WaPo editorial slams American Studies Association Israel boycott
The most difficult thing to swallow about the resolution is how utterly narrow-minded it seems. Was the resolution written on a computer manufactured in China, one of the most repressive regimes on the planet? Did its authors pause to consider China’s incarceration of writers and scholars who dare to think and speak out for freedom, or the ethnic groups in China persecuted for refusing to heel to the Beijing masters? Did they give any thought to what’s happened lately to freedom in Russia, won at enormous cost in a Cold War that lasted more than four decades? Does it disturb the scholars that in today’s Russia, members of a girl band performing a protest against the Kremlin could be thrown into a cold and miserable prison for two years, or that civil society organizations are being systematically shuttered?
Have the scholars overlooked the cries for help from Cuban dissidents bravely standing up to the Castro brothers, demanding freedoms — and suffering beatings and arrest almost every week? Do they condone the decision of a judge in Saudi Arabia who has just sentenced a political activist to 300 lashes and four years in prison for calling for a constitutional monarchy?
To focus a resolution on Israel and ignore these injustices is puzzling at best. It is also fundamentally wrong. For all of its difficulties, including the wrenching, long conflict with the Palestinians, Israel has become a lively and durable democracy. There is more freedom to speak one’s mind and criticize the government in front of the Knesset than will be found in either Tiananmen Square or Red Square today — and far more in Israeli universities than in academia elsewhere in the Middle East.Indeed.
Labels: academic boycott, BDS, boycott Israel, liberal academia, Washington Post
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:49 PM
1 Comments:
The professor in the photo, Pres of that ASA thing, is a Professor at UC San Diego. UCSD is a very warped mentality that produced a dark-of-the-night Student Govt SECRET BALLOT vote in favor of a BDS resolution that had failed multiple times previously.
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/after-hard-fought-battle-students-celebrate-divestment-vote-victory-uc-san-diego
That resolution process was wrangled by the Muslim Bros Students for Justice in Palestine organization that puts on the Israel Apartheid Wall, advocating river-to-the-sea genocide, on UCSD's Library Walk every spring, just before finals.
The BDS resolution (remember Secret Ballot/Middle of the Night) was allowed (supported? its a mystery) by UCSD soon after this $lu$h thing was funded:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4290510,00.html
US-Israel Center established at UCSD
Rady School of Management's new center to promote collaboration between businesses, entrepreneurs, researchers and diverse cultures of Israel to enable translation of technology into new global market opportunities
So the headlines against Israel go around the world, and yet Israel undermines US supporters by staying in there with the $lu$h Machine, rather than CONDEMNING the organizations (e.g., UCSD) that perpetuate this Genocide Advocacy.
As I've said before, it is a big poker game. And if Israel loses, people will be studying what happened and come across the $lu$h as pacifier and euthanasia agent. But if Israel lucks out and wins the poker game, it's all good...
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