Mosley's Ghost Emerges in London (Daniel Johnson, The New York Sun): Last Friday something
happened that made me ashamed to be British. The Association of
University Teachers, which represents 49,000 academics, voted to
boycott two Israeli universities, Haifa and Bar-Ilan. They are likely
to boycott a third, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This boycott is the culmination of years of pro-Palestinian
agitation on campus, which has seen Jewish students and pro-Zionist
academics subjected to frightening levels of vilification and
intimidation. But not since the Third Reich have Jews been the targets
of an official boycott in a civilized country. That this should have
occurred in the profession which, above all others, should have been on
its guard against intolerance, is disgraceful but not, alas, altogether
surprising. Just as German universities were hotbeds of anti-Semitism
even before the Nazis came to power, so in recent years British
universities have become the bastions of the latest mutation of
anti-Semitism: denial of Israel's right to exist. The grounds given for these boycotts are so ludicrous that one
wonders why the promoters bothered to cover their prejudices with this
fig leaf. In the case of Bar-Ilan, the university has links with the
College of Judea and Samaria in the West Bank — an institution that
teaches Palestinian and Israeli Arab as well as Jewish students. Haifa
was targeted for allegedly victimizing a lecturer, Ilan Pappe, who has
made controversial claims that atrocities were committed by the
pre-1948 Jewish militia, the Haganah. The fact that Haifa has not
threatened or disciplined this individual seems to have played no part
in the AUT's debate. That may be because there was no debate: Opponents were given no
opportunity to challenge the two militants from Birmingham who proposed
the boycott. Moreover, the vote was held on erev Pesach, forcing Jewish
delegates to choose between religious and civic duties. One of the chief accusers was Shereen Benjamin, who makes much of
being Jewish herself. She claims that the Hebrew University has evicted
a Palestinian family and destroyed their home, conjuring up images of
punishment demolitions. In reality, there was a legal dispute of title
to a plot of land, the courts had found in favor of the university, and
the matter was resolved by negotiation between the parties. The family
in question still lives in the neighborhood. The fact that a Jewish academic should wish to damage the Hebrew
University illustrates the sheer ignorance of so many of the educators
of our youth. For this is the proudest academy in the Middle East, and
was for many years virtually the only one. It was founded in 1925 to be
the "University of the Jewish People," with the support not only of
international luminaries like Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein, but
also of the British Government, which then ruled Palestine on behalf of
the League of Nations. The opening of the Hebrew University was
attended by the author of the Balfour Declaration, Lord Balfour, and
the governor of Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel. Even more striking is the fact that the Hebrew University became a
principal refuge for Jewish academics fleeing persecution in Nazi
Germany and, later, occupied Europe. The great Kabbalah scholar,
Gershom Scholem, who had been among the first professors to arrive in
1925, commented ironically in his letters on how German-Jewish
academics who had pooh-poohed the threat of Nazism came to Jerusalem
expecting posts and suddenly enthusiastic Zionists. More recently, the
Hebrew University has been attacked by Palestinian terrorists — they
blew up its cafeteria in 2002, killing nine and wounding 84 students. This, then, is the university that Ms Benjamin wishes to isolate
from the outside world. The agenda was set out by the founder of the
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel,
Omar Barghouti: "The taboo has been shattered at last. From now on, it
will be acceptable to compare Israel's apartheid system to its South
African predecessor." Nobody makes such comparisons with Arab
universities, where academic freedom is still only a dream. News of the academic boycott of Israel comes less than a fortnight
before the first British general election in which anti-Semitism and
militant Islam have played a significant part. One Labor poster
depicted Michael Howard, the first Jewish leader of the Conservative
Party since Disraeli, as a sinister hypnotist swinging a watch on a
chain - an anti-Semitic stereotype strongly reminiscent of Fagin, the
villain of Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist." Mr. Howard's spokesman on
finance, Oliver Letwin (who is also Jewish), was indeed compared to
Fagin by the Labor Party chairman. Though these and other slurs were
quickly withdrawn, Muslim community leaders have been pointedly asked
whether they could expect anything from the likes of Messrs. Howard and
Letwin. The commonest anti-Semitic trope, however, is the Jewish world
conspiracy, involving American neoconservatives (all supposedly Jews),
the transatlantic "Jewish lobby," and, of course, the ubiquitous
influence of Israel. Tony Blair, unlike several of his European
counterparts, has refused to dabble either in anti-Americanism or
anti-Zionism. But the British public has been bombarded by the BBC and
the rest of the liberal press with hostile images of Israel and the
suggestion, usually implicit but increasingly explicit, that Israel is
to blame for Islamist terrorism against the West in general, and
Britain in particular. Worst of all has been the emergence of violent gangs of highly
politicized young Islamists, who target candidates they suspect of
supporting the Iraq war or Israel. At a memorial service for more than
100 victims of a Nazi V2 rocket that hit London's East End (then
largely Jewish, now mainly Muslim), the pro-war Labor candidate Oona
King, who is both black and Jewish, and many Jewish war veterans were
pelted by missiles. I wish I were confident that such incidents were not part of a
pattern. But the ghost of Oswald Mosley, the prewar fascist leader who
fomented anti-Semitic riots in the East End, is stalking the streets of
London. Two other views on the subject: 1. A Dying Lion That Can Still Do Harm (Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post) 2. Why Israel Will Always Be Vilified (David Aaronovitch, The Observer)
The usual diatribe that is full of inaccuracies and doesn't hold up to any critical examination whatever. Propaganda, pure and simple.
Posted by: John Stourton | May 17, 2005 at 06:13 AM