This weekend’s One State Conference at Harvard University has prompted predictable cries of outrage and calls for cancellation from the Israel lobby and its allies in Congress. Senator Scott Brown, a Republican from Massachusetts, is the latest Friend of Israel to join the chorus of condemnation, calling for Harvard to ban the conference altogether. The campaign of intimidation and smears highlights America’s pro-Israel community as the political element most devoted to suppressing free speech and academic inquiry on campuses across the United States.

Abraham Foxman, the national director for the Anti-Defamation League, is at the helm of the campaign to censor the discussion at Harvard of equal rights in Israel-Palestine. In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, Foxman wrote, “Let’s be frank. The term ‘one-state solution’’ is a euphemism for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.” He attacked the conference participants for their ” alleged concerns about Israel’s ‘occupation’’ and treatment of the Palestinians,” claiming that their true goal was to “make anti-Semitism more acceptable and more likely.”

In light of Foxman’s assaults on the academic discussion of equal rights for all living under Israel’s control, it is worth recalling an angry letter he sent to the editors of the New York Times on June 20, 1984. In the letter, Foxman took issue with an editorial the Times published calling for a two state solution that would have required Israel to give up control of the West Bank. Foxman criticized the authors for casting Israel’s undemocratic control of the West Bank in a negative light, insisting that Israeli control of the Palestinians was not “deleterious to [Israel's] well being.” And in the end, he suggested that Israel should consider”fully integrating the Palestinian Arabs into the Israeli body politics.” This is the very concept that will be discussed and promoted at the One State Conference this weekend at Harvard.

Below the fold is the full text of Foxman’s letter, which I retrieved from Lexis-Nexis:

To the Editor:

The debate as to whether Israel’s control over the West Bank is irreversible or not is a legitimate and important one. Unfortunately, the writers you chose to conduct that debate on your Op-Page, David Shaham and Geoffrey Aronson, share the assumption that Israel’s control of the West Bank is bad.

The issue of reversibility aside, Times readers should not be given the impression that Israelis or those who write about Israel are united in thinking that Israeli control of the West Bank is deleterious to its well-being. Indeed, a vibrant and ofttimes emotional debate is taking place among the people of Israel as to what would be good for Israel – considering Israel’s narrow security options in that small area, considering the arms buildup of its neighbors, considering Israel’s historical and religious ties to the area and considering whether fully integrating the Palestinian Arabs into the Israeli body politic is the best thing for the country.

The tragedy of the West Bank has been the tragedy of the region for 35 years. While Israelis debate the wisdom of a particular regional policy, the Arabs continue to reject peace and negotiations, making the debate in Israel abstract rather than real.

Your biggest contribution would be to find people who would advocate that the Arabs finally come to the peace table. ABRAHAM H. FOXMAN New York, June 13, 1984

The writer is associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

Abraham Foxman from Blue Pilgrimage on Vimeo.

Anti-Defamation League National Director Abe Foxman arrived in Israel in mid-October on the heels of several controversial decisions that prompted a hail of criticism in the United States. Foxman may have hoped that while in Israel he would have been able to avoid sensitive issues like his condemnation of the construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero; the ADL’s honoring of right-wing media kingpin Rupert Murdoch; or the ADL’s release of a blacklist of “anti-Israel organizations.” And for most of his trip, Foxman was able to propagate his message to the Israeli public and international media without any background noise from the US.

Then the great macher agreed to an on-camera interview with David Sheen, a young writer and videographer who splits time between the center-left Israeli paper Haaretz and independent documentary projects. Sheen, an Israeli citizen who is a friend and colleague of mine, makes no secret of his strong views about issues ranging from the occupation of Palestine to animal rights. He submitted his questions to Foxman days before the interview at the request of the ADL’s press handler. But Foxman did not bother to review the questions. Instead, he walked into the interview expecting to be handled as he was by the rest of the Israeli media: gently and with a degree of deference.

This may explain why Foxman appears so shocked when Sheen confronts him with pointed questions about the ADL’s honoring of Murdoch (Foxman calls him “a media genius”) and his endorsement of the “bigoted” positions of opponents of the Park 51 mosque (Foxman claims the reporter who quoted him defending the anti-mosque crowd’s bigotry “didn’t know history from borscht”). As Sheen presents Foxman with a litany of concerns of his growing legion of detractors, who have accused him of turning the ADL into a smear machine that has nothing to do with its stated mission of promoting civil rights, Foxman furiously lashes out at his interviewer, accusing him of staging a “set up.”

On at least four occasions, Foxman threatens to end the interview, claiming the questions are “not productive” and that he has better things to do. But each time he remains in his seat and berates Sheen. As the interview progresses (or deteriorates), it is clear that Foxman has little interest in promoting the work of the ADL, or even in rebutting his critics. He is far more interested in screaming at Sheen. It is one of the strangest and most embarrassing interview performances I have seen since Sarah Palin campaigned for Vice President.

At around the 28 minute mark of the video, after Sheen has poked and prodded Foxman about the ADL’s denunciation of the animal rights group PETA –- an unusual line of questioning to be sure — Foxman suddenly launches into a forceful condemnation of the “Soup Nazi” character from the TV show Seinfeld. At this point, the interview morphs from a tense exchange into some kind of free association borscht belt comedy routine.

“If you don’t understand [the Holocaust] then you don’t learn the lessons,” Foxman remarks. “So if in New York we have a restaurant where a guy calls himself a Soup Nazi because he decides what kind of soup you’re going to eat, or buy, that’s a trivialization, you’ve learned nothing from history, and yeah, we do care, and we’ll speak out against it.” (No soup for you, Foxman!)

For the rest of the interview, Foxman and Sheen manage not to discuss a single issue of substance. Instead, Foxman rails against Sheen almost uncontrollably, accusing him of setting him up. At around 45 minutes into the video, Foxman launches into a crazed diatribe that ends with him calling Sheen (what else?) a bigot.

“’You don’t like this cup. Why don’t you like this cup? You support this camera! But what about this camera?’ That’s what you’re doing!” Foxman booms, waving his arms at every cup and camera in sight. “That’s the only thing you’re doing. And you’re selecting which cup of coffee, which camera — you’re selecting every example… You only showed your bigotry.” (No cups were harmed in the making of Sheen’s video).

Once again, Foxman declares an end to the interview. He is furious. But instead of leaving he remains in his seat and invites Sheen out for a meal. “First I want to talk to you at dinner. I want to get to know you. Then if you want to play this game before your audience, fine,” Foxman exclaims.

Before Sheen can direct his subject to the nearest TGI Friday’s, Foxman is overcome with regret for ever agreeing to the interview. He compares Sheen to the Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, whose acclaimed documentary “Defamation” followed Foxman around the globe and ultimately exposed him and his colleagues as a bunch of goofballs hyping the issue of anti-Semitism to increase their influence and paychecks.

“I’ve made mistakes before. I participated in a movie in Israel. I made a judgment,” Foxman reflected. “I trusted him [Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir]. I took him into my heart. He screwed me. And a lot of people said don’t trust media. And in a nice way you basically did the same thing…. This was a set up, David! This was a way to embarrass what we do, to say there’s no consistency. PETA? Who gives a shit about PETA?”

Even after Foxman steps off the set, he continues to berate Sheen for supposedly being unfair. Finally, Sheen lights into Foxman for not being able to handle a few tough questions. “You know what I felt?” Sheen asks him. “You’re a professional. It’s your day job. You think all the time about these questions. You think all the time about the answers. I thought you’d be like 1, 2, 3 – like throwing cards at me. Because you hear them all the time. If you don’t hear them, maybe you’re in groupthink; maybe you’re only with people who think the same way you do.”

Sheen raises a good point here: Why couldn’t Foxman simply respond to his questions with a few punchy soundbites and walk away? Why did he throw an hour-long fit that had little to do with the ADL’s work and everything to do with his persecution complex? And has Foxman always behaved this way with journalists?

If I were a responsible member of the ADL’s board of directors who had watched Foxman’s performance, I would enter the next board meeting with some serious questions about his ability to lead. If he persists in responding to mildly adversarial or unpredictable questions like a cantankerous altecocker, or if he cannot control his temper in interviews long enough to muster a semi-coherent thought, Foxman is an organizational liability who might need to be replaced. Personally, I would prefer to see Foxman stay at the helm of the ADL for a long time, and not only because I enjoy witnessing the slow motion collapse of the sclerotic, reactionary Jewish-American establishment that he represents, but because I am a huge fan of borscht belt comedy, even of the unintentional variety.

A t-shirt sold by Richard Quinn's Southern Partisan Magazine

With the Cordoba House controversy, the mainstream press has suddenly discovered that the Anti-Defamation League is more than willing to give sanction to bigotry. But the ADL has a long history of allowing cynical political calculations to trump its professed concerns about racism.

In a virtually unknown and unreported event in 1999, the ADL pointedly refused to condemn Richard Quinn, a leading white nationalist publisher who had come under fire for his history of promoting racist screeds before taking a job as a consultant for John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. Though the ADL initially expressed concern about Quinn’s role on the McCain campaign, it backed off for reasons that appeared to relate to the calculated “pro-Israel” line of Quinn’s magazine.

The episode began after John McCain’s surprising victory in the 1999 New Hampshire Republican primary. Controversy ensued when the New Republic’s Benjamin Soskis revealed that McCain had hired the longtime editor of Southern Partisan Magazine, Richard Quinn, as a consultant. Quinn came under fire from Soskis and many others for editing a neo-Confederate magazine that promoted white nationalist themes. For his part, Quinn had authored an editorial in his publication denouncing Martin Luther King Day as “vitriolic and profane;” attacked Nelson Mandela as a “terrorist” and a “bad egg;” and wrote the following about the KKK’s former Imperial Wizard-cum-Louisiana GOP gubernatorial candidate: “What better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke? What better way to tweak the nose of the establishment?”

As the bad press piled up, and reporters discovered gems like the ad in Southern Partisan for a t-shirt emblazoned with a Republican elephant logo that read, “Lincoln’s Worst Nightmare!” Quinn began to work his contacts. Finally, his friend  Sam Tennenbaum, who served at the time on the ADL’s advisory board, intervened in his defense, ensuring that the ADL did not condemn the Southern Partisan or disturb the McCain campaign about employing an avowed neo-Confederate.

In the 4th Quarterly issue of the Southern Partisan in 1999, editor Christopher Sullivan detailed the ADL’s deliberations and ultimate refusal to condemn Quinn [see the full article here and here]:

Even the Anti-Defamation League, trusting the information that had been conveyed in the media, wrote McCain a letter requesting an explanation. Regular readers of the Partisan know that we have never published anything that even suggested anti-Semitism. In that regard, a friend of Richard Quinn’s [Sam Tennenbaum, a South Carolina businessman and a prominent Democrat] happens to serve on an advisory board to the Anti-Defamation League. Tennenbaum called the League’s national leaders and persuaded them that the attack on Quinn was unfair and undeserved.

Why did the ADL let the Southern Partisan off the hook when it had been so zealous in assailing other white nationalist organizations? A pro-Israel screed authored by Sullivan in 4th Quarterly issue of Southern Partisan in 2001, right after the 9-11 attacks, may offer an explanation. In an article called “Whose Fault?” [read full version here] Sullivan wrote:

Does anybody, however, really thing that if George Bush had come into office and renounced American support for the state of Israel that bin Laden’s sleepers would have packed their bags, settled their bills and flown back to Arabia? Of course not. They hate Jewish Israel and they hate Christian America. If the radical Arabs and Palestinians were successful in their murderous dream of annihilating every last Jew from The Levant, it would only mean more free time to scheme up another plot to destroy the West.

Within neo-Confederate circles, and by extension within the paleoconservative movement, Israel is a generally unpopular cause. Thus the Southern Partisan stood out in its roaring defense of the Jewish State’s value to the United States.

Ed Sebesta, one of the country’s leading researchers on the neo-Confederate movement, suggested to me that the Southern Partisan’s unusual pro-Israel bent helped explain why Quinn was able to marshall the ADL as his ally. “One of the leading figures in the neo-Confederate movement is Frank Conner whose book, ‘The South Under Siege: 1830-2000,’ has chapters of anti-Jewish writing. It is representative of neo-Confederate thinking. Frank Conner is a figure respected in the Sons of Confederate Veterans [the nation's largest neo-Confederate group] and was the author of multiple articles for the Sons of Confederate Veterans educational foundation publication, ‘Southern Mercury.’ What is interesting is that the paleoconservatives and neo-Confederates are very critical of Israel. But the Southern Partisan was always the publication of Richard Quinn, a Republican party consultant who needed to earn a living.  So its position on Israel is anomalous relative to the neo-Confederate movement.”

The ADL’s refusal to condemn Quinn was a telling episode. Foxman and company may have been willing to ignore all the racist propaganda Quinn and his associates promoted (the Partisan ran a glowing review of the pornographic anti-immigrant tract, “Camp of the Saints,” in the same issue in which it defended Quinn) because the magazine maintained a strict “pro-Israel” line. There is hardly any other explanation for the ADL’s strange silence. In contrast, the Southern Poverty Law Center has repeatedly taken on the Southern Partisan and the figures behind it. The SPLC is able to take a sincere and principled stance against bigotry because, unlike the ADL, it does not have a foreign policy.