As for the claim that the Arab world and Iran and Afghanistan have "no human rights" - well, last time we checked, no Arab nation has recently attacked and murdered over 1000 innocent civilians, but Israeli certainly has.Blue Ibis
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Israelis react with fury to British boycott call
Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Independent.co.uk
Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:33 UTC
Israeli scientists and officials reacted angrily yesterday to calls by more than 400 British academics for the Science Museum to cancel educational workshops planned to promote Israeli science tomorrow.
The cancellation call and claims that Israeli universities are "complicit" in the occupation of Palestinian territories and this year's "disastrous" offensive in Gaza, reported in The Independent yesterday, were condemned as "absurd" by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Its spokesman, Yigal Palmor, said: "These calls cannot but be motivated by extreme blindness and silly ideology. This of course does not promote the good causes which the boycotters are presumed to promote - not peace, understanding, nor compromise."
The British academics, among them 40 professors, include many of those behind the eventually unsuccessful campaign to impose a full-scale boycott of Israeli academics. The "educational seminars" - in Manchester yesterday and at the Science Museum in London tomorrow - are being run by the UK Zionist Federation.
Yivsam Azgad, a spokesman for Israel's Weizmann Institute, said: "We don't believe that science and politics should be combined. Period." Dan Zaslavsky, professor of hydrology at the Technion-Israel Institute in Haifa and one of Israel's leading energy experts, said: "It's ugly and it is 100 per cent certain that this will hurt British science in the long run if the largest group don't stand up and reject this repulsive stance." Professor Zaslavsky said academics who thought good would come out of boycotts and protests of this kind were "distorted in their minds".
Professor Amnon Yogev, a former professor of laser chemistry at the Weizmann Institute, said that "freedom of speech is one of the basic principles of democracy". He said that singling out Israel on human rights issues when so much of the Arab world, Iran and Afghanistan had "no human rights" was "an illness". He added: "If you look back at history you will see that when they want to stop people communicating their ideas, it starts with the Jews, then goes on to other minorities and then you can't stop it."
The cancellation call and claims that Israeli universities are "complicit" in the occupation of Palestinian territories and this year's "disastrous" offensive in Gaza, reported in The Independent yesterday, were condemned as "absurd" by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Its spokesman, Yigal Palmor, said: "These calls cannot but be motivated by extreme blindness and silly ideology. This of course does not promote the good causes which the boycotters are presumed to promote - not peace, understanding, nor compromise."
The British academics, among them 40 professors, include many of those behind the eventually unsuccessful campaign to impose a full-scale boycott of Israeli academics. The "educational seminars" - in Manchester yesterday and at the Science Museum in London tomorrow - are being run by the UK Zionist Federation.
Yivsam Azgad, a spokesman for Israel's Weizmann Institute, said: "We don't believe that science and politics should be combined. Period." Dan Zaslavsky, professor of hydrology at the Technion-Israel Institute in Haifa and one of Israel's leading energy experts, said: "It's ugly and it is 100 per cent certain that this will hurt British science in the long run if the largest group don't stand up and reject this repulsive stance." Professor Zaslavsky said academics who thought good would come out of boycotts and protests of this kind were "distorted in their minds".
Professor Amnon Yogev, a former professor of laser chemistry at the Weizmann Institute, said that "freedom of speech is one of the basic principles of democracy". He said that singling out Israel on human rights issues when so much of the Arab world, Iran and Afghanistan had "no human rights" was "an illness". He added: "If you look back at history you will see that when they want to stop people communicating their ideas, it starts with the Jews, then goes on to other minorities and then you can't stop it."
Comment: Notice the entirely laughable arguments against a boycott that are put forward by the pro Israel camp. Science and politics are intricately linked, it is science after all that makes the weapons that Israel uses to massacre innocent Arabs.
As for the claim that the Arab world and Iran and Afghanistan have "no human rights" - well, last time we checked, no Arab nation has recently attacked and murdered over 1000 innocent civilians, but Israeli certainly has.
2 comments:
Apparently you haven't been paying attention. See the next post and google "Boycott, Divest, Sanction" you'll get plenty of hits. The fig leaf of "self defence" (as if a nation with 200+ nuclear warheads needs to to defend itself against children with stones and home-made bottle rockets) has irrepairably slipped.
Re Human Shields"
Israeli soldiers continue to use civilians as human shields http://tinyurl.com/bsw29g
Likud MK calls for using Palestinian prisoners as human shields against Qassam rockets
http://tinyurl.com/cjo7me
The Israeli Human Shield
http://tinyurl.com/d9b39l and so on and so forth since the beginning of colonising Palestine
As to the death toll in this latest massacre:
War in Gaza: Hopes rise for an end to conflict as death toll passes 1,000 http://tinyurl.com/b6ptxr
Gaza: Children heavily represented among 917 dead, say officials
http://tinyurl.com/cz72o3
Palestinian doctor killed by IDF while treating Gaza wounded
http://tinyurl.com/9sxvoc
and from the "most moral army in the world":
Pots of urine, feces on the walls - How IDF troops vandalized Gaza homes
http://tinyurl.com/cvawdw
'nuff said.
Of course the Palestinians fire rockets. The fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto held to the same tactics. Qassams are garage-built, fueled with alcohol distilled from sugar, have absolutely no aiming capability and generally fall into fields and industrial areas.
Israel, on the other hand is armed with precision-guided white phosphorus, and (illegal) DIME ordinance supplied by the US military. They also have heavy bombardment capability from their navy, the largest number of F16 fighters, the most tanks in the area, all courtesy of the US.
And I guess in Mr Levine's world, all these pictures are photoshopped:
http://tinyurl.com/cwsmwk
Mr. Levine appears to be the one wishing to re-write history.
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