Evangelism of Hate at Wits University

A newspaper called the Palestine Times caught my eye at Wits University the other day. It’s a wretched newspaper published in London, and students are seemingly distributing it at Wits University. I can’t claim any expertise on the legalities of distributing material like this on university campuses, but having examined 3 issues, there are certainly no stamps permitting the distribution.

It’s not actually the right to distribute the papers on campus that I wish to examine. It’s the content of this newspaper and what it says about the pro-Palestinian crowd at the university that worries me. At a time when student leaders could be conditioning their groups for the concessions that need to be made at Annapolis, it’s rather sad to see a publication of this standard being dished around.

I have since grabbed three different editions.

The content of the publication is sour, hateful and overwhelmingly childish. Really, really childish. The contributors can’t even bring themselves to mention the IDF by its proper name, instead resorting to chants like “Israeli Occupation Army” or the “trigger-happy Nazi Gestapo.” Zionism is “Zio-Nazism” and the settlers are “Judeo-Nazi settlers.” How very prekindergarten.

The allegation that Israel is a Nazi state is a constant theme in the issues I perused. One article entitled “More on the Israeli-Nazi analogy,” challenged the “Zionists and their supporters and apologists to prove that Israel doesn’t harbour a final solution for the Palestinians.” The author then claims that Israeli leaders openly admit that they wish to see all of the Palestinians dead.

Is this what naïve students should be reading on campus? That Israel is planning to do as the Nazis did and attempt to wipe out an entire people! What will these students then think about Jewish students who support Israel?

The publication is littered with ghoulish lies supporting the Nazi vituperation. Here’s an example

“The Nazis imprinted serial numbers on the forearms of Jewish internees, and the Israelis have done the same to the Palestinians.”

Really? You can't respond to that. It's like someone recently said in the comments of this blog -that in the battle for public opinion it is difficult to fight lies with truth because truth is limited but falsehood can be accommodated to match any argument.

Moving on...it’s not just Israelis or Zionists that are caricatured as Nazis.

“I saw face to face the obscene sadistic acts practiced by Jews against their helpless victims. These are not isolated behaviours. This is the norm, not the exception.”

Another article attacks Ashkenazi (European) Jewry.

“Today Israel and the US want Palestinians to lower the ceiling of their expectations. And for those who don’t know, this is a euphemism for surrender and capitulation to Ashkenazi Nazism.”

The Nazi libel goes on and on and on.

“The Nazi like occupation of Palestine by Israel is not the act of a few Israeli Jews. It is not even the act of a military establishment alone. It is the collective act of a morally desensitised society that has nearly lost its humanity and succumbed to a collective psychosis that is not unlike the moral blindness that struck the German people more than 60 years ago."

The publication weaves a tapestry whose every thread is designed to prolong the conflict, igniting the fierce anger of young energised students. The editor leads the way writing that the Palestinians should never recognise Israel’s right to exist. “Israel is an enduring crime against humanity,” he writes, “just as Nazi Germany was a crime against humanity.”

Is it reasonable to compare Jews to Nazis? I recently reviewed a UN report by the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism. The report, adopted by the UN in August this year, is entitled “Racism, Racial discrimination and related forms of intolerance: follow-up to and implementation of the Durban declaration and programme of action.” The report will get an blog entry of its own, but briefly, let’s take a look at what the report says about anti-Semitism.

There is a crucial need to identify when anti-Zionism is tainted by anti-Semitism. Experts’ analysis point to the following cases of such superimposition: (a) When language, images and character traits attributed to Israel are imbued with recognizable anti-Semitic stereotypes; (b) When Israelis and Jews are represented as cosmic devils, blamed for global disasters and compared with Nazis; - check (c) When Israelis and Jews who support the State of Israel are singled out, attacked, and treated in a manner that is out of proportion to the issue at hand and in comparison with the actions of other countries; - check (d) When the legitimate right of Israel as a Jewish State to exist is questioned. - check

Hmm…if it walks like a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, then...it’s a duck. I’m not saying it, the UN report, adopted by the General Assembly, is saying it.

And so I ask you, should this incitement be allowed on a university campus? My bet is that it’s not allowed, hence the absence of a stamp permitting its distribution. But I don’t think we can expect anything to be done and sadly, I don’t think we have anything to gain in complaining to the university chancellor. So no, I can't be bothered to even look up the chancellor's email address. The predictable response would be accusations that we are trying to control the debate by stifling freedom of expression. Ho hum.

I just hope that the local distributors at Wits end up sending the reverse signal. I hope that they have overplayed their hand and that this evangelism of hate ends up exposing them for what they really are.

Interestingly, one of the recent issues sports an article by our very own voice of Palestine, Mr Iqbal Jassat, from the South African Media Review Network.

Comments

[TC]

I think that there should be rules against the distribution of hate literature and malicious misinformation, especially if it incites violence. I haven't seen the papers, but I took a look at their webpage, and it is full of lies and advocates violence.

Check their advocation of violence in an article on armed struggle titled "The Only Way", and recall that the armed struggle it supports deliberately targets innocent civilians. And note when reading the second paragraph that Kadima removed all the settlements in Gaza.

Would the university distribute flyers for the KKK? What if the flyers did not oppose all black people, but only the "Nazi" African-Americans and "Nazi" American Catholics, and You Know Who? Maybe a few lynchings is "the only way" to liberate the Confederacy? What about a screening of Griffith's "Birth of a Nation"?

I wonder whether Steve is correct that there is nothing to be gained in complaining. It's virtuous for people to stand up against hate, even if this does not have a positive effect on others. But, as Steve points out, in this case complaining may have negative consequences.

Might these consequences be outweighed by the negative consequences of allowing this hatred to be distributed?

[Brett]

Steve, don't become a hardened cynic like me. If you have the ability to complain do so, if nothing comes of it you have lost nothing.

[Gary]

The propaganda of the world today. Israeli Jews are Nazis so killing Israeli Jews is actually killing Nazis, so it's ok.
The first holocaust being used to justify a second holocaust.
Orwellian indeed.

[Steve]

Ok let me explain,

I probably overemphasised the bit on the predictable response. It is the predictable response but that should not deter us from acting on issues we believe in. I agree with that sentiment.

What do I have to lose? Well, its simple, time.

I dont have the time to follow up. A follow up would involve alot of work. Simply emailing complaints would achieve very little.

I don't think this is an issue for two guys with a blog and full time jobs.

I think the best response is just publicising what they are distributing. Wouldnt it be great if Peter Fabricious or Stephen Mulholland saw this and did a write up in the press? Perhaps I should send them the editions I have.

[Mike]

I totally agree with Steve. I think an offcial response is needed. This is for the SAJBD or SAUJS to handle. Not us. We can merely give publicity to the issue.

I actually do think we have a lot to lose. By complaining all the time we look as if we are trying to stiffle free speech. 'The lobby' at work again.

[Steve]

Ya,
So this isn't a "make them stop!" post, it's a "look at what they are doing and reading and judge them by that" post.

{Insert predictable response about who are the "they" that you speak of? This "other" that is so foreign to you etc etc ho hum etc}

[Cnaan]

"truth is limited but falsehood can be accommodated to match any argument." Quite brilliant.

[Brett]

Firstly, Thank you Cnaan

Secondly, Mike and Steve I agree wholeheartedly with your last few posts and when I said 'what do you have to lose' I in no way meant to belittle the value of your time.

What is important though is that I feel that this case is a litmus test. This is pure hate speech with demonstrable lies, if Wits' and even South Africa's freedom of speech policy is worth anything (and I don't believe that it is, but as I said I'm a cynic) then a case so clear as this should require nothing more than a single reporting to illicit a sharp response. A lack of response can only be interpreted as one of two things. Either absolute apathy towards any hate speech on campus or acceptance of hate speech against Jews. Differentiating would be easy - disseminate similar hate speech against them. But apart sinking to their level we cannot do this because cousin Ishmael would not be as peaceful in accepting this kind of abuse and will undoubtedly engage in a violent response.

This is the very nature of our enemy.

[Gary]

The problem is that taking them to the university or any commission or watchdog body in SA, cannot and would not work. As we saw with the ruling by the Human Rights Commission, that Ronnie Kasril's feverish and venomous ravings against Israel and Israelis, did not constitute hate speech, in SA, there is nothing you are not allowed to say about Jews who live in Israel.

Other people are protected from hate speech, but Israeli Jews are not.
The same rules do not apply.

[Gary]

By the way, here are some REAL parralels with the holocaust and Nazism.
It is really sick and evil to label the Israeli people (many of them descendants of holocaust suvivors), who are struggling to survive, as Nazis.
I don't think there is much that one can do or say more evil than this Satanic leftist-Islamist Axis are doing.

[Gary]

Oh, I didn't post the site
http://library.thinkquest.org/12663/summary/genocide.html

[SnoopyTheGoon]

"I hope that they have overplayed their hand and that this evangelism of hate ends up exposing them for what they really are."

I am afraid, Steve, that this hope is unfounded. As long as there is fertile ground for antisemitic ravings, there will be people who love just this kind of simple and, unfortunately, effective, propaganda.

[Kate]

Whenever anybody tells me that antisemitism and anti-Jewish behavior no longer exists, I can point to this post with confidence. Thank you for this.

K.

[Catch-22]

SAUJS took the issue of the Palestine Times to the University Forum. The publication was officially recognised as anti-Semitic. It is banned on campus, yet continues to be illegally distributed. When will the Wits administration stop playing favorites and hold the PSC accountable for its actions?

[JAMES SASSE]

WEB SITE; GODWHOISGOD.COM IS A GOSPEL TRACT IN HEBREW, ARABIC AND MORE LANGUAGES FOR EVANGELISM TO MUSLIMS, HINDUS AND SIKHS FOR JESUS CHRIST. THANKYOU. JAMES AND HAMSA.