RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://jewishlink.news/features/45878-the-underlying-objective-of-the-academic-boycott-of-israeli-institutions

Why does the BDS movement target Israeli academic institutions? One reason is spoken; the other is not.

The basic assumption is that the boycott is a response to Israel’s alleged egregious polices toward Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. By distorting the image of Israel as an apartheid nation that colonized another people’s land and Jews as an imperious oppressor, the movement accuses Israel of being the leading antagonists in the clash between the West and the rest of humanity. Anti-Jewish and anti-Israel canards once considered objectionable have been “repackaged and reintroduced in a more palatable form” by using more conventional terms of discontent with the West, asserts Aryeh K. Weinberg. In a number of ways, anti-Jewish hatred has shifted from the Jew being the “subversive outsider” to the Jew being seen “as the oppressive insider.”

Acquiescence to Bias

Weinberg argues that acquiescence to bias within the academy provides fertile ground for greater attacks on Jews and the West. Though being anti-American, anti-free market and anti-business don’t constitute a form of bigotry as such, they do suggest a tolerance for crude scapegoating that can effortlessly develop into more dangerous forms of behavior against Jews and other Americans. Antisemitism and hatred of Israel have acquired entrée on to the campus, in part, through manipulating this weakness.

The late Gary A, Tobin, who directed the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, said this anti-Israel ideology resonates throughout much of the academic world, even if only adopted by a comparatively small segment of faculty and students, because these individuals “dominate the campus culture.” Despite extensive talk on campus about social activism, supporting liberal agendas and crusading for the downtrodden, the community is rather “complacent” regarding genocide, abuse of women and children, slavery and other appalling transgressions throughout the world.

A War Against the West

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/palestinianism-and-new-anti-semitism-richard-l-cravatts/

A recent survey conducted by Alums for Campus Fairness, “A Growing Threat: Antisemitism on College Campuses,” asked some 500 Jewish-affiliated college students and recent alumni what their perceptions were regarding campus anti-Semitism. The findings of the survey were troubling, given that: “Nearly 100% of respondents said antisemitism is/was a problem on their campus,” “95% of respondents identified antisemitism as a problem on U.S. college campuses, with three out of four describing it as a ‘very serious problem,’” almost “half of current students say antisemitism is getting worse on their campus,” and “69% of students and grads say they have avoided certain places, events, or situations at school because they are Jewish.”

Anyone familiar with current state of affairs on university campuses knows that the root of much of this animus towards Jewish students is the ongoing university campaign against Israel and Zionism, and that Jewish students, whether they even support the Jewish state or not, regularly find themselves the target of derision, bigotry, and condemnation simply because they are Jewish.

In fact, research has demonstrated quite clearly that agitation against Israel—including the toxic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign—by such corrosive student activists as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) increase both the frequency and intensity of anti-Semitic speech and expression. A 2019 report by The AMCHA Initiative, a campus anti-Semitism watchdog organization, for example, revealed that “BDS’s mandate to boycott or suppress programs, collaborations, events, or expression that promote ‘the normalization of Israel in the global academy,’ as well as the academic BDS-compliant ‘common sense’ mandate to criticize, protest and boycott individuals who are deemed complicit with or supportive of Israel’s alleged crimes, appear to greatly encourage antisemitic behavior.”

An earlier AMCHA report had found similar connections between anti-Israel activism and the presence of anti-Semitism on those campuses with SJP chapters. That report concluded, shockingly, that the “presence of one or more anti-Zionist student groups is very strongly correlated with the overall number of antisemitic incidents. 99% of the schools with one or more active anti-Zionist student group had one or more incidents of antisemitic activity, whereas only 16% of schools with no active anti-Zionist student group had incidents of antisemitic activity.” Campuses with SJP or other anti-Zionist student groups, the report found, were “very strongly associated with the occurrence of antisemitic expression. 91% of the schools with one or more active anti-Zionist group showed evidence of antisemitic expression, whereas only 16% of schools with no active anti-Zionist student group showed evidence of antisemitic expression.”