Wow, DP, you have reached a new low. I’m sure the two girls you mention had wonderful smiles, but you chose to mention their hijabs? And say they’re “soft spoken”? Oh, playing right into the suppressed Muslim woman narrative.

BDS is NOT about religion so your singling these girls out based on their hijabs shows what you are really paying attention to. Despicable.

This is islamophobia, plain and simple. Shining the spotlight on the girls’ hijabs and emphasizing their soft-spoken demeanors only serves to reinforce stereotypes of Muslims in this country. This was a despicable attempt to paint the BDS movement as primarily Islamic, suggest that the girls’ opinions, and all Muslims’ opinions, towards P/I are inherently biased, and to liken yourself to people like David Horowitz who continually link pro-Palestinian activism to Islamic Jihad. Everyone has different reasons for their sympathy towards the Palestinian cause, but I know of few who fight for Palestinian human rights merely because of their religion. I wish you had focused more on their unique qualities and not succumbed to irrelevant and counterproductive stereotypes.

Come on, DP. You’re not playing the game! The BDS supporters need camoflauge and you’re not providing it. They can’t be openly Jewphobic and gain their much-desired campus sympathy. They need to appear unassociated with Islam and those who want Jews to die for committing the heinous act of being Jewish. Your emphasis on the girls’ hijabs could reveal the truth. Fewer facts and more smoke and mirrors would be greatly appreciated.

Sarah Smith’s conference coverage for The Daily Pennsylvanian this weekend left something to be desired and, unfortunately, made clear her proclivities and agenda. While her reporting tried to appear objective, her deliberate framing betrayed her subjectivity (or that of her editors).

For example, in her wrap-up of Ali’s keynote, Smith wrote:
“According to Abunimah, Israel was working to maintain its majority Jewish population. ‘Too many babies for the wrong type threaten Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,’ he said. He claimed that Israel has laws forbidding Palestinian citizens of Israel from living in Israel with a Palestinian spouse of Gaza or West Bank origins…
Israel is also demolishing Palestinian houses, Abunimah said.”

Note how everything is framed as “according to”, “he claimed”, and “Abunimah said.”

These are not controversial suggestions – these are documented facts, yet Smith passes them off as mere “claims” made by Ali without any supporting evidence. But the evidence was demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, not only in Ali’s speech itself, but during conference workshops and every single day in the Israeli press.

Writing that Ali “claimed” that there are discriminatory laws in Israel clearly attempts to dismiss the “claim” as unsupported by evidence and elicit eye-rolls from anti-Palestinian readers. But what Ali said is a fact. Sadly, Smith didn’t report that.

One wonders if Smith would ever consider writing a sentence like “Millions of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others were exterminated in the Holocaust, according to Alan Dershowitz, who claimed Nazism was racist.” Framing and equivocating like that would be beyond the pale. But not when Palestinian lives and rights are discussed. Then everything becomes opinion and competing, impenetrable, counter-narratives. This is not only a disingenuous way to report, but it hides the facts from the audience behind frames of personal belief and disputable .

At the “Palestine in the Media” panel, Phil Weiss said, “The truth is serving this cause.”

Meanwhile, reporters like Smith are subverting it.

Where’s the concern for the human rights of the Jews? Is Tahreem Chaudhry willing to condemn the rockets launched every day from Gaza against civilians in Israel, both Muslim, Christian and Jew that made Cast Lead necessary? Is she concerned about the human right not to live every second worrying that you are going to be blow up by a Palestinian rocket? Has she forgotten that Israel gave up Gaza for peace only to get Palestinian rockets in return? What about Israeli human rights? Oh I forgot Israelis aren’t human, that’s what is taught in Palestinian schools and preached on Palestinian TV see for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q39kegyFzmQ

Could have been a little more detailed. Was Shihadah born in Gaza? That her family was from there is clear. The rest of the story suggests that she made a one-time visit, loved Palestine and was detained for 6 hours on the basis of her distant relationship with people in Gaza.

The point of all these quotes is to show what Israel faces. The reasons for the checkpoints and the wall/fence.

The wall was built by the Palestinians as were the checkpoints. Or, more accurately, thanks to Palestinians killing Israelis every chance they get, Israel was forced to enact these security measures.

As the quotes make perfectly clear Israel is not dealing with rational people and Israel is forced to take whatever measures it deems necessary to protect its citizens.

So the BDS folks can tell us their sad stories with lips that quiver but, rest assured, the problem does not lie with Israel, it lies with their Palestinian brothers and sisters and with a religion in which non-Muslim life is treated with contempt.

David, and that’s ultimately my problem with BDS. The underlying assumption of their arguments is that Israel’s behavior must be changed; however, they fail to address the core problem: The Palestinian (and Islam) rhetoric to “kill all Jews” and “annhiliate Israel.” Once the Palestinians openly recognize Israel’s right to exist, the parties can begin negotiating meaningfully. If that happens, I will be the first in line to put pressure on Israel to negotiate cooperatively. However, until that occurs, Israel has no reasonable side with which to negotiate. You can’t negotiate a settlement when one side’s opening position is your destruction. That, my friends, has been the core problem for decades. In this way, the Palestinians control the debate and, therefore, their collective fate.

Some are talking about the “core problem”. Perhaps we should consult some rabbinical authorities:

The Lubavitcher Schneerson: “the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world…the bodies only seem to be similiar in material substance, outward look and superficial quality. The difference in the inner quality, however, is so great that the bodies should be considered as completely different species…an even greater difference exits in regard to the soul. Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from the three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.” (Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel by Prof. Israel Shahak, p. 59-60)

He goes on, “This means that everything, all developments, all discoveries, the creation…are vanity compared to the Jews. The important things are the Jews, because they do not exist for any [other] aim; they themselves are [the divine] aim… the entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.” (p. 60)

Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg offers this: “If every single cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God, then every strand of DNA is part of God. Therefore, there is something special about Jewish DNA…if a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite value…there is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.” (p. 62).

Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion is available online and should be widely read. The Fundamentalism book is available here (http://members.tripod.com/alabasters_archive/jewish_fundamentalism.html).

To aj: Not sure what you are implying here. I suspect that you are trying to say that Jews think of and treat non-Jews as inferior, which is absolutely not a core belief of Judaism.

Also, I don’t see that in practice either. When the IDF fights against the terrorists in Arab Muslim areas, they put the lives of civilian Arabs ahead of their own lives. Frankly, I don’t think they should. It’s the Muslim Arab terrorists that hide themselves and their weapons among civilians and they should get the blame if those civilians are killed by the IDF.

There are many,many other examples of Jewish discoveries that help humnanity – from medical to computer technology.

So I’m not really sure what the “core problem” is that you speak of. I’m also pretty confident that you are not an expert in Jewish law and you are cherry-picking statements to make Judaism look bad. I’m not an expert either, but I do know that Jewish law is often VERY complex and can’t be put into proper context without a thorough examination, which you are NOT doing here.

ARAFAT: GO AWAY

YOUR BIGOTED COMMENTS MAKE THE PRO-ISRAEL SIDE LOOK BAD. WE DO NOT APPRECIATE YOU. YOU COULD NOT PERFORM A GREATER SERVICE FOR THE OTHER SIDE IF YOU DELIBERATELY TRIED.

GO. AWAY.

DP: thanks for deleting that stuff
But good grief, this guy should figure it out himself, too.

Dear David, I am not an expert in Jewish law nor do I wish to become one. I have spent enough time researching to realize the bankruptcy of the mainstream media narrative and therefore have provided a few quotations from Prof. Israel Shahak.

Here are a few important statements by Israeli leaders that deserve wider circulation:

“Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.” — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online

“(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” — Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.” — Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.

“[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs.” — Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the ‘Beasts,”’ New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.” — Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.”
— David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.” — David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth’s Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).

Interestingly, there is a nice similarity between the rabbinical statements and those made by Israeli political leaders. A few choice admissions of fact in the mix also.

I would encourage readers to investigate Prof. Israel Shahak’s books on their own:

Jewish History, Jewish Religion (http://www.radioislam.org/islam/english/books/jewhis/jewhis1.htm)

Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (http://ebookee.org/Jewish-Fundamentalism-In-Israel-New-Introduction-by-Norton-Mezvinsky_1207254.html)

Here’s what Gore Vidal had to say of the late, great Prof. Shahak:

Fortunately, the voice of reason is alive and well, and in Israel, of all places. From Jerusalem, Israel Shahak never ceases to analyse not only the dismal politics of Israel today but the Talmud itself, and the effect of the entire rabbinical tradition on a small state that the right-wing rabbinate means to turn into a theocracy for Jews only. I have been reading Shahak for years. He has a satirist’s eye for the confusions to be found in any religion that tries to rationalise the irrational. He has a scholar’s sharp eye for textual contradictions. He is a joy to read on the great Gentile-hating Dr Maimonides.

Needless to say, Israel’s authorities deplore Shahak. But there is not much to be done with a retired professor of chemistry who was born in Warsaw in 1933 and spent his childhood in the concentration camp at Belsen. In 1945, he came to Israel; served in the Israeli military; did not become a Marxist in the years when it was fashionable. He was – and still is – a humanist who detests imperialism whether in the names of the God of Abraham or of George Bush. Equally, he opposes with great wit and learning the totalitarian strain in Judaism. Like a highly learned Thomas Paine, Shahank illustrates the prospect before us, as well as the long history behind us, and thus he continues to reason, year after year. Those who heed him will certainly be wiser and – dare I say? – better. He is the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets.

To aj: Refer to my earlier post from 12:16. Focus on the concepts of cherry-picking and context. You excel at the former and are lousy at the latter.

When will an actual resolution to divest from Israel be proposed at Penn?

Dear David, if your only response is to hide behind specious characterizations, I won’t respond to you.

Instead, I’ll hope that more open-minded types will consult Prof. Shahak’s books and judge for themselves.

I, like Gore Vidal, found his work revelatory and I’m confident that others will also.

Jeez,

The point I am attempting to make – admittedly in a somewhat ineffectual way – is that the root cause of this issue is based in Islam’s core tenets, i.e., Islam’s quest for power and expansion. Israel is simply a roadblock in that goal’s way and all the Goebbel-like efforts to delegitimize Israel are exactly that – efforts to make people believe, like Goebbels did, that Jews. Zionists and Israel are evil.

If by quoting William Churchill, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Dawkins who agree with me on this point is offensive to you then there is little I can do or say. It is what it is.

Here are two excellent articles which make my case better than I have.

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

http://www.islam-watch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=859:why-muslims-hate-jews-to-the-bones&catid=79:mirza&Itemid=58

“Divest from Israel” – what an interesting concept. If you want to do this the right way, you would probably have to stop using your computer, your cell phone, many medicines, and countless other technologies (including life saving technologies)and many modern conveniences. Are you willing to do that?

http://www.ehow.com/list_6902004_inventions-israel.html

aj: Not sure what Prof. Shahak has to do with BDS. For sure, Israel has internal problems, but how do they justify BDS in your view or Prof. Shahak’s view?

David implies that since Israel invented the computer, the cell phone, medicine, and life itself…
…Israel should be allowed to massacre as many Palestinians as it sees fit.

Maybe out of those massacres, more cool inventions will result — if so, count me out for both.

Boycott Israel.

“Israel should be allowed to massacre as many Palestinians as it sees fit.”

http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=7508

Why do all the BDS people either lie or grossly exaggerate reality?

Israeli espionage activities against the US is another important topic. Please consider the following:

Spy Trade: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy by Grant F. Smith

“Israel and its American lobby have committed audacious but generally unknown crimes against the United States. The government has long kept files about Israeli espionage, weapons smuggling, and covert operations on American soil classified…until now. Spy Trade begins on the trail of a vast smuggler network funneling stolen and illegally purchased surplus WWII arms to Jewish fighters in Palestine. When the FBI threatened to crack down, a clandestine summit meeting yielded minor convictions for small-time operators, but not the financial masterminds behind the scheme. Spy Trade probes Israel lobby smuggling operations diverting uranium from the US to Israel’s Dimona nuclear weapons facility. The Justice Department battled mightily to regulate two key enablers—the Jewish Agency and American Zionist Council—as Israeli foreign agents in the 1960s. But when the effort collapsed, it unleashed election law violations and escalating intimidation of American politicians by the Israel lobby. Spy Trade reveals the long-term impact of a newly declassified “third scandal” that began in the 1980s. In the midst of both the Iran-Contra affair and the Jonathan Pollard espionage incident, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Israeli embassy conducted a spectacular clandestine operation against American industries and workers; it has so far cost the US economy $71 billion and a hundred thousand jobs each year by shutting down or diverting US exports. More than a dissection of the tactics used by Israel and its lobby to evade justice, Spy Trade provides strategies for ending criminal immunity and restoring American governance.”

Smith has an important website at www.irmep.org with many important documents archived.

Admiral Thomas Moorer, former head of the joint chiefs of staff, had this to say:

“I’ve never seen a President — I don’t care who he is — stand up to them. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn’t writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would RISE UP IN ARMS. Our citizens certainly don’t have any idea what goes on.”

Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, US Navy & Chairman,
Joint Chiefs of Staff during interview on
24 August 1983.

Perhaps he was still incensed over the attack on the USS Liberty (http://www.gtr5.com/). Sec. of State, Dean Rusk, was, but like Moorer was apparently unable to do anything about it.

Dear David, please read Prof. Shahak’s books. I think you’ll find the answer to your question in them. I provided the links.

aj: Thanks for reminding me that the Jews and their conspiracies are causing all the problems in the world. I forgot about that. Tell Mel Gibson I said hi.

Dear David, I’m hoping the intelligent folks at Penn will simply check the sources I’ve mentioned and decide for themselves whether the statements and positions are based upon facts.

Regarding the USS Liberty, Dean Rusk, Adm. Moorer, and other high-ranking members of the US government were unequivocal:

“I can tell you for an absolute certainty (from intercepted communications) that the Israelis knew they were attacking an American ship.” — NSA Deputy Director Oliver Kirby

“I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous.” Sec. State Dean Rusk, As I Saw It, W.W.Norton, 1990. p 388

Your attempt to dismiss unpleasant facts by making reference to the antics of a drunken movie star does not do you great credit.

The BBC film, Dead in the Water (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3319663041501647311), is a good starting point for people seeking information outside the mainstream narrative.