In an interview with Teheran Times two weeks ago, Norman Finklestein, the notorious Hizbullah and Hamas supporter and all-purpose anti-Semite, called Israel a "vandal state," and "insane state," a "terrorist state," and a "satanic state."
Last week Finklestein was the keynote speaker at both Emory University and Fordham University during their weeklong annual anti-Israel hate festivals. Speaking to a cheering crowd at a packed auditorium on Emory's Atlanta campus, Finklestein claimed that Israel conducted its recent Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for two reasons. These did not include Hamas's deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians, Hamas's alliance with Iran, its charter that calls for the physical eradication of the Jewish people, its illegal imprisonment of Israeli hostage Gilad Schalit, or its decision to renew its attacks against Israel after a six month period of relative restraint.
In Finklestein's view, the first reason Israel launched Operation Cast Lead was because Hamas had begun expressing interest in peace. In his words, "Hamas were being too moderate, too reasonable. They wanted a diplomatic settlement to the conflict. To Israel, this is a recurring nightmare."
The second reason that Finklestein alleged that Israel launched its offensive was because, well, Israel is just plain mean. As he put it, the operation was Israel's way of "reminding the Arabs who were [sic.] in charge." It was an attempt to "restore the Arab world's fear of Israel."
Finklestein cited an unnamed "chief military analyst" to support his claim that Israel conducted a "massacre" in Gaza and did so with malice of forethought.
According to Emory's student paper, for his libelous, wholly fallacious remarks, Finklestein received a prolonged standing ovation.
In 40 university campuses throughout the US and Canada as well as in Europe and South America, last week students marked what Palestinian terror apologists have dubbed "Israel Apartheid Week." This was the seventh such week in the US, and the fifth in Canada.
In the lead up to this annual Israel vilification week, pro-Israel students were physically assaulted at San Francisco State University and at York University in Canada by their anti-Israel counterparts. In both cases, university officials opened disciplinary proceedings against the pro-Israel students.
At SFSU, two students were arrested by police for assaulting college Republicans who held an anti-Hamas rally. The two – from the campus's Palestinian student club and its Socialist union – now insist not only that the charges against them be dropped, but that the university re-educate its students to ensure that they understand that criticizing Hamas and other genocidal terror groups is a form of prohibited hate-speech.
THE LIBELOUS assertion that Israel – the only free, pluralistic, liberal democracy in the Middle East – is analogous to apartheid South Africa first took hold at the 2001 UN-sponsored anti-Jewish diplomatic pogrom at Durban, South Africa. In the action plan approved by the various non-governmental organizations that participated in the conference, activists were called on to bring about the international demonization of Israel as a racist state, and of Zionism – the Jewish national liberation movement – as a form of racism.
When Israel Apartheid Week was launched the next year, many local Jewish student and community activists in the US and Canada demanded that university authorities ban the clearly bigoted event from their campuses. To their chagrin, university presidents and administrators would do no such thing. Claiming that doing so would restrict academic freedom, the propaganda war against the Jewish state went forward and grew. And, in its wake, the freedom of pro-Israel students on college campuses throughout the West has become increasingly constricted and threatened.
Both through formal speech codes barring criticism of anti-Israel propaganda and violence, and through academic and physical intimidation of pro-Israel students by an increasingly vocal and aggressive coalition of pro-Palestinian professors, Muslim and leftist students, Israel's supporters on university campuses find themselves under assault. Today, seven years after the Durban Conference, Israel Apartheid Week has become a mainstay on the academic calendar, nearly as taken for granted as Homecoming Week and mid-terms.
The use of the term "apartheid" to describe Israel was a deliberate move on the part of Israel's enemies. It was aimed at neutralizing the capacity of Israel's supporters to defend the Jewish state and attack its enemies. Case in point is the campus debate which preceded Israel Apartheid Week at the University of Toronto. The student paper published two topical opinion pieces on the upcoming events. One asserted that Israel is an apartheid regime. The other argued that Israel isn't an apartheid regime.
On the surface, this seems fair enough. But it is nothing of the sort. Israel is the only free country and free society in the region. Pinning its defenders down by confining discussion of the region to the pros and cons of a complete lie serves to only obfuscate the depravity of Israel's enemies, not to enlighten the public about Israel.
While Israel provides the full rights of citizenship to its Arab minority, Jews are denied the rights of citizenship in every Arab League member state, and the Palestinians' fundamental demand is that no Jew be permitted to live in a future Palestinian state.
Then too, while Israeli women enjoy full equality under the law, women and girls in the Arab and Muslim world are systematically subjugated and enslaved. Muslim men who wantonly murder their wives, sisters, mothers and daughters can expect to receive little to no punishment for their crimes. The same holds for men who abuse their female relations. For their part, women in the Muslim world have either no legal rights to citizenship and civil rights or those rights are severely limited.
Gays, blacks, migrant workers, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists are systematically persecuted for their sexual preferences, their skin color and their religious beliefs. Even dogs feel the wrath of these societies where, since they are considered "unclean," children and adults alike routinely engage in their torture and killing.
But under the full protection of self-described liberal university professors, administrators and presidents, and due to the indifference of groups like the World Council of Churches, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Organization of Women, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, anti-Israel propagandists have been allowed to co-opt the language of liberty to advance the political fortunes of terrorists who aim to destroy liberty.
THE ACTIVE and passive support conferred on anti-Israel leftists and Muslims by these officials and groups has provided them with the ideological cover to take their activism to the next level: anti-Jewish violence aimed at intimidating states, universities, businesses and private organizations into cutting off all ties to Israel. Evidence of the success of this campaign is rife throughout Europe today.
In just one notable instance, for the past week Israeli tennis players, Amir Haddad and Andy Ram have been suffering the consequences of the Left's collusion with these anti-Jewish groups in Sweden. Haddad and Ram competed in the Davis Cup tennis championships in Malmo, Sweden.
In an article in Yediot Ahronot on Sunday, Ram wrote, "In my entire athletic career, I have never before experienced such hatred and such a mixing of sports with politics."
In spite of repeated entreaties by Israel, Swedish authorities refused to move the games from Malmo to Stockholm. With its enormous Muslim population, in recent years
Malmo has been the site of some of the worst Islamic violence against non-Muslims – and particularly Jews, women and girls – in the Western world.
Due to threats of violence against Ram and Haddad, Swedish authorities barred fans from attending their tennis matches. As they played their opening match in an empty stadium on Saturday, thousands of violent Muslims and leftists rioted against police and attempted to break down the barriers protecting the stadium with the stated aim of killing Ram and Haddad.
The protesters claim that their desire to murder Israeli tennis players is due to Operation Cast Lead. But this is pure propaganda. Their desire to murder Ram and Haddad stems not from Israel's military actions to defend its citizens from murder, but from the protesters' hatred of the Jewish state. And that hatred stems from the same source as their misogyny, their hatred of the US and their support for the likes of Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
A 2005 Swedish government report indicated that in 2004, incidents of rape had increased 50 percent throughout the country. A Malmo police report noted that 68 percent of the rapists were minorities. As Islamic scholar Robert Spencer has noted, Islamic teaching views rape as a legitimate act against women and girls who behave in "non-Islamic" ways. In much of Scandinavia as well as in Muslim neighborhoods in France, women have begun wearing veils in order to protect themselves against roving gangs of Muslim young men.
The defilement of women and girls, like gay bashing, has nothing to do with IDF operations in Gaza. It has to do with the pathological nature of the cultures that condone and encourage the violence, and the Western governments and intellectuals who make excuses for it.
ALL OF THIS is hidden away from the public thanks to Western liberals' willingness to accept the legitimacy of events like Israel Apartheid Week. Due to the complicity of leftist authorities, the international discourse about the Arab and Islamic world and the cultures they have produced is diverted to false allegations against Israel.
Any attempt to point out that Hamas is genocidal; that Iran stones women to death, and systematically executes homosexuals; that Saudi Arabia is the most repressive society on the planet; that Egypt permits and indeed encourages female genital mutilation; that Jordan does not prosecute fathers, sons, husbands and uncles who murder their female relatives; is attacked and delegitimized. Those who raise these issues are accused of hating Muslims and of being secret Zionist agents.
So too, Islamic violence in the West is swept under the rug. For example, to date, no mainstream US media organ has reported that in Buffalo, New York Muzzamil Hassan decapitated his wife Aasiya on February 12 after he stabbed her to death. Just a few years earlier that same mainstream media had embraced this murderer as a paragon of Islamic moderation after he established Bridges TV network, which was supposed to show the American public how moderate Islam is.
For some reason, the same media don't consider it noteworthy that their moderate Muslim poster boy chopped off his wife's head a week after she filed for divorce. Certainly, no connection can be drawn between her ritual slaughter and Islam.
Sunday was International Women's Day. Throughout the West, feminists spent the day congratulating themselves for their great sacrifices for women's rights.
Last Wednesday Saudi authorities arrested a woman for driving. Her arrest drew no protest from her Western sisters. Obviously, they were too busy defending Finklestein's freedom to disseminate lies about Israeli women to ignorant college kids to care.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
Caroline where is the media? Everyone should be outraged at what is taking place on campuses across this land.
This situation is completely disgusting. They can slice it, color it whatever, it doesn’t change, it’s is anti-Semitisms plain and simple.
Alumna and other contributors better start taking a good look at how their money is being spent. Stop the flow of funds and let them know the reason.
It seems that the pot is boiling and the wicked of the earth have ripened along with the righteous.
The cult of death,Islam and the left have much in common as the left also love death and call it a womans choice.
They serve the same prince of darkness.
I does seem that the harvest of the earth has ripened and the haters of God and His Israel are marked for sickle time.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
John 3:19
And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.”
So He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.
Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.
And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, “Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.”
So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
Revelation 14
There is no female Muslim Caroline Glick in the Arab/Muslim World. Certainly not one free to speak her mind. But its Israel that stands accused of sexism, racism and fascism! Go figure.
Totalitarian Islam and Neo-Liberalism are incompatible. Presently, Islamists and leftists share the same vision of emasculating Israel and Western Civilization. However, under a global caliphate, leftists would lose their heads for having non-Muslim views. The reason that left-wing zealots like Dr. Finkelstein brainwash students is because they have the freedom to do so. The propaganda from the Israel Apartheid Week is intellectually dishonest and promotes lazy scholarship. Professors who politicize their subjects are undermining academic freedom on North American campuses. And there is nothing proud about leftists “dumbing-down” college curriculum.
CAROLINE GLICK wrote: “To date, no mainstream US media organ has reported that in Buffalo, New York, Muzzamil Hassan decapitated his wife Aasiya on February 12 after he stabbed her to death.”
Actually, this story was reported on the Lou Dobbs television show on CNN. I also found two online editorials which cover the story: One at Newsweek / Washington Post.com and another at the Wall Street Journal.com (WSJ.com).
These are obviously “mainstream US media organs.” Even so, it’s extremely obvious that the mainstream media buried the story. Leftists are notoriously shortsighted. They will not understand the full horror of Islamic oppression until it comes upon them.
Ms. Glick, you should have titled your article: “Are you proud to be a Liberal?” for two reasons. The first is that with the examples you make you are putting the finger right into what is perhaps the biggest inconsistency of Liberalism. The second reason is that Liberalism is nowadays commonly associated with the political Left, but has been historically associated also with the political Right.
As a political ideology and social doctrine, Liberalism promotes plurality of thought, equality of expression and individual freedom. In fact John Locke, the English philosopher and founder of modern liberal political theory, postulated that the role of institutions within society is that of protecting individual liberties. Nothing wrong thus far.
Except that Locke put government into a special category. Government, according to Locke, has the “absolute right” under certain circumstances to infringe into individual liberties and to limit the very freedom it is supposed to protect for the “good of the common”. What this means in practicality is that if you and I disagree with what the government says or does and subscribe, say, to a form of peaceful political militancy – meaning for example that you start writing your anti-government blog and I start putting my anti-government comments on it – if things go too far as to become a threat to the government we both oppose, according to Locke the government has all the right in the world to shut your blog down and throw the two of us in jail.
So clearly the great liberal inconsistency resides in the very foundation of the political doctrine it postulates: individual freedom, plurality of thought and equality of expression exist and are derived only for the benefit of society. When they extend too far as to undermine social order itself, Liberalism resorts to their suppression.
In this regard it is interesting to note, and this brings me the historical association of Liberalism with the political Right, how Mussolini started as a liberal social-democrat. It was only when he deviated from Liberalism’s traditional association with the masses and sided with business and industry that Fascism was born. In fact, from a purely political point of view, the entire WWII is nothing but a clash of two extreme forms of militant Liberalism: Fascism, the extremist liberal political Right of Capitalism versus Communism, the extremist liberal political Left of Socialism. As Fascism succumbed dragging down European Capitalism in its fall, American Capitalism (known in pre-war Europe as “Fordism”) took hold.
The indoctrination of the students you make reference to in the article is by no means an American phenomenon. Nor is it new. It dates all the way back to the late 1920’s when Antonio Gramsci, an Italian political theorist and a very outspoken founding member of the Communist Party of Italy proposed a new doctrine within Marxist theory, which became known as the “Doctrine of the Hegemony of the Masses” (Hegemony).
To understand Hegemony one must understand first what Gramsci thought of Fordism (American Capitalism):
” … a Jewish conspiracy intent at causing a passive sedimentation produced by the phenomenon of the saturation and fossilisation of civil service personnel and intellectuals, of clergy and landowners, piratical commerce, and industrial coercion of the trade unions …”.
So, in other words, guess whom Gramsci held responsible for strangling the Italian proletariat, and indeed the proletariat worldwide: you, me and Pops of Vienna. Sounds familiar?
Mussolini, the former liberal social-democrat, didn’t think much about Gramsci’s virulent opposition to American Capitalism until that day in 1934, when Gramsci characterized the newly found friendship between the American Capitalism of FDR and Italian Fascism in his famous and rather outspoken remark:
“When a horse shits, one hundred sparrows feed”.
That cost him a 25-year sentence of forced labor in the shortest political trial ever in the annals of the history of Italian jurisprudence: one day (Gramsci died of tuberculosis and malnutrition in 1937 at the age of 46).
The relevance of all this to your article is that Gramsci figured out that the proletariat and the peasantry would never be capable of overthrowing the capitalistic forces of the “Jewish bourgeoisie”, unless the bourgeoisie itself was indoctrinated at a very early stage. Although his idea could never be put into practice in Fascist Italy, nevertheless it was resumed in post-war times and spread throughout Europe, most notably in those countries where Liberalism had made a traditional dent: France, Britain and Italy. But it also spread in atheist Soviet Russia, as many of your fellow countrymen can personally attest.
Therefore the indoctrination of the minds you see today at SFU or York University in Etobicoke, Toronto, where I spent my freshman years in 1973-1975, is nothing new. It is just the same old-fashioned Liberalism with a new twist: Islam.
Liberalism has a long history of seeking to accommodate religious groups that have deep objections to certain public policies, such as the Quakers, Mennonites or Mormons. Just as much as basic liberal principles about protecting the innocent are valid for those religious groups according to liberal creed, why not afford the same to other extra-Western religious groups such as the Muslims. In fact some liberal thinkers like Lucas Swaine in his book “Liberal Conscience: Politics and Principle in a World of Religious Pluralism”
(available at http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Conscience-Principle-Religious-Pluralism/dp/0231136056/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236678245&sr=1-2)
even go as far as arguing that liberals ought to grant a quasi-sovereignty to such domestic non-liberal groups, allowing them great latitude to conduct their own affairs in their own way.
Judaism, however, in its dual form of religion and ethnicity, is not viewed as foreign and as such, still according to Swaine, is exempt.
And so, in the era of Obama, the planet keeps on spinning.
Regards,
Madam:
While I would be inclined to agree, that it is in fact lamentable individual rights appear to have limited to no bearing in these matters, it is also not lamentable to the point of anguish, insofar as my own view on these matters is concerned.
Individual rights is a “no-sale” in the countries you refer to in your article. Individual rights is a “no-sale” in many other issues as well, even today, and in the foreseeable future.
We’ve been fixed on the wrong targets for so long, we’ve lost the original, and judging from the utterances of some of our leaders, they don’t know which way to go.
I sure hope one of them reads your article, because its starting to feel like we’ve been sold out.
There are dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of Jewish Israeli teachers and professors at our universities and colleges who preach the same perverted and anti Israel commentaries that Finklestein and the Palestinians make all the time. Almost all of them publicly call for boycotts of Israel and divestment from funds which have interests here. These Israeli Jewish professors do this stuff all the time, and the universities and colleges where they work and collect an Israeli taxpayer subsidized paycheck never ever calls them to account for their anti Israel activities, preferring to protect their antics under the rubric of academic freedom. There is now a web site devoted to exposing their nefarious activities which everyone should take a look at to see the sort of sickness which has infected the minds of our leading intellectuals. Worse, there are even Israelis in our Left wing political parties like Meretz who enjoy travelling abroad and use their political positions to besmirch and debase their own country, even though they know full well that they are lying through their teeth. And if that’s not enough, an entire Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, is devoted to publishing some of the most wicked and twisted calumnies about Israel, written again by Israeli Jews who know better but prefer to lie and get well paid for it. I too am disappointed that American universities and colleges allow these shameful and increasingly dangerous anti Israel and anti Semitic conventions to take place, but these sort of events are part and parcel of the Israeli university and college scene, with Jewish and Arab Israeli professors, who live here and have enjoyed the benefits of progressive and liberal Israel, who nevertheless express some of the sickest, most disgusting viewpoints about Israel, and far too often make downright untrue commentaries about their own country. If we promote this sort of sickness and ugliness here, how in God’s name can we expect non Jews to behave any differently?
And yet,Caroline,3/4 of Americans Jews vote reflexively for the Democrats
Woe to those who call good evil…and evil good.
“Religion of Peace”….I don’t think so.
Caroline, you are just brilliant, clearsighted, brave…..
Every word is right on !!!
To put it short,you make me proud to be a woman.
Dear Ms Glick,
Damn! My truth meter’s pegged! Consequently, my curiosity’s piqued. Although palpably non abstract, your analyses suggest a profound potential philosophical acumen. Dare I ask, are you not aware of Ayn Rand’s treatment of the liberal versus conservative fallacy? And her expose of their nature as mystics of muscle versus mystics of spirit respectively? If not, John Galt renders a layman’s understanding in her novel “Atlas Shrugged” which she further expounded upon in her non-fiction book “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.”
Truly,
If you would indulge me momentarily to let each and every individual know that the Jewish community is as diverse as any in the world. Yet, the mistake that fascists make in their quest to prove their logic is by melding everyone together as though there is a vast conspiracy afoot.
This is the Finklestein phenomenon if you will, which is that there are (sadly) Jews who resort this type of generalizing and making scapegoats of people (even their own) so as to further their own importance.
I know of no postulate by any relevant political theorist which states that individuals who are gathered together of their own free will under the auspices of international law cannot form an army with which to defend themselves.
Alas, the history of the State of Israel is footed in war: Those who fled there after World War Two and those who fought to protect Israel in 1948, and while also denying such facts the ones who also deny the Holocaust almost always find their ideas to be a comfortable mix of ideological stupidity.
But what makes Norman Finkelstein most intriguing is the fact that both his mother and his father survived the Holocaust. I liken this phenomenon as a hatred of ones Jewishness that unfortunately is the result of having had ones will broken. While it is almost impossible to fathom the self-hatred that can be bred into a person, nonetheless this is a psychological issue that is rising to the surface from an otherwise learned individual.
Surely the news from Israel every time there is violence there is unsettling. The fact that Jews have no other alternative but to fight is like punching a drunk man. Nobody likes to do it, but sometimes others can be so misled and dangerous that somebody has to wake them up. The reason is purely because of survival. It is not a sadistic lust for revenge or out of hatred that Jews fight. We are not Nazis who do this because it feels good. I have never met one single Jew on the face of this Earth who told me they enjoyed what they were doing in Israel. The act of living in Israel is redemption in itself because of the enormous responsibility that comes from it.
These are things that must be spoken about to those Jews who are leading the charge against Israel. When a state comes of age and a generation that has known nothing but war passes, the question Why war? becomes asked. It almost seems normal for this to happen. It is going on right now in America. The sentiments that arise during this soul-searching is often offensive and certainly distasteful, but the discussion is nevertheless relevant and timely.
it’s not just a ‘finkelstein phenomenon’, it is a ‘liberal/lefty phenomenon’. that, due to a profound lack of torah education combined with leftist cultural/ethical relativism produces mentalities that simply cannot tell right from wrong. or right from left.
the talmud teaches us: those who are compassionate to the cruel end up being cruel to the compassionate.
what happens in america (and previously in ‘enlightened’ europe, is that jewish people without a proper understanding of torah take a deeply held belief in justice out in the world and distort it to work for our enemies.
sick, isn’t it?
but it happens all the time, while singing kumbaya or ‘give peace a chance’ with nutbags like finkelstein.
further, it energizes and informs the antisemites ’cause they get to say: “hey wait, we got plenty of [self-hating] jews with us who criticize israel”. and then these people stand up and holler. like one of the heads of the i.s.m. among others.
there is a deeper aspect to this jewish self-hatred that comes from centuries of brutal persecution. if one is not properly grounded in torah then one could be susceptible to the idea that: ‘gee, if they’ve been hating us for this long, maybe it’s our fault, maybe we upset them’.
this is a typical underlying mindset of many ‘liberal’ jews who think that if we are just nice and appease then the bad guys will leave us alone.
yasher koach to ms. glick for this piece. i hope it will be posted in ‘liberal’ jewish papers all over the place.
Here is a joke for you and your readers, I’ve just heard over the radio.
Q. What do you call a Liberal, single and with no children?
A. A Democrat.
Q. What do you call a Liberal, married and with two children?
A. A Republican.
Q. What do you call a Liberal, married and with four children?
A. A Fascist!
Netanyahu ,is he a leftist or a cad ?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/8641
Netanyahu serves his foreign gods first and foremost and will continue to implement their evil agenda.
His masters told him to form a Kadima,Labor,unity government while pushing aside the right wing Israeli parties and thats the first thing he tried to do.
His loyalty to his gods ,the U.S.,E.U,U.N. is above his loyalty to Israel.
He is a proven devious,lying evil politician who has already sold out his own people to please his masters.
Caroline,
I am proud to be a leftist.
The rights you take for granted as a woman were fought for and won by leftists. You chastise Muslim culture and society for fighting against the rights that were fought for and won by the left.
So, yes, I am proud to be a leftist.
In no way do I support “leftist” groups that fight against the freedoms you and I take for granted. I don’t support them because I am a proud leftist.
Stan
Do you acknowledge that it’s correct time to receive the loan, which can help you.