The occupation is ongoing, I hear. It’s getting more and more ridiculous, or it would be if they didn’t hold such horrifyingly evil opinions.

First, the funny – the facebook group opposing the protestors (now, for some reason, called “Let’s Rebuild The Icelandic Economy”) is more than twice as large as the one supporting them. It’s been that way for a while, and the people behind it have been doing many, many funny things. Including this sign on the 7th floor of the Boyd Orr building, directly opposite the uneducated space:

Picture of the sign opposite the Alwyn Williams Building.

As of this afternoon, it also has the words “Soap Donations 4 Protestors” (or something to that effect). Capitalists are much, much funnier than Commies.

But there’s a more serious side to all this. One of the protestors’ demands is for the university to ban Israeli academics from speaking if they don’t explicitly renounce Israel’s actions in Gaza. That’s right. An Israeli engineering professor, say, who has no political connections or ambitions, should apparently be banned from Glasgow University for not denouncing his/her home state. 

That sickens me. It really sickens me. Why not demand that all professors and visiting academics denounce this, if you’re really afraid of people with other viewpoints coming to the university? Why not single out Cubans for the political repression in their country?

The hard left has always had a seedy undercurrent of anti-semitism, the belief that wealthy, scheming Jews are toying with the world, enjoying the suffering of Palestinians. They want to believe that Israelis like what’s happening there, that they hate the idea of a two-state solution. In reality, that’s something the vast majority of people there want. An individual person from Israel may vote Likud or Yisrael Beiteinu, but they’re still human beings. And if they’re coming to speak here, they probably have some academic ability that would be useful in teaching people. As if education were something these protestors cared about.

To clear our heads of that vileness, let’s get back to lefty silliness. The first item on their list of demands is that they aren’t punished by the university for anything they’ve done. Mummy and Daddy might stop paying them if they were kicked out for playing Che Guevara, after all.

Incidentally, the post’s title comes from an old song, to the tune of One Green Bottle…

One red faction, sitting in a hall,
One red faction, sitting in a hall,
And if one red faction,
Should have a little squall,
There’ll be two red factions,
Sitting in a hall.

How long do you think they’ll last?