Michael Desch

Desch is a former student of anti-Israel academic, John Mearsheimer, who is notorious for anti-Semitic claims that the “Israel Lobby" in the United States exercises undue influence over U.S. foreign policy and is detrimental to U.S. interests. Desch has promoted similar ideas in his own writings. 

As of July 2021, Desch was a professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science of the University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame) in Indiana. 

As of January 2016, he was the founding director of the Notre Dame’s International Security Center (NDISC).

Accusing Israel of Abusing the Holocaust

In a March 2012 article published on the anti-Israel Mondoweiss website, titled “Holocaust consciousness-raising = harming Palestinians,” Desch accused former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of manipulating the Jewish collective memory of the Holocaust “to affect younger people” and achieve political gain.

In the article, Desch claimed that the “young are susceptible to the sort of manipulation Netanyahu and other hard liners count on to perpetuate a state of ‘existential panic’ among Jews in Israel and the Diaspora that justifies so many problematic things from the continuing occupation to preventive war against Iran.”

Desch went on to quote anti-Israel journalist Akiva Eldar, who argued that “Associations with the Holocaust help ease digestion of the injustices of the occupation and increase support for Israel.”

Eldar’s quote continued: “[A] 2008 study by Wohl and Branscombe… found the Jewish subjects who were reminded of the Holocaust and of the Jewish people having been victims in the past tended to see the Palestinians as the root of the conflict more than other subjects did. In other words, the researchers concluded, in order to protect itself from extinction, the group legitimizes harming others.”

On April 12, 2004, Desch wrote an article titled “Abusing the Holocaust” in The American Conservative, where he discussed U.S. policy with Israel. In the article, he argued that “policymakers” use the Holocaust to manipulate the U.S. to “unequivocally support the state of Israel."
 
Desch wrote: “The belief that we must atone for our inaction during the Holocaust makes the U.S. commitment to the state of Israel so sensitive that there is a tendency to question the motives of anyone critical of the Jewish state and its policies.”

Desch then concluded that: “the Holocaust analogy’s demand for unquestioning American support for all the policies of the Jewish state undermines U.S. national interests in the Middle East.”

Desch repeated this argument in another article, published on August 16, 2010, titled:“The Myth of Abandonment: The Use and Abuse of the Holocaust Analogy.”

Demonizing Israel

In a Spring 2015 article published in the alumni magazine of Notre Dame, titled “Show Some Restraint,” Desch claimed that the main obstacle to peace between Israel and Palestinians, “according to [m]ost dispassionate observers… is less Palestinian recalcitrance” and “more the domestic political gridlock in Israel created by a minority of the population doggedly committed to establishing a ‘greater Israel’ from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.”  

Desch also cited Israel as an example of “dominant” country that exemplifies “reckless driving,” arguing that “[e]xamples of such irresponsible behavior include Israel’s continued colonization of Palestinian territory, which is making the two-state solution to that conflict impossible. Without such a solution, Israel will be forced to make the existential choice between being a Jewish and a democratic state.”

Desch then called for the U.S. to adopt a “tough love” approach to Israel to force it to make peace with the Palestinians, and to warn Israel that if it does not, “they will find themselves alone.” Desch also implied that the U.S. should cut off foreign aid to Israel if the peace process does not progress.

On May 27, 2010, Desch wrote an article, published on Mondoweiss, titled: “Liberal Zionism, oxymoron,” asserting that “Liberalism and Zionism are at root inconsistent.”

 

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.

In the article, Desch claimed: “Ben Gurion and other early Liberal Zionists pursued a pretty aggressive nationalist agenda of conquest and ethnic cleansing and only begrudgingly respected the rights of non-Jews in the new state.”

On June 1, 2010, Desch published an article in The American Conservative titled “Divestment Diversion.” In the article, Desch argued that “The politically influential faction in power in Israel is willing to sacrifice democracy to maintain the current dimensions of the Jewish state, and is so committed to the Greater Israel project that they are willing to defy the U.S. president.” 

In a June 2010 article published on Mondoweiss, Desch wrote: “supporters of Israel… deflect criticism of particular Israeli government policies... to encourage the Israelization of American foreign policy. ”

In a March 2005 article published in The American Conservative, Desch wrote that “the corrupt nature of the Israeli political system encourages behavior that is inconsistent with how we hope democratic politics will operate.” Desch went on to describe the Israeli political system as believing that “it should also employ all other means at its disposal to destroy its enemies.”

Supporting Anti-Israel Campus Activism

Desch signed a letter, authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization and published on January 25, 2017, condemning Fordham University’s decision to block the establishment of a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Fordham.

In 2016, Fordham reportedly blocked the formation of a Fordham SJP chapter “based on the reported behavior of other [SJP] chapters on other campuses,” indicating that “the establishment of a local branch could be ‘polarizing’ and pose a safety concern to students and faculty.”

Desch and other letter signatories demanded that Fordham “immediately rescind the rejection of SJP as a student group on campus, apologize to the students affected by this harmful decision, and reaffirm Fordham’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom.” 

The petitioners also highlighted SJP’s BDS activity, characterizing SJP’s efforts to promote anti-Israel boycott as part of “a time-honored non-violent mode of political expression.” The petition accused Fordham’s administration of a “fundamental misunderstanding of what boycotts are, the purpose of a university, and the goals of SJP.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in cooperation with Palestine Legal (PL), and civil rights attorney Alan Levine sued Fordham on behalf of four students in April 2017. 

A New York court annulled Fordham’s decision in August 2019, mandating that the university recognize SJP as an official club. In December 2020, the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division overturned the lower court’s August 2019 decision. 

Whitewashing BDS

In Desch’s June 2010 “Divestment Diversion” article, he questioned the tactical effectiveness of BDS but pointed out its value as part of a larger U.S. national security strategy to move away from the “perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel.” 

Desch concluded that “the BDS movement... has the educational value of raising consciousness about the occupation and it has the symbolic value of mobilizing opponents of Israeli policies around a concrete program of action. Perhaps these are sufficient reasons to support the movement irrespective of its prospects for success.”

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true. 

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”  

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.

Social Media and Weblinks

Twitter:https://twitter.com/mcdesch

University Website:https://politicalscience.nd.edu/people/michael-c-desch/

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-desch-aaa71626/