Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
Israeli universities do not undermine human rights. Israel is one of the freest democracies in the world and political dissent is widespread on Israeli campuses. Israeli universities have a level of political independence we can only envy in our own universities, which are unduly politically influenced and sickeningly politically correct. When the University of Johannesburg should be focusing on academic excellence and freedom, or the problems assailing SA, it wastes its time going on a crusade against Israel. There is more academic freedom in Israel than here and while political correctness has become the dictatorship of the left in SA, universities abroad are flourishing. – Rhoda Kadalie, writing in Business Day (and demonstrating a rather limited knowledge of conditions in Israel)
