On hating Israel and hating Jews

A lot of stupidity (and even more hypocrisy) has been spouted in over-eager defence of the University and College Union's banning of the European Union Monitoring Centre's working definition of antisemitism.

I am not, however, aware of any UCU defenders having referrred to the procedural precedent for the current controversy, namely an even earlier UCU motion, passed in May 2007.

This is unfortunate, as that earlier motion was clearly the forerunner to the EUMC banning. The motion was effectively a call for anti-Israel boycott measures. It listed alleged Israeli transgressions and then stated,

Congress believes that in these circumstances passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic. 

So, according to UCU four years ago, Israel's behaviour meant that "criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic".

Meanwhile, down at the House of Lords terrace, an anonymous life peer (quoted this weekend by Daily Mail columnist, Petronella Wyatt) essentially ends up in the same ballpark as UCU: albeit having taken (I optimistically assume) a somewhat different route to get there.

The Jews have been asking for it, and because of the atrocious way Israel behaves, we can finally say what we think.

(See Wyatt's entire article, here.)