Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University - Elia
Leibowitz (Dept of Physics And Astronomy) claims Zionist students
will soon start shooting leftist anti-Zionist professors like in
Mao's China
Nationalist student organizations are
distributing documents in the style of the dazibao with the
encouragement of the education minister and members of the Knesset
Education Committee, and with the tacit agreement of the Israel's
leaders.
If this activity is a portent of things to
come, we are at the start of another significant step in the march
of the cultural revolution in Israel. The Israeli revolution looks
different from its older brother in China, especially in its
dimensions and it's lack of violent.
However, as in China, it has been accompanied
by a large ad campaign and tendentious reports in the media. In the
absence of violence, the pace of its development is slow and only
few people in the country feel the undercurrent.
Over time, though, the revolution will
undermine the cultural infrastructure on which rest the intellectual
achievements of the Jewish community in Israel over the past 90
years.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/revolution-continued-1.301824
Revolution continued
By Elia Leibowitz
14.07.10
Nine years ago I published an article in this newspaper under the
heading "Cultural revolution, Israeli-style." I argued there that
actions taken by the government against the research universities
invite a cultural revolution with shades of similarity to the
"cultural revolution" in China 44 years earlier, albeit with
inevitable differences due to the profound dissimilarities between
the two cultures.
A renewed comparison of Chinese history with the events of recent
weeks concerning the academic world in Israel reveals that the
Israeli cultural revolution is indeed marching forward.
On May 25, 1966, a young philosophy lecturer at Beijing
University published a dazibao - a poster sharply attacking the
rector and professors at the university and depicting them as
anti-Chinese, haters of the state and traitors to the principles of
socialism, the rock of the people's existence.
The poster won an enthusiastic response from chairman Mao Zedong,
who ordered that it be distributed throughout the country posthaste.
The result was immediate. On May 29, 1966, at the high school
associated with Tsinghua University, the first nucleus of the Red
Guards was formed. That was the opening shot of the Cultural
Revolution, which raged throughout China. The Red Guards - mostly
gangs of students - imposed merciless terror on the country.
Unhindered and working in the name of the nation and for the sake of
social justice, they violently attacked officials tasked with
keeping the public order as well as intellectuals, professors,
teachers and people in the arts and humanities.
Many were killed and many more exiled to concentration camps
where they were pried of their deviant and treacherous thoughts and
brought into the fold of correct Marxist consciousness.
The Cultural Revolution in China made the lives of millions
miserable while it was happening but its destructive results were
felt in China for many years. A manifestation of the cultural
darkness that descended on China is the total absence, for about 30
years, of papers originating in China in the international
scientific press.
In recent weeks there has been vigorous anti-intellectual
activity throughout Israel, mostly against professors, both male and
female, writers, artists and intellectuals, who are depicted as
anti-Israel, haters of the state and traitors to the principles of
Zionism, the bedrock of our existence.
Nationalist student organizations are distributing documents in
the style of the dazibao with the encouragement of the education
minister and members of the Knesset Education Committee, and with
the tacit agreement of the Israel's leaders.
If this activity is a portent of things to come, we are at the
start of another significant step in the march of the cultural
revolution in Israel. The Israeli revolution looks different from
its older brother in China, especially in its dimensions and it's
lack of violent.
However, as in China, it has been accompanied by a large ad
campaign and tendentious reports in the media. In the absence of
violence, the pace of its development is slow and only few people in
the country feel the undercurrent.
Over time, though, the revolution will undermine the cultural
infrastructure on which rest the intellectual achievements of the
Jewish community in Israel over the past 90 years.
Unlike in China, Israel's ability to survive the trend depends on
the existence of exactly what the Israeli-style cultural revolution
is seeking to destroy: our culture. If the Knesset and the public do
not stop this revolution, the outcome is liable to be disastrous for
the existence of the state.
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