Why This Boycott Is Not Like the Others

[Valin]

The Weekly Standarn:

 

MAX EDEN

1/6/13

 

At its annual conference on Thursday, the Modern Language Association (MLA) will hold a kangaroo-court panel discussion called, Academic Boycotts: A Conversation about Israel and Palestine. A few days later the MLA will vote on an anti-Israel resolution that would condemn Israel for the arbitrary denial of entry to Gaza and the West Bank of foreign academics.

 

Panel discussions at conferences are usually gatherings where people with different opinions debate the merits of something. But the MLA, a self-styled advocate of academic freedom and open discourse, will treat the Jewish state by different rules: the panel discussion will actually be a show trial in which Israels guilt is foreordained by a group of aggressively anti-Israel panelists. The MLA appears intent to join the ignominious ranks of the Association for Asian American Studies, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and the American Studies Association, which all recently approved resolutions boycotting Israeli universities.

 

So how will the MLAs resolution be different than all other academic boycott resolutions? Three ways.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Fighting Back against the New Anti-Semitism
Throughout the academic and cultural world, the Israel boycott movement is growing.
Charles Krauthammer

1/10/14

 

For decades, the American Studies Association has labored in well-deserved obscurity. No longer. It’s now made a name for itself by voting to boycott Israeli universities, accusing them of denying academic and human rights to Palestinians.

Given that Israel has a profoundly democratic political system, the freest press in the Middle East, a fiercely independent judiciary, and astonishing religious and racial diversity within its universities, including affirmative action for Arab students, the charge is rather strange.

 

(Snip)

 

And don’t tell me this is merely about Zionism. The ruse is transparent. Israel is the world’s only Jewish state. To apply to the state of the Jews a double standard that you apply to none other, to judge one people in a way you judge no other, to single out that one people for condemnation and isolation — is to engage in a gross act of discrimination.

And discrimination against Jews has a name. It’s called anti-Semitism.

 

(Snip)

 

In this sea of easy and open bigotry, an unusual man has made an unusual statement. Russian by birth, European by residence, Evgeny Kissin is arguably the world’s greatest piano virtuoso. He is also a Jew of conviction. Deeply distressed by Israel’s treatment in the cultural world around him, Kissin went beyond the Dershowitz/Weinberg stance of asking to be considered an Israeli. On December 7, he became one, defiantly.

Upon taking the oath of Israeli citizenship in Jerusalem, he declared: “I am a Jew, Israel is a Jewish state. . . . Israel’s case is my case, Israel’s enemies are my enemies, and I do not want to be spared the troubles which Israeli musicians encounter when they represent the Jewish state beyond its borders.”

 

(Snip)

 

 

________________________________________________________________________

 

I admit in my less tolerant moments my thoughts turn to ax handles and baseball bats.

[Valin]

Anti-Israel academic boycott group’s tax-exempt status challenged
William A. Jacobson
January 6, 2014

 

When the National Council of the American Studies Association endorsed the academic boycott of Israel in early December, and put the boycott Resolution to a quick membership vote, I wondered how the ASA National Council could do such a thing not just on the merits, but because the boycott put ASA’s tax-exempt status at risk.

 

I stated my intention of filing a challenge to that tax-exempt status should the Resolution pass and the academic boycott go into effect.

 

(Snip)