Dear friends,
Our email to you earlier today included a link to a CNN article describing Judea Pearl's alleged charge that UCLA campus police did not follow up on threats to him. Our email also went to Dr. Pearl, and he returned the reply
below setting the record straight.
Best wishes,
Henry Wyle
For UCI Chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME)
ucispme@gmail.comDear Friend,
Thank you for writing to me concerning the CNN article
about the press conference that took place on Friday,
Feb. 27, at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
While I am glad that attention is called to recent
events on campus, the article itself contains several
inaccuracies that I would like to correct.
1.
I did not say that "anti-Semitism is on rise on college campuses."
as the article states. Throughout my writings and speaking
in the past five years, I consistently and maticulously refrain from
using the term "anti-Semitism" in reference to the middle east
conflict and campus tensions. (One reason is that I grew up in an
environment where this disease was considered extinct, so,
my ears are not tuned to detect it. Another reason is that
the term "anti-semitism" tends to divert attention from the
real problem.)
At the press conference on Friday I repeatedly stated
that it is not anti-semitism that we should be concerned about but
another, more dangerous epidemic, one called anti-Zionism -- or
Zionophobia.
2.
My remark about receiving a hate message was blown out
of proportion. In response to a question by a CNN reporter
whether I, personally, ever felt threatened, I recalled
receiving a hateful email message from someone
at UCLA, which I passed on to campus police, who
could not trace that message.
I should have made it clear (but was pressed in time,)
that the email message in question was received
six years ago, on May 19, 2002, and was not related to the
recent hostilities in Gaza.
The text of that email, which I labored to reconstruct
from memory, actually reads as follows:
-----------
"you're anti-arab and anti-IRANIAN. so fuck you.
well let me tell ya somethin', fuckface. me and people like me
will NOT be intimidated by fascist thugs like you. this is a free
country, i will express my opinion. i've seen you in kerchoff, i'd
love to be able to SHIT on israel in front of your face. go ahead
and brand me an "anti-semite". which is what people like you
typically do. so what? what the fuck are you going to do to me?
you can't do SHIT to me.
---------------
3.
At no point did I imply that campus police did not
respond to my complaint -- they
actually told me that they would try their best but that
these kind of messages are hard to trace.
Where I felt, and still feel, that administrators on college campuses
across the country are not doing enough is in
setting the norms for "civil discourse" and,
in particular, in defining the dehumanization of Israel
and her people, side by side with racist and Islamophobic slurs,
as standing countrary to the norms of respectful academic discourse.
4. The main topic of my speech at the press conference, not
mentioned in the CNN article, was the pathetic and immoral attempt
by a handful of US faculty to boycott Israeli academic
and cultural institutes.
Thank you again for writing to me
on this urgent matter, and I hope we
can restore civility, freedom and safety to campus life.
Sincerely,
----------------
Dr. Judea Pearl
Daniel Pearl Foundation
www.danielpearl.org
http://www.danielpearl.org/news_and_press/articles/Op-Eds.pdf
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