Controversial Rabbi visit upsetting and insulting to UA Jewish community
Last week, members of the UA’s Jewish community joined together on the mall to protest the presence of Dovid Weiss, a non-student sponsored, self-proclaimed rabbi.
The community’s protest of Weiss has been misinterpreted as a protest against Weiss’s anti-Zionist rhetoric alone, when in reality the community’s opposition was largely due to Weiss’s relationship and support of radical Islamists, a relationship that continues to help them enhance modern anti-Semitism effortlessly based on his stereotypical appearance alone. Because of this, the Jewish people have globally rejected Weiss and his followers as representatives of the Jewish people’s values and ideals.
Weiss has public support from, and relationships with, terrorist organizations and Holocaust-denying political leaders such as Hamas and Iranian president Ahmadinejad, who promote the destruction and annihilation of the State and Nation of Israel as a religious duty. Justification for their ideology is based on a fictitious, twisted, and perverted form of religion and history, presented as reality to a mass of people whose influence goes far beyond their countries’ borders.
Not a single university teacher, nor the student group Students For Justice in Palestine agreed to Weiss’ visit to campus. I feel this clearly proves that the non-student affiliated group’s goal by bringing Weiss to the mall, since they were perhaps unable to use the Louise F. Marshall building or re-book the College of Law building, was to spread anti-semetic propaganda and purposefully affront the Jewish community on this campus.
Using the most popular token-religious-stereotypical looking Jew is considered to be a major tool by the Jewish people, and it only promotes the opinions of the religious and political Islamist National Socialist goal of religious and political world domination and utter annihilation of the nation of Israel, not just the State. Let me add that this view is not held by millions of Arabs or Muslims around the world. This was something that many Jews of this community could not stand by and let happen.
Weiss’ sponsor’s goal was to actually hear and present a well-respected academic explanation of the ideological opposition to the creation of the state of Israel, and/or Zionism, whether you call it post-Zionism, anti-Zionism, and or from the point of view of a Palestinian nationalist, all they would have had to do was go to the Near Eastern Studies department and ask any one of the many professors who are educated on the subject. From personal experience, the department’s faculty is more than willing to educate anyone on their position concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In the end, Weiss not only offended the crowd with his typical, redundant and drawn-out answers, but he basically avoided giving real answers to questions that posed any type of intellectual challenge to his points. It says a lot when both the pro-Israel activists on campus and the Student for Justice in Palestine can agree that Weiss visiting the UA could only bring about a negative result. This political problem will never move forward with hate and misrepresentation — only honesty and understanding.
Adam Bellos
Judaic studies senior
Columnist should not incorrectly cite bills
After reading Friday’s article “”Guns on campus: Why ASUA needs to act now,”” I was stricken by a few flaws in the columnist’s argument. Most notably, he cites House Bill 2439 as prompting the Regents’ change in policy regarding firearms in vehicles, but it was in fact the recent signing of HB 2474 that necessitated the changes; HB 2439 deals with concealed carry permit requirements. Citing the wrong bill only leads me to believe that the author did not even read the text of the bill that he is denouncing. He claims that proponents of the bill support it without any logic behind their argument (in spite of a perfect counterexample coming from the Appalachian State law school shooting), yet he doesn’t even seem to know which bill he’s upset over. He stereotypes firearm owners as a group of illogical vigilantes that will only impede police and compromise campus safety, yet by gleaning half-truths to denounce a scary-sounding opposing view, he proves himself to be just another liberal hypocrite.
Steven Meyer
mechanical engineering senior
