UNM Israel Alliance

Once again the Daily Lobo gives a stage to an anti-Israeli propagandistic article, where “journalist” Ziad Abbas and his faculty friends in UNM attack and blame Israel for the Palestinian suffering. Like many articles of its kind, it is full with common lies and disguised by “innocent” comments of professors.
First and foremost, the Daily Lobo and Ziad Abbas forgot the very basic definition of journalism: “writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation”. As part of the disgusting phenomenon of journalists forgetting their role as reporters and becoming public opinion creators, it is clear that in his tour to New Mexico Abbas does not function as a journalist, but as a mere propagandist. Sadly, the Daily Lobo collaborates and offers a free advertisement.
The article contains several of the propaganda lies. Abbas says: “my family was forced out of their home in 1948 when Israelis attacked Palestinian villages” and continues: “To be there on the ground and to see how they have changed the reality and tried to hide the history…they gave my village a Hebrew name”. This commonly used narrative is fraudulent and easily refuted. In 1948 Israel was attacked by the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and local Arab villagers, after they all rejected the generous UN partition plan. The majority of the villagers escaped, following the orders of Hitler’s partner, the Mufti of Jerusalem Al-Husayni. That in order to clear the area for the progressing Arab armies. . Moreover, the village of Abbas’s mother – Jirash, as other Arab villages, was built on the biblical settlement Zanoah and therefore it received a Hebrew name.
Prof. Rudolph pretentiously says: “The Palestinians that live on the West Bank were devastated to see their brothers and sisters massacred”. I do not think there was a time when the West Bank was so relatively quiet as at the recent Gaza fighting and when there was such an understanding to the Israeli assault, without even mentioning the brutal killings of Fatah members by Hamas in the Gaza strip.
Last but not least, Prof. Rao says: “Americans have heard the Israeli perspective for a long time and are slowly starting to see the Palestinian point of view”. This baseless statement is refuted by the ongoing propaganda taking place in UNM and as Palestinian speakers, exhibitions, and articles are super abundant in the US and Europe. This claim becomes more absurd as the Daily Lobo chooses to keep publishing pro-Palestinian articles and no pro-Israeli articles at all.
Tens of minorities live around the world stateless and oppressed; from 15 million Kurds in Turkey, to the Tibetans in China, and the list is long. But the honorable professors and the concerned media choose to deal with one issue only. Insanity broke new records at the UN conference on racism, where the most oppressing countries and the worst for human rights judge the rest of the world.

Khaled Abu Toameh – Hudson New York

During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.

Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.

I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.

I was also told that top Fatah operative Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for masterminding terror attacks against Israeli civilians, was thrown behind bars simply because he was trying to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Furthermore, I was told that all the talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist propaganda” and that Yasser Arafat had done wonderful things for his people, including the establishment of schools, hospitals and universities.

The good news is that these remarks were made only by a minority of people on the campuses who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian,” although the overwhelming majority of them are not Palestinians or even Arabs or Muslims.

The bad news is that these groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don’t like to hear.

When the self-designated “pro-Palestinian” lobbyists are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse.

On one campus, for example, I was condemned as an “idiot” because I said that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the January 2006 election because they were fed up with financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

On another campus, I was dubbed as a “mouthpiece for the Zionists” because I said that Israel has a free media. There was another campus where someone told me that I was a ‘liar” because I said that Barghouti was sentenced to five life terms because of his role in terrorism.

And then there was the campus (in Chicago) where I was “greeted” with swastikas that were painted over posters promoting my talk. The perpetrators, of course, never showed up at my event because they would not be able to challenge someone who has been working in the field for nearly 30 years.

What struck me more than anything else was the fact that many of the people I met on the campuses supported Hamas and believed that it had the right to “resist the occupation” even if that meant blowing up children and women on a bus in downtown Jerusalem.

I never imagined that I would need police protection while speaking at a university in the U.S. I have been on many Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and I cannot recall one case where I felt intimidated or where someone shouted abuse at me.

Ironically, many of the Arabs and Muslims I met on the campuses were much more understanding and even welcomed my “even-handed analysis” of the Israeli-Arab conflict. After all, the views I voiced were not much different than those made by the leaderships both in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These views include support for the two-state solution and the idea of coexistence between Jews and Arabs in this part of the world.

The so-called pro-Palestinian “junta” on the campuses has nothing to offer other than hatred and de-legitimization of Israel. If these folks really cared about the Palestinians, they would be campaigning for good government and for the promotion of values of democracy and freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Their hatred for Israel and what it stands for has blinded them to a point where they no longer care about the real interests of the Palestinians, namely the need to end the anarchy and lawlessness, and to dismantle all the armed gangs that are responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinians over the past few years.

The majority of these activists openly admit that they have never visited Israel or the Palestinian territories. They don’t know -and don’t want to know – that Jews and Arabs here are still doing business together and studying together and meeting with each other on a daily basis because they are destined to live together in this part of the world. They don’t want to hear that despite all the problems life continues and that ordinary Arab and Jewish parents who wake up in the morning just want to send their children to school and go to work before returning home safely and happily.

What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the “occupation” as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.

Many of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas officials I talk to in the context of my work as a journalist sound much more pragmatic than most of the anti-Israel, “pro-Palestinian” folks on the campuses.

Over the past 15 years, much has been written and said about the fact that Palestinian school textbooks don’t promote peace and coexistence and that the Palestinian media often publishes anti-Israel material.

While this may be true, there is no ignoring the fact that the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is not less dangerous. What is happening on these campuses is not in the frame of freedom of speech. Instead, it is the freedom to disseminate hatred and violence. As such, we should not be surprised if the next generation of jihadists comes not from the Gaza Strip or the mountains and mosques of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but from university campuses across the U.S.

What’s happening in Toronto is happening in Albuquerque and many other cities on various scales. It behooves us to pay attention…

Posted on Atlas Shrugs, by Pamela Geller

An eyewitness:

Tonight at the U of T [Israeli Apartheid Week] event, two Jewish students were assaulted by the Palestinian “Security” team for being “disruptive” (asking a legitimate question “does Israel have a right to exist”) The Palestinian “security” smacked a student in the head and grabbed him by his neck, while another “security” officer told a second Jewish student to “Shut the F**ck up or he’ll saw his head off”…All of this was done in a crowded lecture room with over 100 witnesses!!
I was there, there are no pictures, filming and taking pictures was prohibited (they seem to have a problem with the general public hearing what they say) it was reported to the police who chose (as usual) to do NOTHING…

Atlas has the full story from a courageous student who was there. Here are some images from last night. I will not run the name of the student reporter. I don’t want them to get their skull cracked by the adherents of the religion of peace.

While last night had higher profile anti-Zionists and anti-Semites, what with Naomi Klein and Sid Ryan, tonight had greater righteous indignation of the “oppressed Fakestinians”.

Notably, with Jews visible in the audience, the audience was repeatedly told from the dias that no photography or recording of any type was allowed by anyone without “media clearance”.

On a number of occasions organizers tried to force me to depart with my camera, though I had not taken even one shot. i told them that when everyone with a cell-phone leaves or gives up their phone i will give up my camera too.

Later, during questions, organizers, ” security”, surrounded the area where visible Jews were seated. A Jew asked a question: “Is Hamas’s charter racist “? That question then become the focus of vitriole, the “security” closed in around the Jews, security then started to push the Jews, then the dias demanded that the Jew leave the room. The Jew replied out loud that he would not depart unless told to do so by the Police. They came in from the lobby, and that ensued.

While this went on, I pulled out my camera and started to shoot. All manner of people closed in around me, and tried to obscure my lens. I got a few shots, and left for the lobby to catch the newly-evicted Jews’ fate. Organizers were demanding my photos, and my name. They got neither, though it will be next to impossible to be anonymous tomorrow.

For my efforts, a Police Sergeant came up to me and pushed me out the front doors using his chest and flack-jacket against my chest. I asked him why i was being pushed out the doors and he said that. “you know why”. Why? Because I look Jewish? Because I was photographing the altercation started by the islamo-fascists? OR, because he is brown ? Oh, but I can’t make that silly, facetious, suggestion, all while being profiled myself ……….

As for the speakers: a communist Ryerson sociology prof; a racist, hijab-wrapped, student VP of YFS ( York Federation of Students ), who should likely better spend her time fighting female circumcision and misogyny in her own ethnic community; a U of T student who’s family was from Haifa, and who’s father was the student president at Bir Zeit in the 80′s and was imprisoned; a Mohawk student espousing common objectives with supporters of Hamas ………………

We had representation with flags and bodies outdoors, and kudos to all those to came out.

Tomorrow will be worse at York.

Lilah tov,
(more pictures on the original site)