A virulent intolerance from British academia

[pizza]

Academic Inti-fad-a
By Melanie Phillips
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 13, 2005

Here we go again. Later this month, Britain’s Association of University Teachers will debate a proposed boycott of Israeli academics. This is almost three years to the day since the campaign for such a boycott was first launched, when Professors Steven and Hilary Rose proposed it in a letter to the Guardian. Although the attempt largely failed, it ushered in a climate of virulent intolerance on campus in which two Israeli academics were sacked from a journal, an Israeli student discriminated against in admissions, and a number of papers from Israeli academics returned unopened.

The Prime Minister’s office said that Tony Blair was ‘appalled by discrimination against academics on the grounds of their race or nationality’ and that ‘universities must send a clear signal that this will not be tolerated’. But it was tolerated, and the unpunished academics did not give up. In March 2004, more than 300 of them signed an open letter in the Guardian asking the leaders of Israeli universities to reveal whether they supported government policies.

They finally managed to reopen the issue at a conference held last December at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies. The conference, organised by the school’s Palestinian Society, was called ‘Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles’ and launched a new boycott organisation, the British Committee for Universities in Palestine. This drew up a manifesto calling on academics to break links with Israel by refusing to work with Israeli institutions, referee academic papers, grant applications or attend conferences.

Even before the AUT debates the new boycott call, the Israel Science Foundation, the biggest government funder of Israeli research, has already found itself a victim of the Israel blacklist, receiving two rejections from British academics to review an application. The Guardian reported that an unnamed academic described his ‘utmost respect’ for the scholar whose grant he was asked to review, but refused on the basis that it was Israeli money and he disapproved of Israel’s actions towards the Palestinian people. ‘I hope you understand this is nothing personal,’ he added.

The AUT has been here before, too, having first debated an Israel boycott two years ago when it was defeated after an acrimonious debate. But now, the tactics are more sophisticated. In a tactical manoeuvre to get the motion accepted, it does not commit the union to implement a boycott but merely requires that the full text of the boycott call be circulated to all members.

There is yet another twist to this resuscitated campaign. For the boycott would not be extended to all Israeli academics -- only to those who refuse to denounce their government’s policies in the occupied territories. The motion would generously exclude ‘conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state’s colonial and racist policies’.

This requirement to denounce Israel as the price of continued social acceptance is doubly disgusting. First, it is of course a monstrous inversion which turns Israel, the victim of unbroken annihilatory Arab terror for the past half century, into the regional bully while sanitising Palestinian aggression.

Second, it represents a profound betrayal of the cardinal principle of intellectual endeavour, which is freedom of speech and debate. If anyone had ever told British academics that there would come a time when they would punish colleagues because of the views they held, and would treat them as pariahs and try to destroy their livelihoods in order to intimidate others into toeing the sole approved political line, they would have been incredulous. In the western tradition the universities are, after all, the historic custodians of free intellectual inquiry and open debate. Censorship, suppression of ideas and intellectual intimidation are associated with totalitarian regimes which attempt to coerce people into the approved way of thinking.

The motion has already been compared to McCarthyism. This is too kind. However cruel, illiberal and arbitrary that disturbing period was, a number of those who were hounded subsequently turned out to have actually been communists. By contrast, Israeli academics are to be persecuted for failing to denounce their own country for seeking to defend its citizens against genocidal mass murder. A more appropriate comparison would surely be the forced conversion of the Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages, or the show trials under Stalinism. For in true totalitarian tradition, only those in the pariah group who denounce their own will be permitted to have a livelihood. To survive in the cradle of free expression, Israelis will have to betray their own people in the cause of hatred and lies.

But who can be surprised? For this is a natural development from the implicit -- and sometimes explicitly stated -- assumption that courses through British intellectual circles in the ongoing hate-fest against Israel, that only those British Jews who denounce Israel’s policies can be considered to be British; anyone who supports Israel is guilty of ‘dual loyalty’. Since defending Israel is a thought-crime which thus calls into question one’s membership of a nation, it follows that Israel’s academics must similarly find called into question their membership of the academy.

What is notable about the AUT motion is that it reflects the truly shocking ignorance of the region’s history and current political reality, the resulting deep gullibility to propaganda based on lies, and the consequent vicious double standards and prejudice that now characterise British received opinion on the subject of Israel.

An unidentified academic has defended the boycott ‘as a means of registering my protest against Israelis’ lack of respect for human rights and continuing illegal occupation of Palestinian land.’ This parrot mindlessly repeats the mantra of the left about the ‘illegal occupation’ in apparent ignorance of the fact that a) the occupation is perfectly legal under international law as the defensive measure against attack that it was; b) that it is not ‘Palestinian land’ at all but territory that belonged to the British colonial power until it was illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt and is now -- since they have washed their hands of it -- most fairly to be described as no-man’s land; and c) that parts of these territories, such as Hebron, are the sites of Jewish settlement of great antiquity, predating the Arab colonisation by several centuries but where Jews were massacred and from which they were driven out by Arab occupiers. If we’re talking colonisation here, the Jews of Palestine were the historic victims.

And of course, no other people than the Jews is to have their livelihood or membership of the community of civilised nations made conditional on how they think. No other people is to be forced to take a particular political line as the price of intellectual acceptance. The fine consciences of those calling for this action do not extend to proposing similar boycotts on any of the world’s myriad dictatorships: no boycott of Syria, for example, for the occupation of Lebanon; or China for the oppression of Tibet; or the Sudan for the small matter of the genocide of some two million-plus Africans.

Yet these are our university teachers, the very people responsible for shaping the assumptions of a society, whose own profound ignorance, prejudice and twisted morality are now on such conspicuous display. Rather then maintain their historic role as the disinterested custodians of truth and objectivity, university academics have become the principal promulgators of an agenda to delegitimise the state of Israel and, by doing so, delegitimise the claim to peoplehood of one people and one people alone in the world: the Jews.

And many of those involved in this despicable enterprise have been Jews from both Israel and the diaspora -- none of whom, it goes without saying, has ever boycotted Palestinian academics, even at the height of the Palestinian terrorism onslaught. The particular psychopathology which causes such Jews to march behind the banner of genocide against their own people -- and all in the cause of ‘human rights’ -- is worthy of academic study in its own right. These Jewish quislings -- to call them ‘self-hating’ is misleading since many of them inordinately love themselves -- have done untold damage, since they provide Judeophobes with the fiction that hating Israel cannot be anti-Semitic.

Not all academics, of course, go along with the boycott; indeed, many are appalled. The British National Postgraduate Committee has issued a statement saying that a boycott attempt based on nationality encourages discrimination and goes against the principle of judging academic work on its merits alone. It inhibits progress in areas that benefit humanity, cuts the UK off from leading research, prevents collaborations, and encourages discrimination against some students and staff within the UK.

Nevertheless, despite such evidence of a residual decency the universities have become the swamp in which this virus breeds. In the grip of a group-think that causes them to genuflect to victim-culture and the deconstruction of western morality and the concept of truth, a dismaying number of our supposedly finest minds have been transformed from people who spread enlightenment to those who cast darkness before them. In Britain, being educated no longer means being elevated. On the contrary, it has begun to seem that the more highly educated the person, the deeper the ignorance and the more virulent the prejudice.

Intellectuals assume they are in the vanguard of progress, and that because of their superior brain power are superior human beings. In fact, the higher reaches of learning and the fundamental tenets of human decency are often strangers to each other. From the time of the French revolutionary terror, intellectuals have been listed amongst the principal enemies of humanity. In the 19th century they energetically promoted eugenics in order to eradicate lesser breeds and create a world peopled by finer individuals like themselves. They supported Stalinism until the Hungarian uprising opened the eyes of some but by no means all to the tyranny they had watched unfold but somehow never seen. And as the British writer Paul Johnson observed in his book ‘Intellectuals’, Mussolini had many intellectual followers, as did Castro, Nasser and Mao Tse-tung, while Hitler performed well among teachers and university professors.

As he concluded: ‘Violence has always exercised a strong appeal to some intellectuals. It goes hand in hand with the desire for radical absolutist solutions’. With the collapse of communism, the intellectuals of the universities have alighted upon a neat replacement instrument to bring about their radical absolutist solution to the existence of the west -- the destruction of Israel, and with it the Jews who first gave the west the civilisation they so despise.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Pr ... p?ID=17665

[jbuck919]

This is almost three years to the day since the campaign for such a boycott was first launched, when Professors Steven and Hilary Rose proposed it in a letter to the Guardian. Although the attempt largely failed....

How do you interpret this as "virulent intolerance from British academia?" Obviously, someone has resurrected something that was controversial three years ago, but firmly put down, and is (assuming the account is not so distorted as to approach untruth in the first place) making enough noise to force some sort of debate that is bound to go against him once again. Only in an extreme right-wing rag like the one you are quoting would such a story receive serious attention.

[pizza]

This is almost three years to the day since the campaign for such a boycott was first launched, when Professors Steven and Hilary Rose proposed it in a letter to the Guardian. Although the attempt largely failed....

How do you interpret this as "virulent intolerance from British academia?" Obviously, someone has resurrected something that was controversial three years ago, but firmly put down, and is (assuming the account is not so distorted as to approach untruth in the first place) making enough noise to force some sort of debate that is bound to go against him once again. Only in an extreme right-wing rag like the one you are quoting would such a story receive serious attention.

If I have to explain how it's intolerance to you, who claim to be able to recognize intolerance at the drop of a hat in areas that affect you personally, it would be useless to even try. On the other hand, try substituting "Homosexual academics" for "Israeli academics" and you might get the idea. If you have another account from the extreme left-wing rags you rely on to contradict it, by all means post it. Try Counterpunch or The Guardian.

[jbuck919]

If I have to explain how it's intolerance to you, who claim to be able to recognize intolerance at the drop of a hat in areas that affect you personally, it would be useless to even try. On the other hand, try substituting "Homosexual academics" for "Israeli academics" and you might get the idea.

In the first place, I only meant (and sorry if I didn't make it clear) that your title implied (perhaps it does not and it's just my interpretation) that there was some reflection on all of British academia because of something that is being propounded by a relative few.

In the second place, it would not be the same thing if it were homosexual academics. They would be being discriminated against because of some arbitrary inherent characteristic, where the Israeli academics would (if this got through) be boycotted because of an incidental association that has nothing to do with them personally. I am not saying the one situation is less objectionable than the other, but they are different.

If you have another account from the extreme left-wing rags you rely on to contradict it, by all means post it. Try Counterpunch or The Guardian.

The problem is, I searched for an alternative source (that's why I was able to confirm that it is a resurrection of a three-year-old controversy). I can't find any other organ of the press, liberal, middle-of-the-road, or mainstream conservative, that has even found this worth reporting.

[pizza]

The article itself makes it clear that there are many within British academia who strongly oppose the proposed boycott, so obviously the title I used doesn't apply to all of British academia.

I'm sorry but I can't see the difference between "homosexual" and "Israeli" in the context of this discussion. One cannot help being an Israeli or a Jew for that matter any more than one can help being a homosexual. Discrimination is discrimination, any way you slice it.

It isn't surprising that the article isn't in many journals now. The attempt to revive the boycott is recent. As the matter progresses, other news sources will undoubtedly pick it up.

[jbuck919]

I'm not saying that I don't find the prospect of this boycott odious. I'm just saying that it would be just that, a boycott to protest a country's policies that would rest arbitrarily on the shoulders of those who do not deserve it, not an act of discrimination based on Jewish identity. Similar things were proposed and sometimes enforced against South Africa in the days of (real) apartheid. I don't think the situation in Israel is equivalent, but I don't think even the Brit academics who are proposing this action are thinking of discriminating against Jews per se.

[pizza]

Most people who are discriminated against couldn't care less about the distinctions you raise between being targeted for reason A or for reason B. The net result is that they are deprived of the opportunities that would otherwise be available to them for reasons basically beyond their personal control, whether practical or inherent. The fact that some who propose the boycott may not have it specifically in mind to discriminate against Jews doesn't change the fact that such will be the case if the boycott were to succeed.

I don't know whether you've read the article in its entirety, but the author clearly explains why the purported reason for the proposed boycott as being a "protest against Israeli policies" is itself a specious argument that flies in the face of international law.

I think the article is journalism of the highest level of integrity irrespective of the source that printed it.

[Ralph]

I share with Pizza his revulsion over the antics of any academics whose actions reflect anti-Semitism, not an oppositional view to specific Israeli acts or policies.

The academy is not an alien island unconnected to the larger society it serves. In countries where there is free expression by academics, unfair, dishonest and biased viewpoints emerge and often are exploited by one faction or another.

[Corlyss_D]

The academy is not an alien island unconnected to the larger society it serves.

It's hard to hold onto that idea, given what we've seen of the radicalized academia in that last few years. I agree with Huntington's observations that academia is one segment of the growing elites that increasingly know no boundaries, nations, or loyalties except cosmopolitianism, Internationalism, and the causes of the liberal left.

[jbuck919]

The academy is not an alien island unconnected to the larger society it serves.

It's hard to hold onto that idea, given what we've seen of the radicalized academia in that last few years. I agree with Huntington's observations that academia is one segment of the growing elites that increasingly know no boundaries, nations, or loyalties except cosmopolitianism, Internationalism, and the causes of the liberal left.

And only with the extremist rarity anti-Semitism, which is still only necessarily the same as dislike of Israel (in whole or in part) in the minds of those who benefit by claiming a lack of distinction.

[Barry]

The academy is not an alien island unconnected to the larger society it serves.

It's hard to hold onto that idea, given what we've seen of the radicalized academia in that last few years. I agree with Huntington's observations that academia is one segment of the growing elites that increasingly know no boundaries, nations, or loyalties except cosmopolitianism, Internationalism, and the causes of the liberal left.

I openly acknowledge that there is a lot of anti-semitism among the world left and clearly a double-standard with regard to Israel. I also oppose the boycott refered to in the article.

But I've got no problem whatsoever with someone being more loyal to their ideals, be they cosmopolitianism, International and causes of the liberal left or otherwise, than to the nation in whose borders they reside or are from as a general matter.

[Ralph]

Anti-Semitic academics garner much attention. The Israel issue is so far below the radar screen of most professors and students that it's just silly to worry that this is an entrenched and troublesome issue. Don't misunderstand me-EVERY expression of hate should be refuted immediately. But the media often exaggerate what is happening.

A good example is the current brouhaha at Columbia which has attracted New York Times editorials and much coverage in the "Street Box" press. I'm at Columbia every Saturday and I can hardly find anyone to talk to me about it.

[jbuck919]

Anti-Semitic academics garner much attention. The Israel issue is so far below the radar screen of most professors and students that it's just silly to worry that this is an entrenched and troublesome issue. Don't misunderstand me-EVERY expression of hate should be refuted immediately. But the media often exaggerate what is happening.

A good example is the current brouhaha at Columbia which has attracted New York Times editorials and much coverage in the "Street Box" press. I'm at Columbia every Saturday and I can hardly find anyone to talk to me about it.

Did you ever consider a career in diplomacy, Ralph? You're a natural.

[Corlyss_D]

And only with the extremist rarity anti-Semitism, which is still only necessarily the same as dislike of Israel (in whole or in part) in the minds of those who benefit by claiming a lack of distinction.

Maybe it's this headache I've got, or maybe it's still early in the day for me, but I don't think I understand your comment. Anti-Semitism isn't that rare among the elites. The modern version got its following by an extremely circuitous route: pro-Palestinianism lashed up with Anti-Americanism to become anti-Israelism translated into anit-Semitism. But's still anti-Semitism tarted up in a new costume of heart-tugging concern for the downtrodden victims of American-Israeli policies.

Let me quote to you from the most recent edition of Brown's Journal of World Affairs. It's got an interview and speech by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland 1990-1997 and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 1997-2002, on Contemporary Anti-Semitism: An Urgent Challenge:

One of the most disturbing manifestations of fear in our world today is anti-Semitism. Sixty years after the Holocaust, there is a renewed and urgent need to emphasize international human rights law as a central component of efforts to combat anti-Semitism. Much of the recent media coverage of anti-Semitism around the world has centered on the situation in Europe. Synagogues and Jewish cemeteries there have been defaced and Jews have been physically attacked on the streets. While many in Europe will point out that the situation today is too complex to be easily equated with historical anti-Semitism on the conteinent, it is vital that Europeans take effective action to stop these reprehensible events.

In Belgium, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Russia, cases of Jewish businesses and schools being defaced with racist slogans, Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials being desecrated, and synagogues being firebombed are tragically frequent. In a three month period in France, forty-three synagogues and three Jewish cemeteries were attacked. Despite some positive measures taken by the French government, the violence has continued without significant abatement. In November 2003, a wind of the Merkaz Hatorah school in the Paris suburb of Gagny was torched by unidentified assailants. In news reports about this horrible incident, students at the school reported that they often endured racists abuse: there were spat upon, called "Dirty Jew," and their skullcaps were snatched from their heads.

Although the resurgence of anti-Semitism in France has earned it special notoriety, anti-Semitic acts are occurring throughout Europe. Human Rights First, a non-governmental organization that has focused on thsi issue, has documented anti-Semitic violence in Italy, Belgium, Russia, Greece, Austria, the Ukraine, and Belarus, to name just a few. Earlier this year, Human rights First published an important report entitled Anti-Semitism in Europe: Challenging Official Indifference, which I commend to you. Despite efforts by human rights groups and Jewish organizations to document anti-Semitic acts, a lack of official recognition of the problem is muting the alarm in these countries. Moreover, the causes of the rise in anit-Semitism in Europe have been the subject of much debate. Journalists, governments, and other observers speak of a "new anti-Semitism animated by increased hostilities in the Middle East. The growing populations of Muslim immigrants in Europe bring to their new homes old prejudices, fueled by anti-Semitic propaganda disseminated through the Internet and the Arab-language media.

These demographic changes clearly are contributing to the new wave of anti-Semitism. We must, however, be cautious about the argument that anti-Semitism is the inevitable side-effect of the Middle East conflict for three reasons. First it too often becomes an excuse for inaction. We saw this happen in the 1990's, when U.S, officials and others in the international community distanced themselves from the human rights crisis in Bosnia by describing the Balkan conflict as a local tragedy, rooted in "ancient" or "tribal" hatreds. Second, it pits tow minorities against one antoher and increases their vulnerability. In Rwanda and Chechnya, Columbia and Sierra Leone, and close to home in Northern Ireland, I have seen how patterns of discrimination drive wedges between communities. These tensions in turn embolden racist extremists, including neo-Nazi groups in Europe, whose racist hatred extends to Jews and Muslims alike. Ultraconservative polticians, like Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, are likely to be both anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim. Although in many countries most anti-Semitic violence is perpetrated by these traditional right-wing groups, growing emphasis on the Middle East conflict promotes the perception that young Muslim men pose the gravest danger to Jewish communities in Europe. Third, this analysis diverts attention from the much-needed discussions about how to combat anti-Semitism by creating a secondary debate - one that blurs the line between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israel. Anti-Semitic attacks often masquerade as opposition to Israeli-policies, in both subtle and virulent ways. This understandably, has led some to regard any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.

The particular things to note in this passage are the reference to "official indifference" and the reference to the growth of Muslim populations in Europe.

I couple these with an observation made within the last couple of weeks that Chirac tolerates these gangs of Franco-colonial Eurotrash roaming Paris and beating the crap out of those they encounter as long as they target people he wants molested. Now, in France, it might be Franco-colonials beating up Jews, but in other countries, it could well be Muslim immigrants doing what immigrants often do here: become the underbelly of crime as their ticket to eventual respectability. I'll be the first to admit I haven't heard it discussed in those terms, I'm just putting together pieces of news and history to try to predict where this is all leading to.

[Corlyss_D]

I'm at Columbia every Saturday and I can hardly find anyone to talk to me about it.

Who are you asking about it, Ralph? I mean, do you just sit down at the student union and say, "Hey! What's up with these anti-Semitic charges against the faculty here?"

[Ralph]

I'm at Columbia every Saturday and I can hardly find anyone to talk to me about it.

Who are you asking about it, Ralph? I mean, do you just sit down at the student union and say, "Hey! What's up with these anti-Semitic charges against the faculty here?"

*****

I've walked into faculty offices, started talking to students at random - now that the weather is good, the campus is a great place to relax outdoors.

Of course I don't claim to have done any methodical investigation but for those of you who are very distant from campus life - in both time and space - the reality is that very few people care much about international affairs, strident advocacy - whatever.

[Corlyss_D]

I've walked into faculty offices, started talking to students at random - now that the weather is good, the campus is a great place to relax outdoors.

Of course I don't claim to have done any methodical investigation but for those of you who are very distant from campus life - in both time and space - the reality is that very few people care much about international affairs, strident advocacy - whatever.

What time of year is it, Ralph? Of course they aren't going to be interested in much now but final exams and getting the hell out. I'm sure that's why the report was issued now instead of the first of next fall's semester.

[jbuck919]

Maybe it's this headache I've got, or maybe it's still early in the day for me, but I don't think I understand your comment.

As I've always suspected from the fact that you will respond to a post I make in the morning at GMT + 1 (now 2), you are a night person. Oh, how you must have suffered working for the government on their schedule.

It might make good press to report otherwise, but when push comes to shove, anti-Semitism has been totally marginalized in mainstream Euro-American culture. I do not buy that fashionable pro-Paletinianism, however objectionable its implications, is the mother of the modern version of hatred of Jews among people who are educated enough to know better. Both the article you quote and the one Pizza originally did simply jump to that conclusion without establishing a causal connection.

When we are looking for the explanation of any phenomenon, it is always more reasonable to go with the simpler explanation. If Europeans hate Israel, it is because its creation appears to them, not without some justification, to be related to the grossest and most dangerous international problems that have manifested themselves in the most disastrous ways. Anti-Israel bias in the west is a form of wishful thinking, of wanting to make a huge problem just go away. It is unnecessary to posit a connection to historic and now (in Europe and America) abandoned prejudices against the religious/ethnic background of most of its citizens.

I hasten to dissociate myself from that mentality, but that is how I interpret it.

[Corlyss_D]

Oh, how you must have suffered working for the government on their schedule.

You have no idea . . . One of the reasons I decided to retire when I did was because my telework detail was up and I had just a dreadful time crawling out of bed in the AM. I could barely stagger in to work by 10 AM. I stayed till 6 PM but the bureaucrats couldn't cope with the outrider who didn't show up by 8:30 AM.

It might make good press to report otherwise, but when push comes to shove, anti-Semitism has been totally marginalized in mainstream Euro-American culture.

I think that's one of Pres. Robinson's points: it doesn't make good press. No offense, but it couldn't be that it appears to be marginalized precisely because of the "official neglect" referred to in Robinson's speech, could it? We encounter the same phenomenon here in the US with the popular notion among elites that if it doesn't appear in the NYT, it didn't happen. In France, for example, some 30% of the press are on the state payroll. How hard do you think it would be under those circumstances to keep it out of the newspapers in France? Not very, I should think.

I do not buy that fashionable pro-Paletinianism, however objectionable its implications, is the mother of the modern version of hatred of Jews among people who are educated enough to know better.

Not to get into a he said/she said, but I did describe a more complex phenomenon than simply the pro-Palestinian movement. It strongly implicates anti-Americanism as well as anti-Israelism. I personally think it has more to do with Anti-Americanism than it does with pro-Palestinianism or anti-Israelism. There would be little bang for the buck in anti-Israelism if it weren't for the secondary payoff it produces in the way of an excuse to fan the flames of Anti-Americanism too. The Anti-Americanism faction invokes all the reasons usually heard from Europe for why they can't stand us, and adds the idea that Jews control the wealth in America and that AIPAC is the strongest lobby in Congress, neither of which is true. It's a short step from there to anti-Semitism.

Both the article you quote and the one Pizza originally did simply jump to that conclusion without establishing a causal connection.

No offense against any of our credentials here as thoughtful analysts of the world scene, but if I had to pick between human rights groups, which have a lot more pressing and more obvious human rights abusers to worry about than those creeping up on the Jews, and one of us here, armed only with anecdotal evidence, for the straight dope on what's happening, I'd pick the people with the experience and the stats. Jews are the canaries in the mineshaft. What happens to them is often a signal that we are in for wide-spread ethnic violence in areas where we thought we had put that pretty much behind us.

When we are looking for the explanation of any phenomenon, it is always more reasonable to go with the simpler explanation. If Europeans hate Israel, it is because its creation appears to them, not without some justification, to be related to the grossest and most dangerous international problems that have manifested themselves in the most disastrous ways. Anti-Israel bias in the west is a form of wishful thinking, of wanting to make a huge problem just go away.

I don't disagree with your observation that the Europeans want it all to just go away. I think they are not as passive about wanting to go away as they used to be. Indeed most of them have gone from overt support for Israel in the 1950s and 60s to outright hostility to Israel. Their obsessive navel-gazing about their own little corner of the world, combined with their open hostility to American activism that inevitably involves them, I think, has led them to believe if they just rant and rave about American support for Israel that it will persuade us to either leave them untroubled or abandon Israel. I don't think Europeans are anti-Semitic because of Israel; I think they are anti-Semitic because they anti-American first and the Palestinian situation gives them cover to be both.

It is unnecessary to posit a connection to historic and now (in Europe and America) abandoned prejudices against the religious/ethnic background of most of its citizens.

Perhaps. But anti-Semitism is too recent in all of the European nations' collective memories as a response to various social problems to be dismissed as "now abandonded." Top down social engineering never works, which is what the post WW2 campaigns were. If they weren't, if they had truly changed the hearts of the people, there would be no tolerance for the kinds of assaults being reported across Europe. There would be reports of active opposition to them. So far, I haven't heard of anything like active opposition. Hell, you can't even get the governments to do anything about criminal behavior in their own countries.

[Ralph]

I've walked into faculty offices, started talking to students at random - now that the weather is good, the campus is a great place to relax outdoors.

Of course I don't claim to have done any methodical investigation but for those of you who are very distant from campus life - in both time and space - the reality is that very few people care much about international affairs, strident advocacy - whatever.

What time of year is it, Ralph? Of course they aren't going to be interested in much now but final exams and getting the hell out. I'm sure that's why the report was issued now instead of the first of next fall's semester.

*****

That's just ridiculous. The undergrad semester goes to June and the investigating body has been at work for several months. If they issued no report now you'd probably say they're hoping for people to forget over the summer or become distracted.

Kids on campuses for the main just have zero interest in these matters whether it's the start or end of a semester. Relatively few students are political and even at Columbia, which has far more than most campuses of equal size, they're in a minority.

There are more posters around Columbia about cultural events and sports than there are about political/campus issues.

I have colleagues who were anti-war activists at Columbia during Vietnam. One woman - my age - was an SDS member who participated in the seizure of the administration building. She now admits that with all the noise and the fury, those students who actively demonstrated against the war other than showing up for a big rally were a large but nonetheless real minority. And the Massad matter isn't the equivalent of Vietnam.

[pizza]

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

AUT boycott: Jewish lecturers resign
Yaakov Lappin, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 22, 2005

The decision by Britain's 40,000 member Association of University Teachers (AUT) to boycott two Israeli universities on Friday has ignited scathing condemnation from Jewish communities worldwide and has prompted the immediate resignation of Jewish academics from the AUT.

In a blitz procedure timed - on the eve of Passover - to exclude Jewish members from the conference, the AUT rushed through two motions to boycott Haifa and Bar Ilan universities, exhibiting an unprecedented escalation of a campaign by British academics to target Israel.

A jovial executive union meeting heard unanswered orations by Sue Blackwell and Shereen Benjamin, both lecturers at Birmingham University. The academics labeled Israel as a "colonial apartheid state, more insidious than South Africa," called for the "removal of this regime," and depicted Israeli universities as "repressing" academic freedom.

In her allegations against the Israeli institutions, Ms. Blackwell relied heavily on a letter by Ilan Pappe, lecturer in political science at Haifa University. A message from Dr. Pappe was distributed to every executive member at the conference, in which Pappe called on the conference to adopt a boycott of his own university, and alleged he was the victim of "restriction" and "harassment."

The speeches were met with rapturous applause from the audience, before AUT executive president Angela Roger cut short the session and moved to deny a right of reply to opponents of the motions. The session was then directed towards a vote, and a "lack of time" was cited as the reason preventing challenges to the motions from being heard. The executive passed by sizeable majorities two separate motions adopting boycotts against Haifa University for its restricting academic freedom and against Bar Ilan university for its college located in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

There was no opportunity for academics who had planned on opposing the motions, such as executive member Alistair Hunter, to address the conference. Dr. Hunter described the AUT's endorsement of a boycott against Israeli universities as an "ill judged decision" and expressed disgust at the absence of debate before voting commenced.

Ronnie Fraser, chair of the Academic Friends of Israel group, said: "The union effectively asked its membership to break its own laws on racism and discrimination."

An alternative motion, tabled by executive member Hugh Manson, called for a "peaceful resolution of the problems facing the Middle East," and for the establishment of "contact with the Israeli Higher Education Union representatives."

"The Palestinians are not boycotting Israeli universities," said Manson, "why should we?" Professor Manson emphasized a need to "establish contacts in both communities," and spoke of advocating "dialogue and understanding." His motion was rejected by the executive after it was attacked by Sue Blackwell, who described it as "an insult to Palestinians."

Before the session, Sue Blackwell, a key figure in the anti-Israel boycott initiative, stood outside of the conference center in the coastal town of Eastbourne, draped in a Palestine flag. She was joined by kaffiya-clad activists of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who handed out leaflets branding Zionism as a "racist ideology," and accusing Israel of "ethnic cleansing."

Asked why she wished to boycott Israeli institutions, Ms. Blackwell told The Jerusalem Post that she was responding to a call made by Palestinian organizations, among them a trade union, to "show solidarity with the Palestinian people and to draw attention to the way Israeli universities were complicit in the occupation."

Shereen Benjamin, the second speaker to advocate a boycott of Israeli universities, was unable to answer questions about the Palestinian union which signed a letter calling for the conference to boycott Israel and could not identify its membership. In her speech to the conference, Ms. Benjamin used a number of photographs, and later conceded that the images were obtained from the "Electronic Intifada" website.

The text of the AUT resolutions is somewhat vague when it comes to spelling out the practical implications of the boycott. The motions resolve "that the boycott should take the form described in the Palestinian call for academic boycott of Israeli institutions."

This is a reference to the Web page of Lisa Taraki, an academic at Birzeit university, which is linked by Sue Blackwell's website, and upon which the AUT motions are modeled. Under the heading "Suggested Guiding Principles," a document advises boycotters to "refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions." The Web site also calls for internationalizing the boycott, and advocates "a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions." In addition, Taraki writes about the promotion of "divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions." Taraki says that the boycott should target Israeli academics who disagree with her political stance, and this clause has been mirrored in the AUT resolutions.

However, the above "guidelines" appear to be in contradiction of the AUT anti-racism code, which pledges to ensure "full recognition for, and participation by, members of all racial and ethnic groups in the AUT, in universities, and in the life of society generally."

AUT general secretary Sally Hunt released a statement saying that "the executive committee will issue guidance to AUT members on these decisions."

The boycott motions have prompted the immediate resignation of two Jewish academics from the AUT. Jonathan Ginzburg and Shalom Lappin, professors at King's College London, wrote in an open letter: "We feel that we have no choice but to resign from the AUT immediately, and we call upon our colleagues to do the same. We also appeal to the administrations of British universities and to other labor unions, at home and abroad, to withdraw recognition from the AUT until it rescinds this motion." Plans to launch an international boycott of the union are currently being discussed by Jewish academics in Britain.

In a statement released Saturday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry denounced the decision as "scandalous" and hypocritical.

"The fact that AUT chose to target Israel, the only country in the Middle East that has complete academic freedom for all segments of the population and all political streams is scandalous," the ministry said.

The ministry singled out countries such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia for suppressing academic freedom. The statement urged British academics to distance themselves from the boycott.

The Israeli embassy in London released a statement criticizing "the fact that no AUT member who wanted to argue against this decision was allowed to speak," and described the motions as "perverse in their content."

Britain's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks expressed his disappointment in the AUT's decision.

"I am most distressed by this outcome. Academic life is about building bridges of dialogue, not destroying them; opening minds, not closing them; hearing both sides of an argument, not one alone. The AUT has betrayed the academic principles it supposedly represents. This is a sad day for British universities," the rabbi concluded.

"This is a political campaign," Jonathan Spyer, Director of the European Affairs of the Global Center in International Affairs at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzeliya, told The Jerusalem Post after Friday's vote.

"The boycott," added Spyer, who is an expert on Europe-Israel relations and on the new anti-Semitism in Europe, "should be seen as part of a broader strategy toward the de-legitimization of Israel, leading to eventual sanctions against the country. This is a political campaign. The people behind the campaign, such as Sue Blackwell, are opposed to the continued existence of the State of Israel. In line with PLO policy of the 1970s, they wish to see the Jewish State replaced by a 'democratic-secular state', i.e., a single state with a Palestinian Arab majority between the Jordan and the Mediterranean."

Danny Stone, head of campaigns for the Union of Jewish Students said: "I think the motion is an absolute disgrace. It's a betrayal of academia and academic principles. At a time when there are moves forward towards peace, the AUT is moving backwards into a pit of hatred and unpleasant discourse."

Mr. Stone added that "whenever there have been boycott motions on campus, they've been accompanied by anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish students." Mr. Stone had recently returned from an NUS conference during which Jewish student officials resigned, in protest at the distribution of the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." In addition, Jewish students at Soas university have been protesting remarks which justified arson attacks against synagogues.

In a conversation following the vote, the AUT's Assistant General Secretary, David Bleiman remarked to Shereen Benjamin that the motion would "carry little moral authority," as there had been "no debate."

With Talya Halkin, Sari Cohen and AP

[pizza]

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

Our World: A dying lion that can still do harm
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 25, 2005

Last May, in the aftermath of the massacre of the Hatuel family; the rocket-propelled grenade attacks on IDF forces and a steep increase in arms smuggling from Egypt through tunnels to Rafah, the IDF launched Operation Rainbow in Gaza. Its aim was to clean out Rafah of terrorists and stem the hemorrhage of arms being smuggled into Gaza from Egypt.

The international outcry against Israel, which began the moment the operation was launched, was hysterical and obscene. Israel was accused of perpetrating crimes against humanity for every action it took to protect its territory and citizens from attack.

The international denunciation was supported by leftist commentators in the Israeli media, most prominently by the Haaretz newspaper, whose coverage of the operation was barely distinguishable from Al-Jazeera's. Ari Shavit, one of Haaretz's most prominent writers, penned a column in which he renounced all ties with Israelis who live in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, claiming that they should not be considered Israelis.

A few days after Shavit's column was published I was asked to give an interview to Britain's Channel 4. When I arrived in the studio I saw that Shavit had been invited as well and concluded I had been set up. Shavit, I was certain, would be the "good Israeli" who would say terrible things about Israel, and I would be the "bad Israeli" called upon in a post-modern disputation to be criminalized before the camera.

Yet what actually transpired was even more outrageous than I had expected. When our turn came to speak, the anchorman – acting as Grand Inquisitor – attacked us both fairly equally. Clearly, the British would have none of Shavit's attempt to separate the "good" Israelis like himself from the "bad" Israelis like myself. All Israelis were criminals for Channel 4.

Recent events in Britain have forced me to recall this miserable little episode. Last Friday, on the eve of Pessah, Britain's Association of University Teachers passed a resolution calling for the boycott of Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities, promising that Hebrew University would be next.

THIS DECISION is an act of pure anti-Semitism. Israel is being singled out from all the countries in the world. There is no call to boycott Palestinian universities, which celebrate terrorist massacres, indoctrinate students to jihad and are used as recruiting grounds for terrorist organizations. There is no call to boycott Saudi Arabian universities, where gender apartheid and religious persecution are the explicit and rigidly followed norms. And of course, no one would think of boycotting Chinese universities for China's occupation of Tibet. Only the Jewish state and its research universities are unacceptable.

There is an ironic twist to all of this. The highest density of anti-Israel activists in Israeli society is to be found in the humanities and social science faculties of Israeli universities. Indeed, it is Ilan Pappe from Haifa University who, while scandalously receiving a taxpayer-financed salary, travels around the US and Europe vilifying his country and calling for anti-Semites like the members of the AUT to boycott us.
Earlier last week, we witnessed another sort of abject prejudice in Britain when two far-left, virulently anti-Israel politicians – Oona King and George Galloway – were attacked by Islamic extremists as they campaigned in their heavily Muslim district.

King makes a big deal about the fact that she is anti-Israel and Jewish at the same time, and has compared Israel to Nazi Germany and the Palestinians to the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Yet, in spite of these politicians' pandering to Britain's large and increasingly extremist Muslim minority, they were physically assaulted by members of that very group. Indeed, over the past week, there have been repeated reports of Islamic extremists storming campaign meetings and denouncing democracy, calling any Muslim who participates in the elections an infidel. British security forces are on high alert for terrorist attacks in the country ahead of next month's elections.

Mainly due to Britain's relationship with the US, Israelis have a tendency to view it as an ally. But the situation on the ground in Britain must force us to reconsider this friendly view. Today Britain manifests the symptoms of a suicidal society. Its elites have been taken over by far-left bigots who, while purporting to care for the downtrodden, work to perpetuate a situation where the Arab world is wholly controlled by brutes who call for the destruction not only of Israel, but of Britain itself.

Anti-Semitism, which has become pervasive among Britain's aristocracy and the chattering classes in the media, culture and academia, is a sign of Britain's steep and steady slide into nihilistic self-destruction. Their animus toward Israel and toward Jews who refuse to denounce the Jewish state has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with them. They are fully aware of the threats posed by the international jihad; but rather than fight it they have tried to appease it by at once denying its danger, obsessively embracing Palestinian terrorists and calling for Israel's destruction. They do this even as the jihadis in their own country make it clear that they are unappeasable.

There is nothing Israel can do to stem Britain's decline. All we can do is keep our distance from that self-destructive society which, like a dying lion, can still do us great harm if we let it get close to us.

[Ralph]

The AUT action is clearly pure and unadulterated anti-Semitism, not a principled political stand. There simply is no rational basis for their stated views which are not considered expressions of disagreement with Israeli foreign and domestic policies, both of which leave a lot to be desired. I never heard of the AUT before. I'd like to know more about their membership.

[Barry]

I was out of town for a few days and am just now reading that the boycott motion passed. It really is sickening.

I agree that it's anit-Semitism. There is a never ending double-standard with regard to Israel among the world left and far American left. It's difficult to think of another reason for it.

[pizza]

And this from the Israeli academic Left:

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

Bye-bye, Britain
GADI TAUB, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 25, 2005

It is unwise – not to mention dishonest – to scream "anti-Semitism" every time Israel is criticized. People concerned with human rights have every reason to oppose Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Like a great many Israelis, I have always done so myself, and I sympathize with those anywhere in the world who criticize Israeli government policies in the territories.

But the case of the British academic boycott of Israeli universities is different. In this instance I am hard-pressed to explain the affair without taking anti-Semitism into account.

As an effort ostensibly designed to promote human rights, the boycott – launched precisely when Israel is moving to end the occupation – is puzzling. It is also striking that the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) has taken no similar steps against any other violation of such rights elsewhere in the world.

Academics from regimes where genuine ethnic cleansing, genocide and human rights crimes are regular occurrences remain welcome at Britain's universities. China's occupation of Tibet, to take only one obvious example, does not seem to bother the AUT. Whatever Israel's human rights failings – and I have been among those critical of government policies – the AUT's hypocrisy is too much to take.

One obvious reason, I suspect, for singling Israel out is Britain's guilty conscience – not just over its own worldwide colonial enterprises, but also over its part in bringing about the Palestinian tragedy. It was, after all, under British colonial rule that the right of Jews to a national home was first recognized.

But this falls short of fully explaining the sentiment behind the boycott. For there seems to be a more subtle phenomenon at work here. The Israeli occupation gives Britain's educated classes a rare opportunity to reconcile two equally deep currents that would otherwise clash: a self-image of British academics as defenders of human rights, civilizing agents of the world, and the seemingly opposite, deep-seated prejudice against Jews.

An instinctive racism cloaking a humanist facade is at work here. It is as if the British liberal conscience wants to tell itself that it now knows why it has always hated the Jews. It has always hated them because Jews are, by nature, racists. Such visceral, twisted logic must be enormously gratifying: primitive, racist instincts given full expression under a civilized, humanist guise.

So gratifying is this logic that it reduces to insignificance the glaring fact that the boycott works for rather than against the occupation, bolstering the very fears Israel's hawks thrive on, the paranoia that "everyone" will always be against the Jews, no matter what. And it hurts the very community that is most outspoken in its critique of the occupation.

Short of boycotting Peace Now, picking on Israeli academia was probably the worst choice of target.

I MYSELF am not affected by the boycott. My university, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has thus far been excluded from the gag rule, and I also qualify under the exception clause, having been publicly critical of my government. But I'll opt in anyway. I have no wish to be excluded from the boycott because I don't consider these exclusions honest. As a Jew, not just an Israeli, I prefer henceforth not to accept any invitations from British universities participating in the boycott. And I urge my fellow Jewish academics around the world to do the same.

If, as I suspect, some British academics prefer their academy Judenrein, it seems fitting and proper to grant them their wish, and not go to those universities where the boycott is in force and where we Jews are not welcome.

The writer is a faculty member in the Department of Communications & The School of Public Policy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

[Ralph]

Good article from a very good newspaper.

[Barry]

I'd love to see a boycott of AUT members in this country (not that I expect it to happen):


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Guardian Unlimited

Why Israel will always be vilified

It is convenient for many British liberals that Israel exists. It saves them from examining the manifest failings in their own actions

David Aaronovitch
Sunday April 24, 2005
The Observer

Last Friday saw two examples of intelligent people behaving in a futile way. The first was the decision by the US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, to seek the death penalty for would-be suicide terrorist, Zacharias Moussaoui. Not only does such a sentence confer on Moussaoui precisely the heroic end that he was seeking (did Gonzales never read Brer Rabbit?), but it would also deprive the authorities of a potentially valuable source of information and psychological insight. All it does is make some Americans feel better.
And then there was the decision of the Association of University Teachers council in Eastbourne to boycott two (perhaps three) Israeli universities, the futility of which I now hope to prove.

Let us first look at the stated objectives of the boycott. What does it seek to achieve? The literature of the campaign suggests that these objectives, far from being focused, are many and nebulous. They are, according to the motion's prime mover, Sue Blackwell of the English Department of Birmingham University, variously to 'add to the pressure on the country's economy and dent its international prestige'; to send a 'message of support to students and colleagues in Palestine'; and to act as 'consciousness-raising' for British academics who, through the boycott, can be brought to realise how the world really is. A sort of speculum for their hidden political organs.

The boycott seems also to be simultaneously aimed at the Israeli system in toto, and at the specific misdeeds of particular institutions - Haifa University for political censorship, Bar-Ilan for having relations with the illegal settlements on the West Bank, and the Hebrew University for pulling down Arab houses to build student dormitories. The AUT executive is 'investigating' this last accusation, but the scope of these targets probably reflects the campaigners' need to maximise support for their motion.

So, according to the disclosed agenda, somehow or other, the boycott will make Israeli academics think again about their support for the system, thus strengthening the forces of progress and justice. It will make Palestinians feel better, it will make Sue Blackwell feel better, it will help.

But will it? On Friday morning, the participants in the council meeting may have read an article in the Guardian by the progressive Israeli writer, Etgar Keret. He recalled how the Manchester academic, Mona Baker, sacked his translator, Miriam Schlesinger, from the board of Baker's journal, the Translator. Keret reflected on the irony. Schlesinger was the former head of Amnesty International in Israel, as well as being a peace activist. Keret added: 'Baker was not the first to call for a boycott of [Miriam's] academic work. Israeli right wingers had been irked by her signature on some petition and had called upon students at Israeli universities to refrain from attending classes given by her and others of her ilk.'

If the AUT delegates read Keret's appeal, just over half of them ignored it. And now, if they have their way, the Schlesingers of this world will be routinely boycotted unless, according to the terms of the motion, they show sufficient individual zeal in the cause of justice of the Palestinians. Sufficient zeal as judged by whom? We have no idea.

Meanwhile, back in Israel, you can easily imagine whose position is strengthened by the AUT boycott. And it isn't that of the academics most sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Look at the Europeans! Once again, they have singled Israel out for special treatment! Who can we trust but ourselves? In the United States, far more important to Israel than we will ever be, it will add grist to the arguments of those who want to support Israel at all hazards and under all circumstances.

So why do something so obviously counterproductive? The AUT delegates will have been reminded of the intolerable conditions of many of those living under Israeli occupation. They will have felt the emotional tug of those stories of checkpoint humiliations, collective punishments and the shooting of civilians. They'll have seen pictures of the wall. The motion may make them feel better. Warmer.

After the vote had been won, Blackwell, a former Christian fundamentalist turned revolutionary socialist, told the press how glad she was to be part of a union that was 'prepared to stand up for human rights'. The problem here, as she will have realised, is that if the AUT was to boycott places with bad human rights records, there'd be a whole lot of boycottin' goin' on. She has tried in the past to finesse this difficulty, at one point arguing: 'You cannot talk about academic freedom and free debate in Israel in the same way you can talk about it in the UK, or in almost any other country in the world.'

This sunniness is rather obviously absurd. There is a significant level of academic freedom and debate in Israel, flawed though it may be, compared with much of the rest of the world. Take just one country, Tunisia, which has a run-of-the-mill torturing authoritarian regime and no debate in its universities at all. Yet it wouldn't surprise me if many academics at Birmingham University have holidayed there, completely unhindered by Sue Blackwell. And then, of course, there's China.

No, Israel's universities are not bad and Israel's human rights record is no worse than that of many other countries. So, inevitably, the tack shifts. Israel's universities are intrinsically racist, according to Blackwell, with 'Israeli academics routinely implicated in racist discourses against Arab students and Arabs in general'.

And that's because there is something utterly unique about Israel itself, which marks it out from the merely abusive North Koreas and Irans. It has become an apartheid state, as South Africa was. And it, therefore, should be treated in the same way, with boycotts and disinvestments.

This is a genuinely, grade-A stupid argument, whether it emanates from the lips of Professor Steven Rose or the more sacred ones of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In itself, Israel is not anything like South Africa, where a majority was denied all political and civic rights on the grounds of race. What is analogous, however, is Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, which bears comparison with South Africa's occupation of Namibia or, some might say, Serbia's occupation of Kosovo.

So the object of those wanting peace and justice in the Middle East is to bring about an end to that occupation, and enable the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state. It is to persuade both sides that such a settlement is practical and to persuade both sides to make the difficult sacrifices that are necessary. It is to build confidence between Jews and Palestinians, and to strengthen, always, the hand of the peacemakers.

Unless, of course, you don't believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state at all within any borders. And this, as it happens, seems to be the view of Sue Blackwell, who describes Israel as 'an illegitimate state'. Unlike the United Nations, she does not believe it should have been set up and she would rather it disappeared. As she pointed out in 2003 to a previous AUT council: 'From its very inception, the state of Israel has attracted international condemnation for violating the human rights of the Palestinian people and making war on its neighbours.' Or, to put it even more bluntly, everything is all the fault of the Israelis.

The problem is that many Jews understand very well that this is her view and, unfortunately, will believe that it is also the view of all her fellow campaigners. Consequently, there will now be a battle royal (of which this article is part) about the rights and wrongs of these particular tactics, and the bigger picture will inevitably be lost. Everyone will return to their trenches and take the tarpaulins off their heaviest and most inaccurate artillery.

However, there may be a saving grace. Two years ago, Blackwell predicted that Tony Blair would be ousted at the next general election over Iraq. But if not: 'Then it may well be time for international pressure to be brought to bear, since the British electorate will have failed in their moral duty'.

So, one last reason, perhaps, to vote Labour on Thursday week. To enjoy the sight of Sue Blackwell busily boycotting herself.

[Ralph]

AUT doesn't have U.S. chapters if that's what was meant.

[Barry]

If that's a reference to my comment, I meant that I would like to see British professors who are members of the AUT and who voted in favor of the boycott to be boycotted by U.S. colleges in terms of fellowships, one year visiting professorships, etc.

[Ralph]

If that's a reference to my comment, I meant that I would like to see British professors who are members of the AUT and who voted in favor of the boycott to be boycotted by U.S. colleges in terms of fellowships, one year visiting professorships, etc.

*****

Barry,

You can't ask a professor how he/she voted in a professional association election or referendum. That by itself would be considered by the AAUP and most academics to be a violation of academic freedom.

[Barry]

If that's a reference to my comment, I meant that I would like to see British professors who are members of the AUT and who voted in favor of the boycott to be boycotted by U.S. colleges in terms of fellowships, one year visiting professorships, etc.

*****

Barry,

You can't ask a professor how he/she voted in a professional association election or referendum. That by itself would be considered by the AAUP and most academics to be a violation of academic freedom.

I didn't realize the voting records aren't available, Ralph. In that case, I'd like to see a boycott of all AUT professors.

[Ralph]

If that's a reference to my comment, I meant that I would like to see British professors who are members of the AUT and who voted in favor of the boycott to be boycotted by U.S. colleges in terms of fellowships, one year visiting professorships, etc.

*****

Barry,

You can't ask a professor how he/she voted in a professional association election or referendum. That by itself would be considered by the AAUP and most academics to be a violation of academic freedom.

I didn't realize the voting records aren't available, Ralph. In that case, I'd like to see a boycott of all AUT professors.

*****

I don't think that would be fair and retaliation would be certain. Like it or not, the academic community just doesn't act that way.

[Barry]

It apparently does in Britain.

[Donald Isler]

The Jewish Week
New York
Thursday, April 28, 2005 / 19 Nisan 5765

Pressure Building Against British Academic Boycott
Counter actions possible in wake of targeting of two Israeli universities.
Stewart Ain and Michele Chabin

In an escalation of tensions between academics in England and Israel over Israeli treatment of Palestinians, the Anti-Defamation League is considering a call for a “counter boycott” of British universities after British university teachers announced a boycott of two Israeli universities, Bar-Ilan and Haifa.

Also, an adviser to the rector of Bar-Ilan University said he is recommending that the Israeli government and academicians ask American universities to suspend all relations with British universities.

“This is not just a matter between Israel and Great Britain,” said the adviser, Eytan Gilboa. “It is a violation of one of the basic rules of world academic conduct.”

In considering the appropriate response to the British boycott, ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said: “I’m usually against boycotts, but I’m not sure that the way to beat this isn’t to call on other institutions to treat them the same way — cut off relations with institutions whose scholars are boycotting Israel.

“We may have to look at a counter boycott as a vehicle because no amount of reasoning, argument and rational discussion has prevailed. This would be a response to crude political pressure by Palestinians and pro-Palestinian elements who are anti-Israel.”

In a statement, the American Jewish Congress said: “Not since the Nazi university boycotts of Jews has there been so far-reaching an encroachment on academic freedom.”

Gilboa said also that he is recommending that Bar-Ilan University write to England’s Association of University Teachers (AUT) — whose executive committee voted 28-26 last Friday in favor of the boycott — objecting to the action, its refusal to allow Bar-Ilan to respond to the complaint and threatening legal action unless the decision is rescinded.

He added that he would like to see AUT members suspend their membership, and called on the British government to halt the public funding of Birmingham University and the Open University of Britain, where the boycott was initiated. Gilboa called also for contributors to those two schools to suspend their donations.

Gilboa said that although AUT has criticized the United States and Russia for their actions in other countries, Israel was the only country singled out for a boycott, which he said smacks of anti-Semitism.

“The boycott was proposed by a group of radical extremists who are not concerned about negotiations or peacemaking,” he said. “This extreme group denies Israel’s right to exist and attempted several times to boycott all Israeli universities but repeatedly failed. So this time they targeted three universities.”

Although the Hebrew University was included initially in the boycott proposal for allegedly bulldozing Palestinian homes to build dormitories, the AUT backed down “pending further investigation” after someone pointed out that Mount Scopus, home to both Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital, was Jewish-held land even when Jordan ruled Jerusalem.

The British boycott is the latest example of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic behavior in Britain. Among recent incidents, London Mayor Ken Livingston refused to apologize to a Jewish reporter for calling him a “Nazi concentration camp guard,” but according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, “rolled out the red carpet for Sheik Qaradawi, the Qatar-based imam whose fatwas sanction female Palestinian suicide terrorist attacks.”

Also, the center noted that just days before Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain, Jewish gravestones were desecrated with swastikas, there were a series of violent attacks against Jewish men in north London, and the Muslim Council of Britain boycotted the commemoration because it failed to include any mention of what it called the “continuing human rights abuses and genocide in the occupied territories of Palestine.”

Dr. Andrew Marks, a Columbia University professor who founded an organization of academics and scientists called International Academic Friends of Israel, said he planned to spearhead a call for AUT members to “reverse” the executive committee’s decision.

Marks, a cardiologist who arrived in London Tuesday for a previously scheduled speaking engagement at a conference on heart failure, said he planned to denounce the AUT action during the last 15 minutes of his one-hour lecture.

“I plan to make a statement condemning this boycott of Israeli academics and pointing out that we can’t use a political litmus test to decide who can be invited to meetings like the one we are having here and now,” he said. “My initial reaction was to cancel my participation in protest, but then I realized that would not be as effective if I showed up and made a strong statement.”

“I will be asking my colleagues from the United Kingdom to take some action to reverse this,” Marks continued. “There are 48,000 members [of the AUT], and some of them likely will be there or will know some of its members.”

Marks said the group of academics he was slated to address would be small, “but everybody has colleagues and it’s a place to start.”

Foxman noted in an interview that the British government of Tony Blair issued a statement opposed to the boycott. But he questioned how effective it would be.

“How do you defeat this outrageous behavior?” he asked. “Maybe by similar outrageous behavior in that American universities and schools who care will not deal with them, engage them or exchange with them. Maybe then they will come to a realization of what this is all about. I’m not calling for that, but we need to discuss it because reasonable, rational discussion has not worked.”

But Foxman said a first step would be to try to get the membership of the AUT to reverse the actions of their leaders “and put into place the will of the majority.”

Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities were targeted for boycott because they are complicit in a system of “apartheid” toward Palestinians, according to the AUT.

Bar-Ilan was singled out because of its academic ties with its satellite school, the Judea and Samaria College in the West Bank settlement in Ariel. But Gilboa said the college became independent five years ago and that as of September, Bar-Ilan would be severing all remaining ties.

The University of Haifa was accused of threatening an Israeli political science lecturer for supporting a student’s research into allegations that Israeli troops massacred 200 Palestinians during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.

But university officials said the union misunderstood what had occurred. They said the issue stems from an incident five years ago when a student confessed that he had falsified much of the evidence in his master’s thesis after a university investigation of his charges resulted in the paper’s rejection. The student also issued an apology to an Israeli court after Israeli soldiers sued him over his allegations.

Ilan Pappe, the professor who supported the student, accused the University of Haifa of suppressing academic freedom and called for a boycott of the university by colleagues in Britain and the United States. Although other faculty members have filed complaints against Pappe, the university has taken no action against him.

The university, which noted that 20 percent of its students are Israeli Arabs, said in a statement that it would continue its efforts to “further Jewish-Arab reconciliation, despite politically motivated initiatives to muzzle free speech and the academic discourse.”

In 2002, hundreds of European academics called for a boycott of Israeli universities to protest the treatment of Palestinians. That resulted in the firing of two Israelis from British publications.

Marks noted that two years ago, AUT members voted against a boycott resolution aimed at Israel by a 2-to-1 margin.

Following the boycott announcement, more than 200 academics sent a signed letter to the Guardian newspaper calling for “continued collaborations” with Israeli academics.

Such interactions, they said, “have already contributed to the reduction of tensions and advancement of cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians by developing joint grassroots projects and academic ventures.” n

Stewart Ain is a staff writer. Michele Chabin is an Israel correspondent.

[pizza]

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

The academic ban - Nazi connection
YAAKOV LAPPIN Jerusalem Post correspondent, THE JERUSALEM POST May. 1, 2005

The Web site of Sue Blackwell, the Birmingham lecturer who presented motions calling for boycotts of Israeli universities, contains a recommended link to a Web site owned by an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi activist. Wendy Campbell, who owns the MarWen Media Web site, has promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories discussing "unrivaled Jewish power," and maintains an additional Web site entitled "Exposing Israeli Apartheid," which is also linked by Blackwell.

MarWen Media, which is linked directly from Blackwell's Web site, advocates the views of Kevin Macdonald, an anti-Semitic pro-Nazi author, who has claimed Jews are responsible for a "breeding program" to conquer other "races."

Under the heading "Sue Blackwell's links on Israel and Palestine," Blackwell provides a link to the MarWen site, along with the following description: "MarWen Media offers the latest in groundbreaking documentaries, breaking through barriers and taboos that mainstream media – and even most alternative media do not venture." Blackwell writes that "the documentaries, mostly about Israel, Zionism, and Palestine, are by Wendy Campbell; see her other site, Exposing Israeli Apartheid."

Combining anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and vilification of Israel, Campbell writes: "It is no accident that Israeli 'security' is now the centerpiece of US foreign policy. How are the highly placed "friends of Israel" able to bamboozle so much of the world?"

She peddles Holocaust denial, saying, "It's a staggering fact that in numerous 'free, Western democracies' (such as Germany, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, and others) it's a crime to question the official Jewish death toll figures or the gas chamber story in the events now called The Holocaust. Penalties include fines and actual imprisonment! Holocaust heretic Ernst Zundel was deported from the US to Canada where he spent two years in solitary confinement. Now he sits in a German prison. Who's next?"

MarWen Media offers a videotaped interview with Kevin MacDonald, accompanied by the following description: "Prof. Kevin MacDonald is the author of three groundbreaking books on Judaism, the most recent being The Culture of Critique. In it, MacDonald concludes that Jewish intellectual movements including Freudian psychology, Marxism (including other radical, Leftist politics), the Frankfurt School of Social Research, the New York intellectuals and others, including right-wing NeoConservatism, have all been designed to advance specifically Jewish interests – often at the expense of non-Jewish interests. MacDonald's incisive analyses offer an alternative view of western history and has the potential to change the course of major events still unfolding."

MacDonald is a pseudo-intellectual white supremacist,who claims that Jews have been practicing a "breeding" program "masked" as a Jewish religious code, in a sinister bid to subjugate the world, and holds that Jews are responsible for an impending "race war" in the US.

Blackwell, who was described by columnist David Aaronovitch as a "former Christian fundamentalist," has said on her Web page that "I do not include links to sites which promote either racism or terrorism. This has always been my policy and applies to all my 200+ Web pages, not just this one."

Her Web site is reported to be under a House of Commons Committee investigation for a previous link to a Web site blaming Jews for the 9/11 attacks.

Ronnie Fraser, chairman of the Academic Friends of Israel group, told The Jerusalem Post that he was "shocked but not surprised."

"Sue Blackwell denies being an anti-Semite, but her denial of being anti-Semitic cannot be taken seriously in light of the links she has put on her personal Web site," said Fraser.

"With this revelation, I call upon the executive of the AUT to take a stand and bring the boycott motions to an end," he added.

[pizza]

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

Professors of hate
Isi Leibler, THE JERUSALEM POST May. 5, 2005

The flow of new initiatives from academics throughout the world seeking to delegitimize Israel continues unabated. Now the emphasis is directed towards anti-Israeli boycotts as exemplified by the recent outrage from the British Association of University Teachers.

Sadly, in many universities, academics of Jewish origin have assumed key roles denigrating Israel often claiming to do so out of "a sense of Jewish justice."

But the most harmful academic purveyors of hatred against the Jewish state are located at our own universities. They demonize their own country and try to persuade their students that Israel was born in sin. Their negative impact abroad is devastating.

University of Haifa political science professor Ilan Pappe would undoubtedly qualify for the title of doyen of the haters of Zion in Israeli academia. He constantly brackets Israelis with Nazis and urges academics throughout the world to delegitimize Israel.

Pappe gained added notoriety as the supervisor of a master's thesis which alleged that the Alexandroni Brigade had massacred hundreds of Arabs during the War of Independence. Veterans of the brigade instituted libel proceedings against the author, Teddy Katz, who conceded in court to having falsified interviews from alleged Arab witnesses. But despite the exposure of his rogue scholarship, Katz – with the endorsement of Pappe – continues to travel around the world repeating the same lies.

In a call to the British Association of University Teachers just prior to their boycott resolution, Pappe appealed to them "as an Israeli Jew who for years worked for other ways to bring an end to the evil perpetuated against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, inside Israel, and in the refugee camps to be part of a historical movement to bring an end to more than a century of colonization, occupation, and dispossession of the Palestinians."

Obscenely anti-Israeli outbursts by Hebrew University historian, and head of the German Studies department, Moshe Zimmerman qualify him as a worthy competitor to Pappe. A Tel Aviv judge who rejected Zimmerman's libel suit against a critic, condemned his repeated comparisons "between Hebron youth and Hitler Youth; between the motivation and conditions of service in IDF units and that of the Waffen SS between the Bible and Mein Kampf."

There are many other Israeli academics promoting similar views:

Ran Hacohen, who teaches comparative literature at Tel Aviv University described "Israel as fulfilling Hitler's dream" and referred to the assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin as "a milestone in the process of the barbarization of mankind."

Lev Grinberg, director of the Humphries Institute for Social Research at Ben-Gurion University, accused the Israeli government, in a Belgian newspaper, of "state terrorism." He also described the "murder of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as an Israeli policy that may be described as an act of symbolic genocide," prompting a Foreign Ministry official to accuse him of treason.

Binyamin Beit Hallahmi, professor of psychology at the University of Haifa, claimed that "Israelis are haunted by the curse of original sin against the native Arabs Its memory poisons their blood and marks every moment of their history."

Ze'ev Sternhell from the Hebrew University history and political science department wrote "There is no doubt regarding the legitimacy of the armed resistance in the territories themselves. If the Palestinians had a bit of sense, they would concentrate their struggle against the settlements."

Baruch Kimmerling, the Hebrew University sociologist, and others leapt to the defense of the anti-Israeli academics at Columbia University, currently under fire for intimidating Jewish students.

Not surprisingly, these defamers of Israel are hailed as courageous fighters for human rights and have become darlings of the global anti-Israeli academic circuit. Their loathsome statements are exploited by the boycotters to cover-up the odium of applying double standards against Israel and displaying anti-Semitic prejudice.

In response to complaints about these activities, all university administrations adamantly refuse to take disciplinary action. They insist that academic freedom is sacrosanct and that under no circumstances will they intervene. Apparently such sensitivities do not apply to the British University Teachers Association whose boycott explicitly exempts Israeli academics willing to denounce their country's "colonialist and racist policies."

It is surrealistic to witness universities funded by Israeli taxpayers being used as launching pads for international activities designed to undermine Jewish statehood under the mantle of academic freedom.

It is equally bizarre for Jewish donors motivated by Zionist and pro-Israel sentiments to contribute funds which indirectly provide platforms for self-loathing Jews to demonize and delegitimize Israel.

Paradoxically, ADL head Abe Foxman, himself a passionate champion of freedom of expression, was one of the first Diaspora leaders to challenge the passivity of Israeli university administrations. After becoming involved in the Columbia University imbroglio and having urged Columbia president Lee Bollinger to take action to prevent anti-Israeli faculty from exploiting their positions, Foxman felt he could not remain silent as similar abominations took place at Israeli universities.

Israel is a nation under siege, facing existential threats. Is it unreasonable to deny anti-Israeli faculty the use of our universities as staging grounds for campaigns to delegitimize the Jewish state? There is certainly no doubt that the vast majority of Israelis would endorse the need to rein in academics who exploit universities as platforms to provide succor to those who seek to destroy us.

It would therefore be timely for the government to set up a commission to enable a public discourse on the role of publicly funded institutions which are being exploited to undermine the security of the nation in the name of academic freedom.

Is that fascism? Only if one associates democracy with a license to incite and subvert the state in the name of freedom of expression.

Besides, in most countries, the growing threat of global terror will in the near future undoubtedly necessitate encroachments, on what has hitherto been considered as unfettered freedom of expression. If the survival or physical welfare of citizens is at risk, most governments (in contrast to Israel) would implement whatever measures are deemed necessary to protect their welfare.

The writer chairs the Diaspora-Israel relations committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and is a former chairman of the governing board of the World Jewish Congress.

[Donald Isler]

Haaretz

Last update - 20:06 05/05/2005


British lecturers call special meeting to reconsider boycott

By Tamara Traubman, Haaretz Correspondent

The Association of University Teachers (AUT) in the United Kingdom has decided to call a special meeting to reconsider its boycott of two Israeli universities. The AUT decided two weeks ago to boycott Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities for what it saw as supporting the occupation and repressing academic freedom.

The decision to reconsider the boycott comes in the wake of letters of protest from AUT members who requested that the decision be reversed.

Israeli academics welcomed the decision to hold the meeting to reconsider the boycott.

"I am glad they will rediscuss the mistaken and immoral decision they took," Haifa University President Aharon Ben-Ze'ev said Thursday. "I hope that this time the facts will play a more important role in the decision and, as a result, that the boycott will be withdrawn."

The boycott decision had met with a great deal of anger among Israeli academic circles, Jewish organizations in Britain and some members of the AUT. AUT rules require 25 signatures for reopening discussion of a decision. Two boycott opponents, Dr. John Pike of the Open University and Dr. David Hirsh of Goldsmith's College, University of London, succeeded in collecting some 30 members' signatures.

The organizers published a call to supporters to begin organizing on the various campuses in the U.K. They proposed that every branch of the 48,000-member association send proposals to the special meeting and elect representatives who would vote to end the boycott "once and for all."


Copyright 2005 Haaretz. All rights reserved

[Ralph]

Interesting.

[pizza]

"Pappe gained added notoriety as the supervisor of a master's thesis which alleged that the Alexandroni Brigade had massacred hundreds of Arabs during the War of Independence. Veterans of the brigade instituted libel proceedings against the author, Teddy Katz, who conceded in court to having falsified interviews from alleged Arab witnesses. But despite the exposure of his rogue scholarship, Katz – with the endorsement of Pappe – continues to travel around the world repeating the same lies."

=================================================

Pappe should have been fired on the spot if he knew or should have known that Katz falsified his "research" and nevertheless allowed it to be published in the name of the university.

[Ralph]

"Pappe gained added notoriety as the supervisor of a master's thesis which alleged that the Alexandroni Brigade had massacred hundreds of Arabs during the War of Independence. Veterans of the brigade instituted libel proceedings against the author, Teddy Katz, who conceded in court to having falsified interviews from alleged Arab witnesses. But despite the exposure of his rogue scholarship, Katz – with the endorsement of Pappe – continues to travel around the world repeating the same lies."

=================================================

Pappe should have been fired on the spot if he knew or should have known that Katz falsified his "research" and nevertheless allowed it to be published in the name of the university.

*****

Definitely. There's a circuit, worldwide, for Holocaust deniers and others of their misbegotten ilk.

[pizza]

Variations on the same theme:

Arutz Sheva - IsraelNationalNews.com

The Assault on the College of Ariel
by Steven Plaut
May 06, 2005

One of the biggest bugs that the Moonbat Left has discovered in its bonnet the past few weeks is the College of Judea and Samaria. It is a college that Israel set up in the Samarian town of Ariel, a town that was constructed outside Israel's 1967 borders (the "Green Line") in land liberated from illegal Jordanian occupation when Israel expelled the Jordanians in 1967 (following the coordinated Arab assault against Israel that started the Six Day War).

The Left is upset because the college operates in "occupied territory". Never mind that the college has oodles of Palestinian Arab students among its student body. The College of Ariel was the official excuse for the anti-Semitic British leftists to announce a boycott of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, one of two universities so named, all because Bar-Ilan has some partial connection to the College of Ariel. (The other target of the British academic pogrom is the University of Haifa, about 20% of whose students are Arabs, and which has the largest group of Arab students getting a liberal Western education in the entire Middle East.)

Then, to upset the Moonbats even more, Israel this week announced it was going to spend large amounts to upgrade and expand Ariel College and turn it into a full-scale university, in which its Jewish and Arab students will get an even better education. The Left, including Israel's own local ultra-moonbats, had a conniption when they heard that. Now the PLO has chimed in, to oppose expanding a school that threatens to educate Israeli and Palestinian students. "Israel has decided to build a university inside a settlement that was built on Palestinian land, and this is something that we can't accept," Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei (sometimes claimed by the "lib'ruh" media to be "moderate") said after the weekly meeting of the PA cabinet in Ramallah. Qurei called for US intervention to prevent the educating of students in Ariel.

Arab residents of the town of Salfit, which is located near Ariel, took time off from the Saddam Hussein birthday celebrations and issued a statement in which they warned that transforming the college into a university effectively means "killing the peace process." The statement, signed by the "national and Islamic forces" in Salfit, called on PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas to suspend talks with Israel until it revoked its decision regarding the college.

So, let's clear things up. Ariel is on land that was never "Palestinian land". None of the West Bank and Gaza was ever part of a "Palestinian Arab state". There has never been a Palestinian Arab state. Israel has far more legitimate claims to all of the West Bank and Gaza than does the PLO and its affiliates, although successive Israeli governments have expressed willingness to relinquish Israeli claims to some of those lands in exchange for peace. Israel has never been offered peace in exchange for relinquishing those lands, although some foolish Israeli politicians have tried to delude themselves into thinking such an offer has been made.

The Palestinians have no more legitimate right to statehood than do the Arabs of Marseilles or Detroit. Even if the Palestinian Arabs could be thought to have once had legitimate claims to statehood, they forfeited all such rights through engaging in a century of terrorist atrocities. Israel building a college or university is no more a violation of "Palestinian rights" than construction of Harvard and Yale on lands once claimed by Indians.

The assault by the Left against educational institutions in the democratic countries that they hate is part of a generic Leftist dislike of all education. You see, education allows humans to see how ridiculous and stupid leftist "ideas" are. The Pink Floyd song that says "We don't want no education" has long been the Left's real mantra.

[Donald Isler]

Last update - 20:24 12/05/2005


Bar-Ilan University opens Web site to fight British boycott

By Tamara Traubman, Haaretz Correspondent

Bar-Ilan University has created a new Web site to enlist academics to oppose the boycott that Britain's Association of University Teachers has declared against it and the University of Haifa. The two universities have been attempting to increase pressure on the AUT ahead of its special meeting called to reconsider the boycott, to be held in two weeks.

The AUT announced the meeting in response to an official request submitted by more than 25 of its members, which under AUT rules allows its decisions to be reopened for discussion.

The site, launched Wednesday, carries an appeal from Bar-Ilan rector Prof. Yosef Yeshurun for academics in Israel and abroad to join a new association called the International Advisory Board (IAB) for Academic Freedom of Bar-Ilan University.

According to its mission statement, the IAB "will undertake actions and steps to guarantee freedom of thought and expression at Bar-Ilan, as well as at other Israeli and non-Israeli institutions of higher education."

The site contains information on the boycott along with articles, letters, and responses it has elicited from around the world.

On Tuesday, the University of Haifa sent a letter to the AUT threatening to sue the British organization for libel.

Jewish organizations and British university lecturers - mostly Jewish - who object to the boycott are trying to recruit as many AUT members as possible to ensure the boycott is canceled at the gathering later this month.

© Copyright 2005 Haaretz. All rights reserved

[Ralph]

This is so bizarre I still don't know how it came about.

[pizza]

This is so bizarre I still don't know how it came about.

Do you mean the boycott or Bar-Ilan U's website?

[Ralph]

This is so bizarre I still don't know how it came about.

Do you mean the boycott or Bar-Ilan U's website?

*****

Pizza,

Obviously the boycott! It's beyond gross and disgusting.

[pizza]

This is so bizarre I still don't know how it came about.

Do you mean the boycott or Bar-Ilan U's website?

*****

Pizza,

Obviously the boycott! It's beyond gross and disgusting.

Of course you know how it came about if you read the lead article and know anything about endemic British academic anti-Semitism. Thus the question.

[Donald Isler]

Ralph,

London ain't New York. And our fellow Jews just don't have the numbers or impact we have here.

In the summer of 2003 I was in London, just after a trip to Israel, and suddenly came upon a loud pro-Palestinian demonstration. I asked what it was about, and why it was taking place there. I was told that I was standing in front of the British Defense Ministry and these people were demonstrating against a visit to Britain by Ariel Sharon. Although I would hardly describe myself as one of his most ardent supporters I immediately looked around for a pro-Israel counter demonstration to join. Alas, there was none.

But the most bizarre visual aspect of that demonstration was the ultra-Orthodox Jews supporting the Palestinians.

[Donald Isler]

Last update - 00:54 15/05/2005


Opposition to U.K. boycott of Israeli universities increasing

By Tamara Traubman, Haaretz Correspondent

At least three British universities will oppose the boycott imposed by the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) on Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities in April, according to sources at the schools.

Representatives of the AUT branches at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Warwick will object to the boycott in the AUT's special council meeting scheduled to reconsider the boycott next week.

Dr. Jon Pike, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the Open University who organized the anti-boycott campaign and special conference, told The Guardian newspaper that he was convinced the ban would be canceled.

"I hope and expect that we will be able to overturn the boycott decision at the special council. Already, the Oxford, Cambridge and Warwick branches have come out in support," Pike said.

AUT local organizer and Oxford professor Terry Hoad told Oxford's Cherwell's newspaper that AUT members in Oxford object to the use of boycotts. He said the AUT's executive committee should set a policy of limiting boycotts to extreme cases.

AUT members who support the boycott say Israel is a sufficiently extreme case. They say Bar-Ilan University is collaborating with the "crimes of the occupation," as indicated by its previous sponsorship - which continues today on a smaller scale - of the College of Judea and Samaria in the settlement of Ariel. They also say that the University of Haifa has been harassing lecturers who criticize and undermine myths that are sacred to Israeli society, such as those relating to the War of Independence and the establishment of the state.

Universities in Israel, Britain and the United States slammed the AUT's decision to impose a boycott. The American Association of University Professors, which represents some 45,000 college and university lecturers, said that the British association's decision "harms academic freedom" and called for its cancellation.

The New York Academy of Sciences has also denounced the boycott. Joseph L. Birman, chair of the Academy's Committee for the Human Rights of Scientists, wrote to AUT president Angela Roger, calling to revoke the decision.

"The AUT resolution, by selecting individuals and universities for boycott, is a very clear reminder of McCarthy-like tactics which were the shame of the United States some 40-50 years ago," he said.

© Copyright 2005 Haaretz. All rights reserved

[pizza]

But the most bizarre visual aspect of that demonstration was the ultra-Orthodox Jews supporting the Palestinians.

Probably Satmar Hassidim along with a few other Hassidic sects who oppose the existence of the State of Israel for religious reasons. They've demonstrated in the States as well. If they are Satmars, they aren't pro-Palestinian. They're anti-Zionist.

[Donald Isler]

You can make whatever silly excuses you want. If they're demonstrating with the Palestinians against Israel as far as I'm concerned they are, in this matter, pro-Palestinian.