David Newman: Professors Against Israel

Nearly eight years ago I wrote the following letter to Professor David Newman of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Department of Politics and Government (excerpt):

November 7, 2001
it is interesting how you side with Degel Ha-Torah over NRP. you are willing to side with your arch-enemy (the religious) simply because they are “anti-zionist.” you insist on labeling the NRP..you leftist professors are such filth..please go back to your english speaking country!

Newman’s reply was:

i dont usually reply to hate male and incitement, but a small correction. I am a religious zionist who grew up in bnei akiva. i have a daughter in sherut leumi and two sons in yeshivot hesder and tichon. I have deep anger at the NRP for having surrendered their influence over rleigion in this country and letting the extremists take it over, because they were too involved in right wing politics. There are many tens of thousands disenchanted religious zionists who feel the same way. i am part of a family of over 120 olim, mostly religious, who contribute to this country by living here, working here and serving in crack army units. do you do any of these things or are you simply one more of these North american Jews, sitting at home in the USA, spending your life writing hate mail and inciting hatred? you may reply as you wish. I will not be bothering to read your message.
sincerely
david newman

Take note of his spelling and grammatical errors and keep in mind that he is a university professor! My response, which he didn’t reply to was:

Professor Newman,
You often profess that you are a religious Jew. However, your continual call for a Palestinian State is completely out of line with the Torah. Read Lech Lecha-Aza is clearly included in the territory that was given to Avraham, not to mention Hebron, where he he buried. That fact that you claim to be a Torah Jew is disgusting. No Torah Jew would express the anti-Zionist ideas you continually pollute the Post with. You are a want-to-be American, trying to import Western philosophy to a region that has its OWN heritage-one you should be proud of-a heritage that you should praise to your students, not vilify. To respond to your question-I am also an oleh, but one with a love for Israel, and not a leftist/Anglo hatred for my country (with surely you brought from Europe). You try to infest the rest of this Nation with the self-hatred of the Galut. Perhaps the time has come to be post-Ashkenazi-not post-Zionist. Stop using Judaism as a clever cover for your misguided political agenda. It is you who incite hatred in this country.
P.S. It would be wise to not ask questions in the text of a letter in which you, in the same letter, whine that you won’t read the others response!

When I wrote that email to him I knew I was onto something. Once again, years later my spider-sense in tingling. Newman now writes (August 2009):

It is never easy to be a diplomat representing a country in conflict. It is even more difficult to be an Israeli diplomat, especially in the post-1967 era, when the country’s international image has moved from being the weak, threatened, post-Holocaust nation to a mighty military power occupying the territory of another people and denying them the right to statehood and sovereignty.
The fact that Israel only continues to portray itself as the weak and threatened country, subject to continuous terror attacks and, more recently, a potential nuclear attack from Iran just doesn’t sell well when, at one and the same time, the government continues to undertake policies which negate many basic international standards of human rights for Palestinian civilians who are subject to its control.
Were Israel, as the strong power, to make real meaningful concessions on the issue of Palestinian statehood, the world would much more readily accept the very real security threats that the country faces and it would not be so antagonistic. But recent policies and statements by our leaders have sent a very different message to the world, and it is now our supporters and allies, not our enemies, who are criticizing us.

It is an irony that it was Richard Silverstein’s anti-Jewish blog that prompted me to look into Newman’s nonsense again after 8 years. It was probably that initial exchange that was the real beginning of Taming Korach. Now we are living under the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons-an Iran that has been the principle supporter of Hezbollah. Newman, like his American counterpart Silverstein uses a religious cover-a bluff-to weaken Israel’s position and attempt to incriminate the very nation he belongs to. Newman is the quintessential Hellenized Anglo Jew. He is “our” version of George Galloway-spending all of his time and energy plotting against Israel, meanwhile remaining oblivious to spiritual underpinnings of the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel.