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Oxbridge Protestors Can’t Hide Their Ignorance

by Richard Eldred
7 May 2024 7:24 PM

In the Telegraph, Oxford professor Nigel Biggar laments the support of Oxford academics and staff for pro-Palestinian student protesters at the university. Here’s an excerpt:

Three hundred and one Oxford academics and staff have signed an online letter declaring their support of the students’ “entirely reasonable” demand that the university disinvest from “Israel’s genocide in Gaza”.

There’s no cause for panic. The signatories represent a fraction of the 15,000 professors, research staff, and doctoral students at Oxford. …

Yet, what should still dismay is that highly educated grown-ups in one of the world’s leading universities – some of them occupying very senior positions – have got their history, ethics and law so wrong. …

Before 1914 the land in Palestine on which Zionists settled had been purchased from Arab landlords. Moreover, many of the settlers were refugees from murderous pogroms in Russia. Naturally, Arab peasants who had worked the land for generations resented it when their tenancies weren’t renewed. The process was legal under Ottoman law. 

In 1922, the League of Nations mandated Britain to administer Palestine, in order to build a new independent Arab state and a Jewish homeland out of the ruins of the irredeemable Ottoman Empire. In 1930, faced with violent Arab unrest, the British considered restricting Jewish immigration but decided against it out of sympathy for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. When Britain unilaterally withdrew from Palestine in February 1947, Zionists occupied only 10% of Palestinian territory. 

The main displacement of the Arab population happened after that, when invading Arab armies attempted to crush the infant State of Israel in 1948-9. This propelled 750,000 Arabs to flee, abandoning their land. Many were expelled. Yet, when Arab troops occupied Jerusalem, Jews too were forced out and about 900,000 more were driven from Arab countries, most seeking refuge in Israel. …

As for ethics, the… dreadful truth is that the prosecution of war invariably involves civilian casualties. And when there are sufficiently compelling reasons for fighting – say, self-defence against a manifestly genocidal Hamas – those casualties may be, tragically, justified. That’s why the laws of war don’t forbid the killing of non-combatants as such, but only their intentional and disproportionate killing: the objective must be a military one, and the harm done civilians incidental to the military purpose and no greater than necessary. …

On the matter of law, the International Court of Justice has not, as the Oxford signatories claim, judged the situation in Gaza as “plausibly amounting to genocide”. In paragraph 30 of its January 2024 ruling of the case brought by South Africa, the court made quite clear that it was “not required to ascertain whether any violations of Israel’s obligations under the Genocide Convention have occurred”. 

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: In the Spectator, Gareth Roberts isn’t shedding any tears over the U.K. university courses on race and colonialism that are facing the axe due to cuts.

Tags: DecolonisationIsrael-Hamas WarOxbridgeProtest

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12 Comments
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

Well Professor Nigel Biggar has certainly provided a significant uplift to my understanding of this terrible mess and I thank him for this.

The whole situation is terribly sad. Peace please.

59
-9
GlassHalfFull
GlassHalfFull
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Equality group Common Ground wrote: “The inaccuracy displayed by Biggar, as well as a conspicuous lack of rigour, must not go unchallenged. He implies that colonised societies had no political order prior to colonisation, invoking a racist, hackneyed, and fictional trope about the nature of pre-colonial societies.”

10
-8
GlassHalfFull
GlassHalfFull
1 year ago

Biggar is a long-time apologist for Western colonialism and it is no wonder he has a warped historical view of Palestine.

41
-101
FerdIII
FerdIII
1 year ago
Reply to  GlassHalfFull

And morons like you are long time apologists for the Muslim Jihad and the eradication by Muslims of Christians and Jews.

37
-28
GlassHalfFull
GlassHalfFull
1 year ago
Reply to  FerdIII

Me and the Chinese government.
China signals that October 7 was an exercise in international law.
The Chinese representative points out to the ICJ that armed resistance against the occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism.

9
-15
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

These ‘useful idiots’ come in many flavours, shapes and sizes, it seems.

https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1787887001619907030

These campus ‘protests’ have been happening all over, including in Amsterdam. Today the police went in and shifted them and the bulldozers tore down their camp though, after things got violent. I’ve seen the French police dragging students away by their legs. I think people are aware of what’s happening in the US and saying, ”No chance, don’t even think about it” before it gets too out of hand like over there. You need to nip these things in the bud before they escalate and the authorities lose control;

https://twitter.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1787764937424535844

29
-23
DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago
Reply to  Mogwai

The same police wishing they got the same support when using the same tactics to deal with lockdown protests.

How quickly people yearn for the authorities to take control when it suits their cause but those who want control will be happy to use any excuse to get it.

31
-12
DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago

From an article by Rachel Marsden highlighting the disparity between the response to woke protests and protests against Israel on college campuses:

“If those who are now upset with the campus crackdowns had bothered to help expand the Overton window – that is, the range of acceptable speech and debate – back when others with whom they disagreed were trying to pry it open as widely as possible, they’d be reaping the benefits of true free speech now. Instead, the establishment has enjoyed a culture of impunity, enabled by the woke crowd and its constant demands for safe spaces. And now the government and universities have unilaterally decided that it’s Israel that needs a safe space and protection from college kids.

To that end, the US Congress has just passed a new bill broadening the definition of anti-Semitism on university campuses to include ‘targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.’ How about another law banning criticism of Iran because it’s a collective of Muslims? Or of Russia because it’s a collective of Orthodox Christians? Or of China because it’s a collective of Buddhists? Can’t have that, because it would enable the state in question to act with carte blanche impunity by scaring critics into silence.”

“Cops cleared out a pro-Palestinian encampment this week at Paris’ Sorbonne University. Why couldn’t they just pretend that they were one of the migrant camps along the Seine and plaguing various other parts of the city for years on end? Pretty sure those migrants aren’t big fans of Israel, either. So why do they get to stay and block the city?”

“The Western establishment supports free speech and democratic values – just as long as you find yourself on the same side as those with the power to redefine them at any given moment to suit their agenda on any given issue.”

https://swentr.site/news/597066-israel-destroyed-western-universities/

26
-4
THE REAL NORMAL PODCAST
THE REAL NORMAL PODCAST
1 year ago

This was covered by the gang at Fat Pig News 🐷🇬🇧

👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS7Akrb4O6U 👈

Enjoy PIGLETS!

the-truth
Last edited 1 year ago by THE REAL NORMAL PODCAST
1
-2
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  THE REAL NORMAL PODCAST

You just reminded me of the comedy: The Piglet Files. Remember them.

0
0
Myra
Myra
1 year ago

There are multiple conflicts globally, so why has this one become a flashpoint?
Is this another example to divide and conquer? I wonder.

13
-3
Less government
Less government
1 year ago

The Globalists are rubbing their hands with glee as they watch another engineered war divide the citizens, academia and students into a boiling mass of discontent.
A divided nation is a broken nation far more susceptible to the subjugation of a new world Government.

0
0

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