The British Association of University Teachers has now created a blacklist against Jewish Israeli academics – really a blue-and-white list – reminiscent of the worst abuses of McCarthyism. And just as McCarthyism was a barrier to peace between the US and the Soviet Union – by contributing to a dangerous atmosphere in which each side vilified and threatened the other – so too does the British lecturers' boycott endanger the progress now being made toward peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
It is not surprising therefore that even the Palestinian Al-Quds University in Jerusalem headed by Sari Nusseibeh released a statement against the British association blacklist, saying, "We are informed by the principle that we should seek to win Israelis over to our side, not to win against them... Therefore, informed by this national duty, we believe it is in our interest to build bridges, not walls; to reach out to the Israeli academic institutions, not to impose another restriction or dialogue-block on ourselves."
But instead of heeding the moderate words of those they claim to support, British university teachers will collectively punish Israeli academics in a manner that leading Palestinian academics do not support. They've become more Palestinian than the Palestinians, and at precisely the time when Israel is taking more risks and making more sacrifices for peace than it has since Camp David in 2000.
A spokesman for the Union of Jewish Students got it exactly right when he said, "Things in the Middle East are moving forward while in the UK they are moving backwards. These boycotts have struck a blow at talks between Israel and Palestine."
As Israel's Ambassador to the Court of St. James's Zvi Hefetz noted, "The last time that Jews were boycotted in universities was in 1930s Germany."
Not only is the academic blacklist harmful and wrong; it may also be illegal. According to Jocelyn Prudence, head of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, "This would appear to run contrary to contractual law, race and religious discrimination law, and academic freedom obligations..."
It's a good thing Israel has only to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors and not European university professors.
The terrible message being sent by this anti-Semitic action – anti-Semitic because it will apply only to Israeli Jews, not Arabs or Christians – is that the Jewish state will not be rewarded for taking steps toward peace and ending the occupation. Instead it will be punished.
This isn't the first time the AUT has targeted Israeli professors and universities. Back in May 2003, in response to Israeli re-occupation of several West Bank towns, the union considered but voted down a proposed boycott of Israeli academics. The ban would have directed members to "sever academic links with Israeli institutions and funding agencies, boycott conferences in Israel, and refuse to participate as referees in hiring or promotions by the country's universities."
The resolution failed by a ratio of two to one, because the members feared that a boycott would "harm progressive Israeli academics campaigning against the Sharon government."
Why did the boycott resolution succeed this time around? What's changed in the last two years? From the Palestinian perspective, the political and social climate is objectively improved over what it was two years ago. In just this year, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have signed a cease-fire agreement, Israel agreed to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and Israel is about to withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements.
The "second intifada" has effectively ended, and Palestinians are preparing to police their own streets after the Israelis disengage. By any reasonable standard, things are better for Palestinians today than they were in 2003.
Instead of applauding Israel for taking courageous actions toward ending the occupation, British lecturers choose to attack Israel by blacklisting the nation's Jewish academics. From now on, professors in the UK are not only permitted, indeed, they're instructed, to discriminate based on nationality and ethnicity. As The Jerusalem Post wondered, "Why is it that just as the Palestinians are about to receive the greatest unilateral concession ever from Israel they urge a boycott? It is hardly the manifestation of goodwill that would encourage Israelis to support yet greater existential risks."
The Guardian concurred, pointing out a troubling double standard: "Singling out Israel raises other questions. AUT members are not proposing, after all, to boycott universities in North Korea, Zimbabwe or Sudan, where the government has been accused of perpetrating genocide against its own people."
" I used to think that it didn't matter what we did," an Israeli moderate once told me. "They will hate us just as much even if we give back the whole West Bank as well as Gaza."
He paused and then continued: "I was wrong. It does make a difference. They hate us even more when we give more, because it confuses their image of us as totally evil. And our enemies see it as a sign of our weakness and their strength."
My friend was right. This academic boycott makes clear that when Israel does precisely what its detractors demand that it do, even then – especially then! – extreme left-wing academics will only despise Israel more for putting the lie to the professors' hate-filled views.
By targeting Israeli Jews, Britain's "Professors Against Peace" – that's what they really should be called – have displayed bigotry against Jews, done violence to academic freedom and anti-discrimination laws, and are fast closing a window of opportunity for reconciliation in the Middle East.
It is not surprising therefore that even the Palestinian Al-Quds University in Jerusalem headed by Sari Nusseibeh released a statement against the British association blacklist, saying, "We are informed by the principle that we should seek to win Israelis over to our side, not to win against them... Therefore, informed by this national duty, we believe it is in our interest to build bridges, not walls; to reach out to the Israeli academic institutions, not to impose another restriction or dialogue-block on ourselves."
But instead of heeding the moderate words of those they claim to support, British university teachers will collectively punish Israeli academics in a manner that leading Palestinian academics do not support. They've become more Palestinian than the Palestinians, and at precisely the time when Israel is taking more risks and making more sacrifices for peace than it has since Camp David in 2000.
A spokesman for the Union of Jewish Students got it exactly right when he said, "Things in the Middle East are moving forward while in the UK they are moving backwards. These boycotts have struck a blow at talks between Israel and Palestine."
As Israel's Ambassador to the Court of St. James's Zvi Hefetz noted, "The last time that Jews were boycotted in universities was in 1930s Germany."
Not only is the academic blacklist harmful and wrong; it may also be illegal. According to Jocelyn Prudence, head of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, "This would appear to run contrary to contractual law, race and religious discrimination law, and academic freedom obligations..."
It's a good thing Israel has only to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors and not European university professors.
The terrible message being sent by this anti-Semitic action – anti-Semitic because it will apply only to Israeli Jews, not Arabs or Christians – is that the Jewish state will not be rewarded for taking steps toward peace and ending the occupation. Instead it will be punished.
This isn't the first time the AUT has targeted Israeli professors and universities. Back in May 2003, in response to Israeli re-occupation of several West Bank towns, the union considered but voted down a proposed boycott of Israeli academics. The ban would have directed members to "sever academic links with Israeli institutions and funding agencies, boycott conferences in Israel, and refuse to participate as referees in hiring or promotions by the country's universities."
The resolution failed by a ratio of two to one, because the members feared that a boycott would "harm progressive Israeli academics campaigning against the Sharon government."
Why did the boycott resolution succeed this time around? What's changed in the last two years? From the Palestinian perspective, the political and social climate is objectively improved over what it was two years ago. In just this year, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have signed a cease-fire agreement, Israel agreed to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and Israel is about to withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements.
The "second intifada" has effectively ended, and Palestinians are preparing to police their own streets after the Israelis disengage. By any reasonable standard, things are better for Palestinians today than they were in 2003.
Instead of applauding Israel for taking courageous actions toward ending the occupation, British lecturers choose to attack Israel by blacklisting the nation's Jewish academics. From now on, professors in the UK are not only permitted, indeed, they're instructed, to discriminate based on nationality and ethnicity. As The Jerusalem Post wondered, "Why is it that just as the Palestinians are about to receive the greatest unilateral concession ever from Israel they urge a boycott? It is hardly the manifestation of goodwill that would encourage Israelis to support yet greater existential risks."
The Guardian concurred, pointing out a troubling double standard: "Singling out Israel raises other questions. AUT members are not proposing, after all, to boycott universities in North Korea, Zimbabwe or Sudan, where the government has been accused of perpetrating genocide against its own people."
" I used to think that it didn't matter what we did," an Israeli moderate once told me. "They will hate us just as much even if we give back the whole West Bank as well as Gaza."
He paused and then continued: "I was wrong. It does make a difference. They hate us even more when we give more, because it confuses their image of us as totally evil. And our enemies see it as a sign of our weakness and their strength."
My friend was right. This academic boycott makes clear that when Israel does precisely what its detractors demand that it do, even then – especially then! – extreme left-wing academics will only despise Israel more for putting the lie to the professors' hate-filled views.
By targeting Israeli Jews, Britain's "Professors Against Peace" – that's what they really should be called – have displayed bigotry against Jews, done violence to academic freedom and anti-discrimination laws, and are fast closing a window of opportunity for reconciliation in the Middle East.
Comments
Hide the following 7 comments
boycott israel
28.04.2005 20:21
nick watson
And if you were intellectually honest
28.04.2005 23:22
sceptic
support the boycott
29.04.2005 08:39
To
Professor Moshe Kaveh
President
Bar Ilan University
Dear Sir
In various media interviews today you expressed anger at the decision of British university lecturers to declare a boycott against the Bar-Ilan University, calling it "an unacceptable mixing of politics into academic life". When asked about the "Judea and Samaria College" which your university maintains at the settlement of Ariel, you stated that this was "an entirely non-political issue" and that said college was nothing more than "the largest of five colleges which Bar Ilan maintains at different locations in Israel". Indeed, you declared yourself and your colleagues to be proud of the decision to establish the Ariel college, and you felt no contradiction between continuing to maintain that college, at the investment of a considerable part of Bar Ilan's total resources, and the maintenance of extensive ties with universities worldwide, including in Britain.
As an example you mentioned your own ties as a physicist with Cambridge University and your plans to spend some time at Cambridge this summer - plans which, as you stated, remain unchanged also in the wake of the British lecturers' decision.
Surely, a person of your intelligence and experience can be expected to note the obvious contradictions in the above position. As you well know, Ariel is not "a location in Israel". Rather, Ariel is a location in a territory under military occupation, a territory which is not and has never been part of the state of Israel. Moreover, Ariel is a special kind of location: it is an armed enclave, created by armed force and dependent for its continued existence on force, and force alone.
The creation of Ariel is a severe violation of international law, specifically of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which specifically forbids an occupying power from transferring and settling its own citizens in the occupied territory. On the ground, the creation and maintenance of Ariel entailed and continues to entail untold hardships to the Palestinians who happen to live in the nearby town of Salfit and in numerous villages a long distance all around. Palestinian inhabitants are exposed to ongoing confiscation of their land so as to feed the land hunger of the ever-expending Ariel settlement, and their daily life are subjected to increasingly stringent travel limitations in the name of "preserving the settlers' security".
The government-approved plans to extend the "Separation Fence" so as to create a corridor linking Ariel to the Israeli border necessitate the confiscation of yet more vast tracts of Palestinian land, depriving thousands of villagers of their sole source of livelihood. Moreover, should the Ariel corridor be completed, it would cut deeply through the territory which the international community earmarked for creation of a Palestinian state, depriving that state of territorial continuity and viability. For that reason, the plan aroused widespread international opposition, not least from the United States, our main ally on the international arena.
In all of this the Bar Ilan University, of which you are president, made itself a major partner - indeed,since a violation of international law is involved, the term "accomplice" may well be used. The "Judea and Samaria College" which you and your colleagues established and nurtured has a central role in the settlement of Ariel, increasing its population and its economic clout. The college's faculty and students are prime users of the "Trans-Samaria Road", the four-lane highway which was created on confiscated Palestinian land in order to provide quick transportation to Ariel. The Palestinian villagers on whose land this highway was built are excluded from using it. They are relegated to a rugged, bumpy mountain trail.
It is you and your colleagues, Professor Kaveh, who started mixing academics with politics. A very heavy mixture, such as few universities anywhere ever engaged in. You cannot really complain when people in Britain, who have different standards for what is the proper moral behavior of academics (or for human beings in general) take action which you do not like. In fact, if you are truly proud of establishing and maintaining the "Judea and Samaria College", you must have the courage of your convictions and take the consequences. Much better, of course, would be for you and your colleagues to sever your connection with the ill-conceived settlement project - and than you can quite rightly demand that the boycott be removed from your university.
Yours
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom (The Israeli Peace Bloc)
antifascist
Support the Boycott
29.04.2005 14:42
INSTITUTIONS
Signed by (all in a personal capacity): Robert Fine (Warwick University),
David Hirsh (Goldsmiths College London), Alan Johnson (Edge Hill College
of Higher Education), Jon Pike (Open University), Phil Semp (University of
Teesside) and Camila Bassi (Sheffield Hallam University)
As democrats, socialists, advocates of Israeli withdrawal from the
Occupied Territories, and supporters of the right of the Palestinian
people to an independent state of their own, alongside Israel, we call on
British academics to reject the moves for a renewed academic boycott of
Israel due to be debated at the council of the Association of University
Teachers on 20 April.
We urge them to consider the arguments against the boycott from Israeli
academics who criticise and oppose Israeli government policy.
Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University, for example, has pointed out the
inconsistent standards in singling out Israeli universities for boycott.
"Some of the boycotters come from countries that are also responsible for
much oppression and suffering... [and] Israel could not carry out its
policies without the ongoing support of the United States..."
Should we boycott US universities too? Why is Israel singled out? The new
moves for a boycott attempt to refine it, proposing boycott of only three
of Israel's eight universities. But boycotts do not make good precision
tactics, and in this case can only feed into the long-standing and high-
profile campaigns for a general boycott of all Israelis and all Israeli
goods.
Neve Gordon also points out: "Israeli universities have been under an
unprecedented assault by the Sharon government... An academic boycott will
only strengthen [the Israeli right], and in this way assist the
destruction of academic freedom in Israel".
Gordon himself has been denounced by the Israeli right as "a fanatic anti-
Semite from the monochromatic (Red) Department of Politics at Ben-Gurion
University."
To the argument that it is the "institution that will be punished for not
taking an institutional stand on the illegality of the occupation", Gordon
replies: "It is precisely the institution that enables Israeli professors -
regardless of their political affiliation - to voice their views,
suggesting that an assault on the university is in fact an assault on its
faculty...
"To fight the anti-intellectual atmosphere within Israel, local academics
need as much support as they can get from their colleagues abroad. A
boycott will only weaken the elements within Israeli society that are
struggling against the assault on the universities..."
Far from helping the Palestinians, a boycott will hinder the democratic
dialogue and accommodation on which prospects for a free and independent
Palestinian state alongside Israel depend.
Josh Robinson
Racist? No we're politically correct.
30.04.2005 10:21
john
Allan, we would like to talk to you.
04.05.2005 20:32
Over at Engage we would love to talk to you. We too are leftists who can spot arguements which boarder on the effectively anti-semitic.
Please come over to the site: liberoblog.com and sign up for a chat.
Jane Ashworth
e-mail:
jane.ashworth@gmail.com
'boycott die Jude' - said Hitler
08.05.2005 15:45
If you like the AUT, you are right winger and racist.
Only right-wingers are racist, everyone knows that.
marcipano