BDS, Turkey and the silence of the (anti-semitic) anti-Israel academics - by A.J. Caschetta

...Real suppression, however, making their persecution fantasies seem absurd, is mostly met with silence. Where is the moral indignation? Yet, there is no shortage of howls of "injustice" and BDS movements criticizing even the slightest perceived infringement of human rights in Israel, a country that ensures human rights and equality under the law to all its citizens.

A.J. Caschetta..
Gatestone Institute.
05 August '17..

In Turkey, academics are currently at the mercy of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who demands their compliance and threatens dissenters. After last July's failed coup (for which Erdogan blamed an American scholar), a series of emergency decrees have specifically targeted Turkish academia. One would think this assault would raise ire from the ivory towers, but as Turkey slides deeper into totalitarianism, academia yawns. The failure of many professors to stand up vigorously and publicly for what they profess is especially notable in those whose careers are focused on the demonization of Israel through various attempts to destroy Israel by suffocating it economically.

All right, it is summer break and everyone is off doing research, writing novels and looking for grant money. But Erdogan's crackdown is not new. Most of it was ignored until January 2016 when he targeted a group of Turkish scholars who called themselves "Academics for Peace" for producing a petition demanding that the Turkish government "end the massacre of the Kurdish people."

Since the failed coup, Erdogan has increasingly behaved like a paranoid dictator flexing his muscles. In the last 12 months alone, he has closed at least 15 universities and confiscated their property. Invoking Article 301 of the Turkish penal code – which amorphously criminalizes insults to "Turkishness," the Turkish government or the Turkish military – he has also closed down numerous publishing houses. He has forced Turkish journals to remove from their editorial boards scholars who criticize him. Hundreds have been fired and blacklisted. Unable to work in Turkey and, with their passports confiscated, unable to leave, they represent the worst-case scenario of every comfortable Western academic who has ever bemoaned the "chilling effect" of Republican presidents and congresses, or who have proclaimed as "McCarthyism" any criticism of their own work. Real suppression, however, making their persecution fantasies seem absurd, is mostly met with silence. Where is the moral indignation? Yet, there is no shortage of howls of "injustice" and BDS movements criticizing even the slightest perceived infringement of human rights in Israel, a country that ensures human rights and equality under the law to all its citizens.

A letter condemning the Erdogan regime and supporting the persecuted academics is the bare minimum one might expect from an easily-piqued group of people who write for a living. Escalations in severity might include organized protests, media events and other kinds of activism to reach audiences beyond readers of The Chronicle of Higher Education and InsideHigherEd. Enlisting the help of celebrities comes next, followed by attempts at isolation in one of the few ways possible to an academic institution, such as cancelling conferences and sporting events convened in the offending state or country. Next come boycotts, calls for divesture of university-controlled funds and sanctioning various individuals.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.