The college I graduated from in 1958 as a teacher. Then, full of returning older vets anxious to get an education |
I would not want to take any classes at Portland State U today. It has changed so much. |
Portland, Oregon, now known as the Weird City, certainly has changed from the city I was born and bred in. I did not know of
anti-Semitism until high school, when I learned I was not accepted
into certain sororities because of being Jewish, so we Jews had our own. When I heard someone saying horrible things about Jews, I
would surprise them, since I was a blond Jewess, and ask a point-blank question about their feelings. Attitudes were improving since 8 years later, my brother was voted in as Student-Body President.Now, I'm proud to say, I hold
dual citizenship since 1980-85; can't remember when we filled out the papers. Again, anti-Semitism is building up.
anti-Semitism until high school, when I learned I was not accepted
into certain sororities because of being Jewish, so we Jews had our own. When I heard someone saying horrible things about Jews, I
would surprise them, since I was a blond Jewess, and ask a point-blank question about their feelings. Attitudes were improving since 8 years later, my brother was voted in as Student-Body President.Now, I'm proud to say, I hold
dual citizenship since 1980-85; can't remember when we filled out the papers. Again, anti-Semitism is building up.
The City Council is going full steam ahead with BDS against Israel, wanting to be against the Caterpillar Co because they had been working in Israel.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement aims to demonize, deligitimize, and destroy the Jewish nature of Israel, with the result of denying to Jews their right of national self-determination.
Reed College, Portland, Oregon My brother graduated from here, and my son attended his 1st year here. We already have seen acts of violence and one unacceptable use of derogatory epithets used against Jewish students at some colleges. . Even if some BDS supporters are Jewish, that does not cleanse the campaign of the increasing stench of anti-Semitism. We can fool ourselves and say that BDS campus campaigns are not directed against the Jewish students, but BDS does not target Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Afghanistan, or Pakistan. Instead, in the name of human rights for Palestinians in the Middle East, BDS targets only the one Jewish state, Israel, which consistently is rated as having the highest level of “freedom” of the 57 countries in the Middle East. Can they really say that they’re concerned about human rights? |
Why are Americans going along with something that the Arab League started December 2, 1945? This was during the British Mandate period of 30 years in Palestine that was started after WWI. The Arabs got wind of the Jewish Homeland planned by the League of Nations and knew the Brits would be leaving in 1948 and the Jews would have their state.
They are in the act of isolating the Jewish state from the international community as well as inflicting economic harm on them. The Middle East Arab League is made up of Kings and Emirs, and are not Democratic states, which Israel is. Israel has been the only Democratic state there. Israel has faced opposition with acts of war against them by these same Arabs since they announced their statehood on May 14, 1948.
Harry S. Truman President of USA 1945-1953 |
Now the Arabs, mainly the Palestinians living in Gaza, Judea and Samaria are carrying on BDS since their Arab cohorts have lost every war they have fought against Israel, and I might add, Israel won without any manpower from the USA. It was the men and women of Israel who did all the fighting and who lost their lives. Gaza continues to lob rockets, mortars and missiles down on southern Israel to this day. Fatah and Hamas can't agree as to how they are going to slice the pie that they are drooling over, the land of Israel, so they are usually not cooperative with each other except in demonizing the Jewish state of Israel with false charges of crimes against humanity, especially themselves, and singling out only one country, Israel, for censure and abuse while ignoring other abuses they themselves inflict on each other and Israel.
Negev Bedouin citizen of Israel |
Their plan is advertising their need for their state of Palestine while they attack Israel. They do nothing but feed their population with hatred towards Jews and Israel. They are not doing a thing to show they would be compatible neighbors of Israel. They have had no intention of running a country by themselves. They have not been a nation-minded people. Long ago they reported to Britain and others that they were Syrian-Palestinians; coming from Syria. Many of them came from all around the area, but mostly most likely, were from Syria. They came into Palestine when they heard that Jews had returned and were building in the 1880s, a possible place to find jobs they did not have in Syria or other homelands.
Khaled Mashal b: 28 May 1956 in Silwad, West Bank Hamas leader since 1996, a Jordanian Palestinian |
Fatah and Hamas leaders Abbas and Mashal |
Israel for a while in 1967 when they won against the great odds of being attacked by many Arab states and coming out of it-by themselves-a winner. That admiration has been short lived, I'm afraid, by the smell of oil and the fear of an empty tank. Israel again is the scapegoat of this world while trying to stick up for themselves and survive.
Minor Arab leader Haj Amin al- Husseini of Jerusalem conspiring with Nazis even Hitler, to destroy Jews in Palestine- Since Emir Feisal, soon to be a King, okayed the Jews' return |
How is this happening? In 2001, the movement disguised itself in a false veneer acting very moral and spoke as if they were human rightists and falsely branded Israel as a "racist, apartheid state," which people in the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban concurred with. Here we do have the most racist people, who can't accept Jews back into their original habitat to join their fellow family members because they are Jews, and many-European at that. It's the old story of the pot calling the kettle black! Israel is the exact opposite of an apartheid state. It was created as a refuge for Jews who have not been accepted into the nations of the world, and were in danger of being annihilated.
The movement grew in strength since in 2005, a declaration of a coalition of Palestinian organizations accusing Israel of racial discrimination. Israel, made up of Jews from all over the world who were in every little nook and cranny, and 1.7 million Arabs of every description, many of whom suffered from discrimination by other Arab groups. The Palestinian Arabs, for Jews living in Palestine were Palestinians also up until May 14, 1948, declared Israel to be breaking international law and called upon the world (people of conscience") to join their boycott and divestment program.
Yasser Arafat founded the Council of National and Islamic forces in Palestine and of course signed on. This was at the start of the 2nd Intifada in 2000 so they could organize a unified effort among the many Palestinian factions to oppose Israel and coordinate their terror attacks against this tiny Jewish country. The Council is made up of Hamas, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) another terrorist group, -General Command, all 3 who are on the list of terrorists in the USA. Their goal is commitment to the elimination of Jews and the Jewish state through terrorism and violent means.
Since 2002, boycotting Israeli scholars has also been the activity of the movement, and when the Palestinians in 2005 worked to bring it about further, the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was created. The American group was endorsed by over 800 american faculty and promoted a boycott of all Israeli scholars and cultural and educational institutions. This violated the most basic principle of academia; THE FREE EXCHANGE OF IDEAS. It was just like the Nazi's efforts to purify Germany by branding Jews as pariahs, and targeting them for economic and social boycotts.
Hannah Rosenthal, the US State Department's former Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, has condemned academic boycotts of Israel. She said, "when academics from Israel are boycotted this is not objecting to a policy---this is ANTISEMITISM."
BDS entering Portland and being considered is destroying what we once had: a love and acceptance for the citizens of Portland, Jews especially, and every Portlander no matter what religion they are, should be shocked that Israel is being demonized like they had been in the 20s and 30s in Germany and singled out as the only country in the world to be censured and abused, while ignoring other human rights abuses that are rampant throughout the Middle East. There have been other religious ethnic minorities, such as Christians, and Muslim women whose rights do not match the western world's women. This movement exposes its bigotry against Jews and should never had been accepted by our city fathers. .
Resource: http://www.amchainitiative.org/1842-2/ AMCHA Initiative, Protecting Jewish Students
http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2014/05/the_bds_bullies_take_over/
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2016/11/bds-and-1949-green-line-in-israel.html
This is a disturbing development. I hadn't heard about it. Why would Portland be engaged in this? I went to Portland State too, and had a lot of friends and colleagues who were Jewish. What is driving these attitude in this day and age?
ReplyDeleteGood question. It's a movement that's happening all over the USA, which is very scary to me. Our Portland is a sanctuary city, something I didn't know since I've been living in a nearby community and have stopped taking the Oregonian. The mayor has no intention of complying with the existing laws of immigration, like other sanctuary cities. Everything goes here. I don't remember it ever being this way. I came back to the area 10 years ago.
DeleteAnti-Israel Boycott Prevents Peace, Assaults Jewish Identity - Miriam F. Elman (Syracuse Post-Standard)
ReplyDeleteOn Oct. 25, Dr. Mohammed Dajani spoke to LIME, an Israeli-Palestinian student dialogue group that I mentor at Syracuse University. Dajani garnered international attention in 2014 when he was vilified for taking a group of Palestinian students to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
After an assassination attempt, Dajani was forced to resign his Al Quds University position. Now he speaks to university audiences about his family history, the radicalization of Palestinian society, and his transformation from an Israel-hater into an admirer of Israel's pluralistic democracy. Dajani also voiced his opposition to the BDS campaign.
BDS is often presented as a nonviolent social justice movement. But contrary to the popular account, BDS wasn't initiated in 2005 by West Bank civil society groups. The platform was developed a few years earlier in Iran, then it was rolled out at the 2001 UN-sponsored Durban conference - an anti-Semitic hate-fest so despicable that the U.S. delegation walked out.
In my experience, many who gravitate to BDS are caring people who harbor no ill-will toward Jews. But there can be no denying that BDS has mainstreamed anti-Semitism.
Recent reports show that on university campuses, BDS is strongly correlated with a rise in anti-Semitic rhetoric and harassment. At colleges where there are active boycott campaigns, Jewish students report hiding their Jewish-Zionist identities to avoid being ostracized from progressive groups.
The writer is an associate professor of political science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, where she is research director in the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration.
I am so disgusted by BDS!
ReplyDelete