keep in mind, the BDS conference, although hosted at Penn, was a NATIONAL conference. People attended from AROUND THE WORLD, and there was only space for 300 people. It was not meant to educate the Penn community alone—indeed, the BDS movement extends far beyond our little bubble here on campus. just sayin.

On top of that, there were several sessions that were open and free to the Penn public, and there were, indeed, many attendees at the Keynote who were not full conference registrants. The panels about Hillel, the black and lgbt communities were also open and free to the public. Therefore your argument about the talks being self-selecting is baseless. And let’s be real, $20 is a deterrent?

The original student price was $15. That included—get ready—FIVE meals. There isn’t a restaurant in Philly that will give you five meals—not to mention two days of panels, lectures and film screenings—for $15. The price was if anything totally negligible.

I suspect that the DP over-represented the significance of your (very reasonable) fee although they also highlighted that people pretty much self selected with the 30 or so Penn students joining the people from AROUND THE WORLD at your conference on Friday and 900 or so Penn students going to hear Dershowitz on Thursday (which, according to Omar Barghouti math, must make the Zionists the 2970% ;-)

How was the food, BTW?

After rejecting the 1947 Partition Plan, refusing to accept any Jewish presence in Israel except if under their control, and attempting to kill the Jews into submitting to these demands, the Palestinians have suddenly found a new tactic. Pathetic.

Dear Mr. Kerpind, that’s the history I got in school also. You leave out all the essential details. I hope that’s a choice on your part and not a reflection on the educators at Penn.

@aj: I don’t need to learn in school about Palestinian suicide bombings after having seen their results with my own eyes. Nor does one need to get anything in school about BDS – its leaders explicitly say they want a one-state solution, i.e. a Palestinian-ruled state under Islamic law. How they can advocate for an Islamic state while rejecting a Jewish state is the kind of hypocrisy that leaves any person with a functioning brain breathless.

I’m afraid editorial writers of the DP missed the whole point of the BDS conference. There had been a tacit truce for many years between the pro=Israel groups and pro- “Palestinian” grops. True each side brought on campus Sometimes controversial speakers like Moshe Feiglin or Joseph Mossad to name a few but it had been roughly balanced. There was enough contact to do things like the Philomatheon Sponsored debate On “Finding Solutions for Peace” in October 2010. It is bad enough to have such a virulent conflict in the Middle-East we did not need to bring it onto campus and have harsh or potential strife like they do on California campuses. Now PennBDS has completely blown to smithereens that truce and we will all have to live with the aftermath as best we can now that the anti-Semitic travelling freakshow and barking dog carnival has moved on. The fact that it was the “pro- Palestinian” side that bears the resposibility.

Er, make that “Joseph Massad” not “Mossad”. Massad is an anti-Israel Columbia University professor. My bad. By the way, I’m not directly comparing the speakers; they are not equivalents or counterparts in anyway I was just using them as examples; both did indeed come to Penn. My point was that BDS was designed to shut down dialogue; proof of that was the Jewish Exponent reporter who was kicked out and the film-maker to whom Ali Abunimah refused to speak ( and who also was kicked out). My hope is that now that the BDS Conference is over the dialogue that the DP editors wrote about can resume or begin again. Peace out.

Still waiting for Penn BDS to propose an actual boycott or divestment resolution against Israel.

Will it ever happen?

Dear Mr.Kerpind, you are avoiding the simple, essential first question: what were the terms of the Partition Plan?

The fact is, the Partition Plan gave 56% of the land to the Jews despite the fact that they only owned 7% and constituted only 33% of the population.

No reasonable people would have accepted such a deal.

If one looks at the disappearance of Palestinian land since then it is quite clear who is being “pushed into the sea.”

Surely you can see that such facts are the sine qua non of any honest discussion of the situation??

Since you bring up terror bombings, again, please begin at the begin. Any honest discussion must begin with the activities of the Irgun, Stern Gang and other Israeli terror groups. Groups which murdered countless innocent people, even international peacekeepers such as Swedish diplomat Count Bernadotte with impunity.

Jordan was given to the so-called Palestinians and Jordan is much bigger than Israel, so I’m not sure where you came up with your numbers. My math skills tell me that getting more than half the land (Jordan > Israel) means that the Arabs were given more than 50% of the land.

Right.

So you would be perfectly content to live in a relocation camp in Canada, after all of the U.S. were seized by invaders? After all, you would still be a North American living in North America.

Boycott Israel, and boycott all this doubletalk about how the invaded and expelled Palestinians are doing so great.

Could someone 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.

• If you want to see a BDS supporter squirm, ask them why Israel existing as a Jewish state is unacceptable and racist but Palestine existing as an Arab and Muslim state is a noble cause worth supporting.

My proof of this is examples of the Palestinian National Charter:

“Article 1. Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the greater Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”

And from the basic law of Palestine:

“Islam is the official religion in Palestine.”

So why isn’t there a movement to boycott the Palestinians, seeing as how they make it clear they intend to make a theocratic, ethnic-based state?