“Racism”, “colonialism” “apartheid” these are the politically correct demons of our time. Never mind that these were the politically correct pro-social watchwords prior to World War Two and have lost any basis in fact in our own time. Or have they?

The worst thing you can call someone on most campuses of the US and Canada and even England and Europe is to be  “racist/pro-apartheid” or a “colonialist”.  These terms have also become hot buttons in the current American election that pits Donald Trump vs Hilary Clinton. The other hot button issue has become sexual morality but I will deal with that in a separate blog. The biggest trump card that the Hilary camp seems to have is the “Trump is a racist” card: and then there is the sexual mudslinging on both sides.

Here I want to bring your attention to several articles that I  have been reading over this period that address the issue of racism in an intellectually rigorous manner. And then I will ask you who are the true racists?

The first article that I wish to draw your attention to is one posted last month by The Gatestone Institute, International Policy Council:

• This asymmetrical war, for the first time since the Holocaust and the wholesale slaughter of six million Jews, also recently shattered a German taboo. Apparently, for some Germans, the old bloodlust never went away — it merely slept. The teachers’ union in the city of Oldenburg just published an article in its September magazine calling for “a complete boycott of the Jewish State,” according to the Jerusalem Post, “the first call to boycott Israel or Jews from a German organized labor group since the Holocaust.” To its belated credit, on September 5, the Oldenburg teachers’ union apologized, labeling the boycott “a big mistake” and “anti-Semitic.”

And here is detailed the role of our current academic intelligentsia in all of this. I quote from the same article

• They are also subjecting Israel’s academia to a “silent” neo-Nazi campaign from unprincipled universities: extend fewer invitations, reject more articles, and use the standards of the Third Reich Nuremberg Laws to exclude participation by Jews. Syracuse University just disinvited from a conference Simon Dotan, a Jewish professor from New York University and award-winning filmmaker, who was born in Romania, raised in Israel and is living in the US. Commentator Caroline Glick noted:

• “Hamner’s decision had nothing to do with the quality of Dotan’s work. She admitted as much… Dotan was disinvited because he is Israeli and because the title of his film, The Settlers, does not make it immediately apparent whether he reviles the half million Israeli Jews who live in Judea and Samaria sufficiently.”

• Others in the world of academia who have approved these neo-Nazi measures include the British historian Catherine Hall and, disgracefully, the severely disabled Stephen Hawking, who is able to speak thanks only to an Israeli voice device.
• This academic boycott campaign began when Oren Yiftachel, a scholar at the Ben Gurion University, had an academic paper rejected by the journal Political Geography. The rejection came with a note informing him that the magazine could not accept a submission from “Israel,” and his paper was returned unopened. The publishing house St. Jerome Manchester, specializing in translations, refused to send academic volumes to the Bar Ilan University in Israel. The British magazine, Dance Europe, refused to publish an article about the Israeli choreographer Sally Anne Friedland; Richard Seaford declined to review a book for the Israeli magazine, Antiquity Scripta Classica Israelica. A professor of pathology at Oxford University, Andrew Wilkie, rejected an application by Amit Duvshani, a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University. Wilkie wrote in his rejection: “no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army.”

And now lets discuss “colonialism” from the same article”

• The European Union signed an agreement with Morocco, which has a territorial dispute with Algeria, but nevertheless enshrined its right to exploit the resources of Western Sahara; no campaign was launched to protest it. And we have not heard any protests against Turkey for its occupation of Northern Cyprus or its wholesale imprisonment of dissidents, journalists or academics. No, the boycott policy is solely against the Jewish State, which boasts one of the highest levels of academic freedom, press freedom and equality under the law on the planet. They do this in the “3-D” ways noted by the true advocate of human rights, the Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky, in his The Case For Democracy:
• Double standard: targeting only Israel from among the 200 territorial disputes, from Tibet to Ukraine.
• Demonization: comparing Israel’s actions to Nazis when it is really the people doing the comparing who should be compared to Nazis.
• Delegitimization: denying the right of Israel to exist.

And on this same topic the article concludes:

• The pre- or post-1967 lines are only an alibi for these new Nazis. Many consider Israel in its entirety illegal, immoral, or both — even though Jews have lived on that land for 3,000 years — part of it is even called Judea. Their appetite for accusing Jews of having the audacity to “occupy” their own historical, Biblical land only reveals their collusion the darkest lies of Islamic extremists, who are trying to destroy the indigenous Christian Copts in their native land of Egypt, and the indigenous Assyrian Christians whom we see being slaughtered throughout the Middle East. Should the French be accused of “occupying” Gaul? Just look at any map of “Palestine,” which blankets the entire state of Israel: to many Palestinians, all of Israel is a single giant settlement that has to be dismantled.
• Instead of Israel, they would facilitate the creation of another Arab-Islamic state that will suppress freedom of expression for artists, journalists and writers; that will drive away Christians from their homes; that will stone to death homosexuals; that will torture inmates in prisons, that will put to death innocents simply for wishing to convert to Christianity; that will sentence anyone to flogging, prison or death who is even alleged to have said something someone might have found offensive to Islam; that will oblige women to wear veils and live apart; that will glorify terrorists; that will ban alcohol; that will arrest people for expressing unpopular opinions; that will encourage a new category of Muslim refugees: those who would gladly escape an oppressive and murderous regime.
• These new Nazis serve up, instead of an argument, untrue and deceptive slogans such as “apartheid state”, “occupation”, “repressive”, “violator of international law” (which Israel meticulously is not). Their goal, like that of the original Nazis, is to manipulate people, and instill in them bias and hate against Israel, and just behind this subterfuge, against the Jews.

• Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author

   

   

If you want to read more articles on this subject I refer you to these:

• Europe’s New Media Darlings: Terrorists, 2016-10-01
• Meet the Western Charlatans Justifying Jihad, 2016-09-28

I ask you now “Who are the racists”? Are you one of them? Do you side with Obama, one of the first presidents to distance himself from  the American Israeli alliance, and his potential successor Hilary Clinton?

Do you support the the Israel Boycott and Divestment Movement on campuses commonly called “BDS” ?

Do you support Churches that support these anti-Israel policies?

Just wondering…Let me know what you think.

Abigail Hirsch, October 2016

Written from Israel where I am spending the month of Jewish Holidays from Rosh Hashanah through Sukkot. 2016.