MUST READ: HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF IN BRITAIN

History repeats itself in Britain
by Melanie Phillips

Anyone not yet convinced that Britain has somehow turned against its own most fundamental values, not to say departed altogether from reality, should look at the decision by the University and College Union (UCU) to urge a boycott of academic institutions in Israel.

This deplorable move destroys the most sacred role of a university — to act as the guardian of free speech and inquiry in order that knowledge, opinion and truth can flourish and grow.

Last week, the UCU voted in favour of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions in protest at the country’s treatment of the Palestinians. While criticism of Israel is as legitimate as it would be of any other country, to boycott academics because of their government’s policies is abhorrent and unjust.

Once the free exchange of ideas is thus shut down, objectivity, knowledge and justice are similarly extinguished. Ludicrously, such a boycott will silence academics within Israel who are critical of their own country’s behaviour. It will also hurt the very Palestinians who want to study in Israel’s universities — which, security considerations aside, welcome them onto their courses.

Such boycotts run counter to all academic codes. It is a mark of shame against Britain’s universities that they are proposing such a repudiation of the very ethos of academic freedom.
Encouragingly, many academics are horrified by the boycott call, with the Russell Group of elite universities speaking out strongly against it. But this issue goes far beyond the universities. In recent weeks, journalists, doctors and architects have also launched attempts to boycott Israel, and the public sector union Unison is poised to launch its own boycott of all Israeli goods and services.

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The only people who have ever opposed a lawfully constituted, peaceful Palestinian state are the Arabs. And yet Britain’s intelligentsia and union activists are busily boycotting and demonstrating against Israel. They are exactly the same kind of useful idiots who once supported Stalin, and waved aside all those who spoke up against the killings and the terror.

There are those who will dismiss what I say because, as a Jew and a supporter of Israel, I am thought to have a large axe to grind. But people said exactly the same thing to those Jews who tried to warn Britain and the world about Hitler in the 1930s. Britain dismissed such warnings then; and as a result the world paid a terrible price.

Dismayingly, the atmosphere in Britain today is all too similar. It is said that tragic history repeats itself as farce. Those who support the boycotts and demonstrations against Israel are helping ensure that history is to be repeated for a second time as tragedy.



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1) History repeats itself in Britain