Dear Academic Proponent of Boycotting the World’s Only Jewish State:

I am writing to express to you my disgust at your highly selective outrage and desire to promote the boycott of the world’s only Jewish State. A boycott that I am certain you and your fellow anti-Israel boycott supporters will claim (and rationalize) as not being driven by the world’s oldest form of racism but rather by your genuine desire to promote human rights throughout the world and to fight for “Palestinian Human Rights.”

Of course, since no one in your organization has called for the boycott of Syria, Kuwait, Iran, Sudan, North Korea, China, Russia, Cuba, Myanmar, Turkey, Pakistan etc., anyone paying attention to actual, extreme human rights abuses and continued military occupation (for example, China and Tibet, Turkey and Cyprus, Pakistan and Balochistan, Russia and Ukraine, Russia and Chechnya, etc.) knows what you really care about. It is also plain that your concern cannot be the rights of Palestinian Arabs, who have been massacred in Syria, denied basic civil rights in Lebanon, expelled from their homes in Kuwait, deprived of all civil rights and religious freedom by Hamas in Gaza, etc. as none of these countries or entities are the subject of your poisonous calls for a boycott.

I am curious if any of you or your peers calling for the boycott of the one Jewish State have ever considered why the Palestinian Arabs have turned down having a 23rd independent Arab state in what has been recently referred to as the “Palestinian Territories” at least 6 times, including in 1937, 1947, 1948, 1967, 2001, and 2008? Do you recognize, as the Palestinian Authorities’ President for Life Mahmoud Abbas recently admitted, that as recently as 2008 Israel offered the Palestinian Authority an independent state in all of Gaza and almost all of Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank) as well as a capital in the eastern portion of Jerusalem, and that Abbas turned it down cold without even making a counteroffer?

Does it bother you in the least that while you call for the boycott of the only Jewish State in the world that you ignore human rights’ violations galore by most if not all of the world’s self-identified Muslim States or Communist States? Do beheadings in Saudi Arabia of people convicted for trying to express their political or religious views not trouble your organization? Do thousands of political prisoners in North Korea or Cuba bother you? Or is it just Jews defending themselves that bothers you?

Does it bother you that in Hamas ruled Gaza that Gays are hung or dragged from the backs of cars and motorcycles? Does it bother you that under the rule of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority incites Arabs to kill Jews with its state-controlled media while Abbas and his cronies steal $Billions in EU and US aid money meant for the Palestinians that you claim to care so much about? Or is it only the notion of Jewish self-determination and independence that incites you to push for a boycott?

When you are pushing your colleagues in Academia and elsewhere to boycott the world’s only Jewish State, does it bother you that this State for which you reserve such exclusive vitriol is the only State in the Middle East and North Africa where there is freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and where the rights of members of the LGBT community are protected as a matter of law? When you are advocating for the wholesale punishment of only the citizens of the one Jewish State, do you stop to consider that this is the one of the few states in the world that has had two female Prime Ministers? Where a woman has served as the Chief Justice of the highest court in the land? Where Jews, Christians, and Muslims serve in the Parliament and at the highest levels in the Army? Or do you simply not care about LGBT rights, women’s rights or religious freedom anywhere else in the Middle East or North Africa? You only want to preach from the relative safety of your ivory towers at the only Jewish State?

When you vote on your call to boycott the only Jewish State do you ever stop to think what would happen to the Jews in Israel if they stopped defending themselves? If Israel did not have the checkpoints and the security barrier that you and your fellow academics complain about and claim are so racist? Have you considered what has happened to defenseless minorities in other parts of the Middle East? Do the massacres of the Yazidis trouble you? Or did the gassing of Kurds keep you awake at night? When 1300 Israelis were murdered in non-stop suicide bombings from 2002 – 2003 that are now largely prevented by those “awful” checkpoints and security barriers, did you weep for those dead Jews? Did you take any legislative action to try and protect any Jewish lives?

We all know the answer to the foregoing questions. We all know that you don’t care about Jewish lives or Jewish freedom or justice for the Jewish people. We know you don’t care very much about human rights violations taking place anywhere else in the world, including even against Palestinian Arabs (as long as the alleged violator isn’t Jewish). And we all know why, because your boycott is animated by the same thing that animates all hatred, delegitimization and demonization of Israel – the oldest form of racism – anti-Semitism.