Anti-Semitism on campus-"An ugly infection"

-An ugly infection - Anti-Semitism is never incidental. It is always insidious. It is insidious because it's not just an action but also a habit.

http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/editorials/story.asp?id=70A0E 58B-D7BD-45B7-BD47-CB69D97214B5

Common sense has prevailed at a Montreal university, but that should lull no one into blissful ignorance about the ugliness infecting campuses across North America.

The ugliness is anti-Semitism. Voices as learned and restrained as that of the president of Harvard University are warning of its virulent renewal in places of higher learning. "I have always ... been put off by those who heard the sound of breaking glass in every insult ... and conjured up images of Hitler's Kristallnacht at any disagreement with Israel," Harvard's Lawrence Summers said recently. "Such views have always seemed to me alarmist ... but while they still seem to me unwarranted, they seem rather less alarmist in the world of today than they did a year ago."

What happened at the Université du Québec à Montréal last weekend gives Canadian context to Summers's cautionary note. In the face of two anonymous threats, administrators cited security concerns as they prohibited Israeli journalist and professor Gideon Kouts from speaking to the Jewish student group Hillel. After Montreal's Jewish community and others raised proper hell, the university regained its nerve and stood up for freedom of speech. Kouts graciously - and puckishly - thanked UQÀM for generating publicity that increased his audience.

As The Gazette has written, UQÀM officials were right to reverse their ban. Yet the initial, reflexive administrative silencing of Kouts remains deeply troubling, shaking us awake to the reality that anti-Semitism is never incidental. It is always insidious. It is insidious because it's not just an action but also a habit. As much as it is acts of insult or violence, it is even more the habit of minds schooled to ignore clear patterns of hatred.

UQÀM officials would doubtless protest - without question truthfully - that they haven't an anti-Semitic bone in their bodies. And yet they evidently failed to discern the larger pattern: Kouts, after all, is not the only prominent Israeli recently prevented from speaking at a Montreal (read: Canadian) university. In September, glass-smashing thugs silenced former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia.

Apologists quickly absolved the pro-Palestinian hooligans responsible for the window breaking. Blame, they argued, belonged to Mr. Netanyahu for being so controversial. Concordia, they maintained, was at fault for letting such a controversial politician speak. No violent controversy would have occurred, they insisted, had the university foreseen the security risk inherent in Mr. Netanyahu's appearance.

Mob violence, in other words, wasn't the fault of the violent mob. Responsibility, rather, was placed on those who saw no reason for a mob or violence. Windows were smashed because the university failed to install glass strong enough to resist pounding fists.

Such insidious logic, once accepted, quickly replicates. Gideon Kouts is a journalist and professor, not a controversial politician. Yet he is also a Jew, invited to Montreal by a Jewish student organization. He is a Jew kicked out of Lebanon last fall for the crime of being a Jew in Lebanon.

Two threatening phone calls later, he - not the callers - became a security risk. And so those who had silenced Mr. Netanyahu through violence needed no violence to stop - temporarily at least - a second Jew from speaking. Thus are habits of mind developed. Thus is the pattern of intolerance - notably anti-Semitism - bred.

It is a pattern that finds repetition in the deplorable action of Concordia's Student Union in expelling Hillel, the Jewish student group, on the flimsiest of pretexts. The CSU-Hillel incident might be written off as a petty post-secondary shenanigan were it not for the chilling, ugly reality that it meant Jewish voices being silenced on a Canadian university campus. History is witness to the evils that can spring from such silencing.

Lawrence Summers was correct that not every cross word between Jews and non-Jews is the start of a new Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass. But we have heard glass breaking on the streets of Montreal. Our response must not be the silence of blissful ignorance.

Canadian Foreign Enlistment Act

4. Any person who, being a Canadian national, leaves or goes on board any conveyance with a view to leaving Canada with intent to accept any commission or engagement in the armed forces of any foreign state at war with any friendly foreign state or, whether a Canadian national or not, within Canada, induces any other person to leave or go on board any conveyance with a view to leaving Canada, with a like intent, is guilty of an offence."

This isn’t worth worth a long discussion. You can read the law above and come to your own conclusion.

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The US military runs recruiting commercials in Canada, yes, imbedded in US programs, but they’re not blocked, they’re not illegal, and the TV stations running them aren’t shut down as Hillel was.

The same brochures on Hillel’s table are in fact distributed in the US. Several other programs recruit short term volunteers for the IDF worldwide, including in the US. I've never heard anything about this being illegal.

No one objected to Hillel’s “recruiting” other than the student union, not the Canadian government, not the university.

Dennis Miller on palestinians

A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need.

Don't thank me. I'm a giver. Here we go:

The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no “Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."

So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death."

I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: “Adjacent Jew-Haters." Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel.

They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course -- that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel. Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it -- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something.

It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mideast. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one.

Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals.

Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.

My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.

Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations coming up against Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of supermodels who've just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight.

We've already lost some. After September 11 our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.

If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. (Hey, wait a minute, that's actually not such a bad id . . . ooh, that is, what a horrible thought, yeah, horrible.)"

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