Thursday, January 26, 2012
Tel Aviv University Standards on Display
Haaretz web site. See
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/pro-palestinian-hackers-crash-haaretz-other-sites-1.409228
Evidently most readers of Haaretz were unaware of the hacking because
the anti-Israel content of the newspaper that had been hacked did not
differ much from its usual fare. The newspaper editors became aware
of the hacking only after a number of readers complained that the
paper was less anti-Israel than usual.
2. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152127
Haifa School Sympathizes Arab 'Victims' Over Jewish Victims
A Haifa school held a panel with speakers from a leftist group -
denying the father of a terror victim an opportunity to speak.
By David Lev
First Publish: 1/26/2012, 11:21 AM
A Haifa high school on Wednesday sponsored a symposium for students on
how families deal with the loss of loved ones from terror attacks.
The speakers, however, were from a leftist organization, called "The
Jewish-Palestinian Forum of Grieving Parents" - while Ron Kerhmann,
another parent whose child was killed in a terror attack, was denied
the opportunity to speak, he says.
Kehrmann father of Tal Kehrmann, who was killed in 2003 when
terrorists bombed a bus she was riding on in Haifa, while on her way
to the same high school – City School number 5 – took place Wednesday.
With his close ties to the community and given the fact that his
daughter had studied there, Kehrmann asked to speak at the symposium –
but was told by the school that he would not be listed as a speaker.
"I tried for over a week to arrange a time to speak, but was given the
runaround," Kehrmann told Arutz Sheva. "After speaking to school
officials I was told that I just was not wanted at the school."
Kehrmann angrily criticized the school for attempting to equate the
suffering of parents like him – whose parents were killed in terror
attacks by Arabs – with that of Arab parents, whose children were
killed by IDF soldiers during anti-terror raids. "My daughter was
killed in a terrorist attack on a bus while she was on her way to
school. Their children were killed during a legitimate IDF attack"
against terror activities that those "victims" were engaged in, he
added.
Kehrmann says that the school's administration has turned terrorist
victimization into a political football. "They lied to me about
respecting my opinion, but they are not interested in hearing what I
have to say," he says, preferring an overtly political organization,
whose main activities is to opposed IDF roadblocks in Judea and
Samaria. "I call on the Education Ministry to prevent such political
activity in schools. This particular group is to the left of Peace
Now," he added.
The school has not commented on the matter, despite requests by Arutz Sheva.
3. http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/25/the-scourge-of-jewish-self-division/
The Scourge of Jewish Self-Division
Posted by David Solway
Tel Aviv University's Academic Standards on Display: PhD candidate
Omar Barghouti Does the Jihad Tour
By Lee Kaplan, www.Isracampus.org.il
24/1/2012
Recently Omar Barghouti, a Columbia graduate in electrical engineering
who is now pursuing a PhD at Tel Aviv University in Philosophy spoke
at three occasions in northern California to promote boycott,
divestment and sanctions against Israel, even his own university. Few
people know that Barghouti, who founded the Academic and Cultural
Boycott of Israel, which attacks Israel's academics abroad and Israeli
universities at home, an extension of the Arab League Boycott, is in
fact not a "Palestinian" or Israeli-Arab. He was born in Qatar and
grew up in Kuwait. His home countries are technically still at war
with Israel. Barghouti's fellow TAU students and other academics
organized a petition asking the University to expel him for his
anti-Israel political activities, but TAU's administration has refused
to do so.
Barghouti declared Israel an apartheid state throughout the evening
during his speech held at the Presbyterian Church in Oakland,
California. He saw nothing hypocritical about his own status as a
subsidized graduate student in Israel, and instead likened himself to
Nelson Mandela. The speaking engagements were sponsored by assorted
groups affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement in order
to raise funds for the Middle East Children's Alliance, an ISM group
that launders most of the ISM's "tax deductible" donations on the US
West Coast. Other sponsoring groups included the anti-Israel extremist
group Jewish Voice for Peace, which is made up for the most part of
Marxist Jews and Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition,
which calls for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and an
unconditional right of anyone pretending to be a "Palestinian" to
"return" to Israel.
There were about 300 people in attendance at the Oakland event, most
aging 60s fossils. Flyers and the announcement at the start of the
evening, one made by Barghouti himself, said his speech would not be
about Israel but about the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland
movements in the United States. After making one brief allusion to the
OWS movement in the US and claiming economic exploitation and denial
of human rights was "worse in the United States even than in Israel,"
he declared Israel as part of the "one per cent" that is economically
exploiting the other "ninety-nine per cent" of humanity. It reminded
me of similar claims in Der Sturmer. Barghouti spent the next two
hours attacking only Israel and claiming it is an apartheid state like
South Africa was in the 1980's. He also criticized America's presence
in Afghanistan. The audience ate it up, applauding loudly at several
points during his lecture.
Barghouti began the lecture stating, "Israelis have been colonizing
our lands since the Nakba in 1948." Throughout the lecture he
acknowledged no Jewish history or any right to any part of the land of
Israel by Jews.
He continued, making the accusation that Israel had altered history
and "destroyed thousands of Palestinian books," and claimed that there
are still thousands more such books hidden away in the library at Tel
Aviv U. You know, the library where he is supposed to be writing his
PhD. So if the books are in that library, we guess they were never
destroyed. Hmmm.
Barghouti then accused Israel of "a worse massacre than anything done
by European colonialism." Barghouti claimed Israel purposely
suppresses Palestinian education during the Intifadas. "Israel shut
down all Palestinian universities in the 1970's, and in 1994 shut down
schools in the West Bank." Of course, Barghouti did not mention that
those universities were actually built by the Israelis in the first
place and were bases and organizing locations for terrorist groups
murdering Israeli civilians in terrorist attacks. "In 1989, occupied
Palestinians had to organize illegal classes in West Bank schools," he
said, proclaiming this an example of human rights violations and
racism.
Barghouti then made reference to the T-Shirt controversy when some IDF
sniper units had T-shirts made that said "One Shot, Two Kills," that
allegedly showed a pregnant Arab woman in a rifle view scope. The
soldiers involved in that were disciplined by the IDF, although we
think they were simply exercising freedom of speech. Arab media, even
children's programs, routinely call for murdering Jews, but this got
no mention. Barghouti suggested IDF soldiers in T-shirts promote the
idea of raping Palestinian women (which Israeli soldiers never do) and
called these examples as "part of the radicalization program the
entire country is undergoing" by Israel against the Arab population.
He then falsely described conditions in Gaza as the "most subhuman" in
the world. He failed to mention the Jacuzzis and designer stores in
the malls. He recounted an unverified tale of an elderly Palestinian
woman "shot while walking along" there for no reason at all and
accused Israel again of "ethnic cleansing."
"In 2005, " he said, "we saw that we must call for boycott and
sanctions as part of a popular struggle to help shoulder the enormous
responsibility in the oppression of the oppressed." He explained the
meaning of BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions), and called for…
"an end to the 1967 Occupation, ending Israel's apartheid." He vowed,
"Israel must recognize the right of refugees to return." He
conveniently left out the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the
Oslo "Peace Process" and voiced the goals of Hamas that Israel must be
flooded with as many Arabs as possible to overrun the Jewish
population.
Barghouti tried to lecture as an academic, but the problem was he kept
lying through his teeth. Besides false claims about apartheid in
Israel (Barghouti himself is proof this is untrue), he then went on to
claim falsely that 93% of the land in the West Bank is off limits to
non-Jews and said Israel has communities where only Jews can live.
Actually Israel is full of communities where Jews cannot live, only
Arabs. Meanwhile, Barghouti had no criticism of the law in the
Palestinian Authority that metes out a death sentence, even
retroactively, if someone sells his land to a Jew. Barghouti also
repeated the oft-used canard of "Jewish only roads" in the West Bank.
Barghouti trotted out every anti-Israel canard he could. He accused
Israel of a "massacre" in Jenin in 2002 when even the United Nations
said there was no massacre. In that "massacre" 20 Arabs were killed in
the crossfire of a battle started by the terrorists. Moving on to the
Gaza flotilla boats that he dubbed "The Freedom Flotilla," he claimed
Israel had conducted a "massacre" of civilians, those civilians who
attempted to murder Israeli soldiers. Barghouti proudly claimed that
local Bay Area anti-Israel activists had succeeded in getting
dockworkers to refuse to unload an Israeli ship in Oakland last year.
The truth was that the day a strike was called was the wrong day for
the arrival of the ship involved, and later the ship did land and
unload. He gleefully mentioned successes in Sweden, South Africa and
even India where dockworkers had refused to unload Israeli goods for
24 hours. This was met with thunderous applause by his audience made
up mostly of Jewish-Marxist "anti-Zionists".
Barghouti discussed the Arab Spring, particularly in Egypt, which he
called "BDS multiplied" and which he said should encourage "no
normalization with Israel." He then began discussing the 1 per cent
vs. the 99 per cent theme of the Occupy Wall Street people (that is,
their claim that 1% control all wealth for the other 99% of world
population who are "oppressed".) Making the Jews the owners of wealth
is a canard right out of the Middle Ages.
He continued, "Suddenly it makes sense to see Israel was fully
involved in the 1% agenda that included the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq." (Barghouti conveniently ignored the profit mongering by OPEC
and the overstuffed Saudis who actually fund his BDS movement even
today and that the war in Afghanistan followed as a result of the 9/11
attacks on US soil.)
Barghouti explained, "It's the Israel lobby following American
interests that serves the 1%." "The Department of Homeland Security,
the Military, banks and US weapons manufacturers make war "on us
because it's good business," he declared, "but is it good for the
other 99%?" he asked.
"Imagine if the US spent the four billion dollars on the war in
Afghanistan, what that would do to improve the roads," he moaned. It
made me wonder what US roads would be like if we didn't spend the
greater sum than that supporting the Palestinians who only cheer on US
enemies to make war on America and Israel. Barghouti declared his
boycott movement was primarily concerned with democracy and human
justice, goals that would be possible "once our struggles emerge." He
declared, "We must unite for freedom, equal rights, social economics
and can no longer ignore the obligation to join hands in the
struggle!" He then claimed to have researched international law, even
though he is not a lawyer or even a law student, and said that the
Palestinian people should have the right to vote for national
self-determination but that the Jews in Israel have no such voting
rights. "I've researched this and international law says occupiers
have no right to vote for self-determination." 63% of Israel's Jews
were born in Israel. When I asked him why they had no right to vote
for self-determination and would have to live under Arab rule,
Barghouti merely repeated that he researched international law and
occupiers (all the Jews in Israel) have no voting rights at all about
how they should live or be governed.
Barghouti also maintained that Christians were being persecuted in the
Holy Land by Israel, not by the Muslim Palestinians (who have driven
most Christians out of Bethlehem) and that many Christians were on the
same side as him. "After all," he told the audience, "Jesus was a
Palestinian." Again, the audience of mostly Jewish radicals cheered
him on and offered no criticism.
The geriatric Marxist Jews from Jewish Voice for Peace gave him cheers
and ovations on his legal claims, too. The hosts continued to repeat
the Big Lie that Barghouti was a "human rights activist."
Barghouti claimed his movement was in line with his "heroes" like
Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi (Martin Luther King stated that
anti-Zionism as Barghouti promoted all night was merely disguised
anti-Semitism and Gandhi promoted non-violence).
Barghouti concluded his speech calling for "freedom and a dignified
life" for people to not live "under savage apartheid" and declared it
a "moral obligation" and urged those attending to "rebound from their
former savaged society of your colony to find it livable again."
Referring to the Occupation Wall Street movement he repeated our
"oppression is intertwined" concluding, "After Egypt it is our time to
reassert our common humanity. I wish you Egypt!"
The rest of the evening consisted of members of the audience
demonstrating what they were doing to promote BDS against Israel. Some
sang in front of a large American chain retailer in front of shoppers
to "end apartheid" by bankrupting the Soda Stream company and Ahava
products. Barghouti took the stand again and boasted how the BDS
campaign had managed to cost the Veolia Company over a half billion
dollars.
Then Barghouti threw out this whopper: "Israel does not consider
itself a nation", he said. He based his statement on the Supreme Court
finding that a single Israeli identity card was not required when
current cards list religious and ethnic denominations. He declared
this racist but had no criticism for calls by the Palestinians to
demand a Palestinian state be Jew free or that there is a law on the
books there meting out a death sentence for selling land to a Jew. He
told the audience that Israel was responsible for the War in Iraq
insisting that Israel knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass
destruction (all Western intelligence services on their own had the
same information and not from Israel) and that now Israel is trying to
get the US to attack Iran.
The final theme of the evening could be summed up as this by
Barghouti: the only way to realize full equality for society is to
boycott and financially harm the Jews.
A video recording of the event is available should anyone wish to see
it. Anyone who would believe that the goal of the BDS movement is for
peace or any kind of settlement needs to see the audience present that
night that could only root for the destruction of Israel and its
Jewish population, no matter how nonsensical it was.
