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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Yet Another Tinfoil Prof(YATP) |
| 2004-03-15 |
| Should a leftist professor who believes Jewish âNazisâ control our government and that the U.S. military has âfunâ attacking Iraqi insurgents be in a position of teaching incoming freshmen at one of the largest junior colleges in the country? No Dr. Leighton Armitage is a professor of political science in the Business and Social Sciences Department of Foothill College in Northern California. Foothill prepares more of its students to attend nearby Stanford and other major universities than any other two-year community college in California. As such, it should offer a first-rate faculty. But Denis Hiller, Foothillâs leader of Students For Academic Freedom, tells me a highly biased view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes it an extremely unpleasant place to go to school. And he feels Professor Armitageâs teaching and indoctrinating students with anti-Israel and anti-U.S. views contributes strongly to this. Professor Armitage recently demonstrated the reality of this in an interview in the campus newspaper, The Sentinel, on January 28. Armitage condemned both Israel and the United States. . Entitled âGood Fences Make Good Neighbors,â by student reporter and pro-Palestinian activist Collin Plehiers, Armitage held nothing back regarding his personal opinions about Jews, even though he represented Foothill College. And this interview was supposed to show his expertise in American geopolitics. Expertise in racism, more like. Plehiers began the interview by comparing the Ghetto Wall in Warsaw erected by the Nazis to with the security fence Israel is now building to prevent terrorists from killing Israelis. Plehiers implied Israelâs security fence to separate the Palestinian Authorityâs population is comparable to what the Nazis did to the Jews. âI find it ironic that during WWII and the Holocaust they were put inside a wall, and now theyâre building one again, but this time its seems to be the other way around,â said Plehiers. You ever hear of "never again"? You ever hear that rewarding evil does NOT end it? Armitage agreed with Plehiersâ description of the wall, calling it a âland grab.â Armitage elaborated, âInstead of building on the green line, theyâre building in the West Bank and theyâre conveniently taking all the settlements constructed, illegally, in that area and they are taking all the water resources.â Liar Armitage might be excused for his ignorance and for not being an expert in international law. The âgreen lineâ he referred to is not a border but actually the 1948 ceasefire line set up by the United Nations after five Arab nations attacked the newly founded Jewish state in a failed attempt to annihilate it. Many people, even American Jews, mistake that ceasefire line as Israelâs âborders.â But much of the land in question does belong to Israel as per international law because indigenous Jews were driven from the region by the Jordanian and Iraqi armies in 1948. Since then, the Arabs have refused to sign a peace treaty or recognize Israelâs right to exist and terrorist attacks have been conducted by the Arab states ever since. Jordan annexed the West Bank and there was no talk of a âPalestinian stateâ until after the Israelis took the area back from Jordan in 1967. But because he is a college educator â and one who teaches political science to many incoming freshmen â Armitageâs remarks are alarming. Either Armitage was unaware of the facts or does not want them known by the student body at Foothill College. And accusations of âstealing waterâ are just the latest canard from the Palestinian propaganda ministries. In fact, the Palestinians in the West Bank actually rely on Israeli expertise to provide them with water services since Arab water agencies are notorious for letting their aquifers become polluted. In Gaza, all of the water is supplied directly to the area from Israel yet the Palestine Authority still claims Israel is âstealing their water.â Some people just throw away facts that conflict with their prejudices. One such died protecting smuggling tunnels a year ago tomorrow. Armitage continued, saying, âNow when you wall in these settlements, rather generously, when you take land away from orchards and land that actually belongs to Palestinians, when you steal their water resources, what are you doing?â But Armitageâs knowledge of history was still faulty. Prior to 1948, there were 23 Jewish settlements in the territories that the Arabs seized. United Nationâs Resolution 242 after the 1967 war actually recognized Israelâs right to take them back after the Arabs negotiated a peace settlement. The Palestinians agreed to do that in the Oslo Accords in 1993 but then proceeded to launch their terror war. The area the fence is encompassing is territory still to be negotiated per those accords and is deemed vital to Israelâs security in the event of war. In addition, the Israeli government pays for any âPalestinian propertyâ that is fenced in. Itâs a price to pay for peace. Harm-itage needs to look critically at facts. However, Armitage stated the real problem with the security fence is âthe Jewsâ and America as Israelâs ally. According to Armitage, âfew people realize how much influence they (the Jews) wield.â He stated that America is hated all around the world because of Israel. He based his reasoning on the fact the U.S. military is destroying the houses of terrorists in Iraq, just as the Israeli army does in to Palestinian terrorists in the territories. âHave you heard what weâre doing now to houses of suspected terrorists in Iraq? Weâre blowing them up. If youâre suspected of being a terrorist your house will be blown up.â Note how Armitage claimed that houses of âsuspectedâ terrorists are destroyed. It implies innocence on those who commit terrorism. People are killed just by suspicion. But the U.S. and Israeli armies do not destroy houses of suspects, but rather of actual terrorists who have attacked and killed their forces, or civilians. Armitage further accused the U.S. military of enjoying it. To quote the professor: âNow, the Israelis do it with a bulldozer and we do it a Howitzer, and Apache gun ships, so itâs different. I guess we have more fun.â Parroting the old sadism libels. Armitage proceeded: âif you say that what they (the Israelis) are doing is akin to the Holocaust, what will they say? Youâre an anti-Semite, youâre anti-Jewish, you just want to destroy the Jewish religion. Itâs so convenient. It allows them to do exactly what was done to them. And what are they doing with the Palestinians, every day? Theyâre killing them.â He continues, âtheyâre not taking their glasses and gold fillings, and everything else, as far as I know, but they are still slaughtering these people. Itâs exactly what Hitler did to the Jews.â Then why are the Palis still alive? Because the Israelis are NOT genocidal. Plehiers and Armitage both used the words âJewsâ and âIsraelisâ interchangeably in their discussion. âThe Jewsâ do everything they âhave learned from their tormentors.â Such a comparison of Jews with Nazis is particularly odious since the Arabs were Nazi allies during World War II and still praise Nazis in their own Arab media. Hitler built extermination camps, did genetic experiments with Jews as guinea pigs, and did forced labor and starvation against Jews in the millions. The Palestinians laud and reward suicide bombers and killed armed terrorists who they count as âcivilian casualties.â Terrorists in Fateh receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority (paid for by EU and U.S. taxpayer). Just as U.S. children collect baseball cards, Palestinian children collect cards extolling suicide bombers. Because Sharkey Arafish has gotten his slaves to equate a lack of Jew-hatred with treason. Jews sent to walled ghettos in Poland did not seek to destroy Germany or other societies. Jews were not given their own country by the Nazis only to repay that act by committing terror attacks on German civilians with suicide bombers. Armitage further claimed the ills of America are due to the Jews because AIPAC, the American Israel lobby in Congress, controls the U.S. electoral system and all U.S. politicians hide their connections to it. Armitage echoes the basic message of the âProtocols Of the Learned Elders of Zionâ: Jews donât contribute like other ethnicities to our government, they conspire to control it. And Plehiers lapped it all up. He interjected (jokingly, he averred) that maybe the U.S. should test a nuclear bomb on Israel to resolve the Jewish problem: âYou know how Bush wanted to start retesting nuclear weapons, should we maybe just test one on Israel, and resolve this problem?â "Problem." Where have I heard someone call the Jews a "Problem" before? Oh, yes, not I recall⊠Did Armitage disagree? No. He then related a conspiracy theory he saw on television that Israel developed nuclear weapons by stealing uranium with the cooperation of the CIA and then bemoaned the âhammerlockâ Israel has on America: âEvery year we give them 5 billion dollars, at least for the Camp David Accords...and another 4 billion dollars in extra money.â What of the money that goes to the aid of Israelâs neighbors, too? One would expect a scholar teaching college freshmen to get his information from hard research and not a TV show. And Armitage ignored that most of the U.S. aid money goes to Israel to pay off Arab countries not to make perpetual war. He also overlooked the fact that the U.S. gives more money to the Arabs than to Israel in direct payouts. For every dollar the U.S. pumps into the Israeli economy, it gets back three in military, medical and industrial technology. Have a cell phone? Much of its technology comes from Israel. Israeli medical innovations have saved innumerable lives. And the U.S. military receives valuable equipment and training from Israeli exports of equipment and expertise. But American aid dollars to Arab countries end up going to pay for more terrorism. Armitage then bemoaned the 250 million dollars contributed by Jewish Americans to support Israel in Congress, implying it comes from Israel, when this money comes from American citizens. Armitage then regurgitated anti-Semitic stereotypes about the Jewish people. He said, âtheyâre good business people, youâve got to respect them for that, if for nothing else.â He continued, âOf course theyâre buying our elections, which really pisses me off. And this stuff you learn over time, itâs not overt, no one tells you this and no one wants you to know it.â He then related his experiences as an intern in Congress and how a congressional assistant warned him of the evils of the âJewish lobby.â Just imagine if Armitage used a similar example implying Black people are âinherently lazyâ to his lesson that Jews are âgood business people,â or that Asians conspire, although ânot overtly,â to control our government. This man teaches in a public college? Tap, tap, nope. Armitageâs performance in this interview is not an isolated incident. Denis Hiller of SAF told me, âHe (Armitage) is the best teacher here for indoctrinating young students with anti-Semitic and anti-American sentiments. I had him as an 11th grade high school student in a college preparatory class here at Foothill, and he had me reading only such recommended materials as Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore with no alternative points of view. Students in the campus Jewish Student Union, the College Republicans, College Democrats and donors to Foothill College have all had enough of Armitage, who, fortunately, is not tenured.â They are also speaking out against anti-Semitism on campus. Denis Hiller has told me that even the Muslims studentsâ group on campus tentatively discussed joining with the Black studentsâ group and the Jewish Student Union to protest Armitageâs comments. "Sack him!" These developments at Foothill College indicate how our centers of higher education continue to be places of indoctrination. The boldness of such a patently offensive article being printed in a campus newspaper illustrates the casualness with which anti-Semitism is now being accepted on campuses all over the country. It appears that the atmosphere of the 1930s in Europe is creeping back into our own universities. |
| Posted by:Korora |
| #3 Sounds like he's preparing students for Berkely, not Stanford. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2004-3-15 7:07:40 PM |
| #2 He then related his experiences as an intern in Congress and how a congressional assistant warned him of the evils of the âJewish lobby.â Anyone want to bet which party he's associated with? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-3-15 2:58:12 PM |
| #1 Here is a link to the article in question. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-3-15 2:12:10 PM |