We published their opinions. We have a policy of not censoring opinions just because they’re critical of Israeli politics. We’ve in good company: the New York Review of Books, the Nation, even Ha’aretz in Jerusalem have similar stances.

Blue Star’s reaction? A toxic e-mail blast, reprinting (without the authors’ permission or ours) the opinions we published, larded with inflammatory headlines like “Ugly Anti-Semitism in Response to BlueStarPR Coexistence Poster.” (See it at http://www.berkeleydailypl anet.com/ mcl/bluestar- pr.htm .)

Even worse, they added, under the headline “Shocking Letters to the Editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet,” another unsigned “letter” which had never appeared in the Planet and never would, because we don’t print unsigned or anti-Semitic letters. We’d never seen it, let alone published it.

Blast recipients—there were a lot of them—wrote knee-jerk outraged letters denouncing the Planet for anti-Semitism, incorporating the material which they’d gotten from Blue Star.

We called and wrote to Blue Star, threatening legal action for libel. They promptly (and prudently) issued a grudging partial retraction, presumably on advice of counsel, but the damage is done.

Blue Star’s effort to link the Berkeley Daily Planet with this spurious letter casts doubt on all the rest of their pro-Israel public relations endeavors. They couldn’t say where they’d gotten the phony letter or why they used it—I called to ask, and was told that “a student sent it.” Oh sure.

http://www.berkeley dailyplanet. com/issue/ 2008-10-09/ article/31298? headline= Free-Speech- Is-not-Hate- Journalism-

Some of this is based on misperceptions: for example, we sometimes use a map we created of historical Palestine on Sproul to signify that we want to recognize the history of the destruction of Palestinian villages by Israel in 1948 (the map has a hook for every village). The last time we did this we put up a sign stating clearly that this was a map of historical Palestine, not a call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel/Palestine. We also handed out a flyer saying similar things. But people continue spreading the lie that the map is a proof of our “secret wish” to throw Israelis into the sea (including our own relatives and friends!). There doesn’t seem to a way of stopping them from spreading this slander.

There is no necessary connection between criticism of zionism and anti-semitism. Up to the middle of the twentieth century most jews in the world weren’t zionists, for a whole variety of reasons. Denying us Israelis the right to even debate a non-zionist future is truly denying our right for self-determination.

I posted my post on Friday morning, before I knew about the threats in 145 Dwinelle against SJP members, but what I predicted would happen in my blog post was completely correct: because of the irresponsible campaign by Tikvah leaders to accuse SJP, they created an unsafe environment for our members on campus and somebody left a threat to us on the wall in 145 Dwinelle.

Here are pictures:

If Tikvah as a group doesn’t want to be associated with this campaign, then its other members are free to criticize its leaders for presenting the image that it’s speaking for the group, and for encouraging this sort of vandalism and intimidation on campus.