Israel Matzav

Columbia has no red lines

In tomorrow morning's JPost column, Rabbi Shmuly Boteach slams Columbia University for its invitation to Iranian maniac Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak tomorrow. Here are some highlights:

Does anyone seriously believe that Columbia would invite a politician or scholar who denied that American slavery took place, or alleged that its effects on African-Americans was benign or exaggerated? Would Columbia host a Grand Wizard of the KKK who called for African nations to be wiped off the map?

And yet, Ahmadinejad is far worse. Not only has he denied the Holocaust and called repeatedly for Israel's destruction, he has gone beyond words and worked hard to put his plan into action.

Ahmadinejad's Iran is one of the world's foremost sponsors of international terror, especially the Hizbullah posse of killers, and he is now hell-bent on building thermonuclear weapons with which he might just accomplish what Hitler could not: the annihilation of half the world's Jews with the push of a single button.

...

When I read about the Holocaust, I often ask myself how the world allowed Hitler to rise to prominence. After all, humanity bore continuous witness to the hatred and venom that spewed from his evil tongue against Jews. Did the nations of the world not isolate him as soon as he began frothing at the mouth?

But in light of Ahmadinejad being invited, on his last visit, to address the Council on Foreign Relations, and to speak at Columbia University on this trip, I now get it. Whatever Hitler said, nobody took him seriously. They treated his rantings as a tasteless form of benign entertainment. They found him darkly amusing. It took the incineration of six million Jews and the destruction of much of Europe to discover that, ultimately, the joke was on us.

IN LIGHT of Columbia's invitation, it is fair to ask what, indeed, Ahmadinejad needs to do in order to be seen in his true colors? Stated differently, what evil must the president of Iran perpetrate in order to incur a much-deserved boycott?

Since calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state is not enough, one would assume that Bollinger would require him to actually kill a few Jews in order for the invitation to be rescinded.

But wait. He's already done that, and not just a few. Via his proxy, Hizbullah, he's killed a whole lot of Jews. So how many is the cutoff before Columbia denies him a platform? Ten thousand dead Jews, 100,000? Six million?

The problem is that Columbia does have red lines - but the only thing they demarcate is which leftist cause is the cause celebre of the week. Columbia's message is that it's okay to hate Jews and women and gays (or at least to tolerate those who hate Jews and women and gays) and members of western military forces, but not to hate the haters if they are Muslims or other left-favored political groups. Hitler and Ahmadinejad are okay. John McCain and David Duke are not. If you're having trouble following these rules, so am I, but read the whole thing because Boteach turns Columbia's hypocrisy on its head.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:20 AM