RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s about time!
Colleges are hanging flyers around campus with phone numbers of officials that students can call to consult with about whether or not their Halloween costume is perfectly politically correct.

“Unsure if your costume might be offensive?” asks a poster that’s been hung around campus at State University of New York at Geneseo. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions.”

The poster contains the phone numbers and e-mails of five (five!) campus officials that students can contact and discuss the very important issue of whether or not what they will dress up as to get drunk in will be advancing social-justice causes.

Wesleyan University has been hanging similar posters around the school — but with six (six!) numbers listed.

#share#It’s not clear whether students will be able to reach these numbers round-the-clock through Halloween weekend. Hopefully they will. After all, Halloween is a very serious issue, and can not be treated as if it were just some fun little holiday that’s a chance for people to use their imaginations and have some fun without taking each other too seriously.

On October 3, 2015, Muhannad Halabi, a 19-year-old Palestinian, perpetrated a stabbing and shooting attack on Israelis in the Old City of Jerusalem. He killed two men—Nehemiah Levi, 41, and Aharon Banita, 22. Banita’s wife was also seriously wounded, and their two-year-old child was lightly wounded. The attack ended with Halabi being shot dead by policemen.

When the wife, Adele Banita, injured and bleeding, begged for help [1] from surrounding Palestinian shopkeepers, they “just spat at me…laughed and cursed…and told [me] to ‘drop dead.’…”

Since that time, the memory of Muhannad Halabi, the attacker, has undergone a process not far from the beatification of a saint:

Just hours after the attack, the first Palestinian baby was named after [2] Halabi. The mother of the newborn Muhannad Halabi called the mother of the deceased Muhannad Halabi, and “the two mothers cried from joy….” Palestinian news outlets dubbed Halabi a “hero of our people” who was “murdered by the occupation army.”

http://david-collier.com/?p=1336

It is 27/10/2015 and I am at 1 Parliament St for a ’roundtable event’ organised by the Palestine Return Council and hosted by Gerald Kaufman. I had not been to one of these before and therefore had no idea what to expect, but as all the names on the invitation were hostile to Israel, I was hoping for a little excitement. However, even I did not expect to be taken down the route of global Jewish conspiracy theories.

The room was small, but it was packed full. The table was not round but rectangle and Kaufman was very late (this not the first time the Palestinians have said one thing and done another, nor that their friends make them promises of support and fail to deliver). The subject was to be British Foreign Policy towards Palestine since 2010, so it came as no surprise when the early attacks were directed towards the Conservatives; I need not have worried though, this room contained people with far greater hatreds.

Before Kaufman belatedly arrived and spoke, there were those such as Martin Linton, who used the time to speak. A red light was flashed to all those who support partial boycott and are unaware of classic PLO strategy. Back in 1974 the PLO changed strategy and rather than reject all compromise, stood behind a new ‘Ten Point Program’ that would see them accept any part of ‘Palestine’ Israel was willing to cede through negotiation. Their goal was still the same, and they would not deliver peace at any point, but felt the only way they would defeat Israel would be by using what Sir Humphrey Appleby referred to as salami tactics (slice by slice). In 2015, BDS is hiding behind the same strategy. Promises that call only to boycott settlement products are merely a ‘first step’ with what they refer to now as the ‘stepladder approach’ outlined in stark detail by one of the speakers. I wonder if those aligning with ‘boycott lite’ are aware the cynical goal is to use those waving a banner of ‘ethical shopping’ to eliminate Israel from the map.