[Peace-discuss] Urbana City Council meeting last night

Wed Apr 16 14:17:31 CDT 2008

Robert,

  I hope you'll pardon my attempts at humor regarding the rituals of our tribe. It's really pretty standard among Jews, and after all, it's our sense of humor that's kept us going for 4,000 years.

  My behavior on April 1st was speaking out of turn, after he said he was finished, not interrupting anyone, and challenging the view that had smugly been assumed to be the dominant assumption for 1 hour and 15 minutes--that colonialists come and peace, and natives want war. 

  Out of the 100 or so people there, four or five shouted me down. Somehow the rest of them managed to restrain themselves. The speaker, to his credit, asserted my right to speak. His response was simply to accuse me of not knowing the facts--no examples necessary. 

  It's also interesting that in response to my raising the issue of the Iraq War, he responded that he would not speak to that issue, that he would leave it to somebody "more qualified." An interesting response from someone from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and pretty telling on a number of levels--it's pretty much taken for granted, even among a Zionist audience, that you don't openly support the Iraq War, and that Israel-Palestine is somehow generically different, which is the only way you can defend it.

  It is true that many supporters of Israel call themselves liberal, and so much the worse for liberalism. But apartheid is apartheid, and that's not liberal.

  When I spoke on Monday, I assured the audience that those who disagreed with me or the message from the movie would be able to ask questions first. In truth, it wasn't that kind of audience anyway, but I would not have allowed it to be. One has to assert a safe environment and assure that opportunities to speak will be forthcoming, which was also done at the event that showed Occupation 101, after which two panelists including me spoke. On that occasion, Jewish students felt perfectly safe to question our views, and there was mutual respect. That concept would be unknown at Hillel, however much they might pay lip service to "civil discourse" on this issue. Obviously, they do nothing whatsoever to encourage or promote the conditions under which that might happen. That would take genuine thoughtfulness, openness, and willingness to acknowledge that there are legitimate views other than their own, which include opposing ethnocratic states, which must be aired. But when you
 don't have the facts on your side, just racist assumptions and cliches, there is an understandable reluctance to place oneself in a situation in which the rules of evidence and logic apply.

  In fact, it is only AWARE that has ever promoted conditions under which both "sides" could respectfully treat each other, as far as I know. In one case, in March 2002, I was the moderator. Robert, I suspect that you were there. It's simply impossible that a "Jewish event" would allow genuinely opposing views. In fact, Makovsky at one point referred to the audience as "Jewish," even though it was a public event. Nobody even bothered to tell him that it might be an opportunity for "civil discourse," and I'm sure nobody expected it to be, in any substantive sense. The last thing they would expect is for students of Arab background to attend and want to be heard, and by their choice of speakers, they do a lot to discourage that. Hillel is totally unprepared to provide the conditions for such a thing, and the sort of Jewish people who show up, when they're on their "home turf," will feel empowered to shout people down unless the ground rules are made clear. Hillel is
 inherently a hostile environment to anyone who has genuine compassion for the Palestinian people.

  Needless to say, there was nothing "liberal" about this event, nor about what happened on Monday evening in Urbana.

  By the way, I will later post the text of my comments on Monday. I'll let folks decide whether it constitutes "indoctrination in hatred of Israel." It's simply an exegesis on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which was followed by a film that mostly interviewed the participants in that from both sides.

  DG

Robert Dunn <prorobert8 at hotmail.com> wrote:
      .hmmessage P  {  margin:0px;  padding:0px  }  body.hmmessage  {  FONT-SIZE: 10pt;  FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma  }    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 -0700
From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com
Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] Urbana City Council meeting last night
To: 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:
      .ExternalClass .EC_hmmessage P  {padding:0px;}  .ExternalClass body.EC_hmmessage  {font-size:10pt;font-family:Tahoma;}    What the hell is that supposed to mean David? That is a real sick comment!

---------------------------------
  Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:29:52 -0700
From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Urbana City Council meeting last night
To: 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 

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