Monday, July 15, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
One of the benefits of being an on-campus Israel hater is
that you never have the pay the price for the damage you cause.
Take the case of Williams College, back in the news after
the school settled a complaint by the Department
of Education that it had discriminated against pro-Israel Jewish students
on campus. This complaint did not arise
due to anything the college or its administration had done. Rather, it was the result of irresponsible
(and all too typical) behavior of students.
Earlier this year, a group of Williams students organized a
new pro-Israel group called Williams Initiative for Israel (WiFi). As with any new group on campus, the
organization was required to follow a set of procedures for becoming a
recognized campus club that could receive funding from the elected student
government. Those procedures were
straightforward, and WiFi followed them to the letter. But still they were rejected.
Why? Because
anti-Israel students who dominated the student council decided that their
political positions – i.e., the legitimate opinions they wanted to advocate for
– were inadmissible on campus. So after
a debate in which “Israel-is-always-wrong” proponents not involved with student
government were given the floor to rail against the Jewish state and its
supporters, the council rejected Wifi’s request 13-8.
Breaking with even more rules they were elected to live by
and enforce, the council did all they could to avoid taking personal
responsibility for their votes, not livestreaming the council meeting (which
would otherwise be normal procedure) or including names of speakers on a
transcript. Given the contents of that
transcript, which revealed staggering levels of ignorance and bigotry, one can
understand why some students did not want to take responsibility for what they
had said and done.
That responsibility fell to the grownups on campus,
specifically the president of the college who immediately condemned
the vote and worked out a procedure whereby WiFi would receive official
recognition, despite the student council vote.
Some students protested
the president’s move, but to her credit she held fast to the principles the
school she led was built upon.
This did not prevent a discrimination complaint being lodged
with the Department of Education which took up the case and proceeded to
investigate the charges. It was this investigation that led to the settlement just
announced this week.
Note that it was not the students who had acted in such an
irresponsible and discriminatory way that had to navigate government
investigators in order to avoid the whole situation being referred to the
Department of Justice as a violation of federal law. Rather, it was (once again) someone else who
had to pay the price (in this case, the adults who led the college.)
This is typical BDS behavior: causing mayhem in one
community after another and leaving it to others to clean up the mess. In theory, the student council could have
changed the rules under which they operated in order to allow discrimination
based on political opinion. Such a move
would likely have faced procedural and administrative hurdles, and would have
been widely controversial (and may have failed). But at least it would have represented an act
of honesty on the part of student representatives who decided their real
constituency was the BDS movement.
It is likely no accident that the whole matter was settled
once summer began and the students who demanded the right to shred the rules
they were elected to live by in order to discriminate against fellow students
who did not share their political opinions were safely off campus.
As in many, many other situations where the BDSers ask an
institution to do their dirty work, once consequences rain down on the
institution that has done its bidding, the boycotters have already moved on to
their next target, leaving it to others to deal with the wreckage.
Let’s hope this is a lesson for the next organization considering
inviting the BDS vampire through the front door.
