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By Tamara Traubman, Haaretz Correspondent
26th Paril 2005
Haifa University President Aharon Ben-Ze'ev called on Dr. Ilan Pappe, a staff member who supports the academic boycott on Israeli universities, to tender his resignation. "It is fitting for someone who calls for a boycott of his university to apply the boycott himself," Ben-Ze'ev said Monday.
Ben-Ze'ev said the university management would not boycott Pappe nor would it take disciplinary steps against him, because boycotts destroy academic freedom. But he said Pappe's behavior was "intolerable from a moral point of view," and that he should therefore decide to leave of his own accord.
Pappe, a member of the political science department, was not available Monday evening for comment.
The Association of University Teachers - the leading union of British lecturers with some 48,000 members - decided on Friday to impose the boycott on Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities on the grounds that they "collaborate with the crimes of occupation." Haifa University was charged with restricting academic freedom of staff members who have spoken out against government policies, while Bar-Ilan is being boycotted for its ties with the Judea and Samaria College in Ariel in the West Bank.
The boycott was the talk of the day Monday on both campuses with staff members planning to take action to counter it. Prof. Eitan Gilboa of Bar-Ilan's political science department, said he and the rector, Prof. Yosef Yeshurun, will call on all British AUT members who oppose the boycott to resign from the union. Gilboa said they would also ask the Israeli government to request that the British government impose sanctions on Birmingham University and the Open University where the initiators of the boycott teach. He said they would also request that academics at British universities who apply the sanctions be brought to disciplinary hearings.
Gilboa called the boycott "an academic terror attack on Israeli academe." He said its initiators were "a radical and extremist group" that has been trying for a long time to find an excuse to boycott Israel.
The presidents of the two universities and staff members are planning personal appeals to British lecturers to work against the boycott. Haifa University Rector Prof Yossi Ben-Artzi said the boycott could severely harm the two universities. "There is hardly a staff member who does not have connections with Britain," he noted.
Prof. Avi Saguy of Haifa University, who is organizing a psychology conference together with Palestinian professionals, said a British colleague had already written to protest the decision and ensure his participation in the conference. Three AUT members announced they would resign from the union. Two of them, Jonathan Ginsberg and Shalom Lapin of Kings College, London - called on other unions in Britain and abroad to cancel recognition of the AUT until it withdraws the boycott.
As someone who is strongly opposed to Israel's behavior towards the Palestinians in the territories as well as its misconduct of its Arab
citizens, I would like to make the following points:
1. While I do find some similarities between South-Africa's apartheid and Israel's conduct in the occupied territories, I do not find the AUT
boycott to be similar to that imposed on South-African universities. The latter was part of a total embargo - diplomatic, economic, cultural, and
educational - a concerted effort of the international community to force SA to abandon apartheid. Had there been a total international embargo on Israel to force it to abandon the occupation of the territories, I would have supported that embargo, including the boycott of Israeli Universities (all of them).
2. The University of Haifa has made many mistakes, or even worse, hasacted in an unfair manner towards its Arab students. Yet, this is an institution with a dynamic community of lecturers, many of whom are opposed to both its policies against Arab students (see the recent discussion about signs in Arabic) and some (perhaps others) are opposed to Israel's policies in the occupied territories. As an institution, the University of Haifa has not allied itself in any way with expansionist anti-Palestinian policies. Hence, the university is not a tool in the hands of the state or the expansionist forces in Israel, but rather a battle ground in which different ideologies are in conflict.
3. Even if Pappe's allegations (as reported) are all true, this is not
enough of a reason to impose a boycott on the whole university. There could be more specific ways to challenge the university's decision re Teddy Katz's MA or re Pappe's secure position at the university.
4. While I do not trust the Jerusalem Post as a source of reliable information, I haven't seen any alternative reports of what went on at the AUT conference. If these are indeed the facts of the decision making procedure, I condemn the decision as both illegal and unjustified in light of 1, 2, and 3 above.
5. The boycott against Bar-Ilan University is fully justified since this university actively supports a college which is part of the settlement apparatus.
Ron Kuzar
==================================================
Dr. Ron Kuzar
Address: Department of English Language and Literature
University of Haifa
IL-31905 Haifa, Israel
Office: +972-4-824-9826, Fax: +972-4-824-9711
Home: +972-2-641-4780, Mobile: +972-54-481-9676
Email: kuzar@research.haifa.ac.il
Homepage: http://research.haifa.ac.il/~kuzar
An update written on a date where professional and personal concerns converge may require a special issue to be addressed. Today's date traditionally mark both Shakespeare's date of birth and death, It is also the Eve of Jewish Passover, known as the holiday of Liberation. As the old Chinese curse would has it, the Middle East will never fail to provide interesting occasions to furnish a special update.
The British AUT has voted a couple of days ago in favor of a motion to boycott two Israeli Universities, one of which is the one I am employed in. Since, I have been asked by many friends for my reaction to this, and I gather I owe you my response.
Whenever asked, over the last few years I expressed my opinion that even though the repressive policies of my country against the Palestinian population, especially in the territories occupied in 1967, is appalling, racist, sometimes horrifying in its cruelty, and often having crossed the boundaries of war crimes, academic boycott was neither morally justified nor effective. It does not distinguish between university administrations and faculty; nor am I sure that a proper mechanism was devised to distinguish between faculty members who think they can live in the ivory tower of academia in times of gross injustice and such and there are many in Israeli academia who risk their position for actively participating in acts of protest against official policies of repression and cooperation with the victims of injustice.
However, while I still adhere to my opinion regarding this matter, both my government and my university hardly have a cause for complaint: they did whatever they could to provoke the responses leading to this, to my mind, erroneous move. The Mini-stress of Education and Culture, who will probably soon cry havoc on that boycott, is the same person who threatened to deny Daniel Barenboim a prestigious prize, and goes on demanding the firing of academics whom she blacklisted as traitors to the national cause. An academic community which didn't shout its protest when an eminent academic and moral figure such as the late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz was forced to withdraw the Israel prize following an ugly wave of political bigotry; which kept quiet when academic freedom in the Occupied Territories was constantly curbed by closures and harassments; which is even now piling on my friend and colleague Ilan Pappe as responsible for the move, while having cheered and elected the person who demanded his firing as their academic leader, but never seriously questioned the "academic privilege" overriding transparency when a formerly cum-laude awarded thesis was suddenly disqualified by an anonymous group of readers following a political controversy surrounding its conclusions; such an academic community should first question its own standards, before proclaiming itself the victim of an anti-Semitic campaign. No equivalent to the AUT was ever created in Israel, to become a body where not only local problems are tackled in the face of a system which made higher education in Israel approach total crumbling, but also take a stand in matters which transcend local issues, and protect the rights of those individuals within academy who face injustice perpetrated by the administrations for protesting against the abuse of justice.
As many of you know, on a personal level, I have many reasons to endorse the allegations directed against my university: I will not elaborate on matters which are still subject to a court litigation. However, while still believing the AUT measure to have been counterproductive, I would advise my colleagues to look deeper into the circumstances which have led a majority of members of the AUT council to go along with such an extreme motion. Hiding our heads in the old arguments of Jew-baiting will not answer many viable questions directed at us, which we often fail to address. Justification for boycott aside, can we really, in all honesty, brush aside the issues directed not only against Israeli policies, but against the general functioning of academia in Israel? I wish all of us will take a moment, while celebrating tonight the holiday of Liberation, to ponder on "the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely... the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of th'unworthy takes," rather than exonerate ourselves of any wrongdoing by assuming the role of the eternal victims.
For better days,
A. Oz
Professor Avraham Oz
Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of Haifa
2105 Eshkol Tower, Mount Carmel, 31905 Haifa, Israel
Office Tel +972-4-8240672 Office Fax +972-4-8249713
Home Tel +972-3-5609627 Home Fax +972-1533-5609627
Mobile +972-50-7220783 Email: avitaloz@research.haifa.ac.il
To
Professor Moshe Kaveh
President
Bar Ilan University
Dear Sir
In various media interviews today you expressed anger at the decision of British university lecturers to declare a boycott against the Bar-Ilan University, calling it "an unacceptable mixing of politics into academic life". When asked about the "Judea and Samaria College" which your university maintains at the settlement of Ariel, you stated that this was "an entirely non-political issue" and that said college was nothing more than "the largest of five colleges which Bar Ilan maintains at different locations in Israel". Indeed, you declared yourself and your colleagues to be proud of the decision to establish the Ariel college, and you felt no contradiction between continuing to maintain that college, at the investment of a considerable part of Bar Ilan's total resources, and the maintenance of extensive ties with universities worldwide, including in Britain.
As an example you mentioned your own ties as a physicist with Cambridge University and your plans to spend some time at Cambridge this summer - plans which, as you stated, remain unchanged also in the wake of the British lecturers' decision.
Surely, a person of your intelligence and experience can be expected to note the obvious contradictions in the above position. As you well know, Ariel is not "a location in Israel". Rather, Ariel is a location in a territory under military occupation, a territory which is not and has never been part of the state of Israel. Moreover, Ariel is a special kind of location: it is an armed enclave, created by armed force and dependent for its continued existence on force, and force alone.
The creation of Ariel is a severe violation of international law, specifically of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which specifically forbids an occupying power from transferring and settling its own citizens in the occupied territory. On the ground, the creation and maintenance of Ariel entailed and continues to entail untold hardships to the Palestinians who happen to live in the nearby town of Salfit and in numerous villages a long distance all around. Palestinian inhabitants are exposed to ongoing confiscation of their land so as to feed the land hunger of the ever-expending Ariel settlement, and their daily life are subjected to increasingly stringent travel limitations in the name of "preserving the settlers' security".
The government-approved plans to extend the "Separation Fence" so as to create a corridor linking Ariel to the Israeli border necessitate the confiscation of yet more vast tracts of Palestinian land, depriving thousands of villagers of their sole source of livelihood. Moreover, should the Ariel corridor be completed, it would cut deeply through the territory which the international community earmarked for creation of a Palestinian state, depriving that state of territorial continuity and viability. For that reason, the plan aroused widespread international opposition, not least from the United States, our main ally on the international arena.
In all of this the Bar Ilan University, of which you are president, made itself a major partner - indeed,since a violation of international law is involved, the term "accomplice" may well be used. The "Judea and Samaria College" which you and your colleagues established and nurtured has a central role in the settlement of Ariel, increasing its population and its economic clout. The college's faculty and students are prime users of the "Trans-Samaria Road", the four-lane highway which was created on confiscated Palestinian land in order to provide quick transportation to Ariel. The Palestinian villagers on whose land this highway was built are excluded from using it. They are relegated to a rugged, bumpy mountain trail.
It is you and your colleagues, Professor Kaveh, who started mixing academics with politics. A very heavy mixture, such as few universities anywhere ever engaged in. You cannot really complain when people in Britain, who have different standards for what is the proper moral behavior of academics (or for human beings in general) take action which you do not like. In fact, if you are truly proud of establishing and maintaining the "Judea and Samaria College", you must have the courage of your convictions and take the consequences. Much better, of course, would be for you and your colleagues to sever your connection with the ill-conceived settlement project - and than you can quite rightly demand that the boycott be removed from your university.
Yours
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom (The Israeli Peace Bloc)
GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033, www.gush-shalom.org
Could the vote by lecturers to suspend links with two Israeli universities fuel a rise in anti-semitism on campus? Donald MacLeod and Polly Curtis report
The Guardian, Tuesday April 26, 2005
In theory, Friday's now notorious decision by British lecturers to mount an academic boycott of Israel has nothing to do with their students. It might affect joint research projects or conferences, perhaps the occasional PhD student.
In practice, the boycott vote has fanned a bitter row about anti-semitism already smouldering in the National Union of Students and in several student unions around the country. Coming after the resignations of three Jewish student officers during this month's NUS annual conference, claiming the union leadership was turning a blind eye to anti-semitism, the Association of University Teachers' vote provoked instant condemnation from the Union of Jewish Students (UJS).
"We see it as a another nail in the coffin of Jewish students," says Danny Stone, campaigns director of UJS. "The AUT should be ashamed of themselves. We are going to call for AUT members to resign. It is absolutely appalling. How can they justify teaching about the Middle East conflict when it is clear that those who voted for the boycott are biased?"
Stone says the boycott could cause tension and hatred in universities. "The worry is that it separates 'good Jews' from 'bad Jews' on campus by whether they speak out in favour of a boycott, or support Israel, or say nothing."
And there is already tension. The NUS is holding an inquiry into the complaints by Luciana Berger and Mitch Simmons, who resigned from the national executive, and Jonny Warren, who resigned from the steering committee. They felt the NUS leadership had failed to react robustly when a pamphlet referring to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was discoverd on a Palestinian students' stall. The Protocols, a 19th-century forgery about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, has a grim record of being used to whip up anti-Jewish feeling and justify pogroms even before the Nazis used it.
Warren, who says he got involved in the NUS to combat the appearance of the British National Party at Leeds University, where he was studying, says he felt utter revulsion that such a "disgusting" leaflet should be on show at the union conference. The "tepid" response of the leadership prompted his resignation, along with Simmons and Berger, who complained the NUS had not dealt firmly with other incidents during the year, particularly provocative statements at the union of the School of Oriental and African Studies, in London.
Their resignations prompted "distress" from the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, that Jewish students should feel intimidated. Islamic and Palestinian student groups issued sympathetic statements but clearly felt the complaints were being overdone -they saw the same incident in a different light.
The General Union of Palestine Students (Gups) said it disassociated itself from the leaflet on Zionism on its stall and that it did not represent its views in any way. "Once Gups became aware of the existence of the leaflet, it was removed from the stall," said a statement last week.
The group added: "The NUS was extremely supportive and efficient in helping to resolve the matter fairly, justly and rapidly. Gups met with the UJS at the invitation of the NUS and an amicable resolution was reached and the leaflet removed.
"Gups condemns any act of racism or discrimination. We ourselves have suffered several attempts to stop our meetings in universities in the last academic year."
Last week, the group had not commented directly on the AUT boycott but its attitude is clear. "We understand the Palestinian struggle as a quest for freedom and self-determination by our people against illegal occupation. We believe that the only way to end the Israeli occupation is by putting pressure on Israel to adhere to international law and to stop its policy of occupation and land confiscation," said the statement.
"We believe that the people of the Holy Land (Muslims, Jews and Christians) deserve to live there in peace. We in Gups had the courage to take the road to peace even when this meant a state of Israel on 78% of our historical Palestine, and we invite pro-Israeli organisations to take such a step so that we all can live in a lasting and just peace."
Wakkas Khan, president of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis), said: "We condemn all forms of anti-semitism towards any Jewish student within the national union. Recently Muslim students have been on the backlash of increased Islamophobia. We need to tackle all forms of discrimination. We empathise with our Jewish friends and stand shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish community to rid society of these grotesque forms of discrimination."
However, Fosis could not resist pointing out that anti-semitism was not the main form of discrimination within the student movement. "Recent figures released show that while a Jew is three times more likely to be attacked, an Asian or a black person is 10 times more likely to be attacked, and an Arab or Muslim is 11 times more likely," said the group.
Fosis felt it had a good conference, helping to defeat the Labour group in the executive elections and hosting a meeting addressed by Professor Tariq Ramadan - seen by Muslims as a moderate scholar of international repute, but opposed by some as anti-gay and banned from the US.
There is a certain amount of the usual infighting that characterises student politics as different factions try to assert themselves. The past few years have seen Muslim students arrive in strength at some UK universities and while the NUS can always agree to condemn racism, it is more concerned about Islamophobia than anti-semitism. And for both Jews and Muslims Israel-Palestine is a visceral issue that embitters student politics.
Three years ago passions were running high when students at Manchester University tried to commit their union to a boycott of Israeli goods. Manchester has a 500-strong Jewish society with strong local community networks. It also has about 2,500 Muslim students and a strong Islamic society, whose members have begun to play a more assertive role in student union politics.
Then as now, pro-Palestinian supporters cited the success of the boycott of apartheid South Africa as a good precedent and accused Israel of operating an apartheid system.
On that occasion, Jewish students, who feared an economic boycott was the thin end of a wedge that would lead to the proscription of Zionism and hence the banning of Jewish societies from student unions (something that occurred sporadically in the 1980s), successfully resisted the move.
Despite the defeat for the Manchester motion in 2002, there has been a total of 19 boycott motions at student unions since then, according to Stone. Even though they were unsuccessful, they soured relations on campus and made Jewish students feel less safe and welcome, he says. Then, as now, student politics and the stance taken by academics seemed to interact. In the same year, Professor Mona Baker, of the then University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (Umist), became a global cause célèbre when she sacked two Israeli academics from journals that she owned, in line with an academic boycott against Israel. She vehemently denied anti-semitism, saying the two professors were friends, but argued they were representing their universities and hence the state of Israel.
That did not stop Baker being investigated by her own university in the wake of a political outcry, despite the fact that her action related to her private business activities. She is still on the staff of the merged Manchester University, as is another Umist professor, Michael Sinnott, who was investigated over an intemperate email, in defence of Baker, that he sent to a Harvard academic, in which he described Israel as the "mirror image of Nazism".
Boycotting Israel can be viewed as blatant discrimination by a university, as Oxford's Andrew Wilkie, Nuffield professor of pathology, discovered to his cost in 2003. He told Amit Duvshani, a student at Tel Aviv University, that he would not agree to his request to work in his laboratory because the professor had a "huge problem" with the Israeli treatment of Palestinians.
Referring to the student's three years of Israeli national service, he wrote: "I am sure you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army." Wilkie was suspended - the stiffest disciplinary measure short of dismissal - and told to take part in equal opportunities training.
This is something the AUT will now have to grapple with, as its executive works out how to advise members. Will it be advising them to break the law? University managers will be in no hurry to help it out. Jocelyn Prudence, chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Employers' Association, who has clashed with AUT general secretary, Sally Hunt, in the past, says pointedly: "[It is] deeply problematic and very unhelpful and opens up all sorts of questions and issues at a point when most people want to be getting on with the main job of academia and I would have thought that they would have wanted to get on with their role in implementing the pay agreement."
It was a swift reversal of the celebratory mood on Thursday night as the union leadership toasted the decision to merge with the other lecturers' union, Natfhe, after nine months of arduous negotiation. The next day that was shattered when the conference narrowly defeated the leadership's frantic attempts to dodge the boycott. It made several efforts to stop it: bringing its own motion to "remove barriers" between academics in Israeli and Palestinian universities, which was rubbished by the pro-boycott lobby when it referred to building links with an Israeli academic union that didn't exist. It also approved a separate motion to circulate information from Palestinian academics, without committing the union to action. Both were seen as attempts to persuade the wavering sympathisers to reject the main three boycott motions.
These, the leadership argued, should be referred back to the executive because the facts weren't clear enough. But the pro-boycott campaigners had got in there first with a supportive message from Ilan Pappe, the Jewish academic at Haifa University who is at the centre of claims that the university threatens the academic freedom of those who criticise Israel.
The boycott has been noisily condemned around the world. The merger honeymoon didn't last long.
For students, the AUT decision will make it harder for the NUS, which has opposed a boycott up to now, to patch things up between its warring factions. Kat Fletcher, the NUS president, is anxious to conclude the independently chaired inquiry as soon as possible and take action if it is recommended. Meanwhile, she is seeking clarification from the AUT. Asked about the conference incident and the resignations, she said she feels bound not to prejudge the inquiry but says the NUS has a proud history of fighting racism of all kinds.
Danny Stone says Jewish students will question whether there is a place for them in the NUS at all, if they do not get satisfaction. "We will have to consider very carefully our place within the NUS if there is no proper investigation, no serious thought given to it, and it is just swept aside."