Peloni: Natasha Hausdorff provides an important analysis for how the West has really failed the Pals. Well done.
Nov 18, 2023
Natasha Hausdorff, UKLFI Charitable Trust Legal Director, speaks on the motion “This House believes the West has failed Palestine” at University College Dublin, replying to Richard Boyd Barrett TD. The full debate, which provides context to Ms Hausdorff’s remarkable composure, can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7zMY…
She spoke clearly and honestly about how the West has ill-served the needs of the Palestinian people because they have supported the institutions of Hamas, the PA, the PLO, PIJ, which have oppressed their own people.
It seemed there were many in the audience who have been indoctrinated by Palestinian propaganda to blame Israel for everything, and these people had difficulty even listening to the speaker without interrupting.
We can see in this a failure of British educational institutions that have allowed this anti-Israel propaganda to fester, grow, and boil.
This is the same failure that exists in America.
At least at this university in England they allow a speaker to represent the issues fairly. In America, students at universities often protest and sometimes their protests are violent, whenever a conservative speaker is invited. Most of the time the speaker has to decline the invitation, possibly at the request of the head of the university.
Instead universities should have a zero tolerance policy for protests that intimidate or lead to cancelling a speaker’s ability to present views with which they are unfamiliar or disagree. Those students should be put on academic leave and during their leave they should be asked to study about the point of education. The point of education is to learn to be open to differing viewpoints, not to close one’s mind to any viewpoint other than one’s own.
The amount of antisemitism in the world seems to have metastasized especially amongst young people everywhere in the West. But it is not just the young people, it is spreading to people of all ages.
It takes the form of anti-Zionism, but it seems that progressives have allowed anti-Zionism to spread under their banner, and in quietly accepting these views as justified, have allowed them to grow unchecked. Jews in the US have seen this happen, but I think they have been afraid to protest about this. The far left progressives have seen that the Jews do not speak against them, so they feel emboldened. This has made the progressive Jews even more afraid, because once you back down from a sense of agency and the importance of representing your points of view, it doesn’t get easier, it gets harder.
I don’t know what these Jews will do now. Many have cancelled their alumni gifts to colleges and have protested to the colleges directly.
Others are just hoping to quietly support Israel, but not shift from their overall progressive viewpoint. They still see “conservatives” as people with whom they don’t want to be identified.
Jews need to unite and disregard viewpoints on other issues. There is much divisiveness in the US that separates Jews from each other, but at this time we need to work together to stop the spreading of Jew hatred.