That organization of course is Campus Watch, Daniel Pipes effort to monitor American college professors for their unwillingness to keep Israel criticism off campus, to remain silent. Pipes is well known for his audacious attempts to silence American professors with threats of blackmail, including arrogant demands from tainted professors that they submit their course curriculums to him, personally, for approval. There is a history of professors deprived of tenure because of organizations like Campus Watch.

I'm not kidding. Check out Pipes' org here: http://www.campus-watch.org/

But this latest attempt at censorship, this attack against Rashid Khalidi really pissed off Cecile Sarasky of Muzzlewatch:

Academic freedom, CampusWatch goes after Columbia’s Rashid Khalidi and PARC

"Is space opening up or shutting down for professors who criticize Israel or express sympathy for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement?

One answer is that academic McCarthyite group CampusWatch is, unfortunately, still in business. In fact, they just published yet another hopefully meaningless attack on the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) and keynote speaker at their October conference, the preeminent Middle East scholar (and famously, former-friend-of-Obama) Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University’s Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies. Why do they want PARC to stop receiving funding from the Department of Education? Because in his speech at a conference on Palestine, Khalidi criticized Israel, and worse, criticized Campus Watch! Comical, yes. Imagine, one of the country’s most respected Middle East scholars having the audacity to criticize Israel and CampusWatch at a conference called “Palestine: What We Know.” CampusWatch’s Jonathan Schanzer smears Khalidi with a charge he denies, that he was ever an official spokesperson for the PLO, and insists:

While Khalidi undoubtedly has the right to express his opinion, the American public has as a right to know that they paid for it. PARC receives controversial Title VI funding from the U.S. State Department and the Department of Education for “Palestinian studies.” By inviting Khalidi, PARC spent fungible taxpayer money to bring a notorious former spokesman for a terrorist organization to Washington to rail against Israel and complain about a group that critiques him.

Meanwhile, Nora Barrows-Friedman’s new article in the Electronic Intifada about academic freedom suggests the answer to the question, is there more space on campus for debate on Israel/Palestine?, is both yes and no.

UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, says:

“There seems to be diverging trends in relation to academic freedom for those who express sharply critical views of Israel or Zionism,” Falk remarked. “On the one side there is growing sympathy for the Palestinian struggle, and this is exhibited by the spreading BDS campaign. On the other side, there are increased efforts by organized Zionist groups to exert covert and overt pressure on university administrations to punish those seen as critics of Israel. As a result, we can expect some inconsistent outcomes in this period.”

Caught up in that tension are professors like UC Santa Barbara’s William Robinson who called down the wrath of the Anti-Defamation League and others for criticizing Israel’s attack on Gaza: in June 2009, the university threw out charges of faculty misconduct. And Columbia’s Joseph Massad and Barnard’s Nadia Abu El Haj who both survived extensive campaigns to deny them tenure." 

Read on here: http://www.muzzlewatch.com/

Interesting stuff. Only in America.

 

The full title of Joshua Holland's article in AlterNet is Ridiculous "Study" Supposedly Finds Widespread Anti-Semitism on Progressive Websites. It was written by Adam Levick.

As intellectually dishonest as this study could get, to quote Holland, it is not actually far from the discourse occasionally seen on progressive blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD. Take this exchange in the comment section of a diary recently posted about the Gaza siege (edited for generality):

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A barcode starting with "729" indicates that this product is produced in Israël

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Cecilie Surasky, editor of Muzzlewatch, listed this article under AIPAC: Kucinich Withdraws as Palm Beach County Democratic Keynoter Amid Uproar over His Israel Stance

We might wonder why Kucinich was invited in the first place if his Israel stance was so offensive.

First, George Bennett responded as to what happened that led to Kucinich's dumping (reprinted by permission):

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich lasted less than 24 hours as headliner for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party's annual fundraising dinner after some of the party's elected officials blasted the Ohio Democrat's stance on Israel and threatened to skip the event.

Kucinich, who has a history of criticizing the actions of the Israeli government and opposing congressional resolutions in support of Israel, withdrew Friday as the keynote speaker for next week's dinner after being announced Thursday.

(snip)

State Sen. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, who's running for the seat that U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler is vacating, called Kucinich "someone whose position on Israel stands in total opposition to the conscience of this community."

County Commissioner Burt Aaronson called the selection of Kucinich "an absolute horror" and said he would refuse to share the podium with him.

(snip)

Kucinich said Friday in an e-mail to county Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel that he supports the Jewish state and its right to defend itself and said his critics are "falsely characterizing me as `anti-Israel.' "

(snip)

"People feel he's anti-Israel. I don't read it that way, but the leadership of AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and other elements of the Jewish community do and I don't want to get into an argument with them," said Siegel, who is Jewish.

Link to the remainder above.

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...from Daily Kos.

Oh, you didn't know there was a Jewish Left? Well it is possible that you looked in the wrong places, like the so-called left wing blog Daily Kos or even in Israel for that matter.

This story about a banning at Daily Kos for alleged anti-Semitism, came by way of Muzzlewatch (Jewish Voice for Peace), but it first ran on The Smirking Chip and Mondoweiss. The evil blogger implicated was Jane Stillwater, who wrote about her experience on Daily Kos after she was banned for posting a satirical diary about the housing crisis, which she said could easily be resolved if one converted to Judaism and moved to Israel. Although Americans lost their homes left and right to the recession and unscrupulous real estate agents, they are not getting help from the Bush and Obama stimulus packages. But they could get help from the government indirectly, if they moved to Israel. Yes, our government is subsidizing housing in Israel, smack in the colonized Palestinian territories.

Poor Jane. Her proposal was called an obvious demonstration of anti-Semitism, after all, everyone knows that Jews rule the world and they apparently arranged it so that Americans can get US government help to purchase homes in Israel if they only moved there. Just say you're Jewish.

It was not funny to (paid?) hasbara troops from GIYUS and The Israel Project, left wing poseurs, who have infiltrated Daily Kos. The sky fell in and they took poor Jane down.

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