Opinion piece on Israel-Palestine debate mentions Tony Kushner and a blocked honorary degree

999 the walls all screamed, ‘Jews get out of Palestine. is Just and necessary. But the imperative, inescapable accompaniment to Israel is Palestine. A two-state solution is the only strategic and moral answer to the wars since 1948 that have left countless Palestinians bereft of home and dignity, living under an Israeli dominion as corrosive of its masters as it is punishing to its victims. Judt, who later suggested the binational idea was utopian, penned a provocation. Its spark was that the current impasse is untenable: Israel cannot be at once Jewish and democratic if it permanently disenfranchises millions of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. While I disagreed with his proposed resolution, I agree that the occupation is untenable and I found the hounding of Judt, who died last year of Lou Gehrig’s disease, an appalling instance of the methods of the relentless Israel-right-or-wrong bullies. Enter the second Tony of this saga, Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer-prize winning author of “Angels in America.” His honorary degree from the City University of New York gets blocked on May 2 after a trustee called Jeffrey Wiesenfeld — like Judt from a family of Holocaust survivors — suggests Kushner is an “extremist” opponent of Israel. Wiesenfeld, by the way, is not sure Palestinians are human given that they “worship death for their children.” For anyone familiar with the Judt saga, Kushner’s travails have a familiar ring. He’s interested in historical facts, which include Palestinians being driven from their homes in 1948; he’s appalled by the ongoing Israeli settlement policy and is a board member of an organization that has supported boycotting West Bank settlements (although Kushner told me he’s against a boycott); he’s mused about one state. A Jewish refuge HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030062