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When it comes to Israel's Ariel College being granted university status by the country's Council on Higher Education, Professor Simons has been leading the war AGAINST it! Alas, Ariel College is located across Israel's Green Line (Curious to note that Indiana University also lies outside the boundaries of the original 13 colonies!). He wrote an article that appeared in an ultra-leftist internet magazine, Ceasefire, in which he complained that granting Ariel College such lofty status would only serve to promote the "occupation" and somehow be responsible for helping to derail "the two state solution."
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In his Ceasefire article, Simons joins the attack by other Israeli academics (supposedly 1000) opposed to a new Israeli university status for Ariel College.
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Simons even uses a quote from a colleague to warn against "the 'academization (sic - another made up polysyllable) of the occupation' if the college in Ariel became a university." Quoting still another colleague, he admonishes his readers that "…the University in Ariel would be a stain on the reputation of Israeli scholarship and research. He also understood that the approval of the college as a university would invite calls for an international academic boycott."

Such fuzzy thinking from Simons becomes more evident if one reads his abstracts from his other scribbling. Israel, you see, is guilty of everything when it comes to "branding" (selling) the notion of peace.

Simons, as a member of and promoter of the American wing of "Peace Now," the EU-funded Israeli "peace" movement that supports whatever the Arabs want, promotes the NGO's destructive agenda against the Jewish people.

Peace through Blocking University Functionings: Indiana University Israeli ex-pat Professor Jon Simons (Communications) insists that They don't Need no Education

By Lee Kaplan, www.IsraCampus.org.il
31/8/2012

One would think that any educator would be in favor of the expansion of educational opportunities for everyone, such as when a college increases curriculum and becomes a university. But not Israeli ex-pat Professor Jon Simons at Indiana University, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Culture.

Simons is an "expert" on the deconstructionist pseudo-ideas of the Marxist "philosopher" Michel Foucault. He is yet another master of the polysyllable, explaining his own work as "…addressing arguments against the aestheticization (sic - no such word exists, he probably meant 'aestheticizing') of politics common in much critical political and cultural theory. He is also interested in the interdisciplinary study of images (especially political images) as a focus for both teaching and research." In other words, like Pink Floyd, he insists that "They" don't need no education, "They" being Jews living across the "Green Line." He fears such breathing Jews offend Arab sensibilities and therefore prevent "peace," something he can write long papers about on the matter and teach his students to think like he does. He in effect suggests that Jews in the West Bank have no right to an advanced education because Arabs don't want them there. This from a college educator, no less! How embarrassing for him if he discovers that Ariel College teaches large numbers of local Arab students also.

Professor Simons, an active member of Peace Now, is a good Israeli peacenik (especially one who lives almost 10,000 miles away from Israel and her hostile neighbors). He feels that the Palestinians should have a state in all of the West Bank, even if the Arabs themselves say it's only a springboard to taking the rest of Israel later. Tucked away in Bloomington, Indiana, Simons has no Qassems or Grad missiles falling on his head. He thinks that Judea and Samaria need to be Judenrein (Jew-free), because that's what the Arabs say they want. So no universities there, thank you very much.

Simons is nevertheless a man on a mission. And that mission is to keep the students of Ariel College ignorant because in his twisted mind that ignorance will mean "peace."

Simons is an adherent to "post-structuralism." We wonder if that is the same as post-encephalopathy.

A word about colleges in the Judea and Samaria, a.k.a. the West Bank would be appropriate here. During 2005, there operated in the West Bank and Gaza, 10 universities, 13 university colleges, and 19 community colleges. Most of these universities were established and developed since the period of the Israeli occupation after the Six Day War in 1967 by Israel. They are today under the Palestinian Authority bastions for terrorist groups, where the student governments and elections are run by terrorist factions like Hamas, PFLP and Fatah. At Bir Zeit University, students vying for campus president boasted whose faction and members had killed more Israelis. An-Najah University hosted a walk-thru art exhibit in praise of the Sbarro Pizza Parlor Bombing, where visitors could view bloody scenes of dismembered Israeli corpses and body parts in a restaurant setting in glorification of the killing of Israelis.

Simons, of course, ignores the fact that Jews cannot attend the Palestinian colleges in the region, paid for by their own taxes. If they did so, they would be killed. In contrast, Ariel College admits both Jews and Arabs.

In his Ceasefire article, Simons joins the attack by other Israeli academics (supposedly 1000) opposed to a new Israeli university status for Ariel College.

Quoting Simons:

"The heads of the seven existing universities had written to Prime Minister Netanyahu, protesting what they regarded as a 'political' decision that would cause severe damage to Israel's higher education and demanding a meeting with him. Already by March, a thousand Israel academics had signed a petition against turning the college into a university, in response to a report by a follow-up committee that deemed the college to meet the requirements of a university. "

Simons even uses a quote from a colleague to warn against "the 'academization (sic - another made up polysyllable) of the occupation' if the college in Ariel became a university." Quoting still another colleague, he admonishes his readers that "…the University in Ariel would be a stain on the reputation of Israeli scholarship and research. He also understood that the approval of the college as a university would invite calls for an international academic boycott."

According to one of his abstracts, Peace Now "… had three images it promoted from 1987 until the 1993 Oslo debacle: First was peace as negotiation and compromise; peace as the ending of the oppression of occupation; and peace as separation between Israelis and Palestinians. The third image contradicts the other two images, which reflects the dilemma Peace Now faced in riding public opinion (which tended to regard Palestinians as hostile to Israel) while also trying to change public opinion to consider peace to be realistic in the present."

He goes on to "credit" Peace Now with the Israeli capitulation/withdrawal from Lebanon in 1982, a move that brought us Hezbollah missiles and border incursions and kidnapping of IDF soldiers as an existential threat. He also "credits" Peace Now with Oslo, but chooses to quote ISM activists and Israel bashers like Naomi Klein or the late Israeli academic Baruch Kimmerling, who spoke to Saudi-sponsored neo-Nazi forums in the US about Israel's intransigence. Simons also talks about Israel being to blame for the stalemate to Arab Muslim goals. So, at least he is consistent. He wants Peace Now to be as influential as ever, so one can assume the deaths of more Jews and other Israelis in the war that will immediately follow the creation of another Arab terrorist state is a result that should simply be ignored.

The question is if Israel's educational accreditation bodies are stupid enough to buy his "brand" of snake oil.

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