Sunday, March 29, 2009
Hannah Safran - the Hamas' Hannah Montana
(http://thm-a01.yimg.com/image/fe9b9ce96206f626 ), an aging Israel-hating
far-leftist "academic." She teaches feminizt dogma at the Galilee
Academic College in Afula and used to spout her nonsense at the "Women's
Studies" program at the University of Haifa. Safran is one of the most
open detesters of Israel pretending to be an academic in Israel. She is a
founder and long time activist in the pro-terror "Women in Black" group,
which has never heard of a terrorist atrocity against Jews it does not
think they deserved.
A few days ago Safran had a column in the leftwing Neo-Nazi web
magazine Counterpunch, published by Alexander Cockburn and his band of
jihad cheerleaders. The title of her rant is, and I am not making this
up: "Ready to be Traitors: The Israeli Resistance." It can be read at
http://counterpunch.com/safran03262009.html . In it she calls for
Israeli "resistance" against Israel, the code word used by leftists for
terrorism.
In it she also hails the violent "anarchists" who attack police and
soldiers in their efforts to sabotage Israel's security wall and so allow
the Palestinian mass murderers to enter Israel. She proclaims an
infantile anti-Ashkenazi racism in her rant: "These groups have not yet
been able to formulate a common platform for change, and they are facing
the resistance of the hegemonic Ashkenazi (Jews of European descent)
establishment, which refuses to recognize their existence and importance.
But in spite of their orchestrated attempt to make the entire
left-peace-resistance movement invisible, these social forces, together
with the new left, might one day group together to effect change." Then
without blinking an eye she denounces Israel itself for being racist:
"The .only democracy in the Middle East., as Israel portrays itself, does
not allow dissent. If you are against its military offensive you are
immediately branded a traitor. From this, the idea follows that all
Palestinian citizens of Israel who oppose the war should be stripped of
their citizenship. Such racism is what all of us, Jews and Arabs, have to
suffer when we decide to publicly oppose the war." She concludes with a
salute to Israeli traitors (HER term for them) and calls for much more
treason against Israel. She issued this call for treason on the web page
of a magazine that claims Jews were behind the 911 attacks on the US.
(Safran has mooed there before - see this
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/HaifaU%20-%20Hannah%20Safran%20-%20counterpunch.htm
)
Please take a moment and let the heads of Galilee College know what you
think of this creature teaching the hapless students at their college. To
do so write
Dr. Gen (ret.) Baruch Levy Chairman, Board of Trustees
levizb@inter.net.il
Dr. Joseph Shevel President
jshevel@galilcol.ac.il
Mr. Zalman Gordon Academic Director, Social Development Programmes
zgordon@galilcol.ac.il
By the way, Galilee College has a track record of moonbatism . it used to
feature Ilan Pappe in some of its special programs and it still has a
massive collaboration effort with "Palestinian" organizations (see
http://www.galilcol.ac.il/page.asp?id=12 )
Safran's email is: hannahs@yvc.ac.il
The new Minister of Education in the Netanyahu government is
to be Likud member Gideon Sa'ar. His email is gsaar@knesset.gov.il. His
fax is 972- 2-6753525
Why not urge him to make his first act in office an unconditional demand
from Gelilee College that Hannah Safran be canned at once for her
celebration of treason?
Safran is cited at this excellent web site in trying to explain her
treasonous agitprop against Israel:
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2006/08/and-this-is-academic.html
There she says (in 2006): "Without this, I don't have a life. I am
scared. I am desperate," said Safran, 56, who was making anti-war signs in
Hebrew, Arabic and English at a women's center in Haifa days before the
July 29 protest. "This is what gives me the ability to cope, the hope that
we can change, that our life has meaning."
Translation: I am bored and do not know what to do with myself and
destroying Israel is my hobby.
2. One of the biggest national disgraces in Israel is the "Israel
Prize," a prize generally awarded to the very worst anti-Israel extremists
in Israel from various fields. When the Left is in office, its hacks
award the prize to leftist haters of Israel, and when the Likud is in
office it usually does exactly the same thing. Zev Sternhell, an
anti-democratic McCarthyist who opposes freedom of speech for those with
whom he disagrees, got one. Junkyard "sculptor" Yigal Tomarkin, who
thinks Orthodox Jews deserved to be annihilated by the Germans, got one.
Judd "Destroy Israel" Ne'eman, a film professor at Tel Aviv University,
also just got one. Ultra-anti-Semite Shlomo Sand, a Stalinist
pseudo-historian at Tel Aviv University who just published a book claiming
that the Jews are not a people but the Palestinian "nation" goes back at
least to Adam, will no doubt get the prize next year. Unless it goes to
Ariel Toaff for his book claiming that Jews drank gentile blood for
Passover. The above mentioned Hannah Safran has already gotten a "human
rights award" from the anti-Israel Association for Civil Rights in Israel
(http://coalitionofwomen.org/home/english/events/hannah_safran_170205/ ),
so she could still get an Israel Prize from the Likud.
In any case, as her last act of abasement while she is still Minister
of Education, Yuli Tamir, better known for her endorsements of female
"circumcision" and her insisting that Israeli children be taught that the
existence of their country is a catastrophe or Nakba, has decided to give
the Israel Prize to the "Israel Institute of Democracy." The IID is a
partisan far-leftist "think tank" that cranks out policy paper after
policy paper to endorse the Far left's political agenda. It is the main
force pushing its own "Consensus Constitution" and hopefully this
monstrosity is at least dead. It is a consensus constitution in the sense
that there is consensus among the leftists at IID that it is a good idea.
It has strongly supported crackdowns on the use of freedom of speech by
anti-Oslo dissidents (or what it calls incitement), supports affirmative
action, and supports "political education" in Israeli schools. Political
education means guess what. The IID often supports the agenda of Israel's
radical Arabs. It is a leading agitator against Israel's using
"disproportionate force" against Hamas terrorists. It has supported
Palestinians from the "territories" who sue Israel for damages caused by
Israel's fighting terror.
The IID is "qvelling" that other leftists think that it is deserving of
the Israel prize. See
http://www.idi.org.il/sites/english/BreakingTheNews/Pages/IDIAwardedIsraelPrize.aspx
3. The mall Marxists and the pre-adolescent Trotskyites were out in
large numbers in London yesterday, and their ilk will be out in other
cities soon, to demand an end to capitalism. Their slogan is "Capitalism
is not Working."
Let me rephrase that. A group of over-fed pampered people showed up at
the London protest in their Nikes and designer jeans and video cameras,
carrying their Blackberries and advanced cell phones, where their most
common health problem is having TOO MUCH to eat, having driven downtown in
their cars with their MP3s blasting, hoping the protest ends before they
need to take off for their seaside vacations or at least so they can catch
some good movies on their DVDs, and they ran about London screaming that
capitalism does not work.
4. Selective condemnation of those who "betray their party":
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3693384,00.html
5. Column from the Left's favorite new bogeyman:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237727544815&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
6. Update on the Ward Churchill affair:
A Radical Takes the Stand Article
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By KATHERINE MANGU-WARD
Denver
Old hippies with gray-streaked ponytails, sporting their best Indian
radical-chic finery, arrived early and waited in a marble hallway of the
District Court here, chowing down on breakfast burritos from the
cafeteria. They came to support Ward Churchill -- you could tell by their
"I Am Ward Churchill" buttons -- in his wrongful-termination lawsuit
against his former employer, the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Ken FallinAlready a big man in his own field of Native American studies,
Mr. Churchill achieved national notoriety in 2005 when an essay he wrote
on the afternoon of 9/11 resurfaced. He had described some of the people
who died in the World Trade Center that day as "little Eichmanns," a
reference to a technocrat who facilitated the killing of Jews in Nazi
Germany. The essay's gist was that, on that day, America got what was
coming to it.
An uproar inevitably followed. But something else followed as well: a
close look at Mr. Churchill's academic career. Charges of shoddy
scholarship, false credentials and even plagiarism surfaced. Eventually,
the University of Colorado let Mr. Churchill go. His lawsuit is the final
chapter in this drama.
And so the aging activists gathered here. Mr. Churchill walked among them
in the hallway outside the courtroom on Wednesday, eating a burrito. He
could be overheard chatting about traffic and politely inquiring about the
well-being of one of his more prominent supporters, attorney Lynne
Stewart, currently out on bail after being convicted in 2005 of passing
messages between her client, Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, and
a terrorist organization.
Mr. Churchill's family was here, too. On Wednesday, Natsu Taylor Saito,
Mr. Churchill's wife and an ethnic-studies professor at the University of
Colorado, was called to the stand. As the storm broke over Mr. Churchill's
essay, titled "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting
Chickens," the department (in which Mr. Churchill also taught) received
many threats, she said, and no university support. She also spoke of her
family's exhaustion and despair at being left alone to defend themselves.
Whether the university offered the ethnic-studies department "support" or
not, it is certainly true that the administration did not, at first, rush
to defend Mr. Churchill's First Amendment rights. At the time, the
Colorado legislature had called the essay "evil and inflammatory"; Gov.
Bill Owens had denounced it, too. At first, the Regents of the University
of Colorado issued an apology and promised an inquiry into Mr. Churchill's
actions. Eventually, it determined that Mr. Churchill had every right to
say what he had said.
By this time, however, Mr. Churchill's offensive essay had goaded angry
readers to examine his larger role as a scholar and activist. A few raised
legitimate concerns about the quality of his scholarship. To take three
examples: Mr. Churchill has long contended that Capt. John Smith or his
agents, in the 17th century -- and later the U.S. military -- handed out
smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans with genocidal intent, but
he supported his claim by citing only the Native American "oral tradition"
of the Wampanoag and Mandan tribes. Mr. Churchill also plagiarized the
work of a Canadian professor. And finally, he ghostwrote an essay and then
cited it in his own work as third-party confirmation of his views. As a
succession of people testified this week, once such complaints had been
submitted to the university in writing, administrators were duty-bound to
investigate. They appointed a committee to do so, and it found enough
truth in the charges to dismiss Mr. Churchill in 2007. He filed suit the
next day.
Without the controversy over the 9/11 essay, would Mr. Churchill have been
fired over otherwise unrelated charges of academic sloppiness and
dishonesty? Mr. Churchill and his lawyers say "no" and demand that he be
reinstated. In the second sentence of its report, the university's
investigative committee admits that there is no way to separate the
original furor from the subsequent investigation, noting "its concern
regarding the timing and, perhaps, the motives for the University's
decision to initiate these charges at this time." Still, it asserts that
Mr. Churchill's scholarly malfeasance was real and serious.
From the stand, Todd Gleason, the dean of Arts and Sciences, noted that no
academic inquiry originates from strictly neutral ground: "It's only
common sense to expect that the source of most complaints against a
faculty member is going to be someone who nine times out of 10 has a
personal or professional disagreement with the author." Pure motives can
be in short supply, even in the supposedly collegial world of higher
education. And which is worse: To check out some footnotes after an
inflammatory essay brings shame on your profession, or to submit a
complaint about a colleague's work after he snubs you in the faculty
lounge?
As the specifics of his academic fraud started to circulate in 2006, Mr.
Churchill began to lose support among his colleagues. Fewer and fewer
signatures appeared on each new petition circulated on his behalf. Mr.
Churchill has periodically expressed surprise that his friends in the
ivory tower sided against him. And perhaps he is right to wonder why they
were suddenly so preoccupied with rigorous, bureaucratic adherence to
university policy, after he had enjoyed so many years of promotions and
awards in the ethnic-studies department without regard for the usual
credentialing and publication requirements.
Mr. Churchill, for his part, remains unrepentant. On the stand this week,
he repeated his position that the attack on the World Trade Center was
"perfectly predictable," saying: "When you bring your skills to bear for
profit, you are the moral equivalent of Adolf Eichmann." And he refused to
acknowledge that the objections to his scholarship had merit, explaining
that history written by white men is full of lies and that he is simply
trying to correct for that historical imbalance. The "technocratic corps
at the very heart of America's global financial empire," dead in the World
Trade Center, were legitimate targets, Mr. Churchill insisted, while he is
an innocent victim. Perhaps, instead, it was simply that Mr. Churchill's
own chickens finally came home to roost.
Ms. Mangu-Ward is associate editor at Reason magazine.
