2008 UC Irvine MSU Hate Week Preview
Posted by: Jonathan Constantine | 04/28/2008 8:10 AM
Office of the Chancellor, Michael V. Drake
Ph: (949) 824-5111
Email: chancellor@uci.edu
Jewish Federation of Orange County
Email:jewishfederationofoc@jfoc.org
The Muslim Student Union combined with other leftist rabble organizations will be unveiling a series of speakers for their annually anti-semitic hate week.
The hate festivities take place May 7-15. The following are the featured guest speakers:
Norman Finkelstein: Disgraced DePaul University professor and holocaust denier, who has recently expressed solidarity with the terror group Hezbollah.
Imam Mohammad Al-Asi: Fervent anti-Semite who has articulated a Muslim Mission to kill Jews, also telling Jews to get out their ghettos, and comparing American Jews to rats hiding from the light. In a very ironic twist of fate Al-Asi was kicked out of his Washington D.C. mosque for being too radical.
Dick Platkin: Los Angeles City Planner and founder of LA Jews for
Peace, an activist organization against Israel's right to defend herself against terrorists.
Craig and Cindy Corrie (The parents of ISM activist Rachel Corrie): It's a shame that the MSU has to exploit the grief of a family in order to indict a whole race of people. For her part, Rachel Corrie was killed when she imprudently sat (as a human shield) in front of an IDF bulldozer as it demolished a home that was smuggling weapons in from Egypt. The IDF soldier was later vindicated as Rachel position was below his restricted view space. But more importantly, why was Rachel aiding terrorists?
Anna Baltzer: American activist and volunteer for the International Women's Peace Service. Young and attractive, Baltzer resembles a modern day Jane Fonda, gallivanting through the West Bank and Gaza in support of terrorists. When she's not promoting her latest pet Palestinian "peace movement," she is a staunch defender of terror tactics. In her latest blog piece, she defends terrorism and mass murder as the only --albeit noble -- tactic that will be judged more favorably once the jihadists establish institutional legitimacy. After all, Baltzer argues, Martin Luther King was called an "extremist" by his enemies.Some might call blowing up a wall "extreme." In fact, just about any action taken unilaterally for Palestinian liberation is portrayed as such. Martin Luther King was also called an "extremist," and eventually embraced the word, calling on others to join him in creative extremism. Criticism of the status quo will always be dismissed as ideological or extreme, and that's what makes challenging power structures so uncomfortable. We would prefer to affect change through consensus and the blessing of communities that have traditionally supported the status quo, like mainstream Jewish temples and US legislators. But, my friends, this is unrealistic; these groups will hopefully become a part of the movement someday, but they will not lead the movement today. And while it would be nice to wait until a day when it feels more convenient, remember that change will never be convenient for those who are profiting off of the way things are. Let us not forget that Palestinians, like people of color in Dr King's time (and still today), have not had the luxury waiting and choosing a convenient time... Indeed, there is no convenient time. But inconvenience and discomfort are a small price to pay for justice. Remember that prophets have always been scorned in their own time.
Ilan Pappé: Disgraced Haifa University professor who apparently believes that evidence is a subjective element of academic research. Such was the case in his defense of protege Teddi Katz. In a shameful act of libel, Katz argued in his graduate thesis that IDF soldiers slaughtered over 200 surrendered Palestinian civilians during the 1948 War of Independence:Katz maintained that the Israel Defense Forces had killed more than 200 unarmed inhabitants of the Arab fishing village of Tantura on May 22-23, 1948, after the village had surrendered. It was an astonishing assertion. No massacre had previously been recorded in Tantura; indeed, no massacre of such magnitude had been recorded in all of Israeli history.In court, it was later found that not only did Katz fabricate evidence, but fictionalized the entire incident:
The trial took place in Tel Aviv in December 2000. After two days' cross-examination in court, Katz signed a statement that nullified his research. "After checking and re-checking the evidence," it read, "it is clear to me now, beyond any doubt, that there is no basis whatsoever for the allegation that the Alexandroni Brigade, or any other fighting unit of the Jewish forces, committed killing of people in Tantura after the village surrendered."Yet his friend and featured MSU speaker Ilan Pappe, argues that historical research need not be based on facts:
No wonder Katz admitted this. The trial had abundantly exposed the flimsiness or nonexistence of his evidence. To cite just two examples, Katz had quoted a surviving Arab villager, Abu Fahmi 'Ali Daqnash, as saying that after the surrender of the village, Israeli soldiers had "often shot, killed, and wounded people." And he had quoted another villager, Abu Riyaj Muhammad Hatzadiyah, as saying, "I know that they shot young people after the fighting and that there was a big slaughter in the village, even after everyone surrendered and stopped fighting." No such statements appeared, however, in either Katz's recordings or his notes of his interviews with the two men.
Katz had understood the "murkiness" of the memories of participants so many years after traumatic events, but he "was not interested in fine details," Pappe wrote. Katz simply wished to see the overall picture, "leaving behind, perhaps forever, certainties about exact chronology and names and precise numbers."
The real story, Pappe contended, was that Israeli forces had indeed massacred a large number of Arab civilians in Tantura--as was typical, Pappe further asserted, of Israeli "ethnic cleansing" in Palestine in 1948. Katz only wished to uncover the "pain and suffering" experienced by people in the midst of war. Pappe compared Katz's work to the recording of the testimony of Jewish Holocaust survivors. Just as researchers used personal narratives to document the traumas of the Holocaust, so too, argued Pappe, did Katz use testimony from Palestinians to reconstruct the horrors of the 1948 Nakba, or "disaster," as Palestinians call it, even though the individual tales might not have been true.
Amir Abdel Malik-Ali: The most frequent MSU speaker known for his antisemitic and anti-American tirades. Not only has Amir Abdel Malik called America a corrupt and evil empire, but has endorsed suicide bombings as a means for justice and has called for Israel to be wiped off the map.CATEGORY:
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