(Commentary) Jonathan S. Tobin - The latest group of academic outliers to back the boycott of Israel is the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. Ohio State English professor Chadwick Allen, the president of the association, wrote that the NAISA Council "protests the infringement of the academic freedom of Indigenous Palestinian academics and intellectuals in the Occupied Territories and Israel who are denied fundamental freedoms of movement, expression, and assembly." This is simply false. Academics in the West Bank work, publish, and pontificate in public from the many Palestinian institutions of higher education that were all founded after Israel took control of the area in 1967. All Palestinian colleges exist as hotbeds of support for terror and the delegitimization of Israel. Nor are there any restrictions on the right of assembly, as the recent Islamic Jihad fascist-style military parade at Al Quds University in Jerusalem proved. Moreover, by attempting to portray the Palestinians as the "indigenous people" and the Jews as the colonial settlers, they are perpetrating the big lie of Palestinian history. Jews are not foreigners in Israel as Europeans were in Africa. They happen to be the indigenous people of their ancient homeland. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and those who would deny them the same rights accorded other peoples are practicing bias, not scholarship.
2013-12-19 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive