Homemade Israel-bashers
Amnon Rubinstein , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 27, 2008
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Shortly after I began teaching at Columbia University, I was taken aback to
hear that the Iranian ruler Ahmadinejad had been invited to speak on campus.
There was hardly any time to organize a protest against the event. Despite
this, three kipot-wearing students from Hillel House worked day and night to
distribute posters and pamphlets featuring a choice selection of the guest's
hate-filled, genocidal invective. They organized a demonstration in front of
the hall where the Iranian president was to speak, and all without any
outside help.

I spoke at the demonstration, where I discovered that almost all the
participants present were local Orthodox Jewish students. The number of
secular Israeli students could be counted on the fingers of one hand - with
fingers to spare.

Inside the hall sat an Israeli student who applauded Ahmadinejad. I asked
another Israeli who witnessed this behavior to tell me about her. I asked:
How can she applaud someone that wants to exterminate her?

His matter of fact reply: "She's known to be a leftist."

In other words, "leftists" applaud a tyrant, a Nazi, a persecutor of
minorities, oppressor of women, stoner of "adulterers," and executioner of
homosexuals. If he protests the oppression of the Palestinians, then he must
clearly be a member of the "left" and should therefore be cheered.

Later, I encountered other Israeli academicians at Columbia who added more
fuel to the fire of hatred against Israel - all belonged to what is known as
the radical Left.

WHEN THE semester ended, my wife and I were invited to a Shabbat meal on
Friday night prepared by the organizers of the demonstration.

I am a professed and impassioned secular Jew. My Judaism is national and
cultural. I believe that my approach is in no way inferior to the Orthodox
or haredi one. It contains neither temptations of paradise, the punishment
of hell, nor the revival of the dead. It is filled with a rich, multifaceted
and wondrous Jewish-Hebrew culture. I also believe that secular humanism is
the right answer for us as individuals and as a nation.
But if I had to choose between the kipa-wearing Jews at Columbia and the
representatives of what is known in Israel as the radical Left - I know
where my heart is.

That is the entire story.

No, it is the end of the story.

It is also the end of the story of the anti-Israeli squadrons in the Israeli
academia.

FOR SOME time, I have been waiting for a hysterical outburst from this
direction, one that would bring their claims to such an absurd point, that
they would be finished. I always believed that their "post-intelligent"
anti-Israeli claptrap would eventually climax in an paroxysm of extremist
mumbo-jumbo lunacy, after which there would no longer be anything to argue
about. They'd be exposed.

Ben-Dror Yemini provided me with just that evidence (Ma'ariv, January 11),
in an article in which he tells of a research project carried out by
graduate student Tal Nizan at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her
research question was: How is it that, contrary to the accepted practice
among other occupation armies, the Zionist occupation army does not rape?

The researcher had two explanations: First, IDF soldiers do not rape
Palestinian women because for them, these women have been dehumanized, and
"consequently, a sexual act cannot be carried out with someone that is
perceived as less than human." Second, the soldiers refrained from raping
the Palestinian women in the service of a higher, demographic goal, because
the rape could cause pregnancies that would subsequently increase the
numbers of our enemies. In other words, not only are there no rapes, there
are no condoms either.

The significant aspect is not this surreal research project. It is not
unusual. Incitement against Israel can be found on the lowest level in some
of the social science departments in Israel's universities. A well-known
philosopher in Tel Aviv University called Israel the dustbin of Europe - and
students, as we know, are influenced by their teachers, even when the latter
are seized by a frenzy of hatred toward the state that provides their
livelihood, and at the expense of which, thanks to their attacks on it, they
make their names.

The interesting thing is that this "research" project won a prize from a
sociology association, with a number of distinguished professors voting in
favor of granting the researcher a prize.

It would be interesting to hear how these professors propose that Israel
amend this serious flaw, that IDF soldiers are not serial rapists. Does that
fact that female tourists are not raped mean that they too have been
dehumanized?

These professors are wrong. It's not true that there is no rape. There is -
the rape of the academia, of science and of the students forced to listen to
these professors' drivel.
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The writer is a professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC)
Herzliya, a former minister of education and MK, and the recipient of the
2006 Israel Prize in Law.