Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Jew list

Both Jon and Wiliam have referred to the "Jew list" on the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign's web site.

I clicked on the links they provided, but didn't see anything that looked like a Jew list and thought maybe it had been purged. But, no.

Actually, it's more frightening than I first thought. This site provides a database (essentially) of "good Jews", those who are basically anti-Israel, and "bad Jews", those who are pro-Israel. But, they helpfully break it down even more.

They provide a "Taxonomy of Author Categories". Amazingly, there was only one person listed under the category "Hardline Zionist Israeli American Jew" (Martin Kramer). There are two names listed under "Hardline American Jewish Zionist", but one of them is Martin Kramer again. We remove the "Israeli" distinction and we only turn up one extra name? I'm sure with a little effort the CPSC could find more. I mean, come on, that total only matches the total for "Zionist Belarussian Jewish immigrant to US".

{The word "hardline" is used in 68 categories - each one of them Jewish. The word is not used with any non-Jewish categories, or even the anti-Zionist Jewish}

All of this is great fun, but what's really annoying me is that I'm PAYING for this through taxes spent on education. The CSPC site is hosted by hosting365.ie, a private company. But, the database actually resides on the University College Cork's web site. I don't know why this should be, but my gut instinct is that moving the database to hosting365.ie was either too expensive or too time-consuming.

I believe in freedom of speech, even for bigots and lunatics. However, why should I pay to promote such a perspective? I would like to imagine that this database may contravene UCC's stated policies on computer and network usage. I don't know what (if any) hate speech type laws exist in Ireland, but some of this might qualify. UCC's rules make it clear that you are not permitted to:
  • use computer or network resources to access or distribute offensive, obscene, abusive, or threatening material;
  • use computer or network resources for any activities which contravene the laws of the State, or of the destination country in the case of data being transmitted abroad