Deconstructing Israel: Academics Meet to Question Israel’s Right to Exist March 19, 2015 by Richard L. Cravatts 4 Comments
Seeming to give credence to Orwell’s quip that “some ideas are so stupid they could only have been thought of by intellectuals,” faculty at the University of Southampton in England will be sponsoring a three-day conference in April, “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism,” conceived of to “explore the relatedness of the suffering and injustice in Palestine to the foundation and protection of a state of such nature and asks what role International Law should play in the situation.”
Not content with the way history and law have worked out independent of their intellectual meddling, the conference sponsors claim that the event will have great scholarly value and “. . . is unique because it concerns the legitimacy in International Law of the Jewish state of Israel” and “will focus on exploring themes of Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism; all of which are posed by Israel’s very nature.”
What does that elevated and academically-inane doublespeak actually mean? Obviously, it is clear, both by the questions posited as the themes of inquiry of the conference, not to mention the list of toxic intellectuals who will present papers at the event, that the purpose and end product of the conference is yet another formalized indictment of Israel—nicely disguised as a bit of academic inquiry and brave new scholarship.
Yes, when we heard the news last evening about the US regime likely going the UN route to force the two state solution, my immediate thought is that this will ultimately lead to the application of R2P when Israel refuses to allow her nation to be torn asunder.
Conferences such as the one mentioned in the article are designed to really start shaping world opinion, I guess that we will be seeing a LOT more of that going on....