After Lev Grinberg finished reading all 241 responses on the Maariv Web site - the vast majority of which described him as a hater of Israel and generally told him to go to hell, he said, "This is a lesson in the sociology of what's happening here, I'm telling you. The best lesson I've had." Grinberg knows what he's talking about: A lecturer in political sociology at Ben-Gurion University, for the past few weeks he has been at the center of a storm that is giving him a chance to draw several conclusions about Israeli society's current psychological state. Ever since this (distorted) headline appeared in Maariv: "Israeli lecturer in Belgium: The state is perpetrating genocide," the education minister has been boycotting the university on his account, various Web sites have been rumbling with threats and prominent people have dubbed his views as "lunatic."
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On Independence Day, Grinberg - as befitting a true member of the Argentinean immigrant community - celebrated with an asado barbecue with friends in the garden of his Jerusalem home.
Lev Grinberg, what's a concerned leftist like you doing with Independence Day celebrations?
"We're trying to note the fact that despite all the attempts to remove us - me and many others like me who think differently than the majority - from the consensus, there is a community that feels that it belongs, that is not detached or alienated, that is committed. And so that there should still be a difference, before we start grilling on a special grill that I brought all the way here from Argentina, we go to the alternative torch-lighting ceremony held by Yesh Gvul across from the Prime Minister's Office, in the square named after [murdered Peace Now activist] Emil Grunzweig."
It all began with the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Grinberg was furious and he wrote an article that was published in late March in the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique. Describing it as "a small leftist newspaper," he says, "The claim that appeared in several places - that my criticism of Israel appeared on the front pages of several major European newspapers - is utter nonsense."
He didn't think the article would "make much noise," as he puts it. "I used to publish a lot of articles in Israel, but since the intifada started, more and more of the articles I submitted were rejected," he says. "I stopped writing for Maariv about a year ago when I felt that they were using me as a fig leaf."
He says he realized that addressing internal Israeli politics wasn't helpful, either. "I started to advocate international intervention in the conflict and I also appeared at the UN conference on ending the occupation, out of the understanding that with the violence that has erupted, the two societies are not ripe to come to negotiations on an accord, and that the first thing that must be done is to lower the friction to a minimum," he relates. "That can only be done by an international power that will give the Palestinians and us, too, a sense of protection. This was pretty much the first time that I wrote to Europe for Europeans - I wasn't thinking at all about what people in Israel would say, and this turned out to be the article that caused such a fuss."
And what a fuss. The fury arose a few days after the article came out in Belgium, when Maariv and Yedioth Ahronoth reported on the gist of Grinberg's words. To Grinberg's astonishment, in both newspapers the quotes from his piece were included in a series of reports on rising anti-Semitism in Europe. While the quotes in Yedioth were at least accurate, the connection between what was published in Maariv and the original was shakier. It started with the headline: Grinberg wrote that "The killing of Sheikh Yassin by the government of Israel is part of a major move carried out by the government of Israel, which can be described as symbolic genocide." The headline in Maariv, as noted, attributed the following statement to Grinberg: "The state is perpetrating genocide."
The continuation was also full of distortions. According to Maariv, Grinberg accused Sharon of "assassinating the democratic leadership of the Palestinian people," but nowhere in his article does Grinberg call the Palestinian leadership democratic; according to Maariv, Grinberg claims that "the Palestinians offered an endless number of cease-fires," but the original article mentions just two occasions in which the Palestinians announced a unilateral cease-fire; and so on and so on.
"These little distortions and removal of words from their context makes all the difference between legitimate criticism and discussion and slander and incitement. They turned me into a caricature, they forgot the most important word in the sentence and now I'm identified only with the word `genocide,'" Grinberg says.
Admittedly the quote is distorted. But what is "symbolic genocide" supposed to mean?
"It means the systematic elimination of all the Palestinian national symbols, whether it's Yassin, the Palestinian Authority, the police, sovereignty. We're not annihilating the Palestinian people, but we're definitely trying to politically annihilate Palestinian nationalism. A few academics, myself included, have been trying for some years now to find the right terminology to define the current process, which began after the September 11 terror attacks. After the Yassin assassination, when I heard the chief of general staff announcing that now Arafat knows that the same fate is nearing for him, I felt I had to write something that would set off a red light before they killed Arafat, too. The French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu wrote about the symbolic violence of the strong, which uses tools like ignoring, humiliation and silencing. The way a boss might treat his employee, for example. Someone who doesn't possess that symbolic power responds with physical violence, because that's all he has. Basically, I borrowed Bourdieu's term. And, by the way, what they've been doing to me in the past few weeks is also symbolic violence."
Has there also been real violence?
"No, touch wood. The day it came out in the newspapers, the university's security department was advised that I could be a target, but nothing has happened."
After reading the fulminating responses to the newspaper stories, Grinberg says: "It's clear to me that most of my attackers never read the original text at all, but only the partial and distorted translation in Maariv. I sometimes tend to scorn the power of the media, by this was a real consciousness-building lesson."
But in the original article, there is one sentence that is particularly provocative. You say that "Because the world will not permit total annihilation, a symbolic annihilation is taking place instead ..." That's a serious accusation based on speculation.
"I agree with you completely, and the fact that critics didn't relate to this sentence only goes to show that they didn't see the original article. I think it's a sentence that shouldn't have been written. I regretted it even before it was published and told my family that. It's something that I don't believe in. I believe and hope that in Israeli society, there are enough moral restraints to prevent it. This sentence was written in a moment of great anger at the Israeli blindness and inability to see the other side as human beings."
Grinberg tried to remedy the damage, but in vain. He sent an angry letter to Maariv editor Amnon Dankner in which he pointed out all the mistakes in the published report, but his letter - without any apology or clarification from the newspaper - was only published three weeks later. He refused to appear on the Channel 10 current events program "London & Kirschenbaum. "I've read a few books about the medium, and I know that when there's a mob atmosphere, there's no point in going on television, because they're only after your blood." Grinberg adds, "I got a lesson in how the media can eradicate a person - symbolically, of course - and there's nothing he can do about it."
It wasn't long before Education Minister Limor Livnat leapt into the fray as well. She sent a strongly worded letter to Professor Avishai Braverman, president of Ben-Gurion University, saying, "In light of the university's decision to refrain from taking action against the grave incitement published by Grinberg, I cannot, in good conscience, stand alongside the directors of the university at such events - not so long as Ben-Gurion University continues to serve as the academic home of such a lecturer."
Livnat also wrote that Grinberg "is calling upon the nations of the world to go to war against Israel," though it's not clear how she came up with this contention. Her demand also had practical import: In an unprecedented step, she informed Braverman that she would boycott the university's board of governors meeting (which opens today, May 7), if the situation was not satisfactorily rectified. The board of governors comprises several hundred people, including about 200 guests from abroad, many of whom are wealthy donors who come to feast their eyes on the Zionist enterprise that is thriving thanks to their generous donations. The university is afraid that the education minister's absence could be perceived as very significant by them. If the government's representative doesn't feel it's right to be here, they might ask themselves whether perhaps there's something really wrong?
Academia under pressure
Livnat's letter to Braverman regarding the Grinberg incident is not the first attempt by the education minister to exert pressure on leaders of academic institutions. Two years ago, she asked then attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein to consider the possibility of trying Hebrew University lecturers who signed a petition supporting the right of IDF soldiers to refuse to serve in the territories. No indictment was issued, and to Livnat's dismay, Professor Menachem Magidor, president of the Hebrew University, said at the time, "I don't control what the faculty members say or disseminate."
At about the same time, the education minister also called for the establishment of a committee headed by a retired judge to look into why, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the head of the David Yellin College allowed Arab students to stand in a minute of silence in memory of Palestinians killed in IDF actions, and she also complained to the rector of Haifa University about political statements made by Professor Avraham Oz, a lecturer in the theater department. Lev Grinberg, it turns out, already got Livnat's goat in 2002, when the content of one of his articles spurred her to request that Avishai Braverman rein in the rebellious lecturer: "I was astounded to receive an article that attacks the prime minister and the government of Israel in such a harsh and severe manner," she wrote.
Livnat's aggressive reactions are perceived by many people in academe as a real threat to freedom of expression in general, and freedom of academic expression in particular. Many also are quick to point out that Livnat has never bothered to send any such fiery letters in wake of racist statements by right-wing professors. Only leftists upset her. For this article, a long list of questions was prepared for the education minister (among others - Did she even read the original article by Lev Grinberg, and just how far does she believe the boundaries of freedom of academic expression stretch?), but she declined to reply to the questions from Haaretz. Spokespeople from the her office responded: "The minister's letter to Professor Avishai Braverman contains all she has to say on the subject, and you can quote from it as you see fit."
But Livnat's crude attempts at intervention are just the tip of the iceberg as far as the struggle going on behind the scenes in the Israeli academic world, a struggle that involves both the right and the left, more than a few players and quite a lot of money.
Livnat's letters have another impact beyond interference with freedom of academic expression. "The education minister herself is not very important in this story," says a professor at Ben-Gurion University. "But she could influence the donors, and the donors are very important, particularly in a period in which the government is mercilessly cutting the university budgets."
Ben-Gurion University's annual operating budget is NIS 772 million, 65 percent of which is state funding. In the past three years, state funding to all universities has been cut by about 20 percent. Roughly speaking, the university raises over $30 million in donations (most of which is designated for research and development and not for the operating budget).
And the donors are certainly following the matter. A few days before the opening of the annual board of governors meeting at Ben-Gurion University, Lord George Wiedenfeld, chairman of the university's board and one of the biggest philanthropists in the British Jewish community, told a Haaretz reporter in Britain that he thinks Livnat's decision is totally wrong and "should have been an expression of sorrow, rather than the imposition of sanctions." But, referring to the Grinberg article, he went on say that he finds it dismaying that the department is now known for disseminating such views and that the heads of the university should consider the implications of the situation.
The huge furore surrounding Grinberg's article did not arise in a vacuum. There are some who seek to turn every controversial utterance by an academic into a crisis, and to exert pressure on the politicians and donors. A number of professors say that it's an attempt to import to Israel what is known in America as Campus Watch. This group was founded about a year and a half ago by Daniel Pipes, a scholar with the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, which tracks - via student reports - the statements of professors and other faculty regarding Israel and the Middle East, and publishes its findings on the Internet. The quotes have an impact on university leaders and, of course, on donors, often Jewish, who subsequently threaten to make their unhappiness felt where it hurts - in the pocketbook.
"It's a witch-hunt, pure and simple," says David Neuman, a professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University. "Since September 11, there's been a very strong assault in America on anyone who expresses unpopular opinions. And the same phenomenon has been on the rise here ever since the intifada broke out. I've been feeling it for over three years now - long before the Lev Grinberg matter. And Limor Livnat's letter is the straw that broke the camel's back."
Dr. Steven Plaut could be thought of as Israel's Daniel Pipes. Plaut, an economist and lecturer at the Haifa University business school, launched an Internet site on which he publishes articles that typically espouse far-right positions. One of his favorite subjects is the utterances of leftist academics. On his site, he devotes a long piece to the Grinberg affair and invites readers to bombard the education minister with faxes, telephone calls and letters praising her for the boycott she imposed on Ben-Gurion University. He doesn't see any problem with an academic calling for a boycott of an academic institution: "As long as the universities are funded mainly by taxpayers' money, it's the taxpayer's right to get something that he's satisfied with," he says. "In a democracy, the public has representatives, so I'm appealing to the public to tell its representative, the education minister, how it feels about a university lecturer supporting the enemy, and at the public's expense."
On the leftist fringe are academics who are calling for an academic boycott of Israel because of the occupation, and here you are urging pressure on donors to stop donating to universities because of things said by lecturers from the left.
"I didn't suggest that anyone boycott Israel and its universities, but I am an economist and I think that everyone has an opinion about what he ought to be spending his money on. If donations are hurt, it's not because of what I say or what Limor Livnat says, but because of the subversive activity of a small group that is tarnishing the name of Ben-Gurion University, which is trying to maintain its distinguished international reputation."
In Haifa University, where you also work, there are also professors who are identified with the radical left. Do you also propose that your donors weigh their moves?
"Certainly. As soon as someone donates funds he becomes a part of the institution - sometimes he has the right to vote - and for some time now I've been calling on people to exert pressure on the university because of people like Ilan Pappe, for instance."
You say on your Web site that there are traitors at Ben-Gurion University. Are you referring to Lev Grinberg?
"I'm referring to an unidentified group of lecturers."
Could it be that you're afraid of a slander suit?
"Exactly."
Many people in academia are worried about the direction in which Israel is heading in terms of academic freedom. "The pouncing on statements by professors is part of the larger process of altering the structure of the universities," says a lecturer from Ben-Gurion University. "They want to turn the university into an economic business. The plan is for the power center to be transferred from the university senate, where academics sit, to the board, to the administrators, to the financial people who operate primarily in accordance with profit-and-loss considerations. A controversial professor like Grinberg is currently protected by tenure, which, with all its drawbacks, still enables academics to be nonconformists and to come out with ideas that are different and that enrage people. With the new structure, it will be possible to get rid of someone like him without any problem, and then everyone will shut up like good little children."
But while many in academe are worried about the trend toward keeping professors on a tighter leash, Grinberg remains optimistic: "I don't believe that something like Campus Watch could succeed in Israel, because the public discourse here is more tolerant of criticism of the government than it is in the United States. But it clearly does have an effect. Right now they couldn't fire me even if they wanted to, but an incident like this could affect my chances of advancement and especially harm my status vis-a-vis the students.
"So far, I don't feel a lack of support," Grinberg continues. "Granted, no one from the university administration has spoken with me about it, but many of my colleagues are demanding that the university stand up to this attempt to silence me, because it's obvious that if they silence me, then others will be next in line. The term I used may be unusual, but my views are not out of the ordinary. The whole idea of academic freedom is that academics can allow themselves to say things that buck the norm, because unlike politicians, they don't stand for public election. If I say something silly, no great harm done. On the other hand, if I come up with a brilliant idea, it could lead the public or scientific discourse in a new and original direction."
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