Good grief, I go away for a couple of days and look what happens !
This should appeal to all the US readers, a Palestinian professor asks an Israeli not to turn up to his classes in uniform WITH HIS GUN and he gets fired.
WOW, you get to carry gun's to class in Israel ??
Guess this doesn't apply if your a Palestinian tho ...........
In the strange world of Israeli academia, an Arab college lecturer is being dismissed from his job because he refused to declare his "respect for the uniform of the Israeli army". The bizarre demand was made of Nizar Hassan, director of several award-winning films, after he criticised a Jewish student who arrived in his film studies class at Sapir College in the Negev for wearing his uniform and carrying a gun.
The incident raises disturbing questions about the freedom of Israeli academics, sheds light on the veneration of the military in Israeli public life, and exposes the close, verging on incestuous, ties between the army and Israeli academia.
Meanwhile, for many of Israel's 1.2 million Palestinian citizens, who are nearly a fifth of the country's population, Hassan's treatment confirms their fears that decades of discrimination, especially in higher education, are far from over.
Hassan has faced a storm of criticism, including claims that he is anti-Semitic, since the Israeli media mistakenly reported back in November that he had thrown out of class one of his students, Eyal Cohen, over the way he was dressed. Hassan and most of the students present say Cohen was simply warned not to attend class in future wearing his uniform.
A letter from the head of army personnel, General Elazar Stern, accused the college of failing to act with "proper determination" and urged that Hassan face "sharp, public, official condemnation". Stern added that Hassan must be made to apologise or be sacked, otherwise the army would end its funding of places for hundreds of soldiers who attend courses at Sapir.
Most academic institutions in Israel not only depend on such funding but receive special grants and endowments for research in security-related subjects. The Israeli revisionist historian Ilan Pappe, who was forced out of Haifa University last year, estimates that half of lecturers in Israeli universities have ties to the security services.
"The whole reaction has been hysterical," Hassan, who lives in Nazareth, said. "It really surprised me, as did the lies that were told about what had happened."
His students say the issue has been blown out proportion and that Hassan has never hidden his opposition to militarism, wherever it exists.
Enass Masri, one of two Arab students in Hassan's film class, said: "When he saw Cohen wearing his uniform, he explained that all military uniforms -- of the Israeli army, of Fatah or of Hamas -- are symbols of violence and that he does not allow them into his classroom.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook02292008.html
This should appeal to all the US readers, a Palestinian professor asks an Israeli not to turn up to his classes in uniform WITH HIS GUN and he gets fired.
WOW, you get to carry gun's to class in Israel ??
Guess this doesn't apply if your a Palestinian tho ...........
In the strange world of Israeli academia, an Arab college lecturer is being dismissed from his job because he refused to declare his "respect for the uniform of the Israeli army". The bizarre demand was made of Nizar Hassan, director of several award-winning films, after he criticised a Jewish student who arrived in his film studies class at Sapir College in the Negev for wearing his uniform and carrying a gun.
The incident raises disturbing questions about the freedom of Israeli academics, sheds light on the veneration of the military in Israeli public life, and exposes the close, verging on incestuous, ties between the army and Israeli academia.
Meanwhile, for many of Israel's 1.2 million Palestinian citizens, who are nearly a fifth of the country's population, Hassan's treatment confirms their fears that decades of discrimination, especially in higher education, are far from over.
Hassan has faced a storm of criticism, including claims that he is anti-Semitic, since the Israeli media mistakenly reported back in November that he had thrown out of class one of his students, Eyal Cohen, over the way he was dressed. Hassan and most of the students present say Cohen was simply warned not to attend class in future wearing his uniform.
A letter from the head of army personnel, General Elazar Stern, accused the college of failing to act with "proper determination" and urged that Hassan face "sharp, public, official condemnation". Stern added that Hassan must be made to apologise or be sacked, otherwise the army would end its funding of places for hundreds of soldiers who attend courses at Sapir.
Most academic institutions in Israel not only depend on such funding but receive special grants and endowments for research in security-related subjects. The Israeli revisionist historian Ilan Pappe, who was forced out of Haifa University last year, estimates that half of lecturers in Israeli universities have ties to the security services.
"The whole reaction has been hysterical," Hassan, who lives in Nazareth, said. "It really surprised me, as did the lies that were told about what had happened."
His students say the issue has been blown out proportion and that Hassan has never hidden his opposition to militarism, wherever it exists.
Enass Masri, one of two Arab students in Hassan's film class, said: "When he saw Cohen wearing his uniform, he explained that all military uniforms -- of the Israeli army, of Fatah or of Hamas -- are symbols of violence and that he does not allow them into his classroom.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook02292008.html
