I’m confused. According to the many media reports, the UCU, successor to the AUT and NATFE and the main trade union representing British academics, has voted to reinstitute the boycott of Israeli universities that the AUT finally rejected last year. But in fact, as far as I can tell , the UCU Congress has done no such thing. Rather it has passed some rather wooly pro-Palestinian resolutions and has ordered its executive to promote discussion of the boycott at branches over the next year or so. The practical effect of this in the world is at best close to zero. In fact it is almost certainly negative: no-one actually gets boycotted but the worst elements of the Israeli right (and the likes of Alan Dershowitz) get a renewed opportunity to portray themselves as victims.
Aside from the general stupidity of the boycott campaign (well summed-up by Steven Poole last year), it promises to consume a lot of energy in fruitless arguments that go nowhere. Last time this happened I stood up on my hind legs at my local AUT branch and opposed the pro-boycott motion . I’ll vote against it again this time, when the opportunity presents itself. I have to say though, that I’m a lot less motivated to oppose the boycotters than I was. They are just as wrong as they ever were, but I’ve been sufficiently disgusted by Israeli conduct over the past year (especially in Lebanon) not to feel all that much enthusiasm for making a big effort. And then there’s the fact that when I did speak up against the boycott I received a load of offensive email. Normally, you’d expect to get such email from the people on the other side, telling you what a horrible sellout you’ve been. But I didn’t receive a single bit of hostile email from a pro-Palestinian persepective. Rather, I got a good deal from Likudniks and their American friends who mistakenly assumed that if I opposed the boycott I must share their vile perspective on Arabs generally and Palestinians in particular. (No thanks. Go away! I don’t want email from people like you.)
Martha Nussbaum’s article in Dissent puts the case against the boycott pretty well. However there’s one pro-boycott argument that she doesn’t address and which I’ve not heard a good reply to. It doesn’t, for me, outweigh the arguments against, but I do think it weakens the often-put “double standards” argument that anti-Israel measures unfairly discriminate against Israel since there are far worse countries in the world. (This is often accompanied by the further claim that because Israel is picked out whilst other countries are worse, the motive of the boycotters must be sinister and is probably anti-semitic.) The argument is this: that the Israeli perpetrators of injustice are far more vulnerable to outside pressure than, say, the Chinese or the Russians are. Measures taken against Israel therefore stand a better chance of being effective. The Russian treatment of the Chechens or the Chinese treatment of the Tibetans may indeed be worse than the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. But we can take action now to force the Israelis to negotiate and to end the injustice of the occupation, whereas we cannot act with similar prospect of success against Russia or China. Obviously that argument depends on a number of facts about the way the world is. And those facts are highly contestable. But it doesn’t depend (to the contrary!) on any claim that Israel is uniquely or even especially evil or unjust.
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The South Africans weren’t in fact uniquely evil or unjust either. There were a lot worse places to live, even in Africa. But they were a racist settler state set up by the Europeans and maintained by bigotry in the US and Europe, some of whose policies were solely and purely motivated by racial bigotry and chauvinism. So’s Israel is similarly a racist settler state maintained by the US and the Europeans, and many of it’s policies are solely and purely motivated by ethnic bigotry and chauvinism, including its settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. (I can’t see last year’s Lebanon invasion being anywhere close to the top of the list of complaints about Israel, frankly). It really takes a certain type of accommodation of Jewish chauvinism to be more upset by an academic boycott than by Israel’s persistent and deliberate behaviour.
In terms of the boycott itself, the best argument for it is one of the second best: I might prefer severe economic sanctions on Israel to withdraw to the 1967 border and compensate the Palestinians, while upgrading academic exchanges and other interaction. But US foreign policy is captured by Israeli-lobby interests, and British foreign policy is largely subservient to US foreign policy, and neither of these two circumstances are at all likely to change. Given that, those in Britain who want to put some pressure on the Israelis to stop their bigotry, and to match in a tiny way the enormous pressures the Palestinians have been under since before 1947, have to take action directly from British civil society to Israeli civil society, of which an academic boycott is the obvious example. Let’s have more of it, including excluding Israel from sporting and other international events. Israeli society is so convinced of its right to colonise and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians that explicit and open rejectionism of Israeli attitudes and policies is required.
I do not want to engage in a frutiless discussion of the total stupdity of boycotting scholars but would like to note this one thing:
When Israel lashes back at rocket attacks, they are immediately confronted world-wide with media remarks about killing or wounding innocent civilians. And yet, for days now, the Lebanese army has been shelling Palestinians in their refugee camps and not a word has been uttered about the innocents killed, wounded in this camp. Why is this so?
not a word has been uttered
(Try google’s news search feature.)
Fred- maybe you’re not looking hard enough. For example, if you’d done a simple web search you would have found this Human Rights Watch article called:
“Lebanon: Fighting at Refugee Camp Kills Civilians”
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2007/05/23/lebano15992.htm
A brief scan of the recent NY Times ariticles from the last few days on the subject makes it quite clear that civilians are being injured and killed as well so I think you’re clearly off base.
The argument is this: that the Israeli perpetrators of injustice are far more vulnerable to outside pressure than, say, the Chinese or the Russians are. Measures taken against Israel therefore stand a better chance of being effective. The Russian treatment of the Chechens or the Chinese treatment of the Tibetans may indeed be worse than the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. But we can take action now to force the Israelis to negotiate and to end the injustice of the occupation, whereas we cannot act with similar prospect of success against Russia or China. Obviously that argument depends on a number of facts about the way the world is. And those facts are highly contestable. But it doesn’t depend (to the contrary!) on any claim that Israel is uniquely or even especially evil or unjust.
Right, it depends on the fact that Israel is a “normal” democratic country. If it were authoritarian and more evil like many worse abusers, then it would be left alone to treat the Palestinians as badly, say, as the Chinese treat the Tibetans. It would be free to move as many Israelis into the West Bank as it liked as China has done with ethnic Chinese into Tibet and there would be a few scattered protests but mostly the world would conduct business-as-usual with Israel as it does with China.
It strikes me that there’s a pretty serious moral hazard argument against this approach, which is that a reason for China’s leaders NOT to democratize is that, as a democracy, it would then be granted much less latitude in dealing with Tibet (and Taiwan and other issues) than it is now.
Another reason, of course, is that such unique pressure is applied to Israel but not Russia or China, say, is that applying pressure to Israel (a small country) is cost-free, whereas applying pressure to Russia and China would be economically costly. Russia is slated for elections soon and pressure might have an effect on the results, but no pressure will be applied. And so the morality behind anti-Israel pressure is revealed as merely opportunistic and capricious, which rather tends to undercut its authority, don’t you think?
And lastly—the difference between the treatment of Israel and China is not just a strategic one. It is not as if boycott organizers weighed up the costs and benefits of applying a boycott to Israeli academics vs Chinese academics and concluded, after careful analysis, to chose Israel rather than China as a target. Rather—there is a real, visceral animus felt toward the Israelis that is completely absent toward the Chinese. It is for this reason that antisemitism is suspected as the underlying factor.
Slocum. it depends on the fact that Israel is a “normal” democratic country”
No it doesn’t.
For us Americans, at least, I think there is a strong argument that the actions of Israel are more “our business” because the country relies so strongly on our support economically, militarily, and politically. Even from a “realist” standpoint, Israel takes our money and acts in ways contrary to our interests. I realize the latter argument may not appeal either to academics or to the international community, but politics lives on coalitions.
I do think sloc has a point about the moral hazard of holding democracies to a higher standard and the notion that imposing sanctions on Israel is much less costly than doing the same to, say, China. I always thought trade with China should be strongly linked to human rights, but that train seems already gone (thanks, Clinton. And that spy plane business showed us your balls too, Bush). That said, costs of imposing sanctions to the imposers are realistically always going to be a consideration. And the way to deal with the moral hazard is to be more insistent with dictatorships, not less with democracies.
Chris, the argument you mention isn’t so much an affirmative argument as a rejoinder to an objection. That “Israeli perpetrators” may be more vulnerable to “measures” doesn’t mean that this particular measure, wildly imprecisely targeted at “perpetrators,” has anything particular to recommend it.
Something that Nussbaum doesn’t discuss, but that I hear a lot in arguments about boycotts, divestments, and the like, is the appeal to clean hands. And I don’t think someone making a clean hands argument, implicily or explicitly, can extricate themselves so neatly from the obligation to see whether the hand they’re refusing to shake is any dirtier or bloodier than the others they carry on shaking. It adds up to someone employing a kind of ethic of absolute ends in the first instance and then taking refuge behind the ethic of responsibility when challenged—when there’s no particular reason to think that the “keep your cooties off me” policy instruments will be the most effective at promoting the improvement, or that they would be the instruments adopted if one were to sit down from scratch and say “what are the most effective steps we can take to reduce injustice in the world?”
Just to be clear, I do oppose a boycott. Because of its international nature, I don’t think the question of US complicity is Israeli abuses applies, and I think if the academy is going to go down that road, perhaps not a good idea anyway, it should start with the worst offenders, which currently would seem to be countries like Sudan (for genocide) or North Korea (for suppression of its own population). However, further isolating those countries intellectually would probably be counter-productive. I suppose the academy should stay out of the boycott business, at least so far as intellectual isolation, rather than 80’s-style divestment.
Slocum,
I am not sure your reasoning is fair. If someone was engaged in the Tibetan cause but not the Palestinian cause we would not simply assume that they did so because of bigoted views against the Chinese.
Under what circumstances would you NOT consider someone who is particularly critical of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians but ignores other problem areas anti-Semitic?
I hope no one thinks that, because I granted some credence to slocum’s first two arguments that I have any respect for his third, his accusation of anti-semitism. That argument is vile and obvious BS.
There’s no more evidence that Western activism against Israel is motivated by anti-semitism than that activism against South Africa was motivated by hatred of Afrikaaners as a people. And, of course, the argument that the Soviets and other African states were worse than South Africa was advanced by defenders of apartheid (aka those who did not want sanctions put on South Africa).
I hope no one thinks that, because I granted some credence to slocum’s first two arguments that I have any respect for his third, his accusation of anti-semitism. That argument is vile and obvious BS.
Let me make it clear—I did not make an accusation of anti-semitism, I suggested why some suspect it (Norm Geras, for example). But it does seem clear that there is a strongly felt animus toward Israel that is absent toward China or Russia. People may realize, intellectually, that they really should care about Tibet as much (or more) than Palestine, but somehow they don’t seem to feel it in the same way (and there are not calls for academic boycotts that get discussed endlessly).
I don’t doubt that antisemitism is a motivation for some fraction (do any of you really think it play no role for any pro-Palestinian activists?) I believe anti-Americanism in a more important factor, though. And then there is simply ‘fashion’—academics pay particular attention to Israel because it is currently a popular cause in the academic world, and one identifies oneself as a member of the tribe by holding particular opinions about Israel and Palestine.
This combination results in attention all out of proportion to the degree of persecution and size of the countries involved (Israel and Palestine combined are less than 100th the population of China).
Slocum, it is kind of obvious why people care a lot more about what happens in Palestine than they care what happens in Tibet. It has something to do with our Judeo-Christian heritage, the significance of the territory to the three leading monotheistic religions etc. That isn’t exactly a matter of “fashion”.
(And I could add to the previous comment that there are additional reasons why the British SWP —the main proponents of the boycott agenda—are so obsessed with Israel that have to do with the biography of their founder and leading light.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Cliff
Chris: “Martha Nussbaum’s article in Dissent puts the case against the boycott pretty well…”
I got about a page into it, and chucked it. She pulled out the old ‘others are worse’ argument.
It’s also the case that we – the US and the UK - have been largely responsible for organising the Jewish colonisation of Palestine and have no such role in Tibet.
“Slocum, it is kind of obvious why people care a lot more about what happens in Palestine than they care what happens in Tibet. It has something to do with our Judeo-Christian heritage, the significance of the territory to the three leading monotheistic religions etc. That isn’t exactly a matter of “fashion”.”
Why is this any more of a plausible claim than that of those who think that spotlighting Israel reflects anti-semitic bias? Why is this even an alternative claim?
I’ve heard senior and respected left-leaning academics reject the boycott proposal via an analogy to South Africa: that the boycott of South African academics was a mistake. Thoughts?
Palestine gets more attention than Tibet in part because the conflict in Palestine is much much more violent. The violence in Chechnya is also declining, although there is not good reporting on what is really going on for well known reasons. A generous analysis of why there is more focus on Palestine should at least include the possibility that some reasonably view or perceive, because of media attention, this conflict to be a more urgent crisis.
This does not of course negate the fact that there is a double standard at work because few countries have the kinds of vested interests in good relations with Israel that they do have with China and Russia.
Of course this assessment leads to all kinds of further questions and problems. For example, doesn’t giving attention to violent conflicts actually promote violence? Nevertheless, we can’t get away from the reasonableness of being particularly affronted by ongoing violent conflict. And all this makes the relative lack of attention to African genocides even more suspect.
To deal with the general principle, let’ re-phrase Bertram’s
The argument is this: that the Israeli perpetrators of injustice are far more vulnerable to outside pressure than, say, the Chinese or the Russians are.
to be:
Ceteris paribus, boycotts should be employed in cases in which when the targets are vulnerable to outside pressure.
This seems to rule out symbolic boycotts. Part of the value of a boycott/embargo is that it imposes costs on the persons imposing the boycott as well as the target. It is costly speech; not ‘cheap talk.’ For example, if I do not to travel for leisure purposes to countries that are rated “not free” by Freedom House without openly denouncing government repression or covertly aiding dissidents during the trip, I impose a cost on myself as well—I don’t get to enjoy Laotian cuisine or Cuban cigars. I pay a price to impose the boycott even though its economic significance is nil.
I’m not a big fan of what I consider to be “lazy boycotts”—boycotting X is proposed because X violates principle A, but proponents of boycotting X make no effort to identify whether Y or Z also violate principle A or whether boycotts would be effective against them.
One of my main concerns about Israeli policies is the potential for the problems to escalate severely. These concerns are worsened by the fact that so many prominent Christians and Muslems (don’t know about Jews) are actively pushing for armageddon. I think that the shelling of Israel showed that the country’s days are numbered unless it can make peace with its neighbors; had those been targeted missles with some payload, Israel would be in ruins. I figure Israel has about five years to do one of two things: make peace with its nieghbors or decimate (since it cannot govern) the region. The second is madness and probably wouldn’t work anyway. And a decent solution to the Palestinian situation is a strong prerequisite of the first. So compassion for the Palestinians is not my biggest reason for wanting that situation resolved. The Tibetan situation may be morally worse, considered in isolation, and I’m all for arm-twisting China, or was when that was possible, but the Palestinian situation is more dangerous.
There are two other options I could see: one is that the US dominate the region thoroughly enough that no real existential threat to Israel could emerge. This seems to have been part of the plan we’re been following (though I think the oil was a stronger interest than Israel, but both arrows pointed the same direction on this policy), and it does not seem to be working at all. The other is that Israel give up: as an American, I would favor simply giving all Israeli citizens passports and passage here. If the original idea was to create a safe home for Jews, Israel has already failed; is there any country where Jews are less safe than in Israel? However, currently this idea is a non-starter; neither the Israelis nor the Americans want it.
If you think this will actually change the policies of any government—Israel or otherwise—I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
If the original idea was to create a safe home for Jews, Israel has already failed; is there any country where Jews are less safe than in Israel?
Martin—The way I understood it, the impetus for the Zionist movement in the 19th century was for a homeland where Jews would no longer be dependent on the whims of their hosts. One could argue that Israel is now more dependent than it has ever been—on an external power, the United States, but which small countries anywhere are not dependent to various degrees on larger powers?
The members of the UCU are state employees. They are hired and paid by the people of Britain to provide a public service: to educate the young and to perform scholarly research. They are not hired and paid to set state policy toward Israel or China or any other foreign entity.
Certainly UCU members have the right to express their political views as private citizens and, by virtue of the necessary protections of academic freedom, in their work, without fear of retaliation. But they do not have the right to allocate public funds in a manner that is intended to effectuate their own political agenda, whether adopted by their union or not.
For example, the editor of a linguistics journal who receives an article of publishable quality from a scholar at an Israeli university, and refuses to publish it in observance of a boycott, is abusing her position of public trust. She is not paid to set foreign policy. She is paid to select and publish good work. If she feels she cannot in good conscience publish the best work in the field due to her political convictions, then her only honorable course is to resign. Otherwise she collects her salary under false pretences.
Imagine a mid-level civil servant who chose to discriminate against a certain nationality or class of persons. He would be fired in a heartbeat. Why does an academic who controls decisions over invitations to conferences, access to laboratories and participation in publications have more latitude than any other government employee?
The entire boycott controversy demonstrates that British academics have no understanding of their own role in society and are on the verge of grossly abusing the protections offered to them by the doctrine of academic freedom.
NYT correction today
A headline on Friday about a growing movement in Britain to boycott Israel economically and culturally referred incorrectly in some copies to a decision reached by the union of public service employees, the largest British labor union. The union said a resolution that would call for a boycott of Israel would be considered at its upcoming annual meeting. The union did not call for such a boycott.
Truly amazing how a story that was not true became so widely accepted so quickly.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html
I am opposed to academic boycotts on principle. Economic boycotts are a whole different kettle of fish, and I’m a bit surprised that people with strong feelings on this aren’t pushing harder on that front.
Anti-semitism is real, but unfortunately accusations of anti-semitism have been casually used as a tool to shut up critics of Israeli policy. One does not need to look far to see why Israel provokes such a strong reaction. Forty years ago the outside image of Israel was that of a scrappy underdog fighting off bumbling bullies.
The West Bank has now been occupied for more than four decades, which is almost as long as the cold war. Settlers have been systematically displacing the people who lived there. Israeli policy is explicitly discriminatory, in the sense that people with different religions are treated differently. The overall picture bears uncomfortable resemblance to South Africa, right down to the bantustans (e.g. Gaza) and the overall level of violence. Chechynia and Tibet are rough analogs, but only roughly. The argument in Chechynia is not about colonization, and Tibet is no different from the rest of China in terms of the absence of the franchise. It looks very different, of course, from the Israeli perspective. But that was also true for South Africa.
The members of the UCU are state employees.
No they aren’t.
Palestine gets more attention than Tibet in part because the conflict in Palestine is much much more violent.
Hmmm, by that logic Africa should have been covered 24/7 on CNN for the last decade or so, but then talking about the middle east is a lot more fun and at least we know who’s who there.
People think that ‘academic’ is roughly equivalent to ‘liberal’. Well, not in Israel; I’ve been there, I talked to some of them.
Dershowitz is an academic. Wouldn’t you want to boycott him?
is there any country where Jews are less safe than in Israel?
Not necessarily in order of peril…
Iran
Iraq (are there any Jews left?)
Syria
Yemen
Egypt
Lebanon
Tunisia
Algeria
Turkey
Argentina
Venezuela
Bosnia (a few left)
Uzbekistan
Moldova
Greece
Russia
Ukraine
Poland (a handful)
Not to mention countries where Jews lived for centuries before the advent of Islam, but are now expressly forbidden, e.g. Arabia, Jordan…
Keely, it may be that small countries generally rely on larger countries, at least nowadays, but if the idea is to be immune to whims, a small country can at least have a diversity of such contacts. Israel has just the US pretty much. Even a country close to the US, like Belize, seems much less dependent.
ohenry, OK, so the answer to my rhetorical question is yes. It doesn’t change the point, though: Israel is not a safe home for Jews, looks to become drastically less safe over time, and safer homes do exist, such as the United States.
I know a Jewish woman who lived in Iraq under Saddam, married to an Arabic man. Not a problem, she said. But, I suppose like so many things, that attitude got shocked and awed into oblivion.
Compare the boycotters to others.
Do US presidential candidates talk about the I/P conflict or Tibet? What do media report about? Blogs?
They all think the I/P conflict is more relevant.
And that is where for me the common argument of singling out fails. Nussbaum suggests that justice requires a comparative study. I’m rather ignorant of that field so I don’t know any of those studies. But I do know that none ever was cited as grounds for intervention, sanctions, boycotts or any other punitive action of this kind that I’m aware of.
So when she says “I am disturbed by the world’s failure to consider such relevantly similar cases” then she should be disturbed about a lot more things going on in this world. Yet she pulls this argument out of her hat just at this opportunity. (And she doesn’t refer to a single example of such a comparison. That’s odd given her expertise.)
I recently signed a Tibet petition. I haven’t asked them for any comparison or their motivation.
And I doubt anyone has.
And last, given the fact that this boycott would be directed at Israel, there isn’t an argument or motivation in the world that can refute the claim that it is singling out Israel. Which probably explains why this claim is the centerpiece in many opposition arguments.
#28 – ah, an adversary who goes right for the capillary. Look, academics in Britain suck at the public tit whether they are formally state employees are not. Academic freedom means they say what they want, not that they can commandeer public resources for private ends. Academics who make decisions regarding allocation of resources at their jobs based on their personal political beliefs are thieves. They are stealing from their employers and from the public at large. It doesn’t matter whether they think their motives are good. All thieves believe that they are entitled to steal. The entire boycott business demonstrates that British academics have an infantile grandiose view of their role in society.
“Tibet is no different from the rest of China in terms of the absence of the franchise.”
I really object to this formulation. First, “the rest of China” conceeds Tibet to China in a way that would never be done with say Israel and the West Bank. Second, is China free to take over whomever it pleases so long as it gives its new subjects the same lack of vote as the old? Again the double standard appears. Why make an argument that China isn’t to be attended to because it mistreats its own citizens more than Israel?
The only reason to go after Israel and not China is a negative reason, China is too big and scary for the UCU to risk attacking. Punishing the most liberal elements in Israel—the academic world—seems stupid too.
Chris,
I’m unclear why your enthusiasm, for or against a boycott of Israeli academics, should be at all influenced by the actions of the Israeli government. This would be understandable to the extent that Israeli academics influence government policy. But as has been well-established, academics have if anything been far to the left of the country as a whole.
Is this just a rhetorical device to express your dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Israeli government and the quality of the e-mail you receive?
Martin—My point was that while Jews in Israel may be more subject to external attack and terrorism than Jews in the more peaceful environments of the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., and so on, they are also at liberty to organize their collective defence, i.e. they have an army. And while this army is still a client for American and European hardware, Israel’s arms industry is probably more self-sufficient than all but a few countries in the world. This was the lesson Jews learned in Europe in the 30s and 40s, and in the Middle East in the 40s and 50s. That it is a lesson not always conducive to compromise and diplomacy, is another matter.
novakant,
Please learn to read.
Notice the “in part” in my comment. Notice my reference and my point in relation to Africa.
Tibet keeps coming up as another example of something else that is terribly unjust. As nice as the Dali Lama may be, and as much as Buddhism may appeal to upper- and upper-middle class Westerners, in the end, the PRC abolished a theocracy in which monastic landlords had pretty much absolute power over their serfs. It wasn’t until close to four decades into his exile that the Dali Lama finally said that a Tibet freed from China should not return to the theocracy.
Okay, done digressing.
Why is this even an alternative claim?
Supposing people to have these motivations does not rule out anti-semitism as a motivation of course, but the anti-semitism hypothesis is usually put forward by people who apparently assume that it is the only possible explanation for people paying special attention to Israel/Palestine. Pointing out that actually things are a bit more complicated than that and there are lots of possible reasons, of varying degrees of moral force, for why they might do so shows that their claim is a non sequitur.
Well, if the reason for these boycotts is that Israel is more vulnerable to this kind of pressure, well, I promise to do my bit. I will vote for the most reactionary Israeli party, the one most absolutely impervious to these gestures.
There. Problem solved.
‘Look, academics in Britain suck at the public tit whether they are formally state employees are not.’
Absolute and total bollocks. Many academics (specifically researchers but also some lecturers) have their fees paid by external funding bodies. I’ve been an academic for nearly ten years now, but I’ve never, EVER, ‘sucked at the public tit’. Instead I sell my labour power to however wants it: some of those who want to buy (but not all) are universities.
Which makes me part of the glorious free enterprise, free market economy. So I can say what I want and boycott who I want.
‘The only reason to go after Israel and not China is a negative reason, China is too big and scary for the UCU to risk attacking.’
It’s true that there is no particular move to boycott Chinese Universities, but then, to the best of my knowledge, no Tibetan organisation has asked for such a boycott. Palestinian organisations (some of them) have asked for a boycott of Israeli Universities (and some haven’t).
There is, on the other hand, a move to boycott Chinese goods in protest against the situation in Tibet. I take it you will be part of this movement Sebastian?
(The normal ‘don’t boycott Israel’ attitude being ‘Why aren’t they protesting about Chinese actions in Tibet and Russian actions in Chechnya, like I don’t?’)
All thieves believe that they are entitled to steal.
They do?
Please chill aaron_m, I was criticizing your contention that there is some relation between level of violence and amount of media coverage. About four million people were killed since 1998 in the Second Congo War and the UN estimates that even after the peace agreement about 1000 people per day die right now as a result of it. The media coverage has been close to non-existent. The total number of deaths in the I/P-conflict between 2000-2006 was around 4000, yet the coverage was 24/7. So I think it’s fair to say, that no such relation exists.
#42- Yes, external funding bodies – like the seven research councils, which are government funded. You don’t mention your field, but perhaps you get your funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which along with the other research councils is funded by the Office of Science and Innovation, part of the Department of Trade and Industry. Where do you think the money comes from? Do you think that books on Rousseau and the social contract are flying off the shelves at Waterstone’s? This is public money we’re talking about, to be spent for the public good. You are deluding yourself when you say you operate in the free market.
When you apply for a grant, Hidari, you are representing to the grant-giver that you will do your level best to carry out the task that you are set. You do not say, “I will do my job except when I choose to spend the money to advance a political goal of my own.” If If you take the money and then spend it in ways that are influenced by your personal political agenda, you are stealing. You are violating a public trust.
Every managerial employee understands that he can’t prefer his friends when he’s awarding a contract for the copy machine service, and that he can’t choose only his co-religionists when looking to place a print job. But academics seem to think that it’s okay for them to give or withhold public money on the basis of the nationality of the potential recipient, regardless of the quality of the work. Who gave you the right to divert public funds to further your personal goals?
I say it again: any academic who makes decisions over funding, or invitations to meetings, or publications, or any work-related event, on the basis of a personal political view, is a thief. You are stealing public money and you are violating the terms of your employment. Perhaps you think you are Robin Hood. Well, Robin Hood was a thief, wasn’t he?
The argument that impresses Chris so much seems actually pretty weak. The main premise involving effectiveness of the boycott is suspect or at any rate we do not know that it is the case that the boycott of Israeli academics will be effective. ( some doubt here because Israeli academics have multitude of international connections and so the British boycott will be merely an inconvenience ).
What does this mean ? Well if we do not know that the main premise of the argument is true we do not know that the argument is sound so it should be obvious that it can not be not persuasive. And the last feature is a feature of all good arguments.
Every managerial employee understands that he can’t prefer his friends when he’s awarding a contract for the copy machine service, and that he can’t choose only his co-religionists when looking to place a print job.
But that’s why they do it thru the union. If their employers (whoever they are) don’t like the boycott, they are free to negotiate or do whatever employers do when they happen to disagree with unions.
Also, if they are indeed employed by the public (directly or indirectly), and if the public doesn’t mind or even supports the boycott (which seems likely), then what’s the problem, where’s the thievery?
Zdenek, I agree, which is why I said “those facts are highly contestable.” IF the boycott were effective in remedying serious injustice THEN it might be justified (even if more serious injustices were being committed elsewhere).
48: Do you think that books on Rousseau and the social contract are flying off the shelves at Waterstone’s?
Hey, you should see my royalties statement! (But don’t expect an invitation to my private yacht any time soon.)
I can’t see why anyone has the obligation to be even-handed in campaigning against oppressive regimes. There are a whole host of personal reasons for being selective. I for one care more about the moral fate of Israel than about the moral fate of China because I’ve been to Israel several times and have friends there. I identify with them and that makes me care about the problems that they care about, including the problem of their racist government.
This is no different from someone who cares more about research into heart disease than research into cancer because his or her father died of heart disease. Is this attitude immoral? No. It’s better to cure some diseases than none, and a diffuse campaign about disease in general is less likely to bear fruit than a selective focus on one disease or another. So long as the selectivity is not on immoral grounds (e.g. because cancer is imagined to be a black person’s disease, because Israel’s dominant population is Jewish) there is no credible objection to selective campaigning. Indeed there’s no credible objection to joining one campaign rather than another purely on a whim (e.g. because it is the only campaign one heard about, or the only campaign that exists), assuming it’s a worthy campaign.
I don’t think that the ‘boycott Israeli academics’ campaign is a worthy campaign. But that’s another matter.
john, on a personal level I would agree, but on a global level it’s simply immoral how the deaths of 4 million people in the congo conflict were for the most part simply ignored, while the death of 3000 Americans or the death of a few thousand in the I/P conflict causes the world to be turned upside down – now, where the personal and the universal meet is another question
I think organizations have the right to decide who to boycott.
And john, I don’t get your argument. The problem isn’t when someone cares more about one foreign country than the others. You use China, I prefer that state because I find it’s culture older and more advanced than the Israeli’s. their mythology is much richer, their belief systems far more nuanced, and their literature far superior. Their state is also well… Real. Israeli seems manufactured, and in a large part it is. They are not a self-sufficient country and that lowers them in my view.
But those aren’t really important issues. The real problem is that some people put the interests of foreign nations over the interests of their own. Some of these people are Christians who place religion before country, some are Jews who place ethnicity over nationality. They may trick themselves into thinking our interests are uniquely intertwined, but that’s not a view that can be, or ever has been, validated by an argument as to how that is so. I don’t really mean to single out Israeli interests in this, it’s hardly unique to them. There were plenty of Irishmen in this country who send money to the IRA, despite the importance of this nations alliance with England. Don’t even get me started about Cubans in Florida. It’s a problem that some people want to put use our government to further the interests of another nation, even in spite of the nation they claim fealty too.
Chris, I chose Rousseau intentionally to see if you were reading. I’m happy to get a rise out of you.
abb1 – the union gives them the muscle to say, we’re going to steal and we dare you to try to stop us. If a group of bandits are powerful enough to cow the state into allowing them to operate with impunity, that doesn’t make their thefts legally or morally just. Like a store owner who pays extortion money every week to the mob, the government may decide to put up with the boycott because the alternatives would be worse.
And the boycott is not accomplished “through the union.” The union has voted to adopt a boycott, but the actual boycotting will be done by individuals whose power to make the requisite decisions comes entirely through their employment or their grant contracts. The union does not have the power to boycott. Only individual academics do.
I have no objection to boycotts by people who are using their own money and acting on their own time. If a British academic decides not to go on holiday to Eilat and refuses to buy Jaffa oranges, that’s fine. But if a British editor of a publicly-funded journal refuses to print an article of publishable quality by, say, an Israeli sociologist, that’s theft.
Chris but this is also you:
“However there’s one pro-boycott argument that she doesn’t address and which I’ve not heard a good reply to. It doesn’t, for me, outweigh the arguments against, but I do think it weakens the often-put “double standards” argument that anti-Israel measures unfairly discriminate against Israel since there are far worse countries in…”
Here is the thing, if the argument in question is weak for the reasons I mention it cannot weaken anything since it is hopelessly weak itself. At best you can say ” if the argument was any good then it might do such and such ..” but this is worthless as a defense of anything surely you can see that.
Another thing of course is that when you say ” I vave not heard a good reply to it…” you are assuming that the argument works ( i.e. is sound and persuasive ) but as I showed this is an illicit move.
The issue is one of perceived proximity: the Israelis’ politically and culturally are “us” the Chinese et al are “them.”
That’s the main problem the threat of a boycott gives offense to so many.
PACBI
Electronic Intifada
“not a word has been uttered
(Try google’s news search feature.)”
But in this country I rely on blogs by Arabs and Arabists to get any detailed information.
As’ad AbuKhalil
Arab Links
Tanya Reinhart on the boycott.
#50
I can’t see why anyone has the obligation to be even-handed in campaigning against oppressive regimes. There are a whole host of personal reasons for being selective.
This is no different from someone who cares more about research into heart disease than research into cancer because his or her father died of heart disease. Is this attitude immoral? No.
I think the flaw here, and in the argument Chris likes, is the assumption that the propsed action is costly, and that it is wise to allocate resources where they will do the most good. The researcher can’t study all diseases, but must choose.
The UCU can pass as many angry resolutions as it likes. Hence its selectivity is suspect.
#22
If the original idea was to create a safe home for Jews, Israel has already failed; is there any country where Jews are less safe than in Israel?
I think the briefest glimpse at twentieth century history ought to be enough to concvince anyone that the original Zionists were quite correct that Jews needed a homeland to be safe. You might even want to examine the post-war experience of the survivors.
How is it a theft, I don’t see the logic. It’s a policy implemented by a union. I’m sure unions implement and enforce all kinds of policies reflecting the will of their membership, that’s what they do; why is this one so special?
Zdenek – the point is that the disagreement with someone putting this argument is different in kind, it is a disagreement about the facts. The possibility that a good argument of this type might be put undermines the argument that claims that we ought not act against injustice A when injustice B is worse. Sometimes we ought to act against injustice A even given that B is worse, since we can make a difference re A but not B.
If you concede the possibility also of reasonable disagreement about the facts, then you also ought to concede the possibility that someone favouring the boycott does so because they believe that it will make a difference. In such a case, the suggestion (often made) that something sinister must lurk behind their position is shown up for the cheap debating tactic that it is.
“I think the briefest glimpse at twentieth century history ought to be enough to concvince anyone that the original Zionists were quite correct that Jews needed a homeland to be safe.”
A homeland that that they control even if in the minority
or a homeland that is only a “home for the jews?”
He requested permission for the General Security Service to act against anyone who aims at changing the official designation of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” – even if they use nothing but completely legal means.
It follows that In the view of the chief of the Security Service, a central figure in the Israeli leadership, the task of the Shin Bet (now commonly known in Israel as Shabak) is not only to protect the state from spies and terrorists, but also from any challenge to its ideological designation, like the KGB in the former Soviet Union and the Stasi in communist East Germany. (The excellent Oscar-winning movie “The Life of the Others”, now screening in Israel, shows how this worked in practice.)”
abb1 – Unions do not implement policies that advise their members how they may spend their employers’ money. A public employees union cannot implement a policy that says, “our members must place print jobs with Christian printers” or “our members may not attend meetings with persons having Hispanic surnames” or “our members must purchase photocopy paper only from wholesalers who pay 5% to the Union benefit fund.”
Academics are given a very wide latitude in how to expend public funds – including their own salaries or grant funding – because it is recognized that academic work contributes to the public good. Academics must have a significant amount of freedom from retaliation in order to do their work, hence the concept of academic freedom.
Now, suppose we have a linguist who edits a scholarly journal of translation studies, which is funded by government grants. Her salary and that of her staff is paid by the taxpayer because a decision has been made, via the political process, that the people of Britain are well-served by the existence of scholarship in this field. Some of her funding comes from subscriptions, which are purchased by universities and libraries funded by the government, and the decisions to subscribe are made by government-funded employees who have been entrusted by the people of Britain to decide which scholarly journals are required by the participants in those libraries and universities. But in the end, all or virtually all the funding is public.
Now, suppose this editor receives an article that meets her requirements as publishable. It is in her view, a valuable addition to the corpus of translation studies. It is something that would be useful to the scholars who read this journal. It would advance the goal of her journal, which is the increase and dissemination of knowledge in the field of translation studies.
Nonetheless she decides not to publish it, because the author has a position at the University of Haifa. Instead she publishes an article that is not as good but is by a scholar at Penn State.
In doing so, she deprives the readership of her journal of an article that they are entitled to receive and would benefit from reading. She has explicitly subjugated her judgment in the area of translation studies, a field in which she is a recognized expert and in which she has been entrusted with public funds, to her judgment in the field of Israel-Palestine relations, an area in which she has no expertise and no position of public trust. She has used the money given to her to publish the best available scholarship for an entirely different purpose – to coerce a change in Israeli government policy. Her journal is now not the best translation studies journal she could publish. It is an inferior publication because it excludes work that is better than the work she chooses to publish. Because she is choosing not to do what she was hired to do – to use her expertise and her academic freedom to publish the best possible journal that she can – she is stealing the money that has been entrusted to her.
She is of course entitled to have a personal view, as every citizen and voter is entitled. She may work tirelessly in her own time in favor of a boycott of Israeli goods and services. But it is unethical for her to use her position of public trust to advance her personal political views.
‘You don’t mention your field, but perhaps you get your funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which along with the other research councils is funded by the Office of Science and Innovation, part of the Department of Trade and Industry.’
And perhaps I don’t. And perhaps I get all my money from private companies. Yes, that seems more likely.
Piece of advice mate: when in a hole, stop digging.
Well, Hidari, if you get your funding from private companies (and again you don’t specify your field) then you are an exception to the rule. But suppose you’re a computer scientist of some sort. Would you refuse to purchase a text authored by an expert at the Technion? Suppose it is a text that may advance your work by several weeks? Would you refuse to attend a conference at which that expert is speaking, even though his presentation is directly related to the topic of your grant? Did you tell your grantor that you will not do the best work of which you are capable because your political beliefs prevent you from taking advantage of the best research available? If you did not then you are stealing from your grantor. The fact that your grantor won’t ever know it does not change the ethical status of your actions.
I think the briefest glimpse at twentieth century history ought to be enough to concvince anyone that the original Zionists were quite correct that Jews needed a homeland to be safe.
Should this really be the lesson of the 20th century? Now, I’m not an erudite academic, but even I could easily come up with something much more enlightened and comprehensive.
Keely, OK, but you appeared to be responding to me, and your comment is only of relevance to a rhetorical question I posed on which my argument does not rely. In any case, I thought it uncontroversial that Israel is dependent on the US in a very basic way; Military independence without economic independence doesn’t count for much in any but the short-term. It is interesting that I made what I think it is very stark assessment of the situation, and a deliberately provocative proposal as to one of the solutions, and all anyone seems to be up to responding to is the rhetorical question, which I should have omitted as it has proved distracting.
Bernard, the Holocaust showed that Jews were not safe in mid-20th century Europe. That doesn’t prove or even support that they are not safe in the United States now. Questioning whether Israel has really been an effective solution to the problem of Jewish security is not at all the same as denying there is or has been such a problem, and it is intellectually dishonest to conflate the two positions. I suppose it is possible in theory that the US will someday again be an inhospitible environment for Jews – a great many things are possible in theory – but what I said, and what no one seems prepared to address, is that either Israel or the bulk of the Middle East is doomed if Israel does not reach peace reasonably soon. I’m not arguing that this is theoretically possible; I’m arguing that it is the logical trajectory of the current situaiton. Needing a homeland, at least that specific homeland, to be safe is only really a viable position if they are in fact safe, and one has only to picture last year’s bombing with better missles to see how unlikely such safety is a few years out.
In any case, I’m not opposed to a Jewish homeland in Israel, but I don’t see it as viable without a peaceful relation with its neighbors. The only other basic alternatives I see are what I mentioned: 1) Decimate the region to such an extent that it will not in the foreseeable future be able to launch an equivalent of the Hezbo missles attacks, but with targetted, payload-carrying missles. 2) Have the US effectively govern the region. The current administration seems quite willing, but unable, and this solution does not seem viable 3) Abandon a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. This is commonly phrased as “pushing the Jews into the sea”, so I put forth a proposal that amounts to no such thing. 2 won’t work; 1 should be unthinkable, and also won’t work. If 3 is unthinkable or won’t work, that leaves peace. Peace or annihilation.
Shorter Bloix: If I choose not to associate – eg. for personal reasons – with someone whose cooperation would advance my research, I am “stealing” government money.
“I thought it uncontroversial that Israel is dependent on the US in a very basic way; Military independence without economic independence doesn’t count for much in any but the short-term.”
Israel’s total PPP-adjusted GDP is about USD 160 to 180 billion, with a growth rate of 4.8 percent in 2006 and expected growth of about 4 percent in 2007. American aid in 2006 totaled $2.5 billion. In other words, not only does American money account for less than 2 percent of the Israeli economy, but if discontinued tomorrow, it would be absorbed into current-year growth. Israel is no more economically dependent than any other country that receives American military aid, and probably less so than most.
Engels, you can “associate” with whoever you want to associate with – dinner, movies, golf, holidays at the shore, whatever you want. But you may not refuse to hire the best candidate for a job based on that person’s politics. You may not refuse to publish the best research in the journal you control based on the author’s nationality. You may not take money that has been entrusted to you for a specific purpose – to do the best possible research and teaching in your field- and use it for a different purpose – to coerce political change in another country. It’s unethical. Who here wants to argue that it is ethical, instead of setting up straw men and knocking them down?
‘Israel is no more economically dependent than any other country that receives American military aid, and probably less so than most.’
Weeeeeeeeeeeeell….up to a point. The other factor, of course, is that Israel trades a great deal with the US. The other factor is that Israel knows that she is a LOT safer with the strongest military power the world has ever seen behind her then…well….not. The point is not that Israel would simply collapse without US help: we know that’s not true. The point is that ceteris paribus Israel would rather have US help and support than not, and that, since, their broad aims in the region are the same, it is seldom in Israel’s long term interests to go against the specific aims of American foreign policy.
There are also cultural factors that also tend to link Israel to the US, not least the influence of the Christian Right in the US.
It’s not that Israel would simply curl up and die if the US stopped its military aid. But its military and financial situation would be greatly weakened. Moreover, say the US did stop its military aid…where would it go? Israel is well aware of the strong Saudi lobby: a tilt away from the Israelis would almost certainly lead to a tilt towards the Arab states.
In other words it is very very very very very much in the interests of Israel to stay in the US’ good books.
Bloix
You really have absolutely no concrete, empirical experience of how modern academia works do you?
Also I would check up the word ‘steal’ in a dictionary. It doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means.
Bloix – Yeah, I’m sure we all agree professors can play golf with whoever they want. I was talking, as I think you were, about association in a professional capacity. Your claim that the choices of individual academics in these matters must pass a test of objective likelihood to optimally advance their areas of research is far too restrictive and does I think cut into freedom of association.
I think your problem starts with your assumption that academic salaries are “money entrusted to” the academic for him to do the best possible research, where the means for achieving the latter are to be objectively assessed. That is a very idiosyncratic view of the purpose of academic pay and the role of academics.
And what Hidari said about labelling everything “stealing”.
But we can take action now to force the Israelis to negotiate and to end the injustice of the occupation, whereas we cannot act with similar prospect of success against Russia or China.
This argument conveniently defines “success” in such a way as to support its point. Does anyone seriously believe that an end to the “injustice of occupation” as defined by the typical western academic would resolve or even significantly mitigate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its impact on the people involved? The rhetoric coming from neighboring countries and the ongoing chaos in Gaza has put an end to the illusions I once had about the viability of a two state solution. In the current political environment nothing short of the dissolution of the state of Israel would end the conflict and this academic boycott will do nothing to bring that about.
Let’s face it, this boycott is purely symbolic and what it symbolizes is poorly defined and justifiably open to interpretation.
Martin—I realize that your throwaway line about the relative safety of Jews in Israel vs. the U.S. was mostly rhetorical. My own – partly rhetorical – point concerned the fact that Jews now have an army. There is an important qualitative difference between being “safe” in another country and being threatened but well-armed “at home”. In the light (shadow?) of 20th century history, I can’t imagine Jews in Israel giving up their army. As for your three alternatives, # 3 was never thinkable, post 1948, and at this point in history too many people/countries/organizations would not let it happen. I think, as well, that a Palestinian state is also inevitable, regardless what some hardliners in Israel might believe. And, even when faced with a belligerent Hamas regime, polls suggest that most Israelis concur. The trick is to persuade this majority of Israelis that concessions and withdrawals are in their best interest, and recent events in Gaza and Lebanon haven’t helped.
Hidari once again does not respond sustantively. BTW, “steal” means among other things to take money under false pretenses.
Engels, if you think my views of the role of scholars in society is incorrect, what is your view? Do you think that the public at large chooses to pay the salaries of people who have spent years studying medieval architecture or South Asian languages in order to set national priorities in health care, energy use and foreign policy? If you do I assure you that you are incorrect. Academics are trained, hired, and paid in order to do scholarship. If you take the money you are given for scholarship in order to do politics, in which your expertise is if anything less than that of the average educated citizen, then you are breaching your contract with society, which did not ask you to use public funds to set national priorities.
“The other factor, of course, is that Israel trades a great deal with the US. The other factor is that Israel knows that she is a LOT safer with the strongest military power the world has ever seen behind her then…well….not.”
With respect to the first issue, the EU superseded the US as Israel’s largest trading partner at the time the EU-10 acceded. As for the second, this is true, but the same is true of any other small country with a great-power or regional-power patron. Most countries have an interest in staying in some other country’s good books, and Israel isn’t uniquely or even unusually dependent in that respect.
You’d also be surprised what people do and don’t “know” about whether Israel would collapse without American help. I’ve seen educated people argue in all seriousness, on this blog, that Israel had no economy and was entirely an American charity case. That’s at least as jarring as hearing that Israel is a “manufactured” country – which of course it is, but isn’t that true of all nations if you go back far enough?
Anyway, all this is mostly beside the point, but I do think that the boycott is partially informed by the perception of Israel as an artificial, dependent state, or as Chris argues, one that can easily be swayed by outside pressure. That isn’t so, regardless of the merit (or lack of merit) of its policies.
Martin,
the Holocaust showed that Jews were not safe in mid-20th century Europe. That doesn’t prove or even support that they are not safe in the United States now. Questioning whether Israel has really been an effective solution to the problem of Jewish security is not at all the same as denying there is or has been such a problem, and it is intellectually dishonest to conflate the two positions.
It was not only the Holocaust, and not only the middle of the century. There was ample evidence on the point both before and, startlingly, after WWII. Where should survivors have gone? Returned to Poland, perhaps? Or was the Soviet Union more hospitable?
Are Jews safe in the US today? Of course. But mass migration of Israelis to the US, even leaving aside from the effects it might have on that safety, is not remotely probable. So I don’t see how that addresses the question of whether Israel “has really been an effective solution to the problem of Jewish security.” The question is what would have happened had Israel not been created.
abb1,
Should this really be the lesson of the 20th century? Now, I’m not an erudite academic, but even I could easily come up with something much more enlightened and comprehensive.
The lesson? No.
One lesson? Yes.
Zarzur wrote:
“Israel’s total PPP-adjusted GDP is about USD 160 to 180 billion, with a growth rate of 4.8 percent in 2006 and expected growth of about 4 percent in 2007. American aid in 2006 totaled $2.5 billion. . In other words, not only does American money account for less than 2 percent of the Israeli economy, but if discontinued tomorrow, it would beIf the government increases spending by 2% of GDP b absorbed into current-year growth.”
The second assertion in no way follows from the first fact, as that is not a legitimate way to calculate impact. At a minimum, you have to account for money multiplier effects, which dramatically increase the impact of infusions of money. Assuming that 2.5 billion of aid has only 2.5 billion of GDP impact is way off – Econ 101, the macro part, will tell you that quite clearly.
Novakant,
#45
You claim that how much violence there is has NO relation WHATSOEVER to how important people think a conflict is. ?????
1) WTF are you talking about? That claim is patently false.
2) I never claimed that violence translates directly into a relative proportion of media attention. In fact I argued that this is not the case for violence in Africa, which is under reported given the level of violence. But, this fact does not amount to level of violence being of no relevance.
Please have the decency to admit that 1) you misrepresented my original comment and 2) that you are wrong on the fairly simplistic issue I was addressing.
“At a minimum, you have to account for money multiplier effects, which dramatically increase the impact of infusions of money. Assuming that 2.5 billion of aid has only 2.5 billion of GDP impact is way off”
This is true if the infusion of cash is spent in the target economy. About 75 percent of American aid to Israel is earmarked to be spent in the United States, and the goods to be purchased – military hardware – tend to sit around until used rather than providing economic benefit to Israel. I don’t have my Econ 101 textbook in front of me, but I doubt the stimulus effect of this money is very great.
seth edenbaum, you messed up the html in your Shin Bet comment. Plus you’ve linked to a citeless op-ed at Counterpunch.
rilkefan—
There are other links out there, just search on “shin bet israeli arabs”. Here’s one from Haaretz
aaron:
The Second Congo War is the bloodiest conflict since WW2, yet it is barely ever reported on and it is not part of the public consciousness at all.
Your thesis has to accomodate for this. It doesn’t and that’s why you are forced to resort to weasel words. It happens to the best of us.
bloix has a good point. Take the example of those Australian researchers (Drs Marshall and Warren) who discovered that many ulcers are caused by bacteria rather than stress. Imagine that an Isreali academic made a similar discovery of medical importance. What academic researcher could justify boycotting that work?
One of my brothers suffered a bad head injury. My mum just came across an important piece of work done by an Israeli head injury centre on patients who have had amazingly good recoveries from head injuries. Anyone going to advocate that New Zealand medical staff specialising in head injuries should ignore that work?
Obviously research in areas like physics or chemistry or horticultural techniques has less of an immediate connection to human welfare than medical research. But there the points still remain, though the connection is less direct. An academic’s first dedication should be to the truth. If an academic boycotts ideas just because they come from Israelis, the academic is not merely betraying the taxpayers, but the truth, and retarding the advancement of their science. This implies that only academics who believe that their work is irrelevant to human wellbeing can justify boycotting other academics.
This argument is independent of the Israeli governments’ policies.
Bernard, my point is that Israel has to come to peace with its neighbors, and soon, or it will be destroyed, possibly taking much of the mideast with it if it tries to solve its problems by force. The purpose of the Israeli immigration proposal is, first of all, to think a little outside the box, so as to look at all the possibilities not just the likely ones – I’m trying to be reasonably exhaustive here, because I am claiming “no alternative”, a strong claim – and, secondly, to show that one can be williing to see Israel “wiped off the map” without advocating the “Jews be thown into the sea”, thus countering some common rhetoric.
If we’re going to get into historical counterfactuals, I think a much stronger moral and, in hindsight, practical case could have been made for carving the Jewish homeland from the hide of Germany while it was in no position to object. That is not what the Zionists wanted, but there is a difference between what you can claim for security reasons and what your little heart desires. Perhaps Europe would not have accepted it, though I think otherwise; but there is no way to resolve the issue, and it’s not going to happen now. I’m not saying Israel was a bad idea. Had things gone a little differently later on, it’s not hard to see that it could have worked, and I still have (fading) hope that it can work. But it is time to recognize that it is in serious danger of not working – of not remaining a viable state – and it cannot counter these threats solely through military means and shouldn’t try. It will obtain peace, within a few years, or die, and it doesn’t matter a whit who does or does not find the end of Israel “acceptable”. Me personally, I don’t care who runs that chunk of real estate, and I’m for separating the combatants so they stop hurting each other. But I think the industrialized west has gotten used to the idea that the world’s possible outcomes are constrained by what the West, especially the US, happens to find acceptable, which is not the case.
martin suggests:
” … Israel has to come to peace with its
neighbors, and soon, or it will be destroyed …”
How very ironic this being the 40th year to the
very day since the Arab tried – and failed miserably – to do just that in 1967.
Perhaps you missed that issue of the Guardian.
And it is also somewhat a flight from reality
given that Israel is at peace with both Egypt
and Jordan.
Or are you suggesting that Arabs are untrust-
worthy? That Arabs make peace treaties which
they will tear up ‘soon’? How very racist of
you.
What you are engaging in is, of course, an
exercise in terror. “You Jews better do what
I say or YOU WILL BE DESTROYED”.
I guess it is better that you are using words
and not using missles. Have you considered
strapping on a suicide belt to make your
point even more emphatically?
Tracy W, imagine that a plant available only in South Africa was shown to provide a cure for HIV in, say, 1985. It would have been a gold mine for the apartheid government, and we would have been in an unpleasant position with our little boycott. There is no special condition attached to academic boycotts in this regard, and the argument you put (like Bloix`s argument about unions “stealing government money”) is an argument about the righteousness of boycotts generally. In fact your argument is really just a small part of the broader argument about why people don`t boycott china – the cost to them is too great.
After all, the kiddies throwing stones at Israeli tanks and copping head injuries from rubber and real bullets in the 90s probably don`t care overmuch about some person with a head injury in NZ who could get better treatment if only the Israeli oppressors could trade freely. That is a cost we can choose to bear, but those kiddies rely on us choosing to bear some kind of cost in order to change the policy of their oppressor. I would argue that the fact that western societies aren`t even willing to consider the marginal cost of an academic boycott shows just how low in the scheme of things we place muslim kiddies.
“seth edenbaum, you messed up the html in your Shin Bet comment. Plus you’ve linked to a citeless op-ed at Counterpunch.”
That “citeless op-ed” is written by Uri Avnery.
And here’s the Haaretz link
imagine that a plant available only in South Africa was shown to provide a cure for HIV in, say, 1985. It would have been a gold mine for the apartheid government, and we would have been in an unpleasant position with our little boycott.
This one strikes me as dead simple. If that happened, then dump the boycott to get the plant. How could anyone live with themselves if they didn’t?
I am opposed to apartheid, I am of mixed-race myself so I’ve never come across a racist society that’d be good for me and my loved ones. But introduce a bit of practicality here for Christ’s sake – in 1985 we had pretty good predictions that HIV would infect millions. The moral complexity of that choice is about zero. Of course boycoutts should be dropped when the cost to boycoutting is too high. Do you really think that all those people who get Aids count for less than the victims of apartheid?
And can you really advocate a NZ doctor ignoring research on head injuries that might help their patients just because it was done by Israelis? You’re kidding me. What happened to the doctor’s obligations to serve their patient? If I had a choice for my brother between a doctor who was prepared to ignore research just because it was done by Israelis and a doctor who’d use every thing they could I’d pick the second without a moment’s hesistation. Again, no moral problems here for me.
Far more people suffer head injuries than just Muslim kids and Muslim kids will continue to suffer head injuries even if Israel suddenly disappeared tomorrow (I presume that Muslim kids outside a war zone are likely to ride bikes into car doors or fall out of trees or off playround equipment or drop heavy books onto their head or otherwise get head injuries like everyone else). Everyone around the world deserves treatment for their head injuries that is informed by the best medical knowledge, and the faster that medical knowledge advances the better. Head injuries are an ongoing problem to far more than Muslim kids, I think Christian kids and atheist adults and Hindi teenagers and Wiccan grandparents count for as much as Muslim kids. And there are a lot of Muslim kids who don’t live anywhere near Israel and therefore aren’t at any risk from the Israeli government. You don’t mention them. Don’t try to claim the moral high ground on me.
Plus I’ve read enough history to know what happens when scientists start placing other priorities above improving human knowledge. For a start, they stop being scientists. Any academic who boycotts Israeli academic work should include a disclaimer on every paper, book or blog post they publish to the effect that they have placed other considerations above the accuracy of their work.
Seth,
While tapping the phones of “enemies of the state” isn’t something to cheer, it’s something that pretty much every western democracy does. What exactly does this have to do with anything being discussed in this thread?
And why are you taking credit for someone else’s work? I assume, along with rilkefan, that you probably just made a mistake with html when you posted several paragraphs from the Counterpunch article as if they were your own thoughts. Still, I think your reply should have acknowledged the mistake.
Lord Acton. When faced with a response that is that irrational, dishonest, and rife with ad hominem attacks and other cheap shots, whether it is worth the effort to respond is not an easy call. Well, here goes:
Forty years ago, Israel did very well. Meanwhile, last summer, as I said, they had missles pounding them for weeks and couldn’t do anything to stop it. Said missles were not guided and had little payload, so they mostly blew up dirt. But similar missles that do not have these limitations exist in greater numbers all the time. What the bombing showed is that Israel has no defense against such an attack. Pointing this out is not threatening Israel; it is facing reality. By your “logic”, those, for example on the Israeli right, who hold that Israel is existentially threatened by Iran’s nuclear potential are also “threatening Israel”, since they too are claiming that a catastrophe could likely await Israel if their council is not followed.
Israel being at peace with Egypt and Jordon is hardly sufficient. For it to be made safe by peace, it must be at peace with every force that constitutes an existential threat, not just with some of them; otherwise, it is still, by definition, under existential threat. And you pile bullshit on bullshit: no peace with Egypt is not relevant, but even if it were, I have said nothing about Egpytian likelihood to break the truce, and even if I had, that would not necessarily be a racist inference, depending on my basis for the assertion, of which there is none: I made no such assertion. So many layers of bullshit in so few words: impressive in its way.
Oh, look at me, I’m feeding a troll. Never mind.
Thinking about it a bit more, if academics start boycotting Israel, where would it end? The arguments for boycotting China equally are of course obvious. Or Russia over Chechnya. Japan over its refusal to face up to its WWII war crimes. The USA over the death penalty. The United Kingdom over Iraq. India and Pakistan over their conflict over Kashmir. Australia over Aboriginal health figures, etc, etc (obviously I am merely mentioning one possibility per country when often there are myriads of possible causes. I am not trying to pick the worst example per country, just ones that come to mind and I can spell).
If you place boycotting Israel above doing the best academic research, then why not any other case of serious wrong-doing by another government elsewhere in the world? Yes, this is a slippery slope argument but I think it’s a valid one.
This would limit academic research more and more. Even if as a result of the boycott every country reformed in five years (which I think would be on the miraculous side) that’s the time that can be spent doing a post-graduate degree. The education of hordes of students would be harmed – and to the extent that those students would go on to do something useful with their studies the harm would spread even further. And what’s the likelihood that success of the boycott would simply lead for calls for more boycotts of further, more minor issues?
Economic boycotts make more sense in a moral view. Money is to be spent, and to be spent on a diverse range of matters. Deciding to “spend” say $100 million on boycotting a country means spending less on health care or on scientific research or on rescuing the blue-eyed penguin or recording Maldivian folk dances for posterity, or whatever, those are the sorts of trade-offs unavoidably made every day by people. Cutting the flow of ideas off though is different – it changes the very nature of academic research and it reduces its quality. It shifts academic research from a search for truth inevitably constrained by resource availability, to a search for truth constrained by both resource availability and moral judgments of who is “acceptable”. It degrades the truth-seeking purpose of academic research and makes that merely a secondary consideration after the academic has approved the person’s moral standing. This is an extremely serious change.
In that case Tracy W, are we to infer that if someone tomorrow publishes a cure for ectopic pregnancies using forcibly impregnated North Korean prisoners, we are honour bound as scientists to use the material, even though it was obtained under completely unethical circumstances? After all, we can`t shift to a search for truth constrained by moral judgements about who is “acceptable”. And if we place other priorities above the quest for knowledge, we (in your words) “stop being scientists”. Presumably this applies to the work of all those nice nazi scientists – can`t boycott any academic work, after all, can we? It`s special.
All of your arguments at 88 and 91 are arguments about all boycotts, as will be your inevitable response to my nazi example, i.e. that they have a price and we have to decide whether the price is worth it. You don`t think the price is worth it in this case, and many people agree. But the price is not “special” because it concerns academic product. You just price this product above, say, plasma screen TVs (which everyone knows are Israel`s main export product).
But if, on the other hand, you thought the price was marginal (as I do) and you opposed the boycott on the basis that the consequences for the west were too high, then you would be saying that you don`t value muslim kiddies very much. My apologies if my statement to that effect in my previous comment implied such a judgement on your part.
I think that there are better arguments against the boycott than the marginal loss of knowledge it might cause.
Ragout, that kind of stuff up happens all the time in comments on this site. First time I`ve seen anyone ever stoop to accusing the victim of plagiarism for it! Especially when following the link will give the credit where it`s due…
re 58 ( Chris B ). Is this right ? : “If you concede the possibility also of reasonable disagreement about the facts, then you also ought to concede the possibility that someone favouring the boycott does so because they believe that it will make a difference.”
Yes but then if this is the principle underpinning the proposal ( lets boycott/ punish those who can be punished as opposed to those wrongdoers who are not punishable ) then we should expect a consistent application of this principle : we should see US academics being on the list or Australian academics . Do we see such a proposal ? No. So it is unlikely that any such principle is involved.
And hence it is unlikely that what we have here is a plausible explanation of why Israel and Israel alone is being singled out for punishment.
Maybe there are lots of reasons for different academics wanting to “single out” Israel? Maybe:
– they think Israel is a really bad human rights abuser and they boycott all such organisations, but in this case there is a movement they can get to support them – human rights abuses by a nation which claims flight from a history of oppression for its people particularly stick in the craw of some academics, and rouse them to action where mere human rights abuses would not be enough – they think Israel`s position and behaviour are a greater threat to world peace than [insert other chickenshit rights abuser here] – they live in a country whose support of teh war on terror, the invasion of Iraq, and Israeli military actions makes them feel a particular desire to boycott Israel – they think that the boycott will send a message to their own government, and thus will change their own government`s actions – they think Israel is a particularly heavy “exporter”, if you will, of academic product, and so they believe that this particular boycott will work particularly well for this country – they are anti-semitic – they had a bad holiday in Israel once – they know people in Palestine – they preferentially want to influence “European” nations, i.e. nations in their own sphere of the world, but like most of the commenters on this blog, they believe that the US`s consistent bad behaviour is a series of one-off errors, so they don`t think of boycotting that nation as wellThe fact that all these ideas come together for Israel is possibly just unfortunate concidence; but more likely it indicates that Israel is in a special position as a human rights abuser (though not necessarily a particularly specially serious abuser), and therefore gets “singled out” for special attention.
Well, Bernard, even as just ‘one lesson of the 20th century’, this idea that the Jews (as defined by all the various strains of antisemitism I suppose?) need to be moved into the middle of Levant and equipped with an all-powerful army – it strikes me as extremely myopic, Homer-Simpson-style judgment.
Scientists are honour-bound to use the knowledge developed by the Korean researcher, but not the technique (assuming the results are relevant to their area of science, I don’t imagine they’d be that useful to scientists focusing on say diabetes, and I think I’m safe in saying that they’d be irrelevant to a geologist).
And political scientists are honour-bound to study the political tactics used by the Nazis (and as an economist I thought that recent study of the Nazi economy was important, though heart-breaking in its further revelations about the pointless suffering the Nazis caused). And psychologists are honour-bound to study the brain-washing techniques used by the Chinese if that is relevant to their particular area of research.
You ar