The picture is one taken at Kristallnacht in Germany prior to World War II. But it is not that far from what is going on at many of the various campuses of the University of California. Anyone who says "it can't happen here" is living in a dream world. Antisemitism is getting consistently more vocal, and already has taken on the trappings of violence.
The far left organizations on the UC campuses have slowly drifted into pro-Palestinian "freedom and statehood" politics over the years, but it has only been over the past few years that it took on a strongly anti-Israel, antisemitic cast. Previous leftist politics were satisfied with being anti-American and anti-West, but the left has decided that attacks on the "perpetrators of violence" in the Middle East have not been sufficiently pointed. Thus, they have made common cause with the Islamic world.
Most recently, the University of California at San Diego Associated Students have attempted to pass a resolution that has been making its way around the UC system. Moral equivalence has gone out the window, and the Jews in Israel are now entirely responsible, as an occupying force, for all the woes of the Palestinians and miserable poverty and death throughout the Middle East. The resolution then calls for complete UC divestment of all investments in Israel or any organization doing business with Israel. These twits have managed to construct in their fevered minds a comparison of Israel with South Africa during apartheid.
The UC resolution is also up for consideration at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. One has come to expect this sort of thing from Berkeley, which is known for its SWINE (Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything). But outsiders may not realize just how radical the other campuses have become. UC Irvine regularly holds anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian rallies, often accompanied by property damage. UC Santa Cruz at times seems like Damascus West, and recently it turned into a Kristallnacht-type visit from the "anarchist campus left" to the business district in town. Berkeley is just bigger and better-known outside of California.
The San Diego resolution was tabled for the second time, but as they say, "the third time's the charm." The largest campus organizations supporting the resolution are the usual suspects: The College Democrats, Students for Barack Obama, The Haiti Emergence Action Team, the Muslim Students Association, and the Black Students Union. The resolution concludes by quoting the United Nations Security Council Resolution 446 which "determines that the policy and practices of [the occupying power] in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East."
At Berkeley, the resolution is in direct support of UC Berkeley Academic Senate Bill 118-A, entitled: "A bill in support of UC Divestment from Israeli War Crimes." Oh, those damned Jews. Forty-one campus groups support the bill, some of which even I haven't heard of. But the biggest promoter of the bill is The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. It is only incidentally a "campus group." Little doubt where their sympathies lie (no double entendre intended). They have declared in no uncertain terms that their goal is to cut off all university funds that are used "to persecute innocent Palestinians."
Needless to say, much of the unrest has been stirred up by Israel's strong rejection of messiah Barack Obama's statements using the Gaza wars as an indictment of Israel's continuing settlements. Never mind that Israel would never have been there in the first place if the Arab world had not tried twice to obliterate the Jewish nation entirely in two wars which tiny Israel won against all odds. The Obama administration, and the University of California students don't respect our own borders, so why should they respect the borders of Israel or its right to survive?
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Antisemitism And The University of California
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
You know, this should shock me more. But I remember all of this beginning with the Nation of Islam and how that was totally tolerated.
I just find it amazing that the left, which loves to think of itself as the "non-haters" and loves to call everyone else Nazis can so openly express hate and go down the same road the Nazis took, without even giving it a second thought.
great post, Hawk - Interstingly, I just finished reading a review by Daniel Pipes at National Review of a new book by Efraim Karsh titled "Palestine Betrayed." Essentially, the book is well researched and indicates that counter intuitively, between 1917 and 1949, the Palestinian leaders are almost solely responsible for lack of a peaceful co-existence. In particular, Amin al Husseini drove his people ona "relentless collision course with the Zionist movement."
Moral equivalency indeed.
Andrew: The left is tolerant of anything that is anti-American, anti-capitalist or anti-freedom. Antisemitism used to be counterproductive for them, but since it now serves their purpose in a war America must win, they are willing to stand by and watch it happen and even encourage it.
What is sad is how many American Jews are involved in the anti-Israel movement because their devotion to liberalism has blinded them to the insidiousness of the perversion of liberalism by the far left.
Tennessee: Daniel Pipes is one of the two or three most in-depth experts on Islam and Islamism. He is the source of great hatred from the left because he is so devastatingly accurate about the history and the future of the Middle East and the current Muslim attempts to reconquer the world.
He is particularly adamant about refusing to refer to the nonsensical "Islamic radicals" as if they are entirely separate from traditional Islam. He calls it Islamism, and sees it as not a fringe group, but a mass movement inspired by the words of the Koran itself.
Southern Baptists are fundamentalists and Islamists are fundamentalists, but unlike the Southern Baptists, Islamists are willing and anxious to murder those who don't agree with them, en masse.
Southern Baptists have the New Testament to temper their religious zeal. Islamists have the Koran to stoke theirs. Thus, fundamentalism is not the problem, the fundamental book is.
Lawhawk, That's a good point. The left uses whoever it needs to serve its purposes. When it becomes worth it to betray them, then they have no problems betraying them.
LawHawk,
I don't believe the "students" there are taught any actual history of Germany and the rise of Antisemitism.
This is the way it starts. So-called intellectuals preaching against Jews. A government which doesn't condemn but actually eggs the hatred on. I hope it doesn't get any farther along the road than this.
Andrew: It's the nature of the statist/socialist. The leaders really seek power, while ideology and human beings are mere means to an end. Anybody or anything that gets in the way must go. Loyalty is temporary. If your friends get in the way, they quickly become former friends.
Likewise, former enemies become allies because they're useful. They can be controlled for the state's purposes. Which is exactly what the German leadership said about Hitler, just before he destroyed them.
Joel: It's another example of how much the University has changed since I was a student at Berkeley. Not only did I have three separate courses on Germany, but it was at Berkeley that I was first introduced to Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, still the definitive work on both the mind of the totalitarian, and the mind of the antisemite as well. They probably don't allow it in class today. Arendt would be considered "too Jewish."
LawHawk,
I have a fascination with Nazi Germany and how it came into being. What struck me strongly was how people just kept not seeing the hatred and the people being taken away.
Oh, one other thing, MSM back then didn't report the concentration and the death camps.
Joel: Santayana's admonition about what happens to those who don't learn the lessons of history is illustrated in spades if we don't pay heed to the rise of antisemitism in America.
The Nazis did a very good job of hiding the death camps before and during the war. Eisenhower himself was shocked when he saw his first death camp. Even his advance military intelligence hadn't prepared him for what he found. He is reputed to have said, "For the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my German heritage."
The coverups by the MSM of the time are much better illustrated by Walter Duranty, The New York Times and the willful coverups of the mass starvations of Russians and Ukrainians under Stalin. Unlike the death camps, those mass deaths were there for anybody with eyes to see. But what are 30 or 40 million deaths compared to the glory of the rise of the international socialist state?
LawHawk. The State University System isn't much better. They just seem to be a bit less organized than the UC system.
CalFed: With the exception of San Francisco State and San Jose State, the state university system is largely comprised of students who don't qualify for the UC campuses and professors who are likewise second-echelon. So it's inevitable that the level of organization and "newsworthiness" of the campus activities would be of a lesser degree. That said, the rabid antisemitism and Muslim intimidation at the SF State campus is far worse than at any of the UC campuses.
my mother's family (germans) hid jews during the war, at the risk of all of them being killed. she doesn't talk much of that time other than to say (and said throughout our youth), "we have to be careful. it could happen here too."
as a kiddo, i poo-pooed her belief. afterall, we lived in america. but that was then and this is now. today, i see her wisdom in trying to instill in us, her american children, the dangers of hate.
Patti: I know that some of my extended family in Germany were part of the German resistance, but I also have no doubt that some of them were pro-Nazi patriots who discovered too late what Hitler was really all about.
The wise words we must never forget, lest it happen here, is "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance." The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the Obamists are just full of good intentions (among other things).
It’s always mind boggling to me how the Jewish people always become the worlds favorite boogey-man. I know the nexus between the democrat party, and Jews, but brother that needs to change!
Post a Comment