British university seminar to question Israel’s legitimacy

A British university conference calling Israel’s existence into question has come under fire, with at least one lawmaker urging the institution to reconsider the event.

The University of Southampton will hold a three-day symposium in April with the stated goal of shifting the debate away from “Israeli actions in the 1967 Occupied Territories” and onto “themes of legitimacy… posed by Israel’s very nature.”

The forum will examine the manner in which “injustice in historic Palestine” was shaped by Israel’s creation, as well as constitutional bases in international law that may rectify the transgression inherent in the establishment of the Jewish state, according to the university’s website.

Mark Hoban, a member of Parliament and former British treasury minister, dubbed the conference “provocative and unhelpful” and called on the university’s leadership to cancel it.

“While I fully support the principles of freedom of speech and the right to question, I find it concerning that an institution as respected as the University of Southampton should host a hard-line, one-sided forum questioning and delegitimizing the existence of a democratic state,” Hoban said.

“Whatever one’s thoughts on the actions of its government, the State of Israel stands as the only democracy in a region blighted by political, religious and social persecution,” he said.

“The Southampton University conference is uniquely singling out Israel, the world’s only Jewish country, to challenge its very existence. At a time when violent anti-Semitism is on the rise and Jewish students feel intimidated by extremist rhetoric on UK campuses, this 3-day conference is ill-timed at best and dangerous at worst,” said Joseph Stoll, UK Campus Director with pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs.

Anti-Israel resolutions on university campuses and in academia have gained traction in the West in recent months, in what critics have linked to rising levels of anti-Semitism across Europe.

According to twin polls publicized in January, half of Britain’s Jews fear they have no long-term future in Britain or Europe, while nearly one in two British people hold anti-Semitic views.

Still, British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted in February that Jews were safe in the United Kingdom and that they were pleased to call the UK home.

“While I am prime minister I promise we will fight anti-Semitism with everything we have got,” Cameron said.

“Britain is proud to be a multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy,” he noted, responding also in part to a report released early February by a London-based anti-Semitism watchdog that claimed 2014 had seen the highest-ever number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain.

Anti-Israel activity on campus is not confined to Europe.

A questionnaire conducted by the Louis D. Brandeis Center and Trinity College found that 54% of Jewish university students across America have experienced some form of anti-Semitism during the school year.

In South Africa in February, the student representative council at the Durban University of Technology in South Africa urged the institution’s management to expel its Jewish students, allegedly over their support for Israel.