A new term and thousands of brand new students to brainwash so it was down to the University of London Students’ Union last night where the Palestine Solidarity Cult held a meeting to discuss boycotting of Israeli culture and academia. Predictably the ingénues were subjected to a farrago of lies. Fortunately there were a number of Zionist activists there and we were able to de-programme a number of the students after the cult meeting. (You will recall that Norman Finkelstein is persona non grata at the PSC after he called it a "cult").
The meeting was chaired by Salim Alam, well known to this blog as a defamation-merchant:
http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/smeared-pscs-salim-alam
Again predictably he used the normal PSC Stalinist tactic of censorship – I was not called on in the Q+A despite having my hand up continuously. Fortunately there were a number of Zionists in the audience who did get called on and their questions of course were steamrollered by the panel.
The first lie came from Ben White:
http://cifwatch.com/cif-contributors/ben-white/
My deconstruction of White’s book is here:
http://www.propagandistmag.com/2009/07/08/lies-damn-lies-and-apartheid-a...
White claimed that Israelis who have been involved in combat in the IDF “cannot go on holiday to London”. Wrong. This government has closed the loophole in the Universal Jurisdiction procedure, by which anyone could achieve a detention of visitors from abroad on the most spurious of charges. Now only the Attorney General can achieve a detention under the Universal Jurisdiction.
The second lie came from Mike Cushman, an LSE academic who believes his halachically Jewish status gives him added credibility when parroting the usual PSC defamatory lies about Israel - never mind that he has about as much connection with formal Jewish customs and institutions as a sloth-eyed toad.
http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2011/10/
Cushman told us that “Israeli Arabs are not Zionists” - a statement disproved by the many surveys which tell us that if there was a Palestinian state, the vast majority of Israeli Arabs would prefer to live in Israel. Maybe that’s because the best place for an Arab woman to live in the Middle East in order to get a good education is Israel.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths2/exclusives.html#a83
The third lie - in the form of a false quote designed to defame Israel - came from Rafeef Ziadah, a Palestinian who works for War on Want:
http://www.jewishcomment.com/cgibin/news.cgi?id=11&command=shownews&news...
From Ziadah we got the false quote about “two legged beasts”:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=21&x_article=775
The students’ brainwashing at the hands of the cult ended with an appeal to come and help disrupt the three Batsheva performances in London next week.
Bring it on – nothing does more damage to the cause of the PSC than for paying customers to witness its cultural hooliganism at first hand.
On the way out Richard Millett was confronted by the oddball Asa Winstanley with a recorder, demanding to know who funds Richard’s blog!
http://cifwatch.com/2011/11/23/racist-alliance-behind-the-scenes-of-the-...
With lies and distortions in practically every sentence, not to mention the liberal sprinklings of ‘Israel lobby’ conspiracy theory and false accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ against the CST and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, it is easy to appreciate why Winstanley is such a hit in anti-Israel circles.
Winstanley is an Evangelical Christian, and was formerly Christian Youth Minister at the Wembley Church of Christ. He opposes the existence of Israel, suggesting he is a supercessionist.
But if we can deprogramme even one student after these cult meetings, that’s a massive success. And last night we deprogrammed several.
Richard Millett's account:
http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/palestine-solidarity-camp...