Despite my own copious critiques, even I must concede that the American mainstream media really does print the bad news about Islamic gender apartheid—but it does so without drawing any “politically incorrect” conclusions, not even on their op-ed pages.

Over the years, the American mainstream media has printed articles about Islamic and African female genital mutilation, the public gang-rapes of innocent young girls in Pakistan (like Mukhtaran Bibi) and the repeated gang-rapes of girls and women in Darfur by ethnic Arab Muslims (the New York Times simply refused to use the word “Muslim”). The media has covered the disfiguring acid attacks on girls and women in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. Maddeningly, it draws no conclusion.

On November 3, 2004, an Iranian man, Majid Movahedi, poured a bucket of acid on Ameneh Bahrami’s head as she was leaving work. He did so because she had rejected his many marriage proposals. Poor Bahrami was blinded and disfigured. Since then, she has endured 17 operations, including one in Spain which failed to successfully reconstruct her face. She now has only 40% of her sight and only in one eye.

Under Shariah law, the victim has the right to demand an eye-for-an-eye if other negotiations fail. In this case, the great Islamic Republic of Iran was prepared to have a physician drop acid into Movahedi’s eyes—unless his victim forgave him.

On July 31^st, 2011, at the last minute, in the hospital, she did so. Movahedi wept.

I dunno. His crime was vicious—but the legal system in Iran is just as vicious. Shariah law is medieval. It may once have worked for warring tribes in Arabia 1400 years ago. Islamic imperialism and conversion by the sword has now led to people in south and central Asia to chanting from the Arab-language Qur’an without understanding a single word of Arabic—and to adopt harsh Arab desert justice in places where Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism once reigned.

Maybe poor Ameneh should marry the fiend; maybe Majiid should atone for his crime by serving and supporting his victim for the rest of his life. But Ameneh didn’t want him before; how much more repulsive he must seem to her now.

On July 31, 2011, on the same day Ameneh forgave the man who blinded and disfigured her, the New York Times ran two pieces on their front page. One article continued its non-stop jihad against the anti-jihadic/anti-Shariah bloggers (whom it blames for the “Islamophobic” Norwegian massacre of mainly ethnic infidel Norwegians). The other article, right beneath it, is titled: “Afghans Rage at Young Lovers; A Father Says Kill Them Both.”

“Lovers”? Hardly. These two seventeen-year-olds have possibly—probably—exchanged glances and perhaps a love letter or two. Maybe they once held hands or even once dared to share a quick, almost chaste kiss. Yes, these two seventeen year old Major Muslim Sinners decided it was better to marry than to burn in Hell. On their way to their (perhaps secret) wedding, “A group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and the girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned or hanged.”

The police rescued them from the raging mob but in the process killed a man. The girl’s family now want her dead; the mob wants the boy dead too because he is a Tajik and she is a Hazara. The family of the dead man have also sworn to kill her—“unless she marries one of their other sons (in order to pay) her debt.”

Funny, you don’t look like a barbarian.

The reporter, Andrea Elliott, notes that another young Afghan couple who had also fallen in love “were stoned to death (in Kunduz) by scores of people—including family members—after they eloped. The stoning marked a brutal application of Shariah law, captured on a video.”

Thus, Elliott’s article, while painting a horrifying picture of raging, out-of-control rural Afghan lynch mobs, also praises the Afghan police in Herat for having rescued the young Romeo and Juliet as well as the local clerics for having refused to condemn them. This is surely a point in their favor, but what conclusion does Elliott draw? Does she honestly believe that the police will prevail against the girl’s family who have been shamed and are now out for her blood? Is there no expert she might have consulted on this point? Does Elliot really understand that such Shariah practices are coming our way, that in fact, they are already here?

Israel continues to endure the fallout from the Mavi Marmara debacle; Israel gets blamed for defending herself even though Turkish hired assassins had come with the express purpose of assaulting and murdering Israeli soldiers.

In the teeth of this cruel public relations disaster, the indomitable Italian parliamentarian Fiamma Nirenstein, the chair of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, asked me to write something that would be read at a massive pro-Israel rally that she, together with Giuliano Ferrara, the publisher of Il Foglio, helped organize.

The rally took place on October 7, 2010, in Rome. More than 3,000 people were present at the Temple of Hadrian. Among those present were Italy’s prime minister, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, president of the Senate, the mayor of Rome, the president of the Jewish community of Rome, the chief rabbi of Rome, and a former Prime Minister of Spain. Messages from Prime Minister Netanyahu and from a distinguished host of intellectuals and politicians were beamed in.

I am now holding a book that memorializes this event: Per La Verita, Per Israele: Mille voci al Tempio di Adriano (For The Truth, For Israel: A Thousand Voices at the Temple of Hadrian). Each contribution appears in both Italian and English. The pieces are passionate, sophisticated, and written by people from many countries, including Italy, Spain, France, Norway, Finland, Holland, the United States, and Israel, etc., including pieces by Iranian dissidents in exile, Iraqis in exile, apostates in Parliament (Magdi Cristiano Allam), the Association of Arab Women in Italy, and Nobel Laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini. My most excellent colleagues Bruce Bawer, Melanie Phillips, Benny Morris, and of course Giuilo Meotti, all appear in the book.

Italy has a long and sordid history of persecuting its Jews. The word “ghetto” comes from the district in Venice in which Jews were forced to live and where they were locked in after dark. I recently took a tour of Jewish Rome and, since I love Italy, was especially saddened by the stories of repeated massacres, pogroms, and ritual persecution that afflicted the Jews of every region.

And still, a remnant of Italian Jewry survived. Alas, so does anti-Semitism.

Given the ongoing events, i.e. the flotilla and flytilla that failed, the hostile mass “surges” into Jewish Israel, the sabotage of the gas lines from Egypt to Israel, and the upcoming UN vote on Palestinian statehood—all of which amounts to the Third Intifada—I hope that Nirenstein is ready to rally soon again.

The 2010 rally in Rome, and now the book that memorializes it, parts company with Italian history. It is an act of profound resistance which I applaud. Here is what I wrote, and what was read for me at this rally.

*

The War In Jerusalem Will Spare Nobody. After the Jews, It Will Be the Christians’ Turn.

Without doubt, Israel potentially faces extinction, possibly a Second Holocaust.

Indeed, many Europeans continue Hitler’s Holocaust by supporting fifty-seven Islamic apartheid nation states against the single Jewish democratic state.

The worldwide media has become totally “Palestinianized” and Stalinized. Palestinians—even the haters, terrorists, and torturers, are naught but noble, innocent victims. Israel has literally become Orwell’s 1984 “Goldstein,” whom propagandized mobs are taught to scapegoat for their every conceivable sorrow.

The ideological assault against Israel has escalated. Daily, hourly, in every language, the media repeats Big Lies. Israel is the “Nazi, apartheid” state, the “colonial” aggressor; neat trick, that. Bloody Muslim imperialism and Islamic religious and gender apartheid are thus denied and projected onto Israel.

Israel is essentially, existentially, “evil.”

In 2005, Ahmadinejad said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” In 2006, he said that the Middle East would be better off “without the existence of the Zionist regime” and that Israel would “soon be wiped out.”

President Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, but really, he feels Hitler did not go far enough. Thus, he is taking up where Hitler left off—Amadinejad’s intention is a clearly stated genocidal one.

No one is stopping him.

There they all stand, guilty as sin, Afghan Taliban terrorists disguised in women’s burqas—but exposed when they were captured by the Afghan Border Police. Their photo (or rather photos) were taken by an Afghan photographer somewhere near Jalalabad and have just been seen worldwide.

One of these charmers was wearing an explosive vest; six had AK-47s. Clearly they were up to no good. One wonders how long they will remain in jail and what they will do when they emerge.

These photographs conclusively validate the concern that Dr. Daniel Pipes has had about the security risk that burqas represent. For the last six years, Dr. Pipes has been detailing the number of common criminals and Islamist terrorists who have robbed jewelry stories and peeped into women’s bathrooms while wearing burqas, or who have blown themselves and others up from under the protective cover of a mere woman’s shroud.

In December, 2009, a suicide bomber dressed in a full veil and abaya gained access to a ceremony attended by Somali government officials in Mogadishu and killed 19 people, including three cabinet ministers. In February, 2010, a female suicide bomber killed 54 Shia pilgrims in Baghdad. She was dressed in an abaya, which police said allowed her to hide an explosive device. In December, 2010 in Pakistan, a woman wearing a burqa threw a grenade and detonated an explosive vest at a U.N. security checkpoint, killing 41 people.

This is not just happening in Muslim-majority countries or in war zones.

In August, 2010, a man wearing a burqa robbed a bank in Silver Spring, Maryland. In January, 2011, a man wearing niqab (a face veil) attempted to rob a bank in Philadelphia. Three years earlier, also in Philadelphia, three men dressed as Muslim women stuck up a Bank of America branch. One of the men shot and killed a police officer during their getaway.

Why are burqas allowed in public? Or rather, why don’t we view them as potentially suspicious as opposed to a religious custom which we infidels are obligated to honor and revere?

For reasons of safety, the West, and for that matter the entire Muslim world, should immediately ban the burqa as a security risk.

The flotilla is coming, the flotilla is coming.

European and North American activists, journalists, and mercenaries have set sail—or are about to do so—on fifteen boats with passengers from twenty-two mainly Western countries to “break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.” Spurred on by the anti-Potemkin Village images of Palestinian Arabs living in wretched refugee hovels, fenced in by an allegedly “apartheid” Israeli wall, oppressed by “Nazi” Israeli soldiers for “racist” reasons (and not because the Palestinian leadership practices both Islamic gender and religious apartheid as well as terrorism)–the Good People are sailing to the rescue.

Bad enough that Israel is surrounded by twenty-two hostile Arab countries plus a genocidally anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli Iran, a country which has positioned soldiers in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria.

Bad enough that the United Nations and the Palestinian leadership are planning to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state on sovereign Israeli land.

Bad enough that the Western mainstream media and university campuses have rendered the most virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism respectable and have intimidated students with endless replays of Gaza on the Hudson, Gaza on the Atlantic and Gaza on the Pacific—now, the flotilla is also coming. They say they plan to “non-violently” “provoke” Israel into a forbidden display of self-defense.

Boats are leaving or have already left carrying passengers from Ireland, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Norway, Greece, Turkey, Canada, as well as the United States. Clearly, these Europeans do not believe that enough Jews died in the European Holocaust and/or do not want to see the descendents of Holocaust survivors continue to flourish in Israel. Perhaps some Europeans believe that their left anti-Israel politics will put them in good stead vis-à-vis the Islamists who are rapidly overwhelming Europe in a way that only Jean Raspail, the author of The Camp of the Saints foresaw and would appreciate.

The boat from the United States has been dubbed “The Audacity of Hope.” (Now where have we heard that title before?) On it are 36 passengers and four crew members, including some members of the Soros-funded Code Pink. Journalists from The Nation, CNN, NPR, CBS, The New York Times, Democracy Now, and the Palestinian News Agency Ma’an are “embedded” within the flotilla. “Embedded”? Isn’t that the word used to describe journalists who accompany troops in active battle?

Forgive me: I take words very seriously.

These self-styled activists and presumed anti-racists are slumming, partying, cruising for cheap thrills and even cheaper publicity. They yearn for cut-rate, no “burn” glory. They are ultimate conformists, careerists, “making their bones,” adding to their activist resumes by sticking it to the Jews. This is meant to prove that they are brave and principled.

In essence, they are engaged in a highly self-destructive form of political theatre: they are concretely manipulating symbols in the same way that Osama bin Laden did on 9/11. In the name of “caring,” these activists are surrendering to the most dangerous totalitarian and misogynist Islamist regime—but in the name of “freedom” and “justice.”

It is something that Orwell would appreciate.

The flotilla activists do not care about the facts on the ground, they refuse to understand that Gaza is filled with luxury hotels, office buildings, palatial villas, nightclubs, beach clubs, and well-stocked markets. They focus only on the artificially maintained poverty-stricken areas, and not on the true reasons for it: namely, that the Arab and the Palestinian leadership have spent more than 60 years milking the West of both its guilt and its money on behalf of this single falsely created refugee population.

Novelist and poet Alice Walker is also on board the “The Audacity of Hope.” She has been giving interviews and publishing op-ed pieces about her upcoming flotilla folly.

Ah, Alice. She and I go way back, and we have watched each other’s backs in significant ways over the years. Her current stance is painful, puzzling, unbalanced, and treacherous.

Walker has been in the forefront of the American civil rights, feminist, “womanist,” and ecological and animal rights movements; for many years, Walker was an activist against female genital mutilation—an African and African Muslim practice. She is best known and loved for her novel The Color Purple, which was made into a popular movie and Broadway play.

Tragically, but typically, Walker believes that Israelis are a more diabolical version of the white southern American racists who enslaved black Americans and then lynched, impoverished, exploited and segregated them. She imagines that the Palestinians are an even purer version of oppressed African-Americans. Most of all, she sees the Palestinians and herself as “non-violent” actors in this great drama.

Walker does not view Jews as the indigenous peoples of the Middle East or as equivalent to the “blacks” of Europe or as the most currently endangered infidel race in the Muslim Middle East. Walker refuses to acknowledge that Arabs and Muslims still practice (mainly African and skin color-based) slavery and real gender and religious apartheid. Instead, Walker scapegoats the Jews, specifically Israeli Jews, for the grave sins and crimes of blatant racism that are being committed by ethnic Arab Muslims in Muslim-majority countries such as Sudan, the Egyptian Sinai, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere.

Walker seems to have no idea that Muslims have a long, long history of slave-trading, sex slavery, imperialism, colonialism, conversion by the sword, and barbaric misogyny. Indeed, she seems to understand nothing about the reign of terror that Hamas has brought to the women, gays, artists, and vulnerable living beings in Gaza.

Walker does not command the facts; she has been fatefully tainted by crude propaganda, which she believes with her whole heart.

For example, Walker claims that 1,400 Gazans died during Operation Cast Lead, yet she fails to point out that, by Hamas’ own admission, between 600 and 700 of these were armed Hamas militants.

Last month, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “scrapped the laws” which guaranteed “leniency” for honor killers. Family honor will no longer be a mitigating factor in such cases. On the West Bank and in Gaza, such barbaric murders of girls and women routinely draw sentences of six months or less.

Abbas was apparently driven to this unusual act by public outrage about an alleged honor killing which took place near Hebron on the West Bank.

Over a year ago, on April 20, 2010, 20-year-old Aya Baradiya disappeared. Her paternal uncle, 37-year-old Iqab Baradiya, and two accomplices had kidnapped her, bound her hand and foot, and threw her down a well, leaving her to die a slow and painful death. Her remains were not found for more than a year.

Aya was a religious woman who wore a hijab. Her university classmates described her as “chaste and noble-minded.”

What crime did she commit? Aya wanted to marry a man. Her suitor went through the traditional channels. Her parents approved of the match but wanted her to wait until she graduated. Her uncle, 17 years older than she was, strongly disapproved of the engagement. And so he killed her.

Although the media are now reporting her murder as an honor killing, it is not a classic honor killing.

For example, her uncle did not immediately confess. Although many honor killings are disguised as “suicides” or accidents and never made public, in general, those that do come to public light often involve proud confessions. Honor killers confess as a way of publicizing that they have “cleansed their shame.”

In Aya’s case, there was no “shame” that had to be cleansed.

In addition, Aya’s parents and siblings did not collaborate in the decision to murder their daughter, knew nothing about it, were haunted by her disappearance, and played absolutely no role in her murder. In fact, when Aya did not return home from university, her parents immediately reported her missing.

One suspects that her uncle may have had a highly inappropriate interest in his niece. His behavior suggests that he had an unnatural proprietary interest in her sexual and reproductive future and acted as if his niece was more like his daughter over whom he had the power of life and death.

How ironic that President Abbas, who has thus far been unmoved by the epidemic of honor killings among Arabs on the West Bank, in Gaza, and in Israel proper (where Israeli police make arrests), has now ostensibly decided to do the right thing vis-a-vis honor killings—when no honor killing has occurred. But is he really doing the right thing?

Aya’s murdering uncle has demonstrated the cruelty of Arab men towards Arab women; this includes the innocent women in their own immediate and extended families as well as women in general. Their misogyny is barbaric. Aya Baradiya was murdered—but it was not an honor murder. Please read my studies on honor killings in order to understand what one actually is. The following are some examples of genuine honor murders among Arabs on the West Bank, in Gaza, and in Israel, which apparently left President Abbas unmoved.

In 2003, Rofayda Qaoud of Abu Qash in the West Bank was murdered by her mother Amira Qaoud, who put a plastic bag over her head and sliced her wrists with a razor. Her crime? Rofayda had been raped by her two brothers and impregnated. According to her mother, the family’s honor demanded that she sacrifice her daughter for the violent crimes of her criminally psychopathic sons.

In 2007, Hamda Abu-Ghanem, 18, was shot to death in Ramle, Israel, by her brother and her cousin because some men in her town had referred to her as a “prostitute.” She was the eighth woman to have been murdered in her extended family in seven years and, in an unprecedented move, the family’s women finally went public.

In 2007, 21-year-old Nadia Abu Amar of Jerusalem was murdered by her three brothers and her uncle because she refused to marry the man she was engaged to and because she got her father arrested and convicted for assault.

In 2009, Fadia Najjar of Gaza City, a divorced mother of five, was bludgeoned to death by her father because she owned a cell phone. He suspected that she was using it to call a man outside of the family. The day after the murder, he turned himself into police.

And so, as I feared, by the end of the first week in June, 2011, Yale University shut down the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA). They gave the initiative, which has been housed at Yale since 2006, until July to clear out.

The Palestinianization and Stalinization of the American professoriate coupled with the likely prospect of funding from the Arab world made this outcome inevitable — as did the non-stop diet of Big Lies about Israel and Jews in the mainstream media, at the United Nations, and in international human rights reports.

Only last year, there were bitter and very public complaints the Palestinians and their supporters made in response to YIISA’s best-ever conference on contemporary global anti-Semitism, which was held last August. And why? Because the scholars gathered by YIISA from at least five or more continents dared to focus on the Muslim and Islamist face of genocidal anti-Semitism.

The YIISA global conference, in which I was privileged to participate, was utterly unique in focusing not only upon the politically correct view of anti-Semitism as a Christian, Western, and European phenomenon, but also on its current and lethal incarnation in the Islamic and Islamist worlds. I, and a lonely and demonized handful of others, had been writing and speaking about this for the last eight to ten years, but this was the first time that voluminous, in-person evidence was brought to bear on this reality.

In the past, I was a single voice crying out. Here, at Yale, my voice was joined by others who had facts, experience, analysis, details and no small amount of drama. I was especially moved by the testimony of the Argentinian prosecutor of Iran’s terrorist plot against Argentina’s Jews, Professor Alberto Nisman. The terrorist mastermind of this heinous plot escaped justice when President Ahmadinejad appointed him Iran’s Minister of Defense. I had not known this. The information was chilling.

The existence of YIISA gave my evolving work on Islamic gender and religious apartheid and on the contemporary betrayal of both the Jews and the truth by Western intellectuals, including feminists, a home, a point of gravity, a place where my work could be both appreciated and critiqued; a place where I could meet and speak with serious scholars whose work I was either already familiar with or came to know courtesy of YIISA. This initiative is invaluable and does not exist anywhere else in the United States. It is a tragedy that Yale decided to shut it down.

In doing so, Yale has rendered racism respectable, has contributed to the academic isolation of scholars of contemporary anti-Semitism, and snuffed out truth-telling, genuine dissent, free speech, and academic freedom. This will be a permanent stain on Yale and on American academia.

Yale insists that the pre-existing study of dead Jews and of Jewish texts at Yale is sufficient proof that they are not anti-Semitic. Yale also insists that the initiative has not borne the kind of academic fruit to justify its continuation. Excuse me? According to Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post:

Deputy Provost and Political Science Professor Frances Rosenbluth served on the faculty committee that reviewed YIISA’s performance and concluded that the university should close the center. In recent years Rosenbluth appointed Judge Richard Goldstone and Iran-regime apologists Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett to serve as senior fellows at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Last September the Leveretts brought their students to New York to hold a seminar for them with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Unlike the YIISA conference, the move did not stimulate any significant controversy at the university.

Glick’s point speaks for itself. Or, as Orwell taught us, not all pigs are equal.

Did you know that Jews and Muslims have a shared history in Europe? That Muslims have “deep roots” on the European continent and that Muslims are as imperiled by “Islamophobia” as Jews are by anti-Semitism?

Nothing could be further from the truth, and yet the first Gathering of European Muslim and Jewish Leaders issued a statement on May 9^th and just held a meeting in Brussels on May 30, 2011. Oddly enough, the meeting was organized by two American Jewish groups, Rabbi Marc Schneier’s Foundation For Ethnic Understanding and philanthropist Ronald Lauder’s World Jewish Congress, as well as by the European Jewish Congress.

No Muslim organization seems to have shared in organizing the meeting, although two organizations and more than a dozen Muslim leaders attended and signed the joint declaration.

Can you believe this? It this some kind of exercise in dhimmitude and self-delusion? Why are the Jews doing the heavy lifting for the far wealthier Muslim world? More important: Why support such dangerously misguided concepts?

At this moment in world history, why are Jews confusing “Islamophobia” with anti-Semitism? One understands that Muslims might want to assume whatever is left of Jewish victimhood and make it their own—but why are Jews enabling them to do so? If the Muslims are coming in great good faith, they would state some obviously truths, beginning with the Koranic roots of Jew- and infidel-hatred and the contemporary Islamist/genocidal intentions towards the Jewish State. Indeed, a new kind of statement from Muslims would include their understanding of–and desire to break from–the historical Muslim persecution of Jews and infidels in Muslim-majority countries.

This is not that kind of statement or declaration.

Anti-Semitism cannot, must not, be equated with Islamophobia. European Muslims have nothing to fear from European Jews. European Jews have everything to fear from European Muslims.

As Clemens Heni, a scholar of German anti-Semitism, has pointed out: “There is no other prejudice or form of racism which you can compare to anti-Semitism. If you look at Islam today, there is a (reason for) Islamophobia because Jihadists say, ‘We want to kill the unbelievers.’ Jews never said that.” Those who equate legitimate fears of Islamist extremism with anti-Semitism, he argues, clearly “didn’t learn the lesson [of] the Holocaust. They are even downplaying the Holocaust itself.”

According to the declaration, “Jews and Muslims live side-by-side in every European country and our two communities are important components of Europe’s religious, cultural and social tapestry.” The document fails to mention that those Jews who live “side-by-side” with Muslims are in danger of being harassed, beaten, or even tortured to death, as was Ilan Halimi of France.

The declaration commits an outrage against history by equating the Jewish experience in Europe with the Muslim experience in Europe, even though Jews have been living as a persecuted minority on the continent for more than a thousand years while most Muslims only arrived in large numbers after World War II. The declaration lumps together the Shoah (Holocaust), the slaughter of six million Jews, with the mass killings of some thousands of Muslims in Bosnia during the 1990s. It ignores the history of Muslim Spain in the Middle Ages, when both Christian and Muslim rulers persecuted Jews and Muslim mobs slaughtered them in pogroms. Needless to say, no Jewish outrages against Christian or Muslim communities have ever taken place on European soil.

With mock solemnity, the document proclaims, “We must never allow anti-Semitism…to become respectable in today’s Europe”—as if anti-Semitism, in its modern guise of anti-Zionism, weren’t already perfectly respectable in every corner of Europe.

Rabbis all over Europe have been telling their people to flee before it is too late. Many Jews have done so.

Last Friday, May 26, 2011, “Queers Against Israeli Apartheid” exercised their hard-won right to hold their meetings at New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Center. Their right to hate and to be grossly misinformed was, as usual, presented as a free speech right and as yet another victim-driven Intifada (uprising).

This meeting followed the long campaign to vilify City University Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld for daring to dissent from Tony Kushner’s anti-Israel views; Kushner, who happens to be both gay and Jewish, is nevertheless being given an honorary doctorate this week. These two events are intimately connected to each other and have been further empowered by President Obama’s shameful and dangerous actions towards the Jewish State.

We have all seen black and white footage of people dancing the night away, even as the crematoria or the machetes did their deadly work somewhere off camera. We understand that people elsewhere continue eating, having babies, buying first homes, going on vacations, even as genocidal wars rage on camera, even as tornadoes, nuclear plant meltdowns, and savage flash floods destroy whole communities elsewhere, also on camera.

Right now, in my little neck of the planet, Manhattan, the weather has turned gloriously sunny and summery; people are enjoying this respite from the unending rains and freezing winter weather. As people amble through leafy city streets, the world is preparing to slaughter the Jews again. As if the Muslim Brotherhood and the Gama’a al-Islamiyya in Egypt were not enough, a new swastika-flying Nazi party has emerged in Egypt—Egypt, Israel’s friendly neighbor; Egypt, which on Saturday opened the Rafah crossing to admit even more weapons and terrorist fighters into Gaza in the unending Arab war against the Jews; Egypt, where many are demanding an end to the cold peace treaty with Israel.

Some say that President Obama might be touring Europe in order to gain European allies to help him pressure Israel into accepting the “pre-1967” Auschwitz borders.

Here at home in America, we continue to enjoy Gazan Intifadas on our campuses. For example, the people are getting ready to party in the streets when, on June 3, 2011, City University of New York gives playwright Tony Kushner his honorary doctorate. In my view, they are feting Kushner, not so much for his art but rather for his celebrity and for his obsessively harsh views of Israel. The playwright has not led any campaigns against genocide in Sudan or against real gender and religious apartheid in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Like the “Queers Against Apartheid,” Kushner also scapegoats Israel for the crimes of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

The LGBT “queers” had threatened to storm or “surge” into the Center if they did not receive official approval for their group meeting.

“Surging” and “storming,” Arab street mob behavior, is a vision and a tactic that has been recommended by none other than journalist Tom Friedman, long adopted by international “Free Gaza” activists; it reminds me of Nazi Brownshirt behavior. Think Kristallnacht. Civilians and men in uniform breaking Jewish shop windows, breaking Jewish bones, burning Jewish books, eventually burning millions of living Jews.

But, you must understand: The German Nazis felt “victimized.” They had lost World War I and were humiliated because they should have been triumphant; they had also been unfairly economically penalized. Kushner and his supporters claim that the genuine dissent of one CUNY trustee, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, somehow “victimized” their views because their views are supposed to triumph, not Wiesenfeld’s. His pro-Israel view is not supposed to exist and, in their view, is not protected by academic or free speech rights. Only the anti-Israel views deserve such protection.

One thousand six hundred and eighty people signed a petition to the Center on behalf of “Queers for Palestine.” Like Tony Kushner and his CUNY supporters, the aggressors first claim victimhood and protest the denial of their free speech rights; then, they “surge” forward as a mob (on petitions, on the Internet, on the streets, on other battlefields), to either murder Jews or to honor those Jews who hate Israel, and to silence gay Jews who are pro-Israel.

This is what happened at the LGBT Center last night.

President Obama’s election is due, in part, to the desire among many American liberals and leftists to be seen as “atoning” for the sin of racism and the crimes of slavery. The fact that Obama is bi-racial—his mother was white—matters little since he looks like an African-American. Indeed, the President’s own writing focuses on his African, Muslim roots, especially because his Kenyan father abandoned both him and his mother.

In an era of symbolic identity politics and affirmative action, only one kind of candidate could trump Obama’s credentials and that would be an African-American woman. Only such a candidate could symbolically address the sin and crime of sexism as well as that of racism. Ironically, the first woman who ever ran in a major party primary for the American Presidency did so in  1972.  That was Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, whose parents immigrated from British Guiana and Barbados. In 2004, Senator Carol Moseley Braun, also an African-American woman, ran in a major party primary for the American Presidency. Both women failed in their bids.

Currently there are 31 African American men and 13 African-American women in Congress; there are no African-Americans in the Senate. In the past there have been only six such senators in American history. Currently, there are 18 women in the Senate. In all of American history a total of 39 women of all races, including the current 18,  have served as Senators.

Given how many Americans confuse voting for the Presidency with voting for an American Idol; given how good so many Americans feel that we have “overcome” and have elected an African-American as our President; given how deep, high, and wide emotions are running in terms of racism (which trumps sexism as an issue even among establishment feminists), clearly, obviously, the next election is ripe for an African-American woman candidate. Obviously, she can be as inexperienced as President Obama was as long as she is charismatic, charming, eloquent, glamorous, and well connected to Hollywood, the media, and the academy. .

Maybe Oprah should run.

She will never run against her “guy.”  Not a chance in Hell. (And I would never vote for her). But she represents the zeitgeist, what’s popular in America right now. And Obama has all the African-American hip-hop and rap artists and Hollywood stars sewn up tight. We can’t turn to them. Obama’s their “guy” too.

This week, Tom Friedman more than earned his keep at The New York Times by essentially calling for the “non-violent” destruction of the Jewish State. I am not exaggerating. Wait until you read exactly what he’s written in his column: “Lessons From Tahrir Square.”

First, Friedman calls for a “Tahrir Square alternative” in terms of the Israel-“Palestine” impasse.

Tahrir Square? Did the man sleep through journalist Lara Logan’s mass gang rape there? Does he view such a mob as “peaceful” or “non-violent?” Does he not understand that the young Egyptian Wael Gonim has, perhaps unintentionally, paved the way for the far more organized Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists to assume power? Does Friedman actually believe that the Islamist factions at war with each other and with their overlords, chieftains, and dictators, are all engaged in “non-violent” social change?

Friedman does not focus on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi or Bahrain’s King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa —all of whom have been shooting down their own people in cold blood in the streets. He does not call for people of good will to “nonviolently” go and face these evil men down. No. Instead, listen to Friedman’s clarion call. He suggests that we should:

Announce that every Friday from today forward will be ‘Peace Day,’ and have thousands of West Bank Palestinians march nonviolently to Jerusalem, carrying two things — an olive branch in one hand and a sign in Hebrew and Arabic in the other. The sign should say: ‘Two states for two peoples. We, the Palestinian people, offer the Jewish people a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders — with mutually agreed adjustments — including Jerusalem, where the Arabs will control their neighborhoods and the Jews theirs.”

If Palestinians peacefully march to Jerusalem by the thousands every Friday with a clear peace message, it would become a global news event. Every network in the world would be there. Trust me, it would stimulate a real peace debate within Israel — especially if Palestinians invited youth delegations from around the Arab world to join the marches, carrying the Saudi peace initiative in Hebrew and Arabic. Israeli Jews and Arabs should be invited to march as well. Together, the marchers could draw up their own peace maps and upload them onto YouTube as a way of telling their leaders what Egyptian youth said to President Hosni Mubarak: “We’re not going to let you waste another day of our lives with your tired mantras and maneuvering.”

Alright, the man’s a regular Gandhi, hand him his dhoti (loincloth). However, why doesn’t Friedman also call for an international delegation to march to Sderot to serve as human shields against Hamas rockets? Why did he never call for thousands of peaceniks to “nonviolently” board Israeli buses during the heart of the Second Intifada — a new group of Freedom Riders to give innocent Israelis freedom from savage, bloody death? Why doesn’t Friedman call for Western supporters of the Arab Spring to swarm over Syria’s or Libya’s borders holding signs calling for Assad’s and Qaddafi’s ouster?

In the news, on the street, at international conferences, and in classrooms galore, everyone is talking about the “two state solution” as if it signified the Second Coming. People who have never been to Israel, or to Ramallah, who own no military maps of the region, and who do not know a single Palestinian, all, every last one, monotonously intones this phrase.

President Obama, talked about the eternal, infernal two state solution or about “two states for two peoples.” Even Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, now says it favors a two-state solution. Prime Minister Netanyahu implicitly but not explicitly supports a “two-state solution.”

I loved how Prime Minister Netanyahu stood up to President Obama when he firmly and clearly declared that the time for illusions—the kind that is always written in Jewish blood—is now officially over.

But why is everyone thinking so “small?” My colleague and friend, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar Ilan University and a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, has a far more realistic and creative suggestion. When I first heard his proposal, I laughed. I thought: “Surely, this is some kind of Jewish joke.”

His suggestion is no joke. In fact, it has some serious support from both Israelis and Palestinians. Of course, things being what they are, no one will go on record supporting this idea, which is based on a sociological and historical analysis of Arab tribes and the consequent concept of Arab tribal city-states.

Dr. Kedar proposes the creation of no less than eight or nine independent and separate Arab city-states within the West Bank, in addition to Gaza. Of course, Israel would comprise the ninth or tenth state. He writes:

“There is no reason to assume that a Palestinian state will not become another failing Arab state, due to the fragmented society in the West Bank and Gaza, tribalism and lack of awareness of nationhood as demonstrated by the failing performance of the Palestinian authority since its establishment in 1994…Social stability is the key for political stability…the only successful model for an Arab state is the one which is based on a single consolidated traditional group such as each of the individual Arab Gulf Emirates.”

This actually makes sense. The Arab Gulf Emirates have been relatively successful because their inhabitants are, with some exceptions, largely homogeneous in terms of tribe, ethnicity, and religion. True, the oil wealth has also provided an incentive for unity. But in general, the Arab Middle East has always been composed of many tribes, religions, sects, and ethnic groups, all at war with each other and with the government. The colonial imposition of a central, western-style nation-state has not served the interests of the indigenous people but rather the interests of dictators and large corporations.

Thus, according to Dr. Kedar, there is essentially one tribe that “governs” (the hearts and minds in) Ramallah, another tribe entirely which does so in Nablus, yet another which presides over Jenin, etc. A small city-state might be able to become productive and join a confederation of similar city-states. After all, size alone does not determine the success or failure of a state. For example, Monaco, Lichtenstein, and Luxembourg are small states with a high quality of life, while Algeria, Libya, and Sudan are large states with poor quality of life. According to Dr. Kedar:

“The towns that will receive independence (from both the Palestinian Authority and Israel) are Hebron (the Arab part), Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tul-karem and Qalqilya…Bethlehem will require further consideration.” (In other writings, Dr. Kedar sometimes includes Bethlehem and questions Jericho).

My nightmares—what I knew could happen—is apparently happening.

The Third Palestinian Intifada on Facebook seems to have at least twenty different groups or pages, each with hundreds or thousands of fans. One group has 365,000 fans. According to Yedioth Ahronoth (YNet), these sites are now urging all Arabs to “rush the Israeli borders” after Friday prayers on May 20.

Look: This could be the work of one nerdy Palestinian in a basement in Ramallah. The fans could also be people who exist only in cyberspace.

But, these Third Palestinian Intifada websites could also be the work of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority, all of which have problems of their own and for whom a diversion would be mighty fine. In fact, I think they are. Thus, this promised new aggression must be taken seriously and stopped in its tracks.

In any event, these Third Intifada facebook websites are suggesting that armed and unarmed hordes, masses, mobs of incited and hate-filled Arabs invade–“surge”–into sovereign Israel (as they have done for years to India.) The Indian press and police are too afraid to report it or to stop them. Israelis have no choice but to do so.

If and when they re-create their failed Nakba Day aggression, public opinion, the Arab “street,” the Arab League, the world’s intellectuals, journalists and progressives, the human rights organizations and the jihadist friendly United Nations, will probably view such an invasion as an act of “righteous resistance” and Israeli self-defense as an act of “unprovoked aggression.”

Facebook, to its credit, has removed one Third Palestinian Intifada site in the past. Clearly, others quickly sprang up, and Facebook has its work cut out for it. Just as the Civil Rights movement in America was initially and brilliantly non-violent, perhaps all the earth’s peace-loving people might now congregate peacefully on all of Israel’s borders to be the human wall that finally says no to jihadic barbarism.

For all those pacifists who genuinely believe in the non-violent teachings of both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, let them congregate and bear witness with their bodies at all of Israel’s borders that human courage and goodness is ready to stand against barbarism and evil.

For all those who believe that barbarism must be met with Navy SEALs, let them, too, gather at Israel’s borders to defend innocent Israeli civilians.

For all those who believe that a nation has the right to defend its people, let them now volunteer to join the IDF or raise money for it.

On the other hand, all those who invade sovereign Israel with malevolent and lethal and genocidal intentions should know in advance that they will be met with force. Israel should immediately begin announcing this, both day and night.

Of course, jihad is always seeking martyrs. This time, the Western media should not fall for the tricks of “Pallywood” (the al-Dura hoax, the “massacre” in Jenin, the “starving” masses in Gaza, etc.). The Western media should report the truth.

I am such a dreamer.

Of course, Israel can always start building walls up to the very sky in order to keep the barbarians out.

Two Muslim mothers, both widows, both living in Uttar Pradesh in India, helped each other murder their grown daughters, Zahida, 19, and Husna, 26, for having committed the crime of marrying Hindu men.

They held their daughters down and slowly strangled them to death. The poor dead darlings actually believed they were entitled to marry non-Muslim men and for “love,” and that ultimately their mothers and Muslim community would accept them back. This is typical of many honor killing victims. While these two young women knew enough to contact the police for help—and the police actually got their mothers to sign an agreement that they would not “harm” their children—it was only a deceptive piece of paper. But the daughters’ longing for reconciliation and naive hopefulness was their undoing. Their mothers agreed not to hurt them and sweet-talked them into returning; once the girls were home, they became prey for the kill.

But life without a family network is unthinkable for someone whose identity is not individual but rather located in a collectivity. Progress and “modernity” may be coming to India, but slowly, very slowly.

Neither mother, Khatun or Subrato, has expressed the slightest remorse. Both feel justified because their daughters brought shame to their families. According to the police, Khatun said: “We killed them because they brought shame to our community. How could they elope with Hindus? They deserved to die. We have no remorse.”

This is cold-hearted, barbaric, almost unbelievable. But such Muslim-on-Muslim crimes and woman-on-woman crimes are typical in many parts of the world.

Clearly, this is an extreme case of woman’s inhumanity to woman; I published a book with that title. We expect women, mothers especially, to be able to defy social custom for the sake of saving their children. The reality is just the opposite. The slightest transgression, especially by women, will upset huge networks and topple all social stability. No one will marry someone from a “shamed” family; that family will be forever ostracized, impoverished, and may also die out genetically. Mothers, fathers, relatives are loyal to their tribal social customs rather than to any one individual, even if that individual is their own child. The system itself demands and allows for such barbarism—but the sacrifice of the individual is seen as in the service of the greater tribal and caste based social structure or “civilization.”

In addition, woman’s inhumanity to woman is a common phenomenon in India where mothers-in-law routinely assist their sons in burning their daughters-in-law to death. This is known as a “dowry killing” because it is done so that a new bride can bring another dowry into the impoverished and/or greedy family. There is actually a special wing in a prison in New Delhi for such mothers-in-law. In addition, female infanticide was a long-time practice in both India and China. Both women and men steal children in India and sell them to be adopted abroad or, more frequently, to be groomed into sexual slavery either at home or abroad. A dear friend is visiting me from India right now and her stories on this subject are unbelievable — and yet all too believable.

Surveys have shown us that women in India believe that women deserve to be beaten. Perhaps they are also saying that women should simply expect this to happen. Many Hindu and Muslim mothers refuse to accept severely battered child-daughter brides back into their home. In Afghanistan, this often leads to suicide, often self-immolation as well.

To its credit, the Indian Supreme Court has recently declared that “It is time to stamp out these barbaric, feudal practices which are a slur on our nation.”

Once again, the major mainstream media in the United States have, thus far, failed to do any original stories about this awful case. The Washington Post relied again on an AP story. The New York Times has neither published nor posted anything.

In the past, the Washington Post has only covered Hindu honor killings in India. This time, they were forced to use the word “Muslim” to identify the perpetrators. The victims were not identified as “Muslims.”

That only happens when Israelis or Americans have killed them.

Last night I watched an incredibly moving documentary about the early civil rights movement in America in 1961. The film is based on Raymond Arsenault’s book about the many hundreds of young volunteers who faced savage beatings and possible death as they rode buses in an attempt to end Jim Crow racial segregation laws and practices. Directly by Stanley Nelson, the film shows us the extraordinary dignity and determination of the “freedom riders” whose courage inspired and guided even the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

These young people were mainly African-Americans, but they were also white, and both male and female. They dressed conservatively and were trained not to fight back—not even when they were being beaten by racist mobs wielding baseball bats, lead pipes, sharp instruments, deadly fists, and hearts filled with hate. Buses were surrounded by mobs of 200 men. One bus was blown up. Bus drivers refused to drive the buses. Southern governors and police officers refused to protect the “freedom riders” or to stop the would-be lynch mobs. Ku Klux Klan members in full regalia literally marched over their bleeding faces. Journalists and photographers were attacked. The “freedom riders” were arrested.

Finally, President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had to send in federal marshals. They also requested that the Interstate Commerce Commission end the “white only” and “colored only” facilities for interstate travelers.

I felt absolutely connected to this struggle. I felt indebted to these valiant Americans. I am sure others of my generation felt likewise. As I watched the non-violent riders—their transcendent purity, dignity, courage—I realized that many leftists of my generation have now assumed that Arabs, Muslim jihadists, and “Palestinians” are somehow the same as these brave, young Americans.

They are not. Arabs are not using non-violent tactics to achieve their reactionary goals. They are violent in every way. Their goals are not to obtain rights for their people but rather to return them to the 7^th century and to destroy both the Jewish and Christian presence in Muslim-majority countries.

I don’t know how to convey this insight to my generation of leftists. They do not read conservative websites. They view me as a “traitor” for having abandoned them by evolving to a deeper and greater understanding of reality. If you know any leftists, please ask them to read this piece.

On the evening of May 15, 2011, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) emailed a letter to the Board of Trustees at City University of New York about the Wiesenfeld/Kushner/CUNY scandal. SPME is an academic group which represents 55,000 professors, researchers and students on 3,500 campuses worldwide. Thus far, no New York mainstream media has covered this truly significant event and unprecedented act of academic courage. I checked today’s New York Daily News, the New York Post, and New York Times (NYT). As we know, the NYT published more than 10 articles, blogs, and columns on the brouhaha. With the exception of the article written by Stanley Fish, the articles essentially defended Tony Kushner as a Great Artist-victim and pilloried Jeffrey Wiesenfeld as a bully. Few articles dealt with the issues. Everyone avoided doing so by attacking Wiesenfeld personally. Wiesenfeld was depicted as a man “obsessed” with Israel who, for that reason, was no longer entitled to free speech or to academic freedom. Wiesenfeld was also demonized by the Forward and by the New York Observer. In other words, if a Trustee of a university does not toe the political party line against Israel and in favor of “Palestine,” then he will be slimed and asked to resign. When serious journalists and academics defend him—as Scholars for Peace in the Middle East just did and as I have done—it is as if we have not spoken. There is very little coverage, feedback, or flack. I googled the CUNY/Kushner/Wiesenthal/SPME subject and found that only pro-Israel blogs had covered it and that only one small blog took issue with SPME. So far, two SPME Board members have heard absolutely nothing. True, it is only two days later, but still…I will continue to monitor the media coverage. If Jeffrey Wiesenfeld is allowed to twist in the wind alone merely for voicing his opinion (which is based on reality), then no lesser personage on campuses across America (a non-trustee who is not yet tenured) will dare speak out about Israel—unless they are in favor of boycotting, disarming, or abolishing the Jewish state. This is typical behavior for left-wing politically correct thinkers. If you disagree with something, you pretend it does not exist. You do not read it, publish it, review it, or talk to the author. If something you disagree with persists or commands power of any kind, then you demonize the person as a way of avoiding the issues. Now something also really big has just happened. The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York has written to the Chair of the Board of Trustees at CUNY, Benno Schmidt, and to CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. This Council represents approximately fifty Jewish organizations (including the ADL, AJC, Hadassah, Hillel, Jewish National Fund, Young Israel, New York Board of Rabbis, UJA, Union of Reform Judaism, the Orthodox Union, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, ZOA, the American Sephardi Association, etc.) and is headed by some Major Jewish Players. One wonders if their letter will be treated as if it did not arrive and does not exist. The letter urges that Trustee Wiesenfeld not be pressured to resign. I am reprinting part of it here:

The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York has never taken a position regarding the worthiness of any particular honorary degree recipient. We respect the process delineated in CUNY Policy 1.19, which appropriately includes a system of checks and balances that ultimately grants the CUNY Board of Trustees the final determination of honorary degrees. We are troubled though that it appears that the explicit right and duty of a CUNY Trustee under Policy 1.19 – to express his/her views and vote his/her conscience – are now being challenged. Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld’s opinions, presented in good faith, unleashed a cacophonous barrage of calls for his resignation. Whether Trustee Wiesenfeld was right or wrong about Item 8 on the May 2, 2011 Board of Trustees’ meeting is immaterial. His fellow Trustees had the responsibility to evaluate and to accept or reject his assertions. We believe that academic freedom cannot be exclusively limited to faculty and/or students. Indeed, that right applies to all sectors of the academy, including Trustees. We are shocked that people – including zealous advocates of academic freedom and free speech – have called for a Trustee’s removal because they disagree with his ideas and/or his desire to articulate them. Mr. Wiesenfeld’s freedom to state his views and opinions – whether one agrees with him or not – is equal to the freedom granted to faculty, students or even honorary degree nominees. We view any effort to remove Trustee Wiesenfeld, or any Trustee, for acting in – what he considered – CUNY’s best interest is unacceptable both as university policy and as public policy.

I have just received news of an astounding and unexpected “first.”

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, (SPME) a group which represents 55,000 scholars, researchers and students on 3,500 campuses across the world has just written to every Board of Trustee member at the City University of New York (CUNY) about the Kushner/Wiesenfeld cause célèbre. They are the first group of scholars to weigh in on another side—perhaps even on the “other” side. SPME is  horrified by the way in which a private Board member’s views became public so quickly and by how quickly the Trustees caved into the goon-squad tactics of the left intelligentsia and the media.

Playwright Tony Kushner, who mistakenly views Israel as “a mistake,” and as involved in “ethnic cleansing,”   was immediately glorified as the victim both by the media and by the CUNY professoriate.

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the trustee who challenged the wisdom of giving Kushner yet another academic “seal of approval” for his views,  was demonized personally in article after article, none of which addressed the issues he raised.

Shamefully, but predictably, not a single major group of academics or of other interested parties stood up for Wiesenfeld, who is also a member of the CUNY Trustee family or for the importance ofintellectual diversity. The politically correct campus wants diversity in terms of gender, race, religion, and sexual preference. They do not want the feelings of formerly marginalized or pariah groups to be hurt, denigrated. Kushner’s incorrectly describes Israel as having engasged in “ethnic cleansing.” This further inflames the anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist masses.

I and others dare, rather plaintively, to suggest that the academy cultivate intellectual diversity as well. As we know, only one view of Israel is acceptable on an American campus. Israel is to be condemned. Anyone who thinks otherwise will find himself condemned just as quickly.

Wiesenfeld was raked over the coals. This week’s Forward did so as did articles in the New York Times and the Manhattan Observer. The points Wiesenfeld raised were not addressed. His right to hold his view based on these points was not respected. Whatever “dirt” could be dug up about him was.

Oddly enough, except for my own column, no reporter noted that Kushner constantly writes about Soviet Russia and about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—and that he was nominated by one of the Rosenberg’s two sons, Michael Meeropol, who is currently teaching at John Jay. Also, no journalist noted that only one professor, Amy Greene, who co-nominated Kushner actually teaches theatre. The committee of seven who rubberstamped his nomination teach criminal justice, politics, government, political science, sociology, psychology, etc.

The John Jay committee voted for a celebrity whose honorary award will ‘magnify and sanctify” their own political views about Israel.

But now, finally, a group has dared to stand up to be counted. .

Before this letter was released, those scholars who did not agree with the glamorization of Kushner as the victim and the demonization of Wiesenfeld as the bully kept silent as did the entire organized Jewish world.

This battle for the soul of the Western campus is part of the larger battle for western civilization which is currently under profound attack. Proponents of hate speech and Big Lies are demanding academic freedom and free speech rights while, at the same time, they are denying these same rights to anyone who tells the truth about Israel (if it happens to be positive), or about Islam (if it happens to be negative).

I am reprinting this letter in full here. I hope that other journalists and bloggers will print it and perhaps also interview the spokesmen for SPME: Board member Awi Fedegruen (af7@columbia.edu) and Director Dr. Sam Edelman (spmeexecdir@gmail.com).

Here is the text of the letter:

May 15, 2011

Board of Trustees

City University of New York

New York, NY

Dear Trustees: We members of the Board of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), a grass-roots organization representing 55,000 professors, researchers and students on 3500 campuses worldwide, would like to express our distress at the politicization of the university revealed by your selection of Tony Kushner for an honorary degree. 1. We are distressed that you have chosen to give your highest honor to someone who frequently makes incendiary and biased accusations against Israel, thereby feeding the fires of antisemitism, hatred, and genocide incitement now prevalent in the Middle East. By accepting this politicized nomination, you are also giving the CUNY stage to a celebrity advocate of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, through direct statements and through his role on the Board of “Jewish Voice for Peace.” This is a position that all American universities have rejected.

2. We are further distressed that, based on political pressure from the press and a letter-writing campaign, your Executive Committee peremptorily overturned an earlier decision by your full Board to postpone Mr. Kushner’s nomination for later discussion. Maintaining the board’s initial decision would have demonstrated your dedication to inquiry into the many allegations and counter-allegations made about this matter. Sadly, your peremptory vote serves to suppress debate and symbolizes to students and the public that a distinguished university easily succumbs to political pressure.

3. We are concerned that you have collectively refused to come to the defense of your trustee, Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, for exercising his fiduciary responsibility. Mr. Wiesenfeld has been vociferously insulted in public, with unsupported insinuations that he was involved in a political scandal and calls for his resignation — for no other reason than his judgment that a university should not honor those who espouse extremist views and advocate boycotts of democratic countries or their institutions. Your silence in the face of these extreme attacks on Mr. Wiesenfeld’s character tragically gives evidence that you, representing a giant urban public university, are now susceptible to public intimidation.

4. We are further concerned at your acquiescence to accusations that a delay in approving Mr. Kushner’s nomination represented an alleged violation of his freedom of speech or academic freedom. To receive an honorary degree is a rare privilege, not a right. To discuss it and consider implications for CUNY’s role as an educational institution is your obligation. Some of your members’ statements that Mr. Kushner has a right to get an award undermine your own role in making considered judgments about whom you wish to recognize as role models for students. By rejecting your earlier decision to table the nomination and put it up for discussion, you have, sadly, abrogated your responsibility. Most of all, we are distressed that you have now given a celebrity the stage through which political advocacy and flag waving will triumph over the tradition of critical thinking that is the university’s highest calling. Please act immediately to reverse this deeply uninformed decision. Your reversal would send a signal of firmness in upholding open inquiry into Middle East affairs over politicization and street pressure.

Sincerely yours, The Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East

Contact: Sam Edelman, PhD

spmeexecdir@gmail.com

Awi Federgruen, DSc

af7@columbia.edu

 

This popular post was originally published May 11.

Western journalists seem shocked—shocked!—by the apparently shabby day-to-day living conditions of master villain Osama bin Laden. After all, the multimillionaire occupied a villa in an elite region where Pakistan’s military elite lived. Had he grown long in the tooth, had Bin Laden “lost it”? How surprising that he lived shabbily, in one room, with an ancient television set.

If the journalists had done their homework, they would not have been surprised at all. Bin Laden chose to live in relatively primitive, ramshackle, sparsely furnished settings for a long time. While he still lived in Saudi Arabia, before he had to flee to Sudan and thereafter to Afghanistan, he condemned his wives and children to lives of physical, medical, and psychological hardship.

Yes, he himself had fast cars, fast planes, the most expensive horses—weaponry too. In his childhood and early married life, he had lived in magnificent and luxurious dwellings. Thereafter, he insisted on an increasingly spartan existence as a matter of ideology and mental health as well.

Just as the Arab and Muslim despot lives far above his lowliest subjects, so too, do many father-despots, each in his own home, live far more comfortably than they allow their own children and wives to live. In fact, a father-despot’s children, both sons and daughters, are taught to literally fear and serve their fathers–but they also desperately want his approval and love. Their father is their only protector.  Even if he torments his sons, they will stand by his side.

Thus, on the one hand, earlier today, Omar bin Laden, Osama’s fourth son, condemned “those forces [that] carried out their criminal mission and obliterated an entire defenseless family.” Omar, suddenly the dutiful and loving son, now finds that his father’s burial at sea was “unacceptable humanely and religiously.” He is also threatening to “follow that crime through the American and international justice (systems) in order to determine the true fate of our vanished father.”

This sounds like a loving son who had a loving father. That is not the case. Here is what Omar bin Laden has written about his life with his father Osama:

There were other absurd rules regarding our conduct. We were allowed to speak in his presence, but our voices must be kept low and our words carefully measured. In other words, we should not ‘over-talk.’ We were told that we must not become excited at any situation. We should be serious about everything. We were not allowed to tell jokes. We were ordered not to express joy over anything. He did say that he would allow us to smile so long as we did not laugh. If we were to lose control of our emotions and bark a laugh, we must be careful not to expose our eyeteeth. I have been in situations where my father actually counted the exposed teeth, reprimanding his sons on the number their merriment had revealed.

According to Omar, his father was not “warm”; in fact, he “caned” him and his brothers “for the slightest infraction.” Osama was very, very cruel and deprived his sons of their much needed asthma medication—even as he force marched them without water for hours and in the desert. In addition, he allowed his sons to be brutalized by sadistic teachers. He refused to give his sons “pocket money” for “school snacks.” He told them, Omar writes:

‘No. You need to suffer. Hunger pangs will not hurt you.’ Improbably, our father was different from so many fathers who wanted nothing but the best for their children. Our father appeared to relish seeing us suffer, reminding us that it was good for us to know what it felt like to be hungry or thirsty, to do without while others had plenty. Why? He said that we would end up being the stronger. Those with plenty would grow up weak men, unable to defend themselves.

And yet, Omar has now come forward as his father’s injured heir, his rightful son. He is now identifying with or standing for the very father who abused and endangered him.

This, too, is not unusual.

First, growing up, Omar and his brothers all learned that they would have to endure paternal cruelty and humiliation and that their tender and sympathetic mothers would not and could not intercede on their behalf. Osama bin Laden’s wives, especially Najwa, Omar’s mother, are portrayed as joyfully submissive, uncomplaining, very religious, quite passive. Najwa gave up her desire to decorate her home, which was, essentially, her prison. She never wore expensive clothing or jewelry. She never uttered a single complaint—not even when she was deprived of most conveniences and normal amenities. Omar writes:

Although we lived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is one of the hottest and most humid cities in a country that is known for its hot climate, my father would not allow my mother to turn on the air-conditioning that the contractor had built into the apartment building. Neither would he allow her to use the refrigerator that was standing in the kitchen. My father announced, ‘Islamic beliefs are corrupted by modernization.’

Thus: Cruel and tyrannical father + absolutely helpless mother=shamed filial identification with the very fathers who abused them. In addition, the sons of rich men do not wish to expose how they, too, were humiliated; therefore, they deny the harsh reality which both shames and exposes them. They minimize the abuse. They even remember a fleeting “good” moment or two. They want to be loved by the fathers who do not love them. They want the sons of poor men to look up to them as the sons of rich men.

Women do not even count.

Osama bin Laden’s father had 57 children and saw Osama rarely. He was not kind to him. In turn, Osama was even less kind, even more cruel to his many sons.

Originally published on May 11, 2011

Life is funny, life is great, but life is also strange, the way it all boils down to one’s views on only two or three subjects, namely Israel, Islam, and America.

Yesterday, I met with a potential intern sent my way by a local area college with whom I’ve happily worked before. She seemed alert, bright, interested, talented and ready to start her (unpaid) full-time summer internship almost immediately. I had already told her to visit my website and to read some of my articles and assumed that she knew my current subjects and views. She did. In fact, on the phone, she went out of her way to agree with me on my critique of the academic feminist view that the Islamic face veil and polygamy are “liberating” for women.

Just after we finished discussing hours and possible projects, she stopped, smiled smoothly, and said this:

“But I have to tell you that I take issue with your position on Israel.”

“Oh” said I. “Have you lived in Israel, do you know any Palestinians, have you read many books, written many articles, taken many courses about Israel and about the Middle East?”

“Well no,” she said, “but I feel strongly about it.”

And then I said: “So, based on your feelings and perhaps on some peer pressure, you are willing to give up an internship that you might otherwise want?”

I stressed that I had no problem with her holding a view different than my own. I asked her whether she could work with someone with whom she did not agree exactly on this one issue.

She paused. And then she said: “But I have another problem. I think it is wrong to condemn all of Islam.”

Now I looked at her for a moment without saying anything.

Then I spoke.  “But I don’t. In fact, I champion the work of some religious Muslims as well as those of secular Muslims and ex-Muslims and I work with Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents and feminists. To expose honor killings, to challenge Islamic gender apartheid practices is not the same as condemning all Muslims or all Islam.”

Again, I told her that I could work with someone with whose views I did not completely agree; could she? Although by now I was fearing that if she said yes that instead of working for me  she would force me to teach her in an unpaid tutorial.

She was not yet done.

“I also take issue with an article you wrote in which I believe you are stereotyping lesbians and Jewish lesbians.”

Friends: I actually managed not to laugh out loud.

Western journalists seem shocked—shocked!—by the apparently shabby day-to-day living conditions of master villain Osama bin Laden. After all, the multimillionaire occupied a villa in an elite region where Pakistan’s military elite lived. Had he grown long in the tooth, had Bin Laden “lost it”? How surprising that he lived shabbily, in one room, with an ancient television set.

If the journalists had done their homework, they would not have been surprised at all. Bin Laden chose to live in relatively primitive, ramshackle, sparsely furnished settings for a long time. While he still lived in Saudi Arabia, before he had to flee to Sudan and thereafter to Afghanistan, he condemned his wives and children to lives of physical, medical, and psychological hardship.

Yes, he himself had fast cars, fast planes, the most expensive horses—weaponry too. In his childhood and early married life, he had lived in magnificent and luxurious dwellings. Thereafter, he insisted on an increasingly spartan existence as a matter of ideology and mental health as well.

Just as the Arab and Muslim despot lives far above his lowliest subjects, so too, do many father-despots, each in his own home, live far more comfortably than they allow their own children and wives to live. In fact, a father-despot’s children, both sons and daughters, are taught to literally fear and serve their fathers–but they also desperately want his approval and love. Their father is their only protector.  Even if he torments his sons, they will stand by his side.

Thus, on the one hand, earlier today, Omar bin Laden, Osama’s fourth son, condemned “those forces [that] carried out their criminal mission and obliterated an entire defenseless family.” Omar, suddenly the dutiful and loving son, now finds that his father’s burial at sea was “unacceptable humanely and religiously.” He is also threatening to “follow that crime through the American and international justice (systems) in order to determine the true fate of our vanished father.”

This sounds like a loving son who had a loving father. That is not the case. Here is what Omar bin Laden has written about his life with his father Osama:

There were other absurd rules regarding our conduct. We were allowed to speak in his presence, but our voices must be kept low and our words carefully measured. In other words, we should not ‘over-talk.’ We were told that we must not become excited at any situation. We should be serious about everything. We were not allowed to tell jokes. We were ordered not to express joy over anything. He did say that he would allow us to smile so long as we did not laugh. If we were to lose control of our emotions and bark a laugh, we must be careful not to expose our eyeteeth. I have been in situations where my father actually counted the exposed teeth, reprimanding his sons on the number their merriment had revealed.

According to Omar, his father was not “warm”; in fact, he “caned” him and his brothers “for the slightest infraction.” Osama was very, very cruel and deprived his sons of their much needed asthma medication—even as he force marched them without water for hours and in the desert. In addition, he allowed his sons to be brutalized by sadistic teachers. He refused to give his sons “pocket money” for “school snacks.” He told them, Omar writes:

‘No. You need to suffer. Hunger pangs will not hurt you.’ Improbably, our father was different from so many fathers who wanted nothing but the best for their children. Our father appeared to relish seeing us suffer, reminding us that it was good for us to know what it felt like to be hungry or thirsty, to do without while others had plenty. Why? He said that we would end up being the stronger. Those with plenty would grow up weak men, unable to defend themselves.

And yet, Omar has now come forward as his father’s injured heir, his rightful son. He is now identifying with or standing for the very father who abused and endangered him.

This, too, is not unusual.

First, growing up, Omar and his brothers all learned that they would have to endure paternal cruelty and humiliation and that their tender and sympathetic mothers would not and could not intercede on their behalf. Osama bin Laden’s wives, especially Najwa, Omar’s mother, are portrayed as joyfully submissive, uncomplaining, very religious, quite passive. Najwa gave up her desire to decorate her home, which was, essentially, her prison. She never wore expensive clothing or jewelry. She never uttered a single complaint—not even when she was deprived of most conveniences and normal amenities. Omar writes:

Although we lived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is one of the hottest and most humid cities in a country that is known for its hot climate, my father would not allow my mother to turn on the air-conditioning that the contractor had built into the apartment building. Neither would he allow her to use the refrigerator that was standing in the kitchen. My father announced, ‘Islamic beliefs are corrupted by modernization.’

Thus: Cruel and tyrannical father + absolutely helpless mother=shamed filial identification with the very fathers who abused them. In addition, the sons of rich men do not wish to expose how they, too, were humiliated; therefore, they deny the harsh reality which both shames and exposes them. They minimize the abuse. They even remember a fleeting “good” moment or two. They want to be loved by the fathers who do not love them. They want the sons of poor men to look up to them as the sons of rich men.

Women do not even count.

Osama bin Laden’s father had 57 children and saw Osama rarely. He was not kind to him. In turn, Osama was even less kind, even more cruel to his many sons.

Life is funny, life is great, but life is also strange, the way it all boils down to one’s views on only two or three subjects, namely Israel, Islam, and America.

Yesterday, I met with a potential intern sent my way by a local area college with whom I’ve happily worked before. She seemed alert, bright, interested, talented and ready to start her (unpaid) full-time summer internship almost immediately. I had already told her to visit my website and to read some of my articles and assumed that she knew my current subjects and views. She did. In fact, on the phone, she went out of her way to agree with me on my critique of the academic feminist view that the Islamic face veil and polygamy are “liberating” for women.

Just after we finished discussing hours and possible projects, she stopped, smiled smoothly, and said this:

“But I have to tell you that I take issue with your position on Israel.”

“Oh” said I. “Have you lived in Israel, do you know any Palestinians, have you read many books, written many articles, taken many courses about Israel and about the Middle East?”

“Well no,” she said, “but I feel strongly about it.”

And then I said: “So, based on your feelings and perhaps on some peer pressure, you are willing to give up an internship that you might otherwise want?”

I stressed that I had no problem with her holding a view different than my own. I asked her whether she could work with someone with whom she did not agree exactly on this one issue.

She paused. And then she said: “But I have another problem. I think it is wrong to condemn all of Islam.”

Now I looked at her for a moment without saying anything.

Then I spoke.  “But I don’t. In fact, I champion the work of some religious Muslims as well as those of secular Muslims and ex-Muslims and I work with Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents and feminists. To expose honor killings, to challenge Islamic gender apartheid practices is not the same as condemning all Muslims or all Islam.”

Again, I told her that I could work with someone with whose views I did not completely agree; could she? Although by now I was fearing that if she said yes that instead of working for me  she would force me to teach her in an unpaid tutorial.

She was not yet done.

“I also take issue with an article you wrote in which I believe you are stereotyping lesbians and Jewish lesbians.”

Friends: I actually managed not to laugh out loud.