Is media conspiring with terrorism? Yes.

This was sent as a letter to The Register Citizen of Torrington, Connecticut by a PRIMER activist who asked that it be published without using his or her name. Like most papers, The Register Citizen does not publish anonymous letters and did not publish this, but the message remains a strong  one.

The recent Op-Ed piece, "Is media conspiring with terrorism?" blatantly ignores the reality of the past 63 years.  I've followed the reality in real time.  During that entire period the Islamic and secular Arab world's intention has been abundantly clear.  They simply cannot stomach the presence of a Jewish state of any size, whether the borders correspond to the lines of 1947, 1948-1967 or the present.

The PLO was formed before 1967 when the West Bank and Gaza were still under Arab control, so its aim had to be to "liberate" Tel Aviv, Haifa and the rest of the world's only Jewish state. In 2000, Yasser Arafat not only rejected an incredibly generous offer to set up a Palestinian Arab state in virtually all of the disputed territories, including parts of Israel's capital, but responded by launching a brutal terrorist offensive. In 2008, Mahmoud Abbas didn't even deign to respond to an even more generous offer that would have effectively given him all the disputed territory and has refused to negotiate with Israel for more than two and a half years.

It's not only Hamas whose charter (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp, Article 7) calls for the destruction of Israel; so do the basic documents of the supposedly "moderate" Fatah (http://www.mideastweb.org/fateh.htm, Articles 8 and 12) and the PLO (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/plocov.asp, Articles 19, 1 and 2).

Israel would love to negotiate with a Palestine that truly believes in peaceful coexistence.  But how do you negotiate with an enemy whose objective is your complete destruction?

If there's any media conspiracy, it's to keep the public ignorant of those critical facts. In doing so, de facto, the media is indeed conspiring with terrorism.

Responding to Threats and Violence

This letter was published in the Danbury News-Times on Thursday, July 7, 2011.

Defends Israel's use of force as response to threats, violence

I read with interest the article entitled "Sticking to the script" by Stephan Lesher, published June 22.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a very complicated and involved subject, and I feel that Mr. Lesher's article deserves some additional comment.

Mr. Lesher complains that whenever anyone discusses the Arab-Israeli conflict, they promise an unswerving commitment to Israel's security. He does not mention that Palestinian and Hamas officials continually profess an unswerving commitment to Israel's destruction.

Mr. Lesher complains that "Israel continually moans and groans about the supposed Iranian nuclear weapons." He dismisses this danger to Israel's existence by saying that it will not occur until 2015. Mr. Lesher evidently thinks that postponing a bad event for four years eliminates the hazard.

He ignores the constant threats by Iran that they will destroy Israel and murder all its citizens.

Mr. Lesher minimizes the abusive firing of explosive rockets against Israeli civilians, stating that only a few people have been killed. How many people have to be killed in this fashion before this vicious act becomes an atrocity?

I wonder, if vandals routinely set off explosives in Mr. Lesher's neighborhood, endangering the lives of his family and their neighbors, would he sit back and say "only a few people will be killed, so why worry."

He condemns Israel's attack on Gaza, but ignores the fact that this attack was in direct response to these rockets. Any nation in the world would take effective steps to counter such constant attacks on its territory and against its citizens. Israel is entitled to do the same.

A brief look at recent history might help to put things in better perspective.

This conflict has its roots in 1948 when several Arab armies attacked the then newly born State of Israel from several directions.

Israel's borders had just been delineated by the United Nations. The Jews accepted the U.N.'s division of the area between Arabs and the Jews, but the Arabs did not.

The stated intention of the attacking Arab armies was to drive the Israelis into the sea and murder all the Israelis. The Arabs have been trying to do this ever since.

The many actions the Israeli government has taken against the Arabs over the years have been done in reaction to constant Arab attacks. Witness the building of a separation be tween Israel and the Arab areas. This separation has effectively stopped the suicide bombers and their attacks against innocent civilians.

Hamas, which is now part of the Palestine Authority, has been listed by the United States as a terrorist organization.

Does inclusion of Hamas in its ranks make the Palestinian Authority a terrorist organization?

There are many thorny issues separating the Arabs and the Israelis. Peace negotiations will be difficult. These negotiations can only begin when the Arabs accept Israel's right to exist and stop their constant attempts to attack and kill Israeli citizens.

We pray this will happen.

Melvin H. Friedman
Danbury

Rewriting history, again

The following letter was published in The Hour, in Norwalk, Connecticut, on July 6, 2011.

To the Editor:

As the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

Scott Kimmich is entitled to his opinions, no matter how illogical and hateful they may be, but he's not entitled to make up his own facts, as he has once again done in his latest, fanatical anti-Israel diatribe, "Questioning those who question you," published in The Hour June 25.

As is typical, his rant was filled with half-truths and what might euphemistically be described as extremely creative versions of history. One could fill volumes analyzing his distortions; I'll restrict myself to the way he again insisted that Israel started the 1948 war.

As far as the fighting before Israel's actual reestablishment, on April 16, 1948, Jamal Huseeini, spokesman for the Arab Higher Committee, told the United Nations Security Council: "The representatives of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We do not deny this. We told the whole world we were going to fight."

As far as the actual war, with the invasion by five Arab armies immediately after Israel declared its reestablishment with a call to its Arab neighbors to live together in peace, Trygve Lie, United Nations Secretary General, reported to the Security Council "The Egyptian government has declared in a cablegram to the President of the Security Council on 15 May that Egyptian armed forces have entered Pales tine and it has engaged in 'armed intervention' in that country.

On May 16, I received a cablegram from the Arab League making similar statements on behalf of the Arab states. I consider it my duty to emphasize to that this is the first time since the adoption of the (U.N.) Charter that member states have openly declared that they have engaged in armed intervention outside their own territory.'

Scott Kimmich is right about one thing, readers can easily determine PRIMER's bias by perusing its website, www.primerct.org: PRIMER is biased to wards the truth.

Alan Stein
President, PRIMER-Connecticut, Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting.

The Stories of Paul and Leah

Introduction: The author recently participated in the Adult International March of the Living, spending one week in Poland visiting the concentration camps and restored historic Jewish sites, followed by a week in Israel celebrating Yom HaShoah V’Hagvura (Holocaust and Martyrs Remembrance), Yom HaZikaron (Remembrance of Fallen Soldiers); and Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day).

______________________________________

I knew the program would be emotionally exhausting. But never could I anticipate Paul and Leah.

Paul Fryberg is an 86-year-old survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau who made the 20-hour trip from Australia with his daughter Yvonne. He’s a large man with rapid speech and a thick Aussie accent. He had survived hell and ended up an orphan on the other side of the world.

Yet now, on our way to his birthplace of Lodz, he said, “I’m scared.” Like most survivors, Paul said he never return to Poland, but the Lodz Ghetto Judenrat kept burial records and, after 67 years, he’d located his father’s grave in the medieval Lodz cemetery and returned to give him a funeral.

He was a teenager when the Nazis herded his family into the ghetto.  When his father's legs became too swollen to work, a German soldier shot him in the head; they showed Paul the picture they took for evidence.  His mother and sister were burned, he believes, at Chelmno. Paul was shipped to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the main extermination camp.

Paul looked disoriented as we entered Birkenau, but quickly he remembered Dr. Mengele, silently waiting for the new arrivals off the trains, using just a one finger to indicate left or right:  immediate death or slave labor.

The next day, we walked among the astounding headstones of the Lodz cemetery that told a story of this once thriving community of some 223,000 Jews before WWII. But Paul never forgot the taunts of the local Polish kids who made throat-slicing gestures and called out “Zhid, Zhid.”

I was worried sick: how would Paul handle this? We found the grave. Paul was trembling, but in control. But when we began to recite kaddish, this gentle old man collapsed over the flat gravestone, calling for his father and sobbing like the lost child he was.

Later, Paul confided he was afraid he’d be alone with his daughter at the grave site. How happy he was when he wiped his tears and saw dozens of us, Jews from all over the world, now his congregation.

A week later, we gathered in Israel’s Safra Square for our march to the Kotel to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day. Music and dancing, flags of Panama, France, Brazil, the UK, Australia, the United States, Argentina, and more-- all signaling we survived, we prospered. Everyone cried as Paul lead his contingent, carrying the Australian flag to the Western Wall.

Leah

Birkenau death camp is a huge, sprawling complex of primitive wood barracks with guard towers everywhere and feeder railroad tracks the Nazis added to expedite the transport of Jews for slaughter. It seems endless.  This day, it was raining and miserable. (We had been surprised at how less ominous Auschwitz I* appeared, with its neat brick buildings, trees in bloom and small grassy yards.)

We walked into a women's barracks, not far from Mengele's house of horrors.   There were windows here and there, but unless you were right in front of one, you couldn’t see much.  The group stopped and I couldn’t move forward or see. We were all wet and cold. Then I heard one of our South African leaders, Tali, translating in English for Leah Herman, a tiny elderly woman from Israel who had returned to the very barracks she had survived. She, too, came to hold a funeral service for her lost family.

Leah, a Hungarian Jew, was grabbed by the Nazis when she was only 12. She was small for her age. They stripped and shaved her, part of the dehumanization process.  They handed her a huge cotton dress, way too large for her tiny body, and wooden shoes.  Nothing else.  

She remembered how they were forced to stand in their thin cotton rags in the freezing snow for hours during "roll call."  If anyone was missing, they’d all have to stand until the escapee was caught, even if it took all night. In the meantime, the Nazis would randomly shoot prisoners. Others just froze to death or dropped from disease or hunger.

When the siren blared, you had to run into your barracks immediately or you would be shot.

One day, the siren went off, but Leah wasn’t close to her barracks; terrified, she ran into the nearest one.  She was amazed to find her aunt there,  the only family member left.
The aunt had learned the Nazis would be collecting women for a work force: it was a chance. Auntie stood Leah on some bricks in a back row and pinched her cheeks to make her appear healthier.

Leah was selected. They walked two miles to work and two miles back, everyday, even in freezing winds.  They were given two slices of moldy bread each day.  Nothing else. They were dying of starvation, disease, and cold.

The sleeping bunks were merely rough wooden slats in layers of three, with room for two or three people in each. The Nazis forced in six to eight. (More could fit as their bodies wasted away.) Leah remembered how everyone wanted a top bunk because, as people died above, their body fluids would spill onto you.  

When the Nazis learned that the Allies were approaching, they took Leah’s group on a 4-day death march to Bergen-Belsen which Leah said was even worse than Birkenau. At Birkenau at least she saw workers. Bergen-Belsen had only corpses.

They marched with no food, no water, no toilets. They ate dirt along the road. Later, the lice covered her body so thickly that when she flicked them with a finger, they’d fall off in clumps.  She contracted typhus and tuberculosis. The child was a living skeleton when the Russians came.

After two years in a Swiss hospital, she ended up in Israel. One granddaughter, Kim, accompanied Leah on the March; this was the first time she’d heard her grandmother’s story. The two women clung to one another and wept.

As Leah softly told her story, I kept my hand on one slat of a middle bunk. I was reaching out to ghosts, but it was all I had.

The rain came hard so we held the ceremony inside the miserable dark barracks. Leah wiped her tears, and, like Paul, turned to see dozens of us reciting kaddish with her.
The warm yellow of the collective candle flames shined brighter than chemistry should allow.

____________________________________

Even in Poland, splattered with so much evidence of human venality, you can understand the Holocaust only a piece at a time. This was one piece: As we were leaving, someone commented that Auschwitz didn’t look as ominous as it does in the Liberation photos; here were lots of blooming trees and grass. Someone else answered, “That’s because it’s April now. When they were liberated, it was winter; the snow probably covered the grass back then.”

“No,” Paul said, “There was no grass. We ate it.”

________________________________

* This is the Roman numeral one “I”

June S. Neal
Delray Beach FL Florida and West Hartford, CT

June Neal is a free lance writer, editor and former feature writer for Northeast Magazine and has contributed to the Jewish Ledger and other publications.  She is an activist for Israel and a member of Connecticut's PRIMER (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting).

Israel Celebrates Its 62nd Anniversary

This is a letter submitted to The Hartford Courant by Professor Joe Behar. It was not published by The Courant, but is posted here with the permission of the writer.

In a few days the modern state of Israel will celebrate its 62nd anniversary.

Established in 1948, any objective evaluation with numerous criteria will show Israel to be a success story. This is especially so when compared to some of its adversaries established in a similar time frame, Jordan (1946), Lebanon (1943), Syria (1946), Saudi Arabia (1932).

This beleaguered nation of eight million citizens has survived numerous attacks by neighboring nations, with their intention of destroying it.

Yet Israel has more Nobel Prize winners than the sum of their attackers. Israel's students consistently score very high in the international exams in science and mathematics.

Israel's GNP per capita is more than the combined total of their neighbors. So is their total economic production.

Their scientific advances have significantly aided us to live more comfortable and healthy lives. The cell phone, voice mail technology, most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems, synthetic vaccines and the first ingestible video camera inside a pill were all the product of Israeli scientists.

These accomplishments are in spite of having to spend more money per capita on defense, than any country in the world!

Religious pluralism, women's rights, a Western legal system and a dedication to democracy and liberty, are some of the reasons over 80% of Americans support and admire the State of Israel.

"Third world" nations attempting to advance their citizens lives should take Israel as an example to emulate.

It is no wonder that successive American administrations continue to declare " Israel is Americas strongest ally in the Middle East."

Congratulations Israel on your 62nd Anniversary.

The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment

This is a minimally edited version of an article I wrote for the Beth El Synagogue Bulletin. J Street, that fringe, deceptive group many consider anti-Israel, was part of an early version but removed because of space limitations. I plan to modify this in the future to deal with their negative role.

In an article, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment," published last year in The New York Review of Books, Peter Beinart took up the question of "why American Jewish college students were not more vigorously rebutting campus criticism of Israel."

Beinart argued that Jewish students were turned off because they wanted "an 'open and frank' discussion of Israel and its flaws."

I believe Beinart is dangerously wrong.

There's no shortage of discussion and debate about Israeli policy within the Jewish community, whether in America, in Israel or anywhere else around the world. The real problem is that there is no real discussion or debate on the other side. This presents a confusing and distorted picture to our youths.

Within the Jewish community, there is a relatively open and balanced debate, with even the strongest advocates of Israel recognizing Israel has made mistakes and the Palestinian Arabs have serious problems, albeit primarily of their own making, and recognizing Israel needs to make painful concessions in any peace agreement.

From the anti-Israel forces, there is a litany of distortions, half-truths and outright lies demonizing Israel.

Not having lived through the re-establishment of Israel, the Suez Campaign, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War and the intifada, too young to remember the beginning of the Oslo process, the bus bombings in the mid-1990s or even the way the Palestinian Arabs rejected the establishment of a state in 2000 and launched the Al Aksa intifada instead, today's youth aren't really equipped to separate fact from fiction.

We have failed, as Peter Beinart points out, but not in the way he argues.

It is not that we have lacked discussion or debate or criticism; it is that we have not sufficiently educated our community and we have not imbued in our youth the feeling for Israel that previous generations had in their kishkes.

The reality is that the Jewish homeland is in a fight for survival, against an enemy that has the automatic support of most of the world. We need to make sure our youth understand that and are knowledgeable enough to carry on with a sometimes neglected part of Hillel's admonition: "If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us."

As far as how we do this, I have no answers, but Beinart's prescription would only exacerbate the problem.

I do believe synagogue needs to play an important role, starting with educating our members and supplying parents with needed tools.

Ripley's Believe It or Not: UN Chief Praises Tehran's Anti-Terror Initiative

From the FARS News Agency, "Iran's leading independent news agency."

TEHRAN (FNA)- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Tehran's initiative and efforts in holding the First International Conference on the Global Fight against Terrorism, and described it as a major move and gathering in the war on terrorism.

In a written massage to the conference read by UN Envoy to Tehran Mohammad Rafi al Din Shah, Ki-moon appreciated the Islamic Republic of Iran for holding the very important conference.

Also in his message, the UN chief said the world body has approved a large number of resolutions against terrorism in recent years, "and holding conferences like the Tehran conference can be considerably helpful in implementing these resolutions".

"The UN has an important role in fighting terrorism and I hope that the Tehran conference can attain great goals," he added.

Ban Ki-moon further underlined in his message that terrorism is not a political but a universal phenomenon "that we should fight firmly".

"Moving towards negotiation and recognition among nations according to the UN charter, having friendly relations with nations and improving relations among them and performing humanistic activities are some of the important strategies against terrorism," the UN Chief reiterated.

The International Conference on Global Fight against Terrorism officially started work here in Tehran on Saturday with several high-ranking officials and international figures in attendance.

The event has brought together senior officials from at least 60 countries, and representatives from several international organizations including the UN.

Presidents of Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Iraq as well as senior dignitaries and officials from different world states and world bodies have attended the conference.

The chief executives of a number of states, including the Armenian president, are also due to join the conference today.

The event, arranged under the slogan of "A World Without Terrorism", is aimed at increasing international convergence and coordination in fighting terrorism.

The topics to be discussed in the two-day summit include various aspects of fighting terrorism, reasons behind the increasing trend of terrorist activities in the world, challenges and obstacles in the way of fighting terrorism, and enhancing appropriate counter-terrorism means and strategies on bilateral, regional and international levels.

Interpreting the Easing of Palestinian Arab Demands

On June 24, the Connecticut Post, Danbury News-Times, Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate published the following short article, dubbed "Palestinians easing demands for freeze:"

The Palestinians are ready to drop their demand for a complete Israeli settlement construction freeze and resume peace talks if Israel accepts a U.S. proposal calling for a broad Israeli withdrawal from territories captured in 1967, according to senior Palestinian official in Ramallah in the West Bank Thursday. The official said the Palestinians have presented their ideas to American mediators visiting the region in recent days in an effort to get long-stalled negotiations moving again.

The following letter was submitted to each of those papers to interpret the article:

To the editor:

Let me see if I correctly understand the article "Palestinians easing demands for freeze."

It appears that, provided Israel agrees to join with the Palestinian Arabs in violating the 1949 armistice agreements, which specify that the armistice lines are to have no political significance, and United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for secure borders, the Palestinian Authority may consider ending its two and a half year long boycott of negotiations. On the other hand, the PA still won't abandon its plan, in flagrant violation of its commitment under the Oslo Accords to negotiate any changes in the status of the disputed territories, to get United Nations approval of its unilateral declaration of independence.

How nice of them.

Sincerely,

Alan Stein

The Hamas - Oops, Gaza - Flotilla

This was written by David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee and sent by email with the following explanation.

Nearly two years ago, I was invited by The Huffington Post (HuffPo) to become a blogger on their site. I was honored. It is one of the most heavily trafficked news sites anywhere, and it reaches an influential audience. Since September 2009, I have published nearly 50 articles there, and look forward to publishing many more. This week, for the first time, I was told by HuffPo that an article submitted was "not for us." It's below. I ask you to read it and decide for yourself. Apropos, the same article was published on my Jerusalem Post blog earlier this week.

Best wishes,
David

The Hamas - Oops, Gaza - Flotilla

June 21, 2011

We're on the verge of another "flotilla" to Gaza. Estimates of the number of ships and participants vary from day to day, tending downward, but the erstwhile organizers insist that the maritime operation will take place.

Their spokesmen have been hyperactive in drawing attention to the event. After all, without coverage, they'd be denied their oxygen. And the kind of coverage they seek - idealistic humanists and peace activists determined to aid the poor, beleaguered residents of Gaza versus stone-hearted oppressors in military uniforms determined to block them at all costs - would, needless to say, portray Israel in the worst possible light.

The International Solidarity Movement, Free Gaza Movement, U.S. Boat to Gaza, and kindred spirits want the world to believe there is a strip of land called Gaza that, left to its own devices, would create the Shangri-La of the Middle East.

All its residents want are peace, harmony, coexistence, and tranquility. Some spokesmen acknowledge that Gaza has a governing authority. A very few even mention its name, Hamas, but hasten to add that it was elected democratically, so end of story. The rest don't give it a name, as it might muddy the waters.

According to this narrative - a word particularly popular in Middle East discussions- the residents of Gaza face a neighboring oppressor, Israel, which, for diabolical reasons of its own, wants to inflict maximum harm on people whose only dream in life is to live and let live. For these spokesmen, the wealth of vocabulary in the Oxford English Dictionary fails to capture the true nature of Israel's venality.

Enter, then, the self-described, modern-day Freedom Riders. They're boarding flotilla ships, they suggest, to bring aid, relief, and attention to those trapped in Birmingham, Alabama, circa 1963.

George Orwell, where are you? You could have a field day with this story.

Actually, you anticipated it when you wrote about the Ministry of Truth in your classic book, 1984. What were the ruling party's slogans on the outside of the 1,000-foot-tall building housing the ministry? Weren't they "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength"? And didn't the ministry rewrite history at will to ensure it always served the party's interests?

The Gaza flotilla spokesmen are inverting the truth and rewriting history at will to serve their interests. And what are those interests? To prop up the Hamas regime in Gaza and delegitimize Israel.

While they are entitled to their own opinions, however misguided, they are not entitled to their own facts.

They cannot separate Hamas from the equation. Much as they might try, the central fact is that Hamas is key to understanding Gaza today.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. Don't take my word for it. Check with the United States and European Union, both of which have designated Hamas as a terrorist entity.

Hamas preaches the elimination of Israel and a toxic brew of classical anti-Semitism. Again, don't believe me. Read the Hamas Charter.

While Hamas may have been elected to govern with the PA in 2006, the first and only national Palestinian elections, one election does not a democracy make. Hamas used the ballot box to gain a foothold, then employed anti-democratic means to impose its own suffocating vision on the land. Hamas violently ousted the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007 and has ruled ever since. Because Hamas cannot reform, the much heralded "unity" agreement it signed with Fatah six weeks ago is headed for an uncertain future.

Hamas celebrates violence. It joyously speaks of jihad, martyrdom, conflict, and the ultimate destruction of Israel. It has matched its fiery rhetoric with a sustained effort to import weapons, courtesy of Iran, smugglers in the Sinai, and tunnels from the Egyptian side of the border. In recent years, literally thousands of rockets and missiles have been fired from Gaza at Israel. Why?

Israel has no claim on Gaza. To the contrary, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Soldiers and settlers alike were pulled out by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, giving local residents the first chance ever in their history to govern themselves.

Indeed, with Israel's encouragement, a number of Jewish donors purchased Israeli greenhouses in Gaza and left them behind to help jump-start the local economy. The first reaction was to ransack them, when they could have been sources of flowers and vegetables for the local economy.

Israel has an interest in a stable, peaceful, and prospering Gaza, not a gun-toting, missile-firing, jihad-preaching entity. After all, you can change a lot of things in life, but not neighbors. Israel and Gaza are destined to be neighbors for a long time to come.

The Quartet - the U.S., EU, Russia, and UN - set three conditions for engagement with Hamas. The group must forswear violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. To date, none of those conditions have been met. Apologists for Gaza would have you believe otherwise, but Hamas's spokesmen always undercut them. When it serves their purposes, they might briefly curtail violence to regroup and rearm, but Hamas is adamant that it will never abandon its struggle against Israel.

So, let's be clear. The flotilla participants, whether they acknowledge it or not, are handmaidens of a terrorist regime. That regime, not Israel, is responsible for the conditions in Gaza, which may not be enviable, but are a far cry from the dire picture of starvation and stunted growth painted by the hyperbolic spokesmen.

Israel has only one concern, which is to ensure that Hamas, a declared enemy of Israel, does not get additional means to threaten its neighbor. That's it, pure and simple.

As has been said, if Hamas laid down its weapons, there would be peace. If Israel laid down its weapons, there would be no Israel.

The flotilla participants claim their mission is nothing more than humanitarian, but, in reality, it serves the interests of a regime that espouses terrorism, peddles anti-Semitism, and praises the memory of Osama Bin Laden.

To portray themselves as the new wave of Freedom Riders is to trample grotesquely on the legacy of America's civil rights struggle and rewrite history. Orwell's Ministry of Truth is back.

For more information, visit ajc.org.

---

Editor's Note: David's blogs are having worldwide impact. If you enjoy reading them, please share this one with your friends and make a donation to AJC.

SPME STATEMENT ON YIISA AND YPSA

By Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Board of Directors

June 20, 2011

In response to Yale University's abrupt and thus far poorly explained termination of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA), Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), representing a worldwide grassroots community of academics from across many disciplines, notes Yale University's announcement that it is establishing the Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism (YPSA) and wishes it success. Nevertheless, SPME remains gravely concerned about the handling of the YIISA and registers significant concerns about the new organization.

During its brief five-year existence, YIISA had gotten off to a spectacular start with much promise ahead. SPME hopes that YPSA can achieve similar success but remains concerned that the manner in which Yale handled YIISA may create obstacles for YPSA. SPME attributes YIISA’s success to four critical factors upon which YPSA’s success or failure will depend: contemporary focus, global reach, substantial resources, and intensive activity.

First, YIISA wisely and courageously focused on the contemporary resurgence of global anti-Semitism. Many anti-Semitism scholars admired YIISA’s effectiveness in tackling the difficult and politically charged issue of 21st century anti-Semitism. These achievements not only enhanced Yale’s prestige but also strengthened our understanding of this pressing contemporary problem. If YPSA greatly illuminates the long history of anti-Semitism but fails to address its current manifestations, it will be judged a failure.

Second, YIISA set high ambitions for itself. It was not merely a study group for faculty at one university, but a global center which brought together scholars from many nations and disciplines. Contrary to what Yale spokespersons have suggested, YIISA’s scholarship was internationally influential, and its fellows madeintellectual contributions to the countries and communities to which they returned. If YPSA provides a productive hub for Yale faculty but fails to engage the international community of anti-Semitism scholars, it will be judged a failure.

Third, YIISA attracted sufficient outside funding to operate at a large scale, conducting major international conferences, attracting numerous visiting scholars, and preparing to launch an international journal. Yale’s handling of YIISA has reportedly alienated many of its outside funders, so Yale must now invest its own significant resources in order for YPSA to achieve its important mission. If YPSA provides a provincial home for anti-Semitism research but fails to gain sufficient funding to operate at YIISA’s level of engagement, it will be judged a failure.

Fourth, YIISA was intensely active in generating, promoting and supporting anti-Semitism scholarship around the world. This intensive activity was due to the energy and creativity of its founding director, Charles A. Small. Dr. Small led YIISA to immense productivity while simultaneously serving as a lecturer in political science, a thesis advisor to undergraduate students, a busy academic author and an internationally recognized speaker. In light of the manner in which Small has been treated, questions remain as to whether YPSA’s leadership will be empowered to achieve similar success. If YPSA generates respectable scholarship at Yale but fails to take active international leadership in the study of anti-Semitism, it will be judged a failure.

YPSA will be judged a success if it can address all forms of anti-Semitism, including contemporary anti-Semitism in its many manifestations; if it can set and satisfy ambitious goals for global engagement; if it can obtain an adequate funding base from Yale; and if it can assume a position of global leadership similar to YIISA’s achievements.

In order to provide YPSA with a fair chance for success, Yale must provide a full accounting of its treatment of YIISA. Great disappointment has been expressed that Yale gave YIISA not only very short notice of termination, but also very little explanation for the decision or chance for appeal. We, therefore, call on Yale President Richard C. Levin to allow a full, independent and transparent accounting of this action with opportunity for a full review and public response to this decision by YIISA’s management.

The Yale community and the international scholarly community should be told why Yale chose to terminate rather than to strengthen YIISA’svaluable academic inquiry in such a deplorably underserved but essential area of study. Substantial evidence available to the public has led some observers to speculate on a non-scholarly, indeed politically driven motivation for Yale’s decision. To facilitate a transparent discussion, and to lay these rumors to rest, we call on Yale to disclose the Institute review report to YIISA’s Director, Advisory Board, and faculty. And we ask that independent inquiry be launched to review Yale’s handling of YIISA.

Anti-Semitism may be the oldest of enduring human hatreds. Examination of the roots and unanticipated contemporary resurgence of anti-Semitism is a critical academic endeavor not just for Jews, but for anyone grappling with the volatile phenomena of modernity. Jews traditionally are an early target of people who use hatred to incite genocide, but they are never the last. The Nazis murdered 6 million Jews, but the total collateral damage caused by their technologically-endowed insanity included an additional 24 million dead. It therefore behooves the modern academy to pay close attention to paranoid Jew hatred.

We also call on other universities to house and build on YIISA’s achievements and to invest in contemporary anti-Semitism scholarship. Europe does better by anti-Semitism studies than the United States. Scholarly institutions should promptly step forward to develop interdisciplinary approaches to the study of this fascinating, repellent, and urgent current problem.

Statement on SPME Website