Here's an article written for 440, and Eldorado. Notice that the former president of Harvard University a LIBERAL opinion differs from yours on some points that you two seem to be misinformed on, yet continue to spew. Try to open your little biased minds and see the mans perspective. While you may not like the men's opinions they're steeped in fact. As usual liberal arguments fall flat when confronted with facts and many of the angles you spew are disputed by a couple of guys with PHD's one of which whom presided over one of the most liberal universities in our country. BIBI plays politics just like every other leader yet I don't see either of you taking on countries with much higher body counts, or guilty of far larger infractions against humanity than the Israeli's ever committed. Wonder Why? I guess the shoe just fits you two doesn't it!!
Here's the article
For decades, the American Studies Association has labored in well-deserved obscurity. No longer. It's 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 it 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.
Former Harvard president Larry Summers called the ASA actions ?anti-Semitic in their effect if not necessarily in their intent.? I choose to be less polite. The intent is clear: to incite hatred for the largest ? and only sovereign ? Jewish community on earth.
What to do? Facing a similar (British) academic boycott of Israelis seven years ago, Alan Dershowitz and Nobel Prize?winning physicist Steven Weinberg wrote an open letter declaring that, for the purposes of any anti-Israel boycott, they are to be considered Israelis.
Meaning: You discriminate against Israelis? Fine. Include us out. We will have nothing to do with you.
Thousands of other academics added their signatures to the Dershowitz/Weinberg letter. It was the perfect in-kind response. Boycott the boycotters, with contempt.
But academia isn't the only home for such prejudice. Throughout the cultural world, the Israel boycott movement is growing. It's become fashionable for musicians, actors, writers, and performers of all kinds to ostentatiously cleanse themselves of Israel and Israelis.
The example of the tuxedoed set has spread to the more coarse and unkempt anti-Semites, such as the thugs who a few years ago disrupted London performances of the Jerusalem Quartet and the Israeli Philharmonic.
In this sea of easy and open bigotry, an unusual man has made an unusual statement. Russian by birth, European by residence, Evgeny Kissin is arguably the world?s greatest piano virtuoso. He is also a Jew of conviction. Deeply distressed by Israel?s treatment in the cultural world around him, Kissin went beyond the Dershowitz/Weinberg stance of asking to be considered an Israeli. On December 7, he became one, defiantly.
Upon taking the oath of Israeli citizenship in Jerusalem, he declared: ?I am a Jew, Israel is a Jewish state. . . . Israel?s case is my case, Israel?s enemies are my enemies, and I do not want to be spared the troubles which Israeli musicians encounter when they represent the Jewish state beyond its borders.?
Full disclosure: I have a personal connection with Kissin. For the last two years I've worked to bring him to Washington to perform for Pro Musica Hebraica, a nonprofit organization (founded by my wife and me) dedicated to reviving lost and forgotten Jewish classical music. We succeeded. On February 24, Kissin will be performing at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall masterpieces of Eastern European Jewish music, his first U.S. appearance as an Israeli.
The persistence of anti-Semitism, that most ancient of poisons, is one of history?s great mysteries. Even the shame of the Holocaust proved no antidote. It provided but a temporary respite. Anti-Semitism is back. Alas, a new generation must learn to confront it.
? Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist