Hebrew U Faculty Member: Boycott Me
Gadi Taub, faculty member in the Department of Communications & The School of Public Policy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, slammed the British boycott of two Israeli universities.
Here are some highlights:
… I am hard-pressed to explain the affair without taking anti-Semitism into account.
… The Israeli occupation gives Britain’s educated classes a rare opportunity to reconcile two equally deep currents that would otherwise clash: a self-image of British academics as defenders of human rights, civilizing agents of the world, and the seemingly opposite, deep-seated prejudice against Jews.
… It is as if the British liberal conscience wants to tell itself that it now knows why it has always hated the Jews. It has always hated them because Jews are, by nature, racists. Such visceral, twisted logic must be enormously gratifying: primitive, racist instincts given full expression under a civilized, humanist guise. …
I MYSELF am not affected by the boycott. My university, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has thus far been excluded from the gag rule, and I also qualify under the exception clause, having been publicly critical of my government. But I’ll opt in anyway. I have no wish to be excluded from the boycott because I don’t consider these exclusions honest. As a Jew, not just an Israeli, I prefer henceforth not to accept any invitations from British universities participating in the boycott. And I urge my fellow Jewish academics around the world to do the same.
If, as I suspect, some British academics prefer their academy Judenrein, it seems fitting and proper to grant them their wish, and not go to those universities where the boycott is in force and where we Jews are not welcome.
Read the whole thing here.
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