IsraCampus.Org.il

What is anchored on Israeli university campuses, however, is not true power, but true weakness. I have … always been struck by the fact that my students are confused when I ask them to think. This confusion confirms what I experienced as a graduate student in Israel. We were asked to learn, but not to think. To repeat, not to be critical. All the professors were on the same political wavelength (guess which one), and they did manage to produce formatted and dogmatic students that knew their field but had no culture and critical mind. Israeli campuses introduced me to something new: intellectually boring Jews. Faced with uncritical and ignorant 20-somethings who just finished the army and only care about getting a degree and a job, Israel's most radical professors have it easy. And what they have to say hardly makes our universities a source of national strength: Young Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria are like the Hitlerjungen (Moshe Zimmerman, Hebrew University); Israel's policy toward the Palestinians is one of politicide (Baruch Kimmerling, Hebrew University) and ethnic cleansing (Ilan Pappé, formerly from Haifa University); the very existence of a Jewish people is a "myth" invented by Zionism (Shlomo Sand, Tel-Aviv University); there never was a unified Israelite monarchy in biblical times (Israel Finkelstein, Tel-Aviv University); Israel is an apartheid state that should be boycotted by the world community (Neve Gordon, Ben-Gurion University), etc.

http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2009/09/trial-and-power.html

Trial and Power

Dr. Emmanuel Navon www.navon.com
September 21, 2009

I shall spare you the ordeal of playing the broken record on what was wrong with the Oslo accords. Still: we're in between September 13 (the date on which the Israeli Government and the PLO signed a Declaration of Principles 16 years ago) and Rosh Hashanah, and there is something to be learned about the Oslo legacy. Oslo has been debated ad nauseam, and this debate is as tiresome as it is irrelevant. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a Catch-22 situation. It is both unsustainable and unsolvable. Most people, by now, realize that. This conflict, however, is manageable -– provided Israel completes its physical separation from the Palestinians, outsmarts them on the diplomatic chessboard, and neutralizes their regional troublemaking backers.

Peace, of course, would be preferable. But saying this is like saying that it is preferable to be handsome, wealthy and bright than ugly, poor, and dumb. Saying it does not make it happen. Moreover, it is a fact that Israel has managed to thrive and be a success story despite the lack of true peace.

Shimon Peres made the bizarre claim in this book The New Middle East (published in the wake of the 1993 Oslo agreement) that "true power -– even military power -- is no longer anchored in the boot camp, but on the university campuses." Though clumsily stated (I happen to doubt the ability of our academic nerds to protect us from an Iranian nuclear bomb), Peres' idea contains an element of truth. What is anchored on Israeli university campuses, however, is not true power, but true weakness.

I have had the privilege of teaching in Israeli universities for the past eight years, and have always been struck by the fact that my students are confused when I ask them to think. This confusion confirms what I experienced as a graduate student in Israel. We were asked to learn, but not to think. To repeat, not to be critical. All the professors were on the same political wavelength (guess which one), and they did manage to produce formatted and dogmatic students that knew their field but had no culture and critical mind. Israeli campuses introduced me to something new: intellectually boring Jews.

Faced with uncritical and ignorant 20-somethings who just finished the army and only care about getting a degree and a job, Israel's most radical professors have it easy. And what they have to say hardly makes our universities a source of national strength: Young Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria are like the Hitlerjungen (Moshe Zimmerman, Hebrew University); Israel's policy toward the Palestinians is one of politicide (Baruch Kimmerling, Hebrew University) and ethnic cleansing (Ilan Pappé, formerly from Haifa University); the very existence of a Jewish people is a "myth" invented by Zionism (Shlomo Sand, Tel-Aviv University); there never was a unified Israelite monarchy in biblical times (Israel Finkelstein, Tel-Aviv University); Israel is an apartheid state that should be boycotted by the world community (Neve Gordon, Ben-Gurion University), etc.

In a way, Peres was right: Israel's future depends not only on the vitality of our economy and on the strength of our army but also, indeed mostly, on what young Israelis know about their past and think of their country -- in other words on the ideas they encounter on campuses. This is where Israelis and Diaspora Jews must concentrate their efforts in the co