Michelle Malkin and race hatred

I like democracy, I like my freedoms but sometimes I hunger for a society where people can’t vote and those in power make decisions for us. Crazy right?

These moments of craving repression are caused by people like Michelle Malkin (and other wastes of matter). If people like her are allowed to vote in our society it is no wonder why things have been horrible for the past eight years. Their lunacy goes to new heights on a daily basis and serves as an insult to people who can formulate coherent thoughts. This week Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Littegreenfootballs and other “conservative” bloggers really jumped off the deep end. (Someone should really tell Michelle that she isn’t white and hating on immigrants is a little hypocritical).

Feministe summed it up wonderfully:

Thanks to Wonkette I found out about the most asinine snippet of fabricated outrage since Falwell warned us all about that sinister homosexual Teletubby. This time, right-wing cheer squad Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson have frothed up at the mouth over the fact that Dunkin Donuts and Rachael Ray are colluding to support anti-Semitic terrorism.

Wait, what?

Look, right there! In the middle of the picture. No, above the “artificial sweeteners and skim milk are better for you” latte she’s hawking… she’s wearing a black and white scarf! Or more precisely, what the froth squad are calling a keffiyah — the traditional Arab headscarf that, in a particular black-and-white pattern, became a symbol of the Palestinian people and their struggles for sovereignty. Sadly, they’re not joking. Although I have to say I laughed out loud at the phrase “hate couture.” The thing is, if you look at the scarf Rachael Ray is wearing in that picture, it doesn’t even remotely resemble the pattern traditionally associated with the keffiyeh, which resembles an interlocking net or a chain-link fence. Look, here’s Yasser Arafat wearing one… a fairly iconic and well-known image. But Ray’s scarf doesn’t even have a regular geometric pattern on it.

It’s easy to joke about the obvious problems here. Dunkin Donuts has already responded to the controversy by saying:

Thank you for taking the time voice your concerns about the Dunkin’ Donuts Rachael Ray advertisement. In the ad that you reference, Rachael is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design purchased at a U.S. retail store and selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. This is not a ‘kaffiyeh’, which is typically a checkered and cotton/wool fabric.

It has paisleys on it. You can see one if you look closely enough. At this point, we’re in the territory where any black and white scarf becomes suspect, whether worn around your head like Arafat or draped loosely around your neck. Extra Axis-of-Evil points if it has knotted tassels! And yes, Jon from Exurban League seems to feel perfectly fine jumping into that territory and saying that no, you shouldn’t wear a black and white scarf unless you want to send an anti-Semitic message of hate and support for terrorism. What’s next… is Santa Claus a Communist again because of the red suit? You know, we really shouldn’t stop at black and white scarves; even more radical Palestinian groups than Arafat’s (such as Hamas) have been known to adopt checkered scarves in red or other colors. We better check the whole Urban Outfitters catalog and boycott suspect neckwear — especially that one called “Desert Scarf,” that’s very suspicious.

However, there are bigger fish to fry here than the extensio ad absurdum of black and white scarves. The keffiyeh, the actual keffiyeh and not just any patterned monochrome scarf in existence, really is a symbol of Palestinian liberation. And this issue has come up before, when outrage from the blogosphere convinced Urban Outfitters to pull their strikingly familiar “anti-war” scarves off the shelves. Oh wait, except they didn’t really pull them off the shelves at all. They just renamed the products, calling the scarves shemaghs, a name also adopted by US and UK troops when wearing this kind of scarf as a face covering for harsh desert weather, or even just “desert scarves” as mentioned above. Fashion and marketing mutate the name, the pattern, even the material (silk’s not quite as good in a sandstorm, Rachael) until the symbol starts slipping out of your hands, and you start looking like a raving lunatic if you try to fix it onto a political opinion.

I actually think a lot of the criticism leveled at retailers like Urban Outfitters was valid. As Sieradski pointed out on Jewschool, the merchandising of the keffiyah dilutes and trivializes any connection the piece of clothing has to actual political conflicst. Posts from the Arab-American forum Kabobfest were quoted saying much the same thing:

With a great deal of discomfort and a tad bit of pissed-off-ness, I regret to (re)inform the KABOB-o-sphere that Palestine has officially become a trend…That’s right folks, for a mere $20.00 (or 75.0127 Saudi Riyal) you too can jump on the socially stupid hipster-doofus bandwagon by rocking your very own “Anti-War Woven Scarf!” (available only at Urban Outfitters… or..err..uh… the Middle East).

It’s another example of the fashion industry thriving on scavenging and appropriating whatever cultural traditions they can find to profit off of, but perhaps more saliently, it’s a fusion of military and political chic — much like Alberto Korda’s famous photograph of Che Guevara. A visual motif becomes popular because it originally meant something; 20-somethings in more affluent metropolises of the world adopt it to look countercultural, to express their political solidarty; finally, Urban Outfitters wants to make some quick cash.

I really do believe that some symbols mean something real. I disagree strenuously with anyone who claims that you can appropriate a meaning-laden symbol and turn it into a simple fashion statement; there are reasons global culture won’t let anyone get away with doing that to an angled swastika motif in black, white and red. (At the same time, I do wish more people knew the much longer history of the symbol and how it’s used in Asian cultures.) But there are two problems in this case. One is that the right-wing zealots are trying to foist their own blanket meaning on a piece of clothing that has a long history as a national symbol. I’ll come back to that later. The other problem is that Malkin and Johnson are complaining about a symbol that has basically escaped and vanished, lost its meaning in the Land of Miscellaneous Consumer Scarves.

The more popular the symbol becomes, not to mention the more permutations it gets put through, the less likely anyone is to make any kind of political connection. Regardless of how you feel about Israel and Palestine, isn’t that what we should be mourning here: the complete dissolution of an important issue that’s killed countless people, destroyed families, and ripped a region apart, into a meaningless fashion statement? The hilarious thing is that the right-wing froth squad have everything exactly backwards; it’s not like they can really stop anyone from wearing any generic black and white scarf, but they can yell about it as if the trivialization and dilution of real life-and-death geopolitical events isn’t happening. As if people’s fashion choices really did mean something, but the whole point of consumerism is that these kinds of meanings get sucked out and replaced with price tags.

Finally, here is the real question we should really ask ourselves: what about celebrities and political figures and everday folks who really do wear keffiyahs, unlike Rachael Ray, and wear them to express support for the Palestinian people? Malkin and Johnson would have you believe that this is a clear statement of support for terrorism and hatred for Jews. There’s something very, very rotten in that assumption — do I really need to explain it? Equating Israel with all Jews is suspect enough; just for starters, it’s an equation that a whole lot of Jews object to strenuously. Even in the United States, pro-Israel political leadership is having an increasingly hard time mobilizing support for Israel’s policies from American Jews, especially all the urban, liberal Jews in this country.

On top of that, the “keffiyehs support terror” mindset makes Palestine and any support for the Palestinian people equivalent to terrorism. You can’t really make that kind of claim with a straight face and also say you hope for peace in the Middle East.

yeah… they are worn all over the middle east, different colors and everything. Republicans and more over people who label themselves “conservatives” are really quite the uneducated bunch.

Kabobfest had this to say:

America Does Away With Algebra and the Numeral System

Because, just like the “scarf,” it is “too Arab” .

Although Will already posted on this, I think it is worth re-opening an already active discussion by shedding some light on the cyber responses to the pulling of Dunkin Donut’s online AD featuring Rachel Ray.

In a post about the DD commercial, The Huffington Post explains that townhall.com columnist, “Michelle Malkin and other conservative observers thought the scarf looked too much like a keffiyeh, what Malkin describes as “the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.” (Her actual full quote is too priceless to not include in its entirety: “The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.”)

How is a scarf worn and used by pre-Islamic Arabs (which probably includes Jews and Christians in the area) automatically read by Malkin as a “symbol of the Islamic Jihad”? One used to keep the sun and sand out of the eyes and mouths of bedouins and South Arabian desert dwellers?

Malkin also claims that accepting this commercial is a mainstreaming of violence. As much as this might shock readers, I would have to agree. Smalltown USA Ray wearing traditional bedouin garb is a violent assault on my culture.

Not allowing the ridiculousness of such a claim go unnoticed, one commentator, maggienow, on the Huffington Post sardonically observes: “I know for a fact Ray is a Palestinian terrorist ” I once watch her make a falafel on her show. Coincidence? I think not!”

Pacific231 follows suit:
“Malkin’s next targets:

The Pillsbury Doughboy. How DARE he sell CRESCENT rolls!!

Little kids who play leapfrog. MY GOD IT LOOKS LIKE THEY’RE PRAYING TO ALLAH !!”

As a result of DD’s cowardly bowing down to pressure from conservative insanity, many of the commentators have suggested boycotting the company’s products and writing the corporate offices.

Oh and Malkin’s real name is Née Maglalang. (sounds like a terrorist to me)

Israel denies journalists entry based on ethnicity

A Dutch journalist who arrived at the Israeli Ben-Gurion Airport on Monday was detained by Israeli forces there for 24 hours, then deported to Holland and not allowed to enter Israel.

The journalist, Abir Sarras, is employed by Radio Netherlands International, and was travelling to the Palestinian territories to report on the Catastrophe (Naqba) commemorations taking place in May. She was told by Israeli security at the airport that, due to the fact that she is part Palestinian, and carries a Palestinian ID in addition to her Dutch passport, she is not allowed to enter Israel through Ben Gurion airport. The Israeli Ministry of the Interior confirmed that any person who carries a Palestinian ID must travel the ‘Palestinian route’ through Jordan.

The experience of Sarras differed significantly from her counterpart, a white reporter for the same outlet, Radio Netherlands International, Nicolien den Boer, who arrived at Ben-Gurion airport on the 9th of April. Den Boer was questioned for five hours, but was allowed to enter, and was immediately provided with the Israeli narrative of the conflict at the Israeli government press office. She wrote about her experience on a blog that has been circulating through the internet, stating that the security measures she experienced are necessary in order for Israel to maintain its security in the face of ‘terror’ threats.

It is unknown whether Den Boer has visited the Palestinian side of the Wall, as Israelis regularly prevent Western journalists from travelling to the Israeli-controlled Palestinian territories to report on the daily realities of life under occupation. What is certain, however, is that Sarras will not be allowed to cross to the Israeli side of the Wall, if she is able to purchase another airline ticket and enter through the Israeli-designated ‘Palestinian crossing’. Because she is part Palestinian, the Israeli authorities consider this foreign journalist to automatically constitute a threat, and will not allow her to see what’s on their side of the Israeli-built Wall.

While Nicolien Den Boer will be able to travel freely to cover the story to which she is assigned, her fellow journalist, assigned by the same news outlet to the same assignment, will be confined in her coverage to the ever-shrinking ghettoes of the Palestinian West Bank - if, that is, she can afford to buy another airline ticket after being deported and flown back home to Holland.

Hat tip to DesertPeace for reporting this story

Clash of civilizations or simply democracy failing

In Hebrew

In English

In Arabic

When you actually speak to the people you find out what they truly want, its not what the media feeds you or what some blogger writes about, it is the people. So when you hear that a majority of Israeli’s want to have meetings with Hamas and a majority of Palestinians want to meet with the Israeli’s one would think that this would make the news, even influence their leadership.

When you read blogs from either side of the spectrum you feel as though peace is not achievable, these are the extremes. They represent the same fundamentalism that first brought on the world’s problems and do nothing to change it.

How can we as a nation advocate the spread of democracy in other countries when our own elected officials publicly declare that public polls mean nothing to them.

Gilad Atzmon - Freedom of Speech: the right to equate Gaza with Auschwitz

(A talk given on the First of March 2008 at Invitation to Learn’s weekend retreat) At the left, “Innocent” by Ben Heine

“They (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves” (Matan Vilnai, Israeli Deputy Defence Minister, 29 February 2008)

It is clear beyond any doubt that the Israeli Deputy Defence Minister was far from being reluctant to equate Israel with Nazi Germany when revealing the genocidal future awaiting the Palestinian people, yet, for some reason, this is precisely what Western media outlets refrain from doing. In spite of the facts that are right in front of our eyes, in spite of the starvation in Gaza, in spite of an Israeli official admitting genocidal inclinations against the Palestinians, in spite of the mounting carnage and death, we are still afraid to admit that Gaza is a concentration camp and it is on the verge of becoming a deadly one. For some peculiar reason, many of us have yet to accept that as far as evil is concerned, Israel is the world champion in mercilessness and vengeance.

Liberty and Authority

In his invaluable text On Liberty, John Stuart Mill argued that struggle always takes place between the competing demands of liberty and authority. In other words, freedom and hegemony are set to battle each other. However, Western egalitarian liberal ideology is there to introduce a political alternative. It is there to nourish the myth that ‘authority’ and ‘freedom’ could be seen as two sides of the same coin.

Today, I will try to elaborate on the structural dynamic of liberal discourse and the different elements that are involved in maintaining the false image of ‘freedom’, ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘freedom of thought’. I will try to argue that it is our alleged ‘freedom’ that actually stops us from thinking freely and ethically. As you may notice I said ‘false image of freedom’ because I am totally convinced that, as far as Liberal discourse is concerned, freedom is nothing more than a mere image. In practice, there is no such a thing. The image of ‘freedom’ is there to fuel and maintain our righteous self-loving discourse so we can keep sending our soldiers to kill millions in the name of ‘democracy’.

Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Thought

I would like to introduce this with an elaboration of the distinction between ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘freedom of thought’.

Freedom of speech can be realised as one’s liberty to expresses one’s own thoughts.

Bearing in mind that humans are expressive creatures, there is no easy policing method to guarantee the silencing of the dissident voice. Since speaking is inherent to human nature, any exercise of litigation to do with the curtailing of such an elementary right is rather complicated: You ban one’s books? One would then spread leaflets in the streets. You confiscate one’s flyers? One would then agitate over the net. You cut one’s power, confiscate one’s computer? One may start to shout one’s head off. You chop off one’s tongue? One would then nod in approval when others are repeating one’s manifesto. You are then left with no other option but chopping one’s head off, but even then, all you do is make one into a martyr.

Two available methods are used by liberals to silence the dissident:

a. prohibition (financial penalty and imprisonment);

b. social exclusion.

However, it is crucial to mention that within the so-called liberal discourse, any attempt to ban an idea or a dissident voice is counter-effective, if anything it reflects badly on the liberal authority and the system. This is why liberals try to facilitate some rather sophisticated methods of censorship and thought policing that would involve very little authoritarian intervention. As we will see soon, in liberal society, censorship and thought policing is mostly self-imposed.

As much as it is difficult to curtail freedom of speech, suppressing freedom of thought is almost impossible.

Freedom of thought could be realised as the liberty to think, to feel, to dream, to remember, to forget, to forgive, to love and to hate.

As difficult as it may be to impose thought on others, it is almost unfeasible to stop people from seeing the truth for themselves. Yet, there are some methods to suppress and restrain intuitive thinking and ethical insight. I am obviously referring here to guilt.

Guilt, inflicted mostly via a set of axioms conveyed as ‘political correctness’, is the most effective method to keep society or any given discourse in a state of ‘self-policing’. It turns the so-called autonomous liberal subject into a subservient, self-moderated, obedient citizen. Yet, the authority is spared from making any intervention. It is the liberal subject who curtails oneself from accepting a set of fixed ideas that support the egalitarian image of freedom and ecumenical society.

However, at this point I see the necessity to suggest that in spite of the liberal claim for peace seeking, liberal societies in general and the Anglo-American ones in particular are currently involved in crimes against humanity on a genocidal scale. Consequently, the more horrid the West is becoming, the greater is the gap between ‘freedom of thought’ and ‘freedom of speech’.

This gap can easily evolve into a cognitive dissonance that in many cases mature into some severe form of apathy. It is said that ‘all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing’. This summarizes perfectly well the apathetic negligence of the Western masses. Not many care much about the genocide in Iraq that is committed in our name or the mass murder in Palestine that is committed with the support of our governments. Why are we apathetic? Because when we want to stand up and say what we feel, when we want to celebrate our alleged freedom and to equate Gaza with Auschwitz, or Baghdad with Dresden, something inside us stops us from doing so. It is not the Government, legislation or any other form of authority, it is rather a small and highly effective self-inflicted ‘guilt microchip’ acting as policing regulator in the name of ‘political correctness’.

I will now try to follow the historical and philosophical evolution that leads us from the liberal-egalitarian-utopia to the current ethical and intellectual self-castration disaster.

The Harm Principle

John Stuart Mill, the founder of modern liberal thinking, tells us that any doctrine should be allowed the light of day no matter how immoral it may seem to everyone else. This is obviously the ultimate expression of liberal thinking. It ascribes absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, ethical, political, religious or theological.

Though Mill endorsed the fullest form of liberty of expression, he suggested a limitation attached to freedom set by the prevention of ‘harm to others’. It is obviously very difficult to defend freedom of speech once it leads to the invasion of the rights of others. The question to ask is therefore, “what types of speech may cause harm?” Mill distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate harm. According to Mill, only when speech causes a direct and clear violation of rights, can it be limited. But then, what kind of speech may cause such violation?

Feminists, for instance, have been maintaining that pornography degrades, endangers, and harms the lives of women. Another difficult case is hate speech. Most European liberal democracies have limitations on hate speech. Yet, it is debatable whether a ban of pornography or hate speech can be supported by the harm principle as articulated by Mill. One would obviously have to prove that such speech or imagery violates rights, directly and in the first instance.

Consequently, Mill’s harm principle is criticised for being too narrow as well as too broad. It is too narrow for failing to defend the right of the marginal. It is too broad because when interpreted extensively, it may lead to a potential abolishment of almost every political, religious or socially orientated speech.

The Offence Principle and Free Speech

Bearing in mind the shortcomings of the ‘harm principle’, it didn’t take long before an ‘offence principle’ had been called into play. The offence principle can be articulated as follows:

‘One’s freedom of expression should not be interfered with unless it causes an offence to others.’

The basic reasoning behind the ‘offence principle’ is trivial. It is there to defend the rights of the marginal and the weak. It is there to amend the hole created by the far-too-broad harm principle.

The offence principle is obviously pretty effective in curtailing pornography and hate speech. As in the case of violent pornography, strictly speaking, the offence that is caused by a Nazi march through a Jewish neighbourhood cannot be avoided and must be addressed.

However, the offence principle can be criticized for setting the bar far too low. Theoretically speaking, everyone can be ‘offended’ by anything.

The Jewish Lobbies and the Liberal Discourse

There is no doubt that the vast utilization of the offence principle ascribes a lot of political power to some marginal lobbies in general and Jewish lobbies in particular. Counting on the premise of the ‘offence principle’, Jewish nationalist ethnic activists claim to be offended by any form of criticism of the Jewish state and Zionism. But in fact it goes further, in practice it isn’t just criticism of Zionism and Israel which we are asked to avoid. Jewish leftists insist that we must avoid any discussion having to do with the Jewish national project, Jewish identity and even Jewish history. In short, with the vast support of the offence principle, Jewish ethnic leaders both on the left and right have succeeded in demolishing the possibility of any criticism of Jewish identity and politics. Employing the offence principle, Jewish lobbies right, left and centre, have managed to practically silence any possible criticism of Israel and its crimes against the Palestinians. More worryingly, Jewish leftist political activists and intellectuals outrageously demand to avoid any criticism of the Jewish Lobby in the USA and in Britain.

As we can see, the ‘offence Principle’ regulates and even serves some notorious Zionist as well as Jewish leftist political lobbies at the heart of the so-called liberal democratic West. In practice we are terrorized into submission by a group of gatekeepers who limit our freedom via an elastic dynamic operator that is there to suppress our thoughts before they mature into an ethical insight. Manipulation set by political correctness is the nourishing ground of our shattering cognitive dissonance. This is exactly where freedom of expression doesn’t agree with freedom of the thought.

Auschwitz Versus Gaza in the light of Political Correctness

We tend to agree that marginal discourses should be protected by the offence principle, so the marginal subject maintains his unique voice. We obviously agree also that such an approach must be applicable to the manifold of Jewish marginal discourses (religious, nationalist, Trotskyite, etc.). Seemingly, Jewish political lobbies want far more than just that, they insist upon delegitmising any intellectual reference to current Jewish political lobbying and global Zionism. As if this is not enough, any reference to modern Jewish history is prohibited unless kosherly approved by a ‘Zionist’ authority. As bizarre as it may be, the Jewish Holocaust has now been intellectually set as a meta-historical event. It is an event in the past that won’t allow any historical, ideological, theological or sociological scrutiny.
Bearing in mind the offence principle, Jews are entitled to argue that any form of speculation regarding their past suffering is “offensive and hurtful”. Yet, one may demand some explanations. How is it that historical research that may lead to some different visions of past events that occurred six and a half decades ago offends those who live amongst us today? Clearly, it is not an easy task to suggest a rational answer to such a query.

Plainly, historical research shouldn’t cause harm or an offence to the contemporary Jew or any other human subject around. Unless of course, the Holocaust itself is utilized against the Palestinians or those who are accused as being the ‘enemies of Israel’. As we learn from Matan Vilnai recently, the Jewish State wouldn’t refrain from bringing a Shoah on the Palestinian people. The Israelis and their supporters do not stop themselves from putting the holocaust into rhetorical usage. Yet, the Jewish lobbies around the world would do their very best to stop the rest of us from grasping what Shoah may mean. They would use their ultimate powers to stop us from utilizing the holocaust as a critical tool of Israeli barbarism.

As one may predict by now, in order to censor historical research into Jewish history and a further understanding of current Israeli evil, political correctness is called into play. Political correctness is there to stop us from seeing and expressing the obvious. Political correctness is there to stop us realising that truth and historical truth in particular is an elastic notion. Yet, you may wonder what exactly political correctness is.

Political correctness, for those who failed to understand it, is basically a political stand that doesn’t allow political criticism. Political correctness is a stand that cannot be fully justified in rational, philosophical or political terms. It is implanted as a set of axioms at the heart of the liberal discourse. It operates as a self -imposed silencing regulator powered by self-inflicted guilt.

Political correctness is in fact the crudest assault on freedom of speech, freedom of thought and human liberty, yet, manipulatively, it conveys itself as the ultimate embodiment of freedom.

Hence, I would argue as forcefully as I can that political correctness is the bitterest enemy of human liberty and those who regulate those social axioms and plant them in our discourse are the gravest enemies of humanity.

I would argue as forcefully as I can that since the Palestinians are facing Nazi-like State terrorism, the holocaust narrative and its meaning belongs to them at least as much as it belongs to the Jews or anyone else.

I would argue as forcefully as I can that if the Palestinians are indeed the last victims of Hitler, then the holocaust and its meaning do belong to them more than anyone else.

Bearing all that in mind, equating Gaza with Auschwitz is the right and only way forwards. Questioning the holocaust and its meaning is what liberation of humanity means today and in the near future.

PeacePalestine

Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel

by Jonathan Cook
Global Research, February 29, 2008

In the strange world of Israeli academia, an Arab college lecturer is being dismissed from his job because he refused to declare his “respect for the uniform of the Israeli army”. The bizarre demand was made of Nizar Hassan, director of several award-winning films, after he criticised a Jewish student who arrived in his film studies class at Sapir College in the Negev for wearing his uniform and carrying a gun.

The incident raises disturbing questions about the freedom of Israeli academics, sheds light on the veneration of the military in Israeli public life, and exposes the close, verging on incestuous, ties between the army and Israeli academia.

Meanwhile, for many of Israel’s 1.2 million Palestinian citizens, who are nearly a fifth of the country’s population, Hassan’s treatment confirms their fears that decades of discrimination, especially in higher education, are far from over.

Hassan has faced a storm of criticism, including claims that he is anti-Semitic, since the Israeli media mistakenly reported back in November that he had thrown out of class one of his students, Eyal Cohen, over the way he was dressed. Hassan and most of the students present say Cohen was simply warned not to attend class in future wearing his uniform.

The story soon gained a life of its own, becoming the subject of incensed talk shows and newspaper columns. A group of rightwing college staff and students lobbied for Hassan, the only Arab lecturer in the film school, to be dismissed, and the Knesset’s Education Committee denounced him.

Critics claim, apparently without irony, that Hassan humiliated the student, abused the concept of academic freedom and impugned the reputation of the Israeli army.

Condemnation has come from surprising quarters, including the journalist Gideon Levy, better known for his articles attacking the army’s treatment of the Palestinians under occupation.

But more predictable has been outrage from the right. Last month two leaders of extremist Jewish settlers in Hebron, Baruch Marzel and Itimar Ben Gvir, announced that they had enrolled on Hassan’s course. “I would love for him to ask me about my army service,” said Marzel. “I can only assure you that he will be the one walking out of the classroom.”

The army added its voice too, with senior officers, including the Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, putting pressure on Sapir College to publicly rebuke the film-maker and punish him.

A letter from the head of army personnel, General Elazar Stern, accused the college of failing to act with “proper determination” and urged that Hassan face “sharp, public, official condemnation”. Stern added that Hassan must be made to apologise or be sacked, otherwise the army would end its funding of places for hundreds of soldiers who attend courses at Sapir.

Most academic institutions in Israel not only depend on such funding but receive special grants and endowments for research in security-related subjects. The Israeli revisionist historian Ilan Pappe, who was forced out of Haifa University last year, estimates that half of lecturers in Israeli universities have ties to the security services.

In Sapir College’s case, links to the army have been reinforced by its location in Sderot, a poor development town close to Gaza that is the target of most of the Qassam rockets fired into Israel.

Under growing pressure, the college’s Academic Council suspended Hassan without offering him a hearing. It also appointed for the first time in the college’s history an academic committee to investigate the incident and report on what disciplinary action should be taken.

The committee published its report late last month, conceding that he is an “outstanding teacher” but offering only a cursory examination the events at the centre of the controversy. Instead the members harshly criticised Hassan’s behaviour and personality and recommended that he apologise to Cohen or face dismissal.

The college’s president, Zeev Tzahor, intervened by contributing his own condition. He wrote to Hassan telling him that in his apology “you must refer to your obligation to be respectful to the IDF uniform and the full right of every student to enter your classroom in uniform.”

Hassan refused and, according to reports last week, the college has begun proceedings to dismiss him.

“The whole reaction has been hysterical,” Hassan, who lives in Nazareth, said. “It really surprised me, as did the lies that were told about what had happened.”

His students say the issue has been blown out proportion and that Hassan has never hidden his opposition to militarism, wherever it exists.

Enass Masri, one of two Arab students in Hassan’s film class, said: “When he saw Cohen wearing his uniform, he explained that all military uniforms — of the Israeli army, of Fatah or of Hamas — are symbols of violence and that he does not allow them into his classroom.

“His concerns about the blurring in Israeli society of the boundaries between the civil and military are well known.”

She added that the mistaken reports about Cohen being thrown out of class may have been part of a long-standing campaign to oust Hassan from his job. He had made himself unpopular with some staff and students by speaking his mind, she said. “Some people at the college are not prepared to accept the kind of things he says from an Arab.”

Sapir College calls itself “a lighthouse in the Negev”, and its film school once had a reputaton for encouraging dissenting social and political opinions.

In other Israeli colleges, discussion of “politics” — a euphemism for views not officially sanctioned — is rarely allowed.

For example, at Haifa University, which has the largest Arab student body in the country, all protests on campus are banned unless licensed by the vice-chancellor. Unofficial demonstrations, however peaceful, are broken up and usually filmed by security staff. Video evidence is used as grounds for suspending or expelling students.

Sapir’s president, Tzahor, recently told the Haaretz newspaper that his motto is: “Politics — only as far as the classroom door.”

However, the college’s definition of “politics” appears selective. In another recent incident at Sapir, lecturer Shlomit Tamari told a Bedouin student to remove her head-covering, telling her it was a sign of her oppression. No disciplinary action was taken against Tamari, who is unrepentant: “I told the college that I have academic freedom, and I can talk about that subject and I am continuing to do so.”

Enass Masri said she was also shocked that the college committee did not question the students in Hassan’s class about what took place. “We thought we would be able to put the record straight, but we were never invited to testify.

“Almost all of the students are on Hassan’s side, and we wrote a letter to the college authorities in protest at his treatment.”

Instead, she says, the committee interpreted the “meaning” of what happened, accordng to their own view of Hassan. “They looked at him not as a human being but as an Arab, and Arabs are not allowed to have an opinion on Israeli militarism.”

Hassan takes a slightly different view. Describing his questioning by the committee, he said: ”They wanted me to be the Palestinian in the room, and I refused to oblige. They wanted to believe that I object to the army uniform because I am Palestinian. But I reject the uniform because it is opposed to my universal and human values. I acted as I did because I am a teacher and a human being.

“What shocked me was that the committee refused to believe that could be my motivation.”

Certainly the committee’s report dismisses Hassan’s arguments, claiming: “Nizar abused his status and his authority as a teacher to flaunt his opinions, feelings and frustrations as a member of the Arab national minority in Israel, cloaking himself in a ‘humane’ and ‘universal’ garb, whereas in fact he demonstrated a stance of brute force bearing a distinctly nationalist character.”

Haim Bresheeth, an Israeli film-maker who was dean of Sapir’s film school between 1996 and 2002, until he was hounded out over his anti-Zionist views, wrote to Tzahor, the college president, arguing that he was making an “irrational and immoral demand” in expecting Hassan to respect the army’s uniform.

Bresheeth, referring to the reserve duty that most Israeli Jewish men perform well into their forties, added: “You are a soldier first, and only then an academic … I call on the historian Zeev Tzahor to refuse the orders of Major Zeev Tzahor.”

As in most other areas of Israeli life, the country’s Palestinian minority faces systematic discrimination in higher education. No public university is located in an Arab community or teaches in Arabic, and, though the minority is a fifth of the population, fewer than 1 per cent of lecturers are Arab.

In addition, the number of Arab students is third of their proportion in the population — an under-representation that is apparently intentional. In 2003, psychometric tests biased towards Western culture were scrapped in an effort to help “weaker sections” of society gain acceptance to university. However, when the Committee of University Heads learnt that the number of Arabs entering university had risen sharply as a result, the tests were immediately reinstated.

Several leading Israeli academics are outspoken racists, including David Bukay and Arnon Sofer at Haifa University and Raphael Israeli at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The latter was called as an “expert” witness by the state at a trial in 2004 in which he stated that the Arab mentality was composed of “a sense of victimization”, “pathological anti-Semitism” and “a tendency to live in a world of illusions”.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His new book, “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

Jonathan Cook is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Jonathan Cook

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Hat tip: DandelionSalad

HILLARY CLINTON IS AN ANTI-SEMITE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE WHO WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN!!!!!!!

 Hillary must be a terrorist sympathizer! I mean look at how she is dressed? I wonder if she went to a madrassa in afghanorabiastan. I bet she was behind 9/11 and the USS Cole. She hate Israel and is a an anti-semite, the nazi!!!

 (Lets see if this works)