Zionist Conspiracy

More on the Haifa Campaign of Assistance to Terrorists

 

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=13077

 

After Im Tirtzu movement issued a scathing report claiming that Haifa University legal clinics aid terrorists, university says, "Im Tirtzu are the ones who are crudely injecting politics into academics for the sake of their own publicity."

Israel Hayom Staff

 

Haifa University

|A day after the Im Tirtzu movement published a report decrying what it termed the politicized nature of Haifa University's legal clinics, reactions began flooding in from the university, terror victims and Knesset members.

Ilan Yavelburg, a spokesman for the university, described the report as "manipulative and biased" and deemed Im Tirtzu an "extremist political organization."

Haifa University's legal clinics are apolitical, he said, adding: "Im Tirtzu are the ones who are crudely injecting politics into the academy for the sake of their own publicity."

The report focuses on three clinics in particular: the Clinic for Prisoners' Rights, the Clinic for Human Rights in Society and the Clinic for the Rights of the Arab-Palestinian Minority. It says the causes chosen by these clinics are part of the "Arab nationalist struggle against Zionism." These causes, according to the report, include undermining the status of the national anthem, providing legal aid to Arab-Israeli security prisoners and opposing Jewish settlement in Acre and Meron. Furthermore, the clinics use public funds and enlist unsuspecting, well-meaning students towards an Arab nationalist agenda, the report says.

Out of more than 20 legal cases that the clinics have handled since 2009, only two were for Jews, the report stated. In all the other cases, the clinics represented Arabs against the State of Israel (in one case the recipient of legal aid was not even an Israeli citizen). And while out of more than 10,000 prisoners held in Israeli jails only 132 (just over 1 percent) are Arab-Israeli security prisoners, eight out of the 10 cases handled by the Clinic for Prisoners' Rights involved security prisoners, the bulk of whom are terrorists.

Yavelburg said that most of the specific cases described in the report ended several years ago and that in many cases the courts themselves approached the clinics to offer representation.

"The legal clinics receive thousands of queries each year on a wide spectrum of issues including education, women's rights, single mothers and more. It is no accident that Im Tirtzu chose to ignore this wide range of activity and to spotlight, in an intentional and biased way, just one narrow issue among many," Yavelburg said.

Reacting to Im Tirzu's report, Almagor, the terror victims' organization, sent a letter to the president of Haifa University on Monday.

"The feeling among the bereaved families and the wounded is sadness, anger and outrage," the letter said.

"In Haifa, there is a population of terror victims and bereaved families who in the past joined our legal battle to prosecute terrorists who hurt us, and we did not see the University of Haifa offer us its services, which it offers, ironically and unfortunately, to some of these terrorists.

"Therefore we ask you to stop providing legal assistance to the terrorists, or alternatively, to establish a clinic that will achieve justice for victims, according to the victims' rights law. Today we have no clinic that helps us to face the attorneys of the murderers, as well as government bodies working for plea bargains with ridiculous punishments, to shorten their punishments or to give them improved conditions in prison.

"We hope that in response to this letter you will shut down the track that allows terrorists to receive aid from the university. We would be happy if you would agree to meet with us," the letter said.

"This is another scandal at the University of Haifa, which under the cover of academic freedom harms the freedom of choice of students and imposes on them a post-Zionist agenda," MK Yariv Levin (Likud) told Maariv newspaper on Sunday.

Levin called on Education Minister Shay Piron to immediately intervene in the matter and to "defend the students who are led astray by these programs and the support they receive from the University of Haifa."

Lt. Col. (res.) Oren Tamam, brother of the soldier Moshe Tamam, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1984 by Israeli Arabs, Maariv that "radical left activists and students have worked in recent years to actively help murderers, including one of my brother's murderers, Walid Daka, with endless appeals to the Israel Prison Service, the state attorney, the courts, and the president. These appeals have allowed him to marry during his time in jail. He was able to study toward a bachelor's and master's degree, with funding provided by terror organizations."