An Open Letter to Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Dear Earl,

I’ve never written an open letter before, and usually they imply an intense criticism. Even so, I’ve respected your work for a long time. But the United Nations Conference on Racism is coming up next month in Geneva, and you took the time recently in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/obamas-israel-dilemma_b_170952.html) to critique the inclusion into the discussion of Israel and Palestine. Mainly, I do this for debate and discourse purposes, not to single you out. By responding to your piece, agreements and disagreements can be part of a single “thread.”

You declared, without being specific, that “anti-Israel rhetoric should…be dropped.” Does that mean Israeli racism toward the Palestinians should be neglected at this forum? You singled out a contentious UN resolution back in 1975 that “equated Zionism with racism” for being toothless. What else did you expect at the UN? That said, why are we meeting in Geneva next month? For me, it’s still important to have representatives for the victims of racism around the world as citizens of the world holding accountable a transnational agency whose laws supersede that of nation-states. If we don’t force the UN’s hand, who will? If we don’t shame racist states into acting more just, who will?

You added that the 1975 resolution only forced Israel to “dig its heels in deeper and refuse more concessions on Palestinian rights.” You’re tracing Israel’s modern racism to 1975? The real beginning of the Israeli apartheid state (in which Israel’s newspapers and politicians currently admit to being) was back in 1948. Its called settler colonialism, similar to what happened in the United States, as well as Canada, Australia, South Africa, etc. White settlers violently removed nonwhite natives. No wonder so many white Americans identify with Israel: they equate Israelis and Arabs to Cowboys and Indians. Furthermore, you implied that the Palestinians made a mistake in making demands in the first place. What were they supposed to do, rely strictly on negotiations with a settler colonial state backed by the US? To quote Frederick Douglas, "power concedes nothing without demand."

Further, you repeated that the 1975 resolution did “nothing to alleviate Palestinian suffering.” Again, it’s the UN, and at that time it was the US and USSR who were the dominant influences in it.

You continue to mention that the conference is on only one track, with the sole focus on Israel and Palestine. I wouldn’t condone a sole focus on that issue, and more importantly I doubt there will be one once the conference proceeds, though I see the urgency of the current situation. The cracks in AIPAC are becoming apparent, the boycott Israel movement growing around the world, so now is a great time to have the Israeli axis on the run and finish the job, if only because this may be the only chance even at a limited victory for the Palestinians.

All in all, Israeli racism toward the Palestinians (as well as against Ethiopian Jewish immigrants), should be seen as part of the overall series in modern colonial and neocolonial race-making projects. For that, I agree with you on the need for a balance (and cross-“racial” solidarity) of time at the forum for all victims of racism rooted in various types of colonialism.

Finally, you rebuked what some would interpret as a remedy to the victims of racism. “Not simply shelling out billions to individuals is the best way to repair the damage wreaked by slavery and colonialism.” That’s odd, there happens to be precedents to reparations that have not been critiqued in hindsight (Jewish holocaust victims, Japanese-American internment survivors). Israel survived not with its ingenuity, but because of the reparations that its individuals as holocaust survivors received from Germany. Why should money be funneled through NGOs or governments of nation-states, who are not often on the same page as their national subjects (see scandals of IMF money to third world governments)? Reparations to the victims of violent racism should absolutely be on the menu in Geneva based on existing precedents around the world.

I agree, too much sweat was poured into the making of this conference for it to be flushed down the drain. But to obscure the Palestinian struggle would miss the whole point of having this as a stage to voice our opposition to racism.

Sincerely,

Michael Calderón-Zaks
Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity
Ithaca College

Dear Prof. Calderon-Zaks,

While I have no doubt that you are well educated in your field, your post is indicative of someone who has either a)stepped outside of their realm of expertise or b)is expressing an agenda, usually ultra-leftist in the academic world. I, for one, was very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause until 2000. I am not any longer. But my question to you is actually on another subject: what is your stand on Tibet? You liken the Isreali to a colonial settler movement, which is why I ask this question.

As an aside, your point about Ethiopian Jewry is one of extreme situational cherry picking. There are virtually no examples where a modern society would take it upon itself to bring roughly 100,000 (amounting to 1.5% population increase) illiterate people that were virtually devoid of skills and an abilitary to cope with a modern industrialized society. Yet Israel did just this so that their lives would be saved. Have they encountered problems? YES! To argue that they wouldn't would have been utterly foolish. Have they encountered racism? YES! Congratulations, you have just discovered that Jews are fallible human beings. But still they are in Israel, not Ethiopia: the state has subsidized their acclimation, and the incidence of racism to which you allude and the problems that they have encountered are far milder than you'd like to think. Compare them with the Algerians in France, or for that matter any number of African groups in Europe, and suddenly their situation is positively peachy. Fact is, immigrants have always enountered problems in all nations, and they always will sad to say. The fact that someone in your field doesn't recognize this.... well, I'll leave it at that.

Cordially,
Aaron Willson-Smith
Adjunct Professor of History, MCCC
Military History and Cultural Identity in the Atlantic World

Mr. Wilson-Smith,

You never did explain why you stopped sympathizing with the Palestinians. In any case, you argue that immigrants in general have been otherized in "all nations." If that applies, then why did Israeli newspapers question the validity of the Jewishness of Ethiopian immigrants, roughly 50,000-100,000, but not of the hundreds of thousands of Russian immigrants to Israel in the early 1990s (some of whom probably forged their Jewishness)? You also point to the illiteracy of Ethiopians without basis. Were they any more "illiterate" than Russian immigrants who came in the early 1990s?

As for my position on Tibet, I support Tibet's right to self-determination. In any case, that wasn't the point of my response to Earl Ofari (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/obamas-israel-dilemma_b_170952.html). I only addressed the points that he had made about the World Conference Against Racism that began today.

Hi Michelle,

I was really disappointed to learn that the US was boycotting such an important conference on two subjects--racism and discrimination--that are important to a growing percentage of its population. I find it ironic that we would boycott the UN Conference Against Racism and Discrimination yet participate in the Beijing Olympics.

The only reason that the US did not participate in this conference is because we, as people of color, failed to organize and demand that we be part of it. We allowed the Jewish right to set the tone in mainstream media.

I especially like what John Boostra had to say about the US' boycott of the conference: "We must never eschew what is right in favor of what is easy" -- except that what is easy here is, in fact, to sacrifice the Durban Review Conference to the wolves howling against it, and to leave the fight against racism painfully un-waged.
http://www.undispatch.com/node/7902

This could have been an opportunity to create alliances between progressive Jews and people of color. Instead, we allowed reactionaries to run the show and lost sight of the bigger battle.