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UK: Israel Society at Cambridge University calls off talk by historian “for fear of being portrayed as a mouthpiece of Islamophobia”

Feb 7, 2010 5:01 am By Robert Spencer

There is no indication in this article about what Morris actually said that was so offensive, or whether or not it was true. Actually, it probably was true: as in the Wilders trial, as Pat Condell has said, “Fear of free speech is the symptom of a profoundly neurotic and dishonest society.” The jihadist thugs and their Leftist dupes only try to silence people who speak truths they would rather not be known.

Free Speech Death Watch Alert: “Benny Morris talk stirs uproar at Cambridge,” by Jonny Paul in the Jerusalem Post, February 7 (thanks to all who sent this in):

LONDON – The Israel Society at Cambridge University has succumbed to pressure and canceled a talk by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev historian Benny Morris after protesters accused him of “Islamophobia” and “racism.”

Morris was scheduled to speak to students at the university on Thursday, but following a campaign led by anti-Israel activist Ben White the Israel Society canceled the talk. Instead Morris was invited to speak at an event hosted by the university’s Department of Political and International Studies.

White, who graduated from the university in 2005 and authored the book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginners Guide, set up a protest page on Facebook in which he claimed that “on different occasions, Morris has expressed Islamophobic and racist sentiments towards Arabs and Muslims.”

He added: “We find it offensive and appalling that an official student society would want to invite such an individual.”

Following the Facebook protest, a letter was sent to the student union by the university’s Islamic Society, other students and two staff members from the English Department asking it to take a stand and show it is serious “in opposing bigotry and Islamophobia.” The 15 signatories said Morris’s views were “abhorrent and offensive.

“The issue is hate speech, and the impact of a visit by this individual on the campus’ atmosphere for the student body’s minority groups… His visit is insulting, threatening to Arab and Muslim students in particular and also goes against the spirit of the student union’s stated anti-Islamophobia policy,” the letter read.

Last year, Cambridge’s Palestine Society hosted Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper. In 2008, Atwan said the terrorist attack on Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav yeshiva, in which eight students were killed and 15 were wounded, was “justified” as the school was responsible for “hatching Israeli extremists and fundamentalists.” […]

Jake Witzenfeld, president of Cambridge University’s Israel Society, canceled the Morris talk, apologizing for any “unintended offense.”

“I decided to cancel for fear of the Israel Society being portrayed as a mouthpiece of Islamophobia,” he said. “We understand that whilst Professor Benny Morris’ contribution to history is highly respectable and significant, his personal views are, regrettably, deeply offensive to many.”…

A Muslim group accused of publishing anti-Semitic material congratulated the Islamic Society for the cancelation [sic] of Morris’s talk.

“Muslim Public Affairs Committee congratulated Cambridge’s Islam Society on the success of their campaign and lobbying to stop the Islamophobe Benny Morris giving a speech at their university… A simple Facebook group and a well written letter is all that it takes to defend your religion,” the group said.

The 2006 All-Party Parliamentary Report into Anti-Semitism alleged that the anti-Israel Muslim Public Affairs Committee has used material from Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi publications, uses the word “Zionist” as a replacement for “Jew” and engages in the spread of conspiracy theories about Jews. In 2006, it was discovered that MPAC founder Asghar Bukhari make a donation to convicted Holocaust denier David Irving….

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Filed Under: "Islamophobia", dhimmitude, Eurabia, free speech, United Kingdom


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