What Kind of Academic Signs These Anti-Israel Petitions?

Fred Gottheil
American Thinker
05 September '10


A year and a half ago, January 2009, David C. Lloyd, Professor of English at the University of Southern California, wrote a three-page petition concerning U.S. relations with Israel, which he addressed to incoming President Barack Obama. His petition was endorsed by nine hundred signatories, most located at universities and colleges in the United States, but some affiliated with academic institutions in Canada, United Kingdom, and even Israel.

Lloyd's petition was notable not only for its criticism of Israeli policy -- that is standard fare among the set of academics who subscribe to a post-colonial view of the world -- but rather for its demonizing of the Jewish state.

His technique was anything but novel. It associated Israel with pre-Mandela South Africa. Lloyd's South African-linking brushstrokes were many and crude, citing "collective punishment," "apartheid regime," "racist regime," "besieged Bantustans," "crimes against humanity," and "ethnocidal atrocities." These were layered on his fact-distorting canvas like icing on a poisoned cake.

The petition was written just weeks following the December 2008 Gaza war, which was Israel's response to the more than six thousand rockets launched randomly and sporadically from Gaza into Israel over a three-year period beginning in 2005. While Professor Lloyd describes in much detail the damage inflicted on Gaza by the Israeli response, the petition completely ignores the casus belli -- Hamas' rocket-shelling and terrorist activity. Even Egypt warned Hamas prior to the Gaza war that its violent provocations would invite an Israeli response, and when that response came, Egypt pointed its accusing finger at Hamas. That, too, Lloyd ignored.

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