This is what passes for 'freedom of speech' on American college campuses
A Jewish student at the University of Michigan is the subject of an 'ethics probe' after confronting anti-Israel protesters on campus last month.
“My actions came from my own place of hurt and that of a sizable
portion of my constituency’s,” said Jesse Arm, a University of Michigan
sophomore and Central Student Government (CSG) representative. “I am
saddened that my fitness for office has been called into question by
virtue of my opposition to a purposefully inflammatory protest.
“To suggest that I am not suited to be a member of Michigan’s Central
Student Government because of my public opposition to Students Allied
for Freedom and Equality’s protest on the Diag [quad] would be to
undermine the core principles of democracy and pluralism on which our
nation was founded and our University rooted.”
Last month, Arm confronted fellow protesting students who
assembled an anti-Israel display on campus. The demonstration took
place on Nov. 19, the day that 18-year-old American student Ezra
Schwartz was killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack in Israel.
The altercation between Arm and the demonstrators was caught on video
and resulted in SAFE, the group responsible for the display, calling on
the student government’s ethics committee to dismiss Arm. During a CSG meeting on Tuesday, a number of university students and former student government representatives spoke in defense of Arm.
Speaking to The Algemeiner about the confrontation on
campus, Arm said he questioned the anti-Israel demonstrators about the
taste, timing, and appropriateness of their display in light of the
recent terror attacks taking place around the world, particularly in
Israel. He said he felt a connection to Schwartz, who was killed the
same day demonstrators put up the anti-Israel display.
“That American student was a contemporary of mine from my community
with whom I shared many mutual friends,” Arm said. “He was abroad on a
gap year program that I seriously considered attending before eventually
electing to enroll at Michigan. His story was my story.”
Read the whole thing. This is not the first time Arm has taken a principled stand on an important issue. I would not be surprised to see him studying in yeshiva here in Israel as part of a Junior (or post-graduate) year abroad. In the meantime, American college campuses have a lot to learn about what freedom of speech really means. But then, you knew that.
The most anti-Semitic college campus in the United States is...
The most anti-Semitic college campus in the United States is the home of Edward Said and Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi and the center for 'Palestinian studies.' Yes, you guessed it, it's Bir Zeit on the Hudson.
According to the [David Horowitz Freedom] Center, Columbia University is listed first because
it is home to the “most well-known antisemitic professors in the
nation such as Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad, who has been accused
of harassing Jewish students on multiple occasions. In addition, it is
home to a highly active SJP chapter that has recently brought BDS
founder Omar Barghouti and disgraced antisemitic professor Steven
Salaita to campus.”
The Center also cited a number of offending events held at Columbia
University in 2014, such as Israeli Apartheid Week and a protest with
signs that read “Call to Action: Stand with Gaza.”
Cornell University came in second place followed by George Mason
University, Loyola University Chicago, Portland State University, San
Diego State University and San Francisco State University. Rounding off
the list was Temple University, University of California Los Angeles and
Vassar College.
Inspired by Stand With Us' Israel IQ project at UCLA, Lions for Israel
sought to discover what Penn State students know about Israel as well. It wasn't much.
Let's go to the videotape.
Some people are probably pleased with this lack of knowledge. And I'm sure that media elites are among them. But then we should have known that Penn State is not exactly a hotbed of people who know anything about Israel or Judaism.
How to deal with rampant anti-Semitism on US college campuses
Given the anti-Semitism being taught in the classrooms on so many North American college campuses, it's not too surprising that anti-Semitism has become rampant on those same campuses. This is Caroline Glick.
Increasingly, anti-Semites in the US are adopting brownshirt tactics
to violently advance their goal of removing Jews from the public square
and intimidating others into boycotting Israel and those who support it.
Take just a few examples in recent weeks. In late September, several
hundred anti-Semitic rioters at the Port of Oakland prevented
longshoremen from unloading cargo from the Israeli cargo ship Zim
Shanghai. According to media reports, there were 50 policemen from the
Oakland police force on the scene, but their presence did not stop the
rioters or enable the longshoremen to offload the cargo.
None of the anti-Semites were arrested. Zim Shanghai was forced to leave the port with its cargo and sail on to Los Angeles.
The group that organized the assault on the Zim ship calls itself
Block the Boat for Gaza. It operates through its Facebook page where it
openly organizes violent assaults on Israeli shipping. Another assault
is planned, according to its Facebook page, for October 25.
A previous assault in August, during Operation Protective Edge, also
took place with police presence and nonintervention. The Zim Piraeus was
forced as well to pull anchor with its cargo and sail on to Los
Angeles.
Block the Boat for Gaza is supported by another group called Arab Resource and Organizing Center.
On October 8, the Brooklyn Nets played an exhibition game against
Maccabi Tel Aviv at the Barclay Center in downtown Brooklyn. The event
was a benefit for Friends of the IDF. Twelve IDF soldiers wounded during
Operation Protective Edge were guests at the event.
About a hundred anti-Semitic rioters organized outside the event.
They were members of variety of organizations reportedly including
Jewish Voices for Peace, Adalah – New York, and the Direct Action for
Palestine.
After the event, a number of the rioters accosted Leonard Petlakh,
the director of a local Jewish community center, as he was leaving the
arena with his two young sons. According to The Forward, they shouted,
“Free Palestine,” and, “Your people are murderers.” And then one of them
punched him in the face, breaking his nose.
The assailant was arrested. But strangely, he was not charged with
committing a hate crime despite the clear anti-Semitic character of his
crime.
On October 5, hours after the end of Yom Kippur, swastikas were
painted on the walls of AEPi Jewish fraternity at Emory University near
Atlanta. Swastikas were also painted at the Yale University campus. In
July, mailboxes of AEPi members at University of Oregon were defaced
with swastikas.
In August, a Jewish student at Temple University was assaulted by a member of Students for Justice for Palestine.
In a video filmed at the national convention of AEPi and posted on
YouTube two weeks ago, members of AEPi from campuses around the US and
Canada shared the stories of anti-Semitic assaults they and their
friends suffer regularly on their campuses. The attacks described
included, among other things, violent assaults.
Gideon Rafal, the president of AEPi at University of Arizona, described
how he was assaulted while trying to prevent a group of 20 Jew-hating
thugs from forcing their way into his fraternity house.
Rafal said he was struck from behind and lost consciousness.
The injuries he sustained during the assault included a skull
fracture, bleeding in the brain, a concussion and a lower back fracture.
He says that he was hospitalized for three weeks, spending 10 days in
the intensive care unit.
Rafal did not say who the assailants were or what legal measures were
taken against them or what organization if any, they were associated
with.
Other students described threats against Jewish students manning a
table for Birthright Israel programs at Loyola University in Chicago,
and the assault of a Jewish female student at University of California
at Santa Cruz.
Shane, a student at University of Calgary, described how he, his
mother and sister were violently assaulted for counter-protesting at an
anti-Israel protest. The group that sponsored the anti-Israel protest
and whose members attacked him and his family is an official campus
organization.
Shane said he fears for his life as he walks through campus.
In recent years it has become apparent that university campuses have
become breeding grounds for anti-Semitism. The incidents described by
the Jewish students who attended the AEPi convention indicate that the
anti-Israel propaganda taught in the classrooms is increasingly being
translated into anti-Jewish violence outside of them.
The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is Hamas on Campus. An organization dedicated to wiping Israel off the map.
Find out how the The SJP was created to be Hamas on Campus and work in tandem with the Muslim Brotherhood proxy, the Muslim Students Association (MSA).
Let's go to the videotape.
I am going to guess that 99% of the college students in the US who have been exposed to the SJP have no clue what they're really about.
"No society, not even one that cossets the young as much as ours does,
can treat you as children forever. A central teaching of Genesis is that
knowledge is purchased at the expense of innocence. A core teaching of
the ancients is that personal dignity is obtained through habituation to
virtue. And at least one basic teaching of true liberalism is that the
essential right of free people is the right to offend, and an essential
responsibility of free people is to learn how to cope with being
offended."
Wall Street Journal (and former Jerusalem Post) editor Brett Stephens at
Haverford College Commencement. (Hat Tip: Gary P - a college classmate of mine).
Great smackdown of BDS by University of Michigan student
This was from last week's debate over a resolution calling on the University of Michigan to divest from Israel, and it's a great speech. The divestment resolution lost because a secret ballot was called.
Let's go to the videotape.
She did great. I hope she moves back here eventually.
Moadim l'Simcha - a happy holiday to all of you (and as I noted on Thursday night, the proper response to that greeting is Chagim u'Zmanim l'Sasson).
Oberlin College in Ohio seems to have a wee little problem with anti-Semitism. So they've done what all good collage campuses do these days: They've blamed the blogosphere.
Subsequent to our post, we were forwarded by someone on campus the
following email from the Oberlin Dean of Students last night blaiming
“the blogosphere” for pressing for the records.
...
From: Eric Estes
Date: Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 6:03 PM
Subject: Important Information from the Dean of Students
To: studentlist@oberlin.edu
Dear Students,
I hope your semester has gotten off to a great start. I want to
encourage you to take advantage of all the resources available to
support you such as the class deans as well as new and enhanced
resources focused on health and wellness (see my start of the year
update on the Oncampus page). Please know that the my door and those of
my colleagues are always open.
I also want to inform students of another important issue that has
developed in the last couple of weeks. The City of Oberlin will soon
release materials related to the Oberlin Police Department’s (OPD)
investigation of the flood of racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic
incidents that occurred in our community last winter and spring. Fueled
by recent stories in the blogosphere, the City of Oberlin has received
several requests for their complete records of the incidents, which they
are treating as part of the public record.Those records
include some Oberlin College Office of Safety and Security (S&S)
reports of the incidents including the names of Oberlin students,
faculty, and staff who reported those incidents in some cases. Each
person likely to be affected has been contacted personally.
This undoubtedly raises some questions. First, we wanted to be sure
to communicate with you in advance of the public records release. We
want to be transparent. Second, let me assure you that the
administration’s sharing of certain relevant S&S reports with the
OPD occurred in response to a unique set of circumstances, and was
undertaken in good faith to protect the health and safety of students by
actively seeking law enforcement investigation and prosecution of
suspected criminal behavior. At the time those reports were shared,
there was no expectation that their contents would become public.
Rather, College administrators were seeking law enforcement’s assistance
in halting the bias incidents and holding alleged perpetrators
accountable for their actions. Finally, we are working together with The
City of Oberlin and the OPD to solve this problem moving forward. We
are committed to doing everything possible to prevent this kind of
situation from ever happening again.
The kind of flag that you see at the top of this post (the picture was taken at Oberlin) is actually par for the course these days for an American college campus.
On no campus in the United States or elsewhere would the racist
posters using the “N” word and so on be acceptable public discourse
(even if it is an interesting free speech legal issue).
But what about the anti-Israel poster?
Unfortunately, such discourse on campuses and elsewhere is par for
the course in the anti-Israel movement. The attempt to single out
Israel alone for boycott, and the false equation of Israel with
Apartheid, facism and Nazism, is part of the dialogue and accepted.
Oberlin is one of only a handful of higher education campuses where the student government has endorsed the anti-Israel BDS movement and boycott.
Read the whole thing. And think about whether your child belongs on an average American college campus.
How did the American Jewish community lose the battle for college campuses?
This article gives a little too much 'credit' to one person, but to me the important point here is that we need to look into how the American college campus was lost so that we can go about trying to regain it.
How did the Jewish community, known for its rhetorical genius, lose a critically important political battle on American campuses? Here is a thumbnail sketch:
In 1990, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, explained on Jordanian TV how the Arab Lobby can and will match Jewish political and organizational success in America. Zogby and his allies recognized that the campus and the media, unlike Capitol Hill, are two battle grounds that Arabists could win by allying themselves with the American left. In both venues they already had beachheads and feet on the ground. The campus was in transition politically, influenced by ’60s tenured radicals who had adopted the dogma of post-colonialism, and its Palestinian version, Professor Edward Said’s “Orientalism.”
Moreover, America was experiencing a significant increase in foreign born Muslim students as well as increased Muslim immigration (many from countries with a culture of vicious anti-Semitism). Zogby focused on forming alliances with Marxist professors, die-hard socialist activists, African- American student groups, gay-lesbian groups and, most importantly, Jewish progressives. He also realized that an emerging anti-Israel Left/Muslim axis on campus could be better organized and benefit from an inflow of Arab petro dollars into prestigious American universities. All this was happening while many Jewish leaders, intoxicated by the Oslo agreement, were abandoning Israel programming.
Today, we can see the brilliance of Zogby’s strategy: Anti-Israel sentiment suffuses the campus atmosphere. In the classroom, radical professors express the the dominant narrative that the Palestinians are right and the Israelis are in the wrong. In its mild form, the Palestinians suffer needlessly at the hands of Israeli occupiers; in its more vicious version, Israel is a racist, genocidal apartheid nation. Outside the classroom, anti-Israel groups hold conferences, screen films and conduct theatrical demonstrations that portray Israel in the harshest of terms. Israel’s advocates are rudely interrupted, prevented from speaking; pro-Israel events are disrupted; Jewish students are intimidated verbally or even physically, and are excluded from pro-Palestinian events. Pathetic attempts by Jewish groups to initiate dialogue with Palestinian students are rejected. Any acknowledgement of Israelis’ humanity is seen as a validation of Palestinian oppression. Our epoch’s secular religion – political correctness and multiculturalism – judges people by who they are, not what they do. Israelis are by definition always guilty, while darker skinned, impoverished, indigenous Palestinians are eternally innocent.
There's another point that needs to be made here. For whatever reason, the vast majority of the American Jewish community is unfortunately incapable of voting Republican. As a result, the community either votes Democratic or stays home, and since most Jews don't stay home on Election Day, the result is that the Democrat gets the Jewish vote regardless of their position on the issues. That leaves the Democrats free to do anything they want to court the Left - including abandon Israel.
The picture below thus reflects reality in today's American Jewish community. And until that changes - until non-Orthodox Jews feel that they can vote Republican and not be deemed sinners for having done so - the Jewish community is likely to continue to be a partner in a radical Leftist agenda that includes supporting the 'Palestinians.'
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
