Matt, from UC Berkeley's Tikvah: Students for Israel read this thoughtful essay at the ASUC hearing regarding Divestment on March 17. Reprinted here with permission and gratitude:
Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the ASUC. As much as I appreciate what you do for the student body, there are some bills that come up before you occasionally that are simply so ludicrous, hypocritical, and misguided that I must put my foot down. I come before you tonight to inform you that it is absolutely correct to say that Israel does not have the world’s most pristine human rights record. The Israeli government has made many poor decisions across its history, and even recently. When I make such statements, I critique Israel, but I do not cross the line into anti-Israel or anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Here’s where the picture gets more complicated. Some supporters of this bill claim that it is not anti-Israel, and that it is simply interested in human rights. Let me show you where you are wrong on this. I agree that we as students should not have investments in countries with abysmal human rights records. This goes against our core values, and it is our moral duty to stand up and decry human rights violations when they occur. If you agree with these statements, then you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. If you are going to divest funding from Israel in the name of human rights, you must divest funding from every single other country in the region, and then some. Let’s start with Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, freedom of religion does not exist. There are separate roads for different religions, and prohibition of public practise of other religions. I as a bisexual can be officially executed for who I am, and who I love, as can any other member of the LGBT community, in any country across the region. Foreigners with AIDS are deported. There are no laws against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Women cannot drive cars, cannot go out into public without a male relative guardian, and are essentially subjected to what may be accurately labelled “gender apartheid”. Human slavery, though outlawed on paper decades ago, still exists, particularly in a form where children as young as four are trafficked from South Asia to serve as camel race jockeys. Berkeley even has gone so far as to have a partnership with a university in Saudi Arabia.
Let’s move on to China. In the course of the brutal repression and occupation of Tibet, at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions (according to Tibetan estimates), have been killed, and tens if not hundreds of thousands have “disappeared”. China has been the largest investor in Sudan’s oil business, is Sudan’s biggest economic partner, and has in fact supplied the very fighter jets and military trucks used by the janjaweed to perpetrate the genocide in Darfur. The threat of a Chinese veto, among other things, has even stalled the UN Security Council from taking stronger action about Darfur.
In Iran, gays, lesbians, and Bahá’ís are murdered, men may even be killed for non-penetrative sexual acts, the government publishes the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, there is a stranglehold on political freedom and freedom of speech, and the government sponsors terrorist organisations committed to the annihilation of Israel such as Hamas and Hizballah, the latter of which has wreaked internal havoc on the country of Lebanon. Turkey denies the genocide it perpetrated 95 years ago against the Armenians, as it simultaneously broadcasts cartoons portraying Jews as bloodthirsty baby-killers, and welcomes a UC study abroad program.
Israel is the only country in a region stretching from Morocco to Iran marked by the most recent Freedom in the World report as FREE. Not partly free, not “not free”, free. You repeatedly tout the number of dead in Gaza as evidence of war crimes. By this logic, in World War II, Germany should be seen as the victim of war crimes perpetrated by Britain and the USA, who specifically targeted civilian areas. Israel not only intended to avoid civilian casualties, but took special measures, quoted by some as the most stringent measures in human wartime history, to ensure that they would not happen. Are you sad that more Israelis didn’t die? So before you even consider removing funding from Israel, consider the vast swath of countries whose human rights abuses far outweigh those of Israel. The fact that this country is being brought up before any of these others singles out Israel, and the fact that to date no resolutions have been passed condemning any of these other countries nor removing investments in them, is indicative of the fact that Israel is held to a higher standard.
I don’t care if it’s one company being divested from, or a hundred, the rationale behind it is intensely hypocritical and flawed. The only time I should see this bill even coming up, and we can have a true debate about this issue, should be when we have condemned every single other country in the region for their mountain of human rights violations. Until that happens, I stand by my viewpoint that this bill is flagrantly anti-Israel, and absolutely takes a ‘side’ in the political web of the Arab-Israeli conflict by sidestepping the larger picture of a region filled with crimes against human dignity that you choose to ignore on this Senate floor. I do not yield my time to questions.
Showing posts with label divestment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label divestment. Show all posts
Friday, March 19, 2010
Friday, May 8, 2009
For Marla Bennett
Oh, those silly, silly Bay area anti-Zionists. Their "NOTICE ME!, NOTICE ME" temper tantrums are getting more and more elaborate. At first, they were content to simply interrupt free speech, to muzzle any dissenting voices, because after all, only their side deserves to be heard. But that wasn't enough to get noticed. So they decided to vandalize kosher food products in Bay area grocery stores. But in spite of their congratulatory self promotion in the local independent media, still no one seemed to care. Their latest misadventure involves inserting mock ads into local bus shelters. This one, in a UC Berkeley bus shelter lasted mere hours before it was removed.
Why did the shelter "ad" stand out so clearly as fraud and theft of service? Well, there is the small matter of everything on it being false.
In particular, the "ad " asks that the University of California's partnership with the study abroad program at Hebrew University, one of the top universities in the world be rescinded.
The First Board of Governors of this prestigious school included Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, and Chaim Weizmann. Albert Einstein bequeathed his papers to the university, which has hosted many Nobel Laureates.
Why would the vandals want to prevent UC students from having the opportunity to study at this prestigious school? Could they fear for the students safety? After all, the university was attacked on July 31, 2002, when a Palestinian exploded a bomb in the university's crowded cafeteria during lunch time. Nine people, including UC Berkeley's own Marla Bennett, were killed in the attack. Hamas claimed responsibility. No- ensuring student safety is not their motivation.
Thought bubbles on the poster say "I believe that governments must be held accountable for their action", ignoring the fact that Israel's academic communities function independent of the government.
The vandals also ignore the fact that more dialog- academic, cultural and personal - is the key to peaceful co-existence. Their motivation for this, and all their actions is the immoral and hypocritical demonization of the only nation in the region that shares our values of liberal democracy, with freedom and civil rights for all its citizens.
Marla Bennett before her murder at age 24, wrote "There is nowhere else in the world I would rather be right now. I have a front-row seat for the history of the Jewish people. I am a part of the struggle for Israel's survival." It is that spirit the anti-zionists seek to smother with their vandalism, and with their proposed boycott
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Anna Baltzer out of the Middle East
Inasmuch as this event was taking place in my own area, I gave up several hours of my life last night to hear Anna Baltzer speak. Baltzer is another in a line of anti-Zionist Jews who traipse around the country to speak against Israel. Her apparent expertise comes from 1. being the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors (she calls them Holocaust refugees, a subtle attempt to put the Palestinian refugee experience on the same level as the horrors of Nazism) 2. Having been a Fulbright scholar at Columbia which resulted in her obtaining a teaching job in Turkey and 3. Having lived in the West Bank for eight months and been trained by the terror support network the International Solidarity Movement.
Her talk focused on many photographs she had taken while in the West Bank and on the hardship that the occupation poses for Palestinians who are seeking emplyment, education and health. She also rails against Israel's security barrier, and shows many pictures of that. From her talk, you would never know that hundreds of Israeli civilians died since 2000 in the terror war launched by Yasser Arafat. You would never know about the children sent to try to smuggle suicide bomb belts through checkpoints. You would never know about the jihadist propaganda on Palestinian TV. She asked at one point "Does segregation bring peace?" (Well, yes if you segregate those who would act violently against you it does!)
She also talks about 1948 in such a way that it is no surprise when she admits that she is an anti-Zionist who favors the so-called "one state solution", in which the Palestinians will agree to suddenly live peacefully with Israel and sing "kumbaya" in the hilltops watching the sun set into the Mediterranean (until the moment they are a demographic majority, that is). She shows the same inaccurate slides of land ownership favored by Jewish Voice for Peace , though this writer was sardonically amused by the slide that showed landownership in 2007 with large chunks of Gaza still designated as "Jewish owned".
In her question and answer period she kept referring back to an appendix in her book, presumably with all her set responses already written in. Most of them sound like they are lifted directly from Ilan "Facts aren't important" Pappe. She also would not answer several questions directly, such as how Israelis can feel secure in withdrawing from the West Bank if that will put Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Airport in the range of rocket attacks, or how Palestinian children are expected to learn peace if they are taught hate.
Not surprisingly, her talk and her answers were riddled with inaccuracies. She showed a slide with a quote by Ben Gurion supposedly advocating compulsory transfer:
"I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral ... The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war."
By omitting the full quote, she incorrectly implies that the Jewish leadership adopted transfer as a plan. Efraim Karsh, in his critique of a book by Israeli historian Benny Morris, quoted from the record of the Jewish Agency Executive meeting on June 12, 1937 (“Falsifying the Record: Benny Morris, David Ben-Gurion and the ‘Transfer’ Idea,” Israel Affairs, V4, No. 2, Winter 1997, p52-53). It reads as follows: "I saw in the Peel Plan [proposed by England] two positive things: the ideas of state and compulsory transfer. I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see in it anything immoral, but compulsory transfer can only be effected by England and not by the Jews... Not only is it inconceivable for us to carry it out, but it is also inconceivable for us to propose it. " This was in reference to the Peel plan, which proposed a very tiny sliver of land on the coastal plain for the Jews from which a small number of Arabs would be transferred. The Jews accepted the plan; the Arabs, foreshadowing the intransigence of 1948, 1967 and 2000, rejected it.
She claims that Gaza is still "occupied" under international law. Good thing she's not MY international lawyer. The International Committee of the Red Cross states: What is occupation?Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations (HR) states that a "territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised." If Israel had control over Gaza then Haniyeh would be dead or captured. Who is responsible for public order in Gaza? Hamas. Rather than occupied, Gaza is under sanctions, because of its refusal to adhere to the basic requirements of renouncing violence and terrorism. Those sanctions are enforced by Israel and Egypt jointly, and supported by the EU and the US.
She claims the Arab armies in 1948 never entered areas that were set aside for the Jewish state; that is completely false. There is a Syrian tank at the gates of Kibbutz Degania--it's a relatively famous photo spot. Degania was within the Jewish area of the 1947 UN Partition plan. The description of the battle is at http://www.degania.org.il/eng/history3.htm. Egyptian armies occupied most of the Negev until driven out by the IDF in late1948-early 1949. Kaukji's "Arab Liberation Army" roamed in Galilee. You can see a detailed map here.
But perhaps the biggest and most damning lie is her claim that Zionism supports an EXCLUSIVELY Jewish state. Ephraim Karsh specifically examines the entire (not edited) relevant quotes from early Zionists-- even Jabotinsky, who drafted a constitution in 1934 that would put Arabs on an equal political footing. Zionism is the movement for a Jewish state, but there is room for non-Jews in it just like there is room for Jews and Moslems in the Christian states of Europe. Even a few (a very, very few) predominantly Moslem states such as Morocco (and officially secular Turkey) grant Jews political and civil rights. But it serves Baltzer's purpose to portray Zionism as an evil, exclusionary policy, because she is promoting the BDS agenda: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Specifically trying to draw a parallel with the anti-apartheid movement, Baltzer shows a slide of logos of companies that do business in Israel and urges the audience to boycott them. Since the "BDS" movement specifically also calls for the so-called "right" of return of 1948 Palestinian refugees, its underlying agenda is clear-- the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Anna seemed fond of saying "Don't trust me; do your own research." Of course, all the sources she used were of the Ilan Pappe variety. I did my research, and it shows that Baltzer twists the truth in support of an agenda against the existence of Israel. She's right; I don't trust her.
Her talk focused on many photographs she had taken while in the West Bank and on the hardship that the occupation poses for Palestinians who are seeking emplyment, education and health. She also rails against Israel's security barrier, and shows many pictures of that. From her talk, you would never know that hundreds of Israeli civilians died since 2000 in the terror war launched by Yasser Arafat. You would never know about the children sent to try to smuggle suicide bomb belts through checkpoints. You would never know about the jihadist propaganda on Palestinian TV. She asked at one point "Does segregation bring peace?" (Well, yes if you segregate those who would act violently against you it does!)
She also talks about 1948 in such a way that it is no surprise when she admits that she is an anti-Zionist who favors the so-called "one state solution", in which the Palestinians will agree to suddenly live peacefully with Israel and sing "kumbaya" in the hilltops watching the sun set into the Mediterranean (until the moment they are a demographic majority, that is). She shows the same inaccurate slides of land ownership favored by Jewish Voice for Peace , though this writer was sardonically amused by the slide that showed landownership in 2007 with large chunks of Gaza still designated as "Jewish owned".
In her question and answer period she kept referring back to an appendix in her book, presumably with all her set responses already written in. Most of them sound like they are lifted directly from Ilan "Facts aren't important" Pappe. She also would not answer several questions directly, such as how Israelis can feel secure in withdrawing from the West Bank if that will put Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Airport in the range of rocket attacks, or how Palestinian children are expected to learn peace if they are taught hate.
Not surprisingly, her talk and her answers were riddled with inaccuracies. She showed a slide with a quote by Ben Gurion supposedly advocating compulsory transfer:
"I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral ... The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war."
By omitting the full quote, she incorrectly implies that the Jewish leadership adopted transfer as a plan. Efraim Karsh, in his critique of a book by Israeli historian Benny Morris, quoted from the record of the Jewish Agency Executive meeting on June 12, 1937 (“Falsifying the Record: Benny Morris, David Ben-Gurion and the ‘Transfer’ Idea,” Israel Affairs, V4, No. 2, Winter 1997, p52-53). It reads as follows: "I saw in the Peel Plan [proposed by England] two positive things: the ideas of state and compulsory transfer. I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see in it anything immoral, but compulsory transfer can only be effected by England and not by the Jews... Not only is it inconceivable for us to carry it out, but it is also inconceivable for us to propose it. " This was in reference to the Peel plan, which proposed a very tiny sliver of land on the coastal plain for the Jews from which a small number of Arabs would be transferred. The Jews accepted the plan; the Arabs, foreshadowing the intransigence of 1948, 1967 and 2000, rejected it.
She claims that Gaza is still "occupied" under international law. Good thing she's not MY international lawyer. The International Committee of the Red Cross states: What is occupation?Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations (HR) states that a "territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised." If Israel had control over Gaza then Haniyeh would be dead or captured. Who is responsible for public order in Gaza? Hamas. Rather than occupied, Gaza is under sanctions, because of its refusal to adhere to the basic requirements of renouncing violence and terrorism. Those sanctions are enforced by Israel and Egypt jointly, and supported by the EU and the US.
She claims the Arab armies in 1948 never entered areas that were set aside for the Jewish state; that is completely false. There is a Syrian tank at the gates of Kibbutz Degania--it's a relatively famous photo spot. Degania was within the Jewish area of the 1947 UN Partition plan. The description of the battle is at http://www.degania.org.il/eng/history3.htm. Egyptian armies occupied most of the Negev until driven out by the IDF in late1948-early 1949. Kaukji's "Arab Liberation Army" roamed in Galilee. You can see a detailed map here.
But perhaps the biggest and most damning lie is her claim that Zionism supports an EXCLUSIVELY Jewish state. Ephraim Karsh specifically examines the entire (not edited) relevant quotes from early Zionists-- even Jabotinsky, who drafted a constitution in 1934 that would put Arabs on an equal political footing. Zionism is the movement for a Jewish state, but there is room for non-Jews in it just like there is room for Jews and Moslems in the Christian states of Europe. Even a few (a very, very few) predominantly Moslem states such as Morocco (and officially secular Turkey) grant Jews political and civil rights. But it serves Baltzer's purpose to portray Zionism as an evil, exclusionary policy, because she is promoting the BDS agenda: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Specifically trying to draw a parallel with the anti-apartheid movement, Baltzer shows a slide of logos of companies that do business in Israel and urges the audience to boycott them. Since the "BDS" movement specifically also calls for the so-called "right" of return of 1948 Palestinian refugees, its underlying agenda is clear-- the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Anna seemed fond of saying "Don't trust me; do your own research." Of course, all the sources she used were of the Ilan Pappe variety. I did my research, and it shows that Baltzer twists the truth in support of an agenda against the existence of Israel. She's right; I don't trust her.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
