Dear Ahmed: Your lectures on settler colonialism...

Note: This letter was sent to Kayum Ahmed, lecturer in law at Columbia. For background, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Last semester at Columbia University, Prof. Kayum Ahmed, a civil-rights attorney, stood in front of his graduate-school class on public health and introduced himself. He is a social-justice activist who has been accused of radicalizing students, he said, adding that he spent part of last summer “working in Palestine.”

The class addresses advocacy and activism, he said, according to a videotape of the lecture. To get a sense of what that feels like, he asked students to participate in a call-and-response protest chant: “What do we want?” he yelled. “Justice!” the students responded. “If we don’t get it?” he asked. “Shut it down!” they replied…

In one video of a lecture last fall before the attacks, Ahmed said that colonialism and white supremacy oppressed indigenous populations. He labeled Israel as a colonial settler state and focused on the health consequences of the Palestinians whom Israel has displaced. Many Jews disagree that Israel fits the definition of settler colonialism because Jews are also indigenous to the land.

Ahmed is the author of the children’s book, “A is for Amandla: The ABC Guide for Young Revolutionaries (and their parents).” The cover shows a group of young people gathered behind a sign that says “Free Palestine.”

In the videotaped lectures, Ahmed didn’t address the region’s historical complexities. The lack of historical perspective in a class where Gaza and Israel aren’t the subject amounted to political indoctrination, some students and faculty said. 

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Dear Ahmed - I read with pleasure a Wall Street journal piece exposing the rubbish you’re teaching our children at Columbia.

I’m sure you’re not used to being challenged about your ideas.  After all, the students depend on you for their grades and among faculty on elite campuses, sympathy for your views is no less widespread than love for the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.

But let me raise just a few important points that I hope you will ruminate on:

1. I’m going to assume that as an intellectually consistent man, if you believe that Israel is a settler colonialist state, you would say the same about the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, and many others.  Long before the Jews have to leave Israel, I would hope you’d encourage the rest of us to do the same from these various countries.  To pick on Israel exclusively would seem a touch … well, anti-Semitic.

This is especially true given that the Jewish people actually do have a long historical connection to the land of Israel.  For example, as a sophisticated man who no doubt has seen Verdi’s Nabucco, I’m sure you’re well aware of the lamentations for Zion in the famous Va Pensiero chorus…

2. I understand that you’re an enemy of colonialism, a position that I will not challenge.  But I’m certain that you’re also aware that colonialism represents the conquest of other countries on behalf of a mother country, rather than the arrival of displaced and persecuted groups in a new locale, as happened to virtually all Ashkenazi Jews who made it to the Holy Land. Once these Jews arrived, they were often at odds with the authorities who continued to oppress them and faced violence on a daily basis (and during World War II dealt with a grand mufti of Jerusalem who was an open Nazi collaborator!).

And I’m sure you’re aware - despite not sharing this with your class - that about half of Israelis are actually black or brown and come from the Middle East and Africa. 800,000 such Jews were unceremoniously kicked out of their ancestral homes in 1948 and had nowhere to go but Israel.

I’m also sure you know very well that if anyone truly carried out atrocities against the Palestinians it’s those governments that expelled them en masse in a few months (Kuwait - close to 300k), shot them indiscriminately (Jordan - during Black September), and more generally did nothing pre-1967 to create a Palestinian state when the territories currently considered the heartland of such a state were under Arab control.

3. Lastly, as someone who grew up under apartheid, I’m sure you’re well aware of the injustices of that regime.  And being an honest man - I hope - you’d have to admit that under apartheid the representation of blacks and “colored people” (as that regime labeled some of its population) among the elite was zero.  I’m sure you contrasted that for your students with the fact that 20% of students at the Technion - Israel’s MIT - are Israeli Arabs; that close to half the pharmacists and many, many doctors and businessmen and other prominent figures in Israel are Arabs as well.  Apartheid indeed!

Let me conclude by stating directly - the students who challenge your views aren’t “products of white privilege”.   They are individuals who think for themselves and understand that, as Orwell said, some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.

I hope you have the courage to share this email with your students and anyone else you wish, including other faculty.  Whether they agree with me or not, it’s important that they hear actual dissent to the indoctrination they are receiving in your class.  For the same purpose, I’m happy to debate you in person in front of your class as well.

Kind regards,

Alex Turkeltaub

alex@jslhealth.com