Diana Muir sent me the following -

On 5 December, 2004, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London will host a flagrantly anti-Semitic conference,“ On 5 December, 2004, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London will host a flagrantly anti-Semitic conference,“ Resisting Israeli apartheid strategies and principles”

This conference has crossed the line from legitimate political criticism, to vile anti-Semitism because the featured speakers:

• Declare support for all national liberation movements, except the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, Zionism.
• Deny the right of the Jewish State to exist.
• Approve of the policies of EU member states, such as Hungary, Ireland, and Greece, that privilege the right of individuals of Hungarian, Irish, and Greek ethnicity to become citizens, while condemning the Jewish State for providing citizenship to Jews.
• Call for the slaughter, on sight, of members of a particular ethnic group. Tom Paulin, the keynote speaker at the conference has said of Jewish immigrants to Israel,"They should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them."

You may wish to take the following action -

ACTION: Write to: Professor Colin Bundy, Director,

School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London cb3@soas.ac.uk

SAMPLE LETTER

Dear Professor Bundy,

In 1937 the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, appalled by the vicious anti-Semitism then rampant in Germany, refused an invitation to attend the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the University at Heidelberg. Long before anyone dreamed that German anti-Semitism would lead to the extermination of millions, these universities stood up and said that flagrant anti-Semitism was unacceptable to civilized people.

To its shame, Harvard University did not take such a stand. It sent crimson-robed professors to Heidelberg to shake hands with the Nazi leadership. Then it invited the German Consul to lay a wreath to the WWI dead in the Harvard chapel. The wreath was decorated with the Nazi swastika.

The School of Oriental and African Studies cannot stop suicide bombers from targeting Jewish civilians, but it can take a stand against violent anti-Semitism by declining to invite, as a keynote speaker, Tom Paulin, a man who has urged that immigrants to Israel be “shot dead,” declared that he has “nothing but hatred for them,” and expressed his approbation of suicide bombers on the grounds that “attacks on civilians in fact boost morale.”

Sincerely yours,