The hosting of PA official Mahmoud Al-Habbash. Blessed be the useful idiots?

...What Al-Habbash means by “religious tolerance” is that Islam’s enemies can be tolerated only after being subjugated or eliminated. And if the enemy is willing to cooperate with his own demise, blessed be the useful idiots.

Dr. Emmanuel Navon..
i24 News..
03 December '14..

Ben-Gurion University (BGU) has announced that it will be hosting Palestinian Authority (PA) official Mahmoud Al-Habbash to talk about “The religious aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the need for religious tolerance.” On paper, this sounds like a welcome event: with religious tensions spiraling in Israel, calling for tolerance is certainly the right thing to do. Except that asking Al-Habbash to talk about religious tolerance is like asking Al Capone to talk about tax compliance.

Al-Habbash is the “Supreme Shari’ah Judge of the Palestinian Authority” and “Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs” of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. On 22 October 2014, the PA-controlled newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported that Al-Habbash declared that, according to Islamic Shari’ah law, the “entire land of Palestine” is Islamic waqf and it is forbidden to make peace with Israel. On 5 November 2014, commenting on the Palestinian terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, Al-Habbash declared on PA television: “We kiss every forehead, every hand and even every foot that carries out ribat (i.e. religious war over land claimed to be Islamic) at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem... We are behind them. The leadership is with them... We are with them in every movement, in every action and every deed, and we welcome what they are doing at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Al-Habbash used the term "ribat" to describe the recent murder of Israelis by stabbing and hit-and-run car attacks. Referring to the recent Palestinian terrorist attacks, Al-Habbash said in his Nov. 5 TV interview: “A few days ago, President [Mahmoud Abbas] greeted them, reinforced them and requested more ribat from them. This statement may have angered the Israelis and the occupation, that the President is inciting the Palestinians from Jerusalem to [perform] ribat. Yes, we are inciting the people in Jerusalem to [perform] ribat. Ribat means to protect and to hold on to your ground.”

Neumann - Is Ben-Gurion PoliSci Department Biased?

Jonathan Neumann
Commentary/Contentions
03 January '12

A recent report by an international committee appointed by Israel’s Council for Higher Education recommended that the Politics and Government Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev be shut down, should it fail to address the shortcomings outlined. In particular, the department stands accused of allowing the faculty’s leftist political opinions and fondness for activism to affect the curriculum and undermine the quality of its academic research, a viewpoint apparently affirmed by students.

Faculty have responded that the committee is populated by extreme rightists and set out to hurt the department. However, in an op-ed for Haaretz entitled, ‘‘Yes, Shut it Down!’’ (perhaps unsurprisingly, it is only available in Hebrew) Ze’ev Maoz, a professor at UC Davis and the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center and a self-declared “proud man of the left” (credentials here), revealed he had been tasked with evaluating the department some nine years ago and came to the same conclusions, also based solely on academic considerations.

Rather than confront the findings of this report (and, it seems, the previous one), faculty have gone on the defensive. Meanwhile, Prof. David Newman, a founder of the department and now a dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion, has paid it little attention, instead engaging in a peripheral, if revealing, personal conflict with Prof. Efraim Karsh, of King’s College, London.

Im Tirtzu - An open letter to the president of Ben-Gurion University

Amit Barak
Im Tirtzu
JPost
05 December '11


http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=248244

Im Tirzu challenges Prof. Rivka Carmi to implement the CHE commitee's recommendations or resign.

Dear Professor Rivka Carmi,

In May 2010 Im Tirtzu submitted to the Knesset Education Committee its findings of severe political bias on a number of university campuses throughout Israel, particularly Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Following our appeal, the Knesset Education Committee asked the Council for Higher Education (CHE) to examine these allegations.

Thereafter, the CHE appointed a committee of international experts which evaluated our findings.

The international committee determined that the Department of Politics and Government is politically biased, does not meet the required standards of professionalism and fails to promote intellectual pluralism. The international committee, therefore, decided that if the department does not undergo extensive modifications, which include replacing lecturers, adding classes and amending class syllabi, the university would be required to shut it down.

With the publication of our study, we implored you to be attentive to this criticism.

We asked you to increase intellectual pluralism in the Department of Politics and Government, and we called you to improve the poor academic level resulting from the department’s policies.

Apparently, such policies are based on ideological affinities, rather than standards of academic excellence.

In addition, many university donors also reject the anti-Israel incitement that has become prevalent at the university. As a result of your incompetence, many donors have already decided to withdraw their contributions and others are considering doing the same.

We (and now, evidently, world-renowned scholars) demanding that you turn your attention toward the evident connection between the strong political bias in the Department of Politics and Government and its poor academic levels of achievement.

Israel’s Enemies Within

A worrying minority is undermining the Jewish state’s self-confidence.

Mona Charen
nationalreview.com
07 January '11

The late Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan coined a pithy test for whether a country is free or not. Take a look at the newspapers, he suggested: “If all the news is good, you’re not in a free country. If all the news is bad, you are.” A corollary to Moynihan’s test could apply today: If a nation is beset by concern about human-rights violations and injustice within its borders, it is a free country. If it concerns itself only with the supposed human-rights violations of other nations, it is not.

In this sense, Israel is just like the United States and other open societies. A free press and an independent judiciary, along with civic organizations, political activists, and professors, are watchful for any perceived deviation from the nation’s high standards.

But it is different for Israel. It alone among the world’s 195 nations is the target of a delegitimization campaign. This intellectual and moral assault is distinct from criticism of Israeli actions (which is always welcome in a free society). The delegitimization effort asserts not that Israel behaves badly, or that it should refrain from this or that activity, but that it has no right to exist at all and/or that the Jewish people do not exist. Long the position of the Arab states and the Palestinians, the denial of Israel’s essential legitimacy has spread over the course of the last decade to include a number of governments and non-governmental organizations, and, perhaps most significantly, a non-trivial number of writers and intellectuals.

(Read full "Israel’s Enemies Within")

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Trading Truth for Money

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
06 January '11

Yesterday (Jan. 5), the Knesset decided to establish a parliamentary committee to examine international sources of funding for Israeli organizations that “aid the de-legitimization of Israel through harming IDF soldiers.” While the decision enjoyed a wide support (41 in favor, 16 against), it turned into a heated spat between the Right and the Left.

The Knesset’s decision was adopted following revelations by organizations such as NGO Monitor and Im Tirtzu that many Israeli NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) testified against Israel in the Goldstone Report; that they are involved in the issuing of arrest warrants against Israeli politicians and IDF officers in Europe; and that some of those NGOs’ funding comes from foreign governments.

Those who oppose yesterday’s decision generally make two points: a. the organizations that stand accused deal with human rights and therefore only deserve praise and protection; b. their sources of funding are already public knowledge, so there is no need to double-check them.

Both claims are half-true.

(Read full "Trading Truth for Money")

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A Lesson in Politics : The Integrity of Ben Gurion Unversity is on the line

Israel Resource Review
05 January '11

By Kalman Liebskind, 
Senior Investigative Reporter
Maariv Daily Newspaper, Tel Aviv, Jan 4, 2011

Ben Gurion University is in stress. The recent reports published by
the “Im Tirtzu” student movement about the Post-Zionist political
control dominating important parts of the university have had their
effect and impact. They have managed to attach labels to the
university’s name in the world with which it is uncomfortable. In the
(leftist) media, in which “Im Tirtzu” was denounced as “censors,” the
university was enjoyed seeing itself defended by journalists. But it
turns out that “Im Tirtzu” managed to get out its message in dialogue
with the wider public, talking to them over the heads of the official
commentators on the TV news shows.

The vast majority of citizens, those who serve and whose children
serve in the Israel Defense Forces, have no affinity for faculty
members calling for worldwide boycotts of Israel, who denounce Israeli
soldiers, and who call on their own students to refuse to serve in the
army. An official statement issued last week by the country’s Council
on Higher Education (the public body that overseas Israeli
universities and colleges) was yet another slap in the face for large
swaths of Israeli academia. The Council proclaimed: “Situations must
be prevented where students or faculty members face rejection,
silencing, penalization or discrimination because of their personal
views or characteristics, including their political opinions.”
(Clearly the Council meant the harassment of non-leftists by leftist
faculty members - SP)

The donors to Ben Gurion University also saw the reports and started
asking questions. Many of these people, who live abroad and send
their generous contributions to the institution of higher learning
that bears the name of David Ben Gurion, had not been aware of the
atmosphere of political extremism that dominates large parts of the
university.

Israel fights the demagogues

Im Tirzu's success shows that after a generation of accepting the Left’s domination of the public discourse the public has had enough.


Caroline B. Glick
Our World/JPost
24 August '10

Israeli academia is in an uproar. And this is a good thing. Last week, the Zionist student movement Im Tirtzu opened a rather modest campaign against Ben- Gurion University’s Politics and Government Department.

And the howls of protest stretched from the Negev to the border with Lebanon.

Im Tirtzu is a grass-roots initiative of university students.

Over the past few years it has managed to amass a modest budget funded by Jewish and non-Jewish Zionists here and in the US.

One of Im Tirtzu’s central goals is to engender an atmosphere of academic freedom and intellectual pluralism on university campuses. Over the past generation or so, those campuses, and particularly the humanities and social sciences faculties, have become hotbeds of anti- Zionist activism and intellectual terror. Stories of professorial intimidation of and discrimination against Zionist students are widespread, as are instances of outright indoctrination in the classrooms.

As Ma’ariv’s Ben Dror Yemini reported this week, at Hebrew University’s law school, Prof. Yehuda Shenhav teaches a class called “Bureaucracy, Governance and Human Rights.” In the course of their studies, the students are expected to participate in the work of anti-Zionist organizations including Machsom Watch and Yesh Din. At the end of the year, the participants – who will be paid NIS 1,450 for their activism – are expected to write an article describing their experiences which will be turned into a booklet edited by Shenhav and anti-Zionist activists Michael Sfard and Yael Barda and published by their anti-Zionist NGOs.

The situation at Ben-Gurion University’s Politics and Government Department is particularly distressing. It is headed by Dr. Neve Gordon, an anti-Zionist activist who has written that Israel is a “proto-fascist state,” has castigated it as an “apartheid state” and has signed petitions calling for international academic, scientific, economic and cultural boycotts of the country.

(Read full article)

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Academic Terror - Not a safe environment

JoeSettler
The Muqata
22 August '10

(Excellent!)

Way back when I was in College, I went to a relatively non-politicized university, but it was always easy to tell who was politically right, and who was politically left. Those who kept their political views to themselves were presumably right, while those on the left made it openly clear what their views were, and often enough your grades were a reflection of how closely you toed their line.

I was young and naïve at the time, and didn’t understand how significant and dangerous this was.

With one professor, a few of us decided as a joke (and an experiment) to hand to hand in a series of essays that were very similar enough in content and subject. Some reports were accurate, factual and politically neutral, while others modified the facts and conclusions to match this professor’s worldview. You can guess which reports got the A’s, and which ones didn’t.

I had another professor that regularly started spouting leftwing political nonsense in class and essentially dared anyone to disagree with her. At the beginning of the semester I started to make the mistake of raising my hand to point out her errors in economics and politics when the looks of everyone around me made it clear that silence was going to be a virtue in this class.

There are those that espouse that professors can say what they want and it’s about Academic Freedom, and creating a safe intellectual environment.

But college campuses are not safe intellectual environments. If you dare disagree with a left-wing professor in your political science or history courses, your grades might well reflect that mistake (of disagreeing with them). That was true then, and is very true now, particularly in Israel.

This is academic terror. This stifles academic freedom and intellectual honesty.

(Read full post)

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Saddam-style freedom

Op-ed: Leftist professors’ concept of ‘freedom’ similar to Saddam Hussein’s vision


Omer Gertel
Israel Opinion/Ynet
18 August '10

Saddam Hussein won 100% of the vote in the elections held in Iraq in 2002. This accomplishment made him very happy, as it proved that popular support for him grew since the 1995 elections, where he only own 99.96% of the vote. Indeed, freedom and democracy were flourishing in Saddam’s Iraq, and every seven years citizens were offered the opportunity to vote any way they wished, as long as they elected the man with the moustache.

I would not be referring to Saddam had it not been for Dr. Nitza Berkovitch’s article, McCarthyism in Tel Aviv, where she bemoaned the assault on what she dubbed “academic freedom” and various elements’ desire to politicize academia. As I discovered, Dr. Berkovitch and myself apparently hold different definitions for the term “freedom”; however, to properly explain this, I must put Saddam Hussein aside for a moment and turn to Edward Said.

Every sociology student is familiar with Said’s name, and with his book, Orientalism. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with this work, I shall briefly sum it up: Said managed to blame the imperialist, wicked West for all the East’s maladies. Every problem in the “Orient,” according to Said, stems from the manner in which the West portrayed and treated Middle Eastern nations.

As result of Said’s immense influence, to this day we see Western intellectuals and almost every Middle Eastern citizen blaming the West for everything, while minimizing the influence of religious fundamentalism, totalitarianism, undeveloped education, technological backwardness, or discrimination against women and minorities.

(Read full article)

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The Nest of Vipers

The Bagelnosher Blog
23 June '10

BGU - Ben Gurion University of the Negev – suffered parallel snake problems this week. On two separate occasions, they had to deal with serpents in their midst.

One of the critters they had captured, bagged and hauled away. But when confronted with the other snake, this one they wanted to keep right where he was -- in front of the classroom.

The first serpent – a black three-foot long species native to Israel – surprised the staff when it was spotted lurking behind a desk at the nanotechnology building on the University’s main campus. Officials called Beersheba’s official snake catcher who responded to the scene. “The snake wasn’t a poisonous variety,” the snake removal man said afterward. “It appeared to have gotten into the building through an improperly secured air vent. The snake was aggressive, but I caught it and later released it in a remote place where it won’t do any harm.”

The second, equally aggressive, snake is far more dangerous. This one, known as Neve Gordon, walks upright on his own two feet, although he, too, lurks behind a desk at BGU where he’s spent almost a decade bombarding students with his anti-Israel, anti-Semitic tirades. This snake in the grass is treated far differently by BGU officials. Not only was Neve Gordon not bagged and hauled away -- instead, the President of BGU, Rivka Carmi, promoted him.

Again.

Up to now, Neve Gordon had been merely a “lecturer” but this week, he was promoted to “Assistant Professor.” For an undistinguished academic, whose writings tend toward hysterical anti-Israel propaganda, how did they justify it? Officials assembled a panel of far-leftist evaluators, who requested letters from other far-leftist anti-Israel radicals, and that did it. Like promotes like.

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Terra Incognita: The (ir)responsibility of the academy

Seth Frantzman
JPost
15 November 09

(Thoughtful with interesting points)

Recent debates surrounding politics at university have usually juxtaposed two different political viewpoints against one another. The Right argues that the academy is overflowing with extreme-leftist professors who work to undermine the existence of the state at home and abroad. The Left argues that its freedom of expression is being threatened by the Right and that its campaigns for "justice" or "human rights" are part of making the state more humane.

The Left believes that if a few of its extremist voices call for boycotts of their own universities then that might be "misplaced," but it is part and parcel of a democratic society. Perhaps both sides are right. The academy is at the forefront of anti-Israel intellectual extremism. It is also a bastion of freedom of expression in a free society.

But what both sides are missing is a third view of the academy, namely one that sees it as enshrining certain values, three of which should be responsibility, decency and maturity. The extreme-leftist antics of some faculty members should not be curtailed by laws or by dismissal from the academy. Instead there should be an inculcation of self-control.

Instead of crying "Nazi" every time the IDF does something an academic disagrees with, one could hold his tongue. Instead of requesting the boycott of one's own university, one could have some restraint. Instead of signing petitions encouraging soldiers to desert their units or calling on European powers to immediately intervene to "save" the Palestinians from a "genocide," one could show some self-control.

It is apparent that the central problem with too many of Israel's academics is that they are unsure of their place in society, they misunderstand their relevance and they are embittered and hysterical in their pronouncements to the point of having a childlike "crying wolf" mentality when discussing the conflict in the Middle East.

Consider a few examples. Prof. Ada Yonath, fresh after receiving a Nobel Prize, instead of saying a few words of praise for a society that gave her the opportunities to succeed and excel, immediately launched into a barrage of opinions about Gilad Schalit. She declared that Israel should release all its Palestinian prisoners and that holding them was the real source of all Palestinian attacks on Israel.
(Continue to full article)
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