Student Calls Campus Symposium Anti-Israel Hate-Fest
by Jim Brown
March 1, 2004
(AgapePress) - Jewish and pro-Israel students at Pace University in New York are criticizing the school for holding a Middle East symposium that excluded speakers who support Israel.The symposium, part of Human Rights Action Week at Pace, included a lopsided panel of left-wing authors and members of socialist organization, but not a sing pro-Israel speaker. Jewish student David Tobey, who attended the event, says although the school assured him the forum would be focused on Israel's controversial security fence, the discussion often deviated from that issue.
"Tangents went everywhere, from Israelis targeting women and children in buildings and that sort of ridiculousness to the massacre in Jenin [refugee camp] -- you know, 5,000 dead and of course, there were absolutely no [Palestinian] bodies," Tobey says, referring to much-disputed reports of an alleged Israeli attack against supposedly defenseless Palestinians. "In fact," he notes, "ten Israeli soldiers were part of the majority of the bodies found in Jenin."
The student says hardly any of the discussion time at the symposium was devoted to talking about the security fence, which oversight he says he found "incredibly frustrating and upsetting."
Tobey contends that the forum turned into an anti-Israel hate-fest and featured panelists who justified Palestinian terrorism. "I surely hope that we will never have to do something like this again," he says. "I hope that the university now understand that if it wants to hold and affiliate itself with an event which is purporting to be an open and honest topic of debate, then it needs to have both sides represented."
The Pace University student asserts that what professors and administrators at the college fail to realize is that the Palestinians are not a group of people fighting for a noble cause, but enemies who target innocent women and children. Tobey says Israel is under attack on university campuses across the United States, and supporters of the only democracy in the Middle East are, unfortunately, losing the fight.
