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Recently I commented on statements issued by the president of Columbia University and the chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, which criticized the British University and College Union for considering a boycott of Israeli academics and institutions.

Both Lee Bollinger of Columbia and John Birgeneau at UC Berkeley strongly condemned the UCU boycott as representing an unacceptable infringement of academic freedom. In my original post I quoted Birgeneau; here is an excerpt from the even stronger statement by Bollinger:

Therefore, if the British UCU is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy, then it should add Columbia to its boycott list, for we do not intend to draw distinctions between our mission and that of the universities you are seeking to punish. Boycott us, then, for we gladly stand together with our many colleagues in British, American and Israeli universities against such intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central mission of higher education.

I asked Dr. John Welty, President of California State University - Fresno, to consider issuing a similar statement. He has not issued a press release, but he gave me permission to quote him as follows:

The future of our world is dependent upon the free interchange of ideas and a discussion of solutions to complex problems. Any actions to stifle interactions among universities and their faculties is counter-productive.

Since the statement does not mention the UCU boycott motion, I asked Dr. Welty if he would be prepared to go a bit further, by prefacing the above with something like “I oppose the UCU boycott of Israeli academics and institutions because…”

He was not.

Dr. Bollinger has asked the UCU to boycott Columbia too, if they must boycott Israeli institutions; and Dr. Birgeneau has said that they can add UC Berkeley to their list. Here in Fresno, Dr. Welty stands four-square behind academic freedom — as long as we don’t get too specific. I didn’t ask him for his position on apple pie.

In his defense, he is presently dealing with several scandals surrounding the university’s Athletic Department. Of course, given the fact that similar scandals erupt with the regularity of Old Faithful (perhaps slightly more frequently), I would expect that he would have developed ways of dealing with other issues by now.

Technorati Tags: UCU boycott, Fresno State, Welty

Numerous universities, even those usually associated with radically anti-Israel opinions of students and faculty such as Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley, have denounced the British University and College Union (UCU) boycott of Israeli academics.

In the words of Berkeley Chancellor John Birgeneau,

Their threat to cut off all funding, visits, and joint publishing with Israeli institutions violates the fundamental principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech that are the hallmarks of great universities nationally and internationally. We hold these values most deeply at Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement.

I have asked the president of California State University at Fresno, Dr. John Welty, to issue a similar statement, and I urge all of my readers to write to their own local colleges and universities and their alma maters to request that they make their commitment to freedom of speech and inquiry manifest.

Technorati Tags: UCU boycott

A recent article in the Fresno Bee entitled “Let’s talk: Islamic cultural center opens its doors to create more dialogue with other members of the community” highlights some of the activities of the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno (ICCF) which are “designed to create better understanding between Muslims and other religious or ethnic groups”.

The article mentions a talk given by the evangelical Rev. Jim Franklin of the Cornerstone Church and a visit from Bishop John T. Steinbock of the Catholic diocese of Fresno. It continues, “The events feature guest speakers or panel members addressing a topic, followed by discussion. The center does not allow political debate” [my emphasis].

One event at the ICCF that the reporter did not mention were a lecture on April 13, 2007 by Michael Hubbart on the topic “The occupation: is it apartheid?”

Since I wasn’t able to attend, I don’t know what his answer was. However, we can get a clue from a similar talk he gave in March at the First Mennonite Church in Reedley:

Speaker: Michael Hubbart. Topic: The West Bank — It Sure Looks Like Apartheid to Me. In October Mike did a brief training with International Solidarity Movement and then worked with internationals at Birzeit University, at nonviolent demonstrations against the building of the wall at Bil’in and with the Tel Rumeida Project in Hebron.

Nope, no politics allowed. Or maybe politics is permitted as long as there isn’t any “debate”?

Another contribution of the ICCF to better understanding was to sponsor a series of events featuring the parents of Rachel Corrie, who spoke at the ICCF and several other venues in September of 2006.

The ICCF is certainly well within their rights in our free society to aggressively present their pro-Palestinian point of view.

But nobody should pretend that there’s anything non-political about it.

Technorati Tags: Fresno, Islamic Cultural Center, Fresno Bee

By Vic Rosenthal

Sasan Fayazmanesh is chairman of the Economics department at California State University Fresno (CSUF), a university that has been called world-class in the misbehavior of its athletes, one of whom was arrested for biting off someone’s lip in a bar fight. But I digress.

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The good news from the recent Pew Research poll report about American Muslim attitudes is that they are economically better off, socially more integrated, and politically less radical than European Muslims.

The bad news is that 8% of the 1.4 million American Muslims believe that “suicide bombing against civilian targets to defend Islam from its enemies” is sometimes or often justified. [poll report, p. 53] That’s 112,000 Americans.

Actually, the news is even worse, since the Pew report indicates that fully 15% of American Muslims under 30 years of age hold this view.

According to the 2000 census, there were 4,668 Muslims in the Fresno area; assuming that the growth in Muslim population since then matched the national average of about 6%, (a very conservative assumption), today there are 4,948.

Therefore, about 396 of my neighbors believe that suicide bombings against civilians “to defend their religion” are sometimes or often justified.

In the hopes that Fresnans were more moderate than the national average, I looked at the website of the local Islamic Cultural Center, and was pleased to find a fatwa which unequivocally denounces terrorism, which begins as follows:

The Fiqh Council of North America wishes to reaffirm Islam’s absolute condemnation of terrorism and religious extremism. Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives. There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism. Targeting civilians’ life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is haram – or forbidden - and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not “martyrs.”

At the end of this declaration is a list of mosques and Islamic centers that support it. As of today, 23 May 2007, neither the Islamic Cultural Center, the Masjid Fresno, or any other local Islamic institution appeared on this list.

Either this is an oversight or my neighbors are not as moderate as I’d hoped.

Technorati Tags: Muslims, Fresno, Pew survey

By Vic Rosenthal

Mark Arax likes to write about conflict among Jews. Last year he published a piece in which he blended a tendentious and distorted view of Fresno’s Jewish community (Victor Davis Hanson and Bruce Thornton called it a ‘caricature’) with what can only be called harassment of a family bereaved by the war in Iraq.

Now he’s written an article which apparently discusses the ’split’ in the Jewish community over a congressional resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide. I say ‘apparently’ because he’s embroiled in a controversy with the Times, which does not wish to run the article. But never mind — is there a ’split’ in the Jewish community over this issue?

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By Vic Rosenthal

An op-ed in today’s Fresno Bee gives the impression that the Jewish community as a whole is opposed to a Congressional resolution that recognizes the Armenian Genocide. Daniel Sokatch and David N. Myers write:

One of the last surviving leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Simha “Kazik” Rotem, once said that the central lesson of the Holocaust to him was that the Jewish people should stand vigilant against genocidal acts directed at any people.

This is why it is troubling that some major Jewish organizations have lined up in support of Turkey’s efforts to keep the U.S. Congress from recognizing the Armenian massacres as an act of genocide.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and B’nai B’rith International recently conveyed a letter from the Turkish Jewish community opposing a resolution recognizing the genocide.

The ADL and the JINSA also added their own statements of opposition, suggesting that the massacre of Armenians was a matter for historians, not legislators, to decide.

However, many Jews have an entirely different opinion. The resolution was introduced by Rep. Adam Schiff, a Jewish Democratic congressman from California.

Schiff says the resolution reflects the historical reality. He notes that Raphael Lemkin, a Jew who coined the term “genocide” in 1943 to describe Nazi actions against Jews, cited the Armenian massacres as a precedent.

The historical parallels between the two events help explain the Jewish community’s reluctance to back the Turkish effort to stop Schiff’s resolution.

Off the record, Jewish officials say a community struggling to stem the tide of Holocaust revisionism is hardly in a position to endorse efforts to deny what Lemkin and other Holocaust chroniclers have described as the Holocaust’s antecedent. — JTA

Sokatch and Myers give several reasons that Jews might be sympathetic to Turkey:

Jewish opposition to recognizing the Armenian genocide comes mainly from a desire to safeguard the strategic relationship between Turkey and Israel. Alone among the world’s Muslim nations, Turkey has forged close military, political and economic ties with Israel.

In addition, Jews remember with a deep sense of gratitude that Turkey served as an important haven for their forebears fleeing persecution, from the time of the Spanish Expulsion in 1492 to the dark days of Nazism and beyond.

I strongly doubt that many Jews remember 1492. More likely they remember the difficulties the Ottoman Empire placed in the way of Jewish immigration to Palestine in the early years of the 20th Century.

In the Nazi era, the Turkish consul-general in Rhodes, Selahattin Ulkumen, saved a number of Jews by his personal intervention, at some risk. However Turkey itself stayed neutral during the war, so Jews in Turkey were not at risk for deportation by the Nazis.

Last year, Turkey severely strained relations with Israel by becoming the second non-Arab country to invite Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal for a visit. Prior to this, the Turkish PM had accused Israel of “sponsoring state terrorism against the Palestinians”.

A more likely reason that the various Jewish organizations transmitted the letter from Turkish Jews was that the Turkish Jews were under pressure from the Turkish government:

Significantly, a Jewish community delegation led by community president Silvyo Ovadya was one of five delegations arriving in Washington this year. The Turkish Jews came on their own initiative; other delegations included three separate groups of parliamentarians and an entourage led by Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

The Jewish delegation, whose visit coincided with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy forum in March, warned U.S. Jewish leaders that passage of the resolution would harm Turkey’s Western tilt and could make things uncomfortable for the country’s Jews. — JTA (my emphasis)

I therefore think that it’s a little disingenuous to write that the Jewish organizations were “lining up in support of Turkey’s efforts” to keep the Congress from recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

Rather, they were acting to protect the Turkish Jews from reprisals by acceding to their request to pass the letter on. They were not speaking — and can not speak — as representatives of American Jews.

Legitimate historians are in agreement about the truth of the Armenian Genocide. I’m confident that the great majority of American Jews would agree with Rep. Schiff and with me and urge the US Congress to pass the measure recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

Technorati Tags: Jews, Armenian Genocide, Turkey

Michael Hubbert will be speaking at the Islamic Cultural Center (ICF) in Fresno this weekend. The title of his talk is given as “The occupation: is it apartheid?”, and I think we know what his answer will be. Hubbart has trained with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organization that recruits Americans and Europeans to be human shields and demonstrators in the territories. He’s previously spoken at the First Mennonite Church in Reedley (where his topic was “The West Bank: it sure looks like apartheid to me”). His qualifications include participation in actions intended to impede the construction of Israel’s security barrier, and involvement in the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and settlers in Hebron.

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By Vic Rosenthal

Last August, Rachel Corrie’s parents came to Fresno to speak about their daughter. Rachel Corrie was the young International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteer who was killed in Gaza in 2003 by an IDF bulldozer. Corrie’s parents and others (ISM leader Adam Shapiro was scheduled but did not appear) presented her death as martyrdom for the cause of peace, and claimed that she was trying to protect a Palestinian home when she was deliberately murdered by the IDF.

The real story is that Corrie’s death was accidental, and ISM photos that allegedly showed Corrie in full view of the bulldozer were taken at a different time and with a different bulldozer. Rather than demolishing a home, the bulldozer was clearing brush near an unoccupied building which sat over the entrance to a tunnel used for smuggling weapons and explosives through the Egyptian border. The ISM is a Palestinian-run organization which recruits young people around the world (but particularly in the US) and uses them to directly obstruct the IDF’s anti-terrorism activities.

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Recently our local newspaper printed a letter in which the writer suggested that the “moneychangers” (he used this word twice) and Israel were responsible for the war in Iraq. I think it’s safe to say that the editors were surprised by the strength of the reaction that they got from the local Jewish community. I’m sure that the “moneychangers” reference went right by them, but it probably won’t the next time!

Anyway, our contributor Murray Farber was thinking about the lack of awareness of Jewish issues in the media — at least outside of the centers of Jewish population — and he sent us this. Murray is a retired reporter and editor.

Am I too sensitive or am I especially perceptive? Two items in the local media bothered me, and I know it is probably pointless to complain because both came via national syndicates. Last week, a radio station ran an item about Anne Frank as part of a series about women and their achievements or impact. It had the expected material about her — hiding, Nazi occupation, the writings — but it never mentioned that she was Jewish.

Similarly about three weeks ago, local TV ran a piece about high school students — I think they were from Maryland — who gave up their vacations to go to New Orleans to assist in the Katrina rehabilation. The students wore yarmulkas and some had T-shirts with Hebrew writing. You guessed it! Again, the word ‘Jewish’ never came up.

Your reaction?

One of the most pressing questions today for Israel and her friends is this: How can Iran be stopped from obtaining (and using) nuclear weapons? The answer may not be what you think. Murray Farber is a retired journalist in Fresno.

By Murray Farber

Visiting Fresno yesterday, Israeli TV newsman Gil Tamary offered his opinion on a hot current question: Should Israel, the U.S. or any other country bomb Iran to block its development of nuclear weapons?

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Randy Ingram, the teacher who had been accused by the local Islamic Cultural Center of making ‘hateful’ comments about Iranians is back in class, according to the Fresno Bee (my previous posts on this subject can be found here and here).

The incident has been ‘investigated’, but a spokesperson for the school district has refused to discuss the results of the investigation.

Technorati Tags: Clovis, Fresno, Randy Ingram, islamophobia