The Central Student Government
University of Michigan
3011 Michigan Union
530 S State, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
Fax: (734) 763-7854
Dear Student Government,
I’m sure this finds you all in isolation at home doing your online assignments. We Californians are locked up in our homes too thanks to the Corona virus that Iranian and Turkish officials blame on the Zionists. We are all in this together. Be well and keep safe.
The news that Michigan’s Student Government has censured your president Ben Gerstein for remarks he made about Palestinians while he was a high school student has reached California. We are relieved that your organization has become the arbiter for acceptable speech. We are also pleased that Gerstein apologized. It appears that you have taught America how to humble people without torturing them. What a great contribution to human rights.
We didn’t realize that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been suspended at Ann Arbor and wonder if other Amendments like the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery will be negated by Michigan U’s student censors.
To honor your role, here are a list of comments that I would like to submit to you for your ruling. “Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,”. “They have been traitors to all agreements. Go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing”. Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas.
At the Al Omari mosque, the imam referred to Jews as “the brothers of apes and pigs,”
The official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, columnist Yahya Rabah called for the open murder of attendees in order to stop the Holocaust remembrance ceremony in its tracks. With a headline reading “Israel on the edge of the abyss,” Rabah bemoaned the international attention Israel will receive on the day of remembrance. And then he advised Palestinians that just “One shot will disrupt the ceremony and one dead body will cancel the ceremony.”
The Governor of Ramallah declared that the Palestinian Authority will remain loyal to “martyrs” who are “perfuming the ground with the scent of their blood” by getting killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis.
In a statement criticized by New York Times editors, Mahmoud Abbas attributed the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust to their “social behavior”.
In August of 2019, Hundreds of Palestinians chanted about killing Jews outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
If one can lose one’s job because of intemperate comments about Palestinians, it is essential to receive guidance from learned people to guide us in our speech. The contribution from Michigan’s Central Student Government happily fulfills this role. Thank you.
Respectfully yours,
Lawrence C. Shapiro,