{news} Fw:1/19/06, Yale Event against historian who supports American Indian genocide

[Justine McCabe]

For immediate release                                                  Middle East Crisis Committee

January 16, 2006                                                           Contact:  Stan Heller, 203-934-2761        



Committee to Picket Genocide Apologist at Yale 



The Middle East Crisis Committee will hold informational picketing at Yale University to protest the appearance of Israeli historian Benny Morris, who has defended the genocide of American Indians and supports ethnic cleaning of Palestinians. 



The event will take place outside Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies, 77 Prospect St. on Thursday, January 19 at 3:45 p.m.  Morris's talk is sponsored by the Yale Center for International and Area Studies.



Stanley Heller, MECC chairperson, cited Morris's comments supporting the genocide of American Indians in an interview in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz as one reason to protest his appearance at the ivy league campus.



 "Benny Morris has made outrageous statements about what was done to American Indians. In the interview he said, 'Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history,' " Heller said.*. 



Heller said that Morris uses his  "Nazi-like defense of the genocide of Indians" to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians who were uprooted and driven from their homes in 1948 when the state of Israel was created.  



The Ha'aretz interview quotes Morris as saying, "When the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide -- the annihilation of your people -- I prefer ethnic cleansing... A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians."



But Morris's support of ethnic cleansing is not a thing of the past, Heller said.



"Morris even has stated that under certain circumstances he would support ethnic cleaning of Palestinians today -- even Israeli Arab citizens. He called them `a time bomb' and an 'emissary of the enemy that is among us,' " Heller said.



Morris's appearance at Yale comes less than two months after the university awarded its first  Henry Roe Cloud Medal in honor of the first American Indian who graduated from Yale in 1910, aid Gale Courey Toensing, a representative of Al Awda CT.  Al Awda, which means ``Return," advocates for the rights of ethnically cleansed Palestinians to return to their homes and lands in historic Palestine, a right upheld in international law and dozens of United Nations resolutions.



Henry Roe Cloud, Winnebago, was a champion of Indian rights and became a spokesman in Washington on American Indian policy issues. Yale presented the Henry Roe Cloud Medal to Philip ''Sam'' Deloria, Standing Rock Sioux, a leading Indian legal and human rights activist, who comes from a family of religious leaders, scholars and writers. Deloria has made outstanding contributions in forwarding human rights for Indians, advancing and preserving tribal sovereignty, developing tribal self-government, and defining the relationship between sovereign tribal governments and states. 

"How ironic that Yale would now honor a man who supports the historic annihilation of Red Cloud and Deloria's people -- the indigenous people of America.  Hopefully, there are no historians at Yale or any American university who would support Morris's claim that the annihilation of American Indians was justified," Courey Toensing said.



Heller called on the university to cancel the Morris event. "There's no place for this racist garbage at a university.  The invitation to Morris should be withdrawn."  



For more information contact Stanley Heller at 203-934-2761.




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