Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 02, 2014

Arabs hold antisemitic rallies in Israel and territories

Here is a video of a rally in Jerusalem where Arabs are chanting "We don't want Jews"

And here's an Israeli news report of a Hizb-ut Tahrir rally in Ramallah, where the chants include "The stones call to Muslims, saying 'Here is a Jew, kill him!' and exhortations to use the sword to destroy Israel.

In other news, there was a massive peace rally in Nablus, where hundreds of thousands of ordinaryArabs urged Palestinian leaders to do whatever is necessary to have a durable, permanent peace with Israel and to end the conflict once and for all.

Just joking! That only happens in Israel.

(h/t Yoel)

06/02 Links Pt1: Douglas Murray: They always come for the Jews; Danon: US Aid Funds Terror

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: They always come for the Jews

Firstly, there will be those who will claim that Mehdi Nammouche is a one-off. He is not. It is worth recalling, among other things, the case of French Muslim Mohamed Merah who two years ago went on a killing spree in Toulouse which targeted French soldiers and a Jewish school.
Doubtless there will also be those who will now say that if the West had intervened in Syria we would have been able to avoid the ‘radicalisation’ of people like Nemmouche. This is the purest ignorance. It is always worth remembering that a certain type of young Muslim claims that they were radicalised when the West intervenes somewhere and also when the West does not intervene somewhere. For instance some people may recall the case of the distinguished London School of Economics graduate Omar Sheikh, a British citizen who claimed to have been radicalised by the war in the Balkans among other things. Omar Sheikh was apparently not satisfied by the NATO intervention which stopped the massacre of Kosovar Muslims. Nor by the intervention to protect the holy sites of Islam from the armies of Saddam Hussein. In 2002 Omar Sheikh kidnapped and then cut the head off the Jewish American journalist Daniel Pearl.
Anyone who still doubts that the anti-Jewish aspect is a central driver for Islamic extremists might also recall the fact that the 2008 Mumbai terrorists, as well as targeting high-visibility targets like the Taj Hotel in Mumbai could not help themselves from entering the only tiny Jewish religious house in Mumbai, where they tortured and murdered a rabbi and his wife among others.

The Brussels Shooting and Why Europe Won’t Confront Islamic Jew-Hatred

Then there is the Israel factor. As much as critics of Israel like to stress that it’s Zionists and not Jews they take issue with, whenever Jews are attacked, liberals and liberal Europeans inevitably make the Israel connection and in so doing invalidate their own pretense that they view the two as being entirely separate. When Jewish children were mowed down by bullets as they made their way to school in Toulouse and the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton was obliged to concoct some words of sympathy, she stunned observers by using this event to note how, “we see what is happening in Gaza.” It seems that for people like Ashton, it is impossible to acknowledge Jewish victimhood without also footnoting Palestinian suffering, as if in some attempt to explain away whatever has just been done to the Jews in question.
European liberals delight in expressing horror and gleeful outrage at the sight of American Evangelical Christianity. They warn against reactionary Christian attitudes on any social issue that arises in their own country and they are always sure to castigate the Catholic Church whenever the opportunity presents itself (Pope Benedict’s visit to London was marred by large and angry protests). But if Europeans were really concerned about ultra-conservative religious extremism then they would act to prevent the proliferation of radical Islam in Europe. Similarly, if they were serious about ending racism then they would crack down on the only form of racism in Europe today that still kills people: Islamic Jew-hatred.

Pallywood Productions Present Beitunia

This 6 min video, however, has a nice deconstruction and presents just some of the problems with the video. Do watch toward the end where they show the various practices and run throughs that the actors and directors in this work of fiction had to go through before coming up with something to show the world.

Analysis of 2 palestinian kids shot

Albawaba is reporting that Saudi social media users are upset that the wife of the new coach of the popular Al Hilal club is said to be Jewish.

It reproduces a number of tweets from upset fans of the club who are raging against the coach, Lawrence Reghecampf.

His wife, Anamaria Prodan, is also a gambler, a model and a sports agent, who lives in Las Vegas.

A few days ago the first wave of controversy hit when it was revealed that she had posed for Playboy.

“The wife of al-Hilal’s manager works as club president, activist, agent and former addict. My comment is: a coach who is unable to control his wife, how can he control [al-Hilal player Nawaf] Al Abed,” writes Faisal al-Mohlaki (@faisalalmohlaki).

(NSFW photo gallery here.)

But the Jewish thing is beyond redemption.

As I looked further into this, I cannot find any proof that Prodan really is Jewish, and it appears that the rumor started because she had visited Israel and this photo of her waving an Israeli flag surfaced:

Interestingly, in all her photos from Israel she is covering her hair, albeit loosely. She also visited a Christian shrine so it seems doubtful that she really is Jewish - the trip to Israel was apparently for professional reasons.

Other Saudi sites are saying that Prodan isn't Jewish, but that Reghecampf is going to/already has converted to Judaism.

If one didn't know any better, one might think that Saudis have a problem with Jews.

El Badil is starting an entire series on mind control based on the works of Noam Chomsky and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as well as another conspiracy-minded classic, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars.

A former Minister of Housing in Egypt is interviewed in Vetogate, where he says that the Arab spring is a "Zionist scheme for years targeting Egypt and Arab countries based on the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' and 16 million Jews seeking to rule the earth, and the Zionist plan succeeded in sectarian sedition between Shiite Muslim and Sunni Muslim and Christian targets dividing Egypt and the Arab countries into small states."

That same theme of Israel being behind the Arab troubles and using the Protocols as their textbook is echoed in Al Watan Voice.

Finally, El Aosboa has an article that seems to say that Jews are behind all movies that have sex and nudity, which is explicitly spelled out in the Ninth Protocol on page 56 of the famous work.

Most of these newspapers are based out of Egypt. No skepticism about the veracity of the work is evident, as usual.

Hey, if I'm not going to keep track of how Arab media refers to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, who will?

Fatah-Hamas unity or not? People are missing the real point (UPDATE)

Even though Abbas keeps saying that there will be an official announcement of a "unity government" with Hamas in the next few hours, Hamas is saying that one part is non-negotiable:

Hamas will not agree to form a unity government that does not include a ministry and minister for prisoners' affairs, a spokesman said Monday.

Sami Abu Zuhri told Ma'an that Hamas has officially notified Fatah that the movement will not join a government that does not include a ministry of prisoners.

"Hamas movement won't agree to announce a unity government without a ministry and a minister of prisoners, and Fatah has already been notified of that irrevocable decision."

Abbas had earlier said that the ministry of prisoners would be replaced with an independent body, with other officials suggesting that the US could withdraw funding from the PA if the ministry was not dissolved.

The unity government is expected to be sworn in on Monday at 1 p.m. in the presidential headquarters in Ramallah.

Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya confirms this in Felesteen.

The idea that the US is pressuring Abbas over the ministry of prisoners seems new. I have not seen anything about that before; on the contrary I have seen more pressure from the EU about how the PA has been spending significant parts of its budget on paying prisoners, families of prisoners and families of "martyrs" - something that is sacrosanct, even if it is ultimately from Western funding.

Yet the EU does not seem to have a problem with Hamas as part of the "unity" government. Hamas and Fatah are trying to have it both ways - to have the PR benefits of unity internally along with assurances to the West that the government accepts all previous agreements, while Hamas continues to say in Arabic that they reject all previous agreements with Israel.

What the media (and, apparently, western officials) keeps missing is that the PA is an almost useless construct. It officially reports to the PLO, not to the people. The PLO is anything but democratic. The PLO is what makes all the major decisions, And while the PA has a "foreign minister," his duties are essentially ceremonial, as the PLO takes that entire role with Abbas, Erekat, and others. Look at the webpage of the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department: they are the ones who are making the real decisions that the West cares about, not the ministers being announced today.

The PLO-NAD decides every major issue that the world cares about: security, settlements, Jerusalem, refugees, borders, water, economic relations, compensation, agriculture, tourism, health, transport, energy, telecommunications and even archaeology.

The important part of the unity agreement with Hamas isn't the appointment of technocrats in the PA. They have been carefully chosen not to give offense to the West and to get the EU and US to look the other way as Hamas gets mainstreamed.

The important part is phase 2, where Hamas joins the PLO. This will challenge the current doubletalk from the PLO of accepting Israel - doubletalk because Fatah supports terror against Israel just about to the same level that Hamas does. That is where the real political battle between the two groups will get very ugly, at least in private.

Yasir Arafat is smiling from his special place in hell, seeing how well his people have adopted his methods of telling the West what they want to hear and actively supporting terror at the same time. As we have seen, wishful thinking often trumps Western will. The real question isn't whether the new government supports terror - both Fatah and Hamas do even as they choose bland officials to pretend to be running their government.

The real question is whether the US and EU can see through the lies.

UPDATE: Get used to these sorts of things happening. Ma'an in English:

No minister for prisoners' affairs was announced, despite having been a key sticking point in reaching consensus on minister portfolios.

In Arabic:

Shawki Alissa named minister of prisoner affairs

Arab "expert" says all European Jews are spies for Israel

Albabwabh News, a pro-Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian newspaper, interviews "spy hunter" Fouad Hussein, a former Egyptian intelligence officer.

Besides discussing how the Mossad recruits Arabs via social media, he says that all Jews in Europe work with the Mossad, providing it with information about Arabs in Europe.

Sounds like he has been getting his intelligence from the same guy that feeds Richard Silverstein.

RS2000 reports that Palestinian Arab customs agents seized some 489 turkeys that were illegally smuggled from Jewish settlements to Bethlehem.

The crack customs officers noticed a man who was driving a car filled with turkeys, who tried to avoid being seen, and they immediately suspected that something wasn't, so to speak, kosher.

It is unclear what will happen to the birds. On previous occasions, Palestinian Arab officials made big public displays of destroying illegal Jewish contraband, but if they would do that here it might be reminiscent of a classic TV episode:

(h/t MtTB)

Turkish Muslims flocking to visit Jerusalem

Ma'an has an article on Turkish tourism to Jerusalem, and being Ma'an, they have to add in some anti-Israel spin:

Thousands of Turkish citizens are visiting Islamic religious sites in occupied East Jerusalem on a yearly basis despite the obstacles they face, and the numbers are only set to increase in coming years.

What are these obstacles?

Thousands of Turks visit the Al-Aqsa compound in particular each year, especially during Islamic holidays, despite the intensive and invasive searches they often face by Israeli security personnel.

Searches? Every Jew who visits the Kotel must go through checkpoints and metal detectors, and to go to the Temple Mount Jews and non-Muslims have to go through a much more complete search to use the single gate available to them. I was not allowed to bring up much of my camera equipment during my visit there. On the other hand, Muslims have a choice of a dozen gates, and the last time I looked there was no metal detector or searching for them to enter, just a couple of bored looking Israeli guards.

Around 3,000 Turkish citizens recently came to Jerusalem to celebrate the day in the Islamic calendar that marks the Prophet Muhammad's ascension to heaven, known as Isra and Miraj, a member of the Graduates' Committee of Turkey told Ma'an recently.

06/01 Links: French Police Arrest Suspected Gunman in Brussels Jewish Museum Shooting

From Ian:

Suspected Brussels gunman admitted on film to attack

Mehdi Nemmouche filmed a short video after the shootings in which he claimed responsibility for the May 24 attack, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said in a press conference. The film also reportedly showed the weapons used by Nemmouche throughout the assault, according to AFP.
The suspect was wrapped up in a white sheet scrawled with the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an extremist group fighting in Syria, Molins said. He said the suspect had spent about a year in Syria.
Nemmouche, a 29-year-old from the northern French town of Roubaix, was arrested Friday in Marseille in possession of a gun and an AK-47 assault rifle of the sort used in the attack.
Nemmouche is suspected of having jihadist links and had reportedly visited war-torn Syria in 2013. (h/t Yoel)

Jewish leaders hail arrest of alleged Brussels gunman

Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old French citizen from the northern French town of Roubaix, was arrested Friday in Marseille in possession of a gun and a Kalashnikov assault rifle of the sort used in the May 24 attack that claimed the lives of four people, including two Israelis.
“We are very satisfied with the work of the French authorities in finding the perpetrator of the cold-blooded murders last week,” European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor said in a statement. “However, for too long authorities in Europe have acted speedily after the fact. it is now time for all to turn attention and set as the highest priority the prevention of these vicious crimes.”

Czech president: Radical Islam behind Brussels attack

President Milos Zeman made the statement last week, before the capture in Marseille on Friday of a suspect whom French authorities said had fought with jihadists in Syria and may be tied to the May 24 murder of four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in central Brussels.
“I will not be reassured by claims that these are the actions of small fringe groups,” Zeman said at the Prague Hilton on May 26 about the shootings, which he called “abominable acts of murder.” He added: “I believe, by contrast, that this xenophobia, racism or anti-Semitism are at the very nature of this ideology, on which these fanatical groups rely.”

San Francisco State University Funds Hatred (Michael Lumish)

Michael Lumish, of the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under, continues his weekly column here at EoZ.

San Francisco State University is among the most racist universities in the United States today.

Last year my old alma mater funded student political organizations that called specifically for murder and presumably for the murder of Jews. At an event sponsored by the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS), among a few other like-minded groups, honoring the late Columbia professor of the Humanities, Edward Said, signs were held aloft calling for the murder of "colonizers."

The people that I spoke to on campus all hold significant institutional positions at the university. They are people with their finger on the pulse of that campus, yet they seemed mystified about just who these "colonizers" in need of killing might be. Nonetheless, I feel reasonably certain that when hard-left students, who happen to be members of the General Union of Palestine Students, hold up signs that read, My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers, that they do not mean Rosicrucians or Rastafarians, they mean Jews.

The irony, of course, could hardly be more rich. The Arabs that flowed from the Saudi Peninsula in the seventh-century were among the greatest, most vicious, and most successful colonizers in human history. They conquered much of Europe and still often hold out hope for the reconquest of Al-Andalus, which you and I might know as the country of Spain. They also kept the Jews in a state of submission for thirteen centuries until the movement for Jewish liberation, Zionism, freed us from perpetual dhimmitude and persecution in the part of the world that the Jewish people have lived in for millenia.

Although last year's president of SFSU's General Union of Palestine Students, Muhammad Hammad, received considerable attention from press around the world due to his violent racism, his mentor, professor Rabab Abdulhadi, received considerably less.

This is because while Abdulhadi might share and encourage Mr. Hammad's disposition toward the Jewish people, as a university professor, she clearly has the wits not to hold up a knife on a social media website in order to discuss a desire to stab Jews.

I have her listed in my notes from the time, but I never wrote about her because, in truth, I find this whole nasty situation with SFSU to be unbecoming. I used to love that campus. I not only received a Master's Degree in History there, but I also met my wife in that department. Some of the happiest years of my life were spent at San Francisco State and arriving at that campus in the late 1990s represented a true turning point in my life.

Of course, I also distinctly recall walking past Malcolm X Plaza, in front of the Cesar Chavez Student Center, and witnessing the Palestinian organization at that time, presumably GUPS, in solidarity with the Pan-African student organization holding aloft a banner that replaced the five-pointed stars in the American flag with 50 little Stars of David.

It was just little racist reminder to the tiny Jewish minority on campus that they better keep in line.

In truth, it should not have taken me a full ten years after that moment to acknowledge the fact that the western left is very definitely no friend to the Jewish people.

So, when, the other day, I received an email from Tammi Benjamin of the University of California, Santa Cruz's AMCHA Initiative telling me that SFSU GUPS' advisor, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, took university funding to visit those who seek to murder Jews, I was only slightly taken aback.

The blood red on the fist that Abdulhadi proudly displays on her SFSU webpage reminds this Jew of the proud display of blood captured in the picture below taken directly after two young Jewish IDF members were lynched by an Arab-Muslim mob, after taking a wrong turn in Ramallah, upon the start of the Second Terror War (intifada) in 2000.

I wish that I could say that I was shocked but, of course, I was not.

This is what Benjamin writes:

Dear Friends and Supporters:

A California Public Records Act inquiry, requested by AMCHA Initiative, revealed that San Francisco State University (SFSU) Professor Rabab Abdulhadi received more than $7,000 from SFSU to fly to Jordan, the West Bank and Israel to meet with known a terrorist and individuals closely affiliated with terrorist organizations.

Abdulhadi claimed the purpose of her trip was for academic and University business-related reasons and she concealed the true nature of her trip - personal political activism - on at least four documents with administrators, including President Wong, who approved the trip. Evidence demonstrated that Abdulhadi had actually always intended to use the University-funded trip to build relationships with anti-Israel political activists to promote anti-Semitic academic, cultural and economic boycotts of Israel, and the meetings were set before Abdulhadi requested University approval.

This is the same professor who was the faculty advisor to the SFSU knife-wielding student investigated by the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force. She was also caught on tape glorifying terrorism to SFSU students.

My initial reaction was to close my eyes and turn away because I simply do not want to deal with this.

I do not want to call down to that campus and, as an alumnus, complain about the fact that the university literally funds student groups that calls for the murder of Jews. What are we supposed to do? Call the office of SFSU President Dr. Wong and talk with some administrative assistant about how funding student organizations that spread violent hatred toward others is perhaps not in the university's mission statement?

I just do not want to feel that the university wherein I met my wife not only tolerates violent hatred directed towards us, but quite literally funds that hatred.

I have no intention of pursuing this story beyond this post - although I may - because I simply do not want to go through this again. If San Francisco State University wishes to gain a reputation as the most anti-Semitic campus in the United States, today, then there is very little that I can possibly do to dissuade them.

I would suggest, however, that the university administration might consider the notion that funding student organizations that call for murder, or funding their advisor's trip to visit with Jihadis, is not necessarily very good for the university's reputation.

Here's the first minute of a documentary shown on Israel's Channel 2 last week showing how kids in Jenin, under PA control, want to become Hamas terrorists when they grow up, and how they get brainwashed to think that way.

But don't worry - I'm sure UNRWA has some excellent programs in place to counter jihadist rhetoric and promote peace with Israel.

Ignore the small fact that the Islamists with Hamas ties are major contributors to UNRWA....

(h/t Yoel)

A few days ago, Reuters published a photo essay of IDF women going through their final training mission before they are officially inducted into the Karakal battalion guarding the Egyptian border.

This didn't sit well with Egypt.

Al Masry al-Youm reproduces every single Reuters photo, but writes:

Dr Ahmad Fuad Anwar, an expert on Israeli affairs, professor of Hebrew studies and Zionist thought at Alexandria University, said in response to a question by Al Masry al Youm about the purpose of such images and their publication, especially with the strong cooperation within the Israeli army: "Such a phot series is provocative propaganda ...to serve the Israeli army."

Fouad adds that [for Israel] to allow the Reuters photographer to enter the training mission of Caracal and accompany them during the whole day are [it accomplished] several goals, the first of which may be to tarnish the image of the Egyptian side, especially with the facts of several incidents of [Egyptian] live fire on African infiltrators which killed them.

He pointed out that the Egyptian side deals with infiltrators using three methods, namely: hotels, prisons, and deportation, and this depends on the way the infiltrator engages with the troops, and while the Israelis are delivering a message to the world that they are recruiting women to deal with the intruders as they are always considered civilians.

He continued: the second goal is to reassure Israeli citizens, who have a tendency to panic, to calm their fears and apprehensions of infiltrators and drug traffickers, and to deliver a message to the Israeli people that it is under control and it sends women to these hot spots, and the third goal is to beautify the image of the Israeli army as it is recruiting women in combat missions which indicates equality, not only using them for administrative work like a lot of the armies of the region, especially with the publication of pictures of beautiful girls with strong physiques that are always smiling.

Fouad called on the Egyptian side to officially complain to the famous Reuters agency about such images in the Western media, as well as to request the Israeli side to refrain from provocations by releasing such images, and Fouad added that religious Israeli soldiers refuse to work near the women's camps, and he wondered "Should the Egyptian side object to the presence a of battalion on the common border that is two-thirds women?"

Hey, at least he isn't accusing the IDf of using the women to seduce and blackmail Egyptians the way Hamas claimed once.

(h/t Aaron)

The Perfectly Placed Pallywood Photographer

This video - again taken from the extended CCTV video released from "Nakba Day" protests in Beitunia - isn't a smoking gun, but it sure raises some questions about what may have been pre-planned.

It shows the events in the three minutes between the "botched Pallywood" video I showed (which now has over 20,000 views) and the first incident with Nadim Nawara. Clearly, one of the masked leaders of the riots also is good friends with photographers on the scene, and they manage to be at the right place at the right time.

(h/t Elihu)

05/31 Links: Exposing the Human Shield Industry; Palestinian MD lauds Israel for saving children

From Ian:

Palestinian Propagandists are Losing Their Touch

To be sure Palestinian propagandists from the West Bank had their helpers in the West. For example, Charles Enderlin, the man who helped broadcast the Al Durah video to French viewers in 2000, has a lot to answer for. Jews are fleeing the hate he helped promote.
But nowhere is this harvest of hate more evident than in Palestinian society itself. In lying to the world about the cause of their suffering, Palestinian elites are lying to themselves and the people they lead.
The anti-Israel and anti-Jewish messaging that Palestinian elites have promoted to Westerners for the past few decades reveals that the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are a long way off from establishing and maintaining a democracy, making peace with Israel and coming to grips with the modern world.
They live in a demon-haunted world of their own making. The end result will be disaster for the Palestinians and possibly for the rest of the world.

New book claims Israel spied on Bill Clinton

The allegations in the book, reported by Newsweek on Friday, are the latest in a series of reports regarding Israeli spying on US targets. The reports have been vehemently rejected by Israel and largely dismissed by American officials.
The new book, however, by British-Israeli political scientist Ahron Bregman, cites purported verbatim transcripts of the Clinton-Assad calls which he says he obtained through “private sources.”
Bregman writes in “Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories,” that Israel also listened in as Syria’s foreign minister called the elder Assad to report on private meetings with US officials. The author further claims that he received transcripts of confidential talks between Clinton and then-prime minister Ehud Barak, as well as a letter marked “SECRET” from Clinton’s secretary of state Madeleine Albright to Barak’s predecessor and current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in which the Americans promised to check with Israel first before offering any peace proposals to the Arabs. (h/t Yenta Press)

Exposing the Human Shield Industry

Here’s one example of how this industry works: On the night of September 30, 2013, IDF troops opened fire at two Palestinians who were trying to sabotage the Israel-Gaza border fence, killing one and wounding the other. Both men later proved to be unarmed, so that’s naturally how the story was reported: Israel kills two unarmed Palestinians.
Four days later, I happened to be visiting friends whose soldier son was home on leave. It turned out his unit was involved in this incident, and he was furious over what the media reports left out: Standing just a few hundred meters behind the two men, he said, was a group of armed Palestinians waiting to see whether the attempt to break through the fence succeeded. In other words, the soldiers had every reason to believe the men sabotaging the fence were part of a much larger infiltration attempt, even though they couldn’t be sure those two were themselves armed (it was night, they were moving, and they were partially obscured by the fence). Thus the soldiers did what responsible soldiers do when facing an attempted terrorist infiltration: They used lethal force to stop it.

Brussels May Be Lying About Museum Shootings, Professor Claims

A Swiss professor wrote on Facebook that Belgian officials may be part of a conspiracy to falsely present the Brussels Jewish museum shootings as anti-Semitic.
Tariq Ramadan, a Geneva-based lecturer on Contemporary Islamic issues at Oxford University in Britain, speculated on Tuesday that the slaying of four people last week at the Jewish Museum of Belgium was a deliberate attack on Israeli secret agents.
“The two tourists targeted in Brussels worked for the Israeli secret services,” Ramadan wrote, citing media reports.
“The [Belgian] government does not comment,” Ramadan wrote. “Coincidence. Is this a case of anti-Semitism or a maneuver to divert attention from the real motives of the executioners? We oppose all slaying of innocents and racism but at the same time, it’s time they stopped taking us for fools.”

Sussex U votes against academic boycott of Israel

People aren't only getting sick of BDS in US universities.

The University of Sussex Students Union held a referendum on the question:
Should the Students’ Union endorse a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions?

The motion failed to pass by a vote of 904-649.

Unfortunately, even the "no" vote argument was framed as anti-Israel:

No one can deny the suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli government. For too long, they have been deprived of their sovereignty, as well as their basic civil and human rights, at the hands of a ruthless military occupation. At Sussex, we have a proud tradition of standing up for the victims of injustice and oppression. This cannot be an exception.

But this referendum is not about solidarity with the Palestinian people. Throughout the history of the conflict, Israeli academics have been known for their outspokenly left-wing and pro-peace views. According to Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestinian president of al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, ‘if you look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we’ve had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favour of seeing us as equals… If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach.’

The academic boycott of South Africa was a result of the apartheid policy to restrict the black population’s access to higher education. Within the legal borders of the state of Israel, there is no such policy. A significant percentage of Israel’s students are Arab Palestinians. And while advocates of a boycott may point to the fact that the Israeli military restricts access to higher education within the occupied territories, this is a result of military rule and occupation, not the policies of Israeli universities themselves.

An academic boycott of Israeli universities would be a form of collective punishment. Israel’s entire academic establishment cannot be held responsible for the actions of its government, as just as in Britain, our students and lecturers often disagree entirely with our government’s actions.

We cannot afford to lose the moral high ground when it comes to our solidarity with the Palestinians – this only serves to strengthen the arguments of chauvinistic right-wingers who will point to this boycott as an example of anti-Semitic prejudice. Widely considered as one of the most prominent activists for the Palestinian cause, Noam Chomsky has stated in numerous interviews that an academic boycott ‘will only strengthen support for Israel’, and will seriously hurt Palestinians in the process.

Instead, we should be encouraging co-operation with critical and progressive elements within Israeli academia. Otherwise, we risk isolating Israeli students and lecturers solely by virtue of their nationality.

This anti-boycott argument shows, very clearly, how embedded the lies and distortions of the Israel-hater are in British universities.

Nothing about how hypocritical it is to single out Israel and only Israel as a place to have an academic boycott, while every truly repressive regime on the planet is not subject to such discussions by the oh-so-progressive students who pretend to care so much about the oppressed. The students are not being taught the most basic critical thinking skills.

Even so, while it is not a victory for the pro-Israel side, it is a big loss for the haters.