Letter to The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association

by Denis M. MacEoin, an academic, scholar and writer with a focus on Persian, Arabic and Islamic studies.

May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain 's great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.

I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel.

That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel . I'm speaking of a hatred that  permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out.  Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel , precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for.

It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.

That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population).

In Iran , the Bahai's (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren't your members boycotting Iran ? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa . They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks were able to do in South Africa .

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel , women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid.

Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran , where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.

Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel . I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.

Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , and Iran . They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that

protects the Bahai's.... Need I go on?

The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side.

Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument.

They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930's (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it?

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence.

It's up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

Denis MacEoin

The Cruel Choice Leads to Just One Conclusion

by Haggai Huberman, long-time Arutz-7 military and Yesha affairs correspondent, translated by Hillel Fendel.

True, the continued combat in Gaza endangers the hostages, but it's also the only chance to save most of them.

Thomas Friedman, in one of his recent New York Times columns, revealed details from an exchange between US President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu this past week. He wrote that Biden, in pushing for a Palestinian state, presented Netanyahu with the following two choices: "Either you'll go down in history as the one who rejected any chance at ending the conflict by cooperating with the Palestinians and the one who led to Oct. 7^th – or you will be the Israeli leader who granted a state to the Palestinians, guaranteed Israel's security, and led to peace with Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Muslim world."

In other words, according to Friedman, Biden was offering Netanyahu the opportunity to be remembered either as a failed Prime Minister who made a comeback, or as one who, like an idiot, turned his failure into an even greater catastrophe.

Joe Biden is the latest in an illustrious line of American presidents who never really understood the reality of the Middle East – and therefore lived in dreamland amid fantasies and who never advanced any type of positive plan for the region. More than once they actually made the situation worse. The Rogers Plan, the Reagan Plan, the Clinton Outline, the Road Map of Bush, the Obama Program – these great plans of US presidents with their unrealistic dreams all ended up in the trashcans of history.  

An example of the dangerous folly of Biden's present plan is this: As Friedman tells it, the United States is trying to promote a scenario that will include a deal to release the Israeli hostages, transfer administrative control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, and introduce a multi-national force into the Strip to maintain order. Biden has overlooked just one thing: How can both of the first two elements coexist at all, given that the main demand and condition of Hamas for any hostage release is that it retains control over Gaza?

Biden, like his predecessors, doesn't understand that there is a built-in contradiction in an offer to be the Israeli leader who both "granted a state to the Palestinians" and also "guaranteed Israel's security." A Palestinian state and Israeli security are a contradiction in terms. If, Heaven forbid, a Palestinian state should ever be established in which the IDF does not rule and control the entire expanse of Judea and Samaria, the results are unthinkable. The scenes that we saw this past Simchat Torah, of thousands of Hamas terrorists roaring through the streets of Sderot, Ofakim, Nachal Oz and Be'eri on motorcycles and pickup trucks, will be repeated in Kfar Saba, Modiin, and Rosh HaAyin. Kfar Yona (near Netanya) will look like Kfar Aza, Netiv HaLamed-Heh (outside Gush Etzion) will be as Netiv HaAsarah (immediately north of Gaza), and Givat Oz (west of Afula) will be like Nachal Oz.

Please don't give me the knee-jerk response, "It can never happen." This is exactly what will happen, as it did just recently, if a Palestinian state arises – and therefore it will not arise. Not because of Ben-Gvir, but because of the instinctive responsibility that Netanyahu and his government, and even many on the left, have for Israel's future.

The writer of a very recent Times article claims to have interviewed four Israeli generals who requested anonymity. Like every other Israeli citizen, I have no idea who these four might be, but I can say that some of their claims against the Netanyahu government are totally groundless. For instance, they reportedly said, "The diplomatic path – a deal to release the hostages – will be the fastest way to return the Israelis who remain in Hamas captivity." Pure nonsense.

But one claim of theirs is on target: "The stated goals of the war – release of the hostages and destruction of Hamas – clash with each other." This is true, although not 100%. They are right in their evaluation that dismantling Hamas will require lengthy battles, but to say that "the result will most likely cost us the hostages' lives" is far from a fact. The continued combat for the purpose of destroying Hamas endangers the captives, yes – but it is the only chance to save them, or at least most of them.

There is much to say in criticism of Netanyahu. It is intolerable from every standpoint that he does not talk for extended periods with his Defense Minister. Leaks from the Cabinet meetings indicate that some of them have turned into a circus. The ongoing problems of the citizens evacuated from their homes in the north and south are a genuine crime. And of course, how is it possible that the government allows so much "humanitarian aid" – nothing less than material aid to our enemies during wartime – to enter Gaza? Soon the world will demand that we allow Hamas to receive weapons as well…

But at the same time, to say that Netanyahu "has no strategy" is totally groundless. Netanyahu most definitely has a very clear strategy – one that is correct, in my opinion – but he simply cannot say it out loud, and certainly not to the families of the hostages. It is that "destruction of Hamas takes precedence over the release of the hostages, and even if it comes at their expense." There is no choice. Hamas has not offered a practical proposal for the hostages' freedom, other than a total Israeli surrender in its totally just war. That is, Hamas expects an immediate end to the war, an IDF withdrawal from all of Gaza, a guarantee that Hamas will continue to reign in Gaza, and even the release of all terrorists from Israeli prisons. This is of course not something that any Israeli prime minister with a minimal sense of responsibility would ever agree to. All that remains, then, is to keep on fighting, at all costs, until victory.

I have nothing bad to say about the behavior of the families of the captives. They are doing what they feel and think from their own point of view. But let us remember the words of the late MK and late Lechi fighter Geulah Cohen, who told the government ministers: "If my son were captive, I would demand that you pay any price for his release – but I would also expect you not to listen to me." Netanyahu must embrace the families, but under no circumstances follow their dictates.

---- Editorial note: Yesterday's tragic incident in which 21 IDF soldiers lost their lives in Gaza took place just 600 meters from the Jewish town of Kisufim, and was part of the critical battle for Israelis to be able to return to their homes. For a studied but not cynical explanation of what happened from a military and strategic standpoint, see this IsraelNationalNews article: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/384045