It should come as no surprise that Mohammed Emzawi — known as "Jihadi John" to those who saw the chilling ISIS videos — was a product of the British university system, columnist
Douglas Murray writes in London's Express newspaper.
While Emzawi had been a student at Westminster University, many British institutions of higher learning have become havens of rabid anti-Semitism.
Earlier this month, students at the Cambridge Union decided to debate the motion entitled: "Israel is a rogue state."
During the debate, Cambridge students listened as a visiting American activist explained "that Israel is worse than North Korea. And they agreed with him,"
writes Murray, associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, a British research group monitoring terrorism and radical ideology.
Next month, the University of Southampton takes its place on the "bandwagon of hate," Murray reports, with an event labeled as a conference aimed at bringing "justice and enduring peace in historic Palestine."
Southampton officials claim that the April 17-19 event is important as "a matter of free speech." But judging from the lineup of speakers, the only people who will be exercising that freedom are fervent enemies of Israel.
One speaker calls Israel a "rogue state" and routinely calls for its destruction. Another blasts companies like Ikea that have business dealings in Israel, saying they are complicit in "human-rights abuses."
Panel after panel consists of speakers with a track record of calling for boycotts of Israel and depicting it as the root of evil in the Middle East.
The conference is "dedicated to annihilation," Murray writes. "So, how appropriate that as the delegates finish their taxpayer subsidized lunch on the first day, their 'after lunch' speaker will be the disgraced academic
Richard Falk, who claims that Israel behaves like Nazis."
The Israelis-as-Nazis theme is apparently "common" among the people heading to Southampton next month. Murray says that those putting together the conference liken Israeli security policies to those of the Nazis "because they wish to taunt" the Jews, Hitler's No. 1 target.
This "is what passes for academic debate in Southampton in 2015: vile and routine Jew baiting," he adds. "You really do have to put some effort into putting together such a one-sided hate-fest."
These "anti-Israel obsessives are fringe weirdos in wider society," Murray concludes. "One of the only places they are not is university campuses. It is high time that non-Jews stood with Jews against this rising hatred."
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