Because of the boycott campaign, UCU turns a blind eye to antisemitism

The Human Rights Commission is a national institution of post apartheid South Africa.  Part of the antidote to the old racist system, and independent of government, this institution functions as the linchpin of the new constitution which endows the rainbow nation with a set of legal and democratic guarantees.

The Human Rights Commission ruled last week that the statements of Mongani Masuku on the subject of Israel amounted to antisemitic hate speech.  He is a senior official in the South African trade union movement and is currently in the UK on a trip paid for by the University and College Union to promote the exclusion of Israelis, and only Israelis, from the global academic community.

This is the full text of the ruling of the South African Human Rights Commission.

The Human Rights Commission does not makes its judgments frivolously.  The Human Rights Commission is aware of the distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism.  The Human Rights Commission is not pro-Israel and is not concerned with defending the reputation of Israel.  It is concerned with racism.

Masuku has openly and repeatedly stated that South African trade unions would target Jewish supporters of Israel in South Africa and “make their lives hell”.  He urges that “every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine”.

The Human Rights Commission recognized unequivocally that using anti-Israel rhetoric, Masuku has attempted to mobilize South African trade unionists against Jews in South Africa – against the vast majority of them anyway, those who do not identify themselves as anti-Zionist.  Masuku believes that Jews who are not anti-Zionist are “agents of apartheid and friends of Hitler” and he proposes to relate to them as though they were both.

UCU has paid for this man to tour Britain’s campuses to make the argument for a boycott of Israeli universities.

Surely, when it is explained to UCU that Masuku is here to use antisemitic hate speech then it will realise that it has made a mistake?

But no.  The distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism has been explained to UCU countless times over the past decade but UCU is not interested and it continues to turn a blind eye to antisemitism.

A UCU spokesperson told a journalist from the Jerusalem Post that the sources of the evidence against Masuku was not credible.

“We don’t comment on stuff doing the rounds on the Internet and in the blogosphere and never will,” he told the Post.

The UCU spokesperson does not understand who the South African Human Rights Commission is or the significance of what it has judged.

But there is nothing new about this.  UCU has demonstrated repeatedly that it is simply not bothered by antisemitism if it comes packaged in the language of criticism of Israel.

Click here for a long and diverse list of evidence and opinion to which UCU has been unwilling or unable to respond in a normal antiraicst way.

Jews in UCU have been bullied, have resigned, have been pushed out and have been silenced.  The situation is so serious that at the last UCU Congress there were no Jews left who were prepared to oppose the boycott campaign.

For more details and argument on UCU and Masuku click here.

David Hirsh

CST Antisemitic Discourse Report 2008

Dave Rich from the CST writes :

CST has long been known for recording and analysing antisemitic hate crimes: the physical assaults, desecrations, racist abuse and hate mail that make up a quantifiable measure of antisemitism. But just as, in recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that antisemitism is not restricted to the activities of street thugs and bar room racists, so it has become necessary to chart that other sort of antisemitism: the ideas, images and language that occasionally pollutes public discourse.

Read the whole piece Here.

Download the full report Here.

Stop the BNP *TODAY* – Vote for somebody else

MSU Jewish Studies welcomes honour to Tutu but calls on him to renounce Israel boycott

Ken Waltzer: Director Jewish Studies MSU

Michigan State University Jewish Studies department has released the following statement:

Since this speech, Desmond Tutu has lent his name to the 2009 U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

MSU Jewish Studies hails MSU’s decision to honor Archbishop Tutu for his important contributions to the freedom struggle in Africa, his Nobel Prize (1984), and his continued activism on behalf of the oppressed — in Sudan (Darfur), Zimbabwe, Timor, and elsewhere.  He is a deserving candidate.

However, MSU Jewish Studies also speaks against Archbishop Tutu‘s contemporary position on Israel, which rests on a false analysis of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, is antagonistic to academic freedom and the values of the university, and is counterproductive in the search for an end to occupation and the establishment of peace.

First, in the speech below, please note that Tutu expresses his affinity to the Hebrew people, their bible, and their tradition, which aligns with the oppressed and downtrodden and was an inspiration, he acknowledges, in the freedom struggle against apartheid. It is a prophetic tradition and it is a tradition of kindness, compassion, and caring.

But, Archbishop Tutu charges, it is a tradition from which Israel today is truant in dealing with Palestine. It is this tradition which Israel ignores in creating checkpoints, an “illegal wall,” and things even South Africa didn’t do, like “collective punishment.”

Subtly shifting focus back and forth between Israel the Jews and Israel the state, Tutu says: Israel should be on the side of the God of Exodus, Israel should be with the oppressed – this is “your calling” – to remember “what happened to you in Egypt and much more recently in Germany” – Israel should behave differently.

For Tutu, a Christian cleric, the Jews have a “divine calling” and Israel should act in accord with it in dealing with the Palestinians.

But while we share some of Tutu’s view, especially his desire for negotiations leading to peace and a two state solution, what sort of affinity and commitment to kindness and compassion, we ask, is it that constructs the Jewish people as having a calling for justice when they suffer but derides them when they take defensive measures or fight back against suicide bombing and terror?

Tutu: anti-apartheid hero and Israel boycotter

What kind of felt affinity and kindness is it that acknowledges Israel’s suffering as its calling, but identifies not at all with Israel’s yearning and aspiration (like Palestinians’ yearning and aspiration) for self-determination and security?

Why is it that Archbishop Tutu does not acknowledge that Israel has seriously negotiated for years at Oslo, Wye, Camp David, Taba, and since, and that Israelis have consistently demonstrated that Israel would leave the West Bank if they will no longer be attacked. Why is it that Archbishop Tutu does not acknowledge that a serious obstacle to peace is the drift among Palestinian leadership to viewing the conflict as a religious one?

Second, the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel calls on people and institutions to one-sidedly boycott Israeli academic and cultural institutions until Israeli occupation ends, Israeli Arabs achieve equal rights, and the right of return for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants, wherever born, is recognized.

In this boycott campaign, it is only Israel and Israel alone that is targeted –no other nation in the world, no other academic or cultural institutions, no other people. The Israel-Palestinian conflict is central but only Israel is seen as an actor – not Fatah, not Hamas, not others. Who opposes negotiations for a two-state solution? Israel or Hamas?

The conflict is also likened to the earlier conflict over apartheid in South Africa and Israel is demonized as evil by the false analogy.  Israel is not an apartheid or racist state and the Israel-Palestinian conflict is a conflict between rival national movements for national self-determination, not a conflict between colonizers and the colonized.  That is why the UN voted partition for Palestine and called for two states and the self-determination of two peoples in 1948.

The campaign for boycott also seeks to impose an embargo on academics and performers based completely on their national origins, and to limit academic freedom in American universities to hear all sides of the conflict from representatives of all viewpoints. It represents an attack on the idea of the university, as President Lou Anna Simon earlier emphasized, and would reduce a complex conflict between two peoples to a slogan.

The campaign for boycott also threatens what we do in MSU Jewish Studies, where among other things we study Israel and its region, have exchange relations with Israeli universities, send students to study there, administer scholarships to support students to study at Israeli universities, and regularly invite and host Israeli speakers, performers, filmmakers and films at MSU to inform about the conflict and about Israel (and Palestine) also beyond the conflict.

Finally, the call for boycott evokes the feel of similar boycotts in modern Jewish history, blaming the Jews and only the Jews (Israel) for complex issues in public life and spreading a discourse in which Zionism and the Jewish state are especially vilified.  True efforts for peace should and would do otherwise.

Kenneth Waltzer

Director-MSU Jewish Studies

Antony Lerman defends “Seven Jewish Children”

Antony Lerman defends Churchill’s play against this CST criticism,  here.

Petra Marquardt-Bigman’s critique of Lerman’s recent work is here.

Saul comments:

“What has gone wrong with the Jewish journey from genocide in Europe to what Israel is today?”

Let us not forget, that the same question was asked by liberals and non-liberals in the nineteenth century to explain how it could be that a people who had been emancipated and brought into the bosom of civilization could still exhibit “negative” Jewish traits. More often than not, the question and the answer provided took the form of,

“a psychological link between past trauma and present brutality.”

It was this “psychological link” that sought to explain the idea that it was because of their prior exclusion in the ghetto that “the Jew could not be but  “immoral”, “unethical”,  “liars”, “cheats”, “dirty”., etc. etc.. Leaving the anti-Jewish tropes in place, these alleged negative images, fixed them all the more firmly under the label of a “psychological” condition of Jewishness. Immoralty, etc. now became the inherent trait of “the Jew”. It was only a short step for the problem of the Jewish “head” to be inscribed in the problem of Jewish “blood”.

Equally interesting was the fact that this notion of  a psychological “Jewishness” as the (“empirical”) foundation for the composite of negative traits that was said to make up the reality and actuality of “the Jew” was a line pushed most ardently by the established and assilimated Jews in the face of the embarassment brought about by the presence of the Ostjuden. The problem for the assimilated Jew, of course, was that people no longer compared them to their liberal (non-Jewish) brethren, but against the “mass” of their “backward” and “superstious” brethren from the East. The fear of loss of social status was palpable.

Needless to say, those assimilated Jews thought themselves adjusted and “healthy” and that the problem of “Jewishness” belonged to others.

The truth of the matter, as many historians of Jewish social and political history have noted, is that it was not the “backward and superstitious” who suffered from the tics of a psychological condition of “Jewishness” – they knew and relished their place as pariah – but those obsessed with differentiation (from the mass of Jews) and the acceptance which they craved – those thrown into the position of parvenu. It is, of course, true that they were forced into this role against their will (but which do not stop them they readily accepting it). Indeed, they were put into the position of playing an impossible game of showing to themselves and to others that they were both the  “same” and “different” at one and the same time. In that situation it is hardly surprising that such a game which implied the constant fear of being associated with the Jewish mass, of being “like them” should not take its psychological toll, and, in its wake, bring forth an alternative, but more socially grounded, more individual, more persistent concept of “Jewishness” that came to determine their every action, both in relation to Jews and non-Jews.

And, in this context, is it not  pertinent to note that, at a time when many a good liberal is seeking to make the Jew and the Jewish state a pariah, the parvenu’s voice joins the chorus and strives to sing the loudest?

In many schools of psychology and psychotherapy, it is encumbent for the therapist himself or herself to undergo the process themselves. If Lerman is going to continue in the present vein, maybe it is a piece of advice that he should take on board. After all, as he so often states, “denial” is a terrible thing.

Saul

Smantha Lishak on the Durban Review Conference

Samantha Lishak, second from the right

This piece is written by Samantha Lishak, Chair of Leeds University UJS

This week, one week after returning from the facade that was Durban II, has been a week of reflection for me. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what went on at that conference, and when people ask me “how was Geneva?” I’m never certain how to respond. How to explain what I went through at Durban II… According to my previous notes people had gathered that I’d gotten rather rageous, and been struck with dissapointment, at the United Nations. The truth is that there was so much emotion flying about that it was sometimes difficult to identify what I was actually feeling.

It is fair to say that Durban II was tainted from the start. The moment President Ahmadinejad was allowed to give the opening address to the UN, months after hosting a Holocaust Denial Conference, there was no way the conference could be seen as a legitimate conference against racism. Ahmadinejad’s racist, antisemitic speech overshadowed the entire week. Beyond his hateful words, what affected me was the repercussions of them. Speaking to NGO’s, I was told that actually Ahmadinejad’s speech was factually correct, that there is a force that controls the world. I was offered the chance to ‘admit’ the War in Iraq was my fault. I was offered the chance to explain how I controlled the media. I personally. I, because I am a Jew.

Never have I been more disheartened with the state of global affairs than after returning from Durban II. I went to Geneva with the naive hope of being able to “make a difference” by participating in a conference ‘against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerances’. As a Jewish Student, human rights issues are of utmost significance, and it is frustrating that human rights abuses across the world are being absolutely ignored; Abuses in Darfur, Sri Lanka, India, to name a tiny few, were finally going to be given the opportunity to speak to the world, at this conference. NGO’s had come from all over the world, many of whom had spent 8 years waiting to afford to come to Europe, to present their plea to the United Nations that their suffering be recognised, and be offer helped. The Jewish student delegations from across the world arranged a rally with Darfuri people against the silence of the UN with issues in Darfur. I learnt so much from that rally. I learnt more about the politics of the Sudan, and most importantly the personal experiences of Darfuri people. Experiences that were inexcusably not heard in the UN General Assembly.

One week later, having celebrated 61 years of Israel’s independence in Leeds on Yom Ha’atzamut, remembered fallen Israeli soldiers on Israel’s Remembrance Day – Yom Ha’zikaron, and having been asked again, by a student, if I thought the um, the um, ‘Israeli’s’ controlled the global media and were using Gilad Shalit as a means of deflection, I am still ‘getting over’ the conference. I am continually asked “how was it?”, and every time I give a different response. Every time another story. Some beaming with joy, such as the clown who threw a nose at Ahmadinejad in the circus we call the UN, some with sadness, such as Tibet being thrown off the podium due to China’s objections to their speech, some with concern, such as the last NGO I heard speak claim that 9/11 was an unsolved mysery that didn’t happen, and that his organization were starting a lobby to remove the word antisemitism from the Oxford English Dictionary as it is clearly racist, and so many more stories and emotions in between.

I’d thought by now I would be able to give a calm response to the question “how was Geneva?” but I guess it will take more time for my blood not to boil when I think about Durban II, the farce it was, and the tragic neglect of what is so urgent to talk about.

This piece is written by Samantha Lishak, Chair of Leeds University UJS

David T on the fight against racism

“…I can see that the far Right has had a certain degree of success by bashing Muslims. The BNP is poised to win 4, 5 seats perhaps in the European Elections: and they’ve done so by conflating popular xenophobia and anti-immigrant prejudice while claiming that British Muslims are conspirators in a Al Qaeda-esque plot to rape our women, steal our jobs, and wreck our country.

I know this strategy works. It is a lot easier to play on racist fears, than it is to make the rather wonkish and somewhat aesoteric  case: that a pluralist culture needs to defend liberal democracy.

So, should we do it? Should we enlist anti-Muslim bigotry in the struggle against Islamist politics?

No of course we fucking shouldn’t. And what an utter disgrace it would be, if we did.

We’ve done the converse, in fact. We’ve challenged the tropes of anti-Muslim bigotry:  in posts and in comments. We’ve argued against the “taqqyiah” slur. We’ve challenged the essentialist view of Islam that is peddled by Islamists and anti-Muslim bigots alike. We’ve supported liberal and democratic political movements in countries with majority Muslim populations.

As Norman Geras points out, the very opposite of all this has been taking place in the anti-Zionist camp…”

Read the whole piece on Harry’s Place.

Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad speaks at UN antiracist conference on Holocaust Rememberance Day

Durban Review Conference – final pre-conference negotiations in Geneva

"... we saw two big white tents. Which right away flashed me back to the Durban WCAR NGO Forum..."

If you want to know what is going on then follow the ICARE reports daily:

Quotes of the day

‘Alas, I’m not Harry Potter or another magician’ (Chair)

‘We’re going to try to make the conference as successful as Durban in 2001’ (Oops)

‘There’s a big elephant in the room but it’s a friendly one, an African elephant’.

Day one of the last intersessional Working Group meeting for the Durban Review Conference (or Intersessional WG for the DRC) saw magicians, elephants in the room and other Disney-esque characters. Exiting the accreditation/security bunker in the morning, to the right we saw two big white tents. Which right away flashed me back to the Durban WCAR NGO Forum, but hey, those tents are for accreditation when the actual DRC starts. The UN expects around a 1000 NGO delegates and they think the security bunker does not have the capacity to hold a number like that.

Back to the meeting, which started fairly on time, 10.15am. The High Commissioner, Ms. Navanethem Pillay, held an opening speech in which she stated that the progress had been remarkable, the latest negotiation document (The Rolling Text) was welcomed by her, she had received many encouraging statements about it from many groups and delegations, lots of goodwill, et cetera. She stressed that ‘procrastination and expediency is not an option’ (which somehow reminded me of the Borg in Star Trek: you will be assimilated). Her full speech can be read here, scanned for your convenience by your intrepid ICARE news team. One of her last sentences was somewhat exaggerated: ‘…the way forward in the anti-racism agenda depends on the outcome of the Durban Review Conference’.

The rest of the morning meeting was pretty laid back, with some undertones. The Chair, Mr. Boychenko first asserted that the ‘Rolling Text’ needed to be adopted as the basis for the working document. Syria immediately piped up saying that this would in no way negate their right to come back to the older texts, including the January 23 one. Sudan wants a reconfirmation of the DDPA, ‘no more no less’ and Pakistan said on behalf of the OIC that they had shown the utmost restrained and expected the same from their discussion partners.

All this veiled ‘you better behave’ language. What a ritual. Next the Chair tried to pull a fast one by firing of a whole lot of Para numbers and suggested that those could be ‘adopted ‘ad ref’ (in one go) by the meeting. This did not succeed. Here’s a scan with those paragraphs.

Notable was the relative quiet of the EU delegations in the morning. Strategy? Inertia? Luckily it got somewhat better in the afternoon. Also notable was Iran, which came in late since they, and a few other delegations were held for 45 minutes at the security bunker because their accreditation papers got lost. The Iranian delegate complained about that but lauded Boychenko for the new working document. Iran turned all flowery, calling the chair a Magician but at the same time said that all ‘their paragraphs’ were dropped from the text. They made the gracious offer to come with a written contribution to correct this problem. Boychenko wisely ignored this. Later in the day delegates talked about all kinds of elephants (see report from the plenary) and on the NGO side an interesting situation presented itself. See further. Tomorrow we will start only at 11am (practically that will make it 11.30) because of private meetings probably. The Intersessional ends Thursday afternoon at 6pm. Friday there will be no meetings since it is the Christian holiday good Friday. More tomorrow. As Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, ‘Abusus non tollit usum’

Ronald Eissens

To follow events from Geneva as they unfold, bookmark the ICARE website and visit daily.

Eve Garrard on contemporary antisemitism in Britain

Eve Garrard

Here is Eve’s concluding paragraph.  How she comes that conclusion is a must-read, on normblog – offering a goldmine of links and an outline of what is going on in Britain.

There is not at the moment, so far as I know, a deliberate and conscious anti-Semitic project on the left to undermine the standing of Jews in Britain and elsewhere, and to deny them the rights of self-determination and self-defence which are accorded to others. But there is a significant number of people on the liberal-left behaving as if they were in fact complicit in such a project; who are impervious to the chilling anti-Semitic effects of their behaviour; who are in practice acting as enablers and facilitators for those full-blooded anti-Semites who want to exploit the rich possibilities of this situation. This willingness to prepare the ground for Jew-hatred is in itself a disgusting development on the left, and a betrayal of some of its most basic principles. It is also a proper source of alarm for Jews who are beginning to feel that the brief decades in which being a Jew in Britain was unproblematic may be coming to an end.

Do read the whole piece.