
SEPT 3, 2014 UPDATE -
TEXTBOOK IS ONCE AGAIN MANDATORY READING FOR PROF ANNETTE TEZLI'S SOCIOLOGY 205 AT UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY.
Picture from bookstore today and media coverage:
U of Calgary still requiring textbook that pushes anti-Israel lies and excuses for Bin Laden
In April 2014 the University of Calgary said that this textbook would be removed from class for the following year (2014/15)
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This is the textbook being currently used in a University of Calgary Sociology class. Sent in today by an undergraduate student.
Update:
EoZ blog conduced a further analysis of this chapter and others problematic sections of the book: "College sociology textbook peddles anti-Isreal lies - and excuses for Bin Laden"
To see how you can help us, please read on below.
Calgary United with Israel is an unfunded, grassroots group of university students, alumni, parents and concerned persons. Clearly the matter of this textbook is something that affects all of us, globally. We are serving as a whisteblower in this case in order to:
1. Raise public awareness + support in order to apply public pressure on our University to remove the textbook
2. Raise public awareness + support in order to apply public pressure on the bodies and persons elected/appointed to help advocate for Jews in Canada, including Jewish students on campus - our local Federation, CIJA and Bnai Brith Canada.
Contacts for Public Pressure:
Elizabeth Cannon, University of Calgary President
president@ucalgary.ca
University of Calgary - Chairperson of the Board
chair@ucalgary.ca
University of Calgary - Provost
provost@ucalgary.ca
Judy Shapiro, Associate Executive Director, Calgary Jewish Federation
jshapiro@jewishcalgary.org
Shimon Fogel, CEO, (Canadian) Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs
sfogel@cija.ca
Jewish Federations of Canada
office@uiafed.org
office@uiac.org.il
Frank Dimant, Executive VP, B'nai Brith Canada
fdimant@bnaibrith.ca
Thank you again for your support. We will keep everyone informed as we see change happen.
If you write a letter to one of the addresses above, please add us to the CC or BCC line: info@cuwi.ca
Also, if you hear back from the parties above, especially the university, please keep us appraised.
Below is one of the several letters already sent to the University of Calgary from a concerned member of the public:
Jan. 20, 2014
Elizabeth Cannon, President
University of Calgary
Dear President Cannon,
It has come to my attention that the U of C sociology department is using a textbook; Culture of Prejudice: Arguments in Critical Social Science," (2003, 2008) by Judith C. Blackwell, Murray E. G. Smith, and John S. Sorenson. The textbook purports to provide provocative arguments on contemporary subjects. Well the textbook definitely lives up to its goal.
It not only makes excuses for Osama bin Laden, [Israel made me do it], which by the way is historical revision at its worst, but it portrays Israeli Jews as drunk with the religious imperative to live as God’s chosen people in the land of Israel that they stole from the real inhabitants the Palestinian Arabs.
Here’s the truth that I hope you will share with U of C sociology department. Jews do not have any such imperative to be the ‘chosen people’. We make fun of it saying as did Tevya in the Fiddler on the Roof, “why couldn’t God have chosen someone else for a change.” There’s no synagogue in the world that ever brings it up. It’s a biblical gag. Jews are not religious supremacists. Ironically, many radical Muslims are, and in a classic case of projection accuse the Jews of their own supremacist dreams. It is pathetic that this moral inversion has made its way into the sociology curriculum at the U of C.
This theological junk is also concocted and disseminated by Arab Christians organizations who despise Jews for failing to accept Christ as their savior, and of course for killing Christ. Yes there are such people. In another letter, I would be happy to give you the sorry details about these creeps. Unfortunately, these creeps have influenced Protestant denominations and human rights groups devoted to the Palestinian cause, and it looks like the authors of the book too.
The text offers a distorted one sided picture of the Holy Land (it has a hard time even uttering the word Israel), that is right out of the Hamas playbook. To the authors of the textbook, Israelis kill and pillage the Palestinians with planes tanks bombs etc. while the poor Palestinians live in squalor with no rights and no hope. This is despicably twisted from the real situation. Vindictiveness oozes from the pages.
Nowhere does the book acknowledge that Jews are the aboriginal people of the region having lived there uninterrupted for over 3000 years. Palestinian Arabs have gone into denial mode about the Biblical stories linking Jews to the land as well as archeological information, carbon dating etc that proves Jews lived there. Perhaps a good sociological study might be to compare the radical American Christian right that denies environmental and biological science to negate global warming and evolution, with the Palestinians who deny all history and science linking Jews to the land of Israel.
I have one final thought for you Madame President, and that is that if I had children or grandchildren attending the U of C, I would strongly urge them to skip the hate indoctrination that is now part of the sociology curriculum.
Sincerely yours,
Larry Shapiro,