Southampton University Law School is to host a major international conference on the “legality, validity and legitimacy” of Israel “given the urgent need to respond to persistent Palestinian suffering.”Nah, no partisanship in a conference that "debates" whether a single state has a right to exist.
For three days in April, academics will flock to discuss the “problems associated with the creation and nature of the Jewish state itself and the status of Jerusalem.”
The conference will explore “the relatedness of the suffering and injustice in Palestine to the foundation and protection of a state of such nature,” asking what role international law should play in the situation.
Event literature says the subject is a “marginalised debate” needing a “legal analysis of the manner by which the State of Israel came into existence as well as what kind of state it is”.
Organised by Prof. Oren Ben-Dor, a former Israeli who has previously called Israel an “arrogant self-righteous Zionist entity,” the event promises “public debate without partisanship.”
The conference literature shows that it isn't necessarily demonizing Israel out, oh no.
This conference seeks to analyse the challenge posed to international law by the Jewish State of Israel and the whole of historic Palestine – the area to the west side of River Jordan that includes both what is now the State of Israel and the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.I wish someone would show me a map of historic Palestine that fits those boundaries that is more than 100 years old. Really, there's an entire university filled with scholars there, one of them must have seen a map of this historic land once upon a time, right?
For its initial existence, the State of Israel has depended on a unilateral declaration of statehood in addition to both the expulsion (some would say the ethnic cleansing) of large numbers of non-Jewish Palestinian Arabs in 1947-49 and the prevention of their return. Furthermore, the Jewish nature of the state has profoundly affected the economic, constitutional, political and social life of those non-Jewish Arabs who were allowed to stay.Yes, let's frame the conference by insisting on producing lies that underpin the entire debate - and then hold a "non-partisan" debate!
Given the urgency of responding to – indeed the urgent responsibility to answer for and to avert - the persistent suffering in historic Palestine, it is time to give a scholarly, academic platform to the exploration of pervasive disagreements regarding the legitimacy in international law of the Jewish State and the status of Jerusalem.Nope, still don't see any partisanship here. Perfectly scholarly and impartial.
The conference and the book of its proceedings will be dedicated to Henry Cattan (1906-1992), a leading Palestinian international lawyer, indeed a legal prophet, who long ago mounted a challenge to the validity of the state of Israel and the legal and moral authority of those institutions that brought it about.Still can't find any bias here.
[D]ebates will ensue as to whether there is any ground to hold the State of Israel as exceptional in comparison with other unjust regimes...Everything looks perfectly non-partisan.
By the way, guess who the other "unjust regimes" are? The United States and Australia!
To sum up: we have a conference that pretends to question whether Israel has the right to exist altogether, a question never asked of other states, Its conclusions are foregone. It frames its "debate" based on obvious lies. It pretends to be impartial when its own words prove that the entire conference is based not on scholarship but on pure hate with a shiny surface of pseudo-scholarship.
And no one in academia (outside of "Zionists" who are of course not nearly as impartial as these professors pretend to be) seems even slightly embarrassed by this sham.