Dr. Amy Gutmann, this was a sorry excuse for a response to such an important and controversial event occurring on your campus. In fact, there is little reason to have ever even written it. The contents of this letter are reiterations of your apologistic and politics-laden statement from earlier this month.

Are you unaware of what is going on in your own campus? Where is any mention of the inflammatory and violence-invoking article that a member of your faculty, Ruben Gur, wrote not even 24 hours ago? Where is the call to protect these students against possible hate crimes? For your silence at addressing these key issues, for neglecting the security of your students, you have failed as a president.

And forget just your own campus. You also seem to have fallen short-sighted when it comes to what is going on in the world.
“when student groups espouse positions that run counter to our institutional values and ideals”? And what exactly are these values and ideals? Certainly not those preached by Benjamin Franklin since your university is so adamant in supporting the apartheid regime of Israel (in which it has invested millions of dollars). Nay, it is not this student group that has taken a position that runs “counter to [Penn]‘s values and ideals,” it is its Board of ‘Trustees.’

Today, I am ashamed to recognize myself as a member of Penn’s community.

I’m with you. I’m ashamed to recognize you as a member of Penn’s community too. Please leave!

‘Where is the Ben at Penn’ is spot on. If Amy Gutman purports to uphold certain “institutional values and ideals”, she shouldn’t allow a Penn professor to liken her students to genocidal Nazis. Gutman, you’ve already made it clear that you don’t support the conference or PennBDS. We get it. When are you going to also denounce Ruben Gur’s unfounded, abusive, and offensive claims? If you truly care about “open expression”, then why do you condone (through your silence) others who try to stifle it.

Also, like Ben at Penn said, I don’t know what “runs counter” to your values, but standing up against a vile system of oppression certainly doesn’t run counter to mine.

Extraordinary. “Ben at Penn” is exactly right. I wish I could applaud President Gutmann for this statement, which should be a defense of something we hold as obvious: freedom of expression. It is clear, however, that this statement was not made for the purpose of such a defense, and was rather to clarify the administration’s apparent position on divestment from Israel.

Why on earth does Penn’s administration have an “absolutely clear” and official position on the divestment of Israel?? Your jobs are to run the university, not opine on controversial political affairs under our name.

Also, what are the “institutional values and ideals” that the PennBDS position runs “counter” to? The group’s website states its position is to pressure Israel into complying with its obligations under international and human rights law. I’d really like to see what part of our University’s chapter is affronted by human rights law.

If you have a personal opinion on this, President Gutmann, then fine. But you have insulted the Penn community by publishing this under the University’s name.

Today, I am also ashamed to recognize myself as a member of Penn.

What a joyful day of agreement. I to am ashamed that you are a member of Penn.

Please, let’s bring an end to this politically correct nonsense at Penn. Everyone knows that “the chance to speak our minds freely” is not an unfettered right. What’s missing here is a failure of the University to articulate its “red lines” that cannot be crossed within the Penn community. Then, there would be an opportunity for a real debate.

First, how did Penn BDS become a registered student group? What are the rules and what are the “red lines”? Can a group (or its members) say or do anything that they want to? Can they be led or funded by individuals or groups that implicitly or explicitly support terrorism? What are the “red lines”, and has Penn BDS or any of its leaders or funders crossed those lines?

The rules of free speech and freedom of expression should not be selectively enforced. Do you remember the unfortunate student who for whatever reason yelled “water buffalo” from his high rise dorm window? Please refresh my memory. What again were his transgressions, and what are Penn’s “red lines”? If you know, tell us.

would it be ok if the KKK got SAC approval and had an event at Penn?

Everybody, chill out for a bit. Nobody commenting should be “ashamed” of anything here. A lot of people are bashing BDS. A lot of people are bashing people who bash BDS. And you know what? It’s all good, baby. Free speech is just groovy like that. I think as Americans, we can all get behind it. Even people you think of as “idiotic” should have a right to say what they believe—and that goes for people on both sides.
I don’t think either the pro or anti-BDS people are really sinking to “hate speech”—at least, not yet. They’re saying some nasty and untrue things about each other, but nothing worse than what politicians these days are calling each other.
And I can see both sides here. Is Israel kinda being a bit of a dick? Yeah. Will boycotting them make them change? Probably not. Is the situation a complicated, nuanced problem that can’t be put in black and white? Yup. The BDS isn’t the KKK and Israel isn’t some horribly evil country.
However, I know better than to think that people here will actually take my advice and calm down. They’re passionate about this whole “issue.” And that’s cool.

Finally, some sanity.

For those of you that support Penn BDS, would you support a “Nazis at Penn” student group? BDS should compared to the Nazis because they have the same goal, the exterimination of Jews.

Anti-semitism takes on a different form in each generation and in this generation it’s accusing Jews of “racism” and “occupation”. Israel is Jewish land because G-d said so – get used to it.

Ask yourself – why is only Israel being targeted by these groups? What about nations that truly deny people their human rights, like Iran or North Korea for examples? They get a free pass for some reason, but Israel receives a HUGE amount of criticism.

Arab nations teach their children to hate Jews, that Jews are evil and murderers, etc. I could go on and on…

I’m Jewish and I don’t find BDS anti-Semitic at all, so David, please stop your offensive claims that Zionism = Judaism, because it’s wrong. There are many Jews that do not associate ourselves with Israel. Israel is a power-hungry political entity. Judaism is a religion and culture. The US is my homeland, and I am ashamed of the occupation carried out by the so-called “Jewish state.”

Zack, Israel is not just “being a bit of a dick.” They are occupying, oppressing, and occasionally killing in droves an entire nation. That doesn’t make BDS right, but you are trivializing a serious issue.

I agree with BDS – Jews should Boycott Penn, Divest our money from Penn and Sanction Penn BDS by having them thrown off the Student Activities Committe. When that happens, we will support Penn and give it money. So until S happens, we will B and D.

To “A Jew”: Judaism is a way of being, not just a religion and a culture. Also, you are naive. The so-called occupation by Israel, is on Jewish land. If you want to argue in war terms, the Israelis took the Arab land when the Arabs attacked Israel for no reason. That’s what happens when you lose a war, you lose land.

The age of imperialism is long gone, David. The idea of conquering land through war bears no relevance to international law and ethics.
Jewish Land? Based on what claim? There is an entire nation of Palestinians there, you cannot claim it is as Jewish land.

Your definition of Judaism is fine, but you have no right to tell me what Judaism is.

A Jew,

You claim America as your homeland while expressing your shame of Israel. Can you see the irony in your statements? Your shame of Israel is rooted in its supposed “occupation” of other’s lands, but you expressed no anger that your homeland is the poster child of unlawful occupation. If you’re ashamed of Israel, you should be up-in-arms about America’s “occupation” of Native American lands. What right do you have to claim America as a homeland? Why aren’t you the first in line to deed all property owned by your family to its original inhabitants? Indeed, what Europeans did to Native Americans was far worse than what has happened in Israel. Why the selective indignation? Indeed, one of the core problems faced by Penn BDC is its selective anger.

The reality is that you can’t put some toothpaste back into the tube. The Jews aren’t leaving Israel, just as Europeans aren’t leaving North America. Instead of being ashamed and embracing inconsistent and unrealistic positions, perhaps you and others can use your energy working on practical solutions.

A Jew – you don’t seem to have much of a clue about your Judaism or where you come from. Judaism is more than just a culture and a religion. According to the Torah (which I’m guessing you have little knowledge of nor connection to) Jews are inextricably tied to their homeland (meaning Israel, not the USA). As for your laughable question, “based on what claim” do Jews have rights to the land, you obviously need a bit of a history lesson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel

Are you aware that the Canaanites/Israelites/Jews have lived in the land since the beginning of recorded history? Are you familiar with any of the countless historical artifacts tying Jews to the region? Coming back to more modern times, are you familiar with the Balfour Declaration establishing a Jewish homeland in 1917? How about the UN Partition Plan? Ever heard of these things? Are you aware of the Arab attack on the new Jewish state in 1948? I know you and your BDS buddies are trying to delegitimize the state of Israel because you have been brainwashed by propaganda, but these things established Israel’s legitimacy, and not “imperialism” as you’d like to label it.

And, by the way, what is the basis for your claim of “an entire nation of Palestinians”? Exactly what nation do they represent? Syria? Jordan? Egypt? The Palestinians were not a “nation” prior to WWII, nor were they after. Many sold their property to Jews quite willingly, many others left because their Arab leaders told them to, and some others were driven off during conflict. Hardly a case for giving them back the state of Israel.

Finally, please provide evidence of Israel’s “occasionally killing in droves an entire nation”. Are you equally appalled at the continued rockets the Palestinians fire into Israel and pipe bombs blown up in crowded markets? I guess this is OK for you?

Smarten up a bit, “A Jew”. Do some research. Don’t believe every bit of propaganda thrown your way by BDS.

Would everyone prefer that the university step in whenever the administration disagreed with student decisions, such as SAC approving Penn BDS? Somehow, I don’t think an organization that is clearly hate-based and/or racist and/or of genocidal tendencies (neo-Nazis, the KKK, etc.) would be approved by SAC. However, as President Gutmann pointed out, while it may not fund or even support groups such as Penn BDS, it is not Penn’s place to actively muzzle those voicing dissident political views.

@ David: Christianity has its origins in Judaism and still shares many aspects with it (the Torah and the Old Testament of the the Bible, for example). Additionally, many sites supremely important to Christianity (Bethlehem, etc.) are in Israel. One could argue the the land currently held by the Israeli state is just as Christian as it is Jewish. Does this make the Crusades (many of which were fought purely for earthly power, control of the land, etc.) right? Perhaps there is a reason so many countries separate church and state.

Turkey has killed between 30,000 and 40,000 Kurds in the last 30 years; it occupies North Cyprus; it blockades Armenia and denies its own historical genocide.

Sri Lanka killed about 25,000 of its own civilians in the course of repressing an insurgency.

Sudan has killed something in the order of 200,000 people in Darfur, with countless rapes and tortures.
Iran rapes and tortures and murders its own dissidents who ask for democracy; it hangs young gays, it oppresses women.

Egypt persecutes Copts.

Russia kills 25,000 to 50,000 Chechens, and almost completely razes the capital city of Grozny; its soldiers inflict hideous tortures on their prisoners before killing them; investigative journalists are murdered.

China kills somewhere between half a million and one and a quarter million Tibetans in the course of quashing Tibet’s independence.

In Pakistan, Christian churches are burned, hundreds of Ahmadiyyas are killed, violence towards women is endemic.

In Saudi Arabia, no churches are allowed, women are subject to gender apartheid.

Congo: More than that 5 million – 5 million – people have been killed in its wars, alongside innumerable rapes and hideous tortures.

The USA and the UK initiate a war in Iraq in which more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians are killed.

France trained and armed the Hutu genocidaires who killed around 800,000 civilians in the Rwanda genocide, and continued to protect them even as they lost power to the incoming Tutsis.

These examples have involved far worse horrors than anything Israel has done. But Israel is the one which is subjected to the BDS campaign. Only Israel. Why is this?

Joseph Goebbels would be proud of the BDS wordsmiths.

• 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?

The recreational compassion displayed by the BDS’ers is appalling: Two decades ago, Arab Morocco built an Apartheid Wall in occupied Western Sahara to subdue the native non-Arabs. Since then, Morocco has exterminated or expelled the natives. Only a few hundred thousand remain, walled off in ghettos. Three decades ago, Muslim Turkey built an Apartheid Wall across Occupied Cyprus, to bar native Cypriots from returning to their homes. Since then, Turkey has moved tens of thousands of settlers into Cypriot homes. And for five decades, the Chinese occupiers of Tibet has expelled hundreds of thousands of natives and settled that sad land with Chinese.
Surely, Saharans, Cypriots, and Tibetans are suffering greatly. But the BDS’ers includes not one word of comfort for them. One can hardly blame the BDS’ers. It’s easier to pick on Jews than take a stand against evil men – particularly when the evil men have oil and grant money.
Still, Jesus said, “You must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the study halls and at the street corners, so they may be seen by people.” Surely the BDS’ers experience this and, apparently, relish in it too.

BDS may be hateful, and President Gutmann’s justification may come off as lame; however, we need to look at this objectively and from a bigger picture.

Penn purposely revamped its speech policy following the shameful reaction to the “Water Buffalo” incident. Now Penn has one of the best Speech Codes in the country, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Penn and Dartmouth are the only Ivies that have a Green rating from FIRE and should be damn proud of that. I applaud President Gutmann and the decision to let this go forward.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/the-seven-best-colleges-f_b_865744.html#s282103&title=Arizona_State_University

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”

Here’s the link directly to the Penn segment of that HuffPo article, so you don’t have to click through the others:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/the-seven-best-colleges-f_b_865744.html#s282134&title=University_of_Pennsylvania

Anyone who is not already committed to a hard and fast position in this fight can see that Guttman’s statement is a complete betrayal of American values and Penn’s values, values like the separation of church and state (which theocratic Israel has violated since its founding), like the notion that every person in the world, including a Palestinian child born under Israel occupation, comes into the world with the fundamental right to life, liberty, and happiness. And that they have both a right and a duty to fight for and claim that right.

Moreover, those of us who have no connection to Israel, we can see how Americans in this country, if they sought to be true to American values, and sought to act on those values, obviously have a right and indeed a duty to support them. I’m not an activist, but the situation seems pretty clear to me.

President Guttman, you shame those values with your statement, especially in light of what Professor Gur wrote, which you failed to distance yourself from.

Ben Franklin would indeed be ashamed of the imposter who has taken his seat at the head of this university.

Could the BDS’ers 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.