These are the kinds of speakers who are welcomed and celebrated on university campuses today. Avoid jihad terror, you’ll be smear and defamed, and your event disrupted. Support jihad terror, and you’ll be a hero. When are these malignant clowns, Peled and Tamimi, booked for Stanford University?
“Miko Peled: Zionists do not deserve a platform,” by Alastair Thomas, Jewish Chronicle, November 12, 2017:
“Zionists should be treated like Nazis”, pro-Palestinian speakers told a 150 strong audience at University College London (UCL) on Friday evening.
The heavily condemned talk, Segregated and Unequal: Palestinian Life under Apartheid Israel, was held under heavy security presence and strict ID checks.
Israeli-born Miko Peled, who describes himself as a human rights activist, was speaking alongside Azzam Tamimi, a prominent Hamas supporter. Pointing to his pink BDS badge, he told the audience that he was speaking about “justice, freedom and tolerance.”
Responding to the criticism surrounding the event, he said: “If there is going to be any hate or incitement, it is certainly not going to come from us.”
However, Mr Peled went on to describe Israel as “a racist, apartheid regime, engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
He continued: “The intent of the state of Israel has never been to live with the Palestinians; the intention from the very beginning was to destroy and get rid of them.”
Midway through the evening, two Jewish students left the room, saying: “You’ve got two liars here – a self-hating Jew and a terrorist sympathiser.” They were met with jeers and laughter from the rest of the audience.
In his speech, Mr Tamimi claimed he had been “silenced” for previous comments defending Hamas’s suicide bombings. At a similar event in 2012, he had said: “I’d be a martyr for my country, of course. If you’re not prepared to die for your country, then you are not a patriot.”
He lamented to the audience: “Many universities do not invite me because of the efforts of the pro-Israel lobby.”
During what was an impassioned speech, Mr Tamimi repeatedly accused Zionism of being a “racist ideology”, which determines a chosen land for a select group of people. He said: “Think about it for a minute, you think there is a true god that favours a certain people because of the colour of their skin? It cannot be god; it must be some idol, a man-made deity.”
He paused before quipping: “God is not an estate agent.”
The two speakers were asked about the impact of the Jewish and Israeli lobbies in the United States. Mr Tamimi said “The pro-Israel lobby uses all sorts of dirty tactics.”
Mr Peled added: “For the last two years there has been this witch-hunt against antisemites and Holocaust deniers.”
He went on to compliment Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and Palestinian support, saying Corbyn “shows clear leadership. You put away this nonsense about Holocaust denial and this nonsense about antisemitism. You focus on what’s important.”
A student from UCL Friends of Israel, probed Mr Peled on a tweet from 2016 where he said: “Jews have a reputation for being sleazy thieves.”
Mr Peled claimed that his comment had been taken out of context, but did not respond to the accusation that he was perpetuating antisemitic tropes, except to denounce Israel’s government for being “sleazy thieves.”
She also asked Mr Tamimi about his previous statements defending suicide-bombing. As the student spoke, the audience members began to shout in outrage, saying “shut your mouth”, while the security staff started converging on her.
Mr Tamimi responded angrily, shouting: “What do you expect [Hamas] to do? Of course, they will rebel, they will fight, they will do something.”
When pressed to clarify, he shouted: “We are not in a court. I do not have to answer you.”
Mr Peled added: “I’m not going to tell [Hamas] how they need to respond. The expectation that Palestinians will not respond with violence is absurd. ‘Is it right or is it wrong?’ is not the question.” This was greeted by loud applause and shouts of ‘preach’ by the audience….
“University College London to Host Hamas Supporter, Activist Who Said Jews Known as ‘Sleazy Thieves,’” Algemeiner, November 1, 2017:
The University College London (UCL) will be hosting an event next week featuring a speaker with ties to the Islamist terrorist group Hamas and another with a history of making antisemitic remarks.
Miko Peled — an Israeli-American activist who was disinvited from speaking at Princeton University in 2016 after publishing a series of controversial tweets, including one saying “Jews have reputation 4being sleazy thieves” — will appear at UCL on Friday, November 10, at an event organized in part by the school’s Friends of Palestine Society.
Peled will be joined by Azzam Tamimi, a British-Palestinian academic who previously admitted to being associated with Hamas.
“I have a great honor to be close to Hamas,” Tamimi said at Queen Mary’s University in 2012, Haaretz reported. He claimed that “all the leaders of Hamas are my friends,” and added, “I am not ashamed of my association with Hamas. Hamas, in my view, is the true representative of the Palestinian people.”