Robbed Of Palestine - The Ivy League Scurries To Find Another Distraction

Esther Pilchman, great granddaughter of Shmuel Pilchman, labor organizer on the West Side, confidant of Samuel Gompers, granddaughter of tenants' rights activists, and daughter of a Distinguished  Professor  Emeritus of Political Philosophy at Columbia University.

 

Abraham Pilchman was a well-known scholar who had transformed the department from a carrel-bound dry, academic one to the center of progressive activism.  His seminal paper 'Irreducible Rights - Palestine And The Right Of Return', a seminal, ironic, bitter takedown of Jewish legitimacy over an Arab homeland, won his plaudits from the Columbia faculty, earned him invitations to speak at Harvard and Yale, and provided the intellectual foundation for the recent violent pro-Palestinian campus uprising. 

Pilchman was particularly listened to because he was Jewish.  The idea that such a prominent Jew could defiantly reject the claims of Israel and denigrate, humiliate, and intellectually disassemble the arguments of Israeli intellectuals and historians, made him an academic hero. An unsullied, undisturbed, and long Jewish lineage - Jewish blood pulsing strongly in his veins - did nothing to mitigate his passionate demands for a Palestinian state, the right of return, and sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount; and he had to be taken seriously.

His daughter Esther, growing up in such a devoutly progressive home, could only follow in the footsteps of her forbears, and when the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel campus movement began to mature, she was one of its leaders. 

Unlike her father, Esther was a firebrand who condemned Israel from the top steps of Butler library, a banshee; a ferocious, possessed, prophetess.  Wild-haired, glaring, saluting, and imploring, she howled for justice.  The Israeli genocide of Palestinians must be met with a countervailing force - the State of Israel must be obliterated and every trace of it expunged, and washed into the sea.

Like her father, because she was Jewish she was listened to more than the many gentiles that joined the cause.  While there were some who dismissed her as an imposter, a Jew-hating Jew - a caricature of the Christianized Jew who exchanged Miami Beach for St. Bart's, mink coats for Armani, who dabbled in Hayekian economics, and who called themselves Muffy and Brent - but such bitchy allegations were quickly and easily dismissed.  Esther, her distinguished father, and all her ancestors never dismissed their Jewishness, but never once let it interfere with social justice. 

The campus was set aflame, and Esther was always the first to set it alight.  She was everywhere, waving a Palestinian flag, wrapped tightly in a keffiyeh, brandishing a torch, and howling 'Down with the Jew!' until she was hoarse.  Only once or twice when memories of the prayerful, intimate, profoundly spiritual seders of her mother's family came unexpectedly into her head, did she hesitate in her virulently anti-Semitic speeches. 

Her grandmother who read to the young girl from Kings and Samuel, was more than a bubke, but the keeper of the flame, a sanctuary from the secular world, a calm, centered, and warm woman; and Esther hated to think of what Rebecca would think of her granddaughter now.  Yet the cause of the oppressed Palestinian people was a strong enough firewall for irritatingly persistent words of her grandmother. 

The demonstrations on the Columbia campus became more defiant and more violent.  The University administrators as invested in the Palestinian cause as the students did nothing to stop what had become mayhem and which had turned from peaceful pro-Palestine protests to violent anti-Israel ones, and from there to rabid anti-Semitic torchlight parades. 

 

Using his administrative authority, Arthur Goldberg, Associate Dean for Student Affairs, a Jew, but as militantly pro-Israel as any IDF sabra, called in Esther for an 'academic review', cover for an opportunity to confront the young woman on her virulent anti-Semitism.  Goldberg kept his own counsel, necessary as a spy in the enemy camp, but felt this was one time his Jewish patriotism could not be kept in check. 

'You are a Jew, Esther', he calmly but resolutely began. 'Does that mean nothing?'

At those words Esther was ready to stand up and spit in his face.  The audacity, the chutzpah to think he could pull the Jewish card on her, berate her for unassailable political positions, and try to change her mind, get her back to temple, to the Wailing Wall, to join the IDF and murder, rape, and eviscerate little Gazan children. 

But the dean was an imposing, authoritative, and intimidating man, and when he raised his hand to stop an unfortunate outburst from the young student, she demurred and began to listen. 

The dean reminded her of Jewish history, the proto-Jewish Semitic tribes from Arabia, the imprisonment in Egypt, the glorious march to Canaan and Jericho, the thousands of years of community, belonging, cultural strength and reverence.  

 

From there the elision to modern Israeli history was easy - the UN, the Jewish State, the creation of a long-awaited and necessary homeland, the spontaneous, untoward, and hateful reaction from the surrounding Arabs; the victorious Israeli wars, and the persistent, noxious, bilious hatred of all Jews by the Palestinians.  Had they simply acknowledged Israel's right to exist, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would be living in the same modern, forward-looking, rich environment as Israel's.  Instead they chose to remain a failed state, a dismal, backward, Paleolithic society ruled by venal opportunists. 

You are not demonstrating for a poor, oppressed people, but for a nasty, hateful, murderous population that wants death, destruction, and the genocide of the Jewish people.  'You are on the wrong side, Miss Pilchman'. 

Of course Esther dismissed everything that the Dean had said out of ignorance, distorted patriotism, and racism; but like her grandmother's words, the Dean's kept niggling their way into her consciousness.  Could he be right? she wondered late one night when the campus had finally quieted down.  

It was a moot question, for Donald Trump quickly sued the University, withdrew hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid and assured the administration that unless they took unequivocal steps to rid the campus of anti-Semitism and to expel those who were fomenting violence, they would be called before judge and jury. 

The frailty and febrile politicization of Columbia was exposed in a matter of days.  We believe in the cause of the oppressed Palestinian people, the University said, but they are not worth $400 million. 

Nature abhors a vacuum, and without Palestine to howl over, something had to replace it - something to justify the privileged education of Columbia; something to show that students were not just wealthy brats with no social conscience, but as committed to social reform and universal justice as anyone. 

And so it was that the protesters took up the cudgel once again for the black man and gay and transgender rights, slightly old, mildewed chestnuts by now, but given the racist homophobe in the White House, important to put back on the fire.  

Old queens, Bernal Heights bull daggers, and an avant garde of transgender wannabes (there were simply not enough real chopped and channeled transgenders to make a phalanx) led the new protests for gender fair play.  Not only was the new movement righteous, there were no legal pitfalls.  The White House could care less about a bunch of prancing fa--ots, and would leave the university alone.  

The university, stung by the White House reprimand, and bound and determined to show that they had not been intimidated by this conservative Anschluss, backed the demonstrators to the hilt.  'We are for diversity, inclusion, and equity' no matter what'; and with that raised the gay pride and old Black Lives Matter flags high above the library. 

'Enough is enough', said wealthy Columbia alumni and the flow of generous donations slowed to a trickle; so slowly but surely students returned to their classrooms.  Not that that mattered much since the curriculum had been so politicized that learning anything substantial or important was moot; but at least it was a beginning. 

'The Ivy League?', was now a meme.  'Who needs it?'