Tom Hickey: 'We have a duty to challenge Israel through Boycott'

University lecturer and Trade Union executive Dr Tom Hickey argues that we have 'not just a right, but a duty' to speak of boycotting Israel, in the light of Israel's cultural assault on the Palestinian people.

Dr Hickey is principal lecturer in Philosophy and Politics at the University of Brighton, Chair of the Brighton University & College Union and a member of the National Executive Committee of the UCU.

Published by Sussex Palestine Society, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=59100596010

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News & Politics

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• israel
• boycott
• palestine
• Sussex University
• tom hickey
• palestine society

[virtuosogenius]

@PForPLondon - In 1947 the UN Gen. Assembly, under Res. 181, partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem internationalised. There were 33 votes for, 13 against, 10 abstentions and one absent. Other states partitioned in the 20thC were: Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, Korea, Germany, India, Vietnam, Pakistan, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, & Czechoslovakia. If anything, the principal act of ethnic cleansing came from some Arab Moslems not accepting infidels. Hence '48 War.

[PersonForPeaceLondon]

The phrase " ethnic cleansing" is applied exactly accurately, as defined in international law: what was done to the Palestinians in 1947-48 (and later) corresponds almost word-for-word to the definition of ethnic cleansing: "the planned deliberate removal from a specific territory, persons of a particular ethnic group, by force or intimidation."

[virtuosogenius]

There isn't scope, with 500 characters, to thrash out the rights and wrongs whole Israel-Palestine conflict. But we can reach an understanding of the real meaning of words. Tom Hickey, as a lecturer in Philosophy at Brighton University, need to be exposed as a Trotskyist propagandist - and as an activist of the tiny Socialist Workers Party. And as an SWP propagandist, he chooses to misuse the word "extirpation" so as to mislead. Now PForPLondon has misused the phrase "ethnic cleansing".

[virtuosogenius]

Let's assume, for the sake of argument that Pappe is a respectible source and that he doesn't bend the data for the purposes of his famous anti-Israel propaganda. None-the-less, what you are describing is not what is meant by the term 'ethnic cleansing'. More than one million Tutsis killed in Rwanda or the cold blooded mass murder of Bosnians Muslim by Serbs, or 300,000 murdered in Darfur is "ethnic cleansing" . Huge population exhanges occurred after WW2 in Europe. This is not extirpation.

[PersonForPeaceLondon]

Ilan Pappe's book (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) is a well-researched, scholarly work (just one of many, in fact) by a respected academic of internationally recognised reputation -- rather more credible than your scribblings on the internet in defense of the indefensible. Readers can decide for themselves who is the "freelance nutter" here.

[PersonForPeaceLondon]

Ilan Pappe's book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" is very well documented : his primary sources include the IDF's own records, as well as contemporary diaries from Ben Gurion and notes from his closest group of military advisers. They all show very clearly that there was an organized plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine (removal of the people that call themselves then, as now, Palestinian) long before there was any Arab attack on Israel.

[virtuosogenius]

Further to me previous comment, I have just noticed that petersz98 has provided us all with a classic example of a "freelance nutter saying hate-filled rubbish".

[virtuosogenius]

You need to cite a credible source for "historian's.documented planned campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians." There is no extirpation. There are always a few freelance nutters to say hate-filled rubbish - but they speak for themselves. Palestinian ethnic identity is a very recent concept. In 1948 this identity barely existed. Now 10.5 million describe themselves as such and numbers are growing fast. Wars have been, frequent, fierce & tragic, but with few dead by World standards.

[petersz98]

The Zionist Third Reich must be destroyed!

Zionism = Nazism!

[PersonForPeaceLondon]

"Extirpation" is not hyperbole -- it is a factually accurate description of what Israeli historian has documented as a planned campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.

The boycott is in fact a very moderate response to the crimes which have been perpetrated against Palestinians.