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AAAS anti-Israel academic boycott resolution 1st outside Arab world

AAAS anti-Israel academic boycott resolution 1st outside Arab world

American academics pass their version of “Zionism is Racism”

The academics who belong to the Association for Asian American Studies must be so proud that their organization passed a resolution at its annual meeting calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

The resolution was a vile pandering to the worst anti-Semitic elements behind the BDS movement, who single out Israel and only Israel for demonization despite far worse records of academic intimidation and discrimination throughout the Arab world.

Jews and Christians are persecuted throughout much of the Muslim world, “occupations” of ethnic groups are the norm (Israel’s control of the West Bank is entirely lawful), hate and glorification of suicide bombings spew from Palestinian universities, gays are subject to imprisonment and worse, and I could go on and on.  Yet only Israel and its universities draw the ire of AAAS.

AAAS has shamed itself and its members.  AAAS has thrown itself in with those who abhor academic freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and just about everything else we hold dear.

The AAAS resolution is reminiscent of the U.N.’s disgraced Zionism is Racism resolution, since withdrawn.

Just how unprecedented was this resolution?  According to an anti-Israel boycott group it was the first by a professional association of academics outside the Arab world, as reported by Iranian PressTV:

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) in a statement appreciated AAAS for “its principled support for the cause of justice in Palestine.”

“The adoption of this resolution by the General Membership of the AAAS is precedent-setting,” PACBI said.

“This is the first time that a professional association of academics anywhere outside the Arab world adopts such a clear and unequivocal resolution in support of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions due to their entrenched complicity in Israel’s persistent denial of basic Palestinian rights, including the right to education and freedom of movement,” it added.

University of Massachusetts – Boston Professor Rajini Srikanth, past President of AAAS, was supportive of the resolution, according to Inside Higher Ed.  How ironic that Srikanth is on the Provost’s staff at U. Mass, since the Provost is the chief academic officer at universities.  I have little doubt that Srikanth and U.Mass would defend Srikanth’s actions in the name of academic freedom, a freedom she denies to Israeli universities.

The American Jewish Congress issued the following statement:

AJC is outraged by the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) endorsement of an academic boycott against Israeli academic institutions. A resolution favoring the boycott was adopted at the national organization’s recent annual meeting, though only ten percent of the membership reportedly voted….

The American Association of University Professors has long opposed academic boycotts. Moreover, in 2007, more than 400 American college and university presidents signed a statement proclaiming such efforts “intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central mission of higher education.”

AAAS and its members need to be held accountable.

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Comments

1. A skeptic might wonder how much of the Association for Asian American Studies consists of people who lacked the brains or work ethic to get into a professional school for medicine, law, STEM, etc.

2. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that AAAS might be a trademark of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

3. The overlap might be resolved if the newer organization adopts AAAGS and clarifies its name as Association for Asian American Grievance Studies.

[…] Legal Insurrection highlights more anti-Semitism from academics […]

It’s not like there are any real human rights abuses/institutionalized racism going on anywhere in Asia, eh?

Set aside India, China, and other countries with obviously checkered records, in Japan the Burakumin and Koreans are routinely discriminated against.

To this day my wife won’t let her Japanese friends know that her father was half-Korean. Her mother shared this information with her sister and her after their father passed away. My wife’s little brother still doesn’t know.

They’re shielding him from this information. I think it’s unbelievably silly, but my wife tells me I don’t really understand how the Japanese look upon Koreans.

Ironically, she quietly seems to take some pride in being part Korean … Japanese women routinely say that Korean women are the most beautiful women in East Asia.

But she says her Japanese friends would see her differently if they were to ever find out she’s part Korean.

I guess the large protests that took place outside one Japanese TV broadcast network a couple of years ago because it was showing “too many” Korean soap operas and other Korean entertainment shows lends some credence to what she says.

The Korean members of AAAS should be reminded that to many in Japan, Koreans are seen as the “Jews of East Asia.” Ironic, no?

But the AAAS represents a united Asian front against the supposed racism of Israeli Zionism.

Isn’t that cute?

    Ragspierre in reply to LukeHandCool. | April 28, 2013 at 10:21 am

    What’s really funny is that most Japanese are genetically Koreans.

    No feud like a family feud, as they say…

      LukeHandCool in reply to Ragspierre. | April 28, 2013 at 10:57 am

      True. And the true native people of Japan are the Ainu.

      I’m sure AAAS doesn’t have time for them because there are so few Ainu left … remnant populations in the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands, Hokkaido.

      They were slaughtered and driven north by the Yamato Japanese … who came from the Korean peninsula.

      The Ainu are the Native Americans of Japan. Very few remain.

      Ah, Rags is back.

For some reason, Indians are considered “Asians” in this context.

I wonder if Pakistanis are also “Asian”, which would explain a lot of animus toward the “Zionist entity” on rank religious grounds by, say, a militant voting minority of this outfit.

Hard to understand a group of Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans taking this tack.

    Juba Doobai! in reply to Ragspierre. | April 28, 2013 at 10:37 am

    Pakistanis are Indians. Pakistan was once part of India, then the Muslims do what they do when they want to take over a country: they start balkanizing it. The bit off one piece where lots of Muslims congregated. Then they demanded another piece, called Bangladesh. Now they are demanding another piece, called Kashmir. If the Hindus yield on that, petty soon they will demand Hyderabad and other places saying that they are Muslim majority. Next thing you know, India is a very tiny country.

    Remember Dearborn? They are heading in that direction,

      moonstone716 in reply to Juba Doobai!. | April 28, 2013 at 2:42 pm

      In the U.K., Pakistanis and by extension other muslims are called “Asians” by the media, so as not to have to call them muslims. Sort of like when our media calls gangs of black teenagers “youths.”

Protest against Fuji TV for showing “too much” Korean entertainment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDVtJhU1CUI

I think AAAS needs to check with the federal government to make sure they’re really Asian and not a bunch of White people. I think I have this correct: people from western Asia and peoples referred to as Indo-Aryan are White not Asian according to the feds.
Hitler said the Afghan people were the purest Aryans on Earth and we even have an ‘Asian’ country that calls itself Aryan (Iran).
I’m SOOOO tired of all the racial BS.