Activities at SOAS become ever more disgusting. An article in the latest issue of the School's magazine 'Spirit' -- a glossy publication freely available in the Union lounge -- is entitled 'When Only Violence Will Do' by Nasser Amin. It urges the destruction of Israel and violence against Israelis. In summary, it says that all Jewish 'colonies' (not just those after 1967) are wrongful and must be dismantled, violence is justified, Zionists must be exposed, and all Israelis are legitimate targets. Here are some exerpts:
'Those who espouse a negotiated 'settlement' ought to come to terms with the inconsistency of their view: it is contradictory to call for a West Bank-Gaza State and affirm the 'right' of the Israeli state to continue to exist. Rational consistency demands that if some Jewish colonies are wrongful, then all Jewish colonies are wrongful and all ought to be dismantled, not just those established after the arbitrary year, 1967. What consistent ethical principle would decree otherwise? Too many fail to recognise that pre-67 Zionism is just as iniquitous as post-67 Zionism. There are many in our world who are Zionists yet fail to recognise it. They ought to be exposed...
'People who are in a wretched state, being deprived of basic moral justice, because of the ongoing deliberate actions of others, have a right to violence against them, if no other course of action is as likely to meet their objective of improving their predicament. In particular, those peoples who are being denied a right to self-determination in their native soil by foreign colonialist occupations - a right their tormentors take for granted with respect to themselves - and suffer as a result have a right to armed resistance, if no other way is available. By contrast, there is no right to violence if the objective is ultimately to exploit further, conquer even more and steal more land, as is the case with Israeli violence.
'The oft repeated view that Israeli victims of Palestinian violence are mainly 'innocents', as Sheikh Yusuf implies, faces the easy objection that those who benefit from the immoral actions of a colonial state in which they have chosen to reside cannot be considered as innocent. They are personally complicit in national wrongdoing, exacerbated by the fact that all Israeli adults, including the women, serve in what is indubitably an imperialist-terrorist organisation, the IDF. By choosing to raise their children in a colony at war with an indigenous people, the Israelis jeopardise the lives of these genuine innocents, who deserve to be protected from the crimes of their parents. Non-violent resistance is no solution either. We know what the Israelis can do to unarmed peace activists. Violence, rather than feebleness, generates power for the oppressed".
Tony Blair's government is currently convulsed by attempts to get its draconian anti-terror laws onto the statute book on the grounds that it is essential to protect people from terrorist violence. Yet here is an outright example of incitement to violence, murder and terrorism from within a so-called place of learning. We already have laws against incitement to violence. Should they not now be used?
This article should surely be brought to the attention of the police. We are getting to the stage where it is becoming dangerous even to express support for Israel. When is the government going to acknowledge the anti-Jewish poison that has been released into the national bloodstream and start taking measures to counter it? When is the Jewish community going to stop hiding behind its collective armchair and start making a public protest about all this? Are the SOAS and London University administrators going to wait until a Jewish student is beaten or killed before tackling this lethal hatred that makes such a mockery of an academic institution?
