What’s the harm in a postponed lecture? |
The British Museum in London has postponed, at short notice, a lecture on ancient Jewish history which was to have been given by Paul Collins, the museum’s keeper of the Department of the Middle East, after it became known that ‘a significant proportion’ of those registered to attend were intending to disrupt the lecture. The lecture would have adduced archaeological evidence to show that a Jewish kingdom existed in Palestine well before the Islamic presence, giving the lie to the assertion that Jews were late-coming interlopers in the land who displaced the indigenous Arab people.
The point here is not to become embroiled in a scholarly disputation but to show how unprepared modern Israel has been for the intellectual war now being waged against Diaspora Jews. This is a war on several fronts. As things stand, the threat to disrupt the lecture has succeeded, and the........