[Peace-discuss] Irit Linur

Thu Apr 19 18:38:41 UTC 2012

http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-rides-rollercoaster-mass-hysteria/11177

Israel rides the rollercoaster of mass hysteria
Ilan Pappe
The Electronic Intifada
18 April 2012

On Apr 19, 2012, at 1:10 PM, David Green wrote:

> Linur was "artist in residence" for the Israel Studies Project on  
> campus in Fall 2009
>
> http://mondoweiss.net/2012/04/israeli-celebrity-says-she-enjoyed-video-of-idf-attacking-danish-activist-because-he-looked-like-a-nazi.html
>
> "[One the one hand they say it causes] embarrassment in the IDF and  
> that the pictures are hard to view, and on the other hand they  
> broadcast it a dozen times in a row. [laughs]
> And me - every time - first of all it’s scary, because you actually  
> see the weapon, it’s smashed into the face of the peace activist in  
> a really surprising way. It’s scary at first, because - my nose hurt  
> from seeing it.
> After the fifth time I say: “show me again. Can I see it again?”
> Now, I want to say things precisely. People are talking about - I  
> really want to be very precise.
> First of all, there’s a certain something in the image, of the Jew  
> wearing his yarmulke [religious hat], who looks, you know, like one  
> of the householders in [Jewish] town, and standing against him is  
> the golden-haired Dane, with the Hitler-Jugend look to him.
> The role reversal - I really-really liked it.
> But I don’t’ want to talk about the black chasm in my soul that is  
> haunted by anti-Semitism and Nazism.
> I want to say this: all those people who want to solve problems that  
> they have no clue about, and that in any case, they tend to be on  
> the wrong side of it - because they were born anti-Semites and will  
> die anti-Semites - one of the reasons that they come here, of all  
> places, is that it’s a kind of summer camp, they know that they’ll  
> maybe demonstrate, they may bump shoulders with policemen, maybe  
> they’ll get some teargas thrown at them, they’ll catch a bit of  
> actual battle time - a kind of adventure summer camp, at the end of  
> which they’ll go back to their privileged northern nation and  
> homeland and feel how good they’ve been.
> They don’t go do that in Syria, nor in Iran nor in Jordan, nor in  
> Egypt, because they know that there - they’d be shot at."
>
>
> This commentary appeared in Sunday's News-Gazette:
>
>
> The Israel Lobby buys public higher educational space in Illinois in  
> order to further its political agenda
> David Green
> The Israel Lobby in Illinois has become an inappropriate presence on  
> public college campuses, including the University of Illinois. The  
> origins of this intrusiveness are in Chicago, Urbana-Champaign, and  
> Springfield. Governor Pat Quinn travelled to Israel last summer for  
> a “week-long educational mission where he sealed two important  
> agreements and received briefings from high-ranking Israeli  
> officials, academic experts and business leaders on topics ranging  
> from high-tech development, energy, water conservation and  
> environmentalism to disaster preparedness, Iran, and U.S.-Israel  
> relations.”
> This is reported on the website of Jewish United Fund/Jewish  
> Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. The article states: “The  
> Governor’s educational visit was part of a JUF initiative that, for  
> the past two decades, has brought influential leaders to Israel.”  
> Quinn signed a “formal agreement on academic cooperation between Ben  
> Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba and the University of  
> Illinois at Chicago to establish a wide-ranging partnership.”
> The academic merit and social outcomes of such agreements are  
> negated by a political and military context that provokes  
> fundamental opposition from advocates of social justice. In relation  
> to Motorola, this opposition relates to the use of technology to  
> maintain Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Meanwhile, Israel’s theft  
> of water from the occupied West Bank continues apace, as documented  
> in a recent U.N. report “How Dispossession Happens: The Humanitarian  
> Impact of the Takeover of Palestinian Water Springs by Israeli  
> Settlers.
> A blatant political agenda, dictated and limited by Israeli state  
> interests and U.S. hegemonic interests in the region, is part and  
> parcel of such academic agreements. The public university and its  
> scholarly and scientific reputation are commandeered by the Israel  
> Lobby in order to serve and legitimize its agenda.
> The past two decades have seen two related developments at the  
> Urbana campus: first, the establishment of a privately-funded  
> Program for Jewish Culture and Society two decades ago and its  
> attendant moral emphasis on the Holocaust and Jewish victimization  
> in general; second, the use of PJCS as an institutional and moral  
> umbrella for an Israel Lobby-funded and baldly propagandistic  
> “Israel Studies Project,” which has moreover been clearly racist in  
> its exclusion of Palestinian Israelis from its purview.
> Blatant conflicts of interest regarding PJCS in relation to the  
> Israel Lobby were obvious from the start, and dovetail with Governor  
> Quinn’s junket. The promoters of PJCS were two professors with  
> prominent positions in local Jewish institutions—religious, secular,  
> and Zionist. One, Michael Shapiro, is the father of Daniel Shapiro,  
> current U.S. ambassador to Israel.
> In 2004, Michael Shapiro worked closely with Michael Kotzin, JUF  
> Executive Vice President, to fund the Israel Studies Project as part  
> of a statewide propaganda campaign at both public and private  
> universities. Kotzin accompanied Governor Quinn to Israel. Quinn’s  
> group was addressed in Israel by Ambassador Shapiro, who “called his  
> address to the group ‘his first official duty’ after arriving the  
> day before to assume his responsibilities as U.S. Ambassador to  
> Israel.”
> In addition the Urbana campus has procured, for the past two  
> academic years, a visiting Jewish-Israeli professor of Israel  
> Studies whose position is by no means disinterestedly funded by the  
> American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), an extension of the  
> organization most central to the Israel Lobby—AIPAC. It is  
> unacceptable that a visiting professor essentially hired by the  
> Israel Lobby is charged with teaching the only class offered at UIUC  
> on the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
> UIUC has never hired a professor of Palestinian or Arab background  
> specifically in relation to teaching and research regarding the  
> topic of Israel/Palestine. Regarding any other oppressed group, it  
> would be unheard of for faculty members to be bought and paid for by  
> interests promoting and justifying that oppression. But in the case  
> of the Israel Lobby on campus in Illinois, it is business as usual.
>
>
>
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