Zionist J-Soc ... Bad Losers!
Jewish students gagged at Leeds
08/12/2006 15:21:00 By Nathan Jeffay The Jewish Chronicle Newspaper
Britain's largest Jewish student community was in a state of shock this week after being constitutionally gagged against a background of intensifying anti-Israel campaigns and propaganda. The student union at the University of Leeds has recently become the stronghold of a growing pro-Palestine lobby, which regularly runs campaigns declaring Israel to be a racist and apartheid state. Following a campus-wide referendum last Friday, union authorities have been mandated to ignore J-Soc complaints "as long as Judaism as a faith is not offended." This policy was carried by 1,421 votes to 895. The motion, proposed by members of the Palestinian Solidarity Group, catalogues J-Soc complaints against it. It then claims that the existing practice of "considering every complaint received by the student union as a real complaint" constituted "an arbitrary use of authority." A further successful motion, worded as a polemic against Israel, resolves to twin the union with the student body at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, where many seats on the student council are held by the Hamas-linked Islamic List. It brings to a climax a disturbing term for Jewish students - in the last month alone, UK J-Socs have fought against some 11 motions, the majority of which they managed to defeat. Campus leaders, students and academics have voiced concern that the first motion singles out the university's Jewish students - thought to number almost 1,000 - and strips them of basic rights enjoyed by all others. They fear this principle will be introduced in other unions, creating a culture where Israeli's critics have carte blanche to launch tirades regardless of their truth, and where it becomes taboo for any J-Soc to show solidarity with Israel. They have also reacted with incredulity to the motion's wording, in which its Palestinian Solidarity Group authors claim for themselves - and to the exclusion of Jewish students - authority to define Jewish identity. Now the motion has passed, Jewish identity is now exclusively religious, according to the union's constitution. After the votes, the atmosphere at Hillel House was gloomy. "The motion is trying to tell us what we should and should not think about Judaism," said Mark Frazer, 21. "Its proponents are saying that Israel should not be part of our Jewish identity; we think is. It should be for us to decide." Judith Keen, 20, spoke of "feeling let down as the referendum process is meant to help students here, not be used a political tool." Zach Esdaile, one of the J-Soc's campaign officers, claimed it will "add to fear on campus." He said: "This motion is supposedly about freedom of speech [by preventing complaints], but it delivers anything but that." However Damola Timeyin, communications and democracy officer for the union, said that the motion was passed by a democratic forum, and as such is binding. According to Mitch Simmons, campaigns director at UJS, the motion represents the "stepping up" of a "national, systematic and coordinated attempt on campuses" to blacken Israel's reputation and delegitimise Israel's centrality in Jewish identity. Insiders in the National Union of Students report a growing rift with Leeds over the motion, even though, publicly, NUS respects the autonomy of member unions. NUS president Gemma Tumelty would not "comment extensively," but confirmed there is a clash.
Here is a competition for all of you; count as many lies as you can in the report. The winner gets a very exceptional reward: ZIONISTS WILL HATE YOU!
Blackening Israel's reputation?! Oh yeah, The Worst Country in the World, what a reputation we should work hard to spoil!
Source: Jerusalem Post
It could take Israel 30 years to change its brand image, after it placed last in a study of 36 countries, one of the leaders in the field of nation branding warned Saturday. Simon Anholt spoke with The Jerusalem Post on the heels of a recent survey he released in which 25,000 consumers were asked to rank 36 countries on issues of tourism, exports, governance, investment, immigration, cultural heritage and people. According to the study, known as the Nation Brands Index, which has been published four times a year since 2005, "Israel's brand is, by a considerable margin, the most negative we have ever measured in the NBI, and comes in at the bottom of the ranking on almost every question." Israel is not typically included in the survey, which looks at such as places as the US, Germany, Mexico, South Korea, China and Singapore. Britain came in first in the survey and the US was ninth. It was included in the third quarter survey of 2006 because there is a guest slot in each survey. "Only Bhutan, the first guest country we included in the NBI, achieved a similarly low score," said the study. But in the case of Bhutan the study attributed its poor score to the fact that few people had heard of it, according to the study. "Israel's poor scores are clearly not the result of anonymity; it is one of the most known countries in the world," said the study. The Foreign Ministry's Director of Public Affairs Amir Gissin said the survey underscored for him the importance of the new nation-branding drive Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni launched this fall. "We see Anholt's research as an opportunity to increase the awareness of decision makers in Israel to the image problem that Israel has in order to make us more determined to deal with the image problem," Gissin told the Post. As part of that drive, the ministry is looking for ways to focus international public attention away from the country's conflicts with the Palestinians and Hizbullah in favor of more positive images such as the country's technical innovations as well as musical, cultural and historical attractions. But Anholt warned on Saturday that the Foreign Ministry would have to be very patient before it benefits from its labors. While his 30-year prediction is not set in stone, Anholt said, he warned that changing people's attitudes and prejudice was so difficult and time-consuming that it often took decades. It took Japan and Ireland 30 years to change their public image, Anholt added. "There are no quick fixes to this," said Anholt, who added that he hoped the Israelis "are very patient." It was for this reason that he did not believe his study was significantly impacted by the fact that it was conducted during the war with Hizbullah in Lebanon over the summer. Israel was often in a state of conflict, Anholt said. It had been his experience, he said, that the survey measured long-seated opinions that were not greatly swayed by current events. Still, he said, just to be certain he planned to include Israel for a second time in the survey during a quiet period, "just to ascertain that the results were not skewed." Anholt said that his study differed from that of other surveys, in that this was not a politically-based public opinion poll. It did not measure people's ideas about the conflict with the Palestinians or Hizbullah, but rather it examined people's instinctive associations with the country that would impact their decisions outside the political arena, such as whether they would buy a product from Israel, visit the country, or hire an Israeli.
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