Academic Hatred of Israel

Legal Insurrection has investigated the academic movement against Israel as was personified in the ASA boycott:

"Researching the numerous articles I have written this past month has been an eye-opener — and that from someone whose eyes were already wide open as to the nature of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement. The hatred of Israel among the academic boycotters is beyond anything you can imagine.

The hatred of Israel is visceral, and beyond reason. Everything good about Israel is turned into a negative.

These academics hold “Homonationalism and Pinkwashing” conferences to denounce Israel for making known that it treats its LGBT citizens fairly and humanely, unlike most countries in the world. Yet the Pinkwashing anti-Israel movement is led by LGBT and “Queer” (their word) activists who would be persecuted or worse anywhere in the Middle East other than Israel. You will hear next to nothing from them about how gays in Palestinian controlled areas are abused and flee … to Israel for protection.

There is nothing good that Israel can do in their eyes. The existence of Israel is their problem, not where borders are drawn.

As I have learned more about these academic boycotters, it is obvious that Israel is just the object of a deep-seated anti-Western anger expressed as “anti-Colonial” or “post-Colonial” or solidarity with “indigenous peoples.” Of course, they deny the Jewish people, whose indigenous presence for millennia in the land of Israel is beyond historical doubt, any indigenous status.

Indeed, you can add to “Pinkwashing” other conferences on “Redwashing” — the supposed injustice of Israeli Jews expressing solidarity with other indigenous peoples. [Added – See this article at Indian Country Today taking the ASA boycotters to task, Don’t Mix Indigenous Fight With Palestinian Rights

It should not surprise you that two of the Brown University professors (here and here) supporting the shout-down protest against Ray Kelly also were anti-Israel BDS supporters.

The connection between the radical left (I’m not talking about mere ”liberals”) and the BDS movement is deep and feeds off each other. That is why you will often find avowed international socialist groups teaming up with BDS on campuses, along with Islamists.

Just read the excellent Forbes article by Richard Behar about the people on the National Council of ASA, including its incoming President from NYU. It would be a parody of what some segments of academia have become, except that no parody is needed, just the facts.

Victor Davis Hanson correctly puts it in context:

Nazis and racists used to spearhead Jewish hatred using ancient crackpot defamations that date back to the Jewish diaspora into Europe after the Roman destruction of Judea. But lately, anti-Semitism has become more a left-wing pathology. It is driven by the cheap multicultural trashing of the West. Jewish people here and abroad have become convenient targets for those angry with supposedly undeserved Western success and privilege.

The academics behind the boycott do not represent all or even a majority of academia. If anything, the ASA boycott will spur even greater cooperation among American and Israeli academic institutions, both because it makes educational sense and because all well-meaning academics know what is at stake.

To their credit, many universities have rejected the ASA and it's boycott; it is rightfully being denounced.