Rabbi vs. Graduate: Intimidation at the University of Oregon

By Gary Murrell

The process that turned me from a closet critic of Israeli policy to a public supporter of Palestinian rights began with an advertisement in The Nation calling for volunteers to participate in the "Eyewitness Israel" program sponsored by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Having had the honor of being chosen as a delegate to monitor human-rights abuses in occupied Palestine, I had the privilege of living with Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza during July and August 1988.

Witnessing the systematic brutality of Israeli "state terrorism" left me, and my 15 fellow participants, sickened, shocked and horrified. We expressed our group outrage in a statement released to the press in Jerusalem and upon our return to Washington, DC. Israeli violence is so ubiquitous and so familiar to readers of the Washington Report, that repetition of our findings here would be tedious, but one incident stands out so vividly in my mind that the retelling will serve as an example of the whole.

In the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, as I sat in her modest but immaculate home, a Palestinian mother described for me what had taken place a few weeks earlier in the very room in which we were sitting. She had been changing the diapers of her six-month-old twin sons, who lay on a rug on the floor, when six Israel Defense Force soldiers chased her 11-year-old nephew into the house. He tried to hide in the bedroom, but the soldiers seized and handcuffed him.

As the soldiers led him out of the house, one soldier lagged behind. He moved to the back of the room and then, like a soccer player, ran the three steps to where the babies lay on the floor and kicked the closest child as if it were a football. The baby flew across the room, bounced off the wall and crashed to the floor. Leaving the mother and both children screaming, the soldier, laughing, left the house.

After I returned from occupied Palestine, I continued work on my Ph.D. in U.S. history. One of my minor fields of study is 19th and 20th century Arab nationalism. I also gave slide shows and lectured throughout Oregon on what I had seen and heard in occupied Palestine for audiences where many heard the reality of Israeli occupation for the first time. I continue to publish op-ed pieces in several mainstream Oregon newspapers, including the Oregonian and the Eugene Register Guard.

Starting in September 1989, I began writing a column devoted to the Palestinian struggle for liberation for the University of Oregon Student Insurgent. My writings were criticized, but my detractors avoided any debate on the facts I presented, and concentrated instead on my personal motives.

In November 1989, only two months after I wrote my first column, Rabbi Hanan Sills, head of B'nai B'rith Hillel and adviser to the Jewish Student Union (JSU) at the University of Oregon, began a series of intimidation tactics, both through surrogates, such as Director Phil Zuckerman of the Jewish Student Union, and on his own.

What Rabbi Sills and Mr. Zuckerman have had to say about me in several publications seemed mild when compared to the campaign Sills began to wage to discredit me with my department and, when that didn't work, with faculty throughout the university.

In the spring of 1990, when the University of Oregon summer catalog announced I was to teach a summer class entitled "Land Tenure in Palestine, 1876-1990, " Rabbi Sills, in a May 21 letter on B'nai B'rith letterhead stationery addressed to the chair of the history department, said in part:

"Gary Murrell has been attacking Israel and Zionism in the U of O school papers for a couple of years . . . I am appalled to learn that the U of O History Department is sponsoring his course on Palestinian history vs. Zionism this summer as a short course. . . Gary. . . has never revealed that he is capable of grasping all of the range of the complexities and the intricacies of the picture in the middle-east [sic] . . . He postures behind his self-righteous doctrinaire ideology . . . Mr. Murrell . . . aligns himself with the. . . aggressive fascistic brand of Palestinian nationalism . . . [which does not] belong in the course catalogue of a university such as the U of O with the imprimatur of the University of Oregon's History Department. This course should . . . not merely reflect one man's very biased and racist views couched in the garb of 'historical scholarship.' Mr. Murrell is not the person to teach this course. . . "

The history department responded by letter to Rabbi Sills saying the department was committed to rigorous standards of academic freedom. I taught the course and received excellent evaluations from the history department graduate director.

A Change of Tactics

Having failed to stop the history department offering, which in fact was based upon the changing patterns of land tenure in Palestine, and having failed to remove me as the teacher, Sills changed tactics. In a "Dear Friend" letter dated Oct. 24,1990, again on B'nai B'rith letterhead, Sills invited faculty members to a brown bag lunch. Among the agenda items to be discussed was "the teaching of a course sponsored by the U of O's History Department by a graduate teaching assistant who openly voiced his prejudices against Israel, of his intention to be biased (which included him quoting in class from The Elders of the Protocols of Zion[sic])."

Of course I did not use the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in my class, although one student, a septuagenarian from Florida, had accused me of doing so and reported this inaccurate information, even after my attempts at clarification, to Rabbi Sills. In fact, while I was vaguely aware of the existence of this forged document, I was unfamiliar with its contents and I had to make a quick run to the library after the accusation to do some research on it. I realized then that the student had confused the words of Theodor Herzl, considered by many to be the founder of modern Zionism, as being a quotation from the Protocols.

As for, my own prejudices or bias, I had told the students:

"I realize that my values are subjective and that history is a subjective not an objective science, no matter how loudly many historians shout the contrary. Historians have to make choices, we have to create for ourselves and for our students the alternatives of choice. My scholarship is colored by my fundamental belief in human equality and human dignity. I believe that every human is entitled to the freedom from domination, repression and exploitation. I cannot look at the history of Palestine without the concept of injustice informing my understanding. I hope that each of you will examine your own values during the course of the next two weeks [the length of the course]. [You] . . . will be evaluated on your independence of thought, originality, analysis, and scholarship. You are not expected to slavishly agree with my opinions or with any bias you may perceive on my part."

Some of what is written here I wrote for one of my December 1990 Student Insurgent columns. I wanted the university community to know about the campaign being waged by the rabbi and his surrogates. But, as former Congressman Paul Findley notes in his book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, one of the tactics suggested to students by the Israel lobby is to gain access to student publications to counter pro-Palestinian viewpoints.

Targeting the Insurgent

That is exactly what has happened at the Student Insurgent. JSU Director Zuckerman obtained a position at the Insurgent. He thus had access to my column prior to publication. He threatened to conduct a JSU sit-in at the newspaper office if my column was published.

The night of the press run, Rabbi Sills, having somehow obtained a copy of my column, threatened a slander and libel lawsuit against the paper if my column was printed. Members of the editorial board, most of whom were serving their first term, were intimidated enough to cancel publication of my column, one of which had appeared in every issue of the Insurgent since the inception of the paper.

Mr. Zuckerman did not confine his threats to the editorial board. While the debate went on concerning publication of my article, he began calling my home and office, leaving messages on my answering machine threatening physical violence. The calls were anonymous, but I played the tapes for an Insurgent staffer who identified Mr. Zuckerman as the caller.

Eventually, through the actions of one brave member of the editorial board, who suffered enormous verbal and emotional abuse from fellow students at the instigation of Mr. Zuckerman, that column appeared in February. But the editorial board members were exhausted and, hoping to avoid any further controversy, they made me persona non grata at the paper and my column was dropped.

When school began again in September 1992, the United States was on the brink of war with Iraq. At one of the teach-ins organized by the peace and justice community, I spoke about the dilemma of the Palestinians, or should I say I attempted to speak. Mr. Zuckerman and two fellow members of JSU shouted me down with chants of "Sieg Heil."

The new school year also brought a new editorial board to the Insurgent, and I was asked to renew my columns. In January 1992, I wrote a column, "Zionism is a Form of Racism," in response to the cowardly withdrawal by the United Nations of its own Resolution 3379 declaring Zionism to be a form of racism. Throughout the next few months, the response, as you might imagine if you have managed to stay with me this far, was continuous, raucous and vicious. Members of the editorial board were attacked as "Jew-haters" and worse; the Insurgent was labeled anti-Semitic; my office was, so I am told because I was not there, picketed; Rabbi Sills, Mr. Zuckerman, and another Eugene rabbi called me everything but a baby-killer in publications ranging from the Eugene Register Guard, the Portland Jewish Review, and the Insurgent.

The end of the school year brought an end to the controversy when the primary antagonist, Mr. Zuckerman, went to live in Israel. It had subsided somewhat prior to that due to the actions of some faculty in the history department. Led by two Jewish members, 14 faculty signed and published a letter in the main college newspaper. While stating that they did not always agree with everything I wrote, this group of historians categorically denied that I am an anti-Semite or that what I had written was anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish.

There is more at stake here than my personal safety and my reputation for scholarly integrity. At the University of Oregon, as at every university and college, there must be a rational assessment of the history of the Middle East in general, and Palestinian history in particular. The voices that challenge orthodoxy and received wisdom should have sanctuary.

Rabbi Sills, however, like Senator Joseph McCarthy almost two generations ago, charges heresy, and his surrogates threaten emotional if not physical violence. These McCarthyite voices want to implement tests for ideological purity. To protect the political orthodoxy which favors Zionism and Israel to the detriment of Palestinians, Rabbi Sills attempts to delegitimize dissent by leveling accusations of partisanship, lack of objectivity, bigotry, fascism and anti-Semitism.

The malice of the crusades of the Israel lobby, conducted by people like Rabbi Sills, seeks to silence meaningful inquiry into the received version of Palestinian and Arab history. Rabbi Sills' assault on academic freedom is only one of numerous such campaigns at American colleges and universities. If these campaigns are allowed to triumph, they will have succeeded also in eroding scholarly and moral integrity, as well as academic freedom, in the U.S..

Gary Murrell is a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Oregon and is currently teaching African-American and U.S. history at Southern Oregon State College in Ashland, OR.