Posted on 08/15/2006 2:46:29 PM PDT by Molly Pitcher
Over the course of my life, I have pondered many improbable situations. For example, what would it be like to play first base for the Atlanta Braves? What would it be like to work as Anna Kournikova’s live-in masseuse? Just how many Muslim terrorists could I kill if the military would ignore my age and let me serve as a sniper?
But I never pondered what life would be like as a Jewish student at the University of Texas at Austin – that is, until I read a letter written by 27 anti-Semites and self-hating Jews who teach there. The letter – addressed to Secretary of State Condi Rice – is reproduced below in its entirety:
We write to you out of growing dismay about the escalation of violence by Israel in Lebanon, which with U.S. military and political support threatens to spread into Syria and to engulf the region. As educators we are compelled to remind you of a fact of which you are well aware of the thousands of Americans in Beirut, several hundred are U.S. students studying in Beirut who have been evacuated. However, our concern extends to our students, former students, and colleagues who remain in Lebanon and Palestine/Israel, indeed to all the citizens of these countries, because they are from the region and have no place else to go. Daily bombing raids continue, increasing the death toll of children and other civilians, civilian infrastructure (including the airport) has been destroyed by the Israeli army with U.S. munitions, and the refugee crisis inside Lebanon is so severe that many are without food and water. There is no doubt that the scale of Israeli military response to Hezbollah military activities is unjustified and disproportionate.
At all times - especially in times of war and conflict - University faculty, and those of us in area studies, and international studies in particular, have a special obligation to protest U.S. foreign policy when it endangers the educational mission of the University. Unconditional U.S. support for Israel at this moment not only endangers the lives of our students, colleagues, Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli civilians, but undermines the purpose of training students to do international work that can contribute to greater cross-cultural understanding and respect, and equipping them to become the next generation of leaders in international relations. Not only this, but we firmly believe that the social, political and economic costs of an unprovoked and illegal war in Iraq, coupled with U.S. support for Israel at this time only serves to isolate the United States in the court of world opinion and is not in the long-term interests of the people of the United States. We call for the U.S. government to suspend arms shipments to Israel, to call for an immediate cease-fire and to participate in an internationally brokered settlement arrived at by all parties at the negotiating table that is not pre-determined by the greater military strength of one party over another.
In the event that readers of the letter to Dr. Rice wish to respond, the names and email addresses of its 27 authors are reproduced below for your convenience:
Dr. Kamran Asdar Ali asdar@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Jafari Allen jsallen@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Mia Carter, miac@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Dana Cloud dcloud@mail.utexas.edu,
Dr. Brian Doherty bfdoherty@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Maria Franklin mfranklin@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Kaushik Ghosh cayocan@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Edmund T. Gordon etgordon@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Charles R. Hale crhale@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Barbara Harlow bharlow@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. John Hartigan hartigan@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Jeanette Herman hermanjm@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Syed Akbar Hyder shyder@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Robert Jensen rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
Dr. Joni L. Jones/Omi Osun Olomo jonijones@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Ward Keeler ward.keeler@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Jemima Pierre j.pierre@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Pauline Turner Strong pstrong@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Sharmila Rudrappa rudrappa@mail.la.utexas.edu
Dr. Yaron Shemer shemer@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Shannon Speed sspeed@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Kathleen Stewart kstewart@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Brian Stross bstross@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Joao Vargas costavargas@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Kamala Visweswaran kvis@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Karin Wilkins kwilkins@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Samuel Wilson s.wilson@mail.utexas.edu
*Note: The University of Texas student newspaper misspelled Dr. Karin Wilkins’ first name as “Karen” in their recent printing of the open letter.
At all times - especially in times of war and conflict - University faculty, and those of us in area studies, and international studies in particular, have a special obligation to protest U.S. foreign policy when it endangers the educational mission of the University. Unconditional U.S. support for Israel at this moment not only endangers the lives of our students, colleagues, Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli civilians, but undermines the purpose of training students to do international work that can contribute to greater cross-cultural understanding and respect, and equipping them to become the next generation of leaders in international relations. Not only this, but we firmly believe that the social, political and economic costs of an unprovoked and illegal war in Iraq, coupled with U.S. support for Israel at this time only serves to isolate the United States in the court of world opinion and is not in the long-term interests of the people of the United States. We call for the U.S. government to suspend arms shipments to Israel, to call for an immediate cease-fire and to participate in an internationally brokered settlement arrived at by all parties at the negotiating table that is not pre-determined by the greater military strength of one party over another.
Love your moniker, Molly Pitcher.
My daughter just finished studying about her.
This letter was written by educators? It's full of punctuation errors.
They sound like a group of people who will gladly report to the gas chambers as a show of good faith in the mistaken belief that the door will not be shut.
Since we are good secular humanists and socialists,we want
(1)a weak America and a weak Israel in order to help accelerate the establishment of a humanist socialist one world government.
(2) Moral relativity, moral agnosticism, moral equivalency, and moral inversion, so that the bad can defeat the good and we can feel so self righteous and holier than thou and we won't have to feel guilty at all.
From each according to his ability and all, you know.
Thus the problem with ethnic profiling, we need to be watching our colleges and universities closely, both students and teachers. They will start converting our children to 'their' side. Observe your kids closely when they come home on break and at Christmas! People make the joke that the bombers arent' blond haired and blue eyed. Yet.
Robert Jensen is a Marxist, anti-semite, journalism professor, and headcase at the UTexasAustin. He alone gives the institution a bad name.
"holier than thou"
Can a atheist even *be* holier than thou? It's easier to just blame the jooz. Atheists don't do religious wars very well.
These educators are curuously inept in International Relations. Bargaining positions are always determined by the strength of one of the combatants, despite these faculty member's wish for a utopian solution that treats all opening bids as equal. It has never happened and will never happen.
Multilateral foreign policy as a doctrine died on 9/11/01. Most schools have given up on it as it produces nothing but wars, punctuated by periods of peace in which the losing side stocks up on munitions to have another go at it.
This approach has been an abject failure.
Did it never occur to you that the Arabs are big boys and can do stuff on their own, including the nasty stuff, and they really never needed the US or Israel to "force" them into it.
Islamofascists know that they have an army of fellow-travelers in the West who believe Jews, even Israeli Jews, even Jews in the Israeli government, are in a conspiracy to make Arabs do stuff.
The Islamofascists also know that the anti-semites in the West HATE THE ARABS and think of them as subhumans, which only adds cachet to the idea that the Jews are forcing the Arabs to do stuff.
Unless they have written similar letters condemning the Muslim genocide campaign against Jews, the one-sided nature of their concern does indeed strongly imply anti-Semitism.
For where the Messiahs people are unwanted, those grafted in should not tread either.
(Colorado being the river that runs through Austin.)
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