Anti-Israel Crowd Lashing Back at AMCHA Initiative

Hat tip AMCHA Initiative and Commentary Magazine


As my regular readers know, I frequently post updates from the AMCHA Initiative, a pro-Israel organization of academics who monitor and counter anti-Semitism on college campuses, particularly California campuses. This is an organization I greatly support.

Predictably, the pro-Palestinian lobby within academia is lashing out at AMCHA Initiative accusing it of trying to stifle free speech. Of course, these critics ignore the fact that they rule the roost in academia when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not only are pro-Israel professors rare in Middle East studies departments, but pro-Israel speakers, when they are rarely invited to campus, are subject to disruption (Ask Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the US, who came to speak at UC Irvine 2010.)

The latest effort to discredit the AMCHA Initiative concerns a letter written by 50 Jewish professors. (I guess they wanted a nice round number). I am not familiar with any of these names, but I am informed by the AMCHA Initiative that of the 9 who teach in the University of California system, 6 of them signed a petition on behalf of the so-called Irvine 11, who in 2010 disrupted the above speech of Ambassador Oren at UC Irvine, an event at which I was present.

In reply, Jonathan S Tobin has written an article in Commentary Magazine I am pleased to cross-post.

What this all comes down to is, "Free speech for me, but not for thee", a concept that was affirmed in my presence at UC Irvine when members of the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace came to talk at UCI in 2011 on behalf of the Students for Justice in Palestine, a chapter conveniently formed when the Muslim Student Union was suspended at UCI as a result of the aforementioned disruption. On this occasion, Matan Cohen, an Israeli who describes himself as a student-anarchist (he was studying in the US at Hampshire College in Massachusetts) said that those who supported Israeli and felt intimidated on campus should not  feel comfortable on campus, while Rachel Roberts, an emotional young lady who yelled at me during the q and a, said that pro-Israel speech was "useless discourse". (She is now a lawyer for CAIR in Los Angeles.)

So whose speech is it that is under threat here?