CA Judge Deems Ramming Jewish Woman with Shopping Cart ‘Free Speech’

(Simply Jews)

The story is peculiar to start with:

Back in June of 2010 a leader of a pro-Palestinian student group at University of Berkeley allegedly rammed a Jewish woman with a shopping cart as she staged a counter-protest to an anti-Israel “Apartheid Week” rally conducted by the Muslim Student Association and Students for Justice in Palestine. The counter-protest was dubbed “Israel Wants Peace Week.”

Now, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg has deemed that the Muslim students who harassed Jessica Felber and other Jewish students were simply engaging in protected political speech.

But the story doesn't end with the shopping cart attack:

Felber and another Jewish student claimed the University did not do enough to prevent the harassment which included the Muslim group conducting checkpoints around the campus. Students were asked if they were Jewish while passing the checkpoints.

And more:

The suit also alleged this attack was part of a pattern of behavior during Apartheid Week, during which Jewish students were spit on and Israel’s government was equated to that of Nazi Germany.

I guess that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, vile as the act is, could be conceivably squeezed under the "protected political speech" clause of free speech rights.
But hitting somebody with a shopping cart, demanding to know whether the person is Jewish or spitting on Jewish students as examples of free speech?
Yeah, your honor, you are reaching...

The Reality of Campus Anti-Semitism

Jonathan S. Tobin

Should the federal government intervene when an American university permits its campus to become unsafe for Jews? When the prevailing atmosphere on campus is hatred against Israel and all things associated with the Jewish people?

After a long and involved debate, the Obama administration finally did the right thing last October and stated definitively that such conduct is impermissible at institutions that receive federal funding. While that ruling, which was prompted by an epidemic of anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students at the University of California at Irvine, ought to have been welcomed by both academia and the organized Jewish world, it has now been challenged by the American Association of University Professors. In a newsletter on the AAUP website, Cary Nelson (the association’s president) and Kenneth Stern of the American Jewish Committee contend that recent events on American university campuses—at Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Rutgers in addition to Irvine—do not rise to the level of a “working definition” of anti-Semitism. Calls for redress by Jewish students and professors are nothing more, they conclude, than an unscrupulous effort to “censor anti-Israel remarks.”
But Nelson and Stern are wrong both about the situation on campus. And they are wrong about the motivations of those whose activism led the U.S. Department of Education to issue its ruling.
Last September, one month before the ruling was issued, COMMENTARY published Kenneth L. Marcus’s essay “A Blind Eye to Anti-Semitism,” a thoughtful examination of the sordid goings on at the Cal-Irvine and the halting steps taken toward combating the epidemic of anti-Semitic acts that had taken place there. The former head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, Marcus detailed not only the unhappy story of how the university had failed to protect Jewish students, but also set forth the legal rationale for the federal government ’s intervention. He pointed out that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in federally funded universities and public schools. Although it has been argued that laws banning racism do not apply to Jews (who are not a race but a people), Marcus rejoined persuasively that, in addition to being a religion, Judaism is a group identity that involves more than adherence to a faith.
Contrary to Nelson and Stern, what is happening on campus isn’t merely the free exchange of ideas about Israeli policies. As Marcus wrote:
There, on the campus of the University of California at Irvine, Jewish students were physically and verbally harassed, threatened, shoved, stalked, and targeted by rock-throwing groups and individuals. Jewish property was defaced with swastikas, and a Holocaust memorial was vandalized. Signs were posted on campus showing a Star of David dripping with blood. Jews were chastised for arrogance by public speakers whose appearance at the institution was subsidized by the university. They were called “dirty Jew” and “fucking Jew,” told to “go back to Russia” and “burn in hell,” and heard other students and visitors to the campus urge one another to “slaughter the Jews.” One Jewish student who wore a pin bearing the flags of the United States and Israel was told to “take off that pin or we’ll beat your ass.” Another was told, “Jewish students are the plague of mankind” and “Jews should be finished off in the ovens.”
The result of these incidents was that Jewish students rightly feared the consequences of speaking up in opposition to this spirit of intolerance. While it may be held that the university should have been able to handle this problem without federal intervention, the truth is that the school did nothing. Cal-Irvine officials reacted to complaints with indifference or without urgency. The Jewish community was left with little choice but to resort to legal complaints seeking to compel the government to enforce the law against discrimination. It is very much to the credit of the Zionist Organization of America that it championed this cause.
Although Nelson and Stern wrongly treat the students complaints as if they were trivial, they also claim that the resort to the law harms the cause of fighting anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Government intervention shifts the discussion, they believe, from opposing bigotry to protecting free speech.
Anti-Semites will howl that they are being repressed if they are prevented from spreading hatred for Jews on university campuses. No question about it. But those who preach hatred for African-Americans could make the same argument. Even to ask whether Nelson or Stern would be okay with the Ku Klux Klan’s holding officially sanctioned forums at federally-funded schools, however, is to answer the question.
Nelson and Stern go on to compare the warnings about campus anti-Semitism to the debate over immigration laws. But the comparison is just as specious. There is, after all, a clear distinction between advocating enforcement of existing laws against illegal immigration and broadcasting anti-Hispanic hate, even if the distinction is often erased in the heat of debate. No one is calling for Israel’s critics to be barred from campus. Harassing Jews in classrooms and public spaces as well as holding authorized campus events whose purpose is to promote the delegitimization of the Jewish people, however, crosses the line from unpleasant speech to an illegal promotion of violence.
The atmosphere of hatred created at Cal-Irvine in 2003 and 2004 and now being duplicated at other American universities stands as a watershed event in the history of the movement to defame Zionism and the Jews. At a time when this pernicious movement tries to flood into America through the classroom door, it is more important than ever that decent people speak out against the rising tide of international anti-Semitism. When universities fail to restrain the haters, it is up to the government to treat Jew-hatred no differently than it would bigotry against any other minority group. No matter what the AAUP says.

via docstalk.blogspot.com

nothing is ever new... do a Google search on the issue and tell me this is fair and unbiased?

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

via rabbiyonah.wordpress.com

Last Friday, eleven Muslim 'students' were arraigned in a California court and plead not guilty to charges stemming from their disruption of a speech by Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren in February 2010. How could someone be criminally charged for exercising their right of free speech by heckling a speaker they didn't like - and in the United States no less? That's exactly the point, writes Yair Rosenberg in the Harvard Crimson. You have the right to speak but so do others who disagree with you. In this particular case, the 'students' were shown to have planned to prevent Oren from speaking at all. That steps over a line.

To understand why this prosecution is justified, and indeed similar future prosecutions of campus disruptors are warranted, one must first understand what this prosecution is not.
It is decidedly not an “absolute affront to the Constitution” that will “inhibit the free exchange of ideas,” as Dan Stormer and Jacqueline Goodman, two of the Irvine defense attorneys, have claimed. It is their clients who sought to inhibit the free exchange of ideas by shouting down Oren’s speech, preventing him and the estimated crowd of 500-700 individuals from exercising their rights to free speech and assembly.
In fact, when viewed through the lens of pragmatism rather than partisanship, the prosecution of these disruptors clearly protects our civil discourse. Imagine, for contrast, a campus climate in which it is possible for any sufficiently motivated group to shut down an event to which it is ideologically opposed. Not only would Ambassador Oren and General Petraeus be shouted off the stage, but Nancy Pelosi would be accosted with cries of “baby killer,” while Omar Barghouti, who spoke recently at Harvard to advocate boycott of Israel, could be met with jeers of “terrorist” and “anti-semite.” It is essential for the preservation of considered campus conversation that such suppressive “speech” never be tolerated, no matter the opinion being espoused. Simply put, no partisan should have a vocal veto over the marketplace of ideas.
Beyond the practical necessity of such prosecution, there is also strong legal justification for it. As Professor Eugene Volokh of UCLA, a renowned free speech expert explains, “California law rightly makes it a crime to interfere with people’s rights to speak, and listeners’ rights to listen.” Volokh is a long-time equal opportunity advocate for First Amendment rights, having defended flag-burning, anti-Israel bus advertisements and even the permissibility of voluntarily-assumed Sharia arbitration on U.S. soil. To him, the Irvine case is not an example of individuals exercising free speech but rather attempting to stifle it. “Of course, the defendants have their own free speech rights,” he says. “They could have freely exercised them outside the meeting. They could have exercised them during Q&A … They could have exercised them by staging their own event. But First Amendment law has long recognized that there’s no right to speak so loudly that it interferes with other people’s activity.”
Countering a misconception, Volokh adds that “while a jail term is theoretically available” if the defendants are found guilty, “it will be highly unlikely for first offenders.” Rather, “in a case such as this, the defendants … will be fined, put on probation, and possibly sentenced to some community service.” And that, he concludes, “sounds like about the right punishment.”

It might be enough to inhibit these people in the future and maybe others as well. But unfortunately, the facts in this case seem uniquely suited for prosecution - a mistake that the BDS'ers are not likely to make again.
Read the whole thing. And if you speak to groups in public, know your rights. No one has the right to shut you down. At least in theory.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

UK University Heads Say They 'Can Do Little' About Islamic Extremism

Yes - this really is a British University: Muslims pray in the street at City University in London

..Oh yes they can. And the time has come for them to be forced to:
Islamic fundamentalism is being allowed to flourish at universities, endangering national security, MPs and peers said yesterday.

via undhimmi.com

How Does It Feel To Be a Victim? Ask Prof. Bayoumi

Moustafa Bayoumi, associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, gave a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) last month titled, "How Does It Feel To Be a Problem: Why Arabs and Muslim Americans Are at the Heart of Today's Culture Wars."
Bayoumi is the editor of How Does it Feel To Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America, a collection of biographical stories about young, Brooklyn-based Arab-Americans that the CMES website describes, among other things, as "a catalog of mistreatment and discrimination."
Baymoui's narrative of Arab victimhood extends beyond America's borders—he is also the editor of Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: the Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How it Changed the Course of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict, as well as co-editor of The Edward Said Reader; victimization has long been a staple of his academic career.
CMES's Sultan Room—so-named for its Saudi patron, the Sultan bin AbdulAziz Al-Saud Charity Foundation—was full. The audience of approximately 75 students and adults acted like fans; they laughed in all the right places, appeared to be in full agreement with Bayoumi throughout, and offered no challenging questions.
At the time, Egypt's recent revolution was dominating the headlines and Bayoumi was on his way to speak on a UC Berkeley panel on the subject directly afterward. As a result, his lecture seemed rushed and, at times, the wording sounded remarkably similar to his October 24, 2010, Chronicle of Higher Education article, "My Arab Problem."
Referencing the situation in Egypt, Bayoumi began his talk by quoting from The Autobiography of Malcolm X: "How is it possible to write about your life when it's changing so quickly?" Later, he paraphrased Invisible Man author Ralph Ellison: "We are surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass." He noted that his book's title, How Does It Feel To Be a Problem, originated with a quote from W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk:

I stole the title from Du Bois; it resonated with me . . . what to do about the increasing dehumanization of the Arab American population.

Clearly, Bayoumi is heavily influenced by African-American literature—the chapters of his book are prefaced by quotes from famous black authors—but in equating African-Americans with Arab-Americans, he is conflating two very different historical experiences.
To support his position that Arabs, including Muslims, in America are "dehumanized," Bayoumi cited polls conducted by the Economist and the Washington Post, which found—not coincidentally—a steady rise in negativity towards Islam beginning with the 9/11 atrocities and culminating in the Park51 (ground zero mosque) controversy. He omitted any possibility of a rational basis for these negative perceptions and later rejected what he called "the rhetoric of the opposition to the ground zero mosque." Echoing the project's organizers, he claimed that:

the idea behind Park51 was to improve our image; model our image along successful lines like the 92^nd Street Y [92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association] a major Jewish cultural institution.

This comparison is inapt in that the 92^nd Street Y—in the secular tradition of Jewish community centers—does not include a synagogue, while Park51 is intended to include a mosque. Also, 92^nd Street is not near a site where Jews massively attacked New York City.
Bayoumi next addressed the controversy that erupted in August 2010 after Brooklyn College assigned his book as its "common reader," thereby making it required reading for all incoming students and setting up a "meet the author" discussion. Complaints poured in that the book was too lopsided and the debate eventually—as Bayoumi claimed the college feared—went "viral," pulling him into "the center of a small culture war."
Citing retired Brooklyn College philosophy professor Abigail L. Rosenthal, who, in a letter to college president Karen Gould, alleged that "the book smacked of indoctrination," Bayoumi responded:

Is my writing that powerful? No. They have not actually read my book, but only the Amazon page.

He blamed the "tabloid media" and "conservative bloggers" such as Bruce Kesler—a Brooklyn College alumnus who broke the story by publicly cutting his bequest to the college over the Bayoumi decision—for the controversy. In fact, a variety of publications ran articles on the subject, including the Jewish Week, the New York Daily News, theNew York Times, and the Huffington Post.
Summing up his thoughts on the matter, Bayoumi remarked that:

Opposition to my book seems symptomatic of our times . . . all things Muslim or Arab are called radical.

Bayoumi decried FBI counterterrorism efforts involving Brooklyn's large Arab-American population, comparing it to investigating "the mafia; investigating family structures" and calling it "patronizing."
Seeking to interview members of the community for his book, Bayoumi "was concerned about [appearing to be] a suspicious questioner" because, he explained, "it was around the time of the Times Square bomber." Tapping into his inner conspiracy theorist, he then added, ". . . which was a fake, by the way." He provided no evidence for this outlandish claim, nor did his audience request it.
Bayoumi brought up the Texas State Board of Education's resolution last year curtailing pro-Islamic, anti-Christian bias in new social studies textbooks:

The Texas revolution [sic] is another attempt to create controversy where really there is none. It's contrived to give the idea that Islam is on the ideological march in the country. It bears little relation to reality. Those who point this out are accused of political correctness, of being duped, liberal, ideological warriors of political correctness.

He scoffed at "allegations of Arab investors taking over the American [textbook] publishing industry," while his audience tittered. They were only too happy to mock such notions, despite significant evidence of these worrisome trends.
Bayoumi moved on to another favorite target of the Islamophobia-phobes, Middle East forum director Daniel Pipes. Selectively quoting from Pipes's article on Brooklyn's controversial Khalil Gibran International Academy, "A Madrasa Grows in Brooklyn," Bayoumi stated:

Daniel Pipes wrote that 'Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.'

Predictably, he neglected to cite any of the examples that Pipes used to buttress this statement.
Bayoumi continued:

What is going on here? As soon as Muslims like myself are on the cusp of entering the mainstream fully, we are hit with a wave of opposition attempting to render us or our work invisible. . . . The trick is simply to attach the word 'radical' in front of a Muslim name, and, like a magician, make the actual person disappear in a cloud of suspicion.

Then he joked, "If you happen to be the president of the United States, 'First Muslim' will suffice," to which the audience chuckled knowingly.
During the question and answer period, an audience member—perhaps referring, however inaccurately, to Pipes's 2001 quote, "I worry very much, from the Jewish point of view, that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims, because they are so much led by an Islamist leadership, that this will present true dangers to American Jews"—asked:

Daniel Pipes says he fears Muslim expansion in America from the Jewish point of view. How much are these cultural wars intertwined with the fear among a segment of the pro-Israel, rightwing alliance of wanting to maintain a reflexive fear of Arabs and Muslims?

Bayoumi responded with a torrent of insults, buzz words, and generalizations:

There's a nexus, and a major part is the Israel conflict. Pipes, David Horowitz—it all has to do with the production of Islamophobia. [It's a] pro-Israel right wing attack; it's a continuation of the rightwing, Christian attack on liberal education; a culture wars place where they've all arrived at that junction.

In response to an audience member's question regarding the hearings on radical Islam in the U.S. convened by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY), Bayoumi concluded that, "It's part of the paranoia of today."
Expanding on this theme, he then read aloud an oft-repeated quote from Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, about the alleged paranoia and bigotry of the "modern right-wing," which, he claimed, "you can hear in 2011." Bayoumi has apparently bought into Hofstadter's always dubious and now thoroughly discredited equation of conservatism with mental illness.
Moreover, chalking up the rational fears of the American public in a post-9/11 world to paranoia displays contempt and willful blindness. Such attitudes only allow apologists to delay indefinitely much-needed theological and cultural reforms within Muslim and Arab communities.
Bayoumi seems oblivious to the religious, economic, and cultural freedom that the U.S. offers. If America is such an intolerant, discriminatory country, why do countless Arabs and Muslims keep immigrating to its shores? According to statistics compiled by the Department of Homeland Security and the Census Bureau and cited by the New York Times, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent U.S. residents in 2005 than in any year in the previous two decades. In addition, a 2007 Pew survey found that Muslim Americans, including many Arabs, are equally, if not better, educated and more affluent than the national average.
Instead of proclaiming a culture of victimhood, Bayoumi might acknowledge this encouraging reality. He could start by turning his book into a series and titling a forthcoming volume, How Does It Feel to be a Fabulous Success? Being Young and Arab in America.
Berkeley resident Rima Greene co-wrote this article with Cinnamon Stillwell, the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.

receive the latest by email: subscribe to campus watch's free mailing list This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

via campus-watch.org

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

University of California at Berkeley in Conspiracy Against Jews

I just got off the phone with an old friend.  His son was one of the victims of University of California at Berkeley. Not sure if this person wants that public, so for now I'm withholding the name.
 -Noah

Jewish Student Jessica Felber Sues UC Berkeley for Not Protecting Her from Radical Muslim Students

Good for her. You can read the entire Complaint HERE.

via 9-11domorethenneverforget-stopislam.blogspot.com

 this is going on in every sector of society... the University merely gets more attention. from gymnasiums to libraries... the attack of Jews this decade is an epidemic. sometime even the courts and jails themselves are part of the abuse.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

I received this via email:

A first of its kind federal civil rights case has been filed in United States District Court in Oakland, California, against the University of California at Berkeley, the Regents of the University of California and their ranking officials, by a Jewish student who had been assaulted on campus last year by a leader of a Muslim student organization during a pro-Israel event.
On March 5, 2010, Jessica Felber, a twenty year old Jewish student at Berkeley, was attacked and injured on campus because of her Jewish ancestry and religious affiliation. At the time she was holding a sign stating “Israel wants Peace.” Her assailant, Husam Zakharia, also a UC Berkeley student, was the leader of Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”) at Berkeley.
Defendants were fully aware that Zakharia, the SJP and similar student groups had been involved in other incidents on campus to incite violence against and intimidate Jewish and other students. Nevertheless, in clear dereliction of their legal responsibilities, Defendants took no reasonable steps to protect Ms. Felber and others.
The Complaint further describes how the SJP conspires and coordinates with the Muslim Student Association (“MSA”), which has a publicly documented history of affiliation with and support of organizations deemed “terror organizations” by the United States Department of State. That they have resorted to intimidation and harassment is evidenced most recently by the fact that the District Attorney of Orange County, California, has indicted eleven students from these groups for inciting and disrupting a speech given by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States at the University of California, Irvine.
The Complaint charges that the assault was the result of the university having: (1) fostered and encouraged campus terrorist incitements by the SJP and the MSA) ; (2) turned a blind eye to the perpetrators of illegal activities; (3) failed to effectively discipline the MSA and SJP for their pro-terrorist programs, goals and conduct; despite having ample notice that such violence was foreseeable; and (4) failed to provide adequate security to prevent the violence, harassment and intimidation which occurred on March 5, 2010.
Ignoring complaints from students about the poisonous climate on campus, defendants condoned, allowed and enabled groups such as the MSA and the SJP to threaten, harass and intimidate Jewish students and to endanger their health and safety. Their tolerance of the growing cancer of a dangerous anti-Semitic climate on its campuses, and their failure to take adequate measures to quell it, violated the rights of Ms. Felber’s and other students to enjoy a peaceful campus environment free from threats and intimidation.
As the Complaint reminds us, the on-campus activities of the SJP and MSA against plaintiff and other students of Jewish religion and ancestry - and the university's failure to confront them - present a disturbing echo of the darkest period in history: the incitement, intimidation, harassment and violence carried out under the Nazi regime and those of its allies in Europe against Jewish students and scholars in the leading universities of those countries during the turbulent years leading up to and including the Holocaust.
There is a genuine fear by Ms. Felber and other students of Jewish ancestry on campuses throughout the University of California system that the tragic lessons of history have not yet been learned by these defendants. They fear that the University of California campuses are no longer places of hope and dignity, of academic and personal freedom, or of peaceful life and personal safety.
Ms. Felber is represented by Joel H. Siegal a civil rights attorney in San Francisco, and New York attorney Neal M. Sher, who for many years was the Director of the Justice Department’s Nazi prosecution office.

If anyone wants more information, the email came with the lawyers' phone numbers and a copy of the complaint that was filed in court.

it isn't enough that the University did not protect the safety of their students... what makes it frightening is the fact that Berkeley apparently was in conspiracy with these Muslim groups.

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous