[Editor's Note: After this article was uploaded, the New Jersey Solidarity (NJS) Hate Fest was cancelled. The points the author makes are still valid.

A brief chronology: after the conference was announced some months ago, Rutgers University (RU) received hundreds of letters protesting the upcoming conference. New Jersey Senate GOP leader, John Bennett, sent a letter to Governor McGreevey calling the upcoming conference "abominable" and asking the Governor to demand RU cancel the event. In July, the Governor's spokesman announced that the Governor would be meeting with Dr. McCormick. On July 17, 2003, according to NJS, "the governor announced today following a meeting with Rutgers University President Richard McCormick in Newark, NJ, that he will respect the University's decision to recognize the conference as a student free speech issue..."

When the event was cancelled, RU administrators claimed they were canceling the conference because the group had not submitted the information the university needed. NJS strongly denied that they had not met these requirements. Even if the administrators have it right, cancelling the event because of a technicality is hardly a courageous stand to take.

According to an announcement on the pro-Arab site, indybay.org, RU not only cancelled its sponsorship of the conference but had become pro-Israel: "the President of Rutgers, Dr. Richard L. McCormick, will appear tonight as a keynote at a pro-Israel event hosted by Zionists groups at RU. [Ed note: a dinner at Hillel House is Zionist?]" The website was indignant of this muzzling of their right of free speech by the University.

On the other hand, the mideast.org website said the conference was cancelled because it did not have the support of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which stated: "The proposal [to move the conference from RU to Ohio State University] was strictly based upon violations of the democratic process and irresponsible behavior by NJS. Moreover, this proposal must not be understood as bowing to Zionist pressure... Keeping the conference at Rutgers would be bowing down to the dictatorial pressure of NJS, surrendering our democratic structure, and setting the movement into a destructive course that could very well have a worse impact on the ISM than any Zionist."

It's becoming clear that universities will have to take a stand and not hide behind technicalities. They will have to give priority EITHER to free speech OR to discouraging the poison spread by hate groups. A university can not encourage hate groups on campus and call it free speech any more than the sun can shine in the middle of the night. It's one or the other.]

The anti-Israeli group, New Jersey Solidarity, is planning a three-day event aimed at destroying the state of Israel. Its spokeswoman, Charlotte Kates, has admitted that she doesn't believe that Israel has a right to exist, and that she and her group support Palestinian suicide bombing. The three-day event plans to train attendees to promote divestiture from Israeli contacts, and to celebrate Palestinian resistance, and work to build our own voices of resistance. NJS's spokeswoman calls the hatefest an issue of "free speech," but the group's admitted intention to  CELEBRATE suicide bombings belies its actual  purpose. Although  calling itself a pro-Palestinian venue, NJS is actually a clan which demonizes Israel, Israelis and Zionist Jews. This clan advocates the destruction of a sovereign nation, and seeks to make refugees out of Israeli Jews.

Indeed, by aiming to kill or  evict every Jew from "Moslem" lands, the Palestinian terrorist groups are guilty of attempted ethnic cleansing. With its unconditional support for such tactics, NJS supports the very crime it seeks to accuse Israel of attempting.

Further disturbing is the fact that the clan plans its event for the Jewish Sukkot holidays, ensuring no Jewish counter-expression. It begins on Friday (eve of Sukkot 1), and lasts until the end of Sukkot 2. In addition to deliberately seeking to quash counter-expression, the selection of this Jewish holiday on which to hold a Jew-hating festival is insensitive and disrespectful to the religious sensibilities of the university's and NJ's Jewish communities.

This hatefest will be sponsored by Rutgers University (RU), an entity funded by taxpayer dollars. Its supporters are attempting to abuse the First Amendment by claiming its protection for their slander. Rutgers University's preamble specifically prohibits ethnic and religious bias, without hampering the First Amendment. NJS's mission statement is the epitome of ethnic and religious bias, yet RU plans to permit this bias-gang-rape to be perpetrated against its Jewish and Israeli brethren.

There is a difference between political expression and harassment. Concluding that a country does not have any right to exist, supporting terrorist attacks against its civilian population, and calling for the destruction of this country through violence and sanctions such as divestiture, surpass the boundaries of reasonable political expression, and transgress into ethnic harassment.

Palestinian terrorist groups, which NJS unconditionally supports, call for the murder of all JEWS on Israeli soil. Not for the murder of Arabs or Christians. This is genocide. NJS is a clan with pro-genocidal beliefs, and as such, doesn't deserve funding from the American taxpayer. The genocide supporters are of course free to assemble peaceably, as laid out in the First Amendment. However, they can do so at their own expense, and on their own property. Not taxpayer-owned property. Nowhere does the First Amendment state that any group must be paid and enabled to express their views. It simply forbids the PROHIBITION of such expression.

The first amendment does not require universities to host hatefests at taxpayer expense. Not only should NJS's event be dropped as a RU-sponsored event; its funding, which comes through mandatory student fees, should be stopped, because it is a hate group which supports genocide and terrorism, while trying to hide behind a facade of political correctness. This facade is transparent, and hundreds of concerned citizens and groups, having seen through it, have protested NJS's planned hatefest, on many grounds. It seems that only RU's leadership is allowing its view to be blindsided by NJS's inaccurate claims of First Amendment protection.

Would a right-to-life group which supported the murder of doctors who perform abortions, and who support the bombing of abortion clinics, and who planned an event aiming to persuade and to teach others how to assist in these goals, be afforded a taxpayer-supported venue sponsored by RU?

Would any skinhead group which supports the murder of minority persons, and which seeks to train others to join their ranks and spread their violent message, be presented with a RU-sponsored, taxpayer supported, three day hatefest which calls for further violence and harassment?

So why is NJS given such preference?

Nobody is denying NJS's right to hold whatever events they want to, as long as it's not on taxpayer-supported property, and as long as it's not sponsored by a legitimacy-enhancing, taxpayer-supported entity, such as RU. This is an abuse of the First Amendment, at its worse. It is the systematic and preferential endowment of a genocide-supporting group. RU should be ashamed of its governors for (a) not seeing through this ploy at hate-mongering; (b) allowing the University's name to be used for desecrating the First Amendment; and (c) failing/refusing to offer the protection and respect due to ALL members of its community, including the Jewish, Israeli, and non-terrorist-supporting members.

Merav Zarifa is an essayist. She lives in Israel.

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