This clown is a college professor? How Neve  Gordon’s attacks on me as a journalist and his excuses for Rachel Corrie’s stupidity reveal the sad state of humanities education these days.

 

By Lee Kaplan , www.Isracampus.org.il

Thew article below can be seen with the photos at www.Isracampus.org.il

I’ve spent the last ten years of my life working as a reporter and investigative journalist.  A great deal of my work has been writing about college education in the United States and Israel, and how indoctrination has replaced the teaching of critical thinking when it comes to humanities courses.

While our universities develop wonderful things in technology and medicine to benefit mankind, humanities courses, particularly history and political science, have become a cesspool of indoctrination courses in Marxism, colonialism, Arab irredentism, and anti-Semitism along with other nonsense and fabricated history. Radicals who want to impart their world view to vulnerable students fabricate false history and political statements that would never stand the light of day in the real world. Serious research has been replaced in academia by opinions and the vague excuse of “social justice” to explain academic support for overseas totalitarian regimes and even terrorist movements like Hamas. This is not progressivism, but a cover for totalitarian indoctrination.

One such victim of this situation was the young girl Rachel Corrie who was killed by an Israeli army tractor as she plopped down in front of it in a combat zone where Hamas weapons smuggling tunnels were being cleared. One such professor, who also promotes terrorist groups and anti-Semitism as part of a “social justice” mantra, is Neve Gordon of Ben Gurion University in Israel. Gordon recently wrote an OpEd piece here in the Nation that questioned my journalistic integrity because I flew to Israel last year and provided government lawyers with evidence about the real Rachel Corrie and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) of the Flotilla boats fame that sent her to her death in a combat zone. Gordon claimed in his article that the trial that took place over two and half years and involved testimonies from all sides was a miscarriage of justice. Gordon also mentions a photograph in the 145 page transcript of the trial that displays a photograph of ISM activists in the West Bank waving around machine guns in the presence of an Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade terrorist and a Palestinian policeman.

Here’s the photo from my article The ISM-Terror Connection

There were actually more such photos with other ISM members with guns in them, given to the Court with the women disguised as Jewish settler women (though not Jewish) to infiltrate Jewish communities in the West Bank to aid terrorist groups like Hamas.

Gordon then wrote:

“The two standing figures appear to be foreigners, the person in uniform appears to be Palestinian, while the face of the second person sitting is intentionally blurred. (Why? We are not told) The title of this photo and of another one next to it (with several people posing in a similar manner, two with guns) reads, ‘Photographs of organization members holding guns, disclosed by the American journalist Lee Kaplan.’

‘Let's set aside the question of whether the so-called journalist Lee Kaplan—whose claim to fame are articles he writes for the academic monitoring website IsraCampus—is trustworthy and think about what these images are meant to prove.

‘The fact is that we are not told where and when the two additional photos were taken, who the people in the photographs are, whether Corrie knew them or what their affiliation is. Yet this uncertainty is obscured by the placement of these suggestive photos adjacent to the one of Corrie. Through this crude juxtaposition, the state attempted to impute guilt by association.”

Gordon is supposed to be a college professor so one would assume he knows how to do facile research. The photos, he says, attempted to impute guilt by association. The photos, however, are easily found on the Web in my article here that names the people in the photos and discusses the ISM at length in my investigative journalism report. The face of one person is blocked out because after providing his undercover report to me his life was threatened. Incidentally, the uniformed man in the photo is a Palestinian Authority policeman.

Before I parse the rest of Gordon’s “article” in the Nation, let me show your readers another photo of Neve Gordon:

 

The above photo was taken only days after the Passover Massacre in Netanya, Israel in 2002, where 31 people, mostly Holocaust survivors, were murdered by a suicide bomber who was dispatched and paid by Yasser Arafat himself. Gordon, in the photo, was acting as a human shield for Arafat who was surrounded in the PLO’s headquarters by the IDFafterward, a time when the ISM was founded by some other “human shields” who up to that time had been low level US State Department employees. Everyone knows Arafat, the father of worldwide terrorism and aircraft hijackings, who has murdered thousands of Israelis and even Americans. Gordon is clearly making a victory and solidarity salute in support of Arafat in the photo. Captured documents showed Arafat personally signed off on the Netanya bombing and many other terror attacks. Gordon has been involved with the ISM many times and frequently is an honored guest at their conclaves in the US. Rachel Corrie was in Gaza as a member of the ISM recruited from Olympia, Washington.

Gordon is still working as a Professor at Ben Gurion University where he calls for the dismantling of the Jewish state. So much for “guilt by association” on the part of the Israeli government, as Gordon is still running around like a brass monkey.

In his Nation article attacking me and the Haifa court’s credibility, Gordon further stated, “Underlying the state's reasoning is an Aristotelian syllogism, bolstered by photographs, graphic figures and authoritative references. The claim is straightforward:

1) the ISM is an anti-Israeli organization that supports violence and terrorism
2) Rachel Corrie was an ISM member, therefore:
3) Rachel Corrie supported violence and terrorism

The second argument was similar:

1) during the period in question, Rafah was a war zone and a closed military area
2) Rachel Corrie chose to be an activist in Rafah, therefore:
3) Rachel Corrie willfully (and illegally) subjected herself to the rules of engagement that apply in a war zone

If one accepts these conclusions and is convinced by the claim that the Caterpillar driver did not see Corrie despite the fact that she wore a brightly colored reflective vest, then it can indeed be inferred that she carries the blame for her own death.”

Absolutely, Professor Gordon.  

What Neve Gordon conveniently left out in his column in the Nation was that Rachel Corrie was recruited and trained by the ISM, even given a manual that I furnished the court that the organization makes all volunteers go through before going into combat zones to interfere with anti-terrorist activities of the IDF. Gordon tries to suggest that Rachel Corrie may not have agreed with ISM teachings about terrorism as “legitimate resistance” when she made statements to the contrary. Rachel Corrie wrote home to her mother in praise of the “martyrs” who were fighting the Israelis and in support of “legitimate resistance” (ISM code speak for terrorism).  Gordon did not write in his article in the Nation that Rachel Corrie wrote copious emails home to her mother where she described being inside the weapons smuggling tunnels dug by Hamas to bring out the dead bodies of terrorists killed in them by the IDF.  Rachel did this under the directions of her terrorist handler named Mohammed Qishta, which was even mentioned in her emails home to her mother and in other ISM communiques.

Testimony in the trial even by ISM activists proved she was not protecting a house when she was killed, but that this scenario was concocted later by the ISM, notably by ISM member Joseph Carr who doctored photos to suggest Corrie was protecting a house when she was run over. In a tape recorded interview by phone I submitted to the Court that I did with Joseph Carr just before the trial, Carr told me how he and Rachel Corrie had retrieved the body of a dead terrorist in an open field right in front of the IDF after being tasked to do so by Qishta. When I asked Carr wasn’t he afraid he’d be arrested by the IDF, he replied, “No, because we knew the Arab snipers would shoot them.”

Thomas Saffold, an ISM leader that day in Rafah, admitted that Rachel had gone off on her own that day and was in a place she shouldn’t have been. She was not protecting a house but was sitting in front of a bulldozer to stop it from clearing brush in front of a weapons smuggling tunnel. She did this because she felt secure that the tractor driver would not emerge for fear that Arab snipers would shoot him. That is why she did this, to assist Hamas terrorists in a known combat zone. Her death was not suicide and the Court never said it was. Her death, however, was the result of her own unremitting stupidity in laying her life down before a bulldozer whose driver could not see her.

Apparently Professor Gordon, like Rachel,  likes to pose in front of cameras or aid international murderers and then call himself a peace activist. It therefore comes as no surprise that he writes such an article in the Nation insisting justice was not done for the Corrie family. The fact is, if one lies down with dogs, one inevitably will emerge with fleas. The Corries are touring the world promoting the goals of Hamas and the trial was just another publicity stunt to damn Israel. Gordon encourages countless other Rachel Corries to come forth in his lectures and emulate this young woman who wasted her life to support Hamas.

Some college professor.