Please watch the video below. It shows anti-Israel activists staging a walkout from a talk given by two Israeli soldiers at the University of Michigan.
This video is interesting for several reasons. First, the anti-Israel crowd scored a well organized and orchestrated propaganda point by filling the room with protesters and then walking out. On the video it looks very nice for them. They placed tape over their mouths and wear their signs that say "silenced" and then leave the room empty.
I would be curious to find out how many people weren't allowed to enter the room due to lack of space, and then entered the room after the protesters left, but for the sake of argument I'll assume there were no other students who were interested in seeing the soldiers' speech.
What I take away from this video is the sad fact that anti-Israel students are not only completely ignorant of the Israeli side of the story, but that they celebrate their ignorance. They are so proud of their unwillingness to listen to the other side that they promote it on YouTube.
I found the tape the activists place on their mouths to be ironic. Anyone who has spent any time on college campuses knows that the anti-Israel voice is everywhere. They certainly do not have a problem with being silenced. It would have been much more appropriate for those activists to place the tape over their eyes and ears for they are desperately afraid to hear the truth.
What truth are they afraid of? That Israelis are human beings. That Israelis are not the racist monsters that hate sites like Mondoweiss talk about. Notice how the soldiers practically beg them at the end of the video to stay and ask questions; to stay and maybe, just maybe, look at them as people and not as monsters.
This is the same blindness that led anti-Israel students to try and shut down the talk given by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine. It is the sad and desperate effort to shut out any voice, any sign, that Israelis deserve the respect and dignity afforded to any human-being. It is a concerted effort to dehumanize Israelis and to strip them of the rights that freedom loving individuals grant to all people.
This is the sad state of Israel discourse on U.S college campuses today. Anti-Israel voices are promoted and celebrated, while Israel is libeled and disparaged to the point that even to propose it should granted equal standing to other nations is considered racist.
It is a truly depressing situation.
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