And so, late in the day, mighty Aftenposten thunders onto the stage in an editorial by Knut Olav Åmås. He makes his stance clear already in the first paragrah:
On Thursday NTNU may become the first university in the world to declare a boycott of Israel. This must not happen. Norwegian cultural workers who have been to Israel recently, can tell them why.
The last sentence is a reference to some Norwegians painters, or some such, who have come under criticism for daring to travel to Israel. By doing so, the critics will have it, they are supporting the “occupation”.
Mr.Åmås then proceeds to give his readers the basics of the story: on NTNU’s infamous seminar series, on how Minister of education Tora Aasland (Socialist Left) is to answer the question from Hans-Olav Syversen (Christian Democrats) on Wednesday, and on anti-Israel sentiment at NTNU in general. Mr.Åmås points out that what we need is more contact between Norway and Israel, not less, and that a boycott will neither work nor be a legitimate tool.
It would be interesting to see the editors of Aftenposten go one step further and question Norwegian foreign policy and anti-Israelism beyond this one, isolated incident at NTNU. The boycott proposal is just one single chapter. There is so much more, and there is no way Norway can dust its hands of things just be demanding that the NTNU board reject the boycott proposal on November 12th.
I also read this article in todays Aftenposten. Glad to see that more people speak out in the biased Norwegian media.
Academic Ranking of World Universities recently published their ranking for 2009. NTNU is on place 200-something. Several Israeli universities are considered to be better than them.
http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2009_2.jsp
So, what will be the natural thing to do if one should really boycott Israel? Maybe NTNU should think about boycotting Chinese, Russian and Turkish universities for those countries politics? And what about the U.S? And the U.K? Fuck them! Boycott, boycott!
Some computer components are made by israeli scientists, so better shut it off to support the arabs – back on handwritten letters from now on. Some cancer treatments are made in Israel. So, in case of cancer, just lay down and die (don’t support the jews by buying their medicine or receiving their treatment).
Haha, yes boycotting every non-perfect nation would make life difficult indeed. Thanks for the ARWU list!