The Davos World Economic Forum is an annual conference attended by the brightest scholars and most powerful figures in the world. It is the kind of place where the agenda setters of the world meet to exchange ideas and, in some ways, to literally decide their agendas. It is also a place where rabid hatred of Israel is on display:
he chairman and executive director of the Davos World Economic Forum on Thursday offered a sweeping apology to all delegates for an article calling for the boycott of Israel that appeared in a prestigious magazine issued by the forum. Professor Klaus Schwab, who founded the annual Davos conclave 35 years ago, said he was “shocked” to read, just today, the article that appeared in the magazine “Global Agenda.”
The problem is that apologizing for legitimizing vicious discourse doesn’t take that discourse back. Once a position is introduced as a legitimate topic for discussion, it can’t be taken back because the ‘taking back’ occurs within the space created by the position. Now the debate is ‘should Schwab have apologized?’ and, moreso, ‘is there anything to this boycott idea?’ In some quarters, of course, that discussion will reach the point of ‘the Jews got to Schwab – look how they control everything and stifle dissent.’ But even where it doesn’t, communities are shaped by the things that it is permissible to say out loud – once a topic is explicitly broached, it moves the line of legitimate discussion (even if what’s being discussion about is an apology and a declaration of what can’t be talked about). These unwritten rules of permissible discourse in polite company are what have been eroded in the highest diplomatic, intellectual, and cultural circles – and it should be no surprise that there are presumably serious thinkers who believe, even in the light of massive Palestinian support for terrorists, that it is Israel that stands in the way of Middle East Peace.
