As one student put it (paraphrased), "I don't know why this is even being voted on, I mean to affiliate the school with a group that is known to be anti-Semitic...."
And as Eylon Aslan-Levy (the Israeli student that George Galloway walked out on, stating he wouldn't talk to Israelis) stated:
"Oxford students showed that their commitment to intellectual freedom is unshakeable.
"In rejecting calls for a boycott against Israel by a seven-to-one margin, we demonstrated resoundingly that we want Oxford to continue to cooperate with Israeli academics, trade with Israeli businesses and debate with Israeli debating societies.
"I hope that other British universities will follow Oxford's lead in standing up against divisive attempts to hinder academic cooperation and progress."
and over at the Times of Israel they report
According to UJS Campaigns Director Judith Flacks, “It’s encouraging to see that this vote reflects a student body who are willing to discuss the complexities that exist within Israel and do not see boycotting it as a viable option or avenue to discuss the conflict.”
One Oxford student who had campaigned against the motion described the atmosphere on campus as “tense” in the run-up to the vote, which individual college student unions (known as “common rooms”) had two weeks to consider.
Henry Watson, a third-year Philosophy, Politics and Economics student at Magdalen College, said that the motion’s sponsors had initially presented their agenda as “pro-peace, while Israel was against peace, and that this would try and get peace through placing economic pressure on Israel.”
As the motion was discussed by the common rooms, he said, students found out that the motion would also have promoted an academic boycott, that the BDS movement “was against the two-state solution” and that the movement’s founder, Omar Barghouti, had made “racist remarks.”This crushing defeat though does not end the BDS Movements attempts to get British Universities to support their racist agenda. Again as the TOI reports:
Despite the success at Oxford, it seems likely that a BDS motion will still be on the agenda of the NUS conference next month. Oxford students told The Times of Israel that an identical motion was distributed by the BDS movement to other universities, although it is unclear how many are going to debate it.One can only hope that this is the first step in further humiliating the morally bankrupt racist BDS movement at British Universities and that there will be many more victories like this in the future.
This is really great news. British universities are a hotbed of un-nuanced anti-Zionism, and even one of them defeated BDS soundly.
ReplyDeleteI can say from my experience at both Edinburgh and Cambridge that most people it seems are not active anti-Zionists, but the anti-Zionists are loud, persistent, and annoying, and other people are not really involved, so the shrill anti-Zionists can dominate the discourse. (Funny enough, this really reminds me of the situation somewhere else that is at the complete other end of the human intellectual spectrum... cough - Daily Kos - cough)
As to the braying of fools on British Campuses and being loud... Yes,Witness one Jamie Stern-Weiner (aka Douchelander).
ReplyDeleteWe see a lot of this. The most extreme voices simply losing their cookies and spewing all over the case. Here it is the BDS goofballs getting their asses handed to them because pretty much anyone except for the biggest morons and racists in the world can see what BDS is really all about.
Whoa, that's who Heathlander is?? I was picturing a grizzled old Scottish curmudgeon who was still mad at Thatcher for the poll tax. This Jamie doesn't even look like he has to shave yet. Internet handles are really deceptive!
DeleteYep... Douchelander runs an old style Communist rag called the New Left Project where he entertains all the latest rages of the "We hate the West" crowd.
DeleteHow do you find out all these peoples' real names?
DeleteStern-Weiner outed himself on DKos years ago.
DeleteMy favorite quote about this, from the Jerusalem Post:
ReplyDelete"“Oxford's students have made it absolutely clear that applying double standards to Israel is wholly unacceptable,” Henry Watson from Magdalen College said. “Oxford's Student Union emphatically refused to endorse a boycott of the only liberal democracy in the Middle East: it decisively repudiated the BDS movement and its anti-Semitic cheerleaders, by a margin of seven-to-one." --Hey338Too
@ Hey338too... Heh.. yeah that is a good one. Good call by the students at Oxford
DeleteThe BDS people were at my school collecting signatures for a petition a month or so back. They did not provide the text of the petition, only that they wanted the school to divest from companies that support the occupation. When I declined to sign the petition, the BDS supporter seemed surprised and said, "Really?" I was like, "Yeah, really."
ReplyDeleteSomewhat related, did you see this story a couple years back.
http://balfourst.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-israel-is-rogue-state.html
(livosh1)
ReplyDeleteExcellent news. The more people tune in to the BDS nonsense, the more they realize that it is simply a too-cute-by-half tactic to advocate for the abolishment of Israel. Oxford students apparently saw right though this. Looking forward to other students similarly seeing the light.
As I have already posted on several other sites discussing the Oxford vote:
ReplyDeleteTo apply what Hussein Ibish said after the divestment vote at Cal was defeated a few years ago: "If you can't get BDS through Oxford, you're done."
Ouch.... Just.... Ouch....
Delete