"A Legacy of Pride, Strength & Peoplehood" (videos)

A couple of recent videos from StandWithUs:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMZDkU1tSr8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjwuhzXSsTI

Academic Who Dreams of Israel's Demise Takes US Students on Free "Trip of a Lifetime"

"It is essential to talk about Israel/Palestine, considering that Israel is the world's largest  recipient of US aid...

 I dream of a binational secular democratic state in Israel/Palestine that provides equal rights to all citizens and inhabitants of the Holy Land (Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians and Muslims) regardless of ethno-religious affiliation.

 I believe that we can and will realize this within our lifetime."
 [Emphasis added, here and below]

The words are those of Swarthmore College visiting professor in Peace and Conflict Studies (and class of '06 graduate) Sa'ed Atshan [pictured], quoted  in the Summer 2016 Swarthmore College [alumni] Bulletin that I finally got around to reading today, having flicked through the class notes a fortnight or so ago.

It's on a profile of Atshan on page 8 by one Michael Agresta, demonstrating how Atshan, an Arab Quaker who attended Ramallah Friends School, "balances scholarship and peace activism".

Inter alia:

"Atshan's most recent foray beyond the ivory tower is the inaugural Swarthmore College Israel/Palestine Study Trip, but he has long worked to build bridges from academia to the front lines of social justice and peace activism.  As a graduate student at Harvard, he organized a similar spring break study trip to Israel/Palestine; the program has endured and is in its eighth year.  He has also partnered in projects with Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees....'

On page 15 is a cross-referenced report by Bulletin managing editor Carrie Compton headed "Trip of a Lifetime".  Illustrated, as you can see here, by, respectively, "Rainbow in Jericho; Palestinian potter; Lunch in Hebron; Dome of the Rock", it tells us:

'Over winter break, 19 students from Sa’ed Atshan ’06’s Israeli-Palestinian Conflict class spent 10 days in that region of the Middle East, meeting with top humanitarian figures on all sides of the conflict. The journey was free for the entire class, thanks primarily to funding from an anonymous donor.

Though the trip occurred during a break in the academic year, the students found it as demanding as any other Swarthmore experience. 

“They were rigorous, emotionally draining days filled with phenomenal meetings,” says Omri Gal ’19, whose parents are Israelis from Jerusalem. “I can’t even count how many times I’ve been to Israel before this, but this was something else entirely: an all-access, insider’s trip.”

The group’s itinerary swept the region, with stops in Israel and the West Bank: Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Negev, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Hebron. On each day the travelers spoke with about 10 of the area’s most influential peace activists, including Israeli and Palestinian Swarthmore alumni, during meetings that began at 8 a.m. and typically ended around 10 p.m. 

“We really got to see every single aspect of the region’s struggles from the conflict zones, which as a tourist, you’d never be able to do,” says Gal. “The vast majority of students came away from the experience with an incredible amount of hope for the situation, because the people we met were so full of strength and resilience.” 

“One of the inspirations for this trip was to help students better think about how they can be engaged globally,” says Atshan, “and how they can contribute to the amelioration of suffering and creating a more peaceful and nonviolent world.” 

Professor Atshan’s course on the Israel-Palestine conflict is slated again for fall 2016, but funding for another trip has yet to be secured.'

So who precisely did fund this trip?  Swarthmore? Soros? CAIR? ...

There is a podcast interview here by Joelle Hageboutros of this extremist Swarthmore group with three participants in the trip.

If you can be bothered to listen to this depressing piece of Israel-bashing (the photo below is a clue to the slant) you will notice that Ms Hageboutros states that the trip was organised by Atshan "in conjunction with Boston College and fully funded by Swarthmore" (which conflicts with the information given by Carrie Compton).

The interview shows how much these young participants have been brainwashed by the "peace activists" with whom they came in contact. 

Though I suspect, that at least one of the interviewees needed little encouragement to become a "useful idiot". 

 When they talk of "peace" is it the demise of Israel that they, too, seek?  Sadly, I assume so. 

Sa'ed Atshan is gay, it seems.

The photo at the top shows him at Swarthmore in 2013, visiting from Tufts.

No doubt he had only good things to say about the treatment of gays in Israel compared wiith Arab states, and his audience was duly impressed and appreciative. with the enlightened attitude of the little Jewish State.  Huh?

Alas for Dr Atshan's "dream" of a replacement state in which all would live in harmony, tasting and meting out only loving kindness,  we don't need a much-vaunted Swarthmore or Ivy League education to work out who, in the kind of state that would inevitably follow his "dream" of the fall of the Zionist Entity, would have reason to fear the sight of cranes and the tops of tall buildings.

Let's hope the kids snap out of their fantasies soon.

"I Love Israel ... Free People Need to Unify against Islam as a Belief System": Son of Hamas leader (video)

At the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a prominent Hamas commander, pays warm tribute to Israel as "the only light in the Middle East", condemns BDS, the "apartheid" slur, and the political correctness that muzzles expressions of fear regarding Islam ("the Muslim people have a problem"), and issues a stark  warning that the danger from Islam endangers the whole world, not just Israel.

(Full speech lasting 15 minutes.)

Meanwhile:

 Read more here

Professor William Jacobson Speaks About The Academic Boycott (video)

This informative video is six months old but if you haven't seen it and want an expert's view of the BDS movement, particularly the academic boycott in the United States, it's a must listen-to (I say "listen-to" because since the professor is in effect a "talking head' speaking from a lectern you don't need to be glued to the screen to appreciate its insights).

For background on the lecture, and the footage which Professor Jacobson refers to at the beginning of his talk (regarding student BDSers on campus), see here

A Californian Call: "We urge all members of UAW 2865 to join us ... in categorically rejecting proposals to support BDS & academic & cultural boycotts of Israel"

"We ask everyone to make their voices heard by voting NO in the statewide vote December 4."

 UAW, the trade union chapter 2865 representing mainly graduate workers, including teaching assistants at University of California campuses will vote today (4 December) on a major BDS motion.

The case against BDS has been powerfully, and hopefully persuasively, stated by a number of people affiliated to the UAW:

'As members and officers of UAW 2865—current and former; Jewish and non-Jewish—we write to oppose the Joint Council’s decision to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Furthermore, we strongly oppose the proposal calling for divestment and an academic boycott.

The BDS movement is not progressive; it is unjust. It rejects the international consensus position on peace and pushes the most strident demands of the rejectionist camp. It collectively punishes Israelis and Palestinians, and stymies efforts to reach across divides, engage in dialogue, and build mutual trust.  Moreover, it rejects basic academic values by opposing cooperation and the free exchange of ideas within the academy. Finally, it manipulates and selectively presents facts to delegitimize Israel, and, in essence, calls for the end of the Jewish State. Support for BDS is unworthy of our union.

Our union leadership has also violated the union’s fundamental principles of democracy, transparency, and solidarity in its efforts to promote BDS. It has announced a membership vote, but stacked the deck in favor of BDS. Our leadership has publicized numerous pro-BDS documents and events, spending thousands of dollars in the process. It has refused to send even a single paragraph representing an anti-BDS viewpoint to its mailing list. Moreover, by promoting an academic boycott against Israel, our leadership stigmatizes and isolates those of us who are Israeli, who do research on Israel, or who have Israeli collaborators. We are saddened that our union leadership would injure its own members to pursue a political goal unrelated to the union’s core mission.

We are proud of the UAW International and the University of California (UC) for taking principled stands against BDS, and urge them to continue rejecting calls for divestment from Israel. The president of the UAW International expressed our sentiments by signing a letter declaring that, “[r]ather than divestment from Israel, we believe that investment of time, energy and material aid is the best means to alleviate the ongoing suffering of Palestinians and Israelis.” The UC also expressed our sentiments by issuing a statement that “isolation of Israel among all of the countries of the world greatly disturbs us and is of grave concern to members of the Jewish community."

We urge all members of UAW 2865 to join us—as well as the leadership of the nine UC campuses, the president of the UC system, over 250 university presidents, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities, the American Council on Education and the American Association of University Professors—in categorically rejecting proposals to support BDS and academic and cultural boycotts of Israel.

We ask everyone to make their voices heard by voting NO in the statewide vote December 4.'

Read more including footnotes and the names of signatories, here/

(Manfred Gerstenfeld has a not impertinent article  here)

 For far left ratbaggery that lies behind this motion and others of its kind see the video of a discussion that took place on the issue on 12 November on one of the University of California campuses.

Here's a taste:

'Lara Kiswani (executive director of the Arab Resource Organizing Center in the Bay Area) :

'.... Moving forward, so the student movement today and since the 90s has been focused a lot around BDS. Now we talk about Boycott, Divest, Sanctions having started in 2005, but you know BDS started way before that actually. And at the heart of BDS, and why I say BDS, and I know this panel is about labor, but 8:25 BDS is about isolating Zionism, BDS is about isolating Israel economically, politically and culturally and that's a labor issue. And so the only way we can actually do that is by working hand-in-hand with labor, by making sure that the driving forces of the economy are able to disrupt that very system that we're trying to bring down. And that is why labor is so key to it, and that is why BDS also centralizes labor as an aspect of that piece of work. And so in 2000, 8:55 we saw BDS kind of sprouting up at different campuses, I mean SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine, run by American Muslims for Palestine, a Hamas-aligned group],  sprouting up at different campuses, and BDS was central to that, and we saw a lot of students also being the main driving force of that movement. But one of the things that was sort of different than it is today, and I'm hoping this conversation will lend itself to this also moving forward, about how 9:17 SJP's and the BDS work on campuses also dismantle the barrier between the university -- the academy -- and the community, because SJPs and BDS were brought from the community onto the campus, and SJP also brought BDS and isolating Zionism into the community. There was really a they were working hand-in-hand in terms of ways of thinking through strategies about how we can isolate Israel all over the world, right? And so here in the Bay Area we saw that happen. I was part of that work, in terms of how we, you know, we locked down Wheeler Hall, it was like, several dozen people that did that but the majority of them weren't actually students, right? So they were students that were involved in that. I was a student at Davis and I came to Berkeley to lock it down, there was solidarity across campuses. 10:02 The idea was to tell students, was to tell professors, to tell academics, to not engage with Zionism or Israeli institutions because doing that is the way we can isolate Israel culturally and economically and the reason for that being is, I don't have to tell you guys this, but you know, graduate students are the ones who do all the work, graduate students are the ones that actually do the work that professors get credit for most often, and the ones who do the work most academic institutions profit off of, right? 10:30 So, if graduate students and undergrad students, even, were to just disrupt that system whether it be by not, you know, participating in an event, whether it's Israeli academics, you know, I take, I think BDS shouldn't just be limited to the points that have been brought out internationally, I think you should boycott any Zionist institution, academic, organization, whether it be from 1967 occupied Palestine or 1948 occupied Palestine because BDS really should be about shifting the cultural framework and shifting how we see Israel and isolating it and making it feel unwelcome anywhere and everywhere, and the only way we can do that is by making it clear that we are not only disengaging ourselves as workers as activists from institutions or organizations or individuals that profit off of occupation in 1967 Palestine. 11:34 The way we do that is we make it clear that the real issue, the heart of the issue is an anti-colonial struggle, we're resisting colonialism in Palestine and colonialism entails all of occupied Palestine from Haifa to Jerusalem to Ramallah, right? So moving forward in terms of how we brought this type of framework into the Block the Boat work which is what we were talking about, I'll try not to talk to long, but, to the Block the Boat work, , when, you know the recent assault on Rasmea [Odeh - see my previous post - D.A.] created an outrage in our community as the Arab/Palestinian community specifically, you know, we saw images we haven't seen, really widely surfacing as widely as they were on social media and even on main stream media, there was a shift of public perception 12:25 as a result and we experienced the assault on Palestine since 1948 or prior, but what we saw during this smear was pretty gruesome and disgusting and really forced us to action and wanting us to really put an end to what we were seeing on the daily basis, in Gaza and also in the West Bank. So we came together and we mobilized various protests in the streets, we had mass mobilizations and that was one way to show the world that the Bay Area is outraged. It's also one way for us as Arabs and Palestinians to bring out our communities to work in solidarity with other communities and to, you know, feel empowered by our numbers and our people power. But that's not enough, right? 12:50 We wanted to feel like we were hurting Israel economically, we wanted to feel like we were actually making a dent in the system and get some tangible results. So we remember in 2010, Palestinians and our allies and activists here in the Bay Area Blocked the Boat, the Zim Ship, in Oakland because of the (couldn't make out the word) incident. We wanted to replicate that action. That was the very first time in history that an Israeli ship was blocked in the United States and Oakland, and the Bay Area made that happen.'

On A US Campus, BDS Meets Quenelle?

In yet another must-read post on his Legal Insurrection blog, Professor William Jacobson draws attention to the disturbing intimidation of and discrimination against pro-Israel students that has been taking place on some American campuses:

'Soon after the defeat of anti-Israel divestment resolutions at U. Michigan and UCLA, I began to see anti-Israel advocates single out pro-Israel students who had gone on trips to Israel sponsored by pro-Israel groups, or had received advocacy training from pro-Israel groups.

These trips and advocacy training are critical because some campuses have become openly hostile to pro-Israel students as a result of “direct action” and other intimidation by relatively small but highly coordinated anti-Israel groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. Professors actively participate in demonizing pro-Israel students. [My emphasis]

So I was not completely surprised when I learned from reader emails over the past several days that there is an attempt at UCLA to disqualify any student who received pro-Israel training or trips from being on the Student Council...'

Be sure to read the entire post, with its supporting evidence and video, here

Meanwhile, boasts the so-called Students for Justice in Palestine group at the University of South Florida regarding a BDS initiative there last month:

"They collected 10,000 student signatures demanding that their university end investments and involvement with those companies. They chose human rights over profit. By collecting 10,000 student signatures, which is 25% of the entire student body at USF, they made history as the largest student petition ever in the state of Florida."

We're told here:

'In Florida, students organizing a divestment petition said they drew inspiration from the words of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. engraved on the center of the campus: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” 

They submitted a petition of more than 10,000 signatures calling on the University of South Florida Foundation to divest from companies complicit in human rights violations in Palestine.

The students’ petition listed three direct demands: transparency, ethical investment, and divestment. “We support SJP’s petition to make USF a [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] school,” said Gage Lacharite, president of Students for a Democratic Society.“...'

But as the above photo shows, one of the victors celebrated by seeming to give the antisemitic quenelle salute.

Sure is ethical, eh?

What other causes has Martin Luther King's quotation inspired the student body to embrace, I wonder.  The persecution of Christians, dissenters, apostates and gays in the Islamic world?  The Islamic war on women? The outrages against democracy in Iran, North Korea, China ...?

I think we should be told.

More BDS Malignancy Among Academics

To quote from an op ed by BDSer David Lloyd, Distinguished Professor of English at University of Southern California, on the monstrous Electronic Intifada website:

'Something extraordinary happened on Saturday evening at the American Studies Association’s annual meeting in Washington, DC.

At a packed open meeting called by the ASA’s National Executive Council to discuss a resolution to “endorse and honor” the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, speaker after speaker rose to express strong support for the resolution.

They urged the council to vote on it without further delay or deferral....

Out of 44 speakers, whose names were submitted in writing and then drawn at random from a box, 37 spoke in favor of the boycott. They ranged from senior professors to graduate students and even undergraduate members of the association. All recalled the association’s fundamental commitment to the study and critique of racism and the US histories of imperialism and settler colonialism.

Many made the connection between Israel as a settler colony and US complicity in politically and materially supporting its colonial projects. In doing so, several remarked that they were members of the association because its commitment to anti-racist and anti-colonial scholarship made it especially hospitable to their work. For them, the connection was self-evident between anti-racist work within the United States and solidarity work with the victims of a settler colonial project that has the fullest support of the United States.

Over and over, speakers refuted the charge that endorsing the boycott is a contradiction that engages in limiting academic freedom in the name of academic freedom. They pointed out that this assertion is simply false, in the face of a campaign of misrepresentation [which] implied that the boycott targets individuals on account of their national belonging or identity.

If anything, the resolution stands to further academic freedom — in particular that of Palestinians whose access to normal scholarly life is continually infringed by occupation, blockade, collective punishment in the form of school closures, and the denial of the fundamental right to travel. No Israeli scholar would be denied the right to express or publish an opinion, attend a conference, do research, or travel wherever they wished....But the most significant thing about this event was that already it showed that engaging in the boycott, and even in discussion of the boycott, is an extension of academic freedom....'

More to read on that sorry saga here
And on the vile Mondoweiss website here

Meanwhile, an "own goal" from a committed BDSer in Britain, a person of Jewish origin (I'm told) whose frequent postings against Israel on Facebook are often breathtaking in their viciousness.

Shortly after posting this

he posted this

(For more academic malignancy see my next post)

BDS On Campus: Bad Guys & Good (includes video)

"I've just completed a paper on Palestine and International Law as one of my UNSW courses. Max Brenner on campus is beyond my anti-apartheid comprehension."
So declares a female student ...

"as someone of Jewish background who has taught at UNSW, I am deeply offended about such a company neing [sic] on campus, just as I opposed South African companies and goods before 1994"
So asserts an activist in an evident hurry (it's not clear from his statement whether he can be described as an "as-a-Jew" or an "as-a-semi-Jew" or even an "as-a-demi-semi-Jew") ....

"The fact that this company financially supports the IDF which have committed horrific, and unthinkable crimes against the indigenous Palestinian population absolutely disgusts me!"
So declares another woman...

These four are among the signatories to an online petition to the Facilities Manager at the University of New South Wales opposing the opening of a Max Brenner outlet on campus.  Framed by the so-called Australian Students for Justice in Palestine, the petition says in part:

"We write as academics, members of staff, students, alumni and friends of the University of New South Wales....

We ask that you follow the example of universities worldwide who have taken a stand against companies that profit from or support a state and military that violates international law. For example, in late 2011, Chicago’s DePaul University removed Sabra hummus, also owned by the Strauss Group, from campus shelves and replaced it with an ethical alternative. Last year, the University of Toronto, Carleton University, the University of Regina and York University in Canada passed resolutions in support of withdrawing investments with companies connected to Israel’s international human rights law and humanitarian law violations, which included Hewlett Packard, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin. The London School of Economics (LSE) cancelled its contract with Eden Springs in 2011, a major water supply company, because of the company’s business dealings in the illegally occupied Golan Heights. LSE joined other UK universities in the United Kingdom, including Edinburgh and Strathclyde, in the boycott of apartheid. Sussex University and the University of London Union, Europe’s largest student union, heeded the call to withdraw support for Israeli goods.

Instead of voting for the Strauss Group and the Golani and Givati brigades, we prefer to vote for a local, Australian business that does not fund and support a military, responsible for severe breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law against the  indigenous [sic] Palestinian population."

(Hat tip: reader Shirlee)

This mean-spirited petition, based in ignorance and bigotry, contrasts sharply with another current online petition, one drawn up in the United States against campus BDS (hat tip: an anonymous reader).  This petition, well worthy of being signed, says, inter alia :

"Anti-Israel college campus activists have turned free speech into hate speech.

They spread anti-Israel propaganda that ignores facts and context, and their strong-arm methods prevent the informed, rational discussion expected at an institution of higher learning. They deceive campus communities about their real goals. They want to instill hostility about Israel's very existence, not champion the Palestinian people or peace. If they were genuinely concerned about the Palestinian people, they would be more honest and more invested in eliminating Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas and eliminating the anti-Israel/anti-Jewish hatred that young Palestinians are indoctrinated with by religious, educational, and governmental officials as well as their media. They would be more concerned about Hamas’ use of human shields (including children and women) and its launching rockets into Israel from Palestinian schools.

We call for an end to harassment and extremism.

We call for responsible, knowledgeable debate on campuses and for constructive dialogue and actions. We support both Palestinians and Israelis and know that peace takes two. After 1,900 years of discrimination and persecution in the Middle East and Europe, the Jewish people restored their ancestral homeland and built one of the most successful nations of the post-World War II period. Our goal should be to learn from and support this extraordinary accomplishment and to support Palestinians who accept Israel as their Jewish neighbor and wish to establish the first Palestinian state in history, one that would exist alongside the Jewish state in peace and security. We advocate working together to educate our campuses about the facts and to help bring understanding about what is needed for peaceful coexistence in the troubled region."

 

Tammi Talks Tachlis (videos)

With its references to the Muslim Students' Association, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the involvement of students from countries in which judeophobia is rife, the following speech concerning antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on campus is not irrelevant to the theme of my previous post.

The speech in question was made last year at Temple Ahavath Torah by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who lectures in Hebrew at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

It was posted to YouTube comparatively recently.

For those who feel disinclined to listen to the entire thing, a brief taste of the speech is available below:

Needless to say, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin has been condemned by the usual suspects for delivering an islamophobic hate speech.

A recent University of California at Berkeley student senate resolution that was passed to that effect notes inter alia:

"Islamophobia is defined as the irrational fear of Islam, Muslims, or anything related to the Islamic or Arab cultures and traditions"

So I assume that anyone who deplores the repellent crimes by Arab men from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states against women and girls who've fled Syria and find themselves the victims of sexual  harassment and rape (see the video below for the harrowing facts) or the equally repellent crimes by Afghan men against their female "possessions," wives and daughters who are sold for less than the price of a mule (see here for the equally harrowing facts) is guilty of "Islamophobia"?

Truly, the ways of the Israel-demonising Left are hypocritical indeed.

(Hat tip: Vlad Tepes Blog)

"Anti-Zionism is a form of racism more dangerous than classical anti-Semitism": Judea Pearl

The lily-livered Jewish students at Leeds University who, like the apprentice "trembling Israelites" they appear to be, withdrew their invitation to pro-Israel activist Brooke Goldstein to address them last week, would do well to reflect on this article entitled "Anti-Zionism is Racism", which appeared as an op-ed in the New York Jewish Week.  It's by Professor Judea Pearl of UCLA, whose son Daniel, professional journalist and gifted violinist, was savagely murdered by judeophobic Islamic fanatics in Pakistan.

Writes Judea Pearl:

'In the past three months, I have visited four “troubled” campuses — Duke, York (Canada), Columbia and UC Irvine — where tensions between Jewish and anti-Zionist students and professors have attracted national attention. In these visits, I have spoken to students, faculty and administrators, and I have obtained a fairly gloomy picture of the situation on those and other campuses.

Jewish students are currently subjected to an unprecedented assault on their identity as Jews. And we, the Jewish faculty on campus, have let those students down. We have failed to equip them with effective tools to fight back this assault.

We can reverse this trend.

Many condemn anti-Zionism for being a flimsy cover for anti-Semitism. I disagree. The order is wrong. I condemn anti-Semitism for being an instrument for a worse form of racism: anti-Zionism.

In other words, I submit that anti-Zionism is a form of racism more dangerous than classical anti-Semitism. Framing anti-Zionism as racism is precisely the weapon that our students need for survival on campus.

Anti-Zionism earns its racist character from denying the Jewish people what it grants to other collectives (e.g. Spanish, Palestinians), namely, the right to nationhood and self-determination.

Are Jews a nation? A collective is entitled to nationhood when its members identify with a common history and wish to share a common destiny. Palestinians have earned nationhood status by virtue of thinking like a nation, not by residing where their ancestors did (many of them are only three or four generations in Palestine). Jews, likewise, are bonded by nationhood (i.e., common history and destiny) more than they are bonded by religion.

The appeal to Jewish nationhood is necessary when we consider Israel’s insistence on remaining a “Jewish state.” By “Jewish state” Israelis mean, of course, “national Jewish state,” not “religious Jewish state” — theocratic states (like Pakistan and Iran) are incompatible with modern standards of democracy and pluralism. Anti-Zionist racists use this anti-theocracy argument repeatedly to delegitimize Israel, and I have found our students unable to defend their position with conventional ideology that views Jewishness as a religion.

Jewishness is more than just a religion. It is an intricate and intertwined mixture of ancestry, religion, history, country, culture, tradition, attitude, nationhood and ethnicity, and we need not apologize for not fitting neatly into the standard molds of textbook taxonomies — we did not choose our turbulent history.

As a form of racism, anti-Zionism is worse than anti-Semitism. It targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, namely, the people of Israel, who rely on the sovereignty of their state for physical safety, national identity and personal dignity. To put it more bluntly, anti-Zionism condemns 5 million human beings, mostly refugees or children of refugees, to eternal statelessness, traumatized by historical images of persecution and genocide.

Anti-Zionism also attacks the pivotal component of our identity, the glue that bonds us together — our nationhood, our history. And while people of conscience reject anti-Semitism, anti-Zionist rhetoric has become a mark of academic sophistication and social acceptance in Europe and in some U.S. campuses.

Moreover, anti-Zionism disguises itself in the cloak of political debate, exempt from sensitivities and rules of civility that govern interreligious discourse. Religion is ferociously protected in our society — political views are not.

Just last month, a student organization on a UC campus hosted a meeting on “A World Without Israel.” Imagine the international furor that a meeting called, “A World Without Mecca,” would provoke.

So, in the name of “open political debate,” administrators would not think twice about inviting MIT linguist Noam Chomsky to speak on campus, though his anti-Zionist utterances offend the fabric of my Jewish identity deeper than any of the ugly religious insults currently shocking the media. He should be labeled for what he is: a racist.

Strategically, while accusations of anti-Semitism are worn out and have lost their punch, charging someone with racism makes people ask why anyone would deny people the right of self-determination in a sliver of land in the birthplace of their history. It shifts the frame of discourse from debating Israel’s policies to the root cause of the conflict — denying Israelis their basic rights as a nation.

Charges of “racism” highlight the inherent asymmetry between the Zionist and anti-Zionist positions. The former grants both Israelis and Palestinians the right for statehood, the latter denies that right to one, and only one side. This asymmetry is the most effective weapon our students should use in campus debates, for it puts them back on the high moral grounds of “fair and balanced” and forces their opponents to defend an ideology of one-sidedness.

For example, I have found it effective, when confronting an anti-Zionist speaker, to ask: “Are you willing to go on record and state that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a conflict between two legitimate national movements?” Western audiences adore even-handedness and abhor bias. The question above forces the racist to unveil and defend his uneven treatment of the two sides.

America prides itself on academic freedom, and academic freedom entails freedom to teach hatred and racism — we graciously accept this fact of life. However, academic freedom also entails the freedom of students to expose racism, be it white-supremacy, women-inferiority, Islamophobia or Zionophobia wherever it is spotted. Not to censor, but to expose — racists stew in their own words.

In summary, I believe the formula “Anti-Zionism = Racism” should give Jewish students the courage to both defend their identity and expose those who abuse it.'

(Courtesy: Zionism and Israel on the Web (ZionismOnTheWeb.org) Hat tip: reader Shirlee)

One Cool Dude: Israel's Ishmael Khaldi

There's no doubt about it. Israeli diplomat Ishmael Khaldi is one cool guy.  A Bedouin and a Muslim, Mr Khaldi was a former shepherd boy who joined the Israeli Foreign Ministry and became the number two person at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco.

Although Mr Khaldi is, I believe, by no means totally uncritical of Israeli domestic policy, he is an articulate defender of the State he serves.  In the line of duty he finds himself as, figuratively speaking, a punching bag for the loathsome fanatics who  would like to free Palestine "from the River to the Sea". 

Last year, he remained calm and collected while subjected to a barrage of abuse from Scottish Israel-haters who, in true totalitarian leftist fashion, prevented him from speaking as scheduled at Edinburgh University.  You can see the footage of this odious display of intolerance here and here and here

On 25 October Mr Khaldi gave a lecture at Kent State University in Ohio.  It focused on his own story, as told in his autobiography A Shepherd's Journey, and he explained how people labour under misconceptions regarding Israel, citing it's current aid to earthquake-ridden Turkey as an example of Israel's humanitarianism.

Afterwards, he invited questions from the floor, and history professor Julio Pino, a convert to Islam,  was quick off the mark:

'Standing at the back of the auditorium, Pino asked Khaldi how he and his government could justify providing aid to countries like Turkey with blood money that came from the deaths of Palestinian children and babies.

This is not Pino’s first brush with controversy. In 2002 he wrote an opinion column for the Daily Kent Stater praising a suicide bomber. In 2007 he made national headlines when the The Drudge Report featured a story accusing him of contributing to a blog called Global War, which refers to itself as a "jihadist news service".

The crowd fell into an awkward silence as the two continued to exchange words from across the auditorium.

"It is not respectful to me here," Khaldi said.

Pino responded by saying "your government killed people" and claimed Khaldi was not being respectful to him.

"I do respect you, but you are wrong," Khaldi said. "It’s a lie."

 The exchange ended as Pino stormed out of the auditorium shouting "Death to Israel!"

One person in the crowd retaliated by shouting [at Pino] "Shame on you!"'

Read more about this incident and Mr Khaldi's response here

Inspirational Video For Those On Campus Who Are Pro-Israel - But Afraid To Say So

Bravo to these fine young victims of harassment on American campuses who summoned the courage to put their support for a just cause ahead of their personal fears, and grew as human beings as a result.  Given the ferocity of the anti-Israel totalitarian left on Western campuses - and indeed not only on campuses -  theirs is a story which can and must serve as an inspiration to us all.