There's yet another bit of moral delinquency shaping up in that curious corner of bizarro-world known as UC Berkeley.
This particular battle is over a landmark anti-Israel 'divestment' bill passed by the the Berkeley ASUC Senate which calls on the college's regents to to divest UC funds from companies like General Electric and United Technologies, which conduct business in Israel.
Bill 118 is a classic Leftist anti-Israel diatribe that does a crafty job of labeling Israeli self-defense as 'war crimes', particularly the recent Operation Cast Lead in Gaza that selectively quotes the ridiculously flawed Goldstone Report and neglects any mention of Hamas firing rockets at Israeli civilian communities or using civilians in Gaza as human shields. In short, the mindset behind it would have rules and standards imposed on Israel for its self-defense that apply to no other nation on earth.
The bill was passed by the Berkeley ASUC Senate by a nice margin,and then vetoed by the ASUC president. Supporters of the bill are holding a vote tomorrow inth eASUC Senate to try and get enough votes to overide the veto.
So aside from a bunch of anti-Semitic Leftists doing what they normally do, what's the big deal?
Since this has no binding effect on the regents, no actual divestment is involved. But this is a test case and involved a meeting of the minds of Leftist students and professors and Muslim activists like the Muslim Students Association. If Berkeley passes this resolution, there will be many other university bodies around the US that will follow. So some of the usual suspects at places like UC Irvine and Michigan State are watching this one closely.
And the pro-divestment forces are recruiting the anti-Semitic celebrities, like the odious Bishop Desmond Tutu.
It's also worth noting, unfortunately, that several fringe Jewish groups are actively supporting this like A Jewish Voice For Peace, Kesher Enoshi and Students For Justice in Palestine (who organized the Israel Apartheid Week on campus). They're all actually are part of the local Hillel, which should give you a good idea of the Berkeley Hillel's overall effectiveness.
Jew haters never seem to have a problem finding Jews on the Left to give them cover for their nefarious activities.
As I said, the vote is tomorrow and will go how it will go, but I'm much more interested in how to deal with these situations in the future.
Today's Jewish students unfortunately seem to lack the stones to get in the faces of these people, the only sure way of stopping this nonsense.
So perhaps a boycott of universities that allow this bigotry might be an alternative countermeasure...no enrollments, no donations, no applications, no cooperation by Jewish academics.
In that way, Jews involved with these universities would get a certain label attached to them and could be shunned by the rest of the Jewish community and most other people with a shred of decency.
It's high time to say enough is enough.
3 comments:
Let me tell you its not an issue of "stones." Maybe if they attacked your child for his views, and I mean physcially not just verablly then you might understand. Its bad enough that our children's futures are in the hands of those idiots who are so-called teachers, but there are campuses that our children cannot walk for fear of physical attack. Our childen are underseige at University throughout this country. The administrations of these universities do nothing to protect them. I don't care what the ADL says that its no worse than 30 years ago on campus. It is worse and its very violent. Its not a joke and not something to yell at a bunch of 18 year olds about. Where are the professors to support them. To go to protests with them. They are alone.Yell at the lowlife so-called Jewish leaders who allowed this to happen over the last decades. They supported violence against any conservative speaker on campus and now it has come back to haunt our children. That jackass Foxman and his friends should rot in hell.
Oh, I hear you IP. I'm sensitive to the issues you have with your children and I quite agree that Abe Foxman and the ADL are the Jewish equivalent of the NAACP.I told Foxman that to his face at a pro-Israel function we both attended and he wasn't pleased.(!)
But it IS a matter of stones on a collective level and not just yelling at 'leadership' as evidenced by groups like the ADL and the AJC is an exercise in futility.
Did you read this link about how my father of blessed memory taught me how one handles Jew haters? You have to get in their faces.
Trust me, it works better than sitting at a little card table 'debating' and handing out leaflets.
If David Duke or someone from the Aryan Brotherhood were to try to come to UCLA, do you think our black brothers and sisters would sit quietly and wait for the NAACP to show up, or would they create such a ruckus that the university would have to backtrack? And tell me, what would they do to a black fellow student who was shilling for Duke or his brethren?
That's what it's going to take.
Previous generations of Jews weren't afraid to mix it up and become a problem when their people were being defamed like this and if Jewish 'leaders' aren't teaching the present generation how to stand up for themselves properly and deal with self-hating quislings than we need new leaders, don't we?
The problem is that too many Jews are still wedded to the Left in a kind of Jewish Stockholm Syndrome.
That's what has to change.
OK, rant over.
All Good Things,
Rob
Today's Jewish students unfortunately seem to lack the stones to get in the faces of these people......
Wrong. The Pro-Israel student group at UC Berkeley: Tikvah, students for Israel has been doing a wonderful job of dealing with the most difficult campus in America.
They've been meeting with the student senators- and they were able to convince enough Senators about the truth of the situation that divestment has failed.
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