[Peace-discuss] Response to "Israel Week"

[David Green]

http://www.dailyillini.com/opinions/columns/2011/04/10/israel-week-brings-opportunity-to-learn-about-country-culture-and-food#comments-title

 
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.
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