The British Anti-“Zionist” BoycottMaimon Schwarzschild

Here is an open letter – at least, it’s open now – from Haifa University Professor Menachem Kellner to Stephen Rose, one of the many British anti-“Zionists” promoting an academic boycott of Israeli scholars, writers, and artists.

Rose’s latest denunciation of the Jewish state included the following:

“There is a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon, albeit daily violated by Israeli overflights. Meanwhile the day to day brutality of the Israeli army in Gazaand the West Bank continues. Ten Palestinians are killed for every Israeli death; more than 200, many of them children, have been killed over the summer. UN resolutions are flouted, human rights violated as Palestinian land is stolen, houses demolished and crops destroyed. For archbishop Desmond Tutu, as for the Jewish (former ANC military commander presently South African minister of security), Ronnie Kasrils, the situation of the Palestinians is worse than that of black South Africans under apartheid.  Meantime Western governments refer to Israel’s “legitimate right of self-defence”, and continue to supply weaponry.”

Here is Kellner:

Dear Professor Rose,

I realize that I am probably wasting my time in writing to you, but I wonder how you account to yourself for the fact that the Israeli Army is in Gaza only because Gazans insist on rocketing the Western Negev with kassams. Would you be happier if ten Israelis were killed for every Palestinian?

Am I to gather from your statement that you, Archbishop Tutu, and Mr Kasrils believe that Israel has no legitimate right of self-defense?

Many Palestinians are suffering indeed and no decent person should be unmoved by that suffering. But, supported by people like yourself, who demonize Israel, and who see anything but a full cup as wholly empty, they prolong their suffering by forcing Israel into actions very few of us here want to see continue. We do, however, want to live without fear of being blown up in busses and in schools. As I have had occasion to point out to people who support your line of thinking, every kindergarten in Israel has and needs an armed guard, no Palestinian kindergarten has or needs one. So long as the Palestinians by and large hate my children more than they love their own, roadblocks will remain, the so-called ‘apartheid wall’ (what a mockery you make of the oppression of Black South Africans when you and your colleagues use that obscene expression!) will continue to be built and the dream of peace here in the Land of Israel will recede ever farther into the distance, driven there by the Stephen Roses of the world.

Menachem Kellner
Haifa University

Nothing Kellner says, or could possibly say, of course, will have any effect on the quite shockingly pervasive and perfervid anti-“Zionism” among British academics, journalists, and “intellectuals” generally.