Not for the first time, but yet again, I hear about the difficulties
that Hillel, the Jewish university campus organization is having dealing
with the anti-Israel sentiments on American campuses.
The latest issue concerns an invitation to the chancellor of the
University of California Irvine, Michael Drake to a Hillel three-day
summit titled “Imagining a More Civil Society” . Evidently UC Irvine is
notorious as a hotbed of anti-Israel activities and Chancellor Drake has
done little to mitigate or confront the fiercely anti-Israel activities
on his campus.
Part of what I find surprising is how simple are the lies told about us,
and by extension how simple and direct could be our responses to them.
For some reason this seems to have eluded Hillel and other pro-Israel
groups on campuses world wide.
A perfect example were two events organized by Muslim students at UC
Irvine titled
“From Auschwitz to Gaza,” The inference is clear and widely used. It is
part of the equation of Israel=Nazi Germany / The Palestinians are the
Jews; the Jews are the Nazis etc. This notorious Big Lie is a staple
element in the European dictionary where Israel is concerned, named or
described.
We can guarantee that these phrases, concepts and equations will also be
well represented in the up coming UN conference on Racism.
As simple as this equation is, the response could be equally simple.
Outside the “From Auschwitz to Gaza, event and the UN conference,
should be someone with a sign something like:
GAZA POPULATION: 1967 – 280,000 – 2006 – 1,480,200 This is Auschwitz?