HESA: Boycotts and Antisemitism
2026/04/14 Leave a comment
Reasonable call for firm set of principles that reduce the risk of double standards:
| …So, here’s where I want to divert a bit to get back to the issue of Israel’s actions since late 2023 because I think they change the context for the “what about actions of other regimes” argument. October 7, 2023, was of course a terrible atrocity and there were few who thought that Israel did not have some kind of right of response. Equally, however, few would suggest that a response which involved killing twice as many as lost their lives on that day every month for the next 30 months is a proportional one. The actions of the Government of Israel since the events of October 7, 2023 – which was, let us all agree, a terrible atrocity – have been inexcusable. You may not be OK with use of the term “genocide” for what has happened in Gaza and more recently South Lebanon (and the term genocide often seems too elastic to be useful), but when a former Likud prime minister feels comfortable describing Israel’s actions as war crimes, it suggests that there is a degree of inhumanity involved in Israeli policy that can’t dismissed as the ravings of antisemites. Back to McGill and the issue of how to create boycott policy. What if the LSA had used language such as “this institution should boycott universities in any countries whose current regimes are in front of the International Court of Justice for War crimes or crimes against humanity” (at present, I believe that would yield a list of Israel, Russia, Myanmar, and Iran, which doesn’t sound so bad to me). Would a referendum like this still have passed: or might it perhaps have passed with a bigger margin? Would it still be considered antisemitic? My guess is no. Obviously, there are some that will simply always hold that criticism of Israel = antisemitism, but that’s, as I have been arguing, an untenable syllogism that should be beneath any serious academic or group of academics. But a firm set of principles, which take concerns about double-standards seriously, would have a similar effect on institutional posture towards Israel while avoiding the trap of appearing hypocritical. Perhaps all parties in Canadian universities could think about the value of such an approach rather than getting involved in unnecessary and unseemly slanging matches about “antisemitism”. Here’s hoping, anyway. |
Source: Boycotts and Antisemitism
Multicultural Meanderings 