In the feature article at FrontPage this morning I discuss how a once-great university has now become a useful idiot of the global jihad (news links in the original):
Brandeis University began in 1948, according to its mission statement, “under the sponsorship of the American Jewish community” in order to “embody its highest ethical and cultural values.” In this age of the ascendancy of the academic Left, it is in danger of becoming the polar opposite of those noble aspirations: a useful idiot of the global jihad. First there was the appointment of Khalil Shikaki a senior fellow at its Crown Center for Middle East Studies, and the flat refusal to consider the evidence linking Shikaki to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Now comes an honorary doctorate to be awarded to playwright Tony Kushner on May 21.Kushner thinks that “it would have been better if Israel never happened,” and that its founding was a “mistake.” He has echoed the most outrageous fantasies of Palestinian propagandists, denouncing Israel for “ethnic cleansing” and declaring: “The biggest supporters of Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community and Israel itself has got this disgraceful record...Israel is a creation of the U.S., bought and paid for...There are lots of beautiful little orange groves and olive groves which the Palestinians had before the Jews were there, and some very attractive European-looking cities, too...” Kushner has decried “the deliberate destruction of Palestinian culture and a systematic attempt to destroy the identity of the Palestinian people” -- without, of course, mentioning that that national identity was invented in the 1960s in what turned about to be an extraordinarily successful ploy to adjust the paradigm of the Arab-Israeli conflict with the newly-minted Palestinians as the underdogs.
Meanwhile, Brandeis Goldfarb Library featured a propagandistic exhibition of children’s paintings called “Voices from Palestine,” including depictions of bloodied Palestinian children and a PLO flag in the shape of Israel, suggesting that all of Israel belongs by right to the Palestinians. Adverse publicity compelled the Library to close the exhibit Wednesday, after four days of a scheduled two-week run. Yet the day after the Library closed the exhibit, protestors came out at Brandeis; one carried a sign reading, “Shut Down the Israeli Apartheid Terror State/From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free.” Another read: “END Repression of Palestanian [sic] Children” -- a particularly brutal irony in light of the culture of murderous hatred into which Palestinian children at the youngest ages are plunged by their parents.These are the “highest ethical and cultural values” of the American Jewish community? Brandeis has clearly lost its way: it has come full circle from the robust and fervent Zionism of Justice Louis Brandeis. It has imbibed so deeply the Left’s iron dogma of relativist multiculturalism that it has become just another academic conduit for the propaganda and disinformation that dominate the discussion about Israel in today’s universities.
The bitter irony is that Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz and the others responsible for hiring Shikaki and honoring Kushner, as well as the protestors at the University last Thursday, no doubt believe that all this demonstrates their commitment to justice. Those at Brandeis who are responsible for all this probably deplore the Israeli “apartheid” state, but they never address (except to explain away) the relentless terror attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinian mujahedin or the overall climate of terror that made the infamous “apartheid wall” necessary. They do not examine the root causes of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and so believe that it can by various concessions on the part of Israel. They, like so many others in Europe and America, labor under the delusion that they can win peace with the jihadists through concessions and negotiated settlements.
They don’t have any idea of what the new rulers of “Palestine,” the Islamic Resistance Movement or Hamas, make quite plain in the Charter of their movement: that the conflict between Muslim Arabs and Israel is not ultimately about “stolen land” or nationalistic yearnings. If it had been, the Palestinian Arabs would have accepted the state offered them by the UN partition plan of 1948. Instead, it is just one front of the global jihad effort to establish the hegemony of Islamic law not just over what is now the State of Israel, but over the entire world. Hamas, the Charter says, “will spare no effort to bring about justice and defeat injustice, in word and deed, in this place and everywhere it can reach and have influence therein.” In this context justice equals Islamic rule: Hamas states that “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”
The jihad ideology stipulates that Muslims must strive to establish the hegemony of the Islamic social order over the world, offering non-Muslims conversion to Islam, subjugation as inferiors -- dhimmis, or protected (or guilty) people -- under Islamic law, or war (cf. Qur’an 9:29; Sahih Muslim 4294, etc.). What the befuddled Leftists of Brandeis don’t seem to realize is that this imperative does not stem from outrages committed by the infidels, although such outrages, whether imagined or real, are used as pretexts to stir up support for the jihad at hand. If Israel dismantled the wall tomorrow and withdrew to the 1967 borders, the Palestinians would not be placated.
If Israel gives up part of Jerusalem, peace will not come. The Palestinian mujahedin and their allies will have fresh demands. And Jerusalem itself will become more dangerous and uncomfortable for free people who believe in the equality of rights of all people. If, as Kushner and the Brandeis protestors evidently hope, Israel eventually disappears before the jihad onslaught, the warriors of jihad will not be placated, and peace will not come to the earth. New pretexts will be found to stir up the faithful to fight on until Islamic law reigns supreme over the entire world.
That’s why Brandeis’ hiring of Shikaki, honoring of Kushner, and displaying of Palestinian war propaganda are all in service of victory not only for the Palestinians, but for the global jihad. Brandeis has betrayed the principles on which it was founded; it is also abetting those whose ultimate goals involve the imposition of a draconian system that would deny equality of rights to women and religious minorities, and would dismiss the cultural monuments and intellectual achievements of the Judeo-Christian West as jahiliyya -- so much ignorance and trash. In that respect, Brandeis officials have not only betrayed its Jewish and American identity, but even its status as a University.
No one who loves genuine freedom, and who respects Judeo-Christian values, should hesitate to call them on these betrayals.
unbelievably repulsive and disgusting. The big lie is in the saddle at Brandeis. Recall that Brandeis himself was a Zionist. What an outrage to honor such filth as kushner.
On the other hand, the April issue of Commentary featured an article by Efraim Karsh on the history of Islam as a history of imperialism and war.
as we travel further into the twilight zone of islam.sit back and let your mind bogle,as america still sleeps.
There is nothing worse than an anti-semitic Jew.
Kushner takes the cake!
What a load of rubbish he spews out! It is outrageous and incorrect.
I believe he also wrote the screenplay for "Munich".He and Speilberg are a huge disappointment and are doing the arabs a big favour.
"With friends like these,,,,,,"
Kushner thinks that “it would have been better if Israel never happened,” and that its founding was a “mistake.”
+++++++++++++++++++++
God has stated otherwise.
This just goes to show, just because you have book smarts, doesn't make you a smart person. Common sense amongst our educated and leaders is dead.
I imagine that among the dhimma, there were a few "people of the book" who actually were genuinely grateful for the 'protection' offered in exchange for the jizya and felt honored to serve as second class people under the iron rule of the fabulous moslems. Pukes like Kushner would be among them.
"If Israel dismantled the wall tomorrow and withdrew to the 1967 borders, the Palestinians would not be placated.
If Israel gives up part of Jerusalem, peace will not come. The Palestinian mujahedin and their allies will have fresh demands." Spencer
"it would have been better if Israel never happened" Kushner
Ok, let's grant Kushner's wish: Israel never happened. Now close your eyes and visualize world peace, because if you open them you will see that even without Israel ever happening (even without Jews ever happening), Muslims will be making war around the world on non-Muslims or different Muslims, from time immemorial to the end of time.
Kapo of the Year Award goes to Tony Kushner.
Years ago, as a Jew living in New York I noticed that lower middle class and working class Jews (and of course Holocaust survivors) were the strongest supporters of Israel.
The irrational hatred of Israel's very existence is a luxury of the children of wealth, privilege and (over) education.
Notice the scorn in Kushner's voice - the 'worst' Jews support Israel he says... (low class, vulgar, Jews without Brandeis educations).
It is so pathetic. They end up hating their parents and grandparent's generation who struggled to survive and give them the privileges they have. In my yuoth in the 70's I jumped on the Palestinian bandwagon for awhile and I shamefully admit the base motives that moved me then.
I’m tempting to say unbelievable, but we say that so much of that around here. This website, a great and important website, is a Hall of Unbelievables where readers stride past one unbelievable-but-true item after the next, as if touring a museum of extremely bad art.
How lost must one be to be an American professor and not seek the Truth? How much conflicted and mis-educated does an Israeli Jew have to be to demonstrate on behalf of “Palestinian” victims? How pompous and intellectually lazy does an American college student, one at Brandeis, have to be in order to undertake dhimmitude as a noble cause?
They say that if it’s fictional it can’t be real.
Say what again?
Kushner dear tell me, what was the name of Iran before bearded freaks took over? It was Persia. muslims destroyed the Persian civilization by Genocide and hijacked the language.
And what was the name of adjoining Afghanistan? It was Kandhar,Western province of India.
What was the name of Palestine before bearded freaks descended ? It was Byzantine.
What was the name of Iraq before the bearded virus spread? It was Mesopotamia.
muslims ARE the aggrosors.
Inviting the enemy within your houses of worship will result in no houses of worship and destruction of your nation.
Insofar as I can see, our best hope in combating Islam's creeping inroads into the civilized world's institutions (of which universities are a noteworthy and very worrying example)is to prove, illustrate, and dramatize Islam's inherently violent and homicidal nature. Once this is spread effectively the masses will have few qualms about giving Islam the wide berth it deserves. I personally think Jihad Watch deserves very high marks for its contributions in informing the public about Islam and its true nature as opposed to the way it wants the American people to perceive it. Jihad Watch can take a bow for the helping to make the following statistic possible: only 19% of the members of the US public polled currently approves of Islam!
With an increasingly enlightened public, it would be possibly to campaign against Brandeis and other institutions of higher learning that have been hijacked by Islam into becoming jihadist propaganda tools. I see no reason why this university and others that share its problem with Islamic infilatration could not be boycotted and thus forced back in line with reality and the civilized world.
The recipients of the honorary degrees are carefully chosen -- chosen to demonstrate the "diversity" (in every sense) of the recipients and of the University that "recognizes" that "diversity." At least one very rich person, chosen so as to reinforce his Desire to Give (no doubt alredy expressed with a donation, but there's always more where that came from). Furthermore, in honoring this once-and-future donor, who may either be a "loyal son of the university" (even, possibly, Head of the Capital Campaign) or a father or grandfather of a graduate in this year's class, or even someone with no connection to the university, but merely someone in possession of a good fortune who is in want of a life, and wants a a little reflected prestige (Harvard is the master at playing on this kind of vanity), and whose selection for an honorary degree will make visions of similar sugar-plums dance in assorted hedge-fund heads: Yes, You Too Can Be Up Here, Receiving Your Honorary Degree Next to Steven Weinberg and Seamus Heaney and I. M. Pei and Amartya Sen.
Say, anyone anywhere eventhink of giving an honorary degree to Ibn Warraq, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali? No? But Dennis Ross is still good for a degree or two? And Carter? And James Baker? And what about that new category, the "Good Arab"? I suppose Fouad Ajami has that one sewed up, doesn't he? Or will he be sharing honors here and there with Kanan Makiya, brave defender of the Kurds, not-so-brave overlooker of how Islaml is a vehicle, more generally, for Arab supremacism, which connects the mistreatment of the Kurds to that of the Berbers, or to that of black African Muslims in Darfur? Well, let's hope that is the extent of it.
Make sure all races are represented among the degree recipients, as in a Benetton ad. Bill Cosby, John Hope Franklin (possibly too old to travel). Bill Russell (who was a very good choice) was given an honorary degree at Brandeis a few years ago. That year's "philanthropist" was one of the founders of Home Depot.
Brandeis, as a self-consciously "Jewish" institution, must be careful to give an award not merely for someone working for "Peace in the MIddle East" (hell, the world is crawling with such people; you stumble over them in government corridors) in the only way that is now morally acceptable -- by having as little morality about it, in a universe "where everyone is right."
Darfur is hot. Who's it to be? Angelina Jolie, to please the kids and make sure the event gets lots of attention? No,we have standards. But it won't be Eric Reeves who will get such a degree. More likely, Nicholas Kristof, a mere reporter, who in all his mere reporting never could grasp, still does not grasp, how Islam for Arab Muslims is a vehicle of Arab supremacism, and how that war of Arab Muslims against non-Arab Muslims has received justification not from the tenets of Islam, but from the attitudes and atmospherics of it, by which the Arabs are the "best of peoples" and the models, the superior Muslims who must be obeyed and whose cultural, linguistic, and political imperialism are a natural part of Islamization. If Brandeis decides to honor a safely "good Arab" to show its catholicity (Jewish university honors semi-Muslim Arab to show catholicity -- as Harry Golden wrote, "Only in America"), it isn't such truth-tellers as Professor Walid Phares or Brigitte Gabriel, or such former Muslims (whose families included participants in acts of terrror) Walid Shoebat and Nonie Darwish. No, that would never do. They are all radioactive. And as for those promoting the rights of women within Islam, don't even think about honoring Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Instead, pick a Muslim female, billing herself as a "feminist," the kind who quickly deflects any sensed criticism of Islam by prating about "cultural practices" and ignoring what Islam states about the status,the role, the treatment of women --such people as Fatima Mernissi, and Leila Ahmad. Don't give any awards to Copts or Maronites, to outspoken Berbers or Kurds. Keep it clean, keep it safe.
And if you must have an Iranian, don't ever honor an Iranian in exile -- especially those who might support either the Shah's son and a constitutional monarchy, or the leftist rebels in the Mossadegh line. No, only a celebrated pseudo-reformer (actually an opponent only of the "excesses" of the Islamic Republic of iran, not of the "excesses" of Islam itself, which she stoutly defends) -- yes, of course it had to be, Sherin Ebadi. Just like those professors who keep being awarded new grants and fellowships because they have been awarded such grants and fellowships in the past, and no one wants to call any bluffs -- she's perfect. She has a Nobel Prize. A Nobel Prize is a guarantee, an International Seal of Approval. Isn't it? Isn't that what the Nobel Prize to Arafat meant? Who cares if her claims about Islam as a religion of "peace" and "tolerance" are ludicrous and, for Infidels, dangerous. We're not in the business here of making fun of people when they utter nice-sounding and hopeful sentiments, are we? No. We're in the business of honoring them, because their sentiments are so pleasing, are so hopeful. In the honorary-degree racket, that is our business: hope and glory and world peace and prestige and money, all mixed in.
So join the fun. Select the university of your choice. Now make up the list of honorary degree recipients. Which representatives of which "groups" -- defined racially, ethnically, sexual-orientationally, however you want to slice it -- will be chosen? Who will be the deep-pocketed "philanthropist" this year? No, don't just come up with Gates and Buffett -- be a little more imaginative than that. If you think a Chinese-American is de rigueur, remember that while I. M. Pei led the pack for a long time, Yo-Yo Ma is coming up strong -- and perhaps it is time to reach out to China itself, "getting-rich-is-glorious" new China, and perhaps reward some Chinese billionaire who might set up some new foundation or institute to "encourage" something - study, dialogue, something. Name your poison. And don't stop there. For some reason, we all want to leave Russia alone. Not even a recognition, in absentia, of the best and therefore most persecuted of Russia's richest, Khodorkovsky. But India? How about Azam Premiji and Infosys, and the "world is flat" fame?
Hey, I forgot. How about that Man who "makes the complicated comprehensible" not only in "his weekly column, but in book after book" of platitutees and shallow plongitudes, the inimtable, the ineffable, the now-world's-expert-on-the-energy-crisis (yes, it happened just after he finished "The World is Flat" -- now it's Friedman's First Law of This and Friedman's Second Law of That -- the amazing, the incredible, the not-to-be-cloned Tom Friedman?
And while we are in this sublimely ridiculous mode, why not honor deep-pocketed James Wolfensohn, fighter for World Peace (and defender of the "Palestinians" and continued Jizyah to them) -- perfect for Brandeis. Just perfect.
Now what about those endlessly silly undergraduates? You know, the ones who want to honor those who created South Park, or give their voices to The Simpsons? Well, Castellaneta and Kavner and Azaria -- yes, why not. Actually, they are more dsserving recipients than many. Most of the undergraduates would probably clamor for r Paris Hilton, or Angelina Jolie. No. Let's give it to Tony Kushner. A two-fer. First, there was his bravely coming out against AIDS in "Angels in America" and then there was that script for "Munich" which came out bravely for moral nuance, for a everyone-is-right-no-one-is-wrong treatment of what could so easiy have been, and would have been in a different age, a clear case of black and white. My god, in retrospect I am so ashamed of having had tears in my eyes when the French, and Rick, drown out Major Strasser in "Casablanca." Obviously things were more complicated than that. Those German soldiers had lived through the unemployment and inflation of the Weimar Republic; there were all kinds of reasons why they were there, in Casablanca, in their German uniforms, wanting in their homesickness to sing the Horst Wessel.
But how about choosing a descendant of the scriptwriters of "Casablanca," even if that movie's moral certainty was nothing like the moral complexity that Kushner brought to "Munich" -- yes, how about an award to My-Son-the-Baseball-Manager, Theo Epstein? Now there's an inspired choice. Jehuda Reinharz must right now be thinking : why didn't I think of that?
Don't expect degrees to the likes, if such likes there still be, of Elie Kedourie or Arnaldo Momigliano, who once upon a time would have been almost the only recipients of such degrees. Amartya Sen is a parody of the perfect recipient. Never mind the current reception among economists of the work for which he was given the Nobel Prize. He's Indian. And more than that, while the descendant of Hindus, he is himself the first to declare his lack of sympathy with those Hindu fanatics, his complete absence of sympathy for Hindu India as an idea, his hatred of "communalism" (i.e., undue sympathy for, or identification with, the Hindus and, concomitantly, undue wariness about Islam). He keeps telling us that democracy and Islam are like a horse and carriage. Let's write the citation:
"In a world where some threaten a clash of civilizations, and others declare such a clash inevitable, Amartya Sen has stood for one thing: Understanding. His earlier work in economics, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize, defied the guild which made economics a forbidding field, a matter of mathematical calculation [actually the work for which he was awarded the price was full of mathematics, and had to do with what is called Social Choice theory], and offered us Economics With a Human Face. Amatrya Sen then turned his attention to famine and other examples of human misery, and at the intersection of economics and politics showed how often economic disasters have political explanations. He stood steadfastly for democracy, and refusing to accept the charge of some that "democracy" was a Western invention suitable only for that West, showed how in the Easst, in the world of Islam for example, a version of democracy had always been accepted, that democracy was as natural in the Muslim MIddle East as in Europe or North America. He taught us all to rethink our narrow preconceptions, and to see that democracy is universal, and that nothing really stands in the way of its equal acceptance everywhere. He stood against division. Unlike some of HIndu descent [boo to you, V. S. Naipaul], he has sympathetically portrayed Islam, at a time of great and dangerous misunderstanding, and has with such insight shown us all that no country or civilization has a monopoly on human freedom." Finish the damn thing yourself -- I can't bear it any longer.
Anyway, if Amartya Sen is one of the recipients, Kushner will on the one hand be praised for the "moral complexity" of "Munich" while Amartya Sen will be praised for his ability to strip democracy, down to itsinner essence, and finding this simplified version in the most implausible places. And the "philanthropist" will be honored for having the money to pay for it all -- the simplicity and the complexity, the football stadium or the Program for (Visiting, Returning, Foreign, Domestic, Post-Doctoral, Retired, Beginning) Scholars, or the Food Court, or the classrooms, or that dormitory complex that has already been planned and is just waiting for a donor.
No damage done. Oh, maybe just a little. To academic standards. To the Idea of the University. To Truth, to Beauty, to stuff like that.
Hey, it's 2006. Get with the program.
Skald: did you know that there are Jews living in Israel whose ancestors have been living there since ancient times? I personally know a Jewish woman whose family can trace its roots back (in Palestine) over 1200 years.
If you were to exavate in most areas of Israel (but not all), you would turn up primarily Judaic remains. Why? Because the Jews have been living there for the past three or four thousand years. That's not scrupture, buddy--that's historical fact.
The Jews did not forfeit anything as far as I can see. Their territory was invaded by Muslims conquerors in the sixth century and many parts of the place became too dangerous to continue living in. The remainder of the Middle East had been converted to Islam and thus there was no place for these people to evacuate safely to except Europe.
These Islamic jihadists who invaded Israel in the sixth century are the ancestors of the "Palestinian people." Palestinians are not an indigenous people in Israel, they are Muslims squatters on Jewish held territory in Israel. Palestinian is an incorrect term incidentally. An inhabitant of Palestine is technically known as a Philistine. And the Philistine people ceased to exist before 600 BC.
Did you know that the experience of the Jews, Skald, is virtually identical to that of the Gypsies of the Himalayan kingdom of Roma? Islamic invasions destroyed their civilization and made much of the Indian subcontinent too dangerous for them to settle in and they found themselves in western Europe and subjected to repeated massacres.
What you do not seem to realize is that what has happened to Israel and the Jews (and the Gypsies) is actually very typical of the way Islam operates. The situation in the Caucasus territories of Russia is hardly any different. And soon western Europe is going to have mini-Palestine war zones, claiming that Europeans are "occupying" Islamic territories in Europe. You watch. Warfare is almost certainly going to erupt in western Europe.
Now as for your claim that the world would be different minus Israel, I fail to see how, as Muslims are doing EXACTLY the same thing to many other lands that they are doing in Israel--Look at Sudan(it's under siege by Islam). Look at India (under sige by Islam). Look at East Timor(under siege by Islam). Look at Chechnya (under siege by Islam). Or Cypress. Or the Balkans. Or the horn of Africa. There is little that is special about the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. It only seems that way if you do not know much about the history of Islam and its conquests across the globe.
Wake up. Forget about who wrote what. Just look at the historical facts and interpret them for yourself.
Tony Kushner is one of the embittered nihilistic socialist Left. He has said he just cannot accept the idea that capitalism is the only viable economic system:
http://www.salon.com/weekly/interview960610.html
Once the USSR collapsed and the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Baltics freely chose capitalism, the socialist Left like Kushner lost their hope that socialism would be the wave of the future. And many of them have responded with a nihilistic bitterness at the West itself, especially America, for its stubborn refusal to turn socialist as they want it to.
So they've morphed from "Building a better world thru socialism" to "If we can't have socialism, then to hell with the West altogether!" Needless to say, that nihilistic streak is much more compatible with what the jihadists are saying about sharia--my way or the highway.
There is a much darker theory of what may influence Brandeis University to make its choices than the ones above. This is propounded by Barry Chamish, who makes some very acute observations, ties unusual pieces of information together, does very detailed research, and comes up with scary conclusions.
In brief, this theory has to do with wealthy and powerful followers of Shabbetai Zevi, a 17th century Jewish false moshiach (messiah)who became a Muslim (!). The theory asserts that wealthy and powerful families and entities, some of them nominally Jewish but actually Shabbeteans (the short version is that normative Judaism considers this apostasy) have continued to work since the time of Shabbetai Zevi to destroy true Judaism. Hence, according to the theory, many of these puzzling Jews who seem to be shooting themselves (and other Jews) in the foot are actually doing it deliberately as a setup. It's a very interesting theory with some evidence that makes one think. After all, it's hard to imagine that so many educated and well-placed Jews could be so stupid and destructive. See the Chamish article at http://freemasonrywatch.org/polaropposite.html
A theory that is completely crazy.
The true diagnostician was that old family practitioner from upper New England, Robert Frost (who still made house calls into his 80s - I received one myself). It was he who diagnosed that illness which some used to call "liberalism" but that was a misnomer. Forgive Frost for using the word "liberal"; he did not have Mill or Milyukov in mind when he used it. "The liberal," wrote Frost, "always takes the other fella's side in a quarrel."
Well, that's part of it. Unwillingness to study something (Islam) for fear of what one might discover, is another part. And laziness another part. And the belief that "as long as I think I have everyone's best interests at heart I am exempted from having to learn about Islam" is another part.
Yes, today we have Naming of Parts.
HaMalach -
You are an idiot.
Thanks, guys. I must have touched a nerve. I stick to my guns.
skald
"they lost the claim with the Diaspora"
Are you serious? Do you blame the Jews for being driven out of their lands by a succession of empires??
Or, rather, you hate the Jews for enduring, for not being totally exterminated, for not being totally subdued, for not going belly-up, while still being one of the most creative people that's lived on this earth, and a gift to humanity as such? How dare they! How dare they be so indommitable and so good at eveything they do when the rule of the day is multicultural victimhood and a celebration of the de-brained, visceral resentment! How dare they be who they are, to remind the followers of Muhammad in what a bad shape he left his flocks 1400 years ago, from which they haven't been able to ever recover, except by the sword?
How dare they put a mirror in front of us to see our own dhimmitude, our own smaller and greater betrayals, our historical opportunisms, the Medusa-like ghastly head that confronts us, in the West, in that mirror?
Which is it, skald? Which is it?
Crazinesses of all kinds. Di tutti i colori.
"Crazinesses of all kinds."
Ha ha! You got me, wacky purist Hugh...
"Opportunisms" sounded just right for the thing at hand, for the heavy plurality such acts of betrayal. Hoped I would get away with it. Oh well.
The feeling behind the offence is pure, and I stand by it.
Pythagoras,
You hit the nail on the head. Just drop the holy books and look at history. And not even history, compare the behaviour of the followers. Who qualm to kill and to torture ? The Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Bahais etc.
WHAT kills uniformly across the globe in the manner describred in their so called "holy book". The followers of islam. They might go under the names of various nations, but the thread of cruelty, savagery, and barbarism links them. From the time mohammad invaded Safiya's village to the beheading of Bahjat.
HaMalach:
Sure you want to praise Chamish? Did you know he writes for a website called rense.com?
He has one article there where he says a true collision of UFOs was caught on video over Israel:
http://www.rense.com/ufo2/realthing.htm
He has another one where he says the source of Islamic extremism is from a secret group called the "illuminati," who he says controlled all kinds of huge world events in history:
http://www.rense.com/general13/whos.htm
He has many other articles at that website. Curiously, that site has quite a few articles by other writers who seem to be quasi-nazi. For example, if you click here and then scroll down, you will find an article called: "Why the holocaust must be questioned" and another article called "The non-existent Auschwitz gas chambers."
I looked at the site briefly, so it's not clear to me if it is a neo-nazi site, or just a site that promotes a grab bag of shoddy conspiracy theories of various types.
Again, HaMalach, are you sure you want to praise this Chamish guy?
Many conspiracy theories are just a modern variant of witch-hunting, involving a similar inability to distinguish superstition and magical thinking from fact and reason, a similar feeling of powerlessness before the unknown, a similar attempt to overcome that powerlessness by a ritual incantation of a magical theory of what is wrong and how to purify it. All of it immune to factual correction.
Hugh,
Most of the Hindus do not take amartya sen as rational. And we know that Degrees and Citations can be bought and bestowed. And the Hindus are not fanatic. If loving your land, not yearning for others land,respecting all, wanting to strike for centuries of terror inflicted by muslims on my homeland India is being a fanatic, then I am proud to be a fanatic.
Skald said:
Not sure if by "diaspora" you are referring to the Babylonian Captivity in the sixth century BC or the dispersion of Jews in the first and second centuries AD by the Romans.
But did you know that despite efforts of the Romans to de-Judaize Judea (Romans renamed it Palestine) thousands of Jews managed to remain in its holy cities?
Did you know that there were Jews in Jericho in the seventh century, and some of them were refugees from Muhammed?
When the Ottoman Turks occupied Palestine in 1516, some 10,000 Jews lived in the Safad region alone.
British reports say that "as many as 15,000 Jews" lived in Safad in the sixteenth century. Many Jews lived also in Jerusalem, Hebron, Acre and elsewhere.
When the first population figures were gathered in the 1800s, the British consul in Jerusalem said that the Muslims there "scarcely exceed[ed] one quarter of the whole population". The Jews were a majority there.
By 1850, some thirty years before the first large migration of diaspora Jews back to Palestine, Jews were often a plurality or majority of the population in Safad, Tiberias, and several other cities and towns.
The areas of Palestine to which diaspora Jews began returning in the 1880s were vastly underpopulated and the land Jews moved to was bought mainly from absentee landlords and real estate speculators. Mark Twain visited Palestine in 1867 and said:
You begrudge the Jews even the tiny spot of earth they have? The myths around this situation are manifold and huge and propagated by fanatically intolerant Muslims whom Europeans sometimes go along with because of 1) oil wealth, 2) intimidation: there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the Middle East and millions in Europe, but only 10 or 15 million Jews in the whole world, and the Jews don't practice Jihad or threaten Europeans, 3) Arab numbers and oil wealth buy and spread much disinformation so that what many people take for granted is a lie, 4)The sheer number of Muslim voices worldwide imposes on world opinion a purely quantitative pressure out of all proportion to its qualitative value or truth. Repeat a lie enough times, and people will believe it. (As Goebbels (?) said.)
As to qualitative vs. quantitative value of opinion, comparing Muslim culture and Jewish culture, did you know that, although they are only about 1/4 of 1 percent of the world's population, Jews won 28 percent of Nobel prizes awarded in Physiology or Medicine between 1901 and 2005? 26 percent of Nobel prizes in Physics during the same period? 22 percent of all Nobel prizes? If Muslims, who constitute 20% of the world population, won Nobel prizes at the rate of Jews, Muslims would have earned more than 20,000 Nobel prizes. But in fact they have won about 7. And one of those went to Yasir Arafat! And several of the 7 Nobels were for peace!
This is not a racial difference, it is a huge cultural difference. And in an argument between these two peoples, I know which side I'm usually going to be on.
Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the seven prizes -- the one awarded for physics -- was perhaps not awarded to a Muslim. His name is Abdus Salam, and he is an Amadiyaa, so most Muslim scholars consider him a non-Muslim.
There is an inherent self-contradiction in skald's words. He is saying that if a nation or people lost its land in the past, then it is lost and that people has no special right to reclaim or reconquer that land. Well, Arabs conquered Israel in the period 632 to 640 CE. Afterwards there was Arab colonization, importation of slaves, conversion of natives, Jewish emigration from the Land on account of Arab-Muslim oppression, exploitation, humiliation [sura 9:29], turmoil with attendant looting of the dhimmis in the land, etc. Then came the Crusaders who massacred most of the surviving Jews in the land from 1099 to 1110 approx. [according to Prof. Moshe Gil, Avraham Grossman, etc]. OK, now if we accept skald's moral principle, we might say that it was wrong for the Crusaders to take the land but that it was wrong for the Muslim powers [Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks] to take the land back from the Crusaders. And then, it was wrong for the Jews to take the land from the British/Arabs [allied at that time] in 1948. Now, skald should bear in mind that the Arabs do not accept this principle. They demand the land back on account of prior ownership, also making up a false history for themselves of direct descent from the Canaanites who, the Arabs now claim, were Arabs. So if skald's principle holds, then the Arabs calling themselves "palestinians" have no right to demand any bit of land back from Israel. And he should be consistent and tell them that. Anyhow, how come the UN doesn't get upset about the Greeks driven out of their homes in northern Cyprus in 1974, about the Greeks driven out of their homes in Smyrna in 1922 [not really so long ago], or about the Armenians, the Sudeten Germans driven out in 1945 [who had sided with an aggressor state, to be sure], etc??? Does skald know about a Norwegian busybody named Fridtjof Nansen who won the Nobel PEACE prize back in the 1920s for getting the Greeks and Turks to agree on a population exchange [of a few million Greeks and a few hundred thousand Turks], after the Greeks had already been driven out, and all this in the name of peace? So why don't the UN and the EU and the so-called Quartet of empires [inc. the UN] make peace between Israel and the Arabs based on the Nansen formula [after all, Jews have been oppressed, exploited, etc., in Arab lands for more than 1,000 years, and nearly one million Jews have left Arab lands since 1948, most for Israel, and Arab states like Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, etc., were pleased to confiscate their property]? By skald's own principle --I repeat-- the Arabs [whether they call themselves "palestinians" or saracens or whatever] do not have the right to refuse to make peace and to live in peace with Israel. Now skald should go to the Arabs and tell them how his principle forbids them to make war on us.
Skald:
Have you read The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz? Take a look at it. Either it will cause you to drop the arguments you are making and support Israel's right to exist, or if it doesn't succeed in that, at least it may compel you to vastly improve your counterarguments, which are for the most part ridiculous.
skald,
I see that your ignorance of the relevant history is comprehensive and profound. As for Jewish suffering as compared with that of American Indians, comparisons are invidious but you are being asinine. You also claim some kind of superior rationality for your ignorant positions on the grounds that you don't believe in God. So don't believe. Let's just consider the issues on strictly historical grounds.
Now, what's relevant is that the Arabs have taken part in persecuting and massacring Jews over the centuries. Indeed, Arab rule over Israel in the early Middle Ages drove Jews out of Israel on account of oppression, exploitation [jizya, kharaj and irregular exactions], persecution, violence and disorder perpetrated by warring Arab and Muslim factions who saw dhimmis as easy prey, etc. The Crusaders too massacred Jews in Israel in the early years of their rule.
Next, you seem to allude to the Holocaust. The Arabs took part in that too. Consider Haj Amin el-Husseini, British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem who spent most of World War 2 living in the Nazi-fascist domain in Europe, encouraging the Germans to murder more Jews faster. He made murder-encouraging broadcasts to the Arab countries urging murder of Jews ["wherever you find them"]. In Europe he helped the Germans organize a Bosnian Muslim SS division [called the Handschar] which massacred Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies; he also helped recruit Soviet Muslims to collaborate with the Nazis. After WW2 he was allowed by the Western Allies to return to the Middle East and resume leadership of the Palestinian Arabs.
Under Arab-Muslim rule Jews and Christians were dhimmis subject to all sorts of oppression, humiliation and monetary exploitation for nearly 1400 years. The traditional Arab/Muslim system of government has been much like apartheid, although based on religion more than on skin color. A similar oppressive system was implemented in India [against Hindus], Indonesia, and elsewhere. This system of oppression also applied throughout the centuries to the Jews in Israel. But you don't have to take my word for anything. Study the history of Islam and the Arabs. As for your moral arguments, I do ask that you read my previous post. If you already have read it, then read it again.
My name is Emily and I am a junior at Brandeis University, Class of 2007.
I am very upset by the blatant sensationalism of this article. It is fairly obvious from this article that the author does not spend much time on our campus.
Brandeis is without question a Jewish, Zionist university, to a point of stifiling any other opinion that may come through. Though I don't personally know much about the appointment of a Palestinian faculty member, I do know about this art exhibit. We've been discussing it a lot at Brandeis.
What doesn't seem to be mentioned here is the fact that it was an exhibit of artwork done by 12 and 13 year olds living in Palestinian refugee camps. The art exhibit, which was taken down by the administration after 4 days when it was supposed to last 2 weeks, was meant to provoke dialogue. It was set up by a student at Brandeis as a final project for one of her courses.
She was a soldier in the Israeli army before coming to school at Brandeis.
The exhibit was taken down because the administration had received what was reported by the media as 6-12 complaints from students- out of a student population of over 3000 undergraduates. Furthermore, after much discussion on campus and online among the student community, what appears to be the vast majority of students at Brandeis feel the "dialogue" going on at our school concerning the Palestinian issue and zionism is blatantly one sided in favor of the zionists. We, as a student community, feel in general that open dialogue is a better guide towards finding the truth.
The protests set up at Goldfarb library were meant to be against censorship. The students who attended initially intended for this reason. Because of the publicity in the news media concerning this issue, several people who are not part of the Brandeis community came and shouted anti-Israel slogans, etc. These were not Brandeis students.
Brandeis students are great people. While I have my issues with the administration, I find that I have never met so many level-headed, open-minded, educated and intelligent students together in my lifetime. I am proud to be a member of this community, though my pride is certainly diminished by the fact that the administration refuses to recognize our freedom of speech.
I promise you that if this had been a pro-Israel exhibit or an exhibit preaching any agenda other than the pro-Palestine agenda, such as an agenda against the war in Iraq or against George W. Bush, the exhibit would have been left up and it would never have been made into an issue.
The issue on campus has nothing to do with zionism- it has to do with censorship. The vast majority of Brandeis Jews, more than fifty percent of the student population, are zionist- I assure you. But we're also willing to hear other people's opinions, and that's what makes Brandeis a great place to be.
Mr. Spencer, shame on you.
As a recent Alumn of Brandeis I agree with what Emily said. Shame on you for such ignorant and factually wrong posts on the University.