Former Israeli Politician Einat Wilf Speaks at Brown
A Stark Contrast With Albanese’s Propagandizing Rants; Brown Daily Herald “Journalists” Apparently Don’t Like Wilf’s Views - No Reason Anyone on Campus Should Be Made Aware of Them
At the invitation of Brown’s Watson Institute (“Watson”), Einat Wilf, who has a PhD in political science from Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and is a former member of the Israeli Knesset, spoke at Brown on September 23. Watson invited Wilf, after being pushed to do so, because Brown had invited Francesca Albanese to speak the week before. Albanese is the Hamas-supporting, UN political propaganda hack denounced as an anti-Semite by the US State Department, France and Germany, none of which gave Brown any pause. The contrast between the two speakers could not have been greater. My comments on Albanese’s “thoughts” are noted in my Substack post of September 21 and need not be repeated here.
Unlike Albanese, Wilf delivered a worthy-of-academia, rational, measured, factual, historically-based analysis of why the Israel/Palestinian situation is where it is and how it might be resolved. A center-left former politician and harsh critic of the Netanyahu government, Wilf noted that the “river to the sea” nonsense - a proposition that predates the founding of the Jewish state that has gone nowhere in nearly 80 years and will never go anywhere - and the nurturing of victimhood by generations of Palestinians, enabled by the UN and its agencies and a host of NGOs for public relations purposes, were among the issues precluding a resolution of the Israel/Palestinian dispute. (I would add to Wilf’s list of Palestinian victimhood salespeople university faculty around the country such as those affiliated with Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies (“CMES”)). Wilf properly dismissed the “genocide” gibberish as not worthy of serious discussion. Perhaps above all else, Wilf put the blame for decades of Palestinian rejectionism and other epic failures on the complete absence of responsible Palestinian leadership.
One wonders how many faculty members of Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies (“CMES”) attended the Wilf presentation. The likely answer is none. Why? Because doing so would run afoul of the illiberal and anti-intellectual BDS guidelines embraced by so many supposed liberal and intellectual Brown faculty. A video of Wilf’s presentation is attached below. Her direct comments take up the first 30 minutes or so of the video; the rest is Qs and As.
As to Wilf’s comments about the failure of Palestinian leadership, the latest example was on full display at this week’s UN meetings. The corrupt, Holocaust-denying, 88-year old Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 20th year of his four year term heading the non-existent “state” of “Palestine” raved on about the imaginary Israeli “genocide”, blathered about the “occupation”, this time using the phrase occupying “usurpers” (he probably meant to say “usurers”), and praised the puerile antics of protesters supporting beheaders, rapists, murderers and hostage takers. Reports are that he did not once say the word “Hamas”.
Further underscoring his unsuitability to be a Palestinian “leader” - unless by his leadership he intends to prevent the Palestinians from ever having a state of their own - last month Abbas addressed the Turkish parliament noting “America is the plague” and “we implement Shari’a law: victory or martyrdom”. Turkey is a perfect place for Abbas to make those points - a country ruled by a despot who routinely imprisons and murders dissidents, including journalists and judges, and continues his war against the Kurds. With recurrent performances like those of Abbas, it is no wonder that the Palestinians have rejected every offer of statehood since 1948. They will remain mired in the past unless and until they take it upon themselves to put non-martyrdom seeking, rational adults in charge of their future.
The same principle of failed leadership holds true for those Brown students and faculty who perpetuate and wallow in Palestinian victimhood and push fool’s errands like the never-going-to-happen “right” of return and the elimination Israel as a Jewish state. They, together with the likes of Abbas ands his predecessors, more than any actions by Israel or the Israeli Defense Forces since the founding of the State of Israel continuing to date, are the ones having done, and continue to do, real and perhaps irreparable damage to the Palestinian people.
Also attached is an amicus brief filed by the Middle East Forum in a case pending in federal court in Texas. The case was brought by the Islamists of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Dallas and the Democratic Socialists of America, and supported by their shadowy funders. Their “argument” is that any attempt to rein in their rampant anti-Semitism and expose their control and funding by foreign terrorist groups somehow violates their free speech rights. The lead defendant in the case is the governor of the state of Texas.
The brief is noteworthy with respect to Brown Students for Justice in Palestine and Brown Jewish Voice for Peace because it details the extent to which these so-called student groups are controlled and manipulated by bigots who hate our country. These well-funded student terrorists, dedicated to the elimination of the Jewish state masquerading as “social justice activists”, stain Brown’s reputation every day they are permitted to use “Brown” in their materials. If these people want to continue to engage in undisguised anti-Semitism to the very limited extent that may arguably be permitted by law, that is their right. But Brown University has no reason, much less any obligation, to continue to stand idly by and allow them to continue to tarnish the university’s name. Given the parties these groups are planning to throw in Providence on October 5 to celebrate the “resisters” of Hamas, Brown has to act promptly. Brown has a duty not just to its Jewish students, but to all its students and alumni, to make it clear beyond question that Brown Students for Justice in Palestine and Brown Jewish Voice for Peace speak only for themselves - whoever they are or pretend to be - but are not affiliated in any way with the university.
Finally, true to form, the Brown Daily Herald (“BDH”) never disappoints in demonstrating its biases, dishonest “journalism” and lack of integrity. BDH reporters Sophia Wotman and Owen Dahlkamp seemingly hung on every one of Albanese’s words on September 16 and promptly filed a lengthy story. By way of contrast, the BDH deemed the Wilf presentation unworthy of any coverage at all. But two days after the Wilf presentation, the BDH made headline news of 100 people - “including 50 Brown students led by the Brown Divest Coalition” - having attended a rally led by the politically and otherwise completely irrelevant “RI Socialism Party” in front of Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed’s office “to support Lebanon following recent Israeli military attacks on the country to target Hezbollah”. For some inexplicable reason, crack BDH reporters Ciara Meyer and of course Wotman thought this tiny, silly rally was so important to the Brown community that it merited 15 paragraphs in the BDH online edition. But, as noted above, Wilf’s presentation, which had actual academic value to the Brown community especially in light of the extensive coverage the BDH gave the Albanese presentation, merited not one paragraph.
The only noteworthy aspect of Meyer and Wotman having wasted time and print to cover an irrelevant Socialist Party rally is the continuing crusade by the BDH to seek out and quote people with names like Mica Maltzman to say inane things like “Whether in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon, our University has continued to profit off this death…It’s time to end this investment”. I have no idea if Maltzman is Jewish, but one of the major themes of CMES is that “even the Jews are on our side”. Seemingly as always, the BDH happily does CMES’ bidding.
One of the greatest, long-remembered and oft-quoted lines in our political history is that of our 32nd Vice President John Nance Garner. In describing the office of the vice presidency, Garner commented that the office “is not worth a bucket of warm spit”. Having read, I believe, every issue of the BDH since October 7, Garner’s words describe perfectly the worth of the BDH’s coverage of one of the most tragic events in Jewish history and its aftermath. Al-Jazeera has a ready source of full-time “journalists” in its Providence bureau.
Willis J. Goldsmith, Brown Class of 1969