I’M EMBARRASSED FOR PRINCETON: A controversy has broken out at Princeton University over an upcoming course that “will include reading material [the book “The Right to Maim,” by Rutgers University professor Jasbir K. Puar] alleging the Israeli military deliberately attempts to cripple Palestinians for profit — outraging critics who have called on the Ivy League school axe the professor and apologize to students.”
A group of students at Princeton wrote an open letter defending the professor and attacking what they called “right-wing Zionists,” which apparently includes anyone who question the lie, rooted in longstanding antisemitic tropes, that Israel deliberately cripples Palestinians for profit.
The letter was signed by several dozen students, and another thirty or so professors. Two things are remarkable about the letter. First, it never gets around to defending the underlying lie that sparked the controversy. One would think that the truth of this claim would be highly relevant to whether the critics are justified in their criticism of the course, or are simply right-wing Zionists who reject any criticism of Israel.
The open letter does allege that “Israel, like other countries, engages in human rights violations — having illegally harvested the organs of both Palestinians and Israelis, which is well-documented.” Puar has, in fact, alleged that Palestinian bodies “were mined [by Israel] for organs for scientific research,” but that is not the crux of the complaint against using her book.
The even more embarrassing part, though, is that when the letter claims that it’s “well-documented” that Israel illegally harvested the organs of Palestinians, the letter links to two sources. First, an article from the newspaper Ha’aretz about the head of an Israeli forensic institute being prosecuted for illegally taking body parts from patients. The fact of prosecution should be sufficient to show that this was not Israeli government policy, but rogue actions.
The second link is to an article about that scandal from from an academic journal, titled, “The Body of the Terrorist: Blood Libels, Bio-Piracy, and the Spoils of War at the Israeli Forensic Institute.” The article is hardly sympathetic to Israel, and takes pains to note that, not terribly surprisingly, the bodies of Israeli soldiers killed in battle were treated more respectfully than were the bodies of Palestinian terrorists. Nevertheless, the article acknowledges that this wasn’t an issue of abusing Palestinians specifically. Rather, “body parts were taken from Jews and Muslims, from IDF soldiers and from Palestinian stone throwers, from terrorists and from the victims of terrorist suicide bombers, from tourists and from new immigrants. There were only two considerations: the physical condition of the body and its organs, and the ability to conceal what they were doing.” Indeed, it was the families of Israeli soldiers, not Palestinians, who discovered that the institute had been tampering with bodies.
So, while the letter suggests that it’s well-documented that “Israel” specifically “harvested the organs of Palestinians,” the actual sources suggest that the head of a forensic institute was prosecuted for taking body parts from any body he could get his hands on. The connection the letter tries to draw between this and claims that Israel has a policy of intentionally maiming Palestinians is entirely spurious, and I can only imagine that the professors signed the letter either didn’t bother to check as to whether the letter’s claim was in fact well-documented, or knew it wasn’t but didn’t care.
And the complete disregard for truth and documentation of claims when Princeton professors support the underlying cause (here, hostility to Israel) is why I’m embarrassed for the university. How did it wind up with several dozen professors (and even more students) who have no regard for the truth?