7 Syrians hurt near border treated in Israel

OriZ · February 17, 2013

Seven Syrians hurt in battles between Syrian army forces and rebels were taken to the Ziv Medical Center in Safed, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit confirmed Saturday. One of the men is in critical condition.
The seven made their own way to the border area in the northern Golan Heights.

"An IDF force administered medical care to the wounded men near the border fence and they were taken for further treatment," a statement said.

Ziv Medical Center director Dr. Oscar Ambon said that one of the wounded arrived in critical condition. He was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit and is scheduled to undergo another surgery in the next 48 hours.

Four of the seven are in moderate condition, he added, and two are set to undergo surgery. "They only said where it hurts, nothing else," Ambon remarked.

Earlier on Saturday, rebels attacked a military police barrage, in the Syrian Golan, only a few miles from the Israeli border, and has taken over a tank of pro-Assad troops.

According to sources with the opposition, a few Syrian soldiers on scene were killed in the clashes between the two armies and the rest were taken prisoners.

In retaliation, the Syrian army bombed the region, including villages near the Israeli border.

The IDF stressed Saturday that the incident should not be regarded a precedent. It was "an isolated event that does not signal any change in policy," a military source told Ynet.

The policy is not to allow any breach of the fence, "with the exception of special humanitarian cases," he added.

It remains unclear whether the seven were rebels who took part in the battles or innocent civilians caught in the crossfire.

They had made their own way across the demilitarized zone to the border fence. A Golani patrol detected them and quickly noticed they were wounded and seeking help. Army medics were called to the scene and administered initial care. Senior officers then debated whether to arrange transport to a hospital in Israel.

It should be noted that the seven did not enter Israel through the official Quneitra crossing and their arrival was not coordinated with the UN force in the area or the Red Cross. It was ultimately decided not to leave them in such condition and arrange their transport to a hospital.

It remains unclear when they will be returned to Syria. In the past, Syrians caught near the fence and taken for questioning in Israel were returned within a few days.

The IDF is currently completing the construction of a new border fence.

Meanwhile, an activist group said that the pro-government gunmen have kidnapped more than 300 people in northwestern Syria in retaliation for the abduction of 42 Shiite Muslims, mostly women and children, who were snatched Thursday from a bus.

The UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, called for the release of the women.

She said "allegations of abduction and rape of women and girls by armed groups have been received."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4345557,00.html

Edited February 17, 2013 by OriZ

OriZ · February 17, 2013

Is it a bird? No. Is it a plane? No. It's Israeli Prime Time TV. What a weird apartheid state to allow a Muslim Arab to be doing this on prime time TV.

OriZ · February 17, 2013

Meanwhile in BDSLand...Israel is still the only country to exist in the world.

The controversy over a "panel discussion" at Brooklyn College has little to do with free speech, and everything to do with politicization of the academia — in this case, by disingenuous anti-Israel ideologues.
Back in December, the political science department at Brooklyn College, a public institution partially supported by taxpayers’ dollars, formally voted to sign on to a talk that took place on February 7th. A student group had scheduled an address by University of California professor Judith Butler and graduate student Omar Barghouti to propagandize on behalf of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This movement seeks to isolate Israel from the world, ostensibly to punish the Jewish state for its security policies.

Though the political science department referred to the event as a "forum," only one view - extreme anti-Israel activism - is represented. Professor Butler so despises Israel that she has unapologetically whitewashed Israel's foes, labeling Hamas and Hezbollah "social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left."

Barghouti, meanwhile, hypocritically urges Americans to boycott all Israeli professors, as he benefits from these same academics as a student at Tel Aviv University.

In fact, during the forum it was those who opposed BDS who were silenced when they were either denied access to the event or pushed out. As Brooklyn College senior Michael Ziegler stated, "I was escorted out for nothing more than the fact that I was holding a paper that would help me assess my decision on my feelings over BDS."

The BDS double standard smacks of anti-Semitism: Targeting Israel and only Israel, advocates hold the world's only Jewish state to a far different standard than other democracies, much less Islamic, African, or Latin American dictatorships. Amidst flowery anti-imperialist rhetoric, the movement misleadingly implies that ending specific Israeli policies, generally deemed "apartheid," would satisfy its backers. In fact, BDS supporters envision the replacement of Israel as a Jewish state with a bi-national, majority Palestinian, entity.

Hollow core

The Brooklyn event is, in short, not an academic forum, but little more than agitprop designed to drum up hostility to Israel - just as similar BDS events at institutions such as Penn and Duke have done. What happened at Brooklyn could have occurred at virtually any university; few places in the United States are as hostile to Israel as the typical college campus.

And while the Brooklyn student group has every right to bring even vile speakers to campus, an academic department formally voting to endorse (or co-sponsor, as the political scientists subsequently, if disingenuously, described their tally) such drivel is a far different matter.

CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has clearly and unequivocally expressed his personal opposition to the BDS cause, but Brooklyn's president, Karen Gould, declined to do so. In two statements on the matter, she refused to condemn the BDS movement, while invoking "academic freedom" to defend her department's actions.

On campus, though, any free exchange of ideas flows only in one direction: In response to media requests, the political science professors have refused to explain what so attracted them to these anti-Israel extremists that their department formally voted to get on board with the talk.

An optimist might hope that the faculty's embarrassment for their actions explains this silence. A realist would understand otherwise. The forum is far from being the first problem with Brooklyn College's flirtation with the BDS agenda. In 2010, as part of a "common reading" requirement, the college ordered all incoming freshman to read a book by yet another endorser of the BDS movement, Moustafa Bayoumi.

His volume asserted that between 1987 and 2001, the US government approach toward "Arab Americans" was "more often used to limit the speech of Arab Americans in order to cement US policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Bayoumi offered no evidence for his wild claim.

It's no wonder that several pro-Israel students at Brooklyn recently admitted their fears of grade retaliation from pro-BDS professors down the road. Virtually abandoned on campus, these students' cause has been championed by a group of politicians led by Jerry Nadler.

The congressman joined three House colleagues and every prominent New York City Democrat running for mayor in penning a public letter urging the department "to withdraw their endorsement of this event, rather than send the message to its students and to the world that the divisive perspective offered by the organizing groups is Brooklyn College’s official view."

Those outside the academy who have witnessed an academic department's exposing its hollow core on matters related to Israel should continue to ask hard questions about how on campuses around the country handle matters related to the Middle East. People of good faith need to continue to search for remedies that will restore a true diversity of ideas to American higher education.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4344736,00.html

Brooklyn College’s political science department co-sponsored an event hosted by the Students for Justice in Palestine that promoted boycott, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel, a move which caused a political storm. The speakers included Omar Barghouti, founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and Judith Butler, who is another BDS supporter. Many Jewish students are outraged and fear that such co-sponsorships send the wrong message. Over 150 people showed up to protest outside of the pro-BDS event at Brooklyn College.
Indeed, it is critical to note that supporting BDS, in addition to being anti-semitic, is also contrary to supporting peace, for how can one promote civil human interactions between peoples and at the same time support boycotting interactions between Israeli and Palestinian doctors, academics, etc.? The two are indeed contradictory. One either supports peace or one supports BDS, not both. British jurist Anthony Julius has rightly described the BDS movement as “an act of violence, although of a paradoxical kind – one of recoil and exclusion rather than assault. The boycotted person is pushed away by the ‘general horror and common hate.’ It is a denial amongst other things, of the boycotted person’s freedom of expression….”

Indeed, both of the speakers whom the Students for Justice in Palestine invited to speak at Brooklyn College have taken problematic stances when it comes to achieving peace. Judith Butler has expressed partial support for Hezbollah and Hamas, claiming that they are part of the global left. Despite her proclamations that she is a feminist, she has not disavowed the gender discrimination promoted by these groups, not to mention their anti-semitism. Omar Barghouti has stated that he would support continued boycotts of Israel even if she withdraws to the 1967 borders and supports the right of foreign born Palestinians to return to Israel proper, a move that would result in the elimination of Israel.

The BDS movement behaves more like a group engaging in hate speech, for this reason New York City Democratic Mayor Candidate William Thomson declared, “You do not have the right and should not put the name of Brooklyn College on hate.” This event has similarly been condemned by Alan Dershowitz, the anti-Defamation League, and Stand With Us. Indeed, at the event itself, Omar Barghouti referred to those who were opposed to his hate speech as those who are engaging in “racist, hate-mongering, bullying attempts to shut down this event.” He furthermore falsely stated that Israel’s democratic government is similar to the apartheid regime in South Africa and wrongly compared the Palestinian cause to “colonially oppressed people throughout history” and urged his listeners to “fight the racism” that he claims exists in Israel, which he declared was similar to the anti-semitism that existed in Europe in the 1930′s.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that the university claimed that they wanted to give opposing students the chance to ask difficult questions upon Barghouti making such proclamations, the Students for Justice in Palestine engaged in the very racism and free speech violations that Barghouti accused Israel and her supporters of doing by preventing Jewish students from entering the lecture and kicking out some Jewish students halfway through. According to Ari Ziegler, “I heard probably about half of what Judith Butler said when I got kicked out. CUNY police escorted us out and when we asked them what we did wrong they said, ‘we don´t have an answer.’ It’s disappointing because they had said that it was a forum for asking tough questions and trying to understand.” He claimed that he and other students who were kicked out of the lecture had anti-BDS material in their laps, which they were planning on utilizing during the Q&A session following the lecture. Evidently, Brooklyn College’s Vice President Milga Morales witnessed the incident, yet did nothing. Melanie Goldberg, an Israel Campus Coalition intern, was not even permitted to enter even though she had registered to attend way in advance.

As the President of the Brooklyn College’s Assembly, Abraham Esses, who is the representative for Brooklyn College’s undergraduate students, asserted, “The department’s approach to the issue is far from constructive; knowing well in advance that such sponsorship would insult and isolate a large portion of its students, it chose to express its own opinions through a venue that inhibits open dialogue and honest debate. [...] Without any support or sympathy for students’ complaints, the administration seems complacent in a department’s clear abuse of its rights and responsibilities. Furthermore, the administration has failed to consult any student group before issuing its statement in support of the Political Science’s sponsorship decision. I believe this approach to be indicative of the respect, or lack thereof, which they have for students on campus. Whereas I understand its hesitation, the administration has clearly failed to represent and act for its own constituents.”

http://unitedwithisrael.org/brooklyn-college-co-sponsored-anti-israel-event/