This is a cross-post by David Collier
Today, 01st April 2017 was the second day in the three day anti-Israel conference in Cork. As I arrived in the morning, I was still feeling somewhat bitter over the events of the day before. This the central difference between the usual anti-Israel events and a conference such as this. There is simply no recovery time. Speech after speech, panel after panel, and then day after day. It is as difficult to digest as it is relentless.
In my mind I was still going over the twisted talk by Oren Ben Dor as I had breakfast. And was replaying the outrageous comments by Ghada Karmi as I walked towards the venue for the second day. When you go to anti-Israel meetings you become accustomed to ludicrous comments, but these people are academics. What on earth was Kharmi doing suggesting Palestinians are the real descendants of the Jews?
Three central pillars of Cork
Just as was originally intended at Southampton, Ben-Dor had split up the conference into three areas of discussion. Legitimacy (showing Israel has no legitimacy), Exceptionalism (showing Israel is an Apartheid Settler colonial state) and responsibility (the ‘what to do about it’ section).
The first day had seen the discussion of legitimacy, so today was all about how disgusting a nation these anti-Israel activists think Israel is. Each of the papers were rancid, none more so than the one by Shalhoub-Kevorian, that dealt with children and what were described as ‘death zones’. It was little more than a desperate and despicable attempt by an activist to use children as an academic sympathy toy.
Do read the rest of David’s post here
