August 6, 2021

Dear President Davis,  

We write to you again to urge you to respond to this letter from the CUNY Alliance for Inclusion and to offer the commitments it seeks. The Alliance was formed to seek the repudiation of the PSC’s defamatory resolution attacking Israel. We note with dismay your recent statement seeking to pin broad political opposition to the PSC’s mind-numbing resolution on conservatives. The signatories below represent both the executive committee and the general membership of CAFI.

Your email of June 14, informing PSC members of the resolution passed by the Delegate Assembly reflects the anti-Israel premise of the Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People. In that email, you did not mention that Israel’s military actions were in direct response to the actions of Hamas, which fired thousands of rockets into Israel. Tragically and inevitably, this triggered Israel’s response that created the victims needed for world-wide condemnation of Israel. 

The absence of a statement of compassion for Israelis living under a terror assault from Gaza in addition to the solidarity with Palestinians, expressed both in your letter and in the resolution, is chilling. This is in line with the union’s condemnation of Israel as racist for defending its citizens and is a clear double standard. It ensures that Hamas’s terror and its rejection of any solution that leaves Israel standing will be supported in every confrontation it initiates with Israel. Your statement “The PSC will continue to challenge racism in all forms, including anti-Semitism, which we do not equate with criticism of Israeli state policy” thus comes across as hollow and refutes itself. You talk of race, but the majority of Jews in Israel are from the Middle East, while others either fled Europe or Africa to find a refuge from antisemitism. 

To make clear the insult and damage to liberal values caused by the PSC resolution, we place your statement and the union’s resolution in the context of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism for your consideration. A match between examples of antisemitism drawn from the IHRA definition and your letter are given below. The violations in the union resolution are even more egregious:

Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

The US killed at least 2,000 civilians in Syria alone in 2016, during the Obama administration, where there was no direct threat to US civilians. At least half of the casualties were children. Who knew? Russia killed at least 6,000 in Syria in the same year. Who cared? But Israel is condemned for defending its citizens from missiles launched by an annihilationist terror group, Hamas, which is not condemned or even named. 

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

You write, “The PSC will continue to challenge racism in all forms, including anti-Semitism,” but the charge of racism is applied only to Israel, while the racism of Hamas and the PA, both of whose power rests on endless racist incitement against Israel is not mentioned. In addition, labeling Israel a “settler colonial state” and denying Jewish indigeneity, while designating Palestinians as indigenous to the area, directly denies Jewish people a right to self-determination in their homeland.

Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

The PSC has not crossed this line. But its unqualified implicit support for Hamas empowers Hamas to continue to use all its resources to build up its arsenal of missiles for the next round. The union’s call for discussion is not to analyze the situation in the Middle East, or Hamas, or the PA, but to consider the boycott of Israel. Advancing the boycott of Israel on the heels of Hamas’ assault on Israel emboldens Hamas and provides the justification it seeks for the killing of Jews in the name of their radical ideology and extremist view of religion.

We call upon you to stand up to the culture of antisemitism pervading the PSC Delegate Assembly and to see that the PSC veers clear of antisemitism and stands against real human rights abuses. There are quite enough peoples in the world who struggle to breathe free. These include the people of Syria and Yemen, the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, and the Palestinian people living under terrorist and autocratic regimes.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves the suffering of two peoples. We have posted a statement that calls for sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis, acknowledges Israel’s right to defend its citizens against missile attacks, a right afforded all other nations, calls for mutual respect and civil conversation, and asks that members of the CUNY community not be harassed or threatened. We call upon you to show that you share these values by signing the CUNY Community Statement Encouraging Mutual Respect and Engagement towards a Just Middle East Peace and a CUNY Free of Harassment. We call on you to commit publicly to work with the Delegate Assembly to rescind the Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People and to put a full stop to plans to have show trials across all of CUNY with Israel in the dock. 

Civility, which you have raised as a value to uphold, must begin with honoring the right of people to define their own identity. It is not the prerogative of the PSC to determine that after two thousand years of exile, the Jewish people should remain a people without a homeland.

We look forward to your reply and hope we can work together to build a community of mutual respect within the PSC. 

Sincerely,  

CUNY Alliance for Inclusion Members:

Ilya Bratman, Baruch and John Jay Colleges

Lev Deych, Queens College

Jonathan Epstein, John Jay College

Azriel Genack, Queens College

Steven Greenbaum, Hunter College

Lana Karasik, College of Staten Island

Alexander Lisyansky, Queens College

Itzik Mano, City College

David Rumschitzki, City College

Vivian Shulman, College of Staten Island

Response from PSC President James Davis: None.