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Dennis contributed an article from Shalom that made the point: "resort to another line of defense: namely, they accuse Israel's critics of being anti-Semitic. Not the sort of classic anti-Semitism found for example in Hamas's Charter, but instead the anti-Semitism of an anti-Israel double standard." Indeed, Dennis, the Obama administration is continuing its own form of Orwellian doublespeak. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, http://bechollashon.org/database/index.php?/article/4238 reviewed the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights letter stepping up efforts against antisemitism on U.S. campuses. "In a move being hailed by some Jewish organizations as a major and welcome shift, the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights has signaled that it plans to step up its efforts to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism under a federal law that bars colleges from discriminating based on national origin or ethnicity. By adopting such a position, however, the office might have increased the likelihood that it will need to grapple with the thorny question of whether it should ever treat verbal or symbolic attacks on Israel or Zionism on college campuses as amounting to anti-Semitic acts that violate federal anti-discrimination laws. "The elephant in the room is anti-Zionism," said Kenneth L. Marcus, director of the Initiative on Anti-Semitism at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, who played a key role in the effort to persuade the department to take a stronger stand against anti-Semitism. "Lots of observers will be closely watching to see whether OCR can take a firm but reasonable line" in dealing with cases in which criticisms of Zionism or Israel appear to have an anti-Semitic component, he said in interview Thursday." There is some discussion taking place on this issue in academic circles. Administrators, of course, would welcome another tool in stifling campus dissent, especially against movements that question U.S. foreign policy. Equating dissent against Israel's policies and the racist, oppressive nature of the Israeli state with the suppression of Jewish people? Gee, I wonder who came up with that one? ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
