[Peace-discuss] Urbana City Council meeting last night

Wed Apr 16 12:19:53 CDT 2008

David, i have been to many bar and bat mitzvahs at Sinai Temple and in California. David, many of the people in the Jewish community who spoke last night are not "right-wing." In fact, the only "right-wing" Jew who spoke last night is actually a moderate Republican. David, get your facts straight. As well, its not because of your views that you were kicked out of the Hillel building, its because of your behavior. I am saddened that you have chosen to make yourself out to be the victim again, but its not the case at all! You chose to not show up Monday night, from what I have heard, you were busy indoctrinating impressionable students into hatred of Israel.
The issue with UPTV has nothing to do with Israel in the least! Its about real anti-Semitism, not criticism of Zionism! This same guy is saying he will have videos targeting Blacks, Hispanics, and Catholics as well. Its not a Jewish/right v. left issue. Its about human decency. 

Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:25:09 -0700From: davegreen84 at yahoo.comSubject: RE: [Peace-discuss] Urbana City Council meeting last nightTo: peace-discuss at anti-war.net
Robert, have you ever had to attend a Bar Mitzvah? 

I'm sorry to state the obvious regarding Monday night below. I do this fully aware that what I say will end up circulating in the Jewish community, and indeed there's no reason why it shouldn't.

What is it that motivates the most right-wing, pro-Israel members of the local Jewish community to obsess about "hate speech" late at night on UPTV? It' an open secret that elites in this country exploit the Holocaust and anti-semitism in order to justify and cover for arming Israel and invading the Middle East, not to mention their desire to bomb Iran. Would people like Lee Melhado and Paul Weichsel, the latter featured on the N-G front page and the most virulent of the local Zionists, be doing what they are doing if they were not blindly self-righteous regarding their support for Zionist bigotry, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing? It's only the golden opportunity they see for asserting Jewish victimhood and innocence in the face of the brutal realities of occupation and ethnic cleansing (and increasing criticism of Israel) that gets them to watch UPTV rather than reruns of Seinfeld.

It isn't just that anti-semitism is trivial and to no effect in our culture, or about questionable views of what constitutes hate speech and its alleged consequences, or about freedom of speech. It's that anti-semitism has to be inflated and featured in order to stigmatize any discourse about what the U.S. and Israel are doing. The pea of anti-semitism absolutely must be felt both by the faithful and our entire culture through a thousand mattresses, to justify what we all are doing in the Middle East.

(Incidentally, it would be a mistake to think that any of these people are actually concerned with the well-being of Jews, especially poor Jews in Israel who suffer from economic policies related to militarism and racism. Moreover, there happen to be 20,000 Jews in Iran, that is, Iranians, living peacefully with Muslims, who are put in danger by U.S. and Israeli threats directed at that country. The CUJF crowd represents elite interests more than "Jewish" interests. Indeed, their conflation of the two contributes more to whatever anti-semitism there is left.)

It's not about Israel wagging the American dog. Silly assertions like that only allow local Zionists to write "poor innocent us" letters to the N-G proclaiming their powerlessness, shooting fish in a barrel in order to assert their benign innocence, while they promote the most brutal policies, and shout down those who protest, experienced personally by me at Hillel on April 1st. If you want to experience the public expression of virulent hatred, you missed your opportunity--both with my detractors and with the speaker, in terms of the content of his talk. One of the recent letter writers, Ehud Yairi, somehow lost his sense of humor when he walked toward me and berated me while I tried to ask the speaker what he thinks the U.S. response would be if Canada invaded Montana and established Canadian-only settlements with Canadian-only roads. Perhaps he didn't get the analogy, and it's understandable that he wouldn't.

In that regard, I'm being completely serious when I say that the speaker that evening, David Makovsky, could not express his ignorant and hateful views anywhere on or near this campus except at Hillel, where he summarized a century of Zionism by saying that "the Jews came in peace, but the Arabs wanted war." Try to find one Palestinian in the world who would not take this in the hateful and racist manner in which it is intended. I would admit that perhaps a half dozen of a billion Muslims might agree with this.

This whole affair is about exploiting historical Jewish suffering in order to suppress criticism about what's going on. Could it be more obvious that CUJF's concerns are expressed in a larger political context? It's not by accident that those Jews most concerned about this silly program are those who most avidly support Zionist atrocities.

This is not only about the suppression of speech, but the support of U.S. militarism and Israeli aggression. You can't separate the two, and you shouldn't.

It seems to met that those who want to protect UPTV as a local resource ought not to waste their energy on legalistic debate and hate speech, as if the Melhados and Weichsels are truly hurt and aggrieved by this program. That's handing them too much. These people don't need to be debated, they need to be shamed.

DG

Robert Dunn <prorobert8 at hotmail.com> wrote:

What the hell is that supposed to mean David? That is a real sick comment!

Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:29:52 -0700From: davegreen84 at yahoo.comSubject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Urbana City Council meeting last nightTo: peace-discuss at anti-war.net
How ridiculous. Brumleve is a crackpot, of course. But suffice it to say that if there was a show that told the awful truth about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, from 1948 to the current day, then the same folks would be labeling that "hate speech" too.

What really is sad is that because of their hyper-sensitivity and complete lack of perspective, the local Zionist self-pity partyers put everyone else through an evening that sounds like having to go to three Bar Mitzvahs. Now you know what we have to deal with.

DG
Karen Medina <kmedina at uiuc.edu> wrote:
The Urbana City Council met Monday night. The meeting was about UPTV and Mr. Dunleve's hate speech dvds from David Duke. The meeting went on for 4-1/2 hours (7pm-11:33pm).UPTV was #8 on the agenda, so people stood through the long presentation about the plan for the Boneyard. They stood through a public arts report and proposal. They stood through the combining of the conflicting revisions of the arts proposal. And literally dozens of people spoke on the hate speech vs. free speech issue (they were given 5 minutes apiece). The other points made were: hate speech leads to violence possibly of some unstable person who watches and then decides that the Jews are to blame for everything, that vandolism and grafiti have already been a problem for years, that Dunleve did not have copyright permission for a long time and that he had removed the titles and credits on the shows so that nobody could tell where he was getting the stuff for a long time, that the city could be sued, that tax money should not go toward this, and how horrible it was to know that someone out there wanted to kill them. Around 10:45, the Council paused the UPTV discussion and rushed through the remaining 7 items on the agenda. Then returned to the UPTV discussion again, giving the last 6 people who wanted to talk about 2 minutes apiece. Durl Kruse was the next to last to speak. He mentioned that no tax money is involved, that it comes from the cable agreement. He also mentioned that the issue was not really hate speech vs. free speech, but I forget what he did say it was (forgive me). Durl did well to show compassion and understanding to entire community. The public discussion was not acted on, but will pick up again in 2 weeks. The council members were all too tired. The lawyer for the city was asked to look in to a few issues and prepare a report. I think it was Charlie Smythe who asked "Could a group of people sue Mr. Dunleve". The lawyer said "I can give you a quick answer right now." But they decided that it would be best to wait on that issue as well.The media was there. Channel 15's camera left around the time the open topics finished. The News-Gazette and WILL stayed throughout. And a few TV people stayed, but I don't think there was a camera with them (there might have been).It had been grueling. The Urbana City Council Chambers were packed. Standing room only at the beginning, then large pockets of people stood in the hallway for a long time. Dwindling over the extended time, there were finally enough seats for anyone who wanted one.After the meeting was adjourned, on the way out the door, one man told Durl that since the City Council Chambers were used for some of the filming of UPTV content, that tax money was involved. A parking lot discussion with Durl and some of the community involved may have led to some other ideas.-karen medina _______________________________________________Peace-discuss mailing listPeace-discuss at lists.chambana.nethttp://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discussbetween 0000-00-00 and 9999-99-99  

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