I want to congratulate City on a Hill Press for its public exposure of the vile racism and hate speech that lecturer Tammi Benjamin offers to this Campus year round. Finally the truth comes out when she admits her belief that, “advocating on behalf of the Palestinians is advocating against a certain people and a certain national group” (CHP May 24th 2012, pg 9) To be clear, advocating for Palestinians right to self determination from military occupation is NOT advocating for anti-semitism, or even anti-Israeli. For example, advocating against US military occupation of Afghanistan is not Anti-American, it is a critique of America’s current policies of military intervention and the anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism in this county post-9/11. This “Investigation” is nothing more than a McCarthyist witch hunt to eliminate Palestinian voices and experience from the UCs, similar to how militant right winger and racist David Horowitz and his book “The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America” called out two of UCSC’s most popular professors Bettina Aptheker and Angela Davis. Ms. Benjamin’s accusations are clear to most UCSC students who realize her position follows along that of racists like Glen Beck, David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, and Andrew Breitbart in their fostering and promotion of the media driven islamophobic hysteria that has taken over this country.
As a side note, CHP’s title of its article, “Anti-Semitism in the Quarry & the Classroom” is a blatant attack on the student run, SOAR sponsored organization Committee For Justice in Palestine’s organizing efforts on the UCSC campus, of which I have participated in for the majority of my four years at UCSC. The same week this article came out, CJP was having its annual “Palestine Awareness Week”, with events in the quarry all week long, all of which were, if anyone from CHP attended, very far from anti-semitic.
This piece here represents solely my views and opinions, not that of CJP, SOAR, or UCSC.
