The bias on college campuses among student groups and faculty who brand Israel as a pariah or “apartheid” state has reached a fever pitch following the recent conflict in Gaza. The problem hit close to home when a pro-Israel campus group recently canceled the Saint Louis University appearance of Jacob Shrybman of the Sderot Media Center. The cancellation came on the heels of an event at DePaul University in Chicago at which Shrybman was reportedly escorted to his car by security personnel after protests became heated. The campus group at SLU, part of the StandWithUs organization, decided that it was unwise for Shrybman to appear at the campus because of potential anti-Israel demonstrations.
How low can things go? Shrybman is a resident of Sderot, the southern Israel town targeted by thousands of Kassam and Katyusha rockets fired by Hamas terrorists. These multi-year rocket assaults, which receive far less prominent coverage in the media than the Gaza incursion, form the rationale for Israel’s retailation against Gaza. And yet a resident and spokesman for that very town is pressured into silence rather than sharing his experience and perspective with a student audience.
The anger directed toward Israel, and the tendency to treat Hamas as a noble freedom-fighting organization, is epidemic on campuses today. Khaled Abu Toameh, a moderate Israeli Arab who frequently contributes to Israeli and American publications, titled his latest piece, “Are U.S. College Campuses Preparing the next Jihadis?” Toameh reports that during a recent visit to several university campuses in the United States, he “discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah,” home of the Palestinian Authority.
Toameh goes on to report that he was told “that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s ‘apartheid system’ is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead (in Gaza) was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.” He added that on one campus he was “condemned as an ‘idiot’ because I said that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the January 2006 election because they were fed up with the Palestinian Authority.” Significantly, Toameh notes that the most viciously anti-Israel protesters and disrupters are not Arab or Muslim students, but members of fringe groups which single Israel out for hateful condemnation while they ignore the genocide in Darfur, or find a way to blame even that tragedy on Israel.
Such pro-Israel professors as Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School have been pelted with eggs or booed off of stages on several campuses in the United States. Adding to and compounding the anti-Israel hysteria are calls by such groups as the British Academic Union for all Western universities to fully sever any ties they might have with their colleagues on Israeli college campuses.
You have to ignore an awful lot of facts to advocate with a straight face the positions espoused by some of these radical groups. For instance, that Israel is a bastion of Western-style democracy in the Middle East; that almost two million Arabs live, work and recreate alongside their fellow Jewish Israelis; that the gender equality supported in Israel from the start is a pipe dream in a number of surrounding nations; and, of course, that Sderot and nearby communites had been pelted for years by rockets before Israel took the recent against against Gaza, whose residents had chosen a Hamas-controlled government.
Certainly any group is free to offer up any position it likes about the Middle East situation, as long as it does not advocate violence in furtherance of its views. But college campuses are supposed to be bastions of free speech, and efforts by any group to intimidate or threaten a school to deny a variety of viewpoints are both irresponsible and contrary to effective democracy.
Fortunately, our local universities, and a majority of American universities, have resisted such immoral pressures. A full-page ad, organized by leading university presidents and chancellors in The New York Times stated, “If you boycott Israel, boycott us.” The ad was signed by the chancellors of Washington University, the University of Missouri -Columbia and UM-St. Louis.
It is a sad day for academia and the vital traditions of academic freedom that it often is no longer physically safe for a pro-Israel speaker to appear on a college campus. We urge our university leaders to re-double their efforts to assure that any and all speakers are given the protection and respect needed to assure that our institutions of higher education will remain true marketplaces of ideas.
During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.
Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.
I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.
I was also told that top Fatah operative Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for masterminding terror attacks against Israeli civilians, was thrown behind bars simply because he was trying to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Furthermore, I was told that all the talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist propaganda” and that Yasser Arafat had done wonderful things for his people, including the establishment of schools, hospitals and universities.
The good news is that these remarks were made only by a minority of people on the campuses who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian,” although the overwhelming majority of them are not Palestinians or even Arabs or Muslims.
The bad news is that these groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don’t like to hear.
When the self-designated “pro-Palestinian” lobbyists are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse.
On one campus, for example, I was condemned as an “idiot” because I said that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the January 2006 election because they were fed up with financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority.
On another campus, I was dubbed as a “mouthpiece for the Zionists” because I said that Israel has a free media. There was another campus where someone told me that I was a ‘liar” because I said that Barghouti was sentenced to five life terms because of his role in terrorism.
And then there was the campus (in Chicago) where I was “greeted” with swastikas that were painted over posters promoting my talk. The perpetrators, of course, never showed up at my event because they would not be able to challenge someone who has been working in the field for nearly 30 years.
What struck me more than anything else was the fact that many of the people I met on the campuses supported Hamas and believed that it had the right to “resist the occupation” even if that meant blowing up children and women on a bus in downtown Jerusalem.
I never imagined that I would need police protection while speaking at a university in the U.S. I have been on many Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and I cannot recall one case where I felt intimidated or where someone shouted abuse at me.
Ironically, many of the Arabs and Muslims I met on the campuses were much more understanding and even welcomed my “even-handed analysis” of the Israeli-Arab conflict. After all, the views I voiced were not much different than those made by the leaderships both in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These views include support for the two-state solution and the idea of coexistence between Jews and Arabs in this part of the world.
The so-called pro-Palestinian “junta” on the campuses has nothing to offer other than hatred and de-legitimization of Israel. If these folks really cared about the Palestinians, they would be campaigning for good government and for the promotion of values of democracy and freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Their hatred for Israel and what it stands for has blinded them to a point where they no longer care about the real interests of the Palestinians, namely the need to end the anarchy and lawlessness, and to dismantle all the armed gangs that are responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinians over the past few years.
The majority of these activists openly admit that they have never visited Israel or the Palestinian territories. They don’t know -and don’t want to know – that Jews and Arabs here are still doing business together and studying together and meeting with each other on a daily basis because they are destined to live together in this part of the world. They don’t want to hear that despite all the problems life continues and that ordinary Arab and Jewish parents who wake up in the morning just want to send their children to school and go to work before returning home safely and happily.
What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the “occupation” as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.
Many of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas officials I talk to in the context of my work as a journalist sound much more pragmatic than most of the anti-Israel, “pro-Palestinian” folks on the campuses.
Over the past 15 years, much has been written and said about the fact that Palestinian school textbooks don’t promote peace and coexistence and that the Palestinian media often publishes anti-Israel material.
While this may be true, there is no ignoring the fact that the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is not less dangerous. What is happening on these campuses is not in the frame of freedom of speech. Instead, it is the freedom to disseminate hatred and violence. As such, we should not be surprised if the next generation of jihadists comes not from the Gaza Strip or the mountains and mosques of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but from university campuses across the U.S.
As Israel’s detractors line up against Israel next week, StandWithUs has prepared unbelievably effective, educational response materials for the apartheid claim. On our website: http://www.standwithus.org/rup/apartheid.asp, you will find amazing BOOKLETS, Downloadable FLYERS, and SIGNS to use both on and off campus.
Our “Apartheid” materials have already been shipped to campuses all across the U.S. and Canada. We thank the other member ICC and Canadian organizations who helped us in this effort.
If you would like to receive these booklets, you can order them on our website directly. If you know campuses that should receive these materials, please contact me directly: dani@standwithus.com.
Type “Jew” into the search function on YouTube, and you’ll discover a host of anti-Semitic videos, including “911 Jew Spy Scandal 3” and a video clip in which National Polish Party’s Leszek Bubel declares himself a “proud anti-Semite.”
And Google Earth, the satellite-mapping program, recently came under fire when officials from Kiryat Yam filed a lawsuit against Google after the Internet giant refused to take down a note posted by user Thameen Darby claiming that the northern Israeli town was founded on the remains of the Arab village of Ghawarina.
This is the new face of anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism 2.0. And it’s potentially
more hazardous than the relatively straightforward smear campaigns and petitions of yesteryear.
Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Google Earth thrive on communities in which users generate and share information in the form of videos, photos and blog posts, which are subject to vague terms of service and seemingly arbitrary censorship.
This leaves the door open for anti-Semites across the globe to co-opt these applications to spread messages of hate, often failing to distinguish between Jews and Israel when comparing Jews to Nazis and Israel to apartheid South Africa, observers say.
“This phenomena is spreading anti-Semitism and acceptability of anti-Semitism in new and increasingly effective ways,” says Andre Oboler, a Legacy Heritage Fellow who runs ZionismOnTheWeb.org and is a post-doctoral fellow studying online public diplomacy at Bar-Ilan University.
“Now in the Web 2.0 world, the social acceptability of anti-Semitism can be spread, public resistance lowered and hate networks rapidly established,” Oboler said.
What’s worse, Oboler contends, Jewish organizations are behind the times and are not devoting the resources necessary to stop the hate virus from spreading.
Many at the helm of these large organizations have yet to sign up for a Facebook account, don’t spend much time on YouTube and aren’t all that sure what Google Earth is.
“Community leaders tend to be the sort of people who are too busy to spend time looking at YouTube videos,” Oboler says. “They are very, very focused on old media, which is a bit strange, since a lot of people their age are online.”
The average American YouTube viewer is 39, and 33.5 percent of Facebook users are between 35 and 54 years old.
The more tech-savvy among community leaders realize just how grave the situation is — but have all but shaken their heads at the impossibility of making a dent in the large volume of hate messages being spread. As Myrna Shinbaum, spokeswoman for the Anti-Defamation League retorted, “We can’t sit here all day monitoring YouTube and Facebook.” (The organization does report objectionable material to service providers. “But the minute they do the right thing and pull something down, another pops up,” says Deborah Lauter, ADL’s national civil rights director. “It takes constant vigilance and policing.”)
Yet we live in a world in which “truth” often belongs to the Web site with the highest Google ranking and the most hits, regardless of its credibility. Therefore, anti-Semitism 2.0 is arguably far more serious than its previous Web incarnations. And when it comes to social networking sites, the stakes are higher since the reach is that much greater, Oboler contends.
On Facebook, for example, information spreads in a viral fashion. When users join a group or sign up to promote a cause, their friends are automatically notified in their “news feeds.” They then have the option of joining, too, spreading the message even further. “The message thus spreads not only across geographic boundaries, but also across social groups,” explains Oboler.
The “Israel is not a country!” group, for example, attracted 35,000 members as of press time. Assuming each member has approximately 150 friends (a lowball estimate), then the group — which decries Israel as an apartheid regime and claims that Israel has no right to exist — will have been advertised to more than 5.25 million people.
In response, several Facebook users established counter-groups, such as the “Palestine is not a country” and even “causes” such as “Facebook needs to delete the group ‘Israel is a terrorist country we all hate Israel!’” which more than 19,000 people have joined. Although “Israel is not a country!” no longer shows up in search results, “Israel: Terrorist State,” “I Hate Israel,” and some 75 groups like it still exist.
With larger Jewish organizations largely failing to combat anti-Semitism 2.0, much of the legwork has been left to individuals (many of them under 40) who lack both financial backing and the time to devote themselves fully to tracking and wiping out anti-Semitism in this new medium for spreading hate. “They see something, get annoyed and have to do something about it,” Oboler says. “But there’s no greater strategy behind it.”
Dovid, an Orthodox businessman in his late 30s, is one of the lone rangers on YouTube, the video-sharing Web site that — according to Alexa, a company that measures Web traffic — is the second-most visited site on the Web. He has posted more than 150 pro-Israel videos on YouTube, generating more than 1.3 million video views — and thousands of hateful and insidious comments (which is why he requested that The Jewish Week not print his last name).
“A little over a year ago, I was searching YouTube and there was so much really, really vile stuff out there,” he says. So he posted trailers from the 2005 movie “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”
“I wanted to get the message out there,” he says.
Using the name “CheckItOutNowNYC,” he continued to spend hours each week searching for videos that highlighted a positive image of Israel and the Jews, including one featuring Bob Dylan performing “Hava Nagilah.” More than 50,000 people have viewed his video, “See the Humane Treatment of a Palestinian Woman by Israel,” a three-minute NBC News clip about a female suicide bomber who entered Israel using a special medical permit but was caught with 20 pounds of explosives.
Dovid labels each video with background information and resources for those interested in learning more. The number of page views is staggering, as are the more than 100 comments he receives a day. But it’s very time-consuming, he says.
“I wish there were 50 guys like me downloading videos and reposting them,” Dovid said.
He’s since posted videos promoting Jewish organizations including Nefesh B’Nefesh and Efrat C.R.I.B. (Committee for the Rescue of Israel’s Babies). Yet he wonders why these organizations aren’t creating their own YouTube channel and posting their videos themselves.
“Super-large Jewish organizations are really slow,” he says. “But the goal is to get the videos out there. We need Jews to take a proactive stance to educate the public.”
A few Jewish organizations are warming up to Facebook. The Consulate General of Israel in New York and the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C., both have Facebook pages, but they’ve each garnered less than 1,000 “fans.” The ADL has a Facebook page, too, but it’s a rather dormant unofficial page created by a high school student.
Among the handful of organizations that are first beginning to explore social networking as a possible avenue for promotion, most lack a comprehensive understanding of how Web 2.0 works.
“Various organizations have a policy that they won’t link to other sites,” Oboler says. “This is counterproductive. Web 2.0 is about sharing. The way a Web site gets popular is partly related to the number of links and how high up they are on Google.”
“Organizations — especially the younger ones — are now realizing that Facebook, YouTube and other such Web sites are an important medium for reaching out to Jewish and non-Jewish students alike to talk about Israel,” said Dani Klein, campus director of the pro-Israel activism group StandWithUs. StandWithUs often records on-campus events and lectures and posts them on the Web.
“There will be 50 to 100 people in the room hearing the lecture, but the number of people who can watch it on the Web grows exponentially,” Klein said.
Since 2005, StandWithUs has been actively using Web 2.0 to connect with Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus. It created a Facebook page, posts events and uploaded videos to the Web site, including the protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad’s speech at Columbia University. In addition to the StandWithUs Facebook page, the organization created a Facebook page for Israel, where Klein posts YouTube videos highlighting Israel’s technological innovations and humanitarian efforts, as well as important links and resources.
In what may be viewed as a hopeful sign, the organization is in the process of creating a multinational online task force to monitor Facebook, YouTube and other Web 2.0 applications and find problematic videos and groups that need responses. The task force would then work on posting educated, rational comments on these pages, hoping to sway those who joined anti-Israel groups out of peer pressure.
“The people who started these groups are most likely in the top 10 percent who are staunchly anti-Israel,” Klein said, adding that they are probably not easily swayed. Instead, StandWithUs will reach out to the majority of the group, who he calls “casual Palestinian supporters” who joined because their friends invited them or because “it’s hip to be anti-Israel.”
“We’ve always known it was a problem,” said Klein. “As individuals, we try to combat it. But we need to do more.”
HATEMONGER U? COLUMBIA MAY TENURE EXTREMIST
By RICHARD MINITER
November 20, 2007 — COLUMBIA University is about to give tenure to an anti-Israel extremist. Joseph Massad, an associate professor of modern Arab politics, has a history of shouting down his students. He compares Jews to Nazis and bizarrely accuses Israel of “anti-Semitism” for its treatment of the Palestinians. (Massad is a Palestinian.) In a course description, he describes his class on Israeli-Arab relations as “not balanced.”
Why does this ivory-tower controversy matter? After 9/11, we simply can’t leave Middle East studies to partisans. We need genuine scholars to train future diplomats, analysts and officers. The government and the press rely on professors to explain events in the Arab world.
Of course, Columbia has long been home to anti-Israel scholars. Edward Said, who taught there until his death in 2003, spent more time worrying about “US imperialism” and “Zionism” than on injustices such as terrorism and the oppression of women and religious minorities in Arab societies. Most recently, Columbia’s sister school, Barnard, tenured Nadia Abu El-Haj, who called the ancient Jewish kingdoms of David and Solomon “a modern nation’s onging myth . . . ” Why add one more?
Some Internet rumors claim Massad was denied tenure, but Columbia sources say that the process is ongoing; a spokesman insists the details are “confidential.” The final decision is due soon.
Why shouldn’t Massad get tenure – lifelong job security?
His critics cite three broad flaws that, taken together, could undermine Columbia’s reputation:
Misstatement of facts: These are not simple errors; when they’ve been called to his attention, he has brushed them aside or unconvincingly denied making the statement.
* In class and in public, Massad has argued that Israel massacred Palestinians at Jenin in 2002. A UN investigation found no evidence of a massacre at Jenin.
* Writing in the Egyptian weekly al-Ahram, he suggested that Israel poisoned Yasser Arafat. He cited no evidence. In reality, Israel provided for Arafat’s medical evacuation to France.
* Massad claims “Jewish colonists [in Israel] were part of the British colonial death squads that murdered Palestinian revolutionaries between 1936 and 1939 while Hitler unleashed Kristallnacht against German Jews.” Note the false equivalency between British police and Jewish residents and the Nazis.
And, of course, there is no evidence of organized Jewish involvement. Indeed, the British also took armed action against the Jews.
Mistreating students: Over the last few years, a number of students have come forward to talk about how Massad treated them in the classroom.
One is Deena Shanker, who attended Massad’s course in 2002. She said that Massad shouted her down and ordered her to leave his class if she kept denying that Israel committed atrocities.
Massad denied her account and said a faculty panel exonerated him. In fact, the panel’s published report found him guilty. The relevant passage:
“Upon extensive deliberation, the committee finds it credible that Professor Massad became angered at a question that he understood to countenance Israeli conduct of which he disapproved, and that he responded heatedly. While we have no reason to believe that Professor Massad intended to expel Ms. Shanker from the classroom [she did not, in fact, leave the class], his rhetorical response to her query exceeded commonly accepted bounds by conveying that her question merited harsh public criticism.
“Angry criticism directed at a student in class because she disagrees, or appears to disagree, with a faculty member on a matter of substance is not consistent with the obligation ‘to show respect for the rights of others to hold opinions differing from their own,’ to exercise ‘responsible self-discipline’ and ‘to demonstrate appropriate restraint.’ ”
Why grant tenure to a professor who has an adversarial relationship with his students?
A non-scholarly temperament: Massad often seems far more a propagandist than an impartial analyst.
* His published work suggests that his heart lies with the terrorists of Hamas. In March, he mourned the “economic choking and starvation” caused by the “international isolation” of Hamas. Last November, he wrote that Hamas “can defend the rights of the Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation and the well-armed Palestinian collaborators that help to enforce it.”
And, yes, he is critical of Palestinians who criticize Hamas.
* The only book on Israel that he assigned in his introductory class was “Israel, a Colonial Settler State?” by a French Marxist scholar, Maxime Rodinson. It concludes, “Jews have as much right to Israel as Arabs have to Spain.”
To students, Massad often seems less like a scholar than a prosecutor presenting his case. Three students recently came forward to say that Massad “repeatedly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa, dismissed its legitimacy as a Jewish state and almost never addressed human-rights abuses in countries such as Iraq, Iran and Syria.”
Massad regularly told his students that “Zionism got its name from the Hebrew slang for penis, Zayin.” While this is plainly untrue, is this the language of a Columbia professor?
If he’s awarded tenure, Massad will be at Columbia for life. He will have no incentive to become dispassionate – and every incentive to become even more of an activist.
Can’t Columbia do better?
Richard Miniter is a bestselling author and fellow at the Hudson Institute.
When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to New York City last week to address the United Nations, the National Press Club and a gathering at Columbia University, some Canadian students decided they wanted their voices heard alongside the American protesters.
Five Toronto students and two campus outreach directors drove to New York to spend the day shoulder to shoulder with 2,000 other demonstrators at Columbia, sending Iran’s leader a clear message: “Ahmadinejad Not Welcome!” as thousands of lapel pins read.
“We were hoping that Iran’s dictator would ultimately not be welcomed to New York. As soon as we realized the speeches were a reality, we took students. This is a perfect example of how we need to get involved. It’s important to be on top of these things,” said Orna Hollander, director of Betar Toronto, the Zionist campus group that organized the trip.
She said initial plan had been to protest at the United Nations, but things shifted when she realized there would be ample protesters there. The group decided to join in solidarity with students at Columbia instead. The rally began Monday morning and lasted about four hours, into the early afternoon.
Thousands gathered at a rally across the street from the UN organized by leading American Jewish organizations and attended by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and prominent members of New York’s congressional delegation.
“Make no mistake – Iran is not only a threat to Israel, and not only a threat to its neighbours, but a threat to the entire world,” Livni told the crowd. “And today we ask, ‘Where is the world?’”
Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs had invited Ahmadinejad as part of the school’s World Leaders Forum. The school received widespread criticism for the invitation.
The event started off with an introduction from Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, who chided Ahmadinejad. Bollinger said that the Iranian president possessed “all of the signs of a petty criminal and a cruel dictator.”
Bollinger asked Ahmadinejad to defend his oppression of women, homosexuals and the Baha’i, as well as to explain statements in which he called for the destruction of Israel. He also challenged the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust and questioned his country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, which has brought UN sanctions against his people.
“I doubt you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions,” Bollinger said.
Ahmadinejad asserted that Bollinger had insulted the intelligence of his audience by offering a one-sided introduction “affected by the press and a political monster,” a seeming allusion to the pro-Israel lobby.
While Iran welcomes its guests with honour, “I got a wave of insults,” Ahmadinejad said.
He reiterated his past claim that the Palestinian people are unfairly paying the price for the Holocaust.
“Why should five million Palestinians pay for this, when they had nothing to do with it?” he asked.
He later insinuated that Israel is the reason for all strife in the Middle East. In response to questions about his denial of the Holocaust and his hosting of a conference of Holocaust deniers last year, the Iranian leader said that studying the issue is like any other scientific pursuit and that it should continue, regardless of how well the Nazi killings have been documented.
Emily Boulter, 22, a member of the Canadian contingent, described the sentiment among students at the protest – organized by the pro-Israel advocacy groups Stand With Us and Hasbara Fellowships – as “a palpable sense of frustration and anger at the [Columbia] administration.”
The University of Toronto student, a major in Near Eastern studies, said Betar joined others ranging in age from 15 to 60. She said there were also a large number of Hebrew day school children and teenagers.
But not everyone who came to protest expressed their disapproval of Ahmadinejad. There were about 15 demonstrators waving placards reading, “Bush is a bigger war criminal,” and shouting their message of “academic freedom,” but they were up against a sea of Israeli flags, Hollander said.
Despite “what [Ahmadinejad] said in the past about Israel and the Holocaust… there was a minority of protesters supporting [him]. We were incredulous,” Boulter said.
Ran della Stua, 21, a U of T political science major, said he got the sense that most New Yorkers weren’t going to put up with the dictator’s visit.
“Across the city, it was clear that people were going to protest this,” he said. In fact, Ahmadinejad had planned to visit the area where the World Trade Center towers toppled on 9/11 – Ground Zero – but he was denied access.
“His views are radical, extreme, and giving him a platform meant the university recognized his views as legitimate. Columbia is considered to be an Ivy League school, the pinnacle of higher education, and yet they gave a platform to the head of a murderous regime.”
Ben Feferman, the Hasbara Fellowships campus co-ordinator for Canada, said the group from Betar was the only Canadian organization to attend.
“I think that when a tyrant comes to a renowned university, we needed to send a message,” Feferman said. “Ahmadinejad represents state-sponsored terrorism, human rights violations, and intends to wage religious war against the West… He represents an extremist position. We wouldn’t have the Ku Klux Klan or [Osama] bin Laden come to speak at Columbia University, nor should we have Ahmadinejad.”
Feferman said the events at the UN and Columbia will lead his organization to encourage students to be more active in promoting freedom.
The message of protest won’t end in New York, he added.
“We are launching a ‘divest from Iran’ campaign,” he said. “Every day money flows to Iran through businesses… and that ends up funding Iranian terror. There’s a lot of endowment funds, and pension funds, sponsoring Iran. We’re really going to be pushing a new initiative.”
That initiative includes encouraging governments and businesses to re-examine their economic interactions with Iran.
“Businesses have to stop investing in Iran. There hasn’t been that grassroots movement, and it’s time to start. As for the government, we’re in the position with the Harper government to put this on the forefront.”
News has just broken that Columbia’s SIPA school has once again invited Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia. He is coming Monday Sept 24th. Ahmadinejad has frequently denied the right of Israel to exist, and has also denied the Holocaust, and recently Iran drew up plans to bomb Israel
As we write this, there are plans by dozens of organizations to protest right near Lerner Hall, where he is speaking, during the speech (1:00-2:30pm). Lerner Hall is right on W. 116th and Broadway. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=6098347650
COLUMBIA STUDENTS (w/ Columbia ID’s): Show up to Lerner Hall anytime between 12:30-2:30PM. Hillel and many other student groups from across the spectrum will be protesting. Bring signs and posters!
OTHERS: As of now, we are talking to NYPD to have a place near Lerner Hall to stage a protest. If you do not have a Columbia ID, you will not be allowed on campus. But Lerner Hall is right on Broadway, a public street, so there will be a place to PROTEST. Until further details come out, plan to arrive on Broadway and 116th during the time of the speech.
Remember – the world is watching. This is a monumental opportunity to make our voices heard. Generations will ask us, What did we do to protest? Where were we?
NEW YORK (JTA) — A brewing battle over tenure for a polarizing Barnard College professor is threatening to thrust Columbia University back into the center of a controversy over its academic treatment of the Middle East.
Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard, is the author Increase of “Facts on the Ground,” a 2001 book that questions archaeological claims regarding the ancient Jewish presence in Israel and argues that Israeli archaeologists legitimize the Jewish state’s “origin myth.”
An online petition against Abu El-Haj had garnered nearly 1,000 signatures as of Tuesday, the bulk of them from students and graduates of Barnard or Columbia University, its institutional parent. <<Sign the Petition Here>>
“This woman has written and made statements that are not based in fact and refused to recognize fact,” said Elaine Bloom, a Barnard graduate and former Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives who said she would reconsider her support for the college if the tenure decision goes forward. “And I think it’s a very harmful direction from somebody who is in a professorial position.”
Neither Barnard nor Columbia would reveal any details about the status of Abu El-Haj’s tenure application, though Barnard has confirmed that the tenure process is under way. Abu El-Haj and Barnard President Judith Shapiro denied requests for comment.
The wall of silence has fueled speculation that Shapiro, herself a professor of anthropology, has secretly endorsed the tenure application. If correct, final approval would rest with a committee appointed by Columbia Provost Alan Brinkley, sources familiar with the university said. Brinkley’s office also declined requests for comment.
The controversy over El-Haj threatens to raise questions anew about the integrity of Columbia’s scholarship on the Middle East, which first came under fire in 2004 with the release of a documentary film alleging university professors intimidated and embarrassed pro-Israel students who challenged them in class. A committee of inquiry subsequently found only one example of improper behavior, leading critics to call the report a whitewash.
Since then, pro-Israel groups have become ever more vigilant in monitoring university campuses. Meanwhile, Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, has labored to improve the school’s tarnished image, most recently by becoming the lead signatory to a statement published in the New York Times opposing an academic boycott of Israel.
If El-Haj’s tenure is approved, much of that progress could be undone. It could also hurt the university financially.
Bloom, Maxine Schwartz and Helene Berger — all Florida-based Barnard alums — met with Shapiro in March in Miami to communicate their concerns about Abu El-Haj. Schwartz and Berger both told JTA they would cease support for Barnard if the professor is granted tenure.
“The credibility of Barnard is on the line,” said Berger, who has contributed to Barnard for each of the 52 years since she graduated.
“It’s one thing to have different points of view, but to have someone with this perspective — I think as a Barnard graduate, the damage that so-called scholars can inflict on a university that I care about is very strong,” she said. “There’s no pursuit of truth here. It’s just merely a book to support her own political objectives.”
Professors bristle at the notion that tenure decisions may be subject to outside pressure, a concern most recently manifested in Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz’s very public campaign against tenure for Norman Finkelstein at Depaul University. In a message posted on the Barnard Alumnae Affairs Web site, Shapiro echoed that concern.
“Please understand that I greatly appreciate your feedback,” Shapiro said. “I always want to respond to any concerns our alumnae may have. At the same time, I will share with you my concern about communications and letter-writing campaigns orchestrated by people who are not as familiar with Barnard as you are, and who may not be in the best position to judge the matter at hand.”
At issue is Abu El-Haj’s only book, which argues that archaeology in Israel was used to legitimize the “colonial” enterprise that was the founding and territorial expansion of Israel. Among her accusations is that Israeli archaeologists bulldozed Palestinian artifacts to more quickly access Jewish ones.
Scholars are divided on the book’s merits. David Ussishkin, a Tel Aviv professor and one of Israel’s most celebrated archaeologists, has defended the excavation methods Abu El-Haj criticized. William Dever, an emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona and the author of many books on the ancient Near East, told the New York Sun late last year that Abu El-Haj should be denied tenure, calling her work “faulty, misleading and dangerous.”
On the other side, Michael Herzfeld, an anthropology professor at Harvard, characterized Abu El-Haj’s work as “meticulous scholarship and even-handedness” in a blurb published on the book’s back cover. Others have lauded Abu El-Haj’s contribution to understanding how national priorities shape academic work on history and archaeology.
(Los Angeles, CA) — StandWithUs (SWU), a Los Angeles-based international education organization, will launch a month-long ad campaign in mid-May through June 11, urging Palestinians to teach their children peace instead of hate, and urging Palestinian extremists to reform.SWU’s ads will appear in 20 downtown Washington DC metro stations to counter the misinformation in an anti-Israel ad campaign scheduled to run in the stations concurrently. The anti-Israel ads, sponsored by the “US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,” (ETO) depict a Palestinian child dwarfed by an Israeli tank and call for the U.S. to cut aid to Israel until it ends the “occupation” of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
According to SWU, the anti-Israel ads misinform the public about occupation, funding, and responsibility for violence. Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005 and from over 40% of the West Bank almost nine years ago. The land was turned over to the Palestinian Authority and 98% of Palestinians are self-governing under its rule. Unfortunately, the 2005 withdrawal did not promote peace. Instead, rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel rose four-fold. Furthermore, the ETO ad implies that the U.S. only aids Israel. But America has also given billions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians either directly or through the United Nations over the years.SWU especially objects to the misleading picture of a Palestinian child apparently threatened by an Israeli tank and charges that the ETO ad is deceptive and emotionally manipulative. “Israel is not fighting children. It is defending itself against extremists like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad whose charters call for Israel’s obliteration and whose terrorist attacks target civilians, including school children and toddlers,” stated Roz Rothstein, SWU’s international director.Underscoring this message, SWU’s ads call public attention to these Palestinian extremists and to the indoctrination of Palestinian children. The SWU ads show photos of Palestinian toddlers whose parents dress them as terrorists and of Palestinian pre-teens at a terrorist training camp. The text calls for Palestinians to teach peace to their children and for extremist groups to moderate and amend their charters which call for Israel’s destruction. The ads stress that Israel is seeking a partner for peace.
SWU contends its ads point to the real tragedy for Palestinian children. Extremists and Palestinian media, schools and mosques indoctrinate them with hatred and encourage them to engage in violence and aspire to be suicide “martyrs.” “Teaching hatred and violence to little kids and pre-teens is a form of child abuse, and dooms hopes for a better future. Peace, understanding and tolerance must be taught,” stated Rothstein.
“Israelis and many Palestinians long for peace, but it can begin only when the younger generation is taught tolerance and instilled with a vision of co-existence for a better future,” comments Esther Renzer, SWU International President. “Hopefully, our ads will help Americans understand the tragic problems within the Palestinian Authority so they will support constructive policies essential to advancing peace.”
StandWithUs is an international, non-profit Israel education organization that hosts speakers and conferences, offers website resources and creates materials widely distributed in universities, libraries, high schools, churches and communities that teach about Israel. Based in Los Angeles, SWU has offices and chapters in New York, Detroit, Michigan, San Francisco, Orange County (CA), Buffalo and Israel. For more information, visit: http://www.standwithus.com/
Finkelstein’s Bigotry
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
May 4, 2007; Page A15
Wall Street Journal
In her 1951 best seller, “The Groves of Academe,” Mary McCarthy fictionalized a failed academic who, realizing he wouldn’t get tenure, became a communist so that he could claim that he was being denied tenure because he was a Red rather than a lousy scholar.
A version of that ploy is being used today. Norman Finkelstein brags that “never has one of [his] articles been published in a scientific magazine.” By his own account he has been fired by “every school in New York,” including Brooklyn College, Hunter and NYU. His chairman at one of these colleges said that Mr. Finkelstein was fired for “incompetence,” “mental instability” and “abuse” of students with politics different from his own. His prospects seemed bleak, so when radical Islamist Aminah McCloud — a follower of Louis Farrakhan — helped him land a job at DePaul, a school that Mr. Finkelstein describes as “a third-rate Catholic university,” he accepted “exile.”
His prospects did not improve when he wrote a screed against Holocaust survivors called “The Holocaust Industry.” The scholar whose work on the Holocaust was the “stimulus” for this volume, University of Chicago professor Peter Novick, warned that: “No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites. . . .[S]uch an examination reveals that many of those assertions are pure invention.” Nor was he helped when New York Times reviewer Prof. Omer Bartov, an authority on genocide, characterized his book as “a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ . . . brimming with indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics . . . [I]ndecent . . . juvenile, self-righteous, arrogant and stupid.”
On the other hand, Mr. Finkelstein is supported by hard-leftists like Noam
Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn. They regard him as a scholar in a class with Ward Churchill (the Colorado professor who called the 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns”) — a characterization with which I would not quarrel.
Facing tenure denial, Mr. Finkelstein opted for a tactic that fit the times.
He expressed views so ad hominem, unscholarly and extreme that he could claim the decision was being made not on the basis of his scholarship, but rather on his politics.
Mr. Finkelstein does not do “scholarship” in any meaningful sense. Although his writings center on Israel (which he compares to Nazi Germany) and the Holocaust, he has never visited Israel and cannot read or speak German — precluding the possibility of original scholarship.
Prof. Bartov characterized his work as an irrational Jewish “conspiracy
theory.” The conspirators include Steven Spielberg, NBC and Leon Uris. The film “Schindler’s List,” Mr. Finkelstein argues, was designed to divert
attention from our Mideast policy. “Give me a better reason! . . . Who
profits? Basically, there are two beneficiaries from the dogmas [of
Schindler's List]: American Jews and American administration.” NBC, he says, broadcast “Holocaust” to strengthen Israel’s position: “In 1978, NBC produced the series Holocaust. Do you believe, it was a coincidence, 1978? Just at this time, when peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt took place in Camp David?” He argues that Leon Uris, the author of “Exodus,” named his character “Ari” in order to promote Israel’s “Nazi” ideology: “[B]ecause Ari is the diminutive for Aryan. It is the whole admiration for this blond haired, blue eyed type.” (Ari is a traditional name dating back to the Bible.) He has blamed Sept. 11 on the U.S., claiming that we “deserve the problem on our hands because some things Bin Laden says are true.”) He says that most alleged Holocaust survivors — including Elie Wiesel — have fabricated their past.
Like other anti-Semites, Mr. Finkelstein generalizes about “the Jews”; for
example: “Just as Israelis . . . courageously put unruly Palestinians in
their place, so American Jews courageously put unruly Blacks in their
place.” He says “the main fomenters of anti-Semitism “are ‘American Jewish elites’ who need to be stopped.” Normally, no one would take such claims seriously, but he boasts that he “can get away with things which nobody else can” because his parents were Holocaust survivors.
And then, of course, there is me. In a recent article, “Should Alan
Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?” Mr. Finkelstein commissioned a cartoon by a man who placed second in the Iranian Holocaust-denial cartoon contest. The Hustler-type cartoon portrayed me as masturbating in joy while viewing images of dead Lebanese on a TV set labeled “Israel peep show,” with a Star of David prominently featured.
Mr. Finkelstein has accused me of not having written “The Case For Israel” but when I sent his publisher my handwritten draft, they made him remove that claim. He has accused virtually every pro-Israel writer, including me, of “plagiarism.” I asked Harvard to conduct an investigation of this absurd charge. Harvard rejected it, yet he persists.
The final part of Mr. Finkelstein’s quest for tenure is to blame his tenure
problems on “outsiders.” He claims that I intruded myself into the DePaul
review process, neglecting to mention that I was specifically asked by the former chairman of DePaul’s political science department to “point [him] to the clearest and most egregious instances of dishonesty on Finkelstein’s part.” I responded by providing hard evidence of made-up quotes and facts — a pattern that should alone disqualify him from tenure.
Nevertheless, Mr. Finkelstein’s radical colleagues voted for tenure, having
cooked the books by seeking outside evaluations from two of his ideological soulmates. The dean, however, recommended against tenure. Mr. Finkelstein then used my letter to stimulate a “Solidarity with Finkelstein” campaign.
Like the character in the “Groves of Academe,” Mr. Finkelstein generated protests by students and outsiders. He has encouraged radical goons to email threatening messages; “Look forward to a visit from me,” reads one. “Nazis like [you] need to be confronted directly.” He has threatened to sue if he loses — while complaining about outside interference. No university should be afraid of truth — regardless of its source — especially when truth consists of Mr. Finkelstein’s own words.
Whether or not he receives tenure, Mr. Finkelstein will persist in his
unscholarly, ad hominems against supporters of Israel, Holocaust survivors and the U.S. But for the time being, the question remains: Will his bigotry receive the imprimatur of the largest Catholic university in the America?
Mr. Dershowitz, professor of law at Harvard, is the author, most recently, of “Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways” (Norton, 2006).
Israel Education Group Concerned about Recent Conference on Zionism
LOS ANGELES–StandWithUs [SWU], a Los Angeles-based international organization, today urged the University of California, Santa Cruz [UCSC], to take steps to stem anti-Israel, anti-Jewish messages on its campus, such as those that were promoted at a UCSC March 15th conference on Zionism. StandWithUs asks that these steps be implemented by the beginning of the fall term in September, 2007. SWU sent a letter expressing its concerns and recommendations to the UCSC Interim Chancellor Blumenthal and to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs that monitors matters of bias.
StandWithUs, whose mission is to ensure informed, balanced discussion about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and who represents concerned citizens and parents residing in the UCSC area, was deeply disturbed by the March conference entitled, “Alternative Histories Within and Beyond Zionism.”
According to faculty and community members who attended, including UCSC alum Gil Stein, the conference speakers promoted anti-Israel, anti-Jewish prejudice by distorting facts and history to delegitimize the Jewish state, equate Israeli and Nazi policies, minimize the Holocaust, and urge divestment from Israel. The conference was organized by Lisa Rofel, professor of Anthropology, and co-sponsored by the Institute for Humanities Research, College 9/10, Feminist Studies, Anthropology, CGIRS, Community Studies, Sociology, Politics, and History.
“StandWithUs firmly supports academic freedom and a free marketplace for all ideas,” reports Roz Rothstein, SWU international director, “but this one-sided, politicized conference violates elementary scholarly and educational standards.” The speakers cited research that has been discredited. The organizer rejected recommendations for other qualified speakers who could have presented different viewpoints and facts. “Such one-sided events spread misinformation and prejudice.”
None of the five invited speakers is a recognized scholar of the history of Zionism or of Israel. They do, however, actively promote a political agenda. Self identified as anti-Zionists, they have regularly spoken out publicly against the Jewish state, signed anti-Israel divestment petitions or other public letters calling for America to end its aid to Israel and for boycotts against Israeli academics, or have organized anti-Israel events such as “Israel Apartheid Week”.
The conference’s political advocacy violated Article IX of the California Constitution which does not allow public Universities to promote partisan politics. Yet UCSC academic departments endorsed and funded this highly political event while deceptively publicizing it as educational. This violates the spirit and letter of Article IX and is a misuse of taxpayer and student tuition money.
“The University of California has a responsibility not only to the students and faculty, but to all Californians to refrain from promoting an ideology or personal agendas,” stated Santa Cruz attorney, UCSC alum and StandWithUs member Gil Stein.
The conference fostered prejudice and a hostile campus environment for an American minority group: Jews. The US Civil Rights Commission, dedicated to combating bigotry on campuses, recently concluded that, “Anti-Semitic bigotry is no less morally deplorable when camouflaged as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism.”
“This event is just the tip of an iceberg,” continued Rothstein. “UCSC has hosted several other similar events that go beyond simply criticizing Israel’s policies. Programs like this create a hostile environment for Jewish and pro-Israel students. In its recent report, the US Civil Rights Commission deplored these developments and encouraged University administrations to take a firm stand against the bigotry of what has been called the ‘new anti-Semitism.’”
StandWithUs urges UCSC to take a similarly firm stand. It asks the administration to:
1. Require the academic departments to refund the public monies they misused for this political event.
2. Sponsor conferences, lectures or debates that present alternative views.
3. Re-examine and reinforce guidelines for academic and intellectual standards, for distinguishing facts from unsubstantiated allegation, and for distinguishing political advocacy from legitimate educational programs.
4. Develop mandatory sensitivity-training programs for faculty and students about anti-Semitism and its recent variant, anti-Zionism.
StandWithUs urges that these actions be completed by the beginning of the fall term in September, 2007.
StandWithUs encourages UCSC to take these steps so that it will live up to its mission of being a center of learning and informed discourse.
StandWithUs, an international, non-profit Israel education organization hosts speakers and conferences, offers website resources and creates brochures and materials widely distributed in universities, libraries, high schools, churches and communities. Based in Los Angeles, the organization has offices and chapters in New York, Michigan, San Francisco, Chicago, Buffalo, Orange County (CA) and Israel. SWU was founded in 2001 in response to the second Intifada and the misunderstandings about the challenges that Israel faces. StandWithUs Campus helps college students fight anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias on campuses. www.standwithus.com
(Copy of UCSC Administration Letter is Available Upon Request)
January 9, 2007 — Pace University administrators threatened to sic the cops on a Jewish-student club if it went ahead with plans to screen a critically acclaimed film about radical Islam, the head of the group charged yesterday.
Michael Abdurakhmanov, president of Pace Hillel, said two deans warned that showing the documentary film would implicate club members as suspects in two hate crimes involving the desecration of the Koran at the university’s lower-Manhattan campus last fall.
In addition, Abdurakhmanov said an assistant dean physically restrained him as he attempted to defend the film and his group in a meeting with administrators.
“The message was pretty clear, if you show this film, you’re going to incriminate yourself,” Abdurakhmanov said.
Pace spokesman Chris Cory acknowledged that officials encouraged Hillel to postpone the screening until tensions over the hate crimes dissipated, but dismissed the accusations of coercion as “far-fetched,” “implausible” and “unprofessional.”
Hillel had planned to screen “Obsession” during Judaism Awareness Week in November. The school stepped in after receiving complaints from Muslim students that the film negatively portrayed Islam.
In September and October, copies of the Koran were found in toilets in men’s rooms on the Manhattan campus. Those incidents were followed by the discovery of a swastika scrawled on a bathroom wall and a Hillel event poster.
Abdurakhmanov, a 20-year-old psychology major from Brooklyn, said neither he nor any member of his club had reason to believe they were suspects in the Koran incidents until the dean of students, Marijo Russell O’Grady, suggested it.
“Her words were if you show this film, the police will be looking into your records further,” Abdurakhmanov said.
He added that he knew of no one who had been contacted by the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force. An NYPD spokesman declined to say whether there were any suspects in the cases.
In a second meeting with university administrators, Abdurakhmanov claims an assistant dean, David Clark, twice pushed him into a seat when he tried to stand to speak.
Phone messages and e-mails left for the president of the Muslim Students Association, which objected to the film and attended the meetings, were not returned.
“The bottom line is the university never told them not to show the film,” said Cory, the Pace spokesman. “This was a good-faith effort by the deans to mediate between the Muslim Students Association and Hillel.”
Sometimes you really can tell a book by its cover. President Jimmy Carter’s decision to title his new anti-Israel screed “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” (Simon & Schuster) tells it all. His use of the loaded word “apartheid,” suggesting an analogy to the hated policies of South Africa, is especially outrageous, considering his acknowledgment buried near the end of his shallow and superficial book that what is going on in Israel today “is unlike that in South Africa—not racism, but the acquisition of land.” Nor does he explain that Israel’s motivation for holding on to land it captured in a defensive war is the prevention of terrorism. Israel has tried, on several occasions, to exchange land for peace, and what it got instead was terrorism, rockets, and kidnappings launched from the returned land.
In fact, Palestinian-Arab terrorism is virtually missing from Mr. Carter’s entire historical account, which blames nearly everything on Israel and almost nothing on the Palestinians. Incredibly, he asserts that the initial violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict occurred when “Jewish militants” attacked Arabs in 1939. The long history of Palestinian terrorism against Jews — which began in 1929, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than 100 rabbis, students, and non-Zionist Sephardim whose families had lived in Hebron and other ancient Jewish cities for millennia — was motivated by religious bigotry. The Jews responded to this racist violence by establishing a defense force. There is no mention of the long history of Palestinian terrorism before the occupation, or of the Munich massacre and others inspired byYasser Arafat. There is not even a reference to the Karine A, the boatful of terrorist weapons ordered by Arafat in January 2002.
Mr. Carter’s book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law, it would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court. Mr. Carter too is guilty of misleading the court of public opinion. A mere listing of all of Mr. Carter’s mistakes and omissions would fill a volume the size of his book. Here are just a few of the most egregious:
Mr. Carter emphasizes that “Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times,” but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.
Mr. Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinian Arabs have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution, with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own.
He barely mentions Israel’s acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection, of the United Nation’s division of the mandate in 1948.
He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan.
Mr. Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition, and secure boundaries, but he ignores that Israel accepted and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous “no’s”: “No peace, no recognition, no negotiation.” But you wouldn’t know that from reading the history according to Mr. Carter.
Mr. Carter faults Israel for its “air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor” without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if Iraq succeeded in building a bomb.
Mr. Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring those of every religion the right to worship as they please — consistent, of course, with security needs. He fails to mention that between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Hashemites destroyed and desecrated Jewish religious sites and prevented Jews from praying at the Western Wall. He also never mentions Egypt’s brutal occupation of Gaza between 1949 and 1967.
Mr. Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers at Camp David and Taba in 2000–2001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects the eyewitness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross, and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar’s accusation that Arafat’s rejection of the proposal was “a crime” and that Arafat’s account “was not truthful” — except, apparently, to Mr. Carter. The fact that Mr. Carter chooses to believe Arafat over Mr. Clinton speaks volumes.
Mr. Carter’s description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. “Captured” suggests a military apprehension subject to the usual prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been heard from — not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel’s invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers.
Mr. Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel’s superb legal system, falsely asserting (without any citation) that “confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts,” that prisoners are “executed,”and that the “accusers” act “as judges.” Even Israel’s most severe critics acknowledge the fairness of the Israeli Supreme Court, but not Mr. Carter.
Mr. Carter even blames Israel for the “exodus of Christians from the Holy Land,” totally ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hezbollah and the repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria.
Mr. Carter also blames every American administration but his own for the Mideast stalemate with particular emphasis on “a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years.” He employs hyperbole and overstatement when he says that “dialogue on controversial issues is a privilege to be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and withheld from those who reject U.S. demands.” He confuses terrorist states, such as Iran and Syria, to which we do not extend dialogue, with states with whom we strongly disagree, such as France and China, but with whom we have constant dialogue.
And it’s not just the facts; it’s the tone as well. It’s obvious that Mr. Carter just doesn’t like Israel or Israelis. He lectured Golda Meir on Israeli’s “secular” nature, warning her that ” Israel was punished whenever its leaders turned away from devout worship of God.” He admits that he did not like Menachem Begin. He has little good to say about any Israelis — except those few who agree with him. But he apparently got along swimmingly with the very secular Syrian mass-murderer Hafez al-Assad. Mr. Carter and his wife Rosalynn also had a fine time with the equally secular Arafat — a man who has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Israelis on his hands:
Rosalynn and I met with Yasir Arafat in Gaza City, where he was staying with his wife, Suha, and their little daughter. The baby, dressed in a beautiful pink suit, came readily to sit on my lap, where I practiced the same wiles that had been successful with our children and grandchildren. A lot of photographs were taken, and then the photographers asked that Arafat hold his daughter for a while. When he took her, the child screamed loudly and reached out her hands to me, bringing jovial admonitions to the presidential candidate to stay at home enough to become acquainted with is own child.
There is something quite disturbing about these pictures.
” Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate a decent man like Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book. Whatever Mr. Carter’s motives may be, his authorship of this ahistorical, one-sided, and simplistic brief against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That is a tragedy because the Carter Center, which has done much good in the world, could have been a force for peace if Jimmy Carter were as generous in spirit to the Israelis as he is to the Palestinians.
Amid mounting criticism for posing for a photograph with a student dressed up as a suicide bomber, the president of a prominent American university has at last issued a public apology regarding the incident.
As The Jerusalem Post first reported on Sunday, University of Pennsylvania president. Amy Gutmann was photographed last week standing alongside Syrian-born engineering student Saad Saadi at the annual Halloween costume party held at the president’s home.
In the photo, a copy of which was obtained by The Jerusalem Post, Saadi is seen with a keffiyeh around his head, a toy Kalashnikov rifle in his hand and six plastic sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest. A smiling Gutmann stood next to him, dressed as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, a character from L. Frank Baum’s novel The Wizard of Oz.
In a statement released by her office on Friday, Gutmann sought to distance herself from the incident by portraying it as an innocent mistake on her part. She asserted that students had crowded around her “to have their picture taken with me in costume,” and that Saadi was photographed with her “before it was obvious to me that he was dressed as a suicide bomber.”
Nonetheless, in Friday’s statement, she expressed no regret for the offense caused by the incident.
But in “a letter to the university community” that was posted yesterday on the college’s Web site, Gutmann appeared to change tack, acknowledging that “the photograph is embarrassing for the university and me alike.”
While still insisting that she did not realize the “full extent of his costume” until after the photograph had been taken, she did offer a more explicit expression of remorse.
“The student has since apologized, and I accept his apology,” she said. “I too apologize for the offense this photo has caused.”
In addition, Gutmann said that some have “mistakenly interpreted the photograph as my support for terrorism. Nothing could be further from the truth. I abhor terrorism, suicide bombers and everything they do. My record is unabashedly clear on this point.”
VIRGINIA BEACH – Want peace in the Middle East? Get rid of terrorism, the Israeli leader said.
Involve a third party or parties in negotiations, the Palestinian leader said.
Get the women involved, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly said.
His suggestion drew some laughter but more applause at the end of Friday’s debate at Regent University between former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian educator, leader and past spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi.
O’Reilly told the crowd that sectarian violence ended in Northern Ireland only when the women got fed up and said “enough,” and pressed both sides to make concessions toward peace. Violence continues in the Middle East, he said, because too many regular citizens on all sides tolerate it, and not enough condemn it – or, for example, turn in bombers.
O’Reilly earlier had mentioned Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who was convicted and executed.
“Get them, kill them – that’s America,” O’Reilly said.
“This country will not tolerate Tim McVeigh,” he added later. “It doesn’t happen here. Because the people – 300 million – say we’re not going to put up with it.
“If Sammy’s making a bomb here in Norfolk,” he continued, “are you not calling the cops?”
Friday’s debate was the Christian university’s fourth annual “Clash of the Titans” event, and the first to focus on an international issue. But the participants agreed that what happens between Israel and the Palestinians affects the world, including the United States. Some 750 watched in the sold-out Main Theatre, and more on a simulcast in an overflow room.
The debaters agreed on the big points: Palestine and Israel should each have separate states. Innocent civilians shouldn’t be killed.
Ashrawi said not all Palestinians support terrorist bombers, but that lack of hope leads to extremism.
“Hamas would never have won if we had been free,” she said, referring to the militant group elected to lead Palestinians.
Barak, his country’s most decorated soldier, admitted that Israel has made mistakes, but emphasized to applause that “we’ll never, ever yield to terrorists, period.”
Both joked that they would prefer Canada as a neighbor – Barak even told a joke about a stuttering Moses who, when asked where he wanted the Israelites to go, tried to say “Canada” but it came out “Canaan.”
He also told Ashwari that if someone like her led the Palestinians, a negotiated settlement would’ve happened already.
O’Reilly brought his aggressive TV style to the stage. He tried to pin down Barak on how Israel would react if Iran developed nuclear weapons. He asked Ashwari if former PLO leader Yasser Arafat wasn’t a “crook” who had stolen millions from his people.
“It’s easy to use labels,” Ashwari answered in part, “but we try to go beyond labels.”
The parade of radical, hateful speakers brought to UC Irvine this week by the Muslim Student Union were of the most extremist variety. Their insults included “Israel the 4th Reich,” “Holocaust in the Holy Land,” “Apartheid Israel” etc. Statements made by speakers included historical mythology that continuously demonized Israel with a steady drum beat. StandWithUs staff were there, all week, supporting the local community of students, faculty and community members who chose to stand up to the hatred and misinformation. We were proud to stand with other concerned organizations, including AJ Congress, ZOA, Hillel, Federation, and the ADL. We collected photos and video footage.
And there was so much misinformation promoted by those who held the microphones! Within the next week, we will share UNBELIEVABLE portions of the speeches that were made at UC Irvine near an “apartheid wall” structure complete with fake aggressive Israeli soldiers harassing passers by. All for the sake of creating hatred against Israel. The scene was incredible.
StandWithUs salutes the Jewish and non-Jewish faculty, students and community members that attended the various hate fests and held clear signs with opposing messages, like “Israel we Stand With You,” and “Suicide Bombing is Mass Murder.” We also salute Rabbi Yona Bookstein who led the pro- peace, pro-Israel attendees in songs like “We shall overcome”, “All We are Saying is Give Peace a Chance” and “”Oseh Shalom.”
Determined attendees helped the greater student body understand that there are TWO sides to this complicated story, and that demonizing one side is completely unhelpful. Not only is this kind of hateful incitement counterproductive to creating a civil society at UC Irvine, but it is unhelpful to the greater goal of bringing peace to a troubled region.
We Condemn the “Holocaust in the Holy Land” program at UC IRVINE
STANDWITHUS, AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS,
AND ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA UNEQUIVOCALLY
CONDEMN THE “HOLOCAUST IN THE HOLY LAND” PROGRAM
PLANNED BY UC IRVINE’S MUSLIM STUDENT UNION MAY 15-19, 2006
(Los Angeles) — StandWithUs, the American Jewish Congress Western Region and the Zionist Organization of America unequivocally condemn the “Holocaust in the Holy Land” program that the UC Irvine Muslim Student Union has planned for May 15 through May 19. Four radical anti-Israel speakers who tour colleges nationwide will address the student body.
“The four invited speakers will not promote education, dialogue or peaceful relationships. They are extremists who defame and foment prejudice against Israel, Jews, and the US through defamation and factual distortions. Such programs offend and alienate a large segment of the student body,” stated SWU National Director Roz Rothstein.”
“We have been deeply concerned about this pattern at UCI and many other campuses. For the past few years, the MSU has regularly sponsored programs that incite hatred. We hope that the UCI administration will use this as an opportunity to take a firm public stand and offer clear guidelines about the difference between hate speech and responsible free speech. Otherwise, California taxpayers end up subsidizing hate and incitement,” declared Allyson Rowen Taylor, Associate Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress Western Region.
Though the invited speakers are marginalized even by the communities they supposedly represent, the Muslim Student Union continues to host them at UCI.
Muhammed Al-Asi, scheduled to speak on “Hamas: The People’s Choice,” was removed as Imam of the Washington, DC Islamic Center in 1981 at the request of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Middle Eastern governments because of his “fiery sermons” (1) and pro-Khomeini rhetoric (2) Saudi Arabia barred him from making the hajj to Mecca. He is notorious for his anti-Semitic comments, such as “You can take the Jew out of the ghetto but you cannot take the ghetto out of the Jew,” for claiming that Nazi anti-Semitism was justifiable and for his close association with Ahmed Huber, the neo-Nazi Swiss convert to Islam who praised Khomeini as the “living continuation of Adolf Hitler.”
Rabbi David Weiss, whose speech is “Zionism Hijacking Judaism,” belongs to a fringe, ultra-Orthodox group called Netuei Karta, which was vehemently condemned by the Jewish Orthodox and Hassidic communities in 2002 and had been barred from their synagogues and communities for decades. (3) Neturei Karta has received funding from the Palestinian Authority.
De Paul University professor Norman Finkelstein’s work has been condemned by the scholarly community for being “the hate campaign of a zealot,” for “indifference to historical facts” and for being nothing more than “an anti-Semitic lampoon.” The final speaker, Imam Abdel Malik Ali, is a firebrand rhetorician who uses street slang to vilify Jews and to rouse his audiences to fight for the victory of Islam in America. Notorious for such anti-Semitic comments as “The Zionists control the media, and the Zionists have spied in your classrooms,” Malik Ali and others who shared the podium at a 2004 Berkeley MSA event shocked and embarrassed many Muslim students, according to the East Bay Express.
“Such programs pose a serious problem on campuses. These speakers represent the ugliest, most irrational element in today’s political debates. Americans and campus administrators have a responsibility to distance themselves from these hateful programs, misinformation and prejudice when they occur on their campuses. Otherwise, universities appear to be giving tacit approval to bigotry and hate mongering and will fail in their mission to educate the next generation,” state Daryl Temkin, executive director, Zionist Organization of America, Los Angeles/Western States and Campus Coordinator Julie Sager.
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(1) http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=3068
(2) www.iran.org/news/AS_9512.html
(3) “Angry Response to Neturei Karta Prayers for Arafat,” Nov 12, 2004 at www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=71966
High School in Riverdale, NY hosts Anti-Israel Panel despite much criticism.
Fieldston School in Riverdale – hosted anti-Israel program
Author: New York Sun
If you were to walk on the lush, treelined 18-acre campus of the Fieldston School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, you could imagine that you are on a campus of the Ivy League. The campus has a college feel, with a quad, archways, a well-stocked library, a theater, a dining hall, and athletic facilities to accommodate nearly any sport.
This ambiance is not lost on parents who aspire to see their children move on to actual Ivy League schools. None of Fieldston’s Manhattan competitors can physically match this mini-university atmosphere.To immerse their children in this collegiate environment, parents pay a college-like tuition of $28,545 a year.
But if Fieldston aspires to the best of university life for its students, it has regrettably also adopted some of the worst aspects of campus culture, a politically correct antagonism toward the Jewish state. Four months ago, Fieldston scheduled a forum on the conflict in the Middle East, lining up two speakers so clearly antagonistic to Israel that the announcement unleashed public outrage, both within the Fieldston community and beyond. A professor at Long Island University, Muhammad Muslih, was to speak in favor of a “two-state solution,” while Mazin Qumsiyeh, who once taught genetics at Yale, was to promote a “one-state solution.”
That was promoted as “balance.” Mr. Qumsiyeh espouses positions so extreme that Fieldston parents and alumni forced the school to pull the plug on the first forum. But there is a clear desire on the part of the Fieldston administration to make sure that their students “get the message.” A committee was appointed to schedule a more elaborate and presumably more balanced daylong presentation.
That’s not how things turned out.
While pro-Israeli speakers have been recruited, they will only appear in individual panels, not at the main school-wide forum. Two speakers have been recruited for that more important program, professors Tony Judt, who has said that the idea of a Jewish state is a “political anachronism,” and Rashid Khalidi, whose support of the Palestinian Arab cause has been well documented.
Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale was one of those recruited to participate on the panels. He was unaware that pro-Israel speakers were shut out of the school-wide program. Feeling “duped,” blindsided by the Fieldston administration, Rabbi Weiss withdrew. He also organized a letter of protest that has been delivered to Fieldston’s principal, John Love.Rabbi Weiss was joined by his colleagues Adam Starr of the Orthodox Hebrew Institute, Rabbi Barry Dov Katz of the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel, and Rabbi Stephen Burton of the Riverdale Temple, a Reform congregation. They characterized themselves as “deeply disappointed” by the “unbalanced” presentation. Protests are being scheduled to take place in front of the Fieldston campus during today’s program.
Mr. Love has refused to respond to either the rabbis or the press and has been defensive in responding to members of the Fieldston community.Alumna Phyllis Leventhal wrote to Mr. Love, asserting: “You can surely count me out as a loyal alum. My allegiance is to where men meet to seek the highest … which your politically correct attempts at ‘educating’ sorely, dangerously, and most egregiously miss.”
Ms. Leventhal’s concerns, apparently shared by many parents, students, and alumni, were curtly dismissed by Mr. Love: “I don’t know how to respond to such an email,other than to say that I am sorry you feel this way, about me and about the hard work that the student faculty-committee has put into this day.”
What is clear is that both the original canceled program and Tuesday’s even worse offerings are not an accident born of ignorance and innocence. It is a deliberate attempt on the part of the school to advance the agenda that is poisoning so many college campuses. This is worse, because some of the students to which this brainwashing endeavor is directed are as young as 12.
The Fieldston School was founded by Felix Adler — part of his Ethical Culture movement — more than 125 years ago.The school is no longer formally affiliated with the Ethical Culture Society. Adler’s movement stresses the ideas of secular humanism, breaking the link of ethical behavior to organized religious beliefs, “deed, rather than creed.”
Unquestionably, Adler, whose father was rabbi of Temple Emanu-el, an early leader of Reform Judaism, would be uncomfortable with the idea of a Jewish state. But I suspect that he would be more distressed by the radical Islam that drives homicide bombers to target innocent Jewish civilians.
The proposal of replacing democratic Israel and its values that honor life and Western ethics with an Islamist state run by the terrorists of Hamas is a far cry from the moral ideals of Felix Adler. Had Adler been alive today, I suspect that he would also be as deeply upset with this unbalanced program at his school as are Rabbi Weiss and the other religious leaders in Riverdale.
SHORT VIDEO of 3 year old Egyptian child talking about her hatred of Jews
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<p><b>PROTEST at COLUMBIA 3/9/06</b>
<p>BY JIMMY VIELKIND
<p>DAILY NEWS WRITER
A controversial professor provoked fury among Jewish students with a Columbia University speech about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last night.
Norman Finkelstein, a DePaul University professor and author whose writings on the Holocaust and comments about Jewish conspiracies have drawn wide condemnation, spoke about what he called the contrived controversy around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israel’s use of the Holocaust as a political tool.
Jewish students held placards and wore signs decrying the academic as a messenger of hate.
“Israel is in effect guilty of state terrorism,” Finkelstein said. “The only difference between Israeli and Hamas terrorism is that Israeli terrorism, judging by the numbers, is three times as lethal.”
The event, which was billed by sponsoring campus Muslim groups as promoting dialogue about the Middle East, found pro-Israel students on one side of the room silently raising placards saying Finkelstein supported Hezbollah and his supporters cheering on the other side of the room. “It feels like a real slap in the face,” said Bari Weiss, 21, a junior from Pittsburgh who was one of about 600 protesters.
Sakib Khan, the former president of the Muslim Students Association and the event’s principal coordinator, hailed it as a “model of democracy” and welcomed the opposition. “We wanted to have a very direct and honest dialogue on Israel and Palestine,” the 21-year-old junior said.
If Students for Justice in Palestine want to hold an anti-Semitic, terrorist-encouraging conference on main campus, don’t try and sell it to me as something that is going to help the Palestinian people. By touting their event as an “academic” conference, the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) has managed to escape the University’s restrictions on hate speech and decency. Even a quick glance at the proposed conference schedule reveals no “academic” speakers lined up and instead it is mostly made up of strategy and planning sessions. With many spots unfilled (according to the group’s website), I’m not surprised serious historians or political scientists wouldn’t come near this sham of a conference.
The anti-Semitic nature of the conference should be clear to anyone familiar with the groups sponsoring the event or the views espoused by its members. The policies advocated by this group of radicals would result in nothing less than the destruction of Israel. The conference sponsors have never accepted the right of Israel to exist and have never condemned suicide bombing. I’m sure an answer the sponsors would give is that they are “anti-Israel” not anti-Semitic. That’s like not being anti-Muslim, but only anti-Haj, or not anti-Catholic but anti-communion. Zionism is as inextricably linked to Judaism as any of the pillars of Islam are to Muslims or Catholic rites are to its adherents. By not accepting a safe place for Jews to live in the Middle East, and by not condemning those who want to blow themselves up for their beliefs contrary to that dream, the PSM conference has decidedly taken an anti-Jewish stance.
One of the policies advocated at this conference is complete divestment of Israel. The divestment movement was stillborn from its start. The brain-child of Prof. Noam Chomsky of MIT, even he has since abandoned this fruitless campaign. President DeGioia has unequivocally stated his opposition to this campaign.
To date, no universities have caved to these demands. This campaign calls for a complete boycott of any company that does business in Israel, without regard to what these companies sell or buy in Israel. It is important to mention this also includes those corporations that provide water, electricity and other basic services to Palestinians as well as Israelis. Included in the list of oppressors targeted for divestment are such evil empires as A&W Root Beer, Nokia, Intel, Taco Bell, General Electric, and Blockbuster Video. This is not an attempt to deny military funding to Israel; this is an attempt to choke the very life out of the embattled country.
Hopefully the hypocrisy of the divestment supporters won’t be lost on the campus community. Launched several years ago at my alma-mater, UC Berkeley, the campaign’s supporters are reminiscent of the confused armchair liberals I used to call my neighbors.
There is nothing quite as heart-warming as a misguided activist trying to sell you his Socialist Worker newspaper for $3 in his $20 Che t-shirt and Nikes. Nothing, except a divestment activist using their Nokia cellphone to organize other phonies, their Intel chip to print their flyers, the GE generators to power the whole endeavor, washed down by a nice cup of Starbucks. If these people were serious about the effort, and not merely concerned with the negative public relations effect it could have on Israel, they might start with themselves.
It’s not surprising that when a situation as complex as this is painted with a propaganda brush as wide as the one the PSM has chosen, many of the finer points are missed. One such point is how efforts like this cause terrorist groups in the region to take heart.
Groups like Islamic Jihad or Hamas view campaigns like this as a sign that the international community supports their efforts and that if they continue to wage war for long enough Israel will be forced to concede to their stated demand for an Islamic theocracy in place of Israel.
Response to the conference has been fairly restrained from both the administration and Jewish student groups on main campus. President DeGioia made an admirable statement in which he explained the University’s stance. Despite the objectionable and dangerous views of the PSM activists, silencing their speech is even more dangerous. Coupled with a statement completely rejecting divestment, I feel this was a commendable position that refuses to let the university’s values of justice and liberty be high-jacked. Jewish students have responded responsibly as well.
Instead of pushing for the conference to be cancelled, they have expressed their concern with its un-academic nature and have called for attention to their own events. The events the Georgetown Israel Alliance has planned include a visit from Mothers for Peace, a speaking tour of Israeli and Palestinian mothers committed to a peaceful solution. The positions of the administration and the pro-Israel students stand in drastic contrast to the absolutist demands and contentions of the PSM supporters.
While it may seem there is little a university student can do to influence world peace, there is definitely an important role that can be played with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ultimately, painful compromises and concessions need to be made by those who live in the region, but they can only do so with the proper support from the international community. Palestinians and Israelis both need to know the world won’t abandon them, and at the same time won’t let one side wipe the other off the map. On American college campuses there exists a unique opportunity to encourage dialogue between the two sides and to explore ways of bringing people who might have been enemies elsewhere, together in a civilized way. A divestment campaign and divisive conference, like the one planned, do not serve this purpose at all. This conference is sure only to radicalize the debate on campus and drive students apart. By taking such extreme stances, the conference supporters have eschewed any attempts for dialogue or understanding and instead have chosen to do everything they can to de-legitimize Israel.
The most ironic truth of this situation is that even if all the PSM’s demands were met it would do absolutely nothing to help the Palestinian people. Surely Israelis and Palestinians both would be hurt by divestment and similarly nobody can be helped by discouraging dialogue.
Golda Meir, famously said the only chance Israel has of making peace with her enemies is if those enemies start loving their own children more than they hate Israel. I would say the same is true about the so-called PSM movement.
Only when they start putting more effort into helping Palestinians than they do into demonizing Israel will they begin to aid, rather than impede the peace process. How much money has PSM raised for Palestinian children? None. How many collection boxes will be placed around campus to collect money for those hurt in the violence? None. This conference has one aim, to hurt Jews and Israel. True, even people who want to hurt me have a right to free speech, but I don’t have to like it.
