Bitchell: Friendly Reminder, Israel Doesn’t Give A Shit About OUSU

Last week Christ Church medic Mahmood Naji wrote George Galloway a letter saying the MP “humiliated” him. Students applauded Naji. This week they humiliated their own Israeli peers, debating whether to pass boycotts or sanctions against Israeli companies.

Yesterday, OUSU voted against the motion. But that doesn’t excuse the month long common room debate revolving around whether or not to sanction Israelis and remove them from an academic and political debate about their nation’s destiny – not Great Britain’s or the United States’s. Policing Israel is no different than George W. Bush policing other foreign states.

Sure, the motion’s supporters have presented this motion as political and moral: Israel commits crimes against Palestine, and therefore, it’s fair to punish the citizens that work for companies in the country that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government rules.

The argument makes sense—if you leave out the fact that it’s a two party disagreement, Israel also has solid arguments for wanting the Gaza Strip, and the reason the debacle is so controversial is because both Israel and Palestine are in the right and wrong.

Passing sanctions could lead the pro-Palestinian group to success, except for the fact that the OUSU is a student government.

Big name, big font, big heads

Yes, Oxford is the most prestigious university on the planet – but that’s it. It’s a university, and OUSU is seventy-nine students in a theatre voting about common room politics that offend their peers and have the chance to financially harm nobody except Israeli workers.

Netanyahu would probably never even have heard about the motion, and protesting Israel alienates certain students and makes others look even more arrogant and elitist than they already appear.

Netanyahu would have had some words for OUSU

To think that Oxford passing sanctions against Israel would have motivated change in the Middle East is ridiculous. It’s a like a boy with a two inch dick walking into a locker room, flashing his pinkie size cock to well hung football players, and then arguing that his winkie matters.

Of course, I’m not an expert on Middle Eastern politics (I study English), but I grew up in the American South, one of the most racist regions in the Western world, and I know racism where and when I see it. In America we call this breed of racism “institutional racism.”

Our country continues to battle this problem every day. Corporations pay minorities less, and corrupt judges fill our prisons with non-violent black drug offenders, as white murderers walk away with manslaughter charges. But often institutional racism operates beneath the surface. Even considering passing sanctions against Israel is blatantly offensive.