Photo from It's Complicated blog)
File this in the category of "you can't please everybody."
They danced on 9-11. They are not dancing now.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Sad Day in Gaza
Photo from It's Complicated blog)
File this in the category of "you can't please everybody."
They danced on 9-11. They are not dancing now.
Another Olive Tree Initiative Whitewash
Ilene Schneider, a writer for the monthly Orange County Jewish Life, has written a puff piece on the Olive Tree Initiative, which is below. You should know that OC Jewish Life receives funding from the Jewish Federation. My own comments are in bold print.
http://www.ocjewishlife.com/site/lingering-issue/
"The Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) is in the news again, because a 2009 document indicating that students participating in the OTI program met with a Hamas leader came to light recently. The news about the discovery of the letter broke around the same time as Jewish Federation & Family Services (JFFS) unveiled its on-line publication of the Rose Report, citing the accomplishments of the Rose Project, which seeks to be “a community initiative to combat anti-Israel rhetoric on our local university campuses, and to educate and empower our students to become advocates for Israel and the Jewish people.”
In April the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) called on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to terminate a university program called the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) – set up to build understanding and dialogue about the Arab-Israeli conflict – and called upon JFFS to stop funding and supporting the program, after it was revealed that students who participated in an OTI trip to Israel, including Judea and Samaria, met with a top leader of Hamas and then were instructed to keep the meeting a secret. The 2009 letter from leaders of JFFS – Jeffrey H. Margolis, co-chair, Rose Project; Dr. James Weiss, co-chair, Rose Project; and Shalom C. Elcott, president and CEO of JFFS – to UCI Chancellor Michael Drake, expressed shock and concern about the secret meeting.
Fousesquawk comment: And where is the UCI response to that letter, which has never surfaced? Meanwhile, the Jewish Federation never disclosed the issue to the community until the Federation letter was recently obtained from UCI under the state Freedom of Information Act. Furthermore, that incident remained kept under wraps in 2010 while the Federation and Hillel were bashing a Jewish woman in the community for expressing alarm about OTI meetings with Internatiuonal Solidarity Movement activists in the West Bank in 2008 and 2010. The 2009 itinerary was not even published by OTI until 2010.
Orange County Jewish Life met with officials of Jewish Federation and Family Services for clarification on the matter.
Who, Ilene?
Q: What is the role of JFFS in OTI?
A: JFFS is extensively involved in combating the campaign to delegitimize Israel, and have been working diligently with many strategic partners over the last several years to combat the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity at the University of California, Irvine campus. The Olive Tree Initiative is not a JFFS program. The program was founded by a group of UCI students from a variety of backgrounds, including Jewish and Muslim students. It is a program of UCI that offers school credit.
Q: Does JFFS fund OTI?
A: Jewish Federation & Family Services, Orange County does not fund the trip or its speakers with community dollars. Instead, donor-designated giving has provided scholarships to a few Jewish student participants. Although at one time Rose Project funding represented the largest single contribution to the program, that has not been the case for quite some time. Funding sources for the program include UCI directly, many non-Jewish community philanthropists and the parents and family friends of the student participants. The students are responsible for raising the money themselves and hold several fundraisers throughout the year.
The Rose Project, which has funded travel of Jewish students on OTI trips, is a creation of the Jewish Federation.
Q: How does the OTI trip affect students who participate in it?
A: One of the incorrect claims that has been perpetuated is that these Jewish students come back less pro-Israel. It is actually quite the opposite. Not a single Jewish student has ever come back less pro-Israel or returned ready to join the anti-Israel camp. Indeed, they come back as stronger advocates, more passionate about pro-Israel activism and express a greater connection with their Jewish identity. These particular Jewish students who participate on the program are recognized by several prominent U.S. pro-Israel organizations as the very best and brightest pro-Israel activists on campuses in America, and receive significant training before departing.
At least two students, (on two different UC campuses) whom I shall not name because they are students, happen to be involved with Students for Justice in Palestine-a virulently anti-Israel organization.
Q: How does Jewish student participation in the OTI trip affect the perceptions of other students?
A: The Jewish students have been quite successful during the trip, and then after, in helping their non-Jewish peers see through any anti-Israel rhetoric or propaganda. These Jewish students have many times offered and asked the critics who make this claim to meet in order to discuss their experiences from the trip. Ironically, those offers have all been turned down.
It sure has not improved the climate at UCI judged by the Oren incident and the May 2010 Israel Apartheid Week to say nothing about the 2009 event. The next anti-Israel week, hosted by the Muslim Student Union, begins May 9.
Q: Does OTI have an anti-Israel agenda?
A: The belief that the program is an anti-Israel body with an agenda to delegitimize Israel is incorrect. Indeed, the group has met with several speakers that we find problematic (and we have expressed this to the group leaders and the university administration), but that does not make the program itself anti-Israel.
Clearly over-represented to the Palestinian narrative.
Q: How does Rose Project participation in OTI help to ensure balance in the programming?
A: We have seen it as our responsibility to make sure that the student participants, Jewish and not Jewish, get the right information about Israel. We have helped coordinate many of their meetings with well-respected pro-Israel speakers, and have helped arrange their visits to Sderot, Yad Vashem, the Begin Center and the city of Ariel, to name a few. In coordination with Israel’s Foreign Ministry (LA Israeli Consulate) we work to ensure balanced perspective on the itinerary and that a strong Israel voice is presented.
Q: Have the leaders of the Rose Project considered terminating the organization’s involvement with OTI?
A: OTI will continue with or without us. Given the choice of having no involvement whatsoever, or having the opportunity to have influence over the itinerary and students, before and the trip, we have chosen the latter.
If I recall correctly, that was part of Albert Speer's defense at Nuremberg.
Q: How did JFFS respond to the OTI meeting with a Hamas leader?
A: The 2009 OTI trip had an unapproved, off itinerary meeting with Aziz Dwaik, a leader of Hamas’s political faction, and the disputed (and unrecognized) president of the Palestinian Authority. Upon the group’s return, JFFS learned of this meeting and met with Chancellor Drake to express our concern and disappointment for this meeting. JFFS requested an investigation be made into the decision by the UCI staff who were responsible for the group’s visit, and filed a letter on the record stating that OTI had crossed a red line."
Why is there no record of an official university response? Was a response expected, or was the Federation letter just something to stick in the files in case it was needed someday? Again, why was the incident not revealed to the local Jewish community?
Finally, where are the apologies to the female activist who brought everything to light and was object of an organized smear campaign within the local Jewish community?
Some journalism.
BTW: Here is my comment on the post to OC Jewish Life. We shall see if they publish it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, who was interviewed?
Where is the UCI response to the Fed letter? Was there a response? Was one even expected?
Keep in mind, that during 2010, (name deleted) was being smeared in the local community for raising concerns about the presence of the International Solidarity Movement activists meeting with the OTI students in the West Bank. All the while, nothing was said to the community about a 2009 meeting with a Hamas official. It only came to light with a Freedom of Information request to UCI which revealed the letter. Where are the apologies to (name deleted)?
Finally, given the recents events regarding the Fogel family massacre, the rocket attack on an Israeli school bus and the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, who just is it OTI wants to dialogue with?
God forbid that one of these students gets harmed on an OTI trip. Then watch the lawsuits fly.
Gary Fouse
Adj teacher
UCI-EXT
OC Graffiti
The below-pictured graffiti appeared Monday on a wall alongside the 405 Freeway in Westminster in Orange County. It has been removed.
The Circus is Coming Back to UC-Irvine
Yes, folks, the circus is back. The Muslim Student Union, now re-instated, but still on probation, is hosting another anti-Israel hate week May 9-12 at UC-Irvine. Next week, perhaps mindful of their suspension, the MSU is bringing in a rather weak line-up, many of whom are themselves Jewish (sort of). Believe it or not, there will be no Amir Abdel Malik Ali and no Normie Finkelstein. Here is the schedule.
The theme for year's extravaganza is: "Palestine-The Invisible Nation" (I guess that's because there has never been a nation called "Palestine".)
On May 5 at 8 pm (this week), the Students For Justice in Palestine are dragging in former State Department diplomat Edward Peck was an opponent of the Iraq war and more recently was on board that "Freedom Flotilla" when it was raided by the Israeli Navy. He thinks Hizbollah is not a terrorist organization. I guess he never heard of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon. Now Peck has "graduated" from the State Department to Students for Justice in Palestine.
Next week it's on to the main event as they say in the circus. On Monday at noon and then at 8 pm, the featured speaker is Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a fringe cleric from a fringe Jewish sect called Neturei Karta. These clowns believe that Israel should not exist. More specifically, this charming speaker attended the 2001 Durban Conference on Racism, which was a show-trial against Israel. In 2006, he attended Iran's Holocaust inquiry that tried to paint the Holocaust as a hoax. Worst of all, this clown is a big fan of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he insists, is a nice guy and not anti-Semitic.
On Tuesday at noon, we have retread Alison Weir, an American activist who made a film called "If Americans Only Knew." Since then, she has been riding that "wave" and will no doubt give pretty much the same lecture she gave last year. She will do an encore performance at 2 probably to show her film for the 1,000th time.
Tuesday evening, we have a couple of guys named Amir Mertaban, a young MSA type, and Mohamad Ahmad. Which Mohamad Ahmad, you ask? God only knows.
On Wednesday, it's Israeli anti-Israel activist Matan Cohen, who was at UCI just a weeks ago. He is involved with Jewish Voice for Peace and Anarchists Against the Wall. A few years ago, Isralei soldiers shot out his eye. To this day, it's the greatest thing he has ever done. More recently, he was involved in the JVP disruption of Bibi Netanyahu's speech in New Orleans. He is an arrogant young twit who told us at UCI that people who support Israel have no right to be heard because it is all "useless discourse". Sounds like a Trotskyite to me. He will also speak at 2 pm on Boycot, Sanctions and Divestment.
At 8 pm, same date will be another retread from last year, Hedy Epstein, a misguided lady in her 80s, who left Germany as a young girl in the 1930s and lost her family in the Holocaust. She is an activist for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and she apparently has no clue that the Palestinians she supports want to kill the Israelis.
On May 12, we have Iraqi war vet Michael Prysner. He became not only anti-war upon his return to America, but anti-capitalist and anti-America as well. He is a young Ramsey Clark in the making who recently ran against Allen West and Ron Klein in the last Florida congressional race. His party? The Party of Socialism and Liberation.
At 8 pm on Thursday, we will once again be treated to the presence of UC Beserkeley
Hatem Bazian
Monday, May 2, 2011
A Response to an Article From the American Jewish Committee and Association of American University Professors
My friend and colleague from UC Santa Cruz (Yes, I do have a friend at UCSC) has written a response to Kenneth Stern of the American Jewish Committee for his article criticizing the application of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to cover cases of anti-Semitic discrimination, harassment and intimidation on college campuses. I recently wrote myself on this article (below link):
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/american-jewish-committee-statement-on.html
"Dear Mr. Stern,
I am a lecturer at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), one of the three universities you mention in your recent statement co-authored with AAUP president Cary Nelson. I am also the author of a federal complaint against my university, alleging a long-standing and pervasive pattern of discrimination against Jewish students emanating from faculty and administrators, which I believe is in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (See HERE for a copy of my complaint).
Since your statement assails the reactions of "some" to the incidents on these three campuses, reactions which you claim "are making the situation worse by distorting the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and what has been called the 'working definition of anti-Semitism'," and since, to the best of my knowledge, mine is the only Title VI complaint that has been filed in reaction to anti-Jewish harassment at any of these three campuses, it is clear that your statement is directed at my Title VI complaint. I would like to make the following points in response to your charges. I do so because I believe these charges are both inaccurate and unfounded.
1) Without offering a shred of evidence -- not even one example -- you imply that the "working definition" of anti-Semitism in the Title VI complaint is distorted. However, the complaint contains dozens of examples of rhetoric that fit squarely within the EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism. Here are two:
In March 2007, a conference entitled “Alternative Histories Within and Beyond Zionism” took place at UCSC, sponsored by eight university departments. Four professors and one graduate student, none of them scholars of Israel or Zionism though all of them self-proclaimed anti-Zionists, delivered papers demonizing the Jewish state, denigrating its founding ideology and encouraging actions such as divestment in order to harm Israel. The five talks were replete with gross misrepresentations of the facts, selected half-truths, and numerous unsubstantiated claims, such as the following: Zionism is racism; Israel is an apartheid state; Israel commits heinous crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing; Israel’s behavior is comparable to Nazi Germany; Jews exaggerate the Holocaust as a tool of Zionist propaganda; and Israel should be dismantled as a Jewish state.
UC Santa Cruz-America's Wackiest University
In the Summer of 2007, a UCSC Community Studies class designed to train social activists was taught by a professor, who described herself in her on-line syllabus as an active participant in the “campaign against the Apartheid Wall being built in Palestine,” and whose course readings, all biased against Israel, included such unreferenced and anti-Semitic statements as the following:
"Israeli massacres are often accompanied by sexual assault, particularly of pregnant women as a symbolic way of uprooting the children from the mother, or the Palestinian from the land."
"We define Zionism as a settler-colonial political movement that seeks to ethnically cleanse historical Palestine of the indigenous population and populate it as a Jewish-only state."
"Not only does the Zionist project use the experience of the Holocaust to legitimate the creation of an exclusionary state at the expense of the displaced indigenous Arab population, it also attempts to foreclose the possibility of other peoples…from calling attention to genocidal practices which in many ways mirror the atrocities that took place in World War II."
Both of these examples, and almost all of the others included in the complaint, involve language that clearly meets the EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism, including rhetoric that denies the Jewish people their right to self-determination (such as by claiming that Zionism is racism); that makes mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of the Jewish collective; that applies a double standard to Israel’s behavior not applied to any other democratic nation; that uses the symbols associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. blood libel); that compares Israeli policy to that of the Nazis; and that accuses the Jewish people and the state of Israel of exaggerating the Holocaust.
Where is the distortion, Mr. Stern? If these are not anti-Semitic expressions, then what are they? Moreover, if the EUMC working definition, which you helped to draft, can not be used to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and expressions of anti-Jewish animus on college campuses, then what good is the definition?
2) As you well know, the existence of anti-Semitic incidents per se does not constitute a violation of Title VI. Although the complaint provides many examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric, nowhere are these incidents, in and of themselves, claimed to be violations of federal anti-discrimination law. Rather, it is argued that the long-standing and pervasive nature of such anti-Semitic expression has contributed to creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, and it is this hostile environment that has violated the provisions of Title VI. The complaint contains numerous student testimonies corroborating this claim. Here are a few:
A Jewish student in a Community Studies class on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wrote: “The professor used her lectures, classroom discussions and course readings as a vehicle for her own personal vendetta against the state of Israel, against Zionism, against Israelis and against Jews…Many times when I would confront the professor in class or on [the class email list], she would argue with me so harshly that I felt personally assaulted by her.”
(Soapbox)
A Jewish student in a senior seminar class in Politics wrote: "My final topic and presentation involved a discussion of Zionism, and was followed by a question and answer session. This session didn't actually involve any questions, but was rather a blunt attack on me by my fellow students. Several students kept asking hurtful and very personal questions, while the professor sat quietly in his seat. I felt as if I was under attack...one student contemptuously responded that Zionism was Nazism and that I as a Zionist am nothing less than a Nazi. I was numb. It was silent in the class; the professor said nothing. Can you even begin to imagine how painful it is to hear such a thing? I, as the granddaughter of holocaust survivors, am now being called the name of the very same people responsible for the murder of my granduncles and aunts. I still cannot believe the events of that day. I cannot believe I was called a Nazi. And above all, I cannot believe my professor didn't even react. I must admit that I spent the ten-minute break in the bathroom stall crying my eyes out. I was heart-broken."
In response to an anti-Zionist panel discussion sponsored by one of UCSC's 10 residential colleges, a student wrote: "I am so perplexed and distressed when intelligent academics fail to recognize Israel's legitimate right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East. This anti-Zionism is tossed around without any compassion to the Jewish people. As a Jew, Israel is central to my identity--to my culture, to my religion, to my ethnicity. To claim so misguidedly that Israel is illegitimate, and furthermore, should be revoked--is so hurtful and so offensive beyond words. [My college's] sponsorship of this event is more than hurtful, it's absolutely unsettling. My trust in UCSC as a non-discriminatory academic environment has been damaged."
90 Jewish students signed a petition to the administrators of one of the residential college, requesting that the college rescind its sponsorship of an event that the students believed would be a hateful, one-sided attack on Zionism and Israel, that is "politically biased and discriminates against the Jewish student population."
Despite the substantial evidence brought to demonstrate a hostile environment for Jewish students at UCSC, you have wrongly insinuated that the complaint was filed to silence all criticism of Israel. Rather, the intention has always and only been to protect Jewish students, as Title VI provides. And this is undoubtedly what motivated 13 Jewish organizations (including the American Jewish Committee) and 38 members of the U.S. Congress to write letters last year to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, urging him to ensure that Jewish students are covered under the provisions of Title VI and have the same protections as other ethnic minority students, such as African American, Latino, and Arab.
Again, where is the distortion? How have the provisions of Title VI been abused? If, as you suggest, the provisions of Title VI should not be used to protect Jewish students in this way, were the efforts of 13 Jewish organizations and 38 senators in vain? Now that Jewish students have won equal protection under federal law, why would you want to take that protection away?
Thankfully, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights does not see things as you do. The OCR does not believe the complaint distorts the provisions of Title VI. In fact, after a thorough evaluation of the complaint, they concluded that the charges raised were serious enough to warrant a federal investigation.
3) Like you, I believe there are many things a university could and should do to combat anti-Semitic bigotry, and that "Title VI is a remedy when university leadership neglects its job to stop bigoted harassment of students." Indeed, that is precisely why the Title VI was filed: After years of documenting examples of faculty and college-sponsored anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and its effects on Jewish students, and using this evidence to encourage faculty and administrators to address the problem with the means available to them, no university leader was willing to address -- or even acknowledge -- this longstanding and pervasive problem.
UCSC is not unusual in this regard. University leaders on many UC campuses have been unwilling to adequately acknowledge and address the problem of anti-Semitic bigotry. Outraged by this refusal to protect Jewish students, 12 major Jewish organizations, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Orthodox Union, signed a letter to UC President Mark Yudof, urging him to address the harassment and intimidation directed against Jewish students on UC campuses. The American Jewish Committee was also requested to sign the letter to President Yudof, but your organization refused.
4) Ironically, although you refused to stand together with other Jewish organizations in order to demand the safety of Jewish students at the University of California, you have made common cause with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an organization that has not only been wholly unsympathetic to the plight of Jewish students, but has vilified and sought to silence those who have struggled to stand up on their behalf.
Since its founding in 1915, the AAUP has been looked to as the authority on academic freedom. In recent years, however, the AAUP has been responsible for a tragic distortion of those same principles. That organization has rushed to the defense of professors -- often their own members and leaders -- whose unscholarly, politically motivated, anti-Semitic attacks on the Jewish state and its supporters have been identified as egregious abuses of academic freedom by many in the Jewish community, and AAUP leaders have assailed all those who would raise legitimate concerns about these abuses.
Consider the following facts about the organization with which you have partnered:
In 2006, the AAUP organized a conference on academic boycotts, which was heavily weighted with speakers who backed the academic boycott of Israeli universities. The conference was postponed after an article taken from a Holocaust-denying magazine was circulated by AAUP organizers to conference participants. Joan Scott, the chief organizer of the conference and the head of the AAUP's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 1999, posted on-line a scathing note blaming the postponement on "a carefully-orchestrated campaign to abort the conference by a lobby of people (pro-Israel occupation) who believe that any representation of a point of view other than theirs is anathema."
In 2007, the AAUP published “Freedom in the Classroom,” a statement drafted by the AAUP's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, as a response to perceived challenges from groups outside of the University who “have sought to regulate classroom instruction." The authors of the report acknowledge that professors have been accused of indoctrinating rather than educating students and of failing to provide balanced perspectives on controversial issues, but they belittle these accusations and instead call those outside groups who would raise them -- a thinly-veiled allusion to Jewish organizations combating anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students -- “a modern menace.”
On the heels of the publication of the 2007 AAUP report, five prominent academics calling themselves The Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University, including the AAUP's Joan Scott, issued a public statement condemning outside groups that have “defamed scholars, pressured administrators, and tried to bypass or subvert established procedures of academic governance” in order to achieve their political ends. The Ad Hoc Committee’s harshest condemnation was directed at “groups portraying themselves as defenders of Israel…[that] have targeted scholars who have expressed perspectives on Israeli policies and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with which they disagree."
Two current members of the AAUP's elite Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure have endorsed the anti-Semitic U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
5) Mr. Stern, you have exploited your credentials as the American Jewish Committee's director on anti-Semitism and the lead drafter of the EUMC "working definition" of anti-Semitism to add credibility and legitimacy to this spurious statement. In so doing, you have also undermined the efforts of a great many in the Jewish community and done enormous harm to the cause of combating campus anti-Semitism. It is unclear to me why you would do such a thing. What is clear is that your co-authorship of this statement is an egregious and shameful failure of Jewish leadership, and I urge you to publicly retract it.
The following individuals have been copied and blind-copied on this email: the leaders of the Jewish organizations that signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, asking him to ensure that Jewish students are protected under the provisions of Title VI; the leaders of other Jewish organizations that have been at the forefront of fighting campus anti-Semitism; and several hundred individuals who are deeply concerned for the safety of Jewish students on campuses across the country. I encourage all of them to write to you and AJC Executive Director David Harris, adding their voices to mine in condemning your statement and urging its retraction.
Sincerely,
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
Lecturer, University of California Santa Cruz
Fousesquawk comment:
Well written, Tammi. As I have stated before, I don't know what this organization (AJC) does. As far as the problems we have observed at UC-Irvine, they have been missing in action. Thus, it doesn't surprise me that this Stern character would team up with ultra-liberal AAUP honcho Cary Nelson to write that silly piece.
It never ceases to astound me how so many leading Jews and their so-called organizations are teaming up with the anti-Israel crowds against Israel. Even worse is when they turn their backs on Jewish students who are subjected to intimidation and verbal abuse-sometimes physical on university campuses. It has happened at UCSC. It has happened at Berkeley and it has happened at UCI-just for starters.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/american-jewish-committee-statement-on.html
"Dear Mr. Stern,
I am a lecturer at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), one of the three universities you mention in your recent statement co-authored with AAUP president Cary Nelson. I am also the author of a federal complaint against my university, alleging a long-standing and pervasive pattern of discrimination against Jewish students emanating from faculty and administrators, which I believe is in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (See HERE for a copy of my complaint).
Since your statement assails the reactions of "some" to the incidents on these three campuses, reactions which you claim "are making the situation worse by distorting the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and what has been called the 'working definition of anti-Semitism'," and since, to the best of my knowledge, mine is the only Title VI complaint that has been filed in reaction to anti-Jewish harassment at any of these three campuses, it is clear that your statement is directed at my Title VI complaint. I would like to make the following points in response to your charges. I do so because I believe these charges are both inaccurate and unfounded.
1) Without offering a shred of evidence -- not even one example -- you imply that the "working definition" of anti-Semitism in the Title VI complaint is distorted. However, the complaint contains dozens of examples of rhetoric that fit squarely within the EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism. Here are two:
In March 2007, a conference entitled “Alternative Histories Within and Beyond Zionism” took place at UCSC, sponsored by eight university departments. Four professors and one graduate student, none of them scholars of Israel or Zionism though all of them self-proclaimed anti-Zionists, delivered papers demonizing the Jewish state, denigrating its founding ideology and encouraging actions such as divestment in order to harm Israel. The five talks were replete with gross misrepresentations of the facts, selected half-truths, and numerous unsubstantiated claims, such as the following: Zionism is racism; Israel is an apartheid state; Israel commits heinous crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing; Israel’s behavior is comparable to Nazi Germany; Jews exaggerate the Holocaust as a tool of Zionist propaganda; and Israel should be dismantled as a Jewish state.
In the Summer of 2007, a UCSC Community Studies class designed to train social activists was taught by a professor, who described herself in her on-line syllabus as an active participant in the “campaign against the Apartheid Wall being built in Palestine,” and whose course readings, all biased against Israel, included such unreferenced and anti-Semitic statements as the following:
"Israeli massacres are often accompanied by sexual assault, particularly of pregnant women as a symbolic way of uprooting the children from the mother, or the Palestinian from the land."
"We define Zionism as a settler-colonial political movement that seeks to ethnically cleanse historical Palestine of the indigenous population and populate it as a Jewish-only state."
"Not only does the Zionist project use the experience of the Holocaust to legitimate the creation of an exclusionary state at the expense of the displaced indigenous Arab population, it also attempts to foreclose the possibility of other peoples…from calling attention to genocidal practices which in many ways mirror the atrocities that took place in World War II."
Both of these examples, and almost all of the others included in the complaint, involve language that clearly meets the EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism, including rhetoric that denies the Jewish people their right to self-determination (such as by claiming that Zionism is racism); that makes mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of the Jewish collective; that applies a double standard to Israel’s behavior not applied to any other democratic nation; that uses the symbols associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. blood libel); that compares Israeli policy to that of the Nazis; and that accuses the Jewish people and the state of Israel of exaggerating the Holocaust.
Where is the distortion, Mr. Stern? If these are not anti-Semitic expressions, then what are they? Moreover, if the EUMC working definition, which you helped to draft, can not be used to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and expressions of anti-Jewish animus on college campuses, then what good is the definition?
2) As you well know, the existence of anti-Semitic incidents per se does not constitute a violation of Title VI. Although the complaint provides many examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric, nowhere are these incidents, in and of themselves, claimed to be violations of federal anti-discrimination law. Rather, it is argued that the long-standing and pervasive nature of such anti-Semitic expression has contributed to creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, and it is this hostile environment that has violated the provisions of Title VI. The complaint contains numerous student testimonies corroborating this claim. Here are a few:
A Jewish student in a Community Studies class on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wrote: “The professor used her lectures, classroom discussions and course readings as a vehicle for her own personal vendetta against the state of Israel, against Zionism, against Israelis and against Jews…Many times when I would confront the professor in class or on [the class email list], she would argue with me so harshly that I felt personally assaulted by her.”
(Soapbox)A Jewish student in a senior seminar class in Politics wrote: "My final topic and presentation involved a discussion of Zionism, and was followed by a question and answer session. This session didn't actually involve any questions, but was rather a blunt attack on me by my fellow students. Several students kept asking hurtful and very personal questions, while the professor sat quietly in his seat. I felt as if I was under attack...one student contemptuously responded that Zionism was Nazism and that I as a Zionist am nothing less than a Nazi. I was numb. It was silent in the class; the professor said nothing. Can you even begin to imagine how painful it is to hear such a thing? I, as the granddaughter of holocaust survivors, am now being called the name of the very same people responsible for the murder of my granduncles and aunts. I still cannot believe the events of that day. I cannot believe I was called a Nazi. And above all, I cannot believe my professor didn't even react. I must admit that I spent the ten-minute break in the bathroom stall crying my eyes out. I was heart-broken."
In response to an anti-Zionist panel discussion sponsored by one of UCSC's 10 residential colleges, a student wrote: "I am so perplexed and distressed when intelligent academics fail to recognize Israel's legitimate right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East. This anti-Zionism is tossed around without any compassion to the Jewish people. As a Jew, Israel is central to my identity--to my culture, to my religion, to my ethnicity. To claim so misguidedly that Israel is illegitimate, and furthermore, should be revoked--is so hurtful and so offensive beyond words. [My college's] sponsorship of this event is more than hurtful, it's absolutely unsettling. My trust in UCSC as a non-discriminatory academic environment has been damaged."
90 Jewish students signed a petition to the administrators of one of the residential college, requesting that the college rescind its sponsorship of an event that the students believed would be a hateful, one-sided attack on Zionism and Israel, that is "politically biased and discriminates against the Jewish student population."
Despite the substantial evidence brought to demonstrate a hostile environment for Jewish students at UCSC, you have wrongly insinuated that the complaint was filed to silence all criticism of Israel. Rather, the intention has always and only been to protect Jewish students, as Title VI provides. And this is undoubtedly what motivated 13 Jewish organizations (including the American Jewish Committee) and 38 members of the U.S. Congress to write letters last year to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, urging him to ensure that Jewish students are covered under the provisions of Title VI and have the same protections as other ethnic minority students, such as African American, Latino, and Arab.
Again, where is the distortion? How have the provisions of Title VI been abused? If, as you suggest, the provisions of Title VI should not be used to protect Jewish students in this way, were the efforts of 13 Jewish organizations and 38 senators in vain? Now that Jewish students have won equal protection under federal law, why would you want to take that protection away?
Thankfully, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights does not see things as you do. The OCR does not believe the complaint distorts the provisions of Title VI. In fact, after a thorough evaluation of the complaint, they concluded that the charges raised were serious enough to warrant a federal investigation.
3) Like you, I believe there are many things a university could and should do to combat anti-Semitic bigotry, and that "Title VI is a remedy when university leadership neglects its job to stop bigoted harassment of students." Indeed, that is precisely why the Title VI was filed: After years of documenting examples of faculty and college-sponsored anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and its effects on Jewish students, and using this evidence to encourage faculty and administrators to address the problem with the means available to them, no university leader was willing to address -- or even acknowledge -- this longstanding and pervasive problem.
UCSC is not unusual in this regard. University leaders on many UC campuses have been unwilling to adequately acknowledge and address the problem of anti-Semitic bigotry. Outraged by this refusal to protect Jewish students, 12 major Jewish organizations, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Orthodox Union, signed a letter to UC President Mark Yudof, urging him to address the harassment and intimidation directed against Jewish students on UC campuses. The American Jewish Committee was also requested to sign the letter to President Yudof, but your organization refused.
4) Ironically, although you refused to stand together with other Jewish organizations in order to demand the safety of Jewish students at the University of California, you have made common cause with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an organization that has not only been wholly unsympathetic to the plight of Jewish students, but has vilified and sought to silence those who have struggled to stand up on their behalf.
Since its founding in 1915, the AAUP has been looked to as the authority on academic freedom. In recent years, however, the AAUP has been responsible for a tragic distortion of those same principles. That organization has rushed to the defense of professors -- often their own members and leaders -- whose unscholarly, politically motivated, anti-Semitic attacks on the Jewish state and its supporters have been identified as egregious abuses of academic freedom by many in the Jewish community, and AAUP leaders have assailed all those who would raise legitimate concerns about these abuses.
Consider the following facts about the organization with which you have partnered:
In 2006, the AAUP organized a conference on academic boycotts, which was heavily weighted with speakers who backed the academic boycott of Israeli universities. The conference was postponed after an article taken from a Holocaust-denying magazine was circulated by AAUP organizers to conference participants. Joan Scott, the chief organizer of the conference and the head of the AAUP's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 1999, posted on-line a scathing note blaming the postponement on "a carefully-orchestrated campaign to abort the conference by a lobby of people (pro-Israel occupation) who believe that any representation of a point of view other than theirs is anathema."
In 2007, the AAUP published “Freedom in the Classroom,” a statement drafted by the AAUP's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, as a response to perceived challenges from groups outside of the University who “have sought to regulate classroom instruction." The authors of the report acknowledge that professors have been accused of indoctrinating rather than educating students and of failing to provide balanced perspectives on controversial issues, but they belittle these accusations and instead call those outside groups who would raise them -- a thinly-veiled allusion to Jewish organizations combating anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students -- “a modern menace.”
On the heels of the publication of the 2007 AAUP report, five prominent academics calling themselves The Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University, including the AAUP's Joan Scott, issued a public statement condemning outside groups that have “defamed scholars, pressured administrators, and tried to bypass or subvert established procedures of academic governance” in order to achieve their political ends. The Ad Hoc Committee’s harshest condemnation was directed at “groups portraying themselves as defenders of Israel…[that] have targeted scholars who have expressed perspectives on Israeli policies and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with which they disagree."
Two current members of the AAUP's elite Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure have endorsed the anti-Semitic U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
5) Mr. Stern, you have exploited your credentials as the American Jewish Committee's director on anti-Semitism and the lead drafter of the EUMC "working definition" of anti-Semitism to add credibility and legitimacy to this spurious statement. In so doing, you have also undermined the efforts of a great many in the Jewish community and done enormous harm to the cause of combating campus anti-Semitism. It is unclear to me why you would do such a thing. What is clear is that your co-authorship of this statement is an egregious and shameful failure of Jewish leadership, and I urge you to publicly retract it.
The following individuals have been copied and blind-copied on this email: the leaders of the Jewish organizations that signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, asking him to ensure that Jewish students are protected under the provisions of Title VI; the leaders of other Jewish organizations that have been at the forefront of fighting campus anti-Semitism; and several hundred individuals who are deeply concerned for the safety of Jewish students on campuses across the country. I encourage all of them to write to you and AJC Executive Director David Harris, adding their voices to mine in condemning your statement and urging its retraction.
Sincerely,
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
Lecturer, University of California Santa Cruz
Fousesquawk comment:
Well written, Tammi. As I have stated before, I don't know what this organization (AJC) does. As far as the problems we have observed at UC-Irvine, they have been missing in action. Thus, it doesn't surprise me that this Stern character would team up with ultra-liberal AAUP honcho Cary Nelson to write that silly piece.
It never ceases to astound me how so many leading Jews and their so-called organizations are teaming up with the anti-Israel crowds against Israel. Even worse is when they turn their backs on Jewish students who are subjected to intimidation and verbal abuse-sometimes physical on university campuses. It has happened at UCSC. It has happened at Berkeley and it has happened at UCI-just for starters.
One New Heart Saves Another Child in Israel
I received an update from Hank Dannecker on his work in Israel for 1NewHeart, a program that brings Palestinian children with heart defects along with their families to Wolfson Hospital in Israel for free heart surgery.
"Greetings Friends and Family,
Just a quick update.
Today we met 8 Year old Hamza, his mother and father at Wolfson Medical center. It is a first for us to see both a father and mother with permission to enter Israel with their son. Tomorrow if all goes well Hamza will be operated on, sometime in the afternoon. Please keep this whole family in your prayers.
Also, we picked up a load of clothing (donated to us from passover cleaning) and other items and took them out to the Bedouins and distributed them among a rather large family. The mother was very thankful and allowed us to take a few pictures to share.
For all of this we give thanks!"
Hank Dannecker Jr.
1NewHeart
If you would like to know more about Hank's work, see the link for One New Heart on the right-hand page of this blog.
* Update:
Dear Friends and Family,
We wanted to update you on Hamza's status. He is still waiting for surgery and it looks like it is tentatively scheduled for this Thursday. The doctors throughout the country are currently on strike therefore public hospitals will be operating with only a skeleton staff. Consequently, this affects surgeries such as Hamza's. Please continue to pray for this family, as both Hamza and his parents are anxiously awaiting his surgery.
Thanking God for you!
"Greetings Friends and Family,
Just a quick update.
Today we met 8 Year old Hamza, his mother and father at Wolfson Medical center. It is a first for us to see both a father and mother with permission to enter Israel with their son. Tomorrow if all goes well Hamza will be operated on, sometime in the afternoon. Please keep this whole family in your prayers.
Also, we picked up a load of clothing (donated to us from passover cleaning) and other items and took them out to the Bedouins and distributed them among a rather large family. The mother was very thankful and allowed us to take a few pictures to share.
For all of this we give thanks!"
Hank Dannecker Jr.
1NewHeart
If you would like to know more about Hank's work, see the link for One New Heart on the right-hand page of this blog.
* Update:
Dear Friends and Family,
We wanted to update you on Hamza's status. He is still waiting for surgery and it looks like it is tentatively scheduled for this Thursday. The doctors throughout the country are currently on strike therefore public hospitals will be operating with only a skeleton staff. Consequently, this affects surgeries such as Hamza's. Please continue to pray for this family, as both Hamza and his parents are anxiously awaiting his surgery.
Thanking God for you!
What Was Pakistan's Role-If Any?
"Welcome Usama. We have been waiting for you."
One of the obvious questions being asked today is what role if any did Pakistan play in the discovery and killing of Usama bin Laden? Of course, we may never know the answer if there was assistance. At this point, however, it seems that the operation was carried out without Pakistani knowledge. If so, that is a damning indictment of that country because it would illustrate the fact that we can't trust them.
Former Pakistani President Musharraf has stated that the operation was a violation of Pakistani sovereignty and that his government should have been "kept in the loop". Certainly, that would be true except that when you allow a terrorist-especially Usama bin Laden to hide in your country, your sovereignty does not deserve to be respected. That was a lesson Afghanistan learned.
It is highly curious that a man like bin Laden could have been hiding in a huge compound in a city so close to the capital of Islamabad-a city that is a major military headquarters no less. In addition, the compound is reportedly 8 times the size of the neighboring residences, with 15-foot walls and barbed wire. How does that not attract attention?
As stated, it is entirely possible that the US is giving Pakistan cover by allowing it to appear that this was a unilateral action. Until we learn more, I am leaning towards the unilateral hypothesis. If that is the case, then the question again begs: What are we doing working with this country and giving it aid.
Unlike that CNN "analyst" Peter Bergen, who incredibly told Wolf Blitzer last night that the killing of bin Laden means the "war on terror is over", the war will continue. The bad guys are still out there operating in cells or franchises, if you will. I am coming to the conclusion, however, that our mission in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly questionable. That country cannot be made into Switzerland. Same goes for Iraq, where rampaging mobs are attacking Christian churches and murdering people. What is left for us there?
Please don't say "nation-building".
I now think that no more American lives need be sacrificed in the name of bringing democracy to regions where it has no possibility of taking root. If there are actual terrorist targets, fine, but propping up the Karzais and Malikis of the world is not worth one more American life, in my view. As for that misadventure in Libya, there is no legitimate objective beyond killing Ghadafi. As for Syria-let Syria be Syria. Basta with this talk of whether we should get involved.
Final thought: Has anyone told our national intelligence director, James Clapper, that bin Laden is dead? Maybe Peter Bergen can tell him that the War of Terror is over too.
Leader of Hamas Condemns Killing of Bin Laden
Ismael Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, has condemned the killing of Usama bin Laden by US forces.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/02/hamas-leader-condemns-killing-usama-bin-laden/
Which brings me back to my photo archives, where I happen to have this photo of Haniyeh with none other than George Galloway.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/02/hamas-leader-condemns-killing-usama-bin-laden/
Which brings me back to my photo archives, where I happen to have this photo of Haniyeh with none other than George Galloway.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Break Out the Champagne!
I just got home and am hearing the news that Usama bin Laden is reportedly dead-killed by US forces in Pakistan. We are awaiting the President's announcement. All I can say at this point is that this is a huge psychological victory for us. Pending the President's annoucement, congratulations to everyone involved in this operation.
Including President Obama.
Why UK Muslims Don't Observe Holocaust Remembrance Day
In a previous post, I described how some of the UK radical Muslims have attempted to mar the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day with their own protests.
Last year, the Muslim Public Affairs Council of UK came out with an article "justifying" their refusal to observe the event.
http://www.mpacuk.org/story/280110/why-muslim-leaders-must-not-attend-holocaust-day-betray-palestine.html
And who did they refer to in this lame explanation? Why none other than that great "independent scholar with a PhD from Princeton", Norman Finkelstein, one of America's most prominent academic misfits.
Of course that is a direct lead-in to Finkelstein's reaction to Richard Goldstone's recantation of the Goldstone Report, which blamed Israel for war crimes in the Gaza fighting-based entirely on what Hamas told his team of "investigators".
Now Finkelstein, in reaction to Goldstone's own disavowal of that report, has rushed into print a revised edition of "This Time We Have Gone Too Far", to stop the bleeding from his own twisted analysis of the Gaza fighting.
http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/this-time-revised/
"This new paperback edition is not only a revised but also a vastly expanded version of the hardback.
It is based on thousands of pages of human rights reports as well as testimonies of Israeli soldiers and statements of Israeli officials.
It includes an analysis of all the official Israeli reports on the Gaza invasion right up until January 2011.
It also contains the only analysis in any language of the Israeli Turkel Commission report on what happened on the Mavi Marmara.
It is the only comprehensive study in any language of what happened in Gaza during and after the invasion.
The challenge now is to preserve the integrity of the historical record on what happened in Gaza against those who are exploiting Goldstone's recantation to whitewash the Gaza massacre and pave the way for yet another round of death and destruction."
And well he should. Last year, when Finkelstein came to UC-Irvine and was made a fool of, he referred to Goldstone in glowing terms as the South African Zionist Jew who had the courage to condemn Israel. This irrelevant information was in response to my request that he sign a petition/letter signed by dozens of UC-Irvine Jewish professors (and me) protesting anti-Semitism on the campus.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/norm-finklestein-refuses-to-sign-letter.html
I anxiously await the return of Finkelstein to UC-Irvine to listen to how he unwinds this one. This is just another example of why DePaul University canned his sorry behind; his "scholarly work" is a joke.
And this is who the MPAC-UK calls "brave and great."
Last year, the Muslim Public Affairs Council of UK came out with an article "justifying" their refusal to observe the event.
http://www.mpacuk.org/story/280110/why-muslim-leaders-must-not-attend-holocaust-day-betray-palestine.html
And who did they refer to in this lame explanation? Why none other than that great "independent scholar with a PhD from Princeton", Norman Finkelstein, one of America's most prominent academic misfits.
Of course that is a direct lead-in to Finkelstein's reaction to Richard Goldstone's recantation of the Goldstone Report, which blamed Israel for war crimes in the Gaza fighting-based entirely on what Hamas told his team of "investigators".
Now Finkelstein, in reaction to Goldstone's own disavowal of that report, has rushed into print a revised edition of "This Time We Have Gone Too Far", to stop the bleeding from his own twisted analysis of the Gaza fighting.
http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/this-time-revised/
"This new paperback edition is not only a revised but also a vastly expanded version of the hardback.
It is based on thousands of pages of human rights reports as well as testimonies of Israeli soldiers and statements of Israeli officials.
It includes an analysis of all the official Israeli reports on the Gaza invasion right up until January 2011.
It also contains the only analysis in any language of the Israeli Turkel Commission report on what happened on the Mavi Marmara.
It is the only comprehensive study in any language of what happened in Gaza during and after the invasion.
The challenge now is to preserve the integrity of the historical record on what happened in Gaza against those who are exploiting Goldstone's recantation to whitewash the Gaza massacre and pave the way for yet another round of death and destruction."
And well he should. Last year, when Finkelstein came to UC-Irvine and was made a fool of, he referred to Goldstone in glowing terms as the South African Zionist Jew who had the courage to condemn Israel. This irrelevant information was in response to my request that he sign a petition/letter signed by dozens of UC-Irvine Jewish professors (and me) protesting anti-Semitism on the campus.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/norm-finklestein-refuses-to-sign-letter.html
I anxiously await the return of Finkelstein to UC-Irvine to listen to how he unwinds this one. This is just another example of why DePaul University canned his sorry behind; his "scholarly work" is a joke.
And this is who the MPAC-UK calls "brave and great."
Stephen Schwartz Speaks Out on Phony Muslim Moderates
Stephen Schwartz
Stephen Schwartz, who is a convert to Islam, is the director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, a Sufist group based in Washington DC. Schwartz is a true Muslim moderate, who speaks out against the radical elements within Islam.
In 2007, he wrote the below article for Family Security Matters lamenting the fact that since 9-11 our government has embraced Muslim figures who are not truly moderate. As one examples, he mentions Muzammil Siddiqi of Orange County, the past president of the Islamic Society of North America.
http://www.islamicpluralism.org/215/hardliners-in-costume-as-moderate-muslims
Pehaps, somebody should forward a copy of this article to Rusty Kennedy, the CEO of the Orange County Human Relations Commission. On May 5, Kennedy is going to bestow the coveted "Rusty Award" to Siddiqi for being a nice moderate community leader or something like that.
Better get some Brasso, Rusty and start shining that baby up.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Siraj Wahhaj Comments on Stoning
Hat tip to Fullerton Taxpayer
This video shows imam Siraj Wahhaj giving a sermon on "The Ways to Paradise". At about the 33 minute mark, he talks about stoning.
This video shows imam Siraj Wahhaj giving a sermon on "The Ways to Paradise". At about the 33 minute mark, he talks about stoning.
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