Last week, Tulane freshman Dylan Borne used the pages of the Tulane Hullabaloo and its online presence to advocate that Tulane University should follow the lead of the New Orleans City Council and support “Palestine.”

As the editor of the online Crescent City Jewish News and a former Features Editor and Executive Editor of the Tulane student newspaper during the early 1970s, I feel it incumbent that I should respond as a Tulane alumnus.

Among many of the fallacies associated with the opinion piece is the tacit implication that the New Orleans City Council does indeed support “Palestine.” In fact, as reported by the Crescent City Jewish News, the withdrawal of its resolution R-18-5 on January 26, sent a signal that indicated, despite their support of human rights, they were not ready to cross the Rubicon and denounce Israel as BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) advocates had hoped. The resolution that passed initially was done under suspension of the council’s rules and without an opportunity for debate near the end of the January 12 agenda.

Almost immediately, BDS forces trumpeted the New Orleans City Council for becoming the first Southern city to pass such a measure, even though the resolution did not have the force of law. In fact, no resolution does.

Publicly two weeks hence, what Council members Jason Williams and mayor-elect LaToya Cantrell objected to most was being used by pro-BDS forces to advance their agenda of delegitimizing the State of Israel. The now-withdrawn resolution was originally intended as a simple statement advancing the idea that the city and the incoming administration was on record as being in support of human rights. Instead, headlines broadcast around the world suggested there was a specific political stance taken by the New Orleans City Council against Israel where, in fact, none existed.

The tenor of the piece by the freshman was to advocate for an academic boycott of Israel by Tulane and many of the spurious charges leveled in the piece alleged war crimes and suppression of the Palestinian people by the university’s institutional partners at Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University, Hebrew University, the University of Haifa and Technion Israel Institute of Technology.

While these allegations have some historical facts within them, they are easily disproven when exposed to the light of truth. As an example, Borne states that Hebrew University was built “on land stolen in 1968.” Borne fails to mention that the cornerstone for Hebrew University was laid in 1918 and that the original campus opened on Mt. Scopus on April 1, 1925. Hebrew University operated with impunity for three decades on that site until the 1948 war for independence at which time Jordan threatened and denied students and faculty access to the facilities. That campus was evacuated and abandoned.

Hebrew University relocated to a new campus at Givat Ram in western Jerusalem and a new medical campus was later opened in partnership with Hadassah in the Ein Kerem neighborhood. Following the defeat and retreat of Jordanian forces in the Six Day War in 1967, the Mt. Scopus campus was restored to Hebrew University and later combined with its facilities at Givat Ram and Ein Kerem.

This hardly seems like an attempt to steal land, but rather represents land forfeited in war and reclaimed decades later by Israel through the blood, sweat and industry of its military.  

The same holds true for Borne’s characterization of  the so-called “Apartheid Wall.” Prior to the beginning of construction of what Israel calls its “Security Fence,” some 1,000 innocent Israeli civilians were killed and many thousands more injured as a result of unchecked terrorist homicide bombs. Once the structure was completed, the number of Israelis killed by terrorist activities was reduced to a trickle. Because of these security measures, Israelis are no longer at great risk from sniper attacks along busy highways or from the detonation of explosive devices. Terrorists today are increasingly relying on stabbing attacks with knives or ramming attacks with motorized vehicles as a result of Israel’s beefed up security.

While one man’s “Apartheid Wall” is another man’s “Security Fence,” most reasonable people can see its construction was necessitated by the abandonment of the Oslo Accords by which the Palestinian Authority had agreed to confiscate illegal weapons and dismantle terrorist networks.  If Technion cooperated with the Israeli government in building this series of security structures, it should be heralded, not villified, for helping to save hundreds of innocent lives and ensuring that fear would not creep into the everyday lives of Israelis.

With a Jewish student population standing at 26%, much of Tulane University is already acquainted with what BDS is really all about. It aims not only to delegitimize, but to destabilize and dismantle the Jewish State. The danger of the BDS movement is that it attempts to wrap itself under the well-intended cloak of human rights for the Palestinians, while ignoring those very same ideals for the Israelis.

Therefore, I encourage my alma mater to stay its course and not be persuaded to sever its ties to these sound Israeli academic institutions in favor of connecting to organizations whose underlying aim is not human rights at all, but, in reality, the destruction of Israel and a potential bloodbath for its citizens.

Like the New Orleans City Council, Tulane University has already taken a side in this debate and it is not likely to deviate at this juncture because of lies and innuendo proffered by well-meaning, but misinformed protestors like Borne.