At what point does a university assist in inciting and supporting violence? How about charities and NGOs that are supposed to be on a mission of peace? These are questions I was left asking myself after recent events at both the University of Kent and UCL.
The latest event in Kent, involved a speaker from the charity ‘War on Want’, Ryvka Bernard. Ryvka is listed as the ‘Senior Campaigner on Militarism and Security’. Forming part of the university based ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’, Ryvka’s talk was titled “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: Responding to the ‘Palestinian Call for Justice”.
Ryvka’s presentation was devoid of historical fact and context. I was accompanied to this event by an ex-student from Kent, Natacha Woodcock, and together we raised several issues about BDS that exposed much of the hypocrisy. When questioned, Ryvka only appeared comfortable sticking to the script prepared by the slick PR of the BDS campaign. At one point I brought up the 1947 partition, only to find out that Ryvka wasn’t even aware the Arabs rejected it. Worse still, when someone in the crowd displayed their own ignorance by suggesting the rejection was a ‘mutual affair’, Ryvka pushed the point that ‘yes, this is the way it happened’.
A personal note to Ryvka: you do not know what you are talking about. Whether you did it through ignorance or not is irrelevant. You spread disinformation amongst impressionable students about one of the defining moments in the conflict. Your ignorance not only helps to create and spread irrational hatred, it tears up your own argument that your cause is one of ‘justice’. How can you deliver justice without knowing the facts?
When discussing ‘Palestine’, Ryvka Bernard, like ‘War on Want’, uses the word ‘justice’ a lot. It is entirely misplaced. A movement that uses a false narrative to inflict a punishment on another side without stopping to check the accuracy of the events is not a movement of justice. A force that only pushes one side’s argument whilst deliberately ignoring justified grievances from the other party has nothing to do with fairness. BDS isn’t about justice at all. BDS is a movement of hate and revenge.
Given this, you have to ask how a movement such as BDS is allowed on campus and why funding from the Big Lottery Fund and Comic Relief ever gets near an organisation such as ‘War on Want’.
This event at Kent however at least acknowledged the partition plan existed. Just a few days later I was at a different event at UCL to hear an entirely different narrative. The event at UCL took place just a few hours after the student union on that campus voted to support BDS. This time, Amnesty UK rather than War on Want were present. Although Amnesty UK did not deliver this particular speech, by their presence at the event, Amnesty give credibility to the demonization process. Amnesty therefore also support the spreading of lies to create hate.
Lies and missing history
Hazem Jamjoum, had arrived at UCL to describe for the students the history of the Zionist project. I’ve seen Hazem talk before and know he has no compulsion to stick to facts at all. Therefore, I am not going to address individually the long list of misrepresentation and distortions made during his latest speech, but rather focus on his comments regarding the time period of the partition plan, 1947.
Hazem’s narrative was simple. It is 1947, the Zionists have failed, so to create their state they invent a plan to forcibly remove the inhabitants of the area.
It is almost impossible to overstate the falsification occurring here: It is late 1947, the partition has been removed entirely. It never happened. The Arab rejection – never happened, the civil war – never happened. This is a tale of Jewish barbarity, the Jews, having ‘failed’ in their attempts at creating a state embarked on a one sided military episode that was designed to cleanse Palestine of non-Jews. This distortion is taking place *on university grounds* in the UK with the support of Amnesty UK. If someone learns to hate Jews from these fake stories – whose fault is it? Is that what we want taught at university?
You can listen to this section of the narrative here:
Throughout history ‘justice’ has been used as an excuse to perpetrate some of the gravest injustices mankind has seen. Unless the process for justice is untainted, unless the singular focus of the system is an adherence to truth, then BDS simply replicates historical examples of violent and brutal mob rule.
I would argue that universities are blind accomplices to this rising hatred on campus. Bastions of diverse thought, they seem unable to handle those that use words of peace to push hatred and war. As a vile movement spreads its tentacles around the throat of campus tolerance, the powers that be have neither the will, nor apparently the tools, to defend against the predator. In the meantime, the hatred spreads unchecked, and the moderate, and truly peaceful voices, are suffocated into silence.
Place irrelevant theory of what is equal and what is not to one side, the antizionism on campus deliberately distorts history to create a demonic vision of the Jewish state. This antizionism’s claim to be different from antisemitism is dependent on several factors, not least, in adherence to a narrative containing factual events. When the movement disseminates a highly selective and clearly false historical rendition, when it intends to create hatred towards the only Jewish majority nation through a corruption of the truth, then the movement itself has crossed a line from which there is no return.
Movements such as War on Want and Amnesty have become willing accomplices to this new hatred. As the only nation with a Jewish majority is demonised on campus, those that seek to support Israel are demonised too. In effect this creates a good Jew / bad Jew scenario amongst Jews in Europe and the US. Sure the BDS mob can claim they don’t hate ‘all Jews’, they just hate the Jews that happen to support the Jewish state. They then lie about why you should hate the Jewish state in the first place.
These people aren’t giving an opinion, they are deliberately distorting the truth beyond recognition. They turn the victim into the aggressor by deleting every single relevant fact from the narrative they tell the students. They know they are lying to UK students, but they also know that nobody seems to care. This distortion perpetuates a conflict and removes all motivation to seek a peaceful solution. Worse still it emboldens the extremists, invigorates the terror movements and inevitably leads to more blood being spilt on both sides of the great divide.
It is time to ask for the truth. It is also time to ask why this lynch mob are even given a microphone on campus. And just as importantly, why are their supporters like ‘War on Want’ actually given lottery funding?
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It seems to me to be a good example of extremism, used to drum up support for Palestinian terrorism. Ask the UKLFI people for advice on how to prepare and submit a complaint in respect of the University’s duty to prevent such things. This is potentially a very good case study. Please contact UKLFI as soon as possible. They are keen to collect examples of what’s happening.
If your argument is based on a foundation of falsehood, what does that do to your conclusion? Unfortunately emotions and “narrative” substitute all too easily for fact, which is why a pro-Israel group at Columbia University so neatly made its point during “Israel Apartheid Week” when it set up a large Pinocchio next to the fake wall. To the vast numbers of onlookers who know little and for whom, frankly issues of Israel and its Arab neighbors are not at the top of their agenda, they will from now on associate Pinocchio and his distant connection with truth-telling with BDS. That picture itself is worth the proverbial thousand words.
BDS and its ilk are not in any manner pro-Palestinian but anti-Israel, which is really to say anti-Jew as they apparently have no issue with Israeli Arab Muslims or Christians. If they were actually concerned with the rights of Palestinian Arabs, they could start by demanding the repeal of Arab League Resolution 1547 which is the basis for blocking the path to Palestinian citizenship in Arab countries, restricting their civil rights and limiting job and educational opportunities. The Arab justification for these apartheid-like rules is the concern that the Palestinians would lose their sense of identity – which itself suggests it must be a rather fragile thing to begin with. Certainly, the Jews over the millennia never lost their sense of peoplehood in far more trying circumstances.
I applaud David Collier for the sterling work he does in attending meetings and keeping us informed but where is our response?
Our enemies are well-organised and properly funded. Our grassroots activists who bear the brunt of trying to present the alternative case for Israel, countering the lies of those who would destroy and presenting the truth are not.
Our enemies attack us. We do not attack them. Instead we simply try to defend Israel from attack. Where is our campaign to make the world – not just the converted – aware of the anti-Israel philosophy of War on Want, Amnesty International, Oxfam and their fellow-travellers? Why are we not seeking to undermine the credibility of these anti-Israel propagandists? Where’s our campaign to make people aware of the true intentions of those who claim to support the Palestinians, to make them aware of the real history of Israel and the Arabs?
On 5th May there is a debate regarding the TSS with an excellent panel of speakers including David Collier which I hope will attract hundreds of people. Should be an interesting evening, but what’s going to come out of it? Based on previous experience I anticipate people leaving shaking their heads and saying how terrible the situation is, how something must be done – and doing nothing. And you can hardly blame them because there’s little they can do: we’re simply not organised to tap into the emotional response that such meetings create.
Isn’t it about time fro actions rather than words? Isn’t it about time we took the initiative, took the battle to our enemies and started to win back the moral high ground that we once had?
It is ,evident the arabo/communist narrative is a heap of LIES but many or most of their supporters don’t seemto care for truth or justice all they want is to prevail thru swindle or side with the large moslem world population which is mere COWARDICE. The latter has NEVER PREVAILED IN HISTORY it is amlways the brave who prevailed whether in large or small numbers. The jewish left which wants to give up the fight do not understand they will be killed to the last if they do that no matter where they intend to hide. Thrfu the fight israel will prevail no matter how thru war or peace since by expelling Israel’s arabs toJordan the outer world will give up the fight.. It could even escape a ww3 which will normally happen independently of the arabo-Israel conflict. and will witness the collapse of islam.
War on Want and Amnesty ceased being ‘charities’ a long time ago, nor are they interested in morality, justice or historical facts. As far as Jews and Israel are concerned, all they are interested in is demonisation and hatred. Sure, they manage to hide behind the legalistic definition of ‘charity’, and in the UK (for example) the statutory authorities are deaf and blind to what’s going on.
I have long since stopped donating to this kind of vile organisation. Oxfam is also on that list.