April 23, 2005

"Blinkered, irresponsible and dangerous"

But that's enough about the Board of Deputies. Well it's actually their considered response to the success of the Association of University Teachers vote to sever links with Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities, and to consider a boycott of a third. The boycott vote is a tribute to the hard and courageous work of Sue Blackwell and all of those who have promoted the idea of boycotting the last of the colonial settler states for some years now.

As the time approached for the debate and vote, the Guardian. newspaper did its disingenuous best to undermine the case for the boycott and promote the interests of the racist war criminals of the state of Israel. It has editorialised that we shouldn't call Israel an apartheid state lest we offend the racist rulers. Today, the first quote in their article on what is a major victory for the anti-zionist cause, came from Britain's leading zionist organisation. The article, penned by three journalists, refers to the illegal, Jews only, settlement of Ariel in the West Bank, as "disputed". Conal Urquhart was one of the three but you would know that without reading his byline.

The Israeli ambassador to the UK compared the boycott to the nazi boycott of Jews at German universities in the 1930s. Danny Stone, the leader of the UK's World Zionist Congress students' wing, misleadingly known as the Union of Jewish Students, "urged the government to establish an inquiry into extremism on campuses - among students and staff."

But the most annoying passage in the article is this:
The Guardian understands that Jewish academics had been in contact with the AUT executive, and had received assurances that the Israeli position would be put forward and the executive would push for dialogue rather than a boycott.
Now, there can't be anyone at the Guardian. who doesn't know that there are many Jews, including academics, calling for and supporting various boycotts of the state of Israel. This reference to Jewish academics, whilst it panders to zionists, is actually an insult to all of those Jews who condemn all forms of racism and racist oppression. I'm not sure how many that amounts to but I like to think that we are not a dying breed.

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