Your tax Shekels at work: Hebrew University paying NIS 4,000 per student for Jews and 'Palestinians' to meet in 'warming' sessions
A couple of days ago, I was sent a link to this Facebook page, which invites Jewish and Arab students at Hebrew University to meet socially at the Athens Bar, underneath the Frank Sinatra cafeteria (the site of a 'Palestinian' terror attack in ). The meeting is to take place on November 11 (next Wednesday) and is described as the first in a series of meetings of a group called "As One" which was founded at Tel Aviv University two years ago (the group's full Facebook page is here).
The group was founded to 'break down barriers' between Jews and Arabs, and is described as a forum for Jews and Arabs to meet and discuss their world views. The goal is to create a 'pluralistic, equal and inclusive' student body.
The first meeting will include a 'warming' session in which the group will break off into pairs so that a Jew and an Arab can get to know each other better. The group describes itself as non-political, and is sponsored in cooperation with the Student Union.
But there's more to this than meetings. The notice I pasted above, in Hebrew and Arabic, informs the students that those who attend these 'warming' sessions will each receive a NIS 4,000 (a bit more than $1,000) grant in exchange for attending 84 academic hours' worth of sessions (one three-hour weekly meeting on 28 Tuesdays during the course of the year. The group is limited to 14 students - seven Jews and seven Arabs - and is moderated by a Jewish woman and an Arab woman.
Hebrew University is a public institution, which means that this program is being paid for by the Israeli government, and by you, the Israeli taxpayer (and overseas donor).
For those of you who wonder why this kind of program is problematic, please consider this article published in the New York Daily News by Dr. Daniel Gordis three weeks ago:
We have a young language instructor at Shalem College in Jerusalem,
where I work. She's a religious Muslim who wears a hijab, lives in one
of the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and is a graduate student at
Hebrew University. She's fun and warm, and a great teacher — the
students like her a lot.
Late last spring, when things here were quiet, some of the students
mentioned to the department chair that as much as they'd spoken with her
over the past couple of years, they'd never discussed politics. They
were curious what someone like her thought about the conflict in this
region, especially now that she was teaching at an unabashedly Zionist
college, had come to know so many Jewish students and had developed such
warm relationships with them. How does someone like her see things here? How did she think we would one day be able to settle this conflict?
"So ask her," the department chair said. "As long as you speak to her
in Arabic (she's on staff to help our students master the language), you
can talk about anything you want."
They did. They told her that since they'd never discussed the
"situation" (as we metaphorically call it here in Israel), they were
curious how she thought we might someday resolve it.
...
"It's our land," she responded rather matter-of-factly. Stunned, they
weren't sure that they'd heard her correctly. So they waited. But that
was all she had to say. "It's our land. You're just here for now."
What upset those students more than anything was not that a Palestinian
might believe that the Jews are simply the latest wave of Crusaders in
this region, and that we, like the Crusaders of old, will one day be
forced out. We all know that there are many Palestinians who believe
that.
What upset them was that she — an educated woman, getting a graduate
degree (which would never happen in a Muslim country) at a world class
university (only Israel has those — none of Israel's neighbors has a
single highly rated university) and working at a college filled with
Jews who admire her, like her and treat her as they would any other
colleague — still believes that when it's all over, the situation will
get resolved by our being tossed out of here once again.
Even she , who lives a life filled with opportunities that she
would never have in an Arab country, still thinks at the end of the day
the Jews are nothing but colonialists. And colonialists, she believes,
don't last here. The British got rid of the Ottomans, the Jews got rid
of the British — and one day, she believes, the Arabs will get rid of
the Jews.
I have three children who have gone or are going through the Israeli university system. I would not be happy about them having 'warming' sessions with Arab students - certainly not in pairs. Yet my government is paying students to do just that.
The Middle East conflict explained in five minutes
The Middle East conflict is framed as one of the most complex problems
in the world. But, in reality, it's very simple. Israelis want to live
in peace and are willing to accept a neighboring Palestinian state. And
most Palestinians do not want Israel to exist. As Dennis Prager
explains, this is really all you need to know. In 5 minutes, understand
how Israel was founded, and how, since that auspicious day in 1948, its
neighbors have tried to destroy it, again and again.
I meant to post this earlier, but as I am sure you can all tell, I've been rather busy for the last few days. Ruthie Blum reminds us that the Israeli-'Palestinian' (formerly known as Israeli-Arab) conflict did not start as a result of the outcome of the 1967 War.
Contrary
to widespread belief, based on a concerted propaganda campaign, this
was not the event that created what has come to be called the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the contrary, it was precisely the
pan-Arab attempt to eliminate the "Zionist entity" that sparked the
three-front war in the first place. And it was Israel that liberated
Jerusalem from Jordanian occupation.
This is something that
most Israeli children are not even taught any more, which might explain
why it is so easy to persuade them that if Israel would only make
sacrifices for peace, the so-called Palestinian people could get about
the business of building a state. After all, it is not only the Arabs
born in Israel after 1967 who have been brainwashed by with a false
narrative; so, too, have Jews been sold a bill of goods.
The difference is that
the former are being educated in the art of annihilation, while the
latter are being fed formulas for peace. Most cooperation programs
funded and initiated by left-wing nongovernmental organizations involve
groups of Israelis and Arabs gathering together to blame Israel for
constituting an obstacle to Palestinian statehood. Kumbayah.
...
How shamefully befitting, then,
that singer Achinoam Nini (known internationally as Noa) was asked to
perform at the official Jerusalem Day ceremony. Nini is not only famous
for her voice; she is also a vocal supporter of handing over east
Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. Is it any wonder that the Arabs
assume it is only a matter of time before Israel relinquishes its
legitimate claim to the wholeness of its capital?
Any argument between the United States and Canada is an argument between two civilized friends.
The conflict between Israel and the 'Palestinians' (and the Arab Islamic world in general) is an ethnic existential conflict, where one side is Islamic savages who live in the 8th century, and the other side is mostly westernized Jews.
Obama is a moron if he really doesn't see the difference.
The questions now are: What was the real cost of these wars to the Arab world and its people. And the harder question that no Arab national wants to ask is: What was the real cost for not recognizing Israel in 1948 and why didn’t the Arab states spend their assets on education, health care and the infrastructures instead of wars? But, the hardest question that no Arab national wants to hear is whether Israel is the real enemy of the Arab world and the Arab people.
I decided to write this article after I saw photos and reports about a starving child in Yemen, a burned ancient Aleppo souk in Syria, the under developed Sinai in Egypt, car bombs in Iraq and the destroyed buildings in Libya. The photos and the reports were shown on the Al-Arabiya network, which is the most watched and respected news outlet in the Middle East.
The common thing among all what I saw is that the destruction and the atrocities are not done by an outside enemy. The starvation, the killings and the destruction in these Arab countries are done by the same hands that are supposed to protect and build the unity of these countries and safeguard the people of these countries. So, the question now is that who is the real enemy of the Arab world?
The Arab world wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and lost tens of thousands of innocent lives fighting Israel, which they considered is their sworn enemy, an enemy whose existence they never recognized. The Arab world has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list. The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people.
These dictators’ atrocities against their own people are far worse than all the full-scale Arab-Israeli wars.
In the past, we have talked about why some Israeli soldiers attack and mistreat Palestinians. Also, we saw Israeli planes and tanks attack various Arab countries. But, do these attacks match the current atrocities being committed by some Arab states against their own people.
The Arabs' real enemy is not Israel. But unfortunately, the Arab spring has just replaced secular dictators with Islamic dictators (a point I'm not sure the author noticed). So long as the Arab world is ruled by Islamic dictators, it won't reconcile itself to Israel and it will continue to destroy itself from within.
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
