Thursday, March 20, 2008
Honest Reporting Canada reports on a vile op-ed that appeared in the student paper at York University, justifying the massacre at Mercaz Harav: Excalibur Writer Justifies Seminary Terror Attack. Author Lama Aggad says it was no surprise as, after all, the institution was both Jewish and Zionist. Imagine. Its students would also grow up to serve in the IDF which, says Aggad, is committing a "Holocaust," and desires an Israel from "the Euphrates to the Nile" -- typical Middle-Eastern conspiracy theorizing.
College papers are no strangers to printing outrageous pieces calculated for effect, though they do usually have some scruples (one would think a Canadian paper especially so) against printing blatantly anti-Semitic applause for child murder.
I did think it worth swatting one fake in Aggad's piece, a supposed quote from Menachem Begin:
...Let's not forget the famous quote from the former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in his speech to the Knesset on June 25, 1982: "[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
This is typical stuff -- fabricating a statement from an Israeli leader in order to justify murder. I had never heard this one before -- there are so many of these fake quotes floating around it's hard to keep up -- so I went looking. Fortunately, CAMERA illuminated the reality of Begin's statement years ago (while debunking Robert Fisk's use of the same "quote":
Internet hate sites, as well as Fisk, attribute this derogation of Palestnians as "two-legged beasts" to former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The source generally given is:
Menachem Begin, as quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts," New Statesman, June 25, 1982
Indeed, the radical French-Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk, did attribute such a quote to Begin in his New Statesman article criticizing Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The author posited:
For this reason the government has gone to extraordinary lengths to dehumanise the Palestinians. Begin described them in a speech in the Knesset as "beasts walking on two legs".
However, further investigation by CAMERA reveals that the actual speech upon which Kapeliouk based his quote, as well as news reports at the time demonstrate that the journalist distorted the quote, giving it a completely different tone and meaning. Begin was talking, not about "the Palestinians" but about terrorists who target children within Israel.
On June 8, 1982, Begin addressed the Knesset in response to a no-confidence motion over Israel's invasion of Lebanon. He talked about defending the children of Israel, and according to a June 9, 1982 AP report, "his voice quaver[ed] with anger and sadness." According to the minutes of the session, Begin stated:
The children of Israel will happily go to school and joyfully return home, just like the children in Washington, in Moscow, and in Peking, in Paris and in Rome, in Oslo, in Stockholm and in Copenhagen. The fate of... Jewish children has been different from all the children of the world throughout the generations. No more. We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off, and our children will grow up in joy in the homes of their parents.
Kapeliouk neither recanted nor apologized for his deception.
If you have a sense of reality, a quotation such as that attributed to Begin should sound warning bells that there's a problem -- either it's a complete fabrication or so stripped of context as to be meaningless. In this case, it's a bit of both. Of course, since Lama Aggad clearly supports terrorists, I'm not surprised he would feel personally affronted by Begin's purported statement and take it as accurate.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: York University Paper Justifies Jerusalem Terror Attack.
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The university paper that recently published an op-ed justifying the Jerusalem terror attack has pulled the offending piece and issued an apology: ...we know many people have been upset by the perceived meaning of the article and by misrepresentations ... Read More
In what moral universe is this kind of paper created?
I was online today, along with tens of thousands of other people around the world, joining in solidarity with the embattled people of Sderot.
There, in a warehouse full of spent qassam rockets, lovely children sang songs of peace as they stood before the neatly stacked piles of blackened metal - remains of the rockets that were fired with the sole intent of maiming and murdering them.
If people can't see, if they don't get that people are advocating the murder of these beautiful children, who want simply to live their lives - there is indeed no hope for this world.
None - none whatsoever.
I pray that people CAN see.
Negotiating with hamas and fatah and the Islamofascist Regime of iran is pointless.
hamas and the IRI have made their goals quite clear - to destroy Israel and its people.
hamas's continual dehumanizing of Jews and Israel are setting the stage, brainwashing so called palestinians for the attempted genocide of Jews just as WW2 nazi Germany dehumanized Jews in the setup for the Holocaust.
God Bless the USA for giving Israel the tools to defend itself and smash the attackers who are at war not only with Israel, but with the entire World.
The long list of Islamofascist atrocities committed all over the World is long, and getting bloodier.
Someone should challenge this school paper to publish a response that lists the actions of Islamofascist theocracies.
That brings up another issue with the paper. As the Honest Reporting item points out, they published another op-ed in the same issue for supposed balance. We see this sort of thing a lot, don't we? But imagine a paper publishing two pieces side-by-side: one supportive of the Columbine killers and one against. It's that brain and morality-dead faux-balance.
It is an article of some 320 words, so short in fact that its disproportionate number of mistakes and outlandish declarations beg the question: what is the purpose of it?
Here are a few of its more glaring mistakes:
1. “The school has around 500 students aged 18 to 30.”
8 human beings were massacred in that terrorist arrack, of whom 7 were 18 and younger: Neria Cohen, aged 15, Segev Avihail, aged 15, Avraham mOses, aged 16, Yehonatan elder, aged 16, Ro’I Roth, aged 18, Yohai Lipshitz, aged 18, Yonadav hirshfeld, aged 18. Another boy, Naftali Sheetrit, one of the critically wounded students, aged 14. This information was easily found on the Internet.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125593
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercaz_HaRav_shooting#Victims
2. “This school strengthens the idea on its students and graduates of the land of Israel from the Euphrates to the Nile”
This idea that Zionism aims at expanding the land of Israel from “from the Euphrates to the Nile” can be found nowhere in Israel’s foundational laws, or documents, or even in Israel’s leaders’s statements. Where it can be found is in the Hamas Charter, alongside other lies quoted directly from the “Protocols of the elders of Zion”. It is a doubtful kind of endorsement of your paper, published in an academic institution, that into its pages creep some of the most notorious defamatoty fabrication in history.
3. “After this incident, thousands went out protesting in Jerusalem cheering “death to the Arabs”.
Here’s a report of what happened, found in an article in Ha’aretz which found the real event outrageous enough to merit the harshest criticism:
“Already last week, radical right-wing groups announced that they planned to gather on Sunday at a spot along the Haas Promenade in Jerusalem and march to the Jabal Mukkaber neighborhood. They were bent on destroying the home of the man responsible for the terrorist attack at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, and the place and time were printed on announcements pasted up all over the city…. We are not talking about a mere handful of individuals who managed to get through police barriers, but a frenzied crowd of dozens of violent people…”
Please note that the incident involved not “thousands” of people, spontaneously spilling into the streets baying for Arab blood, but a few dozens extremists who were organized and were looking to enact some vigilante justice on their own. Note the difference in the way an Israeli paper scathingly scolds the police for not doing enough to protect the Arab neighbourhood and Aggad’s attempt at justifying an act of terrorism.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/965315.html
4. And lastly, “Let’s not forget the famous quote from the former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in his speech to the Knesset on June 25, 1982: “[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs.”
Solomon addressed that.
It seems to me that the description of a person so evil and perverse that he seeks out to kill children qua children, that there is simply no comprehending him as “two-footed animal” does gross injustice to the animal.
André Glucksmann, the French philosopher, defines terrorism as
“a deliberate attack by armed men on unarmed civilians. Terrorism is aggression against civilians as civilians, inevitably taken by surprise and defenseless. Whether the hostage-takers and killers of innocents are in uniform or not, or what kind of weapons they use—whether bombs or blades—does not change anything; neither does the fact that they may appeal to sublime ideals. The only thing that counts is the intention to wipe out random victims. The systematic resort to the car bomb, to suicide attacks, randomly killing as many passersby as possible, defines a specific style of engagement."
It would behove Excalibur’s editor in chief to educate him or her self a little in these matters before allowing the pages of the publication to be used as an open apology for murderers by providing a warrant for another genocide of Jewish people.
York university is a sad depressing place. Full of potential Pali terrorists and lots of Marxists...
Her name sounds Muslim to me, so, 'nuff said. They all are anti-Semites.
They apologized:
http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2008/03/jewish-attack-not-surprise-part-ii.html
This is a very interesting article and they reflect what is actually happening to Jews.