Thursday, April 30, 2009

UCSB PROF calls Israelis Nazis in e-mail to students - Your tax-dollars at work!‏

http://www.commserv.ucsb.edu/directories/departments/default.htm

Aggie

UC Santa Barbara professor Spams Class with graphic “Jews Are Nazis” Email

Via Brad Greenberg, a typical example of the vicious rhetorical moves that would never be tolerated towards anyone but Jews. Can you imagine a professor accusing a black politician of "politically lynching" an opponent? Let alone sending an email about it to his enrolled students, which by the by is a violation of any number of "hostile environment" harassment policies:I just received an e-mail, which included a link to the video seen after the jump, forwarding an e-mail from William I. Robinson, a USCB sociology professor. The contents of that e-mail, which Robinson reportedly sent to students on Martin Luther King Day and ran under the heading "Parallel images of Nazis and Israelis," included 42 side-by-side photos...

"I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but that which shows Israeli children writing "with love" on a bomb that will tear apart Palestinian children. Gaza is Israel's Warsaw - a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide (Websters: "the systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group"), a process whose objective is not so much to physically eliminate each and every Palestinian than to eliminate the Palestinians as a people in any meaningful sense of the notion of people-hood."

I like how he included the smear about Israeli children writing love notes on missiles, even though that incident (a) was staged by photojournalists and (b) happened during Lebanon II and has absolutely nothing to do with "Palestinian children." You can also pick apart the rest of the email - mass starvation is the opposite of true, the genocide is so "slow-motion" that the Palestinian population is skyrocketing, etc.

But why bother? He's got tenure. So blatant lying and anti-Jewish tropes - that's the very definition of academic freedom. Besides, "Jews are Nazis" is exactly the line toed by the State Department's flagship Arab public diplomacy outlet. So what's the big deal?

Anyway, here's a narration of the email, courtesy of one of the students victimized by his textbook harassment:

No word on when the Democratic left will rush to defend him. But it's gotta be pretty soon right?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Left will arrive momentarily to defend this anti-Semite--they always do. Just another reminder of the true feelings of the Left towards Jews.

Unknown said...

Dear Educators Alba and Olmos:

I congratulate you on your straight-forward email documenting the
events of the meeting. Your bias does show through by your directing
people to the website of the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom.
yet not to the ADL.

The issue at hand is not about Professor Robinson nor about the ADL.
Nor is the issue about Academic Freedom. It is of a much "higher"
nature. Something called "Professional Integrity".

The students of any institution of higher learning are entitled to much
better than Professor Robinson offers. Education is like Journalism. A
responsible educator should go to great lengths to remain unbiased in
all issues and to present the students with thought-provoking and
learning experiences. Unfortunately, like the state of Journalism in
the United States... we are being told what to believe and how to think.

It is the role of education to teach people to think. Present the facts,
all the facts, then teach people to think. Educators have no right to
impose their personal beliefs. This is, in fact, what all fascist governments
do...and Hitler was no exception.

In this specific case, Professor Robinson has an obligation to educate
his class, not indoctrinate them in his personal beliefs. It would
be very proper for him to show the pictures, and then present the class
with the question: In what ways does resemble Nazi Germany, and in what
ways is it different. Robinson's personal views are not relevant, but I
would die to protect his right to them and his right of free speech outside
the classroom. He has demonstrated a serious lack of professional
integrity.

Providing his views "masked" as education violates the very precepts of
education and the role of the educator and degrades the institution
that allows it.

Let me point out the moral issue that is really at stake by comparison to
to events. Two men from cover (one in the trunk of a car) killed people
in Washington DC a few years ago. Recently three Navy Seals from
cover killed three Somali pirates. The acts were virtually identical. Killing
people from a hidden position. The circumstances make one a necessary
and correct act; the other a heinous crime. The Nazis were annihilating the
Jewish (and others) population from a position of power. The Israelis are
reacting to acts of aggression.

Robinson seems to ignore any discussion as to Israel's right to exist and
that their "aggressions" have been against a relentless 60-year assault
on their existence. Nor does Robinson discuss the social issues when
the Palestinians and Hamas fighters take refuge in schools and homes so
that civilian casualties will be high. Nor does he seem to want to discuss
that the Israelis do not put people in gas chambers and use human flesh for
lampshades... and other "human" experiments. Possibly he should spend more
time in history classes and less time doing whatever he does.

Richard Knudson