Ha’aretz, the Israeli paper that is the darling of the left, trashes Great Brtain’s policy of constantly trying to delegitimize Israel as a nation.
Britain has become in recent years the battlefield in Israel’s fight for its existence as a Jewish state.
The number of British organizations calling for the boycott of Israel, their public campaigns, and their constant comparisons between Israel and the apartheid regime of South Africa have made the battle for British public opinion particularly significant.
On Wednesday, representatives of the new British University and College Union (UCU) will be meeting in Bournemouth. On the agenda is another proposal to boycott Israel’s academic institutions. These proposals have become as regular and as predictable as Qassam attacks on Sderot. The fact that studies at the Sapir Academic College in Sderot are not taking place because of the constant rocket fire from Gaza, even though the college is not in occupied territory and Gaza is no longer occupied, apparently does not bother British academia. The fact that Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Authority, does not recognize even pre-1967 Israel, and commits acts of terror against civilians, does not matter either. These nuances did not stop one boycott initiator from saying last week that justice in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is entirely on one side.
That is some serious trash-talking from Ha-aretz, the paper most willing to blame Israel for her problems with the Palestinians. This is the newspaper that all serious lefty (and anti-Israel) bloggers quote, and link to in their sidebars.
Taking off the gloves in this debate involves knowingly foregoing the kudos that British academia lavishes on all who are willing to express anti-Israel stands. The UCU has even had the termerity to proclaim that Israeli lecturers who disown the policies of the Israeli government will not be boycotted. It is British academics who should lose sleep over this McCarthyistic demand. Academic freedom means first of all an open exchange of opinions, without coercion, and not shutting people’s mouths. Moreover, the British boycott is directed at Israel’s academic institutions that in any case are a bastion of opposition to the occupation.
That’s telling them, Ha’aretz!
On the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, British academia should look realistically at peace efforts in the Middle East: Over the past decade, Israel has elected governments that have expressed the desire of a majority of Israelis for a bilateral solution of two states for two peoples and a withdrawal from most of the settlements. The withdrawal from Gaza was to have been the first stage. The victory of Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, cut off the process.
The anti-Zionist winds blowing in Europe, mainly in academia and in Britain, strengthen the position that the very birth of the Jewish state was a mistake. The European hard left regards the Law of Return as the root of all evil; however, without acknowledging the Jewish character of the State of Israel, there is not even a basis for dialogue. British academia is in fact demanding that Israel democratically cease to exist as a Zionist entity, and that it be swallowed up in the non-democratic region in order to pander to the latest trend.
One would be tempted to call those “anti-Semitic winds,” if one weren’t Ha’aretz. The current meme, that Israel’s existence was a “mistake,” is yet another way to tell the Jews that they are less deserving than the rest of the world. Sure, we gave you a country, they say (and they do say “gave” us a country, never mind that Israel was ours, and that we are the indigenous people, not “colonists”) but now that it’s turned out to be such a pain in the ass, we’re taking it back. Oh, you can stay there, they tell us, but only at the whims of the Arabs we declared indigenous, even though many of them came from the surrounding countries once Jews started to make the desert bloom again. And never mind that continuous Jewish presence in Israel all these centuries. They were the minority, so they don’t count. You left. It isn’t yours any longer.
That, they say, is democracy in action: Removing the world’s only Jewish state from the world stage, to add yet another Islamic dictatorship ruled by thugs and murderers, with Jews as second-class citizens in the nation they envision. Funny how these same people didn’t give a damn about “Palestine” when the Palestinians were being ruled by Jordan in the West Bank, and the Egyptians commanded Gaza. Funny how the sacred sites of Jerusalem weren’t a problem when Jordan was destroying Jewish shrines and holy sites, but they’ve become a problem now that the Israelis want to maintain the Western Wall and its environs.
Funny.
In a “Gee, something smells funny” kind of way.
Go get ’em, Ha’aretz. Not that it will make a difference. The Brits have hated the Jews for centuries. They need no excuse to continue.
Another group of left-wing Jews seeing the light and beginning to question what the hypocritical left has done to harm Israel and Jews in general.
I really believe more Jews will wake up and begin to fight back, as they see more and more of the Israel and Jew hatred that has infested the left wing.
Jews working together in survival mode, can and will be an awesome political power.
One thing you will count on, though, is that one and all will say “We’re opposed to the Zionist policy of oppressing the Palestinian people. You Zionists try to silence debate by saying that anyone who opposes anything the Zionists do is an antisemite!”