Monday, April 18, 2005
Last week I re-posted the resignation speech given on behalf of three resigning Jewish members of Britain's National Union of Students. I now understand the NUS to be quite an influential body.
The speech itself gave few details as to what, exactly, led to the decision, but this article (via Dhimmi Watch) provides a bit more information.
Times Online: Dons' boycott raises Jewish student fear
Luciana Berger, 23, a close friend of Euan Blair, the prime minister’s son, described last week how she had been forced to resign from the executive committee of the National Union of Students (NUS) after being abused and spat at by left-wing undergraduates and Muslim activists because she is Jewish...
...Berger, who comes from a Jewish family in north London and is studying for a master’s degree in government, politics and policy at Birkbeck College, London University, said opposition to Israel was resulting in abuse of Jewish students.
She said she had resigned from the students’ union earlier this month because of its failure to stand up to racism. “It says it is proud of its policy of diversity but it should be ashamed. It has isolated the Jewish student community,” she said.
“The situation cannot be allowed to get worse. I have had e-mails calling me a dirty Zionist pig, but I have never spoken on or talked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. People have confused the issue.”
She also criticised how prejudice against Jews was seen by some on the left as “second-class racism”.
Berger described her shock at experiencing anti-semitism as a student. “Suddenly I was Luciana the Jew rather than Luciana the British citizen,” she said. On one occasion, she claimed, the NUS failed to condemn a comment made at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies that burning down a synagogue was “a rational act”...
...Danny Stone, campaigns director of the Union of Jewish Students, said academics were increasingly upsetting Jewish undergraduates. He claimed lecturers at London, Sussex and Nottingham had refused to give students leave from exams scheduled for the Jewish sabbath. One allegedly told a student: “We can all think of silly religions if we want.”
Douglas Davis, author of a new book, Israel in the World: Changing Lives Through Innovation, said: “Some British universities are reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. Let us not forget that the first place Hitler had Jews banned from was the universities.”
I read Berger's resignation letter/speech to NUS... btw, interesting that she's a good friend of Blair's son.
What's really interesting about these 1 sided boycotts and aversion to work with Israelis, ostracization of the British Jewish community etc...
I just thought of something............
Bashar Assad's son went to school in England.. He got an opthamology degree?
He is received like royalty when he comes to Britain unlike Benjamin Netanyahu?
So are these elitist nose in the air WASPS trying to tell me that they hold any/all Israelis accountable for the Israeli Democratic Gov't's policies whether or not they agree with them but the son of a Police State Dictator who supports terrorism and every terrorist group and ordered the destruction of Hama and over a weekend killed some 30,000 people for opposing the Dictatorship?
WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT THAT WAY ITS INCREDIBLE.
Does Mona Baker reject any Egyptians who are believers in the Muslim Brotherhood or who cheered for Osama Ben Laden on 9/11?
Does she boycott any relatives Khatami or Khomeni from Iran or instead they are received with open arms and afforded immense amounts of awe and respect immediately?
And then you are in the realm of comparing the Israeli Gov't with Police States which is of course a victory in and of itself for these people but even with that you see the ridiculous insanity of this.
Further, if/when this conflict progresses and comes to some sort of compromise and the British Academic establishment then wants to start boycotting Egyptian intellectuals because their government runs Protocols of Zion on its state run television, will Mona Baker support that boycott, or instead scream racism and McCarthyism?
Real easy to be an elitist high and mighty when the shoe is on the other foot.
Me
my sentiments exactly. or in other words: BINGO!
All jews are part of this ficticious 'Zionist Conspiracy', and meanwhile Muslims are targets of racism, unfairly blamed for countless terrorist attacks. never does a muslim condemn these attacks publically, although the jewish community is clearly mulivalent on just about every issue from Kosher law to Likud politics. What a !@#$ed up world we live in. Dont mess with the chosen people. Youll always lose if you do.
Solomon, tell Landes I'm going to call him via his email this week if you happen to speak to him before I do.
Exact, fyi, Mona Baker is an ex pat Egyptian British Professor.