Friday, November 5, 2010
At Brandeis, where else? Brandeis groups to co-host "Israeli Occupation Awareness Week"
Two Brandeis University student groups, one of them Jewish, will be hosting the school's first "Israeli Occupation Awareness Week" next week. One of the week's events will be a speech by Professor Noam Chomsky.
Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine, along with the school's recently founded chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, organized the series of events. Jon Sussman, one of JVP's founders, said that the programs' goal was to balance out the pro-Israel events that have occurred on campus this semester.
"There have been a lot of events coming from the Zionist narrative," he said. "We thought this would be a nice counterpoint."
Brandeis was founded as a non-sectarian Jewish university, and it has had strong official ties with the state of Israel. Last school year, however, students protested the selection of Michael Oren-Israel's ambassador to the US-as commencement speaker.
Sussman added that Chomsky, who is known in part for his unsympathetic views on Israel, will bring attention to the week of events, which also includes speeches by activists in Israel and Palestine-among other programs...
Hey kids, no conceivable definition of "justice" could possibly involve the dismantling of the region's only actual protector of Human Rights in favor of the regressive regimes and religious Fascists who desire its destruction.
Jewish Voice for Peace (or for Israel in Pieces if you will) was, you may recall, recently named by the ADL as one of the top ten anti-Israel groups in the United States. And this isn't even Israel Apartheid Week yet! It's quite a line-up, with Chomsky, Diana Buttu, Alice Rothchild of AJJP and Workmen's Circle...and many more fun activities!
There is still life at Brandeis, however: Altered Consciousness: Israeli 'Occupation' Awareness Week, so all is not lost on campus. Take heart.
Perhaps this is a good opportunity for the quiet majority to do some counter-programming.
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Richard Cravatts has at the absurd event, ongoing now: Israeli Occupation Week constitutes intellectual dishonesty Seeming to confirm a worldview that the brilliant British commentator Melanie Phillips describes in her new book as "a world turned upsid... Read More
"There have been a lot of events coming from the truth and reality narrative," he said. "We thought lies would be a nice counterpoint."
In one of the article's links,
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/11/israeli-occupation-awareness-week-comes-to-brandeis.html
a press release is quoted,
"We do not support the increasingly racist policies of the State of Israel towards its own citizens, nor do we support the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem."
As to the quote's last part I agree. Evict all the Muslim invaders thereby preventing their further thuggish behavior of unlawful occupation.
"Headlines" don't always sync so well with the "story." This one, though, does so beautifully, what is detailed in the story only serving to prove up what is encapsulated in the headline. I do wonder how often there is/isn't intergenerational tension as a result of the student's anti-Israel advocacy. I hope it is there big time in most cases, but I don't know that to be the case, and fear it isn't.
Ask those smug Brandeis Students for Justice in "Palestine" and the recently founded chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace when they are going to end their racist, brutal occupation of Native American land.
And ask the JVP where is the MVP? The Muslim Voice for Peace?
Isn't it odd there there is no "MVP"?
Is the taliban the SJP?
Jews Snub the GOP. Again
by Eric Alterman
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-05/jewish-voters-stand-by-democrats-the-rights-scare-tactics-backfire/
It's important though to remember that these clowns are NOT representative of Brandeis students. According to current Brandeis students I've spoken with, the campus is still very pro-Israel and pro-Zionist (in a real way, not a J-Street way), but the anti-Zionists/anti-semites make a lot of noise and get a lot of attention.
For example the protesters at Ambassador Oren's speech, which garnered so much attention in the Boston Globe, consisted only of about three or four students and ten to fifteen older 'activists'. (The Globe later apologized for focusing on the handful of protesters and not the speech itself or the rousing reception it got from the audience - too late, or course.)
While we want to be aware of these activities and of course oppose them, we shouldn't let a few nut cases to occupy too much room in our minds.
Happy and Proud, thank you for that report from the battle scene (Brandeis), which I hope is an accurate one. Any more details you might have to supply about how that particular campus is doing with its Jewish identity and vis-a-vis Israel would be appreciated. Not so much rebellion in the air anymore that they are producing radical felons as they were 40+ years ago in the Vietnam era? But there are all these anti-Israel opportunities like JVP, with a worldwide "Progressive" campaign to delegitimize Israel.
A primer mover in this JVP and BDS crap at Brandeis is a senior there, Jon Sussman. When the school paper, The Justice, published a piece critical of the Israel bashing, Sussman replied angrily. Below, fwiw, is what he said and dcdoc's reply to him:
I'll leave aside the ridiculous caricature of Israeli Occupation Awareness Week that this article presents, as if advocating for a just peace that recognizes Israeli and Palestinian claims is tantamount to excusing the murder of Jews.
What really bothers me about this article is that the author is not a Brandeis student, alumnus, faculty or community member: he doesn't know or care what happens on our campus so long as it provides him a soapbox to condemn 'genocidal liberals'. Indeed, his complete denunciation of social justice, one of our university's founding principles, is a pretty clear indication that he is in no way representative of our university or American Jewry.
The Justice needs to do better in its search for editorial commentary. If this issue desperately needed a fact-free, hysterical denunciation of a campus event, I am sure there are right-wing hacks here at Brandeis who are more than up to the challenge.
Jon, boychick, you and your small cohort of Israel bashers do all you can to draw attention to yourselves and your school, then you complain when you get it because the person giving it to you is not "a Brandeis student, alumnus, faculty or community member"?! Brandeis has outlived the ignominy that Angela Davis, Susan Saxe and Katherine Power brought it, and hopefully it will outlive the ignominy you and your ilk would bring it now. And if you truly believe you are more representative of American Jewry than that author, you are delusional.