Academische Boycot Israel onbespreekbaar op Britse universiteiten.

[Maarten]

Academische Boycot Israel onbespreekbaar op Britse universiteiten

We leven in een moderne wereld, maar als het er op aan komt, dan zie je dat zaken nog steeds bepaald worden door oerconservatieve standpunten, die nog het meest aan het oude kolonialisme doen denken.

In de overkoepelende organisatie van universiteiten in Engeland, zouden lezingen en besprekingen gaan plaatsvinden over de wenselijkheid van een academische boycot van Israel. De zaak werd afgeblazen op grond van twee argumenten:
1. Een oproep tot een boycot is alleen al onwettig, omdat die discriminatoir zou zijn.
2. Er kan maar beter geen discussie over plaatsvinden, om te waarborgen dat er geen onwettige dingen plaats vinden.

Dit land vond een boycot van Irak geen probleem. Zelfs invallen in Irak was geen probleem.
Maar een academische boycot van Israel is wel een probleem, en blijkbaar onwettig.
En zelfs een oproep daartoe is een probleem en onwettig.
En zelfs het praten er over is een probleem, want zou bedreigend voor de wettigheid kunnen zijn.
Don’t mention the War! :hihi:

Een Palestijnse wetenschapper, een christen uit Gaza, kaart de zaak dus aan in het volgende stuk.
Terwijl Israel de strijd op grondniveau dus langzaam wint, met Britse steun en dubieuze methoden, zie je de barbaars geachte Palestijnen dus op een van de hoogste niveaus de strijd winnen, door prangende vragen over inperking van de academische vrijheid in het westen.

Hij geeft ook een leuke opsomming van manieren waarop Israel de vrijheid van Palestijnse academici en studenten systematisch aantast in de afgelopen 60 jaar:
- Sluiten van scholen en universiteiten door het IDF gedurende honderden dagen.
- Schieten op studenten, en ze bloedend in de klas achterlaten.
- Gewelddadig de kop indrukken van niet-gewelddadige demonstraties door studenten.
- Duizenden arrestaties en opsluitingen van studenten en faculteitsmedewerkers.
- Weigeringen van visa voor studenten, zelfs voor wisseling tussen gaza en de westbank.
- Noodzaak tot onderduiken bij lesgeving, naar leraren thuis, kerken en moskeeen of vluchtelingenkampen.

In Israel zelf werken Israëlische academici mee aan de discriminatie van Palestijns-israelische studenten (israelisch staatsburger dus), en is er ook geen protest tegen allerlei apartheidspolitiek:
- 25% van de studenten aan de universiteit van Haifa is arabisch-palestijns Israëlisch staatsburger, maar die krijgen 80% van alle disciplinaire maatregelen. Bijvoorbeeld vanwege een demonstratie tegen colleges, die racistisch gevonden werden.
- Buitenlandse studenten worden in hun studiegids bang gemaakt voor het bezoeken van Palestijnse dorpen.
- Universiteiten breiden voortdurend uit naar bezet gebied, waar Palestijnen voor verdreven worden.

De Palestijn zegt dat er nog veel meer is, en vindt dus, dat er een betere inventarisering van alle aspecten van de academische apartheid moet komen, om te kijken of er redenen voor een academische boycot kunnen zijn.
Hij wenst ook graag openheid over de adviezen en de herkomst ervan, die tot de afwijzing hebben geleid.
Hij wijst er op, dat de academische boycot van Zuid-Afrika destijds als “heroisch” bestempeld werd, maar dat het nu zelfs als illegaal bestempeld wordt, om die van Israël überhaupt zelfs te bespreken.
Hij wijst er ook op, dat juist een academische boycot als eerste op zijn plaats is, omdat in die wereld de antiracistische e.a. idealen hoog gehouden worden, en werelden met allerlei onfrisse praktijken daarvan buitengesloten dienen te worden.

[Maarten]

Between Boycott and Apartheid

By Hammam Farah
(Special to www.PalestineChronicle.com)

After passing a motion in May that called for the circulation and debate of the Palestinian call for the academic boycott of Israel, Britain's University and College Union (UCU)'s strategy and finance committee unanimously accepted a recommendation from its Secretary-General, Sally Hunt, that not only is the call to boycott apparently unlawful under discrimination legislation, but even debates on the issue at the union's meetings should be silenced "to ensure that the union acts lawfully." Consequently, the union also cancelled a UK speaking tour in which Palestinian academics would discuss the academic boycott of Israel with their counterparts at UK universities.

There is ample reason to doubt the claim that the union and its members are at risk. After months of trepidation over the boycott due to its alleged violation of academic freedom, the irony lies in that the sole violator of academic freedom is the leadership of the UCU. One is forced to question whether they were driven by genuine concern for justice and the importance of the boycott for achieving it, or bitter resentment at their own membership's democratic decision to discuss the boycott.

As Amjad Barham, head of the council of the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, stated, "by muzzling debate and free discussion on the boycott, the [Israeli] lobby and its supporters within the UCU are suppressing academic freedom in the most crude manner."
In addition, the opacity of the UCU statement further compounds the perception of hypocrisy felt towards the leadership of the union.
The fact that academic unions in the UK are discussing the issue of academic boycott is a big step in the right direction, but it seems like the activists in the UCU will have to continue this uphill battle against apartheid, and we can expect them to keep fighting.

It appears we have been put on the defensive, consumed more with rebutting the allegations of violating academic freedom and singling out Israel than with providing a thorough elaboration of the appalling ways in which Israel has been systematically violating Palestinian academic freedom and students' right to education for the past 60 years:

Schools and universities have been closed for hundreds of days by the military government;
students shot and left to bleed in their classrooms;
violent crackdowns on student non-violent demonstrations;
thousands of arrests and detainments of students and faculty members are common;
permits to study abroad, even from Gaza to the West Bank, are regularly denied. Just recently, Israel's High Court rejected a petition by students from Gaza to transfer to the West Bank to study occupational therapy because the universities in Gaza do not provide the program. This process of academic destruction has driven Palestinian education underground, where classes are held secretly in teachers' apartments, in local churches and mosques, and in refugee camps.

Perhaps more importantly concerning the academic boycott, however, is not only the Israeli government's actions, but the active participation of Israeli academia itself in discriminating against Palestinian students, and here I mean Palestinian citizens of Israel since Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not even allowed to physically access Israeli universities to take admission exams, let alone go to class. Here are just some of the examples of Israeli academic institutions' role in perpetuating apartheid, above and beyond the fact that they have failed to condemn Israel's colonial/apartheid policies.

While 25% of Haifa University's students are Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, they make up 80% of the students facing disciplinary action, a clear disproportion. Recently, students were brought in front of a disciplinary committee for demonstrating against a university-sponsored conference entitled "The Demographic Problem and the Demographic Policy of Israel." The "demographic problem" alludes to the racist fear of the high Arab birth rates that threaten Zionism's obsession with maintaining Israel's Jewish majority at any and all costs.
Can you imagine the uproar that would ensue if Black students were brought in front of a disciplinary committee in the US or Canada for demonstrating against a conference addressing the population growth "problem" of Blacks?
Furthermore, Haifa University's official guide for foreign and exchange students includes a warning entitled "Special Security Instructions" cautioning against visiting Arab-Palestinian towns and villages in Israel. These are only a few of many Haifa University discriminatory practices. At Ohalo College, the only Palestinian student candidate running for head of the student union was disqualified, on the day of the election nonetheless. At the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Arab-Palestinian visitors are required to carry a "certificate of integrity" if they wish to enter the university.

Many of the universities have also played a role in the theft and confiscation of Palestinian land.
Hebrew University began expanding its housing and offices in 2004 over the destroyed and depopulated Palestinian village of Lifta – and of course, the Palestinian refugees do not have the right to return, which means that the people whose land the university is built on are not allowed to study at the institution, let alone reclaim their land. Professor Margaret Aziza Pappano of Canada's Queen's University informed us recently that "Hebrew University has a long and deleterious history of appropriating Palestinian land.
In 1968, in opposition to a UN resolution, the university evicted hundreds of Palestinian families to expand their campus in East Jerusalem. This history of confiscation continues, as October 2004 saw more evictions of Palestinian families and destruction of their homes for another campus expansion."

Tel Aviv University was built over the destroyed and depopulated village of Sheikh Muwannis. The former home of the village Mukhtar (mayor) has become the faculty club/cafeteria. To add insult to injury, the university refuses to allow the posting of a sign that would explain the origins of the building – perhaps it would spoil the faculty's appetite.
The university plans to ironically build a new Faculty of Archeology as an expansion of its campus further into the lands of the destroyed village.

Last but not least, in perhaps the most infamous case, the Ariel University Centre of Samaria (AKA "the settler university"), an extension of Bar Ilan University, was built inside the illegal settlement of Ariel inside the West Bank.
The village of Salfit endured massive land confiscations to make way for the settlement and its residents will soon be displaced to the other side of the illegal Wall that is being erected inside the West Bank (separating students from their universities) to cage in Palestinian communities and to eventually annex the illegal settlement blocks where this University will operate.

This is only a glimpse of the long list of Israeli academia's participation in the colonization of Palestinian land and in the discrimination against Palestinian students. If we are to build on the case for the academic boycott of Israel, we must dedicate more time to disseminating the painful details of this academic apartheid that is part and parcel of the wider apartheid system imposed by Israel on the Palestinians.

In light of this, it is a fair demand on behalf of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine that the leadership of the UCU publish the 'legal advice' for examination and tell us who provided it, tell us whether any other sources were sought out for advice, and what the nature of that advice was.

Furthermore, an explanation of why it was 'heroic' for British academic unions to lead the academic boycott of South Africa, but 'illegal' to even discuss the academic boycott of Israel is vital. Indeed, a fundamental component of academic freedom is academic transparency.

Lastly, it is important to note that academia, perhaps more than any other sector of society, should be at the forefront of the boycott campaign because of its long professed commitments to anti-oppressive and anti-racist ideals. Just as dangerous or hate-speech is ideally exempted from the right to freedom of speech, so should academic practices that perpetuate and entrench racism and apartheid be exempted from academic freedom.
All around the world, academics have begun to take principled positions against Israeli apartheid, and history will remember this. Conversely, history will also remember those academics and university presidents who stood on the side of apartheid, oppression, and colonial domination.

So, to Sally Hunt and her 'legal' team, the lines are drawn – which will it be?

Hammam Farah,
is a Palestinian Canadian who was born in the Gaza Strip as part of Gaza's small Christian community.
He resides in Toronto and is a solidarity activist with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), which is spearheading the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign in Canada.

[ronald]

The anti-boycott movement's movers and shakers
By Adi Schwartz

"Rotten Zionist" is only one of the names David Hirsh was called during his campaign against the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Hirsh, who in 2005 founded the organization Engage with Jon Pike, was called these names not by hooligans or angry Internet posters, but by his colleagues in the British academic world, whom he - until recently - considered his professional and political equals. His only sin was daring to voice his opinion loudly and clearly: that the campaign to boycott Israeli academic institutions is racist, superfluous and even harmful.

After two difficult years, Hirsh and Pike chalked up a victory two weeks ago. On September 28, the British University and College Union (UCU) published an opinion by attorney Anthony Lester stating it cannot even discuss the boycott proposal, because it goes against British law.

Lester was the guiding light behind the wording of anti-racist legislation in England in the 1970s and is considered an authority in the field. Lester determined that such a boycott was liable to lead to a deluge of lawsuits against the organization and against its members as individuals. Thus he effectively ended the boycott campaign conducted by the UCU for the past five years.
Advertisement
Blatant stupidity

Hirsh and Pike, who have not been interviewed in the Israeli media until now, are not the "immediate suspects" in the discourse on Israel and its policies in the territories. They don't think Israel is a perfect country - they believe it to be no different from England, Belgium or Australia, but neither do they see it as "the embodiment of evil." They are exceptions in the European discourse today.

Hirsh is a Jewish sociologist, a leftist, whom the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem would be unlikely to appoint as its spokesman regarding Israeli policies in the territories.

Pike is a non-Jewish philosopher, also a leftist, who is very troubled by the situation facing the Palestinians in the territories - mainly by the straits of academics.

But both believe that the boycott campaign against Israel, specifically Israel and only Israel, contained a clear note of discrimination based on nationality, outright stupidity and even anti-Semitism.

A short reminder: In April 2002, two British Jewish academicians, Steven and Hilary Rose, wanted to stop all scholarly cooperation between Europe and Israel. A month later, Mona Baker of the University of Manchester barred two Israel experts in the field of translation, Miriam Shlesinger and Gideon Toury, from working for publications she edited. The reason was their relationship to Israeli universities.

A year later, Sue Blackwell of the University of Birmingham suggested ending any connection with Israeli institutions, including universities. In April 2005, Blackwell presented an amended proposal with a demand to boycott three specific universities: Haifa, Bar-Ilan and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

"This decision was made after a 10-minute discussion," says Hirsh to Haaretz in a phone interview from London.

"There was no time for discussion and there was no time to present the opposite view. There were several impressive speakers who presented the story in a very emotional manner and gave examples of discriminatory Israeli legislation. You have to bear in mind: There are 120,000 people employees of the British academic world are members of the union, some of them administrators. Not all of them are sophisticated professors. These are people for whom the union is very important, but don't make the mistake of thinking that every discussion there is a profound philosophical discussion."

That was the moment when Hirsh and Pike decided that they had to do something. "The union occasionally discussed international politics," says Hirsh. "I think that we may ask what can be done for the Palestinians, but I simply think the organization gave a wrong answer."

Pike also felt hurt, as someone who holds the union in high esteem: "I didn't want my union to do anything stupid," he says in a phone interview from London.

"This decision was discriminatory and futile. Academicians have to speak to one another, even if they don't agree with the policies of their governments. As a professional union, we must speak out against harming the academic world. We have to work against the boycott of academicians, against the imprisonment of academicians, but we don't have to take a stand in a political conflict. That's not the job of the union. Besides, if they say that Israel or the Israel Defense Forces are not in the right if they prevent Palestinians from studying in a university only because of his national identity, how can you support a boycott of Israelis only because they are Israelis?"

The two decided to promote a manifesto calling for a revote. In addition, they founded the organization Engage, established an Internet site (www.engageonline.org.uk) and began a lobbying campaign in the academic community. Additional organizations outside the academic community strived toward the same goal, such as the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community. However, they were the only ones working from within.

Hirsh and Pike did not want to run a Jewish or Israeli campaign, but one over the image of the British left. "Even people who oppose Israel's policies thought that the idea of the boycott was idiotic," says Pike in reply to a question about his participation in the campaign as a non-Jew. "My area of research in philosophy is the principles of justice, and this was clearly unjust. I thought it was important for non-Jews to voice their opinions aloud too. Our feeling was that there had to be opposition to it within the left, that we could not allow the bodies that usually conduct the discourse about Israel and its policy to conduct the debate. There were people who left the union after this decision, but I thought that we had to continue to fight from within."

A perusal of the articles that appear on the Web site reveals clearly leftist opinions, at least what was once called leftist positions: a call for criticism, social involvement and solidarity, and unease at the nationalist idea, but directed at all types of nationalism, whether Israeli, Palestinian British or Australian. There is a lot of moderation and balance.

"Unfortunately," says Pike, "the genuine liberal democratic left is gradually losing its hold because of the domination of monolithic anti-American and anti-Israeli opinions."

The attempt by the two to challenge the accepted opinions led to a deluge of accusations against them. Hirsh says that some of the members of the Jewish community consider him a radical leftist, but nevertheless, during the last campaign the academicians called him a neocon.

They accused him being a "Zionist," despite the fact that he does not define himself as such, but "from the moment they accused me of that, I'm happy about the accusation," he says.

Pike says that they threatened to sue him, called him "a Zionist scab" and some even decided that he was actually Jewish. "Many people said that I was getting money from the Israeli embassy," he says, "which is really untrue. I lost friendships during this period. In previous discussions in the union they told me, 'Jon, you're wrong.' This time, they said, 'Jon, you're a liar,' and that's a big difference."

Of all people

In the final analysis, Hirsh and Pike had a choice of two options: going to a vote about imposing an academic boycott on Israel or claiming that the discussion itself was improper.

"We knew that we were going to win the vote," says Hirsh. "Surveys we conducted in the prestigious institutions such as Imperial College or Oxford University, showed over 90 percent opposition to the boycott. But we thought that even bringing such a proposal up for discussion was immoral and racist."

Lester's opinion, which determined that the discussion was illegal, in effect ended the affair.

Hirsh says he is not certain that the motivation of those who proposed the boycott was anti-Semitism, but he's certain that the proposal itself is an anti-Semitic act.

"Boycotts against Jews have a very long history. You have to note the fact that nobody who proposed the boycott proposed boycotting American academia for the invasion of Iraq, Russians academia for the occupation of Chechnya, or Chinese academia for what is happening in Tibet. Using other, stricter standards towards Jews is a discriminatory and racist act."

Hirsh and Pike have no good answer to the question of why all this happened in Britain of all places. Anyone who has been keeping abreast of public opinion in Europe in recent years could have expected such an initiative in France or Spain, for example, where public opinion is much more belligerent toward Israel.

"I only have a feeling about that," says Hirsh, "which is based on things I heard at one of the conferences on the subject. Suddenly one of the participants got up and said, 'how do the Israelis dare accuse us of anti-Semitism? After all, we saved them in the Holocaust.' The British, unlike other countries in Europe, have no history of collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, perhaps because they never had the opportunity. Therefore their consciences are clearer when it comes to Jews. On the other hand, there are many guilty feelings in Britain about the colonialist past and a feeling that Israel was established because of Britain. This feeling has only been reinforced in recent years in light of the present support of Israel by British and U.S. governments."

[Maarten]

Geplaatst door ronald
The anti-boycott movement's movers and shakers
By Adi Schwartz

David Hirsh
De kwestie wordt dus misschien wel besproken op Britse universiteiten, maar niet als het er op aan komt, bij het overkoepelende orgaan, dat beslissingen neemt.

Het artikel opent nogal komisch met beteuterde klachten over uitschelden, terwijl het toch enkel gaat over de eerlijke mening van Hirsh, dat een boycot “racistisch, overbodig en schadelijk” is. Grinnik. Hirsh noemt de mensen racist, en hun acties rotzooi, en beklaagt zich dan, net als de schrijver van het artikel, dat hij voor vuile zionist wordt uitgemaakt.

Dan volgt een stommiteit van adviseur Lester, of alweer van de schrijver van het artikel.
Het bespreken van de boycot zou tegen de Britse wet zijn. De boycot zou namelijk een regen van rechtszaken kunnen veroorzaken.
De onlogica is hier volstrekt duidelijk. Het bespreken van de zaak staat volstrekt los van de uiteindelijke beslissing tot een boycot.
En het bespreken van zaken is absoluut niet tegen de wet.
En Lester is evenmin een autoriteit die kan uitmaken of al die rechtzaken wel zullen slagen, ook al is hij een deskundige.
En als de zaken niet grondig besproken worden, is ook niet duidelijk welke argumenten in die rechtszaken als verweer kunnen worden aangevoerd.
Bovendien zegt het aanspannen van rechtszaken nog niets over wat de wet zegt.
Kortom, Lester lijkt een oude sok, die verzopen zit in zijn eigen zaken, en geen onderscheidingen meer kan maken.

Dan de lachwekkende verdediging van de mentaliteit van Hirsh: Hij gelooft toch echt geen rare dingen hoor, hij ziet Israel gewoon als land, net zoals Engeland, Belgie en Australië. En hij gelooft alleen maar dat een boycot een kwestie is van discriminatie op grond van nationaliteit, ongelofelijke stupiditeit en antisemitisme.

Dan een deugdelijk argument, dat hier echter niet op zijn plaats is: Academici moeten blijven praten, ongeacht wat de politiek van een land doet. Dat is een goed argument, met name als de academici in een corrupt land onder druk staan. In dit geval lijkt de academische wereld echter vrolijk mee te doen bij de discriminatie, en is er dus juist reden voor een inventarisatie daarvan tijdens behoorlijke discussies over een eventuele boycot.

Koddig is het argument, dat discriminatie van Israëlische studenten net zoiets zou zijn als dat van Palestijnse studenten. De Palestijnse worden namelijk enkel op grond van hun afkomst gediscrimineerd, terwijl de uitsluiting van Israëlische studenten juist gebaseerd zou worden op wat de Israëlische academische wereld in totaliteit daar doet, namelijk discrimineren.

Raadselachtig is het volgende. Er worden een paar voorbeelden gegeven van oproepen tot een boycot op verschillende Britse universiteiten, waarbij de beslissing te haastig zou zijn genomen. Maar het artikel waarschuwt meteen, dat er 120.000 mensen aangesloten zijn bij de overkoepelende organisatie. Maar het gaat hier helemaal niet over die organisatie. Het artikel beschrijft absoluut niet hoe die organisatie zelf te overhaast geweest zou zijn.

Tibet is ook weer terug. Dat is het beroemde joodse argument: wie niet protesteert tegen China, maar wel tegen Israel, is dús een antisemiet. Dat zie je hier terug: wie niet opgeroepen heeft tot een boycot van Chinese academici (of Russische of Iraakse), is dus racist.

Intussen gooien zowel Hirsh als de schrijver twee zaken op éen hoop: de vraag of een boycot wenselijk is, en de vraag of de zaak wel behoorlijk besproken moet worden in de organisatie?
Ze zijn onmetelijk arrogant. Deze mensen, die wel uitvoerig klagen, dat er te weinig ruimte voor Israelisch weerwoord geweest is, wensen nou voor iedereen te bepalen, dat het doen van het voorstel tot een academische boycot op zichzelf al antisemitisch is, en menen te moeten verhinderen, dat er uit debatten waar iedereen weerwoord krijgt gaat blijken of dat wel het geval is?


Het echte probleem is de joodse wereld zelf. En dat blijkt ook hier weer. Het hoeft absoluut niet om zionisten of om sympatisanten van Israel te gaan. Het grootste deel van die wereld ligt in feite in spagaat over wat met de zaak aan te moeten. Ze willen eindeloos blijven nuanceren en overwegen, maar als er echt knopen doorgehakt moeten gaan worden, of er echte serieuze besprekingen over een boycot komen, waarin de inhoudelijke argumenten écht afgewogen gaan worden, dan slaat die joodse wereld op tilt. Het overgrote deel steunt Israel in feite gewoon, of wenst met al zijn twijfels absoluut geen maatregelen tegen Israel. Vermoedelijk weten ze daar goed, dat iedereen die zich daar voor uitspreekt intern meteen de grootst mogelijke moeilijkheden krijgt. Enkel joden die bereid zijn de enorme druk te weerstaan, en de risico’s op de koop toe nemen, doen dat. En het kan je zeker je baan of je carriere kosten, om maar te zwijgen van je sociale leven, dat vermoedelijk sowieso op de klippen loopt.
Joden die echt werk van het probleem willen maken, moet je misschien helden noemen. En daar zijn er maar bar weinig van.

[Shemharosh]

wat moeten ze doen dan??!! academische samebnwerking aangaan met de buren van Isreal??!! ....dat lijkt me een hele absuurde gedachte