israel, the university’s Jewish students “often take up arms against [Israel’s] occupation, and the occupation is in response to the occupation. That is the nature of the occupation. It is a reaction. It is an act. Israel is an act of resistance. But the students, they are not involved in the act of resistance they are fighting.” He added, “The Jewish students in Israel are the only exception when they are not involved in the act of resistance. In Israel, the only exception is the Jewish students are actively involved in the act of resistance. They fight the occupation.”
My question: How could the university have allowed this young rabbi, a man of his upbringing who was the first Israeli-born person on campus, to talk like a campus student to his fellow students?
And how could it have allowed him to use an old quote by Israeli president Shimon Peres to describe the Jewish state as an “act of resistance”?
It is a curious fact that when a group of anti-Israel professors began circulating an article claiming Israeli-Jewish leaders are “shooting themselves in the foot,” their efforts were greeted with little outrage.
These pro-Israel professors did not “shoot themselves in the foot” by calling the Jewish state an “act of terrorism” (which it obviously is not) or comparing Israeli leaders to Nazi leaders.
They are instead taking an antiwar stance that has served Israeli leaders well throughout the ages.
The same cannot be said about the university.
Stanford’s anti-Jewish bias has been on display for an entire decade now, and it’s time for the university to take responsibility for its role in this ongoing disgrace.
The first step is for the university’s president to publicly apologize for this anti-Semitic conduct.
To start, Stanford should apologize for allowing a man from one of Israel’s most hated nations to take control of