Dr. Shaul Rosenfeld
Part 1 of article
The events of “Israel Apartheid Week” in the world opened this year with “freedom fighter” Leila Khaled’s emotional plea to “continue the armed struggle against Israel.” Khaled, a certified airplane hijacker and a well-known favorite of the radical Left in Western European delivered her words of “reconciliation, peace, and brotherly love” in a videotape shown to participants of a Mideast studies convention held at University of London last weekend.
It is possible that on normal days, with mentally healthy academics and intellectuals who do not rush to worship Satan, such plea would have prompted a major outrage. Yet these are grim days; an era where all the horrors of the world have apparently passed, with the exception of Israel’s acts of injustice and crimes, the oppression of its Arabs, and its many conquests.
Hence, even polls indicating that more than one third of Britain’s Muslim students justify murder on behalf of their religion cannot overcome the “blood pact” being formed between the forces of progress from the East and West.
And so we don’t get confused, heaven forbid, neither Kedumim nor Ariel or Beit El are the main concern of participants. According to the “program” of the week’s events, the participants will devote most of their attention to the “intolerable combination” of a Jewish state, the equality Arab Israelis are being deprived of, the return of all refugees to their homes, and of course the Operation Cast Lead, which as we know befell Gaza residents who committed no crime.
Condemning the monstrous Israel
On such days, it makes sense for the student associations of London School of Economics and Queen Mary College to twin with the Islamic University of Gaza – which also serves as a lab for the development of weapons, and whose finest graduates excelled at firing Qassams at civilians in Sderot and its environs, a short while after hurling their Fatah brethren from selected Gaza Strip roofs.And so, we are seeing the revival of the glorious partnership of yore between “liberal intellectuals” who are seemingly most concerned about equality and democracy, human and civilian rights, and the status of women and minorities, and the sect of Islamic zealots, who brutally trample each and every one of these values as well as other ones – yet nonetheless they are now able to have a jolly good time together at green London campuses, eagerly take in the words of Leila Khaled, and closely listen to some more fascinating thoughts uttered by other representatives of Islamic enlightenment.
In fact, not much is new under the sun. Once upon a time it used to be the Georgian-born “sun of the nations,” Stalin, a well known mass killer who stirred the communist-socialist imagination of the finest members of the radical leftist camp in the West. Now, it is the spiritual offspring of these “useful idiots,” whether they are holding the banner of anti-globalization activists, pro-anarchists, neo-Marxists, Che Guevara fans, anti-Zionists, or just regular anti-Semites in an anti-Israel guise, who are waking up every morning and proceeding with the holy work of condemning the monstrous Israel.
Part 2 of article to be published Thursday night
Dr. Shaul Rosenfeld is a philosophy lecturer