Only force will stop force

Only Jack Teitel can Stop Strenhell!

Zechariah 12-14. If scripture and the Old Testament prophets are valid every Israelite needs to know and understand what is come. 12:2-3 Jerusalem will be a burdensome stone, a cup of reeling for all people and will be under siege. All nations of the earth will be against it. 12:8-10 In that day Jehovah shall defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem. He will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem and pour out a spirit of grace upon the house of David, They will look at upon me whom the have pierced and mourn. (Israel recognizes their Messiah realizing the awful rejection) 13:8-9 One third of Israel survives this last battle and will be refined as gold is refined. They shall call on my name and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people; and they shall say, Jehovah is my God. 14:3-4 Then Jehovah will fight against those nations and His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives. (Jesus) 14:9-10 And Jehovah shall be King over all the earth. And there shall be no more curse. 14:12 And this shall be the plague on the people who warred against Jerusalem: their flesh, eyes and tongue shall consume away while standing on their feet. (This can have several interesting interpretations)

It is high time these leftists loonies be thought that they can not hide behind freedom of speech to excercise poisenous activity against their people.

If Mr. Sternhell and his friends disagree with the ideas of Im Tirtzu, then they should respond with better ideas -- not calls for censorship.

If the activity of Im Tirzu is illegal then it should be prohibited. If their actions are legal than Leftists should shut up. The law should be observed even it does not serve leftists.

Zeev, why are you hysterical. If you truely believe in academic freedom, then provide your contributors in the US with information about your point of view. But of course, you know that your contributors do not know what is really happening in your universities, so you want to keep them in the dark and you are scared that Im Tirzu will tell them the truth. You are not for academic freedom, you are for academic obfuscation.

of hypocrisy stands out. He rather vociferously and repeatedly demands that the right wing and moderates that differ with his views are "dangerous" and "should not be allowed forums." Yet, when the left receives the same response, he is outraged. Typical left wing anti-Israel hypocrisy that is so strongly supported by Haaretz

To disagree with an opposing view is academic freedom. To utilize the power of the state to suppress an opposing view is fascism. To shoot at someone who is shooting at you is defense. To shoot at anyone else is a crime. To deny aid and comfort to one's enemy in time of war is treason. To ascribe treason to those who disagree with you is foolishness. To fight a war one must have an enemy. To invent an enemy in order to fight a war is a perversion of justice. So here's to all those fascist. criminal, treason-obsessed perverts who simply cannot discern the difference between academic freedom and political reality. May they rot in the miasma of their own dark thoughts.

academics have too high an opinion of themselves. their contempt for the average person, who in fact supports them financially, is despicable. this remark applies to academics of the left or right. it so happens that present day academia is ruled by the left. generally, most academics cannot accept those whose opinions differ from their own.

Why Israel should continue to accept to be permanently bashed and denied by it's own citizen, at donators and israeli tax payers? Lok at the moron Shlomo Sand, who denies the jewish People has ever existed , and who is now instrumentalized by all Israel deligitimizers... A drama, for the Diaspora, and mortal poison for the future of Israel

Why Write about the Anti-Zionist Academics? The many claims made in print or through other media of communication by anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic academics in Israel’s universities need to be examined and rebutted, to set the historical record straight. Citizens of Israel, who still respect the status of professors in our universities should understand what is being said by this group and why it is at once very upsetting and very distorted, in many cases turned inside out. There are at least three important reasons why such a rebuttal is vital. These people are among those who teach our youth in the universities and who exert enormous influence on their ideas, attitudes, values and strivings. University professors do not know exactly how they influence their students. Occasionally the reactions of students can be the exact opposite of what was intended. Nevertheless, the role of the anti-Zionist academics in molding Israel’s youth cannot be discounted. It is crucial that their opinions meet with serious counter-efforts on behalf of all Jews who value the existence and significance of Israel as a Jewish nation

Is like saying:Fire will stop Fire.

in the universities... the vociferous Tirtzu minority is now rearing rearing its head...

I find the article a sad, defeatest ,guilt ridden tirade which you could hardly believe is coming from an Israeli. It posits that there is somehow this "Western model" that Israel must inevitably follow like France in Algeria,etc. Friend, there is only one Israel...Love it or leave it ! But even more than that stop apologizing for it ! Whose approval are you seeking?

This just makes me laugh, what with the heads of Universities in Israel cheerleading for the IDF during Cast Lead, violent suppression of "Wall" protesters (including of Jewish Israelis taking part), the government (minus the Arab representation) calling for loyalty pledges, institutionalized relegation of Arab-Israelis as second class citizens (educatonal/housing funding, etc.) to suggest Israeli's "cultural world" is leftist is naked doubletalk. Israeli is leftist only if the definition is anything to the left of pure fascism!

The transparent, frightened little Sternhell is not a pretty sight. Does he represent science? Not a chance. Prof. Aumann won a Nobel Prize and is a patriot - Sternhell is a little anti-Zionist tenured professor who counsels Israel's enemies to attack settlers. We need to get rid of these parasites who choose who will be hired in their departments (eg. 9 of 11 radical leftists at BGU) and allow better professors to teach in universities. Sternheel's threats are empty and sad.

Seems that Zeev SternHell is alarmed that the leftist hegemony over so many departments at Israeli universities is being publicized, scrutinized and challenged these days. Zeev SternHell is himself anti-democratic, someone whose real fear is that non-leftists might actually come to enjoy freedom of speech in Israel and - Heavens - perhaps even on Israeli campuses. Zeev SternHell version of freedom of speech is where academic extremists build careers out of turning out anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate propaganda, but where NO ONE should be allowed to criticize or denounce them for doing so, or even mention it. Criticizing an anti-Israel hatemonger is itself the worst violation of democracy and academic freedom in Zeev SternHell Orwellian little world.

The right-wing's weak point is in their thinking, they run on emotions and not on thought. There are right-wing philosophers and professional thinkers, such as those who teach at Bar-Ilan university. But can they rationally justify the settlement enterprise all over the West Bank? Nobody can be that stupid (rationally). They will have to invoke the Messiah Myth and other religious gobbledigook. The non-religious of the Right will not be able to come up with any explanation. Perhaps you will get from them what PM Shamir once explained: "You want to know why? I will tell you why: Because!"

The greatest exploiters & big Capitalists come from the Stalinist era of Ideology.Time has not whetted their appetite or changed their views that they held some 70 years ago.only more layers of bluff are added..What ticks them ? They might live either in Israel or abroad & yet pour venom on the very country that has given them shelter from the hatred of the Europeans that killed & slaughtered their fathers & grandfathers..Not a word of recrimination against the Arabs where they Whip women for the flimsiest of excuses,stoning women to death & public hangings in Iran,Saudi Arabia Syria Yemen etc. When these same professors wear the mantle of ,"I know better than Thou" Something stinks !

As put so nicely in the novel, Animal Farm, even though all pigs espouse equality in theory, at the end of the day "Some pigs are more equal than others", and Sternhell thinks he is one of them. He just wants to shut up his opposition. But it wont go away. If Sternhell thinks that a liberal talented US academic will think twice about making a move to Israel because of this boycott issue, then I say he is correct, but for opposite reasons to his thesis. This answer is irrelevant to what side of the political spectrum this academic belongs to bar those from the lunatic fringe: No academic would want to join a university in which there is danger that it will be boycotted: that his/her research funding proposals will be officially (or unofficially) boycotted, and that there will be inadequate funding to maintain teaching standards and basic infrastructure of this institution, because some idiots within his/her fraternity want to impose a boycott. A boycott is self defeating for Israeli universities and will cause great damage to these institutions of higher learning, and independent thought (I stress again, including people that come from both or all sides of the political spectrum). Hence the Minister of education, and university heads should be applauded for efforts to remove from their midst those those few who call upon a boycott of their own universities. If these people want to douse themselves with gasoline and light the match, by all means let them do it, but they should do it privately in their own homes. They have no right to burn down the rest of us. I would appreciate if you would print this article, moderator, in the name of free speech.

... are embittered rightists who did not quite make it at regular institutes of higher learning in Israel proper... it is these who who helped spawn the Tittzus of today, with a vegeance...

I read articles written by Neve Gordon,Ran Ha Cohen ,Tanya Reinhardt and Zeev Sternhall in the leftist foreign press.Of course Sharansky is published also by NYTimes and every mainstream media but those cited before not.And they are no placed in Israeli press,as happens also with Uri Avneri.The exemptions are Gideon Levy,Amira Hass and Dafner (from Jerusalem Post) who appear frequently and keep a good work of information,but they are not the target of im tir zu.

True,to present Israel as a country with diverse ideologies,as the Western state are (more correctly were) it good to speak about Israel left.Who are included in this camp:Sharon,Pe4rs,Tzipi,Barak and many like these.The neocons in US are no better than the neocons in Israel,they are at the level of Sharansky (who even teaches them) but the opposition is formed by people like Chomsky,Naomi Klein,Greenwald etc.Are in Israel intellectuals of this magnitude?I knew a very few:Neve Gordon,Ran Ha Cohen and you,but is a difference here.So im tirzu is a futile organization they struggle against mills wind.

The Frankfurt school days are "passe". What we have right now and not only in Israel is a popular rebellion precisely against this global intellectual elites, epistemic communities of scholars who get to be very wealthy with "human rights" grants. It is true, in Europe and America there is a dissasociation between economic liberalism and political liberalism. In Israel Sternhal is right, economic liberalism belongs to the peace camp. Indeed the economic departments, the suckers of neo liberal reform are also in the peace camp that want to return to palestinians the "nice houses" that the Israel proletariat perchuased very cheap in the West Bank. A good reason for the "people" to hate academicians that make a good living and profit by being engaged in those faked processes of publishing crap. Those liberals are defined as the "terminal elites", those that meet in the airports after the last meeting in the World Bank or the last conference of the American Sociological Organization. Good for them....the problem is that also in Europe there is an increasing popular rebellion against academician multiculturalism which is interpreted as appeasment of the Muslims. There is a popular backlash against academic liberalism and it could become a cancer..... However, lets face it...academicians deserve that backlash in their face.

Leave aside this dangerous group of lunatics by the name of Im Tirzu. A question still remains to be answered. Prof. Sternhell describes the situation of the universities are a stronhold of the left put under siege by the right. The question then is: Is the left fighting back to keep its hold on the universities? A positive answer would only mean that the universities a center of political activity, and hence open for grabs. That is what democracy is meant to be

The activites of some far-left Israeli academics -- calling for boycott of their own country overseas, publicly advocating and serving the goals of Israel's enemies, indoctrinating their students with anti-Israel propaganda, etc -- can be characterized as none other than acts of national treason. No nation would tolerate centers of such treasonous behavior in its midst, not even in the name of academic freedom!

If what we've heard is true, and professors are stifilng voices in the classroom and forcing their students to participate in specific activities or fail their classes, its worse than religious coersion. Im Tirzu may be controversial, but it is a private movement, not government. And the government should not stifle their activities. However, if professors are stifiling open debate in their classrooms and attempting to indoctrinate their students into a specific philosophy, that is dangerous. I was a student in Tanya Reinhart's linguistics classes in 1996-97. She attempted to mix politics with coursware and would even give forced political based lectures at the beginning of each class so students either had to sit through her brainwashing or risk missing class. The university put that to a stop after a few month. though it seems today's academic leaders think its OK to use the Israeli education system to indoctrinate. If the school system isn't happy with Im Tirtzu they should debate them publicly, and not try to get the government to shut them up. They (left wing circles and Ha'aretz) cry McCarthyism, yet is all seem to be a terrible case of projection.

the leftists created in academics. They created their moats, their castles and their obsessive desire to discredit their homeland and anyone who disagrees with them. They wrongly think they can drill a hole under their seat in their imaginary boats and wonder why other passengers get upset. They are a pitiful lot of faux academics who really specialize in propaganda, not education. Enjoying protection for so long, it is now time to drain the moat and get these troubled people out of the teaching profession. If they can really demonstrate the ability to teach without their prejudices surfacing in every class, they would be certainly welcomed by the class room.

...Benny Morris? Part of the reason there may be fewer right-wingers or even centrists in academia, esp outside the sciences, is that established left-wing professors and deans select proteges and successors who agree with them politically. A student might have a better chance of becoming a doctoral candidate, a Ph.D. of getting an appointment, etc., if the student doesn't differ from his mentor too much on politics. Certain faculties in the US are well-known for a slant, one way or another. Could be all of Israel's academia has the same self-selecting quality.

The most dishonest phrase (communists, like priests, don't 'err', they lie) in his stalinist rant is where he writes that American neoconservatism began in the world of finance (by which he probably refers to Milton Friedman's influence on Reagan). This betrays Sternhell's almost puerile Marxism (the rich are evil and mostly spend their lives plotting against the poor). As Sternhell himself admits, ordinary people are starting to see through this 'class war' idiocy and the century-old paternalistic lie is losing its grip on them. Hard times are coming for parasites like this professor, many of them will end up having to get a real job for the first time in their lives.

Sternhell admits that the left has a stranglehold on the Israeli secular elite. He also advocates 'force' against those who wish to change the situation. And he ignores evidence of a purge mentality in Israeli academia against anyone who has right wing opinions. Presumably this is part of the 'force' Sternhell wishes to use against his ideological opponents. It is Sternhell who is the Zhdanovist, not Saar.

They are blind to anything that differs from their doctrines, but that's not all: they also fight with all their might those who have different ideas... THIS is Zhdanovism ! Them ! I suffered my first 23 years from exactly that - Zhdanovism! I found finally freedom of thought in America. And now I encounter the old Zhdanovism again, right here?.....God help us....and our students....

Nonsense to claim that in the 1960s that the US academic world was solely determined by the activities against the Vietnam war!! Universities should be focused on empiral studies and as such need to be pluralistic!! If anti occupation and pro boycot streams are the dominant streams in the Israeli sociology departments this is wrong and goes totally against academic freedom and pluralism. This is what people forget

Under the term of "science" we usually consider such areas of knowledge as chemistry, physics, biology, etc. Those are the areas where people can keep their political views, be the latter "left" or "right", and devote themselves to their professions, without any harm to the country and the society. But there is no such thing as _impartial_political_science. Anyone teaching that subject inevitably brings his/her personal political views into the classroom. One and the same people can be called "militants" or "terrorists" or "freedom fighters", depending on the political position of the academic who delivers a lecture to the students. Its either politics, or science; and if it's politics, the academic appointments are the matter of concern for the whole society, not for the academic community only.

Since there is very little real research in modern political sciences, the hiring of new lectureres in based on the political orientation of the faculty. This has nothing to do with merit or "enlightment" of the elite. The plan to bring back talented researchers to Israel has nothing to do with politcal scientists anyway, we've got plenty of them. The story is about breaking the self-sustained left monopoly on teaching, at least in the state-funded universities. Just for your information, "the Israeli neoconservative and nationalist right does not have scholars and cultural figures like its counterparts in the United States and Europe" - well, I don't think we have any ultra-left scholar figures of high caliber here in Israel either.

... is a simple one. Anyone intelligent enough to achieve doctorate or post-doctorate status and perform original research is intelligent enough to realize that human existence is an intractably complex, multi-variate problem. Academics can see a bigger picture, on average, than lay people can. Therefore academics are more likely to see multiple perspectives than lay people are, and are more willing to consider alternate world views than most people. RIght-wingers label this tendency "leftist" because it does not meet with their unipolar world view. In other words: leftist academia is largely a myth. It is not left v. right; it is acknowledgement of complexity v. simplistic thinking.