Brook, Objectivist club rankle Auraria

By stating that colonization was by far the greatest thing to ever happen to the indigenous peoples of the world, Yaron Brook may have failed to win any new supporters Thursday night.

But during a two-hour seminar hosted by the Auraria Objectivist Student Organization in the Tivoli Turnhalle, he also failed to alienate any of his current followers.

Brook, as a member of the Ayn Rand Institute sponsored here on campus by the Auraria Objectivist Student Organization, firmly believes in and preaches Rand's controversial objectivist philosophy.

Among the major tenets of objectivism is the belief in the "Virtue of Selfishness," and that environmental laws are an abomination to the further progress of industry and the personal freedoms of the individual.

Brook — a former member of Israeli military intelligence, a former professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and a current member of the Ayn Rand Institute — presented the Aurarian community with a talk entitled "A Moral Case for Supporting Israel."

Brook's contention was a fairly basic one: The Jewish race created Israel from nothing and has had to defend it without pause since.

By bringing civilization to an otherwise "desolate hell hole" and remaining the single bastion of Western values, Brook said, Israel is the only moral state in the Middle East.

Thus, Brook argued, even simple negotiation with any entity that would challenge Israel's right to exist would be an immoral act.

Some Aurarians stood, clapped, and thanked the man for courage in presenting the controversial philosophy in such an environment.

Others hissed, booed, and held up distracting signs that read "Propaganda" and "Untrue" designed to counteract any rhetoric they thought to be overly exaggerated. None, however, attempted real discourse with the other.

According to Brook, it's the Palestinians who always start the incursions in the region, and the 1948 war between Israel and its neighboring Arab states was solely the product of an Arab invasion.

He also maintained Israel's 1956 battle with Egypt over the Suez Canal was Egypt starting trouble, and the Six Day War in which Israel invaded and seized the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan also was initiated by the Arabs.

Brook also said the Arabs were responsible for all the countless conflicts in the 1970s.

Brook cited the two recent intifadas, or popular uprisings, as the fault of the Palestinians, who claim at the negotiating table they are ready for peace but then suicide bomb pizza parlors and kill Israeli civilians.

Among Brook's arguments for the rights of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories was that they are otherwise peaceful people who have to defend themselves from terrorists who would deny them the right to land their government won in battle.

In addition to his ideas regarding Israel, Brook brought with him the belief that the Twin Towers and Pentagon were attacked on Sept. 11 because the Arab world views the United States as a weak country when it comes to dealing with terrorism and that attacks on U.S. soil will bring a militant Muslim mass closer to its goal of a theocratic totalitarian Middle East.

Brook concluded his lecture by claiming Israel should be defended at any cost because it is the only country in the region that gives its citizens freedom of speech, the right to vote, and freedom of assembly.

In contrast, he argued, the Palestinian Authority kills its public critics, allows no public vote of which to speak, and is a hate-mongering, anti-Semitic, terrorist regime. According to Brook, Yasser Arafat should not be allowed to live.

Some cheered and others argued during this controversial presentation. None in the Turnhalle that night engaged in peaceful dialogue on the issues at hand.