Israeli diplomat pressured US college to drop course on ‘apartheid’ debate
An Israeli diplomat (Jewish) tried to persuade a leading New York college to cancel a course about the growing debate over whether the Jewish state practices a form of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli consul for public diplomacy in New York, Yuval Donio-Gideon (Jewish), took the highly unusual step of contacting Bard College earlier this year to object to the course, Apartheid in Israel-Palestine, on the grounds that it breached the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
When the college defended the course, it came under pressure from pro-Israel groups and from at least one major donor. Robert Epstein (Jewish), the property developer and co-owner of the Boston Celtics, resigned from Bard’s board of trustees in protest at Bard’s refusal to cancel the subject.
The course was designed and taught by Nathan Thrall, a Jewish American writer and researcher who lives in Jerusalem.
“The Israeli consulate contacted Bard and said they would like the course to be cancelled. There was mention of the IHRA definition of antisemitism which is the standard means of attempting to silence criticism of Israel,” said Thrall (Jewish).
“When the consul spoke to Bard they
explicitly said that we fear that if we do not make an example out of
this class then classes like this are going to sprout like mushrooms all
over the US.” [A perfect example of how Zionists are terrified at the dissemination of truthful information about their crimes].
The president of Bard, Leon Botstein (Jewish), confirmed that Donio-Gideon (Jewish) “called to inquire about the course and to object to it”.
“The consul hoped he could talk us into cancelling it. He argued that the course was somehow inappropriate but there was a very polite conversation and it ended there,” he said. “We stood up for academic freedom. The course was excellent, high level and not at all ideological preaching.”
Botstein (Jewish) said he did not find anything untoward in the Israeli consulate’s intervention. Asked if other foreign diplomats had ever called to object to the content of Bard’s curriculum, he said: “I’m sure they have, but I can’t recall.”
Bard, which runs a joint-degree program with a Palestinian university, Al-Quds in the West Bank, awarded Thrall a writing fellowship which he used to complete his recently published book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. The college also invited him to teach a course and Thrall proposed one on Israel and apartheid for the spring semester.
The basis of the course was the growing evidence that Israel is in breach of international laws against apartheid, including reports by Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, and from a prominent legal organisation, Yesh Din, which concluded that “the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank”.
In September, a former head of the Mossad intelligence agency, Tamir Pardo (Jewish) joined a rising number of prominent Israelis in comparing the occupation of the West Bank to South Africa’s defunct [Apartheid] system of racial oppression.
Thrall (Jewish) said there was no opposition to the course until shortly before it began when a tweet by a human rights group drew attention to it.
At that point, Donio-Gideon (Jewish) approached the college, initially through its rabbi (Jewish). Thrall said the Israeli diplomat “said the course meets the IHRA definition” of antisemitism. Among IHRA’s examples of antisemitism is “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”.
The consulate’s intervention came at a time when the Israeli government was threatening to “publish a ranking of the most antisemitic campuses in the US; to shame institutions that promote anti-Israel positions....”.
The Israeli consulate in New York did not respond to a request for comment.
Botstein (Jewish), a renowned conductor who is music director of the American Symphony Orchestra, said that there was pressure from other quarters. Epstein (Jewish), the former Bard board member, “had very strong objections”.
“After a conversation with him, he chose to resign from the board. He made a very strong statement about the course in resigning. I failed to convince him that this was the wrong thing to do. I invited him to visit the course but this is an issue where people’s are emotions run high and those emotions often blind them from looking at the issue more dispassionately, or hearing another point of view,” said Botstein (Jewish).
The Bard president said he did not know whether Epstein (Jewish) would now honor a $2.5m pledge to the college.
Epstein (Jewish), who did not respond to a request for comment, is a national commissioner of the strongly pro-Israel Zionist pressure group, the Anti-Defamation League (A Zionist American organization). His wife, Esther (Jewish, of course), is a past chair of the ADL’s board.
The ADL’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt (Jewish), also sought to pressure Bard. Botstein (Jewish) described their conversation as tense.
“He [Greenblatt] was not open to a free discussion. He was not civil. And he did not accept our invitation to visit the course and see for himself. He called already intent on trying to pressure us to cancel the course,” he said.
The ADL (Zionist) said in a statement that Greenblatt (Jewish Zionist) spoke to Botstein (Jewish) “to convey serious concerns over the course”.
“The entire premise of this course slanders and delegitimizes the democratic state of Israel,” it said. “At a time of surging rates of antisemitic incidents in the United States [and of wholesale slaughter of innocent Palestinians by the Jewish Zionist occupation], some of the most inciteful taking place on college campuses [and across occupied Palestine], ADL is unapologetic in our advocacy for Israel (foreign and barbaric Apartheid colony in Palestine) and the Jewish people (how can ADL claim to be an advocate for the very people it is defaming, threatening and silencing?). We will continue to work tirelessly against efforts that delegitimize Israel (the illegitimate bastard child of British-American adultery) and vilify Jews (at least half of whom reject Zionism) and we stand by our belief that courses like this should not exist (Zionists are against objective knowledge and information) because of the fallacies (truth is a fallacy for these barbarian Zionists) they are based upon.”
......
[And now the standard slander and defamation of those who do no agree with the Zionist "antisemitism" blackmail: Accuse them of being funded by other countries and entities]:
“This class is wrong in its inception, and we are ethically compelled to point out why: Nathan Thrall (Jewish) is heavily financed by the government by Qatar, a leading funder of Hamas and other officially designated terrorist groups,” he said.
Thrall previously worked for the International Crisis Group which received a donation from Qatar after he left. [Note how vile and disgusting is the slander: Thrall, who is Jewish, has nothing to do with Qatar, but now that he is offering a course whose premise is to study whether Apartheid practices are used by the Zionist government, the Zionists have smeared him and defamed him and, in the totalitarian intellectual Gulag to which America has been reduced to by the Zionists themselves, his career is probably compromised]
Botstein (Jewish) responded that “as a child of survivors of the Holocaust I am more sensitive than most” to antisemitism.
“There
is nothing antisemitic about the course in question. It explores
questions that have been the subject of debate in Israel for years. Why
should the Jewish community in America be afraid of the same debates and
arguments taking place in Israel?” he said. [The answer to this question is that the Zionist lobbies in the US want to keep the American people inside an intellectual concentration camp where they are indoctrinated day and night into one line of thinking and one only, just like in totalitarian China. You shall not explore anything that might question the fallacious narratives we the Zionists have made up and imposed on you. Dare you step out of the totalitarian line we have drawn for you. You - the American public - are not smart enough to make up your own minds; we, the Zionist elite in control of your finances, Hollywood, and the media, must guide you toward the correct way of thinking].
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