Thursday, November 14, 2013

From the Mike report: Hezbollah and Israel haters at the University of Washington

Its a familiar tactic- a panel discussion where all the panelists agree "Its all Israel's fault"

From the Mike report, not surprisingly by Mike

I received the call in the late afternoon, “do you want to go to BDS 101 at The University of Washington tonight?”

BDS stands for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction of Israel and represents a radical movement bent on the destruction of the Jewish State. The D in BDS should stand for demographic destruction as the core demand of the BDS movement is the flooding of Israel with over five million hostile Arabs. Such an influx would mark the end of a Jewish majority in Israel and thus the end of Israel as a Jewish state. The Anti Defamation League, the American Jewish community’s central human rights and advocacy organization has identified BDS as an anti-Semitic movement .

The  BDS 101 program was held in a lecture hall filled with a mix of Muslim and Progressive students and a small handful of pro-Israel students and community members. The program  featured a four member panel anchored by Stefanie Fox of the anti-Israel group, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and included Cindy Corrie, mother of the infamous Rachel Corrie. Two co-ed hosts from the sponsoring group (SUPER-UW) opened the event by declaring their solidarity with all of the other righteous struggles on the planet “we condemn all injustice” they said.

Right.  

Mike notes that after the talk:

...a few pro-Israel members in the audience found themselves in an impromptu conversation with three  anti-Israel college students. The most engaging of these was a young man who had a kaffiyeh draped over his shoulders.

The young man told of being in Lebanon during the 2006 Lebanon-Hezbollah war against Israel. He shared of the horrible things he witnessed, things that no child should ever see.

When a pro-Israel woman sympathized but explained that Hezbollah was to blame for what he had suffered, he responded coolly with “I am Hezbollah”. As the discussion continued, the young man defended the bombing of pizza restaurants and buses “what do you expect them to do?” he said with a righteous dose of indignation.

As the woman, seemingly unfazed,  firmly challenged the young man point for point, he began to  back away from her and said “I feel threatened by you”. “You feel threatened by me?” responded the surprised mother of four to the young man a head taller than her. At that moment I recalled the scene from a comedy film of a few years back where the grossly anti-Semitic Borat was petrified in fear of a pleasant elderly Jewish couple with whom he was staying. But thus is the victim mentality.

The Hezbollah Husky politely listened as I tried to plant a few seeds of truth in his college addled brain. I reminded him that there are 22 Arab states, 49 Muslim states, 126 Christian majority states and one Jewish state. I shared with him the 2000 year old lesson of Jewish history, we die when our fate is left to others. I told him that this is why we will never give up our land and that his efforts in this regard are futile.

Read it all here

And thanks to the few, the brave and the intellectually stalwart that challenged the lies and demonization presented at this panel. When we fight back, we win.

3 comments:

Gary Fouse said...

That info about the Jewish Federation paper supporting JVP is devastating. The Fed down here in OC is not so blatant as that, but they are a big part of the problem. They have constantly obstructed our efforts to educate the public about anti-Semitism at UC IRvine.

I realize that Fed chapters are pretty autonomous, but do I detect a pattern here. The head of the Fed in OC is brother of one of the founders of J Street.

Dusty said...

In the Bay Area, JVP is considered beyond the pale- its not just their support of BDS, but also their willingness to stand and support those committed to the destruction of our homeland.

The various local federations need to issue similar guidelines.

Gary Fouse said...

There has been an effort in the last couple of years to get Jewish Federations around the country to support the Fogel letter named after the Fogel family massacred in a settlement. It states that they would not support any program aimed at harming Israel. This was in the aftermath of the Rachel Corrie show in San Francisco. To date, how many Fed chapters have signed? I am only aware of some chapter in Florida.