Obama and Perry may think otherwise for their own nefarious political reasons but then we know better ( See 1 below.)
and
An analysis by Israel's Defense Minister regarding what Israel accomplished in the recent Gaza War. Yes, it was a war! (See 1a below.)
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Muslims are proliferating and will can result in a very radical world for our children and grandchildren etc
Click on:. http://www.youtube.com/embed/6-3X5hIFXYU
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Obama swore to defend America but apparently he decided playing golf, raising money for Democrats and not doing the job he is paid to do was more fun!
Who qualifies for the JV team now ? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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A non-Jewish Professor responds to those who hate Israel for reasons that are hateful and irrational but lamentably growing and particularly is this the case among unwashed students on college and university campuses worldwide.! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)
Author: Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi
- Mahmoud Abbas’ speech to the UN General Assembly reflects the political reality that there is no Palestinian partner today for a settlement with Israel based on compromise.
- He revealed the true face of the Palestinian Authority with its open support for terror as a legitimate tactic.
- Abbas charged Israel with genocide and blamed Israel for the Islamist terrorism sweeping the region. He never mentioned Hamas terrorism or the thousands of rockets fired at Israel’s cities from Gaza.
- Abbas promised to “maintain the traditions of our national struggle established by the Palestinian [Fatah] fedayeen” as far back as 1965.
Abbas UN
On September 26, 2014, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) gave a speech to the UN General Assembly that once again revealed his radical positions on terror and the peace process.
Abbas only used the phrase “state of Israel” once while calling Israel “the occupying state” five times, including two uses of the phrase “settlement occupation state” and two uses of “racist occupying state.” He used the word occupation (or “settlement occupation” or “racist occupation”) an additional 23 times, usually as a synonym for “state of Israel.”
Abbas portrayed Israel as the apex of human evil and as the wellspring of terror, incitement, hatred, and the Islamic radicalism that is sweeping the Middle East and the world at large.
Abbas accused Israel of a “new war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people… the third war waged by the racist occupying state in five years,” and of planning another nakba (mass expulsion of Palestinians). He made no mention at all of terror attacks and the firing of thousands of rockets from Gaza at Israeli cities, strategic facilities, and its international airport.
Abbas denied any Israeli right to self-defense and justified the warfare and terror attacks of Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations, declaring that “the Palestinian people hold steadfast to their legitimate right to defend themselves against the Israeli war machine and to their legitimate right to resist this colonial, racist Israeli occupation.”
“War Crimes” and “Racism”
Abbas demanded that Israel pay the full price for its “war crimes” while directing no such demand at the Palestinian terror organizations (including Fatah, which he heads) for firing rockets at Israeli civilian communities. “Yet,” he said, “we believe – and hope – that no one is trying to aid the occupation this time in its impunity or its attempts to evade accountability for its crimes.”
Abbas also accused Israel of systematically derailing any possibility of peace with a long list of measures including settlement building, land confiscation, home destructions, massacres and mass arrests, forceful expulsion of Palestinians from their West Bank homes, tightening the “unjust” blockade on Gaza, trying to change the nature of Jerusalem with an emphasis on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and “criminal” activity of “racist and armed gangs of settlers.”
Israel, in Abbas’ words, is cultivating “a culture of racism, incitement and hatred [as] glaringly manifested in the despicable, appalling crime committed months ago by fascist settlers, who abducted the young Jerusalemite boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir, burnt him alive and killed him. We hope that this will remind you of something in history.” In that last sentence Abbas hinted at the Holocaust.
Abbas completely ignored the wall-to-wall condemnation of the murder in Israel along with the capture and arraignment of the suspects. This stands in stark contrast to the Palestinian Authority’s systematic failure to arrest or charge the perpetrators of terror attacks against Jews, while glorifying Palestinian terrorists and granting them lifelong economic security.
Praise for Terror and “Political Prisoners”
Praise for terror is a constant motif in Abbas’s speeches, and in his latest UN speech he again referred to all Palestinian terrorists whom Israel has prosecuted for murder or attempted murder as “political prisoners,” and declared that the Palestinian Authority demands their immediate release.
Indeed, Abbas does not view Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis – from stabbings to suicide bombings – as war crimes but as part of a legitimate struggle that comports with international law.
As he put it:
At the same time, I affirm that our grief, trauma and anger will not for one moment make us abandon our humanity, our values and our ethics; we will always maintain our respect and commitment to international law, international humanitarian law and the international consensus, and we will maintain the traditions of our national struggle established by the Palestinian fedayeen and to which we committed ourselves since the onset of the Palestinian revolution in early 1965.
Abbas was thereby referring to the first Fatah terror attack on Israel, an attempted bombing of the national water carrier, on January 1, 1965. Thus, he justified all aspects of the armed struggle that Palestinian terror organizations have been waging ever since.
Abbas attributed terror and the roots of terror to Israel, which, he says, was established in 1948 by expelling innocent and peaceful Palestinians from their homes. Apart from the gross distortion of history and the obfuscation of Palestinian and Arab terror, Abbas pinned the blame for the phenomenon of Islamic terror, as recently manifested by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, on Israel.
As he declared:
We, and all the Arab countries, have constantly cautioned about the disastrous consequences of the continuation of the Israeli occupation and the denial of freedom and independence for the people of Palestine. We have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that allowing Israel to act as a state above the law with impunity and absolving it of any accountability or punishment for its policies, aggression and defiance of the international will and legitimacy have absolutely provided fertile ground and an environment conducive for the growth of extremism, hatred and terrorism in our region.
Confronting the terrorism that plagues our region by groups – such as “ISIL” and others that have no basis whatsoever in the tolerant Islamic religion or with humanity…requires much more than military confrontation. What is primarily needed is a comprehensive, credible strategy to dry out the sources of terrorism…. It requires the creation of solid foundations for a reasonable consensus that makes the fight against all forms of terrorism in any place everywhere a collective task…. It requires, in this context and as a priority, bringing an end to the Israeli occupation of our country, which constitutes in its practices and perpetuation, an abhorrent form of state terrorism and a breeding ground for incitement, tension and hatred.
After denying both the existence of Palestinian terror and the Israeli right to self-defense, Abbas said that “Palestine refuses to have the right to freedom of her people…remain hostage to Israel’s security conditions.”
Not only does Abbas fail to recognize Israel’s security needs, he also claims that it is the Palestinians “who are subjected to the terrorism by the racist occupying Power and its settlers” and who “are actually the ones who need immediate international protection….”
In the speech Abbas also presented his vision for peace:
We want…a sovereign and independent State living in peace and building bridges of mutual cooperation with its neighbors; that respects commitments, obligations and agreements; that strengthens the values of citizenship, equality, non-discrimination, the rule of law, human rights and pluralism; that deepens the Palestinian enlightened traditions of tolerance, coexistence and non-exclusion; that strengthens the culture of peace; that promotes the role of women; that establishes effective administration committed to the standards of good governance….
It is impossible, and I repeat – it is impossible – to return to the cycle of negotiations that failed to deal with the substance of the matter and the fundamental question. There is neither credibility nor seriousness in negotiations in which Israel predetermines the results via its settlement activities and the occupation’s brutality. There is no meaning or value in negotiations for which the agreed objective is not ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the independence of the state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital on the entire Palestinian Territory occupied in the 1967 war. And, there is no value in negotiations which are not linked to a firm timetable for the implementation of this goal.
We reaffirm…our commitment to achieve a just peace through a negotiated solution…. a lasting solution and a just peace….
[This means] ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the two-State solution, of the state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, over the entire territory occupied in 1967, alongside the state of Israel and reaching a just and agreed upon solution to the plight of the Palestine refugees on the basis of resolution 194, with a specific time frame for the implementation of these objectives as stipulated in the Arab Peace Initiative. This will be linked to the immediate resumption of negotiations between Palestine and Israel to demarcate the borders, reach a detailed and comprehensive agreement and draft a peace treaty between them.
Abbas’ vision of peace does not indicate any real intention to reach a historic compromise with Israel on dividing the land into two states that would live peacefully side by side. He called for a political agreement via negotiations, but stipulated the results of the negotiations as a precondition for holding them. Moreover, Abbas lauded the Palestinian Authority’s formation of a unity government with Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations, even though it does not signal that the terror organizations have accepted the diplomatic route but, instead, that Abbas has gone in their direction.
Hamas wields complete control of Gaza and in recent months also tried to overthrow Abbas’ regime in the West Bank, a plan the Israeli security services managed to foil. Hamas’ military power and popularity in the Palestinian street, including the West Bank, constitutes veto power over any political settlement based on recognizing Israel and/or a political compromise of any kind.
Abbas wants the world to think he is taking a constructive political position. In actuality, he is merely reiterating the “just peace” formula and rejecting the Israeli “peace through compromise” formula. [“A just and agreed upon solution to the plight of the Palestine refugees on the basis of resolution 194.”] The “just peace” formula means uncompromising insistence on what the Palestinians call the “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees and generations of their descendants to Israel itself. That, in turn, means forcing Israel to take in five to seven million Palestinians while ejecting millions of Jews from their communities so that the Palestinians can move in. In other words, the “just peace” formula is a prescription for putting an end to the state of Israel, and forms the ideological basis of the Palestinian unity agreement that Fatah has forged with Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations.
1a)
-Author: Mitch Ginsburg
After a punishing 50-day campaign in Gaza, Hamas has retained only 20 percent of its rocket arsenal, totaling roughly 2,000 projectiles, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Monday at Bar Ilan University.
The organization lost 40 senior operatives, Ya’alon said, along with 10 Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders.
Predominantly, however, Ya’alon contended that Operation Protective Edge – in which 72 Israelis and over 2,000 Palestinians, mostly militants, were killed – established a deterrence that will show its worth over time.
“I’m familiar with the longing for the Six Day War, and again and again I remind [you]: the undeniably glowing military victory did not bring quiet for but a limited amount of time,” he said, referencing the border skirmishes in the Jordan Valley that began shortly after the war and the onset of the War of Attrition in the Sinai.
Israeli army troops operating in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge
(photo credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
Israeli army troops operating in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge
(photo credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
“The nature of the achievement of Operation Protective Edge will be tested by time,” he said, adding that there is ample reason to believe that Israel and Egypt, the only countries bordering the Gaza Strip, can help stop Hamas’ re-armament.
“I hope that the future proves that this operation attained a long period of quiet and deterrence not merely vis-à-vis Gaza, but in the entire region,” he said.
Addressing charges leveled at him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – namely that both charted a policy that failed to adequately harm Hamas and that Israel failed to attain a decisive victory – Ya’alon said that “we navigated the operation according to our compass and not the weather vane that was heated from outside.”
As for victory, he added, “a decision, from my perspective, is to bring the other side to a ceasefire in accordance with your conditions.”
Former Southern Command – chief Tal Russo right
(photo credit: IDF Spokesperson/Flash90)
Former Southern Command – chief Tal Russo right
(photo credit: IDF Spokesperson/Flash90)
On Sunday, in a conference focused on the tunnel threat, which proved to be a central component of Hamas’ battle plans during the operation, drawing Israel into a ground war, the former OC Southern Command, Maj. Gen. (res) Tal Russo, said that Israel “made no shortage of mistakes” in addressing the subterranean threat prior to the operation, but stated that “there are one hundred opinions on the matter and everyone is certain that they’re right.”
Speaking at The Institute for Policy and Strategy at the IDC Herzliya, Russo said that Hamas workers, “from Operation Protective Edge and till today, are pulling bodies out of the tunnels; there is the stench of death.”
The central goal for Israel in combating the tunnel threat, he added, does not so much revolve around “the perfect solution” — a technology that can detect all underground digging — but rather how “to turn them into death traps.”
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2)
GAI: Obama Skipped Over Half His Daily Intel Briefs
(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/Landov)
Tuesday, 30 Sep 2014 10:00 AM
In the fallout over President Barack Obama blaming the intelligence community for the rise of the Islamic State, a new report has surfaced showing that he attended less than half of his daily intel briefings.
The Government Accountability Institute, an investigative research organization, said the president went to only 42.1 percent of his intelligence meetings, known as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB, in the 2,079 days of his presidency through Monday, according to Breitbart.
The GAI report also revealed during his first term he attended 42.4 percent of the briefings, while Obama has even reduced that number in his second term, with just a 41.3 percent attendance record.
During an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday, the president claimed that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had failed to warn the Obama administration that the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS, was gaining a strong foothold in Iraq and Syria.
“I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” he said.
The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake alleged on Monday that as long as eight months ago Obama’s senior intelligence officials had alerted the White House that ISIS was growing in power while attempting to create a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
“In the beginning of 2014, ISIS fighters had defeated Iraqi forces in Fallujah, leading much of the U.S. intelligence community to assess they would try to take more of Iraq,”wrote Lake, adding that members of the Defense department were “flabbergasted” by Obama’s statement.
“Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s (lying),” a former senior Pentagon official who knew of the threat posed by Sunni extremists told the Beast.
Breitbart noted that following his controversial TV comments Obama has been accused by people in the intelligence community of lacking interest in “live” PDBs, which allow the president to ask follow-up questions, demand further information and challenge intel suppositions.
Meanwhile, an Obama national security staffer told the Daily Mail that the PDBs have included threat assessment on ISIS since 2012.
“It's pretty well-known that the president hasn’t taken in-person intelligence briefings with any regularity since the early days of 2009,” the staffer said. “He gets them in writing.
“Unless someone very senior has been shredding the president's daily briefings and telling him that the dog ate them, highly accurate predictions about (ISIS) have been showing up in the Oval Office since before the election.”
The White House said that the president prefers to read his intelligence briefings on his iPad instead of having in-person briefings, according to reports.
But Breitbart said, “The question remains whether a 42 percent attendance record on daily intelligence briefings is good enough for most Americans.”
The Government Accountability Institute, an investigative research organization, said the president went to only 42.1 percent of his intelligence meetings, known as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB, in the 2,079 days of his presidency through Monday, according to Breitbart.
The GAI report also revealed during his first term he attended 42.4 percent of the briefings, while Obama has even reduced that number in his second term, with just a 41.3 percent attendance record.
During an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday, the president claimed that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had failed to warn the Obama administration that the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS, was gaining a strong foothold in Iraq and Syria.
“I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” he said.
The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake alleged on Monday that as long as eight months ago Obama’s senior intelligence officials had alerted the White House that ISIS was growing in power while attempting to create a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
“In the beginning of 2014, ISIS fighters had defeated Iraqi forces in Fallujah, leading much of the U.S. intelligence community to assess they would try to take more of Iraq,”wrote Lake, adding that members of the Defense department were “flabbergasted” by Obama’s statement.
Breitbart noted that following his controversial TV comments Obama has been accused by people in the intelligence community of lacking interest in “live” PDBs, which allow the president to ask follow-up questions, demand further information and challenge intel suppositions.
Meanwhile, an Obama national security staffer told the Daily Mail that the PDBs have included threat assessment on ISIS since 2012.
“It's pretty well-known that the president hasn’t taken in-person intelligence briefings with any regularity since the early days of 2009,” the staffer said. “He gets them in writing.
“Unless someone very senior has been shredding the president's daily briefings and telling him that the dog ate them, highly accurate predictions about (ISIS) have been showing up in the Oval Office since before the election.”
The White House said that the president prefers to read his intelligence briefings on his iPad instead of having in-person briefings, according to reports.
But Breitbart said, “The question remains whether a 42 percent attendance record on daily intelligence briefings is good enough for most Americans.”
2a)Letter from the parents of Aaron Carson Vaughn of SEAL Team VI: Please resign, Mr. President
After finally choosing to view the barbaric, on-camera beheading by ISIS of freelance war correspondent James Foley, I have been left with a level of rage known only to those of us who have sacrificed unspeakable offerings on the altar of world peace.
My offering was my only son — Aaron Carson Vaughn. Aaron was a member of SEAL Team VI. He was killed in action when a CH47D Chinook, carrying thirty Americans and eight Afghans was shot down in the Tangi River Valley of Afghanistan on Aug. 6, 2011.
Many times over the past three years, I have been asked what drove my son to choose his particular career. What made him want to be a Navy SEAL? My answer is simple.Aaron Vaughn was a man who possessed the courage to acknowledge evil. And evil, once truly acknowledged, demands response. Perhaps this is why so few are willing to look it in the eye. It is much simpler — much safer — to look the other way.
That is, unless you are the leader of the Free World.
As Commander-in-Chief, your actions — or lack thereof — Mr. President, cost lives. As you bumble about in your golf cart, slapping on a happy face and fist-pounding your buddies, your cowardly lack of leadership has left a gaping hole — not only in America’s security — but the security of the entire globe. Your message has come across loud and clear, sir: You are not up to this job. You know it. We know it. The world knows it.
Please vacate the people’s house and allow a man or woman of courage and substance to seize the reigns of this out-of-control thug-fest and regain the balance we, America, have provided throughout our great history.
Thanks to your “leadership” from whatever multi-million dollar vacation you happen to be on at any given moment, the world is in chaos. What’s been gained, you’ve lost. What’s been lost, you’ve decimated. You’ve demolished our ability to hold the trust of allies. You’ve made a mockery of the title “President.” And you’ve betrayed the nation for which my son and over 1.3 million others have sacrificed their very lives.
But this should come as no surprise, since your wife uttered a vile statement on Feb. 18, 2008, during the primary campaign — one that speaks volumes of your true convictions. “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country,” she said.
I am sure my deceased son thanks you for that, Mrs. Obama. Oh, and you’re welcome.
Never in my lifetime have I witnessed such despair and such growing fear that the world’s last best hope, America, has finally been dismantled. Perhaps the better word is transformed — fundamentally transformed. Come to think of it, it’s become difficult — if not impossible — to believe things haven’t gone exactly as you planned, Mr. President.
Amazingly, in five short years, your administration has lurched from one disaster to another. You spearheaded the ambitious rush to end the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan — with no plan on how to do so effectively. Also, the release of “the Taliban five” in exchange for one American — without consulting Congress — is also on your shoulders.
You have been at the helm during unprecedented national security leaks — including, but not limited to the outing of SEAL Team VI on the Bin laden raid, the outing of the Pakistani doctor who provided the intelligence for that raid, the outing of Afghanistan’s CIA station chief, and the outing of your personal “kill list” to make you look tough. In addition, 75 percent of American deaths in Afghanistan and 83 percent of Americans-wounded-in-action have occurred on your watch, according to icasualties.org.
And now, we have this recent, heinous event: the beheading of an American citizen by a barbaric organization you foolishly referred to as “the JV team” in your statements to the New Yorker magazine in January.
You, sir, are the JV team. It’s time for you to step down and allow a true leader to restore our honor and protect our sons and daughters.America has always been exceptional. And she will be again. You, Mr. President, are a bump in our road.
Billy & Karen Vaughn are Gold Star parents of Special Operations Chief (SEAL) Aaron Vaughn, KIA 6 Aug 2011. Billy is the author of Betrayed: The Shocking True Story of Extortion 17.
3)-Dr Denis MacEoin, a non-Jewish professor, responds to the motion put forward by The Edinburgh Student's Association to boycott all things Israeli, in which they claim Israel is under an apartheid regime. Denis is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs and was a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Here's his letter to the students.
TO: The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association.
May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain 's great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.
I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel .
That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.
Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel . I'm speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel , precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for.
It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.
Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.
That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population).
In Iran , the Bahai's (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren't your members boycotting Iran ? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa . They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks were able to do in South Africa .
Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank.
On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.
In Israel , women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid.
Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.
It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran , where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.
Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the
Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?
University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.
I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel . I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.
Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , and Iran . They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Bahai's.... Need I go on?
The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side.
Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument.
They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930's (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it?
Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence.
It's up to you to find out more.
Yours sincerely,
Denis MacEoin
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