Wilkie: He's really only anti-violence, not anti-Israel or anti-Jewish

I don't buy it

Imshin, at Not a Fish has posted this response from Prof. Wilkie, received by a reader.

"Can I please make it clear that Amit Duvshani was not an applicant for a funded post but contacted me as a preliminary enquiry. My stance was based on his service in the Israeli army and the violence that potentially entails. I would feel uncomfortable working closely with someone who had been through that, which you may not respect but I hope you can understand. The same would apply (to a greater extent, actually) for a palestinian terrorist (although I haven't heard of one applying for a PhD). But my email was hastily written (clearly entirely my fault), and has been widely misinterpreted as a lot of worse things. I am deeply sorry about this and retract what I said, which was caused by too personal and emotional a response to the terrible situation in Israel.

In addition to the official statement (above) issued by Oxford University, I understand that Amit's application will be taken forward if he so wishes. I have been in contact with him to apologise, not just for my original email but also for causing his name to become so publicly prominent.

I hope you can forgive me. My stance (which I do not retract) is anti-violence, whether by jewish, palestinian or any other people.

Please pass this message on if appropriate.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Wilkie"