Mark LeVine |
As if to drive home the point CW made recently in the quote-filled article “Bonfire of the Vulgarians: Middle East Studies in Decline,” UC Irvine history professor Mark LeVine—whose profanity-laden Facebook call to “dismantle” Israel featured prominently in our round-up—has accompanied a new post on his Facebook page with this brilliant analysis: “F— the occupation. 50 years is enough.” Elsewhere, LeVine, who can’t stop posting ill-advised, unedited commentary anywhere and everywhere on the Internet, left a rambling, op-ed length comment for a Jewish Journal op-ed on whether or not the University of California Board of Regents should adopt the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism. LeVine was not placated by the author’s reticence on the matter and concludes his rant with the type of eliminationist rhetoric—couched in platitudes about “Judaism,” “human rights,” and “democracy"—for which he’s become known:
[T]he vast majority of supporters of BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions], including the rapidly growing number of Jewish and Israeli supporters, oppose not merely Israeli policy but the Isareli [sic] state as its [sic] presently conceived of and acts--as an ethnocratic, exclusivist state built upon decades of occupation and no willingness to relinquish these claims.
I want to “undo the events of 1948,” but not because I hate Israel or am anti-Semitic. Rather, it’s because I stay true to the Prophetic Judaism that has always been the core of my identity and the ideals of human rights and democracy for all that they demand. There are many alternatives to the present Israeli political system--confederation, parallel states, binationalism. Advocating for them, and even for the end of a Zionist state cannot be equated with anti-Semitism.
