Teaching Palestinian narrative is only half the battle
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman is right (“Why Jewish educators need to teach the Palestinian perspective,” Jan. 15). Of course it’s a good idea for Jews to understand more about the Palestinian narrative, culture, food, and to know that all Palestinians are not enemies.
But does she think it’s a good idea also for Palestinians to understand more about the Jewish narrative, culture, history, food, and to know that all Israelis are not enemies? And if Jewish educators stopped “betraying” Jewish students and taught them to “wrestle with both Israeli and Palestinian narratives,” then would Palestinians also wrestle? And cease their 70-plus years of hate and incitement? And stop murdering Jews?
Or does Zimmerman think the problem is only on the Jewish side?
June Brott | Walnut Creek
Rabbi’s curriculum is devoid of reality
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman in her Pollyannaish column (Jan. 15) urges the teaching of the Palestinian narrative to Jewish students. In fact, she writes she has compiled such a narrative, teaching it to students at her synagogue, Congregation Shaarei Shamayim in Madison, Wisconsin.
I wonder if the rabbi included in her narrative the oft-stated mission of the Palestinians, whether it is Fatah or Hamas: the delegitimization and destruction of the State of Israel. Or that the methods used are varied: rocket and gun fire, knifing intifada (as I write, horrific news has been received of a 38-year-old Israeli mother of six brutally murdered in front of her children by a Palestinian terrorist), car rammings or boycott and divestment campaigns? Or that the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people support such actions and support the emergence of a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, i.e., the annihilation and disappearance of the Jewish state?
Did she also include in her narrative the incendiary and hateful anti-Israel and anti-Jewish material contained in Palestinian school textbooks? Or the murderous incitement emanating from Palestinian leadership, heard on radio and television? Or the Palestinian leadership naming parks, streets and squares after “martyrs” who viciously slaughtered innocent Jews in cold blood?
Somehow I doubt Rabbi Zimmerman included any of the above in her kumbaya, devoid-of-reality approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Mervyn Danker | San Mateo
Second petition supports Hillel’s Israel policies
Your Jan. 15 article “Top academics join call for Hillel to open up on Israel” indicated that “more than 70 academics” seek a change in the policy of Hillel International. What your article did not mention is a second petition, now including over 400 academics, including myself (professor emeritus, San Francisco State University), who support the current standards of Hillel International.
The signers of this second petition “support the values of critical inquiry, inclusivity and wide-ranging discourse” and “believe in the dignity of different points of view” but assert that those principles “are best served by empowering different individuals and organizations to develop the distinct ideas and perspectives that will compete in the marketplace of ideas.”
Hillel International’s standards of partnership simply exclude partnerships with those who seek to damage and delegitimize Israel. Let those with such anti-Israel perspectives create their own organizations to promote their points of view.
Dan Fendel | Piedmont