UMASS protest questionable.

The Union News (Westfield, Springfield, Massachusetts) ^ | 11/22/02 | Union News Editorial board

[SpinyNorman]

More than 300 professors and students at the University of Massachusetts have signed a petition asking the university to get rid of its holdings in any company that does business with Israel. There's just one catch: It's not very much money, about $5,000. If the Israeli army is anything like the U.S. Defense Department, that's one hammer, a flashlight and three toilet seats.

For comparison, a student at the University of Massachusetts pays $6,482 in tuition and fees. And, for perspective, the university foundation has $150 million in investments.

All across the nation, at campuses from Amherst to Berkeley, students and professors are calling on schools to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

Most aid to Israel comes directly from the United States government, rather than from American corporations, so the protest isn't going to be much of a bother to Israel.

Still, there are many who have legitimate concerns with Israeli policy under the current government, which has reoccupied much of the West Bank, expanded settlements and imposed harsh restrictions on the Palestinian population in retaliation for suicide bombings in Israel.

However, the protesters should ask themselves this: Why Israel, and not Saudi Arabia, which denies basic rights to women? Or Sudan, for its repression of Christians? Or China, for its repression of religion? Or any one of a dozen or so countries with human rights records far worse than that of Israel?

Or, better yet, why not just hand the reins of U.S. foreign policy to a stockbroker at A.G. Edwards ... a secretary of stocks, rather than a secretary of state, to carry out the nation's foreign policy?

The students and professors should invest their time in something else.

[SpinyNorman]

This is a liberal paper describing the idiocy that goes on at UMASS Amherst. You may remember Amherst for many acts of liberal idiocy, particularly, the town meeting held on September 10, 2001 to stop all the American flag waving in the town of Amherst, so as not to offend our foreign visitors! The name of one Professor Jenny Traschen is particularly prominent as an outspoken critic of the United States and its policies at that meeting.

It is pretty bad when you are even found to be nuts by one of your staunchest allies!! LOL!!

[1bigdictator]

bump

[pabianice]

UMass is what you get when the dirty, stupid, violent, anti-American bums from my class of 1968 stay there and become the tenured faculty. I went to school with these people and have watched over the past 40 years as they have largely destroyed a once very good state land-grant university. I have to laugh when they call begging for money because the state is cutting them off (voters/tax-payers recoil from the place).