This is my third attempt to write about the decision by the British Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) to ‘consider an academic boycott of Israel’:
“Israel’s 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement,” the motion said. “Congress deplores the denial of educational rights for Palestinians by invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests of teachers, lecturers and students.”
“Congress condemns the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation… Congress believes that in these circumstances passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-Semitic,” it added. — JPost
Attempt one was to point out that they must be blind to not notice the pogroms, wars, and continuous terrorism of Arabs against Jews which might possibly have something to do with the “invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests”. But they aren’t blind.
Attempt two was to talk about how an anti-Israel position is so much a part of the conventional wisdom in Academe today, especially in the UK, that it’s almost like breathing. It would take a truly original thinker to think otherwise, and not too many academics are original. Probably true, but boring.
So I’ve decided to issue my own manifesto. It will have as much or as little influence on anyone as a line-by-line refutation of their statement, but will be more entertaining.
Resolved, that these academics are moral idiots, and their “criticism of Israel” can only be construed as antisemitic.
Their attempt to rewrite the history of the conflict from one of almost a century of attempted genocide against the Jews of Palestine and later Israel into a story about European colonialism is false from start to finish, and does such great violence to the plain facts staring us in the face that it can only have irrational motivation: antisemitism.
Their alliance with groups such as Hamas, so opposed to traditional British, Western, Christian, and Jewish values that they would send their own children to their deaths in order to kill Jewish children, indicates that those who support the boycott have in a sense become morally insane as a result of their antisemitic infection — a certain symptom of such infection.
Their ability to ignore or repress their awareness of current events, such as the continued Qassam barrage on Sderot, or even the continued captivity of the British journalist Alan Johnston — whose release Hamas could bring about in hours if they wished — in favor of their obsession, clearly points to its pathological nature.
Finally, the fact that support for Hamas and other murderous, totalitarian, corrupt, cruel, and plainly evil gangs can only lead to more misery, poverty, suffering, lack of self-determination and death among the Palestinian people that the academics purport to care about — this shows that the hatred of Jews is far more important to them than the love of Arabs.
Technorati Tags: UCU, Israel, Palestinians
It’s interesting and instructive to see where it came from and how it got to the Middle East.