This newsletter contains the following items:
1. University and College Union 2008 Congress
2. US prof gives Israeli prize money to Palestinian University and to Gisha
3. Norman Finkelstein barred entry to Israel - who is protesting about violations of academic freedom this time round?
4. Report on FFIPP-UK shipment of Books to Palestine
5. Latest FFIPP-USA Newsletter available
6. Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir denied entry into Palestine
7. Twinning
8. Israel, Palestine and a Tenure Battle at Barnard
9. Knesset Eduction Committee: Preventing Students in Gaza from Studying Abroad is Immoral and Unwise.
10. US Withdraws Fulbright Grants to Gaza
11. A change of name for FFIPP-UK
1. University and College Union 2008 Congress
There were a number of motions at the UCU Congress, 28-30 May, on the subject of Palestine and the Occupation. They may be viewed as Motions 25, 26 and 27 at http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3282#European%20and%20international%20work
The most contentious issue In advance of the Congress was clause 7 of Motion 25:
that Congress resolves that "colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating".
In the event all the motions were passed, no 25 without amendment and pretty overwhelmingly on a show of hands, with about 30 of the 250 delegates against.
In advance of the debate:
a) The Guardian summed up the issue on 27 May:
"There are people who want to see us fall out over Palestine and do nothing else," says Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, currently preparing for the UCU conference, which starts tomorrow.
And you can see her point. There is no call for a boycott of Israel on the agenda. The nearest you get is a proposal that "colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions". But that will not stop most media attention from focusing on it, she says, and it will not keep furious delegates on both sides of the argument from each other's throats.
And it has not prevented Stop the Boycott, a group of eminent Jewish lawyers and intellectuals, from gathering legal advice and sending it to Hunt with much fanfare, on the grounds that the proposal "appears to encourage an academic boycott of Israel". There are single-minded pro-Palestinians and pro-Israelis who have devoted much energy to fighting the Middle East war on British campuses. The result has been much bitterness and a stream of motions to UCU branches, student unions and the NUS. "If you're called the Stop the Boycott campaign," grumbled one activist last week as he shuffled his conference papers, "then if there's no proposal for a boycott, you have to invent one."
The debate over such matters will generate great heat, both at the conference and in the media, but whether they are passed or rejected will not make a scrap of difference in the real world.
(at http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2282231,00.html )
b) The pre-Congress Bricup newsletter, May 2008, contains material on this and other issues (including reports on the UCU organised Palestinian lecturers' tour, the UCU Congress, the Turin Bookfair, Torture, Doctors and the Israeli Medical Association).
Downloadable off the Bricup website ( http://www.bricup.org.uk/ ) - the newsletter is at http://www.bricup.org.uk/documents/archive/BRICUPNewsletter4.pdf
c) Engage was preoccupied with the issue over quite a while with a plethora of articles on the topic - links at http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1780
Reports on the actual debate:
a) The Independent reported the outcome under the misleading headline 'Lecturers agree to consider boycott of Israeli academics' at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/lecturers-agree-to-consider-boycott-of-israeli-academics-835853.html
b) Ha'aretz's report is based mainly on agency feeds had a similar that 'U.K. academic union moves to consider boycott of Israeli academia'.
Apart from one mention of Tom Hickey, the proposer of the motion, it consists entirely of quotes from people against the union's decision: the Foreign Office, the Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor, Jon Spellar MP, Academic Friends of Israel, Jeremy Newmark, Joint Head of the Stop the Boycott Campaign, Lorna Fitzsimons, ditto.
c) The Guardian report 'Lecturer union urges moral review of Israeli college links' by Anthea Lipsett, May 29, 2008 is at http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2282541,00.html
d) The Jewish Chronicle reaction: 'Boycotters win new motion', by Leon Symons; and Academics’ motion seen as a boycott by the back door', by Leon Symons and Shelly Paz on 30 May are at http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11&SecId=11&AId=60363&ATypeId=1 and http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11s18&SecId=18&AId=60367&ATypeId=1
e) Engage post-Congress report at http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1921
f) There is a long discussion in the Daily News Egypt by Sarah Carr based on an interview with Phil Marfleet, a Bricup supporter at the University of East London, 'British scholar defends move to ‘reconsider’ links with Israeli institutions', 28 May 2008 at http://thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=14050
Ariel College
The final clause of Motion 25 dealt with Ariel College, resolving that "Ariel College, an explicitly colonising institution in the West Bank, be investigated under the formal Greylisting Procedure." FFIPP and FFIPP-UK have long been opposed to this institution a a gross violation of international law and we hope to have an update about it soon.
2. Acclaimed Mathematician Receives Prize in Israeli Knesset, Donates it for Equal Opportunities for Palestinian Students
Gisha News Release 26th May 2008
Wolf Prize Mathematician David Mumford:
Freedom of movement is essential for intellectual development
"Access to education determines how the next generation of Palestinians will grow up, specifically whether potential mathematicians will have the opportunity to join the international community."
Mon., May 26, 2008: Acclaimed mathematician David Mumford announced today that he is donating proceeds from the prestigious Wolf Prize, awarded Sunday at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset, for the benefit of equal opportunities for Palestinian students. Professor Mumford is donating half his share of the prize to an Israeli human rights NGO, Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, which protects the rights of Palestinian students to access education and half to Birzeit University in the West Bank.
Professor Mumford was given his award by Israeli President Shimon Peres at Sunday's ceremony, in recognition of his groundbreaking theoretical work in algebraic geometry. He is a University Professor at Brown University's Division of Applied Mathematics.
According to Professor Mumford, mathematics is flourishing today as a vibrant international community, because scholars are free to travel, talk and learn from each other anywhere in the world. "Here is my own experience", says Mumford: "the work for which I have received this prize owes more than I can say to sharing ideas when I was young with Jun-Ichi Igusa from Japan, C. S. Seshadri from India, Alexander Grothendieck, a stateless person -- and many others. It was startling and moving when, as a young man, I received a letter from Seshadri, from halfway around the world, telling me that his and Narasimhan’s work had led them to the same results as mine".
"Mathematics in Israel flourishes today on this high international plane. Its lifeblood is the free exchange of ideas with scholars visiting, teaching, learning from each other, traveling everywhere in the world. But this is not so in occupied Palestine where education struggles to continue and travel is greatly limited".
"Therefore I have decided to donate my part of the Wolf Prize in Mathematics to the cause of helping the University community in occupied Palestine survive and flourish. Its existence determines how the next generation will grow up and specifically whether potential mathematicians there will have the opportunity to join the international community that nourished me. For this reason, I am giving half of my prize to the Israeli human rights NGO Gisha which works to further The Right to Education and Freedom of Movement and half to Birzeit University directly."
See also 'US prof gives Israeli prize money to Palestinian University and to Gisha', Ha'aretz 26 May 2008 at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/986898.html
3. Norman Finkelstein barred entry to Israel - who is protesting about violations of academic freedom this time round?
Prof Avraham Oz of Haifa University writes:
You may have heard that US academic Norman Finkelstein was detained a couple of days ago by the Israeli authorities at the airport upon coming to visit the occupied territories and sent back home. Now granted that Finkelstein is a controversial figure in academe: the reason for his detention and expelling from the country is based on his opinions, as expressed in his books and articles. So much for an academic establishment which made a loud worldwide noise when the University of Haifa was boycotted by a union of academic teachers: no whisper was raised by members of academia in Israel to protest the case of detaining a fellow academic for his opinions, radical as they might be.
Full report
4. Report on FFIPP-UK shipment of Books to Palestine
Richard Kuper reports:
The shipment of books for Palestinian universities was finally despatched in April. It was cleared through Ashdod and reached East Jerusalem late in May. Distribution to the final destinations will take place shortly.
It wouldn't have been possible without the support of the University and College Union which made storage space available for the books and circulated an appeal for book donations in its Branch Newsletter. Thanks to all concerned in the UCU. And thanks, too, to the Lipman-Miliband Trust which gave a grant that enabled the project to take place at all.
This shipment was always seen as a pilot project. Somewhat over a thousand books in all finally sent. About a quarter of them were IT books - these were generally substantial books printed on heavy paper and must have accounted for a half a ton weight on their own! Other books were, in order of numbers, in the areas of business, finance & management; economics; maths & stats; women's studies; sociology & politics; education and a smattering of others. The Palestine IT Association will distribute the IT books among a number of institutions; other books were earmarked for An-Najah, the Arab American University in Jenin, Hebron University and the Palestine Polytechnic University (also in Hebron).
We will have to wait for responses form the recipients to see if we got it right and how useful the books prove to be.
The project proved extremely difficult to organise and this shipment took much longer to get together than expected. Some of the reasons:
* it took a long time to find a place where we could store and sort the books we received - eventually the University and College Union in London allowed us to use their basement (a one-off arrangement as the building is about to be sold) and distributed an appeal for books; but the space could only be accessed during working hours and not at all at weekends when volunteers might have been available to help;
* all books in each box despatched had to be listed out for customs purposes, an extremely time-consuming task;
* it was extremely difficult and/or expensive to get the books to London (there are still boxes of books in a couple of cities we were unable to get in time);
* people were generous in what they gave but many ignored the injunction to only give us new or recent books in good condition and some of the books received were simply not suitable;
* individuals in various locations were key - three people in IT departments and one in a business school were instrumental to getting colleagues to donate books and in gathering them together and storing them while awaiting collection;
* it proved nearly impossible to match wants with supply at the individual title level and we had to abandon any attempt to do so. In general, what we were able to send were good quality and generally fairly recent books in areas we knew were relevant to the particular institutions chosen;
* in the end we sent only around a thousand books - a huge number in terms of handling etc but not that many in terms of the time it has eaten up (or the need)...
We know we only scratched the surface. For various reasons, Al Quds, Bethlehem and Bir Zeit were not involved at this stage - and universities in Gaza were not even on the radar because of the logistical impossibility of supplying them. Nor were any books sent to the Al Quds Open University which has some seventeen branches in Palestine, and immense need.
As to the future, we await feedback and will take it from there..
5. Latest FFIPP-USA Newsletter available
This covers a a successful development of FFIPP-USA with three speaking tours since October and a report on the development of its intern programme, with some 50 interns, drawn from the US, UK, the Netherlands, France and Germany going to work in Palestine-Israel and Jordan this summer.
Full newsletter at http://www.ffipp-uk.org/FFIPP-USA_newsletters/newsletter_may08.htm
6. Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir denied entry into Palestine
Thursday May 1st 2008
Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir has been denied entry to Palestine at the Jordanian border. She was on her way home for the world premiere of her new film, "Salt of this Sea" which is the first feature film by a Palestinian female director. She was held at the border for six hours, repeatedly questioned, her telephone taken from her, and then denied entry. Two agents from the Israeli Ministry of Interior escorted Annemarie from the terminal and placed her on a bus back to Jordan.
Israel continues to deny hundreds of people entry to Palestine, including outstanding filmmakers like Jacir, entry to Palestine with complete impunity. Annemarie, who is from the West Bank, has not been allowed into Palestine for nine months, which meant the some of the final scenes of her film could not be shot in Palestine and had to be filmed at an alternate location with the cooperation of the French in Marseille.
Annemarie Jacir writes:
I have been looking forward to this week for months now - it was to be one of the most important moments for me - the world premiere of my feature film, milh hadha al- bahr� (Salt of this Sea) in Palestine.
The premiere was to take place in Amari Refugee camp in Ramallah, with the cast and crew, the people who helped make this film happen, who believe in it, to be in attendance. An outdoor screening and an occasion to share the completion of a project which has been the result of a five-year struggle. What made this event so special was that it is also a big celebration for us - that we received the incredible news that the film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival as an Official Selection (May 14th-25th, 2008).
As you may know, the Israeli Authorities have not allowed me to return to Palestine for 9 months now. Because of this we were not able to film a main scene of the film and in the end, the scene had to be shot in Marseille, France. My lawyer has been working now for eight months on the issue of my return home. So for the premiere of the film, I also had an invitation from the French Consulate in Jerusalem, who have been supporters of the film, and the International Art Academy of Ramallah were co-sponsoring the screening. There was nothing I was looking forward to more than finally being back in Palestine and sharing the film.
From Amman, Jordan, I took the bus to the Allenby bridge (Sheikh Hussein) in order to cross the Jordanian border and enter the West Bank. I arrived at the bridge at 10 in the morning. The Israelis held me there for six hours, during which time I was interrogated approximately five times. In the beginning I was made to wait in the main room with all the other people crossing. After some time, I was taken to another section in the back, separated from the others, and spent the remaining period of my time waiting there alone. Every now and then people would come in and out of a door, sometimes to ask me questions, sometimes just on their way somewhere else. My telephone was taken from me.
At the end, I was then taken to the general room once more and asked to sit and wait. After about 20 minutes, a woman in a blue uniform (the others wore a different uniform), came towards me with my passport in her hand and four security agents behind her. She handed me my passport and said,"The Israeli Ministry of Interior has denied you entry." I asked if a reason was given. She said, "You spend too much time here." I was then deported - escorted by two of the agents out of the terminal and onto a bus back to Jordan.
I got on the bus. I felt like my legs weren't strong enough to carry me.
April 30th, 2008
Annemarie Jacir
7. Twinning
We'd like to draw up a list of all university twinning initiatives - between institutions, departments and student unions - in the UK and Palestine so please let us know of anything existing or proposals in the pipeline.
CADFA (Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association) held a meeting on the subject back on 30 January and here, belatedly, is a report prepared by Mica Nava:
CADFA http://www.camdenabudis.net/index.html ) is a registered charity (unlike eg BRICUP) which has been active in promoting links between Camden and OPT for about three years. It has recently facilitated twinning arrangements between musicians, teachers, health workers, woman's groups and students. A recent ten-day NUT visit for secondary school teachers, designated as part of Teachers' Internal Professional Development, and subsidised by the British Council proved extremely successful in consolidating links between schools and in transforming opinions.
CADFA is now keen to help make links between universities (mainly between institutions in Camden and Abu Dis). The main links between universities so far have been forged mainly between student unions (eg Liverpool, Manchester, Goldsmiths, SOAS, LSE with students in mainly West Bank, not Gaza, universities) but inevitably, because of the rapid turnover of students, these have been hard to sustain. Further info about this is available on. http://www.twinningwithpalestine.net . CADFA already has links with Al Quds -- an 'open university' with branches all over OPT and would like to arrange a trip to strengthen academic links in first part of April. But the particular difficulty this year is that the dates of institutional vacations very enormously.
Academic staff reps from UCL and LSE were at the meeting. The UCL rep thought academic management and colleagues would be interested in forging constructive and professional links between universities here and identified what these might consist of (transfer of resources, student exchanges, etc) but so far not much institutional support has been forthcoming from either UCL or LSE. However there has been some movement in UCU: the UCU rep reported that Linda Newman (president of UCU) paid a recent visit to Palestine and has now changed her mind and agrees that main support should target OPT universities not Israeli.
The issue is which universities to link with. CADFA recommends Al Quds or Jenin or developing already-existing links made by local boroughs (so eg in case of UEL to develop Newham's links). These suggestions are not necessarily appropriate however, partly because of the incompatibility of academic subject areas. From research after the meeting I note that neither of the universities in Jenin (Al Quds and Arab American University) have social science or humanities departments whereas Birzeit has media, history, English language and literature, cultural studies, philosophy, sociology and anthropology.
8. Israel, Palestine and a Tenure Battle at Barnard (previously reported on in 18 Sept 2007 newsletter)
A fascinating article by Jane Kramer appeared in the New Yorker, 14 April 2008, under the titled 'The Petition: Israel, Palestine and a Tenure Battle at Barnard'. It tells the story of Nadia Abu El-Haj, an American academic (whose father was born in Palestine) who did her fieldwork in Israel, leading eventually to a book called "Facts on the Groound: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society". It won the 2002 Middle East Studies Association award for scholarship. Her application for tenure at Barnard (the women's college at Columbia Univerity) passed the first three hurdles and was before the final review committee when an online petition was launched in September 2007 entitled 'Deny Nadia Abu El-Haj Tenure'. It was started by a Barnard alumna Paula Stern living in Ma'ale Adumim and gathered almost 2,500 signatures by the end of October, mainly from Barnard and Columbia graduates. Stern predicted that Barnard and Columbia were going to lose a lot of alumni money if tenure was granted.
The unfolding of the story is fascinating and gives a great insight into American campus politics. But you must read the article through to the end!
It is downloadable at http://www.ffipp-uk.org/background/nadia abu el-haj_newyorker_0804.pdf
9. Knesset Eduction Committee: Preventing Students in Gaza from Studying Abroad is Immoral and Unwise
News release from Gisha, 28 May 2008:
(Gisha is an Israeli not-for-profit organization, founded in 2005, whose goal is to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians, especially Gaza residents. Gisha promotes rights guaranteed by international and Israeli law. See http://www.gisha.org/ )
Lawmakers Hear from Gaza Student Seeking to Study Abroad; Urge Military to Change Policy
Wednesday, May 28, 2008: "I received a permit to leave Gaza today to attend a visa interview, and tonight I return to Gaza. I don't know if I'll be able to leave again, in order to reach my studies." said Obaida Abu Hashem, an 18-year old Gaza resident seeking to reach his studies in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. "The field I want to study does not exist in Gaza, and study abroad is my only opportunity."
Abu Hashem spoke to lawmakers at an urgent hearing in the Knesset Education Committee today, during which lawmakers called on the military to reverse a policy preventing hundreds of students in Gaza from reaching their studies abroad.
"Preventing students in Gaza from studying is reminiscent of a painful point in Jewish history. We are a nation that for years was prevented from studying - how can we do the same thing to another people?" said Committee Chair Rabbi Michael Malchior. "Trapping hundreds of students in Gaza is immoral and unwise."
Full report at http://www.gisha.org/index.php?intLanguage=2&intItemId=1285&intSiteSN=113
10. US Withdraws Fulbright Grants to Gaza
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, 30 May 2008
GAZA — The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave.
Full report at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/world/middleeast/30gaza.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
11. A change of name for FFIPP-UK
The word Faculty in the name of our parent organisation Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace has always been a problem for us. Its meaning in the States and here is so different it gives rise to endless misunderstandings. So we have decided to change our name to Forum for Israeli-Palestinian Peace - UK, leaving us with the same acronym FFIPP-UK. We remain unchanged in our concerns and our focus on academic and educational issues, and remain committed to the general principles of FFIPP and FFIPP-International which can be found at http://www.ffipp.org/about_us
We will bill ourselves with a suitable subtitle which encapsulates our central but not exclusive concern with academic and educational issues.
Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 08:53:30 +0300
From: "Avraham Oz" <avitaloz@gmail.com>
To: "Oz, Avraham" <avitaloz@gmail.com>
Subject: A Middle East Update, 24 May 2008
Dear friends,
You may have heard that US academic Norman Finkelstein was detained a couple of days ago by the Israeli authorities at the airport upon coming to visit the occupied territories and sent back home. Now granted that Finkelstein is a controversial figure in academe: the reason for his detention and expelling from the country is based on his opinions, as expressed in his books and articles. So much for an academic establishment which made a loud worldwide noise when the University of Haifa was boycotted by a union of academic teachers: no whisper was raised by members of academia in Israel to protest the case of detaining a fellow academic for his opinions, radical as they might be.
I send you the only two mails to date posted on the academic circuit of my university, one by my colleague Professor (of psychology) Micah Leshem and one by me, both obviously bitter and ironic, trying to alert our colleagues to the implications of their roaming silence regarding this gross breach of academic freedom. And then two typical answers, by colleagues from the university. Note the last paragraph of the last message, by Professor of Business Administration Steven Plaut, who suggests that Israeli academics such as Leshem and me should get the same treatment by the Israeli authorities as did Finkelstein. Needless to say, our administration lets such comments pass without response. After all, our university is a haven of academic freedom!
For better days,
A. Oz
---------- Forwarded messages ----------
1. from Micah Leshem:
The well oiled anti-academic boycott machine of the University of Haifa has swung into action to fight for the Academic Freedom of Dr. Norman Finkelstein, an American Scholar with views critical of the Israeli Establishment.
The university of Haifa Vice President has called on the government of Israel to respect plurality of scholastic views, especially in view of the recent attempt to boycott our university by British academics critical of Israeli Academics' indifference to compromised academic freedom in selected academic institutions in Judea and Samaria.
Her press release emphasized that the University of Haifa has a tradition of not tolerating any infringement of academic freedom anywhere on campus, and that we have experienced security personnel to back this up. She warned the shabbak that interference with academic freedom of a colleague will be met with the full force of the university's UK lawyers and lobby, and that the university will make a point of Awarding Honorary Doctorates of Philosophy to all those who fight academic boycotts. She ended with a call for practical action, and said the university would put transport at the disposal of all those Faculty wishing to travel to the Knesset to protest the detention and expulsion of a Jewish Scholar from the Jewish State, just because his analyses are critical of Arab and Jewish mores and policies that perpetuate the bloody conflict.
The unicycle will leave from outside Bank HaPaolim at 2500h.
Flight 0000 from Cloud Cuckoo Land has landed. Kindly proceed to the shabbak desk to have your papers reviewed, stamped and shredded.
Micah
2. from Professor Avraham Oz:
From: Avraham Oz <avitaloz@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, May 23, 2008 at 10:04 PM
Yes, Micah,
You can't imagine the traffic jams blocking the roads of Tel Aviv right now with our colleagues rushing to the detention place to demonstrate against the breach of academic freedom!
Which explains of course the scant attendance of academics at the commemoration, this morning, to one of the greatest sociologists we had among us: Baruch Kimmerling, who died a year ago. Nothing to do, of course, with the colour of his arguments.
And the media - thoroughly analyzing every mail on the computer of Shula Zaken [Olmert's aide - A. O.] - didn't find the few seconds to mention either of these two events. Nor have I heard the voice of the famous London attorney who received an honorary doctorate from our University just for helping lift the academic boycott of it, issuing a statement to the effect that academic freedom should preclude political vendetta.
A. Oz
3. from Professor Michael Antony
Michael Antony <Antony@research.haifa.ac.il> wrote:
Micah, I don't know whether Finkelstein is a security risk or not. Quotations such as the following one (from 2001; taken from Wikiquote, and also appearing on Finkelstein's web site) suggest he may well be: "To my thinking the honorable thing now is to show solidarity with Hezbollah as the US and Israel target it for liquidation. Indeed, looking back my chief regret is that I wasn't even more forceful in publicly defending Hezbollah against terrorist intimidation and attack." On what do you base your apparently very high level of confidence that he isn't? Michael
4. From Professor Steven Plaut
steven plaut <steven_plaut@yahoo.com>
A heart congratulations to the Israeli authorities for uncharacteristically doing the correct thing in denying the Hizbollah agent and Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein entry into the country and the "occupied territories."
Finkelstein, described incorrectly in the news story as an "academic," something he is not and never has been, is a Neo-Nazi widely regarded as a Holocaust Denier (including by the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center), who was fired by DePaul university last summer because he has no academic credentials at all and has yet to publish an academic paper. While making a career out of mocking and denouncing Holocaust survivors as frauds, hoaxsters, and thieves, Finkelstein has spent most of his time since being fired by DePaul in promoting Hizbollah terror.
It is of course well in charatecter for the University of Haifa's own pseudo-academic anti-Zionists to rally on behalf of a Neo-Nazi and terrorist agent. Why should they only rally for Bishara? These people believe that "freedom of speech" should always be defended only for those endeavoring to orchestrate a second Holocaust of Jews, but not for anyone else.
Perhaps the Israeli authorities should deny entry into Israel not only to people like Finkelstein but also to those Israeli "academics" who serve as apologists for Neo-Nazis and for Islamofascist terrorists?
--
Professor Avraham Oz
Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature
University of Haifa
Mount Carmel, 31905 Haifa, Israel
Office Fax +972-4-8249713
Home Telefax +972-3-5609627
Mobile +972-50-7220783b
Email: avitaloz@gmail.com
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