normblog

A country beginning with the letter 'I'

Like the AUT boycott decision that came before it (see the links at the end of this post), the vote yesterday at the Bournemouth conference of UCU disgraces a union representing British academics, and it will stain its reputation and moral standing so long as the decision is allowed to stand. Arguing for the boycott position yesterday, John Chalcraft wrote:

The movement for boycott is in no way anti-semitic. It includes Jews and non-Jews...

Well, whether the policy of boycotting Israeli academics is anti-Semitic or not, the fact that the movement in favour of it includes some Jews is neither here nor there. This can't establish its 'clean' credentials, as will be quickly seen from the following simple thought experiment.

Imagine a policy that you're certain would be anti-Semitic: say, just for example, a law requiring all Jewish academics to wear insignia of identity when at their place of work. Now, suppose some Jews who support this law, for whatever reason. End of thought experiment.

The anti-Semitic or non-anti-Semitic character of any policy depends on its overall shape and effects and not on whether or not it has some Jewish supporters - even though, in the nature of things, most Jews will pass up the opportunity of supporting anti-Semitic policies. But most is just most; it isn't all.

Criticism of Israel need not be anti-Semitic, just as criticism of the US need not be anti-American. The criticism - as any criticism of any country - may simply be based on features of the country in question, or of the policies of its government, that deserve criticism, or that do so in the opinion of the critic. But a policy such as the academic boycott, targeting Israeli academics, and only Israeli academics, for treatment that damages their professional interests, needs the backing of a persuasive argument as to what makes Israel an especially bad case in a world with many other cases at least as bad and some of them much worse, if it is to escape the charge of being anti-Semitic in effect, aimed without justification at the universities and the academic staff of the Jewish state alone. As I've argued before, pressed repeatedly to come up with a reason for singling out Israel in this way, the boycotters fail repeatedly to provide one.

But for John Chalcraft it is no trouble at all. Watch and relish - for being a case of the magnificent ruses of the ideological mind.

Is it unfair to single Israel out? It is not clear that there are other heavily militarised, nuclear-armed, expansionist apartheid states with extensive illegal settlement, land seizure and wall-building activity.

Leaving aside 'apartheid' here, it's only a wonder he didn't include 'beginning with the letter "I"'. This picks out Israel all right, since it is a list constructed to do precisely that. Chalcraft's 'It is not clear that' is, in the circumstances, repellently coy. The only thing he fails to explain is why this list is more morally (boycott-)compelling than alternative lists that would pick out the specificity of, say, China, or Sudan, or Zimbabwe, or Iran.

Global Peace Index

What is it? This:

The Global Peace Index is a ground-breaking milestone in the study of peace. It is the first time that an Index has been created that ranks the nations of the world by their peacefulness and identified some of the drivers of that peace. 121 countries have been ranked by their 'absence of violence', using metrics that combine both internal and external factors. Most people understand the absence of violence as an indicator of peace. This definition also allows for the measuring of peacefulness within, as well as between, nations.

The home page has a map, with countries coloured according to their 'state of peace' status. The UK is 'high' but not 'very high'. These are the rankings.

Fast Eddie

Paul Newman has retired at the age of 82. There's a picture gallery here. Fast Eddie was the man. One of my favourite Newman lines: challenged to a fight that could be terminal, Butch says to Sundance, 'Listen, I don't mean to be a sore loser, but when it's done, if I'm dead, kill him.'

Going places

I'm away until late Saturday - starting here today. Blogging at normblog will be intermittent. You won't forget this now, will you?

Not just as bad, but better

Pamela Bone puts things bluntly and well:

To many it is shockingly impolite to suggest that some countries - Western liberal democracies, for example - are better than countries that still operate under rules more appropriate to 7th-century century Arabia. Well, sorry, but if by better we mean more conducive to human happiness and human wellbeing, they are.

A society in which young, lightly clothed women and men can sit together at street cafes and discuss the sins of their government is better than a society in which they can be arrested for doing the same; a free and liberal society is better than a society that stones women for having sex outside of marriage and jails gays for existing.

Moreover, you do not help the reformers in socially backward Islamic societies by politely saying, "Well, look at us, we're just as bad, perhaps even worse." We are bad, all right, but we are not just as bad.

(Thanks: JN.)

Waste no longer schlepped

Here's an article on a new method for disposing of toxic chemical waste, one that doesn't 'just transfer the problem from one place to another'. The new method has been developed in a country not too far from yours. (Thanks: StM.)

Oppose an academic boycott of Israel

On Wednesday, representatives of the new British University and College Union (UCU) will be meeting in Bournemouth. On the agenda is another proposal to boycott Israel's academic institutions. These proposals have become as regular and as predictable as Qassam attacks on Sderot. The fact that studies at the Sapir Academic College in Sderot are not taking place because of the constant rocket fire from Gaza, even though the college is not in occupied territory and Gaza is no longer occupied, apparently does not bother British academia. The fact that Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Authority, does not recognize even pre-1967 Israel, and commits acts of terror against civilians, does not matter either. These nuances did not stop one boycott initiator from saying last week that justice in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is entirely on one side.

This editorial in Haaretz rightly identifies the thinking of the would-be boycotters as impelled by a desire to de-legitimize Israel - identifies it with 'the position that the very birth of the Jewish state was a mistake'.

Two years ago, at the time of the campaign to overturn the academic boycott in the AUT, I argued at length on this blog why that boycott should be opposed. I won't repeat myself by doing so now again. Readers who are interested are referred to the archive pages for April 2005 and May 2005, where you will find very many posts on this issue. From among them I would emphasize these:

On academic freedom: here and here.

On singling out Israel: here, here and here.

On there being two sides to the story: here.

On resigning from the union: here, here and here.

Evil believers

I think I can say with something close to certainty that I don't have a religious impulse in my body. I've never - by which I mean strictly not ever, not even once, not even briefly - felt whatever it is that people feel that leads them towards faith in a divine creator. When I read the arguments of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others in defence of science, rationality, atheism, secularism, I find myself feeling at home on that side of the debate, and I can also laugh at the more outlandish follies of faith. Moreover, there is good enough reason in these times for highlighting the dangerous potentialities of fanatical religion.

I therefore return to asking myself from time to time why some of the argumentative postures that can go with attacking religion get up my nose. If the words of Dawkins and Steve Jones are accurately reported in this piece, I've just come across a good reminder. It's the move you'll see exemplified in what the two of them say from thinking that the beliefs are unfounded, wrong, etc to being willing to assert that people holding or propagating these beliefs are 'evil' (sometimes it's softer - like merely 'stupid'), or that if you hold mistaken beliefs which have as a knock-on consequence that other people may behave badly, then you are not to be engaged with in too friendly a way, even in the case that your mistaken beliefs don't lead you to behave badly yourself and may, as often happens, influence you for the better. It's the easy conflation of legitimate argumentation over truth and belief, with judgements about moral character - and in a way, it should be said, that picks out only religious belief for this treatment, when it is plain that the partisans of other belief systems don't have an altogether pristine record.

Hollerin' uncle

A plot set-up from one of those crime fiction novels?

Twin brothers Raymon and Richard Miller are the father and uncle to a 3-year-old little girl. The problem is, they don't know which is which. Or who is who.

Nope, real life, if in the department of the bizarre. Figure out, if you can, the explanation for this state of affairs, and/or read on here for the details. (Thanks: MK.)

Every part connected

I've already featured some reviews of Sophie Hannah's Hurting Distance. Here's another from Sunday's Observer. Peter Guttridge calls the book 'disturbing and gripping', 'intense and always page-turning with a collection of brilliantly delineated characters' and 'classy stuff'. He has one or two reservations, but I suppose he's allowed.