Monday, December 13, 2010

LSE 's New Middle East Centre eradicates Israel






In recent years the prestigious LSE (London School of Economics) has seen an increasing number of anti-Israel incidents, including an occupation of the Old Theatre in 2009 that was ended only after the School's craven capitulation to the demands of the anti-Israel extremists. Only last week the LSE hosted rabid hate merchant Abdul Bari Atwan, which is especially ironic since last year it banned the brilliant Douglas Murray, on 'security grounds' simply because he was prepared to speak in defence of Israel.

It still comes as a great shock, however, that the LSE has inaugurated a new Middle East Centre, funded by £9.2 million from the United Arab Emirates, which appears to not recognise the state of Israel. In the map accompanying the article (see left) about the new Centre in the latest copy of the LSE Connect Magazine, Israel - and all of its cities - has been completely eradicated. It certainly cannot be for reasons of space since Gaza, Lebanon and Beirut are all clearly marked in the space where Israel should be.

It is difficult to understand why an outstanding scholarly institute like the LSE would wish to be associated with a Centre like this. But clearly the LSE is taking money from wealthy Arab regimes to further delegitimize the only true democracy in the Middle East and promote the cause of Islamic fundamentalism.

See important update to this post (15 January 2011)

10 comments:

Juniper in the Desert said...

The LSE to me, has never been a beacon of truth and real knowledge, always been tainted by the left.

This has been allowed to happen by Jews themselves. A friend and I went to a debate there with Gavri Bargil, earlier this year. He was to speak up for Israel, having been sent by the Israeli embassy in London. The students that were there were mainly Jewish with one arab.
Mr Bargil spoke as if Israel was not being attacked by islamist terrorists 24/7 for the last 62 years. He talked about the 2-state solution. When we countered that Hamas charter promises to kill all the Jews and take Israel from them, he just denied it and so did all the students. It was appalling how wilfully ignorant they were. And now they are upset! THEY have no one to blame but themselves!!

Mark Wright said...

The Gavri Bargil story does not surprise me at all. The Israeli embassy in London is overtly defensive and most of the staff have no understanding at all of what they are up against here. Although Ron Prosser is quite an effective speaker the other people they put up are a waste of space.

Daphne Anson said...

This is an important post, Edgar - thanks for it. In fact, your blog in general is impressive. I don't know whether you realise I made use of it for a blog I did on Sunday night re the deficiencies of the JC.

Matt said...

Good find Edgar. Just discovered your blog via the JC, you're a diamond geezer.

So what can we do about this then?

Daphne Anson said...

And I'm the Diamond Gal who posted about it on the JC - under another alias that I've long used over there to escape a crazy and obnoxious antisemitic stalker. I am blogging something at present in which I'm mentioning the LSE development en passant and will naturally hat tip this post. I probably won't be finished before the morning, though!

YMedad said...

Actually, the map only illustrates main problem: it's still too small. As Efraim Kishon famously quipped, it's the only country not big enough to include its name on maps.

Mark Wright said...

Matt said:

>So what can we do about this then?

I've actually had a kind of positive response from the LSE Connect magazine. Will post an update if and when they publish a suitable apology.

YMedad said:

>Actually, the map only illustrates main problem: it's still too small. As Efraim Kishon famously quipped, it's the only country not big enough to include its name on maps.

The map is 'big' enough to include Gaza. This type of map is a very explicit part of the deligitimization campaign.

Daphne Anson said...

My blog's up now, with mention of this post as its lead-in ...

Unknown said...

In case it's helpful, here is the LSE's response to this issue

"To illustrate a news story in our magazine LSE Connect about the new Middle East Research centre at LSE, we used a small stock image of a map of the region without realising that, while Israel was coloured in on the map, it was not identified in text. This oversight was unfortunately not picked up during the production process. We apologise for any offence caused by its publication and we have updated the online version of LSE Connect to remove the map. We will publish an apology for this error in the next print edition of the magazine.


The image did not come from the Middle East Centre. It was intended as a graphic device only and does not reflect the breadth of the Centre's research. The Middle East Centre is developing research and teaching on the societies, economies, polities, and international relations of the region, which includes Arab states, Iran, Israel, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Anonymous said...

It is not 'prestigious' and it is not 'scholarly'. For years it has been an antisemitic cesspit, as anyone even slightly familiar with it know. It's not quite as bad yet as the filthy SOAS, but it's getting there.
Yoni