Throw Out 'Left-Right'; Let The Patient Die

Haaretz hosted a piece by one of the regular guest columnists, Dr. Lev Grinberg, a political analyst and senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University in sociology and currently at Berkley, which I haven't seen in translation yet, if ever He has been a troublemaker for sometime and more.

Here is a section in the Hebrew:

את המחנות הפוליטיים החדשים צריך להקים לא על פי ההנגדה השבטית של "שמאל-ימין", של תומכי השלום מול מתנגדיו. השדה הפוליטי היום צריך להיות מוגדר כמאבק בין תומכי הדמוקרטיה למתנגדיה. יש בו מקום לוויכוחים בתוך המחנה וייתכנו כמה מפלגות.

Which should be:

The new political camps that need be set up should not be done in the model of tribal "left - right" opposition, of the supporters of peace vs. its opponents. Today the political field should be defined as a struggle between the supporters of democracy and its opponents. There is room for debate within the camp and there could be several parties.

That comes on the background of his antithesis to the Israeli Left which he views so:

בהקשר המקומי "השמאל" הוא חוד החנית של ההתיישבות, המתבססת על גזל הקרקעות הפלסטיניות, הוא אחראי למיסוד הכיבוש ולעידוד ההתנחלות. בדרך נרמסה הדמוקרטיה והתמסדה "דמוקרטיה כובשת", מודל קולוניאלי מקורי תוצרת הארץ.

In the local context, "Left" is the cutting edge of settlement that is based on theft of Palestinian land, is responsible for formalizing the occupation and the encouragement of settlement. On the way, democracy has been trodden under and "occupying democracy", an original colonial model made-​​in-Israel, has been institutionalized.

He speaks of:

ושני עקרונות יסוד של הדמוקרטיה: ריבונות המדינה והשוויון בין האזרחים. כך נוסד משטר הפריווילגיות המכונה מדינה יהודית ודמוקרטית. "השמאל" הוא זה שהפלה, ניצל והשפיל את היהודים שעלו מארצות ערב בשל נחיתותם התרבותית "הערבית". "השמאל" המודרני המערבי מתנשא כלפי כל מה שנתפש בעיניו כפרימיטיבי, כלומר, לא מודרני "כמונו": הדת והאיסלאם, המזרחים, הערבים והחרדים.

...two fundamental principles of democracy: state sovereignty and equality among citizens. Thus was established a regime of privileges known as a Jewish and democratic state. "Left" is what discriminated, exploited and humiliated the Jews who emigrated from Arab countries because of their "Arab" cultural inferiority. The modern Western "Left" holds itself superior to everything perceived as primitive, i.e., not modern "like us": religion and Islam, Orientals, Arabs and Haredim.

His solution?

צריך לתת לחולה הזה למות.

We but need let this patient die.

and

לא צריך לא "שמאל" ולא "ימין", מושגים המטשטשים את כל הוויכוחים הענייניים על כלכלה, על חברה, על תרבות, על זכויות אזרח ועל הפרדת דת ממדינה.

We need neither "left" nor "right", concepts which blur the core arguments about economics, society, culture, civil rights and the separation of religion from the state.

Have you a child or relative or friend at Ben-Gurion U. or Berkley who may have this person as a lecturer?

^

On David Newman - Academic

I recall David Newman as a member of Bnei Akiva in London in the mid-1970s and then later when his book on Gush Emunim came out as well as his father, a fervent member of Rabbis for Human Rights.

I cannot fathom the fanaticism of some on the Left who manage to illustrate the recklessness of maintaining political belief - and in Newman's case, with mobilizing and campaigning - with facts that negate his beliefs.

Efraim Karsh has destroyed him and here's an excerpt:

...[he] penned an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post in which he compared Israel's present political culture to that of Nazi Germany. "I will no doubt be strongly criticized for compared making such a comparison," he wrote...There is no moral equivalence whatever between the Nazi persecution, exclusion, segregation, and eventually industrial slaughter of European Jewry, and Israel's treatment of its Arab population...

...Even more mind-boggling is Newman's equating Israel's attempt to prevent foreign funding of Israeli nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the international Israel de-legitimization campaign -- along the lines of the US Foreign Agents Legislation Act -- with repressing political opponents by the Nazi regime.

What "human rights activists" have been unlawfully detained by the Israeli government, let alone rounded up and thrown into concentration camps? On what planet does the Ben-Gurion University faculty dean live?

But Newman is not someone to be bothered by the facts. His is the standard "colonialist paradigm" prevalent among Israeli and Western academics, which views Zionism, and by extension the state of Israel, not as a legitimate expression of national self-determination but as "a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement" (in the words of another BGU professor) - an offshoot of European imperialism at its most rapacious...[he] views Israel as a present-day reincarnation of Nazi Germany in several key respects...

Further reading:

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

^

Guest Post by Steve Plaut on Israeli Academic Freedom

There has been so much debate on the list and in the media these past few weeks about “academic freedom” that I thought it would prudent and constructive to describe the current politically correct ideas about academic freedom being held and proliferated by the radical academic Left:

1. There is only one correct point of view, that of the radical Left, and - being correct – this is what should be taught to students in as many courses and university departments as possible. It is the main function of universities to operate as centers for the proliferation of radical leftist ideology and for indoctrination into progressive thought.

2. Being correct, there is no reason for any courses to provide students with any point of view other than that correct one. Students should express correct ideas if they expect to pass the course.

3. Faculty members who express opinions that some students might find offensive, such as the recent incident at Ben Gurion University involving discussion of homosexual couples raising children, must be prohibited and suppressed. Ditto for those who dare to criticize the New Israel fund; that criticism makes some people feel offended and sad. We must eliminate statements from university discourse that insult any students, which is why we are also determined to label all the students from Im Tirtzu as violent fascists and Nazis.

4. Faculty members who express opinions that some students might find offensive should be fired, but we see nothing wrong with radical anti-Israel faculty members using their classrooms to lecture students on why IDF soldiers resemble Nazis, why terrorist attacks against Israel are morally just, why Israel should be destroyed, why Jews are morally inferior.

5. Academic freedom means that anti-Israel radical faculty have the right to denounce and demonize Israel and call it foul names, but it never means that anyone has the right to criticize radical anti-Israel faculty members or accuse them of disloyalty.

6. Criticism of radical anti-Israel faculty members is “McCarthyism” and must be suppressed at all costs, at all times. It is also incitement. Where there is any doubt, always insist that all expression of opinion by anyone who disagrees with the Left is incitement.

7. There are some who claim that the real test of commitment to freedom of speech is where one defends the rights of those with whom one disagrees to express their opinions. But we know this is nonsense. That is why we politically-correct defenders of academic freedom oppose freedom of expression for Im Tirtzu students. It is also why we NEVER criticize anti-democratic suppression of the freedom of speech of people from the radical Right. For example, none of us have anything to say about the banning of the Kahanists and the prohibition of exercise of freedom of speech for them. None of us opposed the silencing of the Arutz 7 radio station (but we had no problem with Abie Natan's Peace Radio Ship). It is also why we have never had any problem with the countless indictments of Rightists, including rightist rabbis, for “incitement” when they exercise THEIR freedom of speech.

8. None of us ever had anything to say about the attempt by the Attorney General’s office to suppress academic freedom of speech when they subjected David Bukay to a political Inquisition. None of us had any problem with Yuli Tamir firing a school teacher for expressing an opinion against indoctrination in the schools into Rabin’s political ideas.

9. Because there is only one correct view, and it is a radical leftist anti-Israel view, those adhering to this view must be hired and promoted even if they have no academic publication records at all or only very thin ones. It is how we show our solidarity and struggle for peace.

10. Leftist anti-Israel radical faculty members are entitled to unlimited freedom of speech, but donors to Israeli universities, elected politicians, students, and non-leftist faculty members are clearly not. They have no cause to interfere in university matters that do not concern them. It goes without saying that Alan Dershowitz should be prevented from expressing HIS opinions about Israeli academia.

11. Israeli taxpayers are not entitled to any accountability or say in Israeli universities. It is their job just to pony up the funds that keep the radical anti-Israel faculty members in their cushy jobs, where the latter can advocate attacks against, harm to, and boycotts of those very same taxpaying citizens, without interference. Taxpayers who express reluctance to finance academic sedition are anti-democratic, unhygienic, and troglodytes.

12. Other counties regard patently-absurd statements and claims, such as the world being flat, or the Holocaust never happened, or the Jews have never been a people, or that modern Jews are all converted Khazars, or that anti-Semitic terrorist violence is just - as sufficient grounds for establishing that someone does not belong in a university. Such people sometimes get fired from universities in democratic countries, including the United States. But such common sense must not be applied in Israel.

13. Other countries have jailed academic traitors in times of war. No one was permitted to march on British university campuses under Churchill with swastikas, and Oswald Mosley and his people spent the war in prison. That is no reason however to ban rallies in support of the Hamas and Hezballah on Israeli campuses today. Such rallies are academic freedom. The real threat to academic freedom is when Im Tirtzu organizes rallies AGAINST those rallies.

14. Students who dare to disagree with the correct ideas of radical anti-Israel faculty members should have their grades lowered.

15. Students who go to prison because they refuse to serve in the IDF deserve university backing and support, but those who go to reserves do not and should be barred from entering classrooms in uniform.

16. Calling for world boycotts of Israel is academic freedom. Denouncing such callers as traitors is McCarthyism.

17. Support for freedom of speech means never denouncing leftist neo-fascists who attempt to suppress the freedom of speech of non-leftists using SLAPP harassment law suits. SLAPP suits by leftists are simply defending democracy.

18. Academic diversity means having Ashkenazim, Mizrachim, women and Arabs in the same department all expressing the same correct leftist anti-Israel ideas. It never means including non-leftists in an academic department to achieve diversity by expressing dissident non-leftist ideas.

19. There is no reason for students to be exposed to any ideas other than those of the radical anti-Israel Left, including in course readings and lectures. There is no reason for leftist faculty members to balance their own biases in class by mentioning the views of those who disagree with them.

20. Radical Leftists should be free to call everyone else nasty names, because they are so moral, but no one should be permitted to call radical leftists nasty names.

21. Faculty chat lists should be censored so that leftists may freely insult non-leftists, but where no one should be allowed to answer them in kind.

22. Whenever a radical leftist is presented with documentation of facts that contradict the leftist's theology, the leftist must insist that no facts have been presented at all.

23. No scientific sources that presents facts contradicting leftist theology are admissable. They must be dismissed as being "right-wing."

24. Always support proposals that make real problems of the world worse just as long as advocating them can make you feel caring and righteous. Start with the release of jailed terrorists and with raising the minimum wage.

25. Always insist that there is no such thing as any traitor to be found on the Far Left. Deny that Noam Chomsky has ties to Holocaust Deniers and Hezbollah terrorism. Ditto for other radical anti-Israel extremists. Insist that Chomsky must be allowed to enter Israel, but at the same time endorse the efforts of the academic radicals in Israel to get IDF officers and Israeli politicians indicted for “war crimes” in Europe.

26. The only permissible set of policies that may be advocated for Israel is for limitless capitulation to the demands of Arab terrorists and Islamofascists. Never use the term Islamofascism, by the way. If peace has not been achieved, always insist that it is because Israel has not capitulated enough.

27. Churning out anti-Israel hate propaganda must always be counted as scholastic achievement and research.

28. Watchdog groups like Isracampus at www.isracampus.org.il or NGO Monitor must be suppressed in the name of defending democracy and freedom of speech. They should not be entitled to exercise THEIR freedom of speech.

29. Critical thinking must never involve criticism of the radical Left.

30. Always insist that the only REAL terrorism is when Israel defends itself.

Academic Bias In Israel - How It Is Done

From an op-ed by Amnon Rubinstein:-

...There are many spheres in society in which the integration of Sephardi Jews is remarkable. In politics, business, the arts, the army - all unparalleled in European societies.

BUT ONLY the blind will fail to notice the unpleasant facts. Thus, in recent research, a social scientist found that of the universities' tenured staff, the share of Sephardi Jews was 8.9 percent and at Tel Aviv University less than 8%. It should be assumed that among full professors, the rate is even lower. Can we explain this scandalously
low figure by objective criteria?

...I do not think this is due to outright discrimination, but rather to the fact that Israeli academics, especially in the politicized social sciences, tend to replicate themselves. Indeed, some university departments look as if the academic staff is made up of academic clones, sharing a similar curriculum vitae and identical political and ideological views. Anyone who is familiar with the groves of academe will immediately identify this mold, which excludes not only non-Ashkenazi candidates but also anyone who does not fit...


- - -

On Which Side of the 'Green Line' Does He live?

Here's a Detail Report on one Rassem Khamaisi:


Postion: • Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Palestine (Occupied Territories)
• Senior Researcher and Planner, The International Peace and Cooperation Center (IPCC), East Jerusalem, Palestine
• Senior Fellow, Director and Editor, Project for the publication of The Arab Society Yearbook – III, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Palestine (Occupied Territories)
Nationality: Palestine

Country of residence outside the Arab region: Palestine (Occupied Territories)

Address: Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa
Mount Carmel Campus,
Haifa 31905,
Palestine (Occupied Territories)
Work Tel: 8240389 4 داخلي 2039
E-mail: rassem@013.net

rassem@barak-online.net

Geographical Coverage: Palestine, Palestine (Occupied Territories)
Fields of Application: Geography
Areas of Specialization: Urbanization, Urban Development/Cities, Internal Migration and Population Distribution, Ethnic Groups/Minorities
Area of Expertise: Teaching (Academic), Elaboration of Policies and Strategies
Research Studies


I was wondering - exactly on which side of the 'Green Line' does he reside or is all of Israel something called "Palestine" and the "occupied territory" is actually all of Israel?

He is, after all, a specialist in geography.

Or maybe just a propagandist?


- - -

(Kippah tip: Academic Monitor)

Seems To Disappoint

As I blogged in September, I was waiting for a new book to come out.

It has.

The Amazon blurb reads:

Israeli academics Pedahzur (The Israeli Secret Service and the Struggle Against Terrorism) and Perliger (Middle East Terrorism) point out that Muslim extremists don't hold a monopoly on terrorism: Israel has seen hundreds of attacks by Jewish terrorists — most directed against Palestinians, but some against the state itself.
[Jewish "terrorists" is misleading. There was the communal violence of the 1930s when Arab gangs, like today, indiscriminately attacked Jews, mainly civilians, as there was no Jewish army, and Jews, from the Hagana and Irgun responded in form, and for a short period between December 1947 - May 1948. The current terrorism is much different and you can't lump them together.]

The authors present a carefully constructed theoretical model, positing that radicalization within a specific counterculture, fostered by a threatening external event and portrayed by spiritual leaders as catastrophic precipitate violence — not just by Jewish extremists but any counterculture that adheres to a totalistic ideology. [that's so brilliant - being sarcastic there]

Indeed, the authors see clear parallels between Jewish terrorist cells and their Muslim counterparts, [what?] and stress that mere faith isn't enough to create violent intent (they note that religious terrorist groups...made up less than 15 percent of all terrorist groups active in the 20th century). Pedahzur and Perliger occasionally slip into academese and assume a close knowledge of Israeli political minutiae, but in combining exhaustive analysis with straight-forward language and compelling nonfiction narrative, they provide excellent insight into a little reported and even lesser understood reality.

Statistical Bias - Continuing With the Tel Aviv University Left-wing Bias

Here's a response from today, following up on the story about Tel Aviv University and its left-wing slant:

"We've been dealt a stupid blow with no justification," a senior TAU professor said yesterday.

He said Hativa's comments were "not based on a statistical analysis of an explicit question put to all the students, right- and left-wing. They were based on complaints written by those who want to complain. It's a statistical bias, and it's impossible to know how representative it is."

Another lecturer said, "The definition of left-wing is very broad. Until specific statements or situations are examined, these are nothing but generalizations that right-wing people would gladly use to attack academia."

I can fully understand he being upset as well as his research insight.

But how is it that the academics opposed to certain government policies get all the publicity, most of the grants, get invited to all the academic conferences, and are nigh worshiped across the globe but right-wing or nationalist academics are shunned, boycotted, despised?

Is that a statistical bias?

Oh My Gosh, Finally Discovered: The Truth About Academic Freedom

Recently, Prof. Itzhak Galnoor had published "Academic Freedom Under Political Duress: Israel" in Social Research: An International Quarterly, Issue: Volume 76, Number 2 / Summer 2009, Pages: 541 - 560

The Abstract:

Political duress within the academic community is a strong sense that there is a threat of external interference with core academic values and freedoms - free inquiry, free speech institutional autonomy and personal safety. After a short introduction to the background of Israeli higher education, this article focuses on two current threats: first, political intimidation originating from extreme nationalistic and religious groups aimed at silencing "nonloyal" voices inside and outside the Universities (for example, the pipe bomb that exploded on September 25, 2008, at the gate of Professor Ze'ev Sternhel's house, wounding him slightly, or the threats on the Israel-Academia-Monitor.com web site); second, a process of "commodification" - political and administrative pressures and the enforcement of a "management" and privatization policies (for example, budget cuts forcing internal institutional changes, shifts of resources, and competition).

These steps have been accompanied by antiintellectualism under the slogan of the "democratization of higher education." Academic freedom is under duress in Israel because of the combination of these two attitudes and policies aimed at "taming" higher education.

I commented on it here.

Well, now look what has popped up:

University memo claims students fear payback over right-wing views

Tel Aviv University students are hesitant to express their political views in class, lest lecturers perceived to have left-wing political views penalize them with lower grades, the head of TAU's Department of Curriculum and Instruction wrote in an internal memorandum last month. Prof. Nira Hativa's comment in the faculty memo ignited controversy among professors, with some declaring that her sentiments should not be made public.

Hativa wrote: "There are no small number of students of lecturers with left-wing views who complain bitterly that they are extremely offended by the presentation of materials that oppose their views, but are fearful of expressing contrary viewpoints in class, lest it harm their grades."

...The chair of the university's students' union, Shahar Botzer, said his organization receives a number of complaints each year from students dissatisfied with what they view as lecturers' biased portrayal of material in favor of left-wing positions. He said that such complaints are the exception

...Hativa wrote on October 23. "I have come across many complaints from students about a small number of lecturers in various fields, who express radical left-wing opinions in their classes - that they are lashing out at the State of Israel, the army, the Zionist movement and worse."

Academic freedom, did you declare?


P.S.

Seems there was a conference on ths subject - "Free Inquiry at Risk: Universities in Dangerous Times" - and there, I found this:

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30th, 2008

2:15 pm - 5:00 pm
Session II - Free Inquiry under Conditions of Duress

Some Past History: Past Threats to the Core Values of the University: Europe and the US
Ellen W. Schrecker, Professor of American History, Yeshiva University; Stern College for Women

Academic Freedom under Political Duress: Israel and Palestine
Itzhak Galnoor, Herbert Samuel Professor of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Deputy Chair, Israel’s Council on Higher Education; Associate, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
and
Khalil Shikaki, Director, Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research; Associate Professor of Political Science, Bir Zeit University

I'm All for Academic Freedom But...

At $160, this book, "Gender in Transnationalism: Home, Longing and Belonging Among Moroccan Migrant Women" by Ruba Salih, must be either heavy (but it weighs in at 208 pgs) or printed in some ornate publishing fashion.

The book, according to the blurb, "highlights women's construction of 'home' between Morocco and Italy as a significant site whereby broader feelings and narratives of displacement and belonging can be grasped. Salih investigates what Moroccan women's relations with their adopted country are and how their identities, conceptualisations of home and cultural practices are shaped by the transnational dimension of their lives. This interdisciplinary book provides a gendered account of transnational migration, in the context of changing configurations in both the social sciences and people's lives, of notions of locality, identity, difference and citizenship, and by focusing on the 'lived experience' of Moroccan migrant women's transnationalism between Morocco and Italy. It will interest students and researchers of transnationalism, migration and gender."

Back in May, Ruba gave a talk on how Muslim women in Europe challenge a nationally and culturally bounded conception of citizenship and of the public sphere. Amazingly, she asserts that "Gender lies at the heart of the frictions occurring as a result of contemporary transnational challenges. Muslim women’s bodies are becoming a sort of public space itself where different agendas and rhetoric of modernity, secularism and performances of loyalty are inscribed." Well, since women are women and that is gender, I don't see the shock value of that but, you know academia today.

Ruba Saliha holds a PhD from the University of Sussex and defines her private sphere as being a social anthropologist. She teaches at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the university of Exeter.

Here she is:




In reviewing Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh's "Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel", she notes:

Kanaaneh shows the context in which reproductive practices and discourses have become significant markers of identity and otherness in the context of the Galilee and beyond. Like many other colonized people, Palestinians have internalized, almost in Fanon’s terms, the Israeli dominant representations that, through the modernization rhetoric and language, tends to depict them as pre-modern, or even anti-modern, irrational reproducers of large families. For many Palestinians, reproductive strategies and choices, thus, have come to be a major terrain against which to assess the modernity of people, or alternatively their authenticity and resistance to colonial, dominant discourse. These kinds of representations, however, are not simply imposed, but interact with deep-rooted Palestinian social constructions which, for example, tend to oppose the traditionalism of “Beduins” and villagers (fellahin) to the modernity of city dwellers (madaniin).

and she observes further:

the book could have reached an even greater value by discussing further how Palestinians in the Galilee are producing alternative conceptions of modernity that disrupt and contest the binary categorization of the Israeli state. Although Kanaaneh does underline that this dualistic attitude does not account for the whole picture, in that many people are indeed able to escape the dichotomous reductive framework imposed by the Israeli modernist dominant discourse, the reader would have liked to know more about these alternative ways of life and how they are conveyed in alternative narratives, for example, by highlighting how “modernity” comes to be indigenized by Palestinians living in the Galilee.

The key theme of Ruba is that:

Central in the Zionist project was indeed the de-arabisation and consequent Judaization of Palestine. Along with the entire eradication of Palestinian villages, the Israeli state has carried out this project throughout the years by means of a powerful immigration policy and other instruments, such as the political use of census, family planning and the development of a powerful and pervasive modernization narrative which constructed reproduction as a field whereby to assess the modern or rather backward character of a people.

And the reason I went into this detail is that Ruba was the main speaker at a conference at Ben-Gurion University this past week and spoke on "Diaspora, Transnational Migration and 'Returns': Rethinking Palestinian Refugeehood".

Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for academic discussions including all sorts of subjects and opinions. And I think it fit and proper that Israeli universities should be studying and researching similar topics as those at that conference.

However, three things:

a. why don't Arab institutions of higher learning do the same?

b. why do Israeli universities always invite the most anti academics possible?

c. why are the panels so unbalanced? One responder to Ruba was Oren Yiftahel, one of the most post-Zionist lecturers around and the other was Sapa Abu-Rabiya.

I Await A Similar Statement From Israeli and Jewish Academics

Anthony Blunt, the "Fourth Man", recalling his recruitment as a spy for the Soviets:

Describing his recruitment to the NKVD, a predecessor of the KGB, when Blunt was a tutor and Burgess was a student at Trinity College in 1935 and 1936, Blunt said in the memoir that Cambridge at the time was rife with Marxist sympathizers. “Faced with the advent to power of Hitler and later by the Spanish Civil War,” he said, he realized that “the ivory tower no longer provided adequate refuge.”

He describes coming under intense pressure from Burgess — depicted in histories of the period as a heavy-drinking, show-stealing egoist but in the memoir as “an extraordinarily persuasive person” — to join him in working for Soviet intelligence. “The atmosphere in Cambridge was so intense, the enthusiasm for any anti-fascist activity was so great, that I made the biggest mistake of my life,” he wrote.

and

...the absence of any apology to those who suffered as a result of his actions, including secret agents working for Britain whose identities he passed to the Russians during World War II, contributed to harsh criticism of the document on Thursday from British historians and commentators...Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge historian specializing in intelligence matters, said the memoir reflected Blunt’s unwillingness to acknowledge the evil he had served in spying for Stalin. “The thing that he could never come to terms with afterwards was that, actually, he had entered the service of one of the most wicked men in Europe’s history,” Dr. Andrew told the BBC. “He simply describes it as a ‘mistake.’ ”

The "Erotics of the Occupation"?

Well, our Leftists have finally come up with a new angle, or should that be curve?

Following Steven Plaut's expose on the MA thesis at Hebrew U. in December 2007 of a graduate student who claims that Israel is abusing and oppressing Palestinians by not raping their women, we now have this essay, "The Erotics of the Occupation", which was originally published in Hebrew as a series of articles in Ma’arav Hebrew. It has been translated by Hilla Dayan and I received it via Israel Academia Monitor on whose board I sit.

It's underlying theme?

the Israeli occupation is all about the body: sweat, heavy breathing, desire

National security is obsessed with inspecting, identifying, examining, searching and stripping the body

the Israeli Passages Administration has found a new sex toy that will help it stimulate the erotics of the occupation

Somehow, I think Leftists are too concerned with sex (or should that be too unconcerned?). Instead of making jokes, they take it much too seriously.

The Erotics of the Occupation

Jun 9th, 2009 | By Yael Berda |

Excerpts:

The perverse relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is a depressing B movie that the entire world daily watches...Despite the attraction to the action, not many realize that the Israeli occupation is all about the body: sweat, heavy breathing, desire. There are several principles to the erotics of the occupation, such as stripping and searching.

The Israeli authorities look for war in your handbag. They ask for your identification papers. They strip and search you with a metal detector, and put you through a screening machine...National security is obsessed with inspecting, identifying, examining, searching and stripping the body.

...The Passages Administration recently began to import a machine that is going to improve its stripping capacity. The new apparatus produces a three-dimensional hologram picture of the body, and is officially called the Three Dimensional Holographic Body Scanning. Long transmission signals produce a naked image of the body... To avoid constitutional problems, the machines were made to create a hologram image of inorganic parts of a “normal” body. Israel is an enthusiastic client...

The extent to which technology advances erotics is not well appreciated. Something about the sterility of technology goes against this notion. With the Three-Dimensional Holographic Body Scanning, however, the Israeli Passages Administration has found a new sex toy that will help it stimulate the erotics of the occupation...the new machine is clearly an erotic device...

...This is the nature of the asymmetrical affair, the relationship of attraction and revulsion between Israelis and Palestinians. Israelis have to know, to touch and to smell everything that the other has – the land, the coffee, the music – but without knowing the other...Israelis basically know nothing about Palestinians or Palestinian culture, but the other side suffers from ignorance as well: many believe that Israelis live, think, and breath only in uniforms.

...Orientalism: the desire for the exotic other and his appropriation. Racism becomes more pronounced the greater the desire for appropriation is. In the delirious colonial encounter, the colonizer wants to separate, enclose and protect himself, yet is attracted to the other through the senses as to entertainment or to a cooking spice...Israel is like an obsessed lover, who wants to separate forever and by all means from his loved one, but equally desires to wake up each morning beside him, smell his clothes and spray his perfume all over a house that they share.

...Another principle of the erotics of the occupation is the desire cultivated by the eye to witness the occupation and the war.

The eye has gotten accustomed to the excitement, to the orange and red flashes on the television screen, to the blood-red smeared headlines of the daily newspapers, to the illustrations and maps of the bombing campaigns that graphically depict the event, the incident, the attack, the war zone. The eye, aided by a dramatic soundtrack announcing the special news edition, cultivates a desire for the aesthetics of violence...Without this visual feed we do not exist. If the flames stop burning there is no desire left in our lives. The short answer to the question of what gives to what, images or war, is that although not always and not in every case, usually it is the image that is in the service of violence. The aesthetics of violence make us believe that this is simply how the world is and another world is not possible...

...In every erotic relationship there is an element of uncertainty: secrets, words whispered in bedrooms, intimate situations, delicate games of closeness and distance. The Israeli authorities specialize in intimate games of intrigue. They create a radical uncertainty as for the present and the future of the relationship, and the uncertainty is a central principle of the erotics of the occupation...the true function of secrets is to sustain the erotics of the occupation. The intimate language whispered in the bedroom of the occupation, includes such terms, as security needs, investigation needs, the defense of sources and methods of action, indications, insinuations, allegations, and saves the occupation from becoming boring. It sustains an exceptional, out of the ordinary, relationship. Secrets are the aphrodisiac, an addictive love potion. Something has to keep a forty-year-old relationship going...

You have to admit, for an academic paper, one done at an Israeli University, this is good.

Unfortunately for her, she left out analyzing "Up Against the Wall" which would have been interesting, or erotic, to read.

And, of course, if a nationalist were to have written a paper on "The Politico-Psychological Passions of Arab Terror As Repressed Sexual Urges of a Third-World Putz", he'd or she'd be lambasted.

Ivory Tower Sedition

Beware

Sedition in Israel’s Ivory Towers!

Are you aware of what is taking place inside Israeli campuses??

Did you know?

Professors & Lecturers at Israeli Universities & Colleges:

· Endorse terrorist attacks against Jews
· Call for international boycotts against Israel
· Misuse their classrooms for anti-Israel indoctrination
· Collaborate with Anti-Semites
· Denounce Israel as an apartheid, colonialist, fascist country
· Promote lawbreaking & violence
· Organize mutiny among Israeli soldiers
· Engage in violent protests
· Fabricate imaginary “atrocities” committed by Israel
· Openly call for Israel’s destruction

Learn more about the misuses of contributions and funds received by Israeli universities!

For more details, go to www.isracampus.org.il (POB 6652, Haifa 31066) or email isracampus@gmail.com

Ron Kuzar Is Ticked Off

Ron Kuzar (funny: Kuzar is the Hebrew term for "belonging to the Khazar nation, which is the basis of Shlomo Sand's new silly theory book, ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?").

How silly?

Dahia al-Kahina, a leader of the Berbers in the Aures Mountains...a proud Jewess... who in the seventh century C.E. united a number of Berber tribes...According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand...the queen's tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang

when, in fact, was the Jewish people invented, in Sand's view? At a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people "retrospectively," out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people.

Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish population of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria...Sand revives the hypothesis, which was already suggested by historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to which the Judaized Khazars constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.

"At the beginning of the 20th century there is a tremendous concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe - three million Jews in Poland alone," he says. "The Zionist historiography claims that their origins are in the earlier Jewish community in Germany, but they do not succeed in explaining how a small number of Jews who came from Mainz and Worms could have founded the Yiddish people of Eastern Europe. The Jews of Eastern Europe are a mixture of Khazars and Slavs who were pushed eastward."

Prof. Israel Bartel has torn Sand apart, into little grains. And read Steve Plaut's article last year, pre-Sand.


Anyway, back to Kuzar the academic. Let him do the talking:-

To Dana Barnett manager of Israel Academia Monitor website

It came to my knowledge that an article of mine and an abstract of a lecture I intend to give in Canada on 7 October were presented on your English version of the homepage you manage, under the caption of [Haifa U, English] Ron Kuzar's support of the Palestinian discourse on the Right of Return. A lecture in Canada on October 7, and a new article.

I demand you take off this posting at once and post instead in the same place an apology for presenting baseless facts of my opinions.

There is nothing in this article and not in the abstract of any support in the Right of Return.

I expect this apology to stay on the website and to be circulated to the public in the same way as the original one was.


Ron Kuzar

Shlomo Sharan, Professor Emeritus, Psychology and Education, Tel-Aviv University, responds to Kuzar:-

Dear Professor Kuzar

If you do NOT wish to support the Palestinian's "Right to Return" it behooves you to say so, given the nature of the article that you published in

Discourse and Soiciety that is patently in support of the specious doctrine. However one tries to conceal opinions behind linguistic strategies, your article arouses the question of why you think it fools anyone. Moreover, if indeed you do not believe that the Arab Palestinians should have the right to enter Israel than you did a good job of misleading your readers.

In any case the responsibility is yours, not those who read your statements and react to its message, whether implicit or explicit. Communication is first and foremost the responsibility of the communicator. Under no circumstances would I, or any opther reader with self respect, issue an apology, unless you convince the journal in which your article was published that you retract the article due to lack of adequate clarity regarding the article's message.

Sincerely,

Read and judge.

Amnon Rubinstein Bashes Left

In case you missed it, here are excerpts from Amnon Rubinstein's op-ed. Rubinstein is is a professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, a former minister of education and MK representing first Dash, then Meretz, and the recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Law:-

Homemade Israel-bashers

Shortly after I began teaching at Columbia University, I was taken aback to hear that the Iranian ruler Ahmadinejad had been invited to speak on campus...three kipot-wearing students from Hillel House...organized a demonstration in front of the hall where the Iranian president was to speak, and all without any outside help.

I spoke at the demonstration, where I discovered that almost all the participants present were local Orthodox Jewish students. The number of secular Israeli students could be counted on the fingers of one hand - with fingers to spare.

Inside the hall sat an Israeli student who applauded Ahmadinejad. I asked another Israeli who witnessed this behavior to tell me about her. I asked: How can she applaud someone that wants to exterminate her?

His matter of fact reply: "She's known to be a leftist."

In other words, "leftists" applaud a tyrant, a Nazi, a persecutor of minorities, oppressor of women, stoner of "adulterers," and executioner of homosexuals. If he protests the oppression of the Palestinians, then he must clearly be a member of the "left" and should therefore be cheered.

...I am a professed and impassioned secular Jew. My Judaism is national and cultural. I believe that my approach is in no way inferior to the Orthodox or haredi one. It contains neither temptations of paradise, the punishment of hell, nor the revival of the dead. It is filled with a rich, multifaceted and wondrous Jewish-Hebrew culture. I also believe that secular humanism is the right answer for us as individuals and as a nation.

But if I had to choose between the kipa-wearing Jews at Columbia and the representatives of what is known in Israel as the radical Left - I know where my heart is.

...the story of the anti-Israeli squadrons in the Israeli academia...I always believed that their "post-intelligent" anti-Israeli claptrap would eventually climax in an paroxysm of extremist mumbo-jumbo lunacy, after which there would no longer be anything to argue about. They'd be exposed.

Ben-Dror Yemini provided me with just that evidence (Ma'ariv, January 11), in an article in which he tells of a research project carried out by graduate student Tal Nizan at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research question was: How is it that, contrary to the accepted practice among other occupation armies, the Zionist occupation army does not rape?

The researcher had two explanations: First, IDF soldiers do not rape Palestinian women because for them, these women have been dehumanized, and "consequently, a sexual act cannot be carried out with someone that is perceived as less than human." Second, the soldiers refrained from raping the Palestinian women in the service of a higher, demographic goal, because the rape could cause pregnancies that would subsequently increase the numbers of our enemies. In other words, not only are there no rapes, there are no condoms either.

The significant aspect is not this surreal research project. It is not unusual. Incitement against Israel can be found on the lowest level in some of the social science departments in Israel's universities...The interesting thing is that this "research" project won a prize from a sociology association, with a number of distinguished professors voting in favor of granting the researcher a prize.

It would be interesting to hear how these professors propose that Israel amend this serious flaw, that IDF soldiers are not serial rapists. Does that fact that female tourists are not raped mean that they too have been dehumanized?

These professors are wrong. It's not true that there is no rape. There is - the rape of the academia, of science and of the students forced to listen to these professors' drivel.