"I Urge Jewish Students ... To Avoid Most London Colleges...; The Atmosphere is Thoroughly Toxic"

Remember my recent post here regarding the adoption of a BDS motion by the King's College London Students' Union (KCLSU)?

As reported in the campus newspaper, KCLSU's Trustee Board has since decided that it won't override the motion, and that consequently

"the motion will be published within the KCLSU Welfare and Community Zone alongside other issues on which our members have, by majority, voted."

The same source reports that the Trustee Board also decided that

''we will not use KCLSU resources to implement the ‘Resolves’ section of the motion or otherwise promote the BDS movement through the union."

 It quotes KCLSU President and Chair of the Trustee Board Sebastiaan Debrouwere thus:

"[The Board] decided that the motion as democratically approved by Student General Meeting should stand as a record of the majority view expressed on the issue, but that we should not act on the resolves, given the laws that govern us as a charity and our wider objectives as a charity..."

Cold comfort for Jewish and other pro-Israel students on a campus where for all too many anti-Israel activity seems to have become a way of life:

"As an alumnus of KCL, I wrote to the Chancellor a few months ago, expressing concern about the College - during my time there, extremist groups like Hizb-ut Tahrir set up stalls at the entrance and acted in an intimidating way, and the Jewish Society's noticeboard was routinely vandalised and defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, including Holocaust denial. The College also has the dubious "honour" of educating a British suicide bomber, who attempted to blow up Mike's Bar in Tel Aviv (his accomplice was unfortunately successful).

The Chancellor's representative assured me that the atmosphere was now completely different and there was no problem at all.

They then invited Richard Falk, the anti-Semite at the UN, to give a speech. This time the Chancellor gave me a list of Falk's credentials, and defended the invitation.

I see nothing has changed. The College authorities, whilst not directly responsible for the shameful vote, stoke the fire and then act all surprised when it the fire spreads.

I urge Jewish students, and right minded decent young people, to avoid most London colleges - indeed, most UK campuses, and study somewhere else. The atmosphere is thoroughly toxic."

So writes a commenter named Adam on my recent post here.

 Oxford student Jonathan Hunter (if the name if familiar, it's probably because of this incident)  reflected thus on KCL's invitation to Falk:

".....This man has repeatedly violated principles at the forefront of King’s College’s own external speakers policy; especially in regard to the incitement of religious hatred. And his talk wasn’t even educational; it was filled with garbage. A moral equivocation between U.S. military action during the Second World War and Nazi genocide. A defence of what he even termed ‘inconsistency’ in singling out Israel and the U.S. for human rights abuses. After the talk, when I approached him for clarification on some his views, he basically denied outright that he was a 9/11 truther; despite being a signatory to an organisation called 9/11 Truth.

So why on earth did King’s College invite this clown? Why should King’s grant legitimacy to this complete and utter nut? And more bizarrely, how can this be a compulsory session for students?....

In essence, it boils down to that obsession with Israel which permeates nearly every academic institution. A pathological infatuation which latches onto any crank so long as he has something bad to say about Israel. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Holocaust denier like Israel Shamir – the House of Lords will warmly receive him. Nobody cares if it’s someone as offensive as George Galloway – the Oxford Union will still invite him. Who gives a damn if they’re an apologist for suicide bombers? Azzam Tamimi continues to hop from campus to campus spouting hatred...."

The toxic atmosphere which Adam cites is, of course, apparent on many campuses in the Western world, especially during the excrescence known as "Israel Apartheid Week" (see, for example, the  outbreak of antisemitic daubings at Adelaide University recently (more here) and the outrageous goings-on at Vassar, as described here.

British blogger Edgar Davidson has many interesting insights on Israel Apartheid Week here.  In that must-read post, dated 18th March, he notes, inter alia:

'A number of my friends' children have just experienced their first 'Israel Apartheid' week on campus ... and this has raised the question of how best to respond.... You should expose the person who says that as the liar and insane psychopath that they are.

The long-term objective of the ‘Israel is an apartheid state’ lie is similarly nothing less than the destruction of the Jewish state and its 6 million Jewish inhabitants. Just look at the people who are behind the lie....

  I am not talking about the thousands of naive, easily influenced (and sometimes well-meaning) university students who have fallen for the lie .... I am talking about those who started the lie and those who actively promote it.'

He goes on to say:

'For the historical record the apartheid lie was actually invented by the KGB in communist Russia as part of the Cold War – after the total defeat of the Arab armies with their Soviet equipment  in 1967.  The KGB produced all the propaganda material in the late 1960s and 1970s that was then used by radical leftists throughout the Western world. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the apartheid lie has been driven by a hard core of anti-Semites, leftist revolutionaries and Islamists – the latter of whom  come from Arab countries which practice real apartheid (those same Arab countries provide much of the funding now for the propaganda which is still based on the Soviet material). The liars’ agenda is the destruction of the State of Israel. Despite belonging to organisations with names like the ‘Palestine Solidarity Campaign’ or 'Students for Justice for Palestinians' they have no interest in the welfare of the Palestinians; this is proven by their total lack of concern for the genuinely appalling plight of Palestinians in Syria (where they are being starved and murdered) and Lebanon (where for over 65 years they have been denied rights of citizenship and are banned from most professions).  Read here about the kind of Western student organisations who promote Israel Apartheid week....'

The first source linked to by Davidson  in the paragraph above is an article by the splendidly pro-Israel Professor Alan Johnson, who is associated with BICOM.  Johnson writes:

'....The smear originated in "anti-Zionist" campaigns that were waged without let up by the Communist states during the Cold War. Seeking Arab allies, these campaigns frequently descended into antisemitism, the word "Zionist" understood by all as a fig-leaf for "Jew". Many ideas that have since spread around the world, especially amongst "progressives", began here: Zionism equals racism, Zionism equals imperialism. Israel is the USA's "watchdog" in the Middle East, Zionism is complicit with, or even promotes, antisemitism, and, of course, Zionism equals South African apartheid....

The smear got a huge boost in 1975 when a coalition between the Soviet Bloc, the authoritarian Arab states, and the so-called "Non-Aligned Movement" used its built-in majority at the UN General Assembly to pass Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism. (The UN rescinded the resolution in 1991.)

The third key moment in the growth of the Apartheid Smear came in 2001 with the failure of the Camp David peace talks. This gave the smear an opening which was seized by tightly-organised, politically motivated and well-resourced group of NGOs and anti-Israel activists who hijacked the UN’s World Conference against Racism, Racial Intolerance and Xenophobia in Durban, South Africa to launch a global campaign against Israel as a "racist, apartheid state" and Israel itself as a "crime against humanity".

South Africa’s then Deputy Foreign Minister, Aziz Pahad, was appalled: "I wish to make it unequivocally clear that the SA government recognises that … [the Durban Conference] was hijacked and used by some with an anti-Israel agenda to turn into an antisemitic event."

The event was marked by hate speech. Pamphlets were circulated filled with grotesque caricatures of hook-nosed Jews depicted as Nazis, spearing Palestinian children, dripping blood from their fangs, with missiles bulging from their eyes or with pots of money nearby. In a Palestinian-led march with thousands of participants, a placard was held aloft that read ‘Hitler Should Have Finished the Job.’ Nearby, someone was selling the most notorious of anti-Jewish tracts, ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, a forgery which purports to be the minutes of a world Jewish Conspiracy, and which has been called a ‘warrant for genocide’....

 Davidson, in his post, continues:

The Arabs who promote the Apartheid lie are simply projecting the Apartheid that is rampant in their in their own countries and minds.  The Apartheid states are all Arab and Muslim: not a single practising Jew lives in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority areas (where Jews cannot even travel without facing likely murder),  Jordan and Saudi Arabia (where in both countries it is illegal to be a citizen if you are a Jew). There are just 2 remaining Jews in Iraq (where there were 300,000 as recently as 1952), 3 in Syria, 40 in Lebanon and 30 in Egypt, and less than 3000 Jews live in all of the other Arab countries combined. Yet, less than 60 years ago those Arab countries had thriving communities of Jews totally over 1,000,000.  They have all been driven out. But while every University student knows about the ‘plight of the Palestinians’ none know about the plight of Jews forcibly driven from Arab lands.

The most curiously misunderstood thing about the 'Israel Apartheid' lie is that the only people in Israel who are actually subject to legal restrictions because of their religion are the Jews. For example:

while Muslims are free to pray at any of their holy sites anywhere in Israel, Jews are banned from stepping foot on their holiest site (Temple Mount) and can only enter others (such as Rachel's tomb) at great risk under army escort. Israeli police are not even allowed to intervene when Arabs stone Jews from the Temple Mount.

    only Jews (and Druze) are legally forced to give up 3 years of their life (and then one month per year until retirement) to go in the army. Muslims have no obligation at all for any type of national service despite having full (and indeed disproportionately large) access to all national benefits.

    because all terrorism in Israel is committed by Arabs against Jews, only Jewish-owned buildings and businesses are forced to maintain costly security guards, barriers, and checks on each person entering.

 ....

No Jew can freely walk into any Muslim neighbourhood in Israel without endangering their lives. In contrast any Muslim can enter any Jewish neighbourhood without any fear at all.

    Any plans for new construction in Jewish neighbourhoods result in condemnation by the ‘international community’.  Meanwhile completely illegal construction by Muslims anywhere goes unchallenged both by the ‘international community’ and by Israel lawmakers themselves..

As Davidson observes,

'[T]here is a wealth of unimpeachable, easily accessible material that exposes every single facet of the Israel Apartheid lie (see, e.g. here, here, here, here and here)...'

And here's an excellent interview with Rabbi Marc Golub of Shalom TV,  in which a Jewish, pro-Israel academic at Stanford University, Charles Small, exposes the BDS Movement for the hypocritical, antisemitic movement it is.  Rabbi Golub had asked a pro-BDS academic at Stanford to appear with Small, but the anti-Israel academic had refused, insisting on being interviewed alone; Small pulls no punches in his interpretation of this refusal.  The interview, which took place earlier this year, is well worth listening to: it is very insightful and instructive: