Actions and reactions

The Canadian National Post takes on the consequences of the obscene vote by British academics to boycott Israel and Israeli institutions:

Pay attention, British professors. If you support the boycott of Israel proposed by some of your fellow academics -- and if you are to remain intellectually honest -- prepare for a radical lifestyle change. Firstly, unplug your computers. Good. Now switch off your interactive digital television sets. Well done. And now throw away your mobile phones. Excellent. You see, Professors, these machines are not only the engine of the globalized, capitalist world but they also depend on technologies that have been produced by Israeli academics in the Zionist entity. Also, I'm afraid you may not use the British Library because it has been computerized by Ex Libris, a Zionist company that was spawned by the odious Hebrew University of Jerusalem. And if, God forbid, you develop problems of the small intestine, you may not pop the Zionist-invented 'video capsule,' which passes naturally through your body as it monitors this delicate piece of your anatomy. You will, sadly, have to take it up your respective derrieres, Professors. As a matter of principle, of course. All this boycotting, you see, is the logical extension of academic sanctions against Israel proposed by some members of your Association of University Teachers (AUT) at their meeting in Eastbourne, England, this week. Just visit the Web site of Egyptian-born Mona Baker of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. She set the standard by firing two Israeli scholars from the boards of her translation journals as a matter of high academic principle.

There's more, all of it equally good. In fact, this bit is so good, I can't resist including it here, too:

The AUT boycott brigade has cause for concern. It knows that these companies are attracted not only by the innate brutality of the expansionist regime but also by the cunning of its university graduates (most of the R&D centres are located on or near Israeli university campuses). Proportionally, the Zionist entity has more university graduates than any other country, while its scientists, engineers and agriculturists publish more professional papers per capita than do their counterparts anywhere else on Earth. The result is that Israel has the largest concentration of high-tech companies outside Silicon Valley. But the ultimate sin is that Israel, which came to independence in the process of post-war decolonization, stubbornly refuses to become a failed state. So dangerous has the situation become, dear Professors, that at your meetings in Eastbourne, you have set aside the small matter of your salary disputes. Instead, you and your fellow intellectual heavyweights will ponder far worthier matters. Like foreign affairs. Of course, you will not have to bother your turbo-charged minds with last week's UNICEF report, which shows that half of the women in the Arab world are illiterate and more than 10 million children in the region don't attend school. The issue that will preoccupy you will be the aggressive imperialist apartheid state: a state that has nurtured the Palestinian universities and colleges in the West Bank; one that offers equal rights -- and access to its universities -- to all its citizens, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or sex; and which has educated tens of thousands of Palestinians at Israeli universities (several hundred a year still opt for an Israeli education). It is significant that Omar Barghouti, the Palestinian who is encouraging you and your British comrades to boycott Israel, is a doctoral student at none other than Tel Aviv University.

For more of my blogging on this subject, see here and here. Also, for an interesting pick-up on this same thread, check out this post at Brain Droppings. A hat tip and big thank you to Gail, at Crossing the Rubicon, for finding this great article. BTW, Happy Passover, Gail.