Wednesday, March 26, 2014

The Racist Harassment of Jewish College Students

Michael L.

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

The racist harassment of Jewish college students in western universities is a scandal.

image hostAt the University of Michigan, anti-Israel / anti-Jewish student politicos placed fake eviction orders on the dorm room doors of Jewish and pro-Israel students.  As Jonathan Tobin writes in Commentary:
The movement to boycott Israel cloaks itself in the language of human rights. But when push comes to shove, the violent and discriminatory nature of their efforts is hard to disguise. That’s the upshot of a series of events taking place at the University of Michigan this month where advocates of BDS—boycott, divestment, and sanctions—against the Jewish state tried and failed to get the student government at the Ann Arbor institution to approve a divestment measure. But what was most remarkable about the process was the manner with which BDS groups protested their failure by seeking to intimidate those who opposed their efforts. As the Washington Free Beacon reports, a series of sit-ins at student government offices and other campus facilities by BDS supporters were marked by anti-Semitic threats directed at Jewish students. This followed previous attempts at intimidation at the school when pro-Palestinian activists placed fake eviction orders on the dorm rooms of pro-Israel students and Jews.

This is not the first time anti-Israel campaigners have behaved in such a manner at a major American university. Yet what is most distressing about these incidents is the lack of outrage expressed by university officials about these events as well as the refusal of the administration to publicly oppose BDS motions. The result is what may well be another instance of the creation of a hostile and discriminatory environment for Jews at the school in blatant violation of federal civil-rights laws and U.S. Department of Education regulations. By acting in this manner, the BDS movement is merely illustrating that it is a thinly disguised hate group rather than a protest on behalf of the oppressed.
Having recently come off the kerfuffle at San Francisco State University, I very much relate to stories such as this one.  The universities are a key battle-ground in fighting off anti-Semitic anti-Zionism and the heinous BDS movement.  I will never forget walking across the SFSU campus and seeing the Pan-African student organization, in solidarity with the Palestinian-Arab student organization, displaying a poster that showed the American flag filled with 50 little Stars of David.

That moment is seared into my memory, because it is the very first moment wherein I recognized that Jewish people were being driven out of the political home that we did more than most to build.

Since then, sadly, we have come to discover that San Francisco State is actually funding student organizations that call for the murder of "colonizers."  I am still unclear about just who these "colonizers" in need of killing include, but when members of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) hold aloft signs that read, "My heroes have always killed colonizers" they mean Jews.

Period.

Whoever else they might mean, they clearly mean the Jews of the Middle East who are daring to defend themselves from never-ending Arab aggression.

If you cannot grasp this obvious fact then you are simply refusing to acknowledge what is before your very nose.  I do not care if you are a university professor or just a run-of-the-mill schmuck.  If you cannot grasp what it means when Palestinian-Arab students publicly call for the killing of "colonizers" in broad daylight on a significant American university campus, then you are not facing reality.

But none of this is new.

Jewish students have been harassed and demeaned on American college campuses for decades if they dare to stand up in support of the Jewish State of Israel.

5 comments:

  1. The worst part of this is that people are under the impression that a University education makes one smarter; a critical thinker. heh.

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  2. And another knife wielding idiot emerges:

    A pro-Palestinian activist on the University of Michigan’s campus recently posted what experts described as “an overtly threatening” photo of himself wearing a traditional Arab headscarf and jamming a knife into a pineapple.

    The emergence of the photo comes just days after Palestinian activists on the University of Michigan’s campus leveled death threats and racial epithets at pro-Israel students who opposed a resolution to divest from Israel.

    Pro-Palestinian campus activists, angered by the student government’s recent decision to reject their divestment measure, leveled death threats at one student and have reportedly called other pro-Israel students “dirty Jew” and “kike.”

    The student government again overwhelmingly rejected the divestment measure on Tuesday evening, prompting great anger from activists both on and off campus.

    The vote was reportedly cast by secret ballot due to concerns about the council members’ safety, according to a report from the head of a leading pro-Israel campus group.

    The latest image raising concern among civil rights leaders comes from a Facebook posting by Michigan student Yazan Kherallah, a leading voice in the campus’s Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a virulently anti-Israel movement that championed the divestment measure.

    Kherallah in late January posted a picture of himself on Facebook in which his face is covered by a Keffiyeh and he is jabbing a large knife into a pineapple. The words “it’s on” accompany the photograph.

    Kherallah is said to serve as the divestment chair for the campus group Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), which authored the divestment measure and held “sit-ins” over the past weeks to intimidate student council members.

    Civil rights leader Kenneth Marcus labeled Kherallah’s photograph as “overtly threatening” and said that it could contribute to the culture of fear within the University of Michigan’s pro-Israel community.

    “In the context of the current controversy, the University of Michigan really needs to know what this student is trying to communicate,” said Marcus, a former staff director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “The knife is held in an overtly threatening way [and] coupled with a keffiyeh, it appears to be a gesture of warning or a threat towards Zionists.”

    Marcus said that the use of a pineapple could have significant meaning as it has been used in recent months by the anti-Semitic French comedian Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala.

    “The use of a pineapple may be arbitrary. But in recent months, in France, the comedian Dieudonne has associated the pineapple with Zionists and Holocaust denial, especially with his use of the term ‘quenelle,’” a gesture similar to the Nazi salute, Marcus said.
    - See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2014/03/university-michigan-bds-defeat-jihad-jew-hating-bds-posts-overtly-threatening-photo-facebook.html/#sthash.9p25sLp5.dpuf

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  3. All Jewish kids need to learn Krav Maga or Kung Fu or some other effective form of martial art.

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    Replies
    1. Proficiency in all manner of self-defense is always a good idea.

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  4. I don't know if you've seen these:

    http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/03/anti-israel-academic-boycott-turns-ugly-at-vassar/#comments

    http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/wandering-in-the-academic-wilderness/2014/03/26/0/

    http://www.nyunews.com/2014/03/26/kaplanlavine/

    http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/san-francisco-state-university-professor-found-promoting-terrorism

    http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/03/26/u-k-%E2%80%99s-king%E2%80%99s-college-passes-israel-divestment-resolution/

    http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/no-minority-should-feel-alienated-on-campus/

    http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2014/03/27/wildeman-uwsas-israel-boycott-referendum-was-a-failure/

    http://daphneanson.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/windsors-shame-canadian-university.html

    http://windsor.ctvnews.ca/uwindsor-bds-referendum-didn-t-adhere-to-processes-set-out-by-uwsa-1.1748796#ixzz2xDF5d6Qq

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