Harry's Place

Academics want to boycott Israel because they fear the competition.

Norway has been in the forefront of many things, for instance, celebrating the 150th birthday of one of their great Nazis, an event attended by their princess. They are also very big in general Jew-hatred. One of their own, Dr. Mads Gilbert, has been front and center in condemning Israel (but of course, not Hamas), so this boycott movement is consistent with their general cultural outlook (i.e., hating Jews).

It is a shame that Aftenposten has stopped doing its English language edition, but the involvement of Stephen M Walt is interesting. NTLU had a series of 6 talks, and his (on October 9) was on the subject of the “Israel Lobby and U.S. foreign policy”.

The rector wrote: “a group of scientists at NTNU has initiated a lecture series that aims to shed light on various aspects of the conflict with research-based knowledge. Lecturers are researchers who have worked with the issues they talk about for a long time. I think this lecture series is a commendable initiative. An important part of a university’s work is to disseminate research-based knowledge of important societal, and I want to salute to the three who have put themselves in the forefront of the initiative; Morten Levin, Rune Skarstein and Ann Rudinow Sætnan.”

http://commonweb.ntnu.no/rektors-side/2009/09/forskningsbasert-om-israel-palestina-konflikten/

Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and describes himself on his website (http:walt.foreignpolicy.com/) as a “realist in an ideological age.”

Mentioned in Ben Cohen’s piece above, the 2006 article Walt co-wrote with John Mearsheim of Chicago University called “The Israel Lobby” can be found here:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby

It really is quite alarming in its suggestions of a vast Zionist conspiracy, and declarations that Israel is not strategically worth defending. I urge readers to look at it. Universities have always housed people with eccentric politics, but there is something very biased in his attempts to present himself as “fair”.

NTNU should be about science and technology, where there should never be any place for naked politicking, especially of such a contrived and stage-managed nature. It treats its students as fools. If NTNU does go along with this charade, perhaps they are…..

And to Anon

I too get a bit fed up with many aspects of European politics, but Norway is a strange case because it sits outside of the European Union, and yet is probably one of the more “politically correct” nations. It is in the Council of Europe however.

It has had Al-Qaeda supporting Mullah Krekar there for 16 years claiming to be a refugee from Iraq, yet he was always hopping back to Iraq to help his thugs from “Ansar al Islam” who would burn beauty salons and kill women in the streets for refusing to wear the burka, kidnapping Kurdish troops etc.

And even though Krekar’s trips to Iraq showed he was in no way a true “refugee”, he has never been deported, in case he may get injured. And he lives on state benefits and his Mum was granted refugee status too.

But on the idea of Europe in the 1930s wanting Jews to be set up in Palestine/Israel, many 19th century people supported that – philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury and later Winston Churchill at the end of the century in Britain, but also in your U.S. of America, President John Adams, a namesake ancestor of the recent George Bush presidents, as well as novelist Herman Melville, all publicly supported the establishment of a nation of Israel in the region of historical Judea.

Gene, quite right. I might also add that one of the partners in Norway’s coalition government is the Socialist Left Party, which has supported consumer boycotts and which was, if I remember correctly, involved in the 2005 Sør-Trøndelag boycott which Gene refers to. The SLP’s Kristen Halvorsen is Norway’s Finance Minister and was responsible for the decision to divest Norway’s global pension portfolio from Elbit Systems, an Israeli tech company which provided some of the technology for the security barrier.

I am not that familiar with the specific case of Norway, but it seems to me that behind the wish to boycott Israel is a desire to see the Jewish State disappear.

In Europe the very existence of Israel is a constant reminder of the wholesale murder of Jews the Europeans were engaged in a couple of generations ago. While Europeans claim that they are working not to repeat to repeat such an event, the European Union meant to abolish individual countries, is cited as evidence this desire.

However, it’s difficult to understand how the erasure of borders will lead to an erasure of past hatreds. All it will do is erase the memory of the Holocaust since every nationality will not want to take responsibility for what their grandparents did in another national context.

Hence the presence of Israel will become the only tangible proof that Europeans murdered millions of Jews. This is one of the main reasons for their hatred of Jewish State.

Augie: I don’t think the Norwegians or Swedes are overwhelmed with guilt over the Holocaust. Considering Norway’s recent celebration of a Nazi lover, perhaps they are just sad it wasn’t complete.

I was wrong; the pitiable persecuted homosexuals who arrived in Norway begging for santuary were Iranians:

http://www.meforum.org/2107/europe-shifting-immigration-dynamic

At least one had a change of heart about his sexual orientation and, once safely in possession of the necessary Norwegian papers, returned to Iran to get married.

There’s plenty in the link about Norway and its readiness to accept incomers.

I respect neo-Nazis more. At least they are honest.

These Norwegians should just throw bricks at Jewish businesses and be done with it. Have a Trondheim Crystalnacht, because that’s what this is really all about.

If they really cared about the land rights of a “dispossed people”, they’d be campaigning for the Kurds, Tibetans or someone.

Even if they did care about the Palestinians, then they should be campaiging against Jordan which owns most of the land that Europeans called “Palestine”.

If they really cared about human rights, they’d be boycotting Iran.

The fact that they always choose the pesky “Jew country” to boycott reveals everything. These folks should just stop pissing around, put on their bed sheets and become real racists, instead of pretending to be progressives.

I respect neo-Nazis more. At least they are honest.

These Norwegians should just throw bricks at Jewish businesses and be done with it. Have a Trondheim Crystalnacht, because that’s what this is really all about.

If they really cared about the land rights of a “dispossessed people”, they’d be campaigning for the Kurds, Tibetans or someone.

Even if they did care about the Palestinians, then they should be campaiging against Jordan which owns most of the land that Europeans called “Palestine”.

If they really cared about human rights, they’d be boycotting Iran.

The fact that they always choose the pesky “Jew country” to boycott reveals everything. These folks should just stop pissing around, put on their bed sheets and become real racists, instead of pretending to be progressives.

I respect neo-Nazis more. At least they are honest.

These Norwegians should just throw bricks at Jewish businesses and be done with it. Have a Trondheim Crystalnacht, because that’s what this is really all about.

If they really cared about the land rights of a “dispossessed people”, they’d be campaigning for the Kurds, Tibetans or someone.

Even if they did care about the Palestinians, then they should be campaiging against Jordan which owns most of the land that Europeans called “Palestine”.

If they really cared about human rights, they’d be boycotting Iran.

The fact that they always choose the pesky “Jew country” to boycott reveals everything. These folks should just stop pissing around, put on their bed sheets and become real racists, instead of pretending to be progressives.

Boycott Jewish, sorry, Zionist Science!

Quick note on the historical context: just outside of Trondheim, in a place called Falstad, is where Norwegian policemen interned Norway’s Jews before they were shipped to Auschwitz.

Norway continued a programme of forced sterilisation of the `unfit’, on `scientific’ grounds, until the 1970s. So we know where their `science’ is coming from.

ThinkofEngland:

The celebration was of Knut Hamsun, one of Norway’s most renowned poets and authors. The celebration was not of Knut Hamsun, Nazi, but of Knut Hamsun, author. There is a fine distinction, and there was much debate, discussion, and controversy around this matter. To tar everyone in Norway with a national socialist brush for celebrating the works of Hamsun is tantamount to calling anyone with a Volkswagen a Nazi sympathiser.

As for Kristallnacht, amongst the various political posters I pass on the way to work everyday, the most prominent ones of late have been, of no small co-incidence, advertising vigils and other events against Nazism, with particularly reference to Kristallnacht.

At the last outbreak of hostilities between Isreal and Gaza, there were demonstrations in the capital, both pro-Palestine and pro-Isreal (although the pro-Israel demonstration was marred with particular unrest). It’s worth noting that Oslo has a considerably larger Muslim population than Jewish, which probably leads to knee-jerk reactions, much like the sort of reaction a poster sitting behind a computer in England might have when hearing that Norway celebrates her authors.

This is absolutely shameful. Such dynamics is fueled, on the one hand by the arrogant perception of self-righteousness widespread among Norwegians, who under the illusion that they are the best country in the world, and, on the other, as very cynical way to please and ”buy-off” the Muslim population who lives here.

I am a student of political science in this University, thus such boycott would affect me directly.

Academics want to boycott Israel because they fear the

competition.
Given all the countries in the World and what’s going on, to single out Israel the only functional democracy in the Middle East, as worthy of any kind boycott I have little doubt is driven by Lefty politics and the attend de rigueur admiration for Isalmofascism, underpinned by rather old fashioned, traditional Jew hatred.

The luvs can’t really help themselves.

Hmm, I think i’ll boycott NTNU – well I would if they did anything worthwhile in my area. This is simply appalling.

Just an update on Mr.Trond Andresen of the NTNU: On January 3rd he wrote an op-ed in the communist daily Klassekampen titled “Israeli psychness” suggesting that jews suffer from “empathy deficiency” and that to point this out to them was not anti-Semitism, but a favor. Mr.Andresen subsequently left, or was kicked out, from the radical left-wing party Rødt (Red).

As for Kristin Halvorsen she is a government representative of the Socialist Left and currently the Minister of Education. Last term she served as Minister of Finance and managed to partake in a march in which there were cries of “death to the jews”, although both the Socialist Left and Norway’s envoy to Tel Aviv later claimed that the march had been a “dignified affair”. Please visit Aftenposten, a larger daily, for a spectacular picture of Ms.Halvorsen marching under a placard saying “Israel and USA axis of evil”: http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3006339.ece

Let me know if there is anything you need to know and I and my accomplice Sophie will see what we can do.

Best regards
Kristian T

In that listing, Weizmann had the highest ranking for “citations per paper”, and also the smallest staff/lowest budget.

Are any Norwegian paper covering this?

Andreson’s response to Dollar is particularly repulsive….

An Israeli academic writes a calm reasonable letter to him, and Andreson responds to it as some kind of deceitful gesture from the inhuman zionist hydra.

Academicians among you please sign the petition below. Thanks.

http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/display_petitions.cgi?ID=19&Action=View

Read NTNU academic Trond Andresen’s original piece on the “empathy deficiency” of jews on Raseri.no (Raseri means rage) here: http://www.raseri.nu/Templates/Kommentarer/2009/januar/IsraelslPsykdom-TrondAndresen.html
For an unauthorized translation see here: http://www.israelwhat.com/?p=2636

Thanks Kristian. The work you and your comrades are doing on NIJ is just terrific.

Europe will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.

And that is all this is.

Fabian, that’s not like that. Many normal decent people seem not to realize the meaning of the rising wave of anti-Semitism in Europe, but from that to what you are stating, there is a big distance.

That said, it is amazing how extreme-right line of arguing is infiltrating people who don’t view themselves at all in communion with right wing extremism, but view themselves rather as idealists fighting to give a voice to the oppressed.

This anti-Israel rhetoric is just like the stuff we can read at stormfront and other non-recomendable places…

The professors who head this campaign have nothing to fear, they have permanent positions in their faculties, great salaries, and one day they will retire and benefit from the Norwegian welfare state, which will take care of all their needs. For the students, on the other hand, this is very bad news, but people with this kind of mentality think that ’sacrifices’ are worth for a ‘greater good’, as long, of course, as they are not themselves the sacrificial lambs…

Hi Sarah, I remain convinced that Europe needs to see the Jews as perpetrators to purge itself of its resentment against the victims. So they pretend they see them as such. It is a delusion, but it is a very European delusion.

The mention of 1948 pretty much gives the lie, I’d say, to the suggestion that the current wave of attacks on Israel is happening only because Bibi won the last election and that if Tzipi were PM now, everything would be quite different. Israel is Israel, and the boycotters dream the dream of bringing the Jewish state to its knees. What party happens to be in power at any particular moment is quite secondary. You hear people worrying that Likud is “worse” than Kadima, and Israel Beitenu would have been “worse” still; Labor would have been less “bad”, and so on. This kind of rationalization is just people trying to make excuses for the boycotters.

You need to study the history of antisemitism, Sarah. The Germans were convinced even in 1938 that Jews were oppressing them. So they see Israel as an oppressor no matter what it does, just because it exists.

For me, it is very simple. It is antisemitism. Antisemites in our days cannot attack the Jews in their societies openly because there is Israel. Israel will protect them or will give them refuge. Therefore, Israel is the first objective of the antisemite. If Israel falls, the Jews will follow.

The thing that blinds many people to the antisemitic nature of the attacks on Israel is that people wrongly thing that the only antisemitism that exists is the racist eliminationist one. But the Nazis did not invent antisemitism.

Most antisemites don’t want to kill the Jews or even expell them. They want them “to know their place”. They hate the “arrogant Jew” and the Jew with power “he does not deserve”. Therefore, the worst thing for them is the collective Jewish power of the Jewish State. And the dignity it has given to the Jews in the Diaspora. It allowed them to raise their heads after the Holocaust. This is what the antisemite cannot stand.
They will gladly have Jews in their society, but only if they “behave”. And the first thing is to make them reject Israel, kill willingly part of their identities.
Antisemitism is a disease that even infects some Jews.

One of the reasons ordinary people in Western Europe do not know about rising tide of anti-Semitism in their countries is that there is little coverage of it in bulk of the Media because it would be Politically Incorrect to say that of the Muslims Extremists who are one of the Noble Opressed People Of Color (NOPOC).

I have personal experience that may throw some light on the mentality behind the anti-Israeli sentiment (and the inevitable anti-Jewish sentiment that follows it) in British universities.

As a naïve and idealistic student I was actively involved in the National Association of Labour Student. At a couple of our meetings we received speakers from a seemingly well-organised and well-funded organisation called The Friends of Palestine. The speakers were usually Arab students, but we also had the 2 doctors from ‘Medical Aid for Palestinians’, Pauline Cutting and Swee Chai Ang who told us all about their experiences during the siege of Lebanon and the ‘atrocities’ they saw committed against Palestinians. It was powerful stuff, and my misguided altruism and left-wing propensity to always support the underdog prompted me to join the Friends of Palestine.

In 1985, I travelled to Sunderland to witness the EGM called after JewSoc was banned under the ‘No Platform for Racists’ policy. I recall that the line “Promoting an understanding of Zionism” in the society’s constitution was what prompted the ban. I also recall an Arab student taking the platform. “JewSoc” he said, “want to organise a trip to Jerusalem to plant a tree. My grandparents were born in Jerusalem. It is my homeland. Yet I am not allowed to go there and plant a tree!” How we cheered. Surely Zionism was the most discriminatory and racist ideology ever.

The argument the pro-Palestinians put was so compelling. “Once we had all of Palestine, today we want only a little piece of it. The bit we were left with before 1967. If only Israel would give us that then we can live in peace. All we want peace!”

I remember that at one point in the meeting a female Jewish speaker was all but drowned out by heckling. She became emotional and started shouting “they say they want peace but they’re killing children in Israel! They want to drive the Jews into the sea!” The heckling intensified into jeering and booing and the girl left the platform in tears.

After the vote I felt high. That day was a real victory for we supporters of the ‘oppressed’ Palestinian ‘freedom fighters’.

A little time after the meeting, things got interesting. As someone with an Iranian background I was becoming increasingly aware that the Arab members used different language in my presence than in the presence of the sundry white lefties supporting their cause. For example, I began noticing that they would spit the word “Zionist” in public, but use “Jew” when it was just Arabs (and me) in the room. Also, the “give us the pre 1967 borders” argument trotted out in public was never put at these meetings. Among ourselves, it was all or nothing: the abolition of the State of Israel and the right of return for all Palestinians.

At one meeting, after the lefties had left, I discussed the killing of Israeli women and children with my new Arab friends. Even in my immature stupidity, the responses I received shocked me. First we had the moral equivalence, “the Zionists kill Palestinian women and children so why shouldn’t Palestinians kill theirs.” But most shocking was the universal belief among the Arab members that as a ‘militarised’ country, Israeli women joined the army and children grew up to be soldiers. Therefore, it was okay to target them.

The ensuing argument became a screaming match and I walked out never to return.

I don’t think we can under estimate the power and attraction of the pro-Palestinian movement. For lefties, it has everything. An ‘oppressed’ underdog. Noble and committed ‘freedom fighters’. A rich, powerful and arrogant enemy supported by the enemy of the left; the USA.

What’s more, the supporters of Israel tended to be middle-class Jews. We ‘lefties’ didn’t really see them as really ‘our’ type of people. And if that wasn’t enough, there were some Jews on the anti-Zionist platform. What more proof did we need that we were right?

But the biggest problem was that there wasn’t a convincing response from the pro-Israel camp.

I can see today that the Palestinian side was disingenuous and downright dishonest. But damn, they were convincing.

Obviously, those lies have to be exposed. But more importantly, a convincing pro-Israeli argument needs to be promoted in our universities.

I must admit that I find it depressing. My experiences were over 20 years ago. I dread to think just how much worse things must be now given the ever-increasing Muslim demographic in our universities.

What to do?

Thanks for that, Reza. As for an answer, I’m not sure. I explain where I can. But rational explanation never stopped conventional antisemitism where it had most taken root. Anti-Zionism, at least this kind of anti-Zionism, is a kind of faith, a brotherhood of gnostics, possessed of an absolute truth, a righteousness.

” So they pretend they see them as such. It is a delusion, but it is a very European delusion.”

And what about your Argentinian delusions ? And your Spanish-language website which at times is a tad racist ?

And some of your Argentinian Jewish colleagues who still seem to think that the Falklands war was all Mrs Thatcher’s fault.

And just as the various UCU campaigns dredged up every piece of anti-Zionist rhetoric imaginable

I didn’t realize that ‘antisemitic’ was spelled anti-Zionist.

“I didn’t realize that ‘antisemitic’ was spelled anti-Zionist.”

It very often is.

In fact, today, antisemitism is, to all intents and purposes, anti-Zionist, for it is the hostility most vicious and threatening towards the second or largest, and certainly most visible, Jewish community in the world today.

I once heard a Russian joke from Soviet times.

A Jewish scientist is called into his superior’s office.

Superior: “Rabinovich, we are stripping you of your position here and transporting you to Siberia”.

Rabinovic: “Why, what did I do wrong?”

Superior: “We have learned that you are a Zionist”.

Rabinovic: “No, please I’m not a Zionist”.

Superior: “Don’t lie Rabinovic! We know your maternal grandmother was a Zionist.”