York University: Campus Anti-Zionism Seen Through the Eyes of a Syrian Refugee - By Aboud Dandachi

I was about to find out that Canadian students at a top school like York University could hold protests just as serious and menacing as those I had seen in the Middle East

Aboud Dandachi..
Tablet Magazine..
25 November '19..

A refugee from a war-torn country is used to seeing all parts of their homeland become a battleground. Streets. Apartments. Football fields. Even the historic Krak de Chaveliers castle near my native Homs in Syria was fought over by opposing sides in the Syrian civil war. After landing in Canada, however, I hadn’t expected my new country’s universities to be arenas for ideological mobs to shout down and denounce their opponents.

When I made my way up to York University this month on the evening of the 20th, I was blissfully unaware of the university’s status as a hotbed of “anti-Zionist” activism.” I had only arrived in Canada in two years ago through the Refugee Resettlement Program and, still eager to explore, was taking my first trip up to York. I planned to attend an event being held by Herut Canada, who were hosting five members of the Israeli NGO “Reservists on Duty” an organization of Israeli military veterans who travel the world and hold talks and events to “counter the BDS movement and new forms of anti-Semitism erupting on US college campuses.”

I was looking forward to meeting with the Israeli veterans. Such meetings were frowned upon back in Syria—as in, land one in jail kind of frowned upon. Canada was the one truly safe place I had ever lived where a Syrian might meet Israelis without suffering any consequences.

Poor, naïve me.

As I soon learned, York University in Toronto has for some time earned its reputation as a place that is hostile to people holding Zionist and pro-Israeli political standings. A mural currently exhibited at the York University Student Centre garnered headlines for its depiction of a Palestinian with his back turned, face covered in a kafiya, a map of “Palestine” completely erasing Israel, clutching two rocks behind his back while gazing at a construction site. One does not have to be Jewish or Israeli to consider it a menacing piece.

Such sentiments may not be unique to York. Earlier in the week at another of the city’s major academic institutions, the University of Toronto, an official in the Graduate Student Union rejected a request from Hillel to support bringing more kosher food onto the campus, on the grounds that it would be taken as pro-Israel and might run contrary to the “will of the membership,” who had voted to support the BDS movement against Israel.

Back at York, in October Lauren Isaacs, a student at the school and director of the Toronto chapter of Herut Canada, an organization that describes itself as “a Zionist movement dedicated to social justice, the unity of the Jewish people and the territorial integrity of the Land of Israel”, set up an exhibition at York with a sign saying “I’m a Zionist, ask me why.” The reaction from some students was pure, unadulterated rage. Lauren has described on her Facebook page how she was insulted, spat on, called a Zionist-Nazi.

When I arrived at the campus Wednesday night, York’s Vari Hall appeared like what I imagined any Canadian faculty building to look like, with students lounging about with their laptops and headsets. Someone was dancing quite expertly to the sounds of a stereo player.

I decided, with time to kill before listening to speakers that the Syrian Mukhabarat would have had my neck just for meeting, that I would explore the student cafeteria. My refined Middle Eastern palate was unimpressed by the offerings available to the unfortunate York students at the cafeteria, although I did find the diversity of the student body quite impressive.

That was the last moment I would have any positive feelings toward York University.

(Continue to Full Article)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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(Video) Crossing The Line (UK)

Jerusalem U..
26 May '15..

Crossing the Line: Exploring Israel on Campus examines the proliferation of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents on British university campuses. The documentary explores whether, and in what ways, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic lines are being blurred.



You can also watch the new 2015 North American version 'Crossing The Line 2' go to: http://bit.ly/CTL2_LP

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGtrvAv1Nr4

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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Anti-Israel Course, Campus Farce and Academic Standards at UC Riverside

...Although one can understand why the reporters chose not to write more about the Riverside story, the story is worthy of further consideration.

Jonathan Marks..
Commentary Magazine..
10 May '15..

Sunday’s New York Times has a story on the campus boycott Israel movement. Toward the end, it alludes to a controversy at the University of California, Riverside. I quote the passage in full:

The disputes often spill into the academic realm. Jewish groups are urging the University of California, Riverside, to shut down a student-taught seminar called “Palestinian Voices.” They argue that the course, which is sponsored by an outspoken faculty supporter of the B.D.S. campaign and includes sessions on “Settler-Colonialism and Apartheid,” amounts to indoctrination.

Although one can understand why the reporters chose not to write more about the Riverside story, the story is worthy of further consideration. First, the faculty “sponsor” is not merely an “outspoken faculty supporter of the B.D.S. campaign.” David Lloyd, an English professor is part of the “Organizing Collective” (really?) of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He may be just an English professor. But fortunately, the person he is sponsoring to teach the course is better qualified to teach an informative and rigorous course touching on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Oh wait. Tina Matar, who will be teaching the one credit course, is actually an undergraduate, also in the English department. She is also president of Riverside’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has spearheaded the campus boycott Israel movement nationally. Riverside has passed a divestment resolution, targeting companies alleged to profit from Israel’s activities in the West Bank. More recently, it has persuaded Riverside to stop using Sabra hummus in its dining halls. But let’s be fair. Even a fervent undergraduate partisan might somehow manage to teach a rigorous course, as worthy of one measly credit as others (undergraduate teaching is a thing at Riverside).

But uh oh. The syllabus is available online. Had the Times reporters looked at it, they would have noticed that the course does not just include “sessions” on settler colonialism and apartheid. In fact, Israel as a leading example of settler colonialism and apartheid is the very subject of the class. The course is called Palestine and Israel: Settler Colonialism and Apartheid. Yet what’s in a title?

Siding with the victims of aggression by Caroline Glick

...The rise and spread of anti-Semitism in elite circles in the US of course also threatens Israel. What can the government of Israel do to combat the rise of anti-Semitism in America? How can the object of the demonization defeat those who demonize it?....Israel cannot fight the this fight when government ministers participate in J Street conferences. It cannot defend its defenders when members of the government say that Israel is only legitimate if it works actively to cede its capital city to terrorist groups that seek its annihilation. The government’s response to this onslaught must be clear and uncompromising: The freedom of American Jewry to be Jewish, like the ability of the US to remain a liberal democracy is dependent on restoring the ability of Jewish Americans and American elites to distinguish between victims and aggressors and on their willingness to side with the victims.

Caroline Glick..
CarolineGlick.com..
08 May '15..

The notion that a rape victim deserved to be raped because she was wearing a tight outfit lights up all our red lights.

This is the case first and foremost because it absolves the rapist of responsibility for his crime.

We are also disgusted by attempts to blame the victim for her victimization because they are substantively false. If men are more likely to rape women in tight clothing then rape should be all but non-existent in traditional Islamic societies. Yet the opposite is the case. Rape and sexual abuse are endemic to such societies. According to the UN, a whopping 99.3 percent of Egyptian women report having suffered sexual abuse.

There is a third, more general reason that we recoil from the thought of blaming rape victims for their suffering. One of the foundations of liberal societies has always been that victims of aggression are not to blame for their attackers’ behavior.

Over the past few days, we have witnessed a dangerous erosion of this principle among American elites.

Last Sunday two Islamic terrorists armed with assault rifles tried to massacre participants at a Muhammed cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas.

The goal of the contest was self-evident. The organizers wished to defend the freedom of speech – and the right to life – of critics of Islamic totalitarianism.

Rather than standing with the contest’s organizers and participants, the US media from MSNBC to Fox News attacked Pamela Geller, the event’s main organizer and accused her of responsibility for the attack.

For its part, the White House has refused to condemn the attack.

The White House failed to condemn the terror attack, and the media continued their offensive against Geller even after ISIS claimed credit for the assault, promised to “slaughter” Geller and anyone who shelters her or gives her a microphone, and announced it has a formidable infrastructure across the US it will use to launch more attacks against Americans.

To a degree, the White House’s refusal to condemn the attack, like the media’s pile-on against Geller is understandable. Most Americans ascribe to the overarching notion of “Live and let live.” And it is a good thing they do. It is impossible to maintain a liberal society without a basic tolerance of differences between its members.

But there are groups that a liberal society cannot tolerate without ceasing to be liberal.

When a group says that society as a whole must constrain its freedoms so its members can feel comfortable, it crosses a boundary that cannot be crossed. So too, when a group demands that society choose between it and another group that is not issuing a similar ultimatum, it is crossing the line. In other words, any group that demands a limit on liberty and rights of others is harming the foundations of liberal society. If a society wishes to remain liberal, it must constrain such groups.

Champions of totalitarian Islam test the strength of liberal societies because they force them to choose. Distressingly, as we see with the refusal of the White House and media elites to recognize that like the rape victim with tight clothes, Geller isn’t responsible for the jihadists’ decision to kill her and the participants at her event, elite American society is failing this test.

Geller and her colleagues aren’t the only victims that America’s elites refuse to side with against aggressors. In recent years, on college campuses across America, university authorities have failed to distinguish between tolerant and intolerant groups and so have effectively sided with the intolerant against their victims.

The primary victims of this abdication of moral responsibility on the part of administrators have not been counter-jihad activists like Geller and her colleagues. The primary victims have been Jews.

(Video) Ayaan Hirsi Ali Speaks after Viewing "Crossing The Line 2"

In this video Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks at a recent screening of our film, Crossing the Line 2, a new documentary from Jerusalem U that reveals the rise of anti-Israel activity and anti-Semitic rhetoric on North American university campuses, and demonstrates when reasonable criticism of Israel ‘Crosses the Line’ into anti-Semitism.

Jerusalem U..
12 April '15..

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a human rights activist, champion of free speech, and best-selling author. Time Magazine has listed her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In this video she speaks at a recent screening of our film "Crossing The Line 2", and she talks about about anti-Semitism on college campuses and discusses how criticism of Israel is often fueled by hatred of Jews.



Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl41t5Fn2HI

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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