I’m thinking of introducing a WTF tag for some of my blog posts — this one for instance. WTF? This is old news but it still leaves me scratching my head and asking: WTF? It started with Richard Klagsbrun who drew attention at the National Post and on his own blog to an OISE student named Jennifer Peto and her Master’s thesis titled “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education.” On December 7th, 2010, two Tory MPP’s, Steve Clark and Peter Shurman, took it up in Ontario’s Legislature and persuaded Minister of Citizen and Immigration, Eric Hoskins, to get in on the act. The next day, Macleans.ca hopped on the bandwagon, followed two days later by a mocking ad hominem piece by Jonathan Kay in the National Post.
I’d wager that not one of the trolls listed above bothered to read Peto’s thesis before clicking the post button. You can download the thesis here. I chose to reserve comment until I had a chance to do the responsible thing, which explains why I’m coming at this 3 months after lightning struck the Legislature.
I’m disinclined to entertain (much) discussion of the issues of anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism nor the merits of Peto’s thesis in this space. I say only that the piece is well-written and sufficiently thought-provoking to warrant a read, if for no other reason than to serve as a catalyst for further thought and study. In fact, I offer my endorsement as the highest compliment because, to be honest, Peto writes against my interest; I should be clamouring with the journos and politicos. But I don’t, because there are more important things than feeling justified in my narrow patch of ground.\
Rather than engaging in self-justification, it’s more fruitful to ask: why did a relatively modest offering attract so much attention? Why did our elected representatives waste thousands of our tax dollars talking about a Master’s thesis they’d never even read? I thought they limited themselves to brutalizing the reputations of Ph.D students and left Master’s students to their coffee shops and vintage clothing stores. There are probably several reasons for this.
1) Peto was instrumental in organizing Toronto-based demonstrations during the Israeli assault on Gaza. She was also an organizer of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). As a consequence, it is likely she was already in their sights.
2) Both Jason Kenney and Michael Ignatieff have condemned the IAW, so critiques of Israeli policies have no traction anywhere at the federal level. They state that sanctions against Israel constitute specific targeting of a single group and since this group is Jewish, the call for sanctions is therefore anti-Semitic. This absolute refusal to acknowledge the possibility of legitimate criticism seems to trickle down to other levels of government.
3) Peto’s thesis begins with an analysis of Jewish whiteness. After World War II, North American Jews acquired status as they became white. Perhaps another way of putting this is that, while Jews had historically been regarded as a distinctive and marginalized racial group, that distinctiveness gradually disappeared as their status improved. Because, at least for Ashkenazi Jews, their skin colour was the same as that of the dominant group’s, they could blend in and their distinctiveness disappeared, allowing them to benefit from white privilege without necessarily turning their minds to the fact that such privilege often came from the exploitation of other more racialized groups, most notably blacks and indigenous peoples.
Her point is straight-forward: many Jews occupy positions of power and that power can be used to marginalize other peoples. If a history of victimization is perpetually invoked to silence criticism of Jews who wield power over and against others, then those others will never know an end to their own victimization. The problem is that Peto identifies power with whiteness and implicitly associates whiteness with colonialism and oppression. That sends Jonathan Kay into a modest apoplexy. Could Peto have offended white privilege? Is that the reason for all this backlash? As my grandma used to say: the louder the hen squawks, the closer you are to the eggs.
The puzzle for me is: why don’t I share their resentment? After all, I’m a white privileged goyim. Shouldn’t I feel threatened and indignant at the suggestion that I’m complicit in the oppression of others? Which leads me to the 4th reason I think Peto has raised the hackles of so many white men.
4) Peto’s is a (tacitly) a queer reading, and let’s face it, straight white men have trouble with queer anything. From her statement of context, she makes it clear that her analysis of Jewish identity is informed by her understanding of identity along other axes: “My experience [of transitioning to anti-Zionism] was less painful because I was already an outcast in the Jewish community, and estranged from my family for being atheist, queer, gender-queer, feminist and generally outspoken in a highly normative, Orthodox setting.” Her subsequent analysis of two Holocaust education programs, March of Remembrance and Hope, and March of the Living, becomes an analysis of how these programs work to construct Jewish identity in the service of Zionist aims which privilege that identity at the expense of highly racialized Palestinian and Arab identities.
The only people who give thought to the contingent nature of identity (and the fact that identity is constructed either by them or for them) are those whose identity is threatened. The only reason people don’t feel threatened in this way is that they have sufficient power to control the context of their identity. In other posts, I have alluded to my own loss of control over my context and how that experience forced me to confront my personal identity and to become more active in its management. Because straight white men have more power than anyone else, they tend to be the least introspective when it comes matters of identity. I’m one of them; trust me; I know what I’m talking about. Peto’s thesis implicitly demands that we straight white men offer an accounting. That’s infuriating. It’s courageous of her. But it’s infuriating.
5) The IAW people are supposed to be a hive-mind of rabble-rousers. It is disconcerting when a major academic institution like the University of Toronto grants people the space to develop thinking that can offer a coherent intellectual grounding for an unpopular cause. It’s not surprising then, that Peto’s supervisor, Dr. Sheryl Nestel, should also be harassed, along with OISE and U. of T. Maybe what irks Peto’s critics most of all is that she’s smart. Real smart.
The irony of this situation is that when privileged white men from the Ontario Legislature seek to interfere with the internal affairs of an academic institution, and to silence a young woman who identifies on the margins of society, their actions lend credence to her thesis.