Israel responded to the “flytilla” with a wildly disproportionate deployment of police and extraordinary security checks. But Palestinian citizens of Israel are discriminated at the Ben Gurion Airport on an hourly basis – and are now able to racially profile themselves, using a specially provided form to warn the airport authorities of their arrival.
Tourists being watched by security forces at Ben Gurion airport, June 8 2011 (photo: Oren Ziv / activestills)
In the see-saw of travel-craving and homesickness preceding any trip abroad, there’s one moment when you can feel the balance finally shifting and you becoming glad to be leaving Israel: When you arrive in your car or taxi to the airport gates and a burly, submachine gun-wielding security guard asks you to roll down the window to wish you a good evening. This isn’t about courtesy, of course; he wants to get a good look at your face, and, most importantly, to hear your accent. If your accent sounds even remotely Arab, you will be asked to disembark, answer a flurry of intrusive questions, and asked to open your trunk (just in case it holds a big wooden crate labeled “Acme TNT”). If your accent is “normal”, you’re swiftly waved through.
The undisguised racism of Israeli airport security profiling is a fact of life here as much as summer weather and the impossibility to park in Tel Aviv; only recently did civil rights organisations begin to challenge the practice. Arab passengers get different stickers on their passports at the end of the “did you pack a bomb by mistake” questioning in the queue to the check-in; their baggage is often searched manually (raising interesting questions about the effectiveness of the carwash-sized suitcase screening machines that everybody else go through); and in general, Palestinian Israelis can expect their check-in process to take about twice as longer, both in Israel, and, if they have the misfortune of flying with an Israeli airline, on their way home from abroad.
Recently, however, we’ve moved up a notch and are now asking the Palestinian Israelis to discriminate themselves. The Hebrew version of the Israel Airports Authority has this curious page, reachable through Ben Gurion Airport > Passenger Information > Security Information > [Official] in charge of minority treatment. The general information page of the section explains, in stumbling Brechtian:
“The security treatment of the passengers forms a centrally important link in the chain of service provided to passengers in the process of their departure from the country and return to the country via the Ben Gurion International Airport.
The Israel Airports Administration has set itself a goal of improving the efficiency of the level of service provided for the population of members of minorities in these processes, and decided to set up for this purpose a unit entrusted with liaising with the population of members of minorities in Israel.
The unit includes four delegates: Mr Abu Matir Mohammed, Mr Abu Ghanem Salame, Mr Yossi Makleda and Mr Salah Dubaa, employed on shifts at the airport. Their role is to coordinate, mediate and assist in the processes of security clearance, without infringing upon the necessary security processes.”
Members of minorities is, of course, a euphemism for “Arabs” about as embarrassingly transparent as “persons of colour,” and is used most often by the media to report an Arab is held on suspicion of rape or other offenses (they never specify the nationality when the suspect is a Jew). Incidentally, it’s forever “members of minorities”, not “minorities,” because, as observed in recent years by academic like Yehouda Shenhav, Yoav Peled and Yossi Yona, the Jewish and democratic state can (grudgingly) abide only with recognising individual rights of individual Arabs on a case by case basis, never with describing them as a minority with a claim to collective rights.
But the real treat is the following form, which groups of Arabs (say, extended families or groups of friends) are advised to complete and send to the airport ten days ahead of their arrival (presumably so that the airport authorities doesn’t deploy tanks across the tarmac if they espy more than two Arabs moving together, talking in Arabic and being all Arab). The PDF is a touch more honestly titled “EthnicMinoritiesForm.” It reads:
To: The official in charge of the members of minorities population
Ben Gurion International Airpot
By fax no. 03-9752358
Regarding: Information on flight abroad
1. On date ______ a group/family is planned [sic] to travel to ______ on flight _____ at ______.
2. The group/family includes _____ passengers, as follows:
1. Mr / Ms ________________ Passport no. ____________
2. Mr / Ms ________________ Passport no. ____________
3. Mr / Ms ________________ Passport no. ____________
4. Mr / Ms ________________ Passport no. ____________
5. Mr / Ms ________________ Passport no. ____________
6. Mr / Ms ________________ Passport no. ____________
3. The group is traveling on the behest of the ______ office[/ministry], physicians/academics/public figures/sports delegation/organised tour/other _______ [Arabs don't take holidays or go on business trips -DR]
4. I would be thankful for any assistance you can extend at the airport.
5. Mr/Ms _______ will serve as contact person for the group, phone no. _______
Most respectfully,
Mr/Ms ___________
Phone no. _______________
Fax no.___________
It’s cute that they bothered including pt.4, ensuring that the Arabs are not only discriminated at their own request, but are duly thankful. More than anything else, this is a clear and stark example of normalisation of apartheid: When both parties accept an ethnically discriminative practice as a given and just seek to make it a little more palatable; and when the discriminated party is expected to pro-actively cooperate, “in their own best interest.”
The sad thing is that I can imagine official delegations and tour organisers probably do make use of the form, and both them and the airport authorities actually do prefer this Very Inferior Person treatment to the crude yanking of Arab passengers out of the waiting line. Have you made holiday plans for Israel this summer?
July 9, 2011
3:27 am
Isn’t everyone in Israel part of a minority? I mean, i am a British-born Israeli, aren’t I a minority?
July 9, 2011
4:35 am
[...] ישנו "אחראי לטיפול בבני מיעוטים", ובאתר הרשות מומלץ לקבוצות מיעוטים להשלים טופס מיוחד עשרה ימים לפני [...]
July 9, 2011
5:22 am
Everyone can interpret a form – any form – in such a way so as to extirpate some imaginary evil embedded in it, the kind that best serves one’s agenda. In this particular case, Dimi Reider’s purpose is to hammer, over and over, that Israelis are racists and Israel akin to apartheid South Africa.
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Let’s look at the “evidence”.
” The GROUP is traveling on the behest of the ______ office[/ministry], physicians/academics/public figures/sports delegation/ORGANIZED TOUR/OTHER”
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1. Dimi Reider should have read a little more attentively before he spat the snorty remark : “_______ [Arabs don't take holidays or go on business trips -DR]“. Of course they do, and that form says so. But perhaps Dimi hasn’t noticed that the form is for GROUPS, not individuals. He is obviously unaware that organized group leaders must report their list to immigration, regardless of ethnicity/religion/race.
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2. The fact that those groups are being handled by speakers of their language and from their own communities should be applauded, not denigrated. That was probably done at their own request and it happens all the time elsewhere in the Arab world, during trips to Meccas for example, where not all Muslims understand Saudi Arabic.
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3. As to being racists, well, maybe they are although your evidence serves only to support the contrary.
But what about you? You remind me a lot of Nathan Zach, the Israeli-German supremacist pen-pusher who went on TV denigrating the culture of the Jews of North Africa as “culture of the caverns” -and worse – then to shut people up and “prove” that he is not a racist turned around and announced that he was going on the Free Gaza flotilla.
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Pro-palestinian activism as an alibi? Think about it….
July 9, 2011
5:24 am
Er. Elaborate on that last remark, please. You claim I’m racist/supremacist, because…
July 9, 2011
6:03 am
Duh, Sylvia, can you really read?
The form applies to all Arabs. It’s not a form for organized tourist groups.
July 9, 2011
6:24 am
According to one of the French coordinators of the “Bienvenue en Palestine”, Olivia Zemor, who was refused boarding her plane on Thursday – just as more than 200 other activists and ordinary families with kids who just wanted to go to Palestine to shown their solidarity, answering the invitation from 15 Palestinian associations, and who were expelled from Roissy yesterday evening manu militari by the police and forced into buses excorted back into town after a more than 24-hours sit-in – the around 30 French activists and sympathizers who managed to arrive to Ben Gourion, have been arrested AND divided into two groups: Aravim and non-Aravim. I wonder what they did with the Jews with Arabic family names among the activists.
I don’t have any further informations for the time being but maybe some of the people in situ know more about this.
July 9, 2011
7:16 am
Obviously the bulk of “minorities” in Israel are Arabs, but it’s a bit of bad journalism not to recognize that the discriminatory stickers and interrogation treatment are not premised on “are you Arab”, but rather “are you a Jew or not”? Privilege attaches to Jews, rather than merely being denied to Arabs. This is an important distinction about the Israeli system that got lost in this article. Too often the problem is cast as a false Jew-Arab dichotomy, as if no one else exists in Israel, when in reality the problem is one of Jewish supremacy over all non-Jews.
July 9, 2011
7:35 am
Try traveling on an Israeli passport to any Arab, Persian or otherwise Muslim country. Fun times, fun times.
July 9, 2011
7:57 am
@Empress: Just visited Qatar, no problem at all, also Turkey, and Bosnia: no problem!
July 9, 2011
8:20 am
@DR
Once again, a simple comparison of Israeli policy to life in the United States takes the wind out of your hyperbole. Employers (including government employers) and schools routinely ask for this kind of information for the purpose of advantaging specific groups. Is the comparison perfect? No. But it shows that your pariah-state characterization of this voluntary form that doesn’t even give the user a list of racial options to check (as do the American versions) is silly. Waiting to pounce on non-news items like this, and then crying wolf, is not going to fool intelligent people.
July 9, 2011
9:09 am
Sylvia, since when is “Other” a clearly written intention to go on holiday?
I also would like to see evidence that groups must report themselves to immigration prior to taking off. Just send a link. Like the ones provided in the article which clearly show the name of the PDF is “Ethnic Minorities Form” (unless you’re implying old age pensioners or pre-army teens going on package holidays are ethnic minorities). Also this requirement that you claim exists would be the first I have ever heard of in any democratic country unless you can show me otherwise. In fact I have a strong impression you’re a hired Hasbarist; I’ve encountered you folk on comment boards.
And RichardNYC this form isn’t a positive-discrimination form. It doesn’t say that groups of minorities that complete this form will be entitled to a scholarship. Nor is it designed for the IAA to fulfill some quota on Arab, ahem, non-Jewish travel outside the country although we may be heading there. Don’t compare apples to cucumbers!
July 9, 2011
10:45 am
Philos wrote: “In fact I have a strong impression you’re a hired Hasbarist; I’ve encountered you folk on comment boards.”
Wow. Sounds pretty authoritative. You can tell, just by a mere interaction on the Internet, that someone is a paid Hasbarist? That’s an amazing talent. I better watch what I say then, given that there’s some elite unit of paid Hasbarists working out of a basement somewhere responding to dumb stuff about Israel on comment boards. Stuff like, uhm… your comment.
July 9, 2011
11:45 am
@Sylvia
It says group/family. That could mean that individuals on business will still be yanked out of queues but that families have to register in advance.
Point 3 may only apply if you are a group but given an administrative tendency to call all individuals mishpaha and address them in the plural, it wouldn’t surprise me if even individual travellers had to fill out the form.
Lastly, name me one democratic country that singles out its nationals, when they travel, according to whether they are a minority there. I used to reject the use of the word “apartheid” to categorize Israel, but whatever Israel’s initial reasons for discriminating between Arabs and Jews were, this example is pure, unadorned apartheid. Incontrovertible proof that however vague our point of departure was, we finally arrived at an ominously familiar destination. And who knows whether we won’t continue on from there?
- PS:
“extract”, or even “extricate”, would be better than “extirpate” in the context in which you used it. To extirpate means to destroy totally, by uprooting….
July 9, 2011
11:49 am
@Dimi – I’m wondering a) what happens if they ignore the form and just show up anyway (as I do despite being implored to check in in advance) and b) whether the info supplied in the form actually does anything to stop them from being yanked out of the queue.
July 9, 2011
12:58 pm
“a wildly disproportionate deployment of police”
I wonder what’s “proportionate”? I’s say 4 per person expected to be subdued without physical harm. Any other proposal?
And what’s wrong with disproportional? The waste of your tax Shekels for risk aversion?
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What’s wrong with Profiling based on statistics, not conspiracies or racist ideas?
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The form you mention is addressing groups and is a good step towards solving a nagging problem in Israel: how to not punish the 99% law abiding people from minorities for the risks posed by 1%.
Do you really argue that this isn’t an improvement???
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I suspect that if you have a better idea, supporting the security needs while avoiding the harm of special treatment, your suggestion will be applied.
But here you are, claiming ‘there’s hunger in the world and there’re people eating too much’
July 9, 2011
5:23 pm
I once flew all the way to Malaysia and was turned away because of an Israeli stamp on my passport. I guess the Zionist overthrow of the Malay archipelago will have to wait for another day….
July 10, 2011
12:36 am
RichardNYC, is there a special form for Israeli citizens who are Russian Jews?
Hehe + shavua tov
July 10, 2011
12:42 am
@ CK. I can’t find the actual article but here’s an op-ed about the issue from Ynet.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3744516,00.html
So just like China hires people to flood BBC and other foreign news sites with pro-communist party propaganda on any articles about Chinese HR abuses, Israel has decided to follow the best practices of an Eastern tyranny. Read Bernard Lewis? ^^
July 10, 2011
2:10 am
You just have to google hasbara, and the numbers of articles, sites and organizations dedicated to defending The-Only-Democracy-In-The-Middle-East is amazing.
Here an article on the subject by Richard Silverstein:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/09/israel-foreign-ministry-media
Or Jonathan Cook:
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0406.htm
Or this: http://www.hasbarafellowships.org
July 10, 2011
3:16 am
I googled “arab funds for western universities propaganda” and got 5.4M hits.
What does it mean?
July 10, 2011
3:32 am
@ Max. Do you want a full google analytics and seo keyword analysis of what that means? Or will you be satisfied with the answer that in your long search query there were 5.4 million hits with a combination of those words including, “western universities” et al?
Your point also doesn’t really counter in anyway the discussion on the board about paid, or otherwise, internet hasbarists; nor does it dovetail in anyway with Arab groups having to submit an Ethnic Minorities Form to IAA.
Does anyone know if these forms speed up the embarkation of Arab travelers through Ben Gurion airport?
July 10, 2011
5:01 am
@PHILOS: Arae we allowed to talk about foreign paid anti Israel activists too? Or is it just hasbaraists that you are paranoic about?
July 10, 2011
5:37 am
Philos, thanks for proving my point
July 10, 2011
5:52 am
It’s funny what countries who are at war do with enemy minorities who live amongst them.
Take Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria for example. If they are suspicious of someone from a minority group, they detain them, torture them and often execute them with due pomp and ceremony.
Take Hamas, the only minorities that they possibly have are Christians. Hamas of course don’t need any excuse to persecute Christians. They do so on trumped up charges arbitrarily whenever they have a bad hair day.
Now, let’s just take for example some more enlightened nations. Guess what the USA, Britain, Canada and Australia did with enemy aliens during World War 2? They rounded them up and interned them in camps till the end of the war. They even did that to Jewish escapees from Nazi Germany, just to be on the safe side. And I don’t even recall a single case of a Jewish refugee donning a suicide vest and blowing themselves up just in order to kill unsuspecting American, Canadian, British or Australian civilians. Nevertheless, those Jewish refugees and other enemy aliens were locked up for security reasons.
So, in view of the above, surely the moralisers of this forum should be able to forgive the Israeli authorities if they too would take some minor precautions involving nothing more than separate forms? Even if they are possibly driven sinister security motives? Surely they would still not be as onerous as what some of the above countries have/are done/doing when they were/are at war? Can’t you just indulge Israel at least till the war will be over? If they persist after that, please feel free to vilify Israel to your hearts content. Who knows, even people like me might join you then. Deal, or no deal?
July 10, 2011
6:35 am
@ Max. Please explain.
@ Right Wing Zionist. Please show some evidence that foreign activists are paid. We showed evidence about paid hasbarists so please back up your comment.
Also with regards to your last comment it is a total non-sense because as far as I’m aware Israel isn’t at war with the State of Israeli-Arabs that would justify putting them in an internment camp. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that any Western government, including the USA, would engage in such blatantly anti-democratic and racist actions anymore. Indeed, the US Congress paid compensation and apologized to the Japanese internees on behalf of the US government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese-American_internment#Reparations_and_redress
Yet again facts and history prove ardent right-wing ideologues wrong but I somehow doubt that you will change your mind about anything.
Finally, please stop comparing Israel to nasty tyrannies. It’s unpatriotic. Compare like with like; democracies with democracies.
July 10, 2011
8:44 am
@Philos, USA, Britain, Canada and Australia are not democracies?
July 10, 2011
8:57 am
@ Mitchell Cohen. Well I’d say that Britain, Australia, Canada and USA in the 1940s weren’t quite the same democracies we know today. Or shall I list their histories of civic discrimination and colonial tyranny? Besides, Right Wing Zionist was using the usual refrain of juxtaposing Israel to Iran and Syria and then throwing in some history from WW2. These are hardly yard-sticks by which to judge Israeli democracy in 2011, I hope you would agree?
July 10, 2011
10:45 am
For the naive, the query:
“arab funds” “western university”
gets about nine hits.
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Max you are right for Google it is rubbish in rubbish out…
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For University Hasbara funding fill out this form:
http://www.hasbarafellowships.org/resources/grants
July 10, 2011
1:42 pm
@PHILOS: “Please show some evidence that foreign activists are paid”
Sigh, you won’t believe me anyway. Have you heard about the IHH? That’s just one foreign organisation that organises, funds and implements every aspect of one group of anti Israel activists. You will find more on this site:
http://jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=0&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=378&PID=0&IID=7745&TTL=Who_Is_Behind_the_Second_Gaza_Flotilla
And that’s not all, you might also google “Saudi funding of Western Universities” the list never ends but I won’t bother anymore beyond this to convince the unconvincable.
” because as far as I’m aware Israel isn’t at war with the State of Israeli-Arabs that would justify putting them in an internment camp”(PHILOS)
First: I never said that Israel should put Israeli Arabs into camps. Second: Israel is at war with Hamas, Hezbollah, syria, and a few other assorted Arab terrorist groups. Third: Enemy aliens from Germany, Japan, Italy, especially Jews from those countries etc were not at war with America, Britain, Canada and Australia either. But they were treated as security risks. So compared to that, what is your objection to a different form that Israel uses?
“Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that any Western government, including the USA, would engage in such blatantly anti-democratic and racist actions anymore”(PHILOS)
But they did when THEIR survival was at stake. Don’t be so sure by they way that they wouldn’t if they would again be in a war of survival again.
“Finally, please stop comparing Israel to nasty tyrannies. It’s unpatriotic”(PHILOS)
But your anti Israel activist friends on this very forum would have one believe that Israel is actually worse than those tyrannies. They also don’t agree with you that Israel is a democracy. I am glad that you believe it though
July 10, 2011
2:34 pm
I assume – I hope! – that Israel pays people to do ‘hasbara’. I think that it’s a colossal stupidity that Israel pays for professional public relations less than small companies in Israel do for their products.
Too bad Israel can’t afford to pay Western universities the way oil-rich Arab countries do. Too bad Israel can’t buy stakes and ads in Western media the way the Saudi do.
Having neglected this field for various dumb reasons, many in the world are now only familiar with the Arab “narrative”.
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Posts that claim that the reason there’s no peace between Israelis and Palestinians is only due to Israel’s policy without acknowledging the context do not seek peace and do not promote further understanding.
Their only logical conclusion is that peace will be achieved with a Jews-less ME.
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It’s a shame that Israel didn’t find better ways when profiling, ways that will allow the majority of Israeli Arabs to travel without being searched like criminals.
That’s why I think that this form is a move in the right direction, showing that finally someone started addressing the problem. It’s far from enough, but I doubt that it’s easy to solve. Alternatively, does someone know that the threat is imaginary and Israel is simply intent on making its Arab citizens hate their government?
July 10, 2011
3:15 pm
@MAX: “Posts that claim that the reason there’s no peace between Israelis and Palestinians is only due to Israel’s policy without acknowledging the context do not seek peace and do not promote further understanding.
Their only logical conclusion is that peace will be achieved with a Jews-less ME”(MAX)
Well said. Kol Hakavod
July 10, 2011
3:43 pm
Directrob, you need to improve your queries. It’s not about number of hits but the right ones…
A 1-country sample: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8360103/Libya-and-the-LSE-Large-Arab-gifts-to-universities-lead-to-hostile-teaching.html
and an interesting blog for the US
http://snuffysmithsblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/saudis-give-big-to-us-colleges.html
July 10, 2011
3:54 pm
RWZ: thanks.
July 10, 2011
11:27 pm
Simply put: this form is illegal and unconstitutional, and will fail the moment anyone challanges it in court.
July 11, 2011
1:17 am
Let’s do a thought experiment. Google “Jewish funding of US universities” or “Jewish funding of European political parties”. What you will find is that the same ideas that the Arabs are controlling the West with their money is inverse Jew-hatred. It’s still anti-Semitic obviously because Arabs are Semites. Also if one looks qualitatively at the first 25 sites dealing with “Arab funding of western universities” you get such impartial luminaries like Jihadwatch or campuswatch both notorious affiliates of very right wing ideologues. Furthermore, with the Telegraph article you provided (thanks for that) Pollard opens himself up for a big weakness in his theory; you’re not going to get exposed to this “hostile teaching” unless you’re in the Islamic department of those universities. And is it really surprising that this kind of thing happens? What has happened at departments funded by banks? A total conversion of the economics curriculum into pure neo-liberalism; the students don’t even learn who Marx is! And I’ll raise the issue with the recently shut-down Antisemitism studies program at Yale. That there is a systemic flaw and moral corruption with university funding I entirely agree; to contend that Arab funds are perverting it more than other private funds is pure conspiracy theory. Been reading the Protocols of the Elders of Jihad or something?
Finally, what happened after 9/11 or 7/7? Did the USA and Britain start rounding up all the foreign born Muslims and detaining them in camps? And if Israel is constantly in a war of survival then I presume you think the state hasn’t gone far enough in “securing” the Israeli-Arab population?
July 11, 2011
2:07 am
@PHILOS
“Finally, what happened after 9/11 or 7/7? Did the USA and Britain start rounding up all the foreign born Muslims and detaining them in camps?”(PHILOS)
Ummmmmmmm PHILOS, haven’t you been reading my posts? I did not advocate rounding up Israeli Arabs and putting them into camps. So I don’t understand your point. Unless of course you are telling us that the Americans and the Brits are in imminent danger of falling to the Islamists? If you are saying that, we disagree. Yes, their civilians are in danger but they are NOT fighting a war of survival.
Having said that, have you heard about Gitmo? And rest assured they too are profiling their airline passangers, using their own methods. How do you think they foiled a number of terrorist plots?
On the other hand, when they let the political correctness go too far they paid the price. If you don’t believe me then read up on the Texas Fort Hood Massacre. US army soldiers died needlessly because some touchy feely types like yourself refused to read all the signs of a pending disaster about to blow up in their face. Here, read about it:
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Fort-Hood-Massacre-Complete-Coverage.html
July 11, 2011
6:56 am
This comment has been deleted due to containing a personal attack
Iva and Patrizio
Rome Italy
July 11, 2011
11:17 am
Philos
This was actually the charge leveled against Yale’s JIINSA center. But what the antisemites intentionally miss is there’s a difference between funding a chair for its own sake and creating nothing but pure advocacy.
Clearly you’ve spent almost zero time in any college campus over the last 15 years if you think Arab funding of mideast studies is innocuous. Any study of Israel AT ALL has been driven out. You’re even lucky of you can get a Hebrew language program mounted. Every faculty door has a ‘Palestinian’ flag hanging on it, and Allah save you if you go to class wearing a kippah. You will probably, and this is not exaggeration, be physically assaulted.
Which, in the post modernist world of ‘everything is everything’ isn’t inherently an evil thing, but it’s pure advocacy bordering on hate speech. Which, while it may make you happy to experience, isn’t precisely the same thing as education.
And for what it’s worth, you DO realize that most of this funding comes ultimately from two sources:
The al Aziz ibn Saud royal family which is the absolute fundamentalist monarchy which rules Saudi Arabia and the people in it as their personal property.
and
The Iranian government which, in their own words is a apocalyptic mystical genocidal cult which has executed hundreds of people this year alone for the crime of generally being gay, feminist, not Muslim or generally quarrelsome.
Just so we’re clear who teaching you to have a liberal outlook on the mideast….
July 11, 2011
2:03 pm
Empress Trudy, I can assure you that I’ve been on a university campus within the last 15-months. Within the last 15-years I’ve gone from high school, boot camp, road blocks, foreign university and then graduate study in Israel. Please provide the evidence for all your claims because as far as I’m concerned its twaddle. My brother wrote a thesis on Iraqi Jewry at the Islamic center at Exeter University and, given the fact he’s now a soldier, I don’t think he underwent any significant brainwashing. Indeed, the anti-Israel professors are usually preaching to the converted is what he told me.
My friend, RWZ
, so by your standards Israel is driving at 220 Km/hour into a wall by not booting out all the settler soldiers given the number of terrorist attacks they’ve committed within Israel (three; two of them in uniform)? The fact is I’m not going to let one crazy jerk besmirch thousands of other US soldiers who happen to identify as Muslim.
July 11, 2011
5:10 pm
One good anecdote deserves another. So look into UC Irvine (California), Concordia U (Canada), where outright physical violence is the norm. Look at your own LSE. Look at UNC Chapel Hill (North Carolina) – which has driven out all staff from their mideast dept who weren’t openly pro Palestinian. Look at Columbia (NYC) which invited the President of Iran to speak and then barred knitted kippah Jews from showing up. Look at wherever Finklestein teaches, a borderline holocaust denier. Look at Yale which tried to close the JIINSA center because pointing out that antisemitism exists, is too much advocacy. Look at Rutgers which hosts ISM. Look at Brooklyn college which awarded a doctoral level teaching slot to a non-doctorate ‘activist’.
Or this:
http://eyecrazy.blogspot.com/2011/06/anti-semitism-and-classroom-jew-count.html
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2011/06/ben-gurion-university-leftist-lecturer.html
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/251395/Threat-of-campus-extremists-must-never-be-ignored
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/251395/Threat-of-campus-extremists-must-never-be-ignored
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MnpRK2LMj8&feature=player_embedded
http://greensengage.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/palestine-solidarity/#comment-1131
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/4/18/speech-rights-free-campus/
http://hurryupharry.org/2011/04/14/how-to-bash-israel-in-your-child%E2%80%99s-school-%E2%80%93-a-york-university-graduate-seminar/
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2033/norman-finkelstein-supports-targeting-israeli-civilians
http://www.solomonia.com/wp/2011/04/professors-call-bs-on-campus-anti-israel-groups/#more-3071
http://www.jewishmediaresources.com/1436/jewish-students-under-assault-part-u
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2011/03/oy-vey-university-of-california-at.html
July 11, 2011
7:56 pm
@PHILOS
“My friend, RWZ , so by your standards Israel is driving at 220 Km/hour into a wall by not booting out all the settler soldiers given the number of terrorist attacks they’ve committed within Israel”(PHILOS)
I wouldn’t have the foggiest what this means. Earlier on, you accused me of ranting and raving. Are you sure you didn’t mean yourself?
” The fact is I’m not going to let one crazy jerk besmirch thousands of other US soldiers who happen to identify as Muslim”(PHILOS)
Good for you, neither would I. But if you would have bothered to read the articles to which my link pointed, then you would be aware that in this SPECIFIC case, there were oodles of tell tale troubling signs that this individual would erupt and that he could be dangerous. And why didn’t they act on it? Because those who could and should have acted on it were more concerned with political correctness.
What is my point? My point is that political correctness has it’s place. But when it over rides common sense, then it amounts to criminal negligence.
May 8, 2012
11:10 am
I went to Israel as a tourist. I made the mistake of having visited Tunis before Israel. That got me a four hour stay in their holding area and then a minor search. Then I had to endure the inhospitable culture of some Israelis. Not very friendly people. I went to the East Jerusalem area, the territories. Wow what a breath of fresh air. So nice, the people sweet. Then always lurking not too far away. A young IDF soldier rifle ready to fire. What a great country.