SPME- UK Looking To Monitor Anti-Israelism at British Universities…Palestinian Solidarity Group to Present “Anti-Zionist” Rabbi at University of Leeds– UK Faculty React

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The Palestinian Solidarity Group of the University of Leeds has announced a presentation by an Orthodox Rabbi Ahron Cohen, “Judaism vs. Zionism: Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism” at the University of Leeds. SPME is asking some of its 225 UK members to consider attending this program and report on the challenges that a presentation of this sort presents to faculty and will share it with the Faculty Forum. Below are initial reactions to this presentation from UK Faculty. It is hope that these and other presentation might galvanize some UK faculty to step forward to form a chapter of SPME in the UK to address these and other issues facing British academics in addressing anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism on university and college campuses.

From Robert Segal, Chair, Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen

Nov. 11

Dear Fellow Members,

It is appalling that a rabbi would agree to speak at all to the Palestinian Solidarity Group, let alone with a viewpoint so obvious.

I have never heard of this rabbi, but I will be surprised if his animus toward Israel does not stem from lingering Orthodox opposition to a secular Jewish state. I daresay that the animus of Arabs and Muslims toward Israel has a rather different source.

I am an American academic who taught religious studies at Lancaster University for twelve years before coming to the University of Aberdeen this fall. I would be happy at some point to share my experiences of the one-sidedness of Lancaster–not Aberdeen–toward the issue of the Middle East. Apart from one actor and one venture capitalist, the only successful graduate of the University in its forty years has been Robert Fisk. He has been honored by Lancaster more effusively than a head of state. A few weeks ago he was
invited anew to give the inaugural lecture to some Institute of Peace Studies at the University–one of those one-man operations that in American academia would be called an “institute” only as a joke.

The lecture was widely publicized, just as every possible tidbit of activity at Lancaster is publicized in an effort to tell the world that Lancaster is Harvard.

The University’s e-mail newsletter, called LU TEXT, announced the lecture with the same degree of importance that for Christians would be reserved for the Second Coming. I innocently e-mailed a brief letter to LU TEXT. I said that Fisk was not a scholar, that he had no peace plan, that he was the most virulently anti-Israeli journalist in the English-speaking world, and that he was considered an embarrassment by equally leftwing American journalists. More important, I said that I doubted that the Institute, which has
sponsored other anti-Israeli talks, was planning to invite someone to speak on behalf of Israel.

The editor of LU TEXT declined to publish my letter. After two weeks and two requests to know why, she replied that she’d been very busy but that it seemed odd that someone no longer at Lancaster would
express an opinion about an event there. Obviously, she could not come up with any better excuse. That LU TEXT has long published opinionated letters, many of them lengthy, from staff long departed from the University, did not faze her.

I would relish an occasion for publicizing the anti-Israeli bias at the University. I can offer you examples that will, I think, shock you.

Sincerely,

Robert Segal
Chair in Religious Studies
University of Aberdeen
r.segal@abdn.ac.uk

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From Simon Nadel, Imperial College London

I presume this is a rabbi from the vehemently anti-zionist group (I think they are called Naturei Karta).

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SPME- UK Looking To Monitor Anti-Israelism at British Universities…Palestinian Solidarity Group to Present “Anti-Zionist” Rabbi at University of Leeds– UK Faculty React

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