The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism
Newsletter
Volume 1 No. 27
28 September 2007

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

The UK based University and College Union (UCU) has declared today, that “a call to boycott Israeli institutions would run a serious risk of infringing discrimination legislation”… and “is also considered to be outside the aims and objects of the UCU”, the UCU’s strategy and finance committee recommended unanimously today, to immediately inform branches and members that:

A boycott call would be unlawful and cannot be implemented
UCU members' opinions cannot be tested at local meetings
The proposed regional tour cannot go ahead under current arrangements and is therefore suspended.

Ofir Frankel, Executive Director of the International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom (IAB), welcomed UCU’s decision and said that “the UCU has realized at last that an academic boycott is not a legitimate means of political protest”.

The IAB believes, as Dr. Sari Nusseibah, President of Al-Quds University, stated at IAB’s first conference, “that an international academic boycott of Israel, on pro-Palestinian grounds, is self- defeating as it would only succeed in weakening that strategically important bridge through which the state of war between Israelis and Palestinians could be ended, and Palestinian rights could there for be restored.”

“Although we congratulate this decision, we have much work ahead of us”, said Frankel. “We plan to significantly expand the scientific cooperation between the two countries; and between the UCU and their Israeli and Palestinian counterparts, in order to harness cooperation and engagement as academicians were always the vanguard of change and bringing about of peace.”

index.cfm?articleid=2829

Britain's UCU decides not to boycott Israel
(Ynet) University and College Union announces that after seeking legal advice, it has come to conclusion that academic boycott of Israel would be unlawful and could not be implemented.
Click here to read

Academic boycott campaign is finally defeated - morally, politically, legally
(Engage) The campaign for an academic boycott of Israel has ended today in an absolute and final political, legal and moral defeat.
Click here to read

SPECIAL LECTURE
NEXT YIISA SEMINAR: PROF. ALAN DERSHOWITZ
On Oct. 11, Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, will speak on “Antisemitic Hate Speech: Incitement to Violence in the Absence of a Marketplace of Ideas.” Yale Law School, Levinson Auditorium, 7 p.m.

VIDEO CLIPS & MULTIMEDIA

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Addresses U.N. General Assembly
Click here, click “25 Sept.” and scroll down to IRAN

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, In His Own Words
(MEMRI) Ahmadinejad says that zionists cause turmoil in the world to prevent Europeans from eradicating them.
Click here to watch

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Nuclear Threats
(MEMRI) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, engaged in genocidal speech.
Click here to watch

Iran's Ahmadinejad on Holocaust
(MEMRI) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is asked by MSNBC anchor Brian Williams to clarify his statements about the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust and draws on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to demonstrate
his world view.
Click here to watch

A Hamas TV Music Video in Hebrew Sings: "In Black Bags, Chunks of Flesh of Jews"
(MEMRI) Hamas, which has a majoratan Dvirity in the Palestinian Authority's parliament, broadcast a music video on its Al Aqsa TV channel that showed terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens, accompanied by the lyrics, "In black bags, chunks of flesh of Jews."
Click here to watch

Shelter: Sudanese Refugees in Israel
(YNet) Photographer Natan Dvir depicts the lives and experiences of Sudanese refugees in Israel through a series of engaging photographs.
Click here to view

BOOK REVIEW
Jews and Power by Ruth R. Wisse
(Commentary) Bret Stephens writes about Wisse’s book: “This recurring tendency of Jews, both as individuals and as communities, to pay greater attention to their own moral performance than to the necessities of survival—a tendency Wisse characterizes as 'moral solipsism'—is what animates her fascinating, subtle, and immensely learned study. Why, historically, did Jews feel such ambivalence about the acquisition and exercise of political power when they did not have it and were defenseless in the face of their oppressors? And why does that ambivalence persist today, when they do have political power and the measure of safety such power affords?”
Click here to read

YIISA IN THE NEWS

Director of Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Yale University, Initiates Call to Action
(Yahoo News) September 25, 2007 -- Dr. Charles Small, Director of the Yale University Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), has issued a statement advocating the arrest of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the occasion of Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University.
Click here to read

Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia draws reaction in Conn.
(WTNH, New Haven) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University is drawing reaction and criticism from people in Connecticut. Yale professor, Charles Asher Small, believes Ahmadinejad should be punished for violating international laws.
Click here to read

ARTICLES OF INTEREST

MIDDLE EAST

Ahmadinejad unveils world without Israel
(Jerusalem Post) Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used his speech to the United Nations General Assembly to unveil a vision of a world without Israel, in which America and Europe would be freed of what he said was Zionist oppression. Culminating a concerted assault on what he described as the injustices and oppressions practiced by the "big powers" since World War II, he said that the ungodly era of lewdness and violence was coming to a close and that "the age of monotheism has commenced."
Click here to read

Iran’s Media Assail President’s Treatment
(NY Times) Iranian state television on Tuesday sharply criticized the way President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been treated during his Columbia University talk and asserted that he had triumphed over his adversarial hosts, whom it described as Zionist Jews.
Click here to read

Goldwasser takes Iranian leader to task
(Jerusalem Post) The wife of one of the IDF soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah last summer infiltrated a UN press conference with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday to demand information on her husband. "Why are you not allowing the Red Cross to visit them?" Karnit Goldwasser asked of her husband Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who was kidnapped with him.
Click here to read

What Israel Really Gained by Bombing Syria
(New Republic) On one level the Israeli raid simply reflected an effort to blunt North Korean-Syrian nuclear development before it could allow the Syrians to develop a nuclear capability. But that is only part of the story. The Israeli security establishment has become increasingly concerned about significant Syrian weapons acquisitions, forward deployment of forces, training exercises, and directives about a possible war.
Click here to read

Israelis seized nuclear material in Syrian raid
(Times) Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month. The attack was launched with American approval after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related.
Click here to read

Secret US air force team to perfect plan for Iran strike
(Times) The United States Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions rise with Iran. Project Checkmate, a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War’s air campaign, was quietly reestablished at the Pentagon in June.
Click here to read

Hizbullah Has Set up Terror Cells to Respond to Any Attack on Iran
(MEMRI Blog) Arab and foreign security sources said that Hizbullah has completed the establishment of terror cells in countries bordering on Israel and Iraq, including Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE.
Click here to read

Hizbullah boycott halts election of Lebanon president
(Guardian) The Lebanese parliament postponed a crucial session to elect a new president after pro-Syria politicians boycotted the event. The postponement had been expected after the opposition party, Hizbullah, vowed to boycott the session to block the west-leaning government from electing a president from its own ranks.
Click here to read

Iranian student to Ynet: We do have gay people
(YNet) A day after his controversial appearance at Columbia University, in which he declared that homosexuality did not exist in Iran, Tehran resident says, 'They exist, but have to hide.' Also, Iranian opposition newspapers were critical of the Iranian President's last two visits to the United States. They accused Ahmadinejad's latest visit of being meaningless and criticized him of spewing nationalistic rhetoric and behaving in a vulgar manner that does not benefit Iran.
Click here to read

The Faith Divide: On Muslim Antisemitism
(Washington Post) Eboo Patel writes, “Muslim antisemitism exists and it is ugly and it is vile. I have heard it from the minbars of mosques, and I have heard it from the mouths of Muslim teenagers. I believe it is a violation of the ethos of Islam and of what it means to be fully human. There is never justification for transforming an entire people into an object of ridicule and hate.”
Click here to read

Gaza: Christian-Muslim tensions heat up
(Jerusalem Post) An attack on an 80-year-old Christian woman in Gaza City has triggered renewed fears among the Gaza Strip's 2,500-strong Christian community. Claire Farah Tarazi was the latest victim of anti-Christian attacks that have increased in the Gaza Strip since Hamas took full control of the area in June. Leaders of the Christian community condemned the assault and appealed to Hamas to make an effort to protect Christians.
Click here to read

Exclusive: Ynet reporter at last synagogue in Damascus
(YNet) Ynet reporter and commentator Ron Ben-Yishai continues his journey in Syria, and writes a feature about attending Yom Kippur service at 'the last synagogue in Damascus.'
Click here to read

NORTH AMERICA

As protesters jeer, Ahmadinejad denies Iran wants nuclear weapons
(Guardian) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, told Americans yesterday his country had no nuclear weapons programme.. The claim came in the midst of a bad-tempered occasion at Columbia University, where the Iranian leader had been invited to speak but was denounced before he began as a "petty and cruel dictator" by the university president.
Click here to read

Iran Leader Denied Bid to Visit Ground Zero
(NY Times) A remark by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly that the Police Department was considering a request by Iran that its president visit ground zero set off complaints yesterday before the department corrected itself. Mr. Browne said the request was rejected because the Iranians wanted Mr. Ahmadinejad to visit the area of ground zero where construction is under way, but he said that any additional request that he appear near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack would also be denied out of concerns about security.
Click here to read

Peres: Ahmadinejad at Columbia like talks with Hitler before WWII
(Haaretz) President Shimon Peres criticized Columbia University for hosting Iran's president, comparing the event to attempts to engage Adolf Hitler in dialogue before World War Two. Ahmadinejad has come under international criticism for saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map" and has questioned whether the Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews actually took place.
Click here to read

Anti-Semitic Graffiti Found on Brooklyn Synagogues
(NY1 News) The police are investigating a hate crime after anti-Semitic graffiti was found sprawled throughout Brooklyn. Police say a search on Tuesday turned up dozens of new anti-Semitic markings on buildings, cars, and sidewalks.
Click here to read

Laurentian residents vent anger with Hasidim
(Montreal Gazette) In the 1st century AD, St. Jerome translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin and pulled a thorn from the paw of a lion. Two millennia later, a traveling commission on "reasonable accommodation" of religious minorities in Quebec made a stop yesterday in the Laurentian town named after him and tried to interpret the outcry of French Canadians over a new thorn in their side: Jews. Ultra-orthodox Jews, more precisely - the Hasidim.
Click here to read

EUROPE

Merkel Says Further Sanctions May Be Needed Against Iran
(Bloomberg) Chancellor Angela Merkel said she backs further sanctions against Iran should the Islamic Republic refuse to stop its nuclear program and renewed her push for a permanent German seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Click here to read

Jewish group urges governments to combat anti-Semitism across Europe
(European Jewish Press) A Jewish group called on the member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to meet their obligations to combat anti-Semitism and hate crime. In a statement, it also called on the governments to partner with Jewish communities and other civil society representatives in crafting and implementing policies.
Click here to read

EU to give e15 million to college run by allegedly anti-Semitic priest
(Haaretz) The European Union has decided to give 15 million euros to a Polish college headed by controversial Catholic priest Tadeusz Rydzyk, who is accused regularly of disseminating anti-Semitism. Holocaust survivor organizations have launched a campaign to block the move. Noah Flug, chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, has asked EU Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso to prevent the transfer of funds to the institution.
Click here to read

Anti-Semitic attack at golf club
(Herald Sun) Jewish golfers are outraged at vandals who carved a large swastika and “KKK” into the green of a historic Jewish golf club in Australia. The anti-Semitic attack destroyed parts of the Cranbourne Golf Club's fourth green on September 12, the first night of the Jewish New Year.
Click here to read

Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism | ISPS | yiisa.program@yale.edu