Dear [Decision Maker],

I write to you as a resident of the great state of California and as an American Christian who strongly supports the state of Israel. I see Israel as a nation that shares our values of democracy and human rights.

I understand that you have passed a bill condemning Israel for supposed human rights abuses and have encouraged the University of California, Berkeley to divest from companies that do business with Israel. I believe that you may have acted in good faith based upon misleading and biased reports from the United Nations and non-governmental organizations. You should know that there is another side to the story.

Israeli defensive actions, including the construction of the security barrier, are meant to thwart terror attacks. The fact is that there is no excuse for acts of terrorism against Israel and that Israel has the same right as every other nation to take measures to defend her citizens from such violent attacks.

Israel has demonstrated repeatedly its desire for peace and has made a series of painful sacrifices in the interest of peace. During the Camp David negotiations of 1999 and again as recently as one year ago, Israel offered the Palestinian Authority a Palestinian state in almost all of the West Bank and Gaza. These offers--which would have ended the conflict as well as the "occupation" -- were rejected without even so much as a counter offer.

In 2005, Israel withdrew all of its troops and citizens from Gaza in yet another sacrifice for peace. Following the Gaza withdrawal, the militant group Hamas kidnapped the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and launched hundreds of rockets towards Israeli civilian centers. Kidnapping and the firing of rockets indiscriminately at civilian populations are severe war crimes by any definition.

The ASUC Senate's mention of Israel's alleged crimes without mentioning the blatant and obvious Palestinian war crimes demonstrates a willful one-sided divestment effort aimed at delegitimizing the world's only Jewish state, harming America's faithful ally, and weakening the only stable democracy in the Middle East.

By ignoring the legitimate reasons for Israel's actions, and the need for all nations to protect their civilians from rockets and bomb attacks, you DO choose sides in the conflict, though the bill's text claims to do the opposite.

Berkeley is a leading academic institution which prides itself on its openness to discussion and disagreement. But by passing an unprecedented divestment bill against Israel, you do not further the cause of peace or legitimate discourse on an important geopolitical topic. Instead, by legitimatizing a one-sided and politically driven viewpoint, you merely embolden those who wish to destroy Israel and deny the right of Israel's very existence. When this divestment bill comes under your consideration again, I respectfully ask that you vote for its defeat.

Loose Change. That's the term fringe political movements use to describe people who join their organizations or show up to their events, not because such people believe in what the group stands for, but because such people want to be doing something, anything, to demonstrate they care about an issue.

Practically speaking, the vote will have little to no economic impact. The Berkeley administration, like the administration of hundreds of college campuses that have had divestment pressed on them over the last decade, has shown no interest in politicizing their investment strategies, especially based on the questionable characterization of the Middle East conflict so perfectly embodied in the Berkeley resolution.

But if the practical repercussions of the resolution are small, the symbolic impact is more significant. For, despite the fact that the issue was sold to Berkeley’s leaders as a uncomplicated, general human-rights issue that takes no specific stand on the Arab-Israeli conflict, last week’s vote is today being communicated around the world as the university as a whole standing four-square behind the divestment movement’s real message: that Israel is a racist, apartheid state alone in the world deserving of punishment. And one need only look at how the controversy is playing out on campus to see that, far from helping students better understand these complex issues, divestment is helping to rub political, religious and ethnic wounds raw.

Given the resolution's limited practical potential and significant downsides, we are left searching for where a successful resolution would do anyone any good. And thus we are left with twenty student Senators, many sincerely concerned about problems in the Middle East, and desiring to do something, anything, to make a statement. Even if they have no electoral mandate to make statements, much less take action on international issues, a "Yes" vote would give them the feeling that they are doing something virtuous, even though the actual effects will be all bad for Berkeley and for the Middle East. It would turn leaders trusted to do what's right for the students they represent into a handful of loose change in the pocket of the worldwide boycott Israel movement

Berkeley Divestment: Comments



Rumor has it that student Senators at Berkeley are receiving e-mails from around the world regarding how they should vote on the divestment veto override at a rate of 50 an hour. Now only they are privy to the contents of these suggestions, but if this debate is playing out similarly to the one I participated in years ago in Somerville, MA, it must be getting harder and harder to hold the position that the divestment bill was a simple human rights measure that takes no sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In Somerville, it was letters from Bahrain congratulating the Somerville Aldermen for “standing up to the Jews” that gave these leaders the hint that they may have unleashed something nasty by voting for a divestment bill crafted for them by the Somerville Divestment Project (the equivalent of the Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, who drafted the Berkeley divestment bill) without fully understanding the implications of their activity. (Sound familiar?)

Now Berkeley is certainly different from Somerville, and it could be that – as SJP activists have been touting –the 20 elected student Senators represent the will of the students on campus, while the equally elected student-body President who vetoed the bill does not. But that presumes either one of two things:

* The student Senators specifically campaigned on divestment and were elected based on their stance on this issue; or

* By some other measure, divestment from Israel can clearly be seen as representing a consensus of campus opinion, if not an unquestionable majority

Presuming the first option is not the case (a safe assumption, given that no one has yet brought up a specific electoral mandate for divestment since this debate began), then the only way to claim the student Senators are representing their constituents on this matter is if they can demonstrate overall agreement to divest from Israel among the student body. This is not an impossible hurdle to overcome. After all, South African divestment debates in the 1980s (which divestment advocates claim they are heirs to) were built on such a consensus.

We do have a way of testing this level of consensus, by looking at how the matter of the vote for and veto against the divestment bill is playing out on campus. Berkeley’s Daily Californian newspaper (usually referred to as “The Daily Cal”) has published several news articles and editorials on the topic, each of which has attracted ten to a hundred times the usual number of comments on their online edition.

Unlike a professionally designed and run poll, Internet comments (especially on Web sites that do not limit input to only local students) hardly represents a scientific measure of campus opinion. But with numbers this high, we can take a stab at determining whether or not this issue has reached a level of agreement high enough to approximate a civil debate or at least demonstrate a desire to reach an understanding between supporters and critics of the divestment measure and veto.

So what do we find if we peel through the comments sections? Well there are lots of references to babies, often within phrases such as “baby killers.” And photos of bleeding corpses (victims of last year’s Gaza conflict or Palestinian terrorism) seem to dot the comments pages. Accusations of racism, anti-Semitism, hatred and bad faith abound, as do talking points that can be lifted right from the speeches that accompanied debate on this resolution last week.

If I were to pick a word or phrase that encapsulates this online debate it would not be “consensus-building” but “polarizing.” In other words, this debate has hardened everyone’s positions, taking an issue over which there is no campus consensus and turning disagreeing parties into armed camps.

So who wins on an issue that does nothing for Berkeley other than has to help exacerbate existing splits on campus (which, like the Middle East itself falls along political, religious and ethnic lines)? Well the Students for Justice in Palestine clearly won (albeit temporarily) once the Senate vote was taken. Within minutes, they and their international allies quickly capitalized on the vote, sending out press releases claiming that Berkeley (the university, not just 16 student Senators) was now squarely in the divestment camp and explaining that other campuses should follow suit and condemn Israel as an Apartheid state (is that what Senators voted on, by the way?).

But it’s not entirely clear to me why SJP’s needs must take precedent over the other 35,000+ student on campus, simply because their one skill is the ability to morally blackmail people who (like the student Senators and I would guess nearly all students on campus) actually possess the concern for human rights that SJP simply feigns for their own political gain.

"And photos of bleeding corpses (victims of last year’s Gaza conflict or Palestinian terrorism)"

well there, it seems to me the overwhelming casualties were civilians in Gaza so your " Palestinian terrorism" is really nothing more than a skunk label to assign them from the side that had all the heavy weapons.

And began the attack

And continues a siege.

You individuals need a whole sea of perfume for your pig.

Well it looks like the divestment crew is rolling out their "big guns." Yes, Noami Klein (she of Shlock Doctrine fame) has written the Berkeley Student Senators urging them to be courageous against the "intense pressure" that have been put on them by outsiders.

And by "intense pressure," she's not talking abou the moral blackmail that Berkeley's Students for Justice in Palestine have been applying to the school for a decade, or the 50 e-mails an hour Student Senators have been receiving from the Middle East telling student leaders to vote to override the currently vetoed divestment resolution.

Nope, by pressure she seems to be talking about the fact that people like me write things like this about her and her BDS advocacy at Berkeley. Usually those of us who fight against BDS are simply accused of "muzzling" debate through our nefarious tactic of contributing to it. But now it seems that other people having their say is also an example of unfair pressure being applied by one side. Care to guess what Klein and her allies will think about the democratic bona fides of Berkeley's student government if the ultimate divestment decision doesn't go her way?

is that like being caught in a position where there is no excuse?

like in red handed participation in mass murder?

Its a big oil financed scam intended to influence future American voters. Just another typical Arab con job.

Full of crap.

'Arabs' have no control over anything including their "big oil" as the Trilateral Commission holds all shipping interests.

We see who dominates policy. And controls our nation from Israel.

We don't see any 'Arabs' in authority like the heavy Israeli influence of AIPAC

Or wars stated for the benefit of 'Arabs'.

Can't say that for Israel, that's for sure.

You think all the oil giants of the middle east have less power than a tiny strip of desert the size of New Jersey?

You really think that?

again with the stupidity; if you can't show an 'Arab' presence in the operation of American government, like the overwhelming numbers of Israeli dual citizens in critical political positions, then this is mere noise.

The Vatican is also small but in its day, it ran world politics.

A mental cripple who has squatted here for at least 7 years and posts absolutely anything knows all about injecting noise and confusion.

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/10/89476_comment.php#89511

when Yada, the spook from Is real, loses another point which it can't dispute, it always starts smearing sh*t on itself to hide, thinking this will fool anyone.

Bad camo...from zionist psychopaths; the stink gives away their positions.

Keep talking, squatter. The Palestinians depend on you,

No, wait!

http://la.indymedia.org/news/hidden.php?id=234994

It's a COINTELPRO infiltrator.

Nobody could be so breathtakingly stupid past the point of satire and stereotype, not even a reject from a mental institution. There's no conceivable way that a shit for brains, that has lived here in this left wing roach motel for at least 7 years, wouldn't know that the Guardian is as much an absolutely essential nutrient to the diet of a liberal as terrorist semen is.

please refer to this post:

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2010/04/236727_comment.php#236776

thank you

if you can't show an 'Arab' presence in the operation of American government,.....

Thats not the proof- the proof is the millions of dollars the Saudis and friends have circulating in America- the Sultan grants in Universities, the lobbyists, more...

Strong rumor that the State Department is in Big Oil's pocket.

'Arabs' don't sit in power a all levels of American Government like the spider of zionism.

The Rockefellers own Saudi Arabia ask them about 'big oil' and the

Trilateral Cartel.

Totally lame, squatter.

Does anyone in the gay bar you squat in even know you exist? Do they roll their eyes at your 1st Grade level attempts at witticisms?

But no matter. Even as a complete waste of skin you help us in marginalizing the left.

Thanks.

Yada can't ever dispute anything.

Like the fact that Yada works for the 'Is Really' 'intelligence' propaganda agency.

Up early, heh heh....

The Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine (Students for "Just us" in Palestine") are a mysteriously well financed group of Muslim thugs that have pulled all kinds of stuff including physically assaulting Jewish female students, having professors pressure their students and cynically manipulating thestudent govenment process through intimidation. They are Muslim Brown Shirts

previous comment:

more unfounded opinions from our psychopathic zionazi peanut gallery.

the only thugs around here are zionazis; isn't that right, Yada?

There's no sane way to "debate" a mentally crippled squatter, whose against the Palestinians it claims to be for, who cries like a retarded baby when whoever runs this dung factory doesn't give it succor.

Grinding it's face into the semen crusted pavement is all it gets.

I see a great deal of squawling but I still don't see Yada able to do anything but jack off about each point I have made. Dispute? It can't, it hasn't it wont.

Bouncing off the rubber walls, yes, but countering, no.

Scroll up.

Thanks for your useless contribution,

shit

for

brains.

It helps my cause.

(Really, is there ever going to be someone to come to your defense? I'm amazed at how I constantly grind you under my heel and nobody ever says a word. Does anyone like you in the least, asswipe?)

I'd say the real estate in the hidden zone you occupy, is a fair example of how the readership feels...

you're the one on a psychopathic twig, not me.

No one else will deal with you as you squirt all over the place, never hitting the mark.

It's dirty duty dealing with psychopathic shit pigs from Is real.

You're getting upset,

shit

for

brains.

Drink a Colt 45 and calm down. Or I'll bitchslap you again.

calling a spade a spade, Yada, in your own vocabulary.

Scroll up and see for yourself. Ya big sensitive baby...

Just like the IDF !! Hey, that's so on topic!

Big babies with egos in need of diapers. And American economic and military and political aid.

like to see you waste another division of tanks against a moderately armed resistance...

oh that's right, you have a disarmed population inside walls to attack ... such 'heros' chuckle

The mental cripple just wants attention, just as our resident

shit

for

brains does. If it really wanted to atone, it'd blow it's brains out in a public place.

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2010/04/i_am_a_racist.php

I am a racist



Posted on: April 7, 2010 1:31 PM, by Mark C. Chu-Carroll



Unfortunately, I lost the link that inspired this. But I recently saw a post by a conservative about "reclaiming" the word racist. It went on to list a collection of reasons why he was a racist. The gist of it was that all of us dirty liberals were the real racists - because there's no possible reason for us to support things like affirmative action, welfare, etc., unless we really, deep down, believe that minorities - particularly blacks - are stupid animals incapable of taking care of themselves.

It's typical bullshit. So I'm responding in my own way. Because, you see, I am a racist. I'm not proud of that fact - but growing up in a deeply racist and sexist culture, you can't avoid absorbing racist and sexist messages and attitudes into your worldview. And the blogger who inspired this is, like me, a member of the privileged elite. The difference between us is that I at least try to notice the effects of my privilege. I don't support social justice programs like affirmative action, welfare, and job training because I think that poor black people need help because they're less smart than me: I think that people like me have unfair advantages that we rarely appreciate, and that everyone deserves the same advantages that I've been lucky enough to receive. But however idealistic I am, however commited I am to social justice, the fact remains: I am, to my shame, a racist.

1. I am a racist - because I never noticed all of the unearned privileges that are given to me until someone pointed them out.

2. I am a racist - because even after learning about the unearned privileges that I recieve, I still don't notice them.

3. I am a racist, because I have grown up in a culture that, at every turn, teaches me that to be white is to be better, and smarter, and I have absorbed that lesson.

4. I am a racist, because I instinctively react to members of minorities with fear.

5. I am a racist, because I live in a sunset town.

6. I am a racist, because I believe that I deserve the success I have, even though I know people who are more smart, capable, and talented than I am never had the chances that I did to be successful, because of the color of their skin.

7. I am a racist - because I am a white man who has directly benefited from the unfair preferences that have been directed towards me all of my life.

8. I am a racist - because every day, I benefit from the denial of basic privileges to other people.

9. I am a racist, because I do not notice the things that are denied to people who are different from me.

10. I am a racist, because I do not notice the advantages that I have over others.

11. I am a racist, because even when I do manage to notice what is denied to people of different races and backgrounds, I don't speak up.

The point of this isn't just to do a sort of "walk of shame". The point is that I am an incredibly lucky person, who has benefited from all sorts of things - from where I was born, to the color of my skin, to the background of my parents, to my gender. I have recieved, and continue to receive benefits because of those, and many other factors that have nothing to do with my own merit. And except for very rare occasions, that goes unremarked, unnoticed.

People like me think of ourselves as the default - as "normal" people. We consider the incredible advantages that we receive to be normal, unremarkable. We don't notice just how much we benefit from that assumption of our own normality - the benefits we receive fade into invisibility. We don't even notice that they exist. And then when someone who doesn't get those benefits has trouble, we naturally blame them for not being as successful as we are.

The underlying theme of people like the jerk who inspired this post is: "I made it by myself, without any help. So they should be able to make it by themselves, without any help either."

But that's bullshit, because none of us "made it by ourselves". We're the beneficiaries of the system we live in.

I grew up in a wealthy town in NJ. We didn't consider ourselves wealthy - but by comparison to lots of other people, we really were. I went to a very good school system. We complained about it a lot: the textbooks were too old; the equipment in the science labs were too beaten up; the classes were too easy, and so on.

When I was in college, I got to teach a summer program for top students from schools in Newark, Camden, and Jersey City. And I discovered that my students went to schools where they didn't have to worry about their books being too old - because they didn't have any books. I mean that literally: in their english classes, they didn't have books, because their schools had never been able to buy new books since it opened - and the books had long since fallen apart. They didn't complain about the lousy lab equipment - because their schools had never had science labs at all. How could people coming from schools like that possibly hope to compete with students from a school like mine? I didn't admitted to college over people from their schools because I was smarter. I got admitted into college over people from their schools because I was richer and whiter.

And when my students went to the campus bookstore to buy basic supplies like paper and pencils, the people who worked there followed them around the store - because what would a bunch of poor black kids be doing in a bookstore if they weren't there to rob it?

I write this math blog for fun. How did I get the background to do it? I come from a highly educated family. They taught me to read before I even started preschool. I'd learned about statistics from my father when I was in third grade. I learned about algebra in sixth grade, even though my school didn't teach it until 8th or 9th. I learned calculus in my freshman year in high school - even though my school didn't teach it until a senior year AP class. I was learning this stuff long before the school taught it to me; and my parents made sure that they bought a house in a very expensive school district where there would be things like AP classes. My parents paid for me to go to college - which gave me the time to take courses not just because I needed them to graduate, but because they covered things that I wanted to learn, just for fun.

How could a person from a family that just managed to scrape by, who lived in a school system that couldn't afford textbooks for the basic classes, much less the AP classes, how could they compete with me? It's damned close to impossible. Not because they're any less smart, or any less talented. But because I've had an absolutely uncountable number of advantages. Every day of my life, I've been given benefits which helped make it possible for me to become who and what I am. I'm here partially because I've worked damned hard to get here. But that work, by itself, wouldn't have gotten me to where I am, without luck and privilege.

People like me need to remember that. We didn't earn what we have all by ourselves. We may have earned part of it - but only part. An awful lot of what we have is built on privilege: on the advantages that we've been given because of race, gender, wealth, and family.

and without the race card, they would be just miserable killers looking for a dark corner to hide in.

Once again you have proven that you offer nothing of value to the indymedia. You're just a squatter, an aimless alcoholic who wandered in and noticed a telephone and decided to talk and talk and talk and never say anything of value.

Noise and confusion is the whole point, G-Man, so hurry back.

Yada hasn't been able to do anything but squirt all over this thread like a skunk without being able to debunk any of the post it 'responds' to.

scroll up and see for yourself; right, Yada?

Yes, of course,

shit

for

brains.

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2010/04/236649_comment.php#236858

this isn't about me, ya twit, it's about the problem Is Real is having trying to cover over the horror they periodically inflict upon their neighbors and the former residents.

And let me tell ya, you're doing such a great job here showing your warm fuzzy side of the awful misery, it makes me feel truly humbled by the amount of PR you, Yada, are able to produce; to show everyone exactly why Is Real and their produce is finding itself into discount shelves; waiting. At least in every grocery store I go to...

I asked for some Kosher salt the other day and got a funny look until I said " you know, the coarse grain stuff" and they visibly relaxed.

You individuals are doing well to stoke Jew hatred with the constant welding of zionism to a religious faith.

I merely point out the psychopathic influence of creatures like yourself.

Reality is breaking forth despite your agency and its poison.

what are you going to do when *your* paycheck stops?

find a job? ha ha ha....

Keep babbling, shitferbrains. The indymedia needs you, as evidenced by how the management here treats such a demanding little fucktard superstar.

*snort*

http://la.indymedia.org/news/hidden.php?id=233758

"The editorial staff should hide

I wonder why the editors are not acknowledging the report button

Why the report buttons are ignored after hundreds of posts?

I want the staff to respond

Why are the report buttons on these repeated entries... ignored? Still waiting to have some kind of response from this collective."

nothing can sugar over the kind of creatures that represent the rat Is Really state; particularly the psychopaths their propaganda agency uses to further their 'cause'.

Yada doesn't understand, after all these years that its kind are recognized as dangerous and psychopathic even if it thinks this is perfectly normal.

Patting their best foot forward here... heh heh heh

to help Is Real's public image....