Multiculturalism. It means hating other people.
The video is in Hebrew. But it's not hard to get the gist of it.
Chabad, a Chassidic Jewish group, goes to airports asking Jewish men to put on Tefilin, little black cases containing biblical verses, in fulfillment of the biblical verses urging the Jews to keep them as signs upon their hands and between their eyes.
And then the multicultural and gender studies prof allegedly came on the scene. At one point in the video, she demands that the religious Jews go elsewhere.
"There are people who don't want to be part of this," she appears to insist. "I'm not bothering you, you're bothering me."
Then she insists on laughing and otherwise harassing the two Jewish men during their religious ceremony.
The woman from the tefillin video at Ben-Gurion Airport which caused a storm on social networks is Prof. Pnina Peri, wife of Yoram Peri, a professor of sociology who served as president of the New Israel Fund between 1999-2001.
NIF is an anti-Israel group funded by foreign lefty groups, including George Soros.
Pnina Peri has served as a senior lecturer in the Department of Liberal Arts of Sapir Academic College and in Levinsky Teachers' training college. She is an expert in multicultural theories and is known to have published books such as "Education in Multi-Cultured Society: Pluralism and Congruence Among Cultural Divisions."
The Peri family has been living for the past few years in Maryland, to where Pnina Perry was flying from Ben-Gurion International Airport yesterday when she verbally assaulted a Chabad Hasid who asked another Jew to put on tefillin. Today, she serves as head of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland.
In the video posted on Facebook yesterday by Gad Kaufman, he wrote: "An amazing incident took place this morning at the airport, when I was politely asked by a Chabad man if I wanted to put on tefillin? I said yes, and then a woman with a crazy look jumped up and started cursing, harassing and disturbing! It is really shameful that being a Jew in this country means being persecuted by the leftist Bohemian. If I were a Muslim or a Christian, would it be more legitimate for her ...? "
Mr. Kaufman was interested in practicing his religion. But Prof Perry seemed quite hostile to it.
According to her bio, "She is a specialist in multicultural theories, gender, the political economy of education, social and cultural aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and cross-culture communication. She received her Ph.D. from the University of London. A frequent contributor to academic and literary journals, her publications include Education in Multi-Cultured Society: Pluralism and Congruence Among Cultural Divisions (Kotar, 2007 - Editor - in Hebrew)."
There is a serious problem in Israel Studies and Jewish Studies in academia. It's hard to teach or study a subject when you hate the people who are part of it.
UPDATE: The Coalition for Jewish Values has called for a review of Perry over the incident. Had she done this to Muslims, it's unimaginable that she would still be employed.
In separate letters to the President of American University and the Chancellor of the University System of Maryland, the CJV said that Peri, listed as faculty by both, showed "unbridled hostility towards religious activity" which calls into doubt her ability to "demonstrate appropriate tolerance and accommodation of religious needs."
The man who posted the video, Gad Kaufman, said that he was waiting for his departure on a business trip to Europe. He described what transpired: "I was asked politely by a Chabad representative if I was interested in putting on tefillin (phylacteries), and I responded positively. This woman then appeared and began screeching and interfering."
"Her behavior was gratuitous and outrageous," said Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, East Coast Regional Vice President of the CJV, "and appeared to reflect a deep-seated animus towards Jewish observance. Her derision and forced, sarcastic laughter were completely outside the behavior expected of rational adults. If her hostility is so severe that it overwhelmed common decency and decorum in a public place, it is difficult to imagine how she could banish it from her classroom presentations for a full semester."