Delusional BGU professor thinks Hamas is 'moderate'
Nimrod Hurvitz from Ben Gurion University tries to convince us that
Hamas is becoming 'moderate.' Along with internal Palestinian changes, Hamas is also revaluating the nature of its struggle against Israel. Hamas spokesman Tahir al-Nono has stated that the use of violence against Israel is not their preferred policy. A similar comment was made by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, who noted that Hamas will focus on popular resistance, and strive for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Both of them added the proviso that Hamas still reserves the right to use violence in self-defense.
Hurvitz obviously wasn't talking to
Mahmoud al-Zahar, who unlike Meshaal actually lives in Gaza.
"Popular resistance is inappropriate for the Gaza Strip," al-Zahar said. "Against whom exactly would be rally? Such resistance would be fitting if Gaza was occupied." However, he claimed that all forms of resistance – including the armed kind – are appropriate for the West Bank, as it is "still under occupation."
Hurvitz goes on to argue that Hamas is reorienting itself away from the support of Iran, Syria and Hezbullah. That is true with respect to Syria, but given that Ismail Haniyeh plans to visit Iran this week, Hurvitz seems to be incorrect with respect to Iran. His ready dismissal of Hezbullah also seems quite unrealistic.
The Shiite axis, which has supported Hamas up until a few weeks ago and is made up of Iran, Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon, is disintegrating. Syria's despotic regime, which has hosted Hamas in Damascus for several years, is being brought down by mass demonstrations. Iran is in dire economic and diplomatic straits, and Hizballah is disoriented. The alliance has run aground and Hamas leaders have decided to jump ship.
I wonder if anyone in Lebanon would agree with the description of Hezbullah as 'disoriented.' If anything, Hezbullah is amassing more weapons as Iran transfers them from its Syrian client to its Lebanese one.
Hurvitz then argues that Hamas is reorienting itself toward 'moderate' Sunni states like Egypt and Tunisia - both of which have elected Islamists to power as the first move of their 'democracies.' Undaunted, Hurvitz claims that means that Egypt and Tunisia's Islamist governments both want to live in peace with Israel.
Lastly, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nahda have stated explicitly that they are interested in good relations with the West. What is more, the Muslim Brotherhood have declared that they respect Egypt's past international agreements. This means living alongside Israel in peace.
Except that the Muslim Brotherhood has said
exactly the opposite when it comes to Israel.
The Muslim Brotherhood "did not sign the peace accords," Rashad al-Bayoumi told the London-based newspaper. "We are allowed to ask the people or the elected parliament to express their opinion on the treaty, and (to find out) whether it compromised the people's freedom and sovereignty.
"We will take the proper legal steps in dealing with the peace deal," he added. "To me, it isn't binding at all. The people will express their opinion on the matter."
While the Brotherhood intends to temporarily honor Egypt's international pacts, al-Bayoumi told noted, "each side has the right to reexamine the treaty."
...
He stressed that under no circumstances will the Brotherhood recognize the State of Israel.
I don't know what Hurvitz means by Egypt 'respecting' its agreements, but it sure seems that when it comes to Israel, the opposite is true.
So where is Israel in all this? You knew that was coming. After all, Hurvitz is a professor at what may be the most anti-Israel university in Israel (okay, admittedly, there is lots of competition for that title).
But whereas Hamas is signaling change, Israel's leadership is recalcitrant. In reaction to the development in the relations between the Hamas and Fatah, Israel's prime minister, Netanyahu, has repeated his refusal to speak with Fatah if they unite with Hamas. It is unfortunate that while Israel's harshest enemy is scaling down violence and preparing itself for an historical shift, Israel's leaders are rehashing their old slogans. This is not the time to discard diplomatic opportunities. Rather, it is time to put such developments to the test and check if they can transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yes, it's all Israel's fault because we won't negotiate with a terror organization that doesn't want to talk to us and doesn't accept our 'right to exist' in any place and under any circumstances.
In Israel, this passes for 'academic scholarship.' Keep that in mind the next time that BGU comes calling for money.
Labels: Ben Gurion University, Hamas, moonbats
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Tuesday, December 13.
1) Invention
Newt Gingrich's comment about the Palestinians being an invented people has been much discussed. (See memeorandum for more.)
Barry Rubin writes:
Yet again I don’t see this point as very significant. What’s important is whether a large portion of the people in question believe that they are a people. Moreover, the same “invented” charge has been made against the Jewish people by Stalin and of course by Arab and Islamist propaganda.
The fact that today, a Palestinian people does exist doesn’t give the Palestinians a right to invent history, of course. ABC News didn’t point out that they regularly claim a history of two thousand years or more. And Golda Meir was pointing to the fact that the dominant politics of the Palestinian movement certainly as late as 1945 was a pan-Arab nationalist one. If the “invention” of a Palestinian (Arab, Muslim) people is relatively recent, though, that does imply that they don’t have a claim to everything between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. And that’s what’s important.
Daniel Pipes adds:
Everyone from the PLO to a Mitt Romney spokesman jumped on Gingrich for this assertion, but he happens to be absolutely correct: no Arabic-speaking Muslims identified themselves as "Palestinian" until 1920, when, in rapid order this appellation and identity was adopted by the Muslim Arabs living in the British mandate of Palestine.
At the New Yorker, David Remick attacked Gingrich and made this observation:
It should also go without saying that radical and bigoted polemicists on the other side of the Arab-Israeli dispute have their own pseudo-scholarship—their own numbing, often anti-Semitic, tracts—which make the case that Israel, and the Jewish people, are alien and have no claim on the land.
Those "radical and bigoted polemicists on the other side" represent the mainstream view of Fatah, the supposed moderate faction of the Palestinian Authority. Article 20 of the PLO's charter states:
The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.
One may claim that the Palestinians rewrote their charter, but that doesn't change the fact that this is still a belief held by many in Fatah. Palestinian Media Watch quotes from a recent article by the PA's ambassador to India:
"The demands of this enemy [Israel] are strange and amazing demands, unique in the history of conflicts... They [Israelis] are not satisfied with Palestinian recognition that is a function of their state and its existence, but want recognition of the eternal right of Israel to exist. Possibly their nature will bring them to ask for compensation for the years that have passed without their state's existence, during the time it had the right to exist upon our skulls... They have a common mistake, or misconception by which they fool themselves, assuming that Fatah accepts them and recognizes the right of their state to exist, and that it is Hamas alone that loathes them and does not recognize the right of this state to exist. They ignore the fact that this state, based on a fabricated [Zionist] enterprise, never had any shred of a right to exist... Hamas, Fatah and the others are not waging war against Israel right now for reasons related to balance of power. There are no two Palestinians who disagree over the fact that Israel exists, and recognition of it is restating the obvious, but recognition of its right to exist is something else, different from recognition of its [physical] existence."
And this of course the premise behind Mahmoud Abbas's refusal to accept a Jewish state.
"They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state," Abbas said in a meeting with some 200 senior representatives of the Palestinian community in the US, shortly before taking the podium and delivering a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
Remick claims "some people ... cannot accept, or even deal rationally with, the claims of Palestinians." I wish for once he and others like him would acknowledge that there are those who cannot deal rationally with the claims of Israel, and that includes the mainstream Palestinian political leadership.
Barry Rubin's argument about inventing history is also relevant here. Palestinians claim that they've already compromised and need not do more.
On November 15, 1988, the Palestinian National Council, then led by late President Yasser Arafat, declared the independence of the State of Palestine within the 1967 borders. This was the historic Palestinian compromise: we accepted that our state would exist on only 22 percent of our historic homeland. Israel responded by colonizing more of our land and entrenching its control over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
Critics of Israel like Remick, accept this at face value and demand that Israel meet the Palestinian demands. According to these critics any Jew in the 22% of "historic" Palestine is a "settler" who has no right to be there. In other words, Remick, effectively accepts the premises of the "radical and bigoted polemicists" that he criticizes.
This, of course, encourages ever more Palestinian resistance to making peace.
2) Anti - Israelism
Asaf Romirowsky on Israeli academics who cannot deal rationally with Israel:
In its response, the BGU administration claimed that the department was structured to differ from traditional political science departments by offering a multidisciplinary perspective. Unfortunately, according to Israel Academia Monitor analysis, the department failed to execute this policy as illustrated by the roster of tenured and tenure- track faculty, which shows that a majority of professors specialize in various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict with an emphasis on what is termed the subjugation and mistreatment of the Palestinian and Arab- Israeli population. This peculiar reading of a multidisciplinary approach stems from the political activism of neo-Marxist faculty members who have coopted similarly minded scholars.
This is one issue that few people focus on. Israel's critics aren't simply critics. They condemn Israel not seek its betterment.
3) Sargent at arms
Greg Sargent notes that Two top think tanks may cut ties with former AIPAC spox for calling critics `anti-Semitic’. ( I have no idea that these two think tanks are top. I've never heard of one of them. But the story's much better if it's spun that way.)
Two top think tanks in Washington are mulling whether to sever ties with a controversial former AIPAC spokesman after it emerged that he was encouraging conservative writers to echo charges that critics of Israel are guilty of anti-Semitism, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
The fate of the former AIPAC spokesman, Josh Block, will be a big deal to people in left-leaning foreign policy circles in Washington. For them, the question of whether the think tanks will remain affiliated with Block will be seen as a referendum on the larger issue of whether demeaning Israel critics as anti-Semitic will be considered acceptable discourse among foreign policy experts.
Block stirred a lot of discussion and anger among foreign policy types when Salon reported last week that he was shopping “opposition research” on bloggers critical of Israel to friendly neoconservative journalists. Salon said that Block threw around accusation of anti-Semitism on a friendly listserv, calling on others to “echo” and “amplify” his efforts to “attack the bad guys.” The Salon story came after Block accused writers at the left-leaning Center for American Progress of writing “borderline anti-semitic stuff.”
What's odd is that Alana Goodman observes that the Center for American Progress (CAP) has "scrubbed" its website of references to "Israel firstsers." In other words, CAP effectively acknowledged the correctness of Block's charges. (Sargent, not known for his candor, didn't mention the "Israel first" terminology until he posted an update noting that one of the bloggers charged by Block had pleaded ignorance.)
As I noted above Israel's critics often go a lot further than simply criticizing Israel; they condemn it and question its legitimacy. For Sargent there's nothing wrong with that. He even notes at the end of his original post:
It also sheds light on how intense the battle over what it means to be “pro Israel” has become, now that left leaning groups are mounting a serious challenge to the reigning and long unchallenged Washington consensus about what that term means.
Sargent has been here before, claiming that it is really Israel's critics who are pro-Israel. But after 18 years of peace negotiations during which Israel has made significant material concessions and taken substantial risks, only to get 3 terror wars and continued assaults on its legitimacy in return, it's the critics who insist that Israel is fundamentally at fault for the failure of the peace process who have to show that they really have Israel's best interests at heart.
Labels: AIPAC, anti-Israel obsession, Ben Gurion University, Josh Block, Middle East Media Sampler, Newt Gingrich, Palestinian people, progressives, Soccer Dad
COMPUTERIZED SYSTEM TO PREVENT SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME (SIDS) DEVELOPED BY BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV STUDENTS
I received the following press release via email:
BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, July 13, 2011 – A new system using video and computer software to monitor a baby that could be used to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), as well as for telemedicine applications, has been developed by two students at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).
The new system called “BabyBeat” was developed by students in the BGU Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. It uses computer algorithms to convert video footage to pulses that represent a baby’s heartbeat and skin tone. In the event that the system detects an abnormal heartbeat, an alarm sounds to awaken the baby, change its breathing pattern and alert the parents.
SIDS is the unexpected, sudden death of a child under age one in which an autopsy does not show an explainable cause of death. No one knows what causes SIDS, but researchers have theorized that a dramatic drop in heart rate occurs just before death. Thousands of babies die from this phenomenon each year in the United States.
Tomer Apel and Anava Finesilver developed the program as part of their final research project. While still early in the development process, the software program will work with a basic video camera and home computer, which minimizes cost.
“Heart pulse affects the skin tone,” Tomer Apel explains. “This is such a minor change that it’s not visible to the human eye, but it’s still there. We have developed algorithms to interpret the discoloration recorded by the camera and translate them into pulses. It’s widely assumed that baby’s pulses slow down before SIDS, and this system could help prevent this.”
After further testing, if BabyBeat continues to perform as expected, the students will seek to commercially produce and market the innovation.
The system has other potential applications. It can monitor sleeping babies at daycare, as well as patients online in real time, providing for quality “telemedicare” when needed.
“BGU students were once referred to as ‘Israel’s oil wells that don’t run dry’ by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Well, these innovative students may ultimately have a solution to saving precious lives and alleviating parents’ angst about their child succumbing to this mysterious infant killer,” says Doron Krakow, executive vice president of American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “It fills me with pride to support their efforts.”
Those who wish to boycott Israel are asked not to use this system for their children.
Labels: BDS, Ben Gurion University, Israeli high tech, SIDS
Your tax shekels and dollar donations at work at Ben Gurion University
You all remember Ben Gurion University where they can't find the traitors to whom your donations and our tax shekels are going. Now, there's a new one.
Meet 'Chemistry Professor' Eyal Nir. Mr. Nir has called for '
breaking the necks' of Right wing Israelis.
For months the cabbagehead president of Ben Gurion University, Rivka Carmi, has been telling everyone and anyone willing to listen that there are no tenured traitors at all at her university besides Neve Gordon (SHE calls him a traitor!). She insists she is unaware of any problem at her university besides Gordon. She has never heard of the scores of other anti-Israel extremists on the faculty of her university. She does not know about any of the BGU faculty cheering on Hamas terror, cheering on the Qassam rockets fired into the Negev by the terrorists, denouncing Israel as a fascist apartheid regime, nor about the many BGU faculty supporting the “BDS” (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement of economic aggression against Israel. She does not know about BGU faculty members who have called for Israel to be annihilated. She does not know about BGU faculty members who penalize and harass students when they fail to toe the anti-Israel ideological mark of their professors. She does not know about entire departments at BGU in which non-leftists and Zionists may not teach. She does not know about indoctrination courses, where the entire course consists of anti-Israel propaganda. She cannot find any one-sided anti-Israel propaganda on campus either. She does not know about BGU faculty who have gotten hired and promoted and tenured on the basis of churning out anti-Israel hate propaganda. There are no problems at all at BGU, insists Madame Cabbagehead, other than Little Neve.
Well, let us introduce you to Dr. Eyal Nir, who teaches chemistry at BGU, at least when he is not busy as an activist in the HADASH Stalinist Party and other anti-Israel groups. Over the weekend, the YNET news web site, run by Israel’s largest daily Yediot Ahronot, reported that Nir issued a call for murdering Israelis who fail to support his far-leftist communist political positions. Specifically, he called for the breaking of the necks of Israelis who march with Israeli flags and support the right of Jews to live in neighborhoods of East Jerusalem where Stalinists like Nir think that Jews do not belong.
Read it all.
And think about whom you're supporting when you donate money to Ben Gurion University.
Labels: Ben Gurion University, Eyal Nir, Israel's suicidal Left, radical Left, Rivka Carmi
For academics, they are awfully dumb
You will recall that as of April 1, the University of Johannesburg is cutting its ties to Ben Gurion University, thereby
endangering South Africa's water supply. Well get a load of
this statement issued by the South Africans on Friday.
In a statement on Friday, Prof. Ihron Rensburg, vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Johannesburg (UJ) said “I need to make this quite clear. UJ is not part of an academic boycott of Israel. UJ holds the view that given the current situation in the Middle East the formal institutional agreement between UJ and BGU is an insurmountable obstacle to either institution facilitating a wider dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian academics.”
The statement continued, “it has never been UJ’s intention to sever all ties with BGU, although it may have been the intention of some UJ staff members.
Rather, the UJ Senate voted to bring an end to the formal institutional agreement between the two universities which at this particular time, in the Senate’s view, creates an obstacle to cooperation between academics in Israel and Palestine.”
Huh? Who says academics can't behave like morons?
Labels: academic boycott, BDS, Ben Gurion University, University of Johannesburg
University of Johannesburg cuts ties to Israel
As of April 1, the University of Johannesburg is officially
joining the BDS movement by ending its relationship with Ben Gurion University (Hat Tip:
Russel H).
But the fierce moral urgency of supporting the 'Palestinians' could yet leave South Africa without drinking water. Ben-Gurion University however had been working with UJ on finding a method to clean algae that has infested South Africa's drinking water.
The severing of ties meant the project was likely to come an end, leaving UJ without access to BGU's extensive water expertise.
"There has been quite a lot of scare mongering that if the partnership breaks, South Africa will be confined to bad water quality," Habib said.
"The quality of our water is suffering because we are not spending the type of money on cleaning water that we need to, and not employing skill sets required.
"We can deal with acid rain water in the region if we are prepared to spend money."
...
Habib said individual professors from UJ would be allowed to keep up existing partnerships with BGU.
"That is something for individual academics to determine, but it depends on whether BGU allows this or not."
UJ's severing of ties with came amidst talk of steep water tariff increases and a warning South Africa could run out of water within the next ten years if nothing was done to supplement water resources.
The Environment and Conservation Association has said that by 2015, 80% of South Africa's fresh water would be so badly polluted that no purification process in the country would make it fit for consumption.
The impending disaster that would be created by acid mine drainage, as well as by sewerage and industrial pollution, had on many occasions been brought to the government's attention, with no positive results, the association said.
Someone please tell me that the academics here will at least return the favor and let them drink sea water. Maybe they can even import it from Gaza. Yasser Arafat tried it and said it was pretty good.
Heh.
Labels: Ben Gurion University, drinking water, sea water, University of Johannesburg
Now it's the 'academics'
150 Israeli 'academics' have signed a petition calling for the
boycott of Israel's newest university because it is located in Ariel.
The petition, initiated by Professor Nir Gov of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Chemical Physics, states that the Ariel was established on occupied land and is within proximity to Palestinians forced to live in harsh conditions and lacking basic human rights.
In addition, the petition states that the settlement is a key factor preventing Israelis from living in peace with its neighbors. Therefore, signatories expressed refusal to engage in any academic activity at the center in Ariel.
Professor Ron Naaman of the Weizmann Institute, a signatory of the petition, said during an interview Sunday with Israel Radio that the academic activities carried out in the West Bank hurt the State of Israel.
The goal of the protest, Naaman claimed, was to differentiate between academics at the Ariel center and the academics in the rest of Israel. This, Naaman concluded, would help combat the de-legitimization of Israeli academia in the rest of the world.
Other academic factions in Israel have come out with statements discouraging such protest.
Professor Rivka Carmi, chair of the Heads of University Committee, has urged fellow faculty members to oppose the boycotts, claiming that such protests do not represent any academic institutions in Israel, and that the boycotts are irrelevant to other academic boycotts taking place around the world.
Indeed, they are. But it's rather curious to hear Carmi, the Dean of Ben Gurion University, say so.
I wonder if she
learned anything from what happened on her own campus last year.
Labels: Ariel University, Ben Gurion University, boycott divest sanction, Rivka Carmi
Nimrod Hurvitz from Ben Gurion University tries to convince us that Hamas is becoming 'moderate.' 
