The Observer
Sunday December 30, 2007

By Luke Jennings

Hofesh Shechter: The soldier poet

Few choreographers are as familiar with firearms as Hofesh Shechter, having done his Israeli national service after training as a dancer. 'An Uzi,' he recalls, 'goes off if you drop it.' It was to escape such concerns that Shechter left Israel for the UK in 2002. He discovered a 'dirty, empty London' and found work dancing with Jasmin Vardimon's company. He took advantage of a month's holiday from that job to try his hand at choreography, and his first piece won the Finnish Serge Diaghilev Prize.

The following year, he created Cult, which reached the finals of the 2004 Place Prize, and in 2006 he premiered Uprising, partly inspired by the rituals and belligerence he had observed in Israel. 'In the army, people were loving the game of it, even 18-year-old kids, which was really frightening,' he says. 'At the same time, go into any pub in Islington and you'll see the same dynamic.'

This year, a joint project by the Place, South Bank and Sadler's Wells saw the development of In Your Rooms, a Shechter work that was performed at all three venues and became the contemporary-dance event of 2007. Next year, and his works will be performed in London, Barcelona, Munich and at the Jacob's Pillow Festival in the US. A Shechter piece features in the New Year episode of the C4 teen drama Skins.

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Letters to the Editor

While I certainly agree that there is a need to print much of that which the Guardian won't print, I fear that your blog (it is a blog, isn't it?) won't reach the same readership that The Guardian does.

All The same, every little drop of balance helps, so I applaud your initiative.

Paul Brandt, London

November 20, 2007

Editor's response: You are right, Paul, and we could use all the help we can get in broadcasting this new site.  Any announcements our readers can make, whether on the web or in printed newsletters would help.  Inserting a web link to our site would also be great.

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I know that we all need to be somewhat patient as you get your new site up and running, but one thing you MUST include is a list of links to more balanced information about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

There is much information out there, and it would be good to have the links located in one convenient place.

Noam Keller, Herzliya (Israel)

December 8, 2007

Editor's response: Thanks for the suggestion, Noam, but if you read the goals on the left side of this page you'll see that this doesn't quite fit in with the vision we have for this site.  Maybe we'll reconsider in the future. 

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And just to get some balance in here...

Do anti-Israel professors "tremble in fear" when they criticize Israel at Harvard and other American universities? Not likely, if you have any sense of what's going on on college campuses today where Israel-bashing is rampant among hard left faculty and students. But a Harvard professor named J. Lorand Matory who teaches anthropology and Afro-American studies, whined to the Harvard faculty last week that he "tremble[s] in fear" whenever he criticizes Israel. Well, he must tremble an awful lot, since he spends so much of his time criticizing Israel, a country he has never even visited and a country that he recently told an interviewer he has never even read a book about. Matory submitted a motion stating that "this faculty commits itself to fostering civil dialogue in which people with a broad range of perspectives feel safe and are encouraged to express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas." Nothing wrong with encouraging free speech as long as speech is free to people representing different perspectives. But Matory's motion received support from other paragons of political correctness, who are well-known for their advocacy of censorship of the "offensive" speech of others, but who are now complaining that there's not enough free speech for them at Harvard.

At Columbia University, on the other hand, a group of professors -- who are generally in sync with their extremist colleagues at Harvard -- are complaining that Columbia's President, Lee C. Bollinger, has too much freedom of speech when it comes to the Middle East. A campaign is underway to rebuke Bollinger for expressing his personal views about the Iranian dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Led by well-known radicals such as Eric Foner -- who complained that Bollinger's harsh description of Ahmadinejad was "completely inaccurate" -- these politically correct censors want to muzzle Bollinger. They also want to muzzle students, alumni, and other "outsiders," who have legitimate complaints about the Middle East Studies Department, which has become a wholly owned subsidiary of radical Islam.

It all seems so inconsistent unless you understand what the real agenda is, and then everything becomes completely clear and totally consistent. The agenda is Israel. If you're against Israel -- as Matory, Foner, and their ilk are -- then they want you to have complete freedom to speak against the Jewish state (as they certainly should and do). If, on the other hand, you're perceived as pro-Israel (or pro-American, for that matter), then suddenly you have no right to free speech. It is so transparently cynical that I'm amazed that any reasonable person actually falls for it.

The hypocrisy is rather easy to spot if you've been around long enough to remember when it was leaders of the radical left, led by MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, who were trying to intrude on the tenure process for political reasons. I recall vividly when Chomsky campaigned to prevent Columbia from granting a tenured position to Henry Kissinger. Chomsky spoke at a noisy rally against Kissinger's tenure. It was that same Chomsky who complained when I wrote a letter -- in response to a request from the former chairman of the political science department -- detailing misquotations, made-up facts, and other scholarly sins by anti-Israel extremist Norman Finkelstein and urging DePaul University to deny him tenure. I also remember when it was Professor Matory who tried to prevent former University President Lawrence H. Summers from exercising his freedom of speech with regard to Israel when he was president.

What I don't remember (because it didn't happen) are any complaints by these born-again freedom of speech phonies when Summers, as a mere professor, was prevented from making a speech to the University of California Board of Regents this September. Those political-correctniks who weren't actually demanding censorship of Summers were predictably silent because it wasn't one of theirs who was being censored. Nor do I remember (because it didn't happen) the hard left at Columbia protesting when the University provost defended an anti-Israel professor who was caught by a camera throwing a rock at an Israeli guardhouse. Nor do I remember (because it didn't happen) Professor Matory complaining when Israel's former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was prevented from speaking at Concordia University by a hard-left anti-Israel crowd of violent censors. For that matter, where was Columbia's Eric Foner when the leader of the Minutemen was chased off the stage at Columbia by another group of freedom-suppressing hooligans?

I challenge Matory and his hard left political cronies to show a history of supporting the free speech rights of those they disagree with. Has Matory defended the right of Professor James D. Watson, whose despicable theories of racial inferiority resulted in the cancellation of his speech at Rockefeller University? I, and many other genuine civil libertarians, have long histories of defending the free speech rights of those we most despise. I supported the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Ill. 40 years ago. I opposed the cancellation of a speech by Tom Paulin, who advocated the murder of Israelis. I defended, pro bono, a virulently anti-Israel Stanford professor who was fired for inciting violence. I opposed Harvard's attempt to prevent students from flying the Palestinian flag to commemorate the death of mass-murderer Yasser Arafat.

Don't expect the defense of those with whom they disagree from the Israel-bashers at Columbia, Harvard, and MIT. For them, it is "free speech for me, but not for thee!"

Freedom of speech to criticize Israel and the U.S. is alive and well at Harvard and most other universities. Matory need not "tremble in fear" of anything except his pernicious opinions being rebutted in the marketplace of ideas.

Freedom of speech to criticize Palestinian extremism is however in short supply at many American and European universities. Jewish students do actually "tremble in fear" of offending anti-Israel professors who have the power to downgrade and negatively recommend them. This is an issue that deserves serious attention in the real world of academia, rather than in Matory's ersatz world of topsy-turvy newspeak.

So let us all support complete free speech for every perspective relating to the Middle East, not just for perspectives supported by the hard left.