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Editorial Article
UC Berkeley - Lecturer in Hebrew Rutie Adler spends her days on
campus urging boycott of and divestment from Israel
Her name is on the first boycott and divestment
petition against Israel ever created on a college campus in the US (number
45 there). The idea of creating a divestment-from-Israel program
on US campuses to break Israel financially, help Arab terrorism, and
curry dislike among Americans was actually the brainchild of a law
professor at the University of Illinois named Francis Boyle. But
Rutie Adler, who teaches Hebrew as part of the UC Berkeley’s Near
Eastern Studies Department, part of the Center for Middle East
Studies (CMES), was determined to help fire the first salvo against
Israel in the campaign. … Rutie Adler’s name even made it to the
neo-Nazi
Stormfront website because of her adamant support for anything
against the Jewish state. She signed a petition that the US should
not send foreign aid to Israel when Ariel Sharon went into the West
Bank to clean out the terror cells that were routinely sending
suicide bombers into Israel and blowing up buses, schools and cafes
almost weekly. … Ignoring the spate of suicide bombings in Israel at
the time in the petition is very telling. … Of course, one could
also speak out about what is going on in Darfur or the denial of
human rights in Arab countries, even the Palestinian Authority, but
Adler never finds time to address anything except Israel’s alleged
abuse of Palestinian Arabs.
UC Berkeley:
Lecturer in Hebrew Rutie Adler spends her days on campus urging
boycott of and divestment from Israel
By Lee Kaplan,
www.IsraCampus.org.il
6/9/2009
Her name is on the first boycott and divestment
petition against Israel ever created on a college campus in the US (number
45 there). The idea of creating a divestment-from-Israel program
on US campuses to break Israel financially, help Arab terrorism, and
curry dislike among Americans was actually the brainchild of a law
professor at the University of Illinois named Francis Boyle. But
Rutie Adler, who teaches Hebrew as part of the UC Berkeley’s Near
Eastern Studies Department, part of the Center for Middle East
Studies (CMES), was determined to help fire the first salvo against
Israel in the campaign. The campaign was led by the International
Solidarity Movement, but advised by Boyle, who was a US legal
advisor for the Fat’h Terrorism Organization. It decided to begin
the boycott and divestment campaign at Cal first and then in the
entire University of California system, the biggest university
system in the nation. Rutie Adler leapt to enlist in the new
movement, despite her being from Israel, and her anti-Israel
activities on her campus to this day.
Considered by herself to be an expert in
Hebrew, she is an instructor whose students complain she is
disorganized and uses class time to discuss the politics of the
Middle East rather than teaching the structure of Hebrew. Adler’s
office is just steps away from another UC Berkeley ex-Israeli
obsessive-Israel-hater, Prof. Daniel Boyarin, who was
featured earlier here at Isracampus. Hatred of Israel even by
Jewish faculty on the Bay Area campus
is a common occurrence in the CMES at Cal, which is itself
funded by Saudi Arabia. It is a place where Israelis and Jews
are
consistently hired based on their having anti-Israel views.
Thanks to Adler’s assistance, the Students for
Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley, an ISM-affiliated group that
also allies itself with the anti-US International Socialist
Organization (ISO) was able to launch almost weekly demonstrations
on her campus against Israel, falsely accusing Israel of “ethnic
cleansing” and “violations of human rights.” As an Israeli and
Hebrew language instructor on the campus, Adler was able to lend the
SJP an aura of credibility. Back in 2002, the SJP was actually
involved in violence against Jewish students on the Cal campus, from
pelting Jewish students with eggs to even smashing a concrete block
through the window door of the local Hillel. Such actions, however,
never daunted Adler, who continued to advise and help the
anti-Israel and anti-Semitic SJP movement grow on campus by
spearheading the divestment campaign. Lately, she has helped with
fundraisers for the Free Gaza Campaign and
Norcal ISM, that seek to open the sea lanes to Gaza in order to
facilitate the smuggling of weapons from Iran
Rutie Adler’s name even made it to the neo-Nazi
Stormfront website because of her adamant support for anything
against the Jewish state. She signed a petition that the US should
not send foreign aid to Israel when Ariel Sharon went into the West
Bank to clean out the terror cells that were routinely sending
suicide bombers into Israel and blowing up buses, schools and cafes
almost weekly. The incursions were legal per international law and
the Oslo Accords, but Adler signed a petition that stated among
other things, “We Jews, citizens of the state of Israel and of other
countries, are sickened that the Barak government would let the war
criminal Ariel Sharon enter a Palestinian area and provoke terrible
violence. Unfortunately this just illustrates the determination of
the current Israeli government to keep Palestinians permanently
separate, unequal, closed up in small territories, and exiled in
foreign lands. We protest the ever escalating violence against
Palestinians. We urge the US Congress to suspend all foreign aid to
Israel."
Ignoring the spate of suicide bombings in
Israel at the time in the petition is very telling.
When Israel sent in the IDF to stop Hamas from
firing missiles into Israeli communities over the last eight years
since the Disengagement,
Adler immediately signed a petition calling for a ceasefire. She
never drafted or signed any petitions for Hamas to stop firing those
missiles during those eight years but worked with the SJP on her
campus that encouraged it and tried to justify it. At the same time,
Adler signed a petition in support of Tali Fahima, who helped her
Palestinian terrorist boyfriend plan attacks against her fellow
Israelis.
Adler’s hatred of Israel seems based on her
hatred for the United States and its influence in the Middle East,
as well as her selective concern for the Palestinian Arabs. She
feels it is a duty as a professor to campaign against the Jewish
state, while at the same time she opposes America going to war
against Saddam Hussein, the guy who financed suicide bombings in
Israel. In 2002, Adler stated, “Anybody who says a professor is
supposed to be neutral is supporting whatever the common (sic)
ideology is. If you don't voice an opinion about what is happening
in Israel and Palestine now, you are supporting what is happening."
We guess that anyone who has never expressed an opinion over
whether Adler is a twit must decidedly hold the opinion that she is
one.
Of course, one could also speak out about what
is going on in Darfur or the denial of human rights in Arab
countries, even the Palestinian Authority, but Adler never finds
time to address anything except Israel’s alleged abuse of
Palestinian Arabs. She ignores attacks on Jews in Israel, then
insists that she herself is not anti-Semitic because she was born in
Israel. Talk about non sequiturs. That is like insisting that no one
born in the US is anti-American.
Adler
co-authored a petition attacking Harvard University President
Larry Summers for his statement equating the US college boycott and
divestment campaign with anti-Semitism. According to Adler, “Mr.
Summers thinks, as many good Jews do, that we are anti-Semites, and
I'm also getting e-mails telling me I'm a Nazi. The Jewish community
and the world in general doesn't know the color gray. Either you're
Nazis or you do what Sharon wants you to do.”
After Sharon was gone, the same rhetoric just
changed to include Israel’s new leadership. She proclaimed in a
joint statement, "We reject the allegation that our opposition to
state violence by the state of Israel in any way constitutes
anti-Semitism, which, like all forms of racism, we unequivocally
reject." She continued speaking with her peers about such Jewish
faculty who, like her, “They feel an added responsibility to speak
out against Mr. Summers' brand of slander,” while pointing to her
“Jewish culture” as evidence that her position is not anti-Semitic.
“I grew up in Israel and I know the truth,” she continued. “The
idiocy of calling people like me anti-Semitic doesn't even merit an
answer. It's ridiculous. This has nothing to do with Judaism. It has
to do with politics.”
Adler’s being a Hebrew teacher does not excuse
her from her working to aid those who seek to harm her fellow Jews.
If she really understood Jewish culture she would understand the
idea of
Ahavat Yisrael. The boycott and divestment campaign she
promotes contributes to poverty in Israel. The campus divestment
campaign is an extension of the Arab League Boycott begun after 1948
that seeks the destruction of Israel’s Jews, not just a political
end to Israeli sovereignty.
Disingenuously, Adler professes to be
pro-Israel. In one interview she stated, “If one more person calls
me anti-Israel, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm more
pro-Israel than your newspaper and many Jews who think they are. I'm
pro-Israel and I'm pro-Palestine; there is no contradiction...You
don't have to agree with me; just don't call me an anti-Semite." She
also has acknowledged in that article that anti-Semites are taking
advantage of the Israeli divestment petition to further their own
causes, but said she believed people who hate Muslims are jumping on
the pro-Israel bandwagon.
"We don't want to be called anti-Semites just
because we critique the policies of Israel. If the American
government treated Israel as they treat Iraq with all their
misbehavior, maybe we would have peace in Palestine by now," said
Adler. "We are not anti-Semites and we don't like to be called
anti-Semites."
History is replete with anti-Semitic Jews who
worked to harm others. Rutie Adler’s “politics” are as anti-Semitic
as those of Arafat or Hamas, only hidden under a banner of leftist
radicalism. She hates America where she lives as much as she hates
Israel where she came from, and is an ardent supporter of the
International Solidarity Movement in the San Francisco Bay Area
that is
closely allied with the
International Socialist Organization (ISO) that hates America.
Meanwhile, note also how she talks above about
“peace in Palestine” – not peace in Israel and Palestine or
simply peace in the Middle East. If actions speak louder than words,
Adler has shown her true colors by supporting and allying with
groups that seek for Israel to cease being a Jewish state and to
become “Palestine.” As
one commentator on her has noted: “What would you call someone
who selectively ignores the unspeakable cruelty of certain nations
and goes out of her way to concoct lies about the world's only
Jewish State?”
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Op-Ed articles appearing on IsraCampus.Org.il are those of the writer and
do not necessarily represent the opinion of IsraCampus.Org.il
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