Day 223, April 24th, 2011

To the Editor, The Courier


Dear Sir,

I have just read your disturbing article about two St. Andrews students and their anti-Semitic rants in halls of residence and an online site. Students are allowed some latitude for wild behaviour, given their youth. But they are also expected to be intelligent, whereas this behaviour displayed all the thoughtfulness of a pack of baying hyenas. One of them compounds his vulgarity by describing the Israeli flag as a ‘terrorist symbol’. Are these stupid young men completely unaware of British and Jewish history? Do they really not know that the Jewish flag (based on a Jewish prayer shawl) was proudly raised by Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust to say to the rest of the world ‘We have survived the worst you could do to us, and now we will stand on our own feet and fight back when the next wave of Nazis tries to destroy us.’ That next wave came within two years, when five Arab armies tried to commit genocide on every Jew in Palestine. Yet these young thugs say they despise that and taunt Jews to make their point. I was a student for twelve years, four at Edinburgh, and in all that time students I knew had the good taste, discretion, or plain common sense not to behave like Nazi sympathizers. Students like those at St. Andrews have forfeited all rights to be taken seriously as decent human beings. They are clearly poisonous, and their presence on the campus should no more be welcomed than that of any other group of racists. The university must send them down for good and send out the message that anti-Semitism is no more acceptable than hatred of blacks, gays, or the handicapped. We have done with that sort of thing. Britain fought a long war to defeat it. We cannot let ourselves be betrayed by two immature, unintelligent, and boorish hooligans.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Denis MacEoin

15 Erskine Court

Lindisfarne Close

Newcastle upon Tyne



0191 281 8444



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