UPenn employs the bogey of antisemitism to smear a Palestinian literary event

On September 12, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) issued a public statement, implicitly condemning the Palestine Writes Literature Festival that’s being held on its campus.

“While the Festival will feature more than 100 speakers,” reads the statement, “ many have raised deep concerns about several speakers who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people.

We unequivocally -- and emphatically -- condemn antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values”.

Though strongly worded, this passage of the statement ultimately has no legitimacy. Much as many of the festival’s participants, such as well-known UK musician Roger Waters, have an obvious – and laudable – history of contesting the criminality of Israel, none of them are antisemitic.

That would require them to be hateful towards Jews, which they’re not. The idea that they are in virtue of being anti-Israel is to, rather crudely, conflate opposition to the state – specifically on the basis of its longstanding oppression of the Palestinian people – with being antisemitic.

The conflation is no doubt a tired one. It’s routinely made by pro-Israeli lobbyists, for example, to silence critics of Israel for various nefarious (and dishonourable) reasons, such as to more easily allow Israel to commit egregious human rights violations against Palestine with impunity.

Such violations range from keeping Paelstinians in the open-air prison that is Gaza to depriving them of adequate water and energy supplies in the occupied territory to continued illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank that displaces generations of Palestinians and routine raids in the same territory that often end up with Palestinians either killed – as happened this week – by the Israeli military or imprisoned without charge or trial (referred to in human rights and legal discourse as “administrative detention”).

If anything UPenn, in keeping with its express commitment to diversity and inclusion, should have released a statement commending Palestine Writes – a concrete example of such commitment.

More specifically, Palestine Writes, as it official site emphasises, is about celebrating Palestinian voices, too often marginalised despite the importance of what they illuminate: the prolonged subjugation of Palesitne at the hands of Israel, the resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of it and, on a positive note, Palestinian culture itself – characterised by inspiring art, literature and poetry.

UPenn’s statement not only fails to recognise this rich aspect of Palestine Writes but to provide a shred of evidence that the event is in any way antisemitic. That hypothetically could have been done, say, by citing quotes or activities that implicate various Palestine Writes participants.

The charge of antisemitism – a serious one – deserves at least that. Such hate is outside the realm of most people’s everyday behaviour. Likewise it cannot be assumed that someone is antisemitic simply because a particular entity, be it a person, organisation or institution, says so.

What then are we to make of the likes of UPenn, which make the charge without proof? It happens on the part of apologists and defenders of Israel so often that it’s surprising the question, within popular discourse, is not asked more.

Then again, charging Palestinian voices – as seen earlier this year against musicians in solidarity with Palestine – has become such a “normal” part of Western culture that there may seem no reason, much less urgency, to ask the question at all.

That should worry us. It makes it likelier for bad actors to smear Palestinian voices, events, etc. as “antisemitic”, with relatively little protest from an unquestioning public. At the same time it tarnishes, if not outright ruins, the reputation of good actors, such as those advocating or standing for the liberation of Palestine from Israeli apartheid.

No one should have to bear that cost. It is tantamount to punishing someone for, simply put, doing the right thing.

It’s also deeply racist.

This is articulated well by Palestine Legal, which in an open letter to UPenn states: “By repeating the conclusions of conference opponents [including by not limited to pro-Israeli lobbyists] who are falsely maligning as antisemites conference participants because they support Palestinian freedom and equality, Penn is guilty of perpetuating the anti-Palestinian racism that is at the heart of these detractors’ claims”.

UPenn should be held accountable for both such racism, as well as making the spurious antisemitic charge against Palestine Writes. A responsible and democratic society, whether in the United States (where UPenn is) or elsewhere, must not shrug it shoulders at this, trivialising it as the common fare of those – for whatever reason – want to keep Palestine oppressed.

UPenn’s statement is but one example of this, mirroring Israel’s larger attempt to stamp out all forms of Palestinian resistance and dissent. Even by the pen.