Notice the namecalling and sophomoric goofiness in this post:
Palestine is an addiction for Europe.
Manchester University has once again announced a boycott of Israel.
Very important university. Oy vey: in continuous decline since Chaim
Weizman (later first president of Israel) was professor of chemistry
there at the beginning of the 20th century. Any Israeli academic it
keeps out will only diminish its standing a bit more. Oh, yes, and then
there is Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts where you can major
in the ecology of the Connecticut valley, a weirdo "new age" place if
there ever was one; it is about to disinvest from companies which
"help" the Israel Defense Forces, at the initiative of a far-left-wing
Israeli student. Here we are in koo-koo land.
I doubt Peretz has even visited Hampshire College, or Manchester University, to issue these foolish slights. The other day Dershowitz said that the only forces arrayed against Israel in the U.S. are "the neo-Nazi hard right and the neo-Stalinist hard left." And so when Bill Moyers spoke out, Dershowitz was "disappointed."
Disappointment is likely to be Peretz and Dershowitz's portion again and again in the next phase of this battle, and they will be challenged to come up with better thinking than koo-koo and neo-Nazi.
and they will be challenged to come up with better thinking than koo-koo and neo-Nazi.
Perhaps some of the trollish 'rebuttals' on some of these threads could do the same.
Manchester also happens to have the largest Jewish community in England outside of London – so quodos to Manchester Uni.
Yep, when all attempts at intellectual obfuscation fail, resort to belittling and name-calling. We know how it works. As BLG points out, we witness it here everyday.
As a former student and tutor at Manchester, let me give Peretz some background on the "importance" of the university.
“The university was named Sunday Times University of the year in 2006. According to the Sunday Times "Manchester has a formidable reputation spanning most disciplines, but most notably in the life sciences, engineering, humanities, economics, sociology and the social sciences".
In 2007/08 it had over 40,000 students studying 500 academic programmes and more than 10,000 staff, making it the largest single-site university in the United Kingdom. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than any other university in the country, with more than 60,000 applications for undergraduate courses alone. In 2007 the University had an annual income of £637 million.
In the first national assessment of higher education research since the university’s founding, in 2008 the University of Manchester came 3rd in terms of research power after Cambridge and Oxford and 8th for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions.”
From the New Statesman, February 12, 1999:
“the university remains as vast and prosperous as ever. As the 20th century draws to a close under a Labour government, the university can claim to have manufactured some of the central figures in the Labour movement today.
Alumni include Nick Brown MP, the minister for agriculture, the political commentator David Aaronovitch, the former cabinet minister David Clark, the former lobbyist Derek Draper and the Newsnight producer Nick London. The assistant general secretary of the Labour Party, David Gardner, was a contemporary at Manchester of John Mann, the party's trade union liaison officer. A third key Labour post, business relations adviser to Tony Blair, was held by the recent graduate Liam Byrne. Steve Hewlett (editor of Panorama), Charlotte Raven and Anna Ford were also at Manchester – indeed, Ford was the first president of the union when it went co-ed (previously there had been separate men's and women's unions). For Decca Aitkenhead, now a Guardian columnist, it was clear why she should enrol: she felt "bowled over by this amazing exotic display of political energy" from her first visit.
An insistent suspicion runs through the mind of a political observer confronted with a school such as this: "Manchester Mafia, Manchester Mafia", it rattles with railway-like metre. The concept of educational establishments producing particular schools or traditions in politics is not new; St Andrews was supposed to be important in the Conservative Party at one time. But the number of successful Manchester graduates in all fields of the new Labour movement, and the close ties between them, suggest that it is worth examining what the university has that makes it so adept at producing inhabitants of the political jungle.”
they never despair of the ad hominem, do they? now the whole university is a 'mafia' – like MAUP in Ukraine, perhaps.
Dershie calls for IDF siege of Hampshire College: link to richardsilverstein.com
LONDON (AFP) – Attacks on Jews in Britain, including violent street assaults, have risen sharply since the Israeli offensive in Gaza, a report said on Friday.
The Community Security Trust said 250 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in the four weeks after fighting began in the Hamas-controlled enclave on December 27.
One synagogue in Brondesbury in northwest London was targeted in an arson attack, while hate emails were received by Jews and graffiti threatening "jihad" against British Jews sprayed.
The incidents overshadowed a drop in overall attacks reported in 2008 to 541 from 561 the year before, said CST, a charity which works to safeguard the Jewish community.
"The Jewish community would have welcomed this decline in incident figures for a second year running," said Mark Gardner from the trust.
"Sadly, the subsequent outburst of anti-Semitic rage during the Gaza conflict shows the shocking impact upon British Jews of widespread anti-Israel hysteria."
Incidents have centred on predominately Jewish areas such as Golders Green and Stamford Hill in north London and parts of Salford and Bury.
The figures include 88 violent assaults, including the fatal stabbing of a Jewish man in Manchester at the hands of a mentally-ill attacker.
The incident was the first anti-Semitic killing in Britain since the trust began recording incidents in 1984.
There were 74 reports of damage and desecration to Jewish property, 28 direct threats and 314 incidents of abusive behaviour, including hate mail and graffiti.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090213/wl_uk_afp/britainjewscrimemideastgazaconflict_20090213114640
Here's a nice, concise response to the recently arrived hasbara jr. crew, such as chris berel, Thom, Suzanne, etc–you regulars have figured out who they are:
Israel, Hamas and Civilians
Posted by saifedean on January 16, 2009
(link to thesaifhouse.wordpress.com
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In a comment on my post on Friedman and Goldberg’s call for murder of civilians, commenter Americanthinker asks two excellent questions:
2. Is it morally acceptable for an attacking force to mount attacks from locations overwhelming occupied by civilians? Doesn’t this invite the very risk to Gazan civilians to which you object?
3. Hamas does not distinguish between the Israeli military and the people of Israel (presumably on the basis that the Israeli people elect and support their government) and feels completely justified in firing rockets into Israeli civilian populations. Hamas quite honestly says that it wants no peace with Israel. What, if anything, would induce Hamas to agree to stop firing rockets at Israel? If your answer is that, in the minds of the Hamas leadership, resistance is always justified, then aren’t they condemning Gazan civilians to Israeli military responses? What do you think the results of a referendum would be if Gazans were asked if they wanted the rocket fire from Gaza to continue if the price would be repeated Israeli military responses? The Gazans voted for Hamas; did they also vote for war?
These questions are built on the conventional view of the conflict, which goes thus:
1- Hamas fires rockets at Israeli civilians
2- Israel attempts to retaliate to defend its civilians
3- Hamas hides among civilians
4- Civilians die
If this bore any tenuous link to reality, it could be compelling. But, unfortunately, this line of thinking is as wrong-headed as believing that cancer causes smoking. There are several clear and incontrovertible facts that do not fit with this narrative, and these are:
• 1- The occupation:
Israel has been occupying the Gaza Strip, and has the final sovereign rule over all its inhabitants, since 1967. Israel’s claims to have ended the occupation of Gaza in 2005 are nonsense, because since 2005 Israel has controlled Gaza from land, air and sea. It controls all access of civilians, goods, food, water, fuel and medicine. Israel controls Gaza in the same way that the US controls its Federal prisons.
• 2- The siege:
Since 2006 (and well before) Israel has imposed a draconian and inhuman siege against the people of Gaza. It denies them entry of food, medicine, fuel and water. Infants have died in hospital incubators as power was cut, as Israeli occupation officials prevented fuel from coming into Gaza.
• 3- Israeli murder:
Israel continued to attack, bomb, invade and devastate Gaza since 1967, and did not stop since 2005. These attacks started way before Hamas even existed, and are far more devastating than anything Hamas has ever mustered.
• 4- The cease-fire:
Even if one were to ignore all that and assume that the world started in June 2008, one would still have to place the blame for this mess on Israel, for the very simple reason that Israel was the one that violated this current cease-fire. From June onwards, Hamas did not fire any rockets at Israel, while Israel continues to starve the Palestinians. This in itself is an act of aggression that makes Israel the aggressor, but even if we ignored that, it was still Israel who violated this cease-fire in November.
These facts then turn your story on its head. Once you take them into account, believing that Hamas is the cause of this, or that the people of Gaza brought this fate onto themselves, becomes as perverse as believing that The Black Panthers were the cause of slavery and segregation.
The reality is that Israel has, for the past 42 years (fully funded and supported by America) launched an unrelenting war of aggression, murder, land-theft, siege, destruction and starvation on the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians have had two clear choices all along:
1- Do nothing, in which case you will be starved to death or bombed to death and have your land stolen for religiously exclusive colonies while the world watches and does nothing.
Or
2- Attempt to fight back, in which case Israel, through its hacks like Friedman and Goldberg, will portray that as a naked unprovoked act of aggression that justifies more bombing and death.
In both cases, Israel is attacking and killing Palestinians. Under the cease-fire, when Hamas wasn’t firing rockets, Israel still besieged and starved Gaza. Israel then violated the cease-fire and used Hamas’s retaliation as a pretext for further murder and starvation and sieges.
Hamas reacting by rockets is wrong, unacceptable and unjustifiable. I condemn it unequivocally and wish they would stop it. But to look at that as if it is the root of this crisis is just plain wrong. Israel has been attacking, murdering, occupying, starving and controlling the Gazans since 1967. That is the real problem. That is the real terrorism. That is what you should be angry about. And more importantly, that is what you should get your country to stop supporting.
The pathetic rockets of Hamas are nothing but a reaction to the real problem, which is Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
If you claim to be concerned about civilians and their well-being, then it strikes me as very odd that you would:
1- Ignore the occupation
2- Ignore the siege
3- Ignore Israel’s inhuman, indiscriminate and devastating carpet-bombing of Gaza
4- Ignore the fact that it was Israel that violated this cease-fire
5- Concentrate on the pathetic rockets Hamas fires, which are themselves the result of the acts of aggression by the Israeli government against the Palestinians.
Which brings me to another problematic story that America’s media has not stopped repeating: the idea that any of this is justifiable because “Hamas does not want peace.” This is a very perverse, wrong-headed and racist idea. Israel already has destroyed Palestine. Israel is the aggressor and occupier here. Israel is the result of a Zionist project whose stated aim is to destroy the livelihood of Palestinians who do not belong to the Jewish religion. Israel has ethnically cleansed more than a million Palestinians from their homes over the years, murdered tens of thousands, and made freedom and self-determination impossible for all Palestinians everywhere. Israel continues to colonize Palestinian land, occupy all of Palestinians’ lands and control all their lives. In the face of all this, I find it mind-boggling that adults will still look at this and think that the problem is what Hamas says about recognizing Israel’s “right to exist” (whatever the hell that means).
Hamas is a political resistance movement that has announced that it will accept a two-state solution over the West Bank and Gaza. The idea of Hamas “recognizing” Israel’s “right to exist” before any negotiations can start is as nonsensical as asking the NY Yankees to recognize Tanzania’s right to exist: there is absolutely no meaning to a non-state actor “recognizing” a state.
Most importantly, Israel is the one that is actually and physically destroying Palestine. Everything you accuse Hamas of wanting to do, Israel is actually doing. The problem with the American discourse on this topic is that it is not concerned at all with Israel doing all of this, but is horrified at exaggerated media reports that claim that Hamas wants to do these things.
This would be laughable—were it not so tragic. It is precisely because Americans believe this wrongheaded story that the American government supports Israel politically, economically, militarily and diplomatically. It is because of this support that Israel can do these things.
I think Peretz also claimed that Walt and Mearsheimer weren't distinguished scholars of international relations in part of a diatribe against them. Casual denigration of academic status is just part of his schtick.
Your are correct, otto:
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/06/peretz_versus_walt.php
Zionist butchers have a lot of their wealth tied to the defense industries that feed their killing machines.
It seems that Islamonazis and their prseudo-liberal supporters got the upper hand in Hampshire College. Now it’s about time for all decent academics around the world to boycott this college.
I suggest we should nuke Iran, or let Israelis nuke them.
Great! Let's send those goy soldiers and more of their their families' tax dollars in to support the Zionists land grab. We can tell them if they die for Israel, and continue getting financially bled to death by organized world jewry/Israel that they may get a purple medal in heaven for being a "Righteous Gentile."