McShande: One of Worst Israeli Anti-Zionists to be Honored

McLeftist

Uri Ram is a sociologist at the Bir Zeit of the Negev, er, I mean, Ben Gurion University. You know, the Negev's "academic" bastion of anti-Zionism.

Now the Assication of Israel Studies has decided to give him an award, I guess for his efforts to see israel destroyed and replaced by a "de-zionized" Palestinian state. The leftist Zionist David Hirsh fiercely told off Ram recently in Yediot Ahronot in a piece worth reading in full:

Uri Ram’s mistake is to assume that the boycott campaign is really about Israel. But it’s not about Israel, stupid, nor is it about Palestine; it’s about Britain. Nationalism can be an insidious temptation and it can narrow our perspective; it has narrowed Ram’s perspective. He is not considering the effect or the symbolism of a campaign to exclude a significant proportion of the world’s Jewish scholars from European universities; he is not thinking about how the argument to exclude is made in British public life. Ram seems only concerned with fighting an Israeli battle against the Israeli government.

Here is BGU's PR department kvelling about Ram:

Prof. Uri Ram awarded Yonathan Shapiro Prize


Prof. Uri Ram, a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, has been awarded the Yonathan Shapiro prize for the best book in Israel Studies for the year 2008, for his book "The Globalization of Israel: McWorld in Tel Aviv, Jihad in Jerusalem".

The annual award by the Association for Israel Studies honors the memory of Shapiro (1929-1997), one of Israel’s most distinguished and influential sociologists, by recognizing outstanding scholarship in the history, politics, society and culture of Israel and pre-1948 Jewish Palestine.

Formed in 1985, the Association for Israel Studies is an international, interdisciplinary scholarly society devoted to the academic and professional study of modern Israel. The AIS is open to all individuals who are engaged in, or share an interest in, scholarly inquiry about Israel, the Zionist movement, or the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine. The Association's membership is composed of scholars from all disciplines in the social sciences and many in the humanities.

Maybe Azmi Bishara will get it next year? Or Reverand Wright?

Mc-Shanda!