What is a university for? Does Fordham have a pro-Israeli student organisation? Who would be in favour of closing that down? If a university isn't a place where there can be an open exchange of ideas, what is it? Why should the university exercise this extent of control over its students? Shouldn't they be autonomous as far as their own bodies and organisations go and shouldn't they be free to crate what they like given they don't break the law or promote violence, racism etc? Once more we are faced with the astonishing fact that Israel as a settler-colonial endeavour is so emblematic for the rich and powerful they are paranoid about any criticism. This tiny country is of vast importance because what it stands for is the delusion at the heart of the perverted notion of "progress": that a "higher race" as Churchill put it , has the right to displace a lower; that the "lower" race suffers no wrong because it is inscribed in the universe that the "higher" must prevail. For five hundred years we have seen this doctrine of conquest based on racism in pursuit of lucre. It is because that is the implicit ideology of the world's rulers that Israel must not be challenged. If Israel's right to brutalise the Palestinians is taken away, then the fear among the rich is that their right to exploit the world as they like will also disappear. For this reason, students are denied the right to form an organisation in support of the Palestinians. So much for democracy. Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians is incompatible with democracy. Their only and threadbare excuse is that Palestinians, all of them, children and grandmas alike, are terrorists. Remember when Mandela was a terrorist? Remember when Makarios was? Remember when every Catholic in Northern Ireland was smeared as a terrorist? Such a phoney view of the world can't last. The shame will fall on Fordham. The honour on the students.