Sunday, March 02, 2014
The Israeli Tenured Left demands that Academic Freedom be Suppressed
The Radical Academic Left in Israel Demands that Academic Freedom be suppressed in order to Defend Academic Freedom
It sounds like a Purim gag, and if only it were.
The Israeli tenured Radical Left with some fellow travelers has petitioned Bar Ilan University to suppress freedom of speech in order to defend freedom of speech. Really. No joke.
Let me explain.
A couple of weeks back, Bar Ilan University in Israel hosted an event honoring Edwin Black for his important new book, " FINANCING THE FLAMES IN THE MIDDLE EAST: HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS ABUSES IN ISRAEL." The book, which is gaining enormous attention, exposes the biased pro-terror and anti-Israel political activities of various NGO's pretending to be "human rights groups." Black is a renowned investigative reporter for the NY Times. The event in question was advertised here:
The Tenured Left was not amused. A petition was organized to denounce Bar Ilan University for allowing Black to speak on campus and demanding that the event surrounding the publication of Black's book be cancelled. The petition was organized by Peace Now co-founder Amiram Goldblum, a far-leftist professor of pharmaceutical studies at the Hebrew University. You may recall Goldblum as the character who organized that pseudo-poll that claimed to find that most Israelis favor apartheid. (See http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2794) Goldblum is behind many of the attempts to paint Israel as an apartheid regime and has called for international pressure to suppress Israeli sovereignty and coerce the country to accept the diktats of the tiny ultra-leftist minority.
The new petition initiated by Goldblum demanding that Black be prevented from speaking, with its Orwellian title of "Support Free Speech," can be read here in Hebrew and English: http://www.atzuma.co.il/supportfreespeech. Yes it is there in black and white - the petition demands that freedom of speech be suppressed for Black in order to support freedom of speech. Ben Dror Yemini in Maariv this past weekend devotes part of his column to mocking Goldblum and his fellow petitioners: http://www.nrg.co.il/app/index.php?do=blog&encr_id=f2b4c1b55be76d1e6d7b777256ea0370&id=4900
It is also amusing to see the list of tenured radicals who signed the petition to suppress academic freedom at Bar Ilan University. The list includes many academics who have ever demanded that critics of the Radical Left be silenced and suppressed. It is worth going through the list of signers one by one.
Among the signers are Daniel Bar-Tal from Tel Aviv University, Avraham Oz and Hannah Safran from from Haifa University, Oren Yiftachel from Ben Gurion University, and Frances Raday and Goldblum himself from the Hebrew University, plus a number of other leaders from "Peace Now."
Could George Orwell have invented as good an instrument for exposing the totalitarianism of the Israeli radical Left?
