Here is an
essay about Jew-hate on America’s campus. It’s about Kent State University
(Fred Baumann, “Israel's Security Fence and the SJP Protesters”, The American
Thinker, April 21, 2015). It’s self-explanatory. I have edited it:
Introduction
by Richard Baehr:
Kenyon
College is a small liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio... Professor Fred
Baumann has taught political science at the college for over 30 years. He’s one
of its most distinguished professors in a department that has had many fine
teachers through the years.
In the last
two years, Kenyon has been infected with the arrival and formation of the
anti-Israel hate group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Last year, SJP
erected an “apartheid wall” to “celebrate” the beginning of Passover in the
College’s main dining hall. SJP is a big
fan of in-your-face activism, and at some colleges (e.g. Temple University),
this has meant slugging pro-Israel students in the face. This year, the group set up their wall at
Kenyon right after Holocaust Remembrance Day (coincidental I am sure).
I spoke at
Kenyon about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in February, and one SJP member,
who did not attend my talk, nevertheless wrote a defamatory piece for the
college newspaper, claiming I was an Islamophobe, prejudiced, and a fool, and
calling for greater campus-wide action against me, whatever that means. All of
this condemnation was based on hearsay about a talk he did not attend (likely
from another unbiased SJP member of course), and a few articles in American
Thinker that I did not write...
Needless to
say, the student never withdrew his article, nor apologized, though a few
subsequent letters to the college paper revealed how off base, ignorant and
malicious he was.
In response
to the second annual presentation of the "apartheid wall" at Kenyon,
Professor Baumann has written an open letter to the Kenyon community on why a
wall was constructed by Israel after the second intifada. Of course the wall is not a wall, but a low
fence for almost all of its length, and a wall only in areas where there was a
lot of sniper fire aimed at Israeli villages from elevated Palestinian
communities during the second intifada. Baumann lays out the truth:
Palestinians hate the wall because it has made it much harder to kill Jews in
Israel.
Dear members
of the Kenyon community:
Kenyon
Students for Justice in Palestine have erected their "Wall" for the
second year in a row. It is meant to
arouse your sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian Arabs who live behind it
and whose entry into Israel is impeded by it.
It is meant, correspondingly, to arouse your indignation at Israel,
which so apparently heartlessly erected it. In their explanatory message they repeat the
lie that Israel engages in apartheid.
Ask Israel's deputy ambassador to Norway about that one; he’s an Arab.
Or listen to him on YouTube.
Oh, and by
the way, how are Jews and for that matter Christians treated in Arab countries?
Let's not talk about that, right?
So, in the
spirit of the promotion of rational debate, I want to let the Kenyon community
know why that fence (it's only a wall in a few places where it discourages
sniping) was put up in the first place.
During the
so-called Second Intifada (not a spontaneous uprising at all, but ordered by
Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian chief), the more or less open access
Palestinians had to Israel resulted in a series of horrific massacres. Checkpoints on the West Bank were widely, and
rightly, seen as both harassing the innocent and ineffective against the
guilty. I would urge all of you to
Google the following on the Internet to see what those massacres accomplished. If your need to understand requires gruesome
pictures of dead bodies, they are right there at the top of the list of
links. If you would be satisfied by head
shots of the victims, they are available too.
If you just want to read about what happened, there is plenty of
information on that as well. Specifically,
I would urge you to Google "Sbarro's pizzeria bombing,"
"Dolphinarium bombing," and "Netanya Passover Seder
bombing."
In the wake
of these catastrophes, public opinion in Israel gradually moved in the
direction of calling for a fence of separation. Interestingly, the pressure
came primarily from the Israeli Left; the Right was afraid that building such a
fence would amount to giving up claims to the West Bank. Eventually, the fence was built and the number
of terrorist events declined rapidly.
That meant it again was possible for a bunch of teen age Russian
immigrant girls to go to a disco without the likelihood of being slaughtered,
as had happened at the Dolphinarium.
(Here's the barebones Wikipedia description of what happened there, by
the way:
"Suicide
bomber Saeed Hotari was standing in line on a Friday night in front of the
Dolphinarium, when the area was packed with youngsters (most of them Russian
new arrivals) waiting for admission. Survivors of the attack later described
how the young Palestinian bomber appeared to taunt his victims before the
explosion, wandering among them dressed in clothes that led some to mistake him
for an orthodox Jew from Asia, and banging a drum packed with explosives and
ball bearings, while repeating the words in Hebrew: "Something's going to
happen". At 23:27, he detonated his explosive device. It was the second
attack in five months on the same target. Witnesses claimed that body parts lay
all over the area, and that bodies were piled one above another on the sidewalk
before being collected. Many civilians in the vicinity of the bombing rushed to
assist emergency services.")
True,
terrorism continues. Look at yesterday's
Jerusalem Post for the story of a plan to bomb a shopping mall that was
detected by the police. Still, when it
comes to the fence of separation, few things have been done in the history of
human conflict that have produced more good for one people at such a low cost
to the other. A fence is the single most
passive form of self-defense there is.
It keeps the killers away without retaliation, pre-emption or anything
else.
As for the
grievous harm SJP and all the other haters of Israel claim it does the
Palestinians, I would strongly urge each of you to go to YouTube and watch the
reflections of a Palestinian woman whose house is in fact overshadowed by the
wall at its highest, in Bethlehem. She
is a Christian. You will perhaps not be surprised, after you have watched it
and heard her story, that she got death threats for having told the truth.
So far I
have tried to convey information for the purpose of taking the debate past
gestures and political theater. But here
is a question I would like to ask KSJP.
I know it is a harsh one, but still I believe it necessary to ask
it: what is it KSJP and all the other
SJPs and BDSers in this country and the world, really want in protesting the
fence? Are they most concerned with the
difficulties Palestinians suffer in living their lives? If so, why aren't they vociferously
protesting the recent massacre of Palestinians in Yarmouk by ISIS? Or are they really just concerned that the
fence makes it so hard for terrorists to murder Jews? When KSJP invited Steven Salaita to speak at
Kenyon, a man who rejoices in the murder of Jewish children, they gave us every
reason to think that their anger is really directed at the fence's frustration
of new Sbarro's Pizza, new Dophinarium, new Passover Seder massacres. Perhaps this suspicion is incorrect. But if so, one wonders why SJP, which claims
to speak out of humanitarian compassion, doesn't feel responsible for
explaining how, if the fence comes down, they will assure that the mass murder
of Jews doesn't start again.
Sincerely,
Fred Baumann
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