And, yes… where are the AUT statements against honour killings of women in Palestine. Where is the stand of Palestinian academics against this gendercide.

So basically what you’re saying is:

“They hate us, because they hate our freedoms.”

This is a very cogent analysis indeed—suddenly everything makes complete sense to me. Why didn’t anyone ever put it that way before?

The attacks against Israel for the high and unforgiving crime of defending itself against those who are trying to destroy are acts of the highest hypocracy. Ironic that left wingers like AUT hate the one democracy in the Middle East, Israel and the one place where their criticism of a govt would be allowed and embrace a society like the Palestinians who oppress women and homosexuals, just to name two groups, that they supposedly support.

This is the result, not so much of anti-Semetism as hatred of America and its triumph over their (the left’s) great friend, the Soviet Union. With nothing but their hatred of the West (whose civilization makes their dissent possible) the die hard Leftists have made common cause with the Islamic Fascists who believe in everything the Left is supposedly against. What binds these two opposites together is their hatred of the USA and its most exposed ally, Israel. Ironic that while Europeans want to honor the dead Jews of the Holocaust, the living ones of Israel are condemmed for daring to fight back and even more outrageous survive and even triumph over their attackers. Guess Europe lost its liking for the Jews when they ceased to go peacfully to their deaths!

The underlying truth regarding this boycott is that it is impossible for any fair-minded observer, let alone anyone who is truly concerned with peace and human rights, to encourage support for Palestinian universities that are run by Hamas and glorify suicide bombing, while boycotting Israeli universities. The fact that the AUT has done so is a priori proof that they are not fair-minded, and their goals have nothing to do with peace and human rights. Just the reverse; they have demonized institutions that are among the most tolerant and inclusive in the Middle East, and publicly supported those that openly support and encourage mass murder.

At best these AUT members are ignorant sheep who have foolishly supported the latest politically correct British academic crusade; at worst they are indeed (or are at least led by) hardcore haters of Israel. While I would of course prefer to assume it is merely an odd case of mass delusion, I find it very hard to believe that the people leading this charge at the AUT are honestly unaware of the discrepancy between Israeli and Palestinian educational institutions regarding peace and co-existance. As has been mentioned above, these moralists also choose to ignore other areas of the world where educational institutions are indeed puppets of government policies that oppress citizens and stifle dissent.

The most (if not only) logical conclusion is therefore that the boycotters are driven (to greater or lesser degrees, presumably) by hatred towards the target of their boycott, rather than their love of human rights or an evenhanded appraisal of the wrongs of the Israeli system.

When the AUT cuts off ties with An-Najah and Bir Zeit Universities, when they criticize universities in China for crushing student demonstrations, and when they praise Haifa University for employing and publishing dissidents like Ilan Pappe in the first place, then I will listen to their criticisms of Israeli academia and debate the utility of sanctions in achieving peace in the region. Until then, I must assume that this action is the patently bigoted, one-sided attack on Israel that it appears to be, and not engage in manufactured debate about the applicability of its various provisions. I hope you would all do the same.

Alon

By the way, had you heard that since the time that this boycott was announced, Prof. Pappe has been asked (but is not being forced) to resign?

Basically, he is being asked to “boycott himself”. Some might say this is poetic justice. Personally, I think the administration of Haifa University should have tried to maintain the hight ground. Instead they are shooting themselves in the foot; now there is no way they can really claim to be against the very idea of academic boycotts in principle.

But to put it in my own words, I think it is only through open intellectual exchange that any repressive regime’s practices can ever be challenged. Causing universities—one of the few precious institutions that exist outside of the capitalistic profit motice—to suffer seems counter-productive. Universities and free intellectual exchange should be encouraged.

Boycots that hit a country’s profit-making capacities are of course another thing altogether.

I recognize, however, that a compelling case can be made for the other side. I do not think that the boycott can be fairly characterized as being driven by “near-psychotic Israel haters”. So in the spirit of open inquiry into the subject, I reproduce the following email from Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group, which adds some considerations to the debate that I had not been aware of (though they do not, so far, change my basic stance).

Regrettably I could not find this letter on their web-site, so I must post it in full:

YOU BROUGHT THE BOYCOTT UPON YOURSELVES
Gush Shalom Letter to Bar Ilan University

Tel-Aviv, April 26, 2005

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)

It also seems to be part of the accepted rules that Israel is to be examined in vacuo. First, it is damned for organizing a state on ethnic & religious lines as if the facts of history were irrelevant (and as if no other state did likewise). Zionism, as a reminder, was born of the millenia-long and almost universal Jewish experience of persecution for religious and/or ethnic difference. The horrors that actually impelled Israel’s creation need no mention. If you are willing to brush that all aside, you deserve no place in this debate. More importantly, contemporary Israeli actions are judged as if they have no context: Palestinian actions are not only not judged, they’re not even mentioned. No justification will be permitted for anything Israel does in the Territories (short of unconditionally evacuating to the Green Line) and Israeli academics will be brought to book. In contrast, suicide bombing of Israeli civilian targets, and other acts of terror, are clearly justifiable (since they are not factored into the reasoning of anyone here) and – unless I missed the reports – the AUT has not proposed a boycott of Palestinian academics who fail to condemn them on moral, or even pragmatic, grounds. Similarly the fact that Hamas and others explicitly aim to eradicate Israel, and just as explicitly will not be dismantled by this or prior Palestinian governments, causes no murmur from the AUT and is apparently seen to have no relevance to Israeli policy.

It would be easy enough to go on in the same vein, but pointless. However, it is fascinating to see how much of the whole debate has simply been removed from the mental map of such a large body of – evidently intelligent – people who have convinced themselves that all they want is justice.

The flip side of the AUT campaign against Israel is their encouragement of greater ties to Palestinian universities. Here’s some insight into what is happening at these institutions:

http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=445

Here, on the other hand, is what is going on at Haifa U:

http://research.haifa.ac.il/%7Ejew-arab/club.htm

Please tell me how anyone but a near-psychotic Israel hater could possibly encourage greater ties with the former while boycotting the latter. In the name of peace, of course.

Not at all. Sharon is pulling out of Gaza because it’s in Israel’s interest to do so. Read “the demographic threat”, read it’s just untenable to keep 9,000 settlers among 1.4 million Palestinians, and read Sharon traded the Gaza withdrawal with Bush for a letter stating that the US expects Israel will keep it’s “major population centers”, in the WB in any final deal, and that in the US opinion it was untenable for Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, proper.

“Regarding settlement expansion: The place where this expansion is happening is generally agreed to be a place certain to be kept by Israelis in any final-status negotiation. It’s not like it’s a new settlement, either; It’s been around for 30 years.”

There is settlement expansion happening all over the West Bank. If you are talking about Maaleh Adumim, the proposed A-E expansion would connect the settlement to East Jerusalem. For obvious reasons that’s very contoversial, and vehemently protested by the Palestinians.

Chris:

After the last 3 years, I think any progress is a good thing. This is progress. We shouldn’t oppose it because it’s not completely what might be desired.

Keep in mind: Gaza is not yet a done deal. It’s very bitterly divided Israelis.

But, nonetheless, despite the opposition from within his own party, Sharon is going ahead with it. Despite the fact that there’s an open argument with regards to whether soldiers should refuse orders (despite the fact that there’s been an overwhelming outcry against it). Despite the fact that there may well be violence. Violence, that while we might not agree with it, is in some ways understandable. The people being evacuated see themselves as being forced out of their homes, after the consistent promises to the contrary from governments of every point on the spectrum for the last 38 years. (Like any of us wouldn’t be violently-inclined in similar circumstances? That’d take the willpower of a saint.)

It’s basically guaranteed to be traumatic, deeply traumatic, for Israelis of every stripe.

That’s why this boycott is such a bad idea. Israelis are going to go through trauma basically at the request of the international community; They’re hardly getting anything out of it, after all.

And what does the AUT do? Call for a boycott of Israel.

Pardon me if that makes me wonder if maybe the Israeli right doesn’t have the right idea: They’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t, so why the hell suffer?

Regarding settlement expansion: The place where this expansion is happening is generally agreed to be a place certain to be kept by Israelis in any final-status negotiation. It’s not like it’s a new settlement, either; It’s been around for 30 years. Sharon is doing the politically necessary thing for Gaza to come off: Throwing a bone to those in the settlements that would stay, anyway.

That’s politics. The art of the compromise and the deal. The art of the possible.

You’re aiming for the perfect. While that’s noble, it’s not likely.