Presbyterians Behaving Badly (Again)

As stories about the PennBDS conference fall off headlines in the U Penn student newspaper (to be replaced by tales of student chicken-wing-eating prowess), I suspect the time has come to move onto other BDS-related stories that may have been missed over the last month.

That said, I promise to return to this subject if the local BDSers strategy of desperately Twitterwhining about how no one is talking about the support they received from Desmond Tutu (Tutu’s support for any BDS program on earth being about as newsworthy as the story about a chicken laying eggs) returns them to public notice.

But in the meantime, there are other BDS victories to cover! Such as…, Well…, Hmmm…; OK, I can’t find any. But that doesn’t mean the dreaded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions juggernaut has not been getting some notice.

Most significantly, this is an even-numbered year.  And as those who have been following BDS ups and downs (mostly downs) over the last 7-8 years know, even numbered years are when some of the Mainline Protestant churches (notably the Presbyterians and Methodists) gather for bi-annual conclaves to set church policy regarding a number of religious and (increasingly over recent decades) political

When the Presbyterian Church in the US (PCUSA) actually passed a divestment resolution in 2004, they may not have realized that they invited in what was to become a permanent houseguest. For even though the church reconsidered their hastily decided 2004 vote in 2006 (the year in which the membership rejected divestment by 95%-5%), this just doubled the BDSers commitment to reintroduce the issue in 2008. And when that failed, they tried again in 2010.  And when that (you guessed it) failed, the boycotters simply began planning to re-introduce it two years hence (and again and again after that – no doubt - until the church finally voted the “right” way).

The entire Presbyterian divestment tale is a long and interesting one (to me, anyway) and if you would like to get the full background you can read all about it at this site that I and a Presbyterian (actually former Presbyterian) friend created to address the 2010 vote.

The thing to keep an eye on this year is the configuration of forces that show up to fight it out yet again when PCUSA gathers in Pittsburgh this summer for their 2012 General Assembly (GA).

Traditionally, BDS forces begin planning for the next GA the minute they lose at the current one with voices supportive of Israel not getting their act together until a few months before the gathering.

But last time around, BDS opponents got the attention of important members of the church who had stayed on the sidelines during previous Middle East debates. Most notably, leaders at some of the larger urban Presbyteries were beginning to get sick and tired of hearing the same arguments by the same people year in and year out. And they were also getting annoyed that the only stories reaching the public about important church gatherings was how the Presbyterians were alienating Jewish interfaith friends and supports via what seemed like perpetual Israel bashing.

People more experienced with church internals have informed me that this re-alignment of forces may mitigate said bashing during the 2012 GA, but that is a story that has yet to play out.

In the meantime, anti-Israel activity continues to be concentrated in the church’s Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) committee, members of which have spearheaded most controversial divestment votes in the past.  In 2008, the church asked that a report be generated that would strike some balance in the church’s Middle East policy. But by then the group charged with creating such a report had become so infiltrated by IPMN BDS activists that the group was only able to create a document more laughably lopsided than anything the church had ever created before. In fact, it was the excesses of those involved with the creation of this report that doomed divestment at the 2010 event and galvanized the previously uncommitted church members noted above into action.

If the cartoon that appeared on the IPMN Facebook page (and the associated story behind this charming image which follows on that linked page) is any indication, IPMN has somehow discovered a way to become even more radical, more offensive, and more self-righteous in the last two years, best exemplified by the decidedly un-Christian response they provided to critics pointing out that images like the one linked above (as well as others that have routinely appeared on their sites) were as ugly and inappropriate as they look.

Time will tell if this time around the forces of BDS make progress with the Presbyterians, the Methodists or some other church in 2012.  Trends (including eight years of rejection and reversals) say otherwise,  but like a Fractured Fairy Tale version of the Pandora’s Box story, when all hope has fled they still have ruthlessness and hate to fall back on.

PennBDS – Perspective

Well the PennBDS conference has come and gone and before looking at what it all adds up to, I’d like to start by congratulating the organizers for the impressive job they accomplished.

I know this might seem strange coming from someone who has done so much to criticize the event, both at the PennBDS-Oy site and in the local Philadelphia Jewish paper.  But having organized programming in the past (and having also put a great deal of effort in a PennBDS-related project over the last month), I appreciate the time, energy and logistical effort needed to pull off a program of this scale.  And just because my appreciation of their efforts will never be reciprocated, that’s no reason not to express such sentiments. 

Needless to say, I found the content of the program misguided at best.  And recognizing the various tricks they played to give the appearance of debate while never actually engaging in it did not make watching such manipulative behavior any less distasteful.  But now that the event is over, it’s best to step back and get some perspective on what might emerge from the last few days.

Regarding U Penn where the program was held, my first instinct was to use the last few weeks as another example of stalemate between pro- and anti-Israel forces on US campuses.  After all, the BDS group clearly had the people, resources and wherewithal to pull together a reasonably large conference just as Israel’s supporters put together program of generally comparable size in opposition. 

But after visiting campus last week, seeing who was doing what, and thinking through the long-term results of efforts started over the last month, I may have to give the long-term edge to Israel’s supporters vs. the players at PennBDS. 

After all, the organized Jewish community on campus received a lot of attention as well as resources targeted at long-term programming related to Israel-related political action.  More importantly, students that might have spent four years indifferent to Israel (or focused on apolitical Jewish or Israel-related issues) have been galvanized to action.  And, as we’ve seen on campus after campus, all it takes is one energized and skilled organizer to make a difference.

In contrast, if a goal of group called PennBDS was to make the University of Pennsylvania divesting and distancing itself from Israel more thinkable, all they managed to do was to focus a spotlight on the warm relationship between U Penn and the Jewish state and force the school’s administration to articulate their support for that relationship openly.  With actual BDS closed off to them, chances of even getting a toothless, symbolic divestment resolution passed by the student council are practically nil, leaving little practical outlets for their energy outside of hummus boycotts (which failed as well).

So if on the U Penn campus Penn BDS is remembered as a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, what about the “free media” they got from the event? Might that have some long-term outcome outside of campus?

Well if you subtract stories that appeared in the U Penn paper, stories penned by the BDSers on their own web sites, and what I’ve written about the subject, you end up with an event that generated maybe a dozen stories (mostly in the Pennsylvania or general Jewish press, and mostly negative).  And even at U Penn, the press bandwagon is moving on, with remaining stories wondering what all the fuss was about.

This is important since; despite increasingly ludicrous claims by Omar Barghouti that his political position represents the unspoken will of that mythical “99%,” the vast majority of college students remain indifferent to either side in the Arab-Israeli conflict and distrustful of partisans in either camp.  Sure they support human rights and justice (who doesn’t?), but they show no indication of believing that groups like PennBDS represents those values, just because they mouth the words incessantly.  And, as mentioned before, those unaffiliated with either side tend to favor the party that shows a willingness to engage in dialog.  Which means that the BDSers decision to ban journalists they don’t care for (while all the time insisting they be allowed to do whatever they want, all in the name of free speech) might leave the most lasting impression of their entire effort.

Moving off campus, there is the legitimate concern that students energized by attending the conference will get back to their schools and use what they have learned to inflict BDS on their fellow students for the coming months or years.  But as we have seen for over a decade, BDS has been a complete dead end, particularly at colleges and universities.  So the notion of anti-Israel forces doubling down on a failed tactic for another decade or three should actually fill pro-Israel hearts with joy.

And for those who hope (or fear) that BDS is simply a transmission belt for pumping the Israel = Apartheid propaganda message into public discourse, keep in mind that the level and scale of rejection of BDS over the last 11-12 years cannot be explained as bad luck or a conspiracy of the 1%.  For when boycotts and divestment have been put to a vote (even in places like the Mainline Protestant churches which have been increasingly unfriendly towards Israel over the last few decades), it was voted down by 95-100% ­i.e., by almost the entirety of the grassroots who understood that everything about BDS: its arguments, its message its presentation of facts are simply a tangle of lies and propaganda masquerading as virtue.

And so as the BDSers pack up their tents, pat each other on the back and claim victory on every blog and twitter feed where they maintain control of the conversation, the rest of us can take satisfaction that outside the fantasy world of BDS activists themselves, their event will barely leave the footprints you see in the sand before the next tide comes in.

PennBDS – Cowardice

I had planned to give the whole PennBDS thing a rest over the weekend in order to let that group have their say.  But after this story broke yesterday, it seemed negligent to let the group’s decision to ban a member of the press from their event go without commentary.

As the linked piece above describes, the organizers of the PennBDS conference decided that they didn’t like an article written about their event by a journalist from Jewish Exponent, Philadelphia’s one Jewish paper (one which was generous enough to let me pen an editorial for them last week).  And so they denied her press credentials to cover their conference.  Now they did claim willingness to let a different Exponent reporter in, but by a strange coincidence they selected a reporter who was out of town and thus unavailable.

Whether this de facto expulsion of the Exponent was intentional or just an accidental by-product of the PennBDS organizer’s decision that they be allowed to pick and choose which members of the press could cover them, this incident really encapsulates everything that BDS is about.

First off, you’ve got a group (PennBDS) which has used the phrases of “freedom of speech” and “academic freedom” as blast shields, accusing anyone who criticizes them or criticizes the University for allowing their event to take place as enemies of both.  And yet within the civic space they control (their own conference), they demand full authority to decide who is and who is not allowed to hear what they say.  And apparently that decision was based entirely on the fact that they didn’t like a member of the free press using her freedom of speech to say something they didn’t like.

Now this is par for the course for BDS across the board which routinely demands that everyone else’s civic spaces be opened to them unconditionally, while greedily protecting their own spaces just as unconditionally.  The refusal of BDS organizations to make their Web sites two-way streets in terms of communication is a symptom of this phenomenon that I’ve commented on before, but you can generally count on them only being willing to engage in “dialog” when they’ve got the upper hand (for instance, after every hour-long talk at their conference, they are willing to allow 5-10 minutes of Q&A – but only so long as they get to pick the questioners and continue to control the microphone). 

Most people have talked about the banning of the Exponent in terms of hypocrisy, which is more than relevant.  But I would like to look at it through a different lens: that of courage vs. cowardice.

This too is relevant, especially with folks like BDS generalissimo OmarBarghouti (who demands an unconditional boycott of Israeli academia from his comfortable perch as a University of Tel Aviv grad student) declaring that the across-the-board negative public reaction to PennBDS is evidence that BDS critics are panicking and running scared.

Now to me, the many events set up to counter the PennBDS program seem like nothing more than groups of people lining up to give Barghouti’s cause the swift kick it deserves, but in terms of panicking and running scared, just who do these descriptions fit better, the BDSers or their critics?

The Exponent banishment scandal helps to answer that question, but so does the PennBDS group’s choices regarding how to engage with critics.  As I’ve noted before, this group is fully aware that at least one person (me) has taken them at their word that they are starved for meaningful dialog with those who oppose their “movement,” that I have provided a detailed response to each and every item on their conference agenda, and even offered them space to post transcripts from their event (or any other response they like) in a place that is open for two-way dialog.

Yet their reaction to someone who they understand has their number is to dodge discussion and debate through the simple expedient of avoiding engagement with these arguments: never acknowledging them, never linking to them (despite the numerous links I’ve made to their sites), in fact doing everything in their power to pretend they do not exist.

Now contrast this with their reaction to one letter to the editor that criticized them with less than measured language.  Once that was published, suddenly they found their voice issuing endless denunciations and demands that others condemn this letter, coupled with complaints that they feared for their lives all because a 60+ year old professor dared to use language half as intemperate as the BDSers will using all weekend long to describe the Jewish state.

There is a word for this behavior which is cowardice.  And the bullying we’ve seen since this event started making news (condemning those who criticize them as enemies of free speech, banning the press, etc.) is just a demonstration of something we learned from Saturday morning cartoons: that bullies are cowards (and vice versa).

One of the most important things I’ve learned in participating in debate over the years is something called the Principle of Charity.  This principle says that those participating in debate are obligated to take on their opponent’s strongest arguments, rather than just pouncing on their weakest (and pretending that those weak arguments are all that there are). 

Despite the fact that my writing is probably too long-winded to attract a wide audience, and my viewpoint somewhat eccentric, I will at least be able to go into next week knowing that by choosing to take on my opponent’s chosen arguments (all of them) I was willing to live by the Principle of Charity and to not chicken out or take shortcuts to demonstrate the hollowness of the whole BDS enterprise.

Human beings being what they are, the organizers of PennBDS know in their heart of hearts that they cannot say the same thing.  When given the chance to argue and defend their positions they dodged, they weaved and they hid.  They found (or invented) arguments they would rather take on (such as claims that anyone criticizing them were just hurling empty accusations of anti-Semitism) in order to avoid more substantial ones.

No doubt they will try to ameliorate feelings of spinal inadequacy by congratulating themselves on their courage for standing up to dark, all-powerful Zionist forces that opposed them.  But in the years to come, when most of them have left radical politics behind in order to focus on applications to dental school, a little voice will continue to speak to them reminding them that when they had the chance to truly fight for a cause they claimed to believe in, they chose to do anything but.

Closing Remarks

Well I returned from a brief visit to the University of Pennsylvania campus and I’m happy to report that – at least as far as I can tell – the sky is not falling.

Signs of the impending big-bad-BDS event were non-existent (although I did see Alan Dershowitz’s punim staring me in the face on multiple locations).  And while PennBDS organizers were busy working themselves into an indignant snit over one less-than-elegant article responding to their event (such faux outrage serving as an excuse to continue pretending that other and stronger arguments against their cause do not exist), other people have been busy on the U Penn campus as well.

I mentioned Dersowitz who was invited by the local Jewish community to speak on the subject of “Why Israel Matters to You, Me and Penn” (although I suspect he’ll work a few words on what he thinks about the BDS “movement” into his talk).  And, at last count, over 900 people have signed up to attend the event.  On the surface, this seems like just three times the number of people who will be going to PennBDS, but when you realize that the number of actual Penn students involved with and attending the BDS program is between two and three dozen, you’re looking at a pro-Israel to anti-Israel campus attendance ratio of closer to 30:1.

And the response to PennBDS doesn’t stop there.  Just as the Somerville divestment battles of 2004-2006 created a Zionist enclave alongside Boston and Cambridge, leaving no other BDS footprints beyond the city (except, perhaps, this blog), so to PennBDS seems to have kicked off a Zionist renaissance on campus. 

The school’s administration, which has always been supportive of its relationship the Jewish state, was given the opportunity to speak out on the value of that relationship and to look at ways to strengthen and extend it.  Jewish students who might have put their energies into other religious or secular extra-curriculars are instead raising funds Penn-Israel programs, talking to their friends about the real Israel (not the wicked witch Israel of BDS fairy tales) and marching en mass to buy out the very products the BDSers insisted be boycotted.

All in all, not a bad set of outcomes for a three-day event that has yet to happen.  Oh sure, I know that the attendees of the PennBDS event come from a number of campuses, and they are likely to take what they learn this weekend and use it to try to gin up enthusiasm for boycott and divestment campaigns when they get back home.  But it’s not like anything new is going on.  In fact, such campaigns have been a cornerstone of campus life for more than a decade and today Israel’s relationship with American colleges and universities (like its economy and popularity among the US population) are stronger than they’ve ever been.

With that as backdrop, it’s time to take care of some housekeeping. 

First, here is an editorial I was lucky to have been given the opportunity to pen for the Philadelphia Jewish exponent.  While this will no doubt be used by BDS proponents as more evidence of their wild success (Look!  Someone else is criticizing us!  We must be powerful!), the fact that the PennBDSers have done everything in their power to avoid acknowledging (much less confronting) a month-long effort to take on their arguments just demonstrates that they are willing to do everything for their cause except defend it.   In short, as my editorial makes clear: the big news story about PennBDS specifically is the same decade-old news story about BDS in general, that it’s a L-O-S-E-R. 

Second, I’ve rearranged and re-titled items on the PennBDS-Oy landing page so that they better conform to the final agenda for the actual PennBDS program.

Third (and most exciting), I figured out a way to turn all of the material that’s appeared on this site over the last month into an ebook in a variety of formats.  So if you’re looking for something to read while the PennBDS program is going on (ideally from within the conference itself), go to this page to download your book free of charge (or read it online at Scribd).  And spread the word.

As this series closes up (and please forgive me if things slow down here starting tomorrow), I wanted to wrap with an answer to a question that’s come up a few times since this series started, namely why do this at all?  After all, the PennBDS event is not that big a deal (other similar programs have come and gone without this level of response).  And even if I were whoring for blog hits (as a PennBDS organizer once accused in the comments section on this story), historically the one sure way of reducing readership has been to write a multi-part series (like this one and this one that are actually points of pride).

Now I’ve provided lofty explanations regarding my choice to blog about this subject generally.  And while I stick by those explanations, the reasons for the last 29 pieces in 29 days is far more mundane and simple: I like to write, I like a challenge, and I don’t like bullies.

The rest is commentary.

Cheers!

PennBDS - Spectacle

Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when 3.5 inch floppy disks were considered cutting edge, I attended some of the big computing tradeshows that defined that pre-Internet era (PC Expo, Mac World and – the big one – Comdex), as both a journalist and an exhibitor.

It was while acting as a journalist that I learned an important lesson: that the level of violence a salesperson has to do to his or her own character in order to attract people into their booth is directly proportional to the crappiness of their product (or the likelihood that it would never be released). 

Said violence frequently involved apes (including dressing up in a gorilla suit or, in some cases, having an actual live chimpanzee in the booth – usually under a sign that bore some variation on “Don’t Monkey Around with Data Security!”).  Other acts of “spectacle” included the use of celebrity impersonators (poor imitations of Robin Williams and Cher ring a dim bell) and, at one MacWorld, Leonard Nimoy wearing a grey turtleneck sweater yamming on about Wingz!, a Mac spreadsheet that never saw the light of day.

Such behavior came to mind as I started thinking about the type of “spectacle” that is important enough to merit its own session at the now-so-close-I-can-smell-it PennBDS conference.  Like the aforementioned chimp shows, BDS performances have the tendency to bewilder and appall their target audience, rather than attract and inspire them.  In fact, given that BDS public performances have tended to be either bizarre (such as attempts at creating a “flash-mob,”), gross (queue the Code Pink bikini squad) or hostile (including blowing air horns and shouting through megaphones at concerts and ballet performances), BDS spectacle seems to represent an evolutionary step downward from the good old days of PC Expo monkey-business.

Interestingly, the behaviors required to participate in these types of BDS activities are the very ones I have been busy teaching my nine-year-old to avoid.  This includes interrupting, wallowing in mud, and being rude during public events.  It’s intriguing to discover that at the same time I am trying to get my 3^rd grader to learn proper manners, the PennBDS cru is running a course on how to unlearn them (and then celebrating the results).

There is a logic to this behavior once you realize that, unlike getting schools, churches or cities to embrace your political program, making a spectacle of yourself only requires acting up in public and thus success or failure is under the full control of the boycotters.  Sure, they’re likely to get kicked out of a store or concert for being public nuisances, but even if their “direct action” winds up with them sitting on the pavement, the ability to initiative these actions requires nothing more than their own rudeness and exhibitionism.

And we should not forget that between the start of a flash-dance or interruption-fest, the digital cameras will be rolling (do digital cameras roll?), capturing every minute of the “big event” on film (well, bits, anyway).  This video footage is a crucial component for understanding why folks like Code Pink put such a stake in spectacle. 

Given how much BDSers brag of their flash mobs, de-shelving, and similar “direct actions,” you might be surprised to discover that no more than a couple of dozen these types of events have ever taken place.  Each one lives on, however, on BDS web sites, Facebook pages, YouTube channels and even the occasional DVD which are then talked about in mailing lists, RSS feeds, tweets and BDS conferences, with participants hailed for their edginess and “courage.”.

Once you realize that these stunts are not played out to convince an external audience, but to impress an internal one, everything makes perfect sense.  Other questions get answered as well, including why the BDSers disrupt talks put on by their political opponents when this is guaranteed to turn the uncommitted against their cause?  It explains why they perpetuate fraud and hoaxes, knowing full well they’ll get caught.  It explains why they use corrupt tactics to win one battle, which all but guarantees they will lose the war.

For a full explanation, we must again return to our old friend fantasy politics; a set of activities that on the surface seem political, but in reality are designed to create a self-image among participants in a collective fantasy where they (and they alone) represent a noble, courageous, vanguard, of all-seeing seers who battle alone against unspeakable evil. 

Why should such fantasists care about how the public reacts to their flash dances and catcalls since, for them, this public does not actually exist except as props in a drama going on in their own heads.  In fact, all of us are props for the fantasist: Israel, it’s friends and supporters, even the Palestinians in whose names the boycotters claim to speak are just things, not people, a backdrop for YouTube videos designed to demonstrate to the world that by acting naughty in front of grownups that the BDS “movement” is more than what they are.

And what are they?  Well here in reality, BDS is just a tactic used by the same tired Israeli haters who have been gathering in church basements for decades to show each other cliché-ridden 16mm films and talk about how horrible the Jews (whoops! I mean the Zionists) are.  And while the names and faces may change, the only genuine difference is that today those films are distributed via Internet download and the basement has been briefly extended to an unknown location on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

PennBDS – Palestine and the Media

There are a number of approaches one could take when dealing with media-related issues regarding Israel and the Middle East.

The most obvious is an analysis of the way Israel and the Middle East conflict are treated in newspapers, television, radio and other media sources, both in the US and abroad.  Such analyses can be extremely eye-opening, but they are also conducted every day by people far more experienced at it than I (notably CAMERA in the US and CIFWatch in the UK).

Alternatively, this piece could focus on how BDS activists try to use the media as a force multiplier for their campaigns, especially since pushing BDS events into the headlines is really the raison d’etre for a “movement” dedicated to convincing the world that the desire to punish Israel economically for alleged “crimes” represents the opinion of more than just a tiny, marginal fringe.

A recent discussion of how boycott and divestment forces skillfully utilize Web 2.0 communication to bypass or augment traditional news sources discusses this phenomenon in detail.  And the only thing I could add specifically regarding the PennBDS conference is that organizers of that event never really seemed to get the hang of whole Web 2.0 thing, waiting until just this week to start tweeting frantically, with most of their comments the result of scouring the Internet for weak arguments to pounce on while all the time avoiding strong arguments at all cost.

Given that these two obvious angles are pretty well covered in the linked sources above, I’d like to use the media as an example of one of the key themes of this blog: the corrupting influence of BDS and allied propaganda efforts on important elements of our civil society.

Few readers will remember this, but one of the first unions to officially pass a BDS resolution was Britain’s National Union of Journalists (or NUJ).  The resolution came about as most boycott and divestment “victories” do (especially within UK unions) when a radicalized union leadership with its own agenda passed a boycott vote before members had the slightest understanding that a discussion on the matter was even taking place.

The 2007 resolution committed the union to a boycott of Israeli goods “similar to those boycotts in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.” And given the negative disposition of many British journalists towards the Jewish state, it was unclear whether such a resolution would be accepted and remain union policy.  But instead, a revolt broke out among the membership that had not been consulted about the decision and who resented being put in the position of participants in a political conflict they were supposed to be able to cover impartially.

The spirit of objections was summed up by one journalist who asked how he could be expected to be treated as a neutral observer when he carried his press card in one pocket declaring him to be a professional journalist, and an NUJ card in the other declaring him to be a participating in the conflict he was writing about.

As with similar instances, this whole mishagas represented over-reach by BDS forces with rank-and-file objections overcoming leadership power-plays and the NUJ boycott was quickly withdrawn.  And while I couldn’t imagine a similar situation playing out within the mainstream media in the US, the BDSers have found tiny media niches where they have tried to ply their wares (so far unsuccessfully, at least in the US). 

But step back for a moment and consider that the original NUJ was explicitly asking members of the journalistic profession to place their most sacred asset (journalistic integrity) on the sacrificial alter in order to be considered “right-thinking” by those pushing a BDS agenda within the union.

We’ve seen this level of sacrifice requested before by divestment partisans lucky enough to receive an audience (preferably private), in front of academic and religious groups.  In the case of an academic boycott (the subject of two talks at the PennBDS conference), educators are not being asked to move money from one retirement fund investment to another as a political statement but to throw their greatest treasure, academic freedom, out the window in order to participate in “the movement” and show themselves to be on the side of the angels.

And speaking of angels, when BDS gets injected into church discourse (as it’s been for almost a decade within Mainline Protestant churches in particular), they are not being asked to divest their considerable retirement portfolios of Israel-related assets to take a political position on a secular matter.  Rather, they are told that such action would represent the purest act of “Christian Witness,” implying that who is right and who is wrong in the Middle East conflict is so blindingly obvious that even God can see it (or, at least, that the church can confidently speak in God’s name when making statements to that effect).

A couple of months back, I read Robin Sheperd’s excellent book A State Beyond the Pale which discusses the reasons behind Europe’s deteriorating behavior vis-à-vis Israel.  The whole book is worth reading, but I wanted to end with a quote I found so resonant I decided to save it for just this purpose:

“Whatever it touches, the anti-Israel agenda always brings out the worst.  It brings out the worst in journalists who cast aside their principles of balance and objectivity.  It brings out the worst in seasoned commentators who substitute hysteria and foot stomping for calm analysis and enlightened discussion. 

It brings out the worst in trade unions which put a hateful agenda above the interest of their members.  It brings out the worst in diplomats who debase themselves by pandering to tyrannies against a democracy.  It brings out the worst in artists and writers who submerge their commitment to beauty and truth in ugliness and lies.  It brings out the worst of the great traditions of Left and Right which default back to their shabbiest instincts and their darkest prejudices.”

Truer words were never spoken.

PennBDS: Express Yourself (Literally)

Well it’s a sprint to the finish line to have something to say for every item on the PennBDS agenda before the conference starts.

Fortunately, this morning’s entry will be brief since, for the life of me, I don’t have the slightest idea what a talk on “BDS and Literacy Expression” (the next item on the Penn hit parade) is supposed to cover.  Especially since (as far as I know), I’m the only person who has ever generated a literary corpus based on the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment “movement.”

You may have already seen this piece which provides fictional coverage of preparation for the last national BDS conference at Hampshire College in 2009.  That parody actually followed an earlier mock news story on the Hampshire brouhaha that left a few Hampshire SJP types none-too-amused.

But by far the work I’m most proud of in terms of sheer time wasted when there was something useful and productive to get done goes to these two works which, while not quite Chaucer, at least let me use that “Hitler in the bathroom” joke I was sitting on for years:

Hampshire and the Brain

Sydney and Omar’s BDS Journey

And while I only have one song written for the BDS musical I hope to publish some day, dreams of Broadway will always spring eternal.