Thursday, April 10, 2014
Elder of ZiyonThe Cornell Student Assembly voted late this afternoon to table indefinitely a Resolution to Divest from companies doing business in Israel.A member of the Cornell faculty who attended wrote to me:
The decision foiled the last-minute stealth move on the eve of Passover to push the Resolution forward so that the vote would take place next week in the middle of Passover: ALERT: Sneak Passover Anti-Israel Divestment attack at Cornell.
Even getting to that vote to table required that the Assembly overrule the decision of the President of the Assembly not to allow the motion to table until the Resolution was presented. Under no circumstance was there to be a vote today on the substance of the Resolution, this was a procedural decision to take it off the agenda.
This is a crushing defeat for SJP — maybe one of the most decisive yet on any campus.
They tried to pull a fast one, and never even were able to present their Resolution.
This reflected widespread opposition not only to the substance, but also a resentment of students who see SJP tryig to usurp campus dialogue. As one Assembly member wrote to me:
[Resolution backer] wants to see 20 year old college students form firm opinions on an issue we know very little about and have no responsibility for.
Expect claims that speech was stifled. To the contrary, there is no “right” to take up Student Assembly time on a Resolution that had so little support it couldn’t even survive a procedural motion.
The BDSers are physically intimidating and ugly the way they act as a group with all their finger clicking and so forth. I'm a tenured faculty member and I felt quite intimidated; I can't imagine what a young more vulnerable student feels when confronted by this crap, especially if he/she is not secure about his or her Jewish identity.
But the BDSers are claiming that the pro-Israel students are the ones who were intimidating. Check out this tweet:
Gutless @CornellSA refuses to debate students' #CornellDivest Res. @CIPAC_CU swamps meeting w/ blueshirt Zionist hoodlums #trolltheCornellSA
— Kevin (@Dr_Manhatten) April 11, 2014
So who were the hoodlums, the anti-Israel crowd or the Zionists? Who is lying?
Luckily, we have a video that shows the answer brilliantly:
Apparently, polite applause is the act of "blueshirt Zionist hoodlums" while repeatedly and profanely interrupting a student association meeting is simple manners.
It seems that when you have an irrational hatred of one of the world's most liberal and tolerant countries despite it being surrounded by tens of millions who want it to be destroyed, seeing things as exactly the opposite of truth becomes a habit.
Unfortunately for them, the tide is turning against BDS this year, quite decisively. There will be more angry, profanity-filled outbursts, and more humorous videos of Israel haters.
Rational people remain rational when they lose. Irrational haters become even more irrational when things don't go their way. Nothing I can say is more convincing than this video.
