This is American Feminism

Michael L.



I wonder what Camille Paglia would say?

Torossian Channels Zabotinsky and Dylan about Israel and the Jewish People

by oldschooltwentysix

Read today a post by Ronn Torossian at FrontPage entitled, "To Roger Waters of Pink Floyd & Other Israel Haters."  It's a post I highly recommend, especially for those who reflexively disparage FrontPage as extremist and not to be included in discussion. Yes, these people do exist.

Although Torossian directs his post to Roger Waters and the Israel haters, so many of whom profess allegiance to human rights, yet act like imposters, the message he relates through those he quotes, may have greater applicability to the indifferent, ignorant and apathetic among us. They, too, bear responsibility for the state of what has been, what is, and most importantly what will be.

Ze’ev Zabotinsky said that Jews have nothing to prove to our critics. If anyone needs to apologize for overt persecution and continued bigotry and discrimination still practiced, is it the Jews, and by extension Israel? The critics tolerate conduct by others that make Jewish misdeeds seem paltry. Can they explain why?

Bob Dylan is no firebrand like Zabotinsky, and universally recognized in the eyes of the the indifferent, ignorant and apathetic among us. Dylan cannot be demonized and therefore dismissed like Zabotinsky, even as he communicates a similar message, in his 1983 song "Neighborhood Bully," unknown to this writer until today. Using a poetic form that the indifferent, ignorant and apathetic among us can relate, he provides a context and reality where nothing has changed.

Dylan's lyrics are partially quoted by Torossian, but are worth reading in full.

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully

He got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully

What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He’s the neighborhood bully

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully

Copyright © 1983 by Special Rider Music

Those who judge the Jews, and by extension Israel, and particularly the people who live by the double standard, like Waters and other imposters, should look at themselves and take accountability, first, by making full recognition that the non-Jewish world has, in fact, behaved far worse against the perceived "Neighborhood Bully" and telling us why they allowed this to happen.

San Francisco State University Funds Hatred

Michael L.

This was originally published at the Elder of Ziyon and currently at Jews Down Under.

San Francisco State University is among the most racist universities in the United States today.

Last year my old alma mater funded student political organizations that called specifically for murder and presumably for the murder of Jews.  At an event sponsored by the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS), among a few other like-minded groups, honoring the late Columbia professor of the Humanities, Edward Said, signs were held aloft calling for the murder of "colonizers."

The people that I spoke to on campus all hold significant institutional positions at the university.  They are people with their finger on the pulse of that campus, yet they seemed mystified about just who these "colonizers" in need of killing might be.  Nonetheless, I feel reasonably certain that when hard-left students, who happen to be members of the General Union of Palestine Students, hold up signs that read, My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers, that they do not mean Rosicrucians or Rastafarians, they mean Jews.

The irony, of course, could hardly be more rich.  The Arabs that flowed from the Saudi Peninsula in the seventh-century were among the greatest, most vicious, and most successful colonizers in human history.  They conquered much of Europe and still often hold out hope for the reconquest of al-Andalus, which you and I might know as the countries of Spain and Portugal.  They also kept the Jews in a state of submission for thirteen centuries until the movement for Jewish liberation, Zionism, freed us from perpetual dhimmitude and persecution in the part of the world that the Jewish people have lived in for millenia.

Although last year's president of SFSU's General Union of Palestine Students, Muhammad Hammad, received considerable attention from press around the world due to his violent racism, his mentor, professor Rabab Abdulhadi, received considerably less.

This is because while Abdulhadi might share and encourage Mr. Hammad's disposition toward the Jewish people, as a university professor, she clearly has the wits not to hold up a knife on a social media website in order to discuss a desire to stab Jews.

I have her listed in my notes from the time, but I never wrote about her because, in truth, I find this whole nasty situation with SFSU to be unbecoming.  I used to love that campus.  I not only received a Master's Degree in History there, but I also met my wife in that department.  Some of the happiest years of my life were spent at San Francisco State and arriving at that campus in the late 1990s represented a true turning point in my life.

Of course, I also distinctly recall walking past Malcolm X Plaza, in front of the Cesar Chavez Student Center, and witnessing the Palestinian organization at that time, presumably GUPS, in solidarity with the Pan-African student organization holding aloft a banner that replaced the five-pointed stars in the American flag with 50 little Stars of David.

It was just a little racist reminder to the tiny Jewish minority on campus that they better keep in line.

In truth, it should not have taken me a full ten years after that moment to acknowledge the fact that the western left is very definitely no friend to the Jewish people.

So, when, the other day, I received an email from Tammi Benjamin of the University of California, Santa Cruz's AMCHA Initiative telling me that SFSU GUPS' advisor, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, took university funding to visit those who seek to murder Jews, I was only slightly taken aback.

The blood red on the fist that Abdulhadi proudly displays on her SFSU webpage reminds this Jew of the proud display of blood captured in the picture below taken directly after two young Jewish IDF members were lynched by an Arab-Muslim mob, after taking a wrong turn in Ramallah upon the start of the Second Terror War (intifada) in 2000.


I wish that I could say that I was shocked but, of course, I was not.

This is what Benjamin writes:

Dear Friends and Supporters: 

A California Public Records Act inquiry, requested by AMCHA Initiative, revealed that San Francisco State University (SFSU) Professor Rabab Abdulhadi received more than $7,000 from SFSU to fly to Jordan, the West Bank and Israel to meet with known a terrorist and individuals closely affiliated with terrorist organizations. 

Abdulhadi claimed the purpose of her trip was for academic and University business-related reasons and she concealed the true nature of her trip - personal political activism - on at least four documents with administrators, including President Wong, who approved the trip. Evidence demonstrated that Abdulhadi had actually always intended to use the University-funded trip to build relationships with anti-Israel political activists to promote anti-Semitic academic, cultural and economic boycotts of Israel, and the meetings were set before Abdulhadi requested University approval. 

This is the same professor who was the faculty advisor to the SFSU knife-wielding student investigated by the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force.  She was also caught on tape glorifying terrorism to SFSU students.

My initial reaction was to close my eyes and turn away because I simply do not want to deal with this.

I do not want to call down to that campus and, as an alumnus, complain about the fact that the university literally funds student groups that calls for the murder of Jews.  What are we supposed to do?  Call the office of SFSU President Dr. Wong and talk with some administrative assistant about how funding student organizations that spread violent hatred toward others is perhaps not in the university's mission statement?

I just do not want to feel that the university wherein I met my wife not only tolerates violent hatred directed towards us, but quite literally funds that hatred.

I have no intention of pursuing this story beyond this post - although I may - because I simply do not want to go through this again.  If San Francisco State University wishes to gain a reputation as the most anti-Semitic campus in the United States, today, then there is very little that I can possibly do to dissuade them.

I would suggest, however, that the administration might consider the notion that funding student organizations that call for murder, or funding their advisor's trip to visit with Jihadis, is not necessarily very good for the university's reputation.

Heck, SFSU does not really need its Jews, anyway.

I am certain that they will get along just fine without us.

Obama and World Embrace Genocidal Terrorists.

Doodad

Obama admin to work with Hamas in unity gov't.

The UN and EU as well.

Bibi reports back is sore.

Nothing ever really changes does it?

Defining pro-Israel

Sar Shalom

Before long, the primaries will begin for the campaign to succeed Barack Obama. One of the issues in the upcoming campaign will be who is good for Israel. This assessment might seem simple, but that would be deceiving. The reality is that no viable candidate will claim to be anything but pro-Israel. With everyone vying to claim the pro-Israel mantle, how should we determine who would support Israel when it counts and who would bail out?

One part of this assessment would be a review of Obama's record. For all the legitimate gripes we have about Obama's record on Israel, it is important to note that on any matter of providing military equipment or assistance, Obama has never let Israel down acted comparably to prior administrations, including those regarded as friendly to Israel. Is this an attempt to exonerate Obama from the positions he has taken on Israel? No. Rather, this is an effort to bring in all the facts that a view of Obama's record on Israel needs to explain.

What Obama's military assistance to Israel shows is that when the Arabs wage conventional warfare or terror against Israel, Obama has Israel's back. We do not have to ask questions. However, those methods of attempting to destroy Israel are yesterday's war, corresponding to the Arabs' primary modus operandi from 1948-1973 and 1973-roughly 1995. Today's war, which started as far back as the 1960's but became more significant only recently, is the Arab effort to delegitimize Israel and thus gain international support to destroy Israel or at least to change the battlespace enough that they would be able to succeed in destroying Israel on their own through the previous two means. Obama's shortcomings come in his support, or lack thereof, for Israel in today's war.

Obama's response to the notion that he is not supporting Israel in the delegitimization war probably would be along the lines that what he does or says pales in comparison to the facts of what Israel does in terms of Israel's perceived legitimacy around the world. A brief counter response would be that by that reason, no one would ever have reason to hire a lawyer because lawyers only manage the presentation of the facts to the arbitrating body, jury, judge or arbiter, and have no effect on the underlying facts. A more detailed response is that it's the narrative framing the facts that affects whether Israel's enemies can gain traction in their delegitimization campaign through Israel's actions.

The most Israel-hostile narrative I can construct that is consistent with Obama's actions would be that the Jews had a connection to the land of Israel long, long ago, but abandoned and forgot it in ancient history, only to remember it in the wake of the horrors of the 20th century in Europe. While the Jews achieved great things when they resettled their home, one cannot ignore that they had to displace a thriving Arab population in order to achieve it. While such a narrative may or may not be consistent with Obama's thinking, if it is Obama's thinking, it would explain why he would think that there is land that "belongs" to the Palestinians and that it is "illegitimate" for Jews to live there.

Looking back, Obama's 2009 speech at Cairo University provided an indication of such a narrative. It was not anything he said there, whether his mention of the six million who died in the Holocaust, his rebuke of those who deny the magnitude of that event, or even his lament of the Palestinians' circumstances and his call to realize their aspiration for "dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own." Rather, it was what Obama did not say. Obama said nothing about the Jews' origins in the land of Israel. Obama said nothing about the development of Jewish culture in the land of Israel in any era between the compilation of the Mishna and the Enlightenment. Obama said nothing about the Jews sharing with the Muslims in the horrors perpetrated by the Crusaders or the oppression of the Jews by the Muslims. None of this is a reason to ignore the life current life circumstance of the Palestinian Arabs, but it does provide a reason to balance Palestinian dignity and opportunity with Jewish national fulfillment.

More important than what any candidate would permit Israel to do if elected, say in the realm of settling land that the world calls "expansionism," would be the narrative that the candidate offers as a candidate that would effect international perceptions, such as when Israeli construction is called "expansionism." Such a narrative would have to be based on fact rather simply stating an opinion that Israel is receiving a raw deal. This is because an opinion, such as George W. Bush's statement that Ariel Sharon is a man of peace, can be dismissed as indicating someone is out of touch with reality. However, accurate and germane facts cannot be dismissed.

In addition to the Jewish history of the Middle East, such a narrative would need to include a guideline for evaluating the conduct of today's fighting. For instance, we need someone who will say that anyone, whether Muslim, Christian or Jew, who attacks anyone, whether Muslim, Christian or Jew, who is neither a party to the conflict nor in the vicinity of active fighting is a terrorist. By the same token whenever any party party legitimately perceives a grievance and acts to interdict that grievance, the interdiction is not an act of terror, no matter how much collateral damage results. On a cases by case basis it may be possible to say that greater precaution should have been taken to prevent collateral damage, but insufficient precautions do not make the interdiction an act of terror. Likewise, a candidate could point out that we do not consider it to be good sportsmanship for an athlete to fake an injury in order to draw a penalty call from the referee and that it is time that the Palestinians stop receiving a free pass for doing the equivalent. Update: This post has been updated to reflect corrections in the comments.

The "Jewish Incinerator" comes to America

by oldschooltwentysix


There are many people, too many, more than can be counted, that don't acknowledge the extent to which Jews are subjected to bigotry in society.

Among the non-believers are those who say claims about antisemitism are only made for political purposes, to silence criticism of Israel, often from themselves, often with antisemitic effect. That does not mean they refrain from being political when it suits their needs, as the use of "Islamophobia" is rampant to chill the slightest criticism in the face of Muslim violence, toward women, homosexuals, non-believers, or even other Muslims (see here and here).

Much present day strategy of antisemitism comes from people who claim to be THE voice of human rights. Opposing Jew-hatred, to them, seems not included in the protection of human rights, and Jewish advocacy is merely a ploy to support Israel and perpetuate Zionism, the external self-determination for Jews.

A main strategy adopted by illiberal humanitarians in the name of human rights is based on a model used in the case of South Africa, to help eliminate Apartheid, an international crime. To these selective, even sanctimonious arbiters of morality and justice, Zionism is also an international crime. The strategy was largely developed in South Africa, in 2001, a few days before 9-11. As a result, the Durban Conference of 2001 (see here and here), never received the notoriety it deserved. It was a reiteration of the infamous 1975 declaration that Zionism is racism (see here and here), a malicious concept that persists to this day, under different cover, particularly on college campuses (see here and here) where activities like Israel Apartheid Week and BDS occur.

Most of these illiberals are a lost cause. Yet they are outnumbered by others that are well-intentioned, insulated from the fray, whose ignorance or misinformation becomes evident on discussion. How many who believe antisemitism is not a real problem know anything about Durban? Or the agenda of those that seek to delegitimize Israel, which happens to be the ONLY Jewish state, but no other states? As if that in itself is not antisemitic in principle and in effect. To all of these people on the periphery: WAKE UP! 

It is not just over Zionism or at the universities, however, pronounced as these are. Here we find the case of the "Jewish Incinerator." It has been reported (also here and here) that at a Chicago high school, a Jewish student was verbally attacked by classmates for months. His mother finally contacted school officials after discovering some of the students were further attacking her son and all Jewish people through a popular video-game app called Clash of Clans, and even created an antisemitic gaming group to play. In her words:

So I look down, I see it says Jewish Incinerator with their one goal is to gather all the Jews, put them in an army camp and dispose of them. I’m 42-years-old. I’m not new to this world. I didn’t become Jewish yesterday. I felt naive and shocked. We are in the year 2014. Really? At a school that my son has gone to? And I shake because I watched this group grow literally from four. Kids were just joining and joining.

In Europe, it is now common to see violence directed to Jews (see here and here and here). Hopefully the USA will never evolve so far down this road. Vigilance is necessary to weed out the poison because we have seen where it has lead. Which is why it is important not to act as if there is no problem, when evidence is seen almost every day that antisemitism, often posing as something else, remains a persistent evil, not a phobia. This is so even if some Jewish friends say it's all about Israeli actions like the "expansion" of settlements on Arab land, when construction is almost entirely the addition of housing units in what already exists. Before that Arabs, not to mention Christians, were Jew-lovers, don't you see?