Tuesday, October 2, 2007

UK's UCU [University and College Union] Cancels Boycott Threat

The UCU has been told by its own legal advisers that their threatened boycott against Israeli institutions is illegal.

Now who is going to tell those who spearheaded it that it was also immoral, stupid, and contrary to the very essence of what universities are all about?

8 comments:

Ian Thal said...

I've read the news of the UCU abandoning the boycott, but I am concerned about whether other British unions like the NUJ are still on board. I'm especially concerned about the NUJ, since its members are most responsible for the disemination of inaccurate reportage on the Arab-Israeli conflict to the British public.

Unknown said...

The NUJ's executive committee has decided not to pursue the boycott.

Here's the decision, in all its procedural arglebargle: http://www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=1790

hockey hound said...

"the very essence of what universities are all about"

What are universities all about? That is a very good question. One thing is for certain, they're about excoriating anyone outside of their academia who hasn't a "theory" or opinion or denouement exactly similar to those taught by that same academia.

This timid academia is the reason why Islam is propagated and defended simply because it's a traditional and "ancient" religion, in spite of the fact that its every manifestation is violent and invidious. This is why we have idiots like Daniel Pipes telling the world that "moderate" Islam is the answer to Turkey's (and Israel's) present imbroglio existing between her secularists and her zealous Muslims. Hey, guess what, Daniel Pipes, there is no "moderate" Islam. There is only Islam and the Koran, from whence emits all of Islam's violence and bloodshed.

Deborah Lipstadt said...

Dear Hockey Bound:
I posted your comment with a great deal of reservations. I decided to do so because I think your comments are a lesson in and of themselves.

Tthe way in which you disparage all of Islam and all Muslims is quite disturbing and no different than someone who would disparage Judaism and all Jews.

It's the kind of blanket bigotry which much of this blog is dedicated to exposing. Thanks for providing a living example of it.

hockey hound said...

The Torah does not refer to non-Jews as "the descendents of swine and monkeys" or "vermin". Nor do Jews blow themselves up in supermarkets and Mosque parking lots. There is a vast difference between Jews and Muslims.

Wafa Sultan has written that it is Islam which has killed the terrorist's humanity, not the other way around, "as some foolish people believe." My post is not an example of "blanket bigotry". It is an example of accepting an insurmountable reality, which is the fact that Islam's efficacy is malefic and always has been. Why do you punish me for telling the truth? This is so unctuous of you. Were there ever good Nazis? If a Muslim accepts a Jew as his equal, it is in spite of the fact that his religion forbids this. Can you deny this?

Why are you so afraid of telling the truth? Islam is the 21st century's stimulus for the next "Holocaust" against not only the Jewish people, but also against all non-Muslim peoples.

I very much respect you, Deborah Lipstadt, but I must say here that I feel you have publicly denigrated me unfairly simply because I have transgressed an academic rule of etiquette, which in this case is that one shouldn't take on the whole world in debate simply because the whole world (or much of the world) is falling prey to the imprudence of academic and political etiquette. Heaven forbid the whole world should one day wake up and discover that, hey, maybe Islam is an insalubrious religion!

I wrote "zealous Muslims". I did not write "all Muslims." I have many times defended those innocent Muslims who have been murdered by the hand of "zealous Muslims". They were "zealous" Muslims who cut Daniel Pearl's throat. There may be moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as "moderate Islam."

I condemned the religion of Islam as being the primary source of all Islamic violence and racism (yes, I said racism). Islam the religion has effected Islamic terrorism. There is no way around this reality except by sophism and cavil.

Academic etiquette makes true the Yiddish proverb: "Der oilem iz a goilem."

"If I am not for me, who will be. If not now, when?"

Deborah Lipstadt said...

Hockey Bound: I have posted your comment with some hesitation. I do not endorse your words in any manner, shape, or form. I posted them as an exmaple of the kind of stereotyping and blanket condemnation that produces, in the case of Jews, antisemtism.

There is much to be feared today that comes from the Islamic extemist world. I don't think, however, that that justifies condeming Islam in its entirety.
At all.

hockey hound said...

"stereotyping and blanket condemnation"

Cliches are empty words. Without efficacy.

You're convinced Islam doesn't deserve a "blanket condemnation"? You're no more discerning than Christiane Amanpour who equates zealous Jews with zealous Muslims in her shamefully sciolistic documentary 'God's Warriors'.

Why am I contending with you over a religion that's blatently anti-Jewish and anti-Judaism? And I do this at the expense of my character: you paint me publicly with these calumnious phrases above, as though I am not a thinking man.

How can you teach about the reality of the Holocaust on the one hand, and yet defend such a malefic and anti-Jewish religion as Islam on the other? You think Islam is doing the West any good? I read today that Christian clerics in London England are being warned by Muslims not to wear their religious collars. Some Christians priests have been beaten to a pulp for disregarding this warning. I read the other day that there are hundreds of areas in France where non-Muslims are forbidden entrance. This is not a manifestation of Islam? Oh, yeah, this is extremist Islam. Where do you think "extremist Islam" came from, Captain Kangaroo?

How can you be so cowardly? How can you be so obtuse? What, you think because you had your day in court with expensive lawyers and hundreds of cameras pointed at you that you're entitled to judge Islam as innocuous to your fellow Jews and the rest of non-Muslim humanity? You obviously do not recognize your enemy.

I've been fighting anti-Jewish hatred since I was in my teens, I'm 53 now, so don't presume to teach me about anti-Jewish hatred. I've seen it up close--real up close. You live in society circles I can't even dream of living in, but I tell you here, I've been defending Jews from the bottom up, where I haven't the backing of Penquin Books and expensive British lawyers. I have never failed the victims and survivors of the Holocaust in that I have never, in all my life, allowed even the most insignificant anti-Jewish remark to go unchallenged. And you reprove my estimation of Islam with the book-learning cliches "stereotyping" and "blanket condemnation"? Please. This is your answer?

I actually came to this blog for encouragement and inspiration. I read your book (twice), and I thought, Here is someone who will understand the insidious threat Islam poses for the Jewish people. Here is someone famous who just maybe can get the word out (as so many of my Jewish friends are doing) that Islam's ideology is eerily similar to Nazim's. But no. I was sorely disappointed. When I read your rebuttals to my posts, I think, She doesn't get it. She's no different than those noetic fools from all over the academic world who defend Hamas and Hezbollah simply because she defends the very religion that spawned these homocidal animals: Islam.

How can you not see the ominous threat to the Jewish people in the religion of Islam? How can you not see that Islam the religion is the germ of "extremist" Islam and not the innocent bystander its apologist (yourself included) make it out to be. In this sense you become a Holocaust denier in that you have not learned the lesson of the Holocaust: anti-Jewish malefic ideologies precipitate genocide against the Jewish people. Period. This is the lesson I've learned from the Holocaust.

"In time of war the first casualty is truth." -Boake Carter

hockey hound said...

"There is much to be feared today that comes from the Islamic extemist world. I don't think, however, that that justifies condeming Islam in its entirety"

Time will tell. And you can't say you weren't forewarned.