WHEN SMART PEOPLE GO STUPID
Self-sabotaging Israel-bashers often harm the causes they are supposed to care most about.
The news that Greta Thunberg was detained for trespassing at a Copenhagen university building during an anti-Israel demo is yet another of the endless series of moments people like me have had to deal with lately — people you admire turning out to be anti-Zionist stooges.
Media reports showed the blonde, blue-eyed Thunberg draped in a keffiyeh, the de rigueur accoutrement for the fanatical fashionista. Or as I call it, boho blackface.
Admitting that it hurts me that someone like Greta is aligned with the Israel-haters will of course delight the “pro-Palestinians” for whom none of this is really about helping Palestinians but mostly about owning the zios.
Thunberg’s support for the extremists isn’t a big surprise. Everyone who’s anyone in the posh pol set is kind of on that wagon. But there’s an extra wrinkle. She was part of a group demanding an academic boycott against Israel.
If you want to really harm the environment, advocate an academic boycott and watch the nitrous oxide come spewing out my ears.
There is literally nothing stupider a smart person could do than endorse academic boycotts. It is the 21st-century equivalent of book-burning. It is profoundly anti-intellectual. I mean, why not just pull a full-Stalin and kill off the intelligentsia and be done with it?
That is always true in principle.
In practice, an academic boycott against Israel is unbelievably stone-stupid and self-defeating — especially for someone whose life has been devoted to saving the planet from climate change.
You could launch an academic boycott against most of the countries in the world and the combined effect on climate science would be none the worse. But a leading climate activist calling for an academic boycott of Israel? You might as well just set off a planet-wide tire fire.
Much of the world’s greatest advances in the fight against climate change and its causes are coming from Israeli research. (A few details here, here and here.)
You can fight Israel. Or you can fight climate change. But you can’t do both.
It is a sad fact of bigotry that it often overtakes reason. People will let their prejudices harm their own self-interest. That, in fact, has been the modus operandi of the entire Palestinian movement for 75 years, during which the very people (including their own leaders) who claim to be the Palestinians greatest advocates are the very ones who keep them stateless, hopeless and employed as human shields.
We could argue whether Thunberg’s activism makes her an anti-Jewish bigot. Maybe not. But her endorsement of a blanket ban on ideas from any and every Israeli no matter their politics, discipline or religion is an act of unmitigated bigotry based on national origin. The fact that the nation she targets for an academic boycott is the only Jewish one, well, come to your own conclusion.
Not unrelatedly, I’ve always found it interesting that Israel is the only country targeted for academic boycotts. Antisemitism has always been deeply embedded with envy. Since antisemites almost invariably envy what they see as Jewish intellectualism (and compared to antisemites, it’s hard to argue!) it’s no surprise that they take aim at Jewish ideas. We’ll show those Jews! Kick ’em where it hurts. Right in the books!
Thunberg, in the end, seems more committed to Palestinian nationalism than to the fate of the planet.
It reminds me of another fallen hero.
In 2013, Stephen Hawking withdrew from an academic conference in Israel in deference to the academic boycott movement. Very principled, that.
If Hawking had wanted to be truly principled, he could have put his ideology where his mouth was. Hawking, who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), depended on a computer-based communication system after losing his ability to speak, a device made possible by — you know where I’m going already, don’t you? — Israeli technology.
Israelis literally gave Stephen Hawking his voice and he used it to advocate against the very intellectual, technological and scientific advancements that allowed him to share his own ideas with the world. One hates to speak ill of the dead but what a dink.
What force could act upon these people — and by this I mean not just these two greats but the millions who subvert their own self-interest and everything they claim to value — to make common cause with the most self-sabotaging forces? The Queers for Palestine kooks. Feminists for the ayatollahs. Environmentalists against climate science. Peaceniks for Hamas.
What could possibly lead some of the most intelligent people to suspend all reason and morality to align with the worst entities on earth?
What could it be?
I don't know why you think Greta is particularly smart. Hawking? Definitely. I agree with your title -- that some smart people go stupid when it comes to Israel.
Greta and other environmentalists have been conspicuously silent about the oil spills thanks to the Houthis and thousands of hectares of forest land burned by Hezbollah rockets. But as you point out, logic is not her forte.