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Oren calls on Congress to blacklist boycotters, because they’re ‘bigoted’ against Jews

Oren, right
Oren, right

More evidence of the incredible impact of the academics’ vote earlier this week to boycott Israel: Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., writes at Politico that Congress should take action to make boycott decisions like the one by the American Studies Association illegal–because they’re”bigoted,” i.e., anti-Semitic.

What’s needed is a way to fight back, and Congress can do it.

A successful precedent for that fight already exists in the defeat of the Arab economic boycott of Israel…. In 1977, Congress passed a series of laws making it illegal for U.S. companies to cooperate with any boycott of Israel and imposing stiff penalties on those that did. The boycott, Congress concluded, was not only racist against Israelis but all Jews.

Laws could be passed withholding federal or state funding from any academic program that knowingly blacklisted Israeli scholars or institutions or cooperated with associations that did. While an organization like ASA might prefer punishing Israel to receiving government funds, other academic bodies—including universities—most likely will not. At the very least, lawmakers on the local and national level can go on record expressing their unequivocal opposition to such boycotts.

Then Oren seems to go beyond sanctions against such bodies to legislation against Palestinian solidarity activists who heckle Israeli speakers:

As Israel’s ambassador to the United States and as an historian who believes in free academic exchange, I often spoke before college audiences and welcomed even those questions critical of Israel. But at the University of California at Irvine in February 2010, protesters tried to disrupt my talk and deprive all those present—students and faculty—of the right to discourse. No other visiting lecturer was singled out, only the Israeli. But 11 of those demonstrators were arrested, tried and found guilty of disrupting free speech. Academic boycotts of Israel aim at the same objective and they, too, can be legally stopped.

Max Blumenthal’s take on Oren’s remarks:

Also this:

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Again with the threats and marked & palpable desperation!

So I’ll say again:
“It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

(Macbeth)

Oren is implicitly admitting that outside of Congress, the lobby is losing altitude; fast.

Since political elites are by their nature reactionary and serving the established status quo, it renders them defenseless against the grassroots. This is why hasbara will always fail. You cannot fool thousands of academics. Oren is falling back on the only game he and other lobbyists know: fear and intimidation.

Also, what happened to all that fluff about “engaing”? When it comes down to it, the lobby is not opposed to boycotts – as long as they are directed towards human rights NGOs and liberal academics.

Well perhaps Oren and his ilk, instead of shooting the messenger, would care to argue for the case against the boycott, which would involve him having to explain why universal human rights in Israel are only available to citizens based on their social and cultural grouping, and exclude the indigenous people of the region. Or perhaps he is unable to make such a case, and has to smear the people who highlight the very unAmerican lack of universal suffrage and democracy in this tinpot country with no agreed borders. Israel and its supporters like Oren don’t seem very keen on free speech when it comes to Israel, but merely the obsequious acquiescence to a rabid right wing demagogic government, behaving more and more like fascists, who share very little values with the US or Europe. The bluster and hysteria speak volumes about him and his values, and where his allegiance lies.

If you weren’t so blinded by your self-loathing, you’d realize that they are bigoted.

As a self-proclaimed “journalist”, you seem to have a hard time reporting the truth; Oren never called for criminal prosecutions of the boycott supporters.

Oren can enlighten us with information if those law as were inked by Javit, Jackson. Or by someone beholden to Pearle or by some other crooks? Was it done using the language of lies and misreprentations? Was it done by Congress under duress fear of blackmail, and offer of cash?