Mick Hartley

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A Jew Count

Picture the following: A discussion in a post-graduate university class on the topic of Jews turns ugly. The professor is uncritical when one student says he doesn’t want to be around Jews. Another student complains about “rich Jews,” implying their excessive power.  In a subsequent class, the same professor, as if to validate those points, says half her department faculty are Jews and with her approbation, students conduct a ‘Jew count’. 

While this sounds like an episode in Germany leading up to the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, it occurred more recently and much closer to home, at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Social Work. Now, more details are emerging under the exceptional circumstance of two U of T professors publicly criticizing a colleague for facilitating classroom anti-Semitism and the university administration’s inadequate response. 

Read about it here. 

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9 responses to “A Jew Count”

  1. Dom Avatar
    Dom

    Do you know about Jennifer Peto’s MS Thesis at Toronto? Pretty foul stuff. You can read it here. And yes, sadly, she’s Jewish.
    http://www.scribd.com/doc/37214827/Israel-Jennifer-Peto

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  2. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    Well, that was a depressing read.

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  3. Noga Avatar
    Noga

    From the introduction of the thesis:
    “.. mentioned Baruch Goldstein – the Jewish settler who, in February 1994, had massacred over 50 Palestinians while they were praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.”
    According to wikipedia:
    “Goldstein was an American-born Jewish Israeli physician who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Muslims at prayer there and wounding another 150.”
    The very first hard fact provided by the author was an exaggeration and a lie. Why claim he killed more than 50 when he killed 29? Isn’t 29 a large enough quantity of dead bodies to be outraged about? Why the need to lie, then?
    What kind of a cause for justice is it that it requires lies to maintain its pathos?

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  4. Danny Lucas Avatar
    Danny Lucas

    His intended no doubt, to kill the other 150 he wounded–so your quibble over the number of murder victims is hypocritical.

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  5. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    Why on earth is it hypocritical to point out that she (Jennifer Peto) overstates the number he killed? Would it be better to say he killed 179 then: the 29 he did kill, plus the 150 he injured? Would that then not be hypocritical, even though it happens to be untrue?

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  6. Danny Lucas Avatar
    Danny Lucas

    You are deliberately breaking your teeth on the olive stone; and behaving exactly how holocaust deniers behave! What is true is that Goldstein set out to kill as many Muslims as he could. Peto might be wrong about the precise number–or she might be right: How many of those shot, on the day, died of their wounds later?

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  7. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    Eh? You certainly have a way of ramping up an argument. Now I’m like a holocaust denier!
    Baruch Goldstein, according to Wikipedia, killed 29 Arabs. I’ve seen other sources say “up to 30”. 125 were wounded. Jennifer Peto gave the number killed as 50. Noga, above, pointed out the inaccuracy and wondered why Peto felt it necessary to exaggerate the numbers like that – as if 29 wasn’t bad enough. A perfectly reasonable comment, I thought.
    You then come in and accuse Noga of being hypocritical. The reason, as far as I understand you, is that he, Goldstein, wanted to kill more. So for you there’s no difference between killing and wanting to kill, or killing and wounding. Which is not quite how everyone else, from law courts to writers of history books, sees it. And, obviously, if people died of their wounds later as a result of Goldstein’s shooting, then they would have been included among those killed. That’s how it works.
    I suggest your argument is ridiculous, and that you’re being thoroughly offensive with your accusations of hypocrisy, and, now, this absurd nonsense about me being the equivalent of a holocaust denier.
    Go away and bother someone else.

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  8. Danny Lucas Avatar
    Danny Lucas

    The transparent fact of the matter is that you do not wish to address Peto’s thesis about Israeli racism. You therefore cut the whole thing away over the issue of numbers killed; which is what holocaust deniers do. My accusation stands and will not go away.

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  9. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    No. The transparent fact of the matter is that nowhere, till now, have you brought up the question of Peto’s thesis about Israeli racism. It was you who decided to launch your absurd attack on the grounds of the number of people killed. That’s what this whole ridiculous dispute has been about, with you throwing round accusations of hypocrisy and holocaust denial because a commenter here pointed out, quite rightly, that Peto had exaggerated the number of those killed by Goldstein. Having lost that particular argument you now decide to change the subject.
    You wanted to defend Peto’s thesis? Fine. But that’s not what you chose to do, is it? You concentrated on the numbers issue, and ended up making an idiot of yourself. And now, frankly, it’s too late. I’m not interested.
    And – just to be quite clear about this, because I don’t take kindly to being compared to a holocaust denier – you may have noticed that no one here has denied that Goldstein killed 29 Arabs, or indeed that he was a racist scumbag. I feel I need to point that out because you seem not quite to understand what you’re talking about.

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