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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Hannah Sternberg</title>
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		<title>Do Pete Seeger and the BDS Folks Believe All of Israel Is ‘Occupied’?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/hannah-sternberg/do-pete-seeger-and-the-bds-folks-believe-all-of-israel-is-%e2%80%98occupied%e2%80%99/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=do-pete-seeger-and-the-bds-folks-believe-all-of-israel-is-%25e2%2580%2598occupied%25e2%2580%2599</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:06:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Hannah Sternberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Right to Exist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[righttoexist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=121309</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Pete Seeger is officially on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions wagon.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="highslide" onclick="return vz.expand(this)" href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/pete-seeger.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-121311" title="pete-seeger" src="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/pete-seeger.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="275" /></a></p>
<p>Legendary American folk singer <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1619">Pete Seeger</a> is officially on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions wagon.</p>
<p>According to a press release issued by the Israel Committee Against House Demolition, the singer objects to the Jewish National Fund’s perfidious program to plant trees in the desert. Yes, you read that correctly. The ICAHD press release states that Seeger grew concerned when he learned that “the JNF is notorious for planting forests to hide Palestinian villages demolished by Israel in order to seize their land.”</p>
<p><span id="more-121309"></span>(Interestingly, in the U.S. this happens all the time under the terms “eminent domain,” “wilderness reclamation,” and “EPA regulation.” Here it’s lauded by liberal environmentalists as Earth-friendly. When it happens in Israel, it’s vilified by liberal environmentalists as colonialist and racist. This should give some perspective on the intelligence of <em>either</em> claim.)</p>
<p>The ICAHD’s publicists claim Seeger thought the environmentalism discussion panels and rallies he participated in (partly funded by JNR) were “apolitical.” The press release indicates a sense of betrayal or disappointment to discover the Jewish National Fund’s long support of Zionism. The press release notes that JNF has been involved in “dispossessing” Palestinians since 1901&#8230;meaning he considers the perfectly legal and voluntary sale of land to Zionist Jews by the resident peoples of the area in the early twentieth century to be just as much an “occupation” as the military occupation of hostile areas following the Six-Day War, the latter of which is what BDS <em>purports</em> to object to, to avoid criticism that they’re merely hateful of Jews.</p>
<p>What Seeger’s making clear here is that he objects to Israel’s very right to exist, aside from the complex international legal ambiguities surrounding the occupied territories, Gaza and the West Bank. According to Seeger’s logic, any Jew in Israel is an occupier, whether he’s building a new home on the West Bank or whether he lives on a communal farm that was purchased <em>inarguably</em> lawfully from a Palestinian a hundred years ago. Even more pernicious are his methods used to support such a view, which follow the typical BDS pattern:</p>
<p><strong>1) Isolate yourself from the debate.</strong> Avoid civil, fair discussion with the other side by claiming they haven’t provided a neutral forum for debate (this is what he’s doing by boycotting JNF events &#8212; not simply discouraging contributions to JNF itself). Remember the 2009 Toronto Film Festival?</p>
<p><strong>2) Delegitimize the opposition.</strong> This flows naturally from the first step. It’s another layer of insulation from the debate: if one accepts the premise that the other side is inescapably corrupted by special interests or undemocratic influences, it makes perfect sense to claim it’s beneath one to engage them in debate. This is done in a variety of ways.</p>
<p>Some are simple: Israel’s enemies like to complain that supporters of Israel are oversensitive, needlessly crying “anti-Semitism!” whenever someone criticizes an Israeli policy. On the contrary, there is ample evidence of the vibrant criticism and debate of Israeli politics within the worldwide community of Israel supporters. The “criticism” that Israel’s enemies refer to, however, is nothing less than a full frontal attack on Israel’s right to exist. By conflating it with more reasoned criticism and debate of the nation’s policies, Israel’s enemies hope to simultaneously legitimize this attack while neutralizing the opposition. A good analogy is that a person can criticize specific American policies without being anti-American; but a person who claims America ought to be comprehensively annihilated <em>is by definition</em> anti-American. And yet Israel’s enemies claim the situation is actually the reverse: that people who approach Israel’s complex problems within the framework of Israel’s statehood are bigots, while people who beg for the annihilation of all the Jews in Palestine have a legitimate place in the debate and ought <em>not</em> to be called bigots.</p>
<p>Other methods are far more pernicious. Claims that Zionism is simply a tool of Western Islamophobia; that Zionism is racist, and support for a Jewish homeland therefore has no place in civilized debate; and that Israel’s supporters are all puppets of a secretive and undemocratic “Israel lobby” or “Zionist conspiracy” are all common methods of “winning” the debate by throwing the other side out of the forum.</p>
<p><strong>3) Fabricate and distort the evidence to portray Israelis as inhuman monsters.</strong> Once one has isolated oneself from the debate, and delegitimized the opposition, this is both easy and inviting. Any passionate and creative person knows the temptation of being carried away by the power of one’s description of events, while losing sight of accuracy and accountability. But once the first two steps are complete, accuracy and accountability are obsolete. Once already fueled by the <em>a priori</em> conviction that Israel has no right to exist, evidence is simply putty in a talented artist’s hands. It doesn’t matter what it is; only what it can be made into.</p>
<p>At the end of a process like this, even Pete Seeger can get upset at people for planting trees.</p>
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		<title>Is Coca-Cola Making a Mistake by Responding to Rumors It’s a Zionist-Controlled Company?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/hannah-sternberg/is-coca-cola-making-a-mistake-by-responding-to-rumors-it%e2%80%99s-a-zionist-controlled-company/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=is-coca-cola-making-a-mistake-by-responding-to-rumors-it%25e2%2580%2599s-a-zionist-controlled-company</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:03:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Hannah Sternberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Right to Exist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[righttoexist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=118142</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Coca-Cola has long been a symbol of America and capitalism. But according to an article this week in The Economist, for some it’s also an icon of the Zionist conspiracy. No wonder I can’t get enough of the stuff.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="highslide" onclick="return vz.expand(this)" href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/coke.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-118146" title="coke" src="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/coke.jpg" alt="" width="296" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>Coca-Cola has long been a symbol of America and capitalism. But according to an article this week in <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18114835">The Economist</a>, for some it’s also an icon of the Zionist conspiracy. No wonder I can’t get enough of the stuff.</p>
<p>The authors of the article demonstrate a neat trick: if you Google “Middle East rumors,” the first page that comes up is a page of the Coke website dedicated to debunking urban legends about Coke’s supposed collusion in the Israeli plot to undermine Islam and crush the Palestinians with violence and economic subversion. (The Economist quotes experts telling Coke to stop responding to the rumors, which will just increase their shelf life.) Some of them are typical dross (claims that Coca-Cola in Arabic, when read backward, spells a slur against Muslims) but others reveal a more troubling strain. As a target of the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement, even when Coke isn’t forced to apologize explicitly for doing business with Israel, it must defend itself by proving how many other countries <em>besides</em> Israel it does business with.</p>
<p><span id="more-118142"></span>In the page debunking the myth that “Boycotting Coca-Cola makes a statement against America and American (foreign) policies” (the subtext being that it’s a protest against American policies toward Israel), Coke’s marketing team opens with a sweeping description of its global system of local bottling partners, but then clarifies with the example of how many jobs it creates in the Palestinian territories. That page doesn’t make any explicit reference to Israel, but it’s clear that it was written in response to criticism that Coke did <em>too much</em> business in Israel.</p>
<p>More troubling, however, is the “rumor” that “The Coca-Cola Company is a Jewish company.” The classification of this rumor with other more obvious slurs is telling: those who spread the rumor that Coca-Cola is a Jewish company clearly imply that Jewish ownership is a black mark on any company; and that in a company as large and (supposedly) powerful as Coca-Cola, Jewish ownership is downright dangerous. <a href="http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/contactus/myths_rumors/middle_east_jewish.html">The Coca-Cola website states</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>“We believe the origins of this rumor date back to 1967, when the Arab League pronounced a boycott against companies for conducting business in Israel, following the tensions in the Middle East. The Coca-Cola Company and its bottling partners were present in many Arab and Muslim countries before Coca-Cola was introduced in Israel, and came back to the Arab countries as soon as the boycott was lifted.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This would be a plausible explanation if the rumor had been “Coca-Cola is an Israeli company,” but it incompletely addresses the origins of the claim that Coca-Cola is a <em>Jewish</em> company. That is, unless one believes (as many people in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement do) that a shadow “Israel lobby” controls American politics and the economy (the modern-day manifestation of the long-lived “Zionist conspiracy” theory most famously put into words in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). If one lends credence to the “Israel lobby” conspiracy theory, powerful Jews are dangerous and deserve to be exposed and suppressed, lest they carry out their nefarious schemes of economic and military domination. On its website, Coca-Cola attempts to defend itself against this classic anti-Semitic slander, while cloaking it in euphemism to flatter the sensitivities of their customers. Coke is a non-political company, so I don’t blame them for tiptoeing around that minefield.</p>
<p>The myth of a puppeteer “Israel lobby” isn’t a fringe theory, unfortunately. It has been given false legitimacy by academics to advance their own political agendas. And while some of its propagators may claim they are seeking peace between Israel and a future Palestinian state, the real agenda behind the myth is the delegitimization of the state of Israel by pinning every advance of Israel in public opinion or politics on the machinations a secretive, anti-democratic cabal of powerful Jews. No wonder the promoters of this myth seek to implicate already recognizable, and undeniably powerful, corporations like Coca-Cola in the story they seek to construct.</p>
<p>I would say Coca-Cola is courageous for continuing to do business in Israel despite the BDS movement’s efforts to besmirch its name, but let’s be honest: they aren’t really risking much. Wherever Coke goes, it will be nitpicked by the enemies of prosperity who seek to discredit the giants of commerce simply because they’re big. But oh, how easy it is for extremist groups to take advantage of the naiveté of garden-variety anti-business hippies and exploit it for the ends of Jew-hatred.</p>
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		<title>BDS Movement and Code Pink Now Targeting Children’s Birthday Parties</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/hannah-sternberg/bds-movement-and-code-pink-now-targeting-children%e2%80%99s-birthday-parties/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bds-movement-and-code-pink-now-targeting-children%25e2%2580%2599s-birthday-parties</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:33:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Hannah Sternberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Right to Exist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[righttoexist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=117318</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I don’t know what else I was expecting from Code Pink, the group so inane its members interrupt their own interviews. When they’re not expressing their patriotism by crashing naturalization ceremonies, they unwind by targeting Israeli products for boycott. Boycotting is an easy, do-it-at-home form of activism for the Code Pinker whose boas are all at the dry cleaner.

The boycott in question is the Code Pink campaign against AHAVA beauty products. The embarrassing misstep? Listing, in their trove of media clips surrounding their efforts, an article from The Jewish Week about a mother whose 7-year-old daughter’s birthday party was spoiled by anti-Israel sentiment stirred up by the boycott. Code Pink, why would you list this among your PR victories]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="highslide" onclick="return vz.expand(this)" href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/codepink.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-117321" title="codepink" src="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/codepink.jpg" alt="" width="399" height="304" /></a></p>
<p>I don’t know what else I was expecting from Code Pink, the group so inane its members <a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-10-2008/marines-in-berkeley">interrupt their own interviews</a>. When they’re not expressing their patriotism by <a href="http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2008/07/nice-loons-disrupt-bush-at-july-4th/">crashing naturalization ceremonies</a>, they unwind by targeting Israeli products for boycott. Boycotting is an easy, do-it-at-home form of activism for the Code Pinker whose boas are all at the dry cleaner.</p>
<p>The boycott in question is the <a href="http://www.stolenbeauty.org/">Code Pink campaign against AHAVA</a> beauty products. The embarrassing misstep? Listing, in their trove of media clips surrounding their efforts, an article from <em>The Jewish Week</em> about a mother whose 7-year-old daughter’s birthday party was <a href="http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national/battered_boycotts">spoiled by anti-Israel sentiment stirred up by the boycott</a>. Code Pink, why would you list this among your PR victories?</p>
<p>Now, I can quite realistically write off this error as one of pure incompetence. But looked at from another angle, it <em>is</em> telling, of the bigger story: how the international Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement is not against perceived abuses of Palestinian rights or territory&#8211;it’s against <em>Israel</em>: the state, and its existence.</p>
<p><span id="more-117318"></span>Even Julie Wiener, author of the <em>Jewish Week</em> piece, though she expresses skepticism for both sides of the political conflict, admits, “The BDS movement…with its singling out Israel among all the nations of the world &#8212; not to mention a confrontational approach that demonizes Israelis and puts them on the defensive &#8212; deeply disturbs me.” She insightfully points out that you don’t see Code Pink shouting reminders of Tiananmen Square outside of every store that sells a product made in China&#8211;a country with a near-universally undisputed record of human rights violations of staggering proportions.</p>
<p>I’m willing to believe that most participants in the BDS movement, particularly noted Jewish thought-leaders and organizations, are either unaware of this barely beneath-the-surface agenda, or they believe they can manipulate the movement to make it less about bashing Israel and more about encouraging a reasonable solution for peace.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the BDS movement represents the politics of momentum: once one <em>de rigueur </em>group or individual pledges himself to a cause, others will follow until simply all the cool kids are walking out on anything related to Israel. Remember the <a href="http://www.israellycool.com/2009/09/12/celebrity-wars/">2009 Toronto Film Festival</a>? Celebrities including Jane Fonda and Viggo Mortensen protested the festival’s spotlight on its sister-city, Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is not even remotely close to disputed territory, unless one believes that Israel’s very existence as a state is in dispute. While these celebrities claimed they were making a stand against the occupation of Palestine, in reality they were standing against Israel itself.</p>
<p>It’s easy in today’s pop culture of activism for many people&#8211;even some journalists&#8211;to mistake the phrase “cause célèbre,” originally meaning “an event of note,” to mean “celebrity cause.” And with YouTube, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6dO9eVOY2I">everyone with an axe to grind can be a celebrity, too</a>. That makes it ever more vitally important to aggressively expose the BDS movement for what it really is: an attack on the state of Israel and its right to exist. To acknowledge this is to take one step away from prejudice, and instead to move toward the constructive and rational discussion of peace.</p>
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		<title>Anti-Zionist Organizers Attack Critics in Rutgers Protest Aftermath</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/hannah-sternberg/anti-zionist-organizers-attack-critics-in-rutgers-protest-aftermath/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=anti-zionist-organizers-attack-critics-in-rutgers-protest-aftermath</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Feb 2011 20:03:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Hannah Sternberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Right to Exist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[righttoexist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=115450</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Never Again for Anyone, the national speaking tour that honors International Holocaust Remembrance Day by equating the modern state of Israel to Nazi Germany, is now responding to criticism of its event at Rutgers University this weekend. In a controversy that has captured widespread Internet attention, event organizers turned away hundreds of protesters who, so far, have been accused of nothing more than attending.

 

Several points stand out in Never Again for Anyone’s version of events that simply don’t add up:]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="highslide" onclick="return vz.expand(this)" href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/rutgersscreenshot3.png"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-115475" title="rutgersscreenshot3" src="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/rutgersscreenshot3-1024x466.png" alt="" width="625" height="284" /></a></p>
<p>Never Again for Anyone, the national speaking tour that honors International Holocaust Remembrance Day by <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/01/28/event-at-rutgers-will-promote-hate-ignorance-and-trivialization-of-the-holocaust/">equating the modern state of Israel to Nazi Germany</a>, is now responding to criticism of its event at Rutgers University this weekend. In <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/01/30/israel-supporters-denied-entrance-to-anti-zionist-event-at-rutgers/">a controversy that has captured widespread Internet attention</a>, event organizers turned away hundreds of protesters who, so far, have been accused of nothing more than attending.</p>
<p>Several points stand out in Never Again for Anyone’s version of events that simply don’t add up:</p>
<p><strong>Was the event free or was it not?</strong> The Facebook page for the event clearly listed it as free and open to the public. The <a href="http://www.neveragainforanyone.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=1311:zionists-falsely-charge-exclusion-of-jews-from-rutgers-holocaust-memorial-event&amp;catid=102:icetabs&amp;Itemid=732">press release</a> by Never Again for Anyone claims “Endorsing student organizations had initially publicized the admission fee as ‘suggested.’ This was based on an assumption that the program would be a student event with minimal costs. The university subsequently changed the event’s status since the national sponsors were outside organizations.” Those national sponsors happened to be listed on the same Facebook page that listed the event as “free.”</p>
<p>But in the very next paragraph, the press release states, “The $5 admission was made mandatory only after expenses escalated in the face of organized disruption publicized by Zionist organizations&#8230;” Which was it? Was the fee introduced before the event because of its bureaucratic status, or was the fee introduced as a response to the protest? Additionally, how could the “escalating” cost of the event be estimated <em>during the event itself</em>, accurately enough that organizers made the decision to start charging when people were already showing up, and the preparatory costs had already been incurred?</p>
<p><span id="more-115450"></span>According to several witnesses at the event, <a href="http://challahhuakbar.blogspot.com/2011/01/rutgers-university-event-bans-jewish.html">signs advertising free admission were torn down by organizers</a>, <em>after</em> the protesters showed up. Additionally, a security guard unaffiliated with the event’s sponsoring student group, BAKA, is recorded on video <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX6nESdQEok&amp;feature=player_embedded">stating that the event is open to the public</a>; she doesn’t mention a fee barrier when a protester asks if he can sit in on the event, she simply requests that he do so respectfully.</p>
<p>“We came straight from Havdallah [the end of the Sabbath], and hardly any of us had money,” one Orthodox Jewish student told the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=206009">Jerusalem Post</a>. Orthodox Jews cannot carry money on the Sabbath; other (notoriously broke) college students probably didn’t think they’d have to bring money to a free event. In this context, the sudden and previously unannounced decision to charge admission is as effective a strategy of closing the event as if they had explicitly told protesters not to come.</p>
<p><strong>What was the “disruption”?</strong> The Never Again for Anyone press release on the event claims, “Students and others at the scene reported numerous anti-Muslim and other racist slurs directed against them, and Rutgers police noted that they had never before witnessed such disruption.” While slurs and profanity are a grave disappointment, they are also protected speech. And video from throughout the event, including the video linked above, shows nothing more than a standing group of students and adults. No violence is in evidence; in fact, given Never Again for Anyone’s need to defend its actions, specific incidents of violence surely would have been mentioned in their press release had they occurred on an organized scale. At times the hot-blooded students shout at event organizers, but they are conspicuously quiet and respectful in the videos in which security guards give them instructions. Absolutely no physical melee appears in any of the videos, and even among the less tasteful remarks flung by enthusiastic students, no threats of violence are overheard; just the obvious shock and anger of peaceful protesters who are told the rules of the game have been changed halfway through.</p>
<p>Of course, this also depends on the definition of “disruption.” If “disruption” means the attendance of an organized and informed group of pro-Israel students and adults (as opposed to a few tokens)&#8211;if “disruption” means “disagreement,” “dissent,” and “debate,” then yes, there was quite a disruption that night: while precise numbers are probably impossible to obtain by this point, by all accounts from both sides of the story the pro-Israel demonstrators outnumbered the anti-Zionist attendees by at least four to one. That much disapproval tends to make one uncomfortable; it’s no wonder Never Again for Anyone is squirming.</p>
<p><strong>Where is the “distortion” in the media? </strong>Never Again for Anyone’s press release links to several blog posts and online news articles, cautioning readers that they are “distorted articles about the events.” One in particular stands out, however. It’s a short article on <a href="http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/22770/">the Jewish Exponent</a>, two days <em>before</em> the event, on new funding for upcoming Jewish- and Israel-related events at Rutgers. The article is actually extraordinarily dry to anyone except those with a particularly keen interest in Rutgers bureaucracy, and it doesn’t even mention Never Again for Anyone until the last two paragraphs:</p>
<blockquote><p>“[Rutgers Hillel’s executive director Andrew] Getraer is concerned about another event to be held on Jan. 29 on the Douglass Campus, sponsored by American Muslims for Palestine, the International Anti-Zionist Jewish Network, and the Middle East Children’s Alliance. The program, Never Again for Anyone, is being held in conjunction with the United Nations International Day of Holocaust Remembrance.</p>
<p>‘They will have speakers who will equate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust and genocide, which is morally outrageous,’ said Getraer. ‘It not only trivializes the victims of a true genocide, the Holocaust, but it defames the Jewish State of Israel and the Jewish people.’”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Let’s examine the purported “distortion” here. The first paragraph states nothing more than the information provided on the event’s Facebook page and the Never Again for Anyone website; in fact, it could practically have been copied off them. And even Getraer’s claim that “They will have speakers who will equate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust and genocide” is nothing more than the message explicitly promoted by Never Again for Anyone on their website, which refers to “the on-going ethnic cleansing of Palestine.” The remainder of Getraer’s quote, while opinion, is rationally and civilly expressed; in addition, it is presented in the article as Getraer’s personal opinion, not the opinion of the reporter or the publication. If quoting a person with an opinion constitutes “distortion,” there’d be no credible news source worth reading anywhere.</p>
<p>But Never Again for Anyone goes further; it takes the offensive. In a press release otherwise posturing as a dispassionate account of facts, the writers go out of their way to target and demonize one Rutgers student in particular: “The protest was organized by campus Hillel and publicized by Pamela Geller, a prominent anti-Muslim and anti-Arab opponent of the Park51 Islamic Cultural Center in Lower Manhattan.” It is beneath the writers for Never Again for Anyone to explain how Geller’s opinion on the Ground Zero Mosque is relevant to her role in the protest at Rutgers, or how it substantiates their claims that the protest was a physical threat to the speakers; nor do the writers bother to otherwise explain or defend the vicious charge of bigotry they have attached to this young woman and active leader on her campus.</p>
<p>Never Again for Anyone is a national speaking tour. It will be visiting several more cities in the U.S. and Canada this week, including DePaul University in Chicago this Friday. Students: organize, educate yourselves, attend peacefully, and see how you’ll be treated. Right to Exist this week will continue to expose the bigoted organizations that back this speaking tour, and arm you with the information you need to speak out.</p>
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