Ha’aretz is considered to be the Guardian of Israel, being a paper of the grievance-culture and intellectually pretentious left. Actually it’s worse, since ithe way it loses no opportunity to vilify and libel its own country leaves the Guardian looking like the Jingoists’ Gazette. So when Ha’aretz blanches at anti-Israel venom, things must be bad. Here’s what it wrote today in advance of the decision by Britain’s University and College Union to boycott Israel’s academic institutions:

These proposals have become as regular and as predictable as Qassam attacks on Sderot. The fact that studies at the Sapir Academic College in Sderot are not taking place because of the constant rocket fire from Gaza, even though the college is not in occupied territory and Gaza is no longer occupied, apparently does not bother British academia. The fact that Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Authority, does not recognize even pre-1967 Israel, and commits acts of terror against civilians, does not matter either. These nuances did not stop one boycott initiator from saying last week that justice in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is entirely on one side.

…On the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, British academia should look realistically at peace efforts in the Middle East: Over the past decade, Israel has elected governments that have expressed the desire of a majority of Israelis for a bilateral solution of two states for two peoples and a withdrawal from most of the settlements. The withdrawal from Gaza was to have been the first stage. The victory of Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, cut off the process.

The anti-Zionist winds blowing in Europe, mainly in academia and in Britain, strengthen the position that the very birth of the Jewish state was a mistake. The European hard left regards the Law of Return as the root of all evil; however, without acknowledging the Jewish character of the State of Israel, there is not even a basis for dialogue.

Poor, bewildered Ha’aretz. It gazes upon a great evil, and is incapable of realising the extent to which day in, day out it and the constituency it represents has helped create it.