Posted on 12/05/2014 6:20:14 AM PST by SJackson
The University of California, Berkeley’s graduate student labor union (UAW 2865) is voting on whether the State of Israel should continue to exist. No one is waiting with bated breath for the tally of a vote whose implementation would violate both California and United States law. It is one of those exercises in academic hubris laced with ignorance for which Berkeley is famous. After all, students know slightly less American history after four years at the prestigious institution than before they crossed through Sather Gate.
One of the leaders of the anti-Israel movement is Lara Kiswani, whose rhetoric reminds one of the days when leftists sat in their Marxist circle groups and talked about “mechanistic thinking” as an impediment to achieving the socialist utopia. Kiswani’s rhetoric is filled with the same clichés, but let me say that Kiswani’s ability to manifest hatred honestly and simply is as impressive as it is refreshing.
I have gone to academic panels on the Arab/Israel conflict for more than four decades, and I always find the obligatory pandering to democratic values somewhere between boring and insulting.
Now comes Kiswani like a breeze off San Francisco Bay on a hot day. Here she is in her own words: ”See, part of the problem with the Palestine question, particularly on campus, is it always gets framed as this two-sided thing and liberal democracy loves to make it seem like everyone has a right to speak, including the oppressor alongside the oppressed. … I don’t think that this form of liberal democracy really has a place in terms of real struggle. … Maybe liberal Zionists here on this campus have a hard time understanding what that means. … As long as you choose to be on that side, I’m going to continue to hate you.”
It takes rare courage to stand in a lecture hall at Berkeley, the home of the vaunted Free Speech Movement, and denounce free speech.
And there is something special about acknowledging that her personal embrace of a just cause gives moral license to decide whose voices will and will not be heard, and to admit that the opposition isn’t her adversary – with whom she might compromise, but her enemy, whom she hates and is entitled to isolate and ultimately destroy.
The concept of hatred for Kiswani is not simply that of the great unifier, as Eric Hoffer called it; it is a component of a moral passion that gives her the right to censor thought and speech and call for the destruction of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
Ironically, Kiswani, is the director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which is funded by the Tides Foundation, an organization that allegedly supports peaceful solutions to international conflict, and seeks to protect the Constitution from the intrusion of organizations with an authoritarian agenda. Apparently, in this case, the Tides Foundation made an exception that human rights and peace do not apply to Jews.
Kiswani’s Youth Director Sharif Zakout yearns for the day his people will return to “Palestine” and rebuild it, begging the question of what he will do with the seven million Israelis and the modern, high-tech society they have created. Perhaps, he would prefer a society that both looks and is run like Gaza or Ramallah.
Kiswani wants to silence voices and manifest hatred, but she should neither be silenced nor hated. She is an authentic, unblemished voice that should be heard loud and clear. Perhaps then some of our so called Jewish leaders, with their diaspora (galut) mentality, will ask her what they can do to solve the problem. Her answer would be telling.
It would probably be the most honest conversation they have yet had on the issue.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a contributor to the Franklin Center for Government and Political Integrity.
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Labor activists to UC students: End Israel now
By Watchdog Staff / December 2, 2014
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY: People shelter from Palestinian rocket shelling, July 2014. A union activist told Berkeley students in November that their job was to vote Dec. 4 to isolate and weaken Israel.
By Paul Miller | Watchdog.org
A November 12 panel discussion on the University of California’s flagship Berkeley campus was billed as an opportunity to learn about events 7,000 miles away in Israel – and about a Dec. 4 graduate student vote to join the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Instead, attendees were exhorted to bring down the Jewish State.
Hosted by UAW 2865, a union of over 13,000 student-workers across the University of California system, the union’s BDS Caucus brought in guest speakers to “discuss the role of organized labor in the Palestine solidarity movement.”
Panelist Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), dominated the conversation.
“I think you should boycott any Zionist institution, academic, organization, whether it be from 1967 occupied Palestine or 1948 occupied Palestine, because BDS really should be about shifting the cultural framework and shifting how we see Israel and isolating it and making it feel unwelcome anywhere and everywhere,” said Kiswani.
“Bringing down Israel will really benefit everyone in the world and everyone in society, particularly workers,” she said later.
Panelists also expressed solidarity with extremists who’ve advocated violence to settle their political differences with Israel.
“BDS is not the end-all. BDS is a tactic,” said Kiswani. “We Palestinians resist in all different types of ways, so there is no end-all of BDS. I think the end-all of BDS is to weaken Israel, to isolate Israel, and give the global community a role in the liberation of Palestine and support the resistance on the ground in Palestine.”
Fellow Panelist Clarence Thomas from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 added, “You know in a revolution, people play different roles. Some want to do divestment. Let them do that. Others want to do more military action, let them do that. That’s how the struggle works.”
The panel, which included Labor for Palestine’s Michael Letwin, invoked the ancient stereotype of global Jewish control.
Letwin chimed in with, “Defenders of apartheid Israel have tremendous resources at their disposal, not the least of which are the Democratic and Republican parties, labor officials, the media, campus administrations, all the forces that we see against us on a daily basis.”
“So a lot of the labor movement now is co-opted by Zionists and we shouldn’t let it be co-opted by Zionists… for Palestine itself, the United States is very far behind Europe, Latin America, and other parts in Africa. Everyone else has been taking strong positions, labor workers have been taking strong positions, and the U.S. is behind because of Zionist control,” Kiswani told the audience.
In a follow-up email, Letwin told Watchdog that “defenders of apartheid Israel have tremendous resources at their disposal not because of ‘Jewish control’ (indeed, many of Israel’s defenders are not even Jewish), but rather because Israel’s apartheid character ideal makes it a dependable watchdog for U.S. imperial interests throughout the region. As former Secretary of State Alexander Haig put it, Israel is ‘the largest American aircraft carrier in the world.’”
University of California lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of the anti-Semitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative, told Watchdog.org, “What this event made crystal clear is that the goal of BDS is not to legitimately criticize Israeli policy, but rather to bring an end to the Jewish state. And make no mistake: calling for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state is anti-Semitic.
“This is the true face of BDS: it is the face of pure hatred. It’s not surprising the UAW 2865’s upcoming vote to boycott Israel and other campaigns to promote anti-Israel divestment resolutions in UC student senates have created a hostile, anti-Semitic environment for many Jewish students who support the Jewish State.”
The agenda – which managed to be anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist – was derailed just once. A female graduate student who identified herself as “the voice of dissent in this room” and “a rank-and-file member of the union. I’m Latina. I’m Jewish, and I’m pro-Israel.”
“I’m really disturbed because I want to dialogue with people on the other side, and I really just feel a strong sense of hatred coming from the voices and the language, she said during the question and answer period in the program. “I find it incredibly difficult to engage just hearing the kind of the lack of balanced perspective, from here, from the panel, and from the discussion as a whole, especially from the union.”
She continued, “I feel extremely threatened as a Jew by what you guys are saying. You don’t have to stop saying what you’re saying, but I just want you to know that this is the type of reaction you’re causing in people like me who want to have the discussion and make peace. But the way that you are talking is so aggressive and so sort of suddenly anti-Semitic, that it’s very hard for me to kind of be open and have an open discussion.”
UAW Local 2865 will vote on a resolution concerning participation in the BDS movement on Dec. 4.
Kiswani and Thomas did not respond to email requests for comments
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Berkley has always been a stronghold for terrorists and traitors.
Does anyone know how the vote went?
I would be unable to formulate a response to her that would not include the F-word.
The university of Californicate has been a leader in nazidom for several years. Including some faculty. Many Jews are afraid to even visit there. Governor and legislature do nothing.
End Berkeley Now!
Yes, it makes you appreciate what Gov. Governor Reagan did regarding the Berkeley nut cases back in the 1960s and 70s, as compared to Gov. "Moonbeam" today.
Where did these Arabs on campus come from? Illegal immigration?
There is no rule of law anymore, at least not for the last six years. Obama has open borderized USA. Plus he spends our tax money to import some of them too the Enemy Within. And it’s. Growing. Rapidly.
I’m certain that Bibi is sitting on the edge of his seat.
Huge rivers of evil now run unrestrained across the surface of the United States, like vast flows of lava from a multitude of horrendous volcanic eruptions.
The sulfurous fumes of those cascades of evil are choking the life out of our Republic.
The big quake will come and destroy Berkeley totally. There will be no tears for those that die
illegal “immogration” perhaps...that and or the purposeful import of “exchange” students on order to fuflfil the DIversity Quota
The concept of hatred for Kiswani is not simply that of the great unifier, as Eric Hoffer called it; it is a component of a moral passion that gives her the right to censor thought and speech and call for the destruction of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination... Kiswani, is the director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which is funded by the Tides Foundation, an organization that allegedly supports peaceful solutions to international conflict, and seeks to protect the Constitution from the intrusion of organizations with an authoritarian agenda. Apparently, in this case, the Tides Foundation made an exception that human rights and peace do not apply to Jews.
Scumbags of a feather...
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