Jewish Activist to AIPAC: Stop Silencing Dissent!
Liza Behrendt, 22 year old member of Young Jewish and Proud, the youth wing of Jewish Voice for Peace, stood up during a breakout session called “The Struggle to Secure Israel on Campus” to call attention to the silencing of Palestinians— and young Jews who support them — on U.S. campuses. Liza stood on stage and unfurled a banner that read, “Settlements Betray Jewish Values” and “Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof,” the Jewish text from Deuteronomy meaning “Justice, Justice, You Shall Pursue.”
“I felt it was necessary to confront Wayne Firestone, whose condescending guidelines barred my Brandeis University chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace from joining Hillel last spring. Hillel’s guidelines are part of organized efforts to enforce an ideological status quo among young Jews on Israel, but they are completely out of touch with what’s happening among young people.”
I certainly hope that Liza is not beaten by JDL and AIPAC thugs and goons as Worajet was. But I can see that it would take more than a beating to silence this young Jewish Voice for Peace!
Like Worajet, Janjira, Tapnon, Tira, Buntaep, Piyabutr, Sawatri and Dr Puangthong Pawakapan together with the rest of the Campaign Committee for the Amendment of Article 112… Liza Behrendt, what an inspiration!
An Open Letter to Student Delegates at the 2012 AIPAC Policy Conference from Student Advocates for Justice, Peace and Human Rights.
3. AIPAC says they want to empower your voice and help you build relationships.
What kinds of conversations or relationships are based on silencing dissent?: AIPAC attempts to silence criticism of Israel by fueling an environment in which critics of Israeli policy are labeled “anti-Semitic,” “de-legitimizers” or “self-hating Jews.” Students, professors, journalists, and think tanks, including many Jews, have been accused of anti-Semitism for merely taking stands critical of Israeli policy.
Add in AIPAC’s ties to political donors capable of giving millions to elected officials, and you have Washington DC’s open secret: numerous Congressmen and women want Israel to be accountable to the law and human rights, but are too afraid to say so publicly for fear of losing donations and ultimately, their jobs. Too many are close to AIPAC because they are afraid of AIPAC.
These attacks stifle the critical discussions and debates that are at the heart of democratic policy-making. The recent attacks on staffers at the Center for American Progress initiated by a former AIPACer are but one example of AIPAC’s efforts to crush all dissent. What can you not say, or not ask, at this conference?
Does any of that sound familiar to Thais? You bet it does! With an actual fear for their lives thrown in!
Faced with declining support for Israel’s behavior even among Jews, and finding it increasingly difficult to come up with plausible arguments to defend Israel’s human rights abuses and violations of international law, the pro-Israel lobby seems to be resorting to straightforward attempts at intimidation and censorship – including the old stand-by of labeling any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. The extent to which their tactics are now aimed at shutting down criticism of Israel, rather than attempting to rebut it should be an indication that they know they are losing the debate.
One of their tactics on campuses is to orchestrate a series of attacks on the academic freedom of scholars who have dared to criticize Israel. One of the most notorious was DePaul University’s outrageous politically motivated denial of tenure to Prof. Norman Finkelstein, a leading scholar in his field whose “crime” is that he is an outspoken critic of Israel’s exploitative treatment of Holocaust survivors as well as its oppression of Palestinians.
On campuses in Canada, they have attempted to use that country’s hate speech laws to stifle criticism. At the University of Toronto, for example, pro-Israel faculty took out a full-page ad in the National Post urging the university administration to ban ‘Israeli apartheid week’ events from the campus. Eager to abandon the university’s responsibility to defend freedom of expression, the administration tried to get the Toronto police to do their dirty work for them by soliciting a ruling on whether it is ‘hate speech’ to accuse Israel of practicing apartheid.
Yes, John, this seems to be mirroring what is currently happening in Thailand with the Nitirat group except perhaps that the AIPAC goons are better dressed than their Thai ultra-royalist counterparts and don’t ride in on motorcycles.
If you click on the link to the Open Letter you’ll find under their point number 4 :
The link goes to Muzzlewatch, Cecile Surasky’s site, long a beacon to and rallying point for conscientious Jews, detailing the takeover of the Berkeley student government by AIPAC.
There’s a report of AIPAC’s “resorting to straightforward attempts at intimidation and censorship” as you mention on the front page of Muzzlewatch as I write… AIPAC shut Cecile, and others, out of their convention.
All that came before Liza blew it wide-open.
AIPAC works for the 1 percent points out and details the common problem, world-wide. USA, Thailand, Israel, China… a globalized oligarchy is in place and is bent on protecting its interests and ‘externalizing’ the costs inherent in doing so. We, the 99% of the human race and the balance of creation itself, are envisioned as the ‘sink’ for those ‘externalized’ costs.
The only way we can end this is to end the reign of the 1 percent, liquidating and restoring ‘their’ assets to the common.
And the goons on the motorcycles are not the Thai ultra-royalist counterparts to the AIPAC but their poor stooges, like the Red-Gaurs of yore. The ultra-royalists, or hyper-royalists, are as gucci-pucci, blue-diamonded, as the AIPAC, I’m sure.