The Daily Pennsylvanian :: Your Voice | Promoting a pluralism of ideas

We read with some shock the opinion piece you published yesterday by Penn Professor Ruben Gur. With no evidence whatsoever, and in direct contradiction to everything we’ve ever said or written, Gur designates our student group “genocidal” and equates our upcoming conference with Nazi anti-Semitism. He labels our Jewish participants and organizers “Capos” and (in the same breath that he scolds us for describing Alan Dershowitz as an “Israel apologist”) compares Palestinian human-rights activist Omar Barghouti with Adolf Hitler.

This is the kind of rant one might expect to find in the nether regions of the blogosphere, not in the University of Pennsylvania’s student newspaper, and especially not under the byline of a tenured professor. That opponents of BDS are capable of responding to our language of human rights, international law and basic equality only with offensive slanders and name-calling speaks to the weakness of their position.

Professor Gur takes The Daily Pennsylvanian to task for printing our viewpoint “without any kind of balancing opinion.” But yesterday the DP published not one but three anti-BDS opinion pieces alongside a paid advertisement by the Islamophobic “David Horowitz Freedom Center.” We encourage the DP to raise its standards for what constitutes civil discourse and to actively promote a pluralism of ideas rather than allowing one voice to dominate the discussion.

PennBDS

Comments (5)

Wednesday night at 2:00 in the morning< my brother called worrying about me because of the BDS conference. The conference has accomplished what it set out to do; intimidate Jewish students. Boycotts against Jews or economic restrictions against them have a long and ugly history going back to the Middle-Ages and the Nazis. This is deeply and inherently threatening and no amount of hypocrisy changes that. This is all Dr. Gur was saying.

1. Of course, Gur’s letter is being used to claim they are now afraid of violence being committed against them. Everything becomes a tool of victimization.

Truth hurts, ladies.

I support BDS, I oppose violence. Many in the BDS movement defend, condone, promote palestinian violence calling it “resistance”, no worse than Israel calling its terrorism “defense”. BDS movement must separate itself from everyone who condones, defends, promotes violence. Ali Abunimah, Max Blumenthal, Remi Kanazi fail to do so, we know many others in the BDS movement condone, defend, promote international terrorism, dishonestly calling it “resistance”. BDS movement gives opponents ground when you fail to clear your camp of the fraud nonviolence fools in your midsts. You waste honest nonviolence folk’s energy and sully our good name when you fail to see and separate yourself from the frauds. Opponents of BDS see the violence in the movement you’re in denial of, opponents add more to make their case, but you give them enough to convict you.

Penn BDS: Thank you for speaking for those of us who believe that conversation should be about the issues instead of aggressive rants. I, for one, would like to express my admiration for the work you’ve done in putting together the BDS conference and I hope that we continue to move forward on the issues it raised.

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