Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Hi, this is Grant Reeher. Some of you may strongly disagree with some of the views you're about to hear from my guest on this week's program. That in itself doesn't make it any different from other programs, but the topic this week is extremely politically charged and has deep emotions attached to it. For that reason, I want to remind you that these are the views of one guest, and not those of NPR or WRVO. Thank you.
Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is a lifelong feminist scholar and writer who is deeply concerned with some of the rhetoric from self-styled feminists that is critical of Israel and its war with Hamas and supportive of Hamas in Palestine. Phyllis Chesler is a psychotherapist and a professor emerita at City University of New York. She's written many books among them, “Women and Madness”, “An American Bride in Kabul”, and, “The New anti-Semitism”. Professor Chesler, welcome to the program.
Phyllis Chesler: My pleasure to be with you.
GR: Well, thanks for making the time. So let me just start right at the beginning with something very basic. Give me some examples, if you could, of the public expressions that you have been seeing recently and hearing that worry you and concern you.
PC: More than 62 days after Hamas launched a pogrom on steroids from Gaza into Israel, the public (audio cuts out) feminism (audio cuts out)… Nobody said this is rape, this is barbarism, we believe this happened. They shot their own footage joyfully. And yet feminist icon after feminist icon, feminist listserv after feminist listserv said nothing. They didn't decry it. When they spoke, most said yes. But the Palestinian civilians are in danger and they see as the rest of the academy and the United Nations, all human rights groups and the media in general, they see Israel as the Nazi apartheid nation state, complete big lie, a lethal lie and they think that Hamas, funded by Iran, which has America in its gunsights, they think that Hamas, a terrorist group, are resistance fighters. And in the streets of our country, they're marching in favor of death, in favor of genocide. They denying what they've seen with their own eyes. So that's one example.
GR: Well, I made a, give you perhaps another one you'll want to put on your list, and unfortunately it's from Syracuse University. But I wanted to get your reaction to this, this one caught my eye. This was a statement that was made public from the Department of Women's and Gender Studies. And well, let me read it to you, and I'll just read you the first paragraph. “We…” and this was this was a statement that was made public, and it was also repeated by some faculty in their classes, “We, members of the Women's and Gender Studies Department at Syracuse University mourn the lives claimed by the violence in Palestine and Israel and denounce the escalating Israeli military attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. This position reflects our longstanding feminist commitments to anti-racist education, emancipatory politics and decolonial praxis. We are in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israeli settler colonialism and occupation and support Palestinians in Gaza who are being subjected to ongoing Israeli military violence through indiscriminate bombing, collective punishment of civilians, and the prohibition of life sustaining resources such as water, food and electricity. We oppose the act of genocide…” I want to repeat that, “We oppose the act of genocide of a dispossessed people and population who are trapped and what the UN, Israeli and international human rights organizations have long called an open-air prison”. Okay, so that seems to be in the same vein then, of the things you’re talking about?
PC: Oh, absolutely, yes. But alas, or to cover my shame as a feminist, a real one, it's not just feminists. However, they have long been since the 1980’s, they are Stalinized and they are Palestinianized and they view America as the Big Satan as Iran does, and Israel as the little Satan. And they really are concerned with the occupation of a country called Palestine, which has never existed in history, more so than with the occupation of women's bodies in Gaza or on the British mandatory West Bank I call Judea and Samaria. They do not care. They will not say, well, Hamas is forcing women to a face veil and wear hijab and marry as children and marry into polygamous unions and they risk being honor killed if they won't marry their first cousin or want to leave a violent marriage. Because for them, what used to be radical feminism or real women's studies, which lasted about a decade I think, maybe 15 years at most, their concern now is with the abolition of prisons on behalf of black men with anti-racism, as long as it doesn't mean Jew hatred, that's not seen as racism. They're concerned with, if there's a colonizer, that means someone's colonized, someone's got to be blamed. And they have, against all evidence based truth, against proof, footage, videos, they've decided that Israel must be the oppressor. And so they repeat these indoctrinated lies, open-air prison, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, what occupation are they talking about? What open air prison? Unless they mean that Hamas, which is true enough, has created their own people, turn them into human shields for the purpose of debt, for good propaganda. But that's not what they mean. So why are they teaching at universities? Who are they?
GR: Well, I wanted to focus in on one phrase because it's something that I've been struggling with, and it is this use of the word genocide to describe what Israel is doing right now. And certainly it seems to me that people can have disagreements over whether the response of Israel is proportionate and whether it is careful enough or discriminate enough, I suppose to use the language here of the Women's Studies Department, but I have heard this a number of times, this use of the word genocide to describe it. First of all, by my understanding of what that word is, what Israel is doing cannot be considered genocide, it's not the indiscriminate and complete effort to eradicate a people. They're not rounding up people, civilians by the hundreds of thousands and just killing them and so that concerns me. But the other piece of this that concerns me is, given the history of the Jewish people, given the Holocaust and World War Two, to use that word, seems to me to be at the very best, incredibly insensitive. Now, I guess I'm giving my own opinion here, but I wanted to ask you about this, that's a hell of a loaded question I just asked you, and I apologize for that, but I just wanted to get your sense of the use of that word in this context.
PC: It's post-Orwellian. Black is white. It is such a reversal of reality. First, the Palestinian population or the Gazan population has grown while Israel did occupy Gaza and since it left Gaza. So if we're talking genocide, you would imagine the numbers would be down by millions, but that is hardly the case. But I think also, one thing I didn't mention, and the hysteric herd-like overstatement of certain brainwashed words like genocide, genocide is everywhere, Palestine is everything, anything is equal to anything else. There is no objective standard or reality left in the academy. But what the feminists and the, everyone, public intellectuals, human rights activists, they do not want to accuse men of color, especially if they're Muslim, especially if they have been in countries that were once occupied by Britain, for example, or by Turkey before that. They don't want to accuse them of committing any kind of barbaric crimes because that would be a colonialist (audio cuts out) overreach. So the fact their victims are other people of color who are also Muslims for the most part, it seems to be a blind spot. So, are these professors? And I have to say, I'm happy to hear that they're still calling Women's Studies, “Women and Gender”, that's very good, because in general, women have been disappeared and it's gender and sexuality studies. And the sexuality studies have been totally taken over by, quote, queer and transgender profiles and these are the courses. I did a survey of the Ivy Leagues a few years ago in terms of gender studies, I couldn't believe what I was reading. Queer people in the Caribbean in the 19th century. And I thought, all right, I'm open minded, but what has this got to do with the violence (audio cuts out) issues that we raised in the second wave, which began with rape, went to sexual harassment, then incest, then woman battering. These are not sexy issues anymore, even though, I mean, rape, what's the slogan at #metoo, believe what a woman says. Never believe a man, always believe a woman. Well, but not if she's Jewish, not if she's in Israel and half of Israelis are not white. They are Jews from Arab and African countries who were forced to flee by the Muslims who hate Jews. And on that subject, I work with Muslims and for Muslims who do not hate Jews and who are pro-Israel, God bless them, as well as Christians. So, and many of them are feminists, so I don't know who these feminists are in women's studies, do you?
GR: Well, I'm asking you, you're the expert. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with the psychotherapist and feminist writer, Phyllis Chesler. So, you mentioned a couple of things I want to get into a bit later about where some of these views might be coming from in terms of the history behind who these groups are. But I did want to ask you something else that's in the news cycle in the last few days. The other day, there was an incident that has gone viral. It was Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s challenge of the presidents of MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. They are all female presidents, as it happens, I believe. And their refusal to state that, in the hearing, their refusal to state that calling for the genocide of Jewish people violates their university's code of conduct and none of them would be willing to do that. They all said it depends on the context and whether it leads to behavior. And Congresswoman Stefanik, I think, was genuinely shocked by this, I don't think it was just political theater. Do you have any reactions to what these presidents were saying? If you've seen this video clip?
PC: I've watched it, it's outrageous. I doubt that they would have the same response if students marched and said, shoot all the blacks, kill them now, lynch them, hang them from trees, let's get rid of the Hispanics, or let's build a wall on the southern border of America. That would be seen as inflammatory, incendiary, it would be seen as hate speech and it would be condemned. But Jews, it's cool, it's okay, that's free speech. And for years in the 21st Century, I kept writing about the way in which the concept of academic freedom and free speech are being increasingly used to engage in Jew hatred. And anti-Semitism is now anti-Zionism, they are one and the same. There's only one Jewish state, and that seems to be considered the very worst country on Earth, not Sudan, wait, I'm remembering something. Remember how the feminists and the women activists were so quick to condemn the so-called rape camps in Bosnia? The rapes in Rwanda, the rapes in Africa, in North Africa, done by paramilitary Islamist groups? Certainly I called it a gender cleansing in the Sudan, the public repeated gang rapes of girls and women by the Janjaweed. And on this utter silence, what conclusions can I draw other than the anti-American, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, that's the Stalinization. And in a terrible way, the anti-woman, I mean, rape is rape no matter who was being raped and in Israel, boys and men were raped by these barbarians as well. And I think that the way to handle this, and I wrote a quick piece, is to have an Eichmann like or a Nuremberg like trial in Jerusalem after Israel, only after Israel is militarily victorious.
GR: I want to follow up on a couple of things you said, but we have to take a break. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Phyllis Chesler. She's an emeritus professor at City University of New York and a psychotherapist and feminist writer. We've been discussing her concerns about some of the public rhetoric about the Israeli-Hamas war. So, Professor Chesler, you've mentioned this at a couple of points in the first part of our conversation, I want to draw it out a little more directly. And it has to do with where some of this stuff might be coming from that you're concerned about. And from day one, I've had this theory and you seem to be saying it's a similar version of it, and that is that the criticism among some of the left of Israel seems to me to be criticism of the United States by proxy and in the extreme form, anti-Americanism. And it does seem like something that was already pent up came forward like the day after the attack. And it does seem like, I wanted to get your sense of that, I wonder if that's one of the things that's really driving this.
PC: The sight of Jewish blood thrilled and excited the long prepared, globalized intifada activists who've been funded by left wing people like Soros, the Tides Foundation, who have been funded by, to some extent, the Arab oil countries and by, certainly by the Rockefeller Fund Foundation. So this has been long in coming. And you're right, this is anti-Americanism, Israel's taking the hard hit. And America with the academics, the intellectuals and the politicians are not paying attention to the danger to us from Iran. Iran right now is causing the kind of international conflict that the secretary general just said he's got to invoke Article 99 because the conflict is spreading all on Israel, excuse me, Iran is having Hezbollah in Lebanon, rocket after rocket. They're shooting during a so-called cease fire into the north of Israel. And the Houthis in Yemen are attacking American warships in the Red Sea in the Mediterranean, excuse me, the international conflict or if you will, the increasing visibility of World War Three is clear to me. And why the American presidents, why Congress doesn't get this and doesn't act on it instead of funding Iran and appeasing Iran is everything that President Obama started. So I think that there are all these factors at play. And then add to it, the left wing academic curriculum. America once had slavery, the fact that we had a civil war to abolish it matters not, it did exist, original sin can't be cleansed, no awareness that Islam practices slavery to this day and always has, as well as being a colonial power. I mean, once I lived in Afghanistan, which was, believe it or not, a Buddhist country, until Arab Muslims came and took it down and turned it Islamic. So every continent and every religion has committed all kinds of crimes, it's not just America and America might be the best relatively speaking. And so the way of thinking that one culture is really the same as another, one culture can't judge another, everything is kind of equal and everything is relative, but America is to blame. White people are to blame, Israel is to blame. This is Stalinist thinking and there was a huge amount of Russian propaganda that became absorbed in the bloodstream of Westerners. And then add to that Arab League propaganda, then add to that Islamic, basic quintessential Koranic propaganda and you have this brew, this dangerous brew that bubbles up as Jew hatred to start with, soon will be infidel hatred acted on in the West.
GR: Now, let me interject here and say now, my thought about the anti-Americanism driving it, it wasn't as deeply rooted as what you just said. I was thinking more in terms of the fact that the United States is Israel's single biggest, or Israel is the single biggest recipient of foreign aid and a lot of that is military aid and the fact that we have stood by Israel over the years. And so I wanted to ask you though, two questions here. One is, some people hearing this, I think, are going to be very concerned about some of the ways that you're talking about this and that it's going to sound to them like you are engaging in a similar kind of thinking that you are criticizing just from the other side. And so I wanted to get your reaction to that and then I'll come back with the other thing. But what how would you respond to that?
PC: Well, unfortunately, the anti-Zionist anti-Semites have been fed propaganda, I have not. I have researched and I've read and I've thought and I've consulted with military experts, counterterrorism experts, psychologists, psychiatrists. I'm now thinking about the trauma of people who have been not only held captive but who have been brainwashed as well, I'm talking about the Israeli hostages. And while I can't, let me say this, of course I'm concerned about the death of innocents, and that includes innocents in Gaza. But most of the innocents in Gaza voted Hamas in and now, of course, can't get rid of them, can't get rid of them even though they're being used horribly as human shields and always have been, even though Hamas, clearly we can see even though people are excelling in denying their own eyes, they're choosing their narrative above reality. And I'm not sure how to break that hold. So I don't, I mean, while I could be not expressing at this moment enough sympathy for Gazans who are in a dreadful situation caused by their own leadership, and it could be ended in a moment, all Hamas has to do is return all the hostages safe and sound to Israel, all Egypt has to do is accept these Gazan civilians, let them out. All right, keep them in a camp if you don't want them to become citizens, which, by the way, no Arab country, 57 of them have refused the populations in the areas as we have after every single war in human history. Refugees in flight have been, they've become citizens elsewhere and life moved on. Only in this instance, the Palestinians are being used from the river to the sea to get rid of the single Jewish state. So, this could end in a minute.
GR: My understanding also, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the Arab countries have not in the past provided much support or help to Palestine.
PC: No support, none. It is, you know I was part of a grassroots team that rescued 400 women from Afghanistan, one of whom I've made my granddaughter from Afghanistan and she's excelling in graduate school here, she's an amazing young woman. And we could not get Arab countries to accept them. And these are Sunni Arabs as they are, not Shia from Iran. And the lack of responsibility for, I mean, the whole this entire disaster could have been solved if Jordan had said, yes, you know, actually, we're the Palestinian state, come home, everyone come home to Jordan. But that never happened because they wanted a fake Hashemite dynasty. So this is not on Israel, this is on the Arab world. It's on Iran, it's on Hamas.
GR: Well, we've only got about 3 minutes left or so. But there's another kind of topic I wanted to make sure that I covered with you here and it's a more personal question, if I could. I wanted to know how you have experienced this personally. Obviously, you've got very strong views of your own. And if I could just share one thing very quickly on this or in this context, is I'm a little different from a lot of other academics in that I have friends and acquaintances that span the entire ideological spectrum. And I'm proud of this in the last seven years, I've managed to avoid losing any friends over politics throughout all of this. But, I have lost my first friendship over this issue and I'm struggling with it. So I just want to know, have you have you dealt with this kind of thing since this war has started?
PC: Oh, my dear, when I published after many, many purely feminist works, some bestsellers, some very influential in the academic world and beyond, when I published, “The New Anti-Semitism” in 2003 because I absolutely felt I had to speak out, that was the first time that The New York Times didn't review a book of mine. That was the first time that major left liberal venues, wouldn't interview me even to fight with me because I held the left liberal intelligentsia in the West as responsible as the 9/11’ers, as the Islamists and terrorists. And then, funny thing began to happen on the way to the forum. But this was going on before, that's a longer story. Yeah, there are feminists now who have not reached out to me, some of whom I've sent one of my pieces about the rape issue and their silence, asked for something and either no response or very hostile response. These are not close friends though. And a lot of distance kept, a lot of silence, which is profound. So I'm thinking you know, I work with Muslims who are feminists, men and women. I work with Christians who are feminists, men and women. I'm not going to say that feminists have failed entirely because it's not true, not true. I'm a founding member of something called the Clarity Coalition, go look it up, they have a website. So, but the feminists of the second wave, third wave, fourth wave, their silence is reverberating down in history and will never be forgotten. Never.
GR: Well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Phyllis Chesler. Professor Chesler, thanks so much again for taking the time to talk with me. I really appreciated it.
PC: It's my pleasure. Good questions.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
