The question Jews should ask before our kids go to uni…
By HUGH ASHIT’S been a while since I ushered my kids through the august portals of higher academia.All the same, I’ll never forget the see-saw emotions…the angst over them flying the parental nest, yet relief at no longer having to lie awake, wondering what time – and in what state – they’d come home, not to say the joy of having custody of the TV remote control.So, we did the university ‘open days’ circuit, before figuring out where best suited our little darlings.There was the predictable big sell from faculty honchos, spieling the virtues of their various institutions, then the look-see of the campus and a Q&A session.Is the accommodation single-sex or co-ed, asked one family patriarch, worried about his daughter’s hall of residence (in our case, concerns were allayed by a helpful sophomore guide, who volunteered the info Lauren was slated to be housed in what was dubbed ‘The Virgin Megastore’).How about sports amenities? Impressive, came the reply. Library? Par excellence! Food? Almost Cordon Bleu standard. Clubs/social facilities? Abundant!Excellent. Those responses exactly covered the bases, so no more fretting. Just pack ‘em off to uni and life will be a breeze.Way back then, though, it never crossed our minds to ask: is my child safe here because he/she is Jewish?Today I would certainly pose that question. Also, I’d do a Google search to find which universities were hotbeds of viciousboycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)militancy, where Jew-haters use the charade of anti-Israel/Zionism to veil their true sentiments. In which cases I’d avoid them like the plague.Because, for too long now, BDS has been allowed to ride roughshod, particularly over US and UK campuses, and – in contradiction to its far-Left, holier-than-thou pretensions – it is arguably the most perniciously racist, pseudo-democratic doctrine to infest Western society since the Nazis.Put simply, BDS distorts historical fact with revisionist lies and fairy-tale inventions; its thugs shutter freedom of speech from anyone with the temerity to oppose their bigotry; it shanghaies ‘free space’ – that inalienable right of all students – by perverting campus law to its own, deceitful ends; and it shamelessly disabuses the handful of gullible, mushy-minded, Jewish useful idiots, suckered in as ‘PR shields’ to defend itself against legitimate charges of being Antisemites’ glee clubs.But, probably, the most damning indictment against BDS is that, since it first raised its ugly head in 2005 and invented Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) hate-fests, it has achieved absolutely zilch for Palestinian progress and even Palestine Authority boss, Mahmoud Abbas, has rapped it.These small details, however, don’t faze the cocky, young racists, who seek to impose their twisted worldview across campuses almost everywhere. And none more so than at Edinburgh University – one of Scotland’s most venerated universities – as recent headlines testify.Earlier this month Imogen Wilson, the 22-year-old, non-Jewish vice-president for academic affairs at the Students’ Association (EUSA), was threatened with banishment…ostensibly for having the chutzpah to raise her handduring a student council meeting.This provoked a ‘safe space complaint’over her supposedly ‘inappropriate hand gestures’, which – according to ludicrous EUSA rules –define a ‘safe space’ as ‘a space which is welcoming and safe and includes the prohibition of discriminatory language and actions.’Ergo, Ms Wilson raising a hand to make a point in response to an accusation against her by another speaker was a flagrant breach of what poses as acceptable procedure in this Cloud Cuckoo Land of a student Soviet.Ms Wilson’s real offence, however, was speaking out against a BDS-inspired motion and voicing her fears about an Israel Apartheid Week’s impact on Jewish scholars.She explained, ‘I made a long and passionate speech against us subscribing to this on the basis it encourages Antisemitism on campus. It was only after I made that speech someone made a safe space complaint. I can’t help but think it was a political move against me.’Ms Wilson added her belief that ‘safe space’ rules banning civilized gestures of disagreement were being used as ‘a tool for the hard Left to use when they disagree withpeople’ and had been employed against her after she spoke out against Jew-hatred.Unsurprisingly in Scotland, whose secessionist SNP government has less than a charitable view of Israel, no member of Edinburgh University’s faculty had the scruples to leap to Ms Wilson’s defense.However, one alumni has – and condemned EUSA in the excoriating terms it richly deserves.In an open letter to the students, Denis MacEoin, an expert in Persian, Arabic, Islamic and Middle East history, stated, ‘It embarrasses me to say that your grounds for passing a boycott motion [on Israel] are unworthy of anyone who claims to be well educated, intelligent, or well informed.‘Sadly, the reasons given in your resolution are childish, ignorant, and based on nothing but a series of lies or at best misunderstandings.‘If you stop reading at this point, I call you out as traitors to the most basic principles of academic work: the need for open dialogue, critical debate, and readiness to change one's opinions in the presence of evidence. If you cannot abide by those principles, you are not fit to be at university at all.‘If your self-righteousness and your conviction that you are utterly right all the time cannot be changed, you will never understand what it is to take part in any intellectual debate.’This message should also be a clarion call to the lib-Left hierarchies of many universities, which are either in cahoots with BDS-ers or are too timid to stop the racist lunatics taking over the asylum.Kowtowing to the sacred – now perverted – cow of ‘human rights’, they, too, fall for the big lie of Palestinian victimhood, ignoring blatant violations of its principles – particularly apropos political rivals, Christians, women and gays, not to say Jews – perpetrated by wannabe masters of another, tyrannical Arab state.Worse still, even fair-minded Oxbridge dons, Harvard professors and Berkeley tutors, who claim to promote honest debate, rarely make a brave enough stand against racism posturing in the guise of advocating human rights – like those in democratic Israel, who daily run the gauntlet of stabbings and car-rammings – for fear of compromising ‘free speech’, plus the rights to offend and oppose offence.In short, by not countering BDS fascism, they are guilty of spawning a new generation of leaders, contaminated with the virus of Antisemitism, so it becomes a societal norm.