Five hundred students showed up for my event and were a model audience. This was thanks in part to the large campus police presence and to the protest event which drew 250 potential disruptors to a theater nearby. My remarks were pretty much along the lines of the speech I gave at UCLA. As usual the reports of the speech left much to be desired. We will post the best of them from the Santa Barbara News Press, whose current issues are unfortunately unavailable online.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency fell for a classic leftist trick. A few days before my speech a leftist member of American Students for Israel went to the Hillel rabbi and told him that ASI wanted him to sign a statement drawn up by leftists in the “Respect Coalition” which was formed for the express purpose of trashing my speech in advance. When I met with the rabbi before my speech he told me that was the only reason he signed it. In fact the leadership of American Students for Israel came to my speech and publicly expressed their support. Nonetheless the JTA picked up the fabrication and reported it as truth giving the left a cheap propaganda victory – important to them because they can’t handle the argument and their only weapons are defamation and their control of the campus media which prevents students who did not attend my speech from hearing what I actually had to say.
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