Good Onya, Guys! JHRW confronts BDS

Remember my post here about a great new initiative in the UK?

Well, Jewish Human Rights Watch has been doing much sterling and necessary work.

See this, for instance:

Most recently, it had a rejoinder, in Friday's Guardian, to the abhorrent pro-academic boycott call signed some days earlier by at least 343 scholars (see here).

This is the rejoinder:

 Its text reads:

"Starting in April 1933, German academics actively colluded in the dismissal of their own Jewish colleagues, under the Nazi Law for the Re-Establishment of the Professional Civil Service.

So did the activists of the National Socialist Students’ League which, long before the Nazis came to power, organised boycotts of, and disturbances in, lectures given by Jewish academics.

In many universities, up to one third of the faculty were purged in this way.

Those responsible included philosophers of worldwide renown such as Martin Heidegger at Heidelberg University, and also many junior scholars who spotted opportunities to advance their own careers.

In light of this background, it is disturbing that 350 British academics would support attempts to boycott all academic institutions in the Jewish State.

Those institutions are not responsible for government policies, any more than Cambridge, Oxford, LSE [London School of Economics] or UCL [University College London] are responsible for the policies of David Cameron.

Few of these academics have called for boycotts of the institutions of other nations either: their relentless focus is on the institutions of the Jewish State.

Therefore we call upon British universities to show responsibility and immediately disassociate themselves from this deplorable gesture, which damages their institutions and goes against the fundamental idea that universities should be promoting: Learning – free from antisemitic boycotts."

 More here

 Meanwhile, it's great to see Dame Helen Mirren speaking warmly of Israel and disparaging the cultural boycott.