In Response to Dividing a City

I am not a racist, an anti-Semite, or a Nazi. However, those who read my column on October 18, “A City Divided,” understandably got the impression that I was.

I attempted to begin the article with a point echoed by Israeli author Avraham B. Yehoshua: "The Gentiles feel threatened by Jews, because they have a double identity. The Gentile does not grasp that concept and so he might, under some conditions, react to it with violence."

I was not as graceful in my communication of this idea. I used improper phrasing and I was overly careless in my wording, which led to fuming charges of racism from readers. For example, I used a broad brush to typify all Israelis as “crazy religious zealots,” although this was not my intent.

My friend Benjamin Shalva, recently returned to the US after a year of rabbinical studies in Israel, is not someone I think of as a crazy religious zealot. But zealots do exist in Israel, on both sides of the apartheid fence, and my sloppiness made it seem as if I meant to characterize all Israelis as crazy religious zealots, despite the strong presence of many secular, sane, and peaceful citizens of Israel.

By not differentiating between them, I rightly opened myself to charges of racism. The mistake was due to careless writing, and not to a flaw in my character. Although I am not a racist, I agree that my words were understandably interpreted as such, and I apologize.

My carelessness was due to the nature of the brainstorm. The article was a first draft, and not fit for publication. Although the publication of this article is due to the breakdown of oversight on many levels, I am unquestionably the most careless of the lot. I submitted a rough draft as a publishable article, and two weeks later, when asked if the piece could be run although I had received no revision, I agreed.

There was one blatant factual inaccuracy, when I said, “nobody can convert to Judaism—you are either born Jewish or you are not.” My intent was to illustrate that a Jewish person is both a member of a religion and of an ethnic group. While outsiders may convert to the religion, many Orthodox Jews would agree that in some ways you are either born Jewish, or you are not.

I was attempting to highlight this exclusivity that has enabled the Jewish religion to remain a distinct cultural entity for millennia, and explore the idea that this exclusion in modern day Israel could be hampering the peace process. The argument was not essential to the article, and was not even fully formed in my own mind. As I said, this was a first draft; a simple revision would have been enough to clarify the ambiguous, erase the unintended, and focus the piece onto peace.

For peace was the goal of the article, and not raving dissent. The thesis proves this—I argued that by taking the city of Jerusalem away from both sides, and making it a diplomatic, international city that housed the new UN headquarters, more options for peaceful resolution would be viable.

My intent in writing this article was not to outrage or offend; however, these are frequent techniques that I have been in the habit of using in this column. My familiarity with these techniques, and my failure to recognize when to use them effectively, has led to my crass deconstruction of an extremely complex issue by using very broad and inappropriate characterizations.

I regret the discomfiture this misunderstanding has produced, among the PSU campus, the Jewish community, the Vanguard, and myself. I plan to take the advice of the Jewish Student Union and PSUnity, who convinced me that I do not know enough about this complex issue to speak so frankly about it. I intend to learn more about the conflict, the Israelis, and the Palestinians through these organizations.

The preceding post contains the article that the Portland State Vanguard has refused to print in its pages.

Caelan MacTavish brainstormed an idea for an article, and the article was published two weeks later, without any revision whatsoever, due to a lack of content. In order to fill space, the article was thrown into publication before it was ready.

The Opinion Editor received the article "A City Divided" on October 4, one week after the term began. MacTavish expected some sort of revision, as he usually received from editors at the Vanguard in the past year that he worked there.

Some of the article was flat out wrong. But it was a brainstorm. The fact that it was published has been higlighted elsewhere as a grave error in the editorial process.

What still frustrates MacTavish is the Vanguard's refusal to allow him to explain his intentions.

After the article was published, MacTavish met with the Opinion Editor, as well as the Managing Editor and the Editor-in-Chief (both of whom were fired from the Vanguard last year for unprofessional conduct) and discussed the understandable outrage over the column.

MacTavish requested that however the response be made, his intentions would be made knnown.

Instead, an apology and retraction were written that acknowledged the mistake on the editor's part, and made no attempt to show that MacTavish's intentions were not racist. This lack prodded MacTavish to speak with Paul Haist, editor of the Jewish Review, to defend his reputation.

For this MacTavish was fired from the Vanguard, and the editors declined to allow him to explain to his readers what his actual intention was in the unedited and inflammatory article.

Instead MacTavish has taken the time and effort to forward the unpublished article above to as many offended readers as he can, to let them know his intention was not what has thus far been portrayed in the media.

In addition to the regret and embarrassment of the article being published in the first place, Caelan MacTavish feels optimistic that this situation has illuminated many people of the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and may have prodded more individuals to learn more about it. He looks forward to contributing wiser suggestions to the peace process in the future.