"Students for Justice in Palestine" plays victim and Pallywood...
Third, ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ have become tied up with the performance of political identity in the West in a most dangerous way. ‘The Palestinians’ are a stage on which the BDS activists act out their identity. To make that possible, ‘The Palestinians’ must be reduced to pure victims of the evil Nazi-Israelis. For only those kind of Palestinians can enable feelings of moral superiority, purity, quest, meaning, even transcendence of sorts. Palestinians being starved by Assad hold no interest. Palestinians being thrown from rooftops by Hamas members hold no interest. When Salam Fayyad is building up the Palestinian Nation the BDS activists just yawn, or denounce him as a collaborator. Only as agency-less pure victims can the Palestinians play their allotted role as a screen onto which the individual projects his or her identity of the righteous activist. It is the Palestinians misfortune that they have become this.[caption id="attachment_80976" align="alignnone" width="488"]
(Professor Alan Johnson being shouted down at NUIG-Galway)[/caption]
As I previously reported, NUIG-Galway has promised an investigation and condemned the conduct.
In my follow-up, however, NUIG-Galway declined to provide details or even to commit to making the result public, although it did clarify its prior statement by adding that the investigation will include violations of the student code, as follows (in part):
“You’re f-ing Zionist, f-ing pricks, get the f–k off our campus”Language warning ) We reached out to the President of NUI Galway for comment, and received an email back from NUI Galway press and information officer Tomás Ó Síocháin, with the following statement on behalf of the university:
NUI Galway has over 110 societies and 50 clubs on campus, reflecting the diverse interests of students and staff. The University has a pluralist ethos and all societies have the freedom to both express and communicate those views to students and staff. They must, however, act within the law and in accordance with the University’s code of conduct. The behaviour portrayed is unacceptable and has no place at any forum of discussion or debate. This matter will be investigated immediately. NUI Galway has a long and proud tradition of welcoming visitors and guests to the University’s campus, to both engage in and observe robust debate. The University will take steps to ensure that this remains the case and that all speakers are given the dignity and respect they deserve.The investigation presumably will not be limited to Loughnane, but also the students behind him banging and shouting in support as he ordered Prof. Johnson to "get the f-k off our campus".
More open and honest than faculty supporting American Studies Association boycott of Israel, but there's no real difference....
Judith Butler helped start an academic boycott war that now is turning against her....
The agenda was stacked with anti-Israel professors. The lunchtime program explicitly was oriented toward organizing anti-Israeli groups on campus, including an appearance by someone from Students for Justice in Palestine.
The conference was controversial not just because of the topic, but the one-sided stacking of the deck by an academic department and the exclusion of non-approved attendees. The event was not even open to all NYU students.
A group of NYU students wrote a letter of protest to NYU's President, which reads in part:
From the beginning, this event has been shrouded in secrecy; Professor Lisa Duggan, the event’s sponsor (in a post that has now been removed) cautioned, “PLEASE DO NOT post or circulate the flyer. We are trying to avoid press, protestors and public attention.”
Diagnosis The 1930s Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson asked "Is there another People on Earth so emotionally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape, robbery committed by their enemies fill their hearts with admiration and awe?" This is Jew Flu - the virus of Jewish Anti-Semitism, and its Jewish Anti- and Post-Zionist mutations, afflicting a small but inordinately loud minority of Hebrews. Its modern symptoms are a rejection of Israel's identity as a Jewish state and a dismissal of its right to defend itself militarily, while embracing the goals of its nihilistic Arab enemies. Those infected with the virus wildly inflate Israeli sins real or imagined, while excusing or rationalizing Palestinian anti-semitism and outrages against Jews. Those afflicted with Jew Flu often view the notion of Peoplehood as an artifice, which implies a rejection of Jewish national self-determination and acceptance of the 90-year-old Palestinian Arab contention that Jews are not a nation but merely members of a religion, and as such don?t merit a national home of their own.Silber then goes on to describe some historical, sociological and psychological research on the subject, which I have no way of evaluating on medical grounds, but was interesting to read. Regardless of cause, here's his conclusion:
“This weekend’s American Studies Program Annual Conference is an annual academic conference that is organized by graduate students in NYU’s American Studies Program and designed for faculty and students in this and related disciplines,” said Philip Lentz, the university’s director of public affairs. “Given the purpose of the conference and space considerations, it is not open to the general public or the press.”Elder of Ziyon points out:
My talk at Ithaca College in opposition to the academic boycott of Israel...
Tears and screams from anti-Israel BDS movement after stunning defeat....
UF & UMinnesota both passed resolutions expanding ties with Israel & the Bruins defeated divestment. It's a good week @AviMayer @HenMazzig
— Avia Gridi (@AviaGridi) February 26, 2014
Students hug and walk out somberly from Ackerman Grand Ballroom. #UCLAdivest #USAC
— Amanda Schallert (@amandaschallert) February 26, 2014
An important crack in the ASA academic boycott facade....
The Apartheid accusation is false at every level, and was a deliberate propaganda strategy devised at the anti-Semitic Durban NGO conference in 2001.
Here's what the late Congressman Tom Lantos observed at that Durban conference (emphasis added):
Another ring in the Durban circus was the NGO forum, taking place just outside the conference center. Although the NGO proceedings were intended to provide a platform for the wide range of civil society groups interested in the conference’s conciliatory mission, the forum quickly became stacked with Palestinian and fundamentalist Arab groups. Each day, these groups organized anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic rallies around the meetings, attracting thousands. One flyer which was widely distributed showed a photograph of Hitler and the question “What if I had won?” The answer: “There would be NO Israel…” At a press conference held by Jewish NGO’s to discuss their concerns with the direction the conference was taking, an accredited NGO, the Arab Lawyers Union, distributed a booklet filled with anti-Semitic caricatures frighteningly like those seen in the Nazi hate literature printed in the 1930s. Jewish leaders and I who were in Durban were shocked at this blatant display of anti-Semitism. For me, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust first hand, this was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period. Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the official NGO document that was later adopted by a majority of the 3,000 NGOs in the forum branded Israel a “racist apartheid state” guilty of “genocide” and called for an end to its “racist crimes” against Palestinians…."Israel Apartheid Week" as part of the BDS movement is the direct by-product of the Durban anti-Jewish hatred -- a history few of its participants probably realize. In reality, Israel is nothing like South Africa under Apartheid.
Also don't panic about Israel's economic isolation, as pointed out by Yoram Ettinger (emphasis in original):
1. A record of 5.3 million tourists in Israel in 2013.
2. A record of $83.2BN foreign exchange reserves reflects the strength of Israel's Shekel, at a time when the currencies of the emerging markets plummet.
3. A record of $2.3BN invested in 662 Israeli startups in 2013 (21% above 2012), according to KPMG and IVC (Globes, January 23, 2014).
