Monday, April 24, 2017

BDS Abuse of Freedom of Speech by CUNY City tax dollars paying for one who is an advocate and encourages terror to speak at the CUNY Commencement? Outrageous

bs"d

CUNY invites  terror supporter and Jew hater Linda Sarsour to speak at Commencement?  She advocates for terrorists and calls little kids throwing rocks courageous! See her Twitter account. 

Brandeiss suppresses Pro Israel supporters from speaking. 

Both situations are  clearly abusing the 1st Amendment rights of Freedom of Speech. 

#CancelSarsour: Assemblyman Hikand calls on NY Governor Cuomo to intervene, rescind this commencement invitation: "Sarsour's support for terrorism disqualifies her"

http://pamelageller.com/2017/04/cancel-sarsour-cuny.html/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=gplus 
Brandeis University withdrew an invitation to brave Muslim apostate, Ayaan Hirsi Ali but terror supporter and vicious Jew-hater Linda Sarsour is invited to give the commencement address at CUNY? She should be in jail not on a podium says Congressman Dov Hikind. 
--
Sincerely,

Robin Ticker

Israel Advocacy Calendar (www.IsraelAdvocacyCalendar.com).
Activist emails sent to my list  are L'Ilui Nishmat Yisrael ben David Aryeh ob"m (Izzy - Kaplan) and Howard Chaim Grief great activists and lovers of Eretz Yisroel, Am Yisroel and the Torah. Yehi Zichronum Baruch.  May their memories serve as a blessing. 

Most of these emails are posted on Shemittahrediscovered.blogspot.com 

Personal emails to individuals will not be posted to my blog. 

Muslim Brotherhood Written Plan for North America influence on Park Slope Food Coop BDS (PSFCBDS) PSFC International Trade Education Squad ITES..More.Brainwashing disguised as Education?

bsd

Muslim Brotherhood Written Plan for North America. BDS supporters in Park Slope Food Coop (PSFC) and elsewhere follow this plan by vilifying Israel under the guise of freedom, democracy, equality etc. Who needs to hear facts?
http://shemittahrediscovered.blogspot.com/2017/04/brigitte-gabriel-elaborates-on-muslim.html

Another opportunity to "Educate" or Brainwash?
Park Slope Food Coop International Trade Education Squad
https://coopites.wordpress.com/about/founding-the-ites/

FOUNDING OF THE ITES

Proposal: The PS Food Coop will form a International Trade Education Squad (ITES) to keep members informed about on-going international trade negotiations and how trade agreements affect our ability to maintain our values and realize the goals of the Park Slope Food Coop as put forward in our Mission Statement:
“We try to lead by example, educating ourselves and others about health and nutrition, cooperation and the environment…We seek to avoid products that depend upon the exploitation of others…We strive to reduce the impact of our lifestyles on the world we share with other species and future generations…”
Since the corporate mass media doesn’t inform us, many are confused about how international trade agreements affect our lives, our community and our Coop. To understand the process of how agreements are reached and the policies that trade agreements require that we accept, we agree to take responsibility to study and bring to Coop members information for discussion that can lead to individual and/or collective action.

I assume that this committee will probably have an anti Trump bias as is the case with the Lineswaiter Gazette. I think I am on target with this assumption. They probably have a socialist and progressive agenda.

I see that the purpose of ITES is to keep members informed as per Trade agreements and the Coops ability to maintain our values and realize the goals of the Mission Statement. 

Och in Vey.

I really haven't studied what TPP is all about nor what has been presented in the ITES to form an educated opinion as per whether they are for or against TPP or even neutral and unbiased.  However what seems most suspect here is the mission statement that says that the COOP avoids products that depend on the exploitation of others. When it comes to BDS, the PSFC has determined wrongly that Israel is exploiting the rights of the Palestinians, stealing their land, violating their rights etc. when the violations are clearly the other way around.

Therefore why should anyone trust ITES values and judgement to educate in an unbiased fashion?  Even more worrisome, will they take the side of evil, misrepresent the facts with disinformation and bias and call it education as they have done with PSFC BDS https://psfcbds.wordpress.com/  to clueless and uneducated members of the PSFC  like myself at least when it comes to Trade Agreements who will believe them? 
--
Sincerely,

Robin Ticker

Friday, April 14, 2017

Fwd: Kurtz Op-Ed: Understanding the Campus Free-Speech Crisis

Bsd

Time to discipline progressive/leftists who are supportive of BDS and BDS operatives. The have a proven record of disruption.. not visa versa! This post brings proof of anti Israel and progressive leftists disrupting pro Israel speech from way back. 

They must be disciplined as they have been quick to discipline the members of PSFC for protesting BDS....yes there is something we can learn from them....

We must not be afraid to disrupt and discourage a narrative based on hate and lies.

 At the same time we must not be afraid and be proactive to encourage and protect free speech that is Pro Israel.

Once and for all let us abolish BDS propaganda and lies!  

When will Pro Israel people have the same passion as anti Israel groups have had? 

One day...one day...stop with the violence, stop with the hate...

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Kurtz Op-Ed: Understanding the Campus Free-Speech Crisis

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For more information contact Morton A. Klein 212-481-1500
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NEW YORK, April 14, 2017

By Stanley Kurtz

What's gone wrong on our college campuses and how can we fix it? This past week, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald, a knowledgeable supporter of America's criminal justice system and thoughtful critic of the Black Lives Matter movement, was repeatedly shouted down by protesters at UCLA, then silenced and forced to escape with a police escort the next day, during what should have been her talk at Claremont McKenna College.

These incidents follow the February riot that forced the cancellation of a Milo Yiannopoulos talk at UC Berkeley, and the March shout-down at Middlebury College of conservative Charles Murray, followed by the violent attack that sent Murray's liberal interlocutor, Professor Allison Stanger, to the hospital.

The immediate lesson of the UCLA shout-down and the Claremont shut-down is that widespread condemnation by all sides of the Berkeley and Middlebury incidents has not restored campus free speech. On the contrary, America's colleges continue their descent into low-grade anarchy.

Why is that? The immediate explanation is that leftist college students are furious at the election of Donald Trump as president. Yet often-illiberal demonstrations swept over the nation's campuses during the 2015–16 academic year, well before Trump became a factor. The crisis of free speech has also been aggravated by a rising tide of shout-downs and disruptions of pro-Israel speakers since 2014. Before that, I reported in 2013 on a few of the more egregious silencing incidents sparked by the campus fossil-fuel divestment movement, then in full swing. In fact, I began covering campus silencing incidents for NRO in 2001, when I wrote about angry UC Berkeley students storming the offices of the Daily Californian to destroy a run of papers containing a David Horowitz ad opposing reparations for slavery. Today's problems are hardly new.

Back in 2001, as reported by ABC News, thefts of campus newspapers had increased by 600 percent over the previous decade and campus speeches by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, anti-preferences activist Ward Connerly, and Second Amendment supporter Charlton Heston were often disrupted or canceled. Here is a very partial excerpt from David Horowitz's description of his reception at various campuses in the early 2000s: "I once had to terminate a talk prematurely despite the presence of thirty armed police and four bodyguards at Berkeley. I had to be protected by twelve armed police and a German Shepard at the University of Michigan. I was rushed by clearly deranged individuals and saved only by the intervention of a bodyguard, twice — at M.I.T. and Princeton." (Sixteen years later, Horowitz has become the latest example of a campus free speech shut-down.)

A San Francisco Chronicle article from 2000 describes an incident at Berkeley in which 200 demonstrators broke through police barricades and blocked a talk by then-former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The incident was publicly condemned in a column by Berkeley mayor Shirley Dean and condemned as well in a joint letter by several members of the original Berkeley Free Speech Movement. These interventions by prestigious voices on the left were fueled by "cumulative frustration over several years of leftist demonstrations, particularly at the UC campus, disrupting speeches of those they view as criminal in one form or another." Targets of UC Berkeley disruptions stretching from the mid 1980s to the year 2000 included Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and former NATO commander General Wesley Clark.

The first in this series of UC Berkeley speaker disruptions of the post-1960s era seems to have been the 1983 shout-down down of Ronald Reagan's United Nations ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, by hecklers opposed to U.S. policy in El Salvador. Although her words were drowned out, Kirkpatrick went through the motions of reading her talk. Her follow-up Berkeley lecture was canceled, however. This incident, at a time when shout-downs were rare, sparked a national discussion and broad condemnation. Yet far from this condemnation preventing further disruptions, the virus quickly spread. Kirkpatrick was shouted down two weeks later at the University of Minnesota and her scheduled 1983 commencement address at Smith was canceled. The current era of campus shout-downs, shut-downs, and disinvitations had arrived. Yet the origins of this era lay still further back in time.

The campus disruptions of the 1960s and early 1970s set the pattern for all that was to follow from the mid 1980s onward. Most important for our purposes, Yale's Woodward Report of 1974, the classic defense of campus free speech, identified a series of shout-downs and disinvitations stretching back eleven years as the pattern that Yale would need to break. What the Woodward Report called Yale's "failures" began in 1963 when President Kingman Brewster, "in the interest of law and order" and in deference to New Haven's black community, canceled a scheduled talk by segregationist Alabama governor George C. Wallace at the height of the Civil Rights struggle.

Keep in mind that the report's chairman, Yale historian C. Vann Woodward, had advised Thurgood Marshall's legal team as it argued for school desegregation in what became the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954. And Woodward's book, The Strange Case of Jim Crow, had been dubbed "the historical bible of the civil rights movement" by Martin Luther King Jr. himself. Yet this Civil Rights hero, along with other liberal faculty members at Yale, pressured President Brewster to defend the freedom of speakers such as George Wallace.

None of this is to deny that the problem of campus shout-downs and disinvitations is getting worse. Yet it's important to keep in mind that today's pattern is an intensification of a long-standing crisis that has had its ups and downs since the early Sixties, but has not fundamentally changed in form for well over five decades. What's clear after 50-some years is that the academy has proven itself incapable of solving its free-speech problem on its own. Let's see why.

We can think of the challenges to free-speech since the Sixties as washing over our campuses in four great waves. The first wave ("Young Radicals") was made up of the illiberal and violent Sixties student radicals. Notwithstanding the views of the Free Speech Movement veterans who condemned the Berkeley Netanyahu shut-down of 2000, a great many of the Sixties radicals rejected classical-liberal conceptions of freedom in favor of a neo-Marxist analysis. In this view, free speech and constitutional democracy are tools used by the ruling class to suppress dissent and protect an oppressive society.

The second anti–free-speech wave ("Long March") hit colleges in the early-to-mid 1980s, as the radicals left graduate school and took up junior faculty positions, bringing their suspicions of free speech with them. These faculty did away with required Western Civilization courses as well, helping to launch the academic "culture war" that began at Stanford in 1987. After allied leftist faculty and students succeeded in abolishing Stanford's Western Civilization requirement in 1988, student demonstrators began demanding speech codes (partly in hopes of silencing students who had challenged them during the Western Civilization debate)

The third anti–free-speech wave ("Takeover") began in the mid 1990s, as the older generation of professors began to retire. At this point, the younger and more radical generation of faculty members reached critical mass. That is, they had the numbers to control hiring. Not believing in the classical-liberal vision of a marketplace of ideas, these faculty used the tenure system, not to seek out and protect the finest scholarly representatives of diverse perspectives, but to solidify an intellectual monopoly of the Left. By the 2000s, the tenured radicals constituted a controlling majority in many social science and humanities departments, and stood as the most powerful plurality in the university as a whole.

The fourth anti–free-speech wave ("Transformed Generation") consists of the late Millennial students who began demanding safe-spaces and trigger warnings around 2014, just as the number of university shout-downs and disinvitations began to spike. Free-speech advocate Gregg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt attribute the new student sensitivities, in part, to parental coddling by the Baby Boomers. No doubt there is truth to this, but this college generation's K–12 curriculum also differed dramatically from past standards.

Although Lynne Cheney, former National Endowment for the Humanities chairwoman under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush, managed to convince the U.S. Senate to condemn the proposed new multiculturalist National History Standards of 1994, the left-leaning post-Sixties generation of K–12 teachers adopted them in practice anyway. The rest of the curriculum was also quickly remodeled along lines that stressed group conflict and America's sins. The generation that brought us "micro-aggressions" and "white privilege" duly entered college 20 years later.

The key to solving the campus free-speech crisis lies in the decade-long interregnum between the radical Sixties and the kick-off of the campus culture wars in the mid 1980s. This was also a period of relative calm in the country as a whole.

The widely praised Woodward Report of 1974 marked the effective end of the Young Radicals phase (wave one), and ushered in the decade-long restoration of campus free speech. That restoration ended with the Jeane Kirkpatrick shout-down at Berkeley in 1983, which initiated the second wave of free-speech crisis.

What distinguished the Woodward Report of 1974 from Berkeley's response to the Kirkpatrick shout-down of 1983 was the issue of discipline. The Woodward Report not only eloquently upheld the principle of free speech, it insisted that students who shouted down visiting speakers must be disciplined. The Woodward Report also established a sanctions policy, and a system for warning disruptive students of potential disciplinary consequences. This approach carried the day at Yale and elsewhere during the post-Sixties restoration of free speech. In effect, the Woodward Report and its positive national reception helped return the credible threat of discipline for speaker shout-downs that had been abandoned by craven administrators during the 1960s.

A decade after the Woodward Report, things changed. While the Berkeley faculty as a whole condemned the students who shouted down Jeane Kirkpatrick in 1983, a faculty resolution to have Kirkpatrick's hecklers punished was defeated. This was likely a concession to the many junior faculty who openly defended Kirkpatrick's disruptors on the grounds that "oppressors" have no free-speech rights. Although many observers felt that disciplinary action against Kirkpatrick's hecklers had to be taken, the UC Board of Regents also declined to follow up on a demand for discipline initiated by Regents' chairman Glenn Campbell. Meanwhile, UC Berkeley chancellor Ira Heyman indicated that no disciplinary action would be taken.

With more leftist faculty streaming in over succeeding years, those who favored discipline for disruptors grew less powerful. The days when even (or especially) liberal Civil Rights heroes understood the need to grant free speech to segregationists were over. The policy of disciplinary sanctions for shout-downs instituted to national praise by Yale in 1974, definitively went by the boards at Berkeley in 1983. Speaker disruptions then slowly grew in frequency and force at Berkeley and beyond. So, the refusal to discipline the students who shouted down Kirkpatrick ultimately helped lock today's quasi-anarchic anti-speech system into place.

The thuggishness and violence of the Sixties demonstrations at their height exceeded what we see today. Yet today's chronic, pervasive, and steadily growing vice-grip of campus orthodoxy, punctuated and enforced by occasional shout-downs and meeting takeovers, is in its way more dangerous.

There are plenty of indications that campus free speech is more besieged nowadays than it's been in decades. Trigger warnings, safe spaces, and microaggressions signal a cultural sea-change. Anti-Israel shout-downs and disruptions have multiplied dramatically. These are no longer occasional embarrassing episodes but the fruit of a deliberate strategy devised by influential sectors of the campus left. FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), which keeps an index of disinvitations and shout-downs, says the overall rate of all such incidents is increasing.

Yet statistics tell only part of the story. We can't assume a constant rate of speakers attempting to counter campus orthodoxies. Top comedians and an unknowable number of conservative speakers now avoid college campuses. At some point, a decreasing rate of shout-downs may actually indicate that free speech, along with resistance to campus orthodoxies, has been successfully crushed. And in a world of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, a few well-publicized shout-downs may suffice to chill speech and encourage violent demonstrators across the entire country. Finally, in contrast to the Sixties, today's illiberal demonstrators, disruptive and ornery though they may seem, may actually be allied with significant sections of the faculty and administration (as KC Johnson has cogently argued).

So there are important reasons to believe that today's free-speech crisis is locked-in and unchangeable in the absence of outside intervention. The alliance of radical students with dominant sections of the faculty (precisely those faculty members who reject classical liberalism) means that few C. Vann Woodwards remain to pressure administrators into defending free speech. Meanwhile, the ideologically based "studies" programs (various ethnic studies, women's studies, and environmental studies majors) have grown to challenge the conventional academic departments in size and influence. This creates a large and permanent faculty and student constituency schooled in suspicion of classic liberalism.

Ultimately, the public has granted the academy certain rights and privileges — special financial and policy protections (especially tenure) — on the understanding that institutions of higher education will pursue truth under conditions of free inquiry and fairness to all points of view. There is a kind of implicit bargain or social contract here, and the academy has so consistently and persistently violated its side of the bargain that public action is now necessary.

In particular, the tenure system, designed to ensure freedom of speech and secure the marketplace of ideas, has been abused to create an illiberal intellectual monopoly. And precisely because of this monopolistic abuse of the unique privilege of academic tenure, along with the unresolved, decades-long crisis of campus free speech, the traditional policy presumption in favor of local control can no longer be sustained in this sector.

That is why state and federal legislators cannot look the other way but must act to restore our most basic liberties to the academy. And while legislation eliminating restrictive speech codes and so-called free-speech zones is very much in order, the underlying problem will not be solved until administrators are pressed to restore discipline for speaker shout-downs. The administrative refusal to discipline disruptors, which took off in the Sixties and resumed with the Kirkpatrick incident in 1983, must be reversed. Only a return to the policies and ethos of the Woodward Report offers hope.

There are several state-level campus free-speech bills on offer, but only the model legislation proposed in the Goldwater Report systematically addresses the problem of discipline for campus shout-downs. I have also offered a plan to tie federal aid to higher education to a restoration of discipline for speaker shout-downs, among other things.

The tattered campus climate of free speech ultimately rests on deeper cultural shifts that must be addressed by educators over the long-term. Yet legislative action to protect campus free speech could serve as the shock that initiates cultural change.

Short of legislative steps to restore discipline for disruption, even bipartisan condemnation of campus shout-downs will fail, as it has failed repeatedly in the past. The ranks of authentically liberal faculty members are far too thinned to do what Woodward and his colleagues did in 1974. Without an intervention by the public through its elected representatives, the structure of the anti-free-speech university is locked-in for the foreseeable future. After 54 years, we are indeed at an inflection point. Act now, or campus free speech will be lost for a lifetime.

This article was published by the National Review and may be found here.

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The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is the oldest and one of the largest pro-Israel organizations in the United States. With offices around the country and in Israel, the ZOA educates the public, elected officials, the media, and college/high school students about the truth of the ongoing Arab war against Israel. The ZOA works to strengthen U.S.- Israel relations through educational activities, public affairs programs and our work on Capitol Hill, and to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias in the media, in textbooks, in schools and on college campuses. Under the leadership of such presidents as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, and current President Morton A. Klein, the ZOA has been - and continues to be - on the front lines of Jewish activism. www.zoa.org. For more information contact Morton A. Klein 212-481-1500.





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Thursday, April 13, 2017

Fwd: fyi Fighting BDS by fighting the Left who Kills Free Speech - "*Berkeley Hates Free Speech - David Horowitz..."

bs"d

Chol Hamoed Pesach 5777. Happy Passover, the Festival of Freedom: Moadim LeSimcha!

I am a member to abolish BDS from the Park Slope Food Coop. https://abolishbds.blogspot.com/

Dear Friends who are involved in fighting BDS.

I thought you might be interested in reading this recent article by David Horowitz regarding how they prevented him from speaking at Berkeley.

We are not surprised as this is their modus operandi.

My question to those of you who are lawyers is "Does David Horowitz have legal grounds to go on the offensive to win a case against Berkeley?

The reality is that BDS gets a platform in Berkeley  and anti BDS does not!

In Park Slope Food Coop: 
  • Members who disrupt a hate filled, antisemitic, BDS false narrative are guilty.
  • Those who provide a platform for hate filled, antisemitic lies and propaganda are members in positions of influence obviously not guilty.

BDS operatives have succeeded in silencing any alternative counter pro Israel Narrative by being in positions of influence that control the narrative.. 

We have brought to your attention and are doing so again, that an unwillingness to address what is happening in Park Slope Food Coop  is indicative why the legal establishment has been ineffective in fighting BDS nationwide.  

The reality is that in spite of all the hard work to fight BDS, Berkeley and other college campuses, and PSFC are unsafe places for those who express a pro Israel and anti Palestinian position.. 

BDS operatives, individuals or organizations, and they must be named, whether they are Professors or administrators or in positions of influence, like those in charge of security and discipline,  have afforded themselves the freedom to spread false one sided narratives about the illegal Occupation of Palestine or any left sided narrative they want to promote and suppress the opposite. They use Freedom of Religion to justify Islam when in fact they are justifying Radical Islamic terror. ...They take advantage of our American Constitution First Amendment rights to spread propaganda to justify the armed struggle of the Palestinian people.  This translates to justification of violent Jihad.  BDS promotion translates into their justification of economic jihad.  They use resources of the campus or organization which they have embedded themselves to reach a wide audience. In the case of David Horowitz they gain access to students via unions, student papers etc. to spread misinformation as they successfully suppress any other narrative that is Pro Israel, based on Truth.  The BDS operatives embedded in the administration successfully controls the logistics to prevent David Horowitz from speaking and fails to discipline those who rioted in the past when someone not of their persuasion spoke. 

Lawyers fighting BDS need to see the bigger picture and not get bogged down in the details which is blinding them. They must address underlying root of the matter rather than focus on merely the tip of the iceberg which is the actual boycotting of israeli products.  

What is transpiring in Berkeley is outrageous!  It is equally outrageous what has been transpiring in the PSFC for more than 8 years and that 4 long term members were suspended for protesting a BDS agenda item.

The deceitful way that BDS operates makes it very difficult to prosecute but that is no excuse.  For example not providing a room at a convenient time in an accessible location and then using Security as the excuse to cancel David Horowitz's talk are ways to suppress Freedom of Speech.

Their unwillingness to check real security concerns of the BDS camp and Captain Alex Yao should be investigated,  has led to real security concerns.

David Horowitz writes:

But the UC can't be bothered with actual concerns for public safety. In fact, the UC Police Department led by Captain Alex Yao, did nothing to stop or arrest the rioters, who as a result will not have to  think twice before rioting again, say at my event or at Ann Coulter's which is scheduled to take place at the end of the month.

 In addition they use a 16,000 UAW email list to spread more lies and defend their position.  David Freedman should take them to court for defamation of character, disproving that "Islamophic and xenophobic campaigns of the Freedom Center" are in fact based on truth and fact no different than calling a murderer a murderer. 

David Horowitz writes:

UAW union 3865 which represents over 16,000 "student-workers" across the UC system and sent out an email calling on the university not to give me a platform to speak on campus, citing alleged "Islamophobic and xenophobic campaigns my Freedom Center has sponsored."
....
Everyone is by now familiar with the left's desire to silence its political opponents. A liberal with integrity, Kirsten Powers, has even written a first-rate book titled, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech. But the university regularly condones the antics of its leftist totalitarians, desperate for what all appeasers seek: peace in its time. So desperate is the administration to appease leftists within, in fact, that it willingly places placing crushing burdens on conservative students who want to hear other opinions – not possible in their classrooms because their professors and reading lists were long ago purged of conservative viewpoints.



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Date: Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 7:11 PM
Subject: Shared a post - "*Berkeley Hates Free Speech - David Horowitz..."
To: faigerayzel@gmail.com


Sally Zahav shared a post.
Berkeley Hates Free Speech - David Horowitz
by David Horowitz The totalitarian acts of a cowardly university days before my scheduled appearance. Reprinted from dailycaller.com . The University of California Berkeley has an unearned reputation as the "home of the Free Speech movement," a reference t...
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Berkeley Hates Free Speech - David Horowitz
by David Horowitz The totalitarian acts of a cowardly university days before my scheduled appearance. Reprinted from dail...

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Sincerely,

Robin Ticker

Israel Advocacy Calendar (www.IsraelAdvocacyCalendar.com).
Activist emails sent to my list  are L'Ilui Nishmat Yisrael ben David Aryeh ob"m (Izzy - Kaplan) and Howard Chaim Grief great activists and lovers of Eretz Yisroel, Am Yisroel and the Torah. Yehi Zichronum Baruch.  May their memories serve as a blessing. 

Most of these emails are posted on Shemittahrediscovered.blogspot.com 

Personal emails to individuals will not be posted to my blog. 

Monday, March 27, 2017

From the Committee to Abolish BDS from the PSFC (Park Slope Food Coop): This Wed. March 29th at UN Headquarters: Another Anti Israel BDS Conference this time featuring Niki Haley determined to push for Action. Let us once and for all finally put an end to toothless anti -BDS resolutions and anti-BDS ineffective condemnations.

bs"d

Once again there is the Second Massive anti-Israel BDS Conference to meet at the UN headquarters March 29th.  http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/wjc-and-israels-mission-to-un-to-co-host-annual-ambassadors-against-bds-summit-at-un-headquarters-in-new-york-3-2-2017 Second Massive Anti-BDS Conference to Meet at UN
https://unitedwithisrael.org/second-massive-anti-bds-conference-to-meet-at-un/


They have as their featured guest speaker Niki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Great choice as she seems like a doer. Watch her on Youtube. 

She says she is determined to push for action.  We are following closely hoping and praying that under the Trump Administration and under his people they will follow through with concrete punitive measures like defunding UNRWA  agencies who are enemies of Israel. 


Nikki Haley Puts U.N. on Notice: U.S. Is 'Taking Names'

UNITED NATIONS — The American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, issued a stark warning on Friday to allies and rivals abroad, saying in her first remarks at the headquarters of the world body that the Trump administration would hold to account those who do not back the United States.

"You're going to see a change in the way we do business," Ms. Haley said. "Our goal with the administration is to show value at the U.N., and the way we'll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our back as well."

"For those who don't have our back," she added, "we're taking names; we will make points to respond to that accordingly."
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18447 Nikki Haley's first hurrah By Ruthie Blum
We on the committee to Abolish BDS from PSFC are hoping that the fight against BDS will move on to the next stage...
We have heart enough of toothless anti-Israel BDS resolutions and ineffective condemnations!
Having been at last year's first anti-Israel BDS Conference and as someone who is part of the Committee to abolish BDS from the Park Slope Food Coop, let me disappoint you with the sad news, from our perspective,  that this conference was a lot of hot air and talk and didn't translate to something of substance. Their recommendations did nothing to help abolish BDS in the Park Slope Food Coop and in fact the BDS has intensified. 

Note our goal is to demolish BDS and not merely to stop it.  Stopping it works temporarily and comes back with a vengeance. 

Legal Scholars at BDS Conference UN can't see the Forest for the Trees.  https://abolishbds.blogspot.com/2016/11/legal-scholars-at-bds-conference-un.html

We are a committee to abolish BDS from the PSFC (Park Slope Food Coop). http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/39/27/dtg-park-slope-co-op-casualties-2016-01-07-bk.html  Read about us below in the the ZOA post as well. 

Now we understand why those who disrupt COOP business deserve disciplinary action to keep them in check. We agree that those who don't show up to work or are thieves should be disciplined. 

However, in this scenario, the true offenders were not those that disrupted the BDS agenda item but rather those who put the BDS on the agenda in the first place! It is the PSFC BDS https://psfcbds.wordpress.com/  which is offensive, who have found a warm embrace and platform in a food coop which brainwashed 17,000 of its members against Israel and Settlers living rightfully in their ancestral homeland in Judea and Samria.  It is they who deserve to be ousted by a disciplinary committee. Unfortunately the disciplinary and hearing committee have a BDS Bias. 

If the agenda item to be presented was pornographic wouldn't the members be justified in stopping the presentation?  

Those that stopped the BDS Presentation at the General Meeting are heroes to be commended! Here is an idea of what they  prevented the unsuspecting audience from hearing

In a  BDS narrative:
Israel is accused of every evil. In particular, there is mention of "massacres," "ethnic cleansing," "famine" (of Palestinians), "indiscriminate bombings," and "acts of genocide." The terminology used is particularly savage, and the goal perfectly clear. To promote the boycott of Israel, Palestinian NGOs are trying to equate Israeli actions with those of the Nazis.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, in France http://isgap.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/KnobelFlashpoint43.pdf2002 - 2010 By Marc Knobel Marc Knobel is a Scholar of History and Director of Research at the CRIF 


But the million dollar question is will the legal experts against-Israel BDS take on our case? 

So far not..Why not? Apparently, we don't have a case...apparently PSFC BDS presentations in PSFC were justified under the 1st Amendment of Freedom of Speech! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

On the other hand, a pro Israel, pro IDF, Pro Judea and Samaria narrative from the Coop's perspective is "political" which goes against the "mission Statement" of the COOP. Therefore such a narrative is silenced and suppressed. 

The PSFC COOP selectively will decide that a presentation is considered too political  or considered hate speech in order to reject anything that would put  Israel and settlement in Judea and Samaria in a positive light.  At the same time they use the resources of the Coop to spread  pro BDS propaganda and lies to advocate for "human and Palestinian rights" which they have determined is not political and in keeping with the mission Statement of the PSFC. 


Legally and practically at the moment, it is our opinion that PSFC BDS is a cancer that is part and parcel of the PSFC and has affected and weakened the COOP from effectively acting as a food coop or even being objective enough to hold a fair hearing.  
Case in Point: Would the members of the PSFC Coop agree to hosting an Organic Food Presentation coming from an Organic Farm in the Shomron who happens to be in the forefront of innovations in the field of Organic Farming?

To even suggest doing so is considered by most everyone in the Coop, even those who love Israel, as divisive, controversial, counterproductive  and contrary to a collective and civil discourse. To those who hate Israel it is an anathema. 

This just proves how pervasive the brainwashing has become..

The members of the PSFC clearly voted against BDS in their Coop in 2012 but those on the Board of the Directors and the officers apparently do not care. That in and of itself is very problematic.  They are self appointing and perpetuating group. They represent a BDS Agenda and put whatever they choose on the Agenda and dictate agenda all in the name of diversity and any objection is suppressed and any serious protest to their agenda is a violation of the rules of conduct in the Coop and subject to disciplinary action. Protection of Freedom of Speech is hijacked and reserved only for those who agree with the progressive liberal pro BDS point of view. 

Pro BDS bias in PSFC is evident not only among the Board of Directors but has permeated the entire Coop over the past 8 years and is evident in the LIneswaitier Gazette, the PSFC paper, BDS website, reading groups and all the PSFC committees including the PSFC disciplinary committee and the PSFC hearing committee not to mention the bias of buyers not to buy Israeli products etc.


BDS presents a false one sided picture. They are hypersensitive to anything that is anti BDS, and anti Radical Islam, depicting it as hate speech and Islamophobia.  Will they be honest enough to admit that the victims of Terror in Israel (and often elsewhere) are diverse but the killers are Muslim? (A quote from Daniel Greenfield Sultan Knish).  

Defending the IDF for example for roadblocks with "minor" facts like they are entrusted with  protecting Israeli citizens against terrorists is naturally not part of the BDS presentation. 

Prestigious Lawyers, Alan Dershowitz among them, are sound defenders of the BDS rights of Freedom of Expression and fail miserably to protect the rights of the Pro Israel's side's right to expression...

This golden rule is a doctrine not to be questioned by minions like ourselves. 

Yet it doesn't take a brilliant law professor with umpteen degrees to put 2 and 2 together.  If anti BDS speech is considered hate speech and rejected from the Coop and BDS speech is protected under the 1st Amendment then of course BDS wins hands down.  Legal Scholars by pushing the 1st Amendment rights for the other side have undermined their own efforts!

These super lawyers will pat themselves on the back if they manage to go after a company that can be proven to have boycotted Israeli products. Maybe then they can prevent city or state offices from doing business with them. That is well and good but simply scratches the surface.


The Legal Response - Amb. Alan Baker

The international community needs to act to criminalize incitement to terror  http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-legal-response-amb-alan-baker.html?m=1
...Terror involves two basic components: ideology and practical implementation. Both are often inter-dependent. Ideology comes through education, brainwashing, and incitement. Implementation comes from the availability, manufacture, supply or easy acquisition of weapons in order to implement the ideology.

The fact of the matter is that BDS is not so much the issue as Israeli businesses are booming. 

The brainwashing and indoctrination is the problem and that must be stopped. 

The Governer came out with an executive Order against BDS.  Sounds impressive but again just fluff.

The City Council came out with Legislation against BDS.  Sounds impressive but nothing but hot air air.  

We have had no address to voice our complaint. Not in the City of New York and not in the State of New York. Our letters and phone calls went unanswered.  For starters there isn't any committee or address where we can even launch a complaint.   Needless to say there is surely no way then to follow through with an investigation.  All the elected officials put it on their resume that they are sponsors of anti-BDS resolutions and it's great for reelection hype but as far as we can tell it means zero or the value of the paper that it is written on.   

The fact that  PSFC  have engaged in libelous indoctrination, anti semitic lies and innuendos accusing Israel of the Occupation of Palestinian Land for the past 8 years,  embedding itself in the governing of the PSFC misrepresenting itself as a food coop, while using the resources of the PSFC, using the members membership fees etc,  hosting a PSFC facebook page to advocate for  BDS "Palestinian rights" ,  BDS propaganda, promoting liberal progressive, anti Trump, pro migrant, communist and socialist  agenda spreading viscious and hateful propaganda, and suppressing and silencing equal time with Pro Israel truths is of no value in a court of law?

Maybe this year the anti-Israel BDS Conference will be different under the Trump Administration...The best speakers last year were the Pro Israel Arabs who understood the nature of the beast.  Mort Klein of ZOA spoke well as he is not afraid to speak of the Biblical connection of the Land and the Israel Nation.  

The facts are that Arabs have a much better life under the State of Israel than they do under Hamas or Fatah.  They have  better education, health coverage and work opportunities. Soda Stream made an amazing Employer for Palestinians.  

Arabs living under Arab government don't have it so good. Syrians have had a half a million people slaughtered this year alone not to mention the migration of 47% of its population. World shrugs as Hezbollah prepares massive civilian deaths. 
Lebanon has made Hezbollah, whose rocket launchers are in homes and villages, part of its official army, making it responsible for civilian deaths on both sides should war erupt. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/20314?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Finally let me address one of the saddest reasons of what is most hampering anti-BDS efforts.

Unfortunately, it is quite painful to say that the Government of Israel who is hosting this anti BDS conference is also to blame.  They threw settlers from Amona and Ofra out of their homes very recently   . The claim that they were built on Palestinian Land is highly questionable.  The Jewish homeowners received all the proper permits form the State of Israel to build. In addition there is no Arab who  is claiming the Land and there is no Arab who will have any benefit from this Land once the Jews were thrown out.

Let there at least be be a transparent open and fair trial as per who are the rightful claimants of the property.  

The government of Israel has empowered the BDS narrative by forcing the Jews from their homes in their ancestral homeland.

In Conclusion:

So long as the officers and Board of Directors of the PSFC with an anti Israel Bias are in control of the Coop, and runs their committees, and filters elections and appointees of those who edits their papers, and buys the products and decides the agenda of the their general meeting, and those who runs the disciplinary committee and the hearing committee, BDS will continue to silence and suppress any pro Israel, pro Judea and Samaria, pro organic food education if it in any way reflects positively on Settlements of Judea and Samaria...


The Legal Community does not address the brainwashing of BDS as being criminal subject to investigation, prosecution and conviction with punitive action. 

BDS brainwashing is ideology which is the precursor that leads to economic warfare in the form of actual Boycots Divestment and Sanctions and to actual Terror attacks!  The brainwashing justifies the  Palestinian cause and their "armed struggle" which is just a pseudonym for justified terror attacks.  

Do anti BDS legal scholars care that in the PSFC a pro Israel narrative can't even get a foot in the door and that sympathizers of BDS have brainwashed the members of the Food Coop against Israel and against the Settlers of Judea and Samaria and have controlled the narrative and the bias over a span of many years? 
Dear ZOA

Thank you for this letter in the Jewish Week and a chance to vent..but unless we go after the Coop and manage to fire the BDS bigshots from their Board of Directors position and other BDS sympathizer officers and Committee heads and BDS sympathisers from their influential position of leadership the PSFC will continue as it is, a front to disseminate BDS lies, antisemitism, and progressive, leftist, communist anti Trump anti American agenda in the Coop.

Some real punitive and disciplinary action should be taken against BDS members of the PSFC.  We should be "taking names"  
especially since some of the BDS operatives do not disclose their names.They should be removed from their positions of influence.  If this is not possible and they continue to remain in their positions of influence, than punitive action against  the Coop should be taken.  The PSFC is currently operating in violation of their mission statement  under the pretense of being a not for Profit Cooperative Food Coop. Without punitive measures and enforcement, nothing will change. At best they will lay low for a while only to rise again with a vengeance at the first opportunity.

Immediate course of action to turn the situation around..

.We need access to the PSFC membership mailing list in order to get to the membership and provide for them a pro Israel education and an alternative slate of candidates, not weeded out, for positions open for Board of Directors and officers slots. 

Currently BDS Board members sympathizers are in positions that are  self perpetuating and BDS sympathizer are the recommended slate offered as the best possible choice of candidates when the slots open up. 

Someone who is vociferously pro Israel and Pro Judea and Samaria doesn't seem to have a chance to get on the board or to become an officer. Please prove me wrong. . Committee heads positions are weeded out by a sympathetic BDS board of directors so that they too will be BDS sympathizers. These aren't fair elections since they effectively control the slate.

We need to break this cycle so at the very least both sides are given equal time. BDS has for 8 years dominated the narrative.

It's time for BDS be forced out and or elected out!  This won't happen so long as they are in control of the narrative.

 In all fairness pro Israel should now dominate in the PSFC for the next 8 years. Finally they will once and for all focus on organic healthy living instead of all this other crap ( like a nice seminar how manure can benefit mankind as being studied in Itamar at the Organic Zimmerman farm in the Shomron) !


FYI

From: Zionist Organization of America [mailto:info@zoa.org]
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2017 1:19 PM
To: Ticker, Jay (NYSHCR) <Jay.Ticker@nyshcr.org>
Subject: NY Jewish Week Op-Ed: ZOA Fights Anti-Semitism at Food Coop

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NY Jewish Week Op-Ed: ZOA Fights Anti-Semitism at Food Coop

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For more information contact Morton A. Klein 212-481-1500
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NEW YORK, March 22, 2017

By Eytan Sosnovich and Susan Tuchman, Esq.

Two year ago, four individuals spoke out against hate.  As a result, they, and every member of their households, were barred from their community for an entire year.
The community is the Park Slope Food Coop and the form of hate is anti-Semitism.
The Coop's mission is worthwhile: to make healthy and affordable food available to everyone who wants it.  Yet, over the last several years, the Coop has seemingly become obsessed with bashing Israel – and only Israel – tolerating repeated efforts to have Israeli products removed from Coop shelves.  It is difficult to understand what the Jewish state has to do with offering healthy and affordable food in Brooklyn, but then anti-Semitism has always been beyond reason. The Coop regularly features anti-Israel articles and letters in its bi-weekly newsletter, provides a platform to anti-Israel speakers at general membership meetings, and repeatedly raises boycotting Israeli products.
By April of 2015, many of the Coop's members had rightfully had it. At yet another general membership meeting featuring an Israel-hating speaker, dozens of Coop members spoke out and demanded that the speaker stop his assault on Israel.  Four members were singled out among the many who objected to the viciously biased presentation, and were suspended from the Coop for disrupting the meeting.
All of us should be deeply concerned about the failure of state and local representatives to stand up to the Coop's tolerance for unremitting anti-Semitic attacks on Israel.
Upon learning of the injustice done to these Coop members and their families, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) sent a strongly worded letter, reminding the Coop that boycotts against Israel are illegal in New York State and urged that the four members be reinstated. The Coop failed to respond. Undeterred, the ZOA initiated a petition that garnered hundreds of signatures, asking the Coop to stop its anti-Semitic obsession with Israel and reinstate the four members who spoke out against hate. Again, no response from the Coop.
A former Coop board member did reach out to us in an unofficial capacity.  His comments were illuminating – and alarming.  He urged the ZOA to stop advocating for the suspended Coop members.  He explained that it is Coop policy to allow anyone to speak about anything at general membership meetings, even if the speech is anti-Semitic.  Yet he made an exception for speech that might be offensive to African Americans:  He did not believe that the Coop would provide a platform to a member of the Ku Klux Klan.  When we pushed him about this clear double standard, he explained that those who incite hatred of Israel and Jews at the Coop have "plausible deniability" to the charge of anti-Semitism because their hateful speech is masked as criticism of Israel. But according to the U.S. government's definition of anti-Semitism, demonizing Israel, and singling out Israel and holding it to a standard that no other country is held to – which is exactly what has been happening at the Coop – are forms of anti-Semitism.
Given New York State's prohibition against anti-Israel boycotts and a New York City Council resolution condemning the anti-Israel boycott movement, we reasonably believed that state and local officials would be deeply troubled to learn that the Coop was punishing members who strongly objected to Coop activities that could be illegal and violated public policy.  We were wrong.  We contacted New York State Senators Jesse Hamilton, Kevin Parker and Diane Savino, New York Assembly Members Jo Anne Simon and Pamela Harris, and New York City Council Members Brad Lander and Chaim Deutsch.  Each represented either the Coop or one or more of the suspended Coop members. Not a single elected representative intervened, even to express concern about the injustice of the Coop's harsh punishment and the unfair burden it was placing on the suspended  members and their families.
"All of us should be deeply concerned about the failure of state and local representatives to stand up to the Coop's tolerance for unremitting anti-Semitic attacks on Israel."
Their suspensions will end next month, but the ordeal they endured, and the failure of our elected representatives to step up to the plate to help them, is an important lesson not only for Coop members, but also for the rest of us.  Coop members who simply want to buy healthy and affordable food are still being forced to tolerate fanatical, hateful attacks on the one Jewish state.  The Coop's newsletter is still rife with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic articles. One recent article called for the boycott of Sabra Hummus, because it is "half owned by an Israeli company." Sabra Hummus, however, isn't produced in Israel, but in the United States.
All of us should be deeply concerned about the failure of state and local representatives to stand up to the Coop's tolerance for unremitting anti-Semitic attacks on Israel.  While we commend those representatives who supported legislation against anti-Israel boycotts, we – and all of you – expect more from our elected officials.  Recent violence, vandalism and threats against Jewish institutions are getting heightened public attention. But the truth is that anti-Semitism has long been a serious problem in the U.S.  The FBI's hate crime statistics bear this out:  Jews have always been the biggest target of religious hate crimes.  We need to know that when the anti-Semitism is expressed as anti-Israelism, community institutions like the Park Slope Food Coop – and our elected representatives – will not tolerate it.  Otherwise, Jew-hatred, however it is expressed, will continue to grow.
Eytan Sosnovich is the Director of Regional Affairs for the Zionist Organization of America
Susan Tuchman is the Director of the Zionist Organization of America's Center for Law and Justice
This article was published by the Jewish Week and may be found here.
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About the ZOA
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is the oldest and one of the largest pro-Israel organizations in the United States. With offices around the country and in Israel, the ZOA educates the public, elected officials, the media, and college/high school students about the truth of the ongoing Arab war against Israel. The ZOA works to strengthen U.S.- Israel relations through educational activities, public affairs programs and our work on Capitol Hill, and to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias in the media, in textbooks, in schools and on college campuses. Under the leadership of such presidents as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, and current President Morton A. Klein, the ZOA has been - and continues to be - on the front lines of Jewish activism. www.zoa.org. For more information contact Morton A. Klein 212-481-1500.



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Israel Advocacy Calendar (www.IsraelAdvocacyCalendar.com).
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