Thursday, July 24, 2014
Small Victory for Academic Freedom
A remarkable event took place this week at Bar Ilan University, reported in Haaretz (in Hebrew here http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/education/1.2386146 )
A course in business law was being taught by one Dr. Uri Weiss, an anti-Israel ultra-leftist who was denouncing Israel on Facebook as a criminal inhumane monstrosity committing war crimes and devoted to murdering children. He also endorsed the slanders of the "Goldstone Report." The students were not amused. Bar Ilan is not the first place that comes to mind when it comes to radical anti-Israel propagandists serving on its faculty but even Bar Ilan has its own share of such moonbats. Weiss has published trash on the Neo-Nazi web magazine "Counterpunch" accusing Israel's Supreme Court of "engaging in apartheid." See http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/01/28/apartheid-at-the-israeli-high-court/ .
The students demanded from the administration the right to drop Weiss' course and take an alternative course from someone not engaged in anti-Israel demonization and slander. What is remarkable is that the Bar Ilan administration agreed! 30 students dumped Weiss and his class.
Weiss' email address is uriw10@gmail.com
2. One other remarkable story from the dungeons of Israeli academia. We reported the story of Prof. Mordecai Kedar being persecuted and denounced by the Caring Left after he gave a radio interview about how to understand suicide bombers. There he said that suicide bombers can not be deterred by usual means and theoretically would only be deterred if there were a threat to rape their mothers and sisters when they carry out mass murder. Kedar was not advocating this be done, merely analyzing the problem theoretically.
The tenured Left had a conniption and has been demanding that Kedar be fired and silenced. One tenured leftist at my own university (Haifa) posted a message on the professors chat list that literally (I am not making this up) called for prohibiting anyone even having THOUGHTS like Kedar! That is correct. This woman professor demands a thought police that will patrol incorrect thoughts!
Meanwhile the very same people jihading against poor Mordecai Kedar are also organizing a petition to DEFEND Orna Banai and demand that she be reinstated. Banai is a not-particularly-funny TV comedienne in Israel, niece of singer and entertainer Yossi Banai. She was appearing in ads for Mano, a small Israeli-owned kosher cruise ship line. Orna started mouthing off against Israel and against the Israeli army. Mano, a private company, decided they do not want Orna to be their rep in ads any more, that she is not the image they seek to project. So they terminated her contract. The tenured Left is aghast. The very same people demanding the Mordecai Kedar be burned at the stake are organizing petitions demanding that Mano be coerced into keeping Orna Banai on its advertising payroll.