The reason University geography professor Ron Wixman left geo-political studies at Columbia University is because nobody took him seriously.
“If you’re pro-something, it’s because you’re Jewish. If you’re anti-something, it’s because you’re Jewish,” Wixman said Sept. 6 in a PLC lecture hall. Nonetheless, he continued his research for 40 years and tied together some ideas that created a lot of wrinkled foreheads and concurring hums and nods.
The purpose of Wixman’s nearly two-hour lecture was “to clear up the rationale of U.S. policy and why it came to be what it is.”
Wixman thinks it needs clarification because people have been led to believe that the United States entered World War II to stop Hitler’s massacres, that America supported the Israeli state because they opposed anti-Semitism, and lastly, that Jews in America were so influential that they persuaded the U.S. government to enter World War II to sign the Balfour Declaration to allow Jews a state.
“So many university people start from their paradigm first, then interpret the facts,” Wixman said. “The problem in terms of understanding the founding of Israel is that you have to understand what was happening” before World War I. “Everyone has their paradigm, and tonight I’m going to give you mine, based on 40 years of studying the region.”
Starting his lecture with “a brief history of how the Middle East came to be,” which took more than 30 minutes, Wixman broke down how nationalism was constructing the new-world view.
“People wanted to nationalize their cities, and Jews found themselves truly isolated. There was no longer the option to assimilate because you couldn’t,” Wixman said.
“Everybody was rising up for their own ends (economically and politically),” including Nazi Germany. “But there were no ethnic or religious hatreds in the area,” Wixman said to the crowd of fewer than 40 people. “Europeans didn’t care about Middle Easterners, they cared about their own ends.”
Eventually, after the British, French and Russians minimized the Ottoman Empire’s world domination by promising land to the Arabs for going to war against them, the Middle Eastern region was free for the taking, he explained.
What Wixman called “the single most important fact about the Middle East” was known by only one person in PLC 180. The first country to support the Jews in their Zionist quest was the same country to first offer aid to the Jews during the Holocaust and the same country that liberated Auschwitz – Russia.
“Why did the U.S. change its mind about recognizing Israel?” Wixman asked, looking around the room for a response. “Because Joseph Stalin did!
“America was scared of the Soviets and had to prevent Israel from becoming a Soviet stronghold in the Middle East. We did it for geo-political reasons,” Wixman said.
“The paranoia against the Soviets led the U.S. to support Israel,” Wixman said. “It’s not because anybody gave two shits about the Jews; its because it is a very strong ally in the Middle East.”
Wixman explained that the American government was “pissed off for being dragged into another war” and that supporting the Balfour Declaration, which gave the Jews Palestine, was a decision that the led America to a position of world domination. Upset toward the British for its presence in another war, the United States decided to take control.
“America then had to be the leader of the world to diminish those wars,” he said. “But there was a problem. The Soviets hadn’t been defeated.”
A Communist government was about to be installed in Israel after Eastern Europe and China were taken over by the Soviets.
“Therefore, the U.S. set about to have a new policy, and this is where Israel comes in,” Wixman said.
He explored the evolution of conflict in the Middle-East and that European countries, with foreign policies based on lies and selfishness, all sought to redraw the map of Near, Middle and Far East in a way that benefited their ends.
Britain, France and Russia fought for geo-political control of the most valuable trade region in the world.
“When the British, French and Russians began to cut up the Near East, Middle East and Far East, the Western attitudes began to take shape” because the they wanted to “gobble up the Ottoman Empire and dominate the world,” Wixman said.
Vigorously opposing the notion that the United States entered World War II because of the traditionally accepted view that America could no longer stand to watch innocent civilians get massacred, Wixman said that nationalism and world domination were in the hearts and minds of world leaders.
Because the British believed the U.S. government was under the political control of the Jews, the British
Christians, who thought the Jews could influence the American government, proposed the Balfour Declaration as the way to “get the Jews in America to get the American president to get into World War I,” Wixman said.
“For anyone who thinks Jews control America,” Wixman said, referring to those who believe the Jewish roots of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearl were guiding factors in America’s support for the Israeli state, “I encourage you to open your eyes and drop your anti-Semitism.”
“American policy is not driven by oil, it is driven by geo-politics,” Wixman said in closing. “It’s the right-wing nationalists of America that support Israel – and it’s the Pentagon that wanted to have Israel as a military and geo-political ally.”
“Jews had no influence and they still don’t,” Wixman added.
“The problem is that U.S. foreign policy is consistent but it isn’t right. The problem is that when you try to interpret the world through your ideological view instead of looking at the facts first, you end up with radicals,” Wixman said. “I can critique the American policies because I believe in the American ideals.”
“Professor Wixman gave a strong and unique view of history with masterful knowledge of geo-politics in the Middle East,” Judaic studies professor Jonathan Seidel said after the lecture.
“The value of little-known facts is interesting, and his knowledge of maps is astounding,” Seidel said.
The organizer of the event, George Beres, said it was not surprise to him that Wixman gave a “lively and well-balanced performance.”
“He knows Jewish tradition better than anyone. He’s not perfection, but he comes pretty close to it,” Beres said. “It’s good to have these questions posed on campus.”
Beres represents the Specifica Forum, a group that meets weekly in Chiles 128, usually on Fridays at 4p.m. The forum will be hosting another lecture by Wixman in November, after he returns from traveling abroad, and has several upcoming events and discussions over the next several months.
For more information e-mail George Beres at [email protected].
Professor criticizes U.S. policies and rationale
Daily Emerald
September 18, 2005
Geography professor Ron Wixman explains the history of the Middle East in a talk in 180 PLC on Sept. 6.
0
More to Discover