“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
― Elie Wiesel

BRAVO. the moral strength and the tides of history speak in your favor…way to answer the misconceptions/misrepresentations clearly and calmly.

I feel there are a lot more accusations you could address…maybe a follow up article!

The very first claim of this BDS letter— that “Israel effectively rules over four million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories”— is utterly preposterous. Israel does not “effectively rule” the West Bank or the Gaza strip; rather, the PA rules the West Bank, and Hamas rules the Gaza strip. Moreover, Israel has taken great pains— especially in Gaza— to eliminate the presence of Israelis so that no competing claims of sovereignty can be made. What other country in the world is expected to yield “voting rights and other political and civil liberties” to a population which explicitly does not reside within its sovereign territory?

While it’s nice to be able to choose your own questions to answer, I think you will find that the folks behind the PennBDS have a much more difficult time providing answers to questions they’d rather not be asked.

For instance, I have been providing responses to each and every item on the PennBDS agenda at the web site www.pennbds-oy.com, and have even provided space for the conference organizers, their guests, or anyone else in their “movement” to interact with someone who has demonstrated an interest in giving them the debate they claim to crave. But so far, they seem to be more interested in avoiding (rather than discussing) the very topics they think important enough to build a conference around, preferring instead to talk at their audience through articles (like this one) where they remain in full control of the microphone.

Keep this in mind the next time you are told that BDS advocates have genuine answers for their critics, for up until now they seem to be willing to do everything for their cause short of defending it.

This article was peppered with many false claims. For more info on the BDS movement, see
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/ngo_leadership_in_boycott_and_divestment_campaigns

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/electronic_intifada_and_ali_abunimah_factsheet

Peace and co-existence will only be possible when the Palestinian Arabs and their BDS supporters stop trying to revise historical facts, and accept that there is a Jewish people with historical roots in the Land of Israel and legitimate rights to self-determination and sovereignty. The failure of the Palestinian leadership and the racist and genocidal views of Hamas, well outlined in their covenant, are to blame for the Palestinians condition today. The writers fail to understand and accept that there is no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. An essential part of Jewish faith and peoplehood is connection to the Land of Israel.

These are the words of Simon Deng, once a Sudanese slave. He is addressing the Durban Conference in NY.

“I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today’s distinguished speakers.

I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.

It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state – Israel. Hitler couldn’t have been made happier.

The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.

But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are people who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.

Please hear me out.

By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan — Christians and Muslims alike —- has been the victim of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.

In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them. and they are treated with a special privilege.

Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan’s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a “tribal conflict.” It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.

In the Nub Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans – Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.

Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?

What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is “Israeli crimes” and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.

Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.

I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.

I don’t like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings andhumiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family’s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word “no.” All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”

The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish–led American Anti-Slavery Group — sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.

But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.

My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.

As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees’ only hope was to reach Israel’s side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?

In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is “heaven.”

Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.

So, yes … I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We – a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis — all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: “This is our people.” I was never able to find an answer to my question.

On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.

In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel’s legitimacy.

As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir — publicly stated that the South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built—- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth. Our truth.

My Jewish friends taught me something I now want to say with you.

AM YISROEL CHAI!

The people of Israel live!

Thank you”

Let us organize an annual “Arab Apartheid Week,” which would highlight the decrepit state of human and political rights throughout the Arab world.

There is a solid case to be made that the Arab states remain the last great outpost of despotism and tyranny on earth, and people need to be reminded as much. Indeed, the Arab world today is a living encyclopedia of outmoded forms of government, from sultanates such as Oman and emirates such as Qatar, to thuggish dictatorships such as Syria and dynastic monarchies along the lines of Jordan. It may be a political scientist’s dream, but it is a nightmare for the hundreds of millions of Arabs chafing under oppression and tyranny.

Basic and fundamental freedoms such as personal autonomy and individual rights are routinely trampled upon, and ethnic and religious minority groups suffer extreme discrimination and
intolerance. Just ask Coptic Christians in Egypt, Baha’is in Iran or Shi’ites in Saudi Arabia for starters.

This was borne out most recently by a report issued by Freedom House, the independent Washington-based group that advocates for freedom worldwide. Its annual survey, “Freedom in the World 2010,” would make for eye-opening reading for all those who cry “apartheid” whenever they see a flag with a Star of David.

Consider the following findings:

Of the 18 countries in the Middle East that Freedom House surveyed, only one is considered to be “free.”

And just who might that be? Yep, you guessed it: Israel.

Not a single Arab country – not one! – did Freedom House consider “free.” Three Arab states – Morocco, Lebanon and Kuwait – were labeled “partly free,” while 13 other Arab states as well as Iran merited the dubious distinction of being branded as “not free.”

In effect, then, this means that of the approximately 370 million human beings currently residing in the Middle East, only 2 percent enjoy true freedom – namely those who live in the Jewish state.

So much for “Israeli apartheid.”

NOT SURPRISINGLY, in a press release announcing the report’s publication, Freedom House concluded that “the Middle East remained the most repressive region in the world.” It is this message that Israel and its supporters need to begin highlighting. By casting a spotlight on the subjugation, oppression and tyranny that typify nearly the entire Arab world, we can open some eyes out there and educate the Western public as to who really shares their democratic values.

As Prof. Bernard Lewis has written, the Arab states are little more than “a string of shabby tyrannies, ranging from traditional autocracies to new-style dictatorships, modern only in their apparatus of repression and indoctrination.”

An annual Arab Apartheid Week, held on campuses and at community centers, could be an effective vehicle for driving home this fundamental truth.

Doing so will reframe the debate. More importantly, it will help Westerners to finally begin recognizing the Arab regimes for what they are: a dangerous mix of despotism and dictatorship.

Abbas, Madeline, Matt—Thank you for this response, and to the DP for publishing. I hope Penn students will take advantage of the opportunity to hear Ali Abunimah speak on Saturday. The BDS movement is an intellectually and morally coherent response to escalating violence and oppression. It is our best path forward to a just peace founded on the full equality of Palestinians and Israeli Jews.

The Arabs who, since 1967 and the return of Jewish lands, call themselves “Palestinians” have committed 10’s of thousands of terror attacks on Jews going back before any political controversy of Judea (“west bank”).
In 1929 there was no issue of the modern state of Israel, there was no dispute over Judea and Aza (west bank and gaza). Yet hundreds of Jews were murdered by Arab mobs. Why?
Same for 1936, same for 1919, same for every year in the past 150 years.
If you think this conflict is about a bit of land I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. This is nuts and bolts Arab nationalism (22 countries arent enough) with interpretations of the Koran vs Jewish historical ties to the land of Israel as confirmed in the book thats only the best seller the past 2,300 years since it was first translated from Hebrew to another language (Greek; the septuagint).
End the Arab occupation of Northern and central Africa. Let the Berbers, let the Copts, let the Black Africans, the Christians, the Animists have their land back…let the Kurds, the Jews, the phoenicians, the assyrians have their land back in the Levant area. Arabs can go back to Arabia and worship their moon god Allah. The ARAB occupation is the largest occupational force in the world, far larger than even the British Empire was.
End the Arab occupation of Israel. How’s the that shoe fit on the other foot?
Loyalty to a country regardless of your religion. Thats all Israel asks. Maybe thats asking too much? lol.
Arabs have more opportunities in Israel than any other Arab country. If it was really so bad wouldnt they would be emigrating, like the Christian Lebanese & Syrians being bullied out by the terror organizations you sympathize with?
Instead the Arab population has quadrupled in 60 years, and the “Palestinian” population has increased 6 fold in 60 years.
Hardly any BS going on here.

Like other derogatory terms that rely on their ability to appeal to people’s emotions, using the word “apartheid” to describe the situation in Israel is factually inaccurate.
On a literal level, the word “apartheid” suggests certain practices. While there is no doubt that prejudices exist, the claim that Israelis ascribe to or practice ethnic supremacy over Palestinians is simply incorrect. Compare what children are being taught in the schools of the West Bank and Gaza to those in Israel. The Israeli education system is politically neutral and operates in an egalitarian environment, teaching subjects such as math, history and language. In contrast, in numerous Arab curriculums and textbooks, it is commonplace to teach hatred of Israel and of Jews specifically.
The false parallel that some students have deliberately drawn between the racist and discriminatory laws in South Africa to those of modern day Israel is flawed. During the apartheid in South Africa, the white minority ruled over a large black majority with strict segregation laws while denying equal rights and opportunities. Blacks were not allowed entry to white-only trains, beaches and hospitals — no such segregation exists in Israel.
Roughly 20 percent of the population in Israel is Arab and enjoys the exact same legal rights and opportunities as Jewish neighbors, including the right to vote, to live and to work. Additionally, Arabs hold numerous positions in the Israeli Knesset legislature and other governmental bodies, including the judiciary.
The inaccuracy of the comparison additionally demeans the plight of the millions of oppressed black South Africans who endured the brutal and unequal system of real apartheid. Certainly, it is true that Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza are not Israeli citizens — nor do they wish to be. Instead, Gazan Palestinians live under the brutal terrorist regime of Hamas, which systematically liquidates political opponents, suppresses free speech and oppresses its women. No Jewish-Palestinian segregation exists in Gaza; no Jews live there following the withdrawal of the Israeli Defense Forces. Meanwhile, a historically corrupt and oppressive Palestinian Liberation Organization rules in the West Bank, but is now struggling toward building elements of a democratic society.
Many cite Israel’s security fence as proof of an “apartheid” system. But the Israeli government built the security barrier in 2006 as a measure to prevent terrorists from infiltrating Israel, not as an attempt to disadvantage Palestinians. The statistics speak for themselves: Between 2001 and 2003, before the security barrier was built, terrorists infiltrating from the West Bank and Gaza murdered 399 Israeli citizens. During the next two years, when the wall was partially built, the number of murdered citizens was significantly reduced to 78. In 2008, only one such death was recorded.
This attack on Israel is also curious considering the rampant political, religious and gender-based oppression that exists in the Palestinian territories. Here, women are not allowed to vote — in fact, Israel is one of two countries in the Middle East in which women can vote at all (the other being Iraq). Palestinian officials make no effort to protect women from domestic violence, homosexuals are often tortured, beaten and killed and the Christian minority in the West Bank has been persecuted for decades.
Moreover, it is interesting that these students choose to target Israel when Palestinians suffer far greater legal discrimination at the hands of Muslim “Brothers” in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Many are denied political and employment rights. Additionally, the number of Muslims suffering for deviating from the “true path” in Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan and India is many multiple times greater. Have students decried these atrocities as well, or is the actual focus of the protests on Emory’s campus to defame Israel?
Distorting facts and propagating hatred against Israel will not save lives, promote democracy or bring peace to the Middle East. These misguided tactics, particularly the use of inflammatory misnomers such as “apartheid,” work against the millions of Israelis and Palestinians who together want and deserve peace. Passionate students on campus — as well as interested members of the media and blogosphere — should strive to engage one another in a productive and respectful discourse. Promoting the sharpening of emotional divides, on the other hand, only prevents the dialogue from moving forward.

The root cause of this conflict:

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/1437/classic-islamic-view-of-jews

The call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions of the state of Israel is entirely conditional, and will come to an end when the state of Israel grants three conditions to Palestinans. First: the end of the military blockade of Gaza and the military occupation of the West Bank. The military blockade of Gaza blocks free transit, import, and export by air, land, and sea of all goods and people, effectively denying the population of Gaza equitable access to food, construction materials, medical supplies, and other essential materials. The military courts of the West Bank function as kangaroo courts, wherein 95.5 of those prosecuted are found guilty, with an average trial length of 44 minutes (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/average-idf-court-proceedings-in-west-bank-is-44-minutes-study-shows-1.402826).

The second condition: equality for all citizens under the sovereignty of Israel, including those within Israel and those subject to prosecution by the state and military of Israel in the occupied territories.

Third: the right of those Palestinians who have lost their homes and been expelled from their land to return to their homes and their land.

Though there is some disagreement as to the non-violent tactic of boycott, divestment, and sanctions, my hope is that all would agree that these three conditions would be favorable to all who desire justice and equality in the Middle East. As such, those who desire to see an end to boycott, divestment, and sanctions should strive to see that these conditions are granted by the state of Israel.

Thank you Matt, Madeline, and Abbas for encouraging these values at the University of Pennsylvania, and for encouraging an atmosphere of moral and intellectual debate on campus. And thank you for all of your hard work.

Could Matthew explain this conundrum for me?

Why is it Muslims are free to violently conquer lands anywhere and everywhere without a word of protest from American Muslims, or any Muslims for that matter, but if Jews have a legally established homeland Muslims will never stop protesting against it? Why is this do you suppose? What explanation can be given other than as the Qur’an states repeatedly that Islam’s goal is to establish a worldwide caliphate in which all non-Muslims are subjugated.

For instance, Mohammed was born around 571 AD thousands and thousands of years after Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism existed. But within a few centuries of Mohammed’s birth Islam had violently conquered vast sections of Asia, all of North Africa and smaller sections of Southern Europe.

Now Muslims tell us that all this land belongs to them even though, for instance, in Afghanistan they killed every last Buddhist who once lived there. According to Muslim logic per Israel shouldn’t this land belong to the Buddhists?

Or in North Africa all the Berbers have been forcibly converted to Islam or have been killed and now we’re told all this vast landmass belongs to Islam. That’s interesting, if not completely hypocritical. And what about Southern Thailand. Did anyone know that in the last several years something like 5,000 Buddhists have been killed by Muslims because, or so we’re told, the land the Buddhists are on belongs to Islam. And Southern Russia? Muslims are relentlessly waging a slow reign of terror in Russia because, you guessed it, Russians are treating Muslims poorly and they should give up the Southern section of that country to Muslims.

Or, let’s take Sudan as another example. How many millions have been killed in Sudan? How many babies and children have starved in Sudan while Islamists steal the food from aid compounds? How many women have Muslims gang-raped in Sudan all because that land belongs to Muslims and only Muslims. All other people can go somewhere else to live, I guess.

And Kashmir? The same. Despite Hindus having lived there for 5,000 years – something like 4,000 years before Mohammed was born – Muslims tell us Kashmir belongs to them. Amazing logic isn’t it?

And that brings us to Israel. Israel also belongs to Islam. Did you know that? It’s true. Even though it’s no bigger than a small pimple on the caliphate’s ass it is still their land and they will fight to the death to prove their point.

Doesn’t the logic here make a lot of sense. Isn’t it as clear as day? Of course it is. The world belongs to Islam and we’re mere players on their stage.

Matt – Whether conditional or unconditional, the most important point is that your demands (like your interpretation of Middle East events) have been rejected by everyone, other than those attending your conference next week (including U Penn and every other college campus in America

And they have rejected your appeals because they realize that BDS is decidedly NOT a “non-violent tactic” designed to achieve justice, but a propaganda tactic guaranteed to perpetuate (rather than solve) conflict. So, again, what you call “some disagreement” consists of you claiming you are peaceful and virtuous, and everyone else who knows otherwise and acts accordingly by giving BDS the heave-ho for close to twelve years.

As a final note, you seem to have mistakenly only thanked those who agree with you for encouraging “an atmosphere of moral and intellectual debate.” You seem to have left out someone who has not only provided a response to each and every item on your conference agenda (www.pennbds-oy.com) but has even offered you and anyone else in the BDS pantheon a chance to respond. So if you feel there is a lack of “intellectual debate,” perhaps that is because you have intentionally decided to avoid one.

Matthew,

Your naivety and/or your lack of knowledge on this subject is lame, but it certainly does not stop you from voicing an opinion.

The UN brokered a deal between Israel and Hezbollah after the last conflict in southern Lebanon. In exchange for an end to Israeli actions against Hezbollah, Hezbollah agreeing not to rearm. Of course Israel honored that brokered deal but Hezbollah now has more weaponry and rockets than ever. You and your friends might consider organizing an event in protest to this. I won’t hold my breath waiting for you, though.

Israel agree to remove all settlements and settlers from Gaza in exchange for peace. Of course within a week of doing so the first of thousands of rockets were launched into Israel. What! Not again, you say?

When Anwar Sadat and Begin signed the peace treaty – oh so many decades ago – part of that treaty guaranteed Egypt would end publication of all anti-Semitic publications and hateful TV programming. This, of course, never happened and, in fact, Egypt always led the hate-filled Muslim world in producing anti-Semitic vitriol. More to the point, though, today the new Islamist leadership in Egypt has all but abandoned the previous agreement and has sided with all those other Muslim states who have announced their intention of destroying Israel. No doubt it’s just a matter of time before the Egyptian Islamists wage another war against Israel. Allahu Akbar!

Treaty after treaty, agreement after agreement thrown in the trash bin of Islamic history dating all the way back to the following:

“Muhammad clearly used deception when he signed a 10-year treaty with the Meccans that allowed him access to their city while he secretly prepared his own forces for a takeover. The unsuspecting residents were conquered in easy fashion after he broke the treaty two years later, and some of the people in the city who had trusted him at his word were executed.”

But, of course, none of this enters your thought process or that of your your holier-than-thou allies when damning Israel for not opening up its arms to Hamas. How unfair of Israel, how unreasonable of Israel to not embrace Hamas! After all, we all know Hamas is an entity Israel should trust with all its heart. Just ask the ghost of Neville Chamberlain.

Matthew, did you know Jews encouraged other Jews to embrace Hitler too? Like you they felt that by currying favor with Hitler it would appease him and stop him from saying all those nasty things – the same exact things that Hamas’ leaders are saying today. Gosh, one would think one would learn to learn from history, not ignore it, at a fancy-ass school like Penn.

If you want to know the truth about the BDS “movement” (as opposed to the lies that flow from their mouths like water) read this article:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/26/BDS-boycott-Israel-Avishai-Don-Harvard-Crimson/

And watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifZLk6Ei9-U

The following is what is really happening here:

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/011-taqiyya.htm

this is excellent. thank you

“Arafat”,

Your nonsensical ramblings, monopolization of this comment thread, and clear bigotry are embarrassing to you, me and this university, in which intellectualism and measured debate are valued.

Good work, PennBDS.

G, as an experienced Penn debater, you no doubt are familiar with the axiom that when you are beaten on the merits of your debate than attack the debater instead.

I’m humbled knowing you gave up on debating the merits before writing word one.

Arafat, as someone who is pro-Israel, I ALSO do not appreciate your nonsensical ramblings, monopolization of this comment thread, and clear bigotry. You are an embarrassment to our cause, and your antics provide strawman-fodder for the other side. Please find a way to make pro-Israel arguments without, for example, suggesting that Islam is combative and bigoted by nature.

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” (Hadith, also part of the Hamas Charter)

Yeah, Islam is certainly not combative nor bigoted.

BDS: Gthfr,

It’s obvious you know next to nothing about Islam. The following might help broaden your understanding, not that I believe you will be open to it.

http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/08/the-persistence-of-islamic-anti-semitism-by-robert-spencer/

The OCCUPY Movement started in the Middle East & now many USers are following that model. All people have the right to resist an illegal & immoral Occupation & bulldozing of homes, olive trees & building of separation walls preventing Palestinians from going to their farmland, schools, hospital or family & neighbors. That is why I support Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions of Israel.