Walls Closing In for Jews at UCLA -- and in America
May 16, 2014
Walls Closing In for Jews at UCLA -- and in America
By Pamela Geller
The walls are closing in on status of equality of Jews in America. Anti-Semites and Islamic supremacists have been pursuing their bigoted agenda of hate under the guise of the invented Palestinian narrative. After years of battering and bullying, they have reached a tipping point. A terrible, horrible tipping point.
The targeting and mistreatment of Jews on the UCLA campus has grown increasingly virulent – while the university’s administration and the mainstream media yawn. One particular Jewish student at UCLA, Avinoam Baral, is being vilified and targeted incessantly by Muslim groups. Muslim Brotherhood groups, so named in the largest terrorist funding trial in our nation’s history, are demanding that Jewish students sign Nuremberg-like oaths not to associate with Jewish groups, in their continuing jihad against the Jews.
Daniel Mael, a student at Brandeis and a courageous defender of truth and freedom, reported Thursday that “the editorial board of Al-Talib, the Muslim Newsmagazine at UCLA, called on Jewish student Avinoam Baral to disassociate himself from the pro-Israel program Hasbara Fellowships due to the group's alleged Islamophobia. Al-Talib alleged that the Jewish program “actively (contributes) to violence against Muslims” and asked that Baral, who is a candidate for Internal Vice President in upcoming UCLA student elections, separate himself from the program.” Al-Talib is notorious for having referred to Osama bin Laden as a “freedom fighter” in a 1999 article.
In denouncing Baral, Al-Talib said that “this is NOT to say that Baral is an Islamophobe,” but added: “This IS to say that if Baral does not share those Islamophobic beliefs, he should find it easy to distance himself from organizations that actively contribute to violence against Muslims.” It declared, “that is the only way to provide a measure of reassurance for Muslim students that the Islamophobic message produced by these organizations will not be legitimized should he be elected to office.”
Al-Talib is closely tied to UCLA’s chapter of the Muslim Students Association (MSA). According to Discover the Networks, “as revealed in documents seized by the FBI and entered as evidence in a Texas court, the Muslim Students Association is a legacy project of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is an organization formed by a Hitler-admiring Muslim named Hasan al-Banna in Egypt in 1928.”
The magazine’s effort to strong-arm Baral is part of a larger leftist and Muslim effort to demonize Israel and her defenders. The UCLA paper, the Daily Bruin, reported Tuesday that “all candidates running with the FIRED UP! and LET’S ACT! slates and none running with Bruins United have signed the Joint Statement on Undergraduate Students Association Council Ethics, which asks for councilmembers to refrain from taking free or sponsored trips with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League or Hasbara Fellowships.” It noted also that the MSA supported the statement as well.
The Daily Bruin story said that Baral, “the Bruins United candidate for internal vice president and the current chief of staff for the Internal Vice President’s office, said he did not sign on to the statement because he thinks that councilmembers should have the freedom to associate with different organizations and to educate themselves about different topics through trips as long as they are not violating the USAC bylaws or constitution.”
Indeed. This initiative is an attempt to declare that support for Israel is outside the bounds of acceptable discourse. That’s what UCLA has come to. Administrators should step in and put a stop to these intimidation tactics. But they won’t. They issued a non-statement about the matter, saying essentially that they weren’t going to do anything: “UCLA encourages a climate of respectful engagement among students, faculty and staff, even in situations that are very difficult, painful and complex. Student government functions independently, its proceedings proscribed by a constitution that makes available to students and student groups a process to review issues of alleged conflicts of interest. UCLA encourages all involved in this particular process to deliberate in an honest, respectful and inclusive manner.”
This is the state of academia today – not just at UCLA but all across the country, as BDS initiatives grow in popularity. Supporters of Israel are increasingly shut down, shouted down, and physically menaced by assertive, aggressive leftists and Muslims who know that administrations will do nothing to rein in their thuggery. Universities are supposed to be centers of learning. For Jews they’re instead increasingly precarious, dangerous places.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.
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