PrintMarch 14, 2009
Academic Freedom and the Anti-Zionists
In March 2007, an academic conference entitled "Alternative Histories Within and Beyond Zionism" took place at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), sponsored by eight university departments. Four professors and one graduate student, none of them scholars of Israel or Zionism though all of them self-proclaimed anti-Zionists, delivered papers demonizing the Jewish state, denigrating its founding ideology and encouraging anti-Israel activism. The five talks were replete with gross misrepresentations of the facts, selected half-truths and numerous unsubstantiated claims, including the following:Zionism is racismIsrael is an apartheid stateIsrael commits heinous crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansingIsrael's behavior is comparable to Nazi GermanyJews exaggerate the Holocaust as a tool of Zionist propagandaIsrael should be dismantled as a Jewish stateMorally responsible people should actively engage in mounting an opposition to the...(Read Full Article)
