Professor Stephen Walt reacts to Dr. Neve Gordon's recent call for a boycott of Israel. At the end of this paean to the Ben Gurion U. professor, Walt writes:
I might add that I dont support the "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement" myself. This is partly because I'm uncomfortable with even mild forms of collective punishment and partly because, like Gordon himself, I do worry about the double-standard issue (i.e., if you think it's ok to boycott Israel, why not China or Burma or any number of other countries?). And I'm especially leery of efforts to interfere with academic exchanges, because I don't like anything that interferes with free speech or obstructs the free flow of ideas. But I respect Gordon's motives and his op-ed did make me wonder: what if he's correct and this is in fact the only way to get a two-state solution? Making people think is something scholars are supposed to do, right?
Stephen Pollard can hardly restrain his disgust:
So after spending years spewing out bile and giving spurious academic legitimacy to traditional lies about those manipulative, secretive Israelis running US foreign policy, he casually mentions that he doesn't actually support the genie he has let out of the bottle.
Chutzpah is being kind. I can think of other words to use.
Are Walt or Gordon getting enough oxygen in the thin air at the top of their ivory towers?
