Israel Matzav

Political correctness run rampant in the UK

Cambridge University's Israel Society canceled a talk by historian Benny Morris last week after being threatened by the school's Islamic Society.

The Cambridge University Israel Society (IS) has cancelled a talk by Israeli historian Benny Morris, a man who has written extensively about the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.

Why? Because the leading scholar on the Arab-Israeli Wars has been accused of Islamophobia. The IS commitment to free speech crumbled in the face of denunciations from a few students, most of them in the Islamic Society. A few of the faculty joined in. Publicity stunt? Misguided? Whatever - it's a mess.

The Israel Society apologised for any 'unintended' offence it may have caused and mumbled something about placing the feelings of those who might be offended above the right of the speaker to be heard. That is an interesting position given that just about everyone can be offended by something, so we better all be quiet.

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You can make the argument that the IS should not have invited Mr Morris, but that is to miss the point. A hate campaign against all things Israeli has infected the campuses of Britain and in turn is in danger of engendering a climate in which Voltaire's maxim is changed to 'I will defend to the death your right to say something as long as I agree with it'. The anti-Israel crowd frequently resorts to bullying tactics.

Of course, when Jews are offended, no one particularly cares. This is from the JPost.

Morris was scheduled to speak to students at the university on Thursday, but following a campaign led by anti-Israel activist Ben White the Israel Society canceled the talk. Instead Morris was invited to speak at an event hosted by the university’s Department of Political and International Studies.

White, who graduated from the university in 2005 and authored the book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginners Guide, set up a protest page on Facebook in which he claimed that “on different occasions, Morris has expressed Islamophobic and racist sentiments towards Arabs and Muslims.”

He added: “We find it offensive and appalling that an official student society would want to invite such an individual.”

Following the Facebook protest, a letter was sent to the student union by the university’s Islamic Society, other students and two staff members from the English Department asking it to take a stand and show it is serious “in opposing bigotry and Islamophobia.” The 15 signatories said Morris’s views were “abhorrent and offensive.

“The issue is hate speech, and the impact of a visit by this individual on the campus’ atmosphere for the student body’s minority groups... His visit is insulting, threatening to Arab and Muslim students in particular and also goes against the spirit of the student union’s stated anti-Islamophobia policy,” the letter read.

Last year, Cambridge’s Palestine Society hosted Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper. In 2008, Atwan said the terrorist attack on Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav yeshiva, in which eight students were killed and 15 were wounded, was “justified” as the school was responsible for “hatching Israeli extremists and fundamentalists.”

Read the whole thing.

Anyone want to take bets on how soon England becomes Judenrein?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:54 AM