I hope they're not at Kent State University.
The distinctive perspective that Mr. Khaldi holds made him a prime candidate to lecture at Kent State, where we pride ourselves on diversity and inclusion. His remarkable story of growing up in a Bedouin tent, gaining degrees at Israel’s top universities, serving as a border patrolman in the Israeli Defense Forces and rising through the ranks of the foreign ministry, should serve as an inspiration to us all.
Mr. Khaldi has shown countless times that, despite being a minority Muslim in a majority Jewish state, opportunities in a democracy are boundless regardless of religion, race, gender, skin color, political affiliation, sexual orientation, etc."
From KentWired, the student newspaper:
Ishmael Khaldi, Former Deputy Consul General at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, spoke at Bowman Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 25. Khaldi wrote "A Shepherd's Journey", his autobiography about becoming Israel's first Bedouin diplomat. Photo by Anthony Vence.
Former Israeli diplomat Ishmael Khaldi’s lecture was going smoothly until an altercation with a Kent State professor threatened to derail Tuesday night’s event.
After the speech at Bowman Hall ended, Khaldi opened the floor to a Q-and-A session. The first person to ask a question was history professor Julio Pino.
Standing at the back of the auditorium, Pino asked Khaldi how he and his government could justify providing aid to countries like Turkey with blood money that came from the deaths of Palestinian children and babies.
Julio Pino.This is not Pino’s first brush with controversy. In 2002 he wrote an opinion column for the Daily Kent Stater praising a suicide bomber. In 2007 he made national headlines when the The Drudge Report featured a story accusing him of contributing to a blog called Global War, which refers to itself as a “jihadist news service.”
The crowd fell into an awkward silence as the two continued to exchange words from across the auditorium.
“It is not respectful to me here,” Khaldi said.
Pino responded by saying “your government killed people” and claimed Khaldi was not being respectful to him.
“I do respect you, but you are wrong,” Khaldi said. “It’s a lie.”
The exchange ended as Pino stormed out of the auditorium shouting
“Death to Israel!”
The Akron Beacon Journal has more history on the history professor... Sorry, associate professor.
.... The native of Cuba and convert to Islam has been a lightning rod on campus for a decade.
In 2002, he wrote a column in the Daily Kent Stater eulogizing an 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber.
In 2005 and 2006, he wrote letters to the student-run paper criticizing American policy in the Muslim world.
One letter from Pino later appeared on a jihadist blog, www. global.war.bloghi.com, to which he told the KSU administration that he had contributed. The website no longer exists under that name.
“You attack, and continue to attack, us everywhere,” read both the letter and submission to the website. “The ill done to the Muslim nations must be requited. The Muslim child does not cry alone; the Muslim woman does not cry alone; and the Muslim man is already at your gates.’’
The university fired his department head in 2007 when he allowed Pino to take a fully paid, six-week professional leave to the United Arab Emirates to learn Arabic. The university said John Jameson did not follow university protocol in approving Pino’s travel. Jameson said officials were anxious about further bad publicity about Pino and yanked his title and ordered Pino back to campus in retribution.
In 2009, the U.S. Secret Service acknowledged that it was investigating Pino “as an individual who came to our attention who needed to be interviewed.” Resident agent in charge David Lee said then that officials went to Pino’s home in the “ongoing” investigation and declined to elaborate.
In the latest dust-up, KSU student and event organizer Evan Gildenblatt of Cincinnati, in a guest editorial Thursday in the student media, criticized Pino for abusing his powerful influence over students...
Tuesday evening, Kent State was graced with a visit from a diplomat who has served in the United States as a representative of the State of Israel. Among other positions held, Ishmael Khaldi was posted as the Deputy Consul General at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco and then appointed the Middle East and Arab Affairs Advisor to the Foreign Minister in Jerusalem. What makes him particularly unique, however, is that he was the first Bedouin member of the Israeli Foreign Service and the highest-ranking Muslim officer to date......... The evening, however, was abruptly interrupted by a Kent State professor who instigated a pre-meditated altercation with the speaker and then proceeded to hurl sickeningly disrespectful allegations at this guest of the university. While I wholeheartedly condemn the actions and words of this faculty member along with his abuse of the powerful influence over students that comes with professorship, I do not write this under such auspices. I write instead to remind us all of the reason why we are here and perhaps inject some much needed wisdom into this unfortunate situation in the hopes that it may become a learning experience.
Oh, it's a learning experience alright. What we learn is that supporters of Israel do not have reason to feel safe on American college campuses. Muslim students and faculty, on the other hand, feel not only safe but entitled.
I have watched this phenomenon grow over the years and have always believed that had Abe Greenhouse been expelled - then charged, tried and incarcerated - for attacking Natan Sharansky at Rutgers back in 2003, the trend might have been stopped in its tracks. But apparently, we have needed another near-decade of "learning experiences" in which to learn nothing.
By the way, University President Lester Lefton has issued a memorandum, criticizing Pino for his "grotesque failure to model" university values. BtB notes that the memo did not include an apology to the "guest" of the university, Mr. Khaldi.
BtB also notes that the official university website on which this official university admonition is posted, sports a footer on every page, a blurb which boasts that Kent State offers "the friendly, casual atmosphere of a liberal arts college."
To this observer, the threat of "Death to Israel" seems neither friendly nor casual.
Has our society become so corrupted that we need to remind parents to protect their own children? if you're going to send them to live on an American college campus, engage in some due diligence so you will know "where" they are, and exactly how "friendly" the faculty is.
Posted by: Mannie Sherberg | Tuesday, 01 November 2011 at 11:07 AM
Posted by: Yael | Tuesday, 01 November 2011 at 02:12 PM