Putting aside the fact that the author of this piece is totally deranged, the idea that the DP has published “no balancing opinion” is laughable. To date there have been four DP opinion pieces against the conference and one in favor. If the DP has proven itself uncommitted to balance, it’s certainly in the other direction, with insane rantings like this one permitted to demonize students on campus in the most egregious and utterly baseless terms (“genocidal,” “Capos”). That the author is a professor here should give the administration pause.

And note how the author scolds the BDS organizers for calling Dershowitz a “notorious Israel apologist” in the same breath as he compares Omar Barghouti (a person whose book he admits he hasn’t read) to Adolf Hitler. Does this article approximate any known standard of accuracy, consistency, or decency? Does the DP have such a standard? Or do they just toss up any outrageous screed they find in their inbox?

Hey M – I still haven’t gotten any response from PennBDS or Jewish Voice for Peace regarding offers of open dialog (no doubt you’re both busy since you make it clear with every comment that dialog and debate is something you crave above all else).

Any chance I can get transcripts from your talks to post on my www.pennbds-oy.com site so that both sides can be represented in a place that allows people to comment, discuss and debate? Maybe we could even jointly sponsor this site (or a new site), or – at the very least – we can link to each other.

Let me know!

Jon

It’s ironic, scary even, that a man with such a one-track mind should conduct his life’s work studying the brain.

As a Jew who had relatives killed in the Nazi Holocaust, I’m shocked at the irresponsible nature of the above column. It trivializes the Holocaust beyond comprehension to compare it to a movement for social justice on behalf of the most voiceless people on earth, the Palestinians. And to compare Bharghouti’s BDS, which the professor admits to not having read, to Mein Kampf? Seriously? Just a contemptible piece of writing that justifies an unfortunate caricature of BDS opponents as drooling lunatics.

So a SAC recognized group is bringing the Holocaust to campus? What?? This is GARBAGE.

DP, please remove this at once. THIS is hate speech.

You also owe PennBDS and the University an apology for publishing such damaging filth.

Re: M
1. If claims were so baseless, you wouldn’t feel so threatened
2. How is the article inaccurate, aside from the # of articles published by the DP on the topic… any points to make?

Re:Dave
1. Perhaps the author too is a jew who had relatives killed in the Holocaust. What then? Is he still irresponsible, or merely speaking from experience? Clearly, to the author, Penn is trivializing the importance of hosting BDS. Sorry you can’t comprehend that.
2. Your characterization of Palestinians as “voiceless” and BDS as “social justice” is laughable – does BDS want social justice for all? Nope. Unfortunately, this is the very definition of social justice: equality for all. Rather than drag Israel through the mud, the idea could be to elevate the Palestinians (as many columnists have suggested).
3. Receiving SAC funding does not = legitimacy. A group of monkeys that throw feces could get SAC funding, and host an event where feces are thrown. SAC recognition does not = legitimacy.

To M and Dave: nothing wrong in admitting one has not read a book (especially when purchasing said book would likely fund terrorism), and citing what your opinion of booked is based on

Re: Pat —- it is you, androgynous Pat, who has a one-track mind if you think this is evidence of a 1-track mind. A simple google search would prove you wrong, but I guess you were too close-minded to think of that

What a loony rant. Nobody screens articles here?

link to harvard article isn’t working…

Finally, someone who isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade, who does not mistake hate for ‘social justice,’ and does not let the label ‘student groups’ cloud their view of true intent and motivation – bravo!

Hm. As usual I see our Israel hating friends have nothing to offer except for rage and insults. One would think if this professor was so wrong they could make an argument on the merits, but apparently not. Unfortunately for them, you can’t shout someone down in a newspaper article.

Well done professor.

It is sad that professors at a reputable institution would resort to name-calling and obviously obtuse comparisons. It is Israel who wants to eliminate Palestine, not the other way around. Refer to www.ifamericaknew.org for statistics that show this to be true. As long as our universities and leaders are proliferating Israel’s message of hate, we continue to be complicit in ethnic cleansing and the slow genocide of the Palestinian people.

Samir,

The article is inaccurate in at least the following respects: (a) Barghouti’s book has nothing in common with Mein Kampf (b) Israel is an actual (not “alleged”) violator of human rights, recognized as such by Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and the ICC, among others © Alan Dershowitz is an apologist for Israel, recognized in scholarly works by academics such as Finkelstein, Mearsheimer, and Walt (d) BDS is related in no way or form to a goal of Israel’s “destruction” (e) the precedent Gur cites is of a state actor legislating a boycott, entirely dissimilar to this grassroots movement, which is better explained by the grassroots boycott of Apartheid South Africa (f) Israeli Arabs enjoy institutionalised discrimination, and do not have more rights than they do in other Arab countries (g) nobody’s suggesting “extermination camps” (other than Gur himself).

And that’s just off the top of my head, and ignoring the numerous slanderous adjectives that Gur uses.

If Gur had relatives killed during the Holocaust, he either honestly believes that there are going to be kill-squads roaming Penn in the aftermath of the BDS conference (hardly likely!), or he is exaggerating tastelessly for effect. I would suspect the latter, in which case he deserves to be called out for his disrespect of others, in the same way that settlers in Israel invoking the Shoah were called on it.

In fact, BDS is rights-based and does work towards equality for all. As soon as Israel accords full equality to Palestinians, there will be no BDS.

There’s a great deal wrong with not reading a book, and then going out of your way to criticize what it says. It shows both laziness and intellectual dishonesty – there has been absolutely no attempt to examine the BDS argument fairly. If Gur was so remarkably frightened of contributing a few cents to terrorism, I assume that he is familiar enough with libraries to obtain the book without compromising his principles.

It doesn’t seem that Professor Gur has read the piece that he is complaining about. Otherwise, how could he describe it as an “outpouring of misinformation and anti-Semitism” that “conceals Hamas and Hizballah daggers”? And why doesn’t he take into account the fact that every single point he makes in this article has been addressed, comprehensively, in the article he criticises? In fact, the article in question is written in quite a level-headed, rights-focused way. Reading the article and Prof Gur’s, it’s quite easy to see which of the two is “hateful”.

Frankly, if the response to BDS consists of slanders and caricatures, then BDS has already won in the intellectual arena.

As one of the speakers at this weekend’s conference who is Jewish and therefore deemed a Nazi collaborator by Professor Gur, I would like to echo Ali’s statements and simply add this.

I find it a fascinating extension of the denial of actual Holocaust history that Gur chooses to ignore the findings of Israeli courts in trials of Jewish collaborators with the Nazis — who were actually in cahoots with the World Zionist Organization. The most notorious case was that of Rudolph Kastner, a top official in the Israeli Labor Party, and the person in charge of the Rescue Committee in Hungary during the war, who actively collaborated with Nazi official Adolph Eichmann (the architect of the Holocaust) to get a approval for a “VIP train” of 1,685 Hungarian Jews to leave Hungary safely for Israel. In exchange for the safe passage of the train, Kastner agreed not to warn the tens of thousands of Jews of Hungary (whose rescue was in his hands) about Hitler’s plans for their extermination and not to take any action to protect them. Worse, he helped to deceive Hungarian Jews, convincing them that they were simply being relocated. Kastner had not acted alone, his plan for the VIP train had the support of the highest leaders of the Jewish Agency.

If Professor Gur would like to go head to head on such questions, he is welcome to present his case in person this weekend. I will happily obliterate him in any argument about Palestinian solidarity.

Shame on you Ruben Gur. Shame on you DP. Shame on you Penn. Shame on you.

How is this man a tenured professor? Why did the DP publish his senseless, ill-informed ramblings? This rhetoric calls for condemnation from all sides- not just of Gur, but of this newspaper for publishing such egregious slander.

WOW, BDS speaker Sherry Wolf just slipped and made it clear that “Roberta” is none other than “Ali” aka Ali Abunimah, keynote speaker at PennBDS. Classy.

She writes: “I would like to echo Ali’s statements and simply add this.” Nobody posted under the handle Ali. The most recent poster was “Roberta.” So who are you echoing?

And classy use of term “obliterating” vis a vis a discussion. Just classy classy classy.

Actually, “OMG!!!,” she was referring to this:

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/bds-nazism-and-omar-barghouti-hitler-says-upenn-professor-shocking-smear

Wolf pulled a Feinstein http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/feinstein-offers-peak-at-us-israeli-talks-on-iran/2012/02/01/gIQAY2nqhQ_blog.html

actually, “M,” you “Roberta” and “Ali Abunimah” may all very well be the same people. Or someone not named Wolf copy/pasted what she said on the intifada website to this website, and posted it as her. Either way, it is clearly very classy.

Apparently our BDS friends don’t mind exploiting the suffering of literally every group on the planet (South Africans, Native Americans, African Americans, and of course Jewish victims of the Nazis) in order to help the Arabs finish what Hitler started. But if someone were to point out the very obvious parallels between their “movement” and the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, they get all offended.

Maybe you should take the log out of your own eyes before you criticize the mot of dust in others’.

Jon Haber wrote:
“Hey M – I still haven’t gotten any response from PennBDS or Jewish Voice for Peace regarding offers of open dialog…”

Well, Jon, I still haven’t gotten answers from you on questions I asked of you way back in 2010. Remember back then? You asked a bunch of questions, and I politely answered them all. I then asked you questions and reminded you of incorrect statements you made on your blog, and you both a) refused to answer my questions, and b) refused to acknowledge your errors.

So I think it’s funny that you expect everyone to answer to you, but you are unwilling to answer to anyone else.

It’s also funny that you are so keen for “open dialog” and “both sides be[ing] represented.” Why weren’t you that way when you visited Olympia? Why didn’t you care about dialog and hear from both sides before you decided to publish that wacky conspiracy theory on your blog about voter manipulation?

To jog your memory, here’s where I asked you questions (after answering your own questions):
http://olyblog.net/open-letter-boycott-opponents-olympia-bds#comment-83020

And here’s where you published your conspiracy theory about voter manipulation in Olympia:
http://www.divestthis.com/2011/02/my-visit-to-olympia.html

Anonymous:

Wow. First you accuse PennBDS of exploiting human suffering to further their political goals, and then you immediately transition into exploiting the Holocaust to further your own. There is no similarity between the boycott of Jewish businesses in Nazi Germany and the BDS movement. The former intended to weaken and eventually eliminate an entire people from the earth, the latter intends to pressure the Israeli GOVERNMENT into adhering to universal principles of human rights.

To Hypocrite:

Actually there are a lot of similarities. Hitler wanted all Jewish business and businesses that did business with Jews boycotted. You all want all Israeli business and businesses that do business with Israel boycotted. The brownshirts stood outside of stores with signs that said “don’t buy from Jews.” You stand outside stores with signs that say “don’t buy from Israel.”

Need I go on?

The BDS movement wants to weaken and then eliminate and entire people from the earth: Israelis. If you don’t know that, it’s your own fault for not being well educated enough about a movement before joining it. Learn the truth:

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

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