Israeli Supporters are Extremists and Behave every bit like white supremacists

In late July, my colleagues at Central
Connecticut State University facilitated a
workshop on the Middle East to provide school
teachers information and analysis on the
history, politics, economics, culture and
religions of the region. They were assailed even
before the workshop started by very shrill and
bellicose pro-Israeli, Zionist groups in the area
who also claimed that the workshop was not
"balanced" (i.e. it was deemed to be
pro-Palestinian and/or anti-Israeli without any
evidence whatsoever to level such scurrilous
charges). The pro-Israeli groups wanted
speakers to "balance" the presentations of the
workshop faculty. They called into question,
without any basis, the credentials and
scholarship of the facilitators, thereby trying to
undermine the credibility of the workshop. Their
supporters resorted to hate-mails and
threatening calls besides overloading the e-mail
of the University's President, Dr. Richard Judd,
and others involved in the workshop. But to the
immense credit of the organizing faculty and
our President, the program went ahead as
planned despite the unceasing efforts to
scuttle, demean and disrupt it by the pro-Israeli
lobby.

The intellectual cowardice of such intolerant
groups has plumbed new depths. Their
scare-mongering tactics are reminiscent of the
terrible persecution of people in and out of
academia in the McCarthy-era for the mere
suspicion of harboring "socialist" thoughts.
Now, people and institutions around the country
who attempt to foster an open discussion and
debate on terrorism, or on Israel's unremitting,
brutal war against the Palestinian people, are
attacked, especially if they criticize Israel in the
slightest degree. They are called "anti-Semitic"
by the new thought-police, as people were
labeled "commies" in an earlier period in
attempts to make them social pariahs. Their
sole purpose is to stifle free expression and
silence any criticism of a country they deem
immaculate. Israel's vicious violence against
the Palestinians is "self defence" and beyond
reproach.

These are perilous times for freedom in the
country. The executive branch of government
has enacted, with the complicity of the
legislative branch, some of the most restrictive
laws ever to collect information on "suspects"
and incarcerate them for endless periods
without due process as "enemy combatants" or
"conspirators in terror". The media cowers under
threat of sanction from the pro-Israeli groups or
for seeming to be "not-sufficiently-patriotic".
Politicians are silenced into meekly accepting
the Israeli government's characterization
(supported by the U.S. government) of the
relentlessly cruel war against the Palestinian
people as being an integral part of America's
war on "global terrorism", and hence above
criticism. If any politician dares to step out of
line, the powerful pro-Israeli groups organize to
engineer his or her defeat at the polls. Just ask
Earl Hilliard and Cynthia McKinney. The last
bastions of free speech and open debate are in
the halls of academia and on the grounds of
college campuses.