An editorial piece by Nathan Shachar on today's Dagens Nyheter.
Nathan Shachar: Anyone who gives up on Israeli universities sides with Netanyahu
Updated yesterday 22:59 Published yesterday 20:36
From the inauguration of the Hebrew University in 1925. Photo: Universal History Archive/TT
Skull caps and corkscrew curls – the enemies of the Jews have always lumped them all together. And they have almost always been wrong.
THE COLUMN. Nathan Shachar is DN's correspondent in Jerusalem, author and freelance columnist on the editorial page.
This is a text published on the editorial pages of Dagens Nyheter. The editorial board's political stance is independent liberal.
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100 years ago, the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem was inaugurated. Today, the Israeli government designates it as an enemy of the state and cuts off support for what was once the pride of the Zionist movement. The reason: the university allowed Palestinians to hold a memorial service for the 1948 refugee disaster.
The inauguration in April 1925 attracted a great deal of attention. The international press and dignitaries from all corners of the world were present, including leading Palestinians and a delegation from al-Azhar University in Cairo. Lord Balfour, whose "Balfour Declaration" of November 1917 had pledged British support for the idea of "a Jewish national home in Palestine," spoke. Field Marshal Allenby, who captured the city from the Ottomans in December 1917, was also present, marking British support for Zionism, a support that continued until 1939 and laid the foundations, already in the 1920s, for the State of Israel.
Two Swedish writers were present, Chief Rabbi Marcus Ehrenpreis, who covered the festivities on behalf of Dagens Nyheter, and Fredrik Böök, Svenska Dagbladet's star writer, whose articles about the trip were collected in one of his best books, "Journey to Jerusalem 1925".
But Böök's Zionism also had an ulterior motive: If Jews, who often played leading roles in revolutionary movements, moved to their own country, Europe would become calmer.
The original university, an unassuming stone building, is today the Faculty of Law, a small oasis covered in ivy at the foot of more or less intimidating modernist colossi. Fortunately, the location can withstand a lot of abuse. The view down towards the cauldron of the Dead Sea basin, with the blue mountains of Moab in the background, has not been touched by human hands. "There is not," wrote Böök in his report, "a panorama in the world that is more beautiful and more full of world-historical significance."
Zionism, then as now, was a hot topic. Böök's benevolent portrayal of the Zionists' efforts, and his support for the Jewish national idea, caused such outrage among Svenska Dagbladet's readers that the last articles in his series were set aside. The protests came partly from Swedish Jews, who were afraid that any talk of Palestine as the Jewish homeland would jeopardize their position in Sweden and arouse suspicions of dual loyalties; partly from anti-Semites who were irritated by Böök's praise of the Jews in phrases such as "The moral ideality, which is the noble mark of the Jewish race..."
But Böök's Zionism also had an ulterior motive: If Jews, who often played leading roles in revolutionary movements, moved to their own country, Europe would become calmer. The liberal Torgny Segerstedt agreed with the conservative Böök on this point: Zionism would free Europe from "the Jewish danger, which has found its most malignant expression in the rebellion of Bolshevism against Western civilization." The leading Jewish intellectual of the time, Hugo Valentin, saw the matter in a similar light: Jewish communists, such as the revolutionary Hungarian Bela Kun, had "brought disgrace upon Israel" and fed the stereotype of Jews as enemies of society.
One of Israel's major Orthodox parties, today part of the government, was founded in Poland in 1912 to fight Zionism!
In his DN articles from Jerusalem, Rabbi Ehrenpreis emphasized what was new and revolutionary about Zionism; not only its idea of nationhood, which clashed violently with Orthodox Judaism, but also its cult of work, agriculture, and collective experimentation.
I first learned how hateful Zionism was to Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem's Orthodox quarter in 1971: I handed over a banknote for payment. The shopkeeper refused to accept it. I did not know that the Orthodox refused to touch hundred-pound notes because they bore the image of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement. One of Israel's major Orthodox parties, now part of the government, was founded in Poland in 1912 to fight Zionism!
But despite the contrast and conflict between Zionism and Orthodox Judaism, the Jews' opponents have always confused them. In anti-Israeli cartoons, in the Soviet Union and in the Arab world, Israeli soldiers wore skullcaps and corkscrew caps. During the 1982 Lebanon War, we came to a Palestinian school near Damour that had been hastily abandoned. The last lesson had been on Zionism. The textbooks lay open. One picture showed a swarm of ships heading across the sea to Palestine, with Jews in black hats packed tightly on the deck.
Overall, Israel's universities are a last bastion of reason and humanism, worthy of all encouragement from the outside world.
It was not a deliberate falsification of history, but a casual application of the formula "everything Jewish is Judaism" – that is, ancient, biblical, black and fanatical. The cover image of a new Swedish book on Zionism by diplomat Ingmar Karlsson says more than a thousand words: An orthodox Jew, nothing more. This confusion has accelerated during the ongoing war, and "Zionist" is now a convenient cover word for "Jew".
A mandatory demand during demonstrations against Israel right now is a boycott of Israeli universities. These are under severe pressure from the extreme nationalists, who, through a militant organization, Im Tirzu, record teachers' lectures in search of "unpatriotic" statements. Overall, Israel's universities are a last bastion of reason and humanism, worthy of all encouragement from the outside world, especially now that the country's democracy is in acute danger.
Hebrew University has several thousand Arab students and is one of the country's few remaining oases of coexistence. Anyone who opposes and isolates Israel's universities is in league with its government.
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