Last time former Georgia Democrat Congressman Cynthia McKinney made national news was in 2006, when she struck a Capitol police officer after the supposedly racist bastard had the audacity to stop her for failing to show I.D. But before that embarrassing display, McKinney had amassed a list of anti-white, anti-American, and anti-Semitic remarks. She is truly the embodiment of left-wing hate.
The mainstream media is very good at reporting supposed right-wing anti-Semitism, like last month when two South Carolina Congressmen made the mistake of stereotyping Jews as being frugal with their money. But radical leftist anti-Semites—especially non-white ones—Louis Farrakhan comes to mind—the media tends to sweep under the rug.
It is also an unfortunate reality that leftist racists and anti-Semites are regular guests at universities, as painstakingly documented by David Horowitz et al. This was the case last week at my wife’s alma mater Binghamton University (formerly SUNY Binghamton).
McKinney delivered anti-Semitic rant speech called “Black in America, Black in Palestine.” But if that wasn’t bad enough, all opposing views were suppressed via physical intimidation at the speech location and the theft of flyers alerting the Jewish community of McKinney’s visit.
Earlier this week, my wife received this email from the school’s Hillel organization informing alumni of what happened. Had my wife never received it, I would never have known these disgusting events took place:
Dear Friends,
By now, many of you have heard about a disturbing event that took place at Binghamton University on Tuesday, November 10th when former Congresswoman, and noted anti-Israel speaker, Cynthia McKinney came to campus. …
We are deeply saddened that our students were silenced by the event organizers and by physical intimidation. Throughout the evening, event coordinators threatened to remove anyone who offered a dissenting opinion, and during the question and answer period anyone who even hinted at a different point of view was either intimidated or embarrassed into silence. Student “bodyguards” were in place to prevent anyone who had an opposing viewpoint from speaking.
The Jewish campus community has been deeply affected by this incident.
We are concerned that the University’s statement in the above article does not go far enough. It does not condemn the physical intimidation used by event organizers. Furthermore, the University’s statement leaves students to work out conflicts amongst themselves, without University guidance and leadership about what constitutes civil discourse.
We will continue to work with the University to resolve these matters and make our opinions known. …
More details:
Pro-Israel fliers confiscated at campus speech
November 17, 2009WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Fliers distributed by Binghamton University Jewish students outside a campus speech by a critic of Israel were collected and confiscated by event organizers during the event.
Students from the Hillel Jewish Student Union at Binghamton passed out information outside auditorium doors before a Nov. 10 speech by former Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney. The New York State university’s Hillel president, Rebecca Kohn, described the fliers as facts about Israel and Hamas and other points that they did not believe McKinney would address in her speech, which was titled “Black in America, Black in Palestine.”
But before McKinney spoke, leaders of the Binghamton Political Initiative, a graduate-student organized group, asked that anyone who had received a Hillel flier should pass them to the end of the row so they could be collected.
Kohn also said that during the question period, those who asked questions critical of McKinney’s views were quickly cut off or embarrassed. For example, when one pro-Israel questioner briefly stuttered from nerves, McKinney held up the flier that Hillel passed out and said, “Do you need this?”
An article by Hillel describing the events of the McKinney speech was printed as a letter to the editor in the campus newspaper last Friday. Kohn said Hillel was reaching out to the Binghamton Political Initiative to discuss the event. The event was co-sponsored by the Multicultural Resource Center and other campus organizations.
A university spokeswoman said Tuesday that school administrators had met with the Hillel director to discuss Jewish student concerns and said the school hoped that students could work out the issue among themselves.
“While the University defends the right of event organizers to determine the content of their programs, we hope and expect that all attendees at events held on campus will be treated respectfully regardless as to the extent of their agreement with the program’s message,” the university said in a statement. “When that does not occur, our response is to continue to work with students and student organizations to promote a more respectful community. Part of that work is helping students to develop the necessary tools to resolve disputes effectively amongst themselves.”
The statement also said that “student organizations are under no requirement to be neutral or balanced in their expressive activity and we have been made aware of concerns that the hosts of this event were not interested in presenting critiques of the guest speaker as part of the program. At Binghamton University, as at most campuses, those who stand in disagreement with a program’s message certainly have many alternative avenues available to them to express their own viewpoints including hosting their own events, letter writing campaigns and rallies.”
Kohn said that while the administration had met with the campus Hillel director, no one had met with any Jewish students. She said the university’s statement amounted to administrators saying that while they did not approve of the disrespect shown to attendees at the McKinney speech, they were not going to take any action.
McKinney, whose father famously blamed “J-E-W-S” when she was defeated in a race for re-election to her Atlanta-area congressional district in 2002, has most recently been involved in the Free Gaza movement. She was arrested last summer by Israel for attempting to break the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip and called Israel’s operation in Gaza “full-scale, outright genocide.”
During her Binghamton speech, she made comparisons between Palestinians and blacks in America, and called Israel an apartheid state.
Binghamton Hillel published this response:
Response to Cynthia McKinney
Published Monday, November 16, 2009by Hillel Executive Board
We write to you because our voices have been silenced.
Tuesday night former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney spoke at Binghamton University at an event sponsored by the Binghamton Political Initiative, the Walter Rodney Committee and other campus groups. While we expected her speech to be biased against Israel, based on her well-documented record of past presentations of this nature, we were utterly unprepared for our opposing points of view to be so forcefully suppressed.
As executive board members of Hillel at Binghamton and members of an academic community, we felt that it was our responsibility to educate our peers on all angles of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Therefore, we had spent the week leading up to the event preparing handouts with information representing various points of view that we believed would not be shared by Ms. McKinney.
To our shock, at the beginning of last night’s event, student coordinators were forcibly taking this information away from people. The moderator publicly announced that anyone who received handouts should pass them to the aisle for immediate confiscation. These actions are unacceptable. As students at an institution that promotes academic honesty, integrity, and truth, we are angered that our right to free speech was so clearly denied. Once we distributed the sheets, those who held them had the choice to read the information or disregard it, but it was in no way the coordinators’ or moderator’s right to aggressively take away that choice.
Throughout the evening, student coordinators threatened to remove anyone who offered a dissenting opinion, and during the question and answer period anyone who even hinted at a different point of view was either intimidated or embarrassed into silence. An extreme lack of respect was shown to anyone in attendance who did not wholeheartedly endorse Ms. McKinney’s presentation.
As representatives of the Jewish community on campus, we are outraged that our fellow students chose to bring a speaker to campus who has such a clear record of bigotry. MsMcKinney is strongly tied to the New Black Panther Party, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a “black racist” group and is decidedly anti-white and anti-semitic. In 2006,McKinney lost her seat in congress. “Following McKinney’s concession speech, a reporter attempted to ask the Congresswoman why she thought she lost. The New Black Panther member (part of McKinney’s security detail) interrupted, shouting, “Why do you think she lost? You wanna know what led to the loss? Israel. The Zionists. You. Put on your yarmulke and celebrate.” (Anti Defamation League Press Release, August 9, 2006)
We are deeply saddened by the fact that our peers who planned this event clearly had no desire for any real discourse other than the hate speech that was delivered to the audience. While we do not have to agree with one another, we do have a responsibility to respect one another and allow for the open exchange of opinions. Ms. McKinney’s visit to Binghamton was an affront to any multicultural efforts on campus. Furthermore, it insults the significant struggles that African-Americans went through to gain civil rights in the United States and the Jewish community’s support for those civil rights. Jewish leaders marched in Montgomery and Selma. Fifty percent of white civil rights workers were Jewish and fifty percent of civil rights attorneys in the south were Jewish. Jews helped to found the NAACP. Historically Black Colleges welcomed professors who were Holocaust survivors to teach on their campuses. Ms. McKinney wants us to throw away this glorious shared history and begin a new relationship of bitterness and misunderstanding.
We sincerely disagree with this approach and hope that the leaders of all multicultural groups at Binghamton University share our desire to work together to combat hate and intolerance by creating opportunities for real dialogue. We look forward to a day when we can truly partner with our fellow students and learn to understand and respect one another’s backgrounds.
Hillel E-Board
What’s sad is that Hillel seems surprised that this type of hate speech happened on their campus and that voices of opposition were systematically surpressed.
But this is the standard MO of the left: spread lies and hate and silence opposition. The mainstream media does it, the Obama administration is doing it, and on left-wing-dominated college campus they are most certainly doing it.
Here’s another sad thing about coverage of this incident: Not once is McKinney’s Democrat party affiliation mentioned.
END THE OCCUPATION! LIBERALS OUT OF THE SCHOOLS NOW!
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