This is pretty mild as student protests go but it’s still interesting to see white American students causing a ruckus over Israeli treatment of Palestinians. There are two videos here (the second after the break) showing both sides of the conflict. It’s worth noting that the event was held at an Israel Alliance event so one might expect to hear some standard pro-Israeli views there. What you might not expect is the student reaction. Go kids…
The Arab Spring Comes to New Mexico
Students Physically Attacked for Interrupting Israel Talk in New Mexico
AtlanticWire | 24 Feb 12
A group of University of New Mexico students “mic checked” an Israel Alliance talk on their campus Thursday night, when audience members got up out of their seats and physically attacked the protesting students.
“Mic check! Nonie Darwish speaks for Israeli apartheid!,” yell the students at around 15 seconds into the video. “And genocide at the hands of the IDF [Israeli army]!” From there, older male audience members begin to slowly walk their way up to the students (some of them young women), and start physically pushing and attacking them. At 55 seconds in, you can see one of the students goes flying over a row of seats.
We’re still trying to gather the facts on this story, but according to the promotional flyer, the title of the talk was “Why the Arab Spring Is Failing” and was being lead by speaker Nonie Darwish.
According to uploader of the video, the students eventually filed a police report. (Un)Occupy Albuquerque has this statement on the video:
A group of people, who were acting in solidarity with the Palestinian people, questioned Darwish’s fear-mongering and her unqualified support for Israel. They were shouted down by pro-Israel members in the audience, who assaulted a woman, pulled her hair, and forcibly pushed another person over a row of seats. A third person was punched in the face. Pro-Israel members also destroyed a phone that was used to record the assault.
Here’s another angle of the protest and scuffle:
____________________________________________________________________________ Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American human rights activist, and founder of Arabs For Israel, and is Director of Former Muslims United. She is the author of two books: Now They Call Me Infidel; Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror and Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law. Darwish’s speech topics cover human rights, with emphasis on women’s rights and minority rights in the Middle East. Born in Egypt, Darwish is the daughter of an Egyptian Army lieutenant general, who was called a “shahid” by the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, after being killed in a targeted killing by the Israeli Defense Forces in 1956. Darwish blames “the Middle Eastern Islamic culture and the propaganda of hatred taught to children from birth” for his death. In 1978, she moved with her husband to the United States, and converted to Christianity there. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, she has written on Islam-related topics. Darwish believes Islam is an authoritarian ideology that is attempting to impose on the world the norms of seventh-century culture of the Arabian Peninsula. She writes that Islam is a “sinister force” that must be resisted and contained. She remarks that it is hard to “comprehend that an entire religion and its culture believes God orders the killing of unbelievers.” She claims that Islam and Sharia of forming a retrograde ideology that adds greatly to the world’s stock of misery. Darwish claims the Qur’an is a text that is “violent, incendiary, and disrespectful” and says that barbarities such as brutalization of women, the persecution of homosexuals, honor killings, the beheading of apostates and the stoning of adulterers come directly out of the Qur’an.
This article and video appears at Atlanticwire.com »
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Posted in Foreign Affairs, Religion, War & Peace
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