Monday, June 26, 2017
From Ian:
Cinnamon Stillwell and Michael Lumish: Professors Spin Antisemitic Conspiracies at Cal State-Fresno
Cinnamon Stillwell and Michael Lumish: Professors Spin Antisemitic Conspiracies at Cal State-Fresno
California State University, Fresno (CSUF) is the last place that one would expect conspiracy theories about Jewish power to proliferate — because Jews make up less than one percent of Fresno’s population. But leave it to the academic world to provide fertile ground for this ugly trope.London Mayor Sadiq Khan Faces Criticism for Refusal to Back Hezbollah Terror Designation
It began last year, when CSUF sought to hire someone for an endowed professorship to be named after the late Columbia University professor Edward Said. When the hiring committee failed to appoint one of the final four applicants — all of Middle Eastern heritage — and CSUF canceled the search, an acrimonious battle ensued.
It didn’t take long for anti-Israel CSUF professors to push the antisemitic canard that Jewish faculty members and outside groups had interfered in the hiring process based on the job candidates’ ethnicity.
Joe Parks, the Equal Employment Opportunities representative on the search committee, told the Fresno Bee, “The search was canceled because when the finalists came to campus, the Jewish faculty complained.” Elsewhere, Parks singled out “the Jewish community” as being responsible for the school’s failure to hire one of the applicants.
In solidarity with Parks, Vida Samiian, the semi-retired director of CSUF’s Middle East Studies Program and dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, quit. “I have decided to resign in objection to the unethical and discriminatory cancellation of the Edward Said Professorship,” she wrote. “The administration carried out the vicious and discriminatory attacks launched by Israel advocacy groups against the search committee and the four finalists who were of Middle Eastern and Palestinian ethnicity [emphasis added].”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has come under fire for refusing to confirm that he would petition UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd to designate all of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.Seth Frantzman: We could all be Otto Warmbier
The question regarding the terror group’s status was raised last week by London Assembly member David Kurten (UKIP) in response to the presence of Hezbollah flags during an anti-Israel Al-Quds Day march in London.
“That will close the loophole to stop people marching through the streets of London with a flag with a gun on it,” Kurten said in support of the terror designation during a London Assembly meeting.
At the same meeting, Assembly member Andrew Boff (Conservative) accused Khan of not doing his job, saying the mayor seems to be “avoiding saying, ‘Yes I’ll [confirm the designation with the home secretary].’”
Rudd said she would explore the possibility of banning the annual Al-Quds Day march and designating all of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
In the past, the European Union has come under scrutiny for making a distinction between the so-called “military” and “political” wings of Hezbollah, only giving the “military” wing a terror designation.
The grassroots group North West Friends of Israel amassed 20,000 signatures on a petition advocating for the Hezbollah terror designation.
Otto Warmbier’s tearful confession still haunts me. There is something awful in it. The crying out of a young man who knows he faces a ruined life based on accusations of a regrettable act that he cannot undo. Warmbier faced injustice after injustice in North Korea. A sham trial, a coerced confession, a life-destroying 15-year prison sentence of hard labor, sickness and then death. He was 22 years old.
His last few days were spent back in the US after he was released on “humanitarian” grounds by the very regime responsible for his incarceration and the illness that led to his death. His supposed crime? He was accused of trying to take a government sign as a souvenir. The North Korean government claimed this act undermined the foundations of the state.
He is not the first or last to receive an unspeakable punishment while being innocent of any real infraction. Men, women and children have been executed throughout history for minor infractions. Le Miserables is based on the story of a man sentenced to harsh labor for stealing bread. Nor is the North Korean regime unique in handing down these kinds of punishments in our time. In Thailand people are sentenced for insulting the monarch. In other places they are caned or beheaded, as happens in Saudi Arabia. Women are stoned to death or murdered by their families for looking at a man the wrong way or dressing “immodestly” in countries such as Pakistan.
Albinos are lynched in east Africa. Tourists are sentenced to death, accused of smuggling drugs, in countries like Indonesia.
In discussions about the murder of Warmbier, many excuses have been made and some writers have gone so far as to blame the victim. Time magazine callously titled their story “How Otto Warmbier Made It Out Of North Korea,” and pretended his treatment was due to “the latest grim chapter” in US-North Korea relations, as if bad relations between countries excuses the arrest and death of a young man.
Other hate-mongers claim Warmbier is an example of “white privilege” and his death was deserved because of his skin color. But the only privilege he asked for was not be sentenced to decades in prison and then killed by maltreatment over accusations of stealing a small sign. That’s not privilege, that’s a basic human right.
