[OPINION | Right In Our Backyard]
tone, Laibson continually relied on facts and history as he calmly clarified and corrected several of the inflammatory statements and half-truths that Professors Makdisi and Haas were sharing with the students who filled the lecture hall.
It was distressing to observe Dr. Haas's heavy-handed partisanship, but it was even sadder when, toward the end of the discussion, Dr. Haas announced that, “With 20 minutes left, I know many of you have questions for our panelists, but I have questions of my own,” and with that statement, he robbed his own students of the opportunity to seek answers to their own questions and instead continued his display of academic inappropriateness.
It's not surprising that an article in Talon Marks, the Cerritos College student newspaper, characterized the panel discussion as being about, “Israel and the causes of the conflict,” as opposed to being about Israel and Hamas. It's not surprising to read the comment by one of the students who attended the program, “Israeli behavior toward Palestinians is destroying a lot of people there,” or another student who simply concluded, “Israel controls everything.”
The most disturbing part of the article in the student newspaper comes from the reporter himself, who writes, “This war, however, killed more than 2000 people, who were innocent civilians, mostly Palestinians,” which uses the exact terminology that Hamas recommends in their handbook (published on the Internet after one was seized by IDF forces), reminding their followers to refer to all casualties in the conflict as “innocent civilians”.
Rabbi Laibson should be commended for maintaining a cool head once he realized that this panel discussion was little more than an attempted intellectual lynching of the nation of Israel. His ability to stay on point and inject truth into the hate-speech surrounding him was more than most could have managed in similar circumstances.
Long Beach has been called the most diverse city in America, so perhaps mutual respect and peaceful coexistence are expected and even taken for granted. Maybe that's why it's all the more difficult to imagine that this sort of hateful activity is taking place just a few minutes away, in our own backyard. And that's why it's equally important to shine a bright light on Professor John Haas, a man being paid by our tax dollars to shape young minds, and the lessons he's imparting to those who will soon be tasked with creating our future.
Dr. Haas posed questions to the panel that can only be described
as those of the "How often do you beat your wife?" variety
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