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 thinking in social science courses.
Our universities develop wonderful things in technology and medicine to benefit mankind. But in social science and humanities courses, particularly those in history and political science and communications, "education" has morphed into indoctrination in Marxism, "post-colonialism," Islamofascism, and anti-Semitism.
Radicals who want to impose their world view upon vulnerable students "discover" pseudo-history and political paradigms of "oppression." Serious research has been replaced in much of academia by the expressing of opinions, especially those vaguely focused upon “social justice.” Pseudo-academic advocates promote academic support for totalitarian regimes and terrorist movements like Hamas.
One such victim of the demise of academic standards was the young woman Rachel Corrie, who died while trying to interfere with the work of an Israeli army earth mover operating in Gaza. There she plopped herself down as a human shield for Hamas terrorists to assist the jihad. The army tractor was operating in a live combat zone, where Hamas weapons smuggling tunnels were being cleared out.
Along comes Neve Gordon of Ben Gurion University in Israel, who calls for a boycott of the state of Israel, who writes for the Iranian state newspaper (which also promotes Holocaust Denial) and the jihadist al-Jazeera. Gordon recently wrote an Op-Ed piece in the "The Nation," magazine, which celebrated the "martyrdom" of Rachel Corrie and questioned my own journalistic integrity. Gordon's other venues for venting his opinions include the Neo-Nazi "Counterpunch" web site and his bash-Israel diatribes are also published on the site of Holocaust Denier Ernst Zundel.
Gordon is upset because I flew to Israel last year and provided Israeli government lawyers with evidence about the real Rachel Corrie and the real International Solidarity Movement (ISM). This is the ISM of the Terrorist-Flotilla fame, which also sent Corrie to her death in Gaza.
After she died, Rachel's parents filed a wrongful-death suit against Israel in an Israeli court and demanded damages from the state. Gordon claims in his article that the trial, which took place over two and half years and involved mountains of testimony from all sides, was a miscarriage of justice.
Gordon specifically attacks me for my mentioning a photograph that was cited in the 145 page transcript of the trial in which ISM activists in the West Bank are shown waving terrorist-provided 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 showing other ISM members brandishing guns in them that were provided to the Court. In some of them the women were disguised as Jewish settler women to infiltrate Jewish communities in the West Bank and to aid terrorist groups like Hamas. Rachel Corrie was in Gaza as a member of the ISM recruited from Olympia, Washington.
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 a college professor, so one might assume he knows how to do research. Well, one seems to be wrong. A great deal of Gordon's academic record consists of anti-Israel hate propaganda misrepresented as research. The photos, he claims, attempted to impute guilt of the ISM by association.
My article here names the people in the photos and discusses the ISM at length. 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 you another photo, this one of Neve Gordon:
It speaks for itself.
:
The photo was taken shortly after the Passover Massacre in Netanya, Israel in 2002, where 31 people, some 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 IDF. Gordon entered Ramallah illegally, a bit like Rachel Corrie in Gaza.
The ISM was founded by similar “human shields.” You can see why Gordon embraces them. In the photo, Gordon is clearly making a victory and solidarity salute in support of Arafat. Captured documents have showed that Arafat personally signed off on the Netanya bombing and many similar terror attacks.
Gordon has been involved with the ISM many times and frequently is an honored guest at their anti-Israel pro-terror conclaves in the US.
Gordon is still working as a Professor at Ben Gurion University (in contrast with Norman Finkelstein, who was fired by DePaul University for being the Chicago Neve Gordon!). From BGU's ivory halls Gordon continues to call for actions that would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state.
In his Nation article attacking me and the Haifa court’s credibility, Gordon further states, “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. She was responsible for her own death. The idea she was protecting a Palestinian home, by the way, is an ISM fabrication.
What Neve Gordon left out in his column in The Nation was that Rachel Corrie was recruited and trained by the ISM. She was even given a training manual, one that I furnished to the Haifa court, showing that the organization prepares all volunteers before going into combat zones to interfere violently with the 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 supposedly made statements to the contrary. Actually, Rachel Corrie wrote home to her mother in praise of the “martyrs” (suicide bombers) who were fighting the Israelis and in support of “legitimate resistance” (ISM Newspeak for terrorism).
Gordon did not mention in his article in The Nation that Rachel Corrie wrote copious emails home to her mother, in which she described entering 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, who was mentioned in her emails home to her mother and in other ISM communiques.
Testimony in the trial by ISM activists proved she was not protecting any "home" when she was killed. That was a fictional scenario concocted later by ISM member Joseph Carr, who doctored photos to make it look like Corrie was protecting a house when she was run over. Yes, the ISM has discovered the propaganda potential of Photoshop!
I submitted to the Haifa Court a tape-recorded interview by phone that I did with Joseph Carr just before the trial. In it, Carr told me how he and Rachel Corrie had retrieved the body of a dead terrorist in an open field right in front of noses of the IDF, after being tasked to do so by Qishta. When I asked Carr whether he was afraid he’d be arrested by the IDF, he replied, “No, because we knew the Arab snipers would shoot them (if they emerged).”
Thomas Saffold, an ISM leader present that same day in Rafah, admitted that Rachel had gone off on her own and was in a place she should not have been; a place where the IDF was not expecting any of the "protesters" to be. She was not protecting any 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 from his vehicle for fear that Arab snipers would shoot him.
That is why Rachel Corrie did what she did. And it was to assist Hamas terrorists in a known combat zone. Her death was not formally a suicide and the Court never said that it was. Her death, however, was the result of her playing a game of chicken with a bulldozer whose driver could not see her.
"Professor" Gordon, like Rachel Corrie, likes to pose in front of cameras with terrorists and to aid international murderers, while claiming to be 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. Since they were not jailed by Israel for their role in abetting terrorism, in a sense we agree that justice was not done the Corries. The judge even ordered the Israeli taxpayer to pay the state’s cost for the trial.
The Corries are touring the world promoting the goals of the Hamas. The trial was just another publicity stunt by them to damage Israel. Gordon may beget countless other Rachel Corries in his lectures, where he calls upon his students to emulate this young woman who died for the Hamas.