| Steven Plaut |
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Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university. |
Thursday, December 31, 2009
THIS BLOG HAS MOVED TO http://www.zioncon.blogspot.com
The Left is Having Conniptions over Being Monitored and Exposed: http://counterpunch.com/makdisi10182007.html "Academic colleagues, get used to it," warned the pro-Israel activist Martin Kramer in March 2004. "Yes, you are being watched. Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you've also posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be visited late at night." Tuesday, December 01, 2009
1.
Joel Beinin Whines about Israeli Airport's "Harassment" – by Steven Plaut Posted By Steven Plaut On December 1, 2009 @ 12:06 am In FrontPage | No Comments
Being a leftist Anti-Zionist means not only never having to say you are sorry, such as when you get your facts all wrong. It also means that you have an obligation to represent yourself as a victim of harassment. Armchair martyrdom is as fundamental a part of leftist ideology as anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel. In his now-famous essay from July, 1976, "The Intelligent Co-ed's Guide to America," Thomas Wolfe wrote about how desperately American academics wish to feel persecuted. A pretense of being persecuted today seems to do wonders both for their ego and for their web traffic. The entire "Zionist Lobby" is largely an invention by these same people, anxious to show that they are being oppressed by an evil nefarious conspiracy. You just need to wave your stigmata and denounce the "Neo-Conservatives," the "Rightwing McCarthyists," and – of course the Jews. Whining about being persecuted seems to be the leading participation sport of today's far Leftists and the radical armchair postureurs. As documented recently on this web site [1], Joel Beinin, the Israel-hating pro-Hamas sometimes-Maoist professor of Middle East Studies at Stanford University is just such a persecution whiner. Here is what we wrote: '"McCarthyism" seems to be Beinin's third favorite "m" word, after Marxism and Mao, and he applies it liberally to anyone who dares to criticize him. Beinin wrote a 2004 article called "The New McCarthyism: Policing Thought about the Middle East [2]." In it, Beinin denounced the Ford Foundation [3]'s decision to withdraw funding from any university grantee that finances the promotion of "violence, terrorism, or bigotry or the destruction of any state." What worried Beinin was that such restrictions could potentially hurt a "Palestinian student group [that] called for the replacement of the state of Israel with a secular, democratic state," meaning one seeking the extermination of Israel.' Beinin went on to declare that Bay Area Zionists silenced him and prevented him from giving a talk to a school in San Jose. The San Francisco Chronicle checked and reported that no one at all from the local Jewish Community had even spoken with anyone at that school. Well, the good professor is back. Over the Thanksgiving weekend he widely circulated the following epistle, which we reprint for you here in full, spelling errors and all: 26 November 2009 I arrived in Israel at about 15:00 on Wednesday, 25 November afternoon to visit my mother, brother, and sister who are Israeli (and US) citizens resident in Israel since 1973. My mother has been ill, and this visit was prompted primarily for that reason. I have visited Israel dozens of times before – most recently December 2008 – and resided in the country for extended periods on several different occasions. Yesterday, for the first time since my first visit to Israel in 1965, I was detained without explanation at Ben-Gurion airport for nearly two hours and ultimately interrogated. The questioners asked questions that they surely already knew the answers to. The asked, for example, my profession and my email. My position as Donald J. McLaughlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University and my email are a matter of public record, easily obtainable from the website of Stanford's Department of History. The questioners also asked whether I had travelled (sic) to "other countries in the region" which, since they had my passport in their hands for the better part of two hours with all the relevant visa stamps, was also not obscure information. My luggage was not searched nor was I asked any question remotely related to the security of Israel except whether I had travelled (sic) to Iran (I was there once, for two weeks, in 1970 when Israel had warm relations with the Shah's regime). It therefore appears that this "investigation" had no purpose other than to harass and intimidate me. Upon leaving I was told that I would be contacted further by one "Amos" from the Ministry of Defense. For my convenience, I was given his phone number: 054-*******. Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History The main reports about the horrific suffering by Beinin at the hands of the security personnel at Israel's airport have been on web sites run by Israel's own predominantly-Arab Stalinist communist party and on one of its front groups named "The Left Bank." Now the above Beinin hysterics about being "intimidated" need a dose of deconstruction. Beinin routinely travels to countries that happen to be at war with Israel, and has visited Iran, which happens to be officially on record as calling for the annihilation of Israel and its population. By his own admission, Beinin's passport is bristling with visas from such countries. One would expect even the sleepiest airport passport inspector at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport to sit up and take notice of someone coming into the country with such visas. Most passport inspectors at Tel Aviv airport, by the way, are teenage girls. So you can imagine the terror and intimation experienced there by the poor professor. Now Beinin's insistence that the airport security staff must have known who he is rings a bit curious. I did a search of the Hebrew web, and – sure enough – there are some internet mentions of him in Hebrew, but almost all of those are on the web sites of communist party and its fronts, which the airport inspectors may not visit on a regular basis. There are two mentions of Beinin's getting sued by Los Angeles journalist Rachel Neuwirth for his posting false smears about her. What about Beinin's claim that being questioned about his travels in belligerent countries constitutes "harassment" and "intimidation?" (We have only his word that the questioning took two hours, and no mention at all of his being offered cookies and tea; I have waited in that airport for longer just to get a guitar case out of the belly of a plane!) Well, an acquaintance of mine named Julia is an Israeli Jew born in Libya, a fact noted on her Israeli passport, and you would not believe the hassle she goes through every time she wants to come to the United States for a visit! My wife was questioned at length and searched at Tokyo airport after 9-11 because her passport says she was born in the Middle East. More to the point, Joel Beinin is an anti-Israel hate propagandist, someone who has made a career out of rationalizing anti-Jewish terrorism and endorsing Arab demands for Israel's annihilation. Other countries routinely bar hostile propagandists for far less provocation. Canada banned ultra-leftist [4] and Saddam's agent George Galloway from entering, and also banned some other radicals [5]. Canada also banned a controversial rap group from entering. The US banned Tariq Ramadan due to his terrorist connections. It has banned others for security reasons, including Cat Stevens, the British author Sebastian Horsley [6], a pro-LSD Canadian psychologist [7], and at least one Israeli [8]. The UK banned radio host Michael Savage [9] (along with 15 other people [10]) for being insensitive to Moslems, and tried to ban Dutch politician [11] Geert Wilders. Egypt has barred Hamas members from entering. The Ukraine banned the mayor of Moscow [12] from entering the country because of things he said. Now as it turns out, Israel almost never prevents anti-Israel propagandists and anti-Semitic hate-mongers from entering the country. For example, it rather stupidly allows lots of "anarchists" from the "International Solidarity Movement" and similar pro-terror groups to enter the country and then to attack its policemen and soldiers as their attempt to help Palestinian terrorists. The only two anti-Israel propagandists of note who have been barred from entering Israel in recent years were: 1. Norman Finkelstein, a Neo-Nazi who was fired by DePaul University and who was barred from entering Israel due to his intimate ties with the Hezb'Allah, and 2. Richard Falk, the anti-Semitic retired professor from Princeton who was barred from entering Israel as head of an anti-Israel UN propaganda "commission." (When Falk arrived earlier as a private person to give university lectures, he was admitted.) Anti-Israel fanatics, like Noam Chomsky and the Swedish journalist who recently invented a medieval blood libel about Jews stealing the body parts of Palestinians, have been admitted to Israel freely, although they never would be if I had anything to say about it. Even Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, whose nasty diatribe, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, has become the Koran for Israel-bashers and Jew-haters around the world, were welcomed in Israel for a speaking tour. It goes without saying that Beinin has never expressed any criticism of the fact that Israelis are prohibited altogether from entering Iran and most Arab countries. Some of those countries prohibit entry to Jews from anywhere. In Saudi Arabia you will get expelled and beaten to a pulp if you have a Hanukka Menorah or a Christmas tree. Of course the greatest irony in all of this is that Beinin was not banned from Israel at all, in spite of being a fanatical pro-terror anti-Israel propagandist. He was simply interviewed by an alert young passport inspector, suspicious of all those visas in Beinin's passport from countries seeking Israel's annihilation. For Beinin, however, the incident was a priceless opportunity to wave his stigmata and show the world what a persecuted martyr and victim he is. His questioning in the airport proves he is being intimidated and harassed by them damned Zionists! Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/01/joel-beinin-whines-about-israeli-airports-harassment-by-steven-plaut/ URLs in this post: [1] documented recently on this web site: http://frontpagemag.com../2009/10/16/collaborators-in-the-campus-war-against-israel-and-the-jews-joel-beinin-%D7%92%E2%82%AC%E2%80%9C-by-steven-plaut/feed/ [2] The New McCarthyism: Policing Thought about the Middle East: http://www.censoringthought.org/beinin.html [3] Ford Foundation: http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/funderProfile.asp?fndid=5176 [4] banned ultra-leftist: http://www.911blogger.com/node/19654 [5] banned some other radicals: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/10/04/peace-activists.html [6] British author Sebastian Horsley: http://blog.beliefnet.com/idolchatter/2008/03/british-author-barred-from-ent.html [7] pro-LSD Canadian psychologist: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/04/canadian_psycho [8] at least one Israeli: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/17/israels-national-security-aide-barred-from-us [9] banned radio host Michael Savage: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2009/02/government-bans.html [10] 15 other people: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/16-banned-from-britain-named-and-shamed-1679127.html [11] tried to ban Dutch politician: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5709892.ece [12] banned the mayor of Moscow: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1A1-D90K90UG1.html
PS: Beinin publishes his "version" of the events here: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/beinin281109.html Note the part about how the awful harassing Israeli security officer offers Beinin the former's own personal cell phone number in case Beinin needs any help during his visit to Israel.
2. Haaretz gleefully reports that the EU is about to demand that Jerusalem be recognized as the capital of "Palestine." See http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1131926.html Now the other newspapers are not reporting this, so it may be another Haaretz fabrication. But let us suppose for a moment that the story is for real.
I am trying to come up with a sufficiently snarky snide response to the idea, and am having trouble doing so. Calling for turning European capitals over to the Mongols just does not cut it. Nor does turning Washington over to the confederacy.
The best that I can come up with is this. We must all tell the Eurotrash that such an idea must be stopped at all costs for the sake of protecting the rights of homosexuals.
You see, under Israeli rule, homosexuals can hold "Pride Parades" in Jerusalem. People may freely cheer them on or curse them or throw eggs at them. After all, Israel is (sort of) democratic. But if Jerusalem were to become the capital of "Palestine" or even a shared capital with the savages, clearly one of the first things they will do is to criminalize homosexuality in their "capital." The Palestinian Authority and its satellite terrorist groups routinely torture, murder and kneecap homosexuals. So once they have any control in Jerusalem, you can kiss those Gay Pride Marches goodbye.
Given that homosexual rights are far more important to the Eurotrash than preventing Iran from conducting a nuclear war against civilization, this argument might get through to them. I can also imagine it finally persuading the Tikkun crowd to turn anti-Palestinian!
3. As you know, Jerusalem has been having more than its fair share of hooliganism lately, most coming from the ultra-Orthodox chareidim, who are not above taking to violence to impose their medieval life style and world outlook on the rest of the country. But the problem is not restricted to them. Some Jerusalem ultra-secularists are joining in the thuggery and hooliganism. And in the latest version, some of these philistines have taken to painting the Tetragrammaton, the four letter name of God in Hebrew on streets in order to upset the chareidim. You know, so cars can run over it. See this report: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1131910.html
I propose instead that we chain those ultra-secularist philistines to the violent chareidim rabble and make them scrub all the graffiti off Jerusalem's walls together in chain gangs.
4. Anti-democratic McCarthyist David Newman of Ben Gurion University smears NGO-Monitor: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259243045210&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
5. From Arlene Kushner
Is British anti-Semitism in danger of getting out of control?
7. http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/01/the-deal-for-gilad-shalit-by-jacob-shrybman/ Netanyahu's coming prisoner-release atrocity. 8. Yet another Hebrew University moonbette: http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/HebrewU%20-%20Daphna%20Golan%20-%20lends%20credibility%20to%20Goldstone's%20Hamas%20Propaganda.htm Monday, November 30, 2009
Neve Gordon turns His Own Home into a Spa for Convicted Terrorist http://frontpagemag.com/2009/11/30/sheltering-extremism-by-paul-shindman/
Posted By Paul Shindman On November 30, 2009 @ 12:07 am In FrontPage | No Comments gordon4 Jerusalem – Dr. Neve Gordon of Israel's Ben Gurion University is known as one of the most radical academic Palestinian sympathizers. However, his activities appear to have peaked this year with a call for an anti-Israel boycott, and revelations that he hosted a convicted Palestinian sentenced to house arrest. Despite being the chairman of the political science department at Israel's Ben Gurion University, Gordon wrote an L.A. Times op-ed calling for a worldwide boycott [1] of Israel, including Israeli universities, to achieve what he calls "ending our apartheid." Gordon's call was widely seen as an anti-democratic attempt to undermine Israeli democracy and sovereignty and drew scathing criticism from his peers in both the academic and activist communities. The president of BGU, Rivka Carmi, went so far as to say Gordon's call meant the university " is being threatened by the egregious remarks of one person, under the guise of academic freedom [2]." In a rebuttal editorial, Carmi had to point out that it was only Israeli labor law that prevented the university from firing Gordon. In a harsh assessment, she said his boycott call meant "Gordon has forfeited his ability to work effectively within the academic setting, with his colleagues in Israel and around the world." Veteran Israeli left wing anti-Zionist activist Uri Avnery was with Gordon and other Israeli extremists when they barricaded themselves in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound during a prolonged siege by the Israeli army in 2002. Despite their common background, even Avnery rejected Gordon's op-ed, saying it was an "example of a faulty diagnosis leading to faulty treatment. To be precise: the mistaken assumption that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resembles the South African experience leads to a mistaken choice of strategy." This was harsh criticism from a political colleague that raised questions about Gordon's professional abilities as an academic. Gordon is viewed in his own country as notorious for his venomous anti-Israel writings and statements. The Israeli media reported when Gordon and other activists illegally entered Ramallah in 2002 to serve as human shields inside Yasser Arafat's headquarters. They wanted to prevent the Israeli army from arresting the suspects wanted for the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister. Gordon was shown in newspaper photos embracing Arafat. The terrorists were eventually apprehended, tried and convicted. Gordon also has a fractious track record in his teaching career with numerous run-ins with students who hold opposing views. Gordon regularly denounces Israel as a fascist apartheid entity and admitted that his boycott call was a tactic to force Israeli concessions with the Palestinians. Gordon's articles are so openly anti-Israel that they are often published on neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial web sites. Around the same time as the boycott call, Gordon turned his own home into a refuge for convicted Fatah organizer Mohammed Abu Humus, a resident of the Issawiya neighborhood of East Jerusalem. As a local Fatah organizer, Abu Hums had previous convictions for several security related offenses including arson and assault. Despite the latest conviction for directing demonstrators to throw rocks, Gordon described Abu Humus as a "political prisoner" and "a Fatah leader." A Jerusalem district judge earlier this year convicted Abu Humus and handed down a nine-month sentence, converted to house arrest. Gordon organized a group of far-left academics to testify on behalf of Abu Humus, and Gordon offered the court to host Abu Humus in Gordon's own home in Beersheva for the duration of the house arrest. It is evidently the only case on record of a Palestinian terrorist being released to house arrest in the home of a Jewish Israeli citizen. Abu Humus and Gordon have collaborated in the past in an organization called Ta'ayush, which Gordon himself is on record as describing as a seditious group, but according to its website its activities appear to have petered out in 2007. Abu Humus provided an interesting complement to Gordon's position. Interviewed at his office in the Alternative Information Center, a pro-Palestinian lobby group in Jerusalem, Abu Humus stated that archeological excavations in the Old City prove that despite Jews worshipping at the remaining wall of the ancient Jewish temple, the Jews had no claim to Jerusalem. After years of archeological digging, he insisted no evidence of the Jewish temple exists. "Have they found anything of the Jews? They didn't find anything," Abu Humus said. Talking about the holy sites appeared to get Abu Humus riled up. Despite Gordon's testimony that Abu Humus was a tolerant pacifist opposed to violence, the activist continued on a roll. "If somebody believes in (the Jewish or Christian) religion, he has to change his religion," Abu Humus said. "And after Jesus came, it says Mohammed will come. And Mohammed came. If you are religious as a Jew, you have to believe in Mohammed. You have to believe in Jesus." Gordon is the father of two small children and stated in the media that the time Abu Humus spent in his home under house arrest was "in a way, it's a wonderful experience, probably the best political education that you can give to a child." Paul Shindman is a veteran freelance journalist in Israel who has worked with several North American media outlets and the BBC. He is the former Jerusalem bureau chief for United Press International. Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2009/11/30/sheltering-extremism-by-paul-shindman/ URLs in this post: [1] for a worldwide boycott: http://mobile.latimes.com/inf/infomo;JSESSIONID=CEE61D4835C065AF1DF6.4305?view=page6&feed:a=latimes_1min&feed:c=opinion&feed:i=48747036&nopaging=1 [2] is being threatened by the egregious remarks of one person, under the guise of academic freedom: http://mobile.latimes.com/inf/infomo;jsessionid=B156184E0ECC59444976.4303?view=webarticle&feed:a=latimes_1min&feed:c=opinion&feed:i=48986796&nopaging=1 Want to tell the heads of BGU what you think of this? Write to: Rivka Carmi, President P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel, Tel: 972-8-6461211/9 Fax: 972-8-6472991
Prof. Jimmy Weinblatt, Rector P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel Tel: 972-8-6461223 Fax: 972-8-6479434
Other officers listed here: http://cmsprod.bgu.ac.il/Eng/Units/management/ University "Friends of" Offices outside Israel are listed here: http://web.bgu.ac.il/Eng/Units/associates/WorldwideAssociatesOffices
Thursday, November 26, 2009
1. The miraculous eight days of Hanukka, 5770:
On the first day of cowardice my PM said to me, let's have a settlement freeze. On the second day of cowardice my PM said to me, let's agree the savages can have their own state. On the third day of cowardice my PM said to me, let's agree to judicial activism. On the fourth day of cowardice my PM said to me, let's let the Court kill prison privatization. On the fifth day of cowardice my PM said to me, let's forget reform of water policy. On the sixth day of cowardice my PM said to me, let's forget about splitting the Attorney General from Legal Advisor to the government. because such a split upsets the Left. On the seventh day of cowardice my PM said to me, let's forget about doing anything about the violent "anarchists" who attack Israeli police and soldiers. On the eighth day of cowardice my PM said to me, let's just release all the terrorists we have to buy back a kidnapped soldier.
2. Well, Richard Goldstone has emerged as an Israel-bashing anti-Semite, willing to sell his soul to the UN in order to find favor with his leftist friends. Well, not only is Goldstone a liar willing to toady up to his anti-Semitic masters. It turns out he also has an interesting track record of groveling to the apartheid authorities back when he was a judge in South Africa. Read on:
FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU Posted: November 22, 2009 By Aaron Klein
Richard Goldstone, the United Nations investigator whose controversial report recently accused Israel of war crimes, once sentenced a 13-year-old boy to prison for protesting South African apartheid. The case was one of several of Goldstone's questionable and highly criticized rulings during some of apartheid South Africa 's most violent years. Goldstone served as a judge on South Africa 's Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 until he was appointed judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in 1989 – all during South Africa 's apartheid regime. In a blog piece at the Huffington Post, researcher Ashley Rindsberg references a case in which Goldstone ruled against the 1986 appeal of a 13-year-old boy who had been sentenced to jail for disrupting school as a protest against apartheid and increasingly draconian "emergency laws" used to squelch opposition to the government. The New York Times reported Goldstone provided no immediate comment on his decision to uphold the sentence of the lower court. Rindsberg also pointed out that Goldstone ruled against two appellants who had been convicted for possession of a cassette tape that contained a recording of an interview with Oliver Tambo, who, along with Nelson Mandela, was a founding member of the African National Congress's Youth League. The ANC has been South Africa 's ruling party since the establishment of nonracial democracy in 1994. Goldstone ruled that by possessing the tape, the two young men had violated South Africa 's Internal Security Act No. 74 of 1982 – a piece of legislation that some human rights scholars have called a crucial weapon in the regime's "arsenal of terrorism legislation." Goldstone commented in that case that Tambo's opening words on the recording indicated "beyond a reasonable doubt that the cassette in question was published or disseminated under the direction or guidance or on behalf of the African National Congress." According to Goldstone's Supreme Court ruling on the case, the tapes also included audio of Tambo encouraging the people of South Africa to resist the apartheid regime, as well as the leader's call to "let us change our own country into the kind of society we want it to be." Rindsberg noted Goldstone's ruling against the 13-year-old boy transpired amidst a wave of national protests and school disruptions by South Africa 's black youth against apartheid. Authorities at the time responded with mass detention of almost 2,000 children who participated in the protests or who were suspected of doing so. Goldstone was slammed by South African human rights organi za tions for his 1986 ruling against the boy. He later told the New York Times that South Africa 's emergency laws left him "no way out." Goldstone recently penned a U.N. report that claimed both Hamas and Israel were guilty of war crimes during the Jewish state's defensive war in Ga za last December and January. Goldstone's report claimed Israel deliberately targeted civilians during the Ga za conflict, which started after Hamas refused to extend a cease-fire. The terrorist group instead launched a rocket offensive against Israeli population centers. The U.N. report equated Israel , which worked to minimize civilian casualties in Ga za , to Hamas, which utilized civilians as human shields and fired rockets at Jewish cities from Palestinian hospitals and apartment buildings. During the Ga za war, Israel sent hundreds of thousands of text messages and placed tens of thousands of calls warning local Palestinians of incoming attacks against Hamas' military infrastructure in Ga za . As WND previously reported, Goldstone's investigation may have relied on false witnesses and Palestinian misinformation.
3. I think that "Kick a Jew Day" is a great idea. Go to http://www.abc-7.com/Global/story.asp?S=11558731# For a list of Jews who should be kicked, go to www.isracampus.org.il
4. Turkeys: http://frontpagemag.com/2009/11/26/turkeys-of-the-year-by-michelle-malkin/
5. Dear Barack: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/41578
6. Israeli "Academics" seeking Israel's annihilation thru the Alternative Information Center: http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Israeli%20Academics%20doing%20the%20dirty%20work%20for%20the%20AIC.htm
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Freedom of expression belongs to professors and students alike Nov. 23, 2009 Amnon Rubinstein , THE JERUSALEM POST (Dean, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya) According to a recent report in Ha'aretz, students at Tel Aviv University are complaining bitterly about leftist professors. The students are said to be hurt by the professors' positions, "but are afraid to express contrary views, lest this harm their grades." So wrote Prof. Nira Hativa, head of the university's center for advancement of teaching. She added that in many end-of-year feedback forms, students complained about professors who "attack the state of Israel, the IDF, the Zionist movement and even worse than that." She also added that the complaints allege that "Leftist professors, as distinct from rightist ones, feel absolutely free to express their political views, even when there is no relevance whatsoever to the subject they teach." The head of the university's student union tells of similar student complaints, and the talkbacks to this news item - whatever their credibility - also told about students who are afraid to argue with such professors. THIS NEWS item did not surprise me. A small group of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel faculty members has turned Tel Aviv University into a podium from which to broadcast their political propaganda. Two notable instances: a group of 30 professors signed a pro-Iranian petition last year warning against Israeli and American designs and "adventurism" against the Islamic Republic, without even mentioning its president's threat to wipe Israel off the map and his Holocaust-denying outbursts. The second example was a conference held by the Tel Aviv Law School in which the subject was the alleged mistreatment of "political prisoners" (i.e. convicted Palestinian terrorists) that invited, as guest speaker, a released prisoner sentenced to 27 years in jail for throwing a bomb into a Jewish civilian bus. This is not academic freedom. This is using academic podiums to deliver Israel-bashing propaganda. When I taught at Columbia University, I could see how TAU guest professors would stoke the flames of anti-Israel rhetoric; one of them insisted that the university show the film Jenin, Jenin, which charges Israel with perpetrating a famously imaginary massacre. The usual defense of these TAU excesses is that all professors are entitled to academic freedom. This is inherently true in principle. Academic freedom, a special niche of the freedom of speech principle enshrined in Israeli law, should incorporate marginal and iconoclastic views. This is especially true in a society like Israel which suffers from a constant state of emergency and stress. But academic freedom, like all human rights, is not unlimited. Austrian and German courts rightly decided that Holocaust denial is not protected speech; Jean Paul Sartre went further, believing that all anti-Semitic expressions are unprotected by the right to freedom of speech. A call to boycott Israel, such as was made by a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University's political science department, is certainly unprotected, in a similar way to the Supreme Court's ruling that a party which seeks the destruction of Israel cannot run in the Knesset elections. But there is one further point: academics cannot seek shelter behind their much-touted freedom, while denying the students' right to express their own opinions. If what is alleged in Ha'aretz is true, then these TAU professors are violating the law. Article 5 of the Student's Rights Law states this explicitly: "Every student has the freedom to express his views and opinions as to the contents of the syllabus and the values incorporated therein." In other words, the students, too, have a measure of academic freedom. If the allegations made by the students - probably mainly in TAU's social sciences departments - are true, the university is violating the students' lawful rights. The writer is a professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, a former education minister and Knesset member, as well as the recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Law. Monday, November 23, 2009
1. Tel Aviv University in the News: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1129984.html
The rabbis in attendance included Zalman Baruch Melamed, rabbi of Beit El....
2. Hey no fair – how come Israel's Post-Zionists are not getting funds? Or are they? http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1130072.html http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/columbia_rutgers_on_spy_group_gift_JOTKcEIJ5qgzRWPVeBxxNN
3. Remember the Hebrew University's thesis that showed that Jewish soldiers do not rape Arabs because the Jews are such racists? Well, now comes http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134565 First-Ever Conference on Arab's Anti-Jewish Sexual Harassment
No doubt Hebrew University will proclaim these terrorists progressive protesters against racism!
A panel of experts and activists assembled at Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv Sunday, the International Day for Combating Violence against Women, to discuss one feminist topic that leftist feminists do not talk about: nationalistic sexual harassment by Arabs. Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar Ilan University provided a short history of women's objectification in Islamic culture, from the days of Mohammed to the current mass rape in Darfur. He explained that from its outset, Islam allowed "mut'ah" marriages, a form of temporary marriage for pleasure, which enables a man to marry a woman for a period of time that can be measured in hours or even minutes, solely for the purpose of his gratification. This form of marriage is still allowed among Shi'ite Muslims, he said. Jurist and journalist Daphne Netanyahu explained to the audience, which was made up mostly but not solely of women, that feminism was developed by the Left and is the successor to communism. She said that feminism, like communism, is opposed to nationalism and it expects a Jewish woman to identify with an Arab woman who raised her son to be a terrorist more than she identifies with her own husband, father or son. Likud Knesset Member Tzipi Hotobeli told the gathering that several months ago she was invited, as the chairman of the Knesset Committee for Advancement of Women's Status, to visit a hostel in Jerusalem for Jewish women who had left abusive relationships with Arabs. She met a group of 20 women aged 15 to 30, and discovered to her surprise that these women had not come from "peripheral" areas but from central Israel. She also visited a religious group in Yafo, where Arabs frequently threaten their Jewish neighbors, and learned of a growing phenomenon of Jewish girls in the central Yafo High School who are seduced by Arabs and marry into Islam. Anat Cohen of Hevron told of a repeated pattern of sexual harassment of women in Hevron by Arabs as part of an ongoing campaign aimed at intimidation and humiliation of the Jews. She said that she had turned to the police and repeatedly demanded, in vain, that they do something about the problem. When an Arab accosts a Jewish woman and a Jewish man intervenes to protect her, the police arrest the Jew and not the Arab, she said. Gil Ronen, who heads the Familists organization, spoke of a leftist-feminist "mafia" in academia and the press which censors all attempts to challenge its absolute authority on all matters pertaining to men, women and the relations between them. The right wing, he says, needs to take back morality, because "he who controls morality controls the country." Amit Barak of the growing student movement Im Tirtzu told stories similar to Cohen's regarding Upper Nazareth – a town founded to create a Jewish presence in a predominantly Arab environment. Gradually, he said, Arabs are moving into the town and Jews are moving out. The daily threat of harassment which women face when walking down the street in Nazareth Illit is a major consideration causing many families to leave, he explained. Attorney Tamar Har-Paz of the Zionist Women's Forum, the group that organized the panel, said that it intends to fight for recognition by the establishment and to seek funding for its activity. One idea the group would like to advance involves the creation of neighborhood patrols to give Jewish women and men greater safety in the streets of the mixed cities.
4. Dersh on Judge Goldtone's jihad: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3809194,00.html
5. Anti-democratic judicial activism, where the courts invent laws that the legislature refuses to pass, strikes again: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134549
6. 20 years of treason: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134549
7. Foreign Government Funding for NGO Political Activity in Israel Tuesday, December 1st, 2009, 1-4pm NGO Monitor invites you to attend a conference under the auspices of Minister Michael Eitan and MK Zeev Elkin on Foreign Government Funding for NGO Political Activity in Israel. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play an important role in shaping government policy and public opinion on many core issues in Israel. They receive tens of millions of shekels per year from foreign governments, as well as from bodies such as the EU, to finance their activities. Details as to the extent and nature of this funding have recently been documented in a research report (Hebrew) published jointly by NGO Monitor and the Institute for Zionist Strategies. The conference will deal with the political, diplomatic and legal issues raised by this phenomenon, as well as with legislative proposals put forward in response. 8. The Jerusalem Post reports that Bibi Netanyahu's brother-in-law is calling on Netanyahu to resign rather than sign the cowardly capitulation to the Hamas that will release hundreds of murderers. and will result in untold numbers of murdered Jews. Who says that no one in the Netanyahu family has any common sense?
Sunday, November 22, 2009
(Apologies to those who got the posting yesterday about Abe Lincoln's battle against the Two-State Solution carrying a long address list in the header. I had meant it to be in BSS, not CC. Sorry – I am getting old!)
1. Haaretz reports gleefully that the Israeli military command in the West Bank issued an order that any settlers who cuss at soldiers at checkpoints should be arrested.
Now, let's put aside the constitutional question of whether cussing at and insulting soldiers should be protected speech. I can live with a system that penalizes hooligans of any sort who cuss Israeli soldiers. But the real problem here is that, like so much else in Israel, the new order is being implemented in a discriminatory manner that coddles the Left and panders to the anti-Semitic "anarchists." While some guttersnipes from the Right do in fact cuss soldiers, vulgar and violent attacks on Israeli soldiers and police by the Left take place every single week in the West Bank. The Israeli leftists, with their Palestinian terrorist friends, joined by the "internationals" and "anarchists" from the International Solidarity Movement (or ISM, which really stands for I Support Murder), attack Israeli soldiers guarding the construction of Israel's security fence all the time. The army is under orders to coddle them and not arrest them.
And since the army is now going to arrest settlers who behave in an uncivilized way, when will the police and the University of Haifa shut down the "ALEF List." The "ALEF" list is a chat list of anti-Semites and Neo-Nazis that operates under the auspices of the University of Haifa. See this: http://isracampus.org.il/ALEF%20Watch.htm
A few months ago it circulated materials with the photos and addresses of Israeli army officers and with the caption "War Criminals." When someone circulated the photo of an Arab judge in Tel Aviv with his address, the police interpreted that as attempted murder. The ALEF list's distribution of the photos of army officers was even more clearly a call for murdering them. For details on this story, go here: http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Alef%20watch%20-%20Dorothy%20Naor%20-%20incitement%20to%20murder.htm
If cussing soldiers is criminal behavior, what is this?
2. Now as reluctant as I am to concede that the dual Israeli court system has done something proper and correct, I have to concede that it has done so this past week.
It seems that one Matan Cohen, a young "anarchist" from the above-mentioned hooligan gangs that attack Israeli police, suffered a serious injury to one of his eyes. Cohen sued Israel in Israeli court for millions of shekels, claiming that his eye was damaged as a result of rubber bullets being fired at the rampaging rioters in whose midst he was jihading. Cohen and his buddies went on a media campaign, appearing on Channel 10, and accused the soldiers of trying to murder him.
Just one itsy-bitsy problem. The judge, Dalia Ganot in Tel Aviv District Court, investigated and found out that young Cohen's eye was the victim of a rock being thrown by his jihad friends at the police and soldiers, a rock his trajectory his the wrong Jew (or – if you prefer – the right Jew) by mistake. Cohen was standing out of range of the rubber bullets and video film of the events showed that no soldiers were shooting anything at all when he was injured. The judge added diplomatically that Cohen is a person for whom the facts and the truth are never in danger of being found in his possession. She noted that Cohen had kept changing his version of his story.
And best of all, Judge Ganot hit Cohen with court costs in the amount of 50,000 shekels.
I would have preferred of course that the Judge had ruled that even if Cohen HAD been shot by a rubber bullet while assaulting the cops and the soldiers, he would STILL be un-entitled to any compensation. In fact, he should have been charged the cost of the bullet.
3. Long but very interesting read:
How to Fight the Campus Battle against Old and New Anti-Semites:Motifs, Strategies, and Methods*Manfred Gerstenfeld
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