HATE SPEECH ON CAMPUS
A Film by "Stand With Us"
Reviewed by: FERN SIDMAN
It is that time of the year once again. The new school term will begin in a matter of weeks. As the excitement and anticipation escalates for some, entering college or university for the first time can be a daunting and intimidating experience for the Jewish student. Always a minority, the secular Jewish student faces the foreboding prospect of living on a campus that has morphed into a raging hotbed of anti-Israel fanaticism.
Stand With Us, the pro-Israel advocacy organization that focuses its energies on countering disinformation and slander against Israel and Jews on college campuses, has produced a powerful and must-see documentary on the proliferation of rabid Jew hatred that has permeated today's college campuses.
The introduction to "Hate Speech on Campus" unequivocally states that the objective of this film is not to thwart the rights of free speech on campuses or to initiate a campaign against academic freedom but rather to spotlight the rampant plague of Islamic demonization of Israel that has become a ubiquitous phenomenon.
Focusing on such campuses as the University of California at Irvine, Long Beach and Santa Cruz as well as San Diego State University and Concordia University in Canada, this film utilizes realtime footage of Muslim agitators whose political and religious ideology is clearly tethered to such radical movements as the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qeada. Brought to these campuses by the Muslim Students Association as well organizations such as the International Solidarity Movement, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and Women in Black, these treacherous propagandists use arguments predicated upon half truths, distortions and overt canards as they attempt to re-write history, as it pertains to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
It is clear that what is presented in this film is nothing short of classical anti-Semitism in its most banal form. Armed with the notion that the Jews are responsible for all of the world's ills, Amir Abdel Malik Ali blatantly referring to Israel as an apartheid state, as he takes the podium at UC Irvine and advocates bloody terrorism by telling his audience that Palestinians who blow up civilian buses in Israel are indeed "freedom fighters" who are simply responding to Israeli aggression. Moreover, Malik Ali labels Zionism as "the American disease" that needs to be stamped out, adding that it is the "Zionist Jews" who control the media and have set an agenda for global domination. Calling on all Muslims to unite against what he perceives as a nefarious plot, he insists that Muslims must rule the world and utilize all means at their disposal to do so. He is joined in this cacophony of hate by such Islamic luminaries as Amir Abdel who has defined Zionism as a mixture of "white supremacy and the concept of the chosen people" and Imam Mohammed Al Asi who asserts that Israel is a "war like regime that has assumed a racist and expansionist posture".
Not to be outdone, these Muslim speakers are joined by their American counterparts in excoriating Israel. Alison Weir, a former San Francisco journalist who now heads up an organization called, "If Americans Knew" speaks of Jews stealing Palestinian land and claims that prior to the creation of the State of Israel, "Zionists used an array of misleading strategies, including secret collaboration with the Nazis, to push immigration." Former political science professor Norman Finkelstein who was denied tenure at DePaul University because of fraudulent scholarship is also seen in this film alleging that Israel engaged in "ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948". Finkelstein, a self hating Jew, is known for his role in denying the veracity of the Holocaust and portraying Holocaust survivors as crafty business people who are attempting to use their Holocaust experiences to build a money making industry.
According to Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer in Hebrew at UC Santa Cruz, many of these speakers are sponsored by the Women's Studies and Middle Eastern Studies departments which are rife with academics who possess a clear bias towards Israel and America. Because of the monopoly of power that they wield on today's campuses, it is these very departments that refuse to allow speakers who wish to present a more objective position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue to address the student body. Apparently, the influence of Saudi Arabian dollars is visible as it has been revealed that their far reaching tentacles have a firm grasp on North American universities. Evidence has surfaced that is they who are the architects of the curriculum of numerous Middle Eastern Studies departments as well as their chief benefactors.
What is most frightening about the hate speech presented in this film, is the fact that these words facilitate an incitement to violence as was evidenced in the footage taken at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada when anti-Israel protestors publicly harassed and physically attacked Jewish students when then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak there. As the Muslim students literally blocked the escalator leading to the room where the speech was to be held, we witness clashes between police and demonstrators which ultimately led to the cancellation of the address.
Angered by the ever increasing bellicosity on campus, Jewish students as well as Hillel directors, rabbis and community leaders are now beginning to galvanize against such Jew hatred and are organizing their own activist agendas. Judea Pearl, the father of Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and beheaded by Taliban and Al Qeada operatives Pakistan in 2002 said that, "for too long Jews have allowed this kind of racism on campuses to flourish; all under the cloak of political debate".
This film illustrates quite cogently that the use of such chilling epidemiological metaphors by the plethora of Jew haters on America's college campuses is indeed reminiscent of Nazi incitement and thus represents a prologue to, and justification for a Mid-East genocide. If we choose to ignore this kind of hate as mere blather, we do so at our own peril. History has proven that the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers; but rather it began with words.
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