Israel Matzav

British academics 'redefining' anti-Semitism

Britain's University and College Union (UCU) is a UK trade union of academics. Since being formed in 2006, it has spent most of its time determining how best to boycott Israel, as should be obvious from a look at its Wikipedia page.

Now, these perverters of academia have decided to redefine the term "anti-Semitism" so as to make it devoid of content.

So what is it that the UCU Executive believes about such allegations? We can be sure that it doesn't accept the first possibility, that such allegations are bound to be anti-Semitic. If it believed that, it would be calling for the EU definition of anti-Semitism to be strengthened, not abandoned, and it would (assuming that it objects to anti-Semitism) be disciplining any pro-boycott activists who made allegations of that kind. Nor does the Union accept the second possibility: this is exactly what it's seeking to reject in Motion 70 at the forthcoming Congress. So we're left with the third possibility, that such allegations are never anti-Semitic, that they just can't be. This is what the UCU executive appears to believe. And in fact we've got good reason to think that that is indeed what they believe, since a year or two back it declared that criticism of Israel can't be anti-Semitic.

Here we have the academic union wanting to declare that presenting Jews as malignant forces of sinister power, controlling the media and the economy and the government, can't be anti-Semitic. That the assertion that the population of Gaza (around one and a half million and rising) is in the same position as the population of the Warsaw Ghetto (around half a million falling to virtually zero after three years, as part of a deliberate genocide) just can't involve any prejudice against Jews. That singling out Jews, and the Jewish state, for condemnation and punishment alone among the nations, just can't be anti-Semitic. That's what the EU definition denies, and that's what the UCU believes, since they have rejected the only alternatives.

Maybe it's time for some enterprising sorts to try to set up an alternative union that's actually concerned about the working conditions of academics in the UK.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: anti-Semitism, British anti-Semitism, University and College Union

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:56 PM