Israel Matzav

Israel Remembers the Holocaust

Just a few hours before Holocaust Remembrance Day commenced, Tel Aviv University (TAU) held the official initiation ceremony for its Center for Iranian Studies, a new research institute on campus. In response, a group of extremist professors and Arab and Jewish student radicals held a demonstration and sent an official letter of protest against opening the Center to campus authorities, as reported in Israeli dailies Haaretz and Yediot Ahronot.

In their letter these extremists expressed fear that the new Center will be "misused" to paint Iran as a radical anti-Semitic and pro-terrorism state and grant legitimacy to Western demonization of Iran. Second, they expressed concern that the operations of the Center could be exploited by American imperialism in justifying American aggression against Iran.

The radicals were particularly upset because a speaker at the opening ceremony was the Iran-born Shaul Mofaz, who had been Commander in Chief of the IDF and then Minister of Defense of Israel. As such, Mofaz is guilty in the eyes of the protesters of illegitimately fighting against Islamofascist terrorism, rather than appeasing it and capitulating to the demands of the terrorists. "We cannot remain indifferent, let alone on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, to statements coming from Tehran by one of the most extreme leaders since Hitler, who denies the Holocaust and calls to destroy Israel. We must take it seriously," Mofaz said at the ceremony.

The protesting faculty members expressed fears that the new Iran Center would have a "defensive-military" character (as opposed to an appeasing one). The protesters noisily sat in the hall in which the ceremony took place, holding signs with the names of Palestinians allegedly killed in Israeli shelling when Israel fired back at Qassam missile launchers and otherwise took retaliatory action against Palestinian terrorists. No names of Israeli victims of Arab terrorism were on the signs.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:13 PM