Wednesday, October 28, 2015

JK Rowling: would actually really love to boycott Israel ..but not its anti-Zionist writers and academics


24 hours after signing a statement opposing the cultural boycott of Israel (a very weak statement anyway, since it assumes the flawed narrative that the Palestinians will be happy if they are given their own Jew-free state after the forced evacuation of nearly a million Jews from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria), JK Rowling has made clear her real beliefs:
The Palestinian community has suffered untold injustice and brutality. I want to see the Israeli government held to account for that injustice and brutality. Boycotting Israel on every possible front has its allure. It satisfies the human urge to do something, anything, in the face of horrific human suffering.

What sits uncomfortably with me is that severing contact with Israel’s cultural and academic community means refusing to engage with some of the Israelis who are most pro-Palestinian, and most critical of Israel’s government. Those are voices I’d like to hear amplified, not silenced. A cultural boycott places immovable barriers between artists and academics who want to talk to each other, understand each other and work side-by-side for peace.
Varda Epstein has written a superb response to Rowling's nonsense which should be read in full. She notes:
Rowling wants to encourage Jew-hating Jewish Israelis who damn their own people and ignore their suffering, thus strengthening the hand of Arab terror by giving the terrorists a pass for their brutal be‎havior.  Rowling wants to make Arab terror about something else: lack of hope, terrible treatment, humiliation, the usual lies. Instead of what it's really about: plain old, garden variety Jew-hatred.
Interestingly, Rowling's stance is identical to that of left-wing Jewish students in the UK who used exactly the same arguments last year to oppose the academic boycott. Here is the graphic I did then:

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