Here is an interesting discussion that took place in the UNM Lobo University Paper (in Albuquerque, New Mexico–not exactly a hotspot of activism) on the first of May, 2007 after “International Day” at UNM, when foreign students and people representing foreign interests and national groups put up informational displays, with food and music.
A short distance away from the main exhibits, the Salaam Coalition, a student group, put up a large display protesting the “apartheid wall” in Israel. They painted the wall with graffiti, and hung an Israeli flag on one side, and a PA flag on the other side of the wall, and had posters of pro-Palestinian apologists and Rachel Corrie around and on the wall.
Members of the UNM Israel Alliance, a student group (independently, not as a UNMIA action), taped contradictory paper flyers on the wall and in the vicinity, and added to the graffiti on the wall by painting “Am Yisrael Chai” in Hebrew, fairly low down on the wall. All the while the UNMIA chatted with the Salaam Coalition student who was making the wall, and did everything in the open, with no protest from the student.
This brought the editorial letter and subsequent discussion in the UNM Lobo, that is copied below. Interestingly, this story was picked up and copied by several Arab and Pro-Palestinian blogs and news sites. They must have been low on news that week.
first published opinion
UNM Israel Alliance mars its cause by marking wall
Editor,
On Thursday, a student organization identified as the Salam Coalition prepared a very edifying and informative event at Smith Plaza in which it constructed a miniature replica of the wall being erected between the West Bank and Israel. The foremost purpose of this project was to increase awareness and to educate UNM by bringing the outcomes of global incidents closer to our community in a diplomatic way. The work was very successful in that many UNM students inquired about the wall itself, while others were astonished by the effort and took pictures with their camera phones.
However, the event was not all positive. In fact, another student organization, the UNM Israel Alliance, found it necessary to sabotage the Salam Coalition’s endeavors. Members of the UNM Israel Alliance seized black spray paint that members of the Salam Coalition carelessly left out and spray painted “Israel Lives” in Hebrew on the wall. Nobody from the public was permitted to spray paint anything, good or bad, on the wall. In addition, when a Salam Coalition member asked what they were doing, the transgressors replied they were writing “peace,” which is clearly a lie. There are pictures of the deed and of the product.
Furthermore, affiliates of the UNM Israel Alliance persisted in defacing the work by posting fliers on the wall, its foundations and around the premises. These fliers consisted of falsified and embellished information on Palestinian treatment in other Arab countries and diverted the attention from Israel onto other Arab countries. Other fliers compared the wall with apartheid in South Africa and concluded that declaring the wall an apartheid device is an insult to everything the South African activists stood for. The flier publicized all the disparities and concealed all the similarities. Nonetheless, for a student organization to act out against another student organization and interfere with its event is clearly more of an insult than declaring a wall an apartheid design.
The Salam Coalition is not endorsing conflict, but rather peaceful measures to a solution. The organization draped not only a Palestinian flag from the wall, but also an Israeli flag. Yet, it is extremely suggestive that the UNM Israel Alliance would attempt to disrupt an informative and peaceful proceeding. The fact is, the UNM Israel Alliance is making an effort to bring or incite a conflict that has more to do with the motives of its student organization than the conflict itself. As a UNM student not affiliated with the Salam Coalition, I am particularly affronted that a student organization would promote unruliness on this campus and would think that students, faculty and visitors are ignorant enough to not recognize the awkwardness of a flier posted on the wall that contradicted the wall’s implications.
The UNM Israel Alliance could assume more mature and appropriate methods for promoting its message than the devious actions that were accomplished Thursday.
Katryn E. Fraher
UNM student
Comments on the first Opinion
Brian Fejer
posted 5/01/07 @ 10:22 AM EST
What do you expect from the Zionist Hoodlums?
Michael McNaughton
posted 5/01/07 @ 11:50 AM EST
Way to go UNM Israel Alliance, “Isreal Lives” and always will.
STOP AIPAC (Majority Mexican)
posted 5/01/07 @ 11:28 AM EST
The Israeli Alliance is similar to AIPAC in its attempt to frame the conflict where information disseminated is skewed. If the Israeli Alliance was speaking the truth they would not need to defame the peaceful demonstration of a student organization on campus. The acts of vandalism is the actions taken in desperation as people are leaning they have been lied to over the last couple of decades. Continue to graffiti, continue to write false opinion pieces, and the result will be a further deterioration of Israeli support.
We need the truth not AIPAC.
Amjad Musleh
posted 5/02/07 @ 4:49 AM EST
Mr. McNaughton,
You’re totally right to say that Israel lives, as it obviously does right now, with total dominance in the region with the help it has received from our continued donations given to it from our tax money. I may be wrong, but it seems to me you are the type of person that is pro Israel all the way and in no way would you like to consider the other side to the story. I just wish people were more open minded about all aspects of life and maybe one day we would all learn to live with each other peacefully. I seriously doubt this though because ignorance and bias has been the story of humanity from day one.
Will humans ever understand what G_d meant when he stated it clearly, in one syllable words, “Thou Shall Not Kill?”
I hope we will one day, but till that day comes, I advise everyone to open their minds to the world around them and try to better themselves. Once we better ourselves, then hopefully we can better our families, and then hopefully from there society will be able to better itself, and then maybe humanity itself will eventually become divine. A humanist friend told me that once and I really believe in it, but being the pessimist I am, I don’t see it happening anytime in the near future.
I really hope people here will try to take a more objective stand point about life but till then all I can do is work on myself to overcome my personal biases and to a small extent, that of my friends. Take care Mr. McNaughton and I hope I have not offended you in anyway, I just truly wish for you the best.
(forgive me for my horrible writing style, I am a Biochemistry major)
Rach
posted 5/02/07 @ 10:04 PM EST
Aside from all the rhetorical “open your mind” statements, what else did this post accomplish? Why does “the wall” exist? Your group didn’t exactly explore the concept of terrorism in your presentation, thus don’t you think you’re being hypocritical in calling pro-Israel people “one-sided”?
Just a thought. Maybe we could ALL be more open-minded.
Best–
Brian Fejer
posted 5/03/07 @ 10:41 AM EST
Hey Fredman, Terror is the use of fear or violence for political gain. The Muslim Jihadist Islamofascist Terrrorists do not have a monopoly on “TERROR”! Zionist terrorists blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, The Zionist Hagana, Irgun and Stern Gang groups, The motto of the Israeli Mossad is, by deception, thou shalt do war, What about the Anthrax Zionist Terrorist, Dr. Philip Zack?
Are smart bombs not homicide bombs? Oh that’s different!
My problem isn’t with the wall itself, but the fact that it snakes through Palestine annexing and gobbling up land.
Lynn Provencio
posted 5/04/07 @ 3:04 AM EST
It’s hard to see in what way the “wall” was either informative, edifying or diplomatic. With an opening like that, it’s hard to take a charge of deviousness seriously.
The writer mentions, as if this were a sign of unity, that both the Palestinian Authority flag and Israeli flag were draped across their ropes. In fact the flags were there to show the division between the PA Arabs and Israel, one being on one side of the wall and the other being on the other side.
The fact that the Palestinian Authority flag was used is also a provocation, because in fact that flag represents a hostile foreign entity within Israel and in Gaza. PA Arabs are not oppressed by Israel. They are governed by corrupt leaders of their own choosing, and suffer under their own violent and corrupt leaders.
If the Palestinian Authority, represented by that flag, wanted peace, it would never have begun the attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers in the “second intifada” and could stop at any time. It was given Gaza and several large towns in Samaria on a silver platter and turned them to sh*t for its cause. The purpose is evidently not the betterment of the PA Arabs, but attacking Israel with terrorist, military and propaganda attacks until Israel is destroyed. It uses up its own people because it does not want peace, and it does not want to become a nation. It only wants to destroy a nation. This is what Salaam Coalition is supporting with its wall display.
While other student groups and UNMIA were sitting at international day booths promoting the cultures of the countries they represented in a positive and friendly way, the only thing Salaam Coalition could manage was an one sided propaganda attack on Israel. I suppose the there was nothing positive that Salaam Coalition could show about the PA Arab culture it purports to be so fond of?
It appears that the purpose of Salaam is not Salaam but Israel bashing. Nobody but Salaam took advantage of the day to put down another nation and another culture. Only Salaam was so racist. Even the writing on the wall by UNMIA members was not an attack on Islam or the Arabs, but a statement that the people Israel lives, a fact that bothers the founders of Salaam very badly.
How dare Salaam do such a despicable thing and then complain if a couple of Jews and Zionists answer by defending themselves in a mild statement and some taped up flyers?
If anybody showed themselves in a bad light it was Salaam Coalition, and if anybody should apologize, it’s the Salaam Coalition.
Killing Children Will Not Bring Peace
posted 5/04/07 @ 1:15 PM EST
This individual is a right wing fascist that follows a syndicate comprised of organizations such as AIPAC, Danielpipes.com, AEI, PENAC, and others that want perpetual war. Where do your loyalties rest Lynn, with the US or Israel? If the answer is the US, Israel, or both you need to change your position. Read her lies do some research into these organizations to understand how they manipulate the truth to achieve political objectives.
She wrote Palestinian Authority flag is a provocation but what would she have them use, Fatah’s flag or maybe Hezbollah’s flag. If either of the other two flags that represent large numbers of Palestinians had been used she would say the supporters of the wall at UNM supported terrorism. You are disingenuous and other people at this campus are turning against Israel for the apartheid imposed on the Palestinians.
I am sure you thought the war in Iraq was good for your cause but now you realize people are educating themselves and they are learning they were manipulated by neoconservatives. The actions taken by the Israeli alliance are those of desperation. The Jewish people we need to follow are those that demand peace in the Holy Land and their voice is being heard.
The link is her statements on Danielpipes.org. I encourage people to do some research; here is some info about Daniel.
In April 2003, President Bush nominated Pipes for the board of the federally sponsored U.S. Institute of Peace, on which Douglas Feith was already serving. Soon afterwards, a broad array of Arab-American, American Muslim, and other groups, vehemently denounced the appointment, claiming that Pipes was an “anti-Islamic extremist”. A The Washington Post editorial suggested that many Muslims viewed Pipes’ nomination as a “sort of cruel joke”
Christopher Hitchens, who is also a prominent critic of Islamists, also expressed “bafflement” at this appointment in a critical essay entitled “Daniel Pipes is not a man of peace” in Slate.[6] Hitchens wrote that Pipes “employs the fears and insecurities created by Islamic extremism to slander or misrepresent those who disagree with him” and that this contradicted the USIP’s position as “a somewhat mild organization [...] devoted to the peaceful resolution of conflict.” Hitchens concluded his opposition to Pipes’ nomination by saying that Pipes “confuses scholarship with propaganda” and pursues “petty vendettas with scant regard for objectivity.”
Pipes has had a series of confrontations with various U.S-based Islamic groups, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR has described him as “an Islamophobe,”
Pipes was invited to speak at the University of Toronto in March 2005 by a new student group at the University called The Middle East Forum at U of T. The announcement sparked the following response: more than 80 professors and former graduate students wrote an open letter in which they said that Pipes had a “long record of xenophobic, racist and sexist [speeches] that goes back to 1990″. The letter went on to say that:
Genuine academic debate requires an open and free exchange of ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect and tolerance. We, the undersigned–professors, librarians and students–are committed to academic freedom and we affirm Pipes’ right to speak at our university. However, we strongly believe that hate, prejudice and fear-mongering have no place on this campus.
(Ein Shalom note: The post by Lynn Provencio had no mention of Daniel Pipes and did not quote from him or anyone else)
Vicki Johnson
posted 5/07/07 @ 4:58 PM EST
As the 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation approaches, on June 10th, human rights activists around the world are raising awareness of the Palestinian plight. The Salam Coalition deserves congratulations for their effective wall display at UNM.
In contrast, the defacement of the UNM wall exhibit, the attempts by the UNM Israel Alliance to defend the defacement and their defense of the Israeli wall itself, strikes me as inept and disgraceful.
A week later, the Lobo published an editorial by a UNMIA Member in response…
Israel Alliance’s actions served to open dialogue
Issue date: 5/7/07 Section: Opinion
Editor,
In response to Katryn E. Fraher’s letter in Tuesday’s Daily Lobo, I would like to clarify the events detailed. Fraher claims that the UNM Israel Alliance defaced a presentation put up by the Salam Coalition in Smith Plaza on April 26. The SC constructed a representation of the wall being constructed by Israel consisting of a network of fences with vehicle-barrier trenches. This barrier is located partly along the 1949 Armistice Line between the West Bank and Israel.
I am a UNMIA member who was present at this event. This same day, the UNMIA was operating a booth at the International Festival. An elderly couple approached our booth and asked if we had seen the wall in Smith Plaza. None of us knew this event was taking place, so several of our members went to view it out of curiosity. Once in its environs, we decided to put up the same fliers we were handing out at the International Festival around the area near the wall.
We were hardly antagonistic and were treated very respectfully by members of the SC. What resulted was a dialogue between two groups, which was the stated purpose of the wall display. A majority of fliers we placed in the area were posted around the anthropology building – spaces free for student organizations to post information. Additionally, we were never explicitly forbidden by the SC to place our fliers on the wall; we simply construed this as an act of free speech. However, if SC members had asked us not to put up fliers, we would have politely refrained from doing so. Our intentions were not defacement, and I apologize if they were interpreted this way. Fraher’s letter makes it appear that we acted in a premeditated, malicious manner.
However, these events constituted a very casual, consensual interaction that was in no way meant to sabotage another group’s presentation. The general aim of the wall display was to promote dialogue and awareness of global issues at UNM. Thus, we felt it was appropriate to voice the context of why the wall exists. The wall display certainly achieved its objectives and made a statement; our actions had a negligible effect on this outcome.
Finally, I maintain that the statement “the nation of Israel lives” in Hebrew does not challenge the prospect of a peaceful settlement between Israel and a future Palestinian state that could live side by side.
Bonnie Minkus
UNM student
Comments to second opinion
Vicki Johnson:
Bonnie Minkus is listed as the Vice-President of UNMIA, not just a member.
Lynn Provencio
And the vice-president isn’t a member?…
Vicki Johnson
posted 5/08/07 @ 1:33 AM EST
A vice president is more than a member. Or is Bonnie, who self identified as a “member”, just not willing to admit she has some responsibility for the group?
Octavian
posted 5/08/07 @ 12:13 PM EST
Free speech is funny isn’t it. People howl about it but
God forbid if anyone ever exercises it for real.
Freddie
posted 5/08/07 @ 8:01 PM EST
Looks like Vicki Johnson is just nitpicking. Not surprising, considering her well-publicized political bias.
Vickie Johnson:
Apparently your definition if nitpicking is what most people call fact. How is it possible to be vice-president and not a member and why do you focus on this point rather than other more important information in Vicki’s response. You will not defend the actions taken by the Alliance but you try to divert the agreement about mundane details to distract the audience.
When reading what has been written by the members of the Alliance I was impressed with their ability to frame the argument. Poor research on my behalf resulted in my assumptions being based on incomplete information. It is not the undergrads that are crafting the media campaign of the Alliance but a professional. Tamar Ginossar is the advisor for the group. This person is a professional; she has a PhD in communications and is a part time professor in the communications department. It is important to understand Tamar Ginossar is trained to manipulate the media and she will do so to achieve the Alliance’s right wing political objective.
Lynn Provencio
posted 5/27/07 @ 9:37 PM EST
In fact, you are far wrong. Tamar Ginossar wasn’t even there, and knew nothing about it when some members decided on their own (not as a UNMIA action) to protest the Salaam Coalition “wall” exhibit.
Before making accusations, it would be wise to check on the facts.
Why should it surprise you that we are able to think clearly and write coherently? The logic of our position is clear and backed up by documentation and historical record. It’s easy to present the truth.
Some of us were very angry at the Salaam Coalition’s gratuitous and slanderous attack on the State of Israel. If only everyone saw it for what it is…
UNMIA is far from right wing. If your position is justified, you should be able to make better arguments than that.
Tamar Ginossar, Ph.D.
posted 5/21/07 @ 2:21 PM EST
I was, indeed, the faculty sponsor for the UNM-Israel Alliance, and I do have a Ph.D. in communication. However, to claim that having education in communication provides me with some mysterious, evil ability to “manipulate the media” reveals a lack of knowledge of what encompasses communication studies. My research focus is on health information seeking of Internet Cancer Support Group members.
In addition, I was not present at the event that is discussed here and obviously I do not know what happened there. Therefore, I did not, in any way, write the letters, or even read them before UNMIA members posted them. The members involved (and Bonnie, by the way, is a doctoral student, not an undergraduate as posted) are certainly capable of expressing their opinions without my help.
Moreover, UNMIA is not a “right wing” group. It is advocating for Israel, which is a democratic country with a pluralistic society. The wall (or the fence, as it is referred to in Hebrew) was erected to decrease the terrorists attacks on Israel. It is contested by some groups within Israel, both on the left and on the right wing of the political map. I invite the author of this posting to meet with me if she/he wants to talk about my views about it.
I am not familiar with the person who posted the comments against me, and clearly this person is not familiar with me, or with my political views. My portrayal as a “right-wing master mind” is ridiculous. It is perfectly fine to debate the wall, or any other issue. I can even see why some people prefer to depict the situation in “black and white” and refuse to see the complexity of the problems at hand. I reject the personal, unfounded attacks in this post.
UNMIA and Salam have a lot in common. We do not have to agree on every topic, but it is important to remember that most people on both sides gain nothing in the current conflict, and have everything to gain by finding a peaceful solution.
Sincerely,
Tamar Ginossar, Ph.D.
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