Friday, December 28, 2012

Free Academic Inquiry at the Hebrew University - or Petard, the Sequel

1. More Petard

Recently the tenured chattering classes in Israel were hysterical
when it turned out that one of their own, the leftist political
science professor Dan Avnon, found himself the target of a campaign of
boycott against Israel. Avnon had wanted to spend some time at an
Australian University, at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at
the University of Sydney, no doubt churning out leftist propaganda,
but the local leftists were boycotting anything and anyone associated
with Israel. (An earlier posting about this is attached below.)

The Israeli tenured chatterers were rather upset. The same people
who have spent years promoting divestment and boycotts of Israel never
meant for it to apply to the GOOD Israelis, the anti-Israel leftist
Israelis. The chat forums of the Israeli professors overflowed with
cries of anguish. What about free academic inquiry for us good
leftists?, they squealed. Where is the democracy? The academic
freedom? The free scholarship?

Well, we will tell you where the free academic inquiry is. Just
ask Moshe Foxman Shaal. He is today a PhD student at Tel Aviv
University. But before going there, he did his MA at the Hebrew
University in their political science department.

While there, he approached a senior faculty member with his
proposal to write his Master's thesis about the "national-liberal"
philosophical doctrines of Menachem Begin. Yes, liberal. Begin was a
stickler for the rule of law, for due process, for liberal values, for
freedom of speech, and he even gave lip service to economic liberalism
(although failed miserably to deliver on that when he was in power).

Foxman-Shaal approached the Hebrew University don to be his thesis
supervisor. The professor replied that he would only agree to be the
supervisor if Foxman-Shaal wrote his thesis about how Menachem Begin
was really a fascist, and otherwise he refused.

And just who was that Hebrew University professor? You guessed it!
(Drumroll….) It was none other than Dan Avnon. You know, the
symbol of free academic inquiry, objective scholarship, and freedom of
speech, who is now the martyr saint of the Fascist Left. (Hat tip,
Makor Rishon, Dec. 21, 2012)

Foxman-Shaal is an interesting writer - see this (in Hebrew):
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/270/346.html

***
Previous posting:
Don't you just love it when a leftist moonbat gets hoist with his own petard?

Well, meet the pro-Palestinian Professor Dan Avnon, from the Hebrew
University's School of Public Policy and its uniformly leftist
Political Science Department ( http://politics.huji.ac.il/avnon.html
). He is a leftist who objects to the idea that Israel should be a
Jewish state (http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/422/071.html?hp=1&cat=479&loc=5),
although he does not seem to have any problem with any Arab Moslem
states.

Well, he found himself boycotted by an anti-Israel institute in
Australia, one so anti-Israel that they hosted Ilan Pappe. The
anti-Israel crowd is upset because here Avnon is a leftist but he fell
victim to BDS (boycotting Israel, divestment, sanctions by the Bigoted
Dingbats and Scoundrels (BDS))! Boycotting OTHER Jews of course would
be no problem.

For more details, see also

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/across-the-divide-boycott-shocks-unity-professor-dan-avnon/story-e6frgcjx-1226532541040




2. There are some people out there who have the quaint idea that if
you want to get rid of a politician you do not like, you should
organize voters to vote against him or her.

Such an archaic notion of course is rejected by the enlightened
ones in Israel. When THEY want to get rid of a politician they do not
like, they get the partisan conscripted leftist Attorney General to
file criminal charges against that person, based upon the unsupported
allegations of a disgruntled ex-employee who had been canned with
cause by that same politician. When the leftist Attorney General
cannot find any actual law that was broken by that politician, he
makes one up.

The issue is not whether you approve or disapprove of Israel's
fiery Avigdor Lieberman. I myself have mixed feelings about him.
People who dislike him can vote against him.

But Leftwing fascism rejects voting as a way to determine who
should be in power.

Lieberman is being indicted by a partisan and biased Attorney
General who has the political agenda and interests of the Left as his
guidebook for jurisprudence. He wants to indict Lieberman for
something that is not even a crime: A different Israeli diplomat
leaked to Lieberman that Israel had requested information about
Lieberman's personal financial affairs from a foreign country for an
investigation. Lieberman did not run to the cops to rat on that
diplomat. Since when is THAT a crime?

Lieberman later appointed that same diplomat to another post.
Lieberman claims he was the most qualified person for it. It was for
a smaller less-prestigious country than his earlier post. There is no
evidence Lieberman appointed the diplomat for any other reason than
his credentials.

The Attorney General "suspects" that it was reward/payback for that
diplomat leaking what he leaked to Lieberman. The Attorney General
has no evidence other than his suspicions. He now also has one Danny
Ayalon, who had been Lieberman's Deputy Foreign Minister. Ayalon was
fired by Lieberman for conducting unauthorized negotiations with
Hillary Clinton behind Lieberman's back
(http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6676 ).
Ayalon has a chip on his shoulder, a personal axe to grind. He is no
reliable witness.

And he now is the STAR witness in the prosecution, by which I
mean persecution, against Avigdor Lieberman by the leftist conscripted
Attorney General.





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