1.  This should make your day!   The Dershowitz speech at Tel Aviv University seems to be having some interesting aftershocks.  On the front page of Haaretz today, the headline screams: "Students: Inter-Disciplinary Center head called B'Tselem a 'fifth column'."   The Interdisciplinary Center is Israel's private-sector university based in Herzliya, and in some disciplines (like mine) it is today Israel's leading academic institution.  Its head is Prof. Uriel Reichman, an outspoken intelligent man, hardly associated with the Hard Right.   In fact, he was among the founders of the Kadima party (which I think should be considered leftist), although he left in disgust at Olmert.

 

Anyway, suddenly the Leftist Ascendancy in Israel is upset.  Students claim that Reichman referred to the far-leftist anti-Israel B'Tselem organization as a "Fifth Column."   Never mind that it IS a Fifth Column.  He supposedly made the statement at a IDC campus Democracy Day event.  Leftist students, cited by anti-Israel Haaretz,  consider that "disgraceful."  How dare the head of IDC tell the truth about B'Tselem!! 

 

Now you want to know what about the IDC is NOT a disgrace in the minds of the Israeli Leftist Ascendancy?   It is the column by IDC professor Galia Golan, which appeared http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3888067,00.html a few days ago, in which she argued with a straight face that allowing non-leftists to exercise freedom of speech and to criticize leftists creates violence, implying it should not be tolerated.  Not a single leftist student or journalist denounced THAT as a disgrace.  (Oh and by the way, over the weekend the Makor Rishon newspaper carried a large photo of a Haaretz journalist wearing a "Smash Israeli Apartheid" tee shirt.)  

 

The full piece on IDC in English is here:  http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/students-idc-head-called-b-tselem-a-fifth-column-1.290549

 

Students: IDC head called B'Tselem a 'fifth column'

B'Tselem: We welcome the statement made by Professor Reichman, which indicates that although he doesn't support the organization, he supports the organization's right to make its positions known.

By Asaf Shtull-Trauring

The president of the Interdisciplinary Center, Uriel Reichman, described the human rights watchdog B'Tselem as a "fifth column" and said that inviting its representatives to speak at the college was "disgraceful," students who spoke to the president told Haaretz. Reichman denies ever making the statements.

On April 15, the private college based in Herzliya held a "Democracy Day," during which they invited 40 organizations to set up stalls near the campus cafeteria. However, only the groups B'Tselem, the Movement for Quality Government, Im Tirtzu and the National Left responded.

During the event, one student apparently approached Reichman to protest the presence of B'Tselem on campus. Another student, who witnessed the conversation, said Reichman responded by saying he hadn't been consulted about inviting B'Tselem, that he found it disgraceful and that the organization was a fifth column.

"Some of the students were angry and protested the presence of B'Tselem at the IDC," Omri Akunis, one of the event organizers, told Haaretz. He added that he did not think the college would allow the organization to participate in the event next year.

Reichman told Haaretz that he never made the comments. "It's nonsense," he said. "B'Tselem was invited to the campus. A student approached me to say he thought that they shouldn't be there, that they're a hostile element, a fifth column and so on. I told him that you can't drive out someone who was invited.

"The same student then sent a letter, which the deputy president for student affairs replied to," Reichman continued. "She explained to him that the group had been invited by students, but that we do not identify with the organization. In other words, she wrote that the fact the organization was invited by students does not mean we endorse it. I'm not a supporter or admirer of B'Tselem, but I certainly told that young man that we're not going to kick out any organization we have invited. We're not going to gag anyone."

The college spokesman told Haaretz that "Reichman is working under the assumption that his students are truthful, and he doesn't recall ever making such a statement. He does not agree with B'Tselem's methods, but he nevertheless maintains and will continue to maintain full pluralism and freedom of speech."

B'Tselem issued the followed comment on the matter: "We welcome the statement made by Professor Reichman, which indicates that although he doesn't support the organization, he supports the organization's right to make its positions known. Defending the right to express an opinion even when one doesn't agree with it is the very essence of freedom of speech. B'Tselem will continue stating its positions and encouraging public discussion in Israel of human rights in the Occupied Territories."

 

 

2. Ex-president of Hebrew University joins communists and leftist criminals in blocking traffic.

 

http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2010/05/ex-president-of-hebrew-university-joins.html

 

You may recall that rightist protester Moshe Feiglin was convicted of "sedition" for blocking traffic in a protest against Olso a few years back.  Well, the leftist guttersnipes held their weekly violent protests on Friday against Jewish living in the Simon the Righteous neighborhood of Jerusalem.  The protesters demand that the neighborhood be kept judenrein because Jews do not belong there.  This time a number of prominent members of the tenured Left were present.  These included the ex-President of the Hebrew University Hanoch Gutfreund.  Among the organizers of the protest was the communist party.  The report in Haaretz is here:  http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/police-arrest-14-left-wing-activists-in-sheikh-jarrah-1.290543

 

Other far-leftist tenured radicals were Menachem Yaari (Hebrew Universty economics professor), Moshe Halbertal (Hebrew University, Jewish throught, who helped compose the IDF's "ethical code" in which it was forgotten to mention defending Israel as an ethical obligation), and Menachem Brinker (ex-Israeli in Middle East Studies now at the University of Chicago and who is so anti-Israel that he won an Israel Prize).

 

In short, anti-Oslo protesters blocking traffic are guilty of "sedition" in post-democratic Israel.  Hebrew University professors blocking traffic alongside communists to prevent Jews from living in East Jerusalem is moral and academic and ethical.   At least we now have a pretty good idea of how the Hebrew University became so filled with far leftists under the watch of Gutfreund.

 

The full Haaretz piece on this, with the usual Haaretz spin, follows:

Police arrest 14 left-wing activists in Sheikh Jarrah

By Nir Hasson

Police arrested 14 left-wing activists on Friday during a protest in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

The protesters reported brutality on the part of police forces. Four demonstrators were hospitalized to undergo medical examinations.

The demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah is held weekly to protest the Jewish takeover of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem through the use of ownership documents dating from the period of the British mandate in Palestine.

The clashes on Friday began after a small group left the 350 protesters at the usual demonstration site to try to enter the disputed area. The group was protesting a recent police decision to allow right-wing activists to demonstrate in the area on Jerusalem Day this past Wednesday, as opposed to leftist activists who haven't been allowed to enter the neighborhood.

The activists were stopped at the police barricade and several laid down on the road in protest. Police officers proceeded to arrest them, including Israel Radio reporter Shay Zilber, who was released shortly afterward. Former president of Hebrew University Hanoch Gutfreund was also among the activists blocking the road.

"During Jerusalem Day last week the police showed, without a doubt, that it sees itself as part of the settler movement in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem," one of the protesters said.

"During that entire day, the police allowed hundreds of settlers to enter the neighborhood from all parts of the occupied territories in order to dance and riot in the center of it, while they blocked roads and threatened Palestinian residents," the protester added. "At the same time, police prevented a group of 40 left-wing activists to stand by the Palestinian residents and called the leftists' presence in the neighborhood an illegal gathering."

 

 

 

3.  Leftwing indoctrination now to be found in American AP exams:

High School Students Object to AP Test's Use of a Quote by Edward Said

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen

Forward -- Published May 12, 2010, issue of May 21, 2010.

 

Nearly 2 million high school students worldwide are taking Advanced Placement tests this May, hoping to impress college admissions counselors with high scores and, perhaps, earn a few college credits. But one test question citing the late Palestinian-American scholar and activist Edward Said on the theme of exile is prompting protests from some Jewish students.

The English Literature and Composition test, in which the question occurs, requires students to read excerpts of poetry and prose and compare them to other works they have studied in class. The passage from Said contains no reference to Palestine or Israel. But the test's description of the late Columbia University humanities professor as a "Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic" has led some pro-Israel students to object that the test has been politicized.

"I was really startled to see that quote because both of the practice questions didn't mention the writers' nationalities," said Ayelet Pearl, a senior at New York's Bronx High School of Science. "For me including this one clearly had political implications."

The Said quote on the AP test reads: "Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and its native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted."

"I'm in a public school and most students here have the impression that Israel is the one attacking [the Palestinians]," the 17-year-old Pearl said. "To put a quote in like this subconsciously reinforces the idea that Israel's the antagonist, the aggressor, the one in the wrong."

Though she had just 40 minutes to write the required essay, Pearl froze when she encountered the Said text. "I didn't know what to do because I wasn't comfortable answering it," she said. She decided to put a paragraph objecting to the quote's inclusion at the top of her essay. "I find it really inappropriate to put a political question like that on a test," she said she wrote.

Using this quote in the AP exam "is very reflective of the widespread use of education and testing as a platform for anti-Israel propaganda," she told the Forward.

The College Board, which develops and administers the Advanced Placement exams, requires test-takers to pledge not to discuss test questions for 48 hours after taking the assessment. Two nights later Pearl began an open Facebook protest group, called "Protest the 2010 AP English Literature and Composition Free Response Question."

As of press time the Facebook group had attracted 493 members, many of whom were engaged in lively discussion of the issue.

College Board spokeswoman Jennifer Topiel told the Forward, "We have heard no concerns about this exam question, which contains a quotation about exile and does not contain any political subject matter."

Pearl and her Facebook protest group co-creator Alyssa Blumenthal, a senior at Long Beach High School in Long Beach, N.Y., said they had not yet contacted the College Board directly.

Said, who was born in Jerusalem, was raised there and in Egypt. He went on to become a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University from 1963 until his death in 2003. His 1978 book "Orientalism" is a touchstone for the field known as postcolonial studies. Controversial both as a writer and as a political activist, Said for decades campaigned for Palestinian statehood but was often at odds with Palestinian political leaders.

In a much-discussed incident in 2000, Said was photographed hurling a stone from Lebanon into Israel � at Israeeli soldiers, some witnesses claimed, though Said and other witnesses denied this.

Pearl stressed that she objected to the identification accompanying Said's quote about exile, not the text itself. It was, she said, more detailed than the identifications of other authors, if they were even described at all.

"It creates a bias that can potentially make students feel very uncomfortable and make their ability to respond [to the test question] feel compromised," the 16-year-old Pearl said. "We don't feel that a standardized test should be the place for anything dealing with politics regardless of the stand being taken."

Another College Board spokeswoman, Sheila Jamison, responded, "The characterization of AP exam questions as typically excluding nationalities of writers quoted is not accurate. In fact, it is typical that when an author is cited their heritage is cited. The sample AP Exam questions demonstrate this."

In fact, the other five writers quoted in the free response section of this year's AP English Literature and Composition exam � now posted on the College Board's website � are listed simply by name. The most recent example available of an author being listed with more than a name goes back two years, to the 2008 version of the test, which describes Anita Desai as an Indian author.

Some 1.8 million students worldwide are taking the 30 different AP tests currently offered this spring, on subjects ranging from art history to statistics.

"We aren't sure whether others have ever used Facebook to register opinions about AP exam questions," said Jamison of the College Board.

 

4.  The Flight of the "Intellectuals":  http://www.michaeltotten.com/2010/05/the-flight-of-the-intellectuals.php

 

 

5.  Berkeley Conference Whitewashes History in Positing a 'Judeo-Muslim Civilization'

by Rima Greene
FrontPage Magazine
May 14, 2010

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/14/a-judeo-muslim-civilization/

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/9585

 

 

5.  Using dogs against leftist dogs:  http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3889828,00.html

 

 

7  Yesterday was "Nakba Day" in which the jihadists and their Jewish fellow travelers all mourn Israel's existence and Israel's victories in 1948-9: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3889918,00.html

 

Well, to the tune of We wish you a Merry Xmas, sing:

 

We wish you a merry Nakba,

We wish you a merry Nakba,

We wish you a merry Nakba,

And a second one soon!