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Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Will the University of California Support anti-Semitic anti-Zionism?

Michael L.

AMCHA logo revised20Tammi Rossman-Benjamin will kick your ass in a New York minute... but that is why I like her.

She has alerted me to the fact, and wants me to alert you to the fact, that University of California officials will vote tomorrow, Wednesday the 23rd of March, to include anti-Zionism as a form of discrimination that is unacceptable on campus.

For us locals, if not for Jews everywhere, this is a pretty big matter.

According to Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times:
The inclusion immediately drew sharply divergent reactions, with pro-Israel groups hailing it as a needed step to protect Jewish students from hostility and those supporting Palestinian rights criticizing it as a naked attempt to suppress criticism of the Jewish state.
The fact of the matter, as Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and her partners at the AMCHA Initiative have well demonstrated, is that anti-Semitic anti-Zionists on university campuses throughout the United States kick around Jewish students.

The reason that they do not like Jewish students is because they do not like the Jewish State of Israel or because they are racist against Jews.

If they despise Israel it is due to an acceptable and discriminatory racist double-standard that impales that country - the country of my people - as a terrible violator of human rights, while giving its far worse human rights violator neighbors a pass entirely. The truth is that California university students and professors generally do not care if ISIS buries Yazidi children alive or sell prepubescent girls into sexual slavery, but they very much care that the Jews of the Middle East dare to defend themselves against never-ending Arab-Muslim aggression.

For centuries Jewish self-defense has been seen, among westerners, as a form of aggression and continues to be seen as so on California university campuses.

The fact, of course, is that the Arab-Muslim world, surrounding little Israel, is rife with racism, homophobia, misogyny, and genocidal anti-Semitism, yet racist anti-Zionist students, with the encouragement of anti-Zionist professors such as Rabab Abdulhadi at San Francisco State University, just love to kick around the Jews within venues like "Israel Apartheid Week."

This is a fun-filled event wherein American Jewish students get spit upon by racists with the approval and acceptance of the university, itself, as a matter - much to my never ending astonishment - of social justice.

However, the University of California is set to to vote on a proposal that condemns both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as forms of discrimination.

According to Rossman-Benjamin:
If adopted, this will be a huge step forward for Jewish students on UC campuses, and its impact will be felt nationally.
I tend to agree.

As someone familiar with California university anti-Semitism, I would very much like to see the UC Regents suggest that the movement to rob Jewish people of self-determination and self-defense stands in direct opposition to its own proposed standards of social justice and universal human rights.

Needless to say, anti-Semitic anti-Zionist students and professors claim that their hatred of Jewish people, via their hatred of the Jewish State, is a matter of free speech. They should be allowed to defame Israel, and thereby defame the great majority of Jewish people, as a matter of liberal democracy, despite the fact that such defamation tends to result in violence against the Jewish people and young Jewish students on campus.

They honestly seem to believe that kicking Jewish students in the teeth on a regular basis is a privilege of liberalism and perhaps they are right. If liberalism means anything it means that you have the right to offend anyone. If that defamation results in violence toward the Jewish people, as we are currently seeing with the Children's Intifada in Israel, so be it.

I tend to think, of course, that kicking around Jewish students on California university campuses is not such a good thing and that university officials should look into means of reducing it, if they honestly care... which I also tend to doubt.

29 comments:

  1. I much prefer anti-semites out in the open than plotting behind closed doors. This past week a Tennessee lawmaker proposed allowing ISIS to recruit on college campuses. The first good idea I've heard from a Republican. I like the idea of getting ISIS into the open, it is easier to track them and to out argue them if they are in the public square. So it really depends on exactly what the proposed rule is. If it bans shouting down, interrupting, harassing or using violence against pro-Israel groups, I quite agree. If it doesn't allow anti-Israel groups to speak their minds, then I would vote against it. I think dialogue is important, the problem is too much yelling and monologue. Let's have more dialogue. If we do, we win. We have the rational argument on our side.

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    1. Joseph,
      What makes you think that ISIS' ideas would get defeated in the universities? Unfortunately, everything points to the fact that they wouldn't be.
      Recruitment has been going on for years at European universities. Islamist groups tend to receive a very sympathetic welcome. And do not get challenged in any serious way. Many people fighting for ISIS have come from British universities.
      I quite agree that in any normal, reasonable time and cultural environment that ISIS would be defeated with rational argument; we are not living in those times.

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    2. Yesterday, or the day before, a senior member of the Labour party suggested that we should deal with ISIS by "having cups of tea with them."
      My personal view is that a policy of "having cups of tea" with fascists is not a serious option. In fact, it is obscene.

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    3. I would still rather have them in the open rather than in small apartments where nobody knows who they are or what they are saying. In Brussels they are behind closed doors and looked what happened. I'm willing to risk the lunacy of teenagers against the reality that hidden conspiracies are far worse.

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    4. Joseph,
      I sort of understand the principle of what you are saying. However, ISIS - if you actually mean members of the group - would not choose to be out in the open as that would necessitate the security services arresting them, meaning they would not be able to carry out attacks like today's.
      Their most important objective - in this part of the world - is to continue to plan and execute similar attacks. They wish to use terror. They do not with to have reasonable debates. They are not actually reasonable.
      Our universities are full of radical Islamist speakers who get fawned over by the students and whose views are constantly justified by our media and intelligentsia. It's not a situation that is providing an environment where their ideas get defeated. Quite the opposite. Indeed, the apologists have already been out in full force to do their usual stuff in the newspapers and on television. There will be more of that in the next few days. The most important thing is: "It's all our fault."

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    5. Joseph,
      I see where you are coming from, but I also don't see college campuses at present as the public square. I see them more like something out of Lord of the Flies.

      Delete
  2. Sucks to be a pro-Palestinian activist- the American people (of all political stripes, Dems included) aren't buying, it, despite Obama Hussein's clearly being one of the fringe types on the Palestinian side (he's out of step with a majority of his own party).
    http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/b9hijypcf0sx_p3h9lq6qa.png

    Also, Bernie's no-show proved what I've said about him all along-he's a useful idiot and smokescreen for anti-Semites, and panders to fringe ideas.

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    1. All of the other candidates who showed up to give speeches at AIPAC were Gentiles. The one and only person running for president of Jewish heritage didn't.

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    2. JeffwithaJ, that's what I meant all these months by saying that Bernie is not a representation of Jewish votes, but one of self-loathing that too many Jews engage in.

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  3. Brussels.

    I don't know about you guys, but I am getting more than a tad tired of this stuff.

    And we can hardly even discuss it without being called racist.

    The Islamic State needs to be eradicated... by any means necessary.

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    Replies
    1. Where? In Iraq?
      In Syria? You'd have to bring down the Assad regime, who are backed by the Iranians.
      ( Sent you a link re Assad/ISIS.)
      Will try and post it tomorrow - too tired right now.
      And then, what about Europe?

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  4. It's the obsession that gives it away. To act with such obsession, to obsess that Jews have evil intent, to the exclusion of those that behave far worse. To watch the hate that emanates. And now there's an attempt to make it intersectional. Time for a shift though it will be a slog.

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    Replies
    1. Intersectionality is interesting.

      Essentially what it means is that anything bad anywhere in the world can be leashed to the Jews.

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    2. Intersectionality is not interesting, it is the turning off of the mind.

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  5. What does anti-Zionism have to do with advocating Palestinian rights? Anti-Zionism is no mere criticism, it is a denial of rights. The campus groups who are so against this resolution are those who want a free hand to practice and peddle their antisemitism. Anti-Zionism means working for the destruction of a specific country, i.e., Israel. Objective facts could never support such a savage act. The only hope those who wish to accomplish this is to defame Israel, and by extension Jews. It is the old playbook of the antisemite to soften up his audience until they accept the raping, robbing, and murdering of Jews as a moral good.

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    Replies
    1. It is certainly never about democracy, freedom, and human rights.

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  6. I Barack Obama murmurs the word Islam he might have a heart attack.
    Anyway, why would he need to when the worldwide Jewish conspiracy is behind the whole thing.
    So, any bets one how long it will take the EU to come down on "settlements" as the "root cause"?
    How about al Guardian or the BBC?

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  7. Jeff,
    If you're interested in anti-Semitism re UK and the Labour party, you should go to
    order order.com guido Fawkes blog, who is doing a good job of chronicling the staggering goings-on at the Labour party.
    Pretty much every other day another out-and-out anti-Semite is readmitted to the Labour party. It's almost unbelievable. He's a rightwing, tabloidy blogger doing the job that all the media *should* be doing. He's being linked to by people on the left who actually care about the appalling state of Jew-hatred in the Labour party.
    It's worth having a look.

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  8. Per Daphne Anson, there is no such thing as "Semitism" but the expression "anti-Semitism" implies that there is. If you want to use that term to indicate bias against Jews, the term should be "antisemitism" with no hyphen.

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    1. Sar Shalom,
      I understand your point. I suppose I use that way of writing because that is how it is usually expressed on this side of the pond. It's an English language thing. There are subtle differences between American uses of language and English ones. I will certainly take your point, though. It's a good one.

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    2. I believe Daphne Anson (pseudonymous) is Australian. As is clear from Anson's post at EoZ (http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2016/03/anti-semitism-wrong-name-for-wrong.html#.VvMBd3rCcQg ), American/British has nothing to do with it and Anson specifically changed from hyphenating in response to an article by Shmuel Almog. One clear consequence of hyphenating, and thus identifying "Semitism" as something that someone can be "anti" is that the Arabs can claim that they are "Semites" and thus cannot be "anti-Semitic.

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    3. I simply meant that writing it that way is the accepted norm over here. Including for Jews.
      I perfectly understand the point, and agree that the term - regardless of spelling - allows people of all kinds to try to make the argument that as Arabs are also Semitic people it is impossible for them to be antisemitic. However, over here, it makes no real difference how the word is written in terms of people coming out with that argument. I would say that anyone wishing to make that argument would not be deterred by another way of writing the word. I will, however, use "antisemitism" on this site, and will certainly consider using it elsewhere.
      It would help more - in my opinion - if people of all backgrounds were actually educated as to the origins of the term. And, therefore, would realize that it was coined *only* to refer to Jews. The ignorance about that period of history is depressing.
      As is so much.

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    4. I prefer Judenhass. Not susceptible to "Arabs are Semites too" argument, and has a nice German ring to it.

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    5. "people of all kinds to try to make the argument that as Arabs are also Semitic people it is impossible for them to be antisemitic. "

      But it's really just ignorance and sophistry, and is most often said with malicious intent.

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  9. As you can see, the UC Regents did the right thing.

    http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/03/uc-regents-condemns-anti-semitic-forms-of-anti-zionism/#more-165739

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  10. But they watered the original statement down a little, didn't they? One step at a time, I guess. But it would seem to me that, as now written, the old "as long as they say 'Zionists' instead of 'Jews,' they can claim to be 'merely anti-Zionist totally not antisemitic(tm)'" loophole remains?

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    1. Hi Jay,
      Nice to see you around, so to speak!
      Hope all is going well with you.
      No-one could say we are living in uninteresting times, politically speaking.

      The latest derogatory term used against Jews over here, particularly on campuses, is "Zio." Which has cropped up quite a lot recently.

      http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2016/03/whore-you-calling-a-zio/

      It's all going awfully well over here... ;)

      If you're interested - as I posted earlier for Jeff- it's possible to catch up with the horrendous goings-on at the Labour party via a site called: order order.com. ( Guido Fawkes.)
      Some of it is breathtaking.

      Glad you're still popping in. :)

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  11. Someone should start an anti-Islam-ISM campaign. not anti-Islam, anti-Islam-ISM. The kind that preaches supremacy, caliphate, dhimmitude, subjugation, etc. And when people complain about it being Islamophobic, make the point that this has nothing to do with Muslims, but Islam-ISTS. it's a rough approximation of how they differentiate anti-zionism from antisemitism. Let's see how it plays.

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    Replies
    1. Even better if it is anti Islam (no ism), but no, we don't have anything against Muslims, just Islam.

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