DAFKA Attacks UC Berkeley Students
Most campus observers would agree that tensions between pro-Israel and pro-Palestine groups on this campus have reduced since their relative peak in 2001 and 2002. Part of this decline is arguably attributed to the disappearance of DAFKA from the UC Berkeley campus in 2003. However, DAFKA has recently made overtures towards becoming active on the UC Berkeley campus again, and in quite a disturbing way. A recent post on their website asks readers to locate a students’ family members in Israel.
We are asking Stop the ISM volunteers in Israel to try and locate Ehud Moshe Appel’s family over there so we can interview them and find out what they think of Ehud’s undying and unremitting love for Palestinian Arab terrorists. He even promotes divestment and boycotting of Israel to starve the Jewish state out of existence in his aberrational behavior and hatred of his own homeland and its people. We are sure he is an embarassment to his family in Israel for his actions in Berkeley, California.
Appel is a contributor to Lee Kaplan Watch, a watchdog group to DAFKA. Appel writes the website with another student who has also been attacked on the website.
The politics of Israel and Palestine are an important and emotional topic, to be sure. But this kind of behavior can not be accepted on this campus. To essentially threaten family members of an ideological opponent through a website is ridiculous, intolerable, and above all dangerous. If DAFKA attempts to regain active status at UC Berkeley, ASUC sponsorship, or through the Jewish Student Union, they should be immediately rebuked. Groups that threaten the safety of students and their families should not have their behavior condoned or tolerated.
Ben,
Thanks for the LKW plug and the moral support regarding Dafka and Kaplan’s attacks. Out of curiosity though, how did you happen across the website?
Comment by Yaman — June 25, 2006 @ 9:34 pm
Thanks, Ben. In fairness to those students who might like to join a DAFKA type group, these smears against Yaman and me are entirely Kaplan’s doing. There is no evidence whatsoever that any students are involved in what goes on at the DAFKA website.
Comment by Ehud — June 25, 2006 @ 9:38 pm
I have a bloglines feed that gives me a hit whenever Berkeley comes up. The feed immediately showed the DAFKA news release.
I came across LKW a while ago - I think one of you was posting comments on CalStuff for a little bit. I definitely was able to put the name to the blog when I saw it.
Comment by Ben N. — June 25, 2006 @ 10:48 pm
Yes, I did post some time ago asking if there was some sort of “stalker resource center” after Kaplan discovered the webpage and started harassing us and threatening to sue for libel. Ironically enough, Kaplan instead called the Dean of Students, Jonathan Poullard, to complain about us. Poullard called me, notified me of the complaint, and said University attorneys reviewed the website and determined there was nothing libelous. Putting it into perspective now, all of these over-the-top actions by Kaplan are nothing less than an attempt to intimidate Ehud and I into taking the website down…. just as his more recent actions indicate.
Comment by Yaman — June 25, 2006 @ 11:02 pm
You know, a couple months ago, he was offering a 25 dollar reward for a photo of me, claiming I “assiduously avoid the cameras.” A few days later, he put up a picture of…someone. I’m not sure who. He later took it down after he was told it wasn’t me.
Comment by Ehud — June 26, 2006 @ 1:54 am
I don’t see what the big deal is. For one thing, you are completely misreading the DAFKA post if you think they are “threatening the family members of an ideological opponent”. It says they want to inform Ehud’s family about what Ehud is doing in Berkeley. That might qualify as trying to intimidate or silence Ehud, but it is not a threat against Ehud’s family.
For another thing, who cares? There’s nothing in the DAFKA post that threatens violence. If Ehud really believes in what he’s doing, why should he care if his family know? Isn’t that what free speech is all about? You can say whatever you want, but I can listen to what you say. Words have consequences.
Comment by staff sergeant anonymous — June 26, 2006 @ 8:40 am
While I do not see a threat in the post, I agree that such tactics are childish and ineffective. It’s a waste of time to try and locate Ehud’s family in Israel. It’s unfortunate that Lee chooses to engage in such tactics.
Ben, several inaccuracies in your post.
DAFKA appeared on Berkeley campus in 2003, and disappeared around Fall 2004. The tensions between pro-Israel and pro-Palestine groups had little to do with DAFKA, since, as you wrote, they reached peak around 2001/02, when DAFKA did not exist. It’s unfortunate that you choose to ignore the idiotic actions of SJP during the time (read, occupying Wheeler, blocking Sather Gates, harrasing students, biting a police officer, etc.) and attribute the decrease in tension to DAFKA disappearance. My guess it has more to do with the decrease in idiotic behavior from SJP over time.
Comment by alum03 — June 26, 2006 @ 9:44 am
i’m not even going to comment on #6 other than to say that it is a ridiculous & outragous post. Secondly, who is this Kaplan guy? is he on campus?
Comment by Anonymous — June 26, 2006 @ 9:44 am
alum03:
I totally agree that it is an ineffective tactic. But if Lee Kaplan wants to waste his time on this kind of stuff, who are we to tell him no? Obviously he’s hurting his own cause, since he could be using the time he spends on this to do something productive. But, really, there’s an almost unlimited number of people in the world who are wasting their time on pointless crap. I still think that as long as this is just ineffective, and does not constitute a threat of violence, then there’s nothing “dangerous” or “intolerant” or “ridiculous” about it.
anonymous #8:
Perhaps you could enlighten us about what is so “outrageous”. If Ehud says X, in a public forum; and then Lee Kaplan tells person Y that Ehud said X, is that a problem? Only if Ehud does not want people to know that he said X? But in that case why is he saying X in the middle of Sproul to anyone who walks by???
Comment by staff sergeant anonymous — June 26, 2006 @ 10:08 am
Alum03 is correct, SJP’s demise (or was it loss of support?) led to declining tension on campus. Now, Dafka was a small group of hot-heads with Kaplan playing ring master. Kaplan has not been a student anywhere in at least a few decades and the 1-2 students who supported him graduated back in 04. Hillel and the JSU tossed Dafka out when it was clear it was not a “student” group.
Comment by odd beer — June 26, 2006 @ 10:29 am
#6: Please do not suggest that I’m unaware that words have consequences. I have absolutely no problem with my family “knowing” what I say or think. They have seen Kaplan’s gross distortions of my views and are fully supportive of me. The problem is that Kaplan does NOT tell people that someone said x after they say x. If someone says x, he’ll say they said y and then sent money to Hamas, and then fomented a riot, and then worked in conjunction with neo-nazis. I have absolutely nothing to hide about my beliefs from my family, or from anyone.
Comment by Ehud — June 26, 2006 @ 11:35 am
okay, if he’s lying and misrepresenting what you said, that’s wrong and I won’t defend him.
Comment by staff sergeant anonymous — June 26, 2006 @ 1:01 pm
Thanks Sgt., I appreciate that. And I apologize if I took a harsh tone.
Comment by Ehud — June 26, 2006 @ 1:03 pm
Ben, I really don’t know why you brought this story up other than to rile people up. Everyone within the ‘mainstream’ jewish community and elsewhere knows that Kaplan is a nut- just ask Adam W about him. DAFKA is completely irrelevant. Most people younger then rising senior don’t even know who Kaplan is. So… really, were you looking for a hot button to push?
Just wondering…
Josh B
Comment by Josh — June 26, 2006 @ 3:15 pm
that is interesting about them paying for a photo. it seems like someone sent Mano’s fuzzy picture from a hidden shoe camera to the ‘discover the network’ official list of enemies, citing only SJP participation. Several other palestinian protesters also were smeared on the site, while many other major leftists on campus were ignored. It looks libelous to me.
Comment by hella — June 26, 2006 @ 6:42 pm
I might be wrong, but I thought that fuzzy picture of mano was a stylized one taken from an East Bay Express (or Guardian or Weekly or one of those) article from a few years ago about him vs. Snehal.
Comment by Ehud — June 26, 2006 @ 7:33 pm
uhhhh, I looked at the page for Christopher Cantor (aka mano) at discoverthenetwork.org and I’m not exactly sure what is “libelous” there. His member ship in SJP and UC Divest is factually correct, and the two quotes are backed up with links to posts he made on newsgroups. The fact that some “leftists” aren’t listed does not make the stuff on Cantor libelous.
Do you even know what libel means, or are just throwing around legal terms for kicks?
Comment by commodore anonymous — June 26, 2006 @ 8:19 pm
isn’t Discover the Network’s picture of mano actually a picture of Snehal?
Comment by staff sergeant anonymous — June 27, 2006 @ 9:31 am
yes, yes it is.
Comment by mano — June 27, 2006 @ 9:51 am
Yeah, it seems they’re pretty bad at pictures. Somebody told me that the picture accompanying Gordon Gladstone’s entry on the Masada2000.org SHIT (Self Hating and Israel Threatening Jews) List was also not him.
Comment by Yaman — June 27, 2006 @ 11:14 am
Well, that site is filled with inaccurate statements. The front page of photos for individuals has a category “anti-american radicals” with Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, and Michael Moore in it, which is a pretty libelous thing to print about a congressperson. However, I believe that the status of being a public versus private individual is recognized in law and provides different levels of protection for printing statements about them. It is more acceptable to print inaccurate gossip about public individuals.
Luckily the people making that site couldn’t even put in a good search engine that would let you search the site for ‘Berkeley’ or otherwise easily navigate. The fact that they missed all sorts of Berkeley people who have written books and articles, have national notoriety, or lead movements, but are listing participants (not leaders) of student groups, suggests that the people assembling the site don’t read a lot. They don’t even have Markos Moulitsas.
Comment by hella — June 27, 2006 @ 11:55 am
you’re going to have a pretty hard time winning a libel suit based on the phrase “anti-american radical”.
Comment by staff sergeant anonymous — June 27, 2006 @ 12:24 pm
Israeli jets take annihilate three bridges and a power station in gaza. IDF tanks on the move. Game on!
Comment by staff sergeant anonymous — June 27, 2006 @ 3:34 pm
hella: It’s because they don’t actually focus on pertinent people. The “Rogues Gallery,” for example, has become more of a personal shit list for Lee Kaplan than anything else. I mean, two of the people on there are Cal students… ok?
Where is Barbara Lee though, I don’t see her?
Comment by Yaman — June 27, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
Staff Sergeant;
Ehud is full of it. Go read this on the DAFKA website:
http://www.stoptheism.com/Default.asp?M=28&T=216
Apparently it came from Masada2000 but appears to be accurate. Yaman Salahi of the SJP does endorse a Nazi Party stance on divestment and boycotting Israel and apparently is related to some Al Qaeda supporter in England. I belonged to DAFKA in 2004 and it was the most effective pro-Israel group on campus. It wasn’t kicked out of Hillel, DAFKA’s students graduated and there wasn’t enough student membership. Lee Kaplan moved into international media and you can see his writings all over the Web. I even saw him on TV several times.He once told me there was a bigger audience than the small market that is UC Berkely and apparently he is right. Ehud, of course, does not mention that his group, Tzedek, was kicked out of Hillel for promoting the SJP calls to destroy Israel and because Ehud sent out an email telling students to disrupt a speech sponsored on campus by Hillel featuring Daniel Pipes. In fact, the local JCRC insisted Tzedek be removed from Hillel, and it funds Hillel. Also a fact, it was Adam Weisburg of Berkeley Hillel who kicked Ehud’s group out and informed them they were no longer welcome in Hillel for promoting divestment. Ehud is a strange bird. He even claims Hamas has no animosity against Jews when their charter calls for their murderous expulsion from Israel. I believe every word on the Kaplan website and for good reason because I’ve seen the real Yaman and Ehud Appel on campus. The website Ehud set up with Yaman against Lee Kaplan seems to have only those two as contributors and to contain sophomoreic nonsense. I think these sites are cool and still worth a look: www.DAFKA.org and www.StoptheISM.com and the Rogues Gallery section about Yaman and Ehud appear to be on the mark. I know them both personally at Cal, and they are both dishonest and untrustworthy when it comes to teh facts/ Ehud is particularly strange for his passion to support terrorist movements against Israel.
Comment by Gilad — June 29, 2006 @ 4:40 am
Gilad, your writing is discombobulated. It reads like the stream of consciousness of a mentally disturbed person (not unlike a certain Lee Kaplan). Is that a conscious choice?
PS: your facts are shit, too.
Comment by mano — June 29, 2006 @ 7:54 am
is that really true that Yaman is related to an Al Qaeda affiliate in Britain?
Comment by inspector — June 29, 2006 @ 10:28 am
inspector: It’s not true. You can read more on Kaplan Watch (kaplanwatch.blogspot.com). It’s the second post down. Gilad has spent the past 30 minutes commenting all over there, and at this point it’s very likely that it’s Lee Kaplan with a new IP address, same ISP.
Comment by Yaman — June 29, 2006 @ 1:39 pm
I invite anyone who thinks that “Gilad” is not Lee Kaplan to check out his websites, check out our website, and draw your own conclusions.
Comment by Ehud — June 29, 2006 @ 1:39 pm
How does the ‘most effective’ pro israel organization lose its membership to graduation?
Comment by McMike — June 29, 2006 @ 1:45 pm
McMike: actually, there are sufficient numbers of freakshows on campus to support such an organization. there used to even be one douchebag running around with a kach t-shirt (this is like running around with a KKK t-shirt, and the party is even banned in israel as racist, which is saying a lot).
anyway, hillel is aggressively staking out a position in line with the foundations and the lobby in the united states, which is that they want to steer clear of real debate, and if they are forced into debate on the issue of the Palestinians, by say, a student movement that gets off the ground, they will do their best to steer that debate into as meaningless a discourse as possible, creating a non existent “middle” to occupy, where they focus on all the nice things about israel, such as air conditioning, computers, gay rights, tree planting (carefully avoiding the horrific environmental record) and so forth… as long as we dont talk about _why_ the palestinians have a problem… just that they do have a problem, and are obviously unreasonable, but we just want to say that israel is cool.
people like Kaplan are a huge liability to the ability of hillel to frame the debate this way, because folks like kaplan actually want to argue the “yeah, we _should_ smash the palestinians” side of the zionist debate. They are willing to openly defend oppressive Israeli policies, and argue in favor of more oppressive policies, and that means they start by acknowledging the existence of said policies, and that is something that can’t be allowed in the discourse hillel wants to frame. thats why he got tossed out.
apparently, kaplan is the only one who doesnt know any better, since without the benefit of his wingnutty leadership, the extreme right of the zionist political spectrum on campus has apparently realized that they will not be well received if they come out of their little shell.
Comment by mano — June 29, 2006 @ 2:54 pm
we’re talking about SJP here, right?
I bet it sucks to by an ISM apparatchik in Gaza right now.
Comment by chet (CEO) — June 29, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
mano, Kaplan was a liability because of his personality, not his politics. It’s convenient to paint DAFKA as whole bunch of Kahanists, but that is simply not the case.
Comment by alum03 — June 29, 2006 @ 4:15 pm
alum03, i didnt say they were kahanists. i said their appeal was aimed in that general direction.
you didnt address my comments about where hillel steers the debate over israel and palestine. but then again, im not surprised. yes kaplan the person is mezz-dup. kaplans personality, while a big liability, and i like to think, related to his politics, doesnt change the fact that his politics were much scarier for hillel than his personality. you can compare other campuses across the US and their hillels’ responses to that similar dafka-esque approaches to pro-israel activism.
Comment by mano — June 29, 2006 @ 4:25 pm
mano: One time he went to Princeton to host Walid Shoebat with the Princeton Israeli Public Affairs Council. PIPAC got cold feet and decided to ditch it once they realized what a douchebag Kaplan was, and like the mature leader he is, Kaplan wrote articles calling them all “judenrats.”
What surprises me the most is that Kaplan uses that kind of language and is not even embarrassed by it.
chet(CEO): I bet it sucks to have a soul and be in Gaza right now.
Comment by Yaman — June 29, 2006 @ 5:00 pm
mano: i can assure you that there was nothing “scary” about DAFKA politics, as it was well within the mainstream. But then again, Likud may scare some, or, in Berkeley, Zionism itself is a scary concept.
On what basis are you claiming that Hillel steered debate? There were many programs and events during my years that involved a great deal of debate (shouting matches) between the sides, so I am not sure what you’re talking about. These “debates”, by the way, tended to get nowhere, because the certain members on both sides did not have patience/manners to engage in civilized discourse about the conflict. IMHO, any debate with an organization that regularly chants on campus “Palestine will be free from the river to the see” is a waste of time, much like negotiations with HAMAS.
Comment by alum03 — June 29, 2006 @ 6:18 pm
but… isn’t the whole idea of settlements driven by a sense of ancient historical ownership over the sea to the Jordan river?
Is this thought scary?
Comment by it — June 30, 2006 @ 8:05 am
alum03: you are right about one thing. you are right about the fact that dafkas politics are common to a large portion of the israeli population. but the aipac type pro-israel advocates (hillel) on campus dont want to discuss what people in israel actually think and do.
if you want examples of how hillel steers, or rather, avoids real debate, theres a million examples. Heres one: IAC loves to tote around signs that say how Israel plants trees, or gives gays rights. SJP isnt running around saying that Israel oppresses gays, or trees.
Its non sequitur. SJP is saying that Israel oppresses Palestinians.
of course, there is very little to debate about the basic facts, as most historians, zionist and otherwise, acknowledge them. the debate is over what the solutions are to address those facts, and the problem for “pro-israel” campus wieners, is that those issues cannot be addressed in a way that is acceptable within the standard zionist paradigm. certainly not in a way that the powers that be in israel are willing to accept right now (israel will need to be forced).
anyway, so hillels job is to keep knowledge of the “facts” from turning into a discussion about how to fix the problem, which is a pretty tight rope to walk…
Comment by mano — June 30, 2006 @ 9:01 am
ummm, I’m pretty sure that Hillel was around long before SJP. I don’t see why you assume that all Hillel discourse must be in response to SJP discourse. Who cares if Hillel wants to talk about issues (trees, gays, carburators, …) that SJP hasn’t already brought up. There’s no law that says Hillel can only talk about stuff that SJP has talked about previously. And as I said Hillel has been around a lot longer than SJP, don’t they have a right to set their own parameters?
Also, even if all of the students in SJP support gay rights (that’s debatable, but we’ll assume that they do), you know very well that the Palestinian Authority, and most other Arab governments, treat gays like total crap. If someone is advocating on behalf of Israel, it is perfectly reasonable to point out how Israel treats gays so much better than nearly every other country in the region.
Comment by chet (CEO) — June 30, 2006 @ 10:39 am
chet, you retard, its quite clear that IAC mainly exists as a response to SJP type groups, the interesting thing is that they dont really engage SJP politically, they mostly attempt to distract from the issues SJP is concerned with.
and yes, hillel was around long before the latest wave of sjp/human rights activism hit, but its mission and role has been seriously reconfigured as a result of this activism and become much more focused on supporting israel.
Comment by mano — June 30, 2006 @ 10:58 am
Look at this statement by the German goalkeeper. He’s like “oh, it’s not important if we win. We just want the world to like us and know we are fun loving and laid back and welcome
Comment by it — June 30, 2006 @ 12:39 pm
oops http://www.teamtalk.com/football/story/0,16368,3033_1300401,00.html
Comment by it — June 30, 2006 @ 12:39 pm
seems to me that they just want to interview the family. is this publication really trying to stifle journalistic free speech? should we tell calstuff whom they can and can’t interview?
ehud is actively engaging in organizing activities designed to destroy the state of israel. no one is allowed to look into his background and motives? he put himself in the public UCB eye, he is fair game for journalism.
unless you want to muzzle him.
Comment by bhakti — March 1, 2007 @ 11:24 am