Norman Geras on Greg Philo

… were you to utter some other stereotypical racist trope than an anti-Jewish one today in more or less any liberal company, you’d be for the high jump, as the saying is. Jews pulling secret strings to wield power over media or government, however, this is simply part of the air we now breathe. The moral and ideological stink is so pervasive that there are a lot of people who don’t even notice it.

Read the whole piece on normblog.

It is time for YOU to read the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism

Go on, read it.  It is here. 

The EUMC definition says it may, in some contexts, be antisemitic to accuse Jews of being more loyal to Israel than to their union; to say Israel is a racist endeavour; to apply double standards; to boycott Israelis but not others for the same violations; to say that Israeli policy is like Nazi policy; to hold Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel.  All of these things have been going on a lot inside the academic unions for the last eight years.  Instead of addressing the antisemitic culture, the leadership of the union now proposes to alter the definition of antisemitism.  The union wants to carry on treating ‘Zionists’ as disloyal; singling out Israel and only Israel for boycott; holding Israeli universities responsible for their government; allowing ‘Zionist’ union members to be denounced as Nazis or supporters of apartheid.

The precise form that bullying typically takes within UCU is that people who complain about antisemitism are accused of doing so in bad faith in a dishonest attempt to outlaw criticism of Israel.  The antisemitism isn’t seen, isn’t acknowledged, the accuser is accused; and Israel is blamed for the unseen and unacknowledged antisemitism.

The new motion makes this form of bullying into official union policy.  Even though the definition says that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’, the new motion declares that the definition outlaws criticism and is intended to silence debate.

UCU will now oppose all bigotry except for one particular category: racism which can be said to resemble criticism of Israel.  UCU will oppose racist and religious antisemitism, but political antisemitism will be protected under the new policy.

Israel murders children?  Not antisemitic.  Israel controls US foreign policy?  Not antisemitic.  Magen David = Swastika stuck on your office door?  Not antisemitic.  Jews invent antisemitism to de-legitimise criticism of Israel?  Not antisemitic.  Host a man found guilty of hate speech by the South African Human Rights commission?  Not antisemitic.  Exclude nobody but Israelis from the global academic community?  Not antisemitic.

It is clear now how antisemitism against Israelis far away, in the form of a boycott campaign, also threatens ‘zionists’ within the union.  We have learnt that the boycott campaign brings antisemitism with it into any organisation which treats it as one side in a legitimate debate. UCU have understood it too, now.  The only thing left for them, now, is to change the defiinition of antisemitism so that they fall outside of it.

People  ought to be clear: they ought to specify precisely what it is they want to say and to do which would be defined as antisemitic by the EUMC definition.  Then we will understand why they want so much to dump it.

Gisha on Gaza

For more on Engage concerning Gisha, click here.

Gisha is the Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement.

Engage has been following much of Gisha’s work concerning the freedom of movement of Palestinian students and academics.

Richard Kuper, ‘Asa Jew’…

UPDATE: Writing of the usual quality from Antony Lerman:

…But the truth is that, given the genesis of the ‘working definition’, which in my view was a scandal, the fulminations of the Jewish establishment, the CST, Engage, John Mann MP, the World Union of Jewish Students etc. over the UCU vote are farcical. Certainly, the UCU activists who pressed for the adoption of Motion 70 are not angelic philosophical types approaching this issue with nothing but defence of the purity of academic research in mind. They have a political agenda in relation to Israel-Palestine and they’re fighting for it and their tactics are not pretty. It’s not an agenda I share, but as Professor David Newman of Ben Gurion University, who spent a few years in the UK combating proposals to institute a boycott of Israeli academic, concluded, it’s a political fight that needs to be fought with political arguments, not with accusations of antisemitism.

The critics of the UCU decision don’t seem to understand this. They think nothing of accusing Jews who see things differently from them of being antisemitic. At one moment they tell us the ‘working definition’ is ‘the EU definition’ (which it isn’t and it never was). The next moment they tell us it’s only advisory and is a work in progress. They manipulate the findings of the report of the Macpherson inquiry into the killing of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence and falsely claim it decreed that only members of the group who experience racism can define what that racism consists of – so that anyone who denies Jews exclusive rights to define what is and what is not antisemitism – i.e. the UCU – is antisemitic.

Lerman’s whole piece is well worth reading, it is a classic of the genre.  Here.

 

Richard Kuper is one of the leading voices in Jews for Justice for Palestinians.  He is fond of speaking “as a Jew”.  He has written a piece on the EUMC working definition:

“… the EUMC working definition has little to do with fighting antisemitism and a lot to do with waging a propaganda war against critics of Israel. It is time it was buried and the UCU decision to take it on is hopefully a step in that direction. The fight against antisemitism should not be muddied by those who confuse criticism of Israeli violations of human rights and international law with hatred of Jews. It is clearly no such thing.”

The whole thing is well worth reading, here.

Robert Fine responds to Richard Kuper’s piece:

To my mind this article misses the point. UCU’s decision to ‘redefine’ antisemitism and to ditch the EUMC definition is based on the absurd proposition that no criticism of Israel – from any source, of any kind – can be construed as antisemitic. What the much reviled EUMC definition says is that some forms of ‘criticism’ of Israel should be recognised as antisemitic and it makes a provisional stab at providing criteria to help us judge where criticism ends and antisemitic abuse kicks in. These criteria are not perfect but they provide a start. Take an analogy. Criticism of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe is of course legitimate but some kinds of ‘criticism’ – e.g. ‘criticism’ based on the notion that black people don’t have the capacity to govern themselves – is manifestly racist. It doesn’t require a ‘behind closed doors’ conspiracy to see this. UCU doesn’t object to the particular criteria the EUMC offered some years back; rather they object to the whole project of distinguishing antisemitic abuse and political critique when it come to Israel. UCU should be utterly ashamed of themselves for what they have done and antiracists should campaign to have this resolution repealed.

Richard Kuper was wheeled out in the debate at UCU Congerss by Sue Blackwell, when she told Congress that it was his position that concern for antisemitism was an affection of those who were trying to lead a “strong fightback by Israel and its supporters” against criticism.

Richard’s piece is also endorsed by Ran Greenstein: “Another (better and more thorough) effective refutation of the manufactured hysteria of pro-Israel-state-apologists, by Richard Kuper”.

Why do the  ’68 radicals, like Richard Kuper find themselves totally incapable of recognising antisemitism when they see it?

David Hirsh on the Livingstone Formulation.

David Hirsh (2010) ‘Accusations of malicious intent in debates about the Palestine-Israel conflict and about antisemitism‘ Transversal 1/2010, Graz, Austria

Howard Jacobson:

“When it comes to Jewish anti-Zionists, their Jew-hatred is barely disguised, not in what they say about Israel but in the contempt they show for the motives and feelings of fellow-Jews who do not think as they do. There is, of course, nothing new in such schismatics; Jews have been railing against one another and indeed against Judaism from its inception. It was a Jew who invented Christianity.”

“Monotheism probably explains this enthusiasm for dissent. The Jewish God demands a oneness it can feel like a positive duty to refuse. It might even be to our greater glory that we splinter with such regularity and glee. In our variousness is our strength.”

“But then let’s call the thing that drives us by its proper name. Hiding behind Israel is a cowardly way for a Jew to express his anti-Jewishness. That half the time he is battling his psychic daddy and not his psychic homeland I don’t doubt, though I accept that, in political discourse, we have to pretend that what we are talking about is what we are taking about.”

“But here is the beauty of being a novelist —- I can have fun ascribing pathology to whom I like. I know what’s really bothering them. They are my creations, after all.”