RUTHFULLY YOURS

Channel 1’s report Wednesday that in 1983, current Palestinian Authority Chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas served as a KGB agent is hardly the story of the year, but it does remind us of certain half-forgotten facts about the Cold War that are becoming ever more relevant today.

The PLO’s close and servile relationship with the KGB was first exposed in a systematic way in 1987, with the publication of Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, the exposé of Soviet and Romanian Cold War operations written by former Romanian intelligence chief Lt.-Gen. Ion Pacepa. Pacepa, who defected to the US in 1978 after serving as the head of the DIE – Romania’s KGB – was the highest ranking intelligence officer from the Soviet bloc to ever defect.

In his book, Pacepa revealed that “the PLO was dreamt up by the KGB.”

Pacepa explained how Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, at the direction of Moscow, convinced Yasser Arafat to employ political warfare, centered on phony protestations that he had abandoned terrorism, to weaken the West’s resolve to defend itself and to cause Israel to doubt its own legitimacy.

Wednesday’s Channel 1 report on Abbas was based on new revelations from the Mitrokhin Archive. Vasili Mitrokhin was a senior archivist in the KGB who surreptitiously copied KGB documents for many years and hid his copies in his home. In 1991 Mitrokhin defected to Britain and took his archive of 25,000 copies of documents with him.

In 2004, the second volume of his edited archive was published. The volume, titled, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, focused on the KGB’s efforts to use the Third World as a strategic weapon in its battle against the West. The volume devotes two chapters to the KGB’s campaign against Israel.

Former Head of Central Command General Gadi Shamni said last week that Israel is the most occupying force in the world and is on its way to becoming a pariah state. “Israel must achieve separation from the Palestinians,” Shamni added.

We can assume that Shamni’s words reflect his worldview. In the IDF 2016, it is impossible to be a General or even a Lieutenant Colonel if you believe in a diplomatic solution to Israel’s conflict with the Arabs other than what is dictated by the Left. The Oslo Peace Industry cloned the entire Israeli elite – built from all those who toed the Oslo line and who run the State today – in its own image.

First and foremost, it cloned the military elite. Every officer from Major and up must undergo a (re)education series, taught by the left-leaning Harman and Binah institutes. (Both are supported by the New Israel Fund). The only commanding officer who testified in favor of Elor Azariah, the soldier accused of killing a terrorist, was a low-ranking officer who left the army after the Azariah incident. The rest of the IDF command does not want to be accused of Nazism, as Deputy Chief of Staff General Golan intimated. So all of them think the same way and talk the same way. And in any future war, they will all be defeated in the same way, just as they were defeated in all the recent rounds of fighting. (That is fine, though. The media will praise them as great victors and only the bereaved families will bear their grief in silence.)

Back to General Shamni. Regardless of the worldview from which his words emanated, Shamni is simply right. The ‘Occupation’ in Judea and Samaria cannot go on forever and it must be ended.

Our Zehut party printed t-shirts that say, ‘End the Occupation’. Of course, this is where any agreement with General Shamni ends. While he advocates another glorious Israel retreat that will bring not only missiles to Tel Aviv, but mortar fire to Kfar Saba, as well, Zehut advocates the end of the Occupation by the declaration of Israeli sovereignty on every grain of sand under the control of the IDF. In other words, the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Zehut also has a detailed plan to achieve this goal. The plan also provides a solution for the Arabs living in Israel, for dealing with international pressure, the implications of the move in terms of international law, safeguarding human rights and more.

The idea of ending the Occupation by running away (Oslo/Disengagement) has already exploded in our faces. Even the Left has despaired of it.

“Climate change” is a controversial subject. Some people believe that humans have been doing just about everything wrong and are causing the Earth to heat up to such a degree that we will wipe out civilization. Other people actually examine the evidence and think for themselves.

But the first group includes three professors from the University of Colorado, who have declared that on the subject of climate change, their students aren’t allowed to dissent with their views:

Three professors co-teaching an online course called “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs recently told their students via email that man-made climate change is not open for debate, and those who think otherwise have no place in their course.

“The point of departure for this course is based on the scientific premise that human induced climate change is valid and occurring. We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course,” states the email, a copy of which was provided to The College Fix by a student in the course.

Signed by the course’s professors Rebecca Laroche, Wendy Haggren and Eileen Skahill, it was sent after several students expressed concern for their success in the course after watching the first online lecture about the impacts of climate change.

“Opening up a debate that 98% of climate scientists unequivocally agree to be a non-debate would detract from the central concerns of environment and health addressed in this course,” the professors’ email continued.

The email also banned discussion on class message boards, and told students who have a problem with that to drop the class.

First, why is a Humanities course talking about climate change?

Oh, right: Everything must be used to advance the narrative, even if it has no place in the discussion.

While you might expect better from college professors, they either don’t know or don’t care that their “98 percent of climate scientists” argument has been debunked, junked, and ridiculed for a long time now, and not just by fly-by-night blogs no one has heard of, either.

Morton Schapiro is president of Northwestern University.

College presidents have always received a lot of mail. But these days we get more than ever. Much of it relates to student unrest, and most of the messages are unpleasant.

Our usual practice is to thank the sender for writing and leave it at that. The combination of receiving more than 100 emails and letters a day and recognizing that the purpose of many writers is to rebuke, rather than discuss, leaves us little choice about how to respond.

But that certainly doesn’t mean we don’t think long and hard about the issues being raised. Some writers ask why our campus is so focused on how “black lives matter.” Others express a mixture of curiosity and rage about microaggressions and trigger warnings. And finally, what about those oft-criticized “safe spaces”? On this last topic, here are two stories. The first was told to me privately by another institution’s president, and the second takes place at my institution, Northwestern University.

A group of black students were having lunch together in a campus dining hall. There were a couple of empty seats, and two white students asked if they could join them. One of the black students asked why, in light of empty tables nearby. The reply was that these students wanted to stretch themselves by engaging in the kind of uncomfortable learning the college encourages. The black students politely said no. Is this really so scandalous?

I find two aspects of this story to be of particular interest.

First, the familiar question is “Why do the black students eat together in the cafeteria?” I think I have some insight on this based on 16 years of living on or near a college campus: Many groups eat together in the cafeteria, but people seem to notice only when the students are black. Athletes often eat with athletes; fraternity and sorority members with their Greek brothers and sisters; a cappella group members with fellow singers; actors with actors; marching band members with marching band members; and so on.

And that brings me to the second aspect: We all deserve safe spaces. Those black students had every right to enjoy their lunches in peace. There are plenty of times and places to engage in uncomfortable learning, but that wasn’t one of them. The white students, while well-meaning, didn’t have the right to unilaterally decide when uncomfortable learning would take place.

Now for the story from Northwestern. For more than four decades, we have had a building on campus called the Black House, a space specifically meant to be a center for black student life. This summer some well-intentioned staff members suggested that we place one of our multicultural offices there. The pushback from students, and especially alumni, was immediate and powerful. It wasn’t until I attended a listening session that I fully understood why. One black alumna from the 1980s said that she and her peers had fought to keep a house of their own on campus. While the black community should always have an important voice in multicultural activities on campus, she said, we should put that office elsewhere, leaving a small house with a proud history as a safe space exclusively for blacks.

Christina Paxson is president of Brown University.

New students are entering colleges and universities at a time of fierce debate about whether institutions of higher education are becoming places that stifle speech in the interest of protecting students from ideas and perspectives they don’t want to hear. In the clash over freedom of expression and the supposed coddling of American college students, safe spaces and trigger warnings are held up as the poster children of overprotective universities.
In the setting of private institutions, this is not a First Amendment issue. Private colleges and universities could restrict the expression of ideas and beliefs within their campuses, if they chose to do so. But most private colleges and universities wisely do not make this choice. Instead, colleges and universities protect the rights of members of their communities to express a full range of ideas, however controversial.

That is because freedom of expression is an essential component of academic freedom, which protects the ability of universities to fulfill their core mission of advancing knowledge. Suppressing ideas at a university is akin to turning off the power at a factory. As scholars and students, our responsibility is to subject old truths to scrutiny and put forward new ideas to improve them.

At universities, we also advance understanding about issues of justice and fairness, and these discussions can be equally, if not more, difficult. From the earliest days of this country, college campuses have been the sites of fierce debates about slavery, war, women’s rights and racial justice. These discussions create rocky moments, and they should.

If we don’t have these debates — if we limit the flow of ideas — then in 50 years we will be no better than we are today.

I don’t share the view that American college students want to be protected from ideas that make them uncomfortable. Just the opposite. Over the past few years, our students have addressed topics that make many people very uncomfortable indeed — racism, sexual assault, religious persecution. These are some of the toughest problems facing society today, and we do not shy away from them.

As for “safe spaces” — the term is used in so many different ways that it is impossible to discuss it without being precise about its meaning. The term emerged from the women’s movement nearly 50 years ago to refer to forums where women’s rights issues were discussed. Then it was extended to denote spaces where violence and harassment against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community would not be tolerated, and then extended yet again to mean places where students from marginalized groups can come together to feel comfortable discussing their experiences and just being themselves.

If this is what a safe space means, then, yes, Brown has them. Proudly.

Gulmurod Khalimov, the new ISIS military commander whom the U.S. just days ago announced a $3 million bounty for, was trained by the State Department in an anti-terror program as recently as 2014 while serving in the security service of Tajikistan.

He replaces former ISIS commander Tarkhan Batirashvili, aka Umar al-Shishani, who was also trained by the United States as part of the Georgian army and who ISIS claimed was killed fighting in Iraq this past July.

The State Department confirmed Khalimov’s U.S.-provided training to CNN in May 2015:

“From 2003-2014 Colonel Khalimov participated in five counterterrorism training courses in the United States and in Tajikistan, through the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security/Anti-Terrorism Assistance program,” said spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala.

The program is intended to train candidates from participating countries in the latest counterterrorism tactics, so they can fight the very kind of militants that Khalimov has now joined.

A State Department official said Khalimov was trained in crisis response, tactical management of special events, tactical leadership training and related issues.

Unironically, the State Department spokeswoman said that Khalimov had been appropriately vetted:

“All appropriate Leahy vetting was undertaken in advance of this training,” said spokeswoman Jhunjhunwala.

At that time, Khalimov appeared in a video threatening the United States:

“Listen, you American pigs: I’ve been to America three times. I saw how you train soldiers to kill Muslims,” he says.

Then, he threatens, “we will find your towns, we will come to your homes, and we will kill you.”

Khalimov and Batirashvili are hardly the first terrorist leaders operating in Syria to have been trained by the United States.

Staffer likened Israelis to Nazis, called for slaughter of activists who seek to prevent ritual killings of animals

A Belgian Muslim official who compared Israel to Nazi Germany and the Islamic State is no longer employed as a minister’s adviser on tolerance.

He works for a minister in the government of one of the three autonomous regions that make up the federal kingdom of Belgium.

Bart de Wever, the mayor of Antwerp, which is the capital of Belgium’s Flemish Region, in July told the Joods Actueel Jewish monthly he finds Kobo’s appointment “troubling” also because Kobo, according to de Wever, recently published a tweet about the shooting of police officers in the United States in which he wrote “a shot for a shot.”

De Wever said it means Kobo justifies the shootings as retribution for perceived police brutality, especially against blacks.

Several years ago, before the onset of the Arab Spring, the eminent historian Bernard Lewis suggested that Israel’s future in the Middle East was more secure than many assumed. In measurable ways, the nearer Arab and Muslim states were sinking into ever deeper political, social and economic dysfunction and despair, while Israel, for all its innate tensions and divisive culture wars, was politically and economically sound and socially cohesive.

It was an argument about the way these nations conduct themselves: By conscious choice, the wealthiest Middle Eastern economies rely on oil for their prosperity, whereas Israel relies on technological innovation as its single largest export. As technological advances slowly but surely sideline Middle Eastern oil as a keystone of the global economy, economies that rely on little else will sink further, he argued, while Israel, which has transformed itself into an engine for those very advances, will only rise.

The history of the past few years has largely borne out this assessment.

Israel’s strength set against an imploding Arab state system – indeed, Israel’s strangely separate life in a region that is increasingly seen as an exporter primarily of its own social and religious imbalances – is quietly but decisively transforming the Jewish state’s place in the calculations of both friend and foe.

It has turned some erstwhile enemies into allies in potentia, and forced Israel’s most bitter foes, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, to develop a new apologetic discourse that seeks to explain to ordinary Lebanese or Gazans why the ideology of permanent war against the Zionists justifies their current and future suffering.

Meanwhile, regional and global actors with less emotional investment in Zionism — countries like Greece, India, Russia, Cyprus, China, and even distant Honduras — have all taken dramatic steps to upgrade economic and defense ties with Israel, in no small part out of a clear sense of these growing disparities in power and prosperity in the region.

And, of course, America noticed.

Fourteen years ago my life changed forever as I arrived in the United States, holding tightly to hope and a promise.

That promise was freedom and a dream of a better life.

I entered this beautiful country as a documented immigrant at the age of 18 in August 2002, almost one year after 9/11. After surviving 15 years of oppression under Sharia in Iran, I felt older than my years. I had seen too much and I knew all too well the suffering of those who were subjected to Islam. What I had witnessed and experienced had left my soul weary. But in America, I felt safe. I was able to breathe, and I could stop looking over my shoulder and living in fear.

I could now believe in miracles. Here I was, the newest member of the greatest country in the world. It was my rebirth into freedom. I was in a new place that viewed me as a human; someone of value to society. Finally, my life mattered. I was a daughter of liberty; a citizen of the U.S.A.

I’ve never forgotten those who I left behind — and I have dedicated my life to them. How could I turn my back on them, when I know all too well the vicious suffering women endure in Islamic-ruled countries?

At the age of 9, Qur’anic teachings and Islamic traditions forced me into womanhood. My thoughts, my actions and my life were no longer my own. From that moment on, I lost all rights as a person, as my instruction in preparation to marry and bear children became my only purpose in life. No longer would I be allowed in public without my hijab; prayer and submission would dominate my days. The life of a carefree child at play came to an abrupt and sudden end.

For the next 9 years, I would suffer terrible cruelty under Islam. Rape, lashings, arrests and beatings were my life because I was regarded as property to be “handled” rather than a human being to be loved. During those nine years, I was sold into marriage to a much older man who abused me terribly. A bruised body and broken bones became a common reality for me, and there was little I could do to stop it. Divorce was not an option. Islamic law offers women little support in abusive marriages.

The University of Chicago’s recent decision to not condone “safe spaces” on campus earned a round of applause from First Amendment advocates. “Free speech is at risk at the very institution where it should be assured: the university,” University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer said. But as the University of Chicago has made substantial strides toward freedom of speech on campus, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has opted to narrow the scope of what can be discussed in the classroom.

Last week, three professors co-teaching a course titled “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” released a statement that addressed students who question man-made climate change. “We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course,” the professors said in a statement obtained by The College Fix. And if you disagree? The professors “respectfully ask that you do not take this course.”

One wonders: If the professors are positive that man-made climate change is occurring exactly in the manner they suggest, then why are they worried about a few students questioning their narrative? Universities are supposed to be places where students can improve themselves and others by debating openly. How does suppressing contradictory views aid that?

University Communications Director Tom Hutton backed the professors’ decision to limit students rather than to encourage free inquiry. “By clearly stating the class focus,” Hutton told The College Fix, “the faculty are allowing students to choose if they wish to enroll in the course or seek an alternative.” On the face of it, this sounds reasonable. And yet, if Hutton’s rationale were to be taken seriously, no student would ever enroll in a course that taught beliefs contrary to his own.