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Where is the outrage? Pogrom at SFSU
SFSU Proffesor describes the experience of being caught in anti-Jewish riot at SFSU.
Today, all day, I have been listening to the reactions of students, parents, and community members who were on campus yesterday. I have received email from around the country, and phone calls, worried for both my personal safety on the campus, and for the entire intellectual
project of having a Jewish Studies program, and recruiting students to a campus that in the last month has become a venue for hate speech and anti-Semitism. After nearly 7 years as director of Jewish Studies, and after nearly two decades of life here as a student, faculty member and
wife of the Hillel rabbi, after years of patient work and difficult civic discourse, I am saddened to see SFSU return to its notoriety as a place that teaches anti-Semitism, hatred for America, and hatred, above all else, for the Jewish State of Israel, a state that I cherish. I cannot
fully express what it feels like to have to walk across campus daily, past maps of the Middle East that do not include Israel, past posters of cans of soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead babies, labeled "canned Palestinian children meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license," past poster after poster calling out "Zionism=racism, and Jews=Nazis." This is not civic discourse, this is not free speech, and this is the Weimar Republic with brown shirts it cannot control. This is the casual introduction of the medieval blood libel and virulent hatred smeared around our campus in a manner so ordinary that it hardly excites concern-except if you are a Jew, and you understand that hateful words have always led to hateful deeds.
Yesterday, the hatred coalesced in a hate mob. Yesterday's “Peace In The Middle East” Rally was completely organized by the Hillel students,mostly 18 and 19 years old. They spoke about their lives at SFSU and of their support for Israel, and they sang of peace. They wore new Hillel
t-shirts that said "peace" in English, Hebrew and Arabic. A Russian immigrant, in his new English, spoke of loving his new country, a haven from anti-Semitism. A sophomore spoke about being here only one year, and about the support and community she found at the Hillel House. Both spoke of how hard it was to live as a Jew on this campus how isolating, how terrifying. A surfer guy, spoke of his love of Jesus, and his support for Israel, and a young freshman earnestly asked for a moment of silence, and all the Jews stood still, listening as the shouted hate of the counter demonstrators filled the air with abuse.
As soon as the community supporters left, the 50 students who remained praying in a minyan for the traditional afternoon prayers, or chatting, or cleaning up after the rally, talking -- were surrounded by a large, angry crowd of Palestinians and their supporters. But they were not calling for peace. They screamed at us to "go back to Russia" and they screamed that they would kill us all, and other terrible things. They surrounded the praying students, and the elderly women who are our elder college participants, who survived the Shoah, who helped shape the Bay Area peace movement, only to watch as a threatening crowd shoved the Hillel
students against the wall of the plaza. I had invited members of my Orthodox community to join us, members of my Board of Visitors, and we stood there in despair. Let me remind you that in building the SFSU Jewish Studies program, we asked the same people for their support and that our Jewish community, who pay for the program once as taxpayers and again as Jews,
generously supports our program. Let me remind you that ours is arguably one of the Jewish Studies programs in the country most devoted to peace, justice and diversity since our inception.
As the counter demonstrators poured into the plaza, screaming at the Jews to "Get out or we will kill you" and "Hitler did not finish the job," I turned to the police and to every administrator I could find and asked them to remove the counter demonstrators from the Plaza, to maintain the
separation of 100 feet that we had been promised. The police told me that they had been told not to arrest anyone, and that if they did, "it would start a riot." I told them that it already was a riot. Finally, Fred Astren, the Northern California Hillel Director and I went up directly
to speak with Dean Saffold, who was watching from her post a flight above us.
She told us she would call in the SF police. But the police could do nothing more than surround the Jewish students and community members who were now trapped in a corner of the plaza, grouped under the flags of Israel, while an angry, out of control mob, literally chanting for our
deaths, surrounded us. Dr. Astren and I went to stand with our students. This was neither free speech nor discourse, but raw, physical assault.
Was I afraid? No, really more sad that I could not protect my students. Not one administrator came to stand with us. I knew that if a crowd of Palestinian or African American student had been there, surrounded by a crowd of white racists screaming racist threats, shielded by police, the faculty and staff would have no trouble deciding which side to stand on. In fact,the scene recalled for me many moments in the Civil Rights movement, or the United Farm Workers movement, when, as a student, I stood with Black and Latino colleagues, surrounded by hateful mobs. Then, as now, I sang peace songs, and then, as now, the hateful crowd screamed at me, "Go back to Russia, Jew." How ironic that it all took place under the picture of Cesar Chavez, who led the very demonstrations that I took part in as a student.
There was no safe way out of the Plaza. We had to be marched back to the Hillel House under armed SF police guard, and we had to have a police guard remain outside Hillel. I was very proud of the students, who did not flinch and who did not, even one time, resort to violence or anger in retaliation. Several community members who were swept up in the situation simply could not believe what they saw. One young student told me, "I mhave read about anti-Semitism in books, but this is the first time I have seen real anti-Semites, people who just hate me without knowing me, just because I am a Jew." She lives in the dorms. Her mother calls and urges her to transfer to a safer campus.
Today is advising day. For me, the question is an open one: what do I advise the Jewish students to do?
Laurie Zoloth,
Director, Jewish Studies Program
San Francisco State University
project of having a Jewish Studies program, and recruiting students to a campus that in the last month has become a venue for hate speech and anti-Semitism. After nearly 7 years as director of Jewish Studies, and after nearly two decades of life here as a student, faculty member and
wife of the Hillel rabbi, after years of patient work and difficult civic discourse, I am saddened to see SFSU return to its notoriety as a place that teaches anti-Semitism, hatred for America, and hatred, above all else, for the Jewish State of Israel, a state that I cherish. I cannot
fully express what it feels like to have to walk across campus daily, past maps of the Middle East that do not include Israel, past posters of cans of soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead babies, labeled "canned Palestinian children meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license," past poster after poster calling out "Zionism=racism, and Jews=Nazis." This is not civic discourse, this is not free speech, and this is the Weimar Republic with brown shirts it cannot control. This is the casual introduction of the medieval blood libel and virulent hatred smeared around our campus in a manner so ordinary that it hardly excites concern-except if you are a Jew, and you understand that hateful words have always led to hateful deeds.
Yesterday, the hatred coalesced in a hate mob. Yesterday's “Peace In The Middle East” Rally was completely organized by the Hillel students,mostly 18 and 19 years old. They spoke about their lives at SFSU and of their support for Israel, and they sang of peace. They wore new Hillel
t-shirts that said "peace" in English, Hebrew and Arabic. A Russian immigrant, in his new English, spoke of loving his new country, a haven from anti-Semitism. A sophomore spoke about being here only one year, and about the support and community she found at the Hillel House. Both spoke of how hard it was to live as a Jew on this campus how isolating, how terrifying. A surfer guy, spoke of his love of Jesus, and his support for Israel, and a young freshman earnestly asked for a moment of silence, and all the Jews stood still, listening as the shouted hate of the counter demonstrators filled the air with abuse.
As soon as the community supporters left, the 50 students who remained praying in a minyan for the traditional afternoon prayers, or chatting, or cleaning up after the rally, talking -- were surrounded by a large, angry crowd of Palestinians and their supporters. But they were not calling for peace. They screamed at us to "go back to Russia" and they screamed that they would kill us all, and other terrible things. They surrounded the praying students, and the elderly women who are our elder college participants, who survived the Shoah, who helped shape the Bay Area peace movement, only to watch as a threatening crowd shoved the Hillel
students against the wall of the plaza. I had invited members of my Orthodox community to join us, members of my Board of Visitors, and we stood there in despair. Let me remind you that in building the SFSU Jewish Studies program, we asked the same people for their support and that our Jewish community, who pay for the program once as taxpayers and again as Jews,
generously supports our program. Let me remind you that ours is arguably one of the Jewish Studies programs in the country most devoted to peace, justice and diversity since our inception.
As the counter demonstrators poured into the plaza, screaming at the Jews to "Get out or we will kill you" and "Hitler did not finish the job," I turned to the police and to every administrator I could find and asked them to remove the counter demonstrators from the Plaza, to maintain the
separation of 100 feet that we had been promised. The police told me that they had been told not to arrest anyone, and that if they did, "it would start a riot." I told them that it already was a riot. Finally, Fred Astren, the Northern California Hillel Director and I went up directly
to speak with Dean Saffold, who was watching from her post a flight above us.
She told us she would call in the SF police. But the police could do nothing more than surround the Jewish students and community members who were now trapped in a corner of the plaza, grouped under the flags of Israel, while an angry, out of control mob, literally chanting for our
deaths, surrounded us. Dr. Astren and I went to stand with our students. This was neither free speech nor discourse, but raw, physical assault.
Was I afraid? No, really more sad that I could not protect my students. Not one administrator came to stand with us. I knew that if a crowd of Palestinian or African American student had been there, surrounded by a crowd of white racists screaming racist threats, shielded by police, the faculty and staff would have no trouble deciding which side to stand on. In fact,the scene recalled for me many moments in the Civil Rights movement, or the United Farm Workers movement, when, as a student, I stood with Black and Latino colleagues, surrounded by hateful mobs. Then, as now, I sang peace songs, and then, as now, the hateful crowd screamed at me, "Go back to Russia, Jew." How ironic that it all took place under the picture of Cesar Chavez, who led the very demonstrations that I took part in as a student.
There was no safe way out of the Plaza. We had to be marched back to the Hillel House under armed SF police guard, and we had to have a police guard remain outside Hillel. I was very proud of the students, who did not flinch and who did not, even one time, resort to violence or anger in retaliation. Several community members who were swept up in the situation simply could not believe what they saw. One young student told me, "I mhave read about anti-Semitism in books, but this is the first time I have seen real anti-Semites, people who just hate me without knowing me, just because I am a Jew." She lives in the dorms. Her mother calls and urges her to transfer to a safer campus.
Today is advising day. For me, the question is an open one: what do I advise the Jewish students to do?
Laurie Zoloth,
Director, Jewish Studies Program
San Francisco State University
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Get it straight. Don't believe the hype.
Zionism Is Not Racism.
Just as an aside. The Israeli Jews who are of African descent are often called racist names by the Palestinians. They call them apes, monkeys, and kaffirs.
RESIST!!!
=======================
ZIONISM, FACT FROM MYTH
=======================
A. Zionism and Colonialism
Zionism was born through the writings of Theodore Herzl, in Germany in the late 1880’s. As outlined by Herzl, Zionism was a secular political project that defined “the Jews” as a people, a nation and a race, rather than a religious group. In the context of the fervent European anti-Jewish discrimination of the time, Herzl argued for the need to create an independent Jewish state for “the Jewish people” who, he argued, could never possibly assimilate in the countries they inhabited (Beit-Hallahmi 1993; Garaudy 1983; Segev 1986). Although multiple locations were suggested, the Zionist movement
proposed Palestine as the site for a Jewish state, in a strategic move that would allow them to use the religious history of Palestine to justify their purely political goal of colonization (Garaudy 1983). The racist nature of the Zionist movement originates in its idea of an exclusive Jewish state for Jewish people only, exclusive of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine. Moreover, at every point of its genesis, the Zionist movement was informed and reinforced by nineteenth century European colonialism and its white supremacist ideology.
In the context of rampant British colonization throughout the “third world” at the time, Britain recognized the potential of the Zionist project in Palestine to further its own economic and political goals. Britain assisted the Zionists in exporting 610,000 Jews from various parts of the world to Palestine to make way for the eventual establishment
of Israel on indigenous Palestinian land. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration of Britain legitimized the establishment of “a national homeland for Jews in Palestine” (Laquer and Rubin 1984). The genocide of World War II created a new impetus for immigration; in 1947, further mass immigration projects ensued. After they were refused entry to countries such as Britain and the United States, Jews from all over the world were sent to settle a land where they had no prior territorial affiliation--Palestine. When the Zionists
ultimately occupied Palestine by force, in 1948, they took over nearly three fourths of Palestine and uprooted over 750,000 native Palestinians from their homes. In 1967, Israel took over the remainder of Palestine, uprooting even more native Palestinians.
While Palestine fits the standards of colonization, it is also a special case because its colonizer, Israel, is a Jewish-only nation-state imposed on Arab Palestinian land.2 Israel was not constructed to colonize the natives per se, but to remove them entirely from their land and to construct Israeli Jews as the authentic people of the land.
Since its inception over a century ago, Zionist ideology and practice has sought to ethnically cleanse and “purify” Palestine and the surrounding Arab states of its indigenous inhabitants. Several historical state documents illustrate the centrality of ethnic cleansing to the Zionist project. In Herzl’s diaries, for example, he writes, “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly” (Swirski 1993: 285). Though the contemporary Zionist consensus argues that Israel is not a colonial state, Herzl, in fact, argued to the contrary: “To go further than any colonialist has gone in Africa…where involuntary expropriation of land will temporarily alienate civilized opinion. By the time the reshaping of world opinion in our favor has been completed, we shall be firmly established in our country, no longer fearing the influx of foreigners, and receiving our visitors with aristocratic benevolence (Hertzberg 1997).”
The Zionist project was a by-product of nineteenth century European colonization, and Britain, specifically, furthered its own early twentieth century political goals in the Middle East through colonial Zionism and the establishment of Israel. By the second half of the twentieth century, however, primary financial and military support for the Zionist project was transferred from the hands of Britain to the hands of the U.S. government. Since the 1967 completion of the Zionist takeover of Palestine, no country has received more U.S. foreign aid than Israel.
There is more to the Zionist project than consolidating Israel as a Jewish-only state; it was not the cause of fighting anti-Jewish oppression that inspired the forces of Western imperialism to ally with the Zionist project of Israel (Segev 1993). The U.S., like Britain, has supported Israel as a means to maintain Israel’s position as a Western ally within the Arab region (O’Brien 1986: 154). By exploiting the economic and
political resources of the Arab world, Israel has become a conduit of globalization, militarization and imperialism.3
Britain and the U.S. have provided Israel with the military machinery, strategy and funding necessary to illegally move over four million Jews to Palestine, uprooting Palestinians from their native homeland (Swirski 1993). Since the inception of the Zionist state, thousands of Palestinians have been killed and five million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes (Abu-Sitta 1998; Morris 1987); towards the end of furthering their own political goals of dominance in the region, Britain and the U.S. have collaborated in dispossessing Palestinians.4
Central to the Zionist vision is territorial expansion into neighboring states, such as Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. This vision of expansion has already been illustrated by the thirty-year Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon. Though this occupation has formally ended, its long-term impact continues in ongoing military and economic aggression. U.S. foreign policy is most powerfully used against those countries that refuse to recognize Israel, such as Iraq, Syria, Iran and Sudan. Each of these countries suffer from the collective punishment of U.S.-imposed sanctions while, based on their anti-Zionist position, they are also marked as state sponsors of terrorism. It is the convergence of U.S. national interests with Israel’s position in the center of the Arab region that accounts for the success of the Zionist movement in the U.S.
B. Zionism in the U.S.
Though Israel consistently defies international law and hundreds of United Nations human rights resolutions in its occupation of Palestine, the U.S. government continues to funnel six billion tax dollars per year to the state of Israel. In nearly every sector of U.S. politics, this contradiction remains unchallenged. Contributing to this profound silence are the strategies of the Zionist movement. In the U.S., Zionism is highly influential in the shaping of public opinion (Findley 1985; O’Brien 1986). Many self-identified Zionists, including Jews and non Jews, belong to the organized body referred to as the World Zionist Organization. Other Zionist organizations in the United States include American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jewish Community Relations Council, Hillel, and the Jewish Student Committee. Whether it is in labor, education, media or politics, the Zionist movement’s strategy is to maintain a unified pro-Israel position, silencing criticism of Israeli policy and demonizing its critics. Since it would be ludicrous to market Israel’s history of displacing indigenous people from their land, the most prevalent myth that Zionists propagate is that criticisms of Israel and/or Zionism are anti-Semitic (O’Brien 1986: 97).
We focus specifically on the ADL as an example of institutionalized Zionism because it is one of the most powerful pressure groups in the United States. As Noam Chomsky puts it, “The ADL’s primary commitment [is] to use any technique however dishonest and disgraceful in order to defame and silence and destroy anybody who dares to criticize the holy state (Israel)” (Marshall 1993).
Prior to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, particularly during the height of their political uprising in the late eighties and early nineties, Palestinians were increasingly successful in articulating to the U.S. public a persuasive case with respect to their struggle for human rights. To combat the increasing sympathetic portrayal of the Palestinian liberation struggle, major pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian organizations established espionage rings and published books and kits to help their members discredit Palestinian justice struggles and revive the deteriorating public image of Israel (Rashmawi 1992). The San Francisco spy scandal that broke out in the early 1990’s (Marshall 1993; Isaacs 2000), just as the Oslo agreements were being orchestrated, revealed that the ADL was engaged in spying on the Arab-American community, as well as numerous peace and anti-apartheid activists and organizations. The ADL operation used paid informers, police officers, student recruits, and a full-time staff to meet its goal of discrediting Palestinian and other liberation struggles. Revelation of the spy ring ultimately exposed the ADL as one of many examples where devoutly anti-Palestinian sentiment and covert Israeli intelligence activity are hidden behind a seemingly benign civil rights organization (Rashmawi 1992).5
According to the ADL, any criticism of Israel is racism towards Jews. The ADL further contends that the interests of the United States are so identical to those of Israel that any disagreement with the Israeli government and its policies are a betrayal of the United States. The ADL hits the American public hard and repeatedly with such suppositions, combined with the idea that Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular are vulgar terrorists who are really a menace to society (Rashmawi 1992). The organization lumps together everyone from the Nazis to peace organizations as enemies of both the U.S. and Israel, deserving to be spied upon and mercilessly investigated. The ADL and its affiliate organizations, such as Hillel and AIPAC, have utilized highly unsavory means, including intimidation, scare tactics, the infiltration of organizations, the violation of civil rights and sabotage to achieve their goals (Marshall 1993; Rashmawi 1992).
This systematic attempt to silence and exclude Arabs and Arab Americans from the political process is one example of what Helen Samhan refers to as political racism. According to Samhan, anti-Arab attitudes and behaviors have their roots “not in the traditional motives of structurally excluding a group perceived as inferior, but in politics” (Samhan 1987:11). While Zionism is a politically organized racial project that directly and systematically targets Arabs and Arab Americans,6 the terrain of Zionism is much broader than the practices of particular organizations. In the U.S. context, Zionism has become “common sense”–“a way of comprehending, explaining, and acting in the world”7 that goes completely unquestioned and unchallenged.
If they were really interested in helping the poor oppressed Palestinians who don't have enough money to move to the US and go to an American college, they would be fighting for freedom in the Palestinian territories - not from Israel, but from Arafat's despotic regime!
Maybe they're going to school on some of the money skimmed off by Arafat cronies. I wouldn't doubt it. Obviously they are the upper crust of the Palestinian population. It's in their best interests to continue to point the finger at Israel. If the world starts looking into Arafat's bank account, their support will dry up. Did anyone consider this possibility? Are radical lefties being used by these upper class Palestinians to promote their propaganda? I wonder.
If you really are interested in what happened check the yahoo website.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SFSU/
F.N.
April 2002
-- "A Jew is permitted to rape, cheat and perjure himself, but he must take care that he is not found out, so that Israel may not suffer."
-- "A Gentile girl who is three years old can be violated."
-- "The Jews are human beings, but the nations of the world are not human beings but beasts."
-- "When the Messiah comes, every Jew will have 2800 slaves."
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
F.N.
What I want to know is, where the hell are the professors and faculty at SFSU when all this is going down?
What the hell are they doing, or should I say not doing?
You have to look no farther than the Israeli press itself to realize that the proIsrael crowd in the US is lost in cloud coo coo land. The Israeli press is a lot more critical on Israeli policy than is the US press.
History will at best look on the proIsraeli crowd in the US as misguided. At worst they will be seen in the same light as Serb nationalists who supported the war in Bosnia.
Right in the wake of House Majority leader Dick Armey's explicit call for two million Palestinians to be booted out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Gaza as well, came yet one more of those earnest articles accusing a vague entity called "the left" of anti-Semitism.
This one was in Salon, by a man called Dennis Fox, identified as an associate professor of legal studies and psychology at the University of Illinois. Leaving nothing to chance, Salon titled Fox's contribution, "The shame of the pro-Palestinian left: Ignorance and anti-Semitism are undercutting the moral legitimacy of Israel's critics."
Over the past 20 years I've learned there's a quick way of figuring just how badly Israel is behaving. There's a brisk uptick in the number of articles here accusing "the left" of anti-Semitism. These articles adopt varying strategies. Particularly intricate, though I think well-intentioned, was a recent column by Naomi Klein who wrote that "It is precisely because anti-Semitism is used by the likes of Sharon that the fight against it must be reclaimed." Is Klein saying the anti-globalization movement has forgotten how to be anti-anti-
Semitic? I don't think it has. Are all denunciations of the government of Israel to be prefaced by strident assertions of pro-
Semitism?
If this is the case, can we not ask that those concerned about the supposed silence of the left regarding anti-Semitism demonstrate their own good faith by denouncing Israel's behavior towards Palestinians? Klein did, but most don't.
In a recent piece in the New York Times Frank Rich managed to write an entire column puportedly about Jewish overreaction here to news reporting from Israel without even a fleeting reference to the fact that there might be some factual basis for reports presenting Israel and its leaders in a bad light, even though he found time for plenty of abuse for the "inexcusable" Arafat. Isn't Sharon "inexcusable" in Rich's book?
So the left gets the rotten eggs and those tossing the eggs mostly don't feel it necessary to concede that Israel is a racist state whose obvious and provable intent is to continue to steal Palestinian land, oppress Palestinians, herd them into smaller and smaller enclaves and in all likelihood ultimately drive them into the sea or Lebanon or Jordan or Dearborn or the space in Dallas/Fort Worth airport between the third and fourth runways (the bold Armey plan).
Here's how Fox begins his article for Salon: '"Let's move back," my wife insisted when she saw the nearby banner: "Israel Is a Terrorist State!" We were at the April 20 Boston march opposing Israel's incursion into the West Bank. So drop back we did, dragging our friends with us to wait for an empty space we could put between us and the anti-Israel sign.' Inference by Fox: the banner is grotesque, presumptively anti-Semitic. But there are plenty of sound arguments that from the Palestinian point of view Israel is indeed a terrorist state, and anyway, even if it wasn't, the description would not per se be evidence of anti-Semitism. Only if the banner read "All Jews are terrorists", would Fox have a point.
Of course the rhetorical trick is to conflate "Israel" or "the State of Israel" with "Jews" and argue that they are synonymous. Ergo, to criticize Israel is to be anti-Semitic. Leave aside the fact that many of Israel's most articulate critics are Jews, honorably committed to the cause of justice for all in the Middle East. Many Jews just don't like hearing bad things said about Israel, same way they don't like reading articles about the Jewish lobby here. Mention the lobby and someone like Fox will rush into print denouncing those who "toy with the old anti-Semitic canard that the Jews control the press."
These days you can't even say that New York Times is owned by a Jewish family without risking charges that you stand in Goebbels' shoes. I even got accused of anti-Semitism the other day for mentioning that the Jews founded Hollywood, which they most certainly did, as recounted in a funny and informative book published in 1988, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Gabler.
So cowed are commentators (which is of course the prime motive of those charges of anti-Semitism) that even after the US Congress recently voted full-throated endorsement of Sharon and Israel, with only two senators and 21 US reps (I exclude the chickenshit 28 who voted "present") voting against, you could scarcely find a mainstream paper prepared to analyze this astounding demonstration of the power of AIPAC and other Jewish organizations, plus the Christian Right and the military industrial complex which profits enormously from military aid to Israel since Congress put through a law concerning US overall aid to Israel, to the effect that 75 per cent of such supplies must be bought from US firms like Raytheon and Lockheed-
Martin, lobbying for Israel.
The encouraging fact is that despite the efforts of the Southern Povery Law Center to drum up funds by hollering that the Nazis are about to march down Main Street, there's remarkably little anti-Semitism in the US, and almost none that I've ever been able to detect on the American left, which is of course amply stocked with non-self-hating Jews. It's comical to find the left's assailants trudging all the way back to Leroi Jones and the 60s to dig up the necessary anti-Semitic jibes. The less encouraging fact is that there's not nearly enough criticism of Israel's ghastly conduct towards Palestinians, which in its present phase is testing the waters for reaction here to a major ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, just as Armey called for.
So why don't people like Fox write about Armey's appalling remarks, (which the White House declared he hadn't made,) instead of trying to change the subject with nonsense about anti-Semitism? It's not anti-Semitic to denounce ethnic cleansing, a strategy which according to recent polls, around half all Israeli Jews now heartily endorse. In this instance the left really has nothing to apologize for, but those who accuse of it of anti-Semitism certainly do. They're apologists for policies put into practice by racists, ethnic cleansers and in Sharon's case, an unquestioned war criminal who should be in the dock for his conduct.
He doesn't the realize how much the far right and Arab extremists have infiltrated the "Left" and contaminated it project.
They are constantly in your face with their hateful posters everywhere! There's a stupid Palestinian rally EVERY WEEK!
I'm supposed to feel sorry for these so-called oppressed individuals. Don't they have anything better to do with their time?
They have taken over our student government. If your name even sounds Jewish, they call you a Zionist!
My father is Jewish, my mother is Catholic. I have a Jewish last name. I'm an atheist but according to them I'm Jewish!!! and a Zionist!!!! I don't have anything to do with Hillel but they lump me into the group!
I'm a radical, left-winger myself, but, all of a sudden I'm the enemy, because my last name is Jewish! This is obsurd!
Knock it off GUPS!!!!
The Jews ARE the authority! They ARE the enemy!
Remember that!
Genesis 17 : 1 - 10
Deuteronomy 21 : 15 - 17
Galatians 3 : 16 - 23
Galatians 4 : 30 - 31
F.N.
And Mr AntiSemite-- I sincerely suggest you review your scripture more carefully since I can assure you that Genesis 1:17 would say nothing like "Jews are against God." Using scripture to hatemonger against others is an abomination of morality.
Gee. Those posts sure sound a hell of alot more like right wing David Duke supporters to me. Or is everyone who posts to IMC automatically a leftist? Then I guess you are too.
"Zionism is evil. Zionists, Jews, and Israelis kill innocent children that is fact."
Yes some do. There are bad apples in every bunch. Including Palestinians. Nice try .. but it is just a fallacy of association. If I see a green haired man stealing a bike, does that mean all green haired men steal bikes? And then should I say "green haired men are evil. green haired men steal bikes that is a fact."???
Logic is the process of drawing a conclusion from one or more premises. A statement of fact, by itself, is neither logical or illogical (although it can be true or false).
As an example of how logic can be abused, consider the following argument which has been widely propagated on the Internet.
Premise 1: Bill Clinton supports gun-control legislation.
Premise 2: All fascist regimes of the twentieth century have passed gun-control legislation.
Conclusion: Bill Clinton is a fascist.
One way of testing the logic of an argument like this is to translate the basic terms and see if the conclusion still makes sense. As you can see, the premises may be correct, but the conclusion does not necessarily follow.
Premise 1: All Catholics believe in God.
Premise 2: All Muslims believe in God.
Conclusion: All Catholics are Muslims.
This is a rather extreme example of how logic can be abused. The following pages describe others.
It should be noted that a message can be illogical without being propagandistic -- we all make logical mistakes. The difference is that propagandists deliberately manipulate logic in order to promote their cause.
As generally understood, propaganda is opinion expressed for the purpose of influencing actions of individuals or groups... Propaganda thus differs fundamentally from scientific analysis. The propagandist tries to "put something across," good or bad. The scientist does not try to put anything across; he devotes his life to the discovery of new facts and principles. The propagandist seldom wants careful scrutiny and criticism; his object is to bring about a specific action. The scientist, on the other hand, is always prepared for and wants the most careful scrutiny and criticism of his facts and ideas. Science flourishes on criticism. Dangerous propaganda crumbles before it.
It's propaganda. You have an agenda that biases your opinion. You use so-called "facts" to support it.
Put a bullet in their heads next time. Thats ALL that aaarabs understand. THey love murder, they love death, that's what it means to be an arab.