Loading ...King’s students fight to revoke Peres’ honourary doctorate
A King’s College lecturer was amongst political activists urging students to push for an academic boycott of Israel on Friday, at a conference on campus condemning the college’s decision to award an honorary doctorate to President Shimon Peres.KCL awarded Peres an honorary doctorate in November, claiming it wished to honour the politician’s efforts to further the cause of peace in the region.
Activists at the conference lambasted Peres’ involvement in the 1996 Qana massacre which killed 106 people sheltering in a UN compound, the 2006 Lebanon conflict, and his approval of Israeli military operation in Gaza in December and January.
KCL Philosophy professor Moshe Machover and campaigner for an academic boycott of Israel professor Stephen Rose called on students to ask their lecturers to sever links with Israeli academics.
“Israeli universities are actively complicit in supporting Israeli Defence Force operations through their research,” Rose said, adding: “it’s equivalent to Nazi scientists advocating research on Jews during the holocaust.”
Speakers at the conference encouraged students to “hit Israel where its pride lies” by particularly targeting connections with Israeli research in the sciences.
Yet Jewish Society executive committee member Benjamin Gray said: “I don’t think they have a coherent case for a boycott of Israel. Some of the strongest critics of the Israeli Government come from within academia; it wouldn’t work, it’s illegal.”
“Shimon Peres is fairly leftwing,” he added: “he has done more to encourage Israel to speak to its enemies than anyone else, more than Rabin.”
He struck out at the conference’s organisers, saying: “Speakers are chosen on the grounds of ideology rather than of knowledge. It’s a stuffed a jury, even though you could set up a forum with academics from the department of war studies and European studies.”
London Student understands that interest in strengthening academic ties with Israel, gaining access to archival material and producing better research, was behind KCL council’s decision to award Peres the doctorate.
Student campaigners also slammed student union sabbatical officers, who attend college council meetings, for failing to speak against the decision.
KCL student fundraising has now raised around £4500 pounds in support of humanitarian work in Gaza, with over six hundred students and staff signing a petition calling on the college to revoke the doctorate.
Students will also join a protest at the London Science Museum on Wednesday opposing an event organised by the Zionist Federation to celebrate Israeli scientific discoveries.
You report Rose as saying “it’s equivalent to Nazi scientists advocating research on Jews during the holocaust.”
Israeli Universities – just like British, German, Russian, Chinese etc etc Universities – conduct some defence-related research. But the Nazis perpetrated genocide on Jews with the support of some scientists in German Universities. There is simply no point of comparison and Rose’s statement is antisemitic (see the EUMC Definition of antisemitism).
If a speaker at King’s College made racist statements about Muslims would you report them?
If not, why are racist statements against Jews any different?
As a Guy’s graduate,now linked to King’s. I am apalled at the anti-Semitic attitude of these students. I do not remember sit-ins or demands for fundraising for the 300,000 killed in Darfur, nor the starvation and horrors in Zimbabwe. And before irate students and supportive staff answer, I ask them this one question to prove their actions are based on anti-Semitism. Q: When you castigate Israel do you also include the 20% Arab population, or are they left out of the equation?
http://www.stevenroseonline.net/SPRR/Welcome.html
And Steven Rose does not even include his email address on his Website so that people can protest at this antisemitism.
What a coward.
Professors Machover and Stephen Rose can not but be aware that the promotion of anti-Israel campaigns of any sort spills over quickly into Antisemitic campaigns as we have all seen as much since at least 1973 when the USSR threw its weight behind such a move that quickly degenerated into open resurrection of Antisemitism in the USSR; and the promotion of anti-Zionism everywhere else.
Professor Rose might be able to maintain the distinction between whom he is anti; but the hockey-stick-zoom in police reports of blatant attacks on synagogues and Jews in headgear and frock coats these last two months shows that the chanting boneheads of the soccer terraces; the resentfully not so successful young men of all our deprived and not so deprived local government districts; and those feeling like, “kicking the cat,” can not make the difference.
When Professor Machover, Stephen Rose & his wife Prof Hilary, and namesake Prof Jaqueline, find themselves heckled or otherwise hoist on their own petard they should not be surprised.
It does not seem to matter how dovish Peres is, as people like Rose want Israel wiped off the map (though they may not be stupid enough to declare it as the Iranians do). So the doves are to go along with the hawks purely because of their association with Israel, just as any shade of Jew got killed in Russian pogroms or Nazi gas chambers. People should wake up and realise these proposals reek of prejudice and hate.