Monday, May 01, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
Days after questioning
whether we should be taking student government divestment votes seriously any
longer, along came Exhibit A-Z for why we shouldn’t, direct from the
University of Wisconsin at Madison (UWM).
This story has everything, folks!
First, the familiar phenomena of an endless
student council meeting to debate an anti-Israel divestment motion
proffered by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) who, after browbeating
student leaders for hours, ended up seeing their measure tabled
indefinitely. But for SJP et al,
“indefinitely” translates to “until we can sneak it back on the agenda when no
one is looking.”
Sure enough, a new debate on the topic of divestment was
announced and information distributed about it – you guessed it – during the
Passover holiday! And when Jewish
students complained, rather than hold off debate until all interested parties
could participate, student leaders changed the rules to make sure divestment could
make it back on the agenda.
Fortunately, everyone was told, the original anti-Israel
language would not be part of this new resolution. Instead, student leaders were going to
discuss a list of demands to be made to school administrators addressing
divesting from companies involved with a wide range of controversial issues,
like fossil fuels and general human rights abuses. In other words, the vote would be about
companies, not countries.
Ah, but here is where the amendment process kicks in. For no sooner had the general (i.e.,
non-Israel-specific) measure gained support that SJP and their allies in
student government added amendments that turned the thing back into a full-fledged
BDS
resolution. “Not so!” screamed the
conspirators. Just because we accuse
Israel of everything from practicing Apartheid to training cops to beat up
black people, and demanding that companies on the BDS blacklist be specifically
mentioned, that doesn’t mean the measure we just got passed has anything to do
with BDS.
The first people who weren’t buying it were Jewish students,
which is why the few of them attending the meeting marched out in disgust (along
with principled non-Jewish student leaders).
And then – predictably and within hours – the school’s administration
announced they would not act on any student demands generated in such an
anti-democratic fashion, condemning the entire student government for good
measure.
Never missing an opportunity to play victim,
the BDS cru then demanded
the President of the university resign for not taking them seriously with
regard to the various social justice causes they were hiding behind (perhaps
because they had already demonstrated their total disinterest in black lives or
economic justice by insisting all such issues take a distant back seat to BDS uber
alles).
Oh, and did I mention the
lawsuits?
Hard to believe that in barely a month the BDSers managed to
destroy campus comity by purposely driving wedges between minority groups,
alienate student and school leaders at a time when both are facing the
consequences of drastic state budget cuts), and turned student government into
a laughingstock being condemned, mocked and targeted
for dissolution when it’s not being sued.
And I haven’t even mentioned the punchline: that all of this
activity was rushed to the finish line in April so that the BDSers could chalk
up a “victory” before new student leadership took over on May 1st (with
that new leadership likely to undo everything the boycotters just forced down
everyone’s throats). In other words, all
the tears and anger and hatred and destruction the boycott brigade visited upon
UWM was for nothing more than a one-day headline on Mondoweiss announcing an
impotent political pose not destined to last the week.
So once again, can someone tell me why we need to treat this
kind of activity as saying anything about campus opinion on Israel vs. the
ludicrous and destructive behavior of those who hate the Jewish state?
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