An open letter to the administration and student government of UC Davis:

Although the recent UC Davis divestment resolution against Israel ended in a deadlock, I suppose there is still some silver lining: at least half the people casting votes can be considered clear-headed.  But as for the others, please tell me — what exactly were you thinking?

Did you buy into former President Jimmy Carter’s accusation condemning Israel as an apartheid state?  If so, how do you explain Israeli Arabs having a higher standard of living than Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, or Iraq?  or a higher literacy rate?  or higher life expectancy?  Does it mean nothing to you that Israel is the only democracy in the Mideast?  that only in Israel women have equal rights and equal education?  that Palestinians who work for Israeli companies like Sodastream oppose the boycott you advocate to save them from oppression?  

If you are outraged by the unequal treatment of Israeli Arabs, how do you explain that Israel has Arab members of Parliament proportional to its Arab citizenry?  How is it symptomatic of apartheid that Israel has or has had an Arab deputy Prime Minister, an Arab Supreme Court justice, an Arab national soccer team captain, and an Arab Miss Israel?

Where is your outrage toward apartheid in Arab countries that oppress their Jewish minorities?  Or are there too few Jews for you to apply the term apartheid in Arab countries that are essentially Judenrein?  In case the flight of oppressed Jews from Arab countries is news to you, look at the decline in Jewish populations from 1948 until today:

Algeria:           140,000 to <100

Egypt:             80,000 to <100

Iraq:                 150,000 to 40

Lebanon:         30,000 to 30

Libya:              30,000 to 0

Morocco:         500,000 to 700

Syria:               30,000 to <100

Yemen:            55,000 to <200

You denounce the “illegal occupation” of captured territories.  Why are you not equally concerned about the Jewish-owned land appropriated by Arab governments — all 38,625 square miles of it (compared to Israel’s total area of 7,992 square miles)?  Why do you continue to condemn Israel as intransigent when it was the Palestinian Authority that rejected Ehud Barak’s offer — after the Camp David Accords of 2000 — to return an equivalent amount of territory to that captured in the defensive 1967 war?  And by what twisted rationalization do you fault Israel for not sitting down to negotiate with Arab leaders who continue to call for Israel’s destruction and deny its right to exist?

As for those of you who abstained:  were you lacking clarity or courage?

Why are you not railing against the far more egregious human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and myriad other nations all over the globe?  Even if political correctness is the explanation, please explain why quantifiable Arab oppression is accepted while fabricated Israeli “oppression” is not.

But if the real reason, as seems likely, is old-fashioned anti-Semitism, then let’s trade in that antiseptic euphemism and call your worldview what it really is:  Jew-hatred, plain and simple.

UC Davis was once an institution to be proud of.  For the first time in thirty years, I am ashamed of my alma mater.

Rabbi Yonason (Jonathan) Goldson, Class of 1983