Rice bends to Zionist propaganda
Editor’s Note: This is a guest opinion that has been submitted by a member of the Rice community. The views expressed in this opinion are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of the Thresher or its editorial board. All guest opinions are fact-checked to the best of our ability and edited for clarity and conciseness by Thresher editors.
In the last several weeks, Rice University held three events — both openly and behind closed doors — that, taken together, demonstrate its commitment to advancing a Zionist ideology on campus, which serves as the foundation for Israel’s increasingly psychotic expansion of its genocidal violence into Lebanon and Yemen.
On Monday, Israel commenced a ground invasion of Lebanon after days of assassinations, bombings of urban neighborhoods and destruction of villages across the country. Israel continues its ongoing belligerence because of U.S. backing.
The production of consent for the U.S. support of Israel’s genocidal campaigns is supported in no small part by American universities’ ideological and intellectual participation in promoting Zionist ideology and simultaneous repression of popular student dissent, which has manifested on Rice’s campus through the onslaught of new repressive restrictions of student activism.
On Sept. 13, vice provosts, deans, program heads and staff attended a half-day workshop led by the Academic Engagement Network. The AEN defines its core mission as to “oppose the denigration of Jewish and Zionist identities, promote academic freedom, and advance education about Israel.”
Its board contains many high-ranking university administrators who have openly targeted student organizers in solidarity with Palestine, as well as leaders of lobbying groups specifically created to advance Israeli interests. The AEN has also disapproved of academic boycotts, demonstrating their participation in the suppression of speech by university faculty.
The content of the AEN workshop is seemingly not just designed as an attack on students standing in solidarity with Palestine, but presents a threat to Jewish life by equating the condemnation and boycott of Zionist activity with antisemitism. This programming participates in the erasure of anti-Zionist Jewish thought, denies the multiplicities of Jewish life and instrumentalizes Jewish identity in a colonial project.
For Jewish students – including one of the authors of this article – many of our peers find the link of Zionism with Judaism to be a dangerous and frankly antisemitic conflation as it pigeonholes all Jewish people behind a singular, violent, political ideology.
On Sept. 16, Baker Institute Director David Satterfield hosted Jason Isaacson of the American Jewish Committee. The AJC is a longstanding Zionist organization that directly pressures U.S. political and educational leaders to secure ongoing material support for the Zionist settler state.
Though the event was meant to cover the upcoming election and “the rise of antisemitism,” Satterfield and Isaacson quickly turned to openly espouse a fringe political line in the U.S.-Israeli-led genocide in Gaza, which legitimized unrestrained violence through the complete dehumanization of Palestinians — a position out of step with popular opinion.
Satterfield and Isaacson declared South Africa’s ICJ case — which charges Israel with genocide — “a false charge” and diminished the humanity of Palestinians by cloaking the abject violence of the Israeli assault in technocratic language.
In one example, Satterfield said that U.S. and Israeli leaders had failed to prevent mass starvation in Gaza but were “self-critical” — as if cynical “self-criticism” can negate the conditions of mass death. Their statements served to legitimize the continuation of the genocide in Gaza.
The legitimization of the genocide in Gaza was extended to calls for its expansion in Lebanon in another event hosted by Satterfield. On Sept. 24, Satterfield hosted David Petraeus, a former U.S. Army general who commanded forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States Central Command, where he directed military aggressions in 20 countries.
Satterfield and Petraeus’s glorification of colonial warfare was on horrifying display throughout the event. Petraeus described, in detail, a plan for the complete U.S.-Israeli occupation of Gaza involving walling off the entire Gaza Strip. Petraeus characterized Israel’s terrorist attack on Lebanon through the detonation of hundreds of electronic devices as “diabolically creative and clever and well-executed.” Most chillingly, the two endorsed a ground invasion and occupation of Lebanon at multiple points in the event.
These three events, taken together, demonstrate how the university lays the intellectual and ideological foundation for the expansion of genocidal warfare. The silencing of dissent allows the ideological defense of genocide and warfare to reproduce on our campus. Our fight to be heard is thus not just about freedom of speech, but about confronting and dismantling the entanglement of our university in the violent systems that rule our world.
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