Ah, The Irony of It

Friend and comrade-in-pen Steve Plaut pointed out to me that in the liberal, progressive, leftwing fawning-Arab journal Counterpunch, Dr. Neve Gordon and Prof. Jeff Halper, two of Israel's Jewish most anti-regime policy oppositionists, denounced Israel for bombing terrorists holed up in an Islamofascist "university" in Gaza.

A portion of their drivel:

...the Islamic University was attacked, in part, because it is a cultural symbol of Hamas, the ruling party in the elected Palestinian government, which Israel has targeted in its continuing attacks in Gaza. Mysteriously, hardly any of the news coverage has emphasized the educational significance of the university, which far exceeds its cultural or political symbolism.

Established in 1978 by the founder of Hamas — with the approval of Israeli authorities — the Islamic University is the first and most important institution of higher education in Gaza...

and this part which accuses US academic institutions as being on par with...Hamas:-

...Israel has tried to justify the bombing. An army spokeswoman told The Chronicle that the targeted buildings were used as “a research and development center for Hamas weapons, including Qassam rockets. … One of the structures struck housed explosives laboratories that were an inseparable part of Hamas’s research-and-development program, as well as places that served as storage facilities for the organization. The development of these weapons took place under the auspices of senior lecturers who are activists in Hamas.”

Islamic University officials deny the Israeli allegations. Yet even if there is some merit in them, it is common knowledge that practically all major American and Israeli universities are engaged in research and development of military applications and receive money from the Pentagon and defense corporations. Weapon development and even manufacturing have, unfortunately, become major projects at universities worldwide — a fact that does not justify bombing them.

By launching an attack on Gaza, the Israeli government has once again chosen to adopt strategies of violence that are tragically akin to the ones deployed by Hamas — only the Israeli tactics are much more lethal.

And as Steve notes, their words appeared on the very same day that Gordon's own university, the Ben Gurion University, had to shut down because of rockets landing in Beer Sheba, and I add and which continue to land this morning.