Editorial Article
The Immaterial Girl: Tel Aviv University’s Linguistics Professor
Rachel Giora attacks Madonna for performing in Israel
Lee Kaplan
www.IsraCampus.org.il
18/9/2009
“All the little loonies
With a salient obsession
Come out from the boonies
With their sharpies and their guns
And we're loaded with questions” - lyrics from Madonna song, Guilty
by Association
The newswires have been ablaze with the
tabloid-quality news story that the “Material Girl,” Madonna, was
being attacked by anti-Israel leftist extremists for performing in
Tel Aviv. After being made aware of the protests, Madonna, at her
concert, draped herself in the Israeli flag, which inspired an even
louder brouhaha.
Leading the charge against the singer was Tel
Aviv University’s Israel-hating Professor Rachel Giora. With her
purple hair contrasting with Madonna’s blond, Giora leads an Israeli
anti-Israel group, Call From Within, evidently dedicated to
promoting the next Holocaust of the Jews by
encouraging the boycott of everything and anything in Israel.
At first,
it was the Arabs who launched into a tirade against the pop singer
because of her support for Israel and the flag. They were joined by
the anti-Semitic Left. Using the same boycott formula as that of
the Nazis started in 1933, BDS = boycott, divestment, and sanctions
is their way to achieve the extermination of Israel and its
population. Even Madonna isn’t exempted if she lets Israelis hear
her music.
Giora told the media that Madonna should have
refused to perform in Israel because it is an “apartheid” state.
Never mind that Israel is the only state in the Middle East that
does not practice apartheid and never mind that the
Arabs routinely practice apartheid against all non-Arabs. In the
“mind” of this “academic,” Israelis must not enjoy Madonna’s music
because this somehow contributes to the “oppression” of the
Palestinian Arabs.
I’ve written here before at IsraCampus about
TAU’s Linguisitics department in which Giora works or at least
holds a post. Heavily influenced by the anti-Semitic Stalinist
linguist Noam Chomsky, almost the entire Israeli taxpayer-supported
department is rigidly Old Left. Chomsky himself, their guru,
visited with the Hezb’allah in Lebanon and
called for Israel’s destruction on
Arab TV there. With the exception of Professor Gary Cohen, who
bravely serves as a reserve officer in the IDF, the majority of
linguistics faculty at TAU works assiduously as accomplices in the
Arab efforts to dismantle the Jewish state in a new genocide of
Jews.
As a linguist paid by the Israeli taxpayer,
Giora, of all people, should know the harm of irresponsible
language. Her writings in favor of boycotting, divesting from and
sanctioning Israel go well beyond any rational protest of the
policies of the country.
Below is a quote from Rachel Giora in a letter
in praise of the British academic boycott movement:
“…Israeli academic academia is no
different from any other Israeli institution and in many cases it
plays an active if not vital role in supporting Israeli apartheid
practices against the Palestinians. For example, the R&D (Research
and Development) Directorate of the Israel Ministry of Defense is
currently funding 55 projects at TAU (Tel Aviv University): Military
R&D would not exist without the universities. They carry out all the
basic scientific investigation, which is then developed by defense
industries or the Army; People are just not aware of how important
university research is in general and how much TAU contributes to
Israel’s security in particular.”
Giora goes on to call for the boycotting of her
own university. But, of course, she does not resign her position or
forego her salary as a professor there as part of her
denunciation. And the heads of Tel Aviv University are too
pusillanimous to give her the bum’s rush. Instead she draws her
TAU salary and voices support for Hezb’allah and Hamas:
“These are only shreds of evidence
testifying to the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in the
state’s apartheid polices against the Palestinians. In light of
Israel’s widely documented disregard for international laws
exercised in our area for so many years, culminating in two recent
wars against civilians in Lebanon and Gaza, it is left for us
citizens of the world to attempt to hold up a mirror to Israel’s
real face in the hope that it will give it a chance to choose
justice and peace over occupation. The growing numbers of Israelis
who are now supporting cultural and academic boycotts will rejoice
in our achievements.”
Giora signs her anti-Israel fatwas with the
hardy communist-inspired closing salutation “In solidarity” instead
of the normal “sincerely yours.” Read
this letter if you can stomach it. It’s a real eye opener.
Rachel Giora also works with the pro-terror
International Solidarity Movement (ISM, which some say stands
for “I Support Murderers”) and that may also explain why she uses
their rhetoric about international law, civilians killed, etc.
ad nauseum to promote the boycott of her own university.
Last January, “Call from Within”
initiated
a petition that actually was good enough to appear on the ISM’s
website, supporting its flotilla of boats that tried to run the IDF
Navy’s control of the sea lanes into Gaza. The ISM leadership,
especially Huwaida Arraf, publicly bragged that the ISM works with
and supports Hamas. Apparently, the Gaza flotilla’s organizers feel
“Call from Within’s” goals match their own.
There is
more than meets the eye to Madonna’s appearance in Tel Aviv than
her draping herself in the Israeli flag during her performance than
just entertainment. Madonna and her husband, film director Guy
Ritchie, both study Kabbalah and - while not Jewish - have a
well-recognized love for Israel. Madonna came to Israel to attend a
Kabbalah symposium.
Isn’t it ironic that Madonna, a non-Jew, should
feel love and concern for the people and land of Eretz Yisrael,
while Tel Aviv University’s Rachel Giora seeks their destruction?
And she does so from a bully pulpit paid for by the Israeli
taxpayer. Madonna seeks to immerse herself in Jewish learning,
whereas Rachel Giora wants to destroy the very Jewish state that
employs her.
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