These contracts are mandatory in many states now. Some of them come with additional language involving not criticizing Israeli foreign policy in the classroom
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A major attack on the First Amendment: no credible advocate of free expression can remain silent about this "free speech exception for Israel."...
Jabir bin 'Abdullah narrated that the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w) said:'A slave (of Allah) shall not believe until he believes in Al-Qadar, its good and its bad, such that he knows that what struck him would not have missed him, and that what missed him would not have struck him." (Jami 'at Tirmidhi)
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
Greetings and peace be with you Silas;
I could understand if they asked Americans to buy American products as a way of protecting American jobs. I could understand if they said to people like Apple, produce all your goods in America.
I went to Israel in 2009, I saw the bulldozed homes, I have to say that I would not sign that declaration either. That sounds like the most stupid and unjust law going.
In the spirit of praying for justice for all people.
Eric
You will never look into the eyes of anyone who does not matter to God.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
This is so completely random. Are there now many other countries that should have such protection? What about the people of Italy or Paraguay or Vietnam. Is there a reason why those people do not deserve protection but Israel does?? I simply don't understand how something like this could be a part of law.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
This is excellent - this should p*ss off those teachers and non-teachers who are liberals, civil liberties advocates, human rights advocates, supporters of Islam even if lukewarm, and people with the ability to see -in your face- criminality ... etc and appears sufficient to create a decent backlash if played well and should also help towards awakening people to the falseness of the war on terror.
Maybe a few genuine surveys and petitions asking whether people believed that they should be forced to support the murderous, usurious, parasitical, lying, thieving, hateful, criminal, illegal, gold-calf worshippers .... this is a self-shot in the foot for those people with lying, perfidious forelocks lol.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
Salaam
Comment from the hard right of the US political spectrum.
Is Israel the real enemy of America?
Because I don't see Russia or China or Iran actively attempting to interfere with and eliminate the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. And anti-BDS laws are intrinsically anti-American.
Regardless of what you may think of Israel, or any other country, a U.S. citizen absolutely has the right to personally boycott any business he wants for any reason at all. And a freaking SCHOOL DISTRICT has no right to act in this inquisitorial, conscience-violating manner on behalf of a foreign nation. This direct legal assault on the core Constitutional rights of Americans is an absolutely insane overreaction on the part of the Israel First fifth column in the United States to the growing anti-Israel BDS movement.
If I was Benjamin Netanyahu or any other Israeli leader with influence over AIPAC, the various Jewish organizations, or the media neocons, I would tell them to retreat immediately from this ludicrously self-destructive and obviously unconstitutional policy of attempting to ban the anti-BDS movement, or face being entirely disavowed by Israel. This attack on American rights will not only justify anti-semitism more than any quantity of blood libels or historical complaints about usurious money lenders ever have, it will render it almost mandatory for every single genuine American and U.S. citizen who respects the U.S. Constitution.
Now, I support Israel. I do not support the BDS movement. But I am 100 percent opposed to this insane, egregious, offensively stupid assault on the unalienable rights of Americans. And if these anti-American laws are not overturned for their blatant unconstitutionality, as I expect they will be, then every single US supporter of Israel will have to seriously consider endorsing the BDS movement on principle.
This anti-BDS legal campaign goes far beyond the concept of an own goal. In sports terms, this is Jim Marshall running with the ball towards his own end zone.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
If getting this kind of laws enacted is what the Hasbara machine thinks will defeat BDS, Israel is doomed. The only chance this would be upheld by the Federal Supreme Court is if the right-wing judges would go all out on judicial activism, and even if they did, the attention that would draw to it would make it a PR disaster for the Hasbara machine.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
format_quote Originally Posted by Futuwwa
If getting this kind of laws enacted is what the Hasbara machine thinks will defeat BDS, Israel is doomed. The only chance this would be upheld by the Federal Supreme Court is if the right-wing judges would go all out on judicial activism, and even if they did, the attention that would draw to it would make it a PR disaster for the Hasbara machine.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
A Modern Hebrew word for "explaining" with certain connotations of being lawyeristically disingenuous. With time though, it has become the go-to term for Israeli advocacy efforts.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
Salaam
Another update.
Blurb
Award-winning author and host of “On Contact” Chris Hedges joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the anti-BDS legislation sweeping the US, an effort to protect Israel’s public image by muzzling the Boycott, Divestment & Sanction (BDS) movement, which seeks to put economic pressure on Israel and bring attention to the plight of the Palestinians. Hedges says “Israel can no longer control its narrative or hide the brutality of their apartheid system.”
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
Muslims are so incompetent at propaganda that I honestly think that the best thing that the Muslim world could do in this case is to keep quiet and let the far-right run with this issue as voxday has. The far-right narrative will appeal to Americans, the Muslim narrative won't.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
Maybe something nasty is in the offing hence the desperate attempt to blackmail school-teachers in advance of anticipated increased attention and questions from students....
Maybe a "Breaking The Silence" type of organisation run by teachers will come out and overcome the false - A.D.L usurer and settler engineered "Birthright" type gang which has developed in greedy-zionist-occupied texas and has over-run the school board consultation system and most likely got the corrupt southern-settler puppet cowboy politicians in its pocket.
Check this out and see how this can be flipped nicely and may even be used to set off a vietnam war era style sit-in movement.
After Summer Walkouts, New Birthright Contract Bans 'Efforts to Hijack Discussion'.
Birthright revises contract with participants in bid to avert future anti-occupation protests, saying it rejects any attempt to manipulate trip's 'open climate'
Left-wing participants stage Birthright walkout to attend West Bank tour
Five women affiliated with IfNotNow leave trip early on final day to visit flashpoint city of Hebron, after lamenting program's refusal to grapple with 'realities of occupation' .
By JACOB MAGID
28 June 2018, 8:09 pm 40
4.0K
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Claiming the program was “hiding the realities of the occupation,” a group of five Birthright participants staged a walkout on the final day of their trip on Thursday in order to attend a tour of the West Bank city of Hebron run by the left-wing Breaking the Silence organization.
The group live-streamed their protest, which began with one of them taking the microphone at the front of the bus to announce their decision before the rest of the participants headed to a program in Tel Aviv.
“Like a lot of you, I came on this trip to be in a community with fellow Jewish youth and to learn. I really valued a lot of the experiences I’ve had,” said 25-year-old Bethany Zaiman.
As she continued to speak, the tour guide tried to cut her off, saying it was time to get off the bus and head to the program.
Bethany Zaiman announces her decision to leave a Birthright trip early along with four of her peers to attend a Breaking the Silence tour of Hebron on June 28, 2018. (Screen capture/Facebook)
However, she refused to let go of the microphone, saying that she and her friends had been asking questions throughout the trip in an effort to engage with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We have not been able to do that and as a result, the five of us will be leaving as we get off the bus and will be going on a trip with Breaking the Silence to learn about the occupation from the perspectives of Palestinians and IDF soldiers,” she said.
Breaking the Silence publishes testimony of former Israeli soldiers who report on alleged abuses by the IDF in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The organization has raised the ire of many Israeli officials and drawn criticism from those who challenge the authenticity of its mostly anonymous claims and lament its advocacy work in the international community.
The left-wing NGO offers regular tours of the flashpoint city of Hebron, where several hundred nationalist Israeli settlers live in fortified compounds heavily guarded by the IDF in the midst of 200,000 Palestinian inhabitants whose movements are heavily restricted.
Breaking the Silence Spokesman Dean Issacharoff greets five IfNotNow activists after they they staged a walk-out from their Birthright trip to attend a tour of Hebron on June 28, 2018. (Screen capture/Facebook)
As Zaiman got off the bus, the tour guide, Golan, chastised her for “pulling a fast one” on him and for “trying to enforce [their] opinions on the rest of the participants.”
“You did not come to learn about Israel, you came to learn about Palestine,” Golan shouted at the group of women, who he said had came on the trip in in order “to bash Israel on purpose, and in public in front of all your friends.”
As they began gathering their belongings, the five were approached by several fellow participants who chided them for showing a lack of appreciation for the free trip that they had been given.
“You say [Birthright is] about community, but you’re disrupting everyone’s experience,” one fellow participant told the women.
Another particularly angry participant told the women that they would be “killed” and “raped” on their West Bank trip.
The protesters wheeled their suitcases several blocks down the street, where they were greeted by a handful of Breaking the Silence staffers. Among them was spokesman Dean Issacharoff, who thanked them “for deciding to not cooperate with the silence that is protecting the violent and immoral military regime that we’re enforcing on millions of Palestinians.”
Issacharoff referred to the incident as “the first political walkout from a Birthright trip.”
Speaking to The Times of Israel from their tour in Hebron, one of the participants, Danielle Raskin, said that she and her four peers came to a realization halfway through the trip that “we weren’t really going to get the full picture [of the conflict] from Birthright,” leading to their decision to reach out to Breaking the Silence.
Raskin said that the five of them are activists in IfNotNow, an anti-Occupation organization made up of young progressive Jews in the US.
IfNotNow has been conducting a series of events in recent months targeting Birthright participants as they departed the US.
Asked why they didn’t want to wait until the trip had finished later Thursday to visit Hebron, Raskin said she and her peers had to get back to work on Monday and didn’t have time to stay in Israel longer.
“I also don’t think we should have to go out of our way to get this educational experience. It should be part of the ten day trip,” she added.
IfNotNow activists marching to demand that then-President-elect Donald Trump fire Stephen Bannon, Philadelphia, November 22, 2016. (Courtesy of IfNotNow/via JTA)
The 22-year-old argued that the trip’s goal “to get participants to fall in love with Israel seemed disingenuous,” given that she felt that they weren’t getting “the full picture.”
Birthright, which has brought more than 650,000 young Jewish adults aged 18-26 on 10-day trips to Israel since 1999, tries to get diaspora Jews to identify with Israel. On the trips, they tour the country’s highlights and meet young Israelis, including soldiers, who ride with them on their tour buses.
As for particular issues the IfNotNow activists had with how the trip’s organizers presented the conflict, Raskin lamented being given maps at the start of the trip that did not include the Green Line differentiating the West Bank from sovereign Israel.
She also recalled being told that “security reasons” prevented them from meeting with Palestinians in the West Bank, “but then we were taken to the part of the Dead Sea that is in the West Bank.”
In a statement that they drafted from Hebron the five women said that American Jews should know “that Birthright is not providing the education our generation deserves. It is morally irresponsible to participate in an institution that is not willing to grapple with reality on the other side of the wall.”
Breaking the Silence said that Thursday’s walkout showed how the organization was “building new bridges on the basis of equality and democracy, while the right-wing government is destroying Israel’s connection to Diaspora Jewry.”
For its part, Birthright condemned the actions of the five women.
“Since we respect the ability of our participants to formulate their own views, we reject the promotion of any agendas, attempts at manipulation or provocations from either political side,” the organization said in a statement.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
format_quote Originally Posted by fschmidt
Muslims are so incompetent at propaganda that I honestly think that the best thing that the Muslim world could do in this case is to keep quiet and let the far-right run with this issue as voxday has. The far-right narrative will appeal to Americans, the Muslim narrative won't.
What would the American (or Western) far right narrative benefit the Palestinian case? What they can offer is not more than anti-Semitism and I think anti-Semitism has no benefit for the Palestinians.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
format_quote Originally Posted by anatolian
What would the American (or Western) far right narrative benefit the Palestinian case? What they can offer is not more than anti-Semitism and I think anti-Semitism has no benefit for the Palestinians.
Much of the far-right is not racist, but they are certainly anti-Zionist. Just as Zionism is not in the Palestinian national interest, Zionism isn't in the American national interest either, and the far-right are nationalists. So Palestinians and American/European nationalists have a common enemy in Zionism. Here is an example:
He is replacing "Israel" with "Saudi Arabia" to be sarcastic, but also to avoid YouTube censorship.
Re: Muslim schoolteacher in Texas fired for refusing to sign Pro-Israel oath
Salaam
format_quote Originally Posted by fschmidt
Much of the far-right is not racist, but they are certainly anti-Zionist. Just as Zionism is not in the Palestinian national interest, Zionism isn't in the American national interest either, and the far-right are nationalists. So Palestinians and American/European nationalists have a common enemy in Zionism.
Hmmm not sure about this, but yes they do have a dislike of zionism and (Jewish) leftism. The reasons why make you think.
Off topic - This is a video from a White nationalist perspective. You can agree or disagree with the argument hes making but it tries to stay factual.
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