Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu:

I wanted to write to you about that ship full of Iranian arms that the Israeli navy apprehended on its way to delivering them to the Hezb’Allah terrorists last week. The FRANCOP ship was carrying hundreds of tons of Iranian weapons of various types. Israel seized the arms and let the ship proceed to Beirut.

Mister Prime Minister, I really feel that Israel behaved improperly in this matter. After all, these weapons and bombs are Iranian and belong to Iran. They are properly the property of Tehran. Israel seized things that do not belong to it!

This is why I hereby appeal to you in the name of all decent and honest Israelis. The stolen property must be returned at once to its proper and legal owners. Israel must restore the bombs to Tehran, it must return all the explosives immediately to the Ayatollahs of Iran.

At once, I insist.

From a B-2 stealth bomber above the skies of Tehran!

Thank you for listening!

Prof. Steven Plaut
University of Haifa

A Public Challenge to Tel Aviv University

A Public Challenge to Tel Aviv University

The Sociology department at Tel Aviv University has been engaged in subsidized sedition. It has offered a course in one-sided propaganda and leftist indoctrination. And Tel Aviv University students got PAID to sign up and be indoctrinated in the course! Really!

The course, which is evidently not offered this year but was offered as late as 2007-8, was entitled “Bureaucracy, Governmentality, and Human Rights.” It was group-taught, mainly by Tel Aviv University Marxist sociologist and far-leftist anti-Zionist Professor Yehouda Shenhav, together with far-leftist non-academic political activists. The latter were two lawyers, Yael Berda from the extremist “Machsom Watch” political group, specialized in interfering with Israeli military checkpoints in the “territories,” and Michael Sfard, the attorney for the far-Left “Association for Civil Rights in Israel.” The ACRI believes that Jews have no civil rights worth defending but Arabs have the right to use violence to evict Israel from “occupied territories.”

The course was also offered by Shenhav and friends to visiting students from Tufts University (see this). The syllabus of the course shows that it consists only of leftist anti-Israel propaganda. No pro-Israel speakers or writers were included in the course materials. Students in the course were taken around to visit various Israeli far-leftist groups like the extremist “Yesh Din,” and also Palestinian propagandists. The lectures included diatribes against Israeli imperialism and colonialism. Israel is denounced throughout the course as racist and as an apartheid regime. Occupation of Palestinians is denounced as a horrible atrocity, with never a word as to how and why the “occupation” came about and what the costs have been to Israel from attempts at ending the “occupation." Go here to see the entire course outline.

So here we have the spectacle of Tel Aviv University not only offering a one-sided propaganda and indoctrination program in anti-Israel extremism all dressed up as a course in “sociology,” but also making payments to students who agree to be subjected to the indoctrination. Each student was paid about 1450 NIS plus additional expenses.


Well, my friend and comrade Seth Frantzman, a Phd student at the Hebrew University and a writer for Isracampus.org.il, the watchdog group that monitors and exposes Israeli extremist academics, has come up with a brilliant idea. He (and I second his call) would like to challenge the heads of Tel Aviv University. We would like to ask the heads of Tel Aviv University whether in the name of pluralism and balance they would be willing to approve in principle the following course as a new one to be offered to students in the sociology department. We would like to know if the following course content, which largely parallels the course offered by Shenhav and his buddies, is acceptable. And we would like to ask how much money Tel Aviv University is willing to pay the students who sign up for the course.


Here is the course outline as prepared by Seth Frantzman:

Tel Aviv University
Faculty of Social Sciences
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Yearly Course
Two weekly hours

Bureaucracy, Governmentality and Individual Rights – Alternative Course Syllabus
Prof. Benny Alon
TA: Adv. Itamar Ben-Gvir
Guest lecturer: Baruch Marzel

The course will discuss managerial theory and practice, with an emphasis on mind control mechanisms that Palestinians developed to train terrorists in the context of the West Bank. We will examine the historical sources of these mechanisms and attempt to situate them within the Islamist context, particularly as envisioned in Wahhabism and the writings of Said Qutb. We will then demonstrate how the Hebrew freedom fighter is reflected, within the spaces of sovereignty he creates, in the NGO-funding practices of European countries, their agents and executive authorities. In addition, we will demonstrate how the Palestinian Islamist culture creates lawless spaces, where people's lives become exposed to violence or the threat thereof. Simultaneously, we will analyze the political and cultural implications of historical anachronism, relating them to questions of morality and religion, politics and sovereignty, and political theology. We will place special emphasis on the relationship between radical Hamas interpretations of religion and Fatah bureaucracy and their ties with violence, in all forms. Through the course, we will familiarize ourselves with the complexity of maintaining the human rights of the Hebrew, particularly in the unusual yet daily events in which they are most crucial. We will learn to listen to testimonies and stories from the points of view of different actors in the event, and primarily "look over the shoulder" of those working in service of the Yishuv, in order to try and understand the mechanisms and the networks of events operating in reality.

Course structure

The course is a seminar combining theory and practice. In addition to Prof. Alon's lectures, Activist Itamar Ben Gvir and his friends will accompany the course as a guest lecturer. Every two weeks, the students will take part in Yesh Yehudut's project of observing Palestinian militancy, and in Yad L’Achim's project of assistance to Jewish women trapped in the houses of their abusive Arab husbands in the Palestinian territories. Under the direction of these organizations, the students will be involved in documentation, building a Jewish outpost, advocacy and coordination while maintaining a journal documenting their activity. The students will be guided by Itamar Ben-Gvir, both individually and in groups. Students will receive transportation expenses and a yearly scholarship of NIS 1450. At the end of the year, each student will submit an article based upon her activities and experiences, with reference to the course's theoretical content. Some of the articles will be collected in a book edited by Prof. Alon, Baruch Marzel and Adv. Itamar Ben-Gvir, in cooperation with the organizations.

Schedule and outline
October 24 – Lecture 1: Introduction of the course, group guidance
Prof. Alon, Adv. Ben-Gvir, Adv. Marzel
October 31 – Field work
November 7 – Lecture 2: Development of bureaucratic thought, managerial revolution and rationalism
as an ideology
November 14 – Field work
November 24 – Islamism and terrorism – Guest lecturer: Baruch Marzel
November 28 – Field work
December 3 – Lecture 3: Bureaucracy and political catastrophes
December 12 – Field work
December 19 – Lecture 4: Sovereignty, governance and power
December 20 – Field work
January 2: Testimony of suicide bombers and confession. Guest lecturer: Seth Frantzman
January 9 – Field work
January 16 – Field work
February 27 – Lecture 5: Political theology and the state of emergency
March 6 – Lecture 6: Islamism – occupier and occupied: from co-dependency to
"exposed life"
March 13 – Field work
March 20 – Field work
March 27 – Racialization and Wahhabism
April 10 – Field work
April 17 – Lecture 7: The security paradigm
April 24 – Field work
May 8 – Lecture 9: Bureaucracy of Hamas’ Shariah judicial system
May 15 – Field work
May 29 – Lecture 10: Globalization of terrorism, disaster management and humanitarian organizations
June 5 – Concluding meeting

Hebrew University Prof wants Academic Freedom to be Denied to God and Moses

To Left, Hebrew University's Prof. Galnoor, advocate of suppressing freedom of speech
A few days ago the McCarthyist article by Prof. Itzhak Galnoor was posted here and it is making the rounds in other forums. In it Galnoor claims that there is supposedly a grand right-wing conspiracy to suppress academic freedom in Israel for those with whom the "Right" disagrees. Galnoor believes that leftist anti-Israel academics should have the right under academic freedom to smear Israel, support terrorist violence, advocate law breaking, and call for Israel's annihilation, but critics of such people - including watchdog groups that document what such people say and write - should NOT be entitled under academic freedom to express criticism of the public political writings and behavior of anti-Israel activists. This anti-democratic opinion is evidently shared with Galnoor by David Faur-Levy, who runs the Israel Social Science List and has refused to allow response to Galnoor's article there. For the full story, go here.

This is all very amusing because Itzhak Galnoor was himself the perpetrator of arguably the worst act of political McCarthyism in recent Israeli history, where he persecuted and demanded the firing of a prominent academic who had dared to express an opinion with which Galnoor disagreed. The victim of Galnoor's witchhunt and McCarthyist persecution was Prof. Nahum Rakover, a distinguished scholar of Jewish law. In the 1990s he was an advisor for the Israeli government in matters of Jewish law. After the 1994 Supreme Court decision concerning the granting of spousal perquisites to the gay partner of an El Al steward, Rakover was asked to advise the Knesset what the position of Jewish law was on homosexuality. Rakover stated that Jewish law regards homosexuality as an abomination morally equivalent to bestiality, as stated clearly in Leviticus. He did not say this was his own personal opinion, he simply answered the question about Jewish law, as he was being paid and employed to do.

Prof. Itzhak Galnoor, at the time the chief of the Civil Service in Israel, was enraged that Rakover had expressed an unfashionable opinion, or - to be more precise - cited the Torah's expression of an unfashionable opinion. Galnoor then led a public campaign to get Rakover fired from his government position in response, joined by Yael Dayan and other prominent public figures.

So the same person, now complaining loudly about how the noisy campus Left is supposedly being silenced for its opinions, served just a few years back as chief McCarthyist to get Prof. Rakover fired due to the latter's exercising his right of freedom of speech and academic freedom. Not only does Galnoor believe that academic freedom need not be extended to Prof. Rakover, he also evidently thinks it should be denied to Moses, God, or whomever you happen to believe wrote the Book of Leviticus!

For more details, see www.isracampus.org.il

Tel Aviv University Loses Big in Court; Academic Freedom Wins for a Change

What an embarrassment for Tel Aviv University!

You may recall that we reported last year that Tel Aviv University had suppressed freedom of speech and academic freedom for its students in an exhibit at the Student Union, which showed that China suppresses, persecutes and murders members of the Falon Gung cult group.

The campus administration ordered the exhibit shut down lest it offend the China Embassy staff in Israel. The two students who organized the exhibit, Yaniv Nitzan and Itay Tamuz, are the real heroes here. They were incensed at the censorship of the exhibit and decided to take the matter to court. And they won!

The court found for the students and ordered the university to pay them damages. Evidently Tel Aviv University's law school, a bastion for leftists, Israel bashing, and a school largely uninterested in freedom of speech (you may recall the petition by some of its professors against allowing a woman colonel teach in the school), did nothing to support the students. Neither did any of the rest of the Tenured Left, always pretending to support academic freedom when it comes to things like Neve Gordon's calls for Israel to be annihilated, or the decision to turn the TAU campus into a Gulag for a day (see this).

The details of the story are here.

Here is the full story from the Post:

Court backs students in TAU row over Falun Gong exhibit the university removed
Oct. 1, 2009
Abe Selig , THE JERUSALEM POST
A Tel Aviv District Court judge on Wednesday ruled that Tel Aviv University had "violated freedom of expression and succumbed to pressure from the Chinese Embassy" when it took down a student exhibition last year that focused on the oppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement at the hands of the Communist Chinese government.
The exhibition, which featured 25 paintings by 17 artists from around the world, depicted Falun Gong spiritual practices and the torture and executions its members have reportedly been subjected to in recent years.
The movement, which is based on an ancient Chinese meditation method that aims to bring its practitioners to higher spiritual enlightenment, was outlawed in China in 1999. Some of the artists, who are survivors of China's hard labor camps, had endured the very tortures portrayed in the paintings.
The exhibition was originally approved by the head of the Asian Studies department at TAU, Prof. Yoav Ariel, along with the university's administration, which allotted nearly two weeks in March 2008, for the presenters to show the paintings inside the central on-campus library.
But after just two days, organizers were told that the exhibition had to be removed. After initially protesting the move, they were given an additional three days to hold the exhibition, but were then told it had to come down.
The two students who had organized the exhibition, Yaniv Nitzan and Itay Tamuz, were incensed, and claimed that the decision to shut down the exhibition had been made after TAU was pressured by the Chinese Embassy in Tel Aviv, the two took the matter to court.
Nitzan and Tamuz filed the petition against both TAU and the university's student union, both of whom appear as defendants on the court documents. According to a student union member close to the case, the pair had been under the impression that because the student union had refused to take sides in the matter until a legal ruling was issued, it, too, opposed the exhibition.
Nonetheless, after more than a year of legal battles, Judge Amiram Benyamini ruled on Wednesday that TAU had "succumbed to pressure from the Chinese Embassy, which funds various activities at the university, and took down the exhibit, violating [the students'] freedom of expression."
Benyamini also stipulated as part of his ruling that the exhibition be given another week to be shown, and ordered TAU to pay some NIS 45,000 for the students' court costs.
TAU declined to comment on the matter Wednesday afternoon, and a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy refused to comment, telling The Jerusalem Post that it was "a holiday" before hanging up the phone.
The TAU student union, however, which was not affected by the ruling, issued a response expressing its solidarity with the students, and called on the university to "encourage pluralism and freedom of expression amongst the student body."
"As part of this, the student union will assist the organizers in their efforts to present the exhibition on campus. From the moment that the university decided to do away will the exhibition, the union waited for the legal ruling of the court. After receiving the judge's ruling, we are now standing with the students who initiated the exhibition, and will assist them in any way they might need to present the exhibition anew."

Special for Yom Kippur: from Labor Party Knesset Member Avishai Braverman

Labor Party's Avishai Braverman on the Left, the Far Left. On the right is someone else:



Special for Yom Kippur: Want to know the REAL reason why Ben Gurion
University became a den of treason?

Ben Gurion University just can't get itself out of the headlines thanks to its hordes of anti-Israel extremist faculty members. The worst is Neve Gordon of BGU's political science department, so anti-Semitic that his articles run on Holocaust Denial and official Iranian governmental web sites, who has been leading the call for a world boycott of Israel.

So, Want to know the REAL reason why Ben Gurion University became a den of treason?

Ask Avishai Braverman, who personally set up the Political Science Department there as Israel's worst anti-Israel anti-Zionist propaganda bureau. Braverman was president of BGU for many years and was in many ways even worse than its current President, the clueless Rivka Carmi. Braverman filled BGU with "post-Zionists" and "New Historians." He allowed the political science department to fire and refuse to employ Zionists.

Avishai Braverman, the "economist" Knesset Member now leading the campaign to raise unemployment in Israel by raising the minimum wage, pronounces today in the media:

Minister Braverman: Seek Arabs' forgiveness
Government should ask Arabs for forgiveness ahead of Yom Kippur, minister for minority affairs says.

Got that? Jews should ask for forgiveness on Yom Kippur not from the Almighty but from the Arabs. Including the Negev bedouins who have illegally seized control of large swaths of Negev land they do not own and never paid for.

So why shouldn't Jews also ask forgiveness from the Germans for all the suffering the Germans experienced during World War II?

Full article follows:

Minister Braverman: Seek Arabs' forgiveness

Government should ask Arabs for forgiveness ahead of Yom Kippur, minister for minority affairs says
Ilana Curiel

Minister for Minority Affairs Avishay Braverman urged the government Saturday to "ask for the forgiveness of Israel's Arabs" ahead of Yom Kippur.

"The State of Israel needs to considerably ameliorate its attitude to the Arab population in general, and the Bedouin community in particular," the minister said at a meeting of Bedouin local council heads in the south.

Before the session, Minister Braverman toured several Bedouin communities in the Negev desert and heard the problems faced by local residents. In one case, residents complained that despite living in a community officially recognized by Israel, they do not have access to water, sewage, and electricity infrastructure.

"We must make progress this year in respect to addressing the Bedouin population," Braverman said. "If we want law and order, we also need to do something - they suffer from unemployment, educational problems, and a lack of water and electricity."

'Learn from Jewish mistakes'
The minister also vowed to do everything in his power to prompt the Israeli government to take action in order to resolve the current problems.

Addressing one of the burning issues in the south, the question of land ownership, Braverman said that "the time has come for a land deal. This is a major issue that hinders many other things."

Turning his attention to the Bedouin, the minister said: "The weakness of the Bedouin leadership and the fact that the Sheikhs' power has declined also undermines the implementation of solutions on the ground. Learn from the mistakes of the Jews: Cooperate in order to succeed."

'Conscience' - Or Boor?

When I marked the recent anniversary of Peter Jennings's passing with a column about an embarrassing incident in the ABC newsman's career, a couple of readers chastised your gentle correspondent for speaking ill of the dead. So when Edward Kennedy died not long after, I decided to err on the side of decency and keep mum for an appropriate interval.

OK, interval's up. The whitewashing and lionizing of Ted Kennedy was nauseating - though hardly unexpected from a media establishment that for decades has been in such embarrassing thrall to the Kennedys.

Back in 2003, Kennedy - whose behavior during most of his adult life was once described by Time magazine, in a rare moment of candor, as that of "a drunken, overage frat-house boor" - decided that the war in Iraq was nothing more than one giant scam.

Opposing a war on political or geostrategic grounds is one thing, but Kennedy told the Associated Press, "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."

Kennedy also accused the administration of spreading money appropriated for the war effort "all around to these political leaders in all parts of the world, bribing them to send in troops."

Naturally, Kennedy offered not a shred of evidence for his accusation, nor did he name any of those "political leaders in all parts of the world" who supposedly were on the receiving end of the alleged bribes.

What Kennedy also didn't mention was that just the year before - a mere six months, in fact, before the U.S. invaded Iraq - he had gone on record stating that "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed."

So if the "whole thing was a fraud," as he put it, he was very much one of the perpetrators. The fact is, Kennedy and just about every other Democratic elected official in Washington shared the Bush administration's view of Saddam. Kennedy could shout all he wanted in 2003 about there having been "no imminent threat" from Iraq, but he certainly believed one existed in 2002 - before it became politically advantageous for him to impugn the motives and morals of George W. Bush.

Kennedy sank even lower in 2004 when, in response to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, he in one fell swoop made light of the Iraqi dictator's mass atrocities and slandered the U.S. military with the observation that "Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management - U.S. management."

We know Kennedy didn't think much of George W. Bush. So whom did he admire?

"Al Sharpton," Kennedy bellowed at a Congressional Black Caucus event, "has brought a new energy, a new insight in the issues that are facing this country.... [H]e is educating America about what this country is really about and what it needs to do and what its future should be.... We are a better country because Al Sharpton is in the mix and trying to make an important difference in our nation."

That would be the Al Sharpton of Tawana Brawley fame; the Al Sharpton who referred to a Jewish merchant being picketed by black protesters in Harlem as "some white interloper" not long before one of the protesters went into the store, shot three whites and a Pakistani and then set fire to the establishment (among the dead were five Hispanics and a black security guard).

The Al Sharpton who elevated the public discourse with the following historical tidbit that must be read slowly and savored for its profound insight and literary elegance, and that has been preserved for posterity by Bill Crawford in his book Democrats Do the Dumbest Things:

"White folks was in caves while we was building empires. We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it."

Al Sharpton "educating America"? If Ted Kennedy was, as some chose to eulogize him, the "conscience of the Senate," we are in a sorry, sorry state indeed. Just ask Robert Bork, the accomplished jurist mercilessly and unfairly savaged by Kennedy on the floor of that very Senate. At least Bork can give you a response. If only the same could be said for poor Mary Jo Kopechne.

A Politicized Court sends a Heroic Cop to Prison in Israel

To the Right - Judge Finkelstein

Officer Shahar Mizrachi is the latest victim of the leftist assault on Israel via the court system. Officer Mizrachi is a hero. He should have been awarded a medal for stopping a violent car thief. Instead, a politicized court and a politicized judge are sending him to prison for 15 months. There he will sit among the common criminals, including perhaps some he himself apprehended. They will make his life a living hell.

Mizrachi’s crime? He did his job!

In July 2006, Officer Mizrachi saw a car thief stealing a car in Pardes Hana. It turns out though that the thief was an Arab from nearby Baqa al-Garbiya, one Mahmoud Ganaim. Officer Mizrachi shot the thief, who died from the wound. The thief, Ganaim, tried to stab Mizrachi with a screwdriver before the cop shot him.

But in post-survivalist Israel the court system seems to believe that Arabs should not be expected to obey the law and Jews should never be permitted to stop them from committing crimes. You may recall the farmer from the Negev, Shai Dromi, who shot at three Bedouin thieves trying to steal his sheep and killed one. He was harassed and indicted by the Attorney General and charged with manslaughter, although recently acquited. (see this). The Knesset had to pass a special "Shai Dromi Law" to protect the heroic farmer from the malice of the crusading Prosecutor. Israel’s Attorney General has for decades been a leftist biased judicial activist.

The judge in the Mizrachi case was Petach Tikvah District Court Judge Menachem Finkelstein. He convicted Mizrachi of manslaughter for doing his job and stopping the thief. In his verdict, the judge second guesses Mizrachi in the ruling and insists he could have stopped the thief without killing him, like by shooting at the car tires. Never mind that shooting the tires of a car belonging to a citizen is also a crime. The judge also insists Mizrachi could have shot the thief in a leg. There is no evidence that the judge has any experience as a sharpshooter.

The family of the Arab thief denounced the court for giving the heroic cop a sentence they thought was too light. They screamed that if the thief had been a Jew, the cop would have been convicted with a tougher sentence. Actually, in that case the cop would not have been indicted at all. For the record, if the thief had been a Jew shot in the act, I would still insist that Mizrachi is a hero and deserves a medal. Israel is today under the hegemony of a leftist ideology that holds that Arabs should not be expected to obey the law since they are so “oppressed.”

Israel has a system of clemency for the convicted, but the President issues clemency writs, and the current President, Shimon Peres, is the last person to pardon a heroic Jewish cop who did his duty, although Peres would have been the first to pardon the thief if he had been convicted and sent to prison. Peres is likely to pardon terrorist arch-murderer Marwan Barghoti in order to get the "talks" restarted with the PLO. He also will no doubt pardon Ehud Olmert. But not Moshe Katsav though. Katsav had the nerve to beat Peres in an earlier Knesset vote to become president.

If a public opinion poll were held, my guess is that over 99% of Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs would justify the shooting of the car thief and applaud Officer Mizrachi's courage and actions.

There is also not much one can do about the judge, Menachem Finkelstein. It is all but impossible to dismiss a judge in Israel. Nevertheless, if you would like to try, write the Minister of Justice, Yaakov Ne’eman, at the Israel’s Ministry of Justice, and tell him what you think: Fax : 972-2-6466357- Address : Salah -a - Din 29 P.O.Box 49029 Jerusalem 91490

What Were They Thinking?

I just read the following on The Washington Times' website:

President Obama's plan to inspire the nation's schoolchildren with a video address next week erupted into controversy Wednesday, forcing the White House to pull out its eraser and rewrite a government recommendation that teachers nationwide assign students a paper on how to "help the president."

Presidential aides acknowledged the White House helped the U.S. Education Department craft the proposal, which immediately was met by fierce criticism from Republicans and conservative organizations who accused Mr. Obama of trying to politicize the education system.

White House aides said the language was an honest misunderstanding in what was supposed to be a inspirational, pro-education message to America's youths.

Among the activities the government initially suggested for prekindergarten to sixth-grade students: that they "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." Another task recommended for students immediately after listening to the speech: to engage in a discussion about what "the president wants us to do."

The novel curriculum plan brought sharp criticism from conservatives, including some who complained that classrooms were being used to spread political propaganda. In response, the White House last night confirmed they were revising the lesson plan that was distributed last week by the U.S. Department of Education.

Was I the only one thinking about Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union when reading about children being asked to "help the president" and consider what "the president wants us to do"? Considering the many apprehensions Americans already have concerning Obama and his plans for expanding government, designing this school program truly reflects, at the very least, a lack of seichel.

It is Time to Boycott Ben Gurion University to Save it!

Just when it seems that there is no expression of academic treason that Israel has not seen and that Ben Gurion University has not defended as "pursuing peace and justice," along comes Neve Gordon, the head of Ben Gurion University's politics department, and issues a call in the Los Angeles Times for a world boycott of Israel. He says it is in order to save Israel. And a growing movement among Jews who do NOT hate themselves is organizing to boycott Ben Gurion University in response.

You know, to save it from itself!

Here is the Haaretz report:

According to Israel's Haaretz, Aug. 23 2009, a large group of Los Angeles Jews are launching a campaign to boycott Ben Gurion University for as long as Gordon works there:

Members of the Los Angeles Jewish community have threatened to withhold donations to an Israeli university in protest of an op-ed published by a prominent Israeli academic in the Los Angeles Times on Friday, in which he called to boycott Israel economically, culturally and politically. In the wake of the publication of the article, Israel's Consul-General in Los Angeles, Yaakov (Yaki) Dayan sent a letter to the president of Ben-Gurion University, Prof. Rivka Carmi, in which he said that such statements may be detrimental to the university.
"Since the article was published I've been contacted by people who care for Israel; some of them are benefactors of Ben-Gurion University," Dayan wrote. "They were unanimous in threatening to withhold their donations to your institution. My attempt to explain that one bad apple would affect hundreds of researchers turned out to be futile."
"I believe that the definitive answer to anti-Zionist lecturers like Gordon is to set up a center for Zionist studies, which unfortunately does not exist in Israeli academia," he continued. "This center would help dispel the lies disseminated by Gordon in the name of your university."

Gordon is one of Israel's most openly anti-Smeitic and anti-Israel academic extremists. He surpasses Ilan Pappe in some ways. Much of his "academic" career has consisted of turning out anti-Israel hate propaganda and passing it off as scholarly research. He is so extreme that his articles are covered by Holocaust Deniers, by the main Iranian newspaper, and by Neo-Nazi web sites all over the world. Ben Gurion University's President, Rivka Carmi, has repeatedly supported Gordon and defended his behavior, endorsing not only his right to say treasonous things but also has endorsed the contents of what he says. Carmi celebrates Gordon as a "serious cholar of human rights." Sure he is.

Gordon served as a "human shield" for wanted terrorists and murderers being hidden by Yassir Arafat. He has spent much of time in recent years promoting and supporting Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein, who was fired by DePaul University for his own lack of serious academic work. At DePaul University, anti-Israel hate propaganda does not count as scholarship, but at Ben Gurion University it does! He is a leftist Neo-Fascist who opposes freedom of speech for those with whom he disagrees and has attempted to use the Israeli court system to suppress democracy and freedom of speech through a SLAPP harassment. He has repeatedly called for Israel to be elimiated altogether. Gordon's campaign for the anniliation of Israel is being carried out while Gordon sits in a cushy academic job paid for by the Israeli taxpayer.

To tell the heads of Ben Gurion University what you think of all this, write to Rivka Carmi, President

P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel,

rcarmi@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
and president@bgu.ac.il

Tel: 972-8-6461211/9

Fax: 972-8-6472991


Prof. Jimmy Weinblatt, Rector
P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel

rector@bgu.ac.il

Tel: 972-8-6461223

Fax: 972-8-6479434

Other officers listed here: http://cmsprod.bgu.ac.il/Eng/Units/management/

University "Friends of" Offices outside Israel are listed here: http://web.bgu.ac.il/Eng/Units/associates/WorldwideAssociatesOffices


Here is Gordon's "Let's Destroy Israel" piece in full:

Boycott Israel: An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it's the only way to save his country.


By Neve Gordon
LA Times
August 20, 2009


Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv, and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokesperson, a British actress who also endorses cosmetics produced in the occupied territories. Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.


Not surprisingly, many Israelis -- even peaceniks -- aren't signing on. A global boycott can't help but contain echoes of anti-Semitism. It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one's own nation.


It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.


I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country's future.


The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews -- whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel -- are citizens of the state of Israel.


The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbors do not grow up in an apartheid regime.


There are only two moral ways of achieving this goal.


The first is the one-state solution: offering citizenship to all Palestinians and thus establishing a bi-national democracy within the entire area controlled by Israel. Given the demographics, this would amount to the demise of Israel as a Jewish state; for most Israeli Jews, it is anathema.


The second means of ending our apartheid is through the two-state solution, which entails Israel's withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (with possible one-for-one land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return with the stipulation that only a limited number of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel, while the rest can return to the new Palestinian state.


Geographically, the one-state solution appears much more feasible because Jews and Palestinians are already totally enmeshed; indeed, "on the ground," the one-state solution (in an apartheid manifestation) is a reality.


Ideologically, the two-state solution is more realistic because fewer than 1% of Jews and only a minority of Palestinians support binationalism.


For now, despite the concrete difficulties, it makes more sense to alter the geographic realities than the ideological ones. If at some future date the two peoples decide to share a state, they can do so, but currently this is not something they want.


So if the two-state solution is the way to stop the apartheid state, then how does one achieve this goal?


I am convinced that outside pressure is the only answer. Over the last three decades, Jewish settlers in the occupied territories have dramatically increased their numbers. The myth of the united Jerusalem has led to the creation of an apartheid city where Palestinians aren't citizens and lack basic services. The Israeli peace camp has gradually dwindled so that today it is almost nonexistent, and Israeli politics are moving more and more to the extreme right.


It is therefore clear to me that the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure. The words and condemnations from the Obama administration and the European Union have yielded no results, not even a settlement freeze, let alone a decision to withdraw from the occupied territories.


I consequently have decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that was launched by Palestinian activists in July 2005 and has since garnered widespread support around the globe. The objective is to ensure that Israel respects its obligations under international law and that Palestinians are granted the right to self-determination.


In Bilbao, Spain, in 2008, a coalition of organizations from all over the world formulated the 10-point Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign meant to pressure Israel in a "gradual, sustainable manner that is sensitive to context and capacity." For example, the effort begins with sanctions on and divestment from Israeli firms operating in the occupied territories, followed by actions against those that help sustain and reinforce the occupation in a visible manner. Along similar lines, artists who come to Israel in order to draw attention to the occupation are welcome, while those who just want to perform are not.


Nothing else has worked. Putting massive international pressure on Israel is the only way to guarantee that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians -- my two boys included -- does not grow up in an apartheid regime.

A Few Fast Thoughts

1. Isn't there something wrong when the President of the United states spends every waking hour of the day worrying about some Jews who want to build homes, but nary a moment of the day worrying about Iranians who want to build nukes?

2. A survey in the US just found that 85% of the dollar bills in circulation contain trace amounts of cocaine. A second survey found that 100% of the copies of Tikkun Magazine in the country contain traces of cocaine.

3. Does anyone know the name of the dog that ate the rabbinic smicha (ordination) of Michael Lerner?