American_Jihad
Flaming Libs/Koranimals
Leave it to the left to indoctrinate everyone with their deviousness and sinisterism ...
Open Hillel Welcomes the Enemy into the Jewish Tent
Israel-hating academics want to force Palestinianism down Jewish students’ throats.
Winston Churchill could have been observing the sorry state of academic free speech today when he observed that “Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” As if to confirm Churchill’s prescience, this month a cabal of 55 high-minded but morally incoherent American and Canadian professors formed Open Hillel’s Academic Council, a group comprised of well-known Israel-haters who condemned “Hillel International's Standards of Partnership [which] narrowly circumscribe discourse about Israel-Palestine” and which, in its view, “only serve to foster estrangement from the organized Jewish community.”
This group of academics and intellectuals, who almost, to a person, promote a one-sided, anti-Israel view of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and whose teaching and so-called scholarship perpetuates a historically false and factually defective narrative in which Israel is the world’s greatest manifestation of malevolence and the Palestinian Arabs are innocent victims of colonial oppression, feel very free to tell Hillel how to achieve its mission: “Hillel’s recent aggressive attempts to police discourse about Israel place it in direct conflict with the spirit of the academy,” the Council bloviated, adding that “Just as our classrooms must be spaces that embrace diversity of experience and opinion, so must Hillel.”
This sentiment is not surprising from these particular academics, given the ideological composition of a group that includes: Peter Beinart, associate professor at the City University of New York, who justifies the BDS campaign because “its recruits are progressives, and that what tips them toward BDS is despair that there seems no other way to end Israel’s immoral, undemocratic control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip;” Berkeley’s feminist philosopher, Judith Butler, who notoriously and who almost surreally commented that it is important to view “Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left;” Stanford’s Joel Beinin, a self-proclaimed Marxist and rabid anti-Zionist who singles out Israel for criticism of its varied and frequent transgressions, all the while excusing the social and political defects of the neighboring Arab states who surround it and blaming the pathologies of the Middle East on Western imperialism and the continuing colonial impact of the U.S.'s proxy in the Levant, Israel; and UC Irvine’s Mark LeVine, associate professor of history, who claims that Israel, like America, essentially receives what it deserves, contending that, “In Israel the violence and terrorism of the latest intifada cannot be understood except as emerging out of decades of occupation, discrimination and dispossession.”
Open Hillel, founded in 2013 by “progressive” (read: anti-Zionist) Jewish students at Swarthmore College, was an attempt to challenge Hillel International’s guidelines which seek to preserve Hillel’s primary desire “to enrich the lives of Jewish students so they may enrich the Jewish people and the world.” Part of that enrichment is helping Jewish students to connect and form an enduring relationship with Israel, and so a positive view of the Jewish state is generally fostered and embraced within Hillel chapter walls.
Open Hillel, however, is not satisfied with that approach to forming a Jewish identity; instead, it seeks to invite anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist voices into Hillel, purportedly to bring a diversity of views into discussions about Israel and the Palestinians, but, as is obvious from the unseemly group behind the movement, to actually bring anti-Israel activism right into the otherwise “safe” space that Hillel provides Jewish students who are forming their own spiritual identities and attitudes about the Jewish state.
The idea that Hillel International has very clear guidelines about which type of groups may, and may not, appear at Hillel events was, apparently, too much for these anti-Israel ideologues, who are not content with flooding the rest of campuses with virulent pro-Palestinian activism that incessantly demonizes, libels, and demeans Israel and its supporters; these activists also want to force this tsunami of anti-Israel hatred, often anti-Semitic in nature, right into Hillel’s door—using the disingenuous claim that it is done in the name of academic free speech and diversity of ideas. “Hillel’s recent aggressive attempts to police discourse about Israel place it in direct conflict with the spirit of the academy . . . [by] forcing an unnecessary and destructive choice between academic freedom and membership in the Jewish community.”
What are the “aggressive attempts” by Hillel “to police discourse about Israel”? In fact, Hillel’s guidelines are designed, not to eliminate any discussion about Israel, but only to prevent self-identified enemies of Israel to participate in Hillel events—those groups such as the virulent Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Student Association (MSA), who lead in on-campus agitation against Israel and Jews who support it, and toxic fringe groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Breaking the Silence, which use the cover of having Jewish members themselves to openly, and vigorously, seek to weaken and destroy the Jewish state. Hillel’s Standards of Partnership state clearly that“Hillel will not partner with . . . organizations, groups, or speakers that . . . Deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state . . . Delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel . . ; Support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the State of Israel . . ; [or] Exhibit a pattern of disruptive behavior towards campus”—exactly the speech and behavior characteristic of both the activist groups mentioned above and virtually all of the members of the Open Hillel Academic Council.
Students for Justice in Palestine, for example, the campus group currently leading the campaign to delegitimize and demonize Israel, has absolutely no interest in joining Hillel in robust, honest debates about a future Palestinian state or, as the wishful thinking goes, creating two states that will live side by side in peace. SJP has a long history, since its founding in 1993, of bringing vitriolic anti-Israel speakers to their respective campuses, and for sponsoring Israeli Apartheid Weeks, building mock “apartheid walls,” and sending mock eviction notices to students in their dorms to help them empathize with Palestinians.
SJP may wish to enter Hillel’s tent to spew their venom, and clearly this is the intention of Open Hillel’s Academic Council, but not so they can engage in actual dialogue with pro-Israel Jewish students. The whole idea of even legitimizing a pro-Israel view is anathematic to SJP and their fellow-travelers in their never-ending bash-Israel campaign.
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Open Hillel Welcomes the Enemy into the Jewish Tent
Open Hillel Welcomes the Enemy into the Jewish Tent
Israel-hating academics want to force Palestinianism down Jewish students’ throats.
Winston Churchill could have been observing the sorry state of academic free speech today when he observed that “Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” As if to confirm Churchill’s prescience, this month a cabal of 55 high-minded but morally incoherent American and Canadian professors formed Open Hillel’s Academic Council, a group comprised of well-known Israel-haters who condemned “Hillel International's Standards of Partnership [which] narrowly circumscribe discourse about Israel-Palestine” and which, in its view, “only serve to foster estrangement from the organized Jewish community.”
This group of academics and intellectuals, who almost, to a person, promote a one-sided, anti-Israel view of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and whose teaching and so-called scholarship perpetuates a historically false and factually defective narrative in which Israel is the world’s greatest manifestation of malevolence and the Palestinian Arabs are innocent victims of colonial oppression, feel very free to tell Hillel how to achieve its mission: “Hillel’s recent aggressive attempts to police discourse about Israel place it in direct conflict with the spirit of the academy,” the Council bloviated, adding that “Just as our classrooms must be spaces that embrace diversity of experience and opinion, so must Hillel.”
This sentiment is not surprising from these particular academics, given the ideological composition of a group that includes: Peter Beinart, associate professor at the City University of New York, who justifies the BDS campaign because “its recruits are progressives, and that what tips them toward BDS is despair that there seems no other way to end Israel’s immoral, undemocratic control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip;” Berkeley’s feminist philosopher, Judith Butler, who notoriously and who almost surreally commented that it is important to view “Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left;” Stanford’s Joel Beinin, a self-proclaimed Marxist and rabid anti-Zionist who singles out Israel for criticism of its varied and frequent transgressions, all the while excusing the social and political defects of the neighboring Arab states who surround it and blaming the pathologies of the Middle East on Western imperialism and the continuing colonial impact of the U.S.'s proxy in the Levant, Israel; and UC Irvine’s Mark LeVine, associate professor of history, who claims that Israel, like America, essentially receives what it deserves, contending that, “In Israel the violence and terrorism of the latest intifada cannot be understood except as emerging out of decades of occupation, discrimination and dispossession.”
Open Hillel, founded in 2013 by “progressive” (read: anti-Zionist) Jewish students at Swarthmore College, was an attempt to challenge Hillel International’s guidelines which seek to preserve Hillel’s primary desire “to enrich the lives of Jewish students so they may enrich the Jewish people and the world.” Part of that enrichment is helping Jewish students to connect and form an enduring relationship with Israel, and so a positive view of the Jewish state is generally fostered and embraced within Hillel chapter walls.
Open Hillel, however, is not satisfied with that approach to forming a Jewish identity; instead, it seeks to invite anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist voices into Hillel, purportedly to bring a diversity of views into discussions about Israel and the Palestinians, but, as is obvious from the unseemly group behind the movement, to actually bring anti-Israel activism right into the otherwise “safe” space that Hillel provides Jewish students who are forming their own spiritual identities and attitudes about the Jewish state.
The idea that Hillel International has very clear guidelines about which type of groups may, and may not, appear at Hillel events was, apparently, too much for these anti-Israel ideologues, who are not content with flooding the rest of campuses with virulent pro-Palestinian activism that incessantly demonizes, libels, and demeans Israel and its supporters; these activists also want to force this tsunami of anti-Israel hatred, often anti-Semitic in nature, right into Hillel’s door—using the disingenuous claim that it is done in the name of academic free speech and diversity of ideas. “Hillel’s recent aggressive attempts to police discourse about Israel place it in direct conflict with the spirit of the academy . . . [by] forcing an unnecessary and destructive choice between academic freedom and membership in the Jewish community.”
What are the “aggressive attempts” by Hillel “to police discourse about Israel”? In fact, Hillel’s guidelines are designed, not to eliminate any discussion about Israel, but only to prevent self-identified enemies of Israel to participate in Hillel events—those groups such as the virulent Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Student Association (MSA), who lead in on-campus agitation against Israel and Jews who support it, and toxic fringe groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Breaking the Silence, which use the cover of having Jewish members themselves to openly, and vigorously, seek to weaken and destroy the Jewish state. Hillel’s Standards of Partnership state clearly that“Hillel will not partner with . . . organizations, groups, or speakers that . . . Deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state . . . Delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel . . ; Support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the State of Israel . . ; [or] Exhibit a pattern of disruptive behavior towards campus”—exactly the speech and behavior characteristic of both the activist groups mentioned above and virtually all of the members of the Open Hillel Academic Council.
Students for Justice in Palestine, for example, the campus group currently leading the campaign to delegitimize and demonize Israel, has absolutely no interest in joining Hillel in robust, honest debates about a future Palestinian state or, as the wishful thinking goes, creating two states that will live side by side in peace. SJP has a long history, since its founding in 1993, of bringing vitriolic anti-Israel speakers to their respective campuses, and for sponsoring Israeli Apartheid Weeks, building mock “apartheid walls,” and sending mock eviction notices to students in their dorms to help them empathize with Palestinians.
SJP may wish to enter Hillel’s tent to spew their venom, and clearly this is the intention of Open Hillel’s Academic Council, but not so they can engage in actual dialogue with pro-Israel Jewish students. The whole idea of even legitimizing a pro-Israel view is anathematic to SJP and their fellow-travelers in their never-ending bash-Israel campaign.
...
Open Hillel Welcomes the Enemy into the Jewish Tent