There is a strong scent of 1938 (Munich and Kristallnacht) blowing through our campuses. Pro Israeli speakers are routinely harassed and not allowed to speak, gutless college administrations cave in to a small bunch of vocal left wingers and terror supporting Muslim groups, and board of directors are pressured to divest from companies doing business in Israel. As Caroline Glick points out – this is not just a freedom of speech issue but something much more deep.
by Caroline Glick
Moral blindness in the face of evil is depravity. But in the upside-down moral universe of our world, moral blindness has become a badge of honor. If you refuse to call evil by its name, then you are a moderate. And if you stand up to evil, you are an extremist.
The embrace of moral blindness as an emblem of sophistication is nowhere more apparent than among American Jews. Take recent events on US college campuses. This week the Washington Times reported that a large and vocal group of Brandeis University students are organizing to protest the university’s decision to invite Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to give this year’s commencement address.
In a Facebook initiative led by a student named Jonathan Sussman, several hundred students have joined the demand to disinvite Oren. Sussman claims that by inviting him, Brandeis is siding with “a rogue state apologist, a defender of (among other things) the war crimes and human rights abuses of the war on Gaza.”
Sussman gained notoriety earlier this year when he sought to organize students to disrupt former UN ambassador Dore Gold in a debate the university hosted between him and Richard Goldstone. Sussman, a self-proclaimed communist, is a member of the anti-American Students for Democratic Society.
For their part, pro-Israel students have defended the administration’s decision to invite Oren on technical grounds. In a dedicated Facebook page, Brandeis student Nathan Mizrachi wrote that protesting Oren is a “waste of time.”
While allowing that Oren is controversial, Mizrachi argued against protesting his speech by claiming, “anyone who is consistently contributing to our worldview in a dignified, widely respected manner – instead of idiots like Michael Moore or Fox News – is someone who merits our attention.”
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UNFORTUNATELY, THIS is more often than not what passes as a pro-Israel message in the US Jewish circles these days. Following the example communicated by the US Jewish leadership, supporters of Israel often act as if shouting down Israel advocates is wrong only because doing so is an assault on freedom of speech. It isn’t that Israel is in the right and the Palestinians are in the wrong. It isn’t that Israel is a just and moral society. It isn’t that the IDF fights justly and morally and only in self-defense. It isn’t that the Palestinians have taken all the lands Israel has given them and transformed them into terrorist enclaves or that they democratically elected Hamas – a genocidal terrorist organization – to lead them. It isn’t that there is not now and never was a Palestinian leadership willing to accept Israel’s right to exist.
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Tags: Caroline Glick
