From Columbia Magazine: "Death Rights: A postmortem legal expert visits the “Bodies” exhibit

The following was published in Columbia Magazine, by Paul Hond.

There are the death-curious, the death-fixated, and the death-obsessed. Then there is Norman Cantor.

On a rainy, dreary day last autumn, Cantor ’67LAW, a soft-spoken academic from Hoboken who for 25 years taught a seminar at the Rutgers School of Law called Death and Dying, took the ferry to Manhattan to visit Bodies: The Exhibitionat the Exhibition Centre on Fulton Street. He wore a bright-blue windbreaker stitched with the seal of the Israel Tennis Center and kept it zipped up snugly over his retired professor’s paunch. He went into the old brick warehouse, got his senior discount, and entered the show with some misgivings.

Illustration by Daniel Zalkus

Inside the dimly lit rooms of the gallery were about 20 human bodies in various stages of dissection, preserved through the technique of plastination, by which water and lipids are replaced with polymers and dyes. The finished product is both remarkably lifelike and strangely inhuman. Facial features are erased in the process, destroying individuality. The flayed bodies in Cantor’s midst were arranged in familiar poses: A male cadaver, strung with muscle and ligaments, carried a football in the yearbook style of a collegiate star; a cadaver and a skeleton faced each other, fingertips touching, like dancers in a pair spin; and a sinewy conductor raised his baton, doubtless for a performance of “Funeral March of a Marionette.” Elsewhere, discrete organs and bodily systems, extracted in all their intricacy and fineness, lay miraculously intact, accompanied by eye-popping facts on wall placards (the human body contains 60,000 miles of blood vessels!) that buttressed the semblance of an anatomy lesson.

“Opponents of these types of exhibitions claim that they’re voyeuristic and disrespectful, and that it’s offensive to exploit human remains in that way,” Cantor said as his eye wandered over a skull veiled by a net of red blood vessels. “The bodies at this exhibition are even more controversial, because most, if not all of them, come from China, and the suspicion is that many of these people were executed Chinese prisoners. The exhibitors say they obtained the bodies legally, according to Chinese law. The problem is that China wasn’t really giving the prisoners’ families a chance to object to the sale of the bodies, and the exhibitors admit that they cannot show explicit consent by the decedents.”


In his new book, After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver, Cantor conducts a legal and historical examination of the disposition and treatment of the human corpse that leaves no stone unturned. Among entries on premortem planning, body snatching, medical dissection, autopsies, disposal methods (including green burials), and legal protections for the human carcass, Cantor devotes several pages to the mother of all cadaver spectacles, Body Worlds, created by the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who invented plastination in the 1970s and, like an artist, signs his works. Cantor deems the provenance of von Hagens’s cadavers “more kosher” than those at Bodies. “It does trouble me a little bit,” he said, pausing before a glass case containing a central nervous system, which resembled a large fishbone, “to think of the origins of these pieces.”


But Cantor is no moralist. He doesn’t object to such exhibitions, with their whiff of acetone and sideshow sleaze, so long as the decedents gave their permission. His attitude is pretty much “die and let live.” In After We Die, he cites an American poet who wanted his skin to be used to bind his own writings, and a man in the Galilee who wished for his body to be left in the wilderness and eaten. In both cases, the courts ruled that these methods were inherently disrespectful toward human remains. Cantor isn’t so sure. “I don’t think it would necessarily be a desecration of human remains if you incorporated them into a book, a pair of shoes, or a work of art,” he said. “If you wanted to wear a lock of someone’s hair in a locket, why not a piece of finger?”


Cantor’s interest in such matters can be traced back to 1973, when his stepbrother, a criminal attorney who had a chronic illness, passed away at age 39, leaving instructions for a New Orleans-style funeral. The widow was to wear white, and a Dixieland jazz band was to lead the procession from the funeral home in Trenton. (The family reluctantly complied.) Thirty years and many Death and Dying seminars later, Cantor read about Ted Williams, whose children were in a legal scuffle over whether baseball’s last .400 hitter should, according to his conflicting desires, be cryogenically frozen or cremated and scattered over the Florida Keys. Cantor wondered: Even if Williams’s wish to be resurrected were undisputed, would the responsible parties be bound to implement it if they found cryonics abhorrent? (Williams’s remains are currently being stored in pots of liquid nitrogen at a cryonics facility in Scottsdale, Arizona.) Could a corpse, in short, have legal rights?


The answer, of course, is yes — you can’t, for instance, rob a grave, or wantonly mistreat a body — but when it comes to the more whimsical aspirations of the departed, Cantor feels the courts are too restrictive. Which isn’t to say he’s laissez-faire. “There are limits of decency and good taste,” he said, walking past what looked like a nice rack of lamb from Lobel’s. “In 2009, von Hagens had a display in Germany in which two corpses were copulating. To me, that was beyond the pale. People objected strenuously, and in his next exhibition he did not use copulating corpses.”


Cantor skimmed other curiosities: a gallstone-afflicted gallbladder like a closed oyster, a slab of marble-textured lung, and the pinkish sea coral of a bronchial tree. He then paused at a skeleton with two titanium hip prosthetics. This reminded Cantor of his own hip implants — “I’ve been meaning to ask my doctor about that hip recall” — and of his years wearing down his cartilage on the hard tennis courts in Israel, where he lives half the year.


It also raised the question of Cantor’s own postmortem dreams. Since he has no children and expects no visitors, he dismissed a traditional burial as a waste of space and decent wood. “I’m leaning toward cremation,” he said, as if considering a color for his office. As described in After We Die, the cremation process takes two to four hours, and would leave about seven pounds of matter, minus his titanium bolts. His “cremains,” as they are known in the business, would be entrusted to his life partner, an Israeli woman who is averse to cremation (according to Cantor, there is one crematorium in Israel), but who has agreed to honor his wishes.


As for what he’d like done with his ashes, Cantor was undecided. There were really so many options. He mentioned a woman who sought to comply with her husband’s wishes by sprinkling his ashes in the sand trap of a beloved golf course (the management refused), though when it was suggested to Cantor that he do something similar on his favorite tennis court, he shook his head. Ashwise, his tastes lay on this side of the foul line. Still, he wouldn’t begrudge others the prerogative. “I would be willing to urge someone to do it in secret,” he said, “if that were truly the wish of the deceased.”
— Paul Hond

Keeping the Fun In Funerals

Death is typically a somber occasion full of sadness and mourning.  Yet funny things can and do happen in the disposal of human remains.  While writing my book “After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver,” I came to recognize and appreciate the entertainment value to be found in rites and rituals surrounding disposition of corpses.

            Humor is often intentionally injected into memorial proceedings such as a wake or funeral.  A cadaver represents the continuing embodiment of a particular human being and that being can be fondly evoked by recalling associated humorous expressions and acts.  It is good form in the course of a eulogy to recount humorous anecdotes about the late lamented one.  And the celebration of life that is the theme of many memorial services regularly includes reminiscences about funny incidents involving the deceased.  Thomas Lynch, a mortician and philosopher, describes the celebration of life phenomenon as capturing the “fun” in funeral and the “good” in goodbye.  Humorous remembrance is not incompatible with grief and mourning, but rather an appropriate part of the jumble of emotions accompanying a permanent loss.

           Eulogies strongly tend to glorify the departed or at least to focus on whatever positive qualities he or she had.   Jessica Mitford wryly commented about the exclusive focus on a decedent’s virtues: “No provision seems to have been made for the burial of a Heartily Disliked One, although the necessity for such must arise in the course of human events.”  Sometimes, though, the bitter truth will out, and sometimes that truth is humorous.  One widow, marking a forty-year marriage to her departed spouse, remarked: “This is the first night in all those years that I know exactly where he really is!” At another funeral, an incredulous son piped up during the eulogies:

“Quit telling all of these lies.  My mother was a mean person and everyone here knows it!”

            The wake – a period of hours or days set aside for visitation of the cadaver and its mourning family – can also be an occasion for injection of entertainment and humor.  A wake can serve to preserve a lifetime image that the deceased cultivated.  When my step-brother, a flamboyant criminal trial lawyer, died at age 39, he left instructions for a New Orleans style wake in Trenton, New Jersey.  That meant Dixie-land jazz at the funeral home and mourners dressed in white.  In Pittsburgh, an avid football fan dictated that his cadaver be posed at his wake sitting in his favorite rocking chair with a t.v. remote control and beer in hand.  

Some subcultures have adopted unusual customs in conducting a wake.  Nudists have been known to be laid out naked for viewing, with some of their wake visitors following suit.  In 1991, his colleagues gathered to recall and honor the fallen Inka Dink the clown. Inka Dink was laid out in full regalia, including yellow wig, immense red bow tie, red striped stockings, and giant yellow shoes. Many of those who came to pay their respects also wore full clown regalia. In another subculture, Irish wakes were sometimes boisterous affairs, including storytelling, singing, dancing, and card playing (occasionally propping the corpse up in a chair and dealing it in).

            The epitaph – an inscription on a stone grave marker – was not commonly a vehicle for humorous expression.  Cost of inscription varied by length, so epitaphs were usually terse, like “RIP” (requiescat in pace or rest in peace), “gone to rest,” or “asleep in Jesus.”  An epitaph’s message was also usually somber, frequently a reminder of the inevitability of death.  Memento mori (remember you must die) was a frequent expression; a spent hourglass drawn on the tombstone often conveyed the same dreary message.  Yet even while acknowledging the unavoidability of death, epitaphs sometimes reflected a bemused resignation rather than dread.  An example from a Connecticut churchyard:

            We must all die, there is no doubt;

            Your glass is running – mine is out.

A similar bemusement can be found in ways that members of some trades found to mark their demise.  An author’s tombstone read “FINIS” while an artist’s stone read: “here lies a finished artist.”  On actress Oldfield’s gravestone, the inscription read:

            This we must own in justice to her shade,

            Tis the first bad exit Oldfield ever made.

When Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in Looney Tunes cartoons, died in 1989, his tombstone repeated his signature line: “That’s all, folks!”

            My favorite epitaphs are those that demonstrate an acute sense of humor on the part of the deceased and/or their descendants.  In these instances, perhaps the underlying thought is that a humorous epitaph enhances the chances of perpetuating one’s memory. An example: “Here lies Johnny Yeast; Pardon me for not rising.” Another example is the notation on a grave in a Princeton, New Jersey, cemetery:

“I told you I was sick.”  A West Virginia miner left instructions for cremation and composed his epitaph: “I made an ash of myself.”  A locally renowned housewife and cook had a recipe carved on her gravestone along with the message “I always said the only way you would get this recipe was over my dead body.”

            Epitaphs sometimes reflect an acerbic wit casting the deceased, or his trade, in a derogatory light.  An example: “Owen Moore is gone away, Owin’ more than he could pay.”  Lawyers have been notorious objects of ironic wit.  One example:

            See how God works his wonders now and then

            Here lies a lawyer and an honest man.

Similarly, lawyer John Strange’s epitaph reads: “Here lies an honest lawyer, and that is Strange.”  Yet other trades have also been the object of satiric wit.  A San Francisco money lender is memorialized:

            Here lies old thirty-five per cent;

            The more he made, the more he lent;

            The more he got, the more he craved;

            The more he made, the more he shaved;

            Great God! Can such a soul be saved?

One editor’s tombstone inscription reads:  

            Here lies an Editor

            Snooks if you will;

            In mercy Kind Providence

            Let him lie still

            He lied for his living: so

            He lived while he lied

            When he could not lie longer

            He lied down and died

            The putative shrewish wife is sometimes commemorated with acerbic wit. A tombstone in one New England graveyard reads: “Here lies my wife, poor Molly, let her lie, She finds repose at last, and so do I.”   Another inscription: “Here lies my poor wife, much lamented; She’s happy and I’m contented.”  But some widowers are more vituperative in their epitaphs for departed spouses.  In a Rhode Island cemetery:

            Here lies wife 2d of old Wing Rogers

            She’s safe from cares, and I from bothers;

            If death had known thee as well as I

            He’d ne’er had stopped, but passed thee by,

            I wish him joy, but much I fear

            He’ll rue the day he came thee near.

Widows have been known to respond with their own acerbic commentary.  When her late husband left the admonition on his grave “As I am now, so you must be; Therefore, prepare to follow me,” the widow added in response: “To follow you I’m not content, Unless I know which way you went.” 

            The previous examples all reflect purposeful injection of humorous elements into the solemn context of disposal of human remains.  Sometimes, inadvertent humor results from mishaps or misjudgments in the disposal of remains.  The cremains after cremation can weigh pounds and are not always easy to dispatch.  Efforts to scatter ashes at sea can become messy when wind blows the remains back on board.  Nor are moving ships the only wind hazard.  A New Jersey legislator died after requesting that his cremains be scattered over his beloved Cape Cod Bay. The late legislator’s son, an amateur pilot, decided to fulfill his father’s wish. The son rented a small plane and flew over Cape Cod Bay. At an appropriate moment, he slid open the cockpit cover and turned over the urn—only to have the roaring wind plaster all the cremains against his face and the back of the cockpit -- not exactly what the decedent had in mind when requesting “scattering” over the bay.

Other examples of bad judgment in scattering cremains at beloved places have surfaced in recent years.  In May 2002, a widow’s effort to have her husband’s ashes scattered over his favorite team’s baseball park ended badly. The cruising plane caused a terrorism scare and prompted evacuation of the entire stadium.  In November 2005, Christopher Noteboom ran onto the playing field during a football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers.  Noteboom was attempting to dispose of the cremains of his mother, an avid Eagles fan, in a way that would make her “always a part of Lincoln Field and of the Eagles.” As Noteboom ran, a fine powder trailed from a plastic bag until he dropped to his knees at the thirty-yard line and crossed himself. He was promptly arrested. The arresting officers expressed zero tolerance for someone who runs onto the playing field and dumps an unknown substance in a crowded stadium.

            Other surviving relatives have displayed more common sense, as well as humor, in disposing of a loved one’s cremains.  A widow sought to scatter her late husband’s ashes in a 6^th hole sand trap where her late husband, an avid golfer, had often stood.  When the golf club denied permission for such disposal, the widow stowed the cremains in her own golf bag and covertly raked them into the sand trap.  Consider also comedian Steve Allen’s idea of an appropriate placement for a gum manufacturer’s ashes.  Allen announced on a 1981 t.v. broadcast: “Morden W. Chicklett, the chewing gum heir, died today.  In accordance with his wishes, he will be cremated and his ashes will be stuck to a chair in a nearby restaurant.”  Comedian Jerry Seinfeld has humorously derided the whole cremation enterprise, commenting: “It’s kind of like covering up a crime – burn the body, scatter the ashes around.  As far as anyone is concerned, the whole thing never happened.” 

            The point, again, is that humor has an appropriate place even in the solemn context of disposal of human remains.  Don’t be too hesitant to keep the fun in funerals!  Just do it in a carefully considered manner.

Meet Norman's New Book- After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver

After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver

Norman L. Cantor

This new book presents more than you thought you ever wanted to know about the handling of human remains.  After We Die (AWD) not only chronicles a cadaver’s physical state during various forms of disposal (including possible steps to inhibit bodily decomposition), it also discusses a cadaver’s legal and moral status. 

AWD describes who controls the fate of human remains and the applicable legal bounds.  Control of a cadaver is explored with regard not only to mode and place of disposition of remains, but also to use of cadaveric body parts in education, research, tissue transplant, and procreation.  AWD ascribes enforceable rights to the insentient cadaver, not just to survivors reacting to what is happening to a corpse.  AWD also discusses proposals for increasing cadaveric organ supplies including a presumed consent regime for obtaining body parts critically needed for transplant.

As to moral standing of cadavers, AWD analyses the “quasi-human” status attributed to remains and the protections therefore accorded to cadavers.  The book reflects on the limits that “post-mortem human dignity” poses on disposal choices by either a decedent or an agent entitled to make final dispositions.  Is it intrinsically disrespectful to exploit human remains in public educational displays, in artistic settings, or for utilitarian purposes as in furniture or clothes? 

To order this book, click here and for a 30% discount use code Y28 at checkout.   Or use Amazon or B & N.

Death and Dying: The Sequel

            I always knew I was a sick man.  I just wasn’t sure how to define the malady.  Was it urangst – a primal fear of death?  Or was it a milder syndrome described by Stephen Holden as “upper middle class angst as old age and death loom, and there is suddenly too much time to fill”?   

            The main symptom – a preternatural absorption with the process of dying – appeared decades ago.  Since 1973, I have been immersed in scholarship about the legal aspects of death and dying.  The object was to outline the best methodology – in both practical and legal terms – for dying with a modicum of dignity.  The product was dozens of articles in medical and legal journals and 3 books featuring titles like “Advance Directives and the Pursuit of Death with Dignity.”  By 2005, when I retired from law teaching, I had pretty much said all I cared to about end-of-life decisionmaking – the range of options open to dying medical patients and their families. 

              Then a new vista opened.  I realized that there’s a natural segue between absorption in the dying process and preoccupation with people’s post-mortem fate – the disposition of human remains.  Raw emotions, sharp disputes, and legal uncertainties are just as ripe and just as gripping in the post-mortem as pre-mortem context.  This revelation was spurred by an episode involving the remains of baseball great Ted Williams.  After Williams died in 2002, his daughter sought to fulfill his 1996 will dictating that his remains be cremated and his ashes scattered over the Florida Keys where he had spent many happy times fishing.  Ted’s son wanted to have his father’s corpse frozen and transferred to a cryonic storage facility in Arizona so it would be ready for restoration whenever science might master the technique of revivifying dead human beings.  The son contended that his father had, while hospitalized, changed his mind about cremation.

            Many things about the story of Ted Williams’ remains caught my attention.  From a legal perspective, which of the several interested parties really controlled the disposition of the corpse?  The executor responsible for implementing the will?  The son who believed that his father wanted to be frozen?  The daughter who believed that her father wanted to be cremated as stated in his will?  And even if someone could reliably discern Ted Williams’ wishes, would those wishes be binding on the responsible parties?  What if Ted Williams had indeed wanted cryonic disposition, but his descendants believed that such a disposition was a futile waste of money, or sacrilegious, or overly burdensome, or just plain undignified?   Would the responsible parties still be bound to implement his wishes?  In short, I wondered about the legal principles governing disposition of a human corpse, especially the question of self-determination concerning one’s earthly remains.  Can a corpse have legal rights?   Is a corpse legally entitled to have prior instructions carried out?  Or do the descendants of the deceased have their own right to govern disposition of the human remains?

            Thus was born the sequel to Death and Dying.  For the next several years, I researched my current manuscript “After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver.”  This meant learning not just who legally controls the fate of a corpse, but also what range of dispositions is available for human remains.  I examined what physical consequences accompany each means of disposal, including sepulcher, cremation, cryonic freezing, or mummification.  Some people believe that the physical fate of human remains is irrelevant to a now-dead person, so they are indifferent about post-mortem bodily transformations.  I am not one of them.  Somehow it matters to me whether a buried corpse retains its shape and form or is transformed into a moldy, shapeless, shrunken mass.  I wanted to know whether corporeal disintegration is inevitable and at what pace it occurs.  I learned that a typical buried cadaver will deteriorate to a blackened hulk within two decades, and to a moldy skeleton within forty years.

One lesson of “After We Die” is that advance planning can be useful in the post-mortem context.  A deceased’s wishes usually govern the fate of their corpse.  (Once it was demonstrated that Ted Williams had indeed expressed a late wish for cryonic preservation, his corpse was transferred to Arizona to become a corpsicle).  It behooves a person to articulate his or her preferences for post-mortem disposal.  One’s conception of post-mortem dignity may diverge from that of one’s survivors.  Or survivors may differ among themselves in projecting what the deceased’s wishes would have been if they had only been expressed.  And if beneficence toward fellow humans is one of your inclinations, you might well consider, in formulating instructions, the continuing roles available to the human cadaver as teacher (anatomy lab), scientific research subject, and supplier of used body parts. 

Your good deeds can continue after you die.  Donation of cadaveric tissue benefits the needy recipient, prolongs the physical presence of the deceased, and adds a poignant memory about the late lamented one’s generosity.  Also, dissection of cadavers continues to serve as an important element of medical education.  A Boston University medical student recently expressed her gratitude to the body donor whose corpse provided a critical introduction to the wonders of human anatomy.  She labeled the donation “an exponential gift from one man to eight future doctors to hundreds of patients.”   Likewise, researchers in both academia and industry need cadavers or parts to help expand medical knowledge about bodily afflictions and cures as well as safety products.  Post-mortem examination of the body’s interior sometimes provides insights unavailable from live research subjects – as with brain research regarding dementia or the effects of concussive trauma.

The good news, then, is that a live person is entitled to shape their corpse’s fate in many constructive ways.  Post-mortem human dignity imposes only a few constraints.  For example, don’t try to extend your sexuality beyond your lifetime because necrophilia is an intrinsic violation of post-mortem human dignity even when based on consent. 

The bad news is that a corpse has extremely limited capacity to enforce its predecessor’s instructions.  Implementation of controversial wishes for cadaver disposal may depend on survivors’ willingness to overcome any qualms about the indignity or distaste of a chosen course.   It might help the implementation of disposal wishes if the probable survivors are alerted to any unconventional or controversial plans and their cooperation enlisted.  In November 2009, an 80 year-old Israeli, in failing health, sought a judicial declaration upholding his request to have his corpse thrown to wild animal scavengers on the Golan Heights.  The Israeli court rejected the petition, ruling that such disposal would constitute an intolerable offense to human dignity.  The result is not surprising given the religiously influenced cultural norms that prevail in Israel.  Putting aside practical objections like unsightly debris of skeletonized remains, the question remains whether a decedent’s wish to become fodder for wild animals really represents a debasement violative of post-mortem human dignity.  Is this route any more degrading than burial at sea to become food for the fishes?  Instead of turning to a court, wouldn’t the Israeli man have been better off soliciting advance cooperation from likely survivors?

All this background about “After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver” is just to whet your appetite.  Don’t bother yet to look for it on the shelves at Barnes & Noble.  According to publisher Georgetown University Press, publication is scheduled for Fall 2010.  I will be happy to provide a timely reminder. 

 

          - Norman L. Cantor

No Peace from the Jewish Voice for Peace

            A couple of months ago, I signed up for the newsletter of the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).  As a half-time resident of Tel Aviv, I desperately want peace in the Middle East.  And I subscribe to the JVP’s stated yearning for security, justice, and peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.  Moreover, I too see the extensive Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the harsh treatment of its Palestinian residents (via checkpoints and barrier walls) as significant obstacles to peace.  So I figured that I and JVP have enough shared perspective to warrant my interest.    

            At the same time, I have always perceived some obstacles to peace posed by the Arab or Palestinian side.  Arab rejectionism of peace has been a long-time factor -- starting in the 1948 war, reaching a crescendo in 1967 with the Arab League’s 3 no’s (“no” to recognition, “no” to negotiation, and “no” to peace), continuing through the Yom Kippur war of 1973, and extending to Arafat’s rejection of an offer of a Palestinian state at Camp David in 2000 and the P.A.’s rejection of Ehud Olmert’s peace proposal in 2008.  The annihilationist determination of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and others has also struck me as a threat to peace in the Middle East.  When Israel left Gaza and Southern Lebanon, the opening was quickly seized to rain rockets onto civilian targets in Southern Israel and Kiryat Shmona; today, Iran supplies even longer-range, more powerful missiles for those annihilationists to pursue their goal.  (My Tel Aviv apartment is now within their range, to say nothing of Iran’s nuclear threat).  Hamas, dedicated both to destruction of Israel and to radical fundamentalism on every inch of Palestine, somehow looms in my mind as an obstruction to peace.  Its violent seizure of control of Gaza in the summer of 2007, its cross-border launching of over 10,000 warheads, its fundamentalist incitement in Gaza mosques and schools, and its repression of all dissent seems to me to bode ill for Palestinian commitment to peaceful co-existence.  I don’t know the degree of Hamas influence on the West Bank, but its control of Gaza and its potential role in a Palestinian state are real concerns within a peace process.

            In short, I hoped that JVP, in its stated dedication to a just peace, might address the spectrum of concerns confronting the peace process.  What I have confronted instead in the dispatches from JVP is a barrage of shrill, one-sided condemnation of anything and everything about the State of Israel. 

            JVP appears to uncritically accept and endorse every negative portrayal of Israel.  An example is a November 9, 2009, posting by Rela Mazali featuring a letter from an Israeli Arab university student group urging a Norwegian university to boycott Israeli academic institutions.  The students assert that Israeli universities suppress free expression, in particular by harassing any lecturer dissenting from “official ideology.”  I know enough about Israeli universities (having spent 6 years on the faculty at Tel Aviv University) to know that academic freedom is quite robust in Israel.  Indeed, Israeli academia includes numerous figures, like Neve Gordon at Ben Gurion University, who regularly disseminate decidedly unorthodox views on government policy.  The very existence of dissident student groups and their freedom to publicly chastise their universities, as in the letter in question, tends to refute the claim of suppression of academic freedom.  JVP, though, expresses no doubt or question about the students’ accusations.

            Another JVP tenet is unquestioning acceptance of the Goldstone report as gospel truth.  A November 10 post from Lincoln Shlensky adopts the Goldstone perspective that the Gaza operation of January 2009 was an unprovoked assault (rather than an effort to protect 300,000 Israeli civilians from the 80 to 100 warheads per day then raining down on them).  You don’t have to be a legal scholar (though I was) to recognize the distortions and inadequacies apparent in the Goldstone report.  That report exhibits shameful myopia in its exclusive reliance on Gazan sources thoroughly intimidated by Hamas and its glib dismissal of contemporary press reports contradicting witness assertions. (Of course, Israel didn’t help matters by its stupid refusal to cooperate with the Goldstone mission).  The portrayal of Operation Cast Lead as a purely gratuitous assault amazes and antagonizes the vast majority of Israelis who applauded the IDF effort to end the regular cross-border rocket barrage. Indeed, the recent eclipse of the peace movement within Israel is in part due to widespread recognition that the tactics of both Hamas and Hezbollah warranted a military response.    

A group that wants to promote a just peace has to understand the needs and perspectives of both sides.  Bias can be expressed by exclusive focus on the asserted misdeeds of one side to a dispute.  JVP almost gloatingly trumpets the sad Israeli phenomena of disproportionate funding of orthodox Jewish schools and yeshivas as well as the disadvantages of non-orthodox residents from orthodox religious regulation of marriage, divorce, and conversion. (Nov. 9).  Hello!!!!???  Secular and non-orthodox Jews are well aware of those phenomena and struggle (through democratic channels) to correct the injustices involved.  Parallel struggles go on as to infrastructure discrimination against the Arab sector.  These flaws in Israel’s operation are well known and warrant the democratic struggle.  But JVP utters nary a word about Hamas’ promotion of Sharia, Hamas’ violent suppression of any dissent, and constant inculcation of religious hatred.  Not a whisper about the systematic abuse of Christian Palestinians by fundamentalist Moslems.  JVP’s tunnel vision is blind to the rockets and missiles being smuggled into annihilationist hands.   

The bottom line is that JVP’s tone of unrelenting hostility distressingly echoes the daily anti-zionist polemic seeking to delegitimize Israel.  JVP does nothing to promote Israeli acceptance of a 2-state solution to the Middle East conflict when it ignores the legitimate security concerns of Israel’s population.  I’m not sure which is more depressing – the image of Jewish settlers pouring their talents and energies into Judah and Samaria rather than the Negev and the Galilee, or the image of bright Jewish observers (such as JVP) spouting derision of Israel.  Neither of these forces is advancing a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.    

- Norman L. Cantor

Absorbing the Blows

                                                                                                            Sept. 28, 2009

                Getting back to Israel after 6 months feels somewhat like being placed in a transparent punching bag.  The blows are coming from both the Left and the Right, fast and furious.  But while the puncher is sometimes visible and you can see the blow coming, it still wrenches the gut as it lands.

            Start with the Goldstone Report suggesting that Israel was guilty of war crimes in the Gaza Operation of January 2009.  Richard Goldstone, for all his good intentions, has served as a dupe of anti-zionist forces bent on delegitimizing and destroying Israel.  The so-called objective report is shamefully one-sided in adopting a Hamas perspective on all history and events.  It  is shockingly myopic in its reliance on Gazan sources which are thoroughly intimidated by Hamas and able only to parrot the party line dictated by Hamas.  Even when the report is aware of contemporaneous news reports quoting Palestinians verifying Hamas warfare provoking Israeli response, the report chooses to dismiss that possibility. The report makes outrageous accusations about “deliberate” killing of civilians.  At the same time, there are enough events described to realize that some serious misdeeds probably did occur in Gaza despite Israel’s military’s overall effort to spare civilian casualties.  Israel’s zeal to punish Hamas’ terrorism against Israelis led to some excesses, some of which warrant punishment.  That is not a happy realization.  But Israel continues to investigate and, where appropriate, should punish perpetrators.  In the meantime, the myopic Goldstone report serves mainly as ammunition for anti-zionist efforts to entirely delegitimize the State of Israel.

            Then, consider the op-ed piece recently published in both Los Angeles and London by a political science professor at Ben Gurion University in Be’ersheva.  Professor Neve Gordon is so upset by Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank that he calls on the rest of the world to boycott and “suspend cooperation with Israel.”  He sees this as the only way to bring Israel to its senses and accept what he apparently sees as an outstretched Palestinian hand of peace.  Forget for a moment that Neve Gordon’s perspective is so distorted that he sees the years of Hamas rockets and escalation of launches in December 2008 as a mere “protest” against Gaza’s economic isolation by Israel and Egypt (as opposed to terroristic belligerence by an entity, Hamas, whose predominant object is the total destruction of Israel).  Didn’t Professor Gordon consider that his call would, as it did, infuriate contributors and undermine the future of Ben Gurion University – an institution serving the well being not just of Gordon and fellow faculty, but of 25,000 students of various ethnic backgrounds? 

            Ben Gurion University’s administration is reacting by wringing its hands in frustration, deploring Professor Gordon’s call for a boycott but claiming it cannot sanction Neve Gordon because he is tenured.  Tenure does guarantee freedom of thought and speech to academics in their work.   However, tenure doesn’t provide absolute immunity from misbehavior; tenured academics can be punished for “good cause” shown.  In Professor Gordon’s case, he has ostensibly done at least 2 things that interfere with the academic freedom of others – two acts which warrant investigation of whether they constitute “good cause.”  Gordon forum-shopped and sued for libel a fellow Israeli academic who had noted the association between Gordon’s writing and the writing of Holocaust deniers.  That law suit, in its effort to suppress what was clearly protected opinion by a fellow academic, was itself arguably a violation of academic freedom.  And surely Neve Gordon is jeopardizing and undermining the academic freedom of his colleagues in every Israeli university by seeking an end to cooperation with Israeli institutions.  Israeli academics utilize and depend on their interactions with others in the academic world.

            The blows from the right are just as discouraging.  This weekend’s Yediot Ahronoth does an expose of some extremist settlers in the West Bank, documenting their determination to continue unlawful activities aimed at distracting and harassing the Israeli army, as well as their deliberate provocations and repression of the surrounding Arab population.  All this is a sickening reminder of the difficulty of eventually extracting masses of settlers in order to reach a 2-state solution.  Without such a solution, Israel would ultimately have to either expel innocent Arab residents or treat them as second class in a manner inconsistent with Israel’s own declaration of independence and governing principles. In the same vein of discouraging blows from the right, Yediot’s Yair Lapid (not a rightist himself) reminds us how many billions of shekels have been diverted to by-pass roads and other measures to defend the settlers.  These are resources that could have been used to develop the Negev and the Galilee in a way far more conducive to Israel’s long-range well being than being stuck in the West Bank.  It is incredibly sad to see the pioneer spirit and energy of the young settlers being spilled into the West Bank rather than the Negev or Galilee.

            Another continuing blow is the adherence of right-wing religious parties to anti-democratic agendas like discrimination against non-orthodox Jews (in marriage, divorce, and conversion) and discrimination against Arabs (in housing).  (But the matter of the right wing’s betrayal of Israel’s founding principles is reserved for a later dispatch).  

            On the brighter side, 75 year-old Leonard Cohen gave a wonderful concert on September 24 to a sold-out stadium in Ramat Gan.  The enthralled crowd was swept with enthusiasm and Cohen responded with intensity for over 2 and ½ hours.  Of course, a stain on this happy event came from the ideologues of the Palestinian Campaign for the Artistic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – the activist group that torpedoed Cohen’s effort to spread his concern and good will to a Palestinian audience in Ramallah.  These ideologues forced cancellation of Cohen’s scheduled appearance in Ramallah on the ground that any acknowledgement of a positive Israeli side would be legitimizing the totally evil Zionist entity.  

This is the same kind of unadulterated enmity that prompted a claque of entertainment figures to condemn the Toronto International Film Festival’s effort to honor Israel’s film industry.  The claque’s effort at suppression of Israeli artists curbs the very talented Israelis (Arab and Jewish alike) who often portray the suffering of both sides in the Holy Land conflict and promote a message of reconciliation.  (If you didn’t see Waltz with Bashir, you should have!  And on September 26, a primarily Arabic-language film, Ajeemi, co-directed by an Israeli Arab and an Israeli Jew, won best film at Israel’s Oscar awards).  The claque of ideologues took no prisoners and missed no distortions in their efforts to portray Israel as pure pariah.  Their admonition that Tel Aviv was built on the ruins of Arab villages is illustrative.  That assertion was shocking on two counts – first because it is patently false and second because it implies the illegitimacy of Tel Aviv, the heart of Israel.  

If this dispatch makes me sound a little woozy, you’ll have to understand.  All these punches have been absorbed in the scant 10 days since getting back.  And they don’t include the stoning directed by Palestinians against Jews on the Temple Mount yesterday or the rocket squad liquidated in Gaza 2 days ago while transporting missiles for launching into Israel.  Hopefully, by the time of my next dispatch, I will have recovered my equilibrium.  

- Norman L. Cantor

The Great Disconect

           In the New York Times of January 25, 2009, journalist Ethan Bronner describes vastly divergent narratives of anti-Zionists and defenders of Israel. The anti-Zionist construct is that Israel is a neo-colonialist aggressor uninterested in peace (Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and Israel’s unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza to the contrary notwithstanding). From my observation point in Tel Aviv, I get to witness all too clearly the great disconnect between anti-Zionist rhetoric and reality. I get to see Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas striving to destroy Israel with missiles getting closer and closer to my balcony.

Along with the neo-colonialist myth, the anti-Zionists have invented new definitions of human rights as we once knew them. Here are a couple of examples.

National Self Defense 
          We know that Hamas fired more than 8,000 rockets and mortars at civilians in Israel, increasing the rate to 80 per day as of December 21, 2008. Even the anti-Zionists concede that Israel has a right to self defense. But they define it in a peculiar fashion.
According to the anti-Zionists, efforts to eliminate hostile assaults must be carefully calibrated in terms of weaponry and casualties – at least if the people ultimately being protected are disfavored Zionist Jews. Jet planes, even if precision targeted, are grossly unfair. Casualty rates cannot be too unbalanced, and a 10 to 1 ratio is improper. However, when the civilian victims being protected against hostile assault were Muslims, as in the Balkans in 1999, none of this mattered. When NATO forces were using high-altitude bombing to protect Muslims, and when civilian Serbian casualties were 3 times as great as military casualties, not a single suggestion of disproportionate force was heard. Hamas’ dedication to the destruction of Israel by any means possible doesn’t matter to anti-Zionists in assessing proportionality. Never mind that Hamas’ version of self defense features liquidating civilians and leaving as many Jewish bodies as possible plastered to the walls of pizzerias and other gathering places.

Freedom of Expression
           Democracy depends on diversity of views. Anti-Zionists relish free speech – so long as it supports their own doctrinaire positions. Hamas in Gaza provides some examples. Hamas is all for a free press reporting Israeli aggression. But if a Gazan wants to report Hamas atrocities – e.g., firing missiles from civilian-crowded areas – that person is subject to liquidation. When a N.Y. Times reporter witnessed a summary civilian execution by Hamas fighters in a Gazan hospital, she was immediately subject to threats. Every foreign correspondent in Gaza is well aware of Hamas’ intimidation.

Gazan leaders now want to bar the BBC from Gaza because, they say, the BBC is too biased. They’ve got that wrong. The BBC is biased, all right, which is why I’m fond of calling them the unofficial propaganda wing of Hamas. But in the topsy-turvy lexicon of anti-Zionists, free speech means “unbiased” only in the sense of uninhibitedly supporting the orthodox view. In other words, the BBC is not biased enough in favor of Hamas to enjoy free speech in Gaza.

Another, more peripheral example of anti-Zionist freedom of expression comes out of Malmo, Sweden. On January 25, 2009, a couple of hundred Swedes got a permit and held a pro-Israel demonstration. This was an orderly demonstration featuring songs like Hinai Ma Tov. Suddenly, pro-Hamas counter-demonstrators started hurling rocks and bottles at the pro-Israel demonstrators. Swedish police promptly dispersed the pro-Israel demonstration. (For the incredulous, it’s on You Tube). You don’t have to be a former constitutional law professor to know that this is the antithesis of freedom of expression. Both U.S. Supreme Court precedent and Israeli Supreme Court precedent establish that freedom of expression entails protection of demonstrators regardless of their point of view. Try telling that to Hamas or Hezbollah or any other anti-Zionist advocate of “free speech.” Or perhaps get busy learning the new anti-Zionist lexicon of human rights.