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BDS at Harvard

(City Journal) J.J. Kimche and Angelique Talmor - As we Jewish students have witnessed, the routine vilification of the State of Israel - both inside and outside the classroom - indicates that something in the contemporary Harvard education has gone seriously awry. In the latest example of this trend, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson endorsed the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish state in an April 29 editorial. BDS represents the economic arm of a global effort - spearheaded militarily by Hamas, Hizbullah, and Iran - to destroy the Jewish state. The hostility toward Israel that has permeated our campus - which often involves the endorsement of anti-Semitic attitudes, assumptions, and activities - is symptomatic of larger trends: a retreat from robust critical thinking and a surrender to the most hysterical, least rigorous elements of campus activism. BDS rests upon the pernicious falsehoods that Jews don't belong in Israel, that their presence constitutes an act of colonialism against the native Palestinian population. Such a position betrays an often-contrived ignorance of the millennia-long connection between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. It is also a denial of the right of self-defense for history's most persecuted minority. J.J. Kimche is a Ph.D. student in Harvard's department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Angelique Talmor is an MPP Student in Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
2022-07-07 00:00:00
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