Last night SOAS lecturer Rafeef Ziadah hosted SOAS’ first “Israel Apartheid Week” panel event in front of 300 students and it wasn’t long before the sickening propaganda started flying.
Sahar Francis of Addameer, a prisoner support group, said that Palestinian hunger striker Islam Hamed was threatened with rape by his guards and that Israel’s prison authorities hoped he would die so the courts would implement a “forced feeding bill”.
She continued that Israel has been rumoured to harvest organs from its own car accident victims and from dead Palestinians. However, she said, she couldn’t confirm this (search Israel Advocacy Movement on Facebook to see the video of Francis).
Steven Salaita, an American author, who was once hired and immediately fired by an American university was also on the panel. He claimed last night this was because his course, in which he would humanise indigenous Americans, was too emotional for Americans to cope with.
He spent most of his 20 minutes last night viciously attacking those who support Israel. He asked what a student should do when someone expresses a visceral attachment to Israel. He answered:
“Allow a Zionist’s internal conflict to exist. Exacerbate it!”
He said that “humanising Palestinians undermines the Zionist project” and so Zionists associate Palestinians with Hitler and “have a fear of binationalism which is actual democracy” (this drew huge applause and cheers).
He continued that “Israel directs so much of its violence at children and takes more Palestinian land for water and agriculture”.
He then mused on the symbolism of Palestinians throwing stones. He said there’s a miniscule chance of harm from stones (although tell that to the family of Asher Palmer who was killed along with his one year old son when a Palestinian thrown rock smashed through their car windscreen).
He said Israelis see stone-throwing as “an act of rejection” and that “stones assume primordial importance and an existential anxiety”.
He then compared the indigenous Americans to the Palestinians and spoke about his forthcoming book on the topic. I called out at the end of the Q&A why we shouldn’t be boycotting both himself and America to which he just gave me a vacant smile.
Black Students’ Officer, Malia Bouattia, was also on the panel fresh from her appearance on Channel 4 News when Jon Snow flummoxed her when he asked her which other countries besides Israel she was boycotting.
I asked her again. She replied that when the call comes from Saudi Arabians to boycott Saudi Arabia then she will. She obviously doesn’t know what happens to protesters in Saudi Arabia.
The event was sponsored by War On Want, yet again, and I confronted WOW executive director John Hilary at the end telling him how disgusting it was that WOW uses resources that should help disabled people on anti-Semitic events instead.
The evening became more farcical when six police officers appeared led by a middle-aged woman pointing them towards me saying I have orders against me and am banned from the area for disrupting a funeral!
The police were very, very nice towards me though. They had no idea why they were called or who called them.
It would have been nice to have leaflets to give out; something I have always asked for. As students filed out I told them “Don’t believe the lies, there are two sides to every story”. Many stopped and wanted to know the other side but I and my contemporaries had no leaflets and so some 300 students went home believing Israelis rape prisoners and harvest organs from dead bodies.
“Israeli Apartheid Week” continues for the next two weeks at SOAS where there is an exhibition of photos of Palestinian rock-throwers and dead Palestinians with claims that they have been “executed” by Israel. All this is going virtually unchallenged as is the case throughout the country.
Police called to SOAS event last night but they didn’t know why.
RichardMillett's Blog 
I don’t know how you stand it, Richard, listening to all of this. The frustraion of having no material to give out. You have conclusively proved the fatuousness of the “don’t give them the oxygen of publicity” as the answer, when people had been exposed to the lies and yet were open to a counter narrative. They use vexatious police intimidation against you yet again is outrageous.
It occurs to me that one way to expose the incoherence of the “Israel Apartheid Week” crowd would be to ask the following questions.
First, is their definition of apartheid the same as that in the International Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 1973. Inevitably, the response should be yes as, regardless of whether they are actually familiar with the Convention, they wouldn’t want to publicly admit that they are ignorant of it or that they have a separate definition (which itself would suggest that theirs is a rather flexible whose purpose is to allow the accusation against Israel).
Next, you read the definition itself, focusing on the section addressing “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing or maintaining domination of one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”
Finally, you ask the question: “Do you believe that the Jews, who are present among almost all nationalities, constitute ‘one racial group of persons'”? To help them with the question, you can point out that one of the main objection the Arabs assert against Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is that the Jews are not a people at all, but simply adherents of a religion, which is a round-about way of saying that the Arabs admit that the Jews are not a racial group of persons.
If they answer “Yes” to this question, you can point out the despicable and discredited company that they keep, that they have thereby confessed their ignorance of History and Science and have nothing to teach anyone about morality and justice. If they say “No,” then whatever it is they are claiming Israel may be doing is – by international agreement – not “apartheid.”
It should work… But the proponents of the “Israeli Apartheid” are impervious to logic and reason. Antisemitism does that to its victims.
Elder of Ziyon has a series of “Apartheid?” posters designed to debunk this libel.
Re debunking the lies about organ harvesting we might have to look further afield.
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Re Salaita’s book: I hope Ryan Bellerose will be all over it.
U do amazing work Sir. I salute you. If u want to put a mock if a leaflet together let me see it. Maybe I can get some funds
Regards. Elliot
Sent from Els iPhone
>
I’ve been thinking that it would be very good to crowdfund an award for Richard for his amazing work against hatred. With sufficient funds materials could also be printed. Perhaps things I haven’t thought of too.
I am really surprised that Richard says”It would have been nice to have leaflets to give out; something I have always asked for”. I don’t know who he asked,but there are vast numbrers of leaflets published(for example) by StandByUs and many other organizations, including the Israeli Embassy in London. Also, there is the internet, so anyone with a printer can produce leaflets.
Next time you go to one of these hatefests, contact the Embassy first.
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> Zionists associate Palestinians with Hitler
Is this possibly why?
Or this?
Like… again?
With the rape allegation the Palestinianists are catching up with their own tail. The lack of rapes by IDF soldiers; and the total absence of rape as a military tactic by the IDF is a noted phenomenon. One which demanded a scholarly analysis published, in an award winning paper, by Hebrew University’s Shaine Center. [http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124674#.Vsza1JwrLIU]
The (foregone) conclusion was that the reason for the lack of military rape was exactly the same as the reason for military rape [“In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences – just as organized military rape would have done.”]; and did not occur because the Israelis are such racists (projection much?) [Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers’ eyes.]
This manages to ignore the reality that rape is a crime of violence (not sexuality) which requires dehumanization of the victim in order to proceed.
As an occasional writer of comedy, my inability to keep up with Palestinianist nahrishkeit is a source of endless jealousy. How do they do it?
First of all, while it has been well documented that Israeli soldiers have hardly ever raped Arab women, it’s not inconceivable that they have threatened, especially men. Unfortunately, the threat to screw someone (לזיי3ן) often with an explanation where is quite a commonly used way that some of our lesser educated brothers insult each other. This is deplorable in all events and taken out of context could sound just like a rape threat. The fact that it stays as just a threat is poor mitigation. Neither is the fact that Arabic, and indeed English, know the use of similar expressions.
First of all, while it has been well documented that Israeli soldiers have hardly ever raped Arab women, it’s not inconceivable that they have threatened, especially men. Unfortunately, the threat to screw someone (לזיי3ן) often with an explanation where is quite a commonly used way that some of our lesser educated brothers insult each other. This is deplorable in all events and taken out of context could sound just like a rape threat. The fact that it stays as just a threat is poor mitigation. Neither is the fact that Arabic, and indeed English, know the use of similar expressions.