From Israelnationalnews.com, 28 October 09, by Gil Ronen:
The Haifa University Student Union has distributed a calendar diary containing an advertisement calling readers to know who the “anti-Israeli lecturers” are, in Haifa U. and in other academic institutions throughout Israel.
The advertisement contains the web address of IsraCampus [the link is now permanently on the sidebar of JIW - SL] – a website devoted to exposing lecturers who are employed in Israeli universities, yet openly agitate against the state of Israel.
Under the heading “Warning! Academic Fifth Column!”, the advertisement exhorts readers to ”get acquainted” with the names of “professors and lecturers in Israeli universities and colleges who are involved in subversive activities.” These professors “openly support terrorist attacks against Jews, initiate an international boycott of Israel, make use of their status in the classroom for anti-Israeli incitement and anti-Zionist brainwashing, collaborate with known anti-Semites, denounce Israel as a fascist-colonialist state and an apartheid regime” and more, the ad states.
The head of the Haifa University Student Union, Felix Kuritni, said that he believes that the decision to print the advertisement was justified. “Students who study here need to know who their lecturers are and if there are lecturers who oppose the State of Israel it is important to publish their names. We all remember how during Operation Cast Lead there was a demonstration by lecturers who waved the Palestinian flag, and I do not just mean Arab lecturers but Jewish ones too.”
"Unfortunately the campus management turns a blind eye and continues to allow all kinds of political cells like Hadash and Balad to hold conventions on campus,” he explained. “The management even allowed [Islamic Movement leader] Raad Salah to come to the university and speak... They think that if they let people like Salah enter the campus it will cool down the Palestinian students but in practice the opposite happens: they douse a small fire and ignite a large one instead.”
"A student has many elective courses and he can decide that he will not choose an elective course by a lecturer who is on the list,” Kuritni added. “Why should I enter a lecture by a lecturer who says that the State of Israel murders children?”
Showing posts with label Campus watch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Campus watch. Show all posts
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Shlomo Sand (Tel Aviv Uni) promotes his anti-Semitism in New York
Fron WorldNetDaily, October 16, 2009, by By Lee Kaplan:
A... conference ...is taking place at New York University today with the principal speaker being an Israeli history professor who says the Jewish people was invented in order to justify the taking of the Holy Land from the Arabs, and that today's Palestinians are in fact the descendants of the real Jews from biblical times.
The guest speaker is a history professor at Tel Aviv University named Shlomo Sand [see this earlier posting on Sand] who recently published a book titled "The Invention of the Jewish People." Sand has been called a pseudo-historian by organizations that monitor anti-Israel academics working in Israeli universities.
The meeting has been promoted by an NYU "professor of media ecology" named Mark Crispin Miller who claims his expertise is in "modern propaganda, history and tactics of advertising." However, the Sand theory of today's Israeli Jews being part of an invention to steal Arab/Muslim land is being presented as scholarly fact and not as another form of anti-Israel propaganda.
Miller has also written books claiming the 2000 and 2004 elections of George W. Bush were "stolen" and that 9/11 was an inside job by the U.S. government.
...Rather than being a groundbreaking or original scholarly work, Sand's book is just a rehashing of anti-Semitic tracts distributed by a Jewish convert to Christianity in the pay of Arab interests named Benjamin Freedman who claimed the same historical nonsense from about 1946 to 1961. The only difference was that Freedman also tried to claim falsely that the Jewish Talmud encourages pedophilia and sex with animals. Freedman's career was built on first opposing a Jewish state from the U.N. and later to alienate American Christian support away from the Jews. Sand merely took Freedman's thesis and spruced it up for anti-Israel groups to use as propaganda against the Jewish state.
Sand also tries to claim today's Palestinians are the real Jews who were forcibly converted to Islam after the seventh century. This, too, is academically false, as the majority of Arabs and Muslims residing in Israel and the Palestinian Authority today immigrated to the region in the mid 20th century as a result of the Zionist movement.
"The Invention of the Jewish People" is published and distributed by Verso Books in London, a firm that used to be called New Left Books. It is a publishing house that specializes in Marxist, Communist, Maoist, anti-Israel and even pro-jihadist literature for radical groups and bookstores. Its most recent book is proudly promoted as having been written by and expressing the wisdom of Osama bin Laden.
Shlomo Sand is a lifelong communist who has run with Israel's Communist Party factions since his teens. In adhering to the old Soviet party line, most communist parties in Israel are opposed to the existence of a Jewish state.
Part of the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is to suggest that Jews in America need not support a Jewish or "Zionist" state where Israel is in order to be Jewish. The number of Jewish students at New York University is staggering in terms of the student population there, so what better place to have a Marxist professor like Miller and pseudo-historian like Shlomo Sand from Tel Aviv University come and speak to explain that the Jewish people was nothing more than an invention to justify taking Palestine from the Arabs.
However, the event is really just another form of anti-Semitism and hatred against the Jewish state masquerading as an academic discussion to indoctrinate impressionable students.
A... conference ...is taking place at New York University today with the principal speaker being an Israeli history professor who says the Jewish people was invented in order to justify the taking of the Holy Land from the Arabs, and that today's Palestinians are in fact the descendants of the real Jews from biblical times.
The guest speaker is a history professor at Tel Aviv University named Shlomo Sand [see this earlier posting on Sand] who recently published a book titled "The Invention of the Jewish People." Sand has been called a pseudo-historian by organizations that monitor anti-Israel academics working in Israeli universities.
The meeting has been promoted by an NYU "professor of media ecology" named Mark Crispin Miller who claims his expertise is in "modern propaganda, history and tactics of advertising." However, the Sand theory of today's Israeli Jews being part of an invention to steal Arab/Muslim land is being presented as scholarly fact and not as another form of anti-Israel propaganda.
Miller has also written books claiming the 2000 and 2004 elections of George W. Bush were "stolen" and that 9/11 was an inside job by the U.S. government.
...Rather than being a groundbreaking or original scholarly work, Sand's book is just a rehashing of anti-Semitic tracts distributed by a Jewish convert to Christianity in the pay of Arab interests named Benjamin Freedman who claimed the same historical nonsense from about 1946 to 1961. The only difference was that Freedman also tried to claim falsely that the Jewish Talmud encourages pedophilia and sex with animals. Freedman's career was built on first opposing a Jewish state from the U.N. and later to alienate American Christian support away from the Jews. Sand merely took Freedman's thesis and spruced it up for anti-Israel groups to use as propaganda against the Jewish state.
Sand also tries to claim today's Palestinians are the real Jews who were forcibly converted to Islam after the seventh century. This, too, is academically false, as the majority of Arabs and Muslims residing in Israel and the Palestinian Authority today immigrated to the region in the mid 20th century as a result of the Zionist movement.
"The Invention of the Jewish People" is published and distributed by Verso Books in London, a firm that used to be called New Left Books. It is a publishing house that specializes in Marxist, Communist, Maoist, anti-Israel and even pro-jihadist literature for radical groups and bookstores. Its most recent book is proudly promoted as having been written by and expressing the wisdom of Osama bin Laden.
Shlomo Sand is a lifelong communist who has run with Israel's Communist Party factions since his teens. In adhering to the old Soviet party line, most communist parties in Israel are opposed to the existence of a Jewish state.
Part of the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is to suggest that Jews in America need not support a Jewish or "Zionist" state where Israel is in order to be Jewish. The number of Jewish students at New York University is staggering in terms of the student population there, so what better place to have a Marxist professor like Miller and pseudo-historian like Shlomo Sand from Tel Aviv University come and speak to explain that the Jewish people was nothing more than an invention to justify taking Palestine from the Arabs.
However, the event is really just another form of anti-Semitism and hatred against the Jewish state masquerading as an academic discussion to indoctrinate impressionable students.
Monday, October 26, 2009
"Historian" says "Israel is a fabrication...and I'm not afraid of Dershowitz..."
From Tablet, October 13, 2009, by Evan R. Goldstein*:
...Shlomo Sand [from Tel Aviv university] argues that ‘Jewish peoplehood’ is a myth
...a new book, The Invention of the Jewish People , by Tel Aviv University historian Shlomo Sand, ...argues that the Jews were not in fact exiled from Israel, and that the bulk of modern Jewry does not descend from the ancient Israelites. Rather, he claims, they are the children of converts—North African Berbers and Turkic Khazars—and have no ancestral ties to the land of Israel.
Zionism is not a return home, Sand writes, it is the tragic theft of another people’s land. As such, Israel is not the political rebirth of the Jewish nation—it’s a complete fabrication. [Follow this link to hear him interviewed talking about his “theories” - SL]
Predictably, The Invention of the Jewish People generated a torrent of controversy when it was published in Hebrew last year ...with Tom Segev, the post-Zionist “new historian,” acclaiming it as “one of the most fascinating and challenging books” to arrive in Israel in a long time, while Alexander Yakobson, a professor of history at the Hebrew University, called it a “pack of lies.”
In March, the French translation, which has sold 45,000 copies—a large number for an academic historian—received the prestigious Aujourd’hui Award, which is given to the year’s best non-fiction book.
...the real test of the book’s significance will take place October 19, when the left-wing publisher Verso Press brings out the English edition of The Invention of the Jewish People. ...“America will be the real battle,” said Sand, who arrives on these shores this month for a series of appearances in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and elsewhere.
...“Sand is not publishing this book at a dignified conference in Bern at which scholars of the Middle East debate the origins of the Jews,” said Goldberg, also a Tablet Magazine contributing editor. “He is dropping manufactured facts into a world that in many cases is ready, willing, and happy to believe the absolute worst conspiracy theories about Jews and to use those conspiracy theories to justify physically hurting Jews.” Goldberg views The Invention of the Jewish People as part of a growing body of work designed not only to discredit the idea of Jewish nationalism, but also the idea of Jews themselves. “It is nothing new,” he added ...we can survive this.” ...
...Sand describes himself as a post-Zionist, but his politics are eclectic. “I am not a Zionist because I am a liberal democrat,” he said. “It is not possible to have a Jewish and a democratic state. It would be like America defining itself as a Protestant state. It makes no sense.”
In the late 1960s, Sand joined Matzpen, a now defunct radical group that advocated the de-Zionization of the Israeli state...
... in the Israeli academy Sand’s book has not been received as good news. Yakobson, the Hebrew University professor, said that Sand’s interpretation of Jewish history “gives a bad name to flimsiness.” To him, even if Sand had made a compelling argument about Jewish origins, it would have no bearing on whether the Jews can be considered a nation. “In order to be a people in the modern sense you do not have to be a descent group,” Yakobson said. “What makes a people is their self-determination to regard themselves as a people.”
Israel Bartal charged Sand with “intellectual superficiality” and “twisting the rules governing the work of professional historians.” Sand’s alleged sins include the use of misleading citations, disrespect for historical details, and a slippery tendency to present extreme theories as though they reflect the scholarly consensus.
Anita Shapira, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, wrote what many believe was the definitive take-down review of Sand’s book for The Journal of Israeli History. In it, Shapira wrote that she found something “warped and objectionable in the assumption that for Jews to integrate into the Middle East they, and they alone of all the peoples in the region, must shed their national identity and historical memories and reconstruct themselves in a way that may (perhaps) find favor with Israeli-Palestinians.”
Yet this barrage of criticism has done little to dampen interest in The Invention of the Jewish People. Translations are underway in a dozen languages, including German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian. Sand signed a contract with a Palestinian publisher to release an Arabic-language edition, but the translation was so sloppy that Sand halted publication. “I am very depressed about it,” he said. “I want to write in the preface that I am waiting for an Arab historian to have the courage to write about Arab history in the same way that I wrote Jewish history.”
But at the moment, Sand has his eyes set on America. “I know there are a lot of organized Zionists that cannot accept the sort of criticism I can voice in Israel,” he said. “But I want you to know I am not afraid of Alan Dershowitz.”
[Sand is on a tour of the USA promoting his book. An anti-Semitic US radio announcer Khalil Bendib (gleefully) interviewed Shlomo Sand earlier this year, and once again more recently. Another Jew damaging Israel ...for what? - SL]
*Evan R. Goldstein is an editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
...Shlomo Sand [from Tel Aviv university] argues that ‘Jewish peoplehood’ is a myth
...a new book, The Invention of the Jewish People , by Tel Aviv University historian Shlomo Sand, ...argues that the Jews were not in fact exiled from Israel, and that the bulk of modern Jewry does not descend from the ancient Israelites. Rather, he claims, they are the children of converts—North African Berbers and Turkic Khazars—and have no ancestral ties to the land of Israel.
Zionism is not a return home, Sand writes, it is the tragic theft of another people’s land. As such, Israel is not the political rebirth of the Jewish nation—it’s a complete fabrication. [Follow this link to hear him interviewed talking about his “theories” - SL]
Predictably, The Invention of the Jewish People generated a torrent of controversy when it was published in Hebrew last year ...with Tom Segev, the post-Zionist “new historian,” acclaiming it as “one of the most fascinating and challenging books” to arrive in Israel in a long time, while Alexander Yakobson, a professor of history at the Hebrew University, called it a “pack of lies.”
In March, the French translation, which has sold 45,000 copies—a large number for an academic historian—received the prestigious Aujourd’hui Award, which is given to the year’s best non-fiction book.
...the real test of the book’s significance will take place October 19, when the left-wing publisher Verso Press brings out the English edition of The Invention of the Jewish People. ...“America will be the real battle,” said Sand, who arrives on these shores this month for a series of appearances in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and elsewhere.
...“Sand is not publishing this book at a dignified conference in Bern at which scholars of the Middle East debate the origins of the Jews,” said Goldberg, also a Tablet Magazine contributing editor. “He is dropping manufactured facts into a world that in many cases is ready, willing, and happy to believe the absolute worst conspiracy theories about Jews and to use those conspiracy theories to justify physically hurting Jews.” Goldberg views The Invention of the Jewish People as part of a growing body of work designed not only to discredit the idea of Jewish nationalism, but also the idea of Jews themselves. “It is nothing new,” he added ...we can survive this.” ...
...Sand describes himself as a post-Zionist, but his politics are eclectic. “I am not a Zionist because I am a liberal democrat,” he said. “It is not possible to have a Jewish and a democratic state. It would be like America defining itself as a Protestant state. It makes no sense.”
In the late 1960s, Sand joined Matzpen, a now defunct radical group that advocated the de-Zionization of the Israeli state...
... in the Israeli academy Sand’s book has not been received as good news. Yakobson, the Hebrew University professor, said that Sand’s interpretation of Jewish history “gives a bad name to flimsiness.” To him, even if Sand had made a compelling argument about Jewish origins, it would have no bearing on whether the Jews can be considered a nation. “In order to be a people in the modern sense you do not have to be a descent group,” Yakobson said. “What makes a people is their self-determination to regard themselves as a people.”
Israel Bartal charged Sand with “intellectual superficiality” and “twisting the rules governing the work of professional historians.” Sand’s alleged sins include the use of misleading citations, disrespect for historical details, and a slippery tendency to present extreme theories as though they reflect the scholarly consensus.
Anita Shapira, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, wrote what many believe was the definitive take-down review of Sand’s book for The Journal of Israeli History. In it, Shapira wrote that she found something “warped and objectionable in the assumption that for Jews to integrate into the Middle East they, and they alone of all the peoples in the region, must shed their national identity and historical memories and reconstruct themselves in a way that may (perhaps) find favor with Israeli-Palestinians.”
Yet this barrage of criticism has done little to dampen interest in The Invention of the Jewish People. Translations are underway in a dozen languages, including German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian. Sand signed a contract with a Palestinian publisher to release an Arabic-language edition, but the translation was so sloppy that Sand halted publication. “I am very depressed about it,” he said. “I want to write in the preface that I am waiting for an Arab historian to have the courage to write about Arab history in the same way that I wrote Jewish history.”
But at the moment, Sand has his eyes set on America. “I know there are a lot of organized Zionists that cannot accept the sort of criticism I can voice in Israel,” he said. “But I want you to know I am not afraid of Alan Dershowitz.”
[Sand is on a tour of the USA promoting his book. An anti-Semitic US radio announcer Khalil Bendib (gleefully) interviewed Shlomo Sand earlier this year, and once again more recently. Another Jew damaging Israel ...for what? - SL]
*Evan R. Goldstein is an editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Senate Inquiry into Academic Freedom "achieved nothing"
From an Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council MEDIA RELEASE, Thursday, December 4, 2008:
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council [AIJAC] ...was "very disappointed" with the majority report resulting from the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Inquiry into Academic Freedom...[which] made no recommendations and essentially denied that there were any substantive problems with respect to academic freedom or political bias on Australian campuses.
"... the Committee split on partisan lines, and essentially achieved nothing... there is certainly evidence of Jewish students at Australian universities experiencing problems with bias or intimidation, and we provided substantive examples of inappropriate behaviour by some lecturers."
... "AIJAC will be taking our concerns about some aspects of campus culture and behaviour directly to Education Minister Julia Gillard. We hope and believe that she will prove less partisan and more farsighted than her Senate colleagues....."
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council [AIJAC] ...was "very disappointed" with the majority report resulting from the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Inquiry into Academic Freedom...[which] made no recommendations and essentially denied that there were any substantive problems with respect to academic freedom or political bias on Australian campuses.
"... the Committee split on partisan lines, and essentially achieved nothing... there is certainly evidence of Jewish students at Australian universities experiencing problems with bias or intimidation, and we provided substantive examples of inappropriate behaviour by some lecturers."
... "AIJAC will be taking our concerns about some aspects of campus culture and behaviour directly to Education Minister Julia Gillard. We hope and believe that she will prove less partisan and more farsighted than her Senate colleagues....."
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Griffith University "Foolish -- at best"
From The Australian Editorial, April 23, 2008:
The Saudi Government has bankrolled hardline Islam
QUEENSLAND'S Griffith University ...has been foolish -- at best -- in virtually begging the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Griffith Islamic Research Unit for $1.3 million. So naive was director Mohamad Abdalla that he wrote to Saudi ambassador Hassan T. Nazer offering to keep the controversial deal secret ...And in a letter dated September 11, 2006, vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor noted Griffith was "rapidly becoming a popular 'university of choice' for students from Saudi Arabia".
....What is disturbing ...is Saudi Arabia's track record of bankrolling radical Islam. When it was launched in 2005, Dr Abdalla, who was born in Libya and lived in Jordan before coming to Australia where he completed his science degree and PhD, said the unit's main aim was "to promote a Wasatiyya or 'moderate' Islam". In offering scholars the chance to study Islam in depth, the unit is a worthwhile academic venture, given the increasing significance of Islam on the world stage.....
...[Griffith Islamic Research Unit ] states one of its aims is "cultivating an informed public opinion that will lead to a more ...pluralistic Australian society". It wants "to bring ...lasting change in our communities". Australians could be forgiven for wondering why it is our society that needs changing when the unit is being partially funded by a nation that espouses hardline Islam, policed by the Mutaween or religious police. Some in the Islamic community fear the funding could skew the unit's approach and create sympathy for an extremist ideology -- Wahabism -- which is widely espoused in Saudi Arabia and by al-Qa'ida.
Unfortunately, the university has not been upfront about the matter, and Queensland District Court judge Clive Wall has every right to raise his concerns. Last year, Ross Homel -- then director of Griffith's key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance -- said the university did not chase money from the embassy and that the $100,000 down payment was offered with "no strings" attached.
Documents obtained by The Australian contradict this, with Professor O'Connor offering the embassy the chance to "discuss ways" in which the money could be used and Griffith staffers speculating about "How do we get extra noughts on this cheque". Such a cap-in-hand approach to a nation that despises all manner of freedom, including academic freedom, does not encourage confidence. The funding of such units should be transparent and any conditions attached to it acknowledged publicly.
The Saudi Government has bankrolled hardline Islam
QUEENSLAND'S Griffith University ...has been foolish -- at best -- in virtually begging the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Griffith Islamic Research Unit for $1.3 million. So naive was director Mohamad Abdalla that he wrote to Saudi ambassador Hassan T. Nazer offering to keep the controversial deal secret ...And in a letter dated September 11, 2006, vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor noted Griffith was "rapidly becoming a popular 'university of choice' for students from Saudi Arabia".
....What is disturbing ...is Saudi Arabia's track record of bankrolling radical Islam. When it was launched in 2005, Dr Abdalla, who was born in Libya and lived in Jordan before coming to Australia where he completed his science degree and PhD, said the unit's main aim was "to promote a Wasatiyya or 'moderate' Islam". In offering scholars the chance to study Islam in depth, the unit is a worthwhile academic venture, given the increasing significance of Islam on the world stage.....
...[Griffith Islamic Research Unit ] states one of its aims is "cultivating an informed public opinion that will lead to a more ...pluralistic Australian society". It wants "to bring ...lasting change in our communities". Australians could be forgiven for wondering why it is our society that needs changing when the unit is being partially funded by a nation that espouses hardline Islam, policed by the Mutaween or religious police. Some in the Islamic community fear the funding could skew the unit's approach and create sympathy for an extremist ideology -- Wahabism -- which is widely espoused in Saudi Arabia and by al-Qa'ida.
Unfortunately, the university has not been upfront about the matter, and Queensland District Court judge Clive Wall has every right to raise his concerns. Last year, Ross Homel -- then director of Griffith's key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance -- said the university did not chase money from the embassy and that the $100,000 down payment was offered with "no strings" attached.
Documents obtained by The Australian contradict this, with Professor O'Connor offering the embassy the chance to "discuss ways" in which the money could be used and Griffith staffers speculating about "How do we get extra noughts on this cheque". Such a cap-in-hand approach to a nation that despises all manner of freedom, including academic freedom, does not encourage confidence. The funding of such units should be transparent and any conditions attached to it acknowledged publicly.
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