Friday, March 6, 2009
...but the swastikas remain at DePaul University: Arab Journalist Greeted with Swastikas at DePaul:
Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh was greeted with swastikas as he arrived Israeli Arab journalist to speak at DePaul University in Chicago on February 4.
Abu Toameh was invited to speak on campus by a number of Jewish organizations, including Hasbara Fellowships and StandWithUs, about the situation in the Middle East and his experiences as a journalist.
Shortly before the event began, the organizers discovered that many of the flyers featuring the event and carrying Abu Toameh's picture had been covered with swastikas.
The local Hillel students who also hosted Abu Toameh filed condemned the incident and filed a hate-crime complaint with the university authorities...
...Abu Toameh, who has been covering Palestinian affairs for the past 25 years, said he was shocked to hear about the swastikas at DePaul. He added that sometimes he feels "that it's much safer to be on a Palestinian campus with Hamas and Fatah than on some campuses in the US.
Abu Toameh said he saw no difference between the incitement on US campuses and the incitement against Israel by Hamas and other terror groups. He said that he found it ironic that while many Arabs and Muslims agreed with his views and even thanked him for speaking out against financial corruption and terrorism, some American Jews who came to listen to his talk defended Yasser Arafat and insisted that he was never corrupt.
I don't get it.
What am I missing here?
I do not understand this meshugas. It is one thing to argue against "fear of the other", it is quite another to ignore historical fact.
Also it is nuts to ignore a person like Abu Toameh.
It is embarrassing to see Nazi graffiti on American campuses - it is also terrifying.
I see it on synagogues too lately and of course at "peace demonstrations".
We were pretty "edgy" I guess when I was a kid - but most of us weren't marching in favor of totalitarianism - we were marching against war. And we were not marching in favor of annihilating minorities either - even the craziest "revolutionaries" stood against racism - not for it.
Something has qualitatively changed and to see Jews buying it this is triply upsetting. It's bad enough to see progressives turning into fascists but to see Jews losing their noodles - forgetting the value of history and logic and fact - oy.
This is as bad or worse than Roger Cohen defending Iran on the basis that it isn't a Nazi concentration camp.
Hello? Roger?