Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI), can be seen in the forefront of the picture as dozens of pro-Israel activists take on Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) outside Columbia University on Nov 16. 2011.
It was the third and final day of the 2011 National Students for Justice in Palestine “teach-in”, organized by its members to prepare for their upcoming Israel Apartheid Week events across college campuses throughout North America.
In an article written by Fern Sidman for www.israelnationalnews.com, she described the scene at Columbia University.
Holding aloft both Israeli and American flags and signs saying “SJP Brings Stealth Jihad to Columbia University,” “Stop Hamas Terror Against Jews and Christians,” and “Occupy Columbia With Truth and Justice — Not Lies and Anti-Israel Incitement” were pro-Israel supporters representing such organizations as Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI), the National Conference of Jewish Affairs (NCJA), Amcha — Coalition for Jewish Concerns, and the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI).
Helen Freedman said, “Israel is the only stable democracy in the Middle East and these student activists know very well that Palestinians living in Israel have a much better lifestyle than they would in any other Arab country; yet their goal in organizing such a conference is to perpetuate the myths, incessant lies and blatant distortions that they use in their quest to demonize Israel. What we are witnessing here today is nothing short of the most egregious form of anti-Semitism cloaked in the clever subterfuge of anti-Zionism.”
Debates and arguments broke out between the two sides when the Zionist contingent engaged the SJP members as they exited the university on the corner of 116th Street and Broadway. “Our conference is about advocating for human rights in Palestine. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters are being subjected to the most severe degree of oppression on a daily basis by the Israeli colonialists and occupiers and we are here to put forth our message that a Jewish state is a fundamentally racist concept as are the apartheid practices of that state,” said Amina Fayyid, a SJP student organizer.
According to the SJP web site, one of the objectives of the conference is to “facilitate and support the advancement of existing campaigns and the development of new campaigns with particular emphasis on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel.” Among the multifarious seminars and workshops taking place at the conference is one entitled, “Indigenous Struggles: situating Palestine as a settler-colonial project” which ostensibly explores “understanding Palestine within comparative settler colonial framework while seeking to re-align the Palestinian movement within a universal history of decolonization, and imagining new possibilities for Palestinian resistance, solidarity and common struggle.”
Taking aim at Columbia University for allowing their campus to be used for the conference, Glenn Richter, former chairman of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry movement and the current director of Amcha - CJC said, “This university has a long and shameful tradition of anti-Semitic policies, dating back over 70 years ago when brave students protested against the pro-Nazi policies of the institution’s heavy-handed president, Nicholas Murray Butler. Butler then had a leader of the protests expelled. Today we are here protesting against a different form of racist ideology, commonly known as Islamo-fascism.”
Calling the members of SJP, “Islamo-Fascists For An Arab Only Palestine”, the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam issued a flyer declaring that the motivation for the conference was predicated on “bigotry, violence and genocide against the Jewish people.” Dr. Marvin Belsky, a retired New York City physician and spokesman for HRCARI said, “In Israel, Christians, Muslims and gays have full human rights, protection and dignity. Arabic and Hebrew are the official languages and Arabs who comprise over 1.2 million citizens serve in government, as well as assuming positions as judges, doctors, ambassadors and police and Israel remains a refuge for the world’s oppressed from Asia to Africa.”
Larry Domnitch, an author, academic and historian, said he came “to express my support for Israel in the face of so much misinformation that is being disseminated on this campus and others as well. In a few weeks will be the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration which expressed the inherent and historical right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. 94 years later that right is still being contested.”
Julian Rappaport, one of the demonstrators engaging with passers-by at the university’s gate, contended that the anti-Israel conference inside was not an expression of free speech, but “to give only one, incorrect side of the picture. Columbia has the responsibility to be more critical of what’s going on.” During a heated confrontation with an SJP member who called for “the complete obliteration of the racist Zionist entity”, Mr, Rappaport was arrested by police for allegedly kicking the student and was charged with disorderly conduct. He was released soon thereafter and returned to the demonstration.
The National Students for Justice in Palestine Conference at Columbia University was attended by over 350 students from more than 100 American universities. limited The conference was closed to outside observers as participation was limited to only current student Palestine solidarity activists, as well as alumni actively involved in assisting their former SJP group. The proposed goals of the conference were: Movement Building, Campaign Building with an emphasis on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), Political Development, and Skill Development:
At the conference, the keynote address — the only part of the conference open to the press — featured academics Mahmood Mamdani, a professor of government at Columbia, and Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, an anthropologist who has taught at Harvard and Columbia Universities.
With the usual false picture given at such conferences of Arab-Jewish relationships in Israel, Professor Kanaaneh’s talk was titled “Culturally Incompatible.” It focused on her claim that the Israeli government views Arabs and Jews as culturally mismatched and cannot properly coexist. Arab Israelis are subject to stereotypes — such as “Arab men are violent and misogynistic,” “Arabs are anti-Semitic,” and “Arab women are always oppressed in the home” — that deliberately separate them from the “civilized” Jewish population. Moreover, she said, these images were directly in opposition to the idealistic image Israel has of itself.
Kanaaneh cited several fabricated examples to support her hypothesis. “Palestinians are routinely asked for their IDs…in Jewish areas and businesses,” she said. Some city governments have gone so far as to forbid Jews from leasing or selling property to Arabs and have discouraged Jews from dating interracially, due to Arab men’s supposed propensity to violence. According to Kanaaneh, the town of Kiryat Gat launched a program in schools designed to prevent Jewish girls from becoming involved with Bedouin men.
Prof. Mamdani brought up the made-up Israel Apartheid comparison in his talk by noting: “Whereas Apartheid South Africa was reluctant to claim that it was a white state, a white democracy, Israel is not. Israel publicly claims it’s a Jewish state and it demands that Palestinians acknowledge it as such.” Mamdani added, “…Israel was not South Africa. In many ways, it was, and is, worse than South Africa.”
Helen Freedman has been at the forefront of the fight against hatred towards Israel and the Jewish nation as the executive director of Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI) since 1995. From 2000 – 2008, Freedman was co-host of a weekly television program, Israel Update, which aired on the Public Access Cable and featured hundreds of interviews with Israel’s and America’s leading personalities. She makes frequent trips to Washington to educate lawmakers, countless demonstrations, and leads semi-annual Chizuk missions to Israel.
Helen was practically a one-woman opposition movement in her opposition to Israel’s Gaza disengagement. She organized rallies, wrote press releases, organized missions to Israel and the territories and showed up seemingly everywhere, clad in the settlers’ trademark orange.
And while her side didn’t win, the process arguably turned Freedman into a de facto leader of the emerging bloc of religious Zionists who are unhappy with Israel Government policies. She also works as a high school English literature teacher and a scholar of Broadway theater.
Her organization Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI), with a membership of 5,000, was founded in 1970 as an American counterpart to the Land of Israel Movement, which asserted Israel’s right—historic, religious and legal-- to the territories won in the 1967 war. AFSI supports the right of Israelis, free from outside interference, to live, thrive and expand their communities in all of the Land of Israel. Furthermore, AFSI has argued consistently that a strong territorially defensible Israel is essential to U.S. security interests in the region and that “land for peace” is a delusional policy.
Further reading:
Israel Law Center Launches Student Hotline to Combat Anti-Israel Hostilities on American Campuses
Hind Awwad: Palestinian boycott coordinator provides a Sweet Face for Hatred against Israel
