| Boycotting the Jews in Britain |  |
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 7, 2007
Posted on 06/07/2007 8:13:46 AM PDT by SJackson
BBC reporter Alan Johnston has been held since March 26 by a terrorist group in Gaza, where he had been the last international journalist to keep living and working. He appeared last Thursday in a video wearing an orange sweatshirt and reading a prepared statement. Meanwhile British soldiers are under attack by Muslim and Arab terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, and fifteen British sailors were recently kidnapped and held in harsh conditions for two weeks by Iran.
Closer to home, a survey found one-quarter of British Muslims expressing sympathy for the London bombers of July 7, 2005, and British intelligence estimates that about 16,000 of them are capable of carrying out such attacks themselves. Indeed, last August 11 the left-wing Guardian reported that British Muslim “suicide bombers were within days of blowing up 12 passenger jets above five US cities in an unprecedented terrorist attack designed to commit [quoting intelligence sources] ‘mass murder on an unimaginable scale.’”
Yet Britain’s University and College Union, made up of university academics, as well as other groups have figured out who their real enemies are . . . the Jews.
Last Wednesday, the UCU voted 158-99 to “circulate the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches” and to “encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions.” British journalists’, doctors’, and architects’ unions have also recently proposed boycotts of Israel, the Anglican Church has decided to divest from companies cooperating with it, and later this month UNISON, Britain’s largest trade union, is to vote on cutting economic ties with the Jewish state.
The UCU’s resolution “notes that Israel’s 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement” and “deplores the denial of educational rights for Palestinians by invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests of teachers, lecturers and students.” It also “condemns the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation, which has provoked a call from Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.”
The resolution does not include a single mention of: Palestinian terrorism against Israel; Israel’s total withdrawal from Gaza including the destruction of decades-old Israeli villages and even the exhuming of all Israeli graves; the 1993 Oslo agreement and Israel’s transfer of civil administration in the West Bank (and Gaza) to a Palestinian government that Israel created; Israel’s 2000 offer of full statehood to the Palestinians; or the fact that all universities now existing in the West Bank and Gaza have been established since Israel took control of these territories in 1967.
Gone, wiped from the record; in the UCU resolution, none of this ever existed. Israel engages in “invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests” out of sheer evil and malice; it has never witnessed waves of suicide terrorists blowing bus passengers, café patrons, and hotel guests to bits, thousands of rockets falling on towns and farms, or genocidal exhortations on official Palestinian TV—all of it Orwelled out of reality.
The UCU does, however, call for “organis[ing] a UK-wide campus tour for Palestinian academic/educational trade unionists” and “actively encourage[s] . . . branches to create direct educational links with Palestinian educational institutions and to help set up nationally sponsored programmes for teacher exchanges, sabbatical placements and research.” It does so at a time when the Palestinian Authority is ruled by a popularly elected government of Hamas, which is officially defined as a terrorist organization by the European Union, proudly claims credit for rocket attacks on civilians, and whose charter openly calls for Israel’s destruction and the killing of all Jews.
Recently Prof. Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, canceled a speaking engagement at Imperial College in London. He said, referring to the move to boycott Israel by Britain’s National Union of Journalists, that “given the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, boycotting Israel indicate[s] a moral blindness for which it is hard to find any explanation other than anti-Semitism.”
The UCU resolution, however, states that “passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic.”
No, perish the thought. Apart from the evasive use of “criticism”—what is at stake is not criticism, but boycotts—it is of course not anti-Semitic to make Israel the sole and obsessive focus of efforts at condemnation and excommunication by academics, journalists, doctors, architects, clergy, and ordinary workers at a time of ongoing genocide in Sudan and constant severe human rights abuses in the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority itself—to go no further than the Muslim Middle East.
It is not anti-Semitism, it is just that the Jews, in their not-quite sixty years of statehood after two millennia of dispersion, have managed to create the world’s most evil society and the only one so repugnant that even its academics need to be silenced and ostracized. It is not anti-Semitism, it is just that all the problems of Arab and Muslim aggression the world over stem from that one primal sin of “Israeli occupation”; just that the Jews have somehow once again managed to poison the wells and be at the root of all evil.
And this is how the pathetic West consumes itself; how it cannot tell enemies from friends, up from down, black from white, instead turning in blind viciousness on its own most besieged frontier while grasping at the old, sure mainstay of anti-Semitism.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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This is real evil:
Saudi Arabia - Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is punishable by death. Bibles are illegal. Churches are illegal. Easter celebrations are illegal. It is punishable by death for a non-mulsim to enter the “holy” muslim cities of Medina and Mecca.
Yemen - Bans proselytizing by non-Muslims and forbids conversions. The Government does not allow the building of new non-Muslim places of worship.
Kuwait - Registration and licensing of religious groups. Members of religions not sanctioned in the Koran may not build places of worship. Prohibits organized religious education for religions other than Islam.
Egypt - Islam is the official state religion and primary source of legislation. Accordingly, religious practices that conflict with Islamic law are prohibited. Muslims may face legal problems if they convert to another faith. Requires non-Muslims to obtain what is now a presidential decree to build a place of worship.
Algeria - The law prohibits public assembly for purposes of practicing a faith other than Islam. Non-Islamic proselytizing is illegal, and the Government restricts the importation of non-Islamic literature for distribution. The country has passed the “Regulation of Religious Practice” law, which stipulates a punishment of two to five years’ imprisonment and heavy fines for anyone convicted of urging a Muslim to change his religion.
Syria - The constitution requires the president to be a Muslim and specifies that Islamic jurisprudence is a principal source of legislation. Sharing your Christian faith is discouraged as “posing a threat to the relations among religious groups” and carries a penalty of up to life in prison. A Christian is not allowed to proselytize – ever. Churches who want to hold an extra service must get a government permit. Sermons are routinely monitored, as is church fundraising.
Jordan - Has the death penalty for any Muslim selling land to a Jew.
Sudan - Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is punishable by death.
Pakistan - Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is punishable by death. Bans proselytizing by non-Muslims. Christians regularly put in prison for charges of blasphemy. Islam is the state religion, and in a court of law the testimony of a Christian carries less weight than that of a Muslim. Section 295(c) of the Penal Code calls for a death sentence for anyone who defiles the name of the Prophet Muhammad and requires the testimony of four Muslims for a conviction. This fosters an environment in which Muslims can feel free to use intimidation and violence against religious minorities for personal gain.
Qatar - Islamic instruction is compulsory in public schools. The government regulates the publication, importation, and distribution of non-Islamic religious literature. The government continues to prohibit proselytizing of Muslims by non-Muslims.
Malaysia - Under Malaysian law, any convert to Christianity must apply to a shariah (Muslim law) court to legally renounce Islam. Many Christians prefer to remain silent converts rather than take their battle to the shariah courts, where apostasy or conversion out of Islam is punishable by whipping, fines, imprisonment and—in the most extreme application—death.
The Maldives - In the island paradise visited by tens of thousands of tourists each year, Christianity is simply not tolerated. While local Christians – said to number around 300 out of a total population of 300,000 – do get together to worship, they do so at the risk of imprisonment or worse if discovered by the Muslim authorities. Bibles are banned, and tourists can be arrested for trying to bring them into the country.
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/hr/
bttt
What about a few bombs with a Star of David on the side?
Increasingly irrelevant, not long to be islamist Britain.
Britain’s University and College Union will next take up the cause of Christian persecution in Muslim countries. Oh wait, they won’t be taking up that cause at all.
Now that’s a Mitzvah!
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame: All their attempts to bend thee down, Will but arouse thy generous flame; But work their woe, and thy renown. "Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves: "Britons never will be slaves."
Does anyone sing this anymore?
A few lefty unions do not represent Britain anymore than the ACLU represents America.
I’ll repeat myself from the previous thread.
The usual lefty suspects are calling for boycotts, and yet, and yet ... normal Britons don’t know or care what the inconsequential lefties are screaming about. We’re still going on holiday in Israel and buying evil Zionist fruit. Very nice it is too.
They’re not even allowed to fly their own flag, so I’m sure singing that would meet with harsh reprimand.
On this recent thread you can find out about a massive anti-Israel rally taking place in Washington DC. They are calling for the dissolution of Israel.
This isn't happening in Britain, but in America. Why aren't we moaning about America turning into Iran?
Those fools involved in this evil have not a clue of the eventual earthshaking reciprocity on the UK.
Right there is a symptom of the illness. I don't understand how people allow their countries to fold up, unless that's just the natural outcome of globalism, multiculturalism, and socialism.
Socialists are maggots who hate anything good or fair and love evil, death and murder.
We're supposed to be at war with someone, supposedly over terrorism. 'Could've fooled me.
I don't dispute that, and if you're right the union memberships will vote down these proposals as they did last year. However these aren't simply lefty organizations whining, they're unions attempting to do significant damage to Israel and individual Israelis, not just in Britain, but internationally as well. Relative to the US I'm aware of one pending University partnership where this has been raised as an issue, Alan Dershowitz has announced his intent to take legal action over any attempt to have Israelis or Jews barred form American projects, and there's been a little talk in Congress of amending our antiboycott legislation to make it clear that NGOs are covered as well as governments. So why it may be the usual leftys, and while they may not represent Brits, unless the broad membership of the unions reject the proposals, there will likely be serious damage done.
It won't fly in the US, other countries might comply. If actually implemented, an unintended side effect might be a defacto ban of UK academics and researchers in the US. Legality aside, most corporations and academic institutions here being told by a British researcher, I'll come, but you can't have any Israelis/Jews on the project will be told to stay home.
In terms of the U.S. what you stated is very true. We should recall there are various forms of reciprocity :)
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