For Israel’s Cause (and Hasbara) it was a Famous Victory, even though the Man Who Carried the Day has been Banned for Life!

Daphne Anson
02 November '10

In July this year, The Times (London) obtained from Iranian dissidents 500 pages of harrowing documentation regarding the Ahmadinejad regime’s gross violations of human rights, including the routine practice of punishing political dissidents with torture and rape. One case, as The Times revealed in a rather graphic leading article last Friday (29 October), concerned a young woman called Leyla, who for the “crime” of falling in love with and becoming engaged to a young man who questioned the legality of the country’s election result, was kidnapped by stooges of the regime, handcuffed and blindfolded at knifepoint, beaten, and gang-raped by five men.

But rape is not only a terror device used by a repressive state against women: men are subjected to it as a form of humiliation as well. The male victims include a human rights activist who in reprisal for putting up opposition posters was raped by members of the Basij militia; a journalist who was similarly treated while in custody was re-arrested for having the temerity to report the brutality. Despite these terrifying incidents, and the recent sentencing to death of an Iranian widow by stoning, Iran is – grotesquely – posed to secure a seat on the board of a UN agency formed to promote women’s rights, while those two British “feminists” Lauren Booth and Yvonne Ridley continue to take Iran’s filthy lucre for pimping the regime on Press TV.

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Benny Morris: Banned at Cambridge University Out of Fear. Who’s Next?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
08 February '10

Jake Witzenfeld, president of Cambridge University's Israel Society, canceled a talk by Benny Morris, an Israeli scholar, 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....”

Mr. Witzenfeld should resign his position immediately since by leading a pro-Israel group he will no doubt be portrayed as all sorts of slanderous things and give offense to people. After all, the existence of Israel itself is “offensive” to many Muslims and others, which is not a reason for wiping it out, presumably. As Witzenfeld might know, pro-Israel groups have been banned on British campuses before and perhaps this is what he fears.

As for giving offense, his cowardice offends me, if that's his criterion for making decisions. Hopefully, someone less fearful can be found to head the society.

I have known Benny Morris for many years, including at a time when he was on the far left and we disagreed on just about everything, through the time that he has shifted position as a result of the trauma—felt by all Israelis—over the failure of the 1990s peace process. These experiences underlined the fact that certain more self-blaming and optimistic ideas about politics in Arabic-speaking and Muslim-majority societies didn’t work. Professor Morris adjusted to that reality, as did many other Israelis and others. Come to think of it, that was Israel's equivalent of September 11.

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Benny Morris talk stirs uproar at Cambridge

Jonny Paul
Jewish World/JPost
07 February '10

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.”

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