Disgusting

We thought that academia in the US was anti-Israel. In the last week, England's academics have shown themselves to be even worse. Once again, they are proposing a boycott of Israeli academics, unless of course they renounce their government. There is nothing that I can say about this that Melanie Phillips has not said in this excellent article.

The motion has already been compared to McCarthyism. This is too kind. However cruel, illiberal and arbitrary that disturbing period was, a number of those who were hounded subsequently turned out to have actually been communists. By contrast, Israeli academics are to be persecuted for failing to denounce their own country for seeking to defend its citizens against genocidal mass murder. A more appropriate comparison would surely be the forced conversion of the Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages, or the show trials under Stalinism. For in true totalitarian tradition, only those in the pariah group who denounce their own will be permitted to have a livelihood. To survive in the cradle of free expression, Israelis will have to betray their own people in the cause of hatred and lies.

The Jerusalem Post editorial calls this the "antithesis of freethinking".