To My Beloved Dartmouth Community:
Here it is; I’ve been expecting it.
I’ve known for a while that my alma mater, Dartmouth, could not be immune forever.
Institutionalized anti-Jewism has come to the Hanover Plain at long last. And the time has come for me, one lone “voice in the wilderness,” to speak out.
“For the sake of Zion, I will not be hushed, and for the sake of Jerusalem, I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth like the morning star, and her salvation burns bright as a torch” (Isaiah 62:1-2).
On April 30, Jasbir Puar, a professor of social sciences at Rutgers University, gave a public presentation at Dartmouth in which she spent the vast majority of her time criticizing the State of Israel, its army and its people – the Jews.
I came to Israel 28 years ago, six years after graduating from Dartmouth. I have two sons, each of whom experienced the effects of unprovoked terrorist attacks by Arabs, including the deaths of their friends.
My eldest son was present at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in 2008 when a young Arab terrorist opened fire in a library, leaving eight young students dead, slumped over their books, and dozens of others maimed for life.
My other son was the roommate of Gilad Frankel, one of the three boys abducted by Hamas operatives and murdered in the back seat of the getaway car two summers ago. The boys’ deaths and Hamas’ denial of involvement, were the prime causes of the most recent war against Hamas, the terrorist organization that took over Gaza in a bloody coup in 2007.
Let this be very clear: Puar’s steady stream of diatribe, laced with absolute hate for the Jewish state, is a distortion of what is happening in Israel, and purports to turn the victim of nationalist and religious violence into its supposed perpetrator. Moreover, Puar’s entire method of framing what is going on in my country is inaccurate and misleading. It has one overall objective — the demonization of the Jewish state and a people who have struggled so hard to lead a life of peaceful national independence in the midst of an ocean of countries whose cultures despise our nation and seek its annihilation.
It is widely known that the Jewish nation was expelled from its ancestral land because of its unwillingness to behave in the manner that is expected of a holy nation in its land. Nevertheless, virtually all of the Hebrew prophets state explicitly that our painful exile would be only temporary, and that one day, the Jewish nation would return to the land from which we were forced out so long ago but we never, ever forgot.
That prophecy is being fulfilled today, and as part of it, the Jewish people has worked tirelessly to convert a barren and abandoned land into a veritable Garden of Eden. Everyone knows this is so, despite the attempts of detractors like Puar and her ilk at slandering our movement, our country and the nation itself.
She spares no efforts in her presentations and questionable research to wield a kind of self-declared “Right to Defame.” The nefarious philosophy that powers her and those like her openly condones aggression, and is a blood libel against the nation of Israel in the Land of Israel. It is a retrograde force that has its origins in the greatest anti-Jew movements throughout history.
She frequently talks about people’s abuse of power for the oppression of populations but fails to admit that she herself uses her position of academic privilege to demonize Israel.
The reality is grim. Puar is not alone. She is joined by a small but increasingly vocal group of people, who attack Israel and its policies whenever they can.
The intensity of the hatred flowing from this group, however, could potentially serve another purpose entirely.
The Hebrew prophets – particularly King David, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel – talk about the return of ALL of the captivities of the nation of Israel back to the Land. In its 68 years of re-independence as the Jewish state, Israel has successfully absorbed millions of Jews from all over the world, many of them kicked out of their host countries and penniless, to start their lives anew in the land of their ancestors.
But there remains one great exile community that has never really felt the need to “make aliyah” – to “go up” to the Land of Israel. Like a gleaming marble structure on a hill that has withstood the rigors of time and has miraculously avoided being damaged by war, the American Jewish community has thrived, intact for more than 300 years.
North American Jewry represents the final, intact exile community. How long can that last? In the words of the Hebrew prophets:
“And I will return the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel, and I will build them as in the beginning” (Jeremiah 33:6).
I postulate that Puar and those of a like mind may well be playing a critical role in the process of preparing America’s Jewish community for its eventual aliyah to Israel.
“Here — I am taking the Children of Israel from among the nations from where they went there; And I will gather them from around, and I will bring them to their Land. And I will make them one Nation in the Land, in the mountains of Israel, there will be one king for them, as king; and they will no longer be divided into two nations” (Ezekiel 37:21-22).
Though she might someday hope to claim credit for bringing the American Jews to Israel, Puar will be judged for her intentions, not the results.
Stay tuned. Don’t touch that dial.
This piece is dedicated to the memory of 13-year-old Hallel Ariel from Kiryat Arba, whom a 17-year-old terrorist stabbed to death yesterday morning at 9 a.m. while she was asleep in her bedroom. She was a remarkable and accomplished young girl whose precious life was cut short in the name of senseless violence. May her memory serve as a blessing for all decent human beings.
