40 No. 74 JUSTICE The attempt to mobilize the AHA in 2025 is only the most recent in a series of similar efforts that began in 2003 when what was then called Historians Against the War (HAW) was initially founded to protest the American invasion of Iraq.7 HAW organized national conferences and introduced resolutions opposing the war in Iraq and the policy of the American “empire” in general. Between 2014 and 2016, HAW shifted its focus to “Palestine/ Israel rather than US wars,”8 using the term “Palestine” to refer to a non-existing state comprising the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the summer of 2014, during one of the wars initiated by Hamas rocket fire, HAW endorsed the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, and set up a working group devoted to that issue. That summer it also circulated “a historian’s letter” to President Obama and members of Congress. Two hundred historians, some at very prominent institutions, signed the letter within 24 hours. Eventually, 2,200 historians signed the letter in the summer and fall of that year.9 The signatories stated that they were “profoundly disturbed that Israeli forces are killing and wounding so many Palestinian children,” and found “unacceptable the failure of United States elected officials to hold Israel accountable for such acts.” They called upon the President and politicians “to demand a cease-fire, the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and a permanent end” to Israel’s “blockade,” and urged suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel “until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes”10 (italics in original). In addition to introducing BDS-type resolutions at the AHA business meeting in 2015, HAW organized a roundtable that year titled, “What Is the Responsibility of Historians Regarding the Israel/Palestine Conflict?” Speakers argued that its purpose was to urge the AHA membership to concur with the assertions of the letter HAW had issued the previous summer. As a result, the large majority of historians were confronted by an activist minority that was willing to devote large amounts of resources, time, and effort for the purpose of politicizing the otherwise apolitical annual conference. In August 2014, I responded to the HAW letter with “A Pro-Hamas Left Emerges,” published in the online edition of the American Interest.11 I pointed out that the HAW letter said nothing about the fact that the Gaza war of that summer “began with acts of aggression by Hamas, that by July 31 at least 1,500 rockets had been fired at Israel, and by August 13, the number was over 3,000.” In fact, I noted, HAW did not even mention the word “Hamas.” It called for suspending aid to Israel as Hamas was still firing rockets and did not, as the European Union member States had done, call for the demilitarization of Hamas as a condition for lifting the blockade of Gaza, one that Israel had imposed to prevent smuggling of weapons. I wrote: “The historians’ demands were, in short, essentially the same as those made by Hamas. Satisfying these demands constituted its definition of victory: Lift the blockade without demilitarization, put Israel in the dock for alleged war crimes, and preserve Hamas’s arsenal so it could continue to threaten Israel.”12 The HAW letter adopted the language of rules of political warfare waged against Israel that had first been fashioned in 1948 and gained reinforcement at the United Nations starting in the 1970s. Reflecting the propaganda of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc, the anti-Zionist left on its long march through universities around the world since the 1960s, and the anti-Israeli “human rights” institutions at the United Nations, these linguistic rules essentially call for the erasure of the agency of Palestinian terrorist organizations. But they are ambiguous. On the one hand, they read as though Israel is the only actor resorting to force and that the PLO has no responsibility at all for the absence of peace. On the other hand, however, by focusing only on Israel’s alleged sins, they offer a justification for armed attacks against a state described as racist, colonialist, apartheid and even genocidal. As a result, the anti-Israeli propagandists, when denouncing Israel’s measures of military self-defense, never mentioned the invasions or 7. Historians Against the War, available at https://www. historiansagainstwar.org/ 8. The group’s account of its activities appears in “Our History,” HISTORIANS FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY, available at https://www.historiansforpeace.org/ourhistory/ 9. Supra note 7. 10. “Historians’ Letter to President Obama and Members of Congress,” HISTORIANS AGAINST THE WAR (July 31, 2014), available at https://historiansagainstwar.org/ gazapetition.html; see also, “Historians Urge President Obama to Change Policy on Israel-Palestine,” HISTORY NEWS NETWORK (Aug. 13, 2014), available at https:// www.hnn.us/article/historians-urge-president-to-changepolicy-on-isra 11. Jeffrey Herf, “A Pro-Hamas Left Emerges,” THE AMERICAN INTEREST (Aug. 26, 2014), available at http://www.the-american-interest.com/ articles/2014/08/26/a-pro-hamas-left-emerges/ 12. Ibid.
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