UK Lecturers vote to boycott Israeli institutions
 

Anyone seen this:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/high...091498,00.html

My views - haven't the stupid cunts who voted for this got anything better to do? Jesus fucking wept...

it's a pity, israeli universities are where the most progressive minds in the country are. boycott them and you're boycotting perhaps the greatest force for peace in the country.

Yes we have. My solution? Timetable lots of Mel Brooks films for next semester.

Oy!

this seems very familiar to the last thread that brought up jews and british education system

the thing i am wondering with this if there is a supposed fear of zionism and appeasement of the growing muslim population, i mean previous it was not even acknowledging the holocaust

although i get the argument they say, i don't like the way Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert has been handling their country, i'd think just saying that you condemn their government for how they handle things is fine, it's crossing the line though when you start boycotting an educational institution

i dont know if i would say "the most progessive minds in the country" study at israeli unis. a lotm of them are full of shit. and often chose causes simply to fight something.
but i see what he meant.
adn about our leaders, i definatly agree that AS and EO dont know how to run the country. the proble is there has not been one leader here who has done a good job. and our governtment is so full of corruption that leeft, right , center, everybody is so completely disillutioned by the current state f affairs that apathy toward anything political has become the satus quo.
next election im going to fullfill my civil duties, maybe vote for the legalize pot, or the arab party. not because i belive in them, but because i have so little faith in everybody else that runs this place, that they are the last choice...
its a bummer...

i fully agree, with this.

i can't say i'm surprised, especially since how legal and outspoken far right parties are in britain.

is this a move by the far right, or the left, though?

don't kid yourself about extreme political parties in israel also-- shas isn't exactly mainstream, and yet they wield inordinate power.

fugazifan -- i was in israel when rabin was shot. most pro-peace people i met (writers, artists, filmmakers, etc) were associated with tel aviv university. not sure how it's in jerusalem-- i'd be scared to live in jerusalem, actually.

i'm well aware of israel political parties.

and yes, both far left and right suck. actually it's democracy that's shit, that's where my political beef lies.

oh, democracy beats any other kind of organization. all government is a sham, but some are worse than others. i've seen dictatorships, and rule by committee-- give me democracy any time. it just sucks less.

That's such a good thing that you've said, it goes beyond the school policy of repping you. I went to a good catholic school, with the mind of someone who thinks that schools are rubbish wether they are catholic or jewish, muslim or whatever. This is not to say that education is bad, quite the opposite, but religion-lead schools don't teach you much that can't be self-taught by oneself. This happens unless you go into specific skills, and yes, artistic skills are learned through procedures that are tormenting and require hard work, jewish, catholic, muslim or not.

that's exactly the attitude that allows all this to happen.

the problem is, we're using the lesser worse form of government thought of and started how many hundred years now?

the thing is, since people in power are too content with how bendable and corruptable democracy is, they haven't allowed any other thoughts of other government models to develope.

and one that sucks less is actually anarchy, when governement is not concentrated in one person; the two problems with anarchy is that it's only good for a transitional period and not as a definite form of government and that they had to spoil anarchy too and splinter it into a hundred and one formns of it derived from other forms of government (mostly, obsolete ones like democracy and comunism/socialism).

oh no no no. i didn't allow this to happen. i'm for participatory democracy and i've always participated when given a chance. i don't just sit there ignoring everything.

see with democracy you always have recourse-- with tyrannies you have none, unless you bend over to the will of the great tyrant. oh man you need to live under a dictatorship to fully appreciate democracy, flaws and all.

the problem with anarchy is that eventually it devolves into tyranny, because a power block develops & swallows it all. anarchies generally don't splinter-- if they do it's temporary until some kind of strongman takes over.

apathy is the problem. hands in pockets are the problem. doing nothing because "all is fucked up" is what allows this to happen.

but democracy was flawed from the beginning as only in name it is "the people's governments", it was made so only an elite of people could vote.

actually, the best thing you can do with democracy is to null votes since another major flaw of democracy is that abstinence is not taken into account when counting the votes. when abstinence happens, it should be counted to say that there's a segment of the voters that don't believe in any opposition. of course, the people in power make them see abstinence as a sign of laziness and apathy (sure, some people don't vote because of this). the reality is that the voters mostly don't have the motivation (none of the candidates speak to them) to go out and vote.

of course, i don't advocate tyranny and dictatorship, that's like the worse that can happen, and yes, you are right that democracy is the lesser of all evils. but still, it's mediocre to not have a government that lets us be at our fullest.

anarchy got splintered idologically, with some people leaning to the right and left and everywhere imaginable, divided and conquered. sure, true anarchism is as utopian as socialism and comunism, that's why i said it's a transitional form, but at least it nullifies the power struggle and the cult of personality that comes with being the leader of a country. it spreads the power so it seizes to be a popularity contest.

while anarchy is best of all, even it is a transitional form of government, bottom line is, new ways of government should have bend/should be developed.

okay, but still there's no excuse for having the ideological heirs of menachem begin still in power.

oh man, israeli government in the last, say, ten years has been awful.

the last one that was any good was netanyahu, and he wasn't that good.

oh netanyahu was a fucking stupid pig, no, no, he was a fucking furniture salesman crook.

the last good one was rabin but he got killed. and then i had hopes for whats his name, the other labor dude-- barak-- but he fucked it.

netanyahu was like clinton. his only good policy was to delay everything that was needed to do.

barak was a moron.

and rabin, while being rather good for the most part, was being very feeble, especially in his last year in power.

it's rather sad that he got killed for way less than what has been done in israel ever since, though.

rabin, i heard him drank on the radio once. but he could have made peace with the palestinians. peres was too much of a wuss to do anything-- the day of his election he played chess with a chess master and of course he lost-- the match and the election.

barak was not a moron, he's really a brilliant guy, but i think he wasn't ready for the post.

netanyahu was a fucking demagogue pig and i blame him for the terrorism of the far right, he gave those fringes legitimacy and fanned the flames.

the far right weilds very little power in the uk, and if anything it is opposition to islam that is their key concern at the moment

O Yerushalom, Yerushalom, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

the right wing in israel hold way to much power. olmert is slowly gaining any respect, and there will probably be election within the next year or so.
unfortunatly netanyahu will be our next PM. netanyahu has no political ideologies, he only does what will better his career. he is going to completwely fuck up our economy, education, everything that will not make a profit will go to a worse place than it already be. but here is the scary part, i am pretty sure that his coalitionbwill be
licud
shad
yisrael beteinu

for those of you that dont know yisrael beteinu, its avigdor liberman's right wing facist party. they believe in transfering all arabs to a different country, and all other facist ideals.
what funny is that liberman is a russian immegrant that moved here about ten years ago, and he feels that he has more of a right to this land than a family t5hat has lived in the same house for 100 years.
a real problem here is the legitimacy of racism.

its ok to hate arabs. its ok for a political party top belive in the transfer of another race.
its ok for a political party to be anti gay, and protest gay pride marches, and endorse violence.
what we really need is for all of this society to ber uprooted from the core, re-education of everybody. to teach us basic human values.
take the jewish religeon out of the government and exchange it for the jewish culture.
but unfortunatly this will not happen...

and about living in jerusalem, i have lived here for nearly a decade. i moved here from massachusets. both areas i deeply love. but i really could not see myself living anywhere else.
it is at times difficult to live in a city that cares not for culture, equality... but its something worth fighting for. and it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
and is definatly not scary.

yeah-- olmert did terrible things to arabs while he was mayor of jerusalem-- always expanding settlements & the city limits trying to squeeze them out. i've seen also some of the right wingers buy houses in the arab quarter & hang israeli flags as an assertion of power & a provocation-- and what is the need?

i'm not saying by the way that the arabs are saints and that they don't do their own brand of provocation, but truly they've been occupied for 40 years and that's going to cause a major rash.

when i went to jerusalem it always striked me as a violent city, flaring up with tension. i was never comfortable there. also, i have to say, ultra-religious people scare me-- of any kind of religion, mind, you. and jerusalem has that.

but i love tel aviv dearly, it's like a little new york, only cleaner-- i remember walking around mid-morning, in that beautiful light, people opening shops and the smell of coffee.... yafo is beautiful too, but tel-aviv was like.... i just love everything about that town.

anyway best wishes-- i hope you guys can solve this fucking... balagan. it's sad that israel fell for right-wing temptations, but it's clearly not working so you never know.

This is a crazy decision. it doesn't matter how bad a nation's government is, the people of that country benefit from education and a world view. By attempting to remove this right from students, from the very people who might be a year or two away from a move into the military or politics etc, these lecturers are helping to ensure that only the government line gets heard.

Russia killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Chechnya, There were more Muslims killed in one week in Bosnia than in 40 year of Israeli occupation, Must Palestinians in Gaza would rather live under Israeli occupation than under the Hamas regime.
So how come no one asked to boycott Russian, Bosnian, Palestinian or Syrian institutions?

Israeli soldiers have never acted so brutally as British or American soldiers in Iraq.

No one suggest to boycott American or British institutions.
Why is that? Oil? New kind of antisemitism? or maybe Londonistan?

yeah, very good points-- the russians have LONG and horrible history in chechnya. but they are reverting to tyranny and they are strong country and feared, but do they have the respect of the world?? bosnia however required UN troops to pacify... and then serbia was bombed over kossovo, remember?

the syrians might yet get their comeuppance-- they are finally out of lebanon but still exerting too much influence-- let's see what comes out of the hariri trials.

israel however is a democracy, and as such it is held to higher standards than dictatorships and fiefdoms. don't compare israel to those places, because in israel you have the rule of law, human rights, etc.

and you're right about israeli soldiers being better than most. israeli citizen-soldiers tend to be highly educated, and more realistic about war before actually going into conflict, which is not what you find in the u.s. armed forces for example (except for the officers).

but the problem is that the occupation is not good for israel. it keeps causing problems and puts you in the position of being an opressor. some have argued that israel must be an opressor in order to survive, but at this point, a palestinian state would not be any kind of threat to israel. sure, hamas launches rockets from gaza, and hezbollah from lebanon, but then you have the right to self-defense.

now if the palestinians choose to shoot themselves in the ass by living under the rule of hamas, and inviting attacks, that should be their problem (when they start launching rockets you should have the right to retaliate). however you regain the moral high ground when you let them determine their own fate.

if it weren't for a) the settlements, and b) the religious claims for a greater israel, the west bank could have been returned to the palestinians long ago and the whole moral grey area of the occupation been avoided.

but maybe i'm talking out of my ass :confused:

no, you actually have a better grasp on the situation than most people...
and i agree with you on almost everything..

I like it how this sort of thread goes into specifics, while also missing the specifics of things.

^^ like that??

So given what you see as the problems with democracy, socialism and anarchy, do you see a model that would work better?

So, what's the answer, then?

whoever answers, please don't do it with a bob dylan song.

There's a lot to be said, but I restrain myself. It's only the internet, and the worst public arena known to man, woman and child.

Surely the answer comes from a complete overhaul of the species: making it realise the social perils of pure self-interest. How this might happen is anyone's guess, though.

when are you going to read dawkins? "self" interest is not the interest of the "self"....

really, check out that book (the selfish gene), it is mind-blowing for non-science types, and even for science types that will grasp those ideas for the first time.

you'll love it, or your money back.

Yeah, right. That way we would be still thinking like crippled creatures. I couldn't disagree with something like that more than I do already. I think you work your way up and down through answers and questions, if you already know the answer. If you can't do that, you are doomed. Doomed for life.

Edit - Demon

i don't, but that doesn't mean that's a question not to be asked; there should be people with better grasp of social sciences than me thinking about a new way of things.

the problem is, most people things are "not bad but ok" and that's wrong.

yes but (im not trying to bait you here), if you think things are so wrong, what are you doing about it?

--

im off to watch a movie. will check for answers later.

the only way democracy could be a little more legitimate is for it to legalize and count abstinence, since that's a part of the population that disagrees with all candidates. when only votes are counted it's just a fraction of the people that's counted, meaning just a few decide for all and that's unfair. that's a way of making the actual form a bit better.

but of course, democracy is very flawed and a new form of government should be started, but that's a way to make democracy a bit more fair.

i null my vote so that no one else can use that ballot for their convenience and so that (at least in theory) they can see that i'm not for any of the choices (of course this is wishful thinking).

again, there should be something new but, as i posted earlier, the people in power can manipulate democracy so well for themselves that they won't give any other form to be even considerated. that's the sad truth and the reason there have not been any other government form proposals in decades (or even centuries now).

new forms of government will enter the picture once democracy fails the people who benefit from it.