By Irene Morrison

On Monday afternoon, I snuck into the private lunch for Israeli General Effi Eitam, a far-right, blatantly anti-Arab member of the Israeli government, held in the Hillel offices at UB. My intention was to confront Eitam about his many racist comments and the criminal actions of his government, only to hear shocking comments made by students in Hillel.

"Should we kill him when no one's looking?" joked one Hillel student, referring to Nicolas Kabat, who stood outside the Hillel office, handing out fliers to passerby. The flier is entitled "STOP Hate Speech on Campus" and quotes Eitam's reference to Arab Israelis as a "ticking bomb" and a "cancer" Israel must cut out, as well as his defense of using Palestinians as human shields.

In perhaps the most blatantly racist statement, one Hillel student shouted to Thawab Shibly, "Why don't you go blow yourself up?" But before this, two students remark of Kabat's flier: "But I love hate speech, that's why I'm here," and "I wish I had a human shield."

I then listened to Eitam go on a tirade about Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and how their efforts to make peace with them all failed, and “withdrawal” from Gaza was also a failure. He then compared Israel's reactions to the likes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, explaining that Truman had to "incinerate 200,000 people in a second" to protect American troops. You're right in one respect, Mr. Eitam: bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki is very similar to systematically killing Palestinians. Where I differ: they are similar in that they are both completely morally indefensible.

The greatest irony was his explanation of why they "had to" attack Gazan civilians. He related a story of a female suicide bomber in Israel before she blew up a bus, saying that she looked at an Israeli mother with a baby in her lap before pressing the button. "Even animals don't do that," he said, "when they fight, animals protect their children." He mentioned nothing of the 400 Palestinian children killed in the attack on Gaza, or the fact that their teeth sometimes shatter because of calcium deficiencies as a result of severe restrictions on food aid, or that 91%* of Gazan children have PTSD.

When he was done speaking and it was time for questions, I asked him why he has made such racist comments as calling Arab Israelis a "cancer" and a “ticking time bomb” that needed to be expelled from Israel. I had to ask him the question three times before he denied ever having said those things, saying he can't believe people would take his words so far out of context, and that the Arab Israelis in parliament were being "very irresponsible." Of course, these statements are well-documented.

Before leaving (after being yelled at by the organizer for getting into a private talk, with two dozen angry people at my back saying nasty things to & about me), I reminded him of the 400 Palestinian children killed in the most recent attack on Gaza. I didn’t stick around to hear his response.

 Update: The student responsible for the quote in the title of this article, who we know as Ben, profusely apologized last night after a stern reprimand from Joanna Tinker.

*Figure edited, see: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10879.shtml