6 April 2009

 Dear Barbara Kay,

I write for The Dominion newspaper and the online newsletter Dissident Voice (links at bottom). I have engaged in emails with you previously. I wish to take you up on your stated belief in debating " both sides of the story.” I have emailed the other party for their position, as well. 
First, about your article "Getting them while they're young," are you implying that high school learners do not have critical thinking ability? What evidence do you have that the learners were indoctrinated and critically thinking was suppressed? 
Do you know what went down at the conference?

I would like to know more about the situation described by you of an “Israeli student at TTS felt too frightened by the hostile atmospherics”?
Can you provide evidence for Trustee James Pasternak contention of an “insidious anti-Israel ideology by recruiting teenagers in public schools”?

Do you know for a fact that the learners were “a captive audience of impressionable school children” and that “HAIA are not interested in promoting critical independent thinking”?
 Why do you label the film Occupation 101 as “incendiary”? Is not occupation worse than incendiary? As for balance: Is not the killing of 1400 Palestinians, the bombing of homes, schools, hospitals, and the use of white phosphorus by Israeli military incendiary?
The organizations HAIA and CAIA defined themselves as “anti-Israel Apartheid” and not “anti-Israel.” Why do you twist their position? There is a massive difference. Would you characterize opponents of South African Apartheid as anti-South Africa? Would you characterize Martin Luther King Jr as anti-US because he opposed racist policies in the US?
How do your support your contention of the school promoting anti-Israel propaganda? I submit that merely saying so is unpersuasive and does not appeal to critical independent thinking. 

Sincerely,
kim petersen

7 April 2009

Dear Kim,

*Implying* that high school students have not yet mastered critical thinking? My dear, most adults with university degrees in my opinion have not mastered the art of critical thinking, for critical thinking is not so much a matter of basic IQ as it is exposure to a wide variety of *objective* facts, a wide variety of opinion around those facts and a great deal of practice in analysis and interpretation - not to mention a certain historical referential depth that no high school student can be expected to have.

It is not the role of a high school to upload into its students a settled political finding around a subject that inspires a great deal of debate and passionate discourse on both sides. It is the role of a high school to prepare its students to think critically, which involves exposure to thinking, not memorizing. The school in question is shutting down critical thinking and presenting one side of a story as though it were settled fact, which is not the case at all. The story they are being fed is being presented by advocates and activists in a political cause, not by history teachers. That is why I call it indoctrination and it is indoctrination by any definition of the word. If of course you have evidence that an alternate thesis was put forward so that honest debate could be set before the students and they could draw conclusions based on the merits of the arguments, then you give me evidence of that. Nobody but you has even raised the question of whether what the students were presented with was one-sided or not. All but you seem agreed on that, and many are quite happy with that.

The Israeli student, who at the time was unidentified, was named in I think Saturday's Post. His mother was a professor spending a year at the Univ of Toronto. The mother begged the school to show another side of the story, and they quite haughtily refused. The boy was subjected to such hostiity he felt persecuted and could not function at the school. These facts are also not in dispute - unless you think the boy left for frivolous reasons and you have evidence of that.

I don not know what else oyu would call an audience of teenagers in a forum that bars entrance to parents, teachers and the media but "captive", and as for your other quotes, excuse me dear, but I have seen enough anti-israel propaganda from the folks who run Israel Apartheid Week to know exactly what their materials contain. I challenged the school to show Alan Dershowitz's film, The Case for Israel. have you seen it? Please if oyu have not, get off your high horse. The first rule of indoctrination is to get your subjects when they are vulnerable - and high school students are very vulnerable, being both idealistic and relatively uninformed - and this is precisely the motive behind the HAIA campaign.

All these terrible crimes you accuse Israel of are taken out of a very specific context, as is always the case with the demonizers. Gaza is not occupied - Israel left in 2004 -  and you make no mention of the provocations that caused this war. I am not sure how many rockets would have to land in your back yard for you to retaliate on neighbours who hated you and wanted you exterminated, but perhaps you are a saint. More likely you are one of those who hold Israel to a higher standard than you hold Arabs: it is what we call the soft bigortry of low expectations.

Of the 1400 killed, Israel estimates about 800 were Hamas fighters or active supporters, legitimate targets. Virtually all the rest were human shields, a war crime. But of course you don't believe anything that comes out of Israel, do you. You have made up your mind there is only one villain in this story. I wonder how anyone exposed to your biased view can possibly develop their critical thinking. They cannot.

 If you knew anything of the history of the area, and of the five wars - all started by the Arab states - and of the terrorism that predated the Occupation against Israel, perhaps we could have a discussion. But your ignorance and bias and hostility are set in stone. And that is precisely why it is dangerous for young students to be listening to people like you, and not to be presented with an alternate view.

You may be writing for the media, but you are in no way what I would call a journalist. Let me ask you a question: How is it, do you suppose, that so many Arab countries supported Israel in this war in Gaza? If Israel is so terrible, why have Saudi Arabia and jordan and other Arab nations expresssed disapproval of Hamas, and why did Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority say it was Gaza's fault for starting it? COuld it be that they well understand that Iran - never colonized by the way and with no quarrel with Israel politically - is behind Hamas and they fear Iran themselves? Why does Iran want to wipe Israel off the map? Because they love the Palestinians? Just how naive and ignorant are you? Show me your depths. I have had a glimpse, I yearn for more. Useful idiots like you should not be allowed within 100 yards of a school. And yet here is a high school colonized with clones of you. it is very scary. Barbara

7 April 2009

Dear Barbara, [my responses in burgundy -- KP]
Thank you for replying. 
“*Implying* that high school students have not yet mastered critical thinking? My dear, most adults with university degrees in my opinion have not mastered the art of critical thinking, for critical thinking is not so much a matter of basic IQ as it is exposure to a wide variety of *objective* facts, a wide variety of opinion around those facts and a great deal of practice in analysis and interpretation - not to mention a certain historical referential depth that no high school student can be expected to have.
I quite agree with you that critical thinking is a rarely applied skill. However, I did not write to you about whether high school students had “mastered critical thinking.” I asked whether you deny that they have “critical thinking ability.” You have evaded my question entirely.
It is not the role of a high school to upload into its students a settled political finding around a subject that inspires a great deal of debate and passionate discourse on both sides. It is the role of a high school to prepare its students to think critically, which involves exposure to thinking, not memorizing. The school in question is shutting down critical thinking and presenting one side of a story as though it were settled fact, which is not the case at all. The story they are being fed is being presented by advocates and activists in a political cause, not by history teachers. That is why I call it indoctrination and it is indoctrination by any definition of the word. If of course you have evidence that an alternate thesis was put forward so that honest debate could be set before the students and they could draw conclusions based on the merits of the arguments, then you give me evidence of that. Nobody but you has even raised the question of whether what the students were presented with was one-sided or not. All but you seem agreed on that, and many are quite happy with that.
Indoctrination according to dictionary.com: “to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., esp. to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view.” Critical here is “biased belief or point of view.” Facts are not partisan or biased, and hence, the presentation of facts is not indoctrination. For you to state something is indoctrination requires that you refute the facts and expose them as biased beliefs. This you have not done. What are the facts presented in Occupation 101 that you refute? 
The Israeli student, who at the time was unidentified, was named in I think Saturday's Post. His mother was a professor spending a year at the Univ of Toronto. The mother begged the school to show another side of the story, and they quite haughtily refused. The boy was subjected to such hostiity he felt persecuted and could not function at the school. These facts are also not in dispute - unless you think the boy left for frivolous reasons and you have evidence of that.
I read the story at http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=1467702and nowhere did I see reference to “hostility” or a feeling of persecution nor an inability to function. I did see that Eitan referred to “divisiveness” without elaboration on what that meant. Presumably he was referring to the refusal to “balance its presentation of Palestinian material with an Israeli perspective.” Nonetheless you evaded my request for an example of the “hostile atmospherics” that you referred to.
I don not know what else oyu would call an audience of teenagers in a forum that bars entrance to parents, teachers and the media but "captive", 
The fact that adults are barred entrance does not make the teenagers inside “captive.” If the teenagers were coerced inside and kept inside against their will, then I will agree with you that they are “captive.” But schooling is by definition a type of captivity, and normally adults aside from the teachers are not in the classroom, so your point is – with all due respect – logically incoherent unless you wish to posit that schools should have an open-door policy.
and as for your other quotes, excuse me dear, but I have seen enough anti-israel propaganda from the folks who run Israel Apartheid Week to know exactly what their materials contain. 
In other words you merely assert and provide no evidence to back your assertions. Abraham Lincoln once said “I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.”
I challenged the school to show Alan Dershowitz's film, The Case for Israel. have you seen it? Please if oyu have not, get off your high horse. 
Since it is April 07 and since your article states “The Case for Israel, which will have its official Canadian premiere in Ottawa on April 13,” how is it that you can have expected me to already have seen a non-premiered film and then berate me for it?
The first rule of indoctrination is to get your subjects when they are vulnerable - and high school students are very vulnerable, being both idealistic and relatively uninformed - and this is precisely the motive behind the HAIA campaign.
Again, where is your evidence? How do you support your contention that it is indoctrination? What are the facts in Occupation 101 that you can refute?
All these terrible crimes you accuse Israel of are taken out of a very specific context, 
Excuse me, but in my current email (from yesterday, 06 April) to you, I make no accusations about Israel. 
as is always the case with the demonizers. Gaza is not occupied - Israel left in 2004 - and you make no mention of the provocations that caused this war. 
I made no mention of the “war” in the current email. As for Gaza not being occupied, that is semantics. When a country's airspace, borders, and coast are controled by another entity (a UN official called the blockade “devastating” for Palestinians) then I submit that it is equally or more sinister than an occupation, it is a siege.
I am not sure how many rockets would have to land in your back yard for you to retaliate on neighbours who hated you and wanted you exterminated, but perhaps you are a saint. 
Retaliation? If you were kept penned up in what has been likened to an open-air concentration camp (by no less than the Vatican), humiliated, kept on a starvation diet, etc. would you not resist? Do you deny people their right to resist dispossession, humiliation, and murder?
More likely you are one of those who hold Israel to a higher standard than you hold Arabs: it is what we call the soft bigortry of low expectations.
In this case, there is one standard for all humanity. We are all humans and imbued with equal rights to life, liberty,and equality of conditions. Israeli Zionists are violating that standard. I oppose the violations of such standards everywhere by whoever, e.g., right here in “Canada,” which is founded upon the dispossession of the Original Peoples. I find that your writings violate that standard, and since you are in the well financed corportae media that is why I analyze them and expose the fallacies within them.
Of the 1400 killed, Israel estimates about 800 were Hamas fighters or active supporters, legitimate targets. Virtually all the rest were human shields, a war crime. But of course you don't believe anything that comes out of Israel, do you. You have made up your mind there is only one villain in this story. I wonder how anyone exposed to your biased view can possibly develop their critical thinking. They cannot.
The Israeli human rights abuses are cited by the UN, Israeli soldiers, Israeli media, and Israeli human rights groups. Haaretz quoted UN Richard Falk as stating Israel's attack on Gaza “constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law.”
By your reasoning, all the stories about Nazi atrocities against its victims should be balanced by Nazi views, and one should be criticized for not believing anything that comes out of Nazi Germany. But I do believe in much that comes out of Israel. I certainly believe much of what Ilan Pappe (no longer in Israel, I know), Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Haaretz, etc. 
 If you knew anything of the history of the area, and of the five wars - all started by the Arab states - and of the terrorism that predated the Occupation against Israel, perhaps we could have a discussion. But your ignorance and bias and hostility are set in stone. And that is precisely why it is dangerous for young students to be listening to people like you, and not to be presented with an alternate view.
Occupation against Israel? That is a new twist.
You may be writing for the media, but you are in no way what I would call a journalist. 
I have never called myself a journalist. Does one have to call oneself a journalist to write and critically reflect on information?
Let me ask you a question: How is it, do you suppose, that so many Arab countries supported Israel in this war in Gaza? If Israel is so terrible, why have Saudi Arabia and jordan and other Arab nations expresssed disapproval of Hamas, and why did Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority say it was Gaza's fault for starting it? 
The regimes you mention are US-supported, Zionist-colluding dictatorships; and since Abbas lost the last election to Hamas and since his term of office is past, then any pretense to democratic credentials has fallen by the wayside. Divide-and-conquer is old hat. The distinction you need to make is between the approval of their despotic rulers and the approval of the citizenry.
COuld it be that they well understand that Iran - never colonized by the way and with no quarrel with Israel politically - is behind Hamas and they fear Iran themselves? 
Why do you elide that British and American had their stooges running Iran? Whether it is under colonialism or imperialism, Iranians were at one point not free to determine their own fate.
Why does Iran want to wipe Israel off the map? 
Could you support this assertion?
Because they love the Palestinians? Just how naive and ignorant are you? Show me your depths. I have had a glimpse, I yearn for more. Useful idiots like you should not be allowed within 100 yards of a school. And yet here is a high school colonized with clones of you. it is very scary. Barbara
Is “your depths” revealed by name calling? Can we not engage in a rational discussion based on verifiable facts and irrefutable logic?
Finally, I will pose again my questions -- that you left unanswered:

Do you know what went down at the conference?

I would like to know more about the situation described by you of an “Israeli student at TTS felt too frightened by the hostile atmospherics”?
Can you provide evidence for Trustee James Pasternak contention of an “insidious anti-Israel ideology by recruiting teenagers in public schools”?

Do you know for a fact that the learners were “a captive audience of impressionable school children” and that “HAIA are not interested in promoting critical independent thinking”?
 Why do you label the film Occupation 101 as “incendiary”? Is not occupation worse than incendiary? As for balance: Is not the killing of 1400 Palestinians, the bombing of homes, schools, hospitals, and the use of white phosphorus by Israeli military incendiary?
The organizations HAIA and CAIA defined themselves as “anti-Israel Apartheid” and not “anti-Israel.” Why do you twist their position? There is a massive difference. Would you characterize opponents of South African Apartheid as anti-South Africa? Would you characterize Martin Luther King Jr as anti-US because he opposed racist policies in the US?
How do your support your contention of the school promoting anti-Israel propaganda? I submit that merely saying so is unpersuasive and does not appeal to critical independent thinking. 

Sincerely,

kim petersen

7 April 2009
[From Barbara]

I gave you more time than I usually give responders, do this is it, and I don't want to quarrel on our last date.

. From a reliable source I can tell you the Israeli student was "traumatized" - not just upset.

If you don't know Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map - Ahmadinejad has publicly stated that this will be the first thing he does when his nuclear weapons are ready to rock and roll (and y the way has openly stated it's no ,big whoop if he knocks off 50 million Arabs in th eprocess, since you know, they're replacable and well worth their deaths as long as Israel is finished - then you don't even read the news, in itself a good reason to end this "discussion".

Speaking of "dictionary" definitions: look up "sophomoric". Your picture will be there. Good-bye.