Odd choice to lead Portland State anti-semitism forum

Another human hangover from the 1960s is at it again. The selection of Michael Lerner to lead a recent anti-semitism forum at Oregon's Portland State University is bizarre.

Hat tip to Steven Plaut at the Autonomist blog.

David Horowitz said that there are thousands of Ward Churchills in academia, Lerner is in that crew of crazies.

On Hurricane Katrina, Lerner writes in his Tikkun Magazine:

It didn't have to happen. And it didn't have to result in so many deaths and social chaos. This is the playing out of cosmic karma for ecological, economic and social irresponsibility. Unfortunately, as always the poor deserve it least and suffer most.

Jews, Dr. Plaut, informs the reader, do not believe in Karma. Yet Lerner says he is a rabbi. He's a make-believe rabbi, a Ward Churchill rabbi.

From Discover the Network:

Though Lerner identifies himself as a duly ordained rabbi, many of his critics dispute that claim - on grounds that he was given a controversial private rabbinic ordination by "Jewish Renewal" rabbis, whose ordinations are recognized only by those within the Jewish Renewal community and Reconstructionist Judaism. Orthodox Judaism, the Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly all consider such ordinations invalid.

Back to Lerner and Hurricane Katrina:

But this is a classic case of the law of karma, or what the Torah warns of environmental disaster unless we create a just society, or what others call watching the chickens come home to roost, or what goes around come around.

Sound familiar? From Ward Churchill's Justice of Roosting Chickens:

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens--along with some half-million dead Iraqi children--came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon as well.

Churchill says he instructed Weather Underground terrorists in the craft of bomb making.

Lerner has a soft spot for the Weather Underground too. Once again from Discover the Network:

Lerner's radical politics and counterculture mindset were nourished during his years at Berkeley and have remained with him ever since. At his wedding reception, the wedding cake was inscribed with the words, "Smash Monogomy," a slogan popularized by the Weathermen terrorist group that rose to prominence in 1969. During the marriage ceremony itself, Lerner and his bride exchanged rings fashioned out of metal extracted from a downed U.S. military aircraft. Shortly after the birth of the Lerners' first child, the couple separated - the mother and son going to live in Boston, and Mr. Lerner returning to Berkeley. When asked why he had chosen to move so far from his young son, he answered without hesitation, "You don't understand. I have to be here. Berkeley is the center of the world-historical spirit." (Sha'i Ben Tekoa Israel National News - "Deprogram Program" June 4, 2001).

Lerner, when he's not blaming America for the problems of the world, he's hard at work blaming Israel for the problems in the Middle East.

From Steven Plaut in Conservative Truth:

Since Lerner can be counted on to support the Arab position on the Middle East with perfect consistency, he has become the darling of much of the anti-Israel liberal media. He regularly writes Israel-bashing Op-Eds for the Los Angeles Times and for other outlets and has appeared in the New York Times, where he complained about being victimized by a witch-hunting anti-progressive conformist Jewish community. Naturally, Lerner sticks to the line that he is only opposed to Israel's current policies, not to its existence, and if he happens to "understand" and rationalize the mass massacres of Israeli civilians by Arab terrorists, this has nothing to do with him wishing Jews harm. The campus protesters who took to the streets to support bin Laden also claimed that they possessed not a smidgen of anti-Americanism.

Here is the syllabus of the Portland State University course, Participating Democracy--Lerner's participation was earlier this month. The course guide is a Moonbat's delight; clearly this course is an indoctrination tool of the far Left.

Technorati tags: Oregon Portland Portland State Michael Lerner JINO Israel Judaism Ward Churchill