The Engage website has greeted the latest campaign to rubberstamp institutionalized Antisemitism within the UCU with many posts and articles that reveal the extent with which this teachers union will go to bury its inherent single minded racism against its Jewish members.
The fiery debate has extended to an overabundance of posts and articles, laying bare with logic the union’s active steps taken to free itself from any form of criticism while preparing to circumvent anti-racism laws and globally accepted conventions by redefining Antisemitism itself.
The main tactic and process employed by the union follows the logic of contemporary Antisemites by painting all Jews as accomplices to the “crimes” committed by Israel, and as a logical byproduct, when a Jew points out that Israel is being singled out. When a non Jew makes the same point, they are labeled as Zionists, and therefore complicit. David Hirsh has spent the last decade researching manifestations of modern Antisemitism, publishing a seminal paper on the subject a few years back.
While Engage has been the main contact point with the UCU as far as stripping and predicting this unions intentions and actions, combating the antisemitic union’s leadership with debate, logic and facts, British Jewish organizations have either remained shtum, or copy/pasted Hirsh’s arguments, work and formulations into whiney letters and apologetic appeals to the union.
As a consequence, British Jews currently have no viable leadership to combat manifestations of modern antisemitism. Their lot has been thrown in with Israel and Zionism whether they subscribe to Israel’s defense or not. The community’s lack of action against institutionalized racism in Britain has led to a situation whereby any self defense measure is immediately related to actions taken by an all powerful lobby, or a tacit pro-Israel stance. Complaining about racism for a British Jew, whether pro-Israel or not has now become impossible, and is invalidated by default as a de-facto misuse of the antisemitism “trope” to tarnish the racist offender.
Until Jewish organizations make a pragmatic choice to battle this type of reversed logic racism, we will continue to witness Jews losing their legal and human rights as their voices are drowned by loud racist waves of legitimized Antisemitism.
We therefore call on British Jews to step up in their own defense, waken the established Jewish organizations into action and reestablish Antisemitism as racism.
8 comments:
<p>I was a member of the Association of University Teachers, the predecessor of the UCU which organised solely within the established universities. After less than a year I resigned my membership, when it became clear that the AUT was not interested in defending the conditions of contract research staff. Only tenured academics meant anything to the union.
</p><p>
</p><p>Another characteristic of the AUT, and one that has been strengthened by its amalgamation with the SWP-dominated further education teachers union to form the UCU, is the way in which the vast majority of members allow a tiny minority of ultra-leftist tossers to dominate internal political debates and external political campaigning. The UCU's policy on Israel is a case in point.
</p><p>
</p><p>The reality in British universities is a strong and healthy dialogue with colleagues in Israel and Palestine, and an indifference toward calls for boycotts and disinvestment. That indifference is deeply damaging to the reputation of academics as a whole.
</p>
I was a member of the Association of University Teachers, the predecessor of the UCU which organised solely within the established universities. After less than a year I resigned my membership, when it became clear that the AUT was not interested in defending the conditions of contract research staff. Only tenured academics meant anything to the union.
Another characteristic of the AUT, and one that has been strengthened by its amalgamation with the SWP-dominated further education teachers union to form the UCU, is the way in which the vast majority of members allow a tiny minority of ultra-leftist tossers to dominate internal political debates and external political campaigning. The UCU's policy on Israel is a case in point.
The reality in British universities is a strong and healthy dialogue with colleagues in Israel and Palestine, and an indifference toward calls for boycotts and disinvestment. That indifference is deeply damaging to the reputation of academics as a whole.
I wonder if tying antisemistism to "racism" is really a good idea, since Jews obviously are not a race and never have been. Think of the exhibit at the Jewish museum at Tel Aviv U. that asks the question "What do Jews look like?" and answers it by showing faces of different shapes and colors.
Dick, the implicit and explicit message at Tel Aviv Uni in that poster is to implore the world to repudiate stereotypical labelling of Jews (not to suggest they are necessarily "different" races). It is a commonly held misconception that Jews (however they might "look") are only Jews by religion. Jews are (and remain so for many) quite "race" enough for Hitler to exterminate them blonde, red or raven headed, blue or green eyed, black skin or fair! The fact is that Jews are not simply a religious or political entity or sect or an interest group that culturally identify. Protesting Buddhism, Catholicism or nothing would be to no avail in Nazi Germany, for a hapless Jew. Equally, whatever else a Jew might wish they were, changed names to be or took up whatever belief set that impelled them - now or then, Jews remain a race. Characteristics may vary depending on the geography of various places Jews can be found. It would come as no surprise to imagine that Jews did have local converts to their religion that inter-married and hence the variety.
Jews may also profess Judaism (in whichever form), but even if they didn't or chose otherwise (and this includes converts or children of converts in most cases), the DNA (often to all Jewry's cost over the millenia) is a defining factor - hence "racism" and "anti-semitism" is all to woefully synonymous.
Nat, I understand your use of race for Jews when applied to, say, Nazi Germany. Or other haters who choose to think of the Jews as a race, to keep them all lumped together for political purposes. Indeed, the word race never was a very useful definition of anything, except in the political sense.
But I think the meaning of the exhibit is perfectly clear that Jews are not one race in any biological of the term. More than a religion? Perhaps, depending on the individual. Lots of Jews have disappeared successfully over the centuries into other religions, cultures and ethnic groups, the gestapo and the inquisition notwithstanding.
And conversion is more widespread today than you seem to think, whether you agree with its validity or not. As a biological idea, calling the Jews a race is absurd. And doing so politically should be left to the haters where the absurdity, with all its narrowing implications, really belongs.
<span>Nat, I understand your use of race for Jews when applied to, say, the crimes of Nazi Germany. Or other haters who choose to think of the Jews as a race, to keep them all lumped together for political purposes. Indeed, the word race never was a very useful definition of anything, except in the political sense.
But I think the meaning of the exhibit is perfectly clear that Jews are not one race in any biological meaning of the term---despite the fact that some groups of Jews have intermarried to the point where they now produce kids with Tay-Sachs and other genetic diseases.</span>
<span>More than a religion? Perhaps, depending on the individual. Lots of Jews have disappeared successfully over the centuries into other religions, cultures and ethnic groups, the gestapo and the inquisition notwithstanding.
And conversion is more widespread today than you seem to think, whether you agree with its validity or not. As a biological idea, calling the Jews a race is absurd. And doing so politically should be left to the haters where the absurdity, with all its narrowing implications, really belongs.</span>
Thanks, Francis. Makes a lot of sense to an outsider like I.
Dick, Whereas, I am sure you are aware of the dictionary definitions, I should point out that my example of Nazi treatment of Jews is naturally not the necessary "antisemitism" of contemporary times. Whereas I don't regularly see Jack booted SS men herding Jews into trucks these days - I might well see a student on campus being herangued about Israel's policies on Gaza or being victimised or isolated in social situations no matter what that individual's views might be on Palastinians - but simply because he/she happens to be Jewish (and this individual had gentile parents and was a convert, albeit not religious outwardly, to Judaism). Equally, a Holocaust Memorial Day I attended in recent years run by a local council attended by Jews, Gypsies, Armenians and many local digintaries of varying faiths was shockingly interrupted during the candle-lighting for remembrance by Pro-Palestinian supporters who had been invited (unaware of their agenda or affiliation by the organisers) to sing along with the Jewish Choir on stage. They grabbed the mike to scream "Jewish Israeli Nazis" and othewise appraise the audience of their particular negative attutides towards Israel! I don't think they cared about the exact credentials of those Jews attending as to their DNA or otherwise, just the fact that many attending would have qualified sufficiently as subjects for their invective. Other incidents have involved otherwise gentle, sophisticated and cultured non-Jews laughing amiably about how "Jews" care so much about money - ignorant of the fact that the tall blonde beside them at the gallery private view is Jewish. It doesn't take rampant hate to be racist, a touch of blase prejudice will do.
Jews may or may not have "Jewish" DNA since vast quantities of Jews do indeed convert to the faith voluntarily which is not actually contrary to what I think, but is a fact. As for agreeing to its validity - I think someone's convicition is entirely valid enough and should they wish to take the particular path of Judaism, quite frankly, valiant. This actually does make them identifiable by all too many as worthy of the kinds of "racism" that has been identified by The United Nations own definition of the term where ethnicity and race are not considered distinct. Whereas I do know of some that may, by accident or design, have inter-married or changed names to reach indistinquishable status as Jews, it still remains that any form of identification as a Jew, no matter how little and importantly, why not proudly so? - would potentially expose that person to myriad flack from varying quarters. No matter what degree a Jew might be ill-treated by someone who is not - it is this very behaviour, attitude and expectation that defines and indeed forces, the necessary qualification of "racism" in regard to antisemitism.
Post a Comment