CUNY Law School Anti-Zionism and the Islamophobe FARHUD: White-Hot HASBARAH Cancel Culture!
David Shasha
CUNY Law School Anti-Zionism and the Islamophobe FARHUD: White-Hot HASBARAH Cancel Culture!
Because of the vast amount of White Jewish Supremacy racism that has been presented in the stand-alone daily SHU posts lately, I have held back a couple of White-Hot HASBARAH items that have recently been piling up.
For those who read the Jewish media on a regular basis, there is no story that is hotter than the CUNY Law School commencement speech:
The complete article follows this note.
The JTA article brings us some loudmouth Trumpscum Seditionist called Mike Lawler:
https://thehudsonindependent.com/300-constituents-ask-mike-lawler-to-back-out-of-trump-donor-event/
For the sake of completeness, Lawler appears to be a cowardly shapeshifter on the Zombie Orange Pig, at least according to The New York Post:
https://nypost.com/2022/11/10/time-to-ditch-trump-gop-rep-elect-mike-lawler-says/
But his current branding is all about courting HASBARAH Jewish votes, as he attacks the commencement speech:
“Many in the Jewish community in New York and across the country were outraged when a student spewed outrageous antisemitic rhetoric at CUNY Law School’s graduation in May,” Lawler said in a statement. “No college or university should receive a single dollar of federal education funding if they peddle in the promotion of antisemitism at an event on their campus.”
Lawler is a bit all over the place on the New Fascism, but he seems to think that the Jews run the world and is speaking out against the Anti-Zionist speech.
Then we have, of course, the DERSH who calls for defunding CUNY:
The complete article follows this note.
JNS editor Jonathan Tobin agrees!
https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-answer-to-campus-radicalism-and-antisemitism-defunding/
The Cancel Culture call for defunding CUNY is classic DERSH as he is for Civil Liberties and Freedom of Speech – unless it comes to Zionism:
https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-New-Censorship-Progressives/dp/1510767738
The DERSH censors what he wants and attacks those who he feels censors the wrong people.
We have just seen how DERSH ally Rebbitzin Bengelsdorf was in a real tizzy about “debate,” as she continues to relentlessly and monomaniacally Troll the Libs:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/9SJid_b2Hvw
Indeed, the Free Speech Grift is all over the Trumpscum world:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/E6--GgtkUMs/m/FQ9zVVEBAgAJ
But Free Speech is limited to the HASBARAH Jews and their supporters, like Bari Weiss ally Ritchie Torres:
https://www.thefp.com/p/can-you-be-a-progressive-and-support
The real question is whether a member of the U.S. Congress can be critical of Israel and get elected:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/lawmakers-lash-nyc-college-system-over-antisemitic-graduation-speech/
In this sense there is no difference between Trumpscum Lawler and “Progressive” Torres:
And I do not recall any calls by the Progressive Left to censor Tikvah Fascist Dara Horn’s commencement speech at West Point:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/z9yxeiEljJ4
Horn has clearly expressed her hatred of Ken Burns and FDR – and Holocaust education:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SMERk-ASM6s_8cidnXXBli7ECsNo8Baw/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uhUg1o6VSKWkuP8AB-O8JNebzAQFMldxqM-0oadqmcg/edit
Does her Anti-Americanism disqualify her from making commencement speeches?
And though I do not attend the annual Salute to Israel parade in Manhattan, I was struck by the opening comments in Zachary Braiterman’s blog on the matter:
https://jewishphilosophyplace.com/2023/06/05/end-the-occupation-and-celebrate-israel-ayman-odeh/
It is indicative of what Zionism has become today:
I am not posting digital photos of the ugly spectacle this year at the 2023 Celebrate Israel parade in New York City: the huge and unthinking mass of rightwing American modern orthodox dayschool students and their teachers cursing and flipping off the small group of mostly Israelis at E. 60th Street and 5th Avenue who came to demonstrate in support of democracy and human rights for everyone.
I scoured the media for any reporting on these Children of Zionist Fascism, many of whom are likely connected to schools in the Brooklyn Orthodox community, and could find nothing.
After reading the Braiterman blog, I recalled this piece from The Jerusalem Post, which attacks the Israeli Leftists who were attacked by the Fascist kids:
Again, HASBARAH Cancel Culture in action!
The DERSH has not weighed in on any of it.
But that makes sense, given that only Free Speech critical of Israel and Zionism is fodder for HASBARAH Cancel Culture, the opposite does not merit such concern.
And then, of course, there is the HASBARAH manipulation of the Iraq FARHUD tragedy.
I did manage to post the SHU materials on the matter just in time for the annual onslaught:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/9kVXuJmtBjA
Included in the materials is the late Nissim Rejwan’s eyewitness account of the violent event, which links to the terror to British Imperialism and not to the Islamic religion.
Rejwan is routinely ignored by the HASBARAH fanatics, as I indicated in my special newsletter in tribute to his life and work:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/L4plEN74ZVQ/m/U5QhccYGBAAJ
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HhJQ1jwvbrGvU3t0Ts6CiufNdjyldWTN0At0vPWS9js/edit
When it comes to The Tikvah Fund and the HASBARAH world, Rejwan is a “Bad” Arab Jew, in comparison to Edy Cohen, a “Good” Arab Jew:
Though you must never call him an Arab Jew!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LC0ZoLHGZ0a11m1AMTPdARmm3mpoHW3sarNI3d77-9U/edit
That is a big HASBARAH no-no.
The FARHUD has become a central pillar of HASBARAH, as we saw in a special editorial in The Jerusalem Post:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-744930
Of course, there was the usual contribution of the obnoxious Arab-hater Lyn Julius, who has founded her work on Islamophobia and HASBARAH:
https://www.jewishrefugees.org.uk/2023/06/how-the-farhud-inspires-the-palestinian-cause-today.html
Which is also central to the work of Sarah Levin and JIMENA:
https://twitter.com/JIMENA_Voice/status/1664414723893526528
JIMENA is essentially a front for the White Jewish Supremacy institutional world:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/YNu4jRwwnXg
Ms. Levin has been highly adept at getting the funds that are routinely denied by the White Jewish Supremacy institutions to Sephardi activists who speak out in an independent and critical manner of the racist Ashkenazi Jewish establishment:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/buHSiYDEew4
She is getting those funds to look at the Sephardic situation in New York Jewish Day Schools, though I am not sure she is much concerned with arch-racist Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor of The New York Jewish Week, with its massive influence:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/ddr9CNe3G7A
Never make the Ashkenazim uncomfortable, and your schnorring will go very well!
The JIMENA Voice Twitter feed is an excellent way to see the HASBARAH Intersectionality that animates the monetization:
https://twitter.com/JIMENA_Voice/status/1665684578575564801
That’s right, it is a picture of Levin with the legendary Pamela Paresky.
Who is a Tikvah SAPIR Cancel Culture macher:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/TY59rj63FUE/m/Zb4wpBnjAQAJ
Which links JIMENA to CAMERA HASBARAH:
https://www.972mag.com/american-jews-israel-hasbara-lebanon/
Which links to David Project Bernstein:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ieHrcOg_V84/m/izdwsXfhAgAJ
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10ecrIGNrJN1prVeifX32KsWtS4gQ-gyGoNc_J7CeWJ8/edit
Which links to “The Forgotten Refugees” documentary:
https://www.jimena.org/resources/forgotten-refugees/
CAMERA is indeed the very essence of HASBARAH:
To bolster the efforts to discredit journalists who reported on Israel’s actions in Lebanon, a new watchdog organization was formed specifically to monitor and critique what it saw as anti-Israel mainstream media coverage of the war. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), which operates to this day, was founded by the late Winifred Meiselman in particular to counter the Washington Post’s reporting on the conflict. It refined an approach of reflexively attacking any report — even if visually documented — that cast aspersions, whether implicitly or explicitly, on the moral standing of Israel and its army.
Lastly, I would be remiss not to include the Tikvah ASF, which re-posts this item each year at this time:
https://americansephardi.org/news/simjune21/
And that is what the Tikvah Neo-Con Jew Intersectional bubble looks like in real time.
It is the real Cancel Culture, as we saw in The David Project’s “Columbia Unbecoming,” the event that started Rebbitzin Bengelsdorf on her radical RUFO DEATH SENTENCE career:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GQ1T91xG72SCnuUwl7WQwGYGZk95Dg65zRphnSZxPWg/edit
Which confirms the foundational centrality of the Cancel Culture issue on the reactionary Tikvah Right and its militant suppression of Free Speech, such as that of those Sephardim who refuse the White Jewish Supremacy and its distortions of our history and culture.
David Shasha
New York Rep. Mike Lawler seeks to halt CUNY funding after ‘hate speech’
By: Jacob Henry
Amid ongoing debate over a recent commencement speech at the City University of New York’s law school that included harsh criticism of Israel, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler has introduced legislation that would rescind federal funding from colleges that promote antisemitism.
Lawler, who represents New York’s 17th congressional district, introduced the “Stop Anti-Semitism on College Campuses” bill on Thursday. Lawler’s district includes Rockland County, which has a large population of Orthodox Jews.
“Many in the Jewish community in New York and across the country were outraged when a student spewed outrageous antisemitic rhetoric at CUNY Law School’s graduation in May,” Lawler said in a statement. “No college or university should receive a single dollar of federal education funding if they peddle in the promotion of antisemitism at an event on their campus.”
The bill would “prohibit institutions of higher education that authorize Anti-Semitic events on campus from participating in the student loan and grant programs” under Title IV of the 1956 Higher Education Act. It has eight cosponsors, all Republicans, including the chamber’s two Republican Jews, Tennessee’s David Kustoff and Ohio’s Max Miller.
The bill comes after a speech delivered on May 12 at the graduation ceremony of the CUNY School of Law in Queens, in which Fatima Mousa Mohammed praised the law school as a place where students could “speak out against Israeli settler colonialism.” She also called the New York Police Department “fascist” and encouraged “the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism around the world.”
Pro-Israel advocates have long accused CUNY of tolerating antisemitism on campus, and the speech has drawn criticism in recent days. On Tuesday, CUNY Chancellor Fèlix Matos Rodríguez and the school’s Board of Trustees condemned Mohammed’s speech, calling her remarks “hate speech.”
On Wednesday night, at an event celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month at Gracie Mansion, New York City Mayor Eric Adams criticized the speech. He had been in attendance earlier in the ceremony, which had initially drawn attention because part of the graduating class turned their backs on him and heckled him when he spoke. He said he was not present for Mohammed’s address.
“If I was on that stage when those comments were made, I would have stood up and denounced them immediately, because we cannot allow it to happen,” he said in his speech Wednesday night.
Mohammed has received support from pro-Palestinian organizations, as well as groups of students and faculty at the school. The law school’s Jewish students’ association, which is known as a vocal supporter of pro-Palestinian advocacy, criticized “external zionist organizations” in a May 21 statement backing Mohammed, and said that attacks on her speech had come from groups that were spreading “false claims” about her.
“The organizations currently attacking Fatima and the rest of CUNY Law’s student body, with absurd and false claims of antisemitism, are doing so against the wishes of the majority of CUNY Law’s Jewish students, who wholeheartedly stand with Fatima and have been grateful to have her as our classmate throughout law school,” the group said in the statement, which was also signed by 18 other student groups.
And following the statement from the chancellor and board, 40 members of the CUNY School of Law faculty called for the statement to “be withdrawn immediately,” and requested that “an apology be issued to the student speaker and to the students that make up the law school Class of 2023.”
“No reasonable interpretation of the student speaker’s remarks would suggest it was ‘hate speech,’ given that none of the student’s comments attacked any persons or protected classes, but at most commented on nations and state institutions that are incontrovertibly causing harm to people domestically and internationally,” the faculty letter said.
From The New York Jewish Week, June 2, 2023
Taxpayers Shouldn’t Foot The Bill For Campus Antisemitism
By: Alan M. Dershowitz
What would the reaction be if a publicly funded law school officially endorsed the candidacy of Donald Trump?
Or officially supported white supremacy?
Or invited as graduation speaker an overtly anti-gay bigot?
Would defenders of such action claim free speech? (RELATED: SHEILA NAZARIAN: Biden Turns An Easy Win Into A Major Misstep)
Or would they admit there is a difference between an individual expressing bigoted views and a state-sponsored institution officially endorsing such hateful positions?
That is the question posed, in reverse, by recent actions taken on behalf of the taxpayer-funded City University of New York School of Law.
That law school, part of the system where one of us attended college (Brooklyn College), has become the hotbed of anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
For at least two years now, the official graduation speaker, selected by the students and approved by the administration, has used the occasion to spout some of the most rabid hate speech against the American military, the American police, the Israeli army and the Israeli people.
This year’s speaker, Fatima Mohammed, called the police and the army “fascists.”
She railed against the people of Israel and the nation-state of the Jewish people.
School officials, including Dean Sudha Setty, applauded as Mohammed spat venom out at the May 12 ceremony.
Nor was this an isolated situation.
The faculty as a whole has endorsed the boycott movement against Israel, which is antisemitic to the core.
It prohibits any contact between American academics and Jewish academics in Israel and calls for Israel’s end, demanding it be replaced by a Palestinian state, “from the river to the sea.” Which includes Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and all the rest of Israel.
Imagine being a CUNY Law student who supports Israel’s right to exist.
His or her belief is officially contradicted by the faculty, whose responsibility includes grading and recommending students.
It is wrong for a law school, especially one funded by taxpayers, to formally endorse such hatred against the Jewish citizens of Israel.
On a recent CUNY group chat, antisemites were warned not to shout “F–k the Jews” but instead to substitute “Zionists” for “Jews,” although the meaning remains clear.
Indeed one of the people on the chat then tweeted “F–k all the Jews.”
This reflects the feeling of many at CUNY and many of those who vigorously applauded the speaker’s vicious antisemitic vitriol.
The City University of New York law school should become a private institution and no longer receive public funds unless it ceases to be the academic loudspeaker for anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
This year’s graduation speaker described the law itself as “a manifestation of white supremacy” and called for “revolution” against the legal system.
She praised CUNY Law as the only institution that reflects her hatred.
New York City and state taxpayers should not be required to pay for this institutionalized hate speech. Let the marketplace of ideas prevail, and let students who agree with Fatima Mohammed’s view of American law and Jews attend a private law school that advocates such hatred without governmental financial support.
The government has no obligation or indeed legitimate right to lend its imprimatur to ideologically driven bigotry. (RELATED: ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Elon Musk Is Right About George Soros)
Cutting off government financing may help return CUNY law school to its proper mission of teaching students how to think about the law instead of propagandizing the students about who to hate.
CUNY Law is an embarrassment to the city university system.
It is not a credible place of learning. It is a propaganda mill for radical anti-American and anti-Israel students who should have the right to a real legal education that will prepare them to practice law rather than to spew hatred and foment revolution.
No one should try to prevent Fatima Mohammed from exercising her constitutional right to spread falsehoods about America, Israel or Jews.
But she has no right to have her hate speech receive the imprimatur of our government and the financial support of citizens who disagree with her bigotry.
The situation does not pass the shoe-on-the-other-foot test: No reasonable person would support a taxpayer institution that officially espoused hated against African-American or Arab-American students.
Yet that is exactly what CUNY Law is doing against patriotic American, Zionist and Jewish students, alumni and all decent people.
This double standard should not be accepted.
Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and the author most recently of The Price of Principle: Why Integrity Is Worth The Consequences. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute, and is also the host of “The Dershow” podcast. This is republished from the Alan Dershowitz Newsletter.
From The “Jewish” Voice, June 5, 2023
Don't forget, remember the Farhud
By: Jerusalem Post Editorial
We are living in an era when narratives battle with history – and often win.
This is particularly evident around this time of year, when the Palestinians and their supporters mark Nakba Day – commemorating the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation – and Naksa Day, the “upset” of Israel surviving the Six Day War that was meant to wipe it off the face of the earth. Shamefully, Nakba Day was even commemorated this year in the United Nations, to mark its 75th anniversary.
There is, however, a gap in both knowledge and acknowledgment when it comes to the history of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. More than 850,000 Jews fled or were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands in 1948, upon Israel’s establishment as a state. But this did not come out of the blue.
Remember the Farhud
One of the horrific incidents that preceded this mass flight of Jews is often overlooked. It is the Farhud – the onslaught or violent dispossession – which took place in Iraq on June 1 and 2, 1941, coinciding with the Shavuot festival. It was a pogrom in every sense. 179 Jews of all ages were killed in the two-day rampage, which was concentrated in Baghdad and Basra. They were slaughtered in their homes and on the streets – wherever they were found by the murderous gangs, whipped up by Nazi propaganda and the pro-German Iraqi leadership.
The lethal attacks, rapes, killing, looting and desecration of synagogues affected the entire community. It is estimated that more than 2,000 Jews were wounded and the property of more than 50,000 Jews was looted or destroyed. The dead were later buried in mass graves – and the illusion of peaceful coexistence was buried with them. Although Jews had lived in this ancient Babylonia and Mesopotamia region for some 2,500 years, it counted for nothing when the Farhud broke out.
There were, of course, some righteous people among the general Muslim population, courageous people who risked their own lives to save their Jewish neighbors and friends. But they were a minority.
The campaign of terror came against the backdrop of the power vacuum between the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, who had seized control from the Iraqi monarchy, and the return of British forces to Baghdad. The interim Iraqi prime minister was an ardent supporter of Hitler and introduced the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, to the Nazi leader. Nazi thinking fell on fertile ground. As always, the Jews paid the price.
And in many ways, Israel continues to pay the price. The lies spread by the grand mufti live on in conspiracy theories about Jewish designs on al-Aqsa – a fabrication that he concocted a century ago.
The wartime Iraqi government used radio and the Al-Alam Al-Arabi newspaper to spread antisemitic incitement. In the era of social media, the distortions and blood libels are able to spread even further – in an instant. The wave of terror attacks is partially fueled in this way.
The Palestinians use the battle cry “al-Aqsa is in danger!” to rally support across the Muslim world against Israel. The UN, with its anti-Israel obsession, is part of the problem. It is absurd to commemorate the Palestinians who left or were expelled during the 1948 War of Independence without so much as noting the similar numbers of Jews who lost their homes in Muslim lands.
In 1948 there were some 140,000 Jews in Algeria, 75,000 in Egypt, 150,000 in Iraq, 38,000 in Libya, 30,000 in Syria, 105,000 in Tunisia, 55,000 in Yemen and 100,000 in Iran. Today, some of those countries have no Jewish community at all; others have fewer than 10 Jews.
The late historian Robert Wistrich used to note how strange it is that Israel is accused of “ethnic cleansing” while the Jews have largely disappeared from Muslim lands and the Muslim population in Israel has grown since 1948.
The Knesset this week granted preliminary approval to a bill sponsored by MK Ofir Katz (Likud) calling for an annual Commemoration Day for the Farhud, to be held in June. The bill is important, but we don’t need to wait for it to pass into law. It is incumbent on us all to remember the Farhud and its lessons.
From The Jerusalem Post, June 2, 2023