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.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.