Anti-Semitism Comes To America

Sure, we've seen anti-Semitism before.   But it wasn't official.  In the early days of America, anti-Semitism was decisively rejected by George Washington.  It is true that during WW II America's State Department was peopled by individuals who didn't like Jews and stifled all efforts to save them as they were being consumed by the Holocaust.  Today, however, we find something very different.

Today, Jews are attacked for their association with Israel.  Anyone favoring Israel is a supporter of a Nazi regime, a supporter of an apartheid nation.  We are charged with supporting a nation that  occupies lands that don't belong to it.  These attacks are channeled through the BDS (boycott Israel, divest from Israel, and sanction Israel) movement.  What's really scary is that this movement has had a degree of success.

On December 16, 2013, the NY Times reported on a vote taken by the American Studies Association to isolate Israel and promote an academic boycott of Israel.  Let me take this article and point to shameful behavior which it describes, starting at the end of the article.  There it reads,  "In May, the physicist Stephen W. Hawking withdrew from a conference in Israel in support of the boycott."  Really?  And, where did Mr. Hawking learn anything about Israel?  And, where did he learn about the Palestinians?  And, is he aware that the Jewish recipe for matzos never included the blood of Christian children?

"In Britain, in 2002, two academic journals fired two Israeli professors from their boards because of their nationality."

"The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), with 48,000 members, has reiterated its stance against academic boycotts, which it says, 'strikes directly at the free exchange of ideas,' and not at those responsible for oppression, stifling precisely the kind of interaction that would aid human rights.  The association has noted that during the apartheid era, it backed economic boycotts of South Africa, but not academic ones."

Can a Jew take solace from the AAUP explanation as to why why the AAUP stands against the academic boycott of Israel?   Certainly, not I.  The AAUP suggests that a boycott such as that promoted by the BDS fails to strike against those responsible for oppression and would fail to aid human rights.

What a lot of convoluted nonsense!  Who is it that is responsible for oppression in the Israel-Palestinian dispute?  It is Hamas in Gaza as it oppresses its people; not Israel.  And, is the situation any different in the West Bank where the PA grossly overstates its just dues and historically has launched terrorist actions that have created almost as much as animosity toward them by Israelis, as the animosity towards Israelis which the Palestinians drill daily into the minds of Palestinian children.  As to human rights,  I would be proud to compare Israel's record with that of the Palestinians.

Let's now end our review of this article by going further to the front where it says, "(Curtis Marez president of the American Studies Association and its almost 5000 members) did not dispute that many nations, including many of Israel's neighbors, are generally judged to have human rights records that are worse than Israel's or comparable, but he said, 'we have to start somewhere.' "

Interesting.  It's like saying that family services have to begin working on spousal abuse -- somehow, somewhere.  So what does family services do?  They begin by locking up spouses who use strong language to their spouses and leave until some later date families who have practiced honor killing.  Curtis Marez makes no sense.  But, then anti-Semitism never does.