Photo: Brent Smith/Wikimedia Commons
Common sense would suggest that demonizing the nation-state of the Jewish people is antithetical to the principles of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”
Nevertheless, that’s exactly what Butler University’s Student Government Association’s (SGA) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Board propagated through their co-sponsorship of last week’s “Boycott and Safe Protesting 101” event with the local Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter.
The event included, inter alia, the promotion of artwork that falsely labeled Israel an apartheid state, glamorized the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, donned the phrase “Free Palestine” (meaning the erasure of Israel), and depicted Israeli soldiers purposely killing civilians. (In reality, as former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan Col. Richard Kemp has recognized, the Israeli army’s efforts to safeguard the rights of civilians in combat zones have been exemplary when compared with other armies engaged in asymmetric warfare.)
Such propagandizing necessarily marginalizes Israelis and those who support the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their indigenous homeland. Thus, it’s unsurprising that only a week ago the SGA struck down a resolution condemning antisemitism “of any form, including all forms of BDS.”
Butler’s student government should stand on the side of the truth and disavow SJP’s disinformation.