Israeli Boycott

[lumukanda]

i read http://mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/&articleid=310847this article today and it was quite interesting how many people are considering a boycott against israel due to their practices in palestine.

Driven by daily images of violence and destruction of Palestinian society, and fed by the enormous disparity in the fatality figures (in 2006, 27 Israelis were killed while more than 650 Palestinians, 120 of them children, died) the question being posed to unions, churches and individuals has become: boycott or not?

but check out these paragraphs :

But others on the Israeli left say they are saddened or outraged. "I feel as though I am in mourning," says Yaron Izrahi, a professor of political science and a well-known Israeli author and commentator. "British intellectuals and columnists were for years a great resource for the Israeli peace movement to attack Israel's right. Their critique -- as well as those from France and the US -- was a critique we were able to use. What has happened now with this excommunication is that it threatens to destroy that resource.

"Some of my students are linked to right-wing leaders like Binyamin Netanyahu. And they are very pleased with this. It strengthens the right. They have always argued that there is no valid critique of Israel, only anti-Semitism. Now they are saying we were right all along."

so in other words, they're glad that people are going to boycott them because it proves that they are victims, how screwed up is that? when it is pretty clear to any reasonable person that israel is a the agressor.

then look at this rubbish by the ADL :

The US Anti-Defamation League has been equally vigorous in its response, taking a half page advert in the Financial Times last week reading: "38 journalists arrested in Iran; 700 activists detained and tortured in Zimbabwe, 400 000 murdered in Darfur -- but British unions have singled out Israel for boycott. That's anti-Semitism."

iran is about a hair's breadth from being attacked by the 'allies', zimbabwe has sanctions imposed on them, it's hard to boycott their goods when they have virtually no exports, and darfur, i mean really, whereas the world has not done enough (and even when they do, it will be P-R-S), they are by no means treated the same as israel on the world stage.

all this talk of so called anti-semitism does is to degrade real racism, because really, i think i could point to far more demonised people in the world than israelis.

[sac123abc]

Before my eyes were awaking I never knew what being jew or from israel meant until I met the man upstairs. The man upstairs showed me a world of hatred, sin, and filled my head with garbage. The man upstairs believed the Jews would rule the world and hated arab people. He said all arabs should be killed and he wouldnt think twice if Israel killed off everyone in palestine. Yes the man upstairs showed me what the jews are capable of.

[anoninnyc]

lumukanda, i couldn't agree more. thanks for the post.

[tickles]

I too am very disgusted by the way the Israeli government is treating the Palestinians. Some thing needs to be done for sure. They, the zionist jews, are treating the Palestinians the same way the Nazis treated them during ww2. They didn't like it happening to them and the world knows it. They (jews) remind us of it all the time. But they don't care that they are doing the same thing to the Palestinians.

[anoninnyc]

i urge anyone interested in this topic to familiarize yourself with the work of norman finkelstein. he has a website- www.normanfinkelstein.com

[lumukanda]

finkelstein is a good read, i read somewhere recently that he has been denied tenure at the university he was teaching at because of his 'anti-semetic' stance (see, even jews can be anti-semetic), mainly due to that bastard dershowitz.

Outspoken Political Scientist Denied Tenure at DePaul
Norman Finkelstein, the political scientist whose bid for a permanent position at DePaul University stirred up charges of anti-Semitism, personal vendettas and outside interference in the hiring process, was informed Friday that he had been denied tenure by the university.

Mr. Finkelstein said he clearly “met the publishing standards and the teaching standards required for tenure” and that DePaul’s decision was based on “transparently political grounds” and an “egregious violation” of academic freedom.

DePaul’s political science department had voted to award Mr. Finkelstein tenure, but the University Board on Promotion and Tenure rejected his bid. DePaul’s president, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, upheld that decision. In a letter to Mr. Finkelstein, Father Holtschneider wrote that Mr. Finkelstein is an excellent teacher and a nationally recognized public intellectual but does not “honor the obligation” to “respect and defend the free inquiry of associates.”

Mr. Finkelstein’s work, accusing Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for monetary gain and attacking Israel for oppressing the Palestinians, has made Mr. Finkelstein many enemies over the years. One of the most dogged has been Alan Dershowitz, the attorney and Harvard law professor whose impassioned defense of Israel has led to frequent and often venomous conflicts with Mr. Finkelstein.

In a full-court press against Mr. Finkelstein, Mr. Dershowitz lobbied professors, alumni and the administration of DePaul, a Roman Catholic university in Chicago, to deny him tenure. Many faculty members at DePaul and elsewhere decried what they called Mr. Dershowitz’s heavy-handed tactics.

Sounding resigned, Mr. Finkelstein said of DePaul, “Rationally, it has to deny me tenure.”

“Any time I wrote or spoke would evoke another hysterical response and would be costly for them,” he said, referring to the college’s fund-raising efforts.

In a statement Father Holtschneider said the outside attention paid to Mr. Finkelstein’s bid for tenure “was unwelcome and inappropriate and had no impact on either the process or the outcome of this case.” He added: “Some will consider this decision in the context of academic freedom. In fact academic freedom is alive and well at DePaul.”

It is no surprise that Mr. Dershowitz was delighted. “It was plainly the right decision,” he said.

Mr. Finkelstein said he plans to leave Chicago for New York. “Teaching is in my bones. I love to teach,” he said, but he added that as a result of this “blacklisting, I will be barred from ever entering a college classroom again.”

Nonetheless, any temptation to “indulge in a bout of self-pity,” he said, was halted by thinking of his parents, who survived the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi death camps while the rest of his relatives were exterminated. “They survived,” he said. “I’ll survive.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/arts/11depa.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

also, sign the online petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?nf200704) voicing your support for finkelstein.