RUTHFULLY YOURS

Defying logic, a band of anthropologists voted to boycott archeology. On Friday, Nov. 20, at the business meeting of the American Anthropology Association (AAA), they voted to boycott Israeli universities in line with the BDS movement’s goal of punishing Israel for it’s alleged treatment of Palestinians in the so-called “occupied territories”. The text of the resolution is here. (It is not finalized as the vote will have to go to the 10,000-member association in spring.) Should the resolution pass, the full membership vote, the association will not enter into any formal relationships with any Israeli institutions and would bar Israeli institutions from participating in its publications and events. Israeli institutions, and thereby students (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) would not have access to AnthroSource, the major anthropological database.

I ask not what these anthropologists think they are doing to Israel by weighing in on the complex challenges in the Middle East with a simplistic and biased resolution which demonizes Israel. Nor why an organization representing scholars chooses to ignore the fact that over 11,000 rockets were launched against Israelis after Israel withdrew every living Jew from Gaza. Neither do I ask why academics, who are committed to the understanding of culture and causes, place full blame on Israel and do not factor in evidence of Palestinian government incitement to the murder of Jews. I ask what they are doing to the scholarly pursuits of the archeologists who belong to the AAA.

As most AT readers know, President Obama recently scolded those who don’t want to admit “Syrian refugees” to the United States, saying there should not be a religious test. He had the temerity to suggest it was “un-American,” as if being American means abandoning national security to exchange our lives and future for the lives of some other group of folks, many of who hate us.

In any case, for all of Barry’s faux passion and outrage about religious tests, he had nary a word to say about the religious test that is the core of Islam – the test put forth to non-Muslims before terror strikes, sparing those who can recite passages from the Quran before massacring those who cannot. The dead did not pass the religious test.

Obama does not speak about the religious test put forth to Yazidis and Christians and other non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East when jihadists show up in their town and at their door and in their homes and demand they convert to Islam. Or die. Because they failed the religious test.

Obama does not speak about the religious test when “Palestinians” take to the streets of Israel and knife, or run over, or shoot Jews because they are Jews, with 23 murdered and 192 wounded in the most recent wave of attacks. It’s a war against Jews because they fail the test.

Or perhaps I should say “wayward wimmin”. After all, they are all feminists.

Then again, what kind of feminism is it which would support BDS against the nation in the Middle East that has done more for gender equality than any other, and which was the first in the region (i.e. from its inception in 1948) to give Arab women the vote?

What psychosis motivates the extreme leftists who’ve hijacked the women’s movement as they have hijacked certain Protestant churches and imposed upon them that warped worldview that imperils Western society and gives aid and comfort to its enemies?

Here’s some of the whacko weirdness:

Not least among those welcoming the respite of Thanksgiving must be the nation’s college and university administrators. After student protests evicted Tim Wolfe as president of the University of Missouri, officials at other institutions of higher learning (if we may still call them that) were harassed by shouting or otherwise threatening students. At Princeton University, students occupied the office of the school’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, demanding that he throw Woodrow Wilson down the memory hole.

Even at the remove of several weeks, it is remarkable to recall that the disturbance at Yale University was over “offensive” Halloween costumes. But amid the protests, some important principles are now at risk, notably free speech. We asked at the time where the adults were on campus—either school presidents or boards of trustees? The answer, so far, is that most have caved like wet cardboard. The most hopeful adult response has come from 18- to 22-year olds—the students themselves.

Security checks are necessary – all Israelis are used to opening their bags and passing through metal detectors before being allowed to enter a bus or train station, shopping mall or concert hall.

Palestinian terrorists have taken the lives of more than 20 people, ranging in age from 18-year-olds to a man in his seventies, since the latest wave of attacks started on October 1. (Although arguably, this is not a wave but more like a stormy sea: The exact moment when it started is hard to pinpoint.) People have an understandable need to rationalize the attacks. I can tell you what is not the trigger: Checkpoints.

Recently I have heard an increasing number of Palestinians and their supporters claiming that it is the fear and humiliation of military checkpoints that are “fueling the despair” that leads people to decide to kill Israelis, using whatever they can: knives, scissors, guns, axes, or cars driven into a crowd of pedestrians.

The frustration at checkpoints is real. The need for checks even more so.

It is the equivalent of security checks at an airport. Once upon a time, pre-flight security checks were perfunctory. That was before the Palestinian hijackings that began in 1968, targeting Israelis and Jews. Since September 11, 2001, airports everywhere enforce rigorous rules, some obvious, others verging on the ludicrous.