Gaza’s youth not ‘superfluous’

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By Yousef Munayyer

‘TO CUT down on gang-related crimes, policies could be put in place to curb the African-American population growth in places like Harlem and Compton. The government could consider cutting off welfare benefits for families in these urban areas to discourage births of blacks and cut down the supply of ‘superfluous young men’ who have nothing else to do in their lives but be preyed on by criminal gang leaders who give them a sense of belonging. Ultimately these policies are an effective way to limit gang related crimes.’’
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COMMENTS (108)

The absurdity and lack of logic in the above fictitious paragraph is overshadowed only by its offensive nature. Few would welcome such a view in 2010, but this kind of argument was made recently to an audience that received it with applause instead of disgust.

Martin Kramer, a fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, made this argument at a conference in Israel last month. The only difference was that the population he sought to limit was Palestinians in Gaza to prevent “economically superfluous young men’’ from joining radical groups. He said that “if society cannot offer dignified pursuits for the fourth and fifth and sixth sons, then someone else will.’’

He also supported lowering the fertility rate for Palestinians in Gaza and argued that this “will happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies for Palestinians with refugee status.’’

Society? In Kramer’s version of reality, it is Palestinian society that cannot offer dignified pursuits for their children. He seems to think Gaza exists in a vacuum. He seems to be ignorant of the events and actors that have created the current situation.

The children of Gaza are not “economically superfluous’’ because they were born into large families. Their inability to be productive members of society is not the fault of society itself, but the fault of the occupying and devastating force of the state of Israel. The occupation of Gaza and the subsequent siege and attacks by Israel have destroyed lives, industry and infrastructure. With the percentage of the population relying directly on food aid increasing from 60 percent to 80 percent in the past three years and unemployment at an all-time high, it is obvious that the children of Gaza are “superfluous’’ not simply because they are born, but because of what they are born into: a hell in a prison controlled from the outside by Israel.

read on...
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/03/03/gazas_youth_not_superfluous/

[azurnoir]

1. Really there was no need to use a fictitious statement

Andre Bauer said something close to that a little over a month ago

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x427117

[ProgressiveMuslim]

2. It's interesting to me that there is every any discussion about the obscene racism of the comments.

[Violet_Crumble]

3. Those comments are bigoted, revolting and disgusting...

And unfortunately during my time in this forum I've seen a few posters (one who's still a member of DU) mirror those same sentiments about Palestinians...

[LeftishBrit]

4. Kramer is a disgusting man who shouldn't be using Harvard as a platform for his racist/eugenicist

sentiments.


'‘TO CUT down on gang-related crimes, policies could be put in place to curb the African-American population growth in places like Harlem and Compton. The government could consider cutting off welfare benefits for families in these urban areas to discourage births of blacks and cut down the supply of ‘superfluous young men’ who have nothing else to do in their lives but be preyed on by criminal gang leaders who give them a sense of belonging. Ultimately these policies are an effective way to limit gang related crimes.’’
Discuss
COMMENTS (108)

The absurdity and lack of logic in the above fictitious paragraph is overshadowed only by its offensive nature. Few would welcome such a view in 2010, but this kind of argument was made recently to an audience that received it with applause instead of disgust.'


The first paragraph unfortunately DOES represent the views of many right-wing anti-welfare types, and similar views have certainly been expressed, slightly more genteelly, by academics, e.g. 'The Bell Curve'.

Which is no excuse for Kramer, or for those who share his half-baked eugenicist views.

[sabbat hunter]

5. words cannot describe

the insanity of the thoughts of Kramer

[ProgressiveMuslim]

6. Would Harvard provide a platform for someone calling for eugenics practiced on Jews? nt

[oberliner]

7. Interesting how you shift to "Jews" rather than "Israelis" in your rhetorical question

Lots of universities as prestigious as Harvard provide platforms to people who have some pretty nasty things to say about Israelis.

[Violet_Crumble]

9. Interesting how you only recently defended a 'supporter' of Israel doing just that...

Talk about double standards!

I'm sure some pretty nasty things are said about Israelis and like clockwork you'll be there to expend much energy voicing yr opposition and outrage. It's very telling when comments approaching advocation of genocide of Palestinians are voiced, you have very little, if anything at all to say...

[oberliner]

10. Interesting how you attacked an Israeli "supporter" for conflating the two

But have nothing to say about a "Palestinian supporter" doing the same thing.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

8. Because I'm so sure Kramer's ugly racism is limited to Gazans.

Puh-leeze.

Other than to criticize my use of Jews instead of Israelis, you've been eerily silent on this issue. Interesting.

[LeftishBrit]

12. I don't know about Harvard...

but Kevin McDonald is at the University of California at Long Beach, and is an antisemitic (and generally racist) 'scholar', who is now in process of founding a neofascist party. Admittedly, this university is not of the same intellectual eminence as Harvard; but it's a respectable university.

A significant minority of 'evolutionary psychologists', like McDonald, use their 'scholarship' at least in part as a cover for racism, and some of them work at quite prestigious universities. E.g. the particularly egregious evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, known for his views that (a) most of the problems of Africans are due to their intrinsically low IQs; (b) feminism is evil; (c) America should have Ann Coulter as president; she would have nuked those Muslims after 9-11! (need I go on!?) has a platform at the London School of Economics.


Sooner or later, you run into the problem of balancing academic freedom against anti-racism; though I would say that racist scholarship is generally also *bad* scholarship, and I have little academic respect, as well as absolute moral *disrespect*, for Kramer, McDonald, *or* Kanazawa.

[Ken Burch]

13. Actually, Harvard did use to have a nasty habit of restricting the number of Jews it admitted.

Still, that's not the same as saying they should never have been born.

[Scurrilous]

14. Harvard Crimson Op-Ed: On Kramer’s Statements

<snip>

"We address this op-ed to Beth Simmons (Director, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs), Jeffry Frieden and James Robinson (Acting Directors, WCIA), and Drew Faust (President, Harvard University).

We write as gravely concerned students and student group leaders representing over 16 groups throughout Harvard University. Our entire constituency can be viewed online.

We are disturbed by the racist and inhumane comments of Martin Kramer, Visiting Scholar at the National Security Studies Program at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. We have become even more alarmed that rather than taking a dissociating or even strictly neutral stance against such extremist and hateful statements, the Weatherhead Center issued a defensive response.

At the Herzliya Conference in Israel last month, Mr. Kramer, who in his own words provides advice on “U.S. policy options in the Middle East,” advocated measures to diminish Palestinian birth rates as a means of population control. Mr. Kramer stated that Israel’s siege on Gaza, which prohibits the entry of crucial humanitarian supplies, helps “break Gaza’s runaway population growth and there is some evidence that they have.” He suggests that this phenomenon “may begin to crack the culture of martyrdom, which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men.” Mr. Kramer’s public call to halt food, medicine, and humanitarian aid—which he calls “pro-natal subsidies”—would read as a cruel joke if it did not so egregiously violate the most basic norms of human decency. Such statements have been echoed by people in power and have even been directed at Israel’s Palestinian citizens: At the same conference in 2003, Israel’s current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Palestinian citizens of Israel a “demographic threat.”

Harvard professor Stephen M. Walt commented, “What if a prominent academic at Harvard declared that the United States had to make food scarcer for Hispanics so that they would have fewer children? Or what if someone at a prominent think tank noted that black Americans have higher crime rates than some other groups, and therefore it made good sense to put an end to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other welfare programs, because that would discourage African Americans from reproducing and thus constitute an effective anti-crime program?"

Had Mr. Kramer’s comments been directed at any other marginalized or minority groups—leaving aside the enormous challenge faced by Palestinians living in the impoverished enclosure of Gaza—we believe that the Weatherhead Center would not have hesitated to classify them as racist and hateful. It has described Mr. Kramer’s proclamations as “controversial,” an alarming position since less than a century ago similar remarks were made against African Americans and Jews. The characterization of his statements as merely “controversial” is offensive and dismisses their deeply racist nature."

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