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The Watcher’s Council

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for the this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up, entered into the cosmic archives.

BUT… before we get to that, we have some important business to take care of.

Deep in the heart of Texas (well, North Texas anyway) lives a live wire conservative blogger and a molder of young minds, together with his Darling Democrat and his Apolitical Pooch… yes, it’s Greg at Rhymes With Right’s Birthday! So I figured we’d put on some ‘cue.

Actually, the big day occurs on Saturday, but since I’ll be offline, I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate on the WOW page today.

What’s it been now pardner? Five, six years of us getting in each other’s faces and throwing ideas at each other? I wouldn’t have missed one bit of it.

One parting thought… just think, if you’d have been born four days later in a leap year, you’d have 25% less birthdays and be 25% younger!

Have an absolutely wonderful birthday and many more to come.

Ah yes, this week’s results…

What does it mean when a great university makes a mockery of itself and its own purported raison d’être? How does it look when a place once noted for outspoken anti-Semitism in the past, experiences a back to the future moment? As this week’s winner, Joshuapundit’s Harvard Endorses Israel’s Destruction reveals and it looks like this:

On March 3-4, Harvard University is hosting a conference sponsored by its Kennedy School of Government entitled “One State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One State Solution.” Its explicit goal is to discuss methods of achieving the the destruction of Israel.

According to the “Vision and Goals” of the conference, as outlined by its website:

“To date, the only Israel/Palestine solution that has received a fair rehearsal in mainstream forums has been the two-state solution. Our conference will help to expand the range of academic debate on this issue. Thus, our main goal is to educate ourselves and others about the possible contours of a one-state solution and the challenges that stand in the way of its realization.”

When you who’s speaking and who’s not,what the conference is about becomes painfully obvious.

The Harvard student groups involved include student groups including, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Palestine Caucus, the Arab Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, the Association for Justice in the Middle East, and members of the radical Jewish Voice for Peace. Speakers will include Ali Abunimah, the Executive Director of the Electronic Intifada; Dalit Baum, of the BDS organization Coalition of Women for Peace; Ilan Pappe, a radical left Israeli academic who makes a nice living lecturing in Europe about how evil the country he was born in is and whose main claims to fame were fabricating the story of a ‘massacre’ at a place called Tantura that was proven in court never to have occurred and popularizing a phony quotation to make it seem like Israel leader David Ben -Gurion endorsed the expulsion of Israel’s Arabs ; Marc Ellis, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University, who makes a fetish out of equating Zionism with old fashioned colonialism and Israel’s treatment of the ‘Palestinians’ to the Nazi treatment of Jews and is now desperately trying to avoid being fired; and Hamas apologist Diana Buttu.

And of course, as a main attraction, there’s the Kennedy School’s own Stephen Walt, co-author of the factually challenged anti-semitic trophe The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. When he’s not busily engaged in poisoning the minds of America’s future foreign policy establishment, Professor Walt writes putrid little pieces for Foreign Policy shilling for Mein Kampf, which echoes his own book in repeating the dark fairy tales of a Jewish Fifth Column and fantasizing about a second Holocaust. He’ll go over huge, I’m sure.

All of these individuals and groups have something in common. They all see Israel as an “apartheid state,” guilty of the “ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.” And they all want a final solution in which Israel disappears by any means necessary as quickly as possible. And yes, the last sentence is exactly what I meant, because to these people a ‘one state solution’ means the murder and ethnic cleansing of Israel’s Jews, nothing less.

Nor is this going to be just a bunch of speakers. This is being billed as an ‘activist’ conference, as opposed to one with an academic or research framework. It’s rife with a number of how-to workshops on deligitimizing Israel. And needless to say, not a single pro-Israel voice is going to be heard.

And make no mistake..Harvard is totally behind this. The Kennedy School’s logo appears on the conference website, Harvard is providing the premises and the university is admitting that this hatefest is being at least partially underwritten by “modest” funds set aside for student activities. Yet, when he was pressed, Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood actually had the temerity to release this statement, saying:

I want to emphasize once again that Harvard University and the Harvard Kennedy School in no way endorses or supports the apparent position of these student organizers or any participants they include. We hope that the final shape of the conference will be significantly more balanced.

No, they’re not endorsing it or supporting it – all they’re doing is allowing it to use university property, letting the organizers use the Kennedy School logo and helping fund it!

In our non-Council category, the winner was the one and only Mark Steyn for Contraception Misdirection submitted by Joshuapundit, a masterful look at a few issues involved in the contraception controversy that seems to have escaped a lot of people. Do read it.

Here are this week’s full results. New Zeal was unable to vote this week, but was not affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 2/3 votes! – Joshuapundit – Harvard Endorses Israel’s Destruction
• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – The Mellow Jihadi – Errrrr-rah Marine, Cobra Blood!
• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – Bookworm Room – The ‘ultrasound = rape’ meme on the Left is part of a larger movement to discredit Republicans with a Big Lie
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – The Razor – The Limits of Labels
• Fourth place with 1 1/3 vote – The Independent Sentinel – Forget the Volt and Buy A 1997 Buick Park Avenue
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote – The Glittering Eye – Peace Through Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – Just a crazy writer looking for attention
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews – A few questions for a BDS supporter
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room – Who The Hell Do These People Think They Are?
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Political Commentator – To own a gun or not to own a gun?
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – The World Great Satan Made
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote – VA Right! – Obama Is a Progressive. He Can’t Be a Christian Too!

Non-Council Winners

• *First place with 3 1/3 votes! – Mark Steyn – Contraception Misdirection submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place with 2 2/3 votes – Melanie Phillips – When a seven year-old is branded a bigot submitted by Bookworm Room
• Third place with 2 votes – Stonegate Institute – A New Year of “Dhimmitude” for Egypt’s Copts submitted by The Political Commentator
• Fourth place with 1 2/3 votes – Michelle Malkin – Taxing Medical Practice to Death submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Fifth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Via Meadia – Beyond Blue 5: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Sixth place *t* with 1 vote – Sultan Knish – Guns, Butter, Jobs and Birth Control submitted by The Noisy Room
• Sixth place *t* with 1 vote – Pressure Points – Playing Down the Iranian Threat submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Elder Of Ziyon – “Israeli viruses infecting Egyptian chickens” submitted by Simply Jews
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – Tim Stanley/The Telegraph – Sean Penn should return his Malibu estate to the Mexicans submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Castra Praetoria – What Did They Expect? submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Just One Minute – When Is A Tie Not A Tie? submitted by The Watcher

See you next week! And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that!