WaPo | For decades, the American Studies Association labored in well-deserved obscurity. No longer. It has now made a name for itself by voting to boycott Israeli universities, accusing them of denying academic and human rights to Palestinians.
Given that Israel has a profoundly democratic political system, the
freest press in the Middle East, a fiercely independent judiciary and
astonishing religious and racial diversity within its universities,
including affirmative action for Arab students, the charge is rather
strange.
Made more so when you consider the state of human rights in Israel’s neighborhood. As we speak, Syria’s government is dropping “barrel bombs” filled with nails, shrapnel and other instruments of terror on its own cities. Where is the ASA boycott of Syria?
And of Iran, which hangs political, religious and even sexual dissidents and has no academic freedom at all? Or Egypt, where Christians are being openly persecuted? Or Turkey, Saudi Arabia or, for that matter, massively repressive China and Russia?
Which
makes obvious that the ASA boycott has nothing to do with human rights.
It’s an exercise in radical chic, giving marginalized academics a
frisson of pretend anti-colonialism, seasoned with a dose of edgy
anti-Semitism.
And don’t tell me this is merely about Zionism. The
ruse is transparent. Israel is the world’s only Jewish state. To apply
to the state of the Jews a double standard that you apply to none other,
to judge one people in a way you judge no other, to single out that one
people for condemnation and isolation — is to engage in a gross act of
discrimination.
And discrimination against Jews has a name. It’s called anti-Semitism.
