Academic Boycott against Israel? Umberto Eco misses the point: PACBI
This opinion piece has a story behind it. When Umberto Eco’s harsh opinion piece against the cultural boycott of Israel appeared in the Italian newspaper L’espresso [1], PACBI decided that a rebuttal was in order. Two PACBI members contacted the newspaper through an Italian colleague to ask that a rebuttal be published in the newspaper. After much negotiation and many emails exchanged with one of the editors, the rebuttal was pared down to a bare minimum, and the newspaper agreed to publish it on 2 July 2010 in the letters section of the paper [2]. However, it transpired that the published version had been further cut down, and that the identities of the authors had not been included. This is indeed a sad commentary on the state of press freedom in Italy, where influential figures are allowed freedom to defend Israel and its criminal acts while those with opposing views are not accorded the space to express their opposition to these views.
[1] http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/boicottiamo-i-latinisti-israeliani/2127031
[2] http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/per-posta-per-email/2130083
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On 14 May 2010, on the pages of L’espresso [1], Umberto Eco attacked the growing efforts in Italy in support of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), arguing that “any political position, any polemic against a government, should not involve a whole people and an entire culture.” We agree. But how is that relevant to the debate on the merits of an academic boycott against Israel? Our campaign has consistently targeted Israel and its complicit institutions, not individuals.
One of the most important lessons learned from the global struggle against apartheid South Africa is that refusing to deal on a business-as-usual basis with institutions that are complicit in grave and persistent human rights violations is not only justified; it is an ethical duty for conscientious intellectuals the world over. By colluding in policies that are contrary to international law and infringe fundamental rights, institutions become responsible and therefore accountable. All Israeli academic institutions, without exception, fall into this category, making a call to boycott them imperative in the struggle for upholding Palestinian rights and ending Israel’s occupation and system of racial discrimination that fits the definition of apartheid in the UN Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.
At a time when Israel is flouting international law with utter impunity, attacking civilian ships carrying humanitarian relief to 1.5 million Palestinians suffering under years of an illegal Israeli siege, killing and injuring scores of unarmed aid workers and other activists, the silence of the Israeli academy is louder than ever. This is quite predictable, though. At no time in their history have Israeli academic institutions, professional associations, or unions of academics condemned the occupation. They never voiced any opposition to repeated Israeli military closures of Palestinian universities, sometimes for four consecutive years, let alone to the denial of the UN-sanctioned rights of the Palestinian refugees. When Palestinian students were detained during the first intifada (1987-92) for carrying textbooks or lecturers arrested for conducting “clandestine” classes, the Israeli academy remained shamefully silent, and Israeli academics for the most part continued propagating a deceptive image of Israel as an enlightened “democracy.”
Israel has, in fact, imposed a strict siege upon Palestinian institutions of higher education for the past three decades. That these institutions have survived and are flourishing is a testimony to their determination and perseverance to resist in their own way an oppressive military regime bent on silencing the voice of the Palestinian academy. In Gaza, Israel imposes a blanket academic boycott, among other forms of siege, preventing almost all scholars from entering or leaving the Strip. The latest manifestation of the siege on Palestinian universities—boycott, in fact– was the disdainful and arrogant Israeli act of denying entry to renowned scholar Noam Chomsky to speak at Birzeit University.
Understanding the entrenched collusion of the Israeli academy with the structures of oppression in that country, prominent Israeli historian Ilan Pappe stated as early as 2005 that “the boycott reached academia because academia in Israel chose to be official.” [2] Citing research by a fellow Israeli academic that revealed that “out of 9,000 members of academia in Israel, only 30-40 are actively engaged in reading significant criticism, and a smaller number, just three or four, are teaching their students in a critical manner about Zionism and so on,” Pappe concludes, “academia has chosen to be the official Israeli propaganda. … Academia is Israel’s most important ambassador in making the claim that we are the only democracy in the Middle East.”
During Israel’s war of aggression on Gaza in 2008-2009, when more than 1400 people, predominantly civilians, were killed; thousands of homes were destroyed along with tens of schools and UN shelters, hospitals and clinics were targeted and the largest Palestinian university was bombed by F-16s, the Israeli academy was not just a “neutral observer.” Several universities contributed actively to the war crimes committed against Palestinians.
For instance, Tel Aviv University (TAU) directly collaborated in developing weapons and military doctrines that were used in Israel’s massive aggression against Gaza, a war that was condemned by the Goldstone Report and the UN General Assembly as constituting war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. [3]
Other universities in Israel fared no better. A study [4] commissioned by the Israeli Alternative Information Center (AIC) documents myriad facets of academic complicity in Israel. Ariel College is built on occupied Palestinian territory, making it an illegal “academic” colony. So is one of the two campuses of the Hebrew University, built in occupied East Jerusalem, in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Technion plays a key role in developing weapons systems used against Palestinian civilians. In fact, institutional complicity with Israel’s security and military establishment is the norm in the entire academy, which takes pride, openly, in this partnership.
Even speaking out for the most basic demands of academic freedom for Palestinians is opposed by an overwhelming majority of Israeli academics. Expressing “great concern regarding the ongoing deterioration of the system of higher education in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” four Jewish-Israeli academics in 2008 drafted a petition [5] calling on their government to “allow students and lecturers free access to all the campuses in the Territories ….” Although the petition was sent to all 9,000 plus Israeli academics, only 407 signed it – slightly over 4%.
Despite this widespread complicity, PACBI has consistently made a clear distinction between targeting institutions and individual academics; we rejected the latter, focusing all our energies on an institutional boycott. This stems from our opposition, on principle, to political tests or “black-listing.”
Inspired by the South African struggle for freedom, PACBI and the increasing number of academic boycott campaigns around the world believe that the Israeli academy should not be automatically exempted from the boycott, especially when its role in whitewashing and perpetuating war crimes is beyond doubt.
[1] http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/boicottiamo-i-latinisti-israeliani/2127031
[2] Meron Rapoport, “Alone on the Barricades” (interview with Ilan Pappe), Haaretz. 6 May 2005
[3] http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090708-soas-palestine-society.pdf
[4] http://alternativenews.org/images/stories/downloads/Economy_of_the_occupation_23-24.pdf
[5] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=792&key=407
Editor: Preparations for another war?
It is customary for Israel to destroy South Lebanon and Beirut every couple of years, as we all know. The last time it was done for Summer 2006, so it is high time for the next madness to begin. The activities which led to this latest incident may well be part of the preparation for the next war.
Four die as Lebanon and Israel clash: The Independent
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Toops exchanged fire on the border today in a battle which started over the trimming of a tree
Four people died when Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border today in a battle which started over the trimming of a tree.
It was the most serious clashes in four years, the victims included two Lebanese soldiers and an Israeli army officer.
The violence apparently erupted after Israeli soldiers went to cut down a tree along the fence dividing the two countries, a sign of the level of tensions in an area where Israel fought a war in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The UN urged “maximum restraint” and said it was working with both sides to restore calm. After an initial clash of about five minutes, intermittent shelling and gunfire went on for several hours until the fighting stopped by mid-afternoon.
A Lebanese army officer said the battle started when Israeli troops tried to remove a tree from the Lebanese side of the border.
“It was over the fence but still within Israeli territory,” a military spokesman said.
Ronith Daher, 32, a Lebanese journalist who was at the scene, said she saw a UN peacekeeper ask Israel not to allow the Israeli soldier to cross the fence and warned them the Lebanese troops would open fire. The Israelis proceeded, however, and Lebanese soldiers fired into the air. She said the Israelis fired back directly at the Lebanese soldiers.
The Israeli military’s northern commander, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, however, accused Lebanese forces of shooting toward forces inside Israeli territory without any provocation.” He said that while soldiers were removing bushes by the fence, Lebanese military snipers shot two officers who were more than 300 yards away from the fence.
The military announced that a 45-year-old battalion commander was killed and a captain was critically wounded.
A spokesman said Israel responded with infantry, tanks and artillery fire, and later sent helicopters and artillery fire at a Lebanese army base and command centre.
Residents near the Fatima Gate, a one-time border crossing with Israel, briefly blocked a road as UN peacekeepers tried to pass, shouting: “Are you here to protect us or are you here to run away?”
Many in the area view the international force with mistrust, and there have been skirmishes between residents and the peacekeepers in the past.
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman denounced the fighting and urged the army commander to “confront any Israeli aggression whatever the sacrifices.”
A Lebanese officer said one of the Israeli shells hit a house in the Lebanese border town of Adeisseh. One civilian was wounded in the shelling, he said. A security official also said a Lebanese journalist working for the daily Al-Akhbar newspaper, Assaf Abu Rahhal, was killed when an Israeli shell landed next to him in Adeisseh.
The border has been relatively quiet since the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war that left 1,200 Lebanese and about 160 Israelis dead.
EDITOR: Academic Freedom Israeli style
Academics can say anything they wish, in Israel – it is of course a Jewish democracy – a democracy for Jews only – but even Jews are to be targeted if they speak; They will still be able to say whay they wish, for the time being, but will lose their livelihood. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?
Head of Israeli University Demands Ouster of Professors Who Support Boycott: PACBI
The president of Bar-Ilan University has called for Israeli professors who support an academic boycott of their country to quit or be fired.
The statement comes as Israel’s parliament debates legislation that would allow lawsuits against academics and others who support various boycotts of the Jewish state. The bill is not expected to become law, but it is generating questions about the role of scholars at public universities in Israel.
Bar-Ilan’s Moshe Kaveh, a former chairman of Israel’s Committee of University Presidents, is the first leader of an Israeli university to back the dismissal of the handful of Israeli professors who publicly expressed support for a boycott. Last year the president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev had no kind words for Neve Gordon, a professor of politics and government, for advocating an international academic boycott, but did not fire him.
“It’s easy to be brave when criticizing, but someone who has the courage to criticize the institution where he works should also have the courage to quit—and, if not, I as president will make it happen,” Mr. Kaveh told a Jewish education-and-culture festival on Thursday during a panel discussion with the education minister, Gideon Sa’ar, on the nature of Jewish identity.
“How can it be that a faculty member can stand in class and say to his students, ‘Boycott the State of Israel?’ Someone who criticizes the place where he works is ethically obliged to resign,” said Mr. Kaveh.
His remarks were greeted with warm applause from the audience and from the education minister, Israel Army Radio reported.
“When you call for an academic boycott of Israel, you don’t just do harm to the institution that pays your salary. You also harm academic freedom,” Mr. Sa’ar responded.
Menachem Klein, a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan who is firmly opposed to a boycott, said nonetheless that Mr. Kaveh “disregards the fundamental element of academic research.”
“I wish to remind Professor Kaveh.” he said, “that university researchers’ primary responsibility and loyalty are to universal-humanistic values that direct their scientific research, not to their employer.”
http://chronicle.com/article/Head-of-Israeli-University/123679/
Israeli officer killed in clash on Israel-Lebanon border: Haaretz
3 Lebanese soldiers, one journalist killed as Israeli and Lebanese soldiers exchange fire at border; second Israeli officer seriously wounded.
One Israeli officer was killed during clashes between Israel and the Lebanese army along the border on Tuesday. 45-year-old Lt. Col. Dov Harari, from Netanya, was a reserves battalion commander in the engineering corps.
Another Israeli officer sustained severe wounds and has been admitted to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. He is in stable condition.
Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border Tuesday in the most serious clashes since a fierce war four years ago, and Lebanon said at least three of its soldiers and a journalist were killed in shelling.
The violence apparently erupted over a move by Israeli soldiers to trim some hedges along the border, a sign of the level of tensions at the frontier where Israel fought a war in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Harari, father of four, was killed by sniper fire directed at his post. The other officer at the post was captain Ezra Lakia, who was seriously wounded. The two were situated some 300 meters from the border within Israel in a position to oversee the trimming of the bushes along the border fence.
Israel Defense Forces GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot announced Tuesday that the two Israeli officers had been very seriously hit during the exchange of fire. Eizenkot said that the incident had been a “deliberate ambush.”
Eizenkot told Israeli media that “a routine operation was carried out during the afternoon near Misgav Am – an operation whose purpose was to trim some bushes near the border, in our [Israeli] territory. It was on both sides of the border but still within [Israeli] territory. Officers oversaw the operation from a permanent position. Sniper fire was directed at the officers, and two of them were wounded as a result.”
The GOC Northern Command stressed that “this was a pre-planned event, aggression by the Lebanese army who shot at soldiers inside Israeli territory without any provocation. We view this as a very severe incident.”