Teaching About Palestinians: A Lesson About America

By Daniel McGowan

It started around 1985, when colleges and universities were overwhelmingly demanding that their pension funds no longer invest in South Africa. As a conservative professor of economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, I disagreed with such prohibitions and political obstructions to the free flow of capital.

I began publicly to ask questions: "If apartheid is evil, why is it bad for South Africans and acceptable for Israelis? Why is the expropriation of land for the exclusive use of whites condemned, but the expropriation of land for the exclusive use of Jews condoned? If Krugerrands are to be banned, why not diamonds? Does cutting them in Israel remove the Black blood on them? If Israel, Taiwan, France, Germany, Britain, or any other ally continues to send arms or military advisers to South Africa, should U.S. military aid to that country be withheld? In order to make economic sanctioning more effective against South Africa, should the U.S. further subsidize Israel so that it can purchase elsewhere the coal, uranium and other minerals that it now imports from South Africa?"

Such uncomfortable questions for comfortable members of the college community were largely answered by silence. The one exception was Richard Rosenbaum, the flamboyant vice chairman of the board of trustees of Hobart and William Smith and later a gubernatorial candidate for the state of New York.

In a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education, he expressed "grave concern...that a professor might be teaching students distorted and, in some cases, totally false information." He vowed to take me "on a mission" to Israel "in the certain knowledge that anyone with a shred of an open mžnd would come back a friend of Israel." But, alas, Mr. Rosenbaum could not get Executive Director Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to pay for the trip. So he reneged on his offer by relaying a parting insult from "a wise man" with whom he shared my correspondence. This unnamed person allegedly said, "Why take him to Israel? He's obviously a bigot, and that experience will make him think he's an informed bigot."

But if Rosenbaum and friends found my questions on the efficacy of divestment and the comparisons with Israel to be offensive, others, like Walter Williams, John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, found raising them to be courageous. Invariably, my supporters would first ask if I had tenure. When informed that I did, they would encourage me to use it and freely express opinions and beliefs which, although politically incorrect, were well-founded or irrefutable.

The South African divestment confrontation caused me to begin to study Israel and to use it in pedagogical examples. When lecturing on international trade, for instance, I would point to the fact that the Israeli diamond-cutting industry provided a living for some 20,000 people in South Africa and accounted for over a fifth of the value of the country's viable foreign trade (1990). Nevertheless, while a U.S. ban on the sale of Krugerrands was considered a politically acceptable way to fight apartheid, to ban the sale of diamonds was not.

Stimulating Discussions

When studying labor markets, I often stimulated discussion by illustrating disequilibria caused by ethnic or religious discrimination. For example, I would point out that when workers from Gaza come to Israel they work largely with no benefits and protection in a country with a very strong labor union orientation, at least for Jews. So it is no surprise that as Palestinians they are confined to jobs in agriculture, menial construction, and sanitation.

I wanted to study Islam. So I went to the religion department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The department had five full-time faculty and offered 39 courses, 10 on Judaism and the Holocaust. But there was no course on Islam. I was astounded! Not a single course was offered on this major religion to which roughly 20 percent of the world's population adheres. I compared it to an economics department which offers no courses on macroeconomic theory or a math department with no courses in calculus. In response to my queries, the religion department said that Islam was very complicated and that there was no one qualified to teach such a course.

One member defended the department's shortcoming, saying the colleges had very few Muslim students, as though that mattered. The colleges have no students who are art historians, yet they teach art history. They have no Russian students, yet they teach Russian.

The idea of identifying students by religion raised new questions in my mind. In searching for answers I first consulted a standard source of data for economists, the Statistical Abstracts of the United States. I wanted to find out how many Muslims there were in the United States.

It seemed like a simple question. Sixty religious bodies were listed and I read that the U.S. had 58 million Catholics, 6 million Jews, 4 million Presbyterians, 900,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, 99,000 Mennonites, etc. But apparently it had no Muslims. I was shocked. What about all the Americans who have come from the Arab world? What about those from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Bangladesh and the Philippines? What about the Black Muslims? Why are their numbers not recorded? I wrote to the Department of Commerce and the editors assured me that the failure to present such data was not due to any political motive or lack of ability on their part. The Department claimed that most estimates place the number of Muslims at around 300,000. Other sources set the number at around 7 million, but, in any case, no number was furnished and printed in the Statistical Abstracts.

One of the truly unique features of Hobart and William Smith Colleges is that the faculty is encouraged to teach new courses, especially those which cross disciplines, involve women's studies, and lead to travel or terms abroad. I proposed such a course, called "Palestine and the Palestinian People: Political, Social and Economic Issues," to begin in the winter semester of 1990. The course was to be a senior forum and would be taught by three professors: a political scientist, an anthropologist and an economist. Because the course precisely met the stated goals of the Colleges' curriculum, it was approved by the committee on academic affairs, in spite of some Zionist reservations and insistence that at least one of the professors be Jewish. The latter demand was met by adding a second political scientist who was Jewish, although not a Zionist.

In order to gain knowledge of the Palestinians, I went to meetings of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in the spring of 1989. There I found a wealth of books, films, and potential speakers for the forum I planned to lead nine months later. It was also there that I first learned of ADC's Eyewitness Israel Program which made it possible for small groups of Americans to visit Palestine at their own expense, and experience at first hand the brutality of the occupation. I immediately applied for the program, but was rejected because I did not fit the stereotypical profile. Instead of being a doctor, sociologist, labor union leader, clergyman, or an organizer for human rights, I was a conservative, an economist, and a life-time member of the National Rifle Association. Those were not considered auspicious credentials. Nevertheless, I continued to call and write to ADC, pleading with them to let me go. When another participant dropped out at the last minute, I was ready with passport and money to pay my own way.

While in Palestine, I lived in Jabalia, the largest of the refugee camps in Gaza. I visited hospitals and cottage industries and spoke with doctors, social workers, lawyers, and leaders of the intifada. I photographed Israeli patrols shooting live and rubber bullets at children who routinely attacked them with stones, I went to Hebron, Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Jenin. I tried to visit the large West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, but permission was denied. I offered to retain the services of Israeli human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel to take me to the Ketziot prison camp in Israel, but she was unable to provide me access.

I made many contacts among the Palestinians and some among the Israelis. In all it was a very energizing trip and one which made me eager to read and learn more about Palestine in preparation for the new course.

It is a gross understatement to say that teaching a course on the Palestinians at a liberal arts institution is challenging, especially where 20 percent of the student body, key people in the administration, and key people on the board of trustees are Jewish. In 28 years of college teaching it was the only time that I was summoned to the provost's office and, in the second week of the term, told that there were grave concerns (a now familiar warning) about the course and that it might "need to be cancelled" unless it was immediately given "more balance," meaning, of course, a more pro-Israeli spin. I pointed out that the course was already "balanced," and that for the administration to cancel the course for such a spurious reason would most certainly damage the college's reputation when the argument was aired in the Chronicle of Higher Education or in the local press.

Constant Challenges

But it was not just criticism by some Zionist administrators that made teaching or saying anything positive about the Palestinians difficult. It was a sense of constantly being on guard and of having to back up any statement with a Jewish source. If you wanted to talk about Palestinian refugees, you first had to refute the Zionist propaganda that there were no Arabs living in Palestine when the Jews returned; many students came with the well-worn doctrine that it was a "land without people for people without land."

You had to get by the propaganda in Golda Meir's claim that there is no such thing as a Palestinian—they are all just Arabs. You had to break the image that the Arabs were Nazis; that Palestinians are inherently anti-Semitic (which is a bit oxymoronic, since Palestinians are Semites); that today's settlers are peace-loving, devoutly religious pioneers; that all Palestinians are terrorists, and that Jews practice the "purity of arms" and never use terrorism.

If you wanted to speak about Israeli concentration camps, such as Ketziot, you first had to distinguish a concentration camp from an extermination camp, like Auschwitz, and your numbers of prisoners had to come from the Jerusalem Post or some other non-Arab source. You had to correct the impression that the Six-Day War was started by the Palestinians; you had to clarify that a "pre-emptive strike" is when our side initiates war and a "sneak attack" is when the other side fires first. You had to show that to describe the attack on the USS Liberty is not to bring up a gratuitous anti-Semitic footnote, but to recount a piece of U.S. history which has been flushed down the memory hole, where unpleasant things are put to be deliberately forgotten.

The most frustrating part of teaching this course, however, was that in order even to begin to lecture about Palestinians, you inevitably were forced to speak about the Holocaust, to which the Palestinians did not contribute, which was a genocide committed by Christians, and which had nothing to do with Muslims. In spite of Zionist tales of "Hitler meets the Mufti," the Palestinians no more collaborated with the Third Reich than did the Zionists themselves. Yet if guilt for the Holocaust cannot be laid on the Palestinians, its horror serves as the final apology for injustices committed by Israelis against Palestinians. (The apology goes something like this: "Yes, what the Zionists have done, and continue to do, to the Palestinians is not right, but you really can't blame them after all Hitler did to the Jews." It is the ultimate excuse which covers not only Zionist behavior immediately after World War II, but every year and every generation since then.)

The course was intended to address the issue of Palestinians and yet it was forced first to review the darkest chapter in Jewish history, pointing out that far greater numbers of Jews have been victims than have Palestinians. The fact is that if every Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza were executed tomorrow, the number of victims would not equal half of the number of Jews executed in World War II. But why does a description of the political, social, and economic characteristics of one people in the Middle East have to be prefaced and twisted to fit the history of another in Europe? Many courses are given on Jews with no mention of Palestinians; no courses are given on Palestinians without extensive discussion of Jews and Zionism.

In spite of pressure, more subtle than overt, it is a tribute to Hobart and William Smith Colleges that such a course on the Palestinians was allowed to be taught at all. Yes, I was forced "to balance" the course. Days of Rage was shown for the quid pro quo of Exodus; The Gun and the Olive Branch was read for the quid pro quo of The Israel-Arab Reader; Mubarak Awad was invited for the quid pro quo of Philipa Strum. But I was allowed to buy "Palestinian" books for the library, although there was no special budget as there is for Judaic Studies. I was allowed, and indeed encouraged, by the president of the Colleges, to present a "balancing" speaker when Likud party leader Benyamin Netanyahu visited the campus. Jerusalem-born Professor Edward Said of Columbia University was chosen and he presented a wonderful lecture (which the Colleges were allowed to tape) for roughly a third of the amount charged by Netanyahu (who refused to allow the use of a tape made during his lecture). I also was encouraged to invite Palestinian human rights activist Hanan Ashrawi to "balance" a presentation by Elie Wiesel, who has defended the causes of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's "disappeared," Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, South African victims of apartheid, prisoners in the former Yugoslavia, and most other oppressed people with the glaring exception of Palestinian victims of Zionism, who have been treated consistently to a deafening dose of Wieselian silence.

Teaching a course on Palestinians sparked interest all across the college community. After an Israeli woman artist and close friend of the provost held an art exhibit, I secured support for an exhibit by the Palestinian artist Kamal Boullata. The art department helped with the exhibit; seven pieces of Boullata's work were purchased by people in the local community; and his moving film, Stranger at Home, was shown with hardly a dry eye in the audience.

It was trendy at the time for Hobart and William Smith professors to use vanity license plates to stimulate interest in their disciplines. A geology professor's plate read "devonian"; a science professor's read "botany." My plate on an old Peugeot read "intifada." People who didn't know intifada from enchilada began to recognize the word and to understand that it meant the shaking off of occupation and control not only by the Israelis, but by the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Syrians, and by others who, while providing refuge, sometimes also have oppressed Palestinians. Although some people expressed fear of riding in a car with "intifada" license plates, I drove the car for four years, including trips to New York City, with no incident other than a few finger gestures.

Parked in front of the Colleges on Main Street, the license plate was said to have dissuaded some potential students and some potential donors, but at no time was there any pressure to remove it. To the contrary, the plate become a symbol of someone who was willing to stand up for the human rights of a people others have been taught to despise at worst and to ignore at best. It caused me to be invited to present lectures to local community groups and to colleges throughout the upstate New York area.

I believe, however, that it is not enough "to see the light" regarding Palestinians, their victimization, and their struggle to survive as a nation. Even as more Americans "see the light," only the Palestinians themselves can make real change happen. Crying for the world to recognize injustice and to do something is no more a solution for Palestinians than it was for Jews under the Nazis or for the Bosnians under the Serbs. The path toward achieving human rights and a national state for Palestinians has been blazed by others, including Mohandas K. Gandhi of India and Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and by Jews who have contributed directly and indirectly to the establishment of Israel. "Righteous Gentiles" can see the light, work tirelessly for the cause, and even sacrifice their own lives for it, but only the victims, in this case the Palestinians, can make the change a reality.

Daniel McGowan is a professor of economics