David Collier: The ‘Elders of Zion’ reborn at the University of Kent
Yesterday, 28/01/2016, I was at the University of Kent to hear a talk by Amira Hass titled ‘Israel and the Palestinians: Colonialism and Prospects for Justice. The event itself was a collaboration between The Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Kent University and the Palestine Centre at SOAS, University of London. One of these universities, SOAS, is already a notorious hotbed for extremism, the other, Kent, seems to be desperately trying to catch-up.Cary Nelson: Anti-Israel Academics Face Pushback by the Truth
Dr Bashir Abu-Manneh is the head of the centre for Postcolonial studies at Kent, like other academics of his type, it can be seen from his own activity that he has long lost sight of what academia and critical thinking is about. This event, following one just the evening before attempting to create BDS activists on campus, is simply a sign of a deteriorating environment.
Amira Hass is an Israeli columnist at the Haaretz newspaper. For the last 20 years she has lived in the Palestinian areas, originally in Gaza, but more recently moving to Ramallah in the West Bank. Amira is an example of one of those Israelis nobody should have heard of. Standing for politics that receive no support in Israel, Amira’s opinions reflect none but a handful of oddballs. Every nation has people like Hass hidden in the shadows. What makes her ‘special’, what makes her a marketable commodity, are hundreds of millions of people outside of Israel that simply want Israel gone. The audience of Amira Hass are not peacemakers, but warmongers.
Hass had stepped back in time to explain the perpetual occupation, to present a reason why after 49 years, no movement had been made towards peace. Without Palestinian violence, Israeli actions become irrational, with Israeli democracy, they become inexplicable, and someway, somehow, this illogical unreasonable position needed to be explained away. All that is left is conspiracy. This is what she said:
“And I ask myself did the Elders of Zion really sit together at the beginning of the Seventies and then during the nineties, and plan, and have all these military orders, all these changes? I believe that they knew for sure that they don’t want to give back the land and in the Nineties, my conclusion is that they wanted to do everything possible to stop the two state solution.”
Beyond Israeli democracy, beyond the will of the voters, beyond the desires of peacemakers like Rabin and Peres, there are invisible Jewish decision makers. They planned from the early 1970’s, never to let the territories go, they manipulated, they connived, they controlled as puppet masters do. A conspiracy of a Jewish cabal that places the profit to be won from the occupation above the will of the electorate and the lives of innocent children. And it is called the ‘Elders of Zion’.
At their annual meeting in Atlanta earlier this month, members of the American Historical Association voted down a factually flawed resolution condemning Israel. The resolution claimed that Israel refuses "to allow students from Gaza to travel in order to pursue higher education abroad."Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Holocaust Remembrance Day and UN Chief Ban Ki Moon’s cowardly act Rabbi Abraham Cooper
Opponents marshaled evidence to prove this was untrue. Egypt, not Israel, controls the Rafah crossing that Gaza students and faculty heading toward universities abroad have used for decades.
After Egypt closed the Rafah crossing in October 2014, Israel increased the flow of students leaving Gaza through the Erez crossing into Israel to the north, and on to Jordan for flights abroad.
But Jordan, which once issued transit visas in 10 days, now takes several months or longer because of increased security concerns about students from Gaza.
The resolution also condemned Israel for an air attack on the Islamic University of Gaza during the 2014 Gaza war. But it failed to mention that the campus housed a weapons development and testing facility, a valid target under the laws of war.
Activists in certain humanities and interpretive social-science fields have convinced themselves they have their hands on the levers of history and can delegitimize the State of Israel. But they are more likely instead to discredit their academic disciplines.
Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, who, as he has done each year on this day, will preside of the international organization remembrance of 6 million dead Jews.Alex Salmond rebukes Israelis over Holocaust speech
Yet he chose the eve of this hallowed anniversary to bestow a moral and political blank check to Palestinian terrorists who this week alone buried knives into mother of 8 (6?), a pregnant woman and a beautiful young woman buying groceries for her grandparents.
According to Ban, the current Intifada by knife, gun, and vehicle “is a reaction to the fear, disparity and lack of trust the Palestinians are experiencing.” He went on to explain that "Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process," he said, blaming "the occupation" for causing "hatred and extremism."
"As oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism."
Powerful words and imagery: fear, lack of trust, frustration, and humiliation.
What a tragedy that Mr. Ban lacked the courage to use this Holocaust Remembrance Day as a teachable moment for Palestinians and other “frustrated” and “humiliated” young Arabs and Muslims.
He should have told them, “instead of embracing the culture of death of ISIS, Al Qaeda and Al Shabab, why not read Eli Wiesel’s 'Night,' or Victor Frankel’s 'Man's Search for Meaning'?
Alex Salmond has come under attack for using his new role representing the UK in Europe to issue a rebuke to the Israeli parliament on Holocaust Memorial Day.
The former First Minister told the Council of Europe that it was “inappropriate” for a senior Israeli representative at a Holocaust commemoration service to criticise the presence of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in France.
But his dressing down came the same day as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, published a video questioning whether the Holocaust “is a reality or not”.
The Ayatollah’s website promoted the video with a banner across its home page, featuring a montage of images, including one of Adolf Hitler.
Mr Salmond, who recently returned from a trip to Iran, told the Strasbourg meeting that there was a “time and place for international politics” and the Israeli government should not have issued the criticism “during a solemn commemoration service.”
He last night defended his actions, telling the Telegraph that everyone he had spoken to who also attended the council’s commemoration service on Wednesday morning agreed that the “political” attack in the Israeli speech was wrong.
However, experienced figures from other parties questioned his judgment on the international stage and claimed his comments created the impression of him being an unofficial spokesman for the Iranian regime.