A University of Michigan professor has come under fire for declining to provide a recommendation letter, citing his support for an Israel boycott. John Cheney-Lippold turned down the student’s request after he learned it was for studying in Israel. A Zionist group later shared his response online. Critics said the email was anti-Semitic and called for him to be fired.
The academic says he supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for human rights reasons only. The boycott of state institutions of Israel has nothing to do with the people – it has everything to do with not normalising a system that is apartheid-like.
Whenever Israel does not like something it becomes an act of anti-Semitism or racial hatred. But when it does something, like evict Arab Bedouins from their ancestral villages or evict Palestinians from their home to help Israeli settlers, then it is nothing. The “nation state” law which it recently enacted says Jews have a unique right to national self-determination there and puts Hebrew above Arabic as the official language. Let us be clear as to which nation is the major military power in the Middle East-it is Israel, which has the world’s 4th most powerful army-after the US, Russia, and China. It is Israel which has repeatedly attacked its neighbours-Egypt in 1956, Lebanon in 1982–yet it considers Iran to be an existential threat to itself whereas in reality it is an existential threat to Iran.
Israel routinely considers itself to be above the law-it has refused to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty so it can keep its atomic bomb stash a secret, it has refused to submit to inspections by the International Nuclear Agency, and it forces the US to bully Iran into submission-despite the fact that Iran signed a treaty not to conduct further research into nuclear weapons.
It considers itself an enlightened democracy whereas Professor Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and himself a Jew, considers Israel to be an apartheid regime where the rule of law and human rights are only applicable to the Jews.
Calling a thorn a rose does not make it a thorn-thus, while Iran seems to be the theocracy and authoritarian regime, it is in reality Israel which is a quasi-democracy at best, like South Africa-having one set of rules for Jews and another for Arabs. Any nation which discriminates between its own citizens can’t be called a democracy by any means. The world should recognize Israel for the tyranny on Muslims it has become.
The world must take Israel seriously as a drunken nuclear power most arrogant in oppressing the Palestine Muslims. By ignoring Israel the Western world is encouraging a proven abnormal Jewish leadership to engage in a dangerous war in Middle East.
