HISTORY DOESN’T REPEAT, BUT IT OFTEN RHYMES: Oxford Union: Israel greater threat to stability than Iran.
The Oxford Union voted overwhelmingly that “Israel is a greater threat to regional stability than Iran” in a debate on Thursday last week.
A large majority of 265-113 voted yes to the motion, which was debated first by two panels of speakers. For the proposition were Lincoln College’s Alex Webster, Jessica Rowe, former Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, and former Iranian culture minister Ata’ollah Mohajerani.
For the opposition were Hillel Neuer, international human rights lawyer and executive director of the UN Watch; Dominick Chilcott, Middle East specialist and former British ambassador to Turkey and Iran; St. John’s history student Katie Pannick, and St. Hugh’s history Master’s student William Rome.
Webster opened the proposition by saying that Israel was a larger threat to regional stability, as it holds more sway with global powers. “They get all of the guns but none of the consequences,” he added. Pannick responded by saying that Iran is “capable of systemic disruption” and also drew on the danger associated with its nuclear missile program.
This isn’t the first time that Oxford has chosen to root for the bad guys, of course:
On a cold February evening in 1933, the students of the Oxford Union debated and passed the motion “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” The debate, which took place a week or so after Hitler was named chancellor of Germany, became an international sensation.
The students’ pacifism and lack of patriotism was viewed as emblematic of the degeneracy of an ungrateful and self-indulgent young intellectual elite. Winston Churchill called the vote “abject, squalid, shameless,” and “nauseating.”
The Oxford Union debate was not simply an academic exercise. At the time, many observers claimed it reinforced the view in Germany that the English were soft.
Alfred Zimmern, professor of international relations at Oxford, wrote to the former Oxford Union president who organized the debate: “I hope you do penance every night and every morning for that ill starred Resolution. … If the Germans have to be knocked out a second time it will be partly your fault.” Churchill would later write that as a result of the “ever shameful” motion, “in Germany, in Russia, in Italy, in Japan, the idea of a decadent, degenerate Britain took deep root and swayed many calculations.”
As Michael Walsh wrote a few years ago:
The Europeans should have learned from their own history, but of course they never do. The Oxford Union’s “King and Country” debate of 1933, a fateful year in European history, turned out to be one of the high points of British pacifism. Having been bled dry by the Somme and other horrific battles in World War I, and also having lost the cream of their manhood in the process, the Union passed the motion that “this House would not in any circumstances fight for King and Country.” Winston Churchill who never saw a war he didn’t want to fight, knew that war with Hitler was unavoidable, and was aghast at the surviving, whinging chaff of England’s crop, the sons of the cowards, conscientious objectors, and those otherwise unfit to serve. Six years later, however, they were doing exactly that.
Plus ça change.