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Comment and Opinion

Jewish Chronicle: We need democratic spirit and political will, by Alan Johnson

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A sickening anti-Israel student “activism” is spreading across our universities – it is virulent, demonising and increasingly violent, as we saw at King’s College in London. Bicom is challenging the demonisers wherever we can.

But the activism is only the expression of a deeper problem. Some academics are educating their students to think of Zionism as a kind of Nazism. They tell the students that Zionism is a form of racism, “a quite evil philosophy” in the words of Exeter University’s Ilan PappĂ©.

The first way to challenge the anti-Israel myth is to critique it. At this week’s event we had another sharp but civil exchange of views with PappĂ©, this time about the treatment of Israel in academic debate at UK universities.

We made the case that the academy was being weaponised. Ilan has declared: “I want to devote my energies to delegitimising the state of Israel.”

We pointed to his systematic use of wild, demonising language; and to his tendency to decontextualise in order to demonise. We also raised the extremely disturbing response of one of our opponents, Malaka Muhammed Shwaikh, to the actions of Muhannad Halabi when he killed two and stabbed others in Jerusalem last October.

“God Bless you oh Muhannad,” Shwaikh tweeted on the day. Academic frames, we pointed out, can make violence thinkable outside the seminar room, whether in Jerusalem or London.

Read the article in full at the Jewish Chronicle.