Hampshire College BDS Conference transcripts : AZ IMC

Hampshire BDS Planning Meeting - Exclusive Transcript
A friend from Northampton slipped me a transcript of a recent planning meeting for next weekend's divestment conference at Hampshire College. Apparently some of the original audio recording was garbled, so forgive any dead patches.

Freddy (Student for Justice in Palestine leader): OK gang, we've got to start this conference off with a bang. Now we're still hoping Omar Barghouti can give the opening speech addressing the compelling need for a comprehensive boycott of Israeli academia. But in case he's still taking his finals at Tel Aviv University, I thought we could begin with a stemwinder about the outstanding successes BDS has had this year.

Unknown Student (Female): Yeah! We could talk about the Norwegian government's decision to pull out of Elbit!

Unknown Student (Male): Norway! Give me a break. They've already got squishy on us, highlighting the fact that they continue to invest in over 40 Israeli companies. Besides, who gives a sh*t what Norway thinks. Whoever heard of Norway?

Sven: I have. I was born there.

Unknown Student (Male): You know what I mean.

Yakov: As I Jew, I understand where you're coming from. So why don't we skip Norway for now and focus on university divestment. After all, most of the attendees will be college undergrads, and many of them - like me - will be Jewish.

Freddy: Yakov's right. So who's got the list of colleges that have divested from the Zionist Entity? Carlos - you're head of the academic subcommittee of the action committee of the steering committee. What's the number of wins have we had on the college front?

Carlos: [Sound of shuffling papers]. Well, according my latest research and calculations, the number of schools that have heeded our call and divested from Israel stands at [coughs].

Unknown Student [Female]: What was that Carlos? I didn't hear you.

Carlos: [Coughs a few more times.] Well, zero actually.

Freddy: You mean after eight years of BDS committees working tirelessly on every college in the nation, not one school has actually divested a single dollar from the NaZionist Colonial Power?

Carlos: Well it sounds bad when you put it that way.

[Unintelligible arguing. Sounds of papers being thrown in the air and doors slamming.]

Freddy: OK, OK so we know what to say if the subject of academic divestment comes up. Here on the East Coast, we would have won a series of unending triumphs except for the ugly intervention of Lawrence Summers who tried to muzzle us at Harvard by calling us anti-Semites.

Sven: Actually, I am an anti-Semite.

Freddy: Sorry, Sven. I was just making a point. OK, so by invoking knee-jerk accusations of bigotry, that tired old misogynist "Sexism Summers" censored us by having the gall to state his opinion about what Harvard should or shouldn't do, just because he as the college's President at the time. And then his lackey Alan Dershowitz forced our own President here at Hampshire to say he'd never divest from Israel.

Carlos: Actually, the President of Hampshire said he'd never divest a year before Dershowitz showed up.

Freddy: That's beside the point. After all, who gets to decide the school's investment policies, the administration and investment managers, or us? Of course they're going to use the excuse that we're just a bunch of undergraduates who don't speak on behalf of the college. But do any of them even know how to Tweet?

Yakov: I've got to agree with Freddy's interpretation of events. While we may not have won any actual "victories," I think it's fair to say we've already won the war on campus. Oh, and did I mention I'm Jewish?

Picking up from where we left off, more transcript excerpts from a recent planning meeting for the Hampshire Student for Justice in Palestine conference next weekend...

Freddy: OK, we have our storyline. While we may not have won any actual "victories" in the campus BDS wars, that's just because of the stranglehold on discourse by the You-Know-Whos. And besides, it's just a matter of time before some Left Coast college goes our way. After all, look how successful we've been at San Francisco State where we get to shout our message from the rooftops as well as shout down (I mean disrupt the Zionist narrative) whenever any ZioNazis dare to express their point of view.

Carlos: Actually, the President of S.F. State just condemned BDS as a "campaign to limit other's free speech and reign in the free exchange of ideas [that] runs counter to everything S.F. State stands for."

Unidentified Male Student: Carlos, can you please stop being such a killjoy. As we just discussed, it doesn't matter if no colleges or universities actually divested. If a group of undergraduates like us just pretend they did, shouts loud enough and sends out enough press releases, then we can call it victory.

Yakov: Exactly. In fact, I just wrote a paper for my Physics and Class Conflict in the Middle East course entitled "Objective Reality is Whatever I Say it is" which clarifies this very topic. I brought some copies if anyone wants to read it now [sound of papers being pulled out of a knapsack].

Freddy: We'd better take that offline Comrade Yakov. We've still got a lot of ground to cover. OK, we have our storyline for declaring victory on campus, and - as usual - our friends at Sabeel have been working tirelessly to bring the Mainline Protestant churches in our camp.

Sven: Religion is the opiate of the masses!

Unidentified Female Student: That's true Sven, but we should keep that to ourselves, especially since the Presbyterians and Methodists are just about the only major organizations that have squarely come out in favor of divestment. Carlos - has anyone else been added to this list in the last couple of years? I heard that the United Church of Lasertag has been flirting with a BDS resolution.

Carlos: Can I go to the bathroom?

[Door slams.]

Freddy: OK Carlos, come clean. Before you can take a bio-break, what are you trying to avoid telling us?

Carlos: Well, it's just that...

Sven: Out with it.

Carlos: OK, the Presbyterians rejected their 2004 divestment vote in 2006. And they reiterated that choice in 2008, the same year that the Methodists rejected divestment unanimously. And with all due respect for our comrades at Sabeel, just this summer, the United Church of Canada voted down divestment, even after Sabeel made a passionate plea to stay on the BDS bandwagon. So basically, we've got nothing in the churches either.

[Long silence.]

All: Religion is the opiate of the masses!

Unidentified Female: To hell with those Bible thumping Presbyterian rednecks.

Freddy: OK, calm down everyone. Now we can't start next month's meeting just pretending that we've won on colleges that have rejected us, or shitting on the churches we were celebrating just two years ago. We've got to have some real victory to boast about, or everything will think we're a bunch of ineffectual losers holding celebratory meetings as a substitute for real wins.

Yakov: Well we can't talk about municipalities. Somerville and Seattle are the closest we ever got, and BDS was rejected unanimously in the former, and didn't even get onto the ballot on the latter.

Unidentified Female Student: And US unions are out, they're the most Zionist institution in the country outside of Evangelicals (unless you want to count the Lawyer's Guild).

Yakov: My Dad told me that the last member of the Lawyer's Guild just resigned.

Freddy: OK, scratch the Lawyer's Guild. But come on guys, we've got to have one victory to talk about, just one. Is that too much to ask for by a movement like ours which has been on the march and in the ascendency for the last eight years?

[More silence.]

Unidentified Female Student: Norway?

[More silence.]

Unidentified Male Student: How's this: Our brave Scandinavian comrades have boldly stood up to the Zionist pressure from the massive, all-powerful Norwegian Jewish lobby, creating a bold vanguard which will soon sweep that brave nation, and then the world!

[Sound of cheers, loud whoops and singing of Abba songs.]

Sven: Guys! Guys. First thing, Abba is Swedish. And second thing, I've got a little more bad news...

End of transcript.

Yes, knowing how to "tweet" is very important to immature idiots crippled by acne. It's almost as important as knowing when to drop to your knees and unzipping the terrorist's fly.

Is what happened in Hampshire typical of the behavior of the BDS “movement?”

Because divestment has proven so unpopular with students, educators and college administrators, BDS activists often have to go to great lengths to obtain anything they can portray as some kind of victory. While outright fraud (as in Hampshire) has yet to be repeated, more common questionable behavior includes portraying petition drives (even those out-petitioned by anti-divestment activists 10:1) or student council votes (even unsuccessful ones) as representing campus opinion.

There has also been a tendency of BDS leaders to meet with administrators or student government leaders behind closed doors, hoping to obtain support before Israel’s supporters are aware that divestment decisions or votes are underway.

Finally, when discussing divestment with school or student leadership, BDS activists will often “sell” less-controversial messages such as “ethical investment” or “human rights,” only to turn around after gaining some level of support to declare that an institution is entirely in agreement with their real message that Israel is an “Apartheid State” alone in the world deserving economic punishment. More than one institution has had the unwelcomed experience of having the words of the BDS movement “stuffed into its mouth” by this type of bait-and-switch tactic.

After 10 years of BDS, last month Israel attracted a phenomenal 1.25 billion in new foreign investment.

So, hows that boycott coming, anyway?

With a correction expected in emerging markets, Merrill Lynch gives five reasons for sheltering in Israel.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has come out with a report strongly recommending Israel as a defensive haven among emerging markets. In part, this based on experience. "True to its traditional role of GEM diversifier, Israel has outperformed EM throughout each of seven major global corrections since 1993. Based on historical data from MSCIBarra, the MXIL Index outperformed the MXEF Index by an average of 23%. In the recent 2008-2009 sub-prime financial crisis, Israel outperformed emerging markets by 30%," analysts Haim Israel, Micha Goldberg, and Mai Doan write.

The report gives five reasons for investing in Israel now: (1) resilient economic performance vs. GEM as the local recession ended two quarters ago; (2) lack of excess positioning as investors remain underweight Israel; (3) strong currency vs. the US dollar; (4) substantial domestic liquidity support; and (5) Israel's traditional role as GEM's beta diversifier.

Besides Teva and the healthcare sector in general, Merrill Lynch picks out telecommunications, particularly Partner and Bezeq, and the banks, particularly Leumi and Mizrahi-Tefahot, as good bets. "Although Teva and the healthcare space are perceived by the market as natural candidates to park money in times of uncertainty, we believe this could be the time for Israeli banks and telcos to shine," the report says.

Israel does not rely on the U.S. economy to exist. Israel in fact has one of the strongest economies in the world right now, which is not surprising. It has 135 engineers and scientists per 100,000 workers, more than any other nation. Over 90 advanced technology companies are listed on NASDAQ, over 200 on all American stock exchanges. (Only one other foreign country has more.) (Avishai,2008) So why does Israel get so much aid from the U.S.? Because, by statute, most of that aid comes back to the United States, where it is spent with U.S. arms manufacturers, who contribute more than $7 million each election cycle to congressional campaigns, twice that of pro-Israel groups. Northrop Grumman alone spends more than seven times as much annually lobbying Congress than does AIPAC; Lockheed Martin outspends AIPAC by a factor of four. (Zunes, 2006)

It almost escaped my notice that Feb 7 was the anniversary of the great Hampshire Divestment Hoax, that is until I discovered this stunningly self-aggrandizing announcement by the jesters who started it all: Hampshire’s Students for Justice in Palestine (HSJP).

So I said to myself:”Self, how best to mark this important date?”

Should I Fiske the SJP’s self-celebrating announcement, pointing out that their BDS “movement” actually began in 2001 and has not enjoyed a single success on any campus in the country despite nearly ten years of effort? (HSJP and the like-minded prefer to reset their project with the 2005 PACBI letter, thus flushing most of the last decade of BDS catastrophe down the memory hole.)

Or perhaps I should put their Franz Fanon quote into context, which (in its original paragraph) reads:

“Anti-Semitism cuts me to the quick; I get upset; a frightful rage makes me anemic; they are denying me the right to be a man. I cannot associate myself from the fate reserved for my brother. Every one of my acts commits me as a man. Every instance of my reticence, every instance of my cowardice, manifests the man."

Now I could leverage this full Fanon quote to note that HSJP’s friends the allies in the Middle East are the major manufacturers of the very anti-Semitic propaganda that cut Fanon “to the quick” (a Vesuvius of Jew hatred that even Israel’s harshest critics don’t deny emanates hourly from Tehran to Damascus to Gaza and beyond). But this presumes the members of HSJP actually know who Fanon is, beyond a source for quotes on Google.

But in the end, it seems best to mark the anniversary with some links to the various parodies I’ve done over the last year that seem to have gotten up the nose of those who still insist on pushing the Hampshire divestment fraud with all their might. And so…

Here’s the parody that came to mind last February, once I discovered that the Hampshire divestment story running its course through the media was a hoax.

And here’s a mock planning transcript for last November’s BDS conference at Hampshire (some BDSers still get upset that half the Google links on a search for “Hampshire BDS” brings up this parody).

And finally, my epic time-waster: Hampshire and the Brain.

Paraphrasing William Shatner from Trouble with Tribbles: I take the issues of peace and justice in the Middle East extremely seriously. But Hampshire’s SJP? Not so much.

How low can the Zionists go? Have you seen their latest? This propaganda has been making the rounds lately:

There seems to be no stopping the momentum BUYcott is gaining around the world. A new project is starting this week: BUYcott Month (http://www.buycottmonth.com), a month-long campaign for buying from, investing in and celebrating the state of Israel.

BUYcott Month is a little offbeat, but promises to be a lot of fun. Supporters of Israel from around the world are being asked to send in photos of themselves or friends buying and enjoying Israeli products, taking part in Israel-related cultural events, "breaking" a boycott, or doing anything that celebrates Israel or fights anti-Israel activity during the month of March. As part of this campaign, these photos should include people giving what's called a "Finger-B" hand gesture to indicate their activity is part of the BUYcott Month project.

Are you buying Israeli products during Buycott Month? Having a couscous party? An Israeli wine tasting? An Ahava mud-wrestling match? We want your photos and your story. We’re ready to share pictures of you:

· Purchasing and enjoying Israeli products
· Talking with friends and colleagues about investing in hot Israeli companies
· Taking part in Israeli cultural events
· Counter-protesting at Boycott-Israel events

Or how about a dose of “Extreme Boycott” like sharing Israeli chocolates at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of the sea?

Don't forget- its your support that led to a 33% increase in Israeli exports in the last quarter of 2009. Lets kept the monentum going. Support democracy and buycott Israel!