Leading or Following? Democrats and Obama on Israel

From the Pew Center, an assessment of US attitudes in the Arab/Israeli conflict. As you can see (below), the pattern is clear. While Republicans continue to support the Jewish state, Democrats have moved against Israel, and now are as likely to favor the Palestinians as Israel.

So the question arises: are Democrats following people like Barack Obama, whose disdain for the Jewish state has been quite obvious, or does Obama’s disdain for Israel merely reflect a shift among Democrats generally?

Why Democrats should dislike Israel is something that needs to be explained. For most of the 20th century, Jews had the status of a politically correct victim group (although the term “political correctness” wasn’t in general use).  Liberals prided themselves on opposing antisemitism.

So what has changed?

Essentially, there is been a shift in the axis of liberal identity politics. In most of the 20th century liberals proudly supported Jews, blue collar workers and Catholics was well as blacks. But blue collar workers and Catholics have moved in a conservative direction. Jews continue to vote Democratic, but now they are much harder to portray as a victim group. They have succeeded too well in American society, and discrimination against Jews is extremely rare.

So what victim group have liberals latched onto? The Palestinians. They can be portrayed as victims, while Israel is a successful, modern, affluent state.

Siding with people who really are victims is certainly a virtue. But liberals have huge trouble dealing with groups whose problems are of their own making. They continue to portray the problems of the black community as the result of white racism. But the things that most afflict black people are a 72% illegitimacy rate and an absurdly high rate of crime by blacks who victimize other blacks. Liberals want blacks to be victimized by other people, and are embarrassed by discussion of how blacks are victimized by the bad behavior of other black people.

Likewise with the Palestinians. Liberals can’t admit that they are victimized by their own unwillingness to accept the state of Israel, their own support of terrorism, and corruption among their own leaders. It can’t be that their own bad behavior is the problem, so somebody must be oppressing them. And that “somebody” is Israel.

Thus the intellectual bad habits of liberals in domestic US politics have spilled over into international relations.

Palestinians Celebrate Terrorist Attack

Hamas holds rally in Gaza to celebrate terrorist ramming that killed four Israelis https://t.co/mEB5Bfrj0w #ArabIsraeliConflict pic.twitter.com/YTEUMMwQZ8

— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) January 9, 2017

Settlements and Peace in the Middle East

Confronting Anti-Israel Prejudice

A fellow named Jordan Holmer has the courage (or perhaps merely the chutzpah) to challenge the Palestinian lobby on campus. On Twitter, he has taken exception to a fake wall (called an “Apartheid Wall”) erected on campus by Students for Justice in Palestine. His tweets are included below:

Why @MarquetteU allows anti-Semites to demonstrate in center of campus is beyond me pic.twitter.com/fGiuhRMTpr

— Jordan Holmer (@kybldmstr) April 14, 2016

I feel for every Jewish student on campus today #SJPisHate

— Jordan Holmer (@kybldmstr) April 14, 2016

I bet if it was an image of a KKK cross burning Marquette would jump into action pretty fast

— Jordan Holmer (@kybldmstr) April 14, 2016

It is long past time that somebody challenged the Palestinian lobby on campus. Their motto, shown on the wall, is “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.” Although they deny it, the slogan calls for the end of the State of Israel. The graphic below shows it: the map does not show a two state solution. It shows a single state, which would be dominated by Palestinians. Jews, if allowed to remain, would be a persecuted minority.


Palestinians don’t like the wall Israel has built because it has ended suicide bomber attacks. Again, they won’t admit that.

The Palestinian lobby on campus has been pandered to and petted by campus bureaucrats and leftist faculty. Firmly on their side have been the Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies and the organizations that sponsored “Israeli Apartheid Week,” including the Office of International Studies, Campus Ministry, and the Office of Intercultural Engagement. So it is good to see some opposition.

This is not to say we agree with Holmer on everything. He believes the wall should not have been allowed by Marquette. We think that if Students for Justice in Palestine got the proper approval from Student Affairs, they have a right to their demonstration.

What we would like to see is a counter demonstration. But some push back on Twitter is a start.

Terrorist Supporter to Speak on Marquette Campus

Tonight at Marquette: a speaker named Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, who has consorted with terrorists.

From the Facebook page of Marquette’s Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies:

Today, we are excited to have Dr. Simona Sharoni and Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi present on the incredible work they have been...
Posted by Marquette University Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies on Monday, April 11, 2016

So just who is Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi?

Her Facebook page shows her to be virulently anti-Israel.

She recently made a trip to the Middle East to meet with terrorists.

A California Public Records Act inquiry revealed that multiple professors from San Francisco State University met with terrorists on a trip funded by the university. Professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Joanne Barker, along with Abdulhadi’s husband, met with terrorists Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah during the “Labor Delegation to Palestine 2014” which began on January 5th, 2014 and concluded on February 14th, 2014.

Eight organizations- the AMCHA Initiative, Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon Wiesenthal Center Campus Outreach, StandWithUs, and Zionist Organization of America- sent a letter to CSU Chancellor Timothy White, SFSU President Leslie Wong, CSU Vice Chancellor and Chief Audit Officer Larry Mendel and CSU Attorney Carrie Hemphill Reith concerning the matter.

Leila Khaled is “a convicted hijacker and the most famous member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization responsible for 159 terrorist acts such as bombings, armed assault and assassinations, resulting in numerous injuries and deaths including those of more than 20 US citizens,” the groups noted.

Sheikh Raed Salah has been convicted of funding the terrorist organization Hamas and sat in prison from 2003 - 2005. In the letter to school administration the organizations also highlighted that, “In 2008, Salah was charged with incitement to violence and racism. In 2010, Salah was also arrested for his participation on the Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Salah was recently incarcerated again on charges of incitement to violence.”

Was Abdulhadi just a scholar wanting to gather information? Again, her Facebook page shows her to be a supporter of violent radicals.

One post, for example, shows her to be a supporter of Oscar Lopez Rivera.

Posted by Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi on Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Who is this fellow? A Puerto Rican terrorist. Rivera has been:

personally involved in bombing and incendiary attacks across the country for at least five years prior to Méndez’s [sic] involvement and knowledge, has been a prime recruiter for members of the underground terrorist group, and has been a key trainer in bombing, sabotage and other techniques of guerilla warfare. He has set up a series of safehouses and bomb factories across the country, the searches of which have uncovered literally hundreds of pounds of dynamite and other forms of high explosive, blasting caps, timing devices, huge caches of weapons and stockpiles of ammunition, silencers, sawed-off shotguns, disguises, stolen and altered identity documents, and the proceeds of the armed robberies of locations such as a National Guard Armory, Chicago’s Carter-Mondale Re-Election headquarters, radio and communications companies, as well as a variety of stolen vehicles.

Her Facebook page celebrates a “unity pact” between terrorist organization Hamas and (terrorism condoning) PLO.

And it also lionizes another pair of Puerto Rican terrorists:

Posted by Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi on Monday, April 21, 2014

Should She Be At Marquette?

Should Marquette allow a speaker who supports terrorism?

We have said that there is nothing wrong, in principle, with a Klansman speaking at any university. Students might learn something — although it’s more likely to be something about political pathology than about public policy.

The same principle applies here.

But what would we think of an organization that continually wants to bring Klansmen to campus? We would suspect, rightly, that they were racist.

So what are we to think about the Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies, and the organizations that sponsored “Israeli Apartheid Week,” including the Office of International Studies, Campus Ministry, and the Office of Intercultural Engagement? We have to suspect that they are anti-Israel, and aren’t too scrupulous about wanting the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians solved by peaceful means.

Should you Go?

We are late getting this post up, but we would urge anybody so inclined to go to the talk. Particularly, Abdulhadi should be asked some civil but pointed questions:

• Do you support a two state solution to the Israel/Palestinian conflict?
• Are you willing to condemn Hamas rocket attacks on Israel?
• Are you willing to condemn attacks on Jews in Jerusalem?

Her responses will be revealing.

Update

An e-mail correspondent notes the following:

It’s odd that it is group pushing gender equality and rights for gays that is sponsoring this, since Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has any sort of de facto or legal guarantees for such rights. The Palestinian territories and Gaza are plagued with honor killings (to which the authorities turn a blind eye) and diminished citizenship for women, and are hardly havens for gay rights. Abdulhadi calls such legal protections Israeli “pinkwashing” — as though the rights are instituted to provide a cover for colonialist iniquity.

Good point. And the reality is that the Center for Gender and Sexualities is, like the other centers of leftist activism on campus, not about women or gays. It’s about leftist politics. Thus, including the anti-Israel Palestinian lobby in their coalition is more important than representing the interests of gays and women.

The Academic Left’s Hatred of Israel

From Real Clear Politics an essay about the academic left and its hatred of the state of Israel.

What has happened on campus, aside from the well-documented suppression of pro-Israel views, is the formation of a durable coalition opposed not only to Benjamin Netanyahu and specific Israeli policies but to Israel itself. The coalition is composed of the two fundamental groups on all elite campuses: the self-professed “victims” and the self-flagellating “guilty.” One of the main purposes of orientation week is to sort students into one of these two groups and to educate them in their assigned roles.

The guilty are all students from comfortable backgrounds, except those from approved minorities. These middle-class students are, by definition, “oppressors.” They can expiate their sins by pleading guilty and showing they want to remedy the mess their families have made of America and the world. Their own special movement is environmentalism and “safety” on campus, which goes beyond the legitimate goal of ensuring all students’ physical security to include suppressing views they don’t like. Those views, they say, make them “feel unsafe.” Deans of students, who care not a whit about free speech, happily rush in to protect them. But the main way middle-class students can wash away their sins is to back the movement-du-jour of the “victims’ groups.”

There is no shortage of opportunities. There are all sorts of self-designated victims on campus, each vying for the coveted position as “the most terribly oppressed by America.” Among international students, the undisputed winners are the Palestinians (and Muslim students in general). They are glad to have others’ support as long as no one challenges their status as the No. 1 international victims group.

But why does the left hate Israel? The author (Charles Lipson) goes on to explain:

The left hates Israel’s military strength and its willingness to use it for the same reasons it hates American power. As right-thinking cosmopolitans, they would never approve such brutality. Obama captured this perspective in a Freudian slip. “Whether we like it or not,” he explained, “we remain a dominant military superpower.” The left doesn’t like it. They don’t like it in America, and they don’t like it in Israel. As for Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea brandishing military threats, well, let’s not think about that. The threats may vanish from their minds, but they still threaten everybody else with working synapses.

Not only is Israel powerful, the left (like the Muslim world) sees Israel as a remnant of Europe’s crimes: imperialism and the Holocaust. University faculties are preoccupied with imperialism and post-colonial legacies, which they blame for many of the world’s ills. They see Israel through that lens, as a colony of white settlers in an Arab-Muslim region. They blithely ignore the Jewish people’s age-old connection to the land, its continuous presence there, and its central religious significance. And they ignore how many Israelis were driven out of Arab countries, which have become virulently anti-Semitic.

The combination of Israel’s religious heritage, its nationalism, its prosperity, and its unapologetic self-defense combine virtually everything loathed by secular, cosmopolitan intellectuals. That’s why Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech offered such a tepid “defense” of Israel’s right to exist. Israel was needed, he said, because Jews needed somewhere to go after the Holocaust. That is the view of the average professor of French literature: Israel is the bastard child of Europe’s crimes.

This kind of mentality is common at Marquette, reflected (for example) in the “Israeli Apartheid Week” sponsored by several offices at Marquette.

A few years ago, Manresa sponsored a conference on “peacemaking” which included a panel titled “Jews of Conscience: Voices for Justice and Peace, Hope and Obligation.” What sort of Jews supposedly had a “conscience?” Those who oppose Israel. The people on the panel compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and justified Palestinian terrorism.

Then there was a virulent 2005 Arab Heritage Celebration, which rather than celebrating the cultural heritage of Arabs, attacked Israel.

“Catholic” Marquette, in other words, is no better than the average secular university. Indeed, Marquette is the average secular university.

Palestinian TV: Teaching Kids to Kill Jews

Marquette Backing Away From Inflammatory Anti-Israel Program

We blogged about this a month ago: a rather virulent program on the Marquette campus that labelled Israel an “apartheid state.”

It was not particularly surprising that Marquette’s Palestinian student association would sponsor such a program — although it certainly doesn’t speak well for the students that they would want to use such inflammatory rhetoric.

More surprising was the announcement that two offices at Marquette — Intercultural Engagement in the Office of Student Development and the Office of International Education — were cosponsoring the program.

Is it now Marquette’s position that Israel is an “apartheid state?”

It seems, however, that the university has now backed off its support for this program.

We queried Vice President for Student Affairs Chris Miller about this, and he responded “Student Development is not sponsoring the event. It is purely student sponsored.”

Terence Miller, of the Office of International Education, was not immediately available for comment. But it appears that they too have withdrawn their sponsorship.

The issue here is “what were they thinking?”  What kind of bureaucratic culture prevails among mid-level bureaucrats at Marquette such that declaring Israel an “apartheid state” seems like a good idea?

We have seen this before, most recently with the Femsex seminar, which was approved by the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. When the true nature of the program was revealed here, Marquette’s top administrators withdrew support.

But the fact that things like this can happen at all is terribly revealing.

Marquette to Sponsor Anti-Israel Program

In the mailbox of Political Science faculty:

Dear Political Science faculty and staff:

My name is John Janulis and I work in the Office of Student Development-Intercultural Engagement. I wanted to apprise you of a series of programs focusing on Israeli apartheid and Palestinian awareness that will be happening on Marquette’s campus between March 24 and March 28.

Students for Justice in Palestine (a registered MU student organization), Intercultural Engagement in the Office of Student Development, Marquette University Student Government, and the Office of International Education will be having the following speakers on campus for a series of programs to raise awareness about Israeli apartheid and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Details are still emerging regarding times/locations for the events, but a tentative outline is below. We recently finalized funding for these events early this week, so I will have more information regarding times, locations, and topics by this afternoon. We will have publicity/promotion materials emailed to you by the end of the week if you would like, as well.

Tuesday, March 25:
Film screening of either The Stones Cry Out (http://www.thestonescryoutmovie.com/) or Jerusalem: the East Side Story (http://electronicintifada.net/content/film-review-jerusalem-east-side-story/3528).

Wednesday, March 26:

Soup with Substance featuring His Eminence Archbishop Theodosios (Hanna) of Sebastia .
12:00pm, AMU 157

Keynote address featuring His Eminence Archbishop Theodosios (Hanna) of Sebastia.

6:00pm (tentative), Cudahy 001 (tentative)

Thursday, March 27:

Moderated panel discussion featuring:

Rabbi Brant Rosen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brant_Rosen)
Max Blumenthal (http://maxblumenthal.com/about/)
Dr. Osama Abu Irshaid (http://conference.ampalestine.org/index.php/speakers/26-osama-abu-irshaid)
Kathy Kelly (http://vcnv.org/speaker-bio/kathy-kelly)
Time/location TBD.

Thanks and please feel free to contact me with any questions.

John Janulis, M.Ed.
Coordinator for Intercultural Engagement
Office of Student Development, AMU 121
Marquette University
P: 414.288.3214

Perhaps, if Palestinian or Muslim students want to hold a program taking a particular position on the Arab/Israeli conflict, they should be allowed to. Free speech on campus, and so on.

But this event is sponsored by Marquette University Student Government, and the Office of International Education.

Further, John Janulis, a Marquette official, is personally promoting this event.

Marquette officially sponsoring such an absurdly one-sided, propagandistic event is hard to justify.

It seems that people in certain Marquette offices don’t even understand that the phrase “Israeli apartheid” is anything but a simple, uncontroversial statement of fact.

It seems that what we have here is the narrow, parochial political correctness that has raised its head before, coming from the centers of political correctness on campus.

John Janulis, reached by the Marquette Warrior, was not able to comment immediately for the record.

[Update]

In response to our inquiry, we got this e-mail from a Student Government officer:

Regarding the Israeli Apartheid Week Program, the Students for Justice in Palestine went through the Student Organization Funding Process. The process allows for student organizations looking to plan events on and off campus a way to fund things they might not typically have the budget for. This process is open to all student organizations, and their application was approved by the Student Organization Funding committee as well as Senate as a whole.

Hope this answers your question, feel free to reach out with other questions,

Tyler Tucky

Note that if it is the policy of MUSG to fund controversial events proposed by student organizations, and if this policy is applied in a viewpoint neutral way, we have no beef with student government.

That still doesn’t get the Marquette offices and Marquette officials who endorsed this program off the hook, however.

It’s the Republicans Who Support Israel

Via Jeff Jacoby, the fact that Democrats don’t much like Israel, but Republicans remain staunch supporters.

There are exceptions, for course. Democratic office holders who live in places like New York (where there are a lot of Jewish voters) remain firmly behind the Jewish state (at least rhetorically).

First, the fact that Americans generally support Israel, and have much more sympathy for it than for the Palestinians.

(You may want to click on the image to see an enlarged version.)



Then the question becomes: what about the partisanship of the supporters and opponents. Here the data (from Gallup) is clear.



How do we interpret this? Quite simply. Liberals really don’t much like America (although they would never admit that, even to themselves).

Liberals pride themselves in always seeing that America’s enemies have a justified grievance. In seeing that it’s really our fault.

It follows from that that America’s friends aren’t particularly liked. Just look at Obama’s actions toward America’s allies.

Thus it follows that Israel, one of America’s strongest friends, is viewed with, at best, stand-offish reserve. It follows that the Palestinians, being anti-American, must have a good case.

The views of Democrats in the poll, of course, are what underlies Obama’s foreign policy.

More Anti-Israel Speakers on Campus

It’s become pretty routine to hear pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel speakers on this campus, and two more will be speaking tomorrow at noon in the Union, in Ballroom D.

The speakers will be Dianna Buttu (formerly a lawyer for the terrorist PLO) and Eddie Makue (South African activist).

Both claim to be supporters of the Palestinian cause, although their extreme rhetoric and uncompromising positions are typical of those that make a solution to the problem more difficult.

Diana Buttu is slightly more incendiary. In response to an interviewer who asked “What is your impression of the PLO-Israel negotiations?” she said “That of a child rape victim negotiating with the rapist.”

Even worse, during a Global Exchange tour in the U.S., November 2002 she remarked that “People say, ‘How can we get the Palestinians to stop the suicide bombings?’ That’s like saying to a rape victim, ‘Make sure not to hurt him, don’t scratch his eyes.’ It’s demanding that the oppressed protect the oppressor.”

Makue is not a lot better, constantly claiming that Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is like apartheid in South Africa. Indeed, he has proclaimed:

If the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa was an example of how ‘people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice… through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions’, then we have no choice but to help shoulder the responsibility to abolish the apartheid that seeks to oppress and destroy the Palestinian people.

That the Palestinians, who have engaged in a virtually constant campaign of terrorism against Israel, are themselves largely responsible for restrictions on their movement is something Makue doesn’t seem to recognize.

As one observer put it:

I in no way condone or agree with the way Israel has conducted its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and believe it was a huge strategic and costly military mistake to build the settlements on Palestinian land after 1967. At the same time, Israel’s actions must be viewed in the context of the overall conflict: the Palestinians’ refusal since 1948 to recognize Israel’s right to exist and their decision to resort to airplane hijackings, murder on the high seas, suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism and armed conflict.

Rightly or wrongly, Israel has concluded that while it tries to negotiate a settlement of the conflict, it has to ensure its survival and safety through its military strength and superiority. This context in no way resembles the situation in which apartheid was developed as an ideology and social system in South Africa.

We are happy to report that this event is not sponsored by Marquette, but rather by the Arab Student Association. Marquette has a rather sordid record of one-sided programming attacking Israel and supporting rather extreme pro-Palestinian speakers.

Just letting a student organization present the speakers it wants is an entirely different matter.

But it still remains the case that discourse on campus is badly biased on this issue, and both sides need to be heard.

We would urge people to show up and ask pointed, but civil, questions. Questions about Palestinian terrorism should be particularly interesting.

Anti-Israel Attitudes in the Presbyterian Hierarchy

From Christianity Today:

In May, the Presbyterian Church (USA) released “Vigilance against Anti-Jewish Ideas and Bias.” Jewish organizations were effusive in their praise. The last decade has seen a spike in violent anti-Semitic hate crimes in Europe. The document could not have been more welcomed and well timed.

The love-fest was short lived. In June, the PC(USA) removed the original document from its website and replaced it with “Vigilance against Anti-Jewish Bias: In the Pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian Peace.”

It would be hard to construct two more dissimilar documents with similar titles. The original pointed directly to problematic PC(USA) overtures and materials, such as overtures “declaring that the Jewish people are no longer in covenant with God … or to blame for the crucifixion.” It was a startling and honest mea culpa that directly addressed Jewish concerns about a steady pattern of criticism of Israel that had morphed into derision of Jews. (The latest U.S. State Department annual report on human rights offered, “The distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy that — whether intentionally or unintentionally — has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel’s perceived faults to its Jewish character.”)

Ominously, the main focus of the new document is no longer anti-Semitism, but Presbyterian responsibility in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anti-Semitism has become essentially a sideshow to the main event, which seeks “to call an end to the Israeli occupation … to criticize Christian Zionism … to speak out against the placement of the separation barrier.” (Perhaps the denomination might convince Hamas to end its daily barrage of lethal rockets directed at civilians. That might be easier if the denomination would begin by mentioning them, but don’t look for such mention in the document.) PC(USA) members are now cautioned to mind their Ps and Qs as they pursue their one-sided quest for peace. They are urged to be vigilant against slipping into the language and imagery of anti-Semitism while all references to PC(USA)’s own malfeasance have been purged.

Whereas the old document treated such language as inherently wrong, the new one shifts the blame to the Jews. Using crucifixion language in regard to Israeli soldiers is problematic only because Jews “inevitably construe” such imagery as anti-Jewish. Rather than commit to fight the scourge of exploding worldwide anti-Semitism, the PC(USA) now adds to the one-sided demonization of Israel (“the oppressive force in the Israeli-Palestinian situation”) that fuels it.

There is really only one thing one needs to know about the bureaucrats who run the “mainstream” (now far outside the mainstream) Protestant denominations.

They are hardly (if at all) Christians, but they are bureaucrats, and they are leftist bureaucrats. They move in a circle of politically correct liberal and leftist thoughts. And in the modern era, that means siding with the Palestinians against Israel.

In this, they are no different from Marquette bureaucrats in the Office of Student Development and Manresa, which have a history of virulently anti-Israel programming.

If it becomes advantageous to condemn anti-Semitism, they will do so. But their real sympathies lie with Israel’s enemies, and they don’t much mind if these enemies are terrorists.