Posted on 02/24/2012 4:45:21 AM PST by SJackson
Friends Seminary of New York backed out of an agreement to invite Alan Dershowitz to talk to students about the evils of anti-Semitism. By (Courtesy of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East
The Friends Seminary of New York, which invited the notorious anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon to one of its classes, and assigned its students to read his hate-filled writings, has now backed out of an agreement to invite me to the school to talk to the students about the evils of anti-Semitism.
The headmaster of the Friends Seminary, a school which is supposed to be committed to honesty and integrity, has broken his solemn promise to me, and to members of its own community, to allow its students to hear both sides of an issue that really has only one side: namely, the illegitimacy of bringing hate-mongers into high school classrooms.
After I exposed the original invitations to Atzmon – who justifies the burning down of synagogues as “reasonable” response to Jewish efforts to “control the world” – the headmaster agreed to several things.
First, he would speak at an assembly to the students about the evils of anti-Semitism; second, he would assign my essay to the students who were assigned Atzmon’s essay; and third, he would invite me to address the students. He has now broken each of these promises.
Students who were at the assembly have confirmed that the speakers only made things worse. The teacher who invited Atzmon talked about what a great musician he was. The headmaster was defensive about how his words were manipulated and justified bringing Atzmon based on Quaker principles.
Apparently the word “anti- Semitism” was never once mentioned during this meeting. My article was not assigned to the students; a citation was sent to them saying that I wanted students to read it.
When I wrote to the headmaster complaining about these breaches, they used my letter as an excuse for canceling my appearance. The real reason was almost certainly pressure from hard-left members of his faculty and others.
Let’s be clear what this means. The school was unwilling to cancel Atzmon’s appearance, even after learning that he was a virulent anti-Semite who questions the Holocaust but believes that it may be true that Jews kill Christians to use their blood for religious purposes. But they canceled my appearance because they didn’t like the tone of a private letter that I wrote to them that was critical of the headmaster’s failure to comply with his promises. I ended my letter with the following words: “Please assure me that I am wrong about my judgment about you. I really would like to see this move forward in a positive direction, but you are not helping.
“The ultimate sufferers are your students, who are being taught the wrong values that will serve them poorly in college and in life.”
The values that Headmaster Bo Lauder is imbuing to his students are deception, breach of promise, toleration of anti-Semitism and an unwillingness to present all sides of an issue. In the end, the headmaster is showing tremendous distrust of his students by refusing to allow them to hear another side of the issue, by canceling my promised appearance, by not assigning my essay and by continuing to be defensive regarding the dreadful mistake in judgment he made in allowing Atzmon to teach his students.
The headmaster may believe that by breaking his promises, he has ended this issue. Let him be absolute certain that, as I wrote in my letter to him: “This issue will not go away, and nor will I. Misled once, shame on you. Misled twice, shame on me.”
Unless I am invited to address the students inside the school, I will appear outside the school, where I will hand out my essays to those students who are willing to read them and will address those students who have an interest in hearing a response to anti-Semitism. I am also considering inviting parents, students and other members of the Friends Seminary community to an event, in a venue outside the school, where these issues can be discussed openly and candidly.
Headmaster Lauder may be able to keep me physically out of his school, but he will not be able to stop my ideas from reaching his community. The truth does not respect artificial boundaries.
The Friends Seminary, like other elite schools around the United States, teaches our future leaders. Many Friends Schools around the country have espoused strongly anti-Israel policies for years. The Friends Seminary in New York has a rabidly anti-Israel history teacher on its faculty, who propagandizes his students against Israel in the classroom, and who has a picture of Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian headdress on his website. The school has and is again planning to take its students on trips to the Middle East that present a one-sided perspective. Now it has crossed the line from preaching anti-Zionism to tolerating anti-Semitism. I will not remain silent in the face of the Friends Seminary’s double standard and neither should you.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
..................
The mainstream culture is turning on Christians and Israel...one can see it all over the media (Tebow, Catholics, Mormons), it is now OK to hate, provided Obama’s ministry of hate through the mainstream media chooses the targets.
I bet Dershowitz was a liberal in his younger days. He’s been undergoing a slow awakening over the last few years.
Of course, he was one of the principal defenders of OJ, so he’ll always be damaged goods in my mind.
He’s still a liberal but he’s a classical liberal who actually loves America.
He’s still a liberal on most issues.
William Penn has been reported turning over in his grave. But the groundskeeper has reassured everyone that a good whack on the nogin quiets him down.
NOwhere can you find anything that supercedes the following:
Questions put to Joseph Smith: "'Do you believe the Bible?' [Smith:]'If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does, for there are none of the religious sects of the day that do'. When asked 'Will everybody be damned, but Mormons'? [Smith replied] 'Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 119).Joseph Smith: "for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible" (from Pearl of Great Price 1:12). "What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.270).Brigham Young stated this repeatedly: "When the light came to me I saw that all the so-called Christian world was grovelling in darkness" (Journal of Discourses 5:73); "The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God" (Journal of Discourses 8:171); "With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world" (Journal of Discourses 8:199); "And who is there that acknowledges [God's] hand? ...You may wander east, west, north, and south, and you cannot find it in any church or government on the earth, except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.24); "Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity" (Journal of Discourses 10:230).Orson Pratt proclaimed: "Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the 'whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent" (The Seer, p. 255).Orson Pratt also said: "This great apostasy commenced about the close of the first century of the Christian era, and it has been waxing worse and worse from then until now" (Journal of Discourses, vol.18, p.44) and: "But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of people Christian Churches, because they profess to be ...But there has been a long apostasy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance" (Journal of Discourses , 18:172).President John Taylor stated: "Christianity...is a perfect pack of nonsense...the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century." (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.167); "Where shall we look for the true order or authority of God? It cannot be found in any nation of Christendom." (Journal of Discourses , 10:127).James Talmage said: "A self-suggesting interpretation of history indicates that there has been a great departure from the way of salvation as laid down by the Savior, a universal apostasy from the Church of Christ". (A Study of the Articles of Faith, p.182).President Joseph Fielding Smith said: "Doctrines were corrupted, authority lost, and a false order of religion took the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, just as it had been the case in former dispensations, and the people were left in spiritual darkness." (Doctrines of Salvation, p.266). "For hundreds of years the world was wrapped in a veil of spiritual darkness, until there was not one fundamental truth belonging to the place of salvation ...Joseph Smith declared that in the year 1820 the Lord revealed to him that all the 'Christian' churches were in error, teaching for commandments the doctrines of men" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, p.282).More recent statements by apostle Bruce McConkie are also very clear: "Apostasy was universal...And this darkness still prevails except among those who have come to a knowledge of the restored gospel" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol 3, p.265); "Thus the signs of the times include the prevailing apostate darkness in the sects of Christendom and in the religious world in general" (The Millennial Messiah, p.403); "a perverted Christianity holds sway among the so-called Christians of apostate Christendom" (Mormon Doctrine, p.132); "virtually all the millions of apostate Christendom have abased themselves before the mythical throne of a mythical Christ whom they vainly suppose to be a spirit essence who is incorporeal uncreated, immaterial and three-in-one with the Father and Holy Spirit" (Mormon Doctrine, p.269); "Gnosticism is one of the great pagan philosophies which antedated Christ and the Christian Era and which was later commingled with pure Christianity to form the apostate religion that has prevailed in the world since the early days of that era." (Mormon Doctrine, p.316).President George Q. Cannon said: "After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon" (Gospel Truth, p.324).President Wilford Woodruff stated: "the Gospel of modern Christendom shuts up the Lord, and stops all communication with Him. I want nothing to do with such a Gospel, I would rather prefer the Gospel of the dark ages, so called" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 2, p.196).
It would be nice if Dershowitz used his influence to see that none would be accepted by his Harvard University.
ML/NJ
Hypocrite! Here he has a chance to strike a dagger in such high-school activities and he hides.
ML/NJ
Sasha and Malia Obama’s school is the Sidwell Friends School in D.C. Need more be said? The Society of Friends has long been anti-American and anti-Semitic.
The Friends Seminary of New York, which invited the notorious anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon to one of its classes, and assigned its students to read his hate-filled writings, has now backed out of an agreement to invite me to the school to talk to the students about the evils of anti-Semitism.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/dershowitz-to-campaign-against-media-matters#HTWF2
““Not only will [the Media Matters controversy] be an election matter, I will personally make it an election matter,” Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School, told WABC’s Aaron Klein today.”
Now what media besides Fox does he think will even report against media matters? I think this dim lawyer is about to get a STFU lesson from the left.
What is this “Friends” name business?
What is the connection between the “Friends” Seminary and the Sidwell “Friends” School.
Do you happen to know the basis for the name, “Friends”?
You know, a funny thing happened to David Horowitz on the way to a Black Panther meeting... (Renowned leftist turned conservative when his dear friend was murdered by the Panthers, orphaning her daughter).
They say a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
I hope that Dershowitz is also going to join the ranks of liberals who have been mugged by the reality of what liberalism has now become.
The Society of Friends is the “official” name of the Quakers — I believe the name “Quakers” started as ridicule of their worship practices, some sort of ecstatic shaking maybe?
Sidwell Friends did apologize for the Pearl Harbor Day menu.
At that link there was another link to the apology, though I didn’t watch it.
I never have heard of “Society of Friends”, myself and remain curious about the connection between the name Friends and its use in other institutions like the Sidwell School, and the Seminary.
Thank you, Mary! That does ring a bell, now that you explained it to me.
Sidwell Friends surely isn’t Quaker, where the Obama girls attend, I bet.
Thanks.
NO KIDDING?
How astounding I find that! A Quaker school. Wow. I remain curious about the possible existance of anti-Semite approaches at the Sidwell school, because of the Dershowitz critique against the seminary by the same name.
Just, wow.
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