‘Israel Lobby’ Threatening Free Speech at Berkeley?

Hatem Bazian

Hatem Bazian

By :

The title of a recent panel discussion at the University of California, Berkeley was ominous: “SHHHH! Don’t Talk About Palestine: Chuck Hagel, Judith Butler, and the Israel Lobby’s Threat to Free Speech on Our Campus.” Taking place in Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley’s School of Law and sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine, the event drew what appeared to be sixty hardcore anti-Israel activists—most in their early twenties—eager to embrace the notion that UC Berkeley is under siege by “pro-Israel advocates seek[ing] to silence debate about Palestinian human rights and divestment from Israel’s occupation.”

Although the event was billed as a discussion about the (nonexistent) efforts by the “Israel Lobby” to delay the appointment of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense and its criticism of the political science department at Brooklyn College for co-sponsoring a recent talk on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) by UC Berkeley rhetoric professor and anti-Israel activist Judith Butler, neither subject arose. Instead, the panel engaged in paranoid fantasies about being “silenced,” which, given that this was a well-publicized event at a prestigious law school on a campus where the Palestinian narrative is constantly promoted both inside and outside the classroom, were patently and even hilariously false.

Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in the departments of Near Eastern and ethnic studies, was introduced as the main speaker, one the “500 most influential Muslims in the world,” and, in a false claim, the originator of the term “Islamophobia.” While the latter is untrue, Bazian does have the dubious distinction of directing UC Berkeley’s Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project.

Announcing that, “I come first to discuss this subject as a Palestinian and a Muslim,” Bazian launched into the usual accolades surrounding the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley during the 1960s. Far from being a free speech advocate facing censorship, Bazian is an activist who uses his academic position to advance an anti-Israel agenda. A promoter of the BDS movement and executive director of the Holy Land Foundation-linked American Muslims for Palestine, he is infamous for having called for an “Intifada in this country!” at a San Francisco anti-war rally in 2004.

Read more at Front Page

Contact information for the office of UC-Berkeley’s chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau:

Email: chancellor@berkeley.edu
Phone: 510-642-7464
Fax: 510-643-5499

Lee Kaplan is an investigative journalist and columnist who writes forIsracampus.org.il, Israel National News, and the Northeast Intelligence Network. He is a Fellow at the American Center for Democracy and the founder of DAFKA.org and StoptheISM.com. He wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

Islamic Apartheid Week

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Help the Freedom Center fight back by making a donation to fund placing this ad in 50 campus newspapers across the country.

Front Page:

[Editor's note: The graphic accompanying this article was designed by Frontpage's illustrator, Bosch Fawstin]

“Israel Apartheid Week” is a common blood libel on college campuses, hosted every year by hate groups such as the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine. These hate weeks are designed to de-legitimize Israel and soften it up for the kill, claiming that it is an apartheid state and should be isolated. The declared goal of Hamas and the PLO is to “liberate” Palestine “from the river to the sea” – in other words, to destroy the Jewish state and push its inhabitants into the sea.

The growing BDS movement on campus (BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, which are the steps the movement advocates taking against Israel for its purported policies of “apartheid”) is another element in the jihadist assault. The accusations of apartheid levied on Israel are not simply lies; the truth of the true apartheid and discrimination in the Middle East has been obscured. Israel is actually the only apartheid-free state in the Middle East. Countries such as Lebanon and Jordan do in fact have apartheid-style laws on their books, and Islamic supremacy can be seen all over the world with the subjugation of women, the persecution of gays, and the persecution of religious and racial minorities. Despite the fact that these atrocities are par for the course in countries ruled by Islamic law, the Left (and especially the Women’s Studies departments and LGBT groups) on campus has remained silent.

Until now, there has been no national campaign to expose the brutal discrimination that occurs under Islamic Sharia law. But this spring, the David Horowitz Freedom Center is sponsoring “Islamic Apartheid Weeks” on over 50 campuses. These weeks will elaborate on the many forms of Muslim apartheid that have been integral to the Middle East for over a millennium and can now be seen in other regions of the world such as Africa: religious intolerance, ethnic inequality, racism, gender discrimination, denial of citizenship, political oppression and slavery, among others.

The centerpiece of each week will be panel discussions and keynote speeches featuring former victims of Sharia law and Islamic supremacism, including dissidents such as Nonie Darwish and Simon Deng, and experts on political Islam, such as Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Andrew C. McCarthy. We will also be providing students with a full compliment of resources, such as pamphlets, flyers, and films highlighting the various human rights abuses sanctioned under Sharia law. Groups like Students for Justice in Palestine are in fact partially right: there is apartheid in the Middle East. It’s just that it’s being practiced by the Arab Muslim nations, and the David Horowitz Freedom Center is setting out to make that abundantly clear.

Islamic Apartheid Week events have already occurred or have been planned at these campuses so far:

Bellarmine University
Berea College
Bob Jones University
Brooklyn College
Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo
Liberty University
Michigan State
Missouri Western State University
Murray State University
Rutgers University
Stockton College
SUNY Courtland
Tufts
UC Irvine
UC San Diego
University of Missouri
University of San Diego
USC
Valdosta State University
Wesleyan University
Wisconsin – River Falls

Will the Real Anna Baltzer Please Rise?

Anna J. Piller, aka Anna Baltzer

Anna J. Piller, aka Anna Baltzer

By Lee Kaplan:

The individual known as Anna Baltzer, whose name remains questionable in terms of legal legitimacy, leads the US Campaign Against the Israeli Occupation and the Boycott and Divestment Movement (BDS) against Israel. Under that name, she has developed a sinecure traveling to churches and colleges worldwide regaling false tales of atrocities by Israel’s Jews against innocent Palestinians with slick presentations, somehow even grabbing a television appearance at Oxford University.

What’s in a Name?

Using the identity of Anna Baltzer, she claims to have appeared at over 500 venues spreading her revisionist history. Billing herself as the “grandchild of Polish-born Holocaust survivors” and a “Fulbright Scholar” to lend her legitimacy in college venues, Baltzer would appear to be the perfect foil to the Jewish state. But what appears to be emerging now is that the woman known as Anna Baltzer is not who she claims to bet While in the’ West Bank’, she routinely rubs elbows with known terrorists while citing her very questionable background.

Based on my investigation, it would appear that she is enough of an embarrassment to some of her family that she allegedly fabricated the name Anna Baltzer – or otherwise associated herself with that name without undergoing any obvious legal means allowing her to do so, to conceal her true identity. Research found that she has at least three aliases, including the identity as Anna Baltzer under which she personally collects money while rewriting history and spreading disinformation about the Jews

Fulbright Exaggerations & Damage Control

As a journalist I first ran afoul of reporting about Anna Baltzer, when I wrote a series of articles for the Gatestone Institute about her. In those articles I reported that there was no Anna Baltzer on record as being a Fulbright Scholar; that no one with the name Baltzer was on record as a Holocaust survivor from the death camps of Poland, and that no record existed of an Anna Baltzer ever going on a Birthright Tour to Israel. The Birthright Tour is of critical importance to her saga as it is during this event that Baltzer claimed she had been falsely indoctrinated into a pro-Israel position and that it inspired her to research the truth about the Palestinian plight.

When my first investigative article was published, a self-described Jewish anarchist named Daniel Sieradski  began tweeting about her at Oxford.. Sieradski, having the same objectives to eliminate Israel, writes all manner of cynical “Jewish” materials, and continually defends anti-Semites and blames Jews for anti-Semitism.

He then contacted Gatestone with false accusations of sloppy journalism, contending the inaccuracy of my information about Baltzer despite the authenticated data contained in my report. For his evidence, Sieradski merely sent a computer screenshot from the Fulbright website that listed Baltzer’s real name, Anna J. Piller, suggesting that my initial information was incorrect.

Inspection of his “evidence” determined that the page he proclaimed as evidence that Baltzer, known as Anna Piller, was indeed a Fulbright Scholar was quickly dismissed. The “evidence” Sieradski offered was nothing more than a page devoted to students hired as teaching assistants by Fulbright, and not a list of actual Fulbright scholars. That page merely proved that Baltzer, under the surname Piller, was hired as a teaching assistant to teach English at an English language program in Turkey – an Islamic country. A separate list of legitimate Fulbright scholars dating back to 1990 showed no entries or listings under her legal name or alias. At best, she exaggerated her academic qualifications to gain entry to the university speaking circuit. Yet, Sieradski suggested that as a Jew, he felt I owed Anna Baltzer an apology.

Fellow activists from the ISM and Sieradski, who also encourages boycotting of Israel like Anna Baltzer does, flew into action and changed biographical data on the  Wikipedia site to reflect now that her real name was Piller, explaining that this surname was the reason that Baltzer did not appear on the Fulbright Scholarshipwebsite. Such revisions were done after and in likely response to the findings from my initial investigative report.

Roseanne Barr bakes and more names for Baltzer appear

It is important to note that Sieradski is a Jew who is part of the in-house staff and writes for the anarchist magazine, Heeb. The word Heeb is considered a racial slur for Jews. The cover of that magazine once featured the notoriously anti-Israel Roseanne Barr, sporting a Hitler moustache and placing cookies shaped as Jewish people into an oven.

Gatestone removed my articles. Undeterred, I moved my investigative report to to a more heavily trafficked site. I decided to increase the scope of my investigation of the individual using the name Anna Baltzer. There was indeed more to be found.

Most important was her claim of being the grandchild of “Polish-born holocaust survivors”. Today, she is against the existence of Israel as the Jewish national homeland and not only a vindicator of the Palestinian goal to replace the Jewish state with an Arab one, but even of the violence that is practiced by Palestinian terrorists against Jews and other Israelis.

Read more at Arutz Sheva

Allen West interviews investigative journalist and Israeli activist Lee Kaplan about anti-Semitism at American universities. Why is this happening? What can be done about it? And is the political left uniting with the Islamists on campus? Find out in this interesting conversation.

Jihadist Infiltration

By David Meir-Levi at Frontpage:

Judging from the progress that anti-Israel “Lawfare” and pro-Shari’a movements have made in advancing the “Palestinian Cause” and Shari’a compliant programs in a distressingly vast array of our society’s institutions over the past decade, one must conclude that the Muslim jihadist forces working to infiltrate our society are winning.

The most obvious peril arises from terrorist infiltration. Terrorists identified as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian agents continue to enter our country via Mexico as illegal immigrants.  Yet, almost a decade ago the present writer and others published analyses of the danger posed to our country’s security by such infiltration.  If these agents were not bent on doing us harm, they could easily enter our country via normal ports of entry.  The fact that they disguise themselves as Mexicans and try to sneak past our border guards is a very good indication that they are here on jihadist missions and know that if they were to try to enter the USA via normal channels, they would be identified as wanted terrorists.  Once in the USA, they easily disappear into the American Muslim community, undocumented, untraceable, invisible and unstoppable.

The problem on our southern border has grown only worse since then, with continued jihadist entry via Mexico and the new alliance between Iran and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.  The Iran-Venezuela connection and Iran’s quest for deployable WMDs create the threat of a nuclear armed Venezuela under Iranian influence holding the USA hostage with nuclear-armed missiles having in their cross-hairs all of the southern USA from San Diego to Sarasota.

Expert witnesses reporting to congress have indicated that Iran has active agents, both Hezbollah and Iranian government operatives, in the USA:  sleeper cells awaiting orders while conducting surveillance in preparation for future attacks.  While some pundits are convinced that Iran does not plan to attack the USA on its home front, the operative word that they ignore is “yet.” Iran has successfully laid the groundwork for future terrorism inside the USA with Hezbollah and other Iranian terrorist agents primed, ready and invisible.

Less obvious, but no less perilous, is the quiet, gradual and peaceful infiltration of Muslim operatives and their supporters into our social, legal, educational and political systems under the guise of legitimate democratic activism in the form of the Divestment movement, the  BDS movement, the “One-State Solution” proponents, lawyers implementing “Lawfare,”  those who seek to legitimize Sharia law, and a host of socio-political organizations including “Jewish Voice for Peace” and other “Peace and Justice for Palestine” groups.

The Divestment movement, which sought to pressure institutions (mostly churches and universities) to divest their retirement funds from companies doing business with or in Israel, began more than twenty years ago and soon became a nation-wide phenomenon gaining support and followers in churches, on campuses, and in a variety of other institutions holding substantial retirement funds.  While few assets were actually divested, the real purpose of the movement was achieved: create a new podium from which to demonize Israel and by means of which to grab public attention and mainstream media coverage.  Over time interest in divestment waned, and presenters found themselves preaching to the choir.  So the movement morphed into” BDS,” boycotts, divestment, sanctions.  By including calls for boycott and sanctions, the proponents of this movement created a wider panoply of audiences, since boycotts and sanctions do not need investment funds that can be divested.  And as was the case with the divestment movement, the BDS movement cut a swath through college campuses enjoying large audiences on accommodating campuses with little opposition.  Later, as audience interest diminished and presenters found themselves again preaching to the choir, the forces waging the campus war against Israel re-organized to create the newest front, the “One-State Solution” movement.  Starting at the top, “One-State Solution” conferences were recently held at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard University, schools of international repute whose status lent credence and legitimacy to this new venue for Israel-bashing.   None of this could have happened were there not already on campuses a cadre of willing enablers, student and faculty activists and complicit or complacent administrative leadership, who energetically support these anti-Israel and anti-Jewish efforts.

The advance of Shari’a law displays a similar trajectory. From modest beginnings in the USA and Canada as local Muslims petitioned to have family disputes adjudicated by a Muslim religious court, Shari’a law and Shari’a finance have now become institutionalized.  Thanks to Justice Elena Kagan and Professor Noah Feldman at Harvard, and other promoters of Shari’a as an alternative form of jurisprudence compatible with American secular law, we are witness to a gradually growing number of states accommodating the institutionalization of Shari’a courts into American legal venues; and we see the struggle of Shari’a supporters to prevent or overturn state-sponsored regulations that would exclude Shari’a from American law.  Facilitating this struggle to give Shari’a credence, legitimacy, and legal valence are a host of lay folk, cheer leaders for Shari’a, including some rabbis, encouraging our legislators to grant Shari’a legal status in America.  The dire and existential peril that Shari’a poses to women and Jews, to all Americans, to America, and to Western Civilizations has been adumbrated elsewhere.  Suffice it to say here that much of Shari’a legislation is diametrically opposed to our society’s cornerstone freedoms and to our fundamental concept of all citizens’ equality before the law.

The “Lawfare” movement presents another new front in the infiltration of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish and anti-American forces into our legal system.  The present writer attended the conference in San Francisco in 2010 where academics and lawyers enumerated the ways and means whereby American courts could be turned into staging grounds for anti-Israel lawsuits which could later be used as precedents for future legal battles against Israel, Israelis, and any legal or natural persons supporting Israel.  Then it is only one step from legal decisions to legislation.

The proliferation of the organizations such as the “Jewish Voice for Peace” and numerous other groups claiming to be “for peace and justice in Palestine” on campuses, churches, world-wide Christian organizations, and on the grass-roots level of local communities, is another form of infiltration.  Almost without exception, these groups promote the Arab side of the Israel-Arab conflict, ignore the reality of Israel’s need for defense against vicious genocidal terrorism, and act as mouthpieces for Arab anti-Israel propaganda.  Rank and file membership may be dominated by benighted do-gooders whom Lenin would have classified as “useful idiot,” but leaders and funders know that the real purpose of these groups is to create an almost limitless supply of new venues for Israel-bashing and for the dissemination of Arab lies about Israel and the “Palestinians.”

All of the above are aggressively agitating in the here-and-now to convince us that Israel is evil and the “poor Palestinians” are victims of that evil.  But there is also the long-range battle for American hearts and minds.  From Harvard to high schools our education system has become the target of Arab revisionism.  Decades of Arab oil money pouring into our universities and colleges is now well documented.  That oil money’s influence goes well beyond the university classroom.  Saudi and other Arab largesse has targeted universities with Title VI federal funding, funding which supports university outreach programs that teach our children about the beauties and blessings of Islam.

A Saudi-owned publishing house in New Mexico churns out curriculum supplements which are aggressively marketed to public and private school teachers from kindergarten to college.  Using a well-honed strategy of deceit and tactic of serial lying, this mendacious material not only demonizes Israel but also whitewashes Muslim history by purging it of its jihadist imperialism, and exonerates Islam by ignoring the religious and gender apartheid inherent in its doctrine of Muslim and male supremacy.

Once the invasions and conquests and murders and massacres and genocides of 1,400 years of Muslim jihad are magically retold as nothing more than a gentle religious revivalism; and 1,400 years of religious repression and discrimination are recast with literary sleight of hand as a Golden Age of religious tolerance; then our younger generations can be convinced that the current Muslim war against Israel and Western Civilization is really justified self-defense against evil Zionist land theft and brutal western imperialism.

This year’s sophomore is next year’s Senator.

If we do not stop this tsunami of infiltration, we will lose this war.