Joke’s on them
On this week’s AJN Tech and Innovation page, you will read about a team at Technion–Israel Institute of Technology working on research to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy.
Meanwhile, the Weizmann Institute of Science is looking at new ways of cancer detection, in research contributed to by Tel Aviv University, which, as we previously reported, houses a team that may have found the link between melanoma and brain cancer.
Bar-Ilan University has been at the forefront of COVID-19 research in Israel and scientists at Ben-Gurion University have developed a way to recycle phosphoric acid wastewater to ward off environmental disasters.
And at the Hebrew University, researchers have developed “human-on-a-chip” technology to test drugs without harming animals.
That’s merely a snippet – from AI to climate tech, to quantum computing and cybersecurity, to agritech and beyond, Israeli universities are at the forefront of research to benefit the whole planet.
In August this year, the Hebrew University, Technion and Weizmann Institute were all named among 2022’s top 100 academic institutions by the prestigious Shanghai Ranking of World Universities.
Yet, despite all this, delegates at the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) conference saw fit over the weekend to pass a motion condemning the nation that houses this entrepreneurial spirit and endorsing the right of members to support BDS – which calls to cut ties with the above institutions.
The wording of the motion contains the usual litany of false accusations including “apartheid”, “settler colonial control” and “ethnic cleansing”, and calls for the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism to be opposed.
Those who put and voted for the motion didn’t see fit to condemn Russia for its brutal eight-month war on Ukraine, or Iran’s ayatollahs for their human rights abuses as protests on that nation’s streets gain momentum.
China’s anti-democratic regime and its persecution of Uyghurs likewise went ignored.
It makes it all the more ludicrous that the drafters of the motion saw fit to include a token line opposing antisemitism.
This time, however, the joke is on them. Their call to ostracise Israel and turn their backs on research that has the potential to improve life for all mankind truly exposes them for the ignorant fools that they are.
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