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British Universities Have a Duty to Jewish Students to Monitor Israel Apartheid Week
(Telegraph-UK) Richard Black - This year "Israel Apartheid Week" (IAW) is fixated on the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, a document issued in 1917 which first proclaimed Britain's commitment to the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people." This shows that the issue of the international organizers is not this or that policy. Their objective is to undo a century of Jewish self-determination in the Middle East. IAW almost universally promotes a simplistic approach to discussions of the conflict. It characterizes Israel as an "apartheid" state and a "settler-colonial" regime. It is nothing of the sort. South African journalist and veteran anti-apartheid activist Benjamin Pogrund has described the apartheid charge as "at best, ignorant and naive and, at worst, cynical and manipulative." In the democratic State of Israel, Arab citizens enjoy total legal and political equality. Israel Apartheid Week has a very real effect upon the experiences of Jewish students at university. It has become increasingly hard to deny that anti-Zionism has become a fig leaf for ugly Jew baiting. At universities across the UK, Jewish students have been subject to a barrage of verbal, physical and visual onslaughts. No student should ever be treated like this. The writer is a recent graduate from the University of Oxford.