UPDATE: The conference has been postponed indefinitely by UCC, citing security concerns. UCC clarified that the conference is not “University-sponsored or promoted,” but organized by some of its academic staff; and that the university was not even informed of the event, but only knew about it through public discourse and social media.
A conference that questions Israel’s legitimacy cannot constitute anti-Semitism, according to one of its organizers, John Reynolds, writing in the Irish Times. The fact that he is both a speaker at the conference and on its organizing committee are omitted from the article, displaying a lack of journalistic transparency from Reynolds and the Irish Times. The paper also has a history of publishing extreme anti-Israel articles, with one journalist saying she’s “not interacting with Zionists anymore” in response to criticism of an article of hers.
The conference is due to take place at University College Cork in Ireland, after being cancelled last year due to security concerns when it was originally meant to be held at the University of Southampton. It was roundly condemned by Jewish leaders and groups, Members of Parliament who called it a “one-sided diatribe,” and a Zionist Federation petition that garnered 6,700 signatures.
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Reynolds suggests that the Israeli government attempts to stifle criticism by saying that “to criticise the state of Israel is to demonise Jewish people.” Actually Israel considers demonizing the Jewish state with lies and denying its right to exist as demonizing the Jewish people – which is what the conference does. He dismisses the Israeli embassy’s concerns that it will propagate hatred, as he says the speakers are “established scholars… committed to critical thinking and the promotion of anti-racism.”
But Reynolds himself is a former legal researcher for Al-Haq, a Palestinian NGO involved in libel, BDS and “lawfare” campaigns against Israel, and has defended rocket attacks and “resistance” against Israel as understandable.
He adds that “Many of them [the speakers] are Jewish: Israeli and otherwise… some will present papers supportive of Israeli government policy and even Jewish-Israeli settlement rights,” the implication being that as long as Jews are involved, the conference can’t be considered anti-Semitic. But out of a list of at least 46 speakers only two pro-Israel academics are attending. The majority are extreme anti-Israel activists whose views include promoting BDS, supporting a “one state solution,” equating Israelis with Nazis, accusing Israel of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and justifying Palestinian terrorism, with one, Oren Ben-Dror, calling the terror group Hamas “legitimate opposition.” David Collier has a table that breaks down the figures [see below.]
Reynolds also attempts to bolster his argument by quoting filmmaker Ken Loach, who supports the conference. Loach is a BDS activist who supports a full cultural boycott of Israel, has accused Israel of apartheid, of kidnapping and murdering Palestinian civilians, and has called anti-Semitism “understandable.” (Reynolds and Loach do seem to be very understanding people when it comes to hatred and violence against Jews.)
As so many Israel-haters do, Reynolds rewrites Israeli history, saying that 2017 marks
70 years since the UN plan to partition Palestine, and 50 years since Israel initiated its military occupation of the remaining Palestinian territories.
Never mind that the Arabs rejected the partition plan; and that in 1967 Israel captured the West Bank in a war of self defense. That land had been illegally occupied by Jordan since Israel’s war of independence, when Arab armies tried to wipe out the newly established Jewish state.
The truth is clearly irrelevant to Reynolds, who says Israel’s “founding dispossession” is “institutional discrimination.” He says:
Scholarly analysis of state structures that constitutionally privilege one particular group of citizens over another is far from equivalent to inciting hatred.
Except that it is inciting hatred if – as Reynolds has just done in his article – the historical facts are distorted to present a false narrative that demonizes the Jewish state.
He claims that:
Ultimately, if the Cork conference can be said to be underpinned by any single motivation, it is that of decolonisation, not demonisation.
On the contrary. Excusing terrorism, promoting lies and discrimination against Israel, and calling for the dismantling of the Jewish state, based on those lies, are the very epitome of demonization.
The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland warned that “where a narrative aimed at the destruction of the Jewish state is allowed to flourish, antisemitism follows.” Reynolds’ article is the proof.
