WTF Joseph Dana

Writing letters...again.

This is the event tomorrow:

Anarchists Against the Wall

October 21, 2010 - 7:00PM to 10:00PM

Joseph Dana of Anarchists Against the Wall will be speaking on the Israeli solidarity movement with Palestinian popular resistance to the wall and to Israeli apartheid more generally.

LOCATION:	Goldwin Smith, Lewis Aud.
SPEAKER:	Joseph Dana, Anarchists Against the Wall
TOPIC:	The Israeli Solidarity movement with Palestinian popular resistance to the wall
ADMISSION:	Open to Public.
ADMISSION INFO:	free and open to the public
CONTACT:	Carl Gelderloos 607 277 1309 cag236@cornell.edu This is the speaker's website: http://josephdana.com/ If you want to hear about how he is "creating impossible friendships," or want to laugh, I recommend watching the video interview.

Carl,

We recently came across a poster for the UPJP event, Anarchists Against the Wall. The poster's message, "SMASH ISRAELI APARTHEID," offended us personally as Jews and supporters of Israel. The message implies that Israel is an Apartheid state and Israel's supporters condone the alleged Apartheid.

Israel is not an Apartheid state. Apartheid is a legally enforced system that institutionalizes segregation, discrimination, and oppression based on race, gender, sexuality, or religion. The Separation Barrier and laws in Israel do not discriminate based on race, gender, sexuality, or religion, as Palestinians live on both sides of the wall, and Palestinians in the West Bank have their own government, the Palestinian Authority. Along with the Palestinian government in the West Bank, Arabs in Israel have full citizenship and voting rights, and 14 out of the 120 members of the Israeli Parliament are Arab. The Israeli government is aware of the inconveniences the Barrier poses to residents of the West Bank and is working to find a more advantageous long term solution; however, the safety of the Israeli people is paramount.

The "Wall" itself is actually only about 5% cement wall, which comes out to approximately 10 miles, built to prevent sniper shootings that were frequent in those selected areas. The Security Barrier has been extremely effective in halting attacks on Israeli citizens. Between 2002 and 2003, when major portions of the Barrier was constructed, there were 30% fewer attacks by terrorists from the West Bank and 50% fewer Israelis were murdered. The effectiveness of the Barrier has continued in even greater magnitudes today.

The posters for this event blatantly incite hatred toward Israel by feeding Cornell students misleading information about the status of Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank.

This use of propaganda is unfair and uncomfortable for students like us who feel a strong connection to the State of Israel. For students who have not yet formed a connection or a strong opinion with either side, their opinions will easily be manipulated by the depiction of Israel as an Apartheid state.

It is our hope that you will find validity in our concerns and we can work together to find a solution to this problem, to educate Cornell students about the conflict while representing facts as clearly as possible and without bias.

We look forward to hearing from you,

Jordana Gilman and Rachel M--

Thankfully, Rachel is equally incensed about this issue and we are tearing down the anarchist with our own bare hands. I am ever so grateful to have a fellow Israel advocate like her on my own floor! While we did miss out on a half hour of planned sleep to write this letter, it was worth it and fun. We have been trained for this. It is OUR TIME.

WE ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD ONE JEWISH ORGANIZATION AT A TIME AND IT IS A WONDERFUL FEELING AND I AM GETTING PHOTOGRAPHED SO I HAVE TO LOOK INTENSE AND TYPE REALLY FAST AND LOOK EXCITED

To conclude: Allegations that Israel is an apartheid state will have to find a home elsewhere. Not on our campus. Not in our home. Not in our hearts. (We're laughing now, you can too). But actually.

F/Rats, Bowties

I hosted a pre-frosh through Hillel over the weekend. We went to Shabbat services, dinner, listened to a Professor Sarna speak about Jewish demographics, went to L'chaims in the house (The Center for Jewish Living has a bar...?), went to Phi Sig with friends to meet Joe, danced. The party was shut down so we went upstairs and hung out in people's rooms and danced to techno with people we didn't know. The party started up again around 12:30. They played Nirvana. It was awesome.

I babysat again on Saturday morning. It was an experience that included High School Musical, dancing, diaper changing, and bathing. And more. The best part was at the end, after I had worked somewhere between two and three hours, and my employer rounded UP! It has never happened before. I was in shock.

When I returned, my pre-frosh was amusing herself with sudoku in my room. We went to study for two hours and then went to the Commons where we window shopped and had coffee/neither of us had coffee specifically but it's the idea that counts. We took a bus back in time for dinner with JONNY and Jesse and Ranan and Jessica, and Jonny, Jesse, and me just reminisced about Nativ the whole time. Then we changed and prepared to go out. We walked around campus for about two hours trying to find/get into a party. Finally we settled on Thumpty, a weird frat to which I had vowed to never return. It turned out to be awesome and there was a live band and I had an amazing time and dancing with Nativ was the best. After Thumpty, we went to Sammy after hours and chilled and danced in a Bar Mitzvah fashion. Except most people were drunk and we were at a frat house. I tried to do flying squirrel and was not caught and landed on my back with my legs and arms still in the air. It was mostly a failure, but the party was fun.

In the morning, my pre-frosh left at 10. It had been a wild ride. Then I went back to sleep for an hour, went to a work meeting for the hotel, and studied biology for six. hours.

I dissected a rat on Sunday. It was a male rat, I named him Whiskies. He had beautiful intestines. I did a good job. It was weird at first because he had little rat hands and little rat bones that I had to break, but it was worth it in the end.

On Monday after my classes, I worked my first shift at the Statler Hotel. I was born to banquet. I wore a vest and a bowtie. I had never been more polite in my life. I was working mostly with Hufflepuffs, and if you know anything about Hufflepuffs, you know that they are very nice and easy to work with but lack zing. I worked for about 7 hours. I was exhausted. I served coffee and refilled waters and cleared plates and set up and cleaned up. At the end of my shift, I changed back into my regular clothes in the locker room, returned my uniform, left my work pants/shoes/belt in a bag in the locker room, left the hotel and stuck out my hand at the first intersection. A Chinese man stopped his car. He thought I was telling him to slow down. Actually, I was hitch hiking. He was going to the gym close to my dorm. He was playing Chinese music. His name was Chow. First Cornell Hitch Hiking Experience = Major Success.

Today I picked up my bag of clothes from the hotel lost and found, went to my classes, and ate with Adina. Classic day. Now, off to the RA meeting. L'hit!

Animals

Animals I have seen on the Cornell campus since I arrived in August:

1. Squirrels

2. Dogs

3. A turtle

4. A large toad

5. A large (mutant?) slug

6. A heron (three times!)

7. A red-tailed hawk

8. Chipmunks

9. A bunny

10. Freshman boys

11. A monarch butterfly

12. A pair of blue jays!

13. Two skunks!

Plus, on the drive home two weeks ago--two bald eagles!

So sad that I don't get to see kittens : (

Mind blowing

I feel like I'm cheating on Kurt Vonnegut, my long time favorite author, when I announce this: Anton Chekhov is my new favorite author.

College is doing insane things to my mind. I absolutely love reading late 19th century Russian literature. How is this possible?

Today I went to a lunch for the second day of chag at an apartment on a gorge. Literally, on a gorge, as in, falling into the gorge. It was so beautiful. There were probably 25 people there, all Jewish, with some connection to Cornell and the people who live in the apartment. The food was delicious, the company genial...from freshmen to grad students. I really enjoyed it.

Today there was a turtle on the sidewalk.

Today I went to a play called Revolution because my friend Jesse was playing Jesus Christ in it. It was a play written by a student about revolutionaries and religion and bureaucracy. It was much too complicated for me. In 45 minutes, every single character turned out to be a double crosser, everyone had a name that was a metaphor for something else, and the entire play was about something entirely different than I originally thought.

I did go to see the play with some really cool people though, including several foreigners from Dubai/England, Paris, and the Dominican Republic. And Westchester. We discussed it afterward a bit, and I felt like this is why I went here: We went to see the play. It was an absurdly artsy play. We discussed it afterward and made sense of what we could and gave our opinions. We decided it was too much and discussed our weekend plans.

These are the kinds of people I have always wanted to meet! Cultured, diverse, interesting, intellectual...but not trying too hard. Like we went to the play, we talked about it, and instead of spending our evening wearing glasses with no prescription in them and arguing fervently about fascism, we just got on with our lives.

On a more routine note: I finished my hardest week of college yet! It included two "prelims" (big tests) in Human Development and Nutrition, a Hebrew test, a four page paper in Freshman Writing (I wrote about "The Doctor" by Chekhov!), and a unit test in Bio on photosynthesis and twigs.

I can now determine the age of any twig you place before me. I am bound for success.

Shabbat Shalom!

Stephen Walt

Stephen Walt is a professor at Harvard and the author of two New York Times bestsellers. He is a highly regarded foreign policy analyst and he came to speak at Cornell last Thursday!

He is also highly praised by White Supremacists everywhere and many things in his book are shamelessly anti-semitic. Joyyyyy.

See the Cornell Daily Sun article online about his speech.

This is my response:

Letter to the Editor regarding “Walt Criticizes Obama’s Foreign Policy”

Dear Editor,

I would like to provide an additional perspective in regards to last week’s article on the speech given by Professor Walt about Obama’s foreign policy, specifically concerning Israel and Palestine.

While Professor Walt stuck to his promise after the fire alarm that he would not say anything “inflammatory,” he did leave out some key details. As stated in Joseph Niczky’s article last Friday, Walt predicted that unless Obama put greater pressure on Israel to come to an agreement, there would be no peaceful two-state solution.

This implies that Israel is the only player who holds cards in the deal. It is true that Israel holds bargaining power in the form of territory and Jerusalem, but the Palestinians also have much to contribute to the compromise, like recognizing the State of Israel and giving up terrorism.

Let’s start with recognition. An important part of a feasible peace process is the understanding on both sides that the other has the right to exist. Mahmoud Abbas, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, told the Palestinian newspaper ‘Al-Quds’ that, “For us, there is the state of Israel and we won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state” (The Jerusalem Post, September 7, 2010).

Whether this is a personal sentiment of Abbas or not, there is not enough Palestinian support for the recognition of a Jewish State. If Abbas were to recognize Israel in coming peace talks, it is very possible that he would not stay in power long enough to implement the plans for peace.

During the question and answer portion of the lecture, Professor Walt drew a parallel between the conflict in Ireland that George Mitchell worked to resolve and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, claiming that the key to success in Ireland was the inclusion of all parties. In the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Hamas is known as a terrorist organization and therefore the US will not hold talks that include Hamas. Walt sees bringing Hamas into the discussions as a possible route to peace.

Upon further inspection of what Hamas stands for, Walt may not be so quick to suggest we invite Hamas to our peace planning parties. The Hamas Charter states: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).”

They say it takes two to tango. The US can force Netanyahu to put on his dancing shoes but that doesn’t mean Abbas is going to bring his. And Hamas doesn’t even own dancing shoes.

On to terrorism. While TIME magazine would have you believe that there has been “relative peace” in the southern region since the Disengagement in 2005 (all Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip were forcibly removed from their homes by the Israel Defense Forces and relocated) and Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, rockets have continued to fall on Israel, some in highly populated areas. In many ways, outsiders view the terrorism as acts of individuals unrelated to the Palestinian leadership, when in fact acts of terrorism are organized by Hamas and glorified by the Palestinian Authority.

Professor Walt also mentioned territory quite a bit when discussing the conflict, specifically that the Palestinian Authority has “already given up 78% of mandatory land.” This references the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, General Assembly Resolution 181. The Partition Plan was proposed in 1947, before Israel declared independence from Britain and recommended a two state solution. The leaders of the Jewish State approved the plan but it was rejected by the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, so it was never implemented. When Walt says that the Palestinians do not have land to use as a bargaining tool in negotiations, he is correct. But to say that they have already given up 78% of what is rightfully theirs is ignoring history. The land allotted to the Palestinians during the British Mandate period before Israel’s independence never became a reality because Arab leaders refused to accept the Partition Plan.

To tackle the statements Walt made about Apartheid, I will say this: Israel is a democracy. Arab Israelis vote in Israeli elections. There are Arab parties (multiple!) in the Israeli Parliament, and at times there have been as many as 12 Arab seats in the Parliament of 120 seats. Apartheid in South Africa was a legal system of discrimination, segregation, and domination based on race. To suggest that Israel may face a similar rights violation is to fail to acknowledge the tragedy of Apartheid in the history of South Africa.

There is one thing Professor Walt said that I could have not agreed with more, and that is there is no “low-hanging fruit” in foreign policy. That could not be more true about the case of Israel and Palestine.

College Life

I have friends! I have two real friends in bio, which is great, because we help each other and schedule study dates. I have two real friends in Hebrew, and one of them is my best friend Adina and we are a great team. She is also an Israel freshman and we have similar views about lots of things in life. I have three friends in Human Development, including two people I have known and loved for years. I have three friends in Nutrition as well! I have many friends in my dorm and I am very friendly with my hall. You'd be surprised how well you can cement a friendship while teeth brushing. I also have many, many friends at Hillel. A lot of those friends are other Israel Freshmen and we are quite close and go about together at night and such.

On Friday night, after services and Shabbat dinner, I went out with Adina and Julia to the America Party at Alden's frat. It was really great! I kept running into people I knew and liked! This included Max, a friend from the Meinig Scholars Program. It was a great joy to run into him in such an environment, because we first met in a rather stuffy meet-and-greet at a bowling alley. I know it seems like meet-and-greets can't be stuffy if they're in a bowling alley, but if you get a bunch of kids together at Cornell and tell them they are scholars, I assure you it can get stuffy.

On Saturday night, I watched ללכת על המים or Walk On Water as it is called in English. It is truly an amazing film. Israeli films are the best! They have the realest characters and conflicts and it's all shot on location and none of this Hollywood crap. No special effects. Just human experience and suffering and love and beauty! This is what the art of film is about!

Cried about TIME. You have let me down.

Studied all day, breaking for Ballroom Dancing with Joe D. We are waltz pros.

Watched two episodes of Glee to reward myself for gaining so much new knowledge regarding ATP Synthesis.

Applied for a job with a 9% acceptance rate (by that I mean, about 100 people apply and they only have about 9 spots) which is crazy and depressing. I really wanted to be an over enthusiastic early morning tour guide with too much school spirit and a plethora of random knowledge about the history and architecture of Cornell University. I really would have been a natural, I am sure of it.

I think it might be time for one last Glee episode. Is that too many? I can't think anymore. Damn you, peer reviewed articles on studies showing the effects of B6 on PMS. Why can't you just show the full text on line!!?? I really do hate you.

Classes, Shabbat, and a Rave

I. Classes

A. Bio

1. self taught

2. hard

3. awesome

4. I chill in the bio study center

B. Human Development

1. sit with Julia

2. videos of infants and children

3. what's not to love?

C. Nutrition

1. prof is hilar

2. learning a lot already (autonomic nervous system)

3. prof talked about fight or flight responses as they relate to orgasms today in class, we all had heart attacks. he's ooooold

D. Hebrew

1. prof is my best friend

2. good level for me so far

3. helped me meet one of my actual best friends, Adina, who went to Israel last year and is awesome

E. English

1. prof talks in a British/snoody/A Separate Peace boarding school accent

2. reading Russian literature so I feel smarter

3. not seeing where it's going quite yet

F. Ballroom

1. hasn't started yet

2. doing it with Joe D so how can it not be great!?

II. Shabbat

A. Beit Midrash

1. pre Shabbat learning in the Beit Midrash

2. one other girl there

3. lots of arguing

4. possibly social suicide, still unclear

B. Services

1. I lead Kabalat Shabbat

2. I rocked

3. the conservative minyan was good but I want to try others

C. Dinner

1. madhouse

2. not a lot of food

3. pareve desserts are bad in America

4. made friends!

D. L'Chaims

1. Jewish "frat house" thingy (Center for Jewish Living) hosts "L'Chaims" post dinner

2. lots of drinks and Jews

3. I didn't drink but I mingled

4. weird concept

III. Rave

A. Getting in

1. Arrived with Jesse, Ranan, and Jake

2. recognized new friend Conor

3. Conor, bless his lil heart, let us in

B. Entering the rain forest

1. climate was 100% humidity, about 95 degrees F

2. very crowded

C. Bartending

1. I liked the idea of having a purpose

2. I liked the idea of having a sturdy, high wooden table between me and potential rapists/unwanted dance partners

3. I asked drunk people to use their manners and reminded them to drink water

4. I handed out beers

D. Dancing

1. insanity

2. insanity

3. fun

4. sweaty

5. they played Stereo Love and it brought me back to the days of Yerucham and Crack Square

E. Leaving

1. said goodbye to our many friends (yay!!!!)

2. used my orientation skills to read the campus map and navigated us to the next house

3. entered the next house but the party was over

4. found a pole in the empty basement and tried to turn upside down on it but failed

5. walked back home to North campus and saw a beautiful doe on the way

NOW IT IS TIME TO SLEEP!!!!!