Divest This! A modest proposal to the American Studies Association

After heavy lobbying by anti-Israel activists, the American Studies Association has decided to "boycott" Israel. A glance at the "community activism" table at the conference shows the deliberate attempt to manipulate and deceive- note the widely discredited 4 part maps, and the Mohammed al Dura blood libel, both prominently displayed on a kaffiyah, no less. You'd hope- no, you'd assume that educators would be able to see past this propagandizing.  Apparently not.

Anti-Israel propaganda table from the ASA conference

Our old friend Jon from the Divest this blog weighs in on their decision.
From Divest This! A modest proposal to the American Studies Association originally posted at the CIF Watch blog

...a vote by the American Studies Association (ASA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions was passed the same way other votes have gone the BDSers way in recent months: by stacking decision-making committees with people who are BDSers first, academics second, whose fanatic devotion to “the cause” means they are ready to pass politicized motions they had no mandate to even discuss.  And like stacked student council votes that passed on a few campuses in the Spring, the notion that these measures represent student or academic opinion is laughable.

That’s because for any political measure to have an impact it must either be seen to reflect the will of the people it is supposed to represent or have some direct consequential impact.  But BDS votes taken in forums that involve as few people as possible demonstrate that even the boycotters know they are acting in their own interest, rather than the interest of those they are supposed to represent.

And as for consequences, the ASA vote is likely to produce the same complete lack of action similar votes have led to over the years.  That means no programs linking US and Israeli universities will be severed, no Israeli scholar will be disinvited from participating in a conference or submitting to a journal, no Israeli graduate student will be denied a place at a university, even with a boycott in place that allegedly represents the policy of an entire academic discipline.

This is because those who make such decisions, including those who forced this ASA boycott vote, know that actually enacting the boycott program they just stuffed down the throat of the membership would earn them the immediate and well-deserved contempt of the entire academy.  Which is why this vote, like all “successful” BDS votes, represents nothing because it will lead to nothing.

 Read it all at CIF Watch

Dividing Nations At The Olympics

What is it about judo and the Middle East? First, Iran decided to leave their judo champion home, osenstibly because he had an iffy tummy, more probably because he was the only Iranian competitor in danger of facing an Israeli. Now, the Lebanese judo team has decided that they can't train while looking at the Israeli judo team. And the Olympic officials have decided to accomodate them, erecting screens across the gym.

This is, frankly, disgusting. It is part of an ongoing attempt to portray Israel as a uniquely transgressive nation, one which can be freely discriminated against, with accomodation from the Games themselves. And it is already being defended by anti-Israel voices such as Ben White's, and compared to boycotts against apartheid South Africa. The Olympics have made their message loud and clear this year, first through refusing to honor the memories of the Israeli athletes murdered in 1972, and now through giving in to the political posturing of Lebanon. At an event supposedly dedicated to allowing nations to meet without political burdens, in an open spirit of athletic dedication and competition, Israel, and no other nation, is being delegitimized by her enemies, with the cooperation of the IOC.

The Campaign to Destroy Israel

From Haaretz, written by Gerald Steinberg and Yitzhak Santis of NGO Monitor. I've re-posted it in its entirety- Haaretz does not yet have an English version on-line

"A decade-long global political war is being waged against Israel, aimed at undermining Israel’s legitimacy. Its fundamental goal: to deny to the Jewish people the right to sovereign equality. Given the scale of this drive, the Jewish people continue to face a very difficult challenge.

The opening event was the 2001 UN-led Durban Conference on Racism, when some 1,500 self-proclaimed human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) adopted a strategy to isolate Israel internationally. The “Durban Strategy” seeks to portray Israel as an “apartheid”, “racist” and “colonial” state, so “criminal” that it is beyond rehabilitation. The purpose is to create a moral atmosphere that is conducive to the notion that Israel has no right to exist.

The main tactics are based on boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as the means to the complete isolation of Israel and its supporters. Since Israel’s primary advocate is Diaspora Jewry, this Durban Strategy to delegitimize Israel also de facto targets the Jewish people.

The Durban Strategy is being deployed by activists in numerous arenas: labor unions, churches, local and national governments, sports, culture, etc. In many places, fringe anti-Israel groups with “Jewish” in their names have taken it upon themselves to be a “Jewish shield” for some of the more extreme anti-Israel campaigners, including those using anti-Semitic rhetoric, with the aim of weakening pro-Israel support from within.

This international campaign is massively funded, with hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade – from both European governments and private donors -- flowing to more than one hundred NGOs.

In the intense “soft power” warfare, Israel has not yet developed a successful counter-strategy. While local events, such as “Israel Apartheid Week” and other BDS efforts, get little or no traction in the U.S. and elsewere, on the wider front, the results are not good. The false allegations of the Durban Strategy are repeated frequently, and responses are often slow and inadequate.

On June 6, for example, Amnesty International launched another such attack in a publication focusing on administrative detention in Israel. Although the claims were entirely unsubstantiated, based on unverifiable information, and consisted largely of a one-sided Palestinian narrative, they were immediately repeated in the international media. This was not a surprise attacked – Amnesty circulated pre-release summaries, and sent the Israeli government pro-forma letters with some details. But government officials and major pro-Israeli organizations were not prepared to counter the entirely predictable media coverage.

The need for a coherent pro-active game-plan to attack the engines driving this strategy has been clear, from Durban in 2001 to the repudiated Goldstone report on the Gaza war. Now is the time to expose the farcical nature of the UN Human Rights Council, which has been dominated by the most oppressive and violent regimes in the world, including Ghaddafi and Assad. In parallel, the NGOs that are closely allied with the UN|HRC -- Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and their many counterparts -- have been shown (largely by NGO Monitor – full disclosure) to be far from the knowledgeable and impartial arbiters of international morality, law and human rights.

Of course, not every criticism of Israel is part of the BDS campaign, nor is every critic of Israeli policy involved in delegitimization. Unfortunately, many critical of Israeli policies who do not support Israel’s elimination have been co-opted by the Durban Strategy’s proponents. Separating responsible critics from the delegitimizers should be central to our approach.

Instead of waiting for, more NGO assaults, we must effectively and pro-actively challenge the BDS movement and their funders in every arena. There is too much at stake to do anything less."

The South African Mail and Guardian Suspends Intern for Online Anti-Semitism

The thing that most intrigues, or maybe turns my stomach, about this, is that it is an example of the way the anti-Israel narrative has been permitted to usurp and override the histories and issues of, well, everyone else.

During the First Durban Conference, that UN gathering on racism that turned into a single-minded attack on one country, and one country alone, I recall seeing a picture of two ladies from Brazil, in indigenous Brazilian dress, holding signs denouncing Israel. Indigenous people in Brazil have a lot of problems. I dare say that Israel is not responsible for any of them. But what were these women doing, in front of the cameras of the world, in their beautiful woven dresses? Denouncing Israel, to advance another people's agenda at the cost of their own.

At the same conference, a man who was there to discuss the often dreadful discrimination against, and difficult situation of, the 'scheduled castes' of India, once known as 'untouchables', complained that the Palestinians and their supporters took over everything. His group would hold a demonstration, and the next thing they knew they would be surrounded by Palestinian flags. The struggle of a wretchedly oppressed social group shoved aside--to make room for the neverending, ever-expanding, Palestinian narrative.

And now we have a young South African man who may not be old enough to remember the days of apartheid himself, but his parents and grandparents certainly do. And his first response when asked about it is to effectively deny his own experience, his own people's fight for freedom, and to accede--even actively promote--the ahistorical, dishonest appropriation of the word 'apartheid', and what it meant in South Africa--and to give away his birthright of liberation to the anti-Israel movements.

Ngoako Matsha may be posting anti-Semitic drivel on Facebook, but I'm not angry with him. I feel bad for the kid. He's been brainwashed into giving away what's rightfully his--and he's not even getting a nice bowl of lentil soup out of it.

The Mail & Guardian has suspended an intern, Ngoako Matsha, for an anti-Semitic comment posted on social media platform Facebook. Matsha has been a trainee at the M&G since February 2011, but was commenting in his personal capacity.

In response to a posting by Facebook member Benji Shulman, requesting that users suggest a "basic decent history of apartheid", Matsha posted "Petty apartheid is building tall walls to separate Israel from Palestines." Shulman responded, posting, inter alia, "Thanks for that peace of pseudo-politics but I need something that will stand up to logical argument." Matsha made the following statement in response: "You racists! No wonder Hitler killed all the Jews, because you’re all a bunch of racists."

At 10.23am on June 15, as he was arriving at eTV for an interview with Jeremy Maggs, M&G editor-in-Chief Nic Dawes was informed of the comment by Twitter user @SteveMagid. He immediately spoke with Matsha’s supervisor, who spoke to Matsha and confirmed the authenticity of the comments. By 1.15pm, Dawes had returned to the M&G offices, spoken to Matsha and informed him of his suspension, and that he would be subject to a disciplinary hearing.

In an email sent to staff at 14.12pm, Dawes wrote that "The remarks made on Facebook discussion are fundamentally at odds with the most fundamental values of the Mail & Guardian, the Constitution, and basic human decency. Justifying the Holocaust in this fashion is hate speech and is completely unacceptable in any forum."

The M&G editorial code of ethics clearly stipulates that hate speech is unacceptable. Said Dawes, "I was deeply disappointed and angry when I learned of these remarks via Twitter, and when their authenticity was confirmed by Matsha. Obviously it was appalling to see the Mail & Guardian associated in any way with the hatefulness of anti-Semitism, but more importantly these comments were an awful violation of our most deeply held beliefs, and would have required serious action even if they had never been made public."

The M&G has just completed a series of editorial workshops, at which the outline for a social media policy was discussed, and where it was made clear that the basic foundation would be that an employee would say nothing on social media platforms that he or she would not be willing to see published. Clearly, Matsha's anti-Semitic comment would not be acceptable to the M&G in any forum whatsoever.