The American Studies Assocation, for reasons that I really cannot fathom, voted to boycott Israeli academics.
The American Studies Association said endorsement of the boycott “emerges from the context of U.S. military and other support for Israel,” among a host of other reasons.
“The resolution is in support of scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and it aspires to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians,” Curtis Marez, president of the ASA and an associate professor of ethnic studies at University of California, San Diego, said in an e-mail.
Never mind that the members who actually passed the vote make up about 16% of overall membership and that it is actually apathy that got the boycott through. Never mind that there is such a backlash against it that it will doubtless be overturned–leading, of course, to charges that you can’t say anything negative about Israel without being labeled anti-Semitic. This is why the boycott is so utterly reprehensible.
When a reporter asked him why Israel, alone among the countries of the world, was chosen for excoriation and isolation — the ASA has heretofore boycotted no other country — Marez “did not dispute that many nations, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are generally judged to have human-rights records that are worse than Israel’s, or comparable.” Marez then compounded his error by telling the reporter, in his organization’s defense, that “one has to start somewhere.”
Really? One has to start somewhere? Why not here?
Regime air raids using barrel bombs on rebel-controlled areas of Syria’s second city of Aleppo Sunday killed at least 76 people, including 28 children, said a new toll from activists.
The number of dead “killed after the bombing of areas in the city of Aleppo with explosive-packed barrels yesterday rose to 76,” including “28 children and four women,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.
Let us be honest. The real reason for the widespread hatred of Israel lies much deeper than the surface reason, its treatment of Palestinians. Hating Israel is the acceptable post-Holocaust Jew hatred.
Angela Davis, who was a candidate for high federal office on the Communist Party line, is a member of the boad of the ASA. That should give you an idea of what the leadership of the organization consists of.