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Environment

Why Boycott Israel?

January 4, 2010 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 88, Issue 1

David Mendenhall certainly knows how to pick his battles (C&EN, Sept. 21, 2009, page 3). Journalists and human rights activists are "disappeared" in Russian streets with alleged government involvement, and Chechen cities are reduced to rubble with tens of thousands of casualties, but Russia doesn't seem to be high on Mendenhall's boycott list. China enables the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Sudan and is attempting the wholesale destruction of Tibetan civilization, but that doesn't seem to concern him too much, either.

But Israel is a different matter. After all, an Israeli TV exposé alleged a racist motive to the termination of an accounting program in a school in Haifa! Well, then, to the barricades!

Mendenhall's careful mention that some supporters of the boycott-Israel movement are Jewish should also not go unnoticed. What, exactly, does this prove? That not all Jews think alike? Amazing!

Joseph Kushick
Amherst, Mass.

I am amazed at how mindless bias forms conclusions without considering facts that counter that bias. It is absurd to call Israel an apartheid state when it has a large Arab population that votes, is involved in politics, and has a higher income and better life than most of the other Middle East residents. As for apartheid, the Jews who have lived in the Middle East for millennia were expelled by the Arabs, and their land, homes, businesses, property, and lives were appropriated by the various Islamic governments.

If I as a Christian or Jew were to set foot on Islamic "holy ground," I would stand a good chance of having my throat slit. (And if they didn't have me, the Shias could always murder the Sunnis and vice versa). That is apartheid!

Why don't the so-called academics consider both sides? Why are the bombardments, pogroms, and massacres of Jews by Arabs swept under the rug? Blaming the Jews for the failures of the Arabs to help themselves is false and twisted logic. The Arabs have the oil money and were given many opportunities to govern themselves, which, because they are so driven by the dogma that Jews must be eliminated, they ignored. As for the West boycotting a country, that is at the least immature.

Martin L. Kantor
Mamaroneck, N.Y.

The debate on a boycott of Israeli institutions is interesting from a number of viewpoints. First, are Jewish scientists smarter than everyone else? If not, why bring it up? Even if every Jewish member of ACS supported a boycott, would that make it more desirable or sensible?

Second, where do all the pro-boycott scientists stand on a boycott of China for suppression of dissent and occupation of Tibet, on a boycott of Saudi Arabia for total exclusion of Christian literature and ritual in the country, on a boycott of Iran for openly threatening a nuclear Holocaust, or on a boycott of Russia for repression in Chechnya and invasion of Georgia. The list could go on for pages. Why this obsession with Israel?

Third, it seems there is some separate set of rules for one nation on Earth. I am sure many of the people who are pro-boycott are well meaning, but I think it is appropriate to remember that having a specific religious orientation bestows neither truth nor intelligence, and that international standards of behavior should be applied to all nations, not just one.

Bias in international affairs is no less crippling and wrong than bias in data-point selection. One ends up with erroneous or at the very least suspect conclusions.

Harold B. Reisman
Carlsbad, Calif.

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