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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Jeff Halper at UC-Irvine (Cont)





Jeff Halper-Crackpot

Last night, I attended the second part of Jeff Halper's program at UCI. If the morning event was bad, this was infinitely worse. Last night, Halper revealed that he is more than just a despicable anti-Israel propagandist against his own adopted country; he is a total crack pot as well. This is a long report about a lot of one-sided nonsense, so I'll try to liven it up a bit with my usual collection of "well-timed visual aids".

Last night's audience was much smaller, maybe 30-40 people, mostly students from Professor Chuck O'Connell's sociology class who were being given extra credit for listening to Halper's crackpot view of the world. (They should have been paid a few thousand bucks.)  This time Halper's presentation was entitled, "Exporting Occupation-Israel and the Global Pacification Industry". Again, he was introduced by Professor O'Connell.

He started off by saying that the Israel-Palestine conflict was a microcosm for what is going on in the rest of the world. He referred to the "arms industry, policing and pacification" of which Israel plays a key role. He used the term Bantustan to compare the situation between the Israelis and Palestinians to South African apartheid. He also stated that Israel refused to accept a 2-state solution whereby they would get 78% of the land because they figured they could have it all due to US support especially in the Congress (from both parties). He talked about Israel's image as a "white" society. (Israel is a multi-ethnic society.)

Halper also described the support of the US Jewish community for Israel. (I guess he never heard of J Street and that other outfit called Jewish Voice for Peace, the latter of which should be called "Jews for Jihad".) He talked about the "powerful B'nai B'rith and its president, Abe Foxman". ( Foxman is the head of the ADL, not B'nai B'rith.) He also threw out jabs at Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, "Christian Zionists", Neo-Cons, and Mike Huckabee. Palin, he told us, when she was governor of Alaska, even had an Israeli flag in her office, (Horrors!)


Halper also listed the US defense industry as a support pillar for Israel. He talked about how they give arms to not only Israel but other nations as well. He said the Palestinians pose no military threat to Israel, and they should never have invaded Gaza. (Not one mention of terror, not one mention of Hamas, not one mention of Hizbollah. Not one mention of the fact that the Israelis had earlier left Gaza hoping for peace-in vain.)

(Note" If this comes across as a meandering article, it is only because I am following Halper's talk. He uses no notes and drones on for hours from one unrelated point to another. This anthropology professor never heard of a lesson plan.)

Then it got really bizarre.

You see, according to Jeff's world, Israel is vital to the US defense industry. Today, warfare is war for resources. The US needs Israel because Israel has what the US doesn't-expertise in counter-insurgency. This is because the US is not experienced in fighting counter-insurgency-only conventional wars between nations. In addition, the US needs counter-insurgency to fight against "People", like in Iraq and Egypt, you see. (That's according to Jeff.) The US needs to control People, and Israel has the high tech and tactics that the US needs.

That's right.

But wait! There's more. You see, there is a wider system-a grand strategy, if you will. That's when Jeff trotted out his power points to explain something he called..........

The Core.


Yes, folks, The Core. That would be the US and its hegemonic policy over........

The Gap.



(Can't make this stuff up, folks.)

The gap is the rest of the world, the "unintegrated gap", you know, those Third World folks in poor countries who are always causing us problems, or as he called it "system perturbations". (Did I get that right, Jeff?) He later described this all as "a new line of thinking I have". (I'll say.)

So, according to Jeff, the US can't allow that to happen because our hegemony is a critical element of our capitalistic system. (Jeff is reportedly a Marxist guy whose idol is Leon Trotsky.)

According to my notes, it was at this point that Jeff informed us that the control room for launching our precision-guided missiles was in.........

Las Vegas!



Wikileaks exclusive: Secret government agent launching a missile into Pakistan from Caesar's Palace. (Photographed from the rear to hide his identity).

Keep in mind that this man earlier in the day was a guest presenter in a UCI classroom!!!!

It gets better.

You see (according to Professor Jeff) to preserve the American way of life, we need to "firewall" the Core from the Gap, as well as discreetly firewall off the Core exports of the Gap. Thirdly, we need to shrink the Gap through regime change and nation-building.

Somewhere about this point, I made a note that Halper is nuts.

Anyway, the next topic was SWAT teams. Yes, folks, did you know that 80% of the American police departments have SWAT teams?

"Uhhhh......yeaaaah."

(Trust me, we need 'em.) He talked about the militarization of our police and all that bothersome security we have to go through at US airports. Then he mentioned something called "The Global Purification System".



And, of course, Israel is all part of this because they are high-tech and they have all the expertise here, and they train the police all over the world and.........

He then came to a power point slide entitled, "Israel's 5 Niches". I will try and summarize it because it is reaaaaally deeeeeep. This consists of Clandestine War, Framing and Spin.

No, it is not a washer- dryer. He then went on to talk about Israel arms sales to China. What is the connection to the 5 Niches? Don't ask me. The man makes no sense.

But this is the Piece de Resistance.

It was here that Jeff told us all about...

Spectral Dust.


You see, it works like this. Israel has this spectral dust that it can spray over wide areas of land. Each grain of this dust is a sensor.


I'm not making this up, folks. My notes are right here in front of me.

Anyway, this dust is programmed so that armed with a person's DNA, it can actually track that person, locate him and kill him.



That's right.

And what Israel has can be given to other countries to use on their own people.

Finally, after almost 2 hours, Halper took questions. (Most of the audience were students along with some "grown-ups", the latter of whom were eating up Halper's nonsense like candy.) Each question launched Halper into another winding monologue on how bad Israel is. My "question" went something like this:

I introduced myself and told him that he was speaking on the one-year anniversary of the disrupted speech at UCI by the Israeli ambassador to the UN and I was glad that he (Halper) had not been sunjected to similar treatment. I stated that I was no expert on the Middle East, but that I supported Israel's right to exist and defend herself. I toild him that in my view he had presented a completely one-sided account of a complex situation (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), that he had made no mention of terror against Israel, no mention of the Hamas charter which calls for killing the last Jew, and no mention of Israel leaving Gaza in exchange for peace.  I also mentioned that I found it interesting that he had been born in the US, immigrated to Israel some 35 years ago (40), had been given citizenship, and now was traveling the world trashing his adopted country, which I thought was despicable. I also told him that in my view, his statements about spectral dust, Core and Gap sounded like crackpot theory. (I was respectful, of course.)

After remarking that he was a firm supporter of the "Irvine 11"-the Muslim Student Union members arrested for the disruption- (applause) He then went on to lecture me about Israel and their program of demolishing houses etc, etc., etc., basically rehashing the same things he had already said.

A Jewish lady seated next to me (a friend and colleague) brought up the fact that she was from South Africa, had fought against apartheid, suffered the abuse, and having also been to Israel, could state that there was no comparison between Israel and South African apartheid. Another friend told Halper that Abe Foxman was not the head of B'nai B'rith, but the ADL, that the two organizations were independent of each other and that his information was false. Halper reacted by looking down and shuffling his papers, the same reaction, I might add,  that Paul 'The Worm" Krugman repeatedly made when Bill O'Reilly called him a liar a couple of years back. Later, my South African friend asked Halper whether non-Muslims, Christians and Jews could live and worship in Arab countries. The example of Egypt's Coptic Chyristians was mentioned. At this point one of the older members of the audience in front turned around and said that Copts in Egypt could worship and build their own churches. (One was recently bombed with 21 deaths. The Copts are a persecuted minority in Egypt.) Halper refused to discuss problems in other countries. He was only concerned about Israel because he is an Israeli.

Another classic moment came when a young female student told the audience (I am paraphrasing) that she knew what Halper was saying (about the US) was true because three of her professors (whom she named) had also told her about all the things that America was doing around the world. At that point, I asked her, "Is that what your professors are teaching you, that your country is so evil?" (Many of the aforementioned Kool-Aid drinkers in the audience reacted audibly at this point as if I had said something outrageous,) I then told the girl that there were a lot more than 3 professors that would tell her the same things; that there were thousands of such professors in universities all over the country.

About 8:30, 2 1/2 hours after the event started, Halper was still taking questions and droning on, so I decided I had heard enough and left. Aside from the "adults" in the audience, I have no idea whether the students were buying this guy's talk. He probably lost many of them after an hour or so. One student remarked that she couldn't believe what she was hearing and that she didn't buy it at all.

Let me turn serious as I wrap up this report. Halper's appearance at UCI is a textbook example of what is wrong in American universities today. It is not because he is against Israel (his adopted country) and is a prominent activist and speaker against Israel. It is not because he has no apparent regard for the country of his birth (America). It is because in addition to his one-sided account, which leaves out any mention of why Israel has acted the way it has, this man reveals himself to be a crackpot with his global conspiracy theories about the US and Israel that are right out of a Matt Damon spy thiller. Of course, Halper enjoys his right of free speech at an American university, but he is spouting propaganda- even in a university classroom. What alternative viewpoints are these young students exposed to? I would guess none. What I witnessed yesterday was not education but indoctrination. These students deserve to be exposed to both sides of the issues and not be wasting their time and their families' money by listening to some malcontent misfit talk about The Core, the Gap, and spectral dust.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's worse???

A Nut, or a blogger who devotes two lengthy posts about the Nut?

Face it Fouse, Zionism has warped your mind. You're obsessed.

Anonymous said...

"These students deserve to be exposed to both sides of the issues [...]"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Wait a second, wasn't this supposed to be the "serious" part of your post?

Gary Fouse: Firm believer of exposing BOTH sides of an issue... unless it's on his blog, in which case he will delete comments with links to opposing information or just whine like a little baby when you try to debate him.

Signed,
A Different Anonymous Than the First Poster

Gary Fouse said...

Anonymous,

I devoted the time to attend these sessions and write about it because this nut is speaking in university classrooms to our kids. Someone needs to counter this garbage. And this goes way beyond Israel and Zionism. This is what passes for education in our universities. If you are a student, you should feel cheated-even if you agree with him.

Gary Fouse said...

Dear different anonymous,

I congratulate you on your well-thought-out and reasoned prose. You must be a university student, right?

UC Santa Cruz Community Studies major, perhaps?

Anonymous said...

I enjoy reading Fouse's accounts of events at UC Irvine. I also like when he includes links to the actual video so I can hear the lecture for myself.

Thanks for the report.

- anon since I cannot figure out how to get an account.

Anonymous said...

Way to sidestep my point about what a hypocrite you are. You're only in favor of presenting both sides of an issue or a debate when its convenient for you. As soon as someone presents damning, irrefutable evidence against your case, you delete it. If someone tries to politely and rationally debate you, you accuse them of "playing games" and ask them to leave you alone.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Fouse your populist propaganda won't work on me.

The vast, vast, vast majority of UC Irvine students are adults (18+). There might be a few 17 year old freshmen here and there. The point is that adult UCI students are smart enough to distinguish fact from fiction on their own. How do I know? Because students have to be smart and have an accomplished scholastic background to even get accepted into UCI.

UCI students aren't "kids" (and especially not your kids) who need you to guide them thru the tangled, complex maze that is the modern Middle East.

Whats most disturbing is that you are as, if not more biased than most pro-Palestinian speakers at UCI.

I fear the only place you will "guide" UCI students will be into Jewish slavery (God's chosen).

Bartender Cabbie said...

Such balls it takes to post as "anonymous" At least I use a "handle."

Siarlys Jenkins said...

Yeah, but you sure are taking him seriously. He doesn't merit the attention.

Findalis said...

The Israelis have made Magical Pixie Dust? That is so cool! I wonder what type of Pixie Dust this idiot was snorting?

Gary Fouse said...

PS to Anonymous:

Excuse my misprint. I meant to say, "Well, I guess we can see your ("anti-Semitic slavery") agenda. Also, I hope you don't find my use of the terms "kids" offensive. It's all relevant to an old guy like me.

Yes, I realize many university students can see through someone like Halper on their own and don't need our "guidance". I get that. Yet, there are many who don't see through it. Last night, I know of at least one student who saw through it. I'll bet some of the others saw through it as well. Yet there was one girl who told the audience-as I pointed out- that she knew what Halper was saying about the US was true because three of her professors had told her all about all the things that the US had done around the world. (Again, I am paraphrasing.)

Actually, what was more bothersome was the fact that the ones in the audience who were really buying into Halper were the older adults, probably teachers, who were really buying it. In the evening event, they snickered when I asked the aforementioned girl, "Is that what your professors are telling you-that your country is so evil?"

ZionistRacistPig said...

Note the parallels between what I wrote about that occured nine years ago at Columbia U versus what occured yesterday at UCIrvine with total schlub and useful idiot Jeff Halper, alleged 'cultural anthropologist" and head of the out of date Israel Committee Against Housing Destruction. Their he was attired in crummy jeans and lousy shirts with scruffy white beard preaching conspiracy theories about Astral dust and IDF killing labs in Gaza to an odd assortment of fluttering moon bats all courtesy of enabler UCIrvine Prof O'Connel

Here's is what I wrote about Halper and Friends.

In September 2002, the School of International and Public Affairs co-sponsored an African Studies Institute seminar—"South African Conversation on Israel and Palestine." Its Chair, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, attempted to glue a false apartheid analogy to Israel's counter terror tactics. Lately, U.S. coalition forces have lately adopted Israeli techniques—including checkpoints, curfews and "virtual cantonments"— to contain Ba'athist guerrillas in Iraq. Aiding him was radical leftist Jeff Halper, whose Israel Committee Against Housing Destruction (ICAHD) claimed that destroying the homes of Palestinian terrorists in the disputed territories was only a mendacious "displacement" of Palestinians. MEALC anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj and political science professor Andre du Toit, visiting from the University of Cape Town, concurred.

Only one participant objected. Wasn't "displacement" of more than 900,000 Mizrahi and Mahgrebi Jews before and after the Israeli War of Independence analogous? Arab pogroms targeted Jewish people and confiscated billions of dollars in Jewish assets and property. Mamdani's panel declared the question intellectually dishonest, and Jewish and Palestinian displacements incomparable. When the program ended, a participant approached the questioner. "You are a Zionist racist pig," he said. Sic Gloria transit mundi, Columbia.

Fast forward to yesterday at UCIrvine. A South African colleague of fouse questioned dishelved Halper about Jews ejected from Arabs lands. Halper demurred by saying he can't address 'global issues' only things he knows about as an Israeli. Ditto for his comments about Israel as a land of white men only, forgetting the Black Ethiopian Jews and dark skinned Middle Eastern and Indian Jews. Then he has this bizarre theory that the IDF is using Gaza as an international Counter Terrorism lab to demonstrate efficient killing methods to pass on to the US, Canada and the like. I thought for sure he would accuse the IDF of the plague of crop circles observed in the UK and in the US a few years ago, or that the Israeli Air Force controls Area 51 where alien space ships land in Nevada. The fact that students at this bizarre dangerous event said that others on the faculty at UCIrvine said the same thing leaves me to believe that sanity and intellectual honesty is absent in the groves of acedeme in Orange County, California, save for Prof. Fouse and a few rational faculty members. But then disciplines like anthropology and sociology give PhDs for writing untruths as meta-narratives. What passes for soft science Academia has sunk to a very low estate. It has become the last bastion of dead ender Marxist dialectians. Sic gloria transit UCIrvine. Pity.

Gary Fouse said...

Findalis,

Amazing stuff, isn't it? You couldn't sell that plot to a Star Wars movie. And what's really scary is that some in the audience were believing it. Even scarier, most of them were not even students but people in their 30s and 40s.

You can't believe the idiocy that reigns supreme on our college campuses.

Gary Fouse said...

ZRP,

Amazing isn't it. BTW I am not a professor; only have a masters degree, which I got at the age of 48. Had I gotten a phd, surely I would have been educated out of the last ounce of common sense I was born with.

Frankly, I would be embarassed as a teacher to drag in some stumblebum in front of my class to tell them about spectral dust that acts as a sensor and can track down and kill an individual based on his DNA. He should have been laughed out of the lecture hall when he made that statement.

Miggie said...

Among the devilish complex problems that militant Islam, with its obsession on Israel, has forced on America is how to protect our rights and institutions while stopping the Islamists from exploiting them to the national peril.

Again in this Halper instance they propagandize our students from within our institution. We seem to be helpless because we can't do anything effective about them without impacting our traditions of freedom of speech, academic freedom and all the other civil liberties we cherish. The Islamists keep testing the limits of school's and the country's tolerance.

The vast majority of the American people are unequivocally anti-militant Islam and pro-Israel. Academics have no such feelings. The problem is that at this stage of their lives the college students are more influenced by their teachers than their parents. Perhaps evil wins a transient victory here and when the students are mature, they will understand more about consequences.

One of the things we could do more of is to demonstrate to the students how foreign, how out of place, how vulgar and inappropriate these clowns and the hateful ideology they spew are.

Gary does this with this blog. Others do it in their own ways as well. While marginal soft headed liberals and academics uncritically defend the Islamists, I believe the majority of Americans view them as badly mistaken useful idiots.
.

Findalis said...

I'm very surprised that he didn't mention Area 51 and the aliens there being controlled by Israel.

Maybe next time.

Siarlys Jenkins said...

Anonymous, how dare you besmirch the good name of Populism by granting a franchise to the material posted at this site? The Cooperative Commonwealth has room for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, no room for Ascendancy politics, whether in the name of Bourbon patricians, comfortable Likud obstructionists, or rabid jihadists.

Gary Fouse said...

Siarlys,

....or one-legged Cub fans.

Miggie said...

What about the Jeffersonian Philistines?
.

Siarlys Jenkins said...

One legged Cubs fans are always welcome.

Miggie, you're Leninist side is showing.

Philippe said...

"Extremism thrives amid ignorance and anger, intimidation and cowardice."
Who said that? Hilary Clinton.
And yes, University students are still children. They may be smart, but they have not yet learned wisdom. Chronological age does not make you an adult.

Anonymous said...

If you're going to write a post trying to expose both sides of the conflict, you write about both sides of the conflict. You do not ever waste your time by trying to prove to other people that you are right, and the other side is wrong.
This is what I saw:
From the moment you start to write, you called Mr. Halper a "crackpot". Really? What a way to convince people you're not biased. Yes, Mr. Halper didn't do enough research, but YOU, you also didn't try to listen to what he was saying. Half of the time you were listening, you spent it to prove him wrong. Isn't that what we all do?
I know this. I know this because I used to think this way, but my thinking has changed. I can no longer take anything I hear or see from face value. I question and search for the hidden truth about the conflicts of the world. Are you doing that?
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict may not be like the South African apartheid, but it is dangerous, maybe even more so than the apartheid. Both sides are unwilling to listen because they'd both undergone trauma of a sort by other races and other coutries. Jews underwent anti-Semitism with WWII, Hitler, and other European countries, but the Palestinians also struggled with gaining a home for themselves due to the British.
Is it so hard to find peace?
Is it so hard for you to listen with unbiased ears?
We all look at the world through our own lens, are we willing to step out of the cave we've lived our whole life and go outside into the light? Truth is harsh. And if you're not willing to see that the Palestinians do have a right to cry for help, I say you to go thence to Palestine and see for yourself. But also, don't forget the Israelis. Visit their struggles as well with the Palestinian extremist groups.
Go, and see the true stories of what the conflict is doing both to the Israelis and Palestinians.

Gary Fouse said...

I just love these commenters who tear into mwe and can't even give their names. First of all, I listened to Halper speak. He proved he was a crackpot when he claimed the Israelis had a weapon called spectral dust, which, programmed with a person's dna, could be released into the general area where he was, would seek him out and kill him.

What would you call that?

As for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I have never been closer to it than Cairo. I have watched it played out on the UCI campus and elsewhere. Aside from the fact that the Palestinians want all of Israel with no Jews, I have personally seen the pure Jew hatred on our campus. I choose to support our democratic ally, Israel. The Palestinians, through their embrace of terror and leaders like Abbas and Hamas, bring on their own misery. Why should I support people who danced on 9-11?

And what makes you qualified to criticize when this all happened 7 years ago? Where have you been for 7 years?