Saturday, March 12, 2005
Norm has some thoughts on that piece that appeared in the student magazine of London's School of Oriental and African Studies I posted on a couple of days ago. He puts it well why the piece is so urgently disturbing, and why violence tends to follow-on so quickly when certain ideas infect a place. Read all, but here's a snip:
Israelis, without further ado, become legitimate targets. Now, notice that this is written in the SOAS student magazine and there are Israeli students at SOAS. (Notice, also, how very easily the idea of 'personally complicit in national wrongdoing' could be extended from Israelis to anyone else thought to be complicit in 'national wrongdoing', of which the reader will certainly be able to summon up topical examples.) I don't know enough about the law to know what constitutes the threshold for incitement to violence. But I think I know enough about the world to know that something is seriously amiss inside the student body at SOAS, and that something needs to be done about it. One of the main places an initiative for doing this something should come from is within the student body itself.
Doeas anyone know how I could go about reporting Nasser Amin to the police or the race relations board for incitement to racial hatred. I am an Israeli student at SOAS and due to a number of verbal attacks recently worry for my own safety. Not sure how these things are done in the UK but I am resolved to act.
Sobo, I don't want to belittle your comment but its quite simple - you walk into your nearest police station, clutching a copy of the evil extremist article, tell them how reading its destroyed your life and in true democratic Zionist fashion ask them to lock him up and rent a bulldozer to make sure...
GAVIN GROSS IS AN ISLAMOPHOBE - OFFICIAL
The IHRC which is a human rights group part of the UN is running its Annual Islamophobia Awards to determine the most Islamophobic person in the world. SOAS Zionist extremist and Sharon-supporting anti-Muslim bigot GAVIN GROSS is a contender which rightly places him in the company of the BNP leader, George Bush JR and Richard Littlejohn.
View it and vote for him here:
http://www.ihrc.org.uk/islamophobia/
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:cTNdLZdpfRoJ:www.ihrc.org.uk/islamophobia/+ihrc+islamophobia&hl=en
Student slapped down for defending Palestinian right to resist
by RICHARD SEYMOUR
Axiomatically, leading academic institutions involve intense and varied debate over a variety of topics, and some of that debate ranges over territory that mainstream conversation often misses. SOAS, a prestigious higher learning institution in the centre of London, would appear to have a defender of free and open discussion in head Colin Bundy. In the last month, the Director & Principal has openly defended the right of an apologist for the Uzbekistan regime, Shirin Akiner, to speak at SOAS, rejecting calls for reconsideration by former British ambassador the dictatorship, Craig Murray. He previously overturned a ban imposed by the Student Union on the attendance of Israeli embassy counsellor Roey Gilad: the students have an anti-racist policy, and consider Zionism to be in practise a form of racism. Bundy has expounded an heroic Voltairean dedication to free speech in defence of these actions.
Yet, one glaring exception renders the rule absurd: the treatment of a student named Nasser Amin. Amin had written an article for a student magazine arguing that Palestinians had the right to use force against Israel's occupation. Instantly, this issue was used alongside a clutch of others by some right-wingers and pro-Zionist students who insisted that SOAS was guilty of anti-Semitism. The broadsheets in the UK were joined in coverage of this claim by American far right website FrontPage magazine and Campus Watch, the former run by David Horowitz and the latter by Daniel Pipes, an anti-Muslim bigot. Gavin Gross, the SOAS student who had been most involved in pressing these claims, was given a glowing interview by FrontPage in which he dragged Amin's name through the mud. David Winnick MP raised the possibility in parliament that Amin should be charged with incitement to racial hatred. Finally, Bundy succumbed to the pressure and issued Amin with a formal reprimand, without even informing him of it or why he was being reprimanded.
Professors Richard Falk and Ted Honderich have referred in the past to a right to violence – Honderich has gone further, suggesting that on the basis of present realities, the Palestinians are entitled to their terror. Professor Michael Neumann uses similar arguments to Amin. These are public intellectuals, and so are in some position to defend themselves. Amin, by contrast, is a student. He is almost entirely defenceless. As a Muslim, he belongs to a community that is subject to calumny and extraordinary scrutiny of its every word and gesture. His academic freedom was sacrificed to the exigencies of an urgent political struggle by defenders of Israel to curtail the scope of anti-Zionism on campus. Some staff at SOAS spoke out on Amin's behalf, including his tutor Dr Mark Laffey, who said "It is part of the job description of an academic institution that you are willing to give offence. Our job is to seek out the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or unpleasant for various groups or interests." Another member of staff, John Game, circulated an open letter condemning Bundy for giving in to such pressure. The Islamic Human Rights Commission said a word or two on Amin's behalf, demanding the Bundy explain why the reprimand was issued with Amin being given the chance to defend himself, and also demanding that the reprimand be retracted.
Yet, Bundy's impressive dedication to free expression continues to elude him on this issue. Answer came there none, and Amin still has an official reprimand to remind him of just what commonplace argument he may not articulate in mixed company. He also has an MP who'd like to see him face jail for up to seven years. And he has American rightists accusing him of "Jew-hatred" for the benefit of audiences whom he may never address. Amin, for his part, feels that the article was "selectively misquoted" by the media and that he has been misused for political purposes. Further, just when he hoped the college would defend him from "Islamophobia, bullying, racism, harassment and slander", they instead acceded to the bullying, slapped him down and made him a scapegoat on their website.
This is not an isolated story. Campus Watch has been behind the hounding of a number of pro-Palestinian academics in the United States, including Professors Joel Beinin and Rashid Khalidi. The website has a page inviting students to tell on teachers who are insufficiently supportive of Israel. It attacked a professor named Joseph Massad who was falsely accused of bullying pro-Israeli students. In part, this is happening because the issues surrounding Israel-Palestine are becoming more urgent, while at the same time a decades-long pro-Israel consensus is eroding. There is also a vast gulf between what is academically known about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the picture generally presented in the media. This has produced a climate in which pro-Zionists and right-wingers feel compelled to try and rein in academic discourse. The treatment of Nasser Amin is a small introduction to that trend, one which began in America and is gathering pace in the UK. So the story is, if you like, about all students and their right to argue points of view that are controversial in mainstream discourse.
Anyone feeling the urge to defend his or her own intellectual integrity could do worse than contact Colin Bundy and protest against the mistreatment of Nasser Amin: cb3@soas.ac.uk
http://www.therundown.co.uk/features/1130714210/
Related link: http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/12/israel-re-occupies-academia.html