This diary will be far briefer than yesterday's:
(Via Raw Story http://rawstory.com/...
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was invited to speak at the University of Chicago last Thursday. At Olmert's request, the University of Chicago attempted to prevent any media sources from covering the event, despite claiming to facilitate "open discourse and freedom of expression."
However, Electronic Intifada, a Palestinian news organization, managed to get a camera into the event anyway. The video they released is available below.
I find it startling that there is so much anti-Israeli venom present in the halls of our universities, not because such venom is undeserved--many Israeli actions seem indefensible to me--but because the MSM allows so little anti-Israeli sentiment to be displayed on a national stage. That this level of ire is possible despite the absence of media coverage reveals both an impressive level of self-determined information gathering and a wide-spread discontent with America's well-advertised "special relationship" with Israel.
Udate:
Before this diary scrolls off into the Daily Oblivion, I wanted to thank everyone for the educating discussion in the comment section. Your input made a rather sparse diary into a well-rounded debate.
I also wanted to use my position as originating diarist to step up on the soap box once again and address several of the concerns addressed in the comments below.
It is certainly true that some on the Palestinian side have engaged in some horrific acts of terrorism. I should, perhaps, have made this clear. Terrorism is always indefensible.
It should be noted, though, that terrorism is often an act of the powerless against the powerful. One should always keep in mind that some of the earliest terrorists on record were the Jewish Zealots fighting the Roman occupation; the impulse to fight, often horrifically, against oppression is not simply a Palestinian (or Irish, or Uighur) problem, but one that is common to any group of the oppressed. Though this in no way excuses the awful nature of the acts, we should make an effort to understand the impulse behind them. Simply condemning them and responding with further acts of oppression will not end the horror. Instead, it will only serve to exacerbate it. Indeed, in my view, this is exactly what is occurring in the Palestine/Israel conflict. Systemic oppression and deprivation leads to violence leads to further systemic oppression, deprivation and violence. In the process, everyone becomes guilty of terrible wrongs.
On a somewhat less grave note, the heckling and interruption of Olmert do present some interesting questions of free speech. These questions are not easily answered, but should, I believe, be debated. As I mentioned several times in the comment thread below (though other commenters put it far more eloquently), it is difficult to come up with an adequate way to protest a person like Olmert, who is given a platform to defend himself, while the opposing viewpoint is left to shout from the sidelines.