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State Department Funds Televised Call for Boycotting Israel; The New York Times Is Amused

June 7, 2016

State Department Funds Televised Call for Boycotting Israel; The New York Times Is Amused, Algemeiner, Ira Stoll, June 6, 2016

Palestinian-riots-300x244Palestinian rioters. Photo: Wikipedia.

The State Department is using American taxpayer dollars to finance Palestinian Arabs celebrating violent attacks on Israelis and advocating a boycott of Israel and the division of its capital city.

Where’s the outrage?

Not in the New York Times, which treats the topic as subject for a light-toned feature article about what it describes as a Palestinian “reality television show.”

The show features contestants who “run” for the job of Palestinian president. TheTimes article reports that “the three finalists all had similar platforms: Boycott Israel. Designate East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.”

Later, the Times reports, almost in passing, that the television program “broadcast on the Maan satellite network to large audiences in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere in the Arab world — was funded mostly by a State Department grant.”

The dollar amount of the grant is unreported by the Times. Also unreported by the Times is what the members of Congress who hold the spending power under the Constitution think about the idea of having taxpayer money used to broadcast, across the Middle East, calls to boycott Israel.

An NBC news article on the program quoted one of the contestants celebrating the role of women in the “revolution and resistance — they were throwing stones.” The NBC article also included a contestant’s call for a “’right of return,’ or the right for Arabs driven from their communities in 1948 when the State of Israel was established to go back.” Never mind that some of those Arabs left of their own free will or at the urging of neighboring Arab states, or that their “return” would, as a practical matter, be a way of destroying the Jewish state.

The Algemeiner did what the New York Times did not do, which is contact a major American Jewish organization for its view on the wisdom of spending taxpayer dollars to spread this message.

The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, told The Algemeiner that he found the State Department funding for the television program “astonishing,” and “shocking.” He said that if the State Department were found to be funding an Israeli television program advocating extremist views, there would be an uproar. In this case, however, “not a peep — the only peep is from Ira Stoll.”

“Where is the media and Congress screaming about this?” Mr. Klein asked.

It’s a good question, and one in which the Times shows a disappointing lack of interest in answering, or even in asking.

Categories: BDS, Department of State, Foreign policy, Israel, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians and media
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Chicago College Council Backs BDS for Israel, Not China

May 12, 2016

Chicago College Council Backs BDS for Israel, Not China, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 12, 21016

bds_original

Some students at the University of Chicago set out to prove that divestment resolutions aren’t about human rights, but hating Jews. They proved their point quite easily with a China divestment resolution.

Last week, some students at University of Chicago, where I attend, proposed a resolution to our College Council to divest from Chinese weapons manufacturers, in protest of China’s severe human rights abuses and its long-standing occupation of Tibet.

Members of the council were quick to condemn the resolution, and for good reason. The members noted it was political, and disrespectful to Chinese students. Other members noted that Chinese students should be given time to respond to the presenters with a counter-presentation. One representative even suggested that the College Council issue an apology to Chinese students for even considering the resolution. The resolution was tabled indefinitely.

Curiously, when a few weeks earlier the same College Council passed a nearly identical resolution condemning Israel, no one suggested an apology. These same representatives argued why it was their moral imperative to condemn Israel. They were determined to push this through at all costs, and despite requests, they didn’t even offer the other side an opportunity to present.

Over the past few weeks I have been told that Jews “don’t count” as a minority. I have been accused of using anti-semitism to justify oppression. All I want to know is why my campus doesn’t treat anti-semitism with the same rigor with which it treats any other forms of bias.

When Jews stood before the council, and asked that it recognize the Jewish right to self-determination, a basic right for all people, people in the room laughed. One representative noted that “If we were to affirm the right to Jewish self-determination … it takes away from the intent of the resolution”.

Students in the room that day called us racists and murderers and “apartheid supporters”, for even thinking we, as Jews, could have a voice in the discussion over the one small state we call our own. A Jewish student was chided “You are racist and you are against me and my family’s existence”. It was uncivil, and unproductive, but the council-members did not once that day condemn the personal nature of these attacks, or defend the rights of the opposition to make their case.

At one point, a student questioned the presenters, members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), about their organization allegedly holding a moment of silence for Palestinians who were killed while trying to murder Jewish Civilians. One of the presenters confirmed the moment, then responded without missing a beat “Palestinians have a right to honor their martyrs”.

If the killing of any other ethnic group had been celebrated, the University would make grief counselors available. It would send out mass emails of condemnation. They would suspend the organization responsible, and possibly the students involved in it. The organization would certainly not have any credibility to present to the student government. Since the victims were Jews though, their celebration of murder went unchallenged. The representatives never even brought the issue up.

On the third slide of the presentation in favor of the resolution, presenters claimed that voting against the resolution would mean “maintaining a system of domination by Jews”.

Now this is taking place at the same time that sombreros are considered racist and Trump chalkings are denounced as hate crimes. But celebrating the murder of Jews is always okay.

Of the members of the College Council at the University of Chicago, Peggy Xu backed BDS for Israel but was offended by the idea of holding China accountable. Michael Meng also aggressively pushed the campaign against the Jewish State. Michael Meng very predictably opposed the China BDS resolution.

And Peggy Xu has announced that she’s running again because, “My time in SG has been simultaneously enlightening, difficult, and incredibly fulfilling, and it would be an honor to continue advocating for an SG that is inclusive, equitable, and responsive to student needs.” I’m not sure what’s equitable and inclusive about hating Jews.

Moments like these make it clear that this is not about human rights. It’s about using colleges as a forum for tribal hatreds, in this case legitimizing the expression of anti-Semitism.

Categories: Academia, Antisemitism, BDS, China, Israel, Palestinians
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BDS Spreads Anti-Semitism Across U.S. Campuses

May 12, 2016

BDS Spreads Anti-Semitism Across U.S. Campuses, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Noah Beck, May 12, 2016

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Anti-Semitic incidents seem to spring up each week on college campuses throughout the United States. According to a study, “The strongest predictor of anti-Jewish hostility on campus” is the presence of a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

The greater the BDS activity, especially involving faculty members, the more likely anti-Semitic episodes become, said the study issued last month by the AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating, documenting, and combating anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses.

One recent example occurred on April 15, when the City University of New York Doctoral Students’ Council passed a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel, 42-19. Weeks earlier, a CUNY professor and BDS advocate claimed that the killing of Palestinians in Gaza “reflects Jewish values.” On CUNY campuses, the New York Observer reports, Jewish students were harassed, with “Jews out of CUNY” uttered in at least one instance, and a professor who wears a yarmulke was called a “Zionist pig.”

On April 21, two-thirds of a union representing about 2,000 graduate students at New York University voted to approve a motion to support a BDS resolution against Israel. The motion also urges the union and its affiliate, the United Auto Workers, to divest from Israeli companies. The resolution asks NYU to close its program at Tel Aviv University, claiming the program violates NYU’s non-discrimination policy.

About a month earlier, NYU’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), one of the main organizing forces behind the nationwide BDS campaign, hosted Israeli academic Ilan Pappé, described by Benny Morris as “one of the world’s sloppiest historians.”

As reported by AMCHA:

“Pappé blamed Jews, perceived historically as evil, for antisemitism stating, ‘The [Jewish] Israelis…are responsible for bringing antisemitism back.’ He denied Jews self-determination and demonized Israel stating, ‘evil Zionism will come to an end – all immoral regimes do’ as well as suggested rich Jews should leave Israel as a process of ‘decolonization.’ He further demonized Israel throughout accusing Israel of carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ multiple times. Pappé delegitimized Israel consistently referring to Israel as a ‘settler colonialist project,’ …[and] promoted BDS.”

The Jewish Law Students Association at Harvard University and Harvard Hillel co-sponsored an event April 14 on “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict & the U.S.” During the question and answer session, Husam el-Qoulaq, an HLS student and head of SJP at the school, insulted  Israeli Knesset Member Tzipi Livni by asking, “How is it that you are so smelly?… A question about the odor of Ms. Tzipi Livni, she’s very smelly, and I was just wondering.” The student’s question resurrected the anti-Semitic stereotype of a “smelly/dirty Jew.” Incredibly, some “progressive” HLS Jewish students later defended el-Qoulaq.

As BDS campaigns spread on campuses, anti-Semitic expression increasingly follows – from swastika-filled vandalism at UC Davis and Purdue University to student “debates” at Stanford University that implicitly dignify classical anti-Semitic tropes about Jews controlling the media and economy. Among other recent incidents:

  • April 20: At Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, there have beensix anti-Semitic incidents reported on campus since last December. These involved swastikas on walls or doors of residence halls, messages including “I am a Nazi” and “Hitler did nothing wrong,” a faculty member making anti-Semitic gestures in a classroom, and a Star of David with an “X” scratched into it on the window of a bus.
  • April 19: At the University of Maryland, about two dozen protesters arrived at a Hillel and Jewish Student Union event called, “Israel Fest” and, for about an hour, chanted, “Fight the power; turn the tide; end Israeli apartheid” and held signs saying “Zionism kills.”
  • April 15: At the University of Notre Dame, a letter published by three students in the school newspaper accused Israel of apartheid and directed readers to the Anti-Semitic site “IfAmericansKnew” and the site for a major BDS group, Jewish Voice for Peace.
  • April 10: At Atlanta’s historically black Morehouse College, participants at the U.S. Universities Debating Championship (USUDC) were forced to justify the motion, “This House Believes That Violence By Palestinians Against Israeli Civilian Targets Is Justified.”

According to AMCHA, 2016 already has seen 171 anti-Semitic/BDS incidents as of April 21. At this rate, 2016 will see a 36 percent increase in incidents over last year.

Faculty members have become increasingly active in BDS efforts and smears. During a talk at Vassar College in February, Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar accused Israel of harvesting Palestinian organs and conducting scientific experiments in “stunting” the growth of Palestinian bodies. Last month, 40 Columbia University professors signed a BDS petition. More recently, one pro-BDS professor even tried to link campus rape to Israel. As Rochester Institute of Technology lecturer A.J. Caschetta notes, “at a time when much of academe is jumping on the BDS bandwagon, there is little risk to academics who join the movement, whereas opposition to majority leftist positions often leads to a perilous path.”

Indeed, academics who buck this trend may be endangering their careers. At Connecticut College, one of the few professors who defended Andrew Pessin, who hasn’t been in his classroom for the past year after a hate-filled campaign miscast his comments about Hamas as a smear on all Palestinians, says his stance cost him a promotion. Manuel Lizarralde, associate professor in Ethnobotany, wrote in a faculty-wide email Jan. 26 that the college “acted like vigilantes and found the perfect scapegoat,” in Pessin.

Within days, Lizarralde said, he was called in by the administration for a scolding. Noting that he was recently denied promotion, Lizarralde suggested in a recent email that this was payback for his support of Pessin. Connecticut College has “a sense of racism since we are Latinos, Jews and advocate for social injustice…[and we] are being punished [for such activism].”

Responding to the negative media coverage generated by the Pessin case, Connecticut College President Katherine Bergeron published an email to the faculty March 28, in which she championed “the right of all its members to express their views freely and openly.” She failed to explain how that principle applied to Pessin, who was hounded off campus for expressing his views, only to see them twisted and turned against him. She said that the school should promote “reasoned and informed debate about the most complex issues of our time,” but Pessin’s absence leaves the school with no pro-Israel voice. When asked about the contradictions between her email and the Pessin affair, she declined to comment.

Meanwhile, outrage against Connecticut College continues to build, with a petition to investigate the Pessin affair and revoke the school’s accreditation now exceeding 1,500 signatures.

Just as the character assassination targeting the only pro-Israel voice at Connecticut College appeared as a total surprise, BDS campaigns to influence student government votes across the country pop up with minimal notice, just weeks before the vote, giving the opposition little time to organize. That strategy helped secure SJP a BDS victoryat the University of Chicago undergraduate student government in March.

It failed to persuade the university’s administration, though.

Who is funding BDS? Analyst Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently told members of Congress that former employees of Hamas-linked charities now work for the Illinois-based organization American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which is “arguably the leading BDS organization in the US, a key sponsor of the anti-Israel campus network known as Students for Justice in Palestine.” Schanzer noted that AMP provides money, speakers, training and even “apartheid walls” to SJP campus activists. More surprising, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has given anti-Israel BDS organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center.

On campus after campus, the BDS movement has proven itself to be well organized and determined to poison the minds of impressionable students against Israel. It will take an equally concerted and sustained effort to oppose BDS in academia.

Categories: Academia, American Muslims for Palestine, Antisemitism in America, BDS, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Palestinians and Jews, SJP
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The Arabs’ Real Grievance against the Jews

May 7, 2016

The Arabs’ Real Grievance against the Jews, Gatestone Institute, Fred Maroun, May 7, 2016

♦ The Arab world still does not today accept the concept of a Jewish state of any size or any shape. Even Egypt and Jordan, who signed peace agreements with Israel, do not accept that Israel is a Jewish state, and they continue to promote anti-Semitic hatred against Israel.

♦ During Israel’s War of Independence, Jews e cleansed from Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and in the years that followed, they were ethnically cleansed from the rest of the Arab world.

♦ Jews demand the right to exist, and to exist as equals, on the land where they have existed and belonged continuously for more than three thousand years.

♦ We would rather claim that the conflict is about “occupation” and “settlements.” The Jews see what radical Islamists are now doing to Christians and other minorities, who were also in the Middle East for thousands of years before the Muslim Prophet Mohammed was even born.

♦ The real Arab grievance against the Jews is that they exist.

As Arabs, we are very adept at demanding that our human rights be respected, at least when we live in liberal democracies such as in North America, Europe, and Israel. But what about when it comes to our respecting the human rights of others, particularly Jews?

When we examine our attitude towards Jews, both historically and at present, we realize that it is centered on denying Jews the most fundamental human right, the right without which no other human right is relevant: the right to exist.

The right to exist in the Middle East before 1948

Anti-Zionists often repeat the claim that before modern Israel, Jews were able to live in peace in the Middle East, and that it is the establishment of the State of Israel that created Arab hostility towards Jews. That is a lie.

Before modern Israel, as the historian Martin Gilbert wrote, “Jews held the inferior status of dhimmi, which, despite giving them protection to worship according to their own faith, subjected them to many vexatious and humiliating restrictions in their daily lives.” As another historian, G.E. von Grunebaum, wrote, Jews in the Middle East faced “a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms.”

The right to exist as an independent state

Zionism stemmed from the need for Jews to be masters of their own fate; no longer to be the victims of discrimination or massacres simply for being Jews. This project was accepted and formally recognized by the British, who had been granted a mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations. The Arab world, however, never accepted the recognition formulated by Britain in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and it never accepted the partition plan approved by the United Nations in 1947, which recognized the right of the Jews to their own state.

The Arab refusal to accept the Jewish state’s right to exist, a right that carries more international legal weight than almost any other country’s right to exist, resulted in several wars, starting with the war of independence in 1948-1949. The Arab world still does not today accept the concept of a Jewish state of any size or any shape. Even Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace agreements with Israel, do not accept that Israel is a Jewish state, and they continue to promote anti-Semitic hatred against Israel.

The right to exist in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem

In 2005, Israel evacuated all its troops and all Jewish inhabitants from Gaza, in the hope that this would bring peace at least on that front, and to allow the Gaza Strip, vacated by Jews, to be a flourishing Arab Riviera, or a second Singapore, and perhaps to serve as a model for the West Bank. The experiment failed miserably. This is a case where Jews willingly gave up their right to exist on a piece of land, but sadly the Palestinians of Gaza took it not as opportunity for peace, but as a sign that if you keep on shooting at Jews, they leave — so let’s keep on shooting.

There are many opinions among Zionists as to what to do about the West Bank. These opinions range from a total unilateral withdrawal as in Gaza, to a full annexation, with many options in between. At the moment, the status quo prevails, with no specific plans for the future.

Everyone, however, despite the treacherous UNESCO’s rewriting of history, knows that before that piece of land was called the West Bank, it was called Judea and Samaria for more than two thousand years.

Everyone knows that Hebron contains the traditional burial site of the biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs, within the Cave of the Patriarchs, and it is considered the second-holiest site in Judaism. Every reasonable person knows that Jews should unquestionably have the right to exist on that land, even if it is under Arab or Muslim jurisdiction. Yet everyone also knows that no Arab regime is capable or even willing to protect the safety of Jews living under its jurisdiction from the anti-Semitic hatred that emanates from the Arab world.

East Jerusalem, which was carved away by the Kingdom of Jordan from the rest of Jerusalem during the war of independence, is part of Jerusalem, and contains the Temple Mount, the Jews’ holiest site. The Old City in East Jerusalem was inhabited by Jews up until they were ethnically cleansed by Jordan in the war of 1948-1949.

1588In May 1948, the Jordanian Arab Legion expelled all of the approximately 2000 Jews who lived in the Old City of Jerusalem, and then turned the Jewish Quarter into rubble.

Although Israel has twice in the past, first under Prime Minister Ehud Barak then under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, offered East Jerusalem as part of a Palestinian state, that offer is not likely to be made again. Jews know that it would mean a new wave of ethnic cleansing, which would deny the Jewish right to exist on the piece of land where that right is more important than anywhere else.

The right to exist in the Middle East now

During Israel’s War of Independence, Jews were ethnically cleansed from Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and in the years that followed, they were ethnically cleansed from the rest of the Arab world.

Today, Israel’s enemies, many of them Arab, are challenging its right to exist, and therefore the right of Jews to exist, on two fronts: threats of nuclear annihilation and annihilation through demographic suffocation.

Iran’s Islamist regime has repeated several times its intention to destroy Israel using nuclear weapons. Just in case Iran is not “successful,” the so-called “pro-Palestinian” movement, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, has a different plan to destroy the Jewish state: a single state with the “return” of all the descendants of Palestinian refugees. The refusal of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat to accept any two-state solution presented to them is part of that plan.

The right to exist elsewhere

Anti-Zionists claim that Jews are imperialists in the Middle East, as were the British and the French, and like them, they should leave and go back to where they belong. This analogy is of course not true: Jews have an even longer history in the Middle East than do Muslims or Arabs.

Do Jews belong in Europe, which tried only a few decades ago to kill every Jew, man, woman, or child? Do Jews belong in North America where until a few hundred years ago, there were no Europeans, only Indians?

Saying that Jews “belong” in such places is not reality; it is just a convenient claim for anti-Zionists to make.

The Jews will not give up

As Arabs, we complain because Palestinians feel humiliated going through Israeli checkpoints. We complain because Israel is building in the West Bank without Palestinian permission, and we complain because Israel dares to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists. But how many of us have stopped to consider how this situation came to be? How many of us have the courage to admit that waging war after war against the Jews in order to deny them the right to exist, and refusing every reasonable solution to the conflict, has led to the current situation?

Our message to Jews, throughout history and particularly when they had the temerity to want to govern themselves, has been clear: we cannot tolerate your very existence.

Yet the Jews demand the right to exist and to exist as equals on the land where they have existed and belonged continuously for more than three thousand years.

In addition, denying a people the right to exist is a crime of unimaginable proportions. We Arabs pretend that our lack of respect for the right of Jews to exist is not the cause of the conflict between the Jews and us. We would rather claim that the conflict is about “occupation” and “settlements”. They see what radical Islamists are now doing to Christians and other minorities, who were also in the Middle East for thousands of years before the Muslim Prophet Mohammed was even born: Yazidis, Kurds, Christians, Copts, Assyrians, Arameans, and many others. Where are these indigenous people of Iraq, Syria and Egypt now? Are they living freely or are they being persecuted, run out of their own historical land, slaughtered by Islamists? Jews know that this is what would have happened to them if they did not have their own state.

The real Arab grievance against the Jews is that they exist. We want the Jews either to disappear or be subservient to our whims, but the Jews refuse to bend to our bigotry, and they refuse to be swayed by our threats and our slander.

Who in his right mind can blame them?

Categories: Antisemitism, Arabs, BDS, Israel, Israel borders, Israel settlements, Obama and Israel, Palestinians and Jews
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Op-Ed: Read Peter Beinart and you’ll vote Donald Trump

May 6, 2016

Op-Ed: Read Peter Beinart and you’ll vote Donald Trump, Israel National News, David Friedman, May 6, 2016

Several weeks ago, I was “outed” as one of Donald Trump’s two advisors on the relationship between the United States of America and the State of Israel. It is an honor and a privilege to advise Mr. Trump on a critical issue that is near and dear to my heart, and I fervently hope that I have the opportunity to assist him in developing and implementing policies that strengthen both countries and the unbreakable bond between them.

Right now, however, the bloodsport of American presidential politics is in full bloom, and within that scented garden emerges a recent Op-Ed piece by CNN panelist, Peter Beinart, published in Israel’s left-wing paper Haaretz. Beinart, a well-known supporter of J Street, New Israel Fund and the BDS movement, decries Trump’s selection of Israel advisors as a cynical charade by which Trump leverages Jews in his employ to go “all in” on Israel solely to garner political capital. According to Beinart, these token Jews, myself included, are just willing pawns in a modern day Game of Thrones, all willing to fall on their proverbial swords for Trump the King.

I have never met Mr. Beinart nor do I care to, and he knows absolutely nothing about me. Had he made the slightest inquiry (apparently no longer necessary for modern journalists), he would have known that I am not in Mr. Trump’s employ,  have hundreds of other clients, and hold views on Israel that are entirely independent of any political movement or candidate.  Those views have been developed over more than thirty years of study of historical accounts and scholarly works, interaction with Israeli political, military and business leaders, and probably 100 trips or more to the Holy Land. I didn’t just come out of “central casting,” as Beinart implies, to facilitate some political theatre, and my beliefs are not for sale to the highest bidder. The same holds true for Jason Greenblatt, Mr. Trump’s other advisor, whom I have known for years.

But I do want to thank Mr. Beinart for getting this issue out on the table, albeit clumsily and disingenuously. Because his reflexive reaction to my involvement in the Trump candidacy lays bare how dangerous the Jewish left is to the State of Israel.

Let’s look at the criticisms offered by Mr. Beinart of views that I have previously expressed. He thinks I’m no good because  (1) I have accused President Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism,” (2) I have questioned the wisdom of Israel bestowing the benefits of citizenship, including free tuition at some of its best universities, upon those who advocate the overthrow of the State, and (3) I have likened J Street supporters to “kapos during the Nazi era.” Let’s unpack each of those a bit.

First, Obama’s anti-Semitism. Here’s the context – Hamas puts on school plays in which 10 year olds dressed as terrorists plunge fake knives into 10 year olds dressed as Jews to the delight of the audience, and Palestinian Authority leaders (they’re supposed to be the “moderate ones”) bestow praise upon all participating in the “knife intifada.” Asked to comment on the unspeakable tragedy of innocent Jewish civilians being murdered by knife-wielding Islamic radicals, Obama and Kerry do little more than condemn the proverbial “cycle of violence.” I’m sorry, but this is pure and outright murder and any public figure who finds it difficult to condemn it as such without diluting the message with geo-political drivel is engaging in “blatant anti-Semitism.”

Second, the wisdom of free stuff for those engaged in advocating the overthrow of the State of Israel. Every civilized country other than Israel punishes treason. In the United States, advocating to overthrow the government by force or violence can get you life in prison. In Israel, Islamic radical citizens speak this way all the time, often on the way back and forth from world class institutions of higher learning which they attend for free. Is this a good idea? Is there no minimal allegiance required for Israeli citizenship? Sure seems like a fair question to me.

Finally, are J Street supporters really as bad as kapos? The answer, actually, is no. They are far worse than kapos – Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps. The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty and who knows what any of us would have done under those circumstances to save a loved one? But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas – it’s hard to imagine anyone worse.

Mr. Beinart, therefore, has done us a service, albeit unintentionally. He has shown us the danger of the Jewish left – the lost souls who blame Israel for not making a suicidal “peace” with hateful radical Islamists hell bent on Israel’s destruction. This is Hillary Clinton’s crowd, and they are no friends of Israel.

Donald Trump’s view of Israel isn’t quite as nuanced as that of Mr. Beinart nor as academic as that of President Obama. He thinks that when radical Islamic terrorists are trying to kill you, the right thing to do is kill them first. Don’t negotiate, reason or cajole. Just defeat them. Or as Mr. Trump would say, “win.”

So please read Peter Beinart’s latest column. It will leave you convinced to vote for Donald Trump.

Categories: 2016 elections, Abbas, Antisemitism, BDS, Clash of civilizations, Defense of Israel, Donald Trump, Foreign policy, Gaza, Haaretz, Hypocrisy, Islam and Jews, Israel, J Street, Leftists, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Obama's anti-semitism, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian incitement, Republicans
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Hundreds Swarm SDSU President to Protest Freedom Center Anti-BDS Posters

April 30, 2016

Hundreds Swarm SDSU President to Protest Freedom Center Anti-BDS Posters, Front Page Magazine, Sara Dogan, April 29. 2016

Anti BDS poster

A series of posters created by the David Horowitz Freedom Center targeting proponents of the Hamas-inspired and funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Jewish state have incited a storm of controversy on the San Diego State University campus where hundreds of students swarmed University President Elliot Hirshman to claim that he did not condemn the posters forcefully enough and demanding an apology.

The Freedom Center’s posters identified by name a number of prominent student and faculty BDS activists on the campus and described them as having “allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred on this campus.” The posters also contained the hashtag #StopTheJewHatredonCampus, the slogan of the Freedom Center campaign which seeks to confront the agents of campus anti-Semitism and refute the genocidal lies spread by Palestinian terrorists and their campus allies. These lies include the claims that Israel occupies Palestinian land and that Israel is an apartheid state.

Protestors were also incensed by a print ad taken out by the Freedom Center in the Daily Aztec.

The ad states:

There is an epidemic of Jew hatred on American campuses and at San Diego State University. This Jew hatred is incited by Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Students Association and assorted leftist groups, all of whom support the terrorist organizations Hamas and Fatah.

The ad goes on to explain that both SJP and MSA were created by operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and that both groups “disseminate genocidal lies about Israel whose purpose is to weaken and destroy the world’s only Jewish state.”

Posters for the campaign appeared on five California campuses, including at UCLA and UC-Berkeley, where they also sparked protests from anti-Israel activists, as well as university administrators who falsely characterized them as “hate speech.” Images of all the posters may be viewed here. Accounts of the protests and administrator responses can be read here.

In an email sent to San Diego State’s entire student body on Tuesday, Hirshman criticized the posters but also defended the importance of free speech: “First, we recognize and fully support the rights of all parties to voice their positions on political issues, whether supportive or critical. We also understand that when parties adopt a specific political position they become responsible for their actions and these actions may produce criticism.”

Hirshman’s failure to outright condemn the posters did not sit well with SDSU’s anti-Israel activists and the campus left. The protestors first held a silent protest of Hirshman during the swearing-in ceremony of incoming Associated Students President Jamie Miller. Following that protest, students surrounded a police car in which Hirshman was traveling and detained him for over two hours, chanting “Hirshman, Hirshman, come on out. We have something to talk about.” The Daily Aztec, San Diego State’s campus paper, reported the incident this way:

After leaving the council chambers, protesters got word that Hirshman was in a police cruiser near the Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theater, and rushed to “trap” him. The police cruiser was surrounded for over two hours as students chanted and even began praying.

Hirshman eventually got out of the police vehicle and stood to the side, surrounded by members of his administrative staff, who formed a barrier around Hirshman and several leaders of the protest so they could speak.

Photos of the protest taken by the Aztec reveal students holding signs proclaiming “We Demand An Apology” and “Respect My Name.”  A large banner hung on a fence adjacent to the protest reads “SDSU THINKS WE ARE TERRORISTS.” Video footage of the protest taken by a local ABC affiliate can be viewed below:

Despite the protestors’ claims to the contrary, it is notable that neither the Freedom Center’s ad nor its posters call SJP and MSA members terrorists. They merely declare that they support anti-Israel terrorists and parrot their propaganda, a claim which any photo of a mock “Israeli apartheid wall” will confirm.

President Hirshman himself confirmed this point while speaking with protestors, saying, “I don’t think they’re saying our students are terrorists. If there was a statement that our students were terrorists and they weren’t, I would certainly condemn that.”

Student activists interviewed by the Aztec defended their actions in detaining President Hirshman. One of the protestors, Hassan Abdinur, who was named on the Freedom Center’s poster as an SJP and MSA activist, stated: “Things have been building up and building up and the university hasn’t done anything so this was our opportunity to kind of stand face-to-face, really close, actually I smelled his breath, with the president of the university and tell him how we feel about what’s going on.”

According to The San Diego Union-Tribune which also reported the story, Hirshman eventually gave the student protestors a brief and nonspecific apology. “If we have done things inadvertently that have upset or hurt people, we are sorry for that,” Hirshman said.

While the protestors finally dispersed following that apology, they remain unsatisfied by Hirshman’s failure to condemn the posters outright. Presumably they were looking for a reaction more in line with UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang who sent an email attacking Horowitz to the entire UCLA community calling the Freedom Center’s posters “repulsive” and “personalized intimidation” and stating that they produce “chilling psychological harm.”

“[We wanted] an apology to the entire student body for his disrespect and disregard for the student voice [and] opinion,” Mustafa Alemi, a member of SDSU’s Associated Students Board of Directors, and also one of the SJP and MSA activists named on the posters, told the Daily Aztec. “Without our tuition money he’s not living the life he has right now and the fact that it took two to three hundred students to block his car to have a conversation with us is incredibly disrespectful.”

David Horowitz is scheduled to speak on SDSU’s campus on May 5th. It will be interesting to see just how respectful the conduct of SJP and MSA activists will be during his address.

Categories: Academia, Antisemitism in America, BDS, Freedom of Expression, Islam and Jews, Islam in America, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama's America, Palestinian terrorists, US colleges
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Terror ties of BDS backers revealed

April 26, 2016

Terror ties of BDS backers revealed, Israel National News, David Rosenberg, April 26, 2016

BDSBDS activists (file) Wikimedia Commons

While the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has done little to hide its malicious anti-Israel hatred, the movement hitherto has succeeded in maintaining the appearance of legitimacy, presenting itself as the peaceful alternative to terrorism.

Despite rhetoric which pro-Israel activists have noted signals a rejection of Jewish statehood per se and draws upon the kind of terrorist propaganda disseminated by Hamas and the PLO, no clear link tying BDS to supporters of terror organizations could be found.

Last week, however, a former terrorism finance analyst for the US Treasury Department offered testimony to congress suggesting connections between the BDS movement and supporters of the Hamas terror group.

Jonathan Schanzer, who worked for the US Treasury Department from 2004 to 2007 monitoring terrorist funding, spoke before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee last Tuesday regarding the ties between the BDS movement and terror fundraisers including the now defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

Schanzer noted that three prominent Islamic organizations – the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and the KindHearts for Charitable Development – had been prosecuted and eventually shut down after serving as fronts for the Hamas terror group.

While many of the organizers responsible for these three groups were given prison sentences or deported from the US, others high-level members were involved in the founding of American Muslims for Palestine.

An inquiry by the Investigative Project on Terrorism found that five high-ranking officials in American Muslims for Palestine had been members of the Islamic Association for Palestine.

Schanzer pointed out other senior Islamic Association for Palestine members now operating in the AMP.

Rafeeq Jaber, for instance, had served as President of the IAP. Today, he is an official working for the AMP’s Educational Foundation. Former IAP secretary general, Abdelbasset Hamayel, is now listed as an AMP agent in the organization’s Chicago branch.

Other AMP members include Hossein Khatib, a former regional director for the Holy Land Foundation who now serves on the AMP board of directors.

Salah Sarsour is another AMP board member with ties to the Holy Land Foundation. Both Salah and his brother, Jamil, had served time in Israel over their ties to Hamas. Jamil admitted that he and his brother Salah had raised funds for the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.

Anti-Israel organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, which operates on college campuses across the US, are heavily funded by the AMP. In recent years the AMP has become one of the leading financial backers of BDS groups like the SJP.

Aside from direct financial support, the “AMP provides speakers, training, printed materials… and grants to SJP activists. AMP even has a campus coordinator on staff whose job is to work directly with SJP and other pro-BDS campus groups,” Schanzer testified.

In some cases, terrorists were involved directly in the operation of BDS organizations. Schanzer offered the example of the US Coalition to Boycott Israel, a Chicago-based BDS group run by a former PFLP terrorist.

“The group’s president is Chicago resident Ghassan Barakat, a consular notary for the Palestine Liberation Organization who has been identified… as a member of the Palestine National Council.”

Barakat was a “’fighter in the ranks of the mountain brigade’ for the PFLP,” a reference to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terror group responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed in Israel including the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre and 2014 Jerusalem Synagogue Massacre.

Categories: BDS, Israel, Terrorism
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Canadian FM outdoes himself

February 23, 2016

Canadian FM outdoes himself, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, February 23, 2016

(Please see also, Abu Mazen rebuffs Kerry’s appeal to cool Palestinian terror against Israelis. – DM)

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion exhibited a real knack for the twofer on Friday, by going after both his political opposition and the Israeli government in one disingenuous swoop.

In perfect doublespeak, Dion managed to announce his (Liberal) party’s support for a Conservative motion condemning the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, while attacking it as an attempt to foment discord in parliament.

The motion to “condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals” to engage in BDS — “the demonization and delegitimization” of Israel — was tabled by Tory MP Tony Clement.

“This is not a partisan issue,” he asserted, urging Liberals to “side with us on this motion. Send a strong message to our fellow Canadians and to freedom-lovers around the world.”

Tory MP David Sweet went even further, calling BDS “anti-Semitic.” Sweet also got up and commended the Liberals for joining in a bipartisan effort to combat it. But this was too much for Dion, who made sure to say that though the Liberals would support the motion, they had “reservations” about it, among them the impure and divisive motives of the Tories in pushing the bill forward.

“To me, this is further proof that the Conservatives have not learned from their mistakes and are still trying to divide Canadians on issues that should unite them,” he said.

Huh?

And then he proceeded to defend not only “freedom of expression,” but BDS as well — at least its supporters whose motives (unlike those of the Tories) are pure.

“Some supporters of the boycott have bad intentions, do not want peace and are working against Israel,” he said. “However, it cannot be denied that many of the boycott supporters are mistaken in good faith. Many organizations and individuals in Canada and abroad support the BDS movement out of the belief that it will somehow accelerate the peace process and be a nonviolent initiative that leads to a lasting resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their goal ultimately is the same as ours: a two-state solution with a secure, stable and democratic Israel, living side-by-side with a secure, stable and democratic Palestinian state. However, they are mistaken in the way this goal may be achieved.”

This is quintessential Dion drivel in its finest. Since the November election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which marked the end of Stephen Harper’s conservative government, Dion has been making it clear in his convoluted way that Israel shares, if not bears, responsibility for the ills befalling it.

The wave of Palestinian terrorism against the Jewish state that surged shortly before Trudeau took office provided Canada’s recently instated top diplomat with the perfect opportunity to show the international community that he — the new peace sheriff in town – grasped this tenet. To illustrate he meant business, Dion promptly took a sharp turn away from his predecessor’s public display of support for Israel as a staunch Western ally, under the same kind of attack at the hands of radical Islamists as the rest of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim world.

The way he did this was to issue a public statement equating Palestinian and Israeli “violence and incitement,” and calling on “both sides” to return to the negotiating table. His timing was impeccable, as an additional heads up about a more harshly worded reprimand to Israel came on the heels of two particularly horrifying stabbing attacks by Palestinian terrorists against two Israeli women — one slashed to death in front of her traumatized teenage daughter, the other wounded while pregnant.

Imagine how painful it must be for him, then, to have to join forces with his enemies at home in countering Israel’s enemies abroad. No need to worry, however. We have not heard the last of Dion, whose ability to distort reality to suit his fantasy may yet surpass that of his counterpart, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Fortunately for Israel, Canada has no real power; it has simply become yet another former ally professing to have its best interests at heart.

Categories: BDS, Canada, Israel, Palestinian terrorists, Two state solution
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It’s Not Just About Israel. BDS Threatens Us All

December 23, 2015

It’s Not Just About Israel. BDS Threatens Us All, Huffington Post, , December 22, 2015

(Yes, it’s from the Huffington Post. Reader comments indicate that it was not well received. — DM)

A campaign of hate is sweeping across our country. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement – advancing an agenda to demonize the Jewish people and destroy the State of Israel – is moving from the fringes of our society and into the mainstream. Churches, labor unions, and associations have voted to divest from Israeli companies. In the past year alone, more than 30 student governments at American universities have considered resolutions calling for divestment from the State of Israel. More than a dozen academic trade associations have followed suit, voting to prevent their members from making any contact with Israeli institutions of higher education, preventing the free exchange of information and infringing on academic freedom.

Those that believe this is just an issue for Israel or the Jewish community are sorely mistaken. These developments endanger the future of America. Like a wildfire spreading out of control, BDS is a menace that must be contained today, before it alters our society’s moral compass and threatens the values and freedoms at the heart of our very way of life.

What’s the big deal about BDS? In short, what it teaches and what it seeks.

What does it teach? Growing legions of Americans are now being brainwashed by BDS to join an attack on the Middle East’s only oasis of democracy and human rights, while turning a blind eye to the brutal dictators and terrorists that dominate the rest of the region. Iran hangs gays and tortures political dissidents. ISIS enslaves young girls and murders minorities. The Assad regime is responsible for the slaughter of 500,000 civilians. Lebanon brutally oppresses Palestinians, denying them the right to own land or become lawyers and doctors. Yet, in the warped moral universe of BDS, none of these of abuses merit mention, while Israel’s vibrant democracy – which shares our values, advances our interests, and safeguards the rights of women, gays, minorities – is public enemy number one.

What does BDS seek? This Movement wants to do much more than boycott Israel. It seeks to destroy it. BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti, has said publicly that he’s working for Israel’s “euthanasia”. The maps that BDS groups publish of the region make this clear, depicting a single Palestinian state that extends from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea, with no trace of Israel.

Yet, many fail to recognize that those driving the BDS agenda have ambitions that extend well beyond Israel. For them, Israel is the small Satan. America is the big Satan. They hate America’s belief in individual liberties and democracy, our capitalist system, and our influence around the world.

In the wake of BDS, we have seen other resolutions to remove the American Flag at UC Irvine and to cancel the 9/11 commemoration at the University of Minnesota.

Hatem Bazian, the founder of the largest on-campus BDS organization – Students for Justice in Palestine – has called for a violent uprising – in his words “an Intifada”, here in America against the United States. Like many other BDS leaders, Bazian has been connected to a range of groups shut down by the Justice Department for raising money on behalf of the Hamas terrorist organization and other radical Islamist groups.

It should be no surprise that the leading BDS activists are fundraisers and cheerleaders for terrorists. The top-listed signatory on the foundational document for today’s BDS Movement – a declaration issued in 2005 – is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, which includes representatives of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The acceptance of these groups as legitimate voices in public discourse is dangerous. Those who justify suicide bombings in Tel Aviv or stabbings in Jerusalem, also find reasons to endorse the brutal murder of American civilians in the World Trade Center, the stabbing of students at UC Merced and innocents in London, and bombing of commuters on trains in Spain and tourists on a Russian airliner in Egypt. Indeed, the same radical Islamist groups that staged violent anti-Israel protests on the streets of Europe in the summer of 2014 have provided fertile ground for ISIS and others to recruit the terrorists that have committed recent wave of attacks in Brussels, Paris, London, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and San Bernardino, California, which have claimed hundreds of lives.

The Jewish people have come to learn that when we are targeted with economic sanctions, much more dangerous things are often on the horizon – and the consequences often extend well beyond our community.

Germany staged economic boycotts of all Jewish businesses before Hitler and the Nazis sent the Jews of Europe to death camps. More than 60 million people died in the war that followed.

The Tsarist Government in Russia issued the “May Laws” – which imposed severe economic sanctions on the Russian Jewish population – in the years before Jews were mass murdered in pogroms across the country. Nine million died in the Russian civil war that followed.

The Arab League had an official boycott on Jewish-owned businesses many years before the vast majority of Jews in Arab Lands were systematically expelled or murdered in the wake of Israel’s independence. Since the mass exodus of Jews across the Middle East, the region has erupted in flames, with Christians, B’hai’s, Yazidis and other minorities next in line for persecution.

History’s lessons hang over our moment. What begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews. Now is the time for Americans to take action. For the sake Israel and America, for the sake of our shared values and our common future, we must stop BDS dead in its tracks. Nothing less than our very way of life is at stake.

Categories: BDS, Israel
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How to insult a “progressive”

July 6, 2015

How to insult a “progressive,” Pat Condell via You Tube, July 6, 2015

 

Categories: BDS, Cognitive dissonance, Foreign policy, Hamas, Islam, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Pat Condell
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