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.
There's a war zone in Jerusalem and it can and should make a lot of you uncomfortable. It's Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus - the one that includes the overseas program.
Tom Nisani, a political science student, used the term "war zone" to describe the campus and told Arutz Sheva
that the situation has become an “impossible” one: “Since the academic
year began,” he said, “we have been witnessing repeated attacks near the
dormitories. It can be harassment of the girls or worse – the throwing
of firebombs into the university grounds. Only last week, a woman was
injured here as she drove on the university's perimeter road. Her car is
simply full of holes.”
The throwers of rocks and firebombs come from Issawiya, Nisani
confirmed. “Just two weeks ago, they arrested a terror cell there, which
had attacked campus buildings and cars. I regret to say that even the
Hadassah Hospital, which serves Arabs, is being targeted with rocks. We
are holding evening patrols because of the phenomenon of harassment, but
for now, my recommendation is that people avoid bringing their cars to
the campus, because they will either be broken into, or attacked with
rocks.”
The Arabs of Issawiya have become fearless, said Nisani. “Every once
in a while, a few youths come out with boulders and rocks, or they break
into cars in broad daylight. They molest girls, stopping their cars
next to them and honking their horns. The girls do not feel safe to walk
here in the evening. The university invests in security – there are
cameras and the police are involved. But we think there needs to be
tougher enforcement, and an uncompromising war.
“At the same time, we are conducting patrols with walkie-talkies in
the evenings, and we even have some Arab volunteers, who understand that
things cannot go on like this.”
From 1949-67, Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus was an Israeli enclave across the 'green line.'
I'm sure that if we just gave it to the Arabs, they would stop there and not terrorize us anymore. /sarc
An Egyptian activist blogger who endured 10 months of imprisonment
and abuse by the country's military is taking his message of peace to
Israel and the West Bank this weekend in an effort to spur peace in the
region.
"After years of calling for peace, I have realized that practicing peace is more important than talking," Maikel Nabil, 27, wrote of his trip.
"My visit is a message from the Egyptian peace community that we have
had enough violence and confrontation and we want this to end. We want
to live together as human beings without violence, racism or walls."
Nabil was arrested in
March 2011, two months after pro-democracy protests erupted in Egypt and
weeks after a military regime took over the country.
After writing about
alleged army violence against protesters during the uprising, Nabil was
arrested and charged with insulting the military and spreading false
information.
He was the first prisoner
of conscience in post-revolutionary Egypt. His imprisonment sparked an
outcry from prominent rights groups such as Amnesty International and
Reporters without Borders.
The military junta
pardoned him in January along with nearly 2,000 other prisoners as a way
to appease protesters. Nabil later described being kept in solitary
confinement, witnessing the torture of many prisoners, being drugged and
going on a hunger strike.
The trip to Israel and
the West Bank -- his first -- is being organized by the Geneva-based
advocacy group U.N. Watch. The group's executive director, Hillel Neuer,
called Nabil a role model and "a true hero who inspires hope around the
world." U.N. Watch is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.
Nabil is scheduled to
speak at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, The World Union of Jewish
Students and Tel Aviv University. He also has plans to visit Ramallah in
the West Bank.
But a funny thing happened when Nabil tried to speak at taxpayer-funded Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Sunday. Nabil was shouted down by Arab students. How open-minded and tolerant!
Egyptian blogger, Maikel Nabil Sanad, was shouted down today during his
visit to Israel… by Arab students studying at Hebrew University. The
protesters were screaming, “Shame on you”.
...
Sanad, born into an Christian Copt family, is a liberal secularist
and doesn’t believe that Egyptians have had the opportunity to hold
free elections, since the atmosphere created by the
Muslim Brotherhood does not permit an environment where the actual will
of the Egyptian people can be expressed.
He is very fearful about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and
compares what they’re going to do, to what Hamas did in Gaza,
particularly regarding the oppression of women.
Oh, and he also admires and supports Israel , which would explain the shout-down.
But what would explain the Arab (“Palestinian”) protesters’
hypocrisy? After all, they’re the ones studying at the Hebrew
University.
Yes, there are Arabs at Hebrew U. According to the one daughter who studied there, they have a type of affirmative action that might even make the American Left cringe: Not only are they admitted to the university via affirmative action because they are Arabs, they also have their grades raised by affirmative action because they are Arabs. Think about that the next time an Arab doctor wants to treat you.
Two Israeli universities - Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University - were ranked in the top 100 in the world in an annual ranking issued by The Times Higher Education (THE) World Top Universities by Reputation 2012. THE issues the survey annually.
The Times Higher Education (THE) World Top Universities by Reputation 2012 ranked the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 61-70 range and Tel Aviv University in the 81-90 range.
Ankara, Turkey's Middle East Technical University was the only other university in the Middle East to make the list, coming in at the 91-100 range.
This wasn't the first time that Israeli universities were recognized by the publication. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem was ranked the 121st best university in the world and Tel Aviv University the 166th in the publication's World University Rankings 2011-2012. On the same list, the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and Bar-Ilan University were ranked in the 201-225 range and 301-350 range respectively.
According to the weekly, the rankings of universities are determined according to the "overall measure of their esteem that combines date on their reputation for research and teaching."
I'm amazed that the Technion is not higher up, but it's nice to beat Turkey. Heh.
Video: An awesome Israeli technology that helps the world
At the President's conference, Hebrew University introduced a 'virtual cane' for blind people (Hebrew U had a large exhibition of their technologies, which I did not get to see as much as I would have liked). I'm going to show you a videotape and then we will see a press release about it.
Let's go to the videotape.
Yissum Research Development Company Ltd., the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, presented today at the Israeli Presidential Conference, a virtual cane that will significantly improve the orientation and mobility of sight-impaired people. This new device can assist blind people in estimating the distance and height of various obstacles. The invention was registered as a patent by Yissum, which is now seeking strategic partners for further development.
Currently there are almost 200 million visually impaired people globally, 40 million of which are legally blind, and most face multiple difficulties in orientation and navigation. One of the main challenges facing blind people is the ability to assess the height of various obstacles as well as to identify far away objects in their surroundings. The white cane, the current solution, offers only a very partial solution to these challenges.
Dr. Amir Amedi from the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC) and the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his team recently developed a device to help in spatial navigation for the blind. The invention, which functions as a virtual flashlight, can replace or augment the classic white cane. The virtual cane emits a focused beam towards surrounding objects, and transmits the information to the user via a gentle vibration, similar to a cell phone vibration. The cane incorporates several sensors that estimate the distance between the user and the object it is pointed at. This allows the blind person to assess the height and distance of various objects, reconstruct an accurate image of the surroundings and navigate safely. The virtual cane is extremely small, easy to carry, accurate, can function for up to 12 hours and is easy to charge. Using the device is highly intuitive and can be learnt within a few minutes.
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
