Jews have been under seige and attack in the Swedish city of Malmö for years as leftist policitians turned a blind eye or cooperated in anti-Israeli agitation by Islamists and other pro-Palestinian groups. See my prior post, Malmö Syndrome. It is a phenomenon spreading across Europe, Not Just Malmö and The Irish anti-Israel sickness isn’t limited to Ireland.
Indeed, it’s also prevalent on U.S. campuses, particularly in California, although the attacks are less violent here.
Melanie Phillips, via Israel Matzav, writes about the situation at British universities, Jewish students running gauntlet of hate: welcome to 21st century Britain:
The delegitimisation campaign against Israel, comprising the obsessional lies and blood libels promulgated by the media and intelligentsia week in, week out, has produced this result: Jewish students in Britain are being forced to abandon their university courses out of fear….
So this is what it has come to. In the 21st century, British Jews are being forced to hide their Jewish identity out of fear for their personal safety — because they support the state of Israel in its struggle to defend itself against genocidal attack.
This disgusting and surreal state of affairs has arisen from what can only be described as the madness that has all but consumed the British intelligentsia and media, which portray Israel – the target and victim of Jew-hating extermination – in the deranged propaganda terms set out by its Arab and Muslim attackers. The result is rampant Israel-hatred, Judeophobia and Jew-baiting which is either tolerated or actively promulgated by a so-called educated class – including broadcasters and many mainstream politicians — which on this issue is in fact totally impervious to evidence or reason.
She highlights the situation at the University of Edinburgh:
A case in point was one of the incidents described above, when Ishmael Khaldi was forced to abandon his invited address at Edinburgh University. He was called a Nazi and accused of representing an ‘apartheid state’ by a baying mob who unfurled Palestinian flags and screamed that the university’s Jewish society was a ‘religious club that supports violence and unjust behaviour’ before security officials hustled him away. The JC reported:
‘At one stage the mic was ripped from his lectern and a demonstrator shouted: “We don’t discuss with the Ku Klux Klan, why should we discuss with this thug?”’
But Ishmael Khaldi is an Israeli Arab, a Bedouin from the Galilee who is an advisor to Israel’s Foreign Minister. He is thus living proof that Israel cannot possibly be an ‘apartheid state’. His treatment at the hands of the screaming Edinburgh University mob was therefore not merely an unconscionable outbreak of thuggery but defied reason itself. As does the whole way in which Israel is presented in British public debate.
Sounds all too familiar.
It could, and does, happen at Universities everywhere. Not just in Malmö.
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Sort of like Fordham, eh?
We have our own form of distortion in this country in nearly every entity of higher education.
Persecution exists everywhere and in particular to Christians in the “Arab Spring” countries and most of this action is violent and yet as usual the world simply watches…
Maybe “His treatment at the hands of the screaming Edinburgh University mob” was because he was “living proof that Israel cannot possibly be an ‘apartheid state’”.
He endangers the narrative and so must be silenced. And the narrative is what is important.
Oh, the irony of a pro-Palestinian group accusing Jewish society of being a religious club supporting violence and unjust behavior. So I guess the ‘left’ is as un-self-aware in other areas too. It isn’t just the U.S.
“So I guess the ‘left’ is as un-self-aware in other areas too. It isn’t just the U.S.”
In that sense, the “Left” truly is international!
Let’s try to remain positive.
Maybe this growing global anti-Semitism by anti-Israel proxy is nothing more than a case of mass Münchausen syndrome by proxy in which the Jews’ tormenters eventually become their rescuers, a fable artistically enshrined by the BDS troupe’s magnum opus.
LukeHandCool (who is, despite this single superhuman effort at optimism, a born pessimist)
This is appending already in the USA in CA. It will happen more in the future because it is the price to be paid for taking the millions that pour in fom Islamic countries. If universities want the petrodollars to fill their coffers they have to accept Jew-hatred. Being bastions of Communsm, they do.
Having grown up in the UK before moving to the states in 1989 at the age of 30, I am dumb-founded by the rise of anti-semitism in the UK. When I was growing up it was absolutely unacceptable to criticize Israel or the Jewish people in any way, no exceptions. Since I left, and probably within the last decade, the situation has changed completely, and it is very hard to understand what has caused this shift.
The UK I grew up in had a large number of people who had escaped the Nazis as they swept through Europe, and had lost many family members in the holocaust. There were probably fewer actual holocaust survivors than in the US.
I would love to understand how public opinion in the UK was changed. Were there specific events that caused a widespread shift in public opinion, or is this the result of the slow drip of steady anti-semetic propaganda?
If I hadn’t been in the U.S. since 1989 and just returned, I think I’d be dumbfounded at the PC insanity that had sprouted like a giant, evil weed.
I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that the rise of PC … multiculturalism … diversity, etc., seems to coincide with the rise in anti-Semitism. I think it’s part and parcel.
This umbrella of ostensibly tolerant ideologies is very intolerant towards disproportionate success, i.e., people like Jews and countries like Israel.
Maybe this explains it?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020382/You-entering-Sharia-law-Britain-As-Islamic-extremists-declare-Sharia-law-zone-London-suburb-worrying-social-moral-implications.html
Our college campuses have gone from enlightenment zones to pockets of the new Dark Ages. Between this nonsense, and the nonsensical application of political “correctness”, individuals, both student and non tenured faculty, that disagree with the liberal orthodoxy mob either stay under the radar, afraid to express their opinions, or do, and are publicly ostracized and frequently harassed.
Current campus life is something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but it is just the brains that are being snatched. I know: I am right in the middle of one.
Muslim hate for Jews (and Christians, and Hindus, etc.) is rooted in Islamic doctrine. Sadly, this kind of thinking will grow worse so long as Westerners fail to understand the well spring for these views.
Dr. Bill Warner is a brilliant academic in Nashville (http://www.politicalislam.com/pages/bio) who is the founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. Warner has mathematically dissected Islamic doctrine in order to reveal the reasons Muslims attack Jews, Christians, Hindus, and other religious sects.
Warner’s website (http://www.politicalislam.com) is the go-to place for a logical, rational analysis of the Islamic faith and it’s practitioners treatment of non-Muslims. In fact, Warner applies a mathematical approach to his analysis of Islamic beliefs and practices. Download Statistical Islam (http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/category/statistical-islam/). You’ll be stunned by the stats.
Most Westerners are ignorant about Islam. We assume Islam is simply a religion, and that like every other religion, they follow a golden rule because we do. However, as Warner points out, Islam applies authoritarian thinking with dualistic ethics. This means they do not have a golden rule. Muslims must follow one set of rules; non-Muslims (all of them kafirs) must follow a different and very unpleasant set of rules in order to cohabit. Dissent is a death warrant.
Video interview: http://en.video.canoe.tv/video/no-islamic-golden-rule/1993362077001
Warner has plotted the growth of Islam in many nations, and formulated “The Law of Islamic Saturation”, which means, once the law of Sharia is put into place, the native civilization will be annihilated. This happened in Turkey, which used to be known as Asia-Minor. It was both Greek and Christian. Today it is only 0.3 Christian%
Read, listen, learn, and share with others.
In the PR sphere, Israel’s biggest enemy is its own success. When you defeat your enemies soundly and become an economic powerhouse, you’re one of the “bad guys”, regardless of whether you’ve done good or evil. The West’s victim culture sees you as Goliath, even if you’re minding your own business or handing out roses.
If only Israel would lose a few hundred thousand people to terrorism every so often, or suffer some major economic setback, it might drop off the rabid leftist’s radar.
The Bedouins are a major force that is not understood by the jonnycomelateley ME pundits.
they are particularly strong across Israel & The Sinai.
Stay tuned .
I’ve never understood the left’s hostility towards Israel. It was before my time and my knowledge of it pretty much ends at having seen the film “Baader-Meinhof Complex”, but I’d love for someone on the left to explain to me how the Red Army Faction in Germany managed to go on a Nazi-guilt-fueled reign of terror over a perceived rise of fascism in the country while simultaneously making common cause with the PLO.
They were like Cabaret without the singing & art deco. They were completely talentless.
muck like the movie was to the original time place & people namely Christopher Isherwood , Berlin & the real Sally Bowles .
Also no music or drama contributions. No Bertolt Brechts from that mob.
They were exceedingly dour, in fact perhaps the most dull revolutionaries ever.
Sounds like we’re back in the dark ages and back to Ivanhoe style culture.