(BLOG) York University Suppresses Offensive Speech Only When Jews Are Speaking

"The Canadian university hosts the odious anti-Semite and pro-terrorist George Galloway, and moves to suppress the free speech rights of a Jewish rabbi for condemning him.

York University in Toronto, which has gained for itself the dubious distinction of being Canada’s epicenter of campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, is displaying once again the moral inversion that seems to have infected its student body and administration when the issues of the Middle East are discussed.



The issue at hand is a November 16th visit to the York campus by British MP George Galloway, as the invited guest of the York Federation of Students. In 2009, Mr. Galloway had been barred from entering Canada due to his public support of and donations to Hamas, a group designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department, Canada, and the EU, but a court has since overturned that decision and given Galloway access to Canada once again.

Not everyone was thrilled with the prospect of having Galloway, who, according to wry commentator Christopher Hitchens is '100 percent consistent in support for thugs and criminals,' arriving on the York campus to spew forth his rabid fulminations against Zionism, Israel, and the West. In particular, Toronto-based Rabbi Ahron Hoch took it upon himself to post an announcement on his Aish web site in which he urged readers to proactively protest Galloway’s appearance, and to take specific steps to inform the greater community about the noxious speaker, including emailing York’s president, calling the dean’s office to lodge a formal complaint, and participating in a rally to be held on the York campus.

Feeling that the Galloway visit was one more contribution to the cesspool of anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian activism that has punctuated the York campus for years now, Rabbi Hoch took York’s president, Mamdouh Shoukri, to task for allowing Galloway to speak 'under the pretext of freedom of speech,' even though it 'was never meant to be used as a vehicle to spread support for terror, murder and genocide.'

And more relevant to Rabbi Hoch was that York’s president had again failed to take a strong stand to rid his campus of anti-Israelism that frequently has morphed into anti-Semitism. 'Mr. Shoukri has again showed his amazing tolerance for anti-Semitism and lack of vigilance regarding the feeling of safety for Jewish students on campus,' Hoch wrote.

Rabbi Hoch did receive a response from the university, but not the one he had probably hoped for. In fact, what he received was a formal letter from Harriet Lewis, York’s general counsel, who ordered the rabbi, in no uncertain terms, to remove the announcement 'from [his] web site and to direct [his] supporters to cease and desist' any further distribution of the online poster. Why was the university demanding these steps? Because it believed that Hoch’s comment about President Shoukri was 'untrue, harmful to [him] and his reputation, and to that of the university.' More ominously, the university considered the rabbi’s words 'actionable,'( read: criminal), and expected 'a retraction and apology forthwith.'

The letter also warned Hoch that his request for individuals to come to the York campus to protest Galloway’s appearance 'might disturb and provoke others to disturb the peace' and 'that this too is actionable and may constitute criminal behavior.' (Emphasis added.)

In a morally coherent world, university administrators might be better able to distinguish between behavior by terrorist-coddling ideologues and the actions of those who wish to protect Jewish students from hatred, bias, and vilification as a result of their perceived support of Israel. But not at York, where, when someone stands up and asks why anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism have infected the York campus and have even recently widened into physical assaults and attacks on Jews, it is that individual who is condemned for saying what has not been said before: that the university’s failure to take a strong moral stand — when it sees obvious hatred and aggression towards Jewish students as part of an ostensible discussion about Israel — is a great moral lapse that no amount of talk about 'academic free speech' and the supposed right of people like Galloway to speak on campus can remedy.

Before threatening to take legal action against Rabbi Hoch for his possible criminal behavior of criticizing the moral judgment of York’s president and urging others to protest Galloway’s appearance, the university might well assess the character and odious moral behavior of Galloway himself.

In October 2009, for instance, in an action that seemed to give credence to notion that there was, and remains, a sinister and dangerous side to anti-Israel activism on college campuses, the U.S. Justice Department initiated an investigation into possible illegal fundraising on behalf of Hamas participated in by UC Irvine’s Muslim Student Union (MSU). Based on a formal complaint by the Zionist Organization of America, the investigation would look into allegations that Galloway had raised funds for the Viva Palestina project.

Galloway, who has referred to murderous thugs of Hamas 'as heroes [who] are opening the eyes of the world to the siege in the Strip,' and who elevates the Palestinian cause as a sacred mission against the tyranny of Western imperialism, had attended a May 2009 event on the Irvine campus sponsored by the university’s MSU, 'Israel: The Politics of Genocide,' and used the opportunity not only to condemn Israel for its many alleged transgressions, but also to raise money to assist its enemies in arming themselves to further their ambition of extirpating the Jewish state. His real intention, and the spurious purpose of Viva Palestina’s fundraising, was on full display in 2009, when Galloway presented a satchel of cash to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. 'This is not charity,' he said as he defiantly passed the money to Haniyeh at that meeting, 'this is politics.' What is more, he contended, he was fully intent on 'break[ing] the sanctions on the elected government of Palestine.'



Galloway’s type of rhetoric and ideology is not unknown by the York administration, where radicalized students had already revealed a rabid anti-Semitic leaning when, in February 2009, some 100 pro-Palestinian students initiated a near-riot. Police had to be called to usher Jewish students to safety after they had been barricaded inside the Hillel offices and were 'isolated and threatened' by the physically and verbally aggressive demonstrators.

Parroting the morally incoherent and factually defective exhortations of Israel-haters elsewhere, the York mob, which consisted of members of both the York Federation of Students and Students Against Israeli Apartheid, demonstrated once again that what is positioned as 'intellectual debate' on campuses about the Israeli/Palestinian issue has devolved into something that is not really a conversation at all. York’s supporters of the cult of Palestinianism apparently no longer felt even a bit uncomfortable voicing what is actually on their minds when the subject of Israel comes up: when the York Hillel students were trapped inside locked offices, surrounded by an increasingly violent and aggressive mob, the intellectual 'debate' that day included such invidious and raw slurs as 'die Jew ― get the hell off campus.'

That thuggery by pro-Palestinian Jew-haters had already become something of a tradition on the York campus. A year earlier, in April 2008, York’s Hillel had invited then-Knesset member Natan Sharansky to deliver an address. Not content with allowing anyone with a pro-Israel viewpoint to shares his or her views on campus, the Palestinian Students Association and Students Against Israeli Apartheid@York (SAIA) used the now common tactic of intellectual bullies on American and Canadian campuses: They jeered at and shouted down Sharansky, spoke loudly among themselves during his talk, and generally prevented anyone in the audience from listening to the content of the speech, but not before they had articulated their own vitriol with such comments as 'get off our campus, you genocidal racist' and 'you are bringing a second Holocaust upon yourselves.'

Even more disingenuous in York’s behavior toward Rabbi Hoch is their prior hypocrisy in suppressing pro-Israel events on campus at the same time they facilitated or were complicit in allowing hate-fests such as Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) held in March 2010 at York.

In the month prior to Israeli Apartheid Week events, a group called Imagine With Us had planned a series of lectures to counter the invidious content of the IAW activities. Imagine With Us, according to Michael Mostyn, national director of public affairs for B’nai Brith Canada, is a Jewish/Christian coalition that is a 'multi-faith, multi-political movement that is concerned with maintaining Canadian values and keeping our campuses safe from hatred, discrimination and radical incitement, particularly from those subscribing to radical Islam,' a mission that would seemingly be eagerly embraced by a university administration. But York leaders would have none of it, evidently pressured by Muslim students who were not interested in an alternative discussion about Israel and the Palestinians. The administration immediately took the outrageous step of requiring Imagine With Us to 'include a formidable police and campus security presence paid for by the organizers, a list of all attendees in advance, a minute-by-minute synopsis of all speakers talking points and a ban on public advertising of the event at York and on satellite campuses.' When the coalition could not, or chose not to, comply with the onerous regulations, York canceled the event.

But the reason given for the cancellation — that the event posed a potential risk necessitating costly additional security services — was specious at best, and revealed yet another danger for free expression on campuses as a result of accommodating the wishes of groups who wish to suppress the speech of others, the content of which they do not wish to hear or have heard. In fact, York admitted that the expensive mandated security detail was necessary, not because of the likelihood that participants in the Imagine With Us events would be unruly, but 'due to the participation of individuals who they claim invite the animus of anti-Israel campus agitators'; in other words, the mere potential threat of violence from pro-Palestinians, as a result of hearing speech that they did not agree with and could not abide, meant that York officials thought it appropriate and acceptable to expunge it before it could even be heard in the university’s much-vaunted 'marketplace of ideas.'

It apparently never occurred to the York administration that Jewish students and other supporters of Israel may also take offense during the repellent Israeli Apartheid Week, when libels, lies, and distortions about history and fact portray Israel as a racist and brutual rogue state among the community of nations, and Israel’s supporters, and Jewish students in particular are made to confront vilification, ridicule, and slander. It evidently does not bother the administration, either, when an intellectual charlatan like George Galloway comes to campus and proudly expresses his affinity for and admiration of terrorists whose sole purpose is the murder of Jews and the extirpation of the Jewish state." (source)



Related Article:

• Pro-Israel opponents of Galloway plan to attend Canadian talks in disguise

(BLOG) On The Bleeding Edge Of The West

"Israel isn’t the only country in the world where the East meets the West, but it’s the only place where you can walk from Western Civilization to the Arab world in just a few minutes. Much of East Jerusalem is Arab — Palestinian — and the southern parts of East Jerusalem don’t even look like they’re in Jerusalem. They’re what neighborhoods in Baghdad might look like after a decade of economic growth and good government.

Over the summer I could walk from my apartment in West Jerusalem’s German Colony to the Begin Center near the Old City in about twenty minutes, and from there see the security wall Israel built during the Second Intifada to keep out the suicide bombers. That wall is where the West ends, more or less, and it concentrates the minds of those who spend time in its proximity.

My colleague David Hazony and I recently discussed this, among other things, in a Jerusalem coffeeshop. He and I both write for the Commentary magazine blog Contentions, and he commissioned a story from me years ago about Iraqi Kurdistan when he was editor-in-chief at Azure magazine. (You can read a preview of it here, but the rest is behind a pay wall, alas.) Just a few weeks ago, his first book, The Ten Commandments: How Our Most Ancient Moral Text Can Renew Modern Life was published by Scribner." (h/t Elder Of Ziyon)

(ENVIRO) Has Israel Just Figured Out How To Make The Electric Car Worthwhile?

"Energy independence has been talked about so much for decades that many doubt it’ll happen in our lifetimes. But the world may soon see a dramatic change over the next few years — and that change is coming from Israel.

During my recent 10-day trip there, thanks to the Once in a Lifetime project by 24 Hebrew University students, I went to a facility run by Better Place — a company that seems to have worked all the kinks out of making electric cars free of gasoline a reality. The cars look like any other car, and drive smoothly and silently (you can see video of me test-driving one here). Once charged, either at your home or at a station, the car can drive 100 miles without needing another charge.



The new twist? Rather than wait for a recharge, you can go to a battery switching station that will install a new battery in less than two minutes. They charge up your old battery for another customer.

This recycling of the battery will significantly drop the price of the vehicle down to $20,000 or less, the company claims. Better Place is confident that they can make the electric car very affordable. Customers obviously won’t have to pay for gasoline, and maintenance will be cheaper. Plus, the vehicles employ a braking regeneration technology that will prolong the life of brakes.

The Israeli government has reduced the tax rate on electric cars down to ten percent — from 79 percent — to help get them on the road.

The system is ready. The staff answered every skeptical question posed to them by the audience, and they even had a pricing plan prepared. Customers will pay a monthly subscription to use the infrastructure based on how many miles they drive.

And this is coming very soon.

As you read this, Better Place is working to set up five to ten battery switching stations and thousands of charging stations around Israel for a test run this month. CEO Shai Agassi says that six months later, the cars will begin being sold, and they believe 100 switching stations will be set up and 1,000 electric cars will be added to the road per month. At least 92 Israeli companies have already agreed to convert some of their cars, and 17 local councils and municipalities have given the thumbs up to setting up charging stations. There are already 1,000 charging stations in Israel (and 100 in Copenhagen). Deals have been struck to build the switching stations in Australia, Canada, Japan, and Hawaii.

The significance of this cannot be overstated. According to War Footing, a book by Frank Gaffney and a team of national security experts, half of the cars in the U.S. are driven 20 miles per day or less. A 'plug-in with a twenty-mile range battery would reduce gasoline consumption by, on average, 85 percent,' they write. But we’re not talking about a twenty-mile range. We’re talking about a range of about 100 miles with the ability to switch batteries if you need to drive longer.

One of the questions raised has been about the stress this would put on the electrical grid. Better Place says they are going to make use of alternative energy sources like wind power. The company is setting up its own energy infrastructure to take care of this obstacle and says electric cars are three times more energy efficient. Even here, Israel is making breakthroughs. Another company called Innowattech has developed the technology to generate electricity from generators in roads. The company says that it will not require extensive infrastructure construction and that the installation of generators on one traffic lane for one kilometer produces 220 kilowatts of electricity per hour.



However, not everyone believes the hype about Better Place. David Booth opines that the transformation in Israel isn’t transferable to the U.S. because of the size difference. He says that the limited range of a single charge means there’d have to be about as many battery switching stations as there are gas stations at the moment.

He also argues that car manufacturers won’t submit to one battery design, undermining Better Place’s plan to use the same batteries for each customer.

Booth’s first point puzzles me. If Better Place is successful in one part of the U.S., it will expand its operations just like any other business would. An immediate nationwide overhaul is not required. If customers are happy, the necessary revenue and demand will exist. As for the range, Booth doesn’t seem to take into account that customers won’t have to rely only upon battery switching stations. The charging stations that are much less expensive will be built in parking lots and you can count on the technology to improve and make each charge last longer as time goes on.

A valid point exists about car manufacturers wanting to design their own batteries, but we have to remember that they are businesses, first and foremost. Unless they want to build their own battery switching stations, they’ll have to make them compatible with Better Place’s facilities. Customers simply won’t buy their cars if it’s too difficult to exchange their battery. No matter how the capitalist competition ultimately unfolds, the point is that electric cars will have become a reality and businesses will be competing to make them as cheap and efficient as they can for consumers.

This is one of the few issues that all Americans can support wholeheartedly. It is great for the environment and will stimulate the economy as less money flows outside of the country to hostile governments. There may be nothing else that will as significantly shift the balance of power in the West’s direction.

Virtually every country hostile to the West relies upon our oil dependency, and a steep drop in this dependency will set off a chain reaction in our favor. Chavez will find himself struggling to fund the Colombian FARC. Ninety percent of the Iranian government’s export revenue is from oil sales and they can’t afford to lose a penny of it, especially as domestic consumption rises. Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria will find themselves without the Iranian sponsorship they require. Radical Islamic groups around the world will see their wallets get thin as they can’t raise as much money from the Gulf. The mosques, Islamic centers, and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations springing up all over the place with Wahhabi financing will find their construction halted.

Israel may be about to deliver its most painful blow yet to its enemies since its creation in 1948 — without firing a single shot." (source)

(BLOG) One Muslim Nation’s Brave Support Of Israel

"In so many ways the world is a giant schoolyard playground. It possesses its bullies, jocks, popular cliques, and the nebbishes who hang around praying they will go unnoticed and avoid beatings by the bully contingency.

It is an unusual mix indeed. Deciding whom to befriend is one of the decisions one makes on that playground that will most greatly impact daily life — often, one’s entire future.

Many who possess weakness seek out the protection of the power brokers. This is also done regularly on the world stage. Rarely does one see the quiet kid show the guts to take on the biggest bullies.

I suppose this is why I have such enormous respect for the country of Azerbaijan, notably a secular and modern majority-Muslim nation."



(2 pages)

(BLOG) What Only The Jews Can Do About Anti-Semitism

"In a world filled with floods, mudslides, tornadoes, oil spills, small airplane crashes, non-stop wars, allegations of political corruption from Harlem to Kabul–Israel still remains front page news.

Today, according to Israeli Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the 'Turkish flotilla activists fired first.' The evidence (as seen on live action video, and based on the non-Israeli ammunition, cartridges, and bullets found on board) backs him up. While Israel investigates its right of self-defense, key American (not Turkish) congressmen are calling for an investigation of the Turkish charity that sponsored the Turkish freedom flotilla 'for its possible ties to terrorism,' specifically to Al-Qaeda."

(BLOG) Understanding Israel By Talking With Real Israelis

"The vast majority of foreign journalists who come to Israel to cover events are utterly clueless about this country, the conflict(s), the society and everything else when they arrive –and remain that way. They remain that way because they generally arrive and spend the majority of their time in Jerusalem, hanging out in the American Colony Hotel with other foreign journalists, getting most of their information and perspectives about what is going on here from one another and from a tiny handful of very unrepresentative sources. They don’t understand the history, they don’t understand the contexts, the complexities, and they certainly don’t understand the culture. So it is not surprising that the majority of what is written in the news about Israel is so far from reality as to be unrecognizable. Michael Totten is not your typical journalist.

Totten, who is vastly knowledgeable about Lebanon and other points in the Middle East, having not only spent considerable time in those places, but spent that time with the locals –lots of locals from lots of different areas and backgrounds, religions, and perspectives — is a guy I would call a real journalist. He does what journalists are supposed to do but generally don’t: learn about the history(s), the many different perspectives that exist in the tapestry of any country, and the culture and to do so not by getting that information from other journalists or other foreigners or those who live completely disconnected not only from the rest of the country but also from the hebrew-speakers in their own city, but from going out in the field and talking extensively with the locals…lots of locals and in lots of different parts of the country, and doing the same in the West Bank with our partners in conflict A. Further, he actually puts what he learns and newsworthy events into context –something that is utterly lacking in your average MSM report on the region. Totten deserves the title of Journalist.

Now, I’ll refer you over to an excellent interview he’s done that shows exactly why it is that Totten, unlike 99.9% of other foreign journalists, gets Israel and the events resulting from the conflicts here right. Enjoy!" (source)

Click Here for the interview