Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Chomskyite Terror at Tel Aviv University

1. From Isracampus
The Chomskyite Terror at Tel Aviv University:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Noam%20Chomsky%20-%20speechless.htm
Tel Aviv U.s Chomsky disciples in linguistics leave us speechless
By Lee Kaplan www.isracampus.org.il

When historians look back at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they will
no doubt observe the importance that words played for Israel.s enemies in
the dispute. Blowing up a bus full of people becomes .legitimate
resistance,. and a security fence to keep out suicide bombers and
terrorists suddenly becomes an .apartheid wall.; .occupation. takes on
multiple meanings.does it mean the West Bank and Gaza or all of Israel? In
fact, it means both depending on its usefulness at the time the phrase is
spoken by irredentist Arabs. Words such as .genocide. and .ethnic
cleansing. increasingly refer to a subjugated Palestinian Arab population
that in reality seems to only grow exponentially. To the outside world, a
plethora of deceptive words, be they in English or translated to other
languages, suggest Israel is persecuting the Arabs who are bent on the
Jewish state.s annihilation by distorting that Israel, a Jewish haven from
European Nazism, has in effect become the nation of the new Nazis and that
the Arabs are the new Jews. Such is the power of words used to manipulate
ideas and disguise facts in any language.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. But the harm to
Israel.s image is still there and can be dramatically inflated when Jewish
linguists contribute to this misperception for political reasons that are
just as damaging as those presented by the Arabs themselves. One cabal of
such linguists exists in the Linguistics Department at Tel Aviv
University.

In education, the purpose of language is to enlighten rather than
obfuscate, but education became a business in the 20th century where
careers could be enhanced by political activism within academe. Bookings
for lectures, lucrative publishing or just plain job advancement can hinge
on one.s politics more than ever before. For Israel.s universities it is
no different. Given the importance of linguistics.we can see how words can
kill given the sloganeering by terrorist groups dismissing each attack on
Israelis, or when Israel.s self-defense is described as .war crimes,.
.apartheid. or .crimes against humanity..it becomes even clearer the need
for Israel.s universities to help defend the nation from such obfuscation.
But the business of education has become tainted by Arab oil money that
helps fuel radical leftists who seek Israel.s destruction as the .Zionist
entity. and the end of a democratic America for a dictatorship of the
proletariat as parts of their platform.

One linguist who has had a profound effect on the misuse of language to
curse Israel and America is the major radical leftist star in the
linguistics field by the name of Noam Chomsky, a professor at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Manfred Gerstenfeld, considered an
expert on anti-Semitism and Jewish culture and the effects of
post-Zionism, has observed that Chomsky is a .paradigm of cultural
anti-Semitism.. Chomsky, who belonged as a youth to an anti-Zionist youth
movement against a Jewish state called Akuva, has made a fortune
denigrating both Israel and its ally, the United States, repeatedly,
branding those countries as imperialists, warmongers and guilty of crimes
against humanity.

Despite his damning of America and Israel, one has only to see that those
totalitarian governments and leaders that Chomsky embraces are the real
practitioners of genocide such as Pol Pot, who Chomsky once praised, or
the murderers in Hizballah and Hamas who Chomsky has met and spoken out in
support of publicly against Israel in the Media. Chomsky even degenerated
into writing the forward to a book denying the Holocaust recently.

Chomsky.s influence grew during the Vietnam War when his linguistic
theories, now pretty much discredited, ascribed to an idea of combining
ideas of revolution with anarchist dogma. There no longer was any right or
wrong such as is found in grammar; linguistics had no rules any more but
was based on the mind of the speaker. This attitude of no right or wrong
plays an important part in how linguists can rationalize the misuse of
language to support Arab anti-Semitism against Israel. Chomsky disciples,
in order to be true to their dogma, would have to develop more and more
sophisticated types of explanations that explained the contradictions
found in natural speech; grammar became less important than what the
speaker intended to say. In true anarchistic fashion, the rules no longer
need apply. The perceived hierarchy of society that existed before,
including those rules of grammar, were no longer important, because with
hierarchy destroyed, the mantra goes, all people will be equal. However,
Chomsky himself enjoys a lucrative career as a rich anarchist who drives a
Mercedes, has tenure at MIT and lives like a capitalist with profitable
book and speaking tours.

Meanwhile, the Linguistics department at Tel Aviv U. is like any other
academic department at any other university; it.s a small pond with some
big frogs. And when those frogs follow the same dogma of Chomsky.s sense
of anarchism, it affects everything else in that department.

However oddly, Chomsky.s students among his acolytes accorded to him this
same hierarchy and status he eschews as their guru of the use of language
as part of the political ideas of the day. Since right or wrong no longer
applies, some of the most bizarre ideas emerged from, let us call them the
Chomskyites, including blind acceptance of totalitarian murderers from Pol
Pot to the Hizballah, even support for anti-Semitism and all manner of
accusations against Israel and Jews, even Holocaust denial. Chomsky, given
his domination in the field of linguistics during the Vietnam War,
developed an international following, that continues today even in the
Linguistics department at Tel Aviv University.

Because Chomsky as a linguist has acolytes from Israel who studied under
him or from his closest followers promulgated his theories to be learned
and carried forth, his political campaigns of vilification of the West in
support of totalitarian regimes and interests also reached Israeli
universities. Of these followers, many have ended up as mini-Chomskys at
the University of Tel Aviv where they repeat their mentor.s inanities
against the right of Israel to exist or defend itself.

Although she is recently deceased, Professor Tanya Reinhart was one of
Chomsky.s best known disciples, who traveled in anti-Israel circles within
Israel itself as a faculty member in Linguistics at Tel Aviv U and as a
visiting faculty member abroad where she promoted the goals of Israel.s
enemies. Chomsky was in charge of Reinhart.s PhD thesis and she was also
an acolyte of the late Edward Said, the Palestinian demi-god (born in
Egypt like Arafat) among anti-Israel pro-PLO activists abroad.

If you ever wanted an example of the use of linguistics to convey an
untrue impression of a country like Israel, the quote below is pure Tanya
Reinhart:

"My biggest hope and plea is - save the Palestinians!...what Israel is
doing now exceeds the crimes of the South Africa.s white regime. It has
started to take the form of systematic ethnic cleansing, which South
Africa never attempted. After 35 years of occupation, it is completely
clear that the only two choices the Israeli political system has generated
for the Palestinians are apartheid or ethnic cleansing (transfer)."

So in the above paragraph we have Israel, the only pluralistic country in
the Middle East, reduced to the level of the truly apartheid state of
South Africa in the 1980.s, a common propaganda tactic of anti-Israel
forces in academia and Arab irredentists who want to appeal to the social
conscious of the West through obfuscation. Thus Reinhart throws in the
overused word .apartheid. and phrase .ethnic cleansing. that actually
originated in the propaganda war between the Muslims and the Christian
Serbs in Bosnia. The use of that language inspired NATO bombing runs
against Serbian forces that never committed atrocities they were accused
of doing. Such a threat from NATO still exists today, only now for Israel.
If you wonder why Israel is so cautious about retaking Gaza to clear out
the terrorist government there that is firing on its southern border
towns, consider what happened to the Serbs.

The good news is Tanya Reinhart no longer teaches at Tel Aviv U since she
passed away over a year ago. The bad news is her effect is still felt
there, and her legacy lives on particularly among the linguistics faculty
who comprise a large number of anti-Israel activists on the Tel Aviv
campus. The question remains why she was allowed to be on board and
represent the TAU linguistics department and faculty as a world-traveled
anti-Semite for so many years.

Professors Mira Ariel and Rachel Giora are two more of such linguists on
the TAU linguistics faculty list, both of whom organized a conference
memorializing Tanya Reinhart with the help of Professor Yeshayahu Shen,
another faculty linguist. Both Ariel and Giora signed a petition urging
their students and other Israeli youth to refuse service in the IDF citing
as the reason that .such service too often involves carrying out orders
that have no place in a democratic society founded on the sanctity of
human life.. The strangeness of it all was Tanya Reinhart actually
campaigned to have her fellow TAU linguists boycotted worldwide as
Israelis and that included Ariel and Giora!

Uttering Chomkyisms can keep one in favor no doubt in TAU.s linguistics
department, yet Chomsky has been guilty of telling inveterate lies against
the West and in particular Israel, most which center around false
accusations of genocide such as Reinhart alluded to in her statement
above. For example, Paul Bangador has compiled over 200 lies told by
Chomsky that get accepted among the academic elite which could be said to
maintain an elitist attitude toward the non-academic world (that includes
most Israelis). Thus students wishing to enter that world as carbon copies
of their professors, or merely to get along, tend to follow in the
footsteps of professors such as Tanya Reinhart, which could explain the
memorial given for her.

The fact that the IDF protects the Children of Israel from Arab
terrorists, and in fact also protects the Palestinian Arabs in the
Territories who are subject to harm from terrorist murderers and thugs,
are hardly services that have no place in a democratic society concerned
about human life. But such rhetoric voiced to impressionable college
students at Tel Aviv University does take its toll: Enlistments are being
discouraged more and more by radical groups that are not always truthful
about Israel.s security needs.

The Linguistics department at Tel Aviv U. is like any other academic
department at any other university; it.s a small pond with some big frogs.
So who are some of these .anti-Israel. or .anti-Zionist. academics in
TAU.s linguistic department? Here are some of the more active ones and
what they.ve been saying or doing:

As mentioned, Rachel Giora who organized the Reinhart memorial with
colleagues from the Linguisics department was one of those Israeli
academics that Tanya Reinhart encouraged academic institutions abroad to
boycott. Giora.s behavior is so bizarre that she initiated recommending
Tali Fahima for the Nobel Peace Prize. Fahima is the Israeli woman who
helped her Palestinian boyfriend smuggle weapons to kill Israelis. Giora
has further stated, "I support every form of open criticism against the
current policies of the Israeli government in the occupied territories,
whether it is an economic boycott or other forms of resistance. A lack of
such stances allows Israelis to assume that the world is not against them.
But the world, or large parts of it, are against them. And rightly so."
The words .other forms of resistance. stated above denote terrorism even
to someone without a degree in linguistics.

Mira Ariel played a part in organizing a petition blaming a denial of
academic freedom at colleges in the Palestinian Authority on Israel
despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority had responsibility for
such things and had already chosen a constitution based on Shariah Law.
Bir Zeit University is an educational institution where the student
government represents various terrorist groups such a Hamas and Fatah. Yet
Mira Ariel accused Israel for the dictatorial lack of academic freedom
under Palestinian Authority control despite the fact these groups work to
murder Israelis. Israel.s responsibility extends to security needs against
terrorism that the Arabs refuse to show any cooperation to enforce. Only
today, news reports of Fatah and Hamas affiliated students doing battle on
campus give testament to the real reason for any lack of academic freedom
on the BirZeit campus: Palestinian inclination to terrorism and violence
against opposing views, not because of Israel. Ariel has also called for
the release of Tali Fahima despite Fahima.s assistance in an attempt to
murder fellow Israelis.

Professor Outi Bat-el called upon her students to break Israeli law and
refuse to serve in the IDF. She further called for international
intervention against Israel for allegedly wanting to destroy the
Palestinian state. Perhaps she.d like NATO to do to Israel what was done
to Serbia in setting up the new Muslim slave trade state in the region,
like Kosovo.

Professor Julia Horvath is presently Chair of the Linguistics Department
at TAU. She uses the same rhetoric as the other linguists in her
department in describing Israel by misusing the word .apartheid,. and
advocating for the Arab right of return that would demographically destroy
the Jewish state and set up another Arab Muslim dictatorship. As a
linguist she didn.t mind signing a petition that stated, .Since its
foundation Israel has lived by its sword. An incessant succession of
.retaliations., military operations and wars has become the life-support
drug of Israel's Jews.. and claims that .Ten years after the Oslo Accords,
we are living in a benighted colonial reality - in the heart of darkness.
Thirty-seven years after Israel conquered the last of the Palestinian
territories in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.. In other words (and the
words of this linguist Horvath) Israel.s self-defense is merely a ruse for
Jews to persecute Palestinian Arabs. The petition even suggests there was
a Palestinian nation partially seized by Israel in 1948 in its wording, a
strange and fabricated revisionist history to be accepted by an .educated.
noted linguist! Horvath and co-professor emeritus Alexander Grosu, another
TAU linguist are still acolytes of Noam Chomsky in their academic work.

Professor Paul Wexler has called for his students to not serve in the IDF.
Nirit Kadmon accuses Israel of being responsible for a denial of academic
freedom at Palestinian universities too (After all, isn.t everything
Israel.s fault?).

Others among the leftists in TAU.s linguistics department who express a
unity against Israel are Galit Adam, Gary Cohen, Charles Kisseberth, Lior
Laks, Fred Landman, Aya Meltzer, Tal Siloni and Lyle Lustigman. Most have
only signed onto petitions condemning Israel for practicing self-defense
against the Arabs, or for rubberstamping whatever claims the Arabs make
against Israel and its existence. All of these academics have either
encouraged Israeli youth to not serve in the Army or accused Israel of
violating academic freedom in Palestinian universities governed by
totalitarian terrorist groups over which Israel has little control.

One thing is for certain. Most of the team at TAU Linguistics, are
adherents to at least the anarchist politics of Noam Chomsky, if not his
theories on the usage of the spoken word, where anarchy reigns supreme and
that translates into a consistent anti-Israel attitude, even if not
official one, from that academic department .

That leaves all of us here speechless.

2. Yet another anti-Zionist kook at Ben Gurion University:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/BGU%20-%20Uri%20Ram%20-%20fatal%20flaw.htm
Ben Gurion University - Uri Ram (Dept. of Sociology) has a "glaring flaw
of logic"
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3580743,00.html

Post-Zionism.s fatal flaw
If Israel is not Zionist, it won.t be Jewish; if it.s not Jewish it won.t
be democratic

Martin Sherman
11/8/2008

In my understanding, the concept "Post Zionism" is - at the ideological
level - a demand for democratization of the state - i. e. a call for a
liberal democratic state in the Western mode.
Prof. Uri Ram -- from "The Anti Zionist Congress" Israel Radio (Reshet
Bet) 27-4-2008

This quote from one of the leaders of the post-Zionist school in Israeli
academia is representative of the moral hypocrisy, intellectual
shallowness and pompousness, and grossly misplaced self-righteousness that
characterize the adherents of this self- contradictory philosophy.

For it takes only the most elementary analytical skill to identify the
glaring flaw in the logic of post.Zionist positions which - allegedly in
the name of enlightened liberal values - call for the conversion of Israel
from a "Jewish State" to a "state of all its citizens." It requires no
extraordinary intellect to grasp the fact that should such a change indeed
take place, the resulting realities would in fact be the exact antithesis
of the values invoked for making it.

Indeed, it is not difficult to foresee the inevitable chain of events that
such a move would trigger. First, the significance of a simple but
far-reaching truth must be recognized: If Israel is indeed defined as a
"Jewish state," there is a valid rationale and a viable justification for
the existence of an entire range of elements that characterize the conduct
of national and public life in the country, such as: the Star of David on
the Flag; the "Menora" candelabrum as the state emblem; the words of the
national anthem that refer to the "yearning of the Jewish soul"; and the
status of Hebrew as the dominant vehicle of communication between the
citizens of the state. The same is true for a considerable body of
"Judeo-centric" legislation such as the Law of Return granting any Jew
immediate citizenship on immigrating to Israel.

However, should Israel be re-defined as a "state of all its citizens,.
there will be no valid rationale or viable justification for any of these
features. As an inevitable consequence, there will neither be rhyme nor
reason why any Jew (apart from those ultra-devout few who regard living in
the Holy Land a religious command) would choose to live their life in a
"non-Jewish Israel" rather than in any other "state of all its citizens"
where the rigors of daily life are less demanding and less stressful. No
Jew (apart from the handful of ultra-pious souls who believe in the divine
sanctity of the Land of Israel) would insist on living their life in a
country, where instead of the blue Star of David, the national flag
displays stripes . whether vertical or horizontal . of different colors
even if these include nostalgic tinges of blue and white.

Continual erosion of Jewish population

Accordingly, not only would there be a dramatic increase in the number of
Jews who leave the country (and who of course no longer will be called
"Yordim" but merely "emigrants",) but also an almost total termination of
the number of Jews arriving here. After all, if Israel in not a Jewish
state, there will be absolutely no motivation for, nor reason, why highly
educated, highly skilled and highly trained Jews from across the developed
world should aspire to make their homes here - not scientists, not
doctors, not engineers not entrepreneurs, not academics.

There would be no mass "aliyah" from lands where Jews were oppressed and
sought safe haven in the Jewish state. Obviously the extraordinary
phenomenon of the huge inflow of Jewry from the former USSR, with is huge
contribution to every aspect of life in the country, would be
inconceivable if Israel became just another "state of all its citizens" on
the fringes of a desert at the gateway to the Levant.

Moreover, if Israel became a state of all its citizens, there would be
little grounds for preventing the massive influx of migrants from
neighboring lands from pouring into the country . whether to fulfill the
"right of return" or merely to make a better living . since, initially,
the chances of finding a more lucrative livelihood would still be higher
here rather than there.

Inevitably, these processes will bring about a continual erosion of the
Jewish population. As the composition of the population in the land
becomes similar to that in the other states of the region, there is no
reason to suppose that the realities that prevails in it will not also
become similar to those prevailing in those states . including the level
of economic development, standard of living and lifestyle, status of
women, nature of the regime, and the liberties it allows those living
under it. It is difficult to imagine that even the post-Zionists, with
their bias and selective view of the world, are unaware of the fact that
that in the entire Arab world - from Casablanca to Kuwait - there is no
semblance of any "liberal democratic state in the Western mode" for which
they allegedly yearn with such passion.

Indeed, in view of the stark contrast between their declared objectives
and the nature of the realities that the endeavor to achieve that
objective is likely to create; in light of manifest contradiction between
their purported aspirations and the consequences likely to result from the
pursuit of those aspirations, it is difficult to determine whether the
post-Zionists are motivated by nastiness or naivet; whether they are being
mean-spirited or only feeble-minded.

However, whatever the explanation may be, all those genuinely desirous of
"liberal democratic state in the Western mode" in this neck of the woods
must recognize a basic inescapable truth: If Israel is not Zionist, it
will not be Jewish; if it is not Jewish it will not be democratic.

3. That terror boat to Gaza: http://israelbehindthenews.com/#PRstunt

4. The Terror Poet:
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2008/08/terrorist-poet-croaks.html and
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=13D94960-3E7A-4B83-96E5-995ED829BAFB

5. CAIR and Savage:
http://www.thejewishpress.com/displaycontent_new.cfm?contentid=35082&contentname=Savage:%20I'll%20Take%20CAIR%20To%20Supreme%20Court&sectionid=14&mode=a&recnum=0






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