Curtailment of this free speech fad
Is seen on campus not a bad
Development–so you will see
Faculty senates all agree.

(Barometers record the sinking
Of liberty´s attendant thinking!)

Professors once autonomous
Had best hop on the party bus,
Accelerating to the ramp:
Faculty senates put their stamp.

(The barometric pressure sinks
While faculty just nods and winks!)

Great was the man as did invent
The rubber stamp–but his intent
Was not the mind´s autonomy:
Faculty senate, do you see?

(Liberty sinking, room for thought
Diminishes, that once was sought.)

The football team is doing well,
Tossing the pigskin, can´t you tell,
Hooting it for the home team so
Faculty senates “spirit” show!

(Alumni contributions rise,
Bequests, gifts and indemnities.)

I NEVER SAID THAT! SHOW US WHERE I POSTED ANYTHING RESEMBLING YOUR ASSERTION PLEASE EDITOR!

What’s your solution to the conflict? Genocide?
There are 7 million people now in Israel.

A copy of this is being kept in case this “unacceptable viewpoint ” is erased by “management.”

Also, the right of Israel to exist has nothing to do with the right of Jews to exist. The existence of a state is not a sine qua non for the existence of a people. The existence of Jews, Arabs, Chinese, and other nationalities and ethnicities outside their traditional lands is clear evidence of this.

Although I speak in my own capacity here, I am certain that my fellow DV editors consider the right to equality and equality of conditions to hold for all races, ethnicities, and nationalities.

Just as Jews have no right to dispossess a people, Arabs or Muslims do not have the right to dispossess other peoples. In the same vein, I argue that the European-committed genocide and subsequent occupation of Turtle Island and South Ixachilan (South America) is immoral and illegitimate and that the Original Peoples must receive just reparations.

I laid out much of this position out earlier in an essay: “Progressive Principles: Israel and the Duty to Obey Conscience.”

So those critics who want to argue for the right of Israel to exist must therefore also agree that Palestine also has the right to exist where it always has existed — otherwise their argument fall flat on its face.

Dear Kim Peterson (DV co-editor):

I’m kind of surprised that Dissident Voice has been permitting comments, (though I myself have made, I hope, perhaps very good, informative and even valuable use of that facility), because then you inevitably get the likes of this verbal graffiti (but without any intelligent artistry) from rabid Zionists (or other right-wing nutcases), like:

“From what I see posted here, the position of DISSIDENT VOICE is that Israel and the _Joos_ have no right to exist.”

Or stuff like:

“Not that I expect any of _you Hezbollah Jihadis_ to understand it”

Can you imagine any Zionists saying this to the opposition panelist(s) at a formal public debate, say at a university? Such Zionists would just make themselves look like manic *morons* — and not even a mainstream corporate TV public affairs program would have them on. (That is so, excluding a Bill O’Reilly verbal spitball kind of TV program; but that’s known for what it is — political tabloid TV, if you call that mainstream too.) And yet the rabid Zionists, including the Dershowitz’s, the Horowitz’s, the O’Reilly’s, and the other right-wing nuts here have the CHUTZPAH to attack Finkelstein for “uncollegial/uncivil” discourse.

Usually, whenever I see something that inane — like blatant and boorish anti-Semite-baiting in a post — like slinging baiting words like “Joos” around — I just *immediately* skip over the entire comment, because I know that it has nothing informative to say. Or, pretty soon I (and I’m sure others) just skip reading all the comments if there’s too many posts like that to sift through: so such Zionist garbage actually works as a form of censorship, dissuading others from wishing to find and follow more reasoned posts or debate here.

(I think that even people on the left do a disservice to DV when they begin a comment with “Give it up, jerks.” It’s a big turn-off for people who are not especially conversant about an issue, but will hopefully use DV as a regular intellectual resource, and want to become informed, even about the different sides of a debate, to reach their own decision. No one’s ever accused me of being prissy in argumentation, but I think we progressives/leftists can be more creative here at DV than just an intellectually undeveloped declarative sentence that, “You’re a jerk! You’re a fool!”)

This (especially rabid Zionist) level of freewheeling verbiage might be acceptable at a more general website, but I believe that it insults the dignity of, and debate at, an honorable intellectual political journal like DissidentVoice. In short, it doesn’t “Add to the discussion” — it *detracts* from it.

(I believe, for example, the BBC or some of the major British newspaper websites have excellent published guidelines for what is acceptable –or, especially, what is *unacceptable*– discourse at their comments pages, if DV would like to adapt that right off the shelf.)

Also, I humbly would like to suggest to DV that when someone (usually, again, some rabid Zionist) posts AN ENTIRE SCREED FROM A RIGHT-WING RAG –when a URL would suffice– you (&/or your moderator) immediately delete the article and, if possible and acceptable (FrontpageRag articles customarily contains quite a bit of personal invective and defamation), perhaps just leave the URL (or just say that posting other entire articles or overly extensive article excerpts will not be allowed, but acceptable URL references will be).

(Of course, I would hope that DV would automatically delete any comment-posted article without a URL because Zionists often like to post articles, especially pro-Palestinian human rights articles, and falsify the content, or just change certain words, to make it look patently anti-Semitic, while leaving the over-all article in the compositional style or otherwise the general, and therefore seemingly authentic, words and argumentation of the author.)

Thus, all that (usually rabid Zionist) inanity merely (and *purposely*) serves to distract from (and makes it hard to visually follow) the flow of sincere, reasoned, or at least reasonable, debate, and/or BECOME A PUBLISHING BRANCH OUTLET FOR THE LIKES OF FRONTPAGE_RAG_ (expoiting YOUR money and using YOUR resources, when they have enough of their OWN media). Your comment pages will just become a graffiti garbage wall, or egg-throwing excercise, for right-wing (usually Zionist) nutcases, their verbal bullying, and even their purposeful political or (im)moral defamation. And other people will eventually just stop reading the comment posts altogether, or bothering to sincerely comment themselves, because there will become too much trash to sift through, and they know that most other people won’t sift through the trash either. This would defeat almost the entire potential value of even having article comment pages — if they become a veritable trash bag for Zionists.

And while the rabid right-wing Zionists love to mar and scar progressive/leftist political comment pages with their inane ‘bear-baiting’, they tightly control their *own* websites: first, you must *register* beforehand at their websites (and then be cleared upon their background search on the web or from other personal knowledge or political investigation); their websites are *tightly* moderated; and they *don’t permit* known pro-Palestinian human rights advocates (who are usully quite articulate and informed on the subject and therefore quite compelling to non-Zionists readers/commenters and thus make the Zionists look especially silly and immoral) to post there. Zionists certainly don’t practice freedom of speech –except their own– and the open marketplace of ideas at their website comment pages — as the Israel lobby’s crushing of Finkelstein’s tenure amply demostrates.

My apologies, Kim Peterson, if you have already considered all of this.

Thank you.

Dear Professor Abraham:

Thank you for your very informative articles re Norman Finkelstein. I’m sure they will be greatly appreciated by many. I think that the struggle for Finkelstein’s reinstatement and tenure should not skip a beat. The tenure process has long been politically abused against politically progressive professors.

I think that Norman should have consulted an attorney who has handled tenure cases before (or at least won VERY sizeable settlements) — before he, seemingly, precipitously resigned (and with the all-too-often abused, by universities, imposition of secret terms). Other than whatever money DePaul paid Finkelstein to just make nice, shut up and go away quietly –immediately– I don’t see what he had to lose by continuing the fight: it’s not like any other name-brand university (if any accredited university at all) in America is going to offer him a position now, seeing him as a hot potato — especially since the Israel lobby (the political and financial sledgehammer it can bring to bear) has made its position quite clearly and resoundingly understood now.

At any rate, this case is not just about –and is far larger than– Norman Finkelstein. In fact, it is not even just about DePaul University sending a message to any aspiring professor at DePaul. It’s about THE ENTIRE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM IN AMERICA sending a message to ALL aspiring (especially untenured) professors in America: don’t criticize Israel; don’t cross the Israel lobby! This is so, as well as for any aspiring academic going against any other deeply held conservative establishment (including even corporate doner) interests. That’s why the Finkelstein reinstatement and tenure struggle needs to be continued without skipping a beat.

I especially appreciated your sentence: “I’d prefer tenure to be an honor we bestow upon people who are saying provocative and timely things about the important issues of the day,[as well as their scholarship,] rather than an accolade with which we buy people’s silence and good behavior.”

You might be interested in the comment that I posted below under DissidentVoice.org co-founder/-editor Kim Peterson’s article. I did not send a copy of my comment to Norman: now would not be the time for me to say ‘I told you so’ directly to him. (For your indirect reference, I also wrote a DissidentVoice article last June 8, 2006: “The Left and the Israel Lobby”.)

Regards,

Joseph Anderson

Berkeley, CA

====================================================================

Resisting Tyranny in Academia
The Deepening Bathos at DePaul University
- by Kim Petersen / September 5th, 2007

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/09/resisting-tyranny-in-academia

Joseph Anderson said on September 8th, 2007 at 12:12 pm #

I have a great deal of respect for Norman Finkelstein. I think he’s a very courageous person — and obviously a meticulous scholar (as one would certainly have to be, dealing with his academic subject matters). I signed the petition (#1376, if I correctly recall) for his tenure. I consider him a highly valued friend. We have communicated on numerous occasions. And I see him whenever he comes to the San Francisco Bay Area.

But, I consider it very ironic that THE ISRAEL LOBBY, whose POWER he once denied (as Chomsky too still completely denies), or said that PROOF of the lobby’s power is indeterminable, is the very lobby that has DESTROYED his career at DePaul University (a CATHOLIC university –not a state or Jewish one– previously known for its supposed liberalness at that!).

(Finkelstein had just *partially*, say about 30%, shifted to my position –see “The Left and the Israel Lobby”, online– as a result of our previous private analytical discussions.)

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/08/does-norman-finkelstein-constitute-a-security-threat-to-depaul-university-you-bet-he-does/

Actually there is an inextricable connection between Jews and the Land of Israel, but I would never expect you to understand it.

Every time formal prayers are done in the Jewish religion, both Israel and Jerusalem are specifically mentioned with great reverence. And Zion or Israel is acknowledged as where the Torah, or basic code of law emanates from.

Also whenever there is a Jewish burial outside of the Land of Israel, a small quantity of Israeli soil is placed in every casket beneath the person’s body.

This practice has continued for nearly 2 thousand years and symbolizes the eternal connection between Jews and the Land of Israel.

Similarly, for practicing Hindus the world over, the River Ganges in India and it’s water have an enormous spiritual significance extending back perhaps 5,000 years. Are you going to tell us that Hindus have no right to a majority country of their own?

Those others reading this, who have respect for and knowledge of larger things than you will ever understand know what this means.

So back to my original question… How would you go about effecting that?
Would you butcher children in front of their parents for world peace and social justice? What about the disposition of their assets? How would you dispose of the bodies?

If you can’t read this article and feel there is not something truly wrong with the USA blindly supporting Israel…Then you qualify as a Nazi!

“American media may well have covered some aspects of Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza, but one is unlikely to have seen coverage of its continuing demolition of the homes of the weakest and most vulnerable Israeli citizens: the Bedouin Arabs of the Negev desert.”

“On May 8, 2007 the entire village of Twail Abu-Jarwal -30 huts, home to over 100 people – were destroyed on Israeli government orders.”

…the Israeli “government had hired young workers from West Bank settlements, known for racist, anti-Arab zeal, adds a further vindictive twist to the saga.”

The German Government during WWII and the Israeli Government
that currently exists….is there a difference? Racism due to hatred of
someone that is different than you be it gender, color, race, or religion
is sick….and Israel appears to be critically ill….

I do not know how the USA who wants to pride itself on being a “melting pot” for religions, race, and socio-economic groups can maintain any
relationship with such an inferior country that Israel presents as a
racist and segragationalist society

you continue to make the same mistakes over and over again–even after having it explained to you by empathetic contributers

I’ll answer the silly question by saying nothing should be done to Jews

Can you answer if it’s possible (despite what you feel others think) for a Jew to not be a Zionist?