The Upside-Down World of University Human Rights
Open Letter to the UK National Union of Students*

by Denis MacEoin • June 13, 2015 at 5:00 am

For the sake of students living in totalitarian state across the globe, we in the liberal democracies are obliged to take advantage of our freedom to debate. But that does not mean allowing ourselves to be swayed by manifest "agitprop," distortion or factual inaccuracy. And it does not permit us to ban opinions on a racist basis (as is the case with academic boycotts of Israeli Jews). There is no sign in the motions you passed of Israeli opinion, just the views on one side.
The world you live in us upside down: you claim to act in defense of human rights, but your motions do not reflect this. You give free passage to the worst abusers of human rights -- countries that persecute religious minorities, suppress and kill women, throw homosexuals from high roofs, execute hundreds of dissidents every year, and imprison, torture and slaughter -- without rebuke. Yet you fulminate against Israel, which does none of these things. It does not use torture; it does not execute anyone -- not even Palestinian terrorists who have committed mass murder against innocent civilians and children.

The stage at the National Conference of the UK National Union of Students, June 1, 2015.

Neither the great many supporters of Israel whom I know personally nor I want anything but the best possible future for the Palestinians. No one I know hates the Palestinians. What we do hate are the organizations that exploit and dominate the Palestinian people, that deny them the right to vote for new governments, the culture of hatred in Palestinian mosques, schools, and political speeches, and the acts of terror and war that have been directed at Jewish, Muslim and Christian Arab Israelis for many decades. It is the hatred and the violence we deplore, knowing as we do that this hurts not only Israelis, but that, since 1948, it has been blocking Palestinians from achieving their true potential.

We believe sincerely that boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel will not bring peace so long as the Palestinian leaderships in Gaza and the West Bank insist that they intend to destroy Israel and take control of its entire territory.