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<P><A href="http://www.dailyillini.com/opinions/columns/2011/04/10/israel-week-brings-opportunity-to-learn-about-country-culture-and-food#comments-title">http://www.dailyillini.com/opinions/columns/2011/04/10/israel-week-brings-opportunity-to-learn-about-country-culture-and-food#comments-title</A></P>
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<P>But it is about politics. It's about sanitizing the image of a country that is built on land that was stolen and ethnically cleansed. It's about a country that occupies, oppresses, continues to steal land, and murders in order to do so. It's about a country that massacres children at will. "Israel week" cannot possibly be about anything but politics. The politics of apartheid, racism, and worse. And it's about a secular politics with a component of religious fanaticism to do its dirty work in the settlements and outposts. And its about the politics of U.S. hegemony in the Middle East and our government's support for Israeli oppression, and it's about the top-down politics of Jewish institutions in this country that have to march in lockstep in support of Israeli atrocities, including Hillel, which has decided to exclude Jewish students who are critical of Israel. And, not least, it's about the sort of breathtaking cultural stupidity and insensitivity
that deals in camels and tents, as if the native Bedouin Arabs of Palestine with their camels and tents have not been forcefully and violently expelled from their land and their way of life by the Zionists, ongoing. "Israel week" is about stupidity, racism, ignorance, and worse (implicit justifications for violence and murder). It's about the grossest form of cultural superiority and disrespect that can be openly and publicly displayed on this campus. What an embarrassment, and what a travesty, including for most Jewish students. And worse. And by the way, this "traditional" food is Arab food, not Jewish food. It's Jewish settler-colonialist food--like everything else in Israel, stolen from the Palestinians.</P></DIV></div></body></html>