Jots & Tittles

When Politics Clash

Readers have recently called our attention to the fact that Harvard University professor Paul D. Hanson, a member of our editorial advisory board, has signed a petition calling on Harvard to sell its investments in companies—like IBM and McDonalds—that do business in Israel—a movement based on a similar boycott years ago to object to South African apartheid.

A committee of cosigners explained that such investments should be made only on condition “that Israel end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and return to its pre-1967 borders, that it vacate its settlements in these territories, that it end government-sanctioned torture and deportation of prisoners and suspects, and that it compensate Palestinian refugees who were forced to leave their homes when the state of Israel was founded…As terrible as suicide bombings are, they do not justify continued occupation or abrogation of the human rights of the Palestinians…Suicide attacks are likely to continue until Palestinians have a real stake in peace and are convinced that Israel will leave the territories permanently.”

Professor Jacob Neusner of Bard College, the most prolific Jewish studies author of our time, wrote a letter to another Harvard professor who had signed the petition, William Graham, with whom Neusner had organized and written a book entitled Three Faiths, One God:

“Dear Bill: