Quote of Note: PLO Leader Zahir Muhsein

Michael L.

{Cross-Posted at Jews Down Under.}

Zahir Muhsein told the following to the Dutch newspaper Trouw in a 1977 interview:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

The fact of the matter is that "Palestinian" is neither an ethnicity, nor a nationality.  Palestine was never an Arab-Muslim country, but merely a region within the greater Ottoman Empire.

More and more I am convinced that the biggest mistake that Israel ever made was in acknowledging the "Palestinians" as a separate and distinct people.  They aren't.  They are a small part of the much larger Arab-Muslim nation that controls well over 99 percent of the Middle East, the landmass that they conquered following the death of Muhammad in the 7th century.

The Arab conquerors of that part of the world placed Christians and Jews into positions of submission as "protected" peoples and kept us that way from the 7th until the 20th centuries.  The alleged emergence of a brand-spanking new people, the so-called "Palestinians," came about not out of any genuine national aspirations, but in order to present a competing claim to the 3,500 year old historical Jewish homeland.  This emergence of the so-called "Palestinians" was not an organic process, but derived from conscious political decisions from PLO and Soviet leadership.

According to Mr. Muhsein, "the Palestinian people does not exist."

Who are we to argue?

Nonetheless, if the very point of "Palestinian" people-hood was something other then trying to rob the Jewish people of our homeland after persecuting us for 13 centuries, I would be more than happy to welcome them into the greater family of nations.  However, since the "Palestinians" only emerged as a group for the purpose of doing the Jewish people terrible harm, within living memory of the Holocaust, I see no reason whatsoever in acknowledging them as a distinct ethnicity or nation, particularly given the fact that they are not a distinct ethnicity or nation.  Nations do not come into existence for the sole purpose of destroying other nations and even if they sometimes did, those whom they seek to destroy are under no moral or ethical obligation to assist them by recognizing them.

Israel should cease undermining its own well-being by dealing with these people.  Mahmoud Abbas should be entirely persona non grata, as should the PLO, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas, on the other hand, should be destroyed by any means necessary.

We have absolutely got to awaken to the fact that there will be no negotiated conclusion of hostilities for the very simple reason that this is not what the "Palestinians" want.  If they had wanted peace with a state of their own they could have had one many decades ago, but they refused every single offer since 1937.  This can only mean that statehood in peace next to Israel is not the goal.

The goal, of course, is the elimination of the State of Israel and returning the Jews to their traditional role as an abused minority under Arab-Muslim domination.

That's the goal and we need to stop pretending otherwise.

On the Passing of a Former Friend and Fellow Blogger

Michael L.

Ria D. of FireFlyDreaming passed away on December 18 according to reports on that website.

Despite our disagreements, there is no question but that Ria was a heartfelt woman who very much wanted to see a better world and who genuinely cared about humanity.

I have no doubt but that she is in a cool place.

How the Zionist-Left Prolongs the Arab-Israel Conflict

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

The Zionist-Left is responsible, at least in part, for prolonging the long Arab war against the Jews of the Middle East.  It is also responsible, at least in part, for encouraging the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS) and for encouraging rising European hostility toward the Jewish state, if not toward Jews, more generally.

This is, of course, not their intention and many would scoff at the very notion without giving it any actual consideration.  Nonetheless, the Zionist-Left, through refusing to see past the Oslo Delusion, through giving credence to hysterical, toxic, and largely false Arab claims of Jewish wrong-doing, and through demonizing Jews who choose to live within the Jewish heartland of Judaea and Samaria, have provided cover and encouragement to the enemies of the State of Israel, and thus the enemies of the Jewish people.

The Oslo Delusion:

The Zionist-Left, just like Jewish people as a whole, desperately want peace.  Given the fact that the Jews of the Middle East are a tiny minority surrounded by a much, much larger hostile Arab-Muslim majority, the conclusion of the Arab-Israel conflict is of greater Jewish concern than the concern of Israel's enemies.  It is because the Jewish Left is desirous of a peaceful conclusion of hostilities that they cannot bring themselves to accept not only the failure of the Oslo Accords but, more importantly, the implications of that failure.

To quote myself from an earlier piece:

The Oslo Delusion is the mistaken belief that if only Israel would jump through certain hoops then there would be peace between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. At the center of the Oslo Delusion is the notion that the Jews of the Middle East have oppressed the Arabs in their tiny part of the world and if only Jews would be nicer then Hamas would have no reason to shoot rockets at them and dictator Abbas might stop encouraging genocidal hatred toward Jews on Palestinian Authority television. 

Maintaining this delusion is at the heart of how and why the Zionist-Left prolongs the Arab-Israel conflict.

By demonstrating to the Arabs that large portions of the overall Jewish population throughout the world are willing to grovel at their feet, while offering them half of the Jewish capital of Jerusalem and almost the entirety of the ancient Jewish heartland it does not placate the Arab majority, but encourages it to demand more and to pour on additional pressures.  This is because no one respects weakness and the position of the Zionist-Left, viz-a-viz the conflict, is the very image of weakness.

Ironically, it is the Arabs, who allegedly come from a position of weakness, who speak in terms of confidence and strength.  For example, just recently the Palestinian-Arab ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, told a Lebanese newspaper:

"Even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [then-Palestinian] state are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.” He added that the new state would “absolutely not” issue Palestinian passports to refugees, lest they be understood to be citizens of Palestine. “When we have a state accepted as a member of the United Nations, this is not the end of the conflict. This is not a solution to the conflict. This is only a new framework that will change the rules of the game.”

This is confirmation from a high-level Palestinian-Arab official that the Arabs have no intention of ending the conflict until they achieve all-out victory.  That is what someone coming from a position of strength within a conflict talks like.  It is talk of victory.  The Jews, however, never speak of victory.  We speak of compromise and negotiations and the desire for peace, but that is not what the Arabs speak of.

By framing the Israeli-Jewish position in terms of desperation and weakness, the Jewish-Left encourages further aggression toward the State of Israel and further violence against its Jewish citizenry.

Arab Claims of Jewish Guilt:

While the weakness of the Jewish-Left encourages aggression from the hostile Arab-Muslim majority in that part of the world, it is only one way in which the Jewish-Left encourages that aggression.  The second way is through affirming Jewish guilt and thus bolstering the "Palestinian narrative" of total victim-hood.

This is what I have called the Palestinian colonization of the Jewish mind.

The Palestinian-Arabs constantly cry to the world that the Jews are devils and much of the world, including many Jews, started to buy this nonsense many years ago.  The Palestinian-Arabs, and their western anti-Zionist allies, tell the international community that Israel is a racist, imperialist, colonialist, apartheid, militarist, racist regime.  They claim that they are victims of a military occupation and it is because of that military occupation that they have every right to kill as many Jews as they can possibly get their hands on, even as their leadership claims that "Palestinians" are, hysterically enough, the descendants of Jesus who they bill as the first "Palestinian shaheed."

The Zionist-Left agrees with the first part of that equation, but not the second part.

That is, they agree that the "Palestinians" are living under a brutal military occupation, but do not agree that this gives them license to kill - nor, of course, do they agree that Jesus was a Palestinian, but that goes without saying.  The problem, of course, is if the local "indigenous" Arabs are living under military occupation, then why shouldn't they resist that occupation by any means necessary, including violence?  So long as Jewish leftists continue to speak of the Occupation - particularly with the Big O - then they affirm the rights of those allegedly occupied to fight against their own people.

This is the second way in which the Jewish-Left encourages bloodshed toward the Jewish people.  It is not their intention, but it is certainly their effect.

It should also be noted that by framing the conflict within what is essentially the "Palestinian narrative" they also wipe out thirteen centuries of Jewish history as second and third-class non-citizens under Arab-Muslim imperial rule in the Middle East.  Furthermore, by speaking of "Occupation" they inevitably frame the conflict as one between a powerful and brutal majority population, the Jews, versus a weak and pathetic minority population, the "Palestinians."  So, if you were a European who was basically ignorant of the conflict, not to mention a mujaheddin ready to kill for the cause, why would you not believe that the "Palestinians" are the innocent party while the Jews are the aggressors?

The Zionist-Left, which represents the majority of diaspora Jews, is telling the world that the Jews of the Middle East are essentially the aggressors and that the "Palestinians" are essentially the victims.  The problem is that from an historical perspective it is entirely false and from a contemporary perspective it eliminates the vast majority of forces arrayed against Israel.  From an historical perspective it fails to place Jewish efforts at self-defense, which is what the "Palestinians" call the "occupation," within many long centuries of Jewish abuse under the brutal system of dhimmitude.

If the Zionist-Left wishes to deflate the conflict then they need to stop speaking of it in terms that prolongs the conflict and gives Israel's enemies every reason to stay on the attack.

The Demonization of their Fellow Jews:

The lede in a recent Y-Net article by Elior Levy reads as follows:

As Israel announces plans to build 1,400 new settlement housing units, Palestinians petition US to halt move, 'save the peace process'

It has been obvious for years, now, ever since Obama demanded "total settlement freeze" as the price that Israel must pay for the privilege of speaking with the "Palestinian" dictator and his cronies, that they would use the fact that Jews build housing for themselves in Judaea as an excuse to avoid negotiations and a conclusion of hostilities.  This was a little gift given to the "Palestinians" by Barack Obama upon the opening of his first term.  Never mind that the long history of non-Jews telling Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live is entirely anti-Semitic.  It also affirmed to the "Palestinians" that their tactic of avoiding negotiations, and blaming that avoidance on the Israelis, is one that will receive backing from both the US and the EU.

If Barack Obama had affirmed the idea that Jews building housing for themselves on what he calls the "West Bank" is insufficient reason not to negotiate then the local Arabs would have much less traction on this issue.  Instead Obama negated the idea, thus giving Abbas all the excuse that he needs to end negotiations and blame Israel.  This will lead to a further embrace of BDS by the EU and universities around the world and it will lead to an increase in violence against Jews, particularly in Israel. It may even lead, as John Kerry threatened, to a Third Arab Race War (intifada) against the Jews in the Middle East.

One question to ask yourself, however, is just how is it that Barack Obama embraced the racist notion that Jews should not be allowed to live on, and thus build on, the traditional heartland of the Jewish people?  Did he just conjure that notion out of his own head?  I do not think so.  The reason that Obama could embrace this racist notion, and thus serve it up on a platter to dictator Abbas, is because his Zionist-Left friends and advisers falsely confirmed that the settlements represented an impediment to peace.

They do not.

Unless one believes that any future state of Palestine must be Judenrein then there is no reason why Jews should not be allowed to live and build there.  But the point is that Obama would not likely have embraced this racist notion if it was not presented to him as a reasonable demand upon Israel by so much of the American Jewish Left.  People like, for example, Alan Dershowitz, who says that he publicly opposed the settlements since 1973, primed the pump.  Dershowitz, and many Jews of his generation, can be forgiven for opposing Jewish township construction in Judaea and Samaria when the Oslo Peace Accords were still in full-swing, prior to the Second Race War against the Jewish people.  But after that race war it should have been clear to everyone that the local Arabs are not prepared to live in peace with the local Jews and therefore opposition to Jews building housing for themselves on Jewish land is simply unconscionable.

By refusing to truly acknowledge the failure of Oslo, and thus through maintaining the Oslo Delusion, the Zionist-Left helps prolong the conflict, encourages BDS and violence toward Jews.  It is long past time that they started to finally rethink old assumptions and until they do so they will continue to contribute to the ongoing war against the Jewish people in the Middle East.

An open letter to St. James' Church at Christmas

Michael L.

This has been going around and although I am not reprinting the whole piece it can be read in its entirety over at JDU.  Written by Michael Dickson, the Director for StandWithUs, Israel, here is the opening:

St. James’s Church, in Piccadilly, London, decided to celebrate Christmas by erecting a 26 foot replica of the wall section of the Israeli security barrier outside their church and project anti-Israel propaganda on it as part of their “Bethlehem Unwrapped” ‘festival’. 

Here is a letter I sent today to the pastoral and administrative staff of the church. 

You can see the extent, planning and money that went into this stunt on this clip.

Danny Ayalon Has Some Words

Michael L.



Ayalon is a member of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party which, in the minds of our more close-minded co-religionists, makes him a cross between Charles Manson and the friggin' devil.  Most "progressive Zionists" despise Ayalon, not to mention Lieberman, far more than they do, say, Hamas.  The degree of hatred that gets poured onto people such as Ayalon by "liberal" Jews is fairly astounding.

Yet, if you watch the video you will see that he speaks simple and irrefutable truths.  One of those truths is that "Palestinian" does not represent a national group anymore than does say, Saharan or Amazonian or, as I would add, Californian.

The Jewish people, it must be understood, are under no obligation to recognize an alleged national grouping that came into existence within living memory for the sole purpose of undermining Jewish liberation and freedom via the elimination of the Jewish state.  One of the biggest mistakes that Israel ever made was in recognizing "Palestinian" as a legitimate national designation.

It is not.

And how it is that we go along with this obvious fiction is beyond me.  The so-called "Palestinians" are Arabs, no different culturally from Syrians or Jordanians or Lebanese.  They eat the same food.  They share the same religion.  And they speak the same language, because they are the same people.

Arabs control well over 99 percent of the region that they conquered.  The only part that they do not control is Israel and that is why the social construction of the "Palestinian" people emerged in the second half of the twentieth-century; in order to challenge Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land.

The other thing that Ayalon mentions which I would like to highlight is the ridiculous notion that Jesus was "Palestinian."  This is absolutely laughable and it says something that Mahmoud Abbas feels no embarrassment in repeating this hysterical lie.  The reason that he feels no embarrassment is because he knows full well that the western leaders will not challenge him on this obvious fiction.

One question to ask yourselves is, why they will not?

I would suggest that the primary reason for western-left condescension toward the Palestinian-Arabs is flat-out racism.  And make no mistake, this is primarily a left-wing fault, not a right-wing fault.  The political right is far, far less likely to pat them on the head like children and give them a cookie no matter what they say or do.

These may be unpleasant truths, but truths they are, nonetheless.

To Our Christian Friends:

Michael L.

Although I am most definitely not Christian, I have always had an appreciation for the Christmas holiday because the spirit of the holiday is both fun and humane.

Merry Christmas to everyone.

The War Goes On

Michael L.

The tidbit below was written by Shoshana Bryen and published at the Algemeiner:

In an interview with a Lebanese newspaper, the Palestinian Ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, said Palestinian refugees would not necessarily become citizens of any new Palestinian State. “They are Palestinians, that’s their identity. But … they are not automatically citizens. Even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [then-Palestinian] state are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.” He added that the new state would “absolutely not” issue Palestinian passports to refugees, lest they be understood to be citizens of Palestine. “When we have a state accepted as a member of the United Nations, this is not the end of the conflict. This is not a solution to the conflict. This is only a new framework that will change the rules of the game.”

In other words, we have a direct admission by a high-ranking Palestinian-Arab diplomat that the local Arab leadership absolutely refuses, even if given a state carved out of the Jewish ancestral home, to end the long Arab war against the Jews of the Middle East.

If that is the case, where is our motivation for making the painful sacrifices necessary to ushering in whatever little corrupt, terrorist statelet that the "Palestinians" allegedly want?

If Palestinian-Arab hatred for Jews is so never-ending and so entrenched within their culture and if they have no intention of coming to peace with the Jews, why should we make any concessions at all?

What is the point?  Land for peace might make some sense if the Arabs actually want peace, but that is not what they want.  Mr. Abdullah is telling us this in a very direct fashion.  This means that the Jews should have zero motivation for negotiating an Arab state on Jewish land.  It also means that Palestinian-Arab refugees, even those within any future state of "Palestine," will remain refugees without citizenship within their own country.

So, just who benefits from yet another Arab state in the Middle East?  The Jews obviously do not benefit by giving away our historical homeland and neither do the Palestinian-Arab refugees, who will not see the benefits of citizenship within such a state.

The Indigenous People

Michael L. 

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

The tidbit below was written by Jonathan Tobin and published in Commentary:

By attempting to portray the Palestinians as the “indigenous people” of the territory on which the State of Israel and the administered territories exist and the Jews as the colonial settlers, they are perpetrating the big lie of Palestinian history. Jews are not foreigners in Israel as Europeans were in Africa. They happen to be the indigenous people of their ancient homeland and efforts to deny this isn’t scholarship. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and those who would deny them the same rights accorded other peoples are practicing bias, not scholarship. As with Palestinian attempts to deny the Jewish connection with the country or with Jerusalem and ancient Jewish holy sites such as the Temple Mount or the Western Wall, attempts to cast the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one between foreign occupiers and natives is revisionist myth recast as left-wing politicized scholarship.

This is the kind of basic, fundamental statement that we need more of in pro-Jewish / pro-Israel advocacy.

What I have consistently argued is that if we ground our arguments within the Jewish history of the Middle East, we have a much better chance of bolstering those arguments to the rest of the world.  It is probably fair to say that many, if not most, westerners think of the local Arab population in Israel as the indigenous population.

They are not.

History tells us very clearly that the only extant people who can possibly be considered the "indigenous" population of that land are the Jews.  We have at least 3,500 years of demonstrable history in our native homeland and were there for almost 2,000 years before the conquering Arabs showed up in the 7th century.

When we make our arguments before the larger world, whether on blogs or in the comments within blogs, or in high-brow magazines or low-brow magazines, or in personal conversations or lectures or discussion panels, we need to make people understand that the Jews are the indigenous population of our own land because we are, in fact, the indigenous population of our own land.

Once we make that clear the whole dynamic of the conversation has to change in our favor.  Or, if it does not, this can only mean that liberals without sympathy for Jewish claims to Jewish land stand in direct opposition to their own alleged values of social justice and human rights.

To the extent that the Jewish people are losing the overall argument concerning Jewish claims to Jewish land it is, at least in part, due to the fact that much of the west views us as militaristic interlopers.  Decades of Soviet and Arab propaganda around this issue has done its work very well.  At this point it is considered "common sense" that the regional Arabs are the natives and the Jews are the imperial-colonialist-fascist-racists.

This is false, but until we educate people otherwise, we have no case.

We cannot stand before a hostile world and say something to the effect of, "Yes, well, we are Occupying and abusing the native Palestinian population, but we mean well and hope to sometime stop doing so."

This will simply not cut it, but it represents the general position of the pro-Israel Jewish left.

No one is going to respect a political position grounded in admission of guilt toward a poverty-stricken, indigenous people and they should not.  The western-left likes to think of itself as standing with the underdog and so long as we think of the "Palestinians" as the underdog then we might as well pack it in and go home, because we have no case.

There are three points that need to stand forward in our advocacy and each of these points, thankfully, has the benefit of truth and history behind them.

1)  The Jews are the indigenous people of the region.

2)  The conflict is part of a long-standing, Koran-based, aggression of the Arab and Muslim majority against the Jewish indigenous minority.  It is, therefore, not an Israel-Palestine conflict, but an Arab / Muslim conflict against the Jews.

3)  The Jewish people in the Middle East are a people under siege by a much larger, aggressive majority.

Each of these points are unquestionably true, but until we ground our arguments within those points, we should expect no sympathy and will get none.

We...

Princess Trudy

We control all governments - which are nearly universally against us.

We control all banks - yet need total economic support from the US.

We control all media - which is also nearly universally against us.

We are colonialist invaders - while 3/4ths of Israelis were born there and 2/3rds are descendants of people from Arab countries.

Our 'Lobby' is massive - yet doesn't appear on a list of the 50 largest lobbying groups in America either by staff or funding.

We wage genocide on the Arabs - whose population since 1948 has at least quadrupled.

We practice apartheid (note - it's pronounced Apart-Hate) - yet there is not a single law that anyone can point to prove that point.

We practice a theocracy - while gay rights and secular law are the most advanced compared to nearly anywhere on the planet.

We wage genocide upon the Arabs and Persians - while they have killed a hundred times more of each other.

You Don't Know What Apartheid Really Was

Michael L.

Check this out:



"You don't know what apartheid really was."



What I want, more than anything, is for the Jewish people to stand up for themselves.
The Jews are about .2 percent of the world population and if we do not stand up for ourselves, no one else will.

Giving SFSU the chance to do what is right

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

After consulting with a number of people for whom I hold respect at San Francisco State University, I have decided to back off the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) story until the university has the time to go through its procedures, come to its conclusions, and take whatever disciplinary action it deems necessary.

Ultimately, of course, the real question here is not so much about GUPS, nor Mohammad Hammad, the president of that organization, but about San Francisco State University and political trends in higher education in the United States, more generally.

Although many people, including SFSU president Les Wong, speak about safety and security on campus, I do not believe for one moment that there is much current likelihood of racial violence at my old alma mater.

What does concern me, however, are the precedents being laid down and the gradual impact of those precedents on the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel, as well as the changing nature of acceptable political speech on university campuses.

What has to be emphasized beyond all the noise and apologetics is the simple fact that GUPS, and other groups, called quite specifically for killing.  They called for the killing of "colonizers."   Who are these people that are in need of killing, exactly, and since when is the university in the business of handing out cash to people who call for the murder of other people?

That's the bottom line.

We understand that when a Palestinian-Arab student holds up a sign calling for the killing of "colonizers" that he or she means the Jews of the Middle East.  There is no other reasonable interpretation.  He or she may be calling for the killing of other people, such as white people, but is most definitely calling for the murder of the Jews of the Middle East.  Any interpretation which denies this is disingenuous and seeks to white-wash incitement to violence.

SFSU earned a reputation for being anti-Israel and, in some measure, anti-Semitic a long time ago and is, at least as of this moment, doing an excellent job of maintaining that reputation.  It was bad enough that several political student organizations, including GUPS, held up signs that for all intents and purposes called for murder, but to have the president of GUPS discuss his desire to murder Jews on social media sites is simply unacceptable.

And, yet, it is accepted.

The question is what, if anything, does the university intend to do about this?

In his undated statement on this matter university president Wong wrote this:

There is no place at SF State for celebrating violence or promoting intolerance, bigotry, anti-Semitism or any other form of hate-mongering.

For the moment, at least, president Wong is mistaken.  There is most certainly a place at SFSU for celebrating violence and hate-mongering and it was there for all the world to see on November 7th at the Edward Said mural event.   Although it is true that GUPS, as a whole, cannot be held responsible for any one of its members' behavior, it does not speak well of either the organization, or the university, that the president of this organization held up a knife on a social media site and discussed his desire to see the murder of Jews.

The university deserves the time to consider who, exactly, has done what and to consider its disciplinary actions.  My only question is whether or not there will be disciplinary actions?

We shall see what the new year holds.

The Jig is Up!

Michael L.

And it is long past time for us to come clean.

Today I was reading an article over at the Gatestone Institute by Fiamma Nirenstein entitled, Israelophobia. 

Nirenstein references professor Daniel Goldhagen's recent book, The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism.  In that book, Goldhagen, who is Jewish - notice the word "Gold" directly in his name - lists the various sins of the Jewish state of Israel and, thus, the sins of the Jewish people, more generally.

This is, among numerous other things, what we are guilty of:

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, are the source of disorder for the neighboring countries. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, are the cause of the dictatorships in the Middle East.  

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, are the greatest threat to world peace. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, are the Nazis of our time. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, inspired the war against Iraq. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, controls U.S. policy. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, foments hatred toward the Americans and the West. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, perpetrates genocide against the innocent, bunny-like "indigenous" population from Saudi Arabia. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, wants to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, murders Palestinian babies in their cribs. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, poisons wells and people... mainly for the fun of it. 

The Jews of the Middle East, via the State of Israel, only pretend to be friendly toward Gay people, but really it is nothing but "pinkwashing," i.e., a brazen attempt to pretend an attitude of respect toward gays, as opposed to the persecution of them in Muslim countries, purely for propaganda purposes.

The jig, as they say, is up.

We should just come clean and embrace our evil nature.  It has to be understood, of course, that these crimes against humanity, and all things decent, were not merely committed by the government of the State of Israel.  Israel is a democracy and, thus, its government reflects the will of its people.  Furthermore, the State of Israel has the general support of Jews throughout the world and since Israel is clearly an evil and insidious country that is in good need of an ass-kicking, what does this say about its Jewish supporters?

One cannot knowingly support evil and not be evil, after all.

So, yes, the Jews are evil and we need to embrace our evilness!

I say that whenever Israel is accused of this or that heinous crime against either the "Palestinians" or anyone else, for any reason whatsoever, we just go with it.  For example, let us admit that not only are we persecuting the local Arabs under a brutal system of "apartheid," but that we are absolutely gleeful about it.

Persecuting Arabs is a Jewish past-time, a hobby of sorts, and we have no intention of giving it up anytime soon and the rest of the world is simply too weak to make us stop.  We are Jewish Supremacists and we believe that the normal rules of civil society, or common human decency, simply do not apply to us because we are better than the rest of you, do not need you for anything, and therefore we will do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it.

I am suddenly reminded of Cathy Bates' character in American Horror Story: Coven.  Bates plays Madame Delphine LaLaurie, an early 19th century woman of luxury in New Orleans who gets sadistic enjoyment out of tormenting and deforming and cutting body parts out of black slaves in her own personal torture chamber.  One of the poor bastards says, "Why are you doing this to me?" and Bates replies, "Because I can, honey.  Because I can."

{You should also know that later in the series she very definitely gets her comeuppance in a way that is both gruesome and hilarious.}

The truth is that no matter what Israel does, or does not do, we are going to face large segments of the western left who tell us that the Jewish country is vile as, by unspoken extension, are the Jewish people.  Even if Israel is first on the ground in Haiti, we will be told that the only reason that Israel reacted so quickly to bring aid from half-way around the world was to deflect from its horrific treatment of the "Palestinians" or to steal human organs for sale on the international black market.

It simply doesn't matter what Jews contribute to world culture via computer technology or medical technology or agriculture or art or entertainment or religion.  We gave the world a humane moral code via the religion, but that does not matter.  In fact, were it not for the Jews there would be no Christians, nor any such thing as the religion of Islam, but even that does not matter.

That being the case we have nothing to lose and we should stop apologizing.

In fact, as soon as I am done writing this I fully intend to find the nearest well and poison the holy crap out of it.

Chloe Valdary

Michael L.

Chloe Valdary is, or was, a student of international relations at the University of New Orleans.  Her material is getting a lot of play at the Elder's site, which is where I found this video.

While I deeply appreciate Ms. Valdary's advocacy, I do find it to be a little overly dramatic.  Nonetheless, there is an eerie and disconcerting parallel between the Nazi boycotts of the Jews in the 1930s and progressive-left efforts at a boycott of the Jews today.

Oh, We Have Not Forgotten You, Mr. Hammad

Michael L.


Tammi Benjamin of the AMCHA Initiative is leading the effort to ensure that San Francisco State University actually does something in response to the fact that the president of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) held up a knife on his Tumblr page and waxed poetic about stabbing a Jewish Israeli.

You guys know this story and I feel no particular desire to dive into it again.

Mohammad Hammad, a student leader, called quite specifically for murder.  He did so against certain people, in general, and he did so against a specific Israeli Jewish woman.

While he most obviously broke the SFSU Student Code of Conduct, and should at least be disciplined on that basis, he may very well have broken California state law, as well.

We should give the university a reasonable time to go through its procedures.

In any case, here is Tammi Benjamin's recent letter to SFSU President Les Wong:

Dear President Wong,

Last week you issued a public statement regarding an on-campus General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) event glorifying the murder of Jews and numerous antisemitic social media postings by GUPS President Mohammad G. Hammad, including postings expressing his desire to murder an Israeli soldier and "all others who support the IDF."  In your statement, you say that "first and foremost" the University community must be "firmly committed to free speech," although you also claim to work hard "to achieve a balance where both expression and safety are fostered."

Therefore, we ask you to clarify your position on this matter:

Is it acceptable for a registered student organization receiving university funding to display or use rhetoric that glorifies or promotes violence against Jews?
Is it acceptable for a registered student organization receiving university funding to display or use rhetoric that glorifies or promotes violence against African Americans, Hispanics, or Muslims?
We look forward to your prompt response. Unless we hear otherwise, we will assume that your answer to these questions is "YES," and we will inform the Jewish community that Jewish students, and all supporters of Israel, are not safe at San Francisco State University.

Sincerely,

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
Co-founder, AMCHA Initiative

Leila Beckwith
Co-founder, AMCHA Initiative

CC:
CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White
CSU Board of Trustees
CSU Interim General Counsel Andrew Jones
Kenneth Monteiro, Dean of College of Ethnic Studies at SFSU
California State Senator Leland Y. Yee (San Francisco)
California State Senator Mark Leno  (San Francisco)
California Assembly Member Philip Y. Ting (San Francisco)
California Senator Carol Liu, Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Education
California Assembly Member Joan Buchanan, Chair of the Assembly Education Committee
California Assembly Member Marc Levine
California State Senator Marty Block
California Assembly Member Das Williams
California Assembly Member Jose Medina
California Senator Lois Wolk
California Assembly Member Richard Bloom
California Assembly Member Steve Fox
California Jewish community leaders 

Professor Benjamin is fighting the good fight here, but I tend to disagree that the problem is only of anti-Semitism.  When they held up signs reading, "My heroes have always killed colonizers," they were calling for murder.  Who are these colonizers, in need of killing?  Jews?  Sure.  But not just Jews.

In any case, I fail to understand how the CSU system can be in the business of funding student organizations that quite literally call for murder.

The Death of the Left

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

The tidbit below was written by Allan Goldstein and published in the Algemeiner.

Israel is fighting for its right to exist with one hand tied behind its back. The left hand.

Conservatives strongly support Israel. We have won that battle. Only on the extreme right wing, the lunatic fringe of fascists and skinheads, do we find Israel haters and Jew bashers on that side.

But it’s a different story on the left. One needn’t travel far from the center of conventional liberal opinion to find anti-Israel sentiment—even virulent anti-Israel sentiment—on the left.

Among otherwise sensible liberals, the question of an entire nation’s existence is an acceptable subject of polite conversation.

‎That state of affairs would be shocking if we weren’t so used to it. But, as a liberal, I will never get used to it, because it is a perversion of everything liberalism stands for.

I have been making a very similar argument for quite some time.  What has been most amusing, however, is when pro-Israel leftists - the moniker "fizziks" suddenly comes to mind - insist that anti-Zionism is not coming from the left, as if Rachel Corrie was a hard-line, right-wing Republican.

The writer of this Algemeiner piece, Mr. Goldstein, is, like me, a liberal.  Also like me, he is disgusted with the way that progressives have thrown their own values down the toilet.  What I would argue, however, is something broader than he does.  Goldstein suggests that standing up for Israel is to stand up for liberal values and I certainly agree, but it's not just a matter of standing with the besieged Jewish minority in the Middle East, but also the besieged Christian minority, the besieged and much maligned Gay minority, and all women throughout the region who live under a religious system that is deeply misogynistic and that fails to respect their fundamental human rights.

The failure of the left is not merely the betrayal of its Jewish constituency, but also a moral failure to stand with Christians, Gays, and women throughout Arab-Muslim zones of influence.

Goldstein writes:

The choice for liberals worldwide is stark. They can either support a country that validates their values better than their home countries, or they can support woman-enslaving, gay-hating, democracy-fearing, America-phobic, anti-Jewish theocracies, thugocracies, and failed states that torture their own publics with endless civil wars and sectarian demagoguery.

This either-or moral imperative is apparent, but not real.  The leftist tendency to back the most atrocious actors on the planet today, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, is not universal among leftists.  Many people on the left do, in fact, support the right of the Jewish people to live in peace within a Jewish state of Israel, however one need not support either Israel or groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.  One can be neutral on such issues and very much still be a member in good standing on the left.

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that most people on the left are entirely ambivalent about the Arab-Israel conflict and while they do not necessarily support Israel, likewise they do not necessarily support the enforcement of al-Sharia throughout the region.  But they do not necessarily oppose it either and that's the rub.  Many of them still think that the so-called "Arab Spring" had something to do with democracy - pssst, it didn't -  and the great majority turned away their eyes when Barack Obama decided to support the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with ideological roots that go, at least in part, to Nazi Germany.

They simply shut their eyes, jammed their heads into the ground, and refused to acknowledge what could not have been more obvious.

Goldstein is therefore mistaken when he claims that for liberals the choice is stark.  For most liberals the choice is not the least bit stark, but entirely muddled.  They want to do what is right.  They want to do what is ethical.  They want to support social justice and human rights and they simply wish that Israel would embody their ideals to a greater degree.  On the other hand, of course, they hold Arabs to no standards of human decency whatsoever due to the unacknowledged and ingrained racism riddled within a political movement that flatters itself as anti-racist.

Make no mistake, the progressive-left is not anti-racist.  On the contrary.  The progressive-left is the single most racist political movement in west today outside of political Islam, itself.

How, in G-d’s name, have we lost that argument? It shouldn’t even be close. You can’t be a passionate promoter of woman’s equality, an indefatigable defender of gay rights, a champion of social welfare, environmental justice, and religious tolerance at home and abandon those beliefs at the water’s edge and still call yourself a progressive.

Ding!  Ding!  Ding!  We have a winner!

This is precisely what I have been arguing for a number of years now.  Either one believes in universal human rights or one does not believe in universal human rights.  However if one does believe in universal human rights that means that people should have such rights even if they do happen to live in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia and, therefore, we should advocate for those rights.  If we fail to do so, how can we be said to stand for universal human rights?

The fact of the matter is that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where a Jew can live in freedom.  It is also the only country in the Middle East where women, Christians, and Gay people can live in freedom.  Furthermore, the Arabs of Israel have more civil liberties and greater economic opportunity than Arabs anywhere else throughout that part of the world.

I’m an unshakable defender of Israel and progressive political values, both at the same time. There is no contradiction in those positions; they are mutually reinforcing. Many of my fellow liberals feel the same way.

‎For some of us, it is impossible to shackle ourselves—against all Jewish tradition of learning, of tolerance, of acceptance, of, dare I say it, social justice—to the right – a right that shares none of our liberality in mores or attitudes, a right that has made common cause with some of the most intolerant, reactionary, even racist groups in American society in a cynical attempt to make a majority out of a motley assortment of haters.

In the above two paragraphs Goldstein falls into the traditional knee-jerk broad-brushing of the right by the left.  After so many years of nodding along with our fellow progressives when they shake their little fists at the right, it becomes ideologically difficult to break from old stereotypes and preconceptions.

The question is, does one break from the left due to its betrayal of its Jewish constituency, as well as its own alleged values, or do you stay and fight?  Some like, for example, our own JayinPhiladelphia, have chosen to stay and fight.  That is, he self-identifies as on the left, supports various progressive-left causes and candidates, and yet fights for Jewish interests within progressive-left venues.  Other pro-Israel liberals are simply in denial about the fact that anti-Semitic anti-Zionism is mainly a progressive movement in the west today, not a right-wing movement.

And then there are some of us, like me, who have simply gone rogue.

I am an independent.  I am neither a Democrat, nor a Republican, nor a member of any political party at this point.  While I lean leftward on the issues, I am no longer automatically opposed to anything and everything that comes out of the right; which is to say that I am no longer an ideological partisan.

I’m just saying we need to engage the liberal/leftist half of humanity with all the energy and passion we can muster. Right now our enemies hold that field by default. Liberal supporters of Israel—and don’t kid yourself, we are legion—are mostly scared into silence by the perverted peer pressure of a high-decibel minority, full of rage and wrath as only those possessed by an irrational, unsupportable, political fetish can be.

This is partly true, but ultimately it fails to satisfy.  The real problem is not that pro-Israel liberals are afraid to stand up for the Jewish State.  For the most part, in my experience, at least, they are willing to stand up.   The real problem is what I have called the Palestinian Colonization of the Jewish Mind, but what could more accurately be dubbed the Palestinian colonization of the liberal mind.

We have, as liberals and as Jews, largely accepted the "Palestinian narrative" of victim-hood at the hands of Zionist aggressors.  This is a problem not only because such a notion is largely false, but it erodes Jewish ability to defend ourselves as a tiny minority seeking to maintain autonomy on Jewish land.

From the comments:

BH in Iowa 

What was once the party of Bobby Kennedy is now the party of Sirhan Sirhan.

Ummm...

I do not think that I would go quite so far!

Dr. Denis MacEoin 

A perfect set of arguments in the proper direction. Too many of Israel’s defenders come from the conservative right, but most of Israel’s enemies are from the left, especially the far left, and it’s time more time and money was put into addressing this issue. I have advanced several of the same arguments in my blog ‘A Liberal Defence of Israel’. If you liked this, do look at some of my entries too.

For those of you who do not know, Professor MacEoin is at the forefront in the fight within Europe to defend the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel.  He publishes very sporadically at A Liberal Defense of Israel, but his material is always worth reading.

He also wrote An Open Letter to Tamar Fogel shortly after the Fogel family massacre at the hands of young Jihadis in March of 2011.  I signed that letter and when it was presented to Tamar, who was 12 years of age at the time, my name was among the thousands of names from around the world extending our sincerest sympathies and support.  I tried to get a few of the people who later became associated with the failed Progressive Zionist blog to sign the letter, as well, but they refused.

Quote of Note: Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi (1937)

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

Between 1936 and 1939 the Arabs of the British Mandate of Palestine went on a rampage that became known as the "Arab revolt."  The Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, cried to the heavens that the Jews were destroying the al-Aqsa Mosque and agitated his easily agitated people into bloody rampages that lasted for years.  The British, seeking to calm the situation, initiated the Peel Commission which recommended a division of the land between Arabs and Jews in order to ease tensions and create peace between the vast Arab majority and the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East.

During their investigations they met with Syrian Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, who told them:

There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.

What are we to make of the fact that it is only within living memory that the Arabs of that small portion of the world fashioned themselves as a distinct ethnicity or nationality known as "Palestinians"?  They did so, with the encouragement of Yassir Arafat and the Soviets, for the purpose of contesting Jewish claims to Jewish land after the establishment of Israel.  The majority of Arabs in the region only took on "Palestinian" identity after the the 6 Day War of 1967, appropriating it from the Jews.

It has to be understood that all national identities start somewhere in time and place.  "American" identity, which is to say the identity of people who live in, or are citizens of, what is now the United States, emerged toward the end of the 18th century and did not completely solidify until after the Civil War.  Jewish identity, of course, is well over 3,000 years old, which makes the Jewish people one of the oldest surviving nationalities, along with the Chinese, on the planet today.

So-called "Palestinian" national identity only gained credence shortly after I was born.

Prior to that the people who now call themselves "Palestinian" thought of themselves as Arabs and as Muslims from this or that particular family, tribe, or clan.  Palestine was merely a region within Syria which, itself, was part of the Ottoman empire.  Prior to 1967 virtually no one claimed "Palestinian" national identity any more than people from Connecticut - let's call them Connecticutians - think of themselves as a distinct and separate nation or people.  And like Connecticutians, most "Palestinians" were from elsewhere.  A certain percentage of people who call themselves "Palestinian" have immediate roots within Israel, but very many also have roots in Egypt and Syria and Jordan and Lebanon and Iraq and ultimately, of course, to Saudi Arabia.

Throughout the early part of the twentieth-century the Jews thought of themselves as "Palestinian," but it was not considered a national identity.  The Jews of the British Mandate of Palestine were "Palestinian" in a way not entirely dissimilar from the way that the Jews of California, such as myself, consider themselves to be "Californian."

The fact of the matter is that the emergence of a distinct Arab nation known as "Palestinian," toward the end of the twentieth century was not organic, but political and its entire purpose was (and is) to steal the tiny Jewish homeland from the besieged Jewish people of the Middle East.  The essence of "Palestinian" national identity is to represent themselves as a hostile and persecuted doppelganger to the indigenous Jewish population in order to steal Jewish identity for the purpose of undermining Jewish claims to Jewish land.

The evidence for this is widespread.

How else to account for the fact that Yassir Arafat, much to Bill Clinton's astonishment, denied the historical presence of the Jewish temples in Jerusalem?

How else to account for the fact that the local Arab leadership often refers to Jesus - who was, quite obviously, a Jew - as the first "Palestinian shaheed"?

How else to account for the fact that many local Arabs and their allies throughout the west enjoy pretending that the local Arabs are the "New Jews" and the Jews are the "New Nazis," for the purpose of creating a politically useful historical inversion?

How else to account for the fact that they, and their allies, like to put Anne Frank in a keffiyah?

This is a very under-discussed phenomenon, but I believe that it represents a key to the conflict as it is unfolding today.

One of the biggest mistakes that Israel made was acknowledging "Palestinian" as a separate and distinct Arab national identity with claims to Jewish land.  Not only is such a claim useful in clubbing the native Jewish population and whipping up hatred toward them throughout the world, but it is also entirely false from an historical perspective.  The Jewish people can never be free from Arab-Muslim persecution until "Palestinian" national identity is denied as the fraud that it quite obviously is.

But even more egregious than that is the Palestinian-Arab attempt at Jewish identity theft.

This is an exceedingly dangerous and insidious phenomenon that is in great need of further exploration.

Ignoring it is a crucial mistake.

The Ongoing Saga of San Francisco State and Mohammad Hammad

Michael L.

Shortly after Tammi Rossman-Benjamin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the AMCHA Initiative, pointed out a call for murder at the November 7 Edward Said mural event in San Francisco State University (SFSU) she was denounced.

The president of GUPS, Mohammad Hammad, wrote the following on their official Facebook page as a petition to SFSU president Les Wong soon after the incident and almost one month before the larger media, including me, took notice:

We are appalled at this blatant attack against the integrity and principled position that GUPS has maintained throughout its history. We are horrified by the baseless attack and allegations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled against GUPS and the Cesar Chavez Student Center, the organizers of the 6th annual anniversary of the Palestinian Cultural Mural honoring the late professor Edward Said.” - Mohammad Hammad.

It is hard to fathom the degree of hypocrisy that it takes for a man who speaks of "integrity" and "principled positions," yet who also calls for the decapitated head of a Jewish woman to be brought to him on a plate.

The degree of cognitive dissonance, or what George Orwell called "doublethink," is quite simply astounding.

Mohammad Hammad is, until confirmed otherwise, the president of the General Union of Palestine Students at San Francisco State University.  Just how his allies will defend him is rather hard to imagine given the fact that he called quite specifically for murder at least twice in public forums.

Not only did he suggest that all friends of the Israeli military should be killed - which would include, of course, the vast majority of Jews, not to mention how many tens of millions of Americans and Australians and Canadians? - but that he personally wants a specific female Israeli soldier to be murdered and voiced that desire on a social media page.

And that may be his crucial mistake... if people from various ethnic groups are held to the same standards of human decency, that is.

It is one thing for a young, angry Muslim male from Ramallah, receiving higher education at San Francisco State University, with the benefit of US taxpayer cash, to call for murder toward Jewish Israelis, but it is another thing entirely for that same individual, as a student organizational leader, to call for the specific murder of a young Israeli Jewish woman who is guilty of nothing more than protecting a fellow soldier from an apparent attack.

I just do not see how either SFSU or the state of California should be paying for such a thing.

I was very much hoping to move away from this story by now, because it gives me no pleasure.  I have a personal connection to San Francisco State University and I found my time there, through the late 1990s and the early part early part of the 2000s, intellectually engaging and personally satisfying.

{I even met my wife there.}

But, you must admit, there is a problem.

And the problem is not the likelihood of racial violence on that campus.  The real problem is with the ongoing attempt by Arab and Muslim organizations throughout the world to demonize the Jewish State of Israel and, thus implicitly, the Jewish people, more generally.

That is the real problem and it is not a new problem.

What seriously compounds that problem is the institutional unwillingness throughout the western academe and media to hold Arabs or Muslims accountable for their words or behavior out of some bigoted and wrong-headed sense that they cannot be held responsible for themselves.  This is to say that the west is so "racist" towards Arabs and Muslims that they refuse to hold them to any standards of general human decency.

This is, of course, entirely demeaning toward the great Arab-Muslim population in the Middle-East who neither scream for the blood of the Jews, nor who promote political Islam, and who want nothing so much as to raise their children in peace... or so one hopes.

It is, in fact, an exceedingly imperial attitude that smacks of "white man's burden."

Mohammad Hammad wrote the quote above as part of GUPS' larger response to those "My heroes have always killed colonizers" signs displayed at the Edward Said mural event:

GUPS has historically stood for justice in/for Palestine and has linked our struggle with that of all people’s struggles for self-determination, justice and peace.

This quote, to my mind, gets to the saddest thing about this little tempest.  The statement above is a lie.

GUPS does not stand with all people's struggles for self-determination, justice and peace, precisely because it leaves the Jewish people out of that equation, entirely.

The very people that the Arab nation should be apologizing to for 13 centuries of general ill-treatment and abuse under Muslim imperial rule is the very people that they continue to harass and demonize until this current moment.  Mr. Hammad is just one small example of the spread of that demonization and the toxic mushrooms that it can grow anywhere in the world.

What matters to very many of us, at this point, however, is how SFSU chooses to respond.  Thus far, the university is playing cards close to the chest and I certainly agree that the office of the president should be allowed sufficient time to do the due diligence and go through their procedures.

Nonetheless, the school owes it to its students and its alumni to be forthcoming about the forms of those procedures and their outcomes.

My main concern is that the university will stonewall this and that we cannot allow.

Will SFSU Act? (Updated)

Michael L.

I just received this email from Ellen Griffin, the Associate Vice President of University Communications from SFSU.

Dr. Lumish: 

This is in response to your inquiry regarding Mohammad Hammad. Consistent with the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, I can confirm that San Francisco State University has a student by that name. In the event of separation from the University, should that occur with any student, I cannot reveal the cause of separation (such as expulsion). Similarly, I cannot I cannot reveal the existence of a disciplinary review or the results of that review.

The clear implication is that, for the moment, at least, Mr. Hammad is still with the university.

Update:

Oldschooltwentysix writes:

According to Student Conduct Procedures - Executive Order 1073

Confidentiality

Information provided to University employees shall be shared with other University employees and law enforcement exclusively on a "need to know" basis. University employees shall endeavor to honor any Complainant's or victim's request for confidentiality; however, the University shall also weigh requests for confidentiality against its duty to provide a safe and nondiscriminatory environment for all members of the campus community. Confidentiality, therefore, cannot be ensured.

http://www.calstate.edu/eo/EO-1073.html

As such, one may argue that she is not precluded from providing information, and that to impose confidentiality in this matter would not fulfill the "duty to provide a safe and nondiscriminatory environment for all members of the campus community." 

The University must have a reasonable period to conduct its procedures, after there is a complaint filed, and the student is allowed for due process. In other words, he cannot be summarily expelled.

This is the kind of thing that we need to keep an eye on going forward.  School is, of course, correct that the university has its procedures and those procedures will take a reasonable amount of time.  The question becomes, however, how much time represents a reasonable amount of time given the fact that we have clear and obvious proof that Mr. Hammad called for the murder not only of the Jewish people in general, the great majority of whom support the IDF, but he called for murder of a particular female Israeli soldier?

I am willing, now, to give the university and president Wong's office the benefit of the doubt primarily because people that I know and trust on that campus are willing to do so.

Trust, but verify.

San Francisco State University

Michael L.

I arrived back at my old alma mater, San Francisco State University, yesterday, and met with a number of individuals on that campus to discuss the recent hub-bub over the Great Killing of "Colonizers" Scandal of 2013.

As I walked onto campus I had a number of questions.  The first was whether or not people were satisfied with president Wong's response to the November 7 Edward Said mural event in which students from the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS), and other groups, held up signs that read "My heroes have always killed colonizers." 

It should be obvious to any fair-minded person that when a Palestinian-Arab student holds up a sign calling for the killing of "colonizers" who they mean are the Jews of the Middle East.  But even if that can somehow be construed as not the case, is it not obvious that American universities should not be in the business of financing advocacy for the murder of any people or group or nationality?

Islamic peoples, of course, are among the most significant colonizers in recorded history and they colonized and exploited the Jewish land of Israel, the land of my people, for thirteen hundred years between the time of Muhammad until the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

For thirteen hundred years the Jews of Israel were a colonized people by Arab invaders and by the Ottoman Turks.

My second question was concerned with the potential for ethnic tensions on that campus.  There was, after all, a time at SFSU, not so long ago, where a student might get chased out of the quad for wearing a kippa or a Star of David.  

The final question was, what of GUPS president Mohammed Hammad who directly threatened violence?  In the case of Mr. Hammad we have a student leader who explicitly called for the murder of Jews.

Everyone that I spoke with on that campus was someone of institutional significance within the SFSU community.  However, the only one that I am putting on the record is the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, Andrew Cullen, of the Golden Gate Xpress.  Andrew and I had a very interesting conversation as we walked from the offices of his newspaper to the Edward Said mural.

The first thing that I want my readership to understand, however, is that the likelihood of violence on this campus over ethnic tensions is practically non-existent.  There was a time, around ten years ago, when this was not necessarily the case, but I was there a little over ten years ago as a student and I never felt any threat of personal violence whatsoever.  I did, however, witness a confrontation against Jews by Arab students and therefore cannot discount the possibility entirely.

As for president Wong's response to the incident, the general feeling is mixed, although leaning in his favor.  President Wong is new to campus, having recently replaced president Robert Corrigan who was a friend to the Jewish constituency.  My tendency is to agree with editor Cullen that it is quite unclear just what Wong's office intends to do, although rumor has it that Mr. Hammad, president of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) has been forcibly retired from his position... and from the university, as well.

That is a question that I will be looking into, you can be certain.

This story is winding down and I, for one, will be happy to let it RIP sometime soon.

Among the various things said to me was one particularly outstanding point.

Ethnic tensions against Jews at San Francisco State University have, over the course of many years, until this recent dust-up, been virtually non-existent.  

I have a personal interest in this story and will, therefore, from my little perch in the Oakland hills, keep an eye.

Quote of the Day: Mohammad Hammad

Michael L.

In honor of Mr. Hammad we are starting a new feature here at Israel Thrives imaginatively called "The Quote of the Day."

I think that we may end up getting a few more from Mr. Hammad going forward, but we shall see.  The real point is, though, to show the kind of thing that we face.  The hatred, the propaganda, the lies, the lack of any historical context.

Here is the quote taken from an Algemeiner article on November 26.

You know what? 

Israelis ARE colonizers, there is literally no way around it 

And you know what else? 

My heroes HAVE always killed colonizers 

I literally see nothing wrong with this and my only regret is that not all colonizers were killed  

- Mohammad Hammad, president of San Francisco State University's General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS)

Does anyone for even an instant believe that when Hammad refers to Israelis that he means Israeli Arabs?  Of course, not.  He clearly means Jews.  It could hardly be more obvious.

The real problem is that Hammad, and many millions of others, have been taught the Big Lie by Arab and Soviet propagandists that has now become "common knowledge."  They honestly think that the Holocaust survivors who fought to get into Israel after World War II, whose ancestors had lived on that land two thousand years before the Arab invasion, are insidious "colonizers."

This is why it is imperative to discuss the long Arab war against the Jews in the Middle East within the historical context of Arab-Muslim imperialism and colonization throughout that the part of the world and the subjugation of its native peoples under the repressive boot of dhimmitude.

Until such a time as the Jewish community, both diasporic and Israeli, figure out that discussing the conflict within the context of Jewish history under thirteen centuries of Arab and Persian rule is the only way that we can make our case, we will constantly get little monsters like Mr. Hammad screeching for Jewish blood.

What people need to understand is that the movement for Jewish liberation was a movement by a long subjugated people for freedom from the violent domination of the Arab-Muslim majority; a movement that succeeded well beyond anyone's imagination in 1948.

The truth of the matter is that it is not the Jews who are "colonizers" in the Middle East, but the Arabs, themselves, who colonized that part of the world and often did so in an exceedingly brutal fashion after the death of Muhammed in the 7th century.

Certainly the Jewish experience under Muslim rule was generally horrific.

For thirteen long centuries throughout the Muslim Middle East an Arab could bludgeon a Jew, but it was illegal for the Jew to fight back.  We had no means of self-defense.  We had virtually no access to a judicial system.  We were not allowed to ride horses in certain places.  We were sometimes not even allowed out of our homes on rainy days so as not to pollute the streets with our alleged Jewish filth.

What Mr. Hammad needs to learn is that those days are over.

The Day of the Dhimmi is Done and the Jews are now a free people.

SFSU Responds to Arab Calls for Violence Against Jews

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

San Francisco State University (SFSU) president, Les Wong, has responded for the second time to criticisms that calling for the murder of Jews is perhaps something less than educative.  And for the second time he refuses to address the central issue, which is a call to violence against Jews by the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS).

Professor Wong, who earned a PhD in educational psychology from Washington State University, makes three significant points.  The first is that calling for the murder of Jews is essentially a matter of free speech.  That is his first and foremost point.  It is not that calling for the murder of Jews might be in contradiction to university policy, the law, or just common human decency, but that calling for the murder of Jews is a matter of free speech.

He writes:

First and foremost, I ask that you stay firmly committed to free speech.  Strong opinions—and strong disagreements—are essential to the life of our democracy, and the life of our university. 

Thus, in the mind of the president of San Francisco State University, whether or not to kill Jews is a matter for discussion and debate.  It cannot be condemned outright because that would ruin the discussion on this important matter.  SFSU cannot expel Mohammad Hammad, the president of GUPS, who held up a knife before the camera and said:

“I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier….” 

Nor can the university cease funding GUPS, and thus eliminate the call for the murder of Jews on the campus of SF State, because that would violate student rights to a free and open discussion on the issues of the day.  In other words, it seems to Professor Wong that the question of genocide against the Jewish people is a matter open to discussion and as the president of an important institution of higher education, dedicated to social justice and human rights, he does not want to interfere with that discussion.

He is, nonetheless, considering, maybe, doing something:

Second, trust that I will step in when speech or actions cross the line into violations of law or University policy. I am absolutely committed to maintaining a safe environment. In both recent cases, for example, we have conducted thorough threat assessments with law enforcement, increased campus safety measures, facilitated dialogue with student groups, offered counseling resources and initiated the student conduct review process. I am confident these actions protect both the safety and the rights of our campus community.  In all situations, I ask that you give our processes the time needed to be thorough, objective and effective.  Understand as well that these processes must protect the rights and privacy of those who may be the subject of counseling, review or sanction. 

The way that Dusty put it, over at San Francisco State Unbecoming, is that:

We are being asked to respect the system, and to respect the process. 

What president Wong is saying is that if, and when, it is determined that calling for the murder of Jews is in violation of the law or university policy then, perhaps, he may actually do something, but until we figure that out "first and foremost" is the matter of free speech.

It is not as if we are unclear whether or not GUPS called for the murder of Jews, because they quite clearly did so.  On November 7, during a rally in honor of anti-Israel / anti-Jewish scholar, Edward Said, they handed out signs that said, "My heroes have always killed colonizers."

The question to ask yourself is just who are these "colonizers" in need of killing?

I am pretty sure that you know the answer to that question.

Finally, professor Wong says this:

Third, keep an open mind.  I have spoken before about the obligation to own your own mind. Issues being debated on campus can capture widespread attention.  This can be a welcome contribution to the dialogue. It can also be a source of confusion, misinformation, and pressure to subvert our processes.  Each of us at this university is a scholar—whether student, faculty member or staff—and each of us has the obligation to form opinions and take action based on exploring, analyzing and carefully listening before drawing conclusions.

Indeed.

Who could disagree with such a reasoned and sensible assessment of the question of whether or not Jews (i.e., "colonizers" - otherwise also known as insidious "Zionists") should be killed or not?  We need to keep an open mind on the matter and thereby see point number one, the matter of free speech.  In truth, Wong's Point Number One and Wong's Point Number Three are essentially identical.

None of this should actually be surprising to anyone.  For decades the progressive-left has told itself that the Jews in the Middle East deserve a good beating.

Doctor Wong just wants students to be free to discuss the possibility.

Screeching for Jewish Blood at San Francisco State University

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

I find it fairly remarkable that my alma mater, San Francisco State University (SFSU), funds a student organization that calls for the killing of Jews.

The great irony, of course, is that SFSU is among the foremost universities in the United States dedicated to social justice and human rights, which is part of the reason that I attended as a graduate student in the late 1990s and taught there afterward.

It was Jewish people in the United States, in the twentieth-century, that did as much as anyone to advance causes of social justice and human rights, and far more than most.  We did so for obvious reasons.  The Nazis taught almost everyone that racial or ethnic hatred is simply unacceptable and Jews at SFSU were hell-bent-for-fury to drive that point home in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The University of California at Berkeley gets the fame, but SFSU has always been more diverse and more radical in its drive for universal human rights. This is, after all, a campus that features the Caesar Chavez Student Center directly adjacent to Malcolm X Plaza.

When at a student protest the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) held up signs, on November 7, 2013, reading that, "My heroes have always killed colonizers," they held up signs calling for the murder of Jews.

 I simply do not see how the larger Jewish community can stand for this.

 

This is not a matter of a lone racist student calling for violence.

San Francisco State University is paying these people.  The president of GUPS, Mohammad Hammad, was even so bold as to hold up a knife on a social media site discussing his desire to kill Jews in Israel.

I have two questions about this situation.

The first is just what SFSU president Les Wong intends to do?  It is very nice that he has "concerns," but so far we are not seeing much action from his office.

The second question, and I think that it is the far more important question, is what this signifies for the relationship between the Jewish people and "liberal" politics in the United States and the west, more generally?

When a progressive-left university such as San Francisco State funds a student organization that calls for the murder of Jews then the Jewish people in the United States should know that we have an obvious and very old problem.

I Love This Blade...

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}



What are we to make of the fact that a student leader at San Francisco State University feels comfortable holding up a blade on a social media page calling for the murder of Jews in Israel?

Much like SFSU President, Les Wong, I am not sure just what to make of this story, either.

G-d knows that he doesn't have much of a clue and who can blame him?

There are a number of people seeking to pressure Professor Wong into standing against violent threats toward minority students on his campus.

Tammi Benjamin, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the ACHMA Initiative seems to be taking the lead and "Dusty" at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers put up a website devoted entirely to SFSU and its ongoing reputation for hostilities toward the Jewish State of Israel.  The Elder of Ziyon has also showed considerable interest and linked to one of my posts at the Times of Israel with the exceedingly sad title, "Canned Palestinian Children Meat."

Israellycool is covering it.

The Jewish Press is covering it.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is involved.

The Times of Israel has taken notice.

The Jewish Journal Says Hello.

Jews are in an uproar!

It seems to me that what we want is for the Office of the President of SFSU to do a tad more than merely express disturbance and dismay.

I do not believe for one second that the tiny Jewish population at San Francisco State will be threatened by violence by Arab organizations or anyone else.  I was there between 1996 and 2001 and never - not ever - felt physically threatened for being either Jewish or a friend of Israel.

This, I have to say, was my experience and it was certainly not an experience shared by all Jewish students there.  I saw with my own eyes Jewish students backed up against the wall at the Malcolm X Plaza at SFSU directly threatened by violence and, I know from direct reports, that such behavior continued into 2002.

What we are looking at now, however, is not so much the likelihood of some Jewish kid getting punched in the nose for standing up for his people, but the manner in which hatred is spread toward Jews, more generally.

That's really the point.

What we saw at SFSU on November 7th, when GUPS handed out flyers proclaiming that "My heroes have always killed colonizers," is a part of an ongoing campaign of hatred and defamation that is at its most intense within the Arab-Muslim Middle East, has considerable following throughout Europe, and has the backing of some colleges in the United States, such as SFSU, who apparently cannot bring themselves to understand that generalized hostility toward Jews, including Israeli Jews, is perhaps not really in the interest of human rights or social justice.

It is not surprising that GUPS, in its defense of itself, cited "justice" as its primary concern:

We are proud to continue the rich legacy of justice-centered student activism at SFSU. GUPS has historically stood for justice in/for Palestine and has linked our struggle with that of all people’s struggles for self-determination, justice and peace.

The problem, of course, is that the above statement is simply false.

GUPS has not linked its struggle with that of all people's struggles for self-determination, justice and peace because it has quite clearly eliminated the Jewish people from that category.

What GUPS fails to understand is that the Jewish people were subject to 1,300 hundred years of second and third class citizenship under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism.  Once we freed ourselves from that abuse the Jewish minority faced an ongoing war against them by the great Arab majority that continues to this day.

What the Jews of the Middle East want is nothing so much as to be left in peace so that they can go about their business of exporting computer technology, medical technology, and Natalie Portmans out into the world.

What they want is to be free of this never-ending harassment and once that harassment stops you can be sure that the check-points will come down and the security fence will be dismantled.

It is the racist Muslim majority in the Middle East that created Fortress Israel.