Creating Anti-Semitism With A College Apartheid Week

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

One cannot take a young adult and expose him to anti-Semitic falsehoods without previous education of facts about Jews first. He would have little to work with to be successful in comparative thinking.  That's what's been happening on college campuses evidently.  Students see all the negativity coming from other misinformed Palestinian students and get caught in the excitement of mis-information.   

"With the arrival of spring, the buds begin to blossom and flowers begin to bloom.  But on college campuses across the country it means something different: Those who hate Israel and who wish to ostracize the Jewish state come out in full bloom to launch their “Anti-Apartheid Week.” On college campuses across the country, the mock “die-ins”, posting of eviction notices, and construction of walls and checkpoints to dramatize the suffering endured by Palestinians come out this time of year in full bloom".

What they refuse to accept is the fact that there is no apartheid in Israel.  Palestinians are not 2nd class citizens like Jews were in Arab countries before 1948 when they were then thrown out and most emigrated to Israel.  

The 16th annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), a series of worldwide anti-Israel events, took place in the United States and Canada March 21-28, 2022. This year’s theme, announced on the BDS Movement’s website, was "the role of culture, and art in particular, in decolonizing our minds in our collective struggles against cultural appropriation and oppression." While some events reflected the week’s theme of culture and art, much of the programming hewed, as is often the case, to the accusation inherent in the week’s name, and focused on the allegation that Israel is an apartheid state.

At least 90 IAW events were held, mostly on university campuses, from March 17 through March 31. As in past years, the major driver of these events was Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a vociferously anti-Israel campus group with approximately 200 chapters across the U.S. Allied groups, including the similarly anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace (a community-based group with some campus chapters), occasionally participated.  

Back in 2017, for much of the rest of the spring, students affiliated with chapters of the rabidly anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)  staged events throughout the world marking “Israeli Apartheid Week.” The mission of these odious events, according to organizers, was “to raise awareness of Israel’s settler-colonial project and apartheid system over the Palestinian people and to build support for the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.” That year’s tagline: “100 Years of Settler-Colonialism. 100 Years of Popular Struggle for Justice.” wasn't even historically correct.                                 

Pro-Palestinian activists post eviction notices on students’ dorms--Harvard students receive notes informing them that their rooms are slated for demolition as part of Apartheid Week promotion

Did they ever mention that the Jews lost the land in the year 70 to the Romans who had been occupying their country first?  They had been without a country since then till 1948 with the extremely great need to have their own after the horrible Holocaust?  Or that Jews had been living in Arab lands for want of living someplace but only accepted as 2nd class citizens called Dhimmis?  Or that Jews had been thrown out of England for 365 years because they were Jewish?  Or that they were being attacked in pogroms in eastern Europe?  Even in the USA, there was a lot of anti-Semitic discrimination going on. Do these students know about that?   

What actually happened? When Britain failed to speedily implement the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist movement sprang to action. There had been a continuous Jewish presence in the Land of Israel for thousands of years; now, it began to grow. Jews living in the Diaspora flocked there, eager to take part in the Zionist project. Jewish individuals and organizations bought land there, draining swamps, tilling soil, and building homes. This wasn’t “settler-colonialism,” it was Jewish national rebirth.  The year, 1967 brought on the Six Day War when all the surrounding Arab states attacked Israel and yet Israel won that battle, and then had to face another in 1973 on their holiest of days, Yom Kippur, when the people were in synagogues, fasting and praying.  

FLAME'S article just brought my attention to Duke University, a private university in North Carolina,  who had pro-Israel speakers one week, and then sponsored "Apartheid Week!  Evidently Duke isn't into history as someone there should know that Israel is not practicing any type of apartheid, which South Africa was known to have been doing. The very definition of apartheid is:  (in South Africa) a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race. segregation on grounds other than race.   In fact, Israel does the very opposite of practicing apartheid! This has been shown over and over again by myself and others.  Do they never read a differing viewpoint-like the truth?  https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2022/02/amnesty-internationals-apartheid-claims.html ;  https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/10/apartheid-not-in-israel.html

Palestinians participate in the Knesset.  They are in contests, such as Miss Israel.  They participate in everything except they are not drafted into the service as soldiers.  Some Arabs are serving, however, who are loyal to the state of Israel.  It's their choice to serve.  Israel has been a democratic state ever since its inception on May 14, 1948.  

Throwing around a term and knowing that people have not been educated about it is deplorable for a university to allow to be backed by themselves.  What they are doing is contributing to anti-Semitism being Israel just happens to be the only Jewish state in the world.  The 20% of Arab citizens are sharing the same fates as the 80% Jewish ones.  Jews are a small number in the world, 0.02% of the whole world population.  

          Chaim Weizmann and soon to be King Feisal in Paris talks in 20's.  Feisal was all for a Jewish state until the Sherif of Jerusalem, an Arab awarded the title by a British well-meaning Jew, had his followers attack Jews with aim to kill in the 1929 riots in Palestine.  Did the Duke students learn about this?  

Your well-educated Duke students and faculty should know by now that WWII was over in 1945 where 6 million Jews were slaughtered because they were Jewish by the Nazi regime, and that the remnant of the world Jewish population had been already negotiating with the League of Nations since 1917 due to constant pogroms in eastern Europe against Jews, which followed the end of WWI, in returning Palestine back to the Jewish people to create their Jewish Homeland.  

You allowed a poet, Mohammed El-Kurd advocate for Palestinian liberation and telling his audience that he and his fellow Palestinian friends with the word, "WE"--want their land back from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea...and that would be wiping out Israel, wouldn't it?  Mohammed El-Kurd is a Palestinian writer and poet from Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. He was pursuing a Master's in the United States before returning to Sheikh Jarrah to protest the forced evictions there, including his family's.  He has gained prominence for his description of Israeli occupation, often referring to the evictions as a form of ethnic cleansing, and the occupation as a whole as apartheid and settler colonialism.

This man would benefit of learning the truth about how Israelis tried to keep them from leaving, but that the Arab forces told them to leave and let them win so that they could return and take over the Jewish homes, etc.  They were pawns in a chess game.  They left for camps that their descendants continue to live in, 

Such a copy-cat, Ed-Kurd is.  That phrase happens to come from the Torah (First 5 books) found in the Old Testament)-that said "In the Bible, the term “Promised Land” refers to a specific region of land that God endowed to His chosen people, as part of their heritage. (Genesis 12, Genesis 26:3, Genesis 28:13) God first gave this pledge of land to Abraham saying, “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River.” He then reiterated the vow to Abraham’s descendants until the time came for His people to claim their inheritance."

     Here are Israelis of the IDF, Jew, Arab, Christian and they live in a land which is only 10% of the original "Promised Jewish Homeland, and they have to fight to keep it against those who want to keep them all out."                        

"The "Promised Land" was the geographic area God declared to give to his chosen people, the offspring of Abraham. The promised land was placed in ancient Canaan, on the eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea. Numbers 34:1-12 discusses the location of the Promised Land:"

The chosen people happened to be the Jews, a term telling that they were given the responsibility of behaving according to the laws Moses handed to them which were said to have come from G-d.  They were the stiff-necked ones.  It was never meant to say that they were the best of all the people, as in the chosen ones chosen for some great reward, but that's the way many have interpreted the statement, not understanding the meaning.  They've even taken the term for themselves and have said they have no more use for Jews since they made themselves the chosen.  Oy vey!  

  

Resource:

FLAME: facts and logic about the Middle East:James Sinkinson, President---Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME)

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgzGpFqVHmPrFfChhtfTXrpwDhKMQ

https://israelforever.org/programs/shifting_perspectives/what_to_do_about_apartheid_week/