In a perfect world, Israeli MK Haneen Zoabi would be held up as an example of Israel's pluralistic and democratic nature. An Arab woman, educated in Israeli universities and elected to the Kenneset is surely a testimony to Israel's vibrant pluralism and vigorous democracy.
We don't live in a perfect world.
Instead, Zoabi is crisscrossing the Bay area, spreading lies about the state she calls home, enabled by some of the most extremist groups in the Bay area.
A variety of vehemently anti-Israel groups have been sponsoring and promoting Zoabi's Bay area tour. "Jewish" Voice for Peace is a sponsor and has freely promoted this open supporter of Hamas.
Zoabi has appeared at the Ramallah Institute, at Stanford, at Berkeley City hall (invited by the equally extreme Cheryl Davila), at UC Berkeley and on KPFA, a local radio station.
Sue Fishkoff of the
J weekly interviewed Zoabi.
“I’m willing to meet with and talk with anyone,” she said. But they’d better know what they’re going to hear from her, she added. “Anyone who is not anti-Zionist, who perceives himself as a left-wing Zionist, must recognize their complicity in the tragedy of the Palestinians. You are either anti-Zionist and realize the colonialist dimension of Israel as a Jewish state, or you have to take responsibility for the oppression of the Palestinians.”
The “progressive Zionist left” is misguided at best, she said. The point is not to make things better for the Palestinians, she said, but to dissolve the state itself and replace it either with two states — one secular, one Palestinian — or, ideally, one binational secular state with self-determination for both Jews and Palestinians.
She has been criticized in recent years for stating that Jews are not a people, and therefore do not need a state, in contrast to Palestinians. Reiterating that view to J., she said Jews outside Israel have no claim on that land and never did. ..."
Zoabi's Bay Area visit would have gone unchallenged, if not for the brave students of UC Berkeley, who conducted a brief, dignified silent protest last night. Wearing shirts that declared "I am a Zionist" in Arabic, they held signs that exposed Zoabi's racist agenda in front of the auditorium, visibly flustering Hatem Bazian, the host of the evening.
Afterward they released this open letter to the Cal Chancellor, documenting Zoabi's lies, and the
University structure that gave her a platform.
From Tikvah, the Zionist voice on campus:
We will not be silent as our identities are slandered through an official, academic platform supported by the university, which provides lecturers like Hatem Bazian the opportunity to do this over, and over and over again....We now call on ChancellorChristand the UC Berkeley Administration to take a definitive stance against anti-Semitism and to take immediate administrative action against Hatem Bazian for promoting said anti-Semitism and hosting a radical, offensive and utterly dishonest speaker in an "academic event". If no action is taken immediately, we will have proof that our university does not care about academic , intellectual and moral dishonesty, and that it chooses to bury and forget the threats Jewish and Israeli students face on this campus.
We hope the Chancellor takes the right steps and finally acknowledges the deep rooted level and acceptance of anti-Semitism at UC Berkeley, and its never ending promotion by the same faculty member. We will not back down and will continue to vocally oppose the indoctrination happening under the guise of academia, today and every day.
