8 thoughts on “Brandeis President’s Hypocrisy – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Reading beyond a MSM headline. I detest hypocrisy, lies and pure propaganda on an issue important for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.

    Thank you for putting this all together.

  2. RE: “In fact, there was nothing ‘Nazi-like’ or anti-Semitic about anything at the rally, nor has Brandeis Pres. Frederick Lawrence offered any proof that there was. About the closest he can come is claiming that a straight-armed salute offered by the protesters was reminiscent of the Nazi salue.” ~ R.S.

    MY COMMENT: Al Quds should have just said that the black clothing and “straight-armed salute” were a tribute to Menachem Begin and the Betar Revisionist Zionist youth group!

    ● FROM WIKIPEDIA [Betar]:

    (EXCERPT) The Betar Movement (בית”ר, also spelled Beitar) is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. Betar has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group Irgun Zevai Leumi. It was one of many right-wing movements and youth groups arising at that time out of a worldwide emergence of fascism.[1] Some of the most prominent politicians of Israel were Betarim in their youth, most notably Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, the latter of whom idolized Jabotinsky.[2]. . .
    . . . The group initially praised Mussolini for his anti-communism and fascist principles, leading it to adopt the black uniform shirt of Italian fascism for a short period. Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, however, was seen as “cowardly” by Betar and led them to break with him shortly after.[8] . . .

    SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betar

    ● ALSO SEE: “The Hidden History of Zionism”, Chapter 6, by Ralph Schoenman

    [EXCERPT] . . . Mussolini set up squadrons of the Revisionist Zionist youth movement, Betar, in black shirts in emulation of his own Fascist bands.
    When Menachem Begin became chief of Betar, he preferred the brown shirts of the Hitler gangs, a uniform Begin and Betar members wore to all meetings and rallies – at which they greeted each other and opened and closed meetings with the fascist salute. . .

    SOURCE – http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/ch06.htm

    P.S. They really should drop that “straight-armed salute” (even if it is just “an arm raised toward a liberated Jerusalem”)! It gives me the willies big-time!

  3. Brandeis Faculty Members’ Visit to Al Quds University
    .

    On the Brandeis/Al-Quds University Partnership by Dan Terris

    I have recently returned from a five-day trip to Al-Quds University, continuing work on a decade-long partnership between Brandeis University and this prominent Palestinian educational institution. I was accompanied by my Brandeis colleagues Sue Lanser (English, and Women’s and Gender Studies) and Dan Kryder (Politics).

    Our trip, scheduled months ago, was focused on projects for the next phase of the successful partnership with which we three and many others have been involved. Projects in progress at the time of our departure included faculty research exchanges, a women’s leadership institute, and curriculum development in the politics and English departments.


    What we can say at this point is that nothing that we have learned during this period has changed our conviction – built over many years of experience – that Sari Nusseibeh and the Al-Quds University leadership are genuinely committed to peace and mutual respect. President Nusseibeh’s comments following the suspension of the partnership, published in the Times of Israel, show that he is continuing his commitment to those values and to sustained dialogue even when circumstances are challenging.

    In addition, I have just been informed that the University has suspended Sari Nusseibeh’s membership on the advisory board of the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life, saying that this action is consistent with the suspension of the partnership. While I have strong opinions about this, this decision is not in my hands, since all board members serve by appointment by the president of the university. Sari has been a member of this board since 2000. Among other things, his membership pre-dates the partnership. This is a good time to recall Nusseibeh’s forty-year record of courage, innovation, and willingness to engage in challenging dialogue, the marks of a man whom I know personally to be a stalwart opponent of hatred and intolerance wherever they are found. Brandeis need not agree with everything that Sari Nusseibeh says to value him as an important member of the Center’s extended community.

    Over the past decade, hundreds of Brandeis University students, faculty, and staff members have participated in a variety of activities with Al-Quds University counterparts with the goal of enhancing mutual understanding through work together on shared scholarly and educational interests. At the time of this post, Brandeis has taken down the Brandeis/Al-Quds Partnership website, so the detailed record of our many years of work together is not available. [Note: as of November 22 Brandeis has restored the web site with a note on the home page about the suspension.]. However, a short video and a brochure describing some aspects of the partnership are available, and I encourage you to take a look to get a flavor of what we have done together.

  4. A more balanced article on Al Quds protest …

    After Brandeis and Syracuse, a US school decides to stay with Al-Quds

    (JPost) – The US university with the closest ties to Al-Quds University, Bard College in New York, has announced it will continue its partnership, despite two other American colleges severing ties with the Palestinian school. Bard’s connection to Al- Quds is substantially different than Brandeis’s. While Brandeis’s partnership had deteriorated over the years due to funding problems, Bard maintains active joint-degree programs.


    Bard read the message, and subsequent public discussion, differently.

    “Suggestions that the university administration condoned the actions of a very small group of students within a university of 12,000 are simply inaccurate,” Botstein wrote in his statement, noting that “the incident and the ensuing controversy demonstrate that it is more important than ever to maintain our educational partnership with Al-Quds.”


    Mohammed Dajan Daoudi, a prominent Al-Quds professor who founded the school’s American Studies program, said the dispute revolves around a difference of perspective.

    In an open letter posted to the American Studies Facebook page, Daoudi said that when he sees students demonstrating, he sees “disappointment, frustration, despair, anger, all combined together in a militaristic march protesting the dire present Palestinian political and economic conditions.”

  5. Al-Quds president says Brandeis counterpart ‘gone overboard’ in row over rally

    (TOI) – Nusseibeh was responding to a follow-up query in which The Times of Israel asked him whether he had condemned the rally — and any lauding of suicide bombers that may have taken place there — in Arabic to the students of al-Quds. Nusseibeh replied with a lengthy critique of Lawrence’s role in the affair and a defense of his own actions in the wake of the rally.

    “I think president Lawrence has gone overboard in his reactions — the last being his decision to expel me from the Board of Ethics, justice and public life, with which I have been associated since its inception, and from many years before I forged a partnership between the two universities,” Nusseibeh charged.

    He criticized Lawrence for never bothering “to express any sympathy for the continued plight of my university — the latest being yet another vicious incursion by the army into the campus just a day after the rally, as a result of which more than 30 students were hospitalized from various gas-related effects.” Nusseibeh may have been referring to an incident last week reported by the Palestinian Ma’an news agency. “Nor has he shown any sympathy for the fact that my graduates continue to suffer from not having their degrees accredited in the Israeli system. In other words, nothing that he has done has shown any feeling for our plight under occupation. Yet he demands immediate reaction just based on a picture and comment circulated by someone who clearly wishes to inflame the political climate between Israelis (and Jews more generally) and Palestinians.”


    “Sixthly, and only yesterday, I learnt (still informally) from one of the people on the investigation committee what the occasion was: the jihad faction was protesting the manner of killing by the Israeli army a few days ago of the suicide bomber from three years ago: they had invited the parents of the person bombed inside the cave where he was hiding by way of ‘paying respects’ to them.”

    Nusseibeh may have been referring to the late-October killing by the IDF of Islamic Jihad’s Muhammed Aazi, who was allegedly among the planners of a bus bombing in Tel Aviv last November in which 29 people were injured. Aazi, who was said by the IDF to be planning another attack, was shot in a clash in the cave where he was hiding out west of Ramallah.

    The suspect was killed by special forces shooting a Stinger shoulder-fired missile into the cave.

  6. Dictum for Brandeis – Fighting ‘New Anti-Semitism’

    Brandeis Fred Lawrence, Elie Wiesel, Gov. Duval Patrick and ADL Abe Foxman discuss ‘The New Anti-Semitism’

    President Fred Lawrence advocated broad exercise of free speech, scholarly criticism of biased analysis and strong support for studies in the humanities as responses to “The New Anti-Semitism,” a subject he explored with Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick before an overflow crowd at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall.

    Lawrence invoked the legacy of Justice Louis Brandeis in response to fears expressed at the ADL-sponsored forum about the use of the Internet to spread slander and hatred of Jews. He reminded Foxman of Brandeis’ dictum that “the answer to bad speech is more speech” and said figuring out how to make the Internet a force for good is a worthier endeavor than trying to solve problems through government regulation.

    Advocate for ‘The New Anti-Semitism’ places Fred Lawrence in the class of Olivier Melnick and a campaign against the BDS movement and to silence criticism of the Israëli occupation of Palestine.

  7. Here is what Nusseibeh said: “These extreme elements spare no effort to exploit some rare but nonetheless damaging events or scenes which occur on the campus of Al Quds University, such as fist-fighting between students, or some students making a mock military display. These occurrences allow some people to capitalize on events in ways that misrepresent the university as promoting inhumane, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi ideologies” (full statement available here: http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2013/November/pdfs/al-quds-statement-11-18-13.pdf).

    Richard, what do you think Nusseibeh is referring to here, if not the demonstration?

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