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How to Fight Academic Bigotry

(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - Given that Israel has a profoundly democratic political system, the freest press in the Middle East, a fiercely independent judiciary and astonishing religious and racial diversity within its universities, including affirmative action for Arab students, the charge that Israel is denying academic and human rights to Palestinians is rather strange. Made more so when you consider the state of human rights in Israel's neighborhood, where Syria's government is dropping "barrel bombs" filled with nails, shrapnel and other instruments of terror on its own cities, where Iran hangs political, religious and even sexual dissidents and has no academic freedom at all, and where Christians in Egypt are being openly persecuted. And don't tell me this is merely about Zionism. Israel is the world's only Jewish state. To apply to the state of the Jews a double standard that you apply to none other, to judge one people in a way you judge no other, to single out that one people for condemnation and isolation - is to engage in a gross act of discrimination. And discrimination against Jews has a name. It's called anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is back. Alas, a new generation must learn to confront it.
2014-01-10 00:00:00
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