US Investigating Anti-Semitism at Berkeley, Including Apartheid Week Activities
October 16, 2012 15:13 by Pesach Benson
Everything you need to know about today’s coverage of Israel and the Mideast. Join the Israel Daily News Stream on Facebook.
Today’s Top Stories:
1. Campus activists for Israel take note: the US Dept. of Education is investigating whether the civil rights of Jewish students at U. of California-Berkeley have been violated by a “pervasive hostile environment” against Israel and the Jewish people. An LA Times staff-ed notes:
The department responded to a request from lawyers for two recent Berkeley graduates who earlier had sued the university complaining about a “dangerous anti-Semitic climate” at Berkeley. In their letter, the lawyers alleged that the university’s actions “present a disturbing echo of incitement, intimidation, harassment and violence carried out under the Nazi regime . . . against Jewish students and scholars in the leading universities . . . during the turbulent years leading up to and including the Holocaust.”
Central to the complaint is an annual demonstration known as Apartheid Week . . .
2. Busted! Palestinians caught on video chopping down their own olive trees. Palestinians responded by calling the video a lie. So who wants to break the inconvenient news to Hanan Ashrawi, The Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald?
3. French diplomat accused of helping Palestinians rewrite history. According to the JTA, France’s consul general in Jerusalem, Frederic Desagneaux, who was giving a speech on archeology:
spoke of “the important archaeological projects that French archaeologists had helped to uncover in Palestine,” including the Qumran Caves.
Desagneaux also praised French archaeologists for “helping to discover Palestine.” An approved copy of his speech mentions, in this context, the Qumran Caves, where archaeologists discovered the collection of biblical texts knows as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The text does not contain the word “Jewish” and Israel appears in it once, in a sentence about the “Israel-Palestinian conflict.”
Israel and the Palestinians
• Times of Israel: Hamas and Fatah are politicizing the haj, much to Saudi dismay.
• Interesting pair of Gaza dispatches in the Christian Science Monitor. Regarding the smuggling tunnels, Kristen Chick reports that Mohammed Morsi’s putting Egyptian interests ahead of expected ideological support for Hamas. And Josh Mitnick notes that the rising Salafist movement is robbing Hamas’ “banner of resistance.” For more on the latter issue, see also the BBC.
• A Washington Post staff-ed hopes for a “reset” in Israeli-US relations.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Did the IDF hack the Iranian drone that flew over the Negev?
• Reports say 17 Russian intelligence agents were aboard one of the planes recently intercepted by Turkey. Today’s Zaman writes:
Those intelligence officials were headed to Damascus to determine the identities of some 300 Chechen Russian citizens who, according to the FSB, are fighting side by side with opposition forces to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
Clicking “Unsubscribe instantly” on your mailing will remove you from the Israel Daily News Stream list, but not from your regular HonestReporting emails.
Guy Sade
5:07 pm
Oct 16, 2012
I’m a strong believer in the mission of Honest Reporting and provide you with my modest annual financial support. However, it is important that HR remain professional and balanced in its coverage of the events, and not become a mouthpiece of one side’s propaganda. I therefore found your “news” item about Palestinians supposedly cutting down their own trees in order to “frame settlers” unprofessional and unworthy of your mission. The video was shot by local Jewish settlers and provides absolutely no context or proof to the claims made. Attacks by extremist settlers on Palestinian individuals and property are real and disturbing and should be condemned in the strongest terms, including by HR
Hot debate. What do you think?
5 
11
Adler
5:29 pm
Oct 16, 2012
I too like objectivity in any report, and I have viewed the video attached which clearly shows that those palestinians cutting for no appearance reason some olive trees. What you should have instead, is try to provide us with a possible explanation for this vandalism. Maybe they needed to cut these olive trees for firewood because they are cold and are freezing. Maybe you may have some other rational explanation in mind. Please share it with us,thank you.
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
9 
4
Barnea Levi Seavaan
11:38 am
Oct 17, 2012
I agree in principle that it seems out of line from HR. I live in Israel. May I report that this issue of olive tree uprooting is being used to as a media tool to defame the Jewish residents of the area and attack them in court.
Therefore the discovery that Arabs are uprooting their own trees, and then bringing in the press to blame the Jews- for whom else would uproot them?- is exactly the kind of detail examination and revelation which is what HR is meant to do.
As local media are not telling the whole story, recently these communities asked everyone to “arm” themselves with cameras and record and post what is going on. That effort is (pardon me) bearing fruit.
Agree or Disagree:
2 
0
Lynette
5:30 pm
Oct 16, 2012
Palestinian Arabs caught on video chopping their own olive trees down doesnot surprise me but sadly all the media will see is the film of ten masked men who appear to be throwing stones at them.and this was probably shown on the BBC news as evidence of the Israeli settlers aggressiion towards them.. A similar “attack” was seen on the 10pm news on the BBC in June 2008. Then it was a few seconds of jerky footage showing someone wearing a purple headscarf round his or her face and then the viewers saw an Arab woman that appeared to be cut or bruised.
To see almost exactly the same propaganda repeated again four years later is distressing. We all need to do more!
Agree or Disagree:
0 
2
Allyson rowen taylor
5:54 pm
Oct 16, 2012
Berkeley has been a hot bed of anti Jewish activities for years. The board of regents refuses to listen so we are entering dangerous times again. As for the olive trees this is also nothing née this is the same blood libel type of behavior . Hanan will deny this video is real and the Arab media will say it is Jews posing as Arabs. The bs continues
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
5 
1
Guy Sade
6:09 pm
Oct 16, 2012
Adler, it is not my responsibility to provide for an alternative explanation to what those Palestinians were doing.Those who present it as a news item should, using the same standards of reporting we demand from other news outlet on this forum. Non of us would have accepted such a video as a conclusive evidence for negative actions taken by Israel, and we should therefore apply the same standard to videos that supposedly depict Israel, or some of its citizens, as the victims of a fraud.What’s more disturbing to me here though,is that the text accompanying the video appears to ridicule real claims that some extreme factions amongst the settler movement are guilty of barbaric and criminal acts
Agree or Disagree:
1 
3
Guy Sade
6:09 pm
Oct 16, 2012
Adler,it is not my responsibility to provide for an alternative explanation to what those Palestinians were doing.Those who present it as a news item should, using the same standards of reporting we demand from other news outlet on this forum. Non of us would have accepted such a video as a conclusive evidence for negative actions taken by Israel, and we should therefore apply the same standard to videos that supposedly depict Israel, or some of its citizens, as the victims of a fraud.What’s more disturbing to me here though,is that the text accompanying the video appears to ridicule real claims that some extreme factions amongst the settler movement are guilty of barbaric and criminal acts
Agree or Disagree:
0 
1
H.E.J
7:44 pm
Oct 16, 2012
always when u say something,don’t think that people r dull.Palestinians will not chop their trees,as these trees r their living,and life.In case it happened,may be these trees r not fruitful and they want to replace it by better quality trees.
So plz avoid to say not lgical things
Agree or Disagree:
0 
3
Leonard
9:51 pm
Oct 16, 2012
Wake up—The Arabs are cutting down their own olive trees so that it can be blamed on the Israelis. It’s their suicde belt mentality.
Agree or Disagree:
3 
0
Allyson rowen taylor
3:56 am
Oct 17, 2012
Watch videos of pally wood. See how the pa media with support from France filmed fake videos of fake dif soldiers doing abuses to the poor palistinians. This is documented and the msm refuses to acknowledge it. When a country states Jews use the blood of young men for their Passover matzo we are dealing with lies beingtold over again. The whole PR mission of the PA is to turn Jews onto animals. And it is working
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
5 
0
iris claire blutreich
5:23 am
Oct 18, 2012
These Apartheid demonstrations, if Berkley is supporting this Jew baiting Apartheid demonstrations. Why isn’t the university also having demonstrations of Apartheid toward all of the Arab countries that have refused to allow Jews to live in those Arabic where they have lived for centuries before there was a Muslim religion.That Jewish citizens had their money, homes and businesses stolen by the Arabic countries of their birth. If Berkley is receiving taxpayer dollars directly or indirectly as in grants. Americans should demand that our tax money in all forms should be withdrawn. (research grants, fellowships, pell grants) Jewish alumni and benefactors should ask that their awards to the school be returned.
Agree or Disagree:
2 
0
US Investigating Anti-Semitism at Berkeley, Including Apartheid Week Activities | The Conservative Papers
12:26 pm
Oct 19, 2012
[...] the FSB, are fighting side by side with opposition forces to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. VN:F [1.9.20_1166]calculating…Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)topsyWidgetPreload({ "url": [...]
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0