In what appears to have “the makings of a Saturday Night Live skit,” Paul Miller, executive director of the Salomon Center for American Jewish Thought, reported in the New York Observer this week that the University of Missouri had hired a professor named George Smith - who “despises Israel” - to teach a course called “Perspectives on Zionism.”

The class was cancelled, however, due to the fact that no students had enrolled in it. However, anti-Israel student groups are said to be trying to recruit students so that the course can be revived.

Smith, said Miller, “has called the creation of the Jewish State a shameful chapter in Jewish history.

Smith also finds humor in Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli citizens,” writes Miller. “When Sderot resident Noam Bedein came to [the university ]to discuss the nearly 13,000 rockets Hamas has fired, killing and injuring the people of Sderot, Smith showed up and distributed fliers that mocked the attacks – justifying terrorism because the average Palestinian has to 'go through a checkpoint'” just to go to the bathroom.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/197257#.VYvw4vnF_kJ



What's next? Geert Wilders hired to teach a class on Mohammed and the history of Islam?

Suspected Palestinian assailant shot and seriously hurt; officer reportedly on life support


Palestinian man stabbed and seriously injured an Israeli Border Police officer Sunday outside Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, police said. An officer on the scene shot the suspected assailant.

The suspect was identified as an 18-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank, who was named by Arabic media as Yasser Yassin Tarwa of Hebron. He was seriously injured and sent to Hadassah Hospital.

The officer suffered multiple stab wounds to the neck and chest and was taken to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital after receiving treatment on site. The man was on life support in serious condition.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/border-policeman-stabbed-outside-jerusalems-damascus-gate/

Experts from US, Germany warn IDF 'legal zeal' sets dangerous precedent tying hands of democracies fighting terror.

The IDF went to extraordinary lengths last summer to prevent civilian casualties while fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza, achieving a remarkable 1:1 civilian to combatant ratio, but according to international legal experts it went too far in avoiding casualties among the enemy population.

Willy Stern of Vanderbilt Law School, in an article to be published next Monday in the Weekly Standard, details what he found while spending two weeks with attorneys in the IDF's international law department dubbed "Dabla" as well as front-line commanders, and documents the IDF's "legal zeal" which as he notes has not stemmed the deluge of international criticism against it.

Stern listed how the IDF bombarded Gaza residents with thousands of telephone calls, leaflet drops, TV and radio messages, as well as calls to influential citizens urging them to evacuate residents, and in doing so gave the terrorist enemy detailed information about its troop movements.

"It was abundantly clear that IDF commanders had gone beyond any mandates that international law requires to avoid civilian casualties," writes Stern. He reported how Dabla attorneys have to sign off on a "target card" for each airstrike on terror targets, with the cards enumerating all of the relevant data about the planned strike.

In contrast, the Hamas "doctrine manual" captured by the IDF in the Shejaiya neighborhood early last August documents how the terror group urges its fighters to embed themselves among civilians in hopes that the IDF will kill civilians.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/196506#.VXgbY_nF_kI