| | | | | Radical Hypocrisy of the Radical Left: Why British Universities Target Israel but no Others? | | Stephen Hawking's decision to cancel a visit to Israel triggered a virtual deluge of op-eds articles and essays. While most of those who chastised the famous scientist spoke about hypocrisy and anti-Semitism, few understand the financial underpinnings of the British universities relentless attack on Israel.
As the following article explains, Saudi Arabia and Gulf States have engaged in egregious violations of human rights for decades. Yet there are very few voices of protest emanating from the British faculty. The Universities and College Union (UCU) which has passed several resolutions to boycott Israel, has never discussed the human right situation in the Gulf.
The reason is simple. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have spent billions of dollars to support a variety of programs in British universities such as Middle East studies, Islamic studies, Palestine studies, international relations studies and others. These programs harbor faculty that is hostile to Israel and serve as centers for anti-Israeli agitation. They also provide employment for former Israeli professors who are willing to bash Israel. It is hardly a coincidence that Ilan Pappe is now teaching at the Middle East Center at Exeter University; its founder, Professor Tim Nibloc, was a significant recipient of Arab largess. The same money sponsors the Israel Apartheid Week on campuses and other activities aimed at delegitimization of Israel.
Arab oil money buys not just academic hostility toward Israel but silence on violation of human rights in the Gulf and beyond. Not a bad investment considering the pay-offs of hypocrisy. |
| | Ofira Seliktar's Lecture for the IAM Round table, May 3, 2013 | | When Dana Barnett approached me about doing a project on Academic Freedom in Israel in a comparative perspective, I have worked on a larger project on Delegitimization of Israel. Unlike ordinary criticism of Israel, the delegitimization campaign is part of Soft Asymmetrical Conflict (SAC). The Pentagon defines SAC as a campaign to delegitimize the target country and to improve the image of the challenge group and the causes it represents.
The anti -Israel SAC involved an extensive, complex, multilayered, interlocking and well-financed network. Its components include NGOs, UN-based forums, EU-sponsored entities, sovereign governments, religious organizations, academic associations, scholars, committees, conferences, symposia, journals and presses.
Michel Foucault developed the idea of soft asymmetrical conflict by inverting the idea of famous dictum of Clausewitz that “war is a continuation of politics by other means” to read” politics is war by other means.” Foucault and his disciplines considered the “discursive arena” as a battlefield; using critical approaches, intellectuals and scholars can delegitimize “hegemonic” narrative and substitute it with the narrative of the of the powerless and suppressed strata in the society.
The core of the delegimitzation is in the academy, since it is the academic paradigms that structure our view of social reality. There are two paradigms that are currently used in liberal arts (humanities and social sciences)
Positivist: “Truth” is arrived at through a discursive-pedagogical process with fixed rules, including objectivity and neutrality. The liberal arts classroom becomes the “marketplace of ideas.”
Neo-Marxist, Critical: There is no social “truth,” there are “narratives,” critical scholars need to expose the “hegemonic” narrative” of the dominant classes. The scholar is urged to use teaching and research to advance social justice and other progressive issues.
While the neo-Marxist, critical paradigm made its debut in liberal arts in the late 1960s, it was Edward Said who introduced it to Middle East studies in his famous book Orientalism. Not accidently, Said thanks Foucault and the Egyptian neo-Marxist scholar Samir Amin for inspiring him to write the book.
Predictably, Israel looks very different in the two paradigms. |
| | Academic Freedom in Israel: A Comparative Perspective - updated | | |
| | EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL SANCTIONS ANTISEMITISM | | Having just finished reading the lengthy judgment in the case of Ronnie Fraser v The University and College Union, I want to comment briefly on the Employment Tribunal’s response to the allegation of anti-Semitism in the UCU; and to the claim that Israel is a non-contingent aspect of Jewish identity.
Anti-Semitism was the crux of Fraser’s case. His complaint against the UCU was that the union had created a hostile environment for him as a Jewish member (‘Jewish’ being a “protected characteristic” under s. 26 Equality Act 2010) by engaging in unwanted anti-Semitic conduct. He complained that the unwanted anti-Semitic conduct, which included not only speech but also acts and omissions, was due to a prevailing culture and attitude in the union that was informed by contemporary anti-Semitism. His written complaint, drafted by Anthony Julius who is renowned for his scholarly knowledge and innate understanding of anti-Semitism, went to great lengths to explain how and why forms of hostility to Israel and Zionism amount to contemporary anti-Semitism. The written complaint also explained that there have always been anti-Semitic Jews, as well as Jews who are ready to make common cause with anti-Semites, so that Jewish support for irrational hostility to Israel does not make it any the less anti-Semitic. |
| | Zochrot: Abusing the Memory of the Holocaust
| | Zochrot was founded in 2002 by Eitan Bronstein, a veteran peace activist who previously worked in the Peace School in Neve Shalom. Zochrot mission is to educate Israeli citizens about the Nakba and restore the memory of Palestinian presence before 1948. According to Zochrot's mission statement, recognizing the tragedy is a prerequisite for ending the conflict, which also includes a return of Palestinian refugees and their resettlement in Israel.
Zochrot is supported by a number of entities such as Oxfam, Mennonites, Trócaire, CCFD, Broederlijk Delen & Belgian Government, Bischoefliches Hilfswerk Misereor, HEKS-EPER (see list below). The funding has enabled the group to mount an energetic campaign of exhibitions, workshops and conferences, both in Israel and abroad. For instance, in a forthcoming conference in October 2013, Zochrot's agenda calls for panels to discuss various factors of the expected return of the refugees.
A German group of activists who tried to educate their public about the Holocaust served as a model for Zochrot. Unfortunately, Zochrot not only copied the model but has actually engaged in a long-term project to equate the Nakba with Holocaust.
As IAM reported, a number of radical faculty have been engaged in this endeavor. The intellectual pioneers of the Nakba-Holocaust equivalency are Adi Ophir (TAU), Hannan Hever (HUJ), Yehouda Shehav (TAU) and Ariella Azoulay,. Azoulay, who specializes in "creating" photographic evidence "demonstrating" that the IDF treatment of Palestinian is similar to the fate of the Jews during the Holocaust. These academics have worked very closely with Zochrot; others such as Yair Auron, an expert on the Armenian genocide, appear as Zochrot guest lecturer to promote the same theme.
In an interview in 1995 by Avihai Nudel to Yerushalayim newspaper, Professor Moshe Zimmermann (HUJ) compared settlers to Hitlerjugend.
Reacting to a wave of anti-Semitism, in 2004, the European Union Monitoring Center (EUMC) published a document titled "A Working Definition of anti-Semitism" stating that "nazification of Israel" that is comparing it to Nazi Germany is a new form of anti-Semitism." The "Working Definition" was incorporated into the European Union Agency for Fundamental Right. That Zochrot and the radical faculty who support it should abuse the memory of the Holocaust is a travesty of academic freedom and, more to the point, an affront to basic human decency. By rejecting the UN Partition proposal and starting a war that they lost, the Palestinians placed themselves in a category of a losing belligerent. Whatever cost they paid for failing to win the war, is no way comparable to the Holocaust where six million were murdered for no other reason than being Jewish.
On the day that Israel commemorates the six million, it is important to assure that their memory is not sullied in the service of a radical political agenda. |
| | Or Kashti in Haaretz on the academia | | | Faced with the campaign being waged by the right to reshape reality, academia - as an institution based on values like skepticism, tolerance and pluralism - has barely raised its voice. At least, not in public. The number of academics who see public activism as part of their job description is declining. But even the larger organizations, like faculty groups, the various universities and the Israeli Academy of Humanities and Sciences, are trying to prevent any kind of statement being uttered about the increasingly ugly face of Israeli society. Self-censorship and conformity are more efficient than direct repression. |
| | Friday Special - Prof. Edward Alexander reviews Dr. Clemens Heni's Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon | | Clemens Heni is a young German scholar who has undertaken the Herculean task of throwing back the assault on Holocaust memory that is currently carried on “mostly in the ivory towers of esoteric academia” by activist professors (who demonstrate the explosive power of boredom). Himself a PhD in political science from Innsbruck and currently Director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Heni pays particular attention to the ignorance as well as tendentiousness of the learned.
“We are currently facing a …movement around the globe to distort the history of the Second World War and to deny the uniqueness and unprecedented character of the Holocaust…. Many scholars…seem to have a clear mission: universalizing the Holocaust and denying its specific anti-Jewish character.”
Heni shows, in this vast and discriminating critical survey of the campaign to make murdered European Jews into metaphors for both humanity in general and Palestinian Arabs in particular, that it would be dangerous to think of academics as harmless drudges who know so much about so little that they cannot be contradicted, nor are worth contradicting. Drudges they may be; harmless they are not. Their aims are not scholarly, but political—and often murderous.
Professors did not always take the lead in the campaign to make the Holocaust an assault not on Jews but on “humanity in general,” and eventually to reinvent the Palestinian Arabs as Jews and give them a free ride on the coattails of Jewish suffering. |
| | At a time of sea- change that needs research academics resurrect Communism | | The fall of communism has dealt a blow to Communist parties around the globe, including that of Israel. But party members and sympathizers who joined the academy have escaped marginalization. To the contrary, as IAM repeatedly reported, they have used their positions to engage in radical, and time- intensive political activism and leave taxpayers holding the bag.
The Arab Spring and the social protest in Israel in the summer of 2011 rekindled hopes for a second coming of Marxism. Veteran activists - including Dani Filc, Yossi Amitai, Maya Rosenfeld (BGU), Anat Matar (TAU), Ehud (Udi) Adiv and Ilana Kaufman (Open University) and others- established a research group to discuss such prospects, under the auspices of the Van Leer Institute.
Their concluding international workshop "Between Revolutions:Public Protest and the Rejuvenation of Marxist Categories reflected the excitement of the group. These and other activists have advocated for a bi- national state - the original vision of the Communist Party in Palestine and the Canaanite Movement - that was inherited by Matzpen whose members joined the academy in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Udi Adiv. Using their academic positions, Matar and Rosenfeld have launched a variety of programs to realize the bi-national goal including the signature Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
With the Arab Spring turning into an Islamist Winter and the street protests in Israel a distant memory, the mood of the 2012 study cycle has been more somber. Rather than a revolution, the objective was scaled to stopping the tide "of conservative republican neoliberalism."
But Marxism is still the guiding perspective. Under the title of "Post Communism and Political and Religious Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin," members have turned to post-Marxist theory (also known as neo-Marxism) to ponder "the ontological and epistemological of class as a revolutionary historical subject and the development of theoretical and practical alternatives to class as a revolutionary historical player. " To those who find such ponderous verbiage confusing, here is a simple English translation. The group is trying to figure out how to create a Marxist revolution using some unspecified substitutes for class.
To this end, group members plan to look at the developments in the Middle East through the "prism of the philosophy of Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Turkish, Palestinian and Israeli Communists" to "examine the nature of the rift and the alternatives proposed to fill the vacuum created." They also propose to meet with "leading intellectuals from around the world with the aim of organizing an international conference that will include leading philosophers from the Arab world."
That dedicated Communists will try and look at the world through their prism even when the conclusions are utterly detached from reality is expected. Like other radical leftists, the Israeli activists cannot bring themselves to admit that the Islamist prism would be a more appropriate tool for analyzing the developments in the region. After all, Marx viewed religion as a form of false consciousness and the neo-Marxists have not done much better. As a result, the real rift that the research group is agonizing over is actually that between Marxism (or neo-Marxism) and reality.
More puzzling is why Van Leer supports such marginal activities. At a time of sea- change in the Middle East that needs research and explanations, Van Leer and the Dutch Foundation behind it sponsor a group whose members have consistently lambasted Israel but had never mentioned the Islamist agenda in the region. |
| | Academic Freedom in Israel | | We are happy to announce the publication of the study Academic Freedom in Israel in Comparative Perspective; it compares academic freedom in Israel with that enjoyed by faculty in three academical leaders- Germany, Great Britain and the United States. This first of a kind research, is systematic, detailed and meticulously referenced.
The study indicates that, contrary to the view of radical scholars and their liberal supporters, the Israeli academy has enjoyed far greater freedom than its counterparts in the comparative cases. Indeed, in all three countries a combination of case law, ethic codes and strong oversight by boards of directors and politicians who appointed them have prevented radical faculty in public universities from abusing and subverting academic privileges to push an activist political agenda.
Not countervailed by academic duties and a need to account to the public and its elected representatives, the expansive sense of academic freedom has hurt Israel’s academic standing in the world. Liberal arts and social science, in particular, have been trending well below global averages, jeopardizing Israel’s overall competitive quest.
We hope that the study will spur a long-overdue debate on how to restore much- needed balance between academic freedom and the broader interests of the society and the state. |
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| | Zochrot: Eyal Sivan, Ilan Pappe "Video testimonies of Zionist Fighters in 1948" and Ariella Azoulay's "What isn't there" | | |
| | IAM Friday Special: Dr. Sari Nusseibeh under attack for agreeing to cooperate with Israeli universities & academics
| | Well before the the Oslo peace process, Sarri Nusseibeh served as one of the more important interlocutors in the Israeli dialogue with the Palestinians. His role as a moderate Palestinian trying to reach out to the Jewish Israeli peace camp has not changed, even after Oslo peace collapsed and the bloody Intifada took over. Nusseibah was a fixture in all the subsequent peace projects, such as the Geneva initiatives.
As President of Al-Quds University, Nusseibeh took a principle and courageous stand against the academic boycott of Israeli universities, much to the displeasure of Palestinian faculty that strongly supports the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Over the years, Nusseibeh was the targets of threats and calls for his dismissals, especially as the Palestinian Council for Higher Education decided to cut all ties with Israeli academics to avoid being seen as as supporting the "normalization" of the occupation."
There are certain lessons to be learned from the Nusseibeh phenomenon. For more than three decades now, EU foundations have spent untold millions of dollars on "conflict resolution." Pioneered by academics, the conflict resolution theory holds that peace can be advanced when well-meaning moderates, preferably academics, would meet in preliminary "confidence building sessions." Nusseibeh was a perfect choice for Israeli conflict resolution and peace activists and the "person to go" when a foundation expressed willingness to support yet another project. In the latest round Berlin University tried to sponsor a collaboration between Al-Quds University and Hebrew University, which, as the article below indicates, was terminated by strong Palestinian protest.
What various conflict resolution and peace activists in Israel seem to ignore is that PACBI is a leader in the newest form of asymmetrical conflict waged against Israel. The 2001 Durban NGO Forum conceived of a soft conflict in which cultural, political, economic and legal warfare is being waged by Palestinian NGOs and the multitude of their supporters. At the heart of this effort is the academic community, which provides conceptual as well as organizational tools for delegitmizing Israel in the international arena.
Sarri Nusseibeh has opposed this trend, but it is hard to make peace with a minority of one. |
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| | BGU Yossi Yona and TAU Gadi Algazi - Experts for All Seasons | | Yossi Yona (BGU), a professor of education and an activist in the Keshet Mizrahit (Mizrahi Rainbow Coalition) which sought to create an alliance between the Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians against the "hegemonic Zionist establishment" has remade himself into an Iran expert.
Gadi Algazi (TAU) who teaches medieval history and veteran pro-Palestinian has also joined the new crop of "Iran experts" made up of radical faculty.
There is, of course, a good reason for discussing the future of Iran's nuclear program and the pros and cons of a possible Israeli strike. As a matter of fact, such a discussion has been taken place at all levels; the foreign policy and the intelligence agencies in both Israel and the United States have vigorously debated the issue. The academic community has contributed a prodigious amount of research known as the "Second Nuclear Age," a quest to determine whether rogue states such as Iran have the type of nuclear rationality that sustained the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) of the Cold War. Thomas Schilling, a leading expert on rational choice theory whose work underpinned the MAD construct, noted that the decision to pre-empt a rogue program hinges on whether the proliferator has the so-called "MAD rationality."
Yona and Algazi show no interest in joining this legitimate discussion. In fact, their articles demonstrate deplorable ignorance about the most basic principles involved in the Second Nuclear Age literature.
But then again, why should they study Schelling? Their goal is very different; Yona is intent on showing that Israel's current leaders are an apocalyptical bunch set on destroying the Middle East; Algazi is keen on proving that Israel is a rogue state whose undeclared nuclear arsenal is the real danger to the region.
As citizens, Yonah and Algazi have the right to write on this or any other subject. But their ignorant and hysterically shrill commentary is a sad reflection on scholarship. |
| | IAM Friday Special: A review of Prof. Edward Alexander's "The State of the Jews" | | The worrisome state of the Jewish people these days has little to do with anything intrinsic to the State of Israel, the thriving, vibrant, and solitary democracy in the Middle East. Rather, as Edward Alexander writes in the Introduction to The State of the Jews, his selection of trenchant essays and reviews spanning the last decade, it is attributable to “the role played by Jews in the war of ideas against the state of the Jews.”
Alexander, professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington (who also taught for many years at Tel Aviv University), does not suffer liberal fools gladly. It was, he reminds us in his scrutiny of the Victorian background of anti-Semitism, the writer George Eliot who suggested back in 1878 that liberals have a “Jewish problem.” To be sure, not only liberals. The Fagin of Oliver Twist, after all, was the direct literary descendant of Shakespeare’s Shylock. |
| | IAM Friday Special: "Attacking Israel with genocidal intentions" by Nidra Poller | | | De-legitimization of the State of Israel is the current episode in a persistent genocidal project aimed at the Jews and, more profoundly, at the values inherent in Judaism and shared by civilized societies. Skirting the shame attached to anti-Semitism after the horrors of the Holocaust, contemporary advocates of the genocidal plot are given free rein to attack Jews by a combination of severe criticism of the State of Israel and well-meaning plans for its geopolitical future, i.e. the peace process. Ugly lies – the Jews stole the land from the Palestinians, Israel is an apartheid state – funct'ion like the age-old charges that justified persecution of the Jews as Christ killers. Beautiful lies – the two state solution that everyone knows – echo the proto-legalistic measures that gradually deprived European Jews of their rights, their strength, their resources and capacity to resist deportation and extermination. Americans, misinterpreting as a repetition of the 1930s the rise of violent anti-Semitism in Europe at the dawn of the twenty-first century, are unprepared to deal with a parallel rise in Muslim Brotherhood forces within the US. As brutal Islamic Jew hatred boils in an Arab-Muslim world revolting, reforming, and submitting to sharia law, the Obama administration conducts a policy of the outstretched hand and blindfolded eyes that leaves Iran free to develop the ultimate genocidal weapon. Israel is the bulwark, not only for Jews but for the free world. Clear thinking, uncompromising discourse, and resolute action – at the risk of being labelled extremist – can stop the genocidal project and, working backward, disarm the lies. |
| | Israel Affairs - "The War against the Jews" by Efraim Karsh | | The sustained anti-Israel de-legitimization campaign is a corollary of the millenarian obsession with the Jews in the Christian and the Muslim worlds. Since Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, and since Zionism is the Jewish people’s national liberation movement, anti-Zionism—as opposed to criticism of specific Israeli policies or actions—means denial of the Jewish right to national self-determination. Such a discriminatory denial of this basic right to only one nation (and one of the few that can trace their corporate identity and territorial attachment to antiquity) while allowing it to all other groups and communities, however new and tenuous their claim to nationhood, is pure and unadulterated anti-Jewish racism, or anti-Semitism as it is commonly known.
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| | Under the Auspice of ‘Academic Freedom’ the Politicization of Israeli Universities Has Deepened | | | Shamir reflects on the abuse of academic freedom by radical left-wing scholars who have created their own set of dogmas as rigid as the ones held by the ultra-orthodox. The ultra-orthodox community has, over time, radicalized their belief in matters as separation of men and women in the public domain in general and public transpiration in particular. The secularists have invented their own “religions,” such as gender studies, queer studies, post-colonial studies. These topics are legitimate subject for academic inquiry, but in the present climate of academic rigidity, they are being defended as holy dogmas where critics can only thread at their peril. For instance, most of research in feminism is essentially pseudo-research, where the conclusions are reached ahead of time and empirical surveys are tailored to fit the foregone conclusions. There are few who dare to question these “religious” axioms in humanities, social science and even law, as they would face excommunication from the academic community. |
| | Bedouin Settlement in Late Ottoman and British Mandatory Palestine: Influence on the Cultural and Environmental Landscape, 1870-1948 | | | Israel's treatment of the Negev Bedouins has become highly politicized under the doctrine of "indegeneity" developed by ethnographers and some legal scholars. The doctrine states that "native people's self- evident attachment to place is paramount in the articulation of rights to land;" Oren Yiftachel, a critical geographer, and Alexander Kedar, a critical legal expert, have claimed that Israel, a colonial/apartheid state, has violated the indegenity laws. They excoriate the Israeli government for herding the Bedouins into permanent settlements, confiscating their land and otherwise disrupting their nomadic existence. As IAM reported, Yiftachel and his followers have either overlooked or distorted the complex history of the Bedouins to make the case against Israel. The following article sheds more light on this issue |
| | Petition by many radical academics to the CHE accusing it of political motivation reached Haaretz instead | | A report by the Council for Higher Education that threatened to close the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University should it fail to improve deplorably low academic standards and curb excessive political activism, has provoked a predictable reaction. Talila Nesher from Haaretz broke out with the story of a petition opposing the CHE decision, (see below). Curiously, this petition could not be found anywhere on the Internet; when contacted by IAM, the CHE spokesperson related that he only had learned about it from a Haaretz journalist who contacted him for a reaction. IAM made further inquiries, yet as of this writing, according to the spokesperson, the petition has not arrived.
It is quite plausible that the real target of the petition was not the CHE; rather the organizers sought to garner publicity through Haaretz. Indeed, violating every journalistic norm, Nesher played right into such expectations. She notes that the petition was signed by leading academic authorities in the world. In reality, the list of the 160 odd academics bears the names of some of the most radical academic in the United States and Israel. |
| | Double Standards of Radical Gay Academics: A Question of Credibility | | Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) have made impressive strides in Israeli society; the Israeli Defense Force was among the first militaries to allow openly gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in its ranks. Such attitude of acceptance stands in stark contrast to the fate of homosexuals in many Muslim societies; in Iran they are hanged on trees in public parks and in Taliban- ruled areas of Afghanistan the punishment is even more gruesome - they are buried up the their waist against a brick wall that is then toppled on them by a bulldozer. Fearful for their lives, gays in Hamas- controlled Gaza have fled to Israel to seek asylums.
One would assume that gay professors would acknowledge the liberal treatment of the GLBTs. But Aeyal Gross (TAU), Roy Wagner (TAU) Orna Ben Naftali (Colman), Yishai Blank (TAU), Dalit Baum ( Haifa U) and Hannah Safran (Emek Yizrael College), Yuval Yonay (Haifa U) and others have nothing but condemnation for Israel. Indeed, in the convoluted logic of their neo-Marxist, critical studies paradigm, even sheltering of the Palestinian gays is a "sin", a public relations gimmick to cover the "sins" of colonialism, imperialism, racism, and homophobia. As their articles indicate, they have used thousands of words to denounce Israel without as much as noting the egregious violations of human rights in many Muslim countries. |
| | "Across the Wall" Moshe Zuckermann, Ehud Adiv, Dan Rabinowitz, Oren Yiftachel, Lev Grinberg & Uri Davis | | Co-edited by Ilan Pappe, Across the Wall brings together a group of radical academics for yet another exercise in presenting the Arab-Israeli conflict which is one-sided at best and falsified at worst.
For Pappe, this is a repeat performance. In 1998 a similar meeting broke up because two Israeli historians- Benny Morris and Itamar Rabinovitz opposed equating of Zionism with colonialism and the description of Nakba as "ethnic cleansing." Rather than dealing with these objections, Pappe picked a more congenial group with a long history of denigrating the "Israeli narrative." Professor Moshe Zuckermann (TAU) parlayed the decidedly unglamorous position as a historian of Germany for high-voltage attention that he receives for comparing Israeli behavior in the West Bank to that of Nazi Germany. Prof. Oren Yiftachel (BGU) is one of the architects of the notion that Israel is an apartheid state. Prof. Lev Grinberg (BGU) has constantly warned that Israel is descending into a fascist state. Dr. Dan Rabinowitz (TAU) made a modest academic career by "proving" the racist and aparteheid nature of the state. Dr. Uri Davis (Exeter U), who describes himself as a Palestinian was picked to serve in Fatah's parliament. Dr. Ehud Adiv (Open U), a former member of Matzpen, served many years in Israeli jail for participating in a spy ring for Syria. |
| | IAM Friday Special: Appropriation of Land in the Negev – The Post-Zionist conceptualization | | Oren Yiftachel and his followers had applied a radical post-Zionist approach to the issue of the Israeli policy toward Arab and Bedouin land. They posit that, as a colonial power, Israel simply appropriated the vast majority of such land without considerations of ownership, especially in the Bedouin community. However, the empirical reality is more complex than the concept of colonialism that became a dogma in the post-Zionist academic community.
Professor Haim Sandberg had produced a detailed and nuanced study of Israel's land policy toward the Arabs. The following chapter discusses the legal status of the Negev expanse during the Ottoman, Mandatory and Israeli period. |
| | Senior professors cast doubt on Jewish heritage of Jerusalem
| | A senior archaeologist at Tel Aviv University has cast doubt on the alleged Jewish heritage of Jerusalem.
Archaeology lecturer Rafi Greenberg: Israel is supposed to find something if it digs for a period of six weeks. But, Greenberg told the Jerusalem Post, Israelis have been excavating the so-called City of David in the occupied Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan for two years to no avail.
Professor Yoni Mizrahi, an independent archaeologist who has worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency said that the right-wing Elad Association has not found anything "saying welcome to David's palace" although that was taken for granted by Elad, as if the group depended on scriptural texts to guide them in their work. |
| | Prof. Oren Yiftachel, Dr. Ishai Menuchin, Dr. Ovadia Ezra, Prof. David Enoch back the radical leftist activism in Bilin, Al Arakib, | | |
| | IAM Friday selection: Whither Arab solidarity? / The disrepute of Zionist intellectuals / BGU has lost its legitimacy | | Whither Arab solidarity**?
By AMNON RUBINSTEIN JPOST - 07/03/2011 23:11
Lessons learned over 2,000 years still serve us now
The truth is that Shlomo Sand’s compilation of rubbish serves an important purpose. It is a further erosion of the line between academic writing and its parody. Thus, Sand makes fun of all the genetic studies, undertaken by firstrate scientists, that prove two astounding conclusions: Ashkenazi Jews are genetically closer to oriental Jews and oriental non-Jews than to the non-Jewish European host societies, and Jews managed to keep their separate genetic identity throughout this long and eventful time.
**The disrepute of Zionist intellectuals
06/28/2011 11:59 By EVELYN GORDON JPOST
Israeli intellectuals of yesteryear may have had differing political opinions, but they agreed on the fundamentals: that the Jews are a nation and deserve a state located in the historic homeland. Sadly, the actions of many modern Israeli intellectuals mark a departure from this view.
**Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Has Lost Its Legitimacy
Dr. Haim Misgav, Attorney
June 18, 2011
Of course I am not proposing that any proceedings, criminal or otherwise, be taken against Neve Gordon or Eyal Nir. But the university that falsely, to my mind, bears the name of David Ben-Gurion should do something. |
| | A group of 300 academics headed by TAU Ishay Rosen-Zvi stated in Haaretz ad they are willing to break Israel’s Entry Laws | | About 300 lecturers and teachers from institutes of higher education throughout Israel have signed a public advertisement in support of civil disobedience actions of a women’s group which openly infringes the law of entry to Israel.
The academics put their full names in an advertisement which was published in theHa'aretz newspaper last Friday, 17 June 2011, next to an advertisement – the third in recent months - published by the women's group called "Civil Disobedience". The women, who have all been investigated by Jerusalem police and who now have official criminal records, called for the Israeli public to join them in their protest activity which consists of driving Palestinian women and children for a day at Israeli recreational sites and the beach. These actions come in the wake of writer and translator Ilana Hammerman, who started publicizing such activities last year.
We recognize neither the legality, nor the morality, nor the wisdom of the walls between us and our neighbors which have been erected with brute force," stated the group in its advertisement. |
| | Shlomo Sand, Moshe Zuckermann & Ilan Pappe only European neo-Marxists attend their lectures, publish their books | | Israel’s intellectuals are worried. The Israeli Holy Trinity (Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, and David Grossman) is getting old. The Hebrew University’s Pantheon (Martin Buber, Yehuda Magnes, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz) belongs to History. Avraham Burg tries to mimic Leibowitz, but it is hard to inherit the Lithuanian brainbox when you didn’t finish college. As for Shlomo Sand, Moshe Zuckermann and Ilan Pappé, only European neo-Marxists are willing to attend their lectures and to publish their books.
“It used to be that … they would call me from Army Radio” complains Moshe Zuckermann to Ofer Aderet from Ha’aretz (“The Shrinking of the Israeli Mind,” June 7, 2011). So what happened? “The people have been silenced. They tried to strangle them –and they’ve succeeded” he says. Zuckermann doesn’t specify whom he means by “they” but Daniel Gutwein blames “market forces.” You see, explains Gutwein, “The market … ensures there is no intellectual discussion.” As for Shlomo Sand, he blames the Universities themselves: “To become a professor” he says “you have to be cautious.” |
| | Radical-leftist academics search for ways to give the Nakba its "rightful" place in teaching: "Zoom In, Palestinian Refugees of 1948, Remembrances" | | In the summer of 2010, the institute hosted groups of Palestinian and Israeli academics from a variety of research disciplines.
Israel is fighting against the memory of the Nakba and the very historical truth, whereas researchers such as Mahmoud Yazbak of the University of Haifa, Menachem Klein of Bar-Ilan University, Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University and Efrat Ben Zeev of Sapir College and others are meeting and searching for ways to give the Nakba its large, rightful place in teaching and education, in the history of the land, and in the emotions and vision of the future.
They argued, disagreed and agreed and finally decided to create an album from the period and articles that analyze the students' comments. Through the comments, the academics analyze the two societies - one victorious, silencing and keeping quiet, and the other, defeated, silent and violating the silence - with both competing over victimhood. |
| | Response to David Newman's "Thoughts on academic freedom at Pessah" / "Rethinking the End Game" with Dr. Kedar | | * David Newman (Thoughts on academic freedom at Pessah – 18th April) complains about attacks against freedom of speech. However, Newman describes a strangely one-sided definition of “freedom”. In his article, only those views that match his own political agenda deserve freedom of expression. Students are not allowed to protest against the hard-left anti-Israel propaganda that Newman’s friends and colleagues churn out constantly. Newman complained about the demonstration by students opposing his conference. In his world, protests are only allowed if he approves of them. The conference organisers only invited extreme left-wing speakers so was a mockery to Newman’s demand for academic freedom.
* Z STREET Presents:
RETHINKING THE END GAME:
Improving Lives in The Middle East
May 4th 2011, Washington DC
Learn from experts on the
Likely Impact of the Arab Uprisings on the Arab Palestinians' and Israel's future
Freedoms in the Middle East
Economic Dignity and Prosperity in the Middle East
Engage with the
Combined Panels in a Discussion |
| | After 'Israeli Apartheid Week', the European Union now funds: Menachem Klein & Mahmoud Yazbak launch one-sided book on 1948 refugees, April 4, 2011 | | After the Israeli Apartheid Week 2011 in which ISS took active part with a series of lectures and other events, a project aiming at undertaking a cultural reconciliation in Israel Palestine will be presented.
The Institute for Historical Justice will introduce and discuss an exceptional account of Palestinian refugees of 1948, “Zoom In: Palestinian Refugees of 1948, Remembrances,” in which six Israeli and Palestinian scholars analyze university student comments to archival photographs. This innovative account of Palestinian and Israeli students encounters with their common past takes the reader on a unique visual and historical journey.
“Zoom in” touches upon topics such as the Nakba, loss of homeland, internally displaced people, remembrances, collective identity, victimization from historical, sociological and anthropological perspectives....
PRESS INVITATION
Top Scholars Menachem Klein and Mahmoud Yazbak launch
book on 1948 refugees at the American Colony Hotel on
Monday, April 4, 2011 |
| | One-sided new book by Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, Menachem Klein, Tamir Sorek, Mahmoud Yazbak "Zoom in" on Palestinian refugees of 1948 | | The project described and commented on in this book reveals the utter confusion of identity that exists among Israel's youth between 'self-image' and 'self-knowledge', where bare nakba Palestinian pictures evoke different types of self-denials, including, significantly, the identification of some of those images as ones of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis. Anyone wishing to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must learn the paradoxical lessons contained in this volume."
Sari Nusseibeh, Professor of Philosophy, President, al-Quds University |
| | IAM Friday Special - Israeli Academia: The Rot Spreads / PFUUPE Boycott / Israel Apartheid Week / Toronto U: Israel-haters | | *Israeli Academia: The Rot Spreads
The new year has produced yet another boycott of Israelis by Israeli illuminati. In this case 150-plus academics signed a petition calling for a boycott of the Ariel University Center of Samaria (formerly the College of Judea and Samaria).
* Statement of Position
The Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) wishes to reiterate its firm opposition to any bilateral or multilateral relationships between Palestinian and Israeli academic institutions. In reference to the decision by the University of Johannesburg Senate in September 2010 to review the University's Memorandum of Understanding with Ben-Gurion University, and particularly regarding the condition of partnering with a Palestinian university, PFUUPE, representing Palestinian academics at virtually all Palestinian universities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip stands firmly behind the position of the Palestinian Council for Higher Education (CHE) rejecting cooperation with Israeli universities.
* Mark your calendars - the Seventh Annual Israeli Apartheid Week will take place in Toronto from March 7 - 13, 2011!
First launched in Toronto in 2005, IAW has grown to become one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar. Last year was incredibly successful with over 55 cities worldwide participating in the week's activities. In Toronto, IAW 2010 featured a full week of events celebrating 5 years of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) successes.
* University of Toronto: Among the Israel-haters
Last night, I went to the University of Toronto’s George Ignatieff Theatre, plunked down my $5, and, along with about 130 other interested observers, walked into a 2-hour panel discussion called “Exposing Israeli Apartheid and the Violation of Palestinian Rights: A public forum on the second anniversary of the Gaza massacre.” |
| | PFUUPE Boycott / Israel Apartheid Week / In U of Toronto: Israel-haters | | *Occupied Palestine, 19 January 2011
The Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) wishes to reiterate its firm opposition to any bilateral or multilateral relationships between Palestinian and Israeli academic institutions. * The 7th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week
featuring keynote speakers Judith Butler and Ali Abunimah
Toronto: March 7 - 13, 2011
*Last night, I went to the University of Toronto’s George Ignatieff Theatre, plunked down my $5, and, along with about 130 other interested observers, walked into a 2-hour panel discussion called “Exposing Israeli Apartheid and the Violation of Palestinian Rights: A public forum on the second anniversary of the Gaza massacre.” |
| | IAM Friday Special: IAM responds to Dr. John Kelly - An Israeli Response to Irish Invective | | To Professor John Kelly,
I have just read your communication with the Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) in which you state that you would strongly endorse a boycott of Israeli academic institutions if you believed it would be effective; and your accompanying 2006 article in the Irish Times.
|
| | IAM Friday Special: Letter to the TAU Dean of Humanities regarding TAU Prof. Moshe Zuckermann / Codes of Incitement | | 1. I have seen your winter 2010/11 programme, including a lecture on December 30, 2010, by Moshe Zuckermann.
I am curious how this could happen. Zimmermann is a leading
anti-Israeli voice in Germany.
Hardcore anti-Semites like the daily junge Welt or the Iranian news quote Zimmermann regularly.
Why did the Stephen Roth Center include such a person like
Zuckermann in its programme?
2. Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) is an annual event. Its purpose is to virally spread the demonization and the delegitimization of the Jewish State. This year 40 festivals of hate will be celebrated simultaneously. It'll be in March, and they're already hard at work on preparations. |
| | "Please Boycott Us! You Are Our Only Hope" By an anonymous Israeli academic in the field of the social sciences | | | Anyone who yet rationalises non-action against Israel is actively contributing to the inevitable use of the only other tool world history has provided for social and political change: violence! Please boycott my country today, you are our only hope! |
| | IAM Friday Special: Canada- Master’s thesis shines light on OISE faculty’s anti-Israel agenda / Israel on Campus Where Are We? | | |
| | Jadal Magazine Mada Al-Carmel on October 2000 uprising: "Oppressive domination cannot but generate social energy that is contrary and opposed to it" | | | Oppressive domination cannot but generate social energy that is contrary and opposed to it, and the oppressed cannot but amass their forces at an historic moment – which is difficult to determine a priori – in order to challenge oppression and resist injustice. This moment is not purely coincidental, but rather a revolutionary state that reflects a partnership entrenched in the consciousness of a population group which was not aware, or at least did not dare to gain awareness, of such a partnership, the primary factor in legitimizing the oppression and injustice of the hegemonic institution. Departure from the familiar and the confrontation with hegemony hastens the formation of consciousness as soon as the clash with the institution that represses and subjugates forces opposed and hostile to it takes place. |
| | Friday Special: Government Guidelines on 'Pluralism', Mount Scopus or Mount Olympus? äñúä îåôøëú, äàùîåú àåèåîèéåú, úâåáä | | *News of Government Guidelines on 'Pluralism' Alarms Israeli Academics By Matthew Kalman
*Mount Scopus or Mount Olympus? By Emanuel Navon
On November 2nd, 2010, the Knesset’s Education Commission hosted a special hearing under the title: “The Exclusion of Zionist Positions in Academia.”
*àåøï éôúçàì | äñúä îåôøëú ðâã äà÷ãîéä
áò÷áåú ãéåï áëðñú òì ãå"ç äîëåï ìàñèøèâéä öéåðéú, ùôåøñí áúçéìú ä÷éõ
åòåøø ãéåï ñåòø, ñðè éùøàì äøàì áàåðéáøñéèàåú.
*îàú çðï îåæñ | äàùîåú àåèåîèéåú
"áúåí äùéøåú äöáàé ðøùîúé ììéîåãé äéñèåøéä åîãò äîãéðä áàåðéáøñéèú úì àáéá... áäùøàú îåøé áàåðéáøñéèä, øàéúé áäñëîé àåñìå îäìê îðéôåìèéáé éùøàìé ùðåòã ìäîùéê àú äëéáåù áàîöòéí ëìëìééí".
*Response to "Prof' Yuri Pines supports Palestinian stone throwers at Israeli cars"
By Michael Sherbourne: I FIND IT INTERESTING THAT A MAN AS, PRESUMABLY, WELL EDUCATED AS PROFESSOR YURI PINES IS, SHOULD SHOW, WHAT MUST BE, EITHER HIS INNATE PREJUDICE,FROM HIS PARENTS, AGAINST ZIONISM AND THE STATE OF ISRAEL |
| | Knesset Education committee on exclusion of Zionist lecturers: Education Minister to publish academic freedom code | | Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar, participated in the discussion and said that the Council for Higher Education, of which he is the chairmen of, intends to publish a code of basic principles regarding academic freedom.
"These institutes must look into any claim regarding academic freedom." said Sa'ar. "Public discussion is legitimate and any attempt to silence it isn't democratic."
|
| | 'Arab Jews' have emerged in the Israeli academy to rewrite history out of flattery and subservience to Arabs | | In recent years so-called "new historians" or "post-Zionists" like Professor Sasson Somekh of Tel Aviv University have emerged. They have tried to downplay the importance of the pogrom, distort the facts or deny them. Salim Fattal's book is a brave attempt to fight back against this destructive tendency...
In another case, Fattal visited scholar Reuven Snir, a scholar of Arabic literature who published a 'vegetarian' study on Iraqi-Jewish literature published by the Ben Zvi Institute (2006) failing to mention that the actual voices of the Iraqi Jews were silenced by the repressive regime. Salim Fattal details at length the restrictions and discriminatory laws Iraq imposed on the Jews between 1948 to 1952, the humiliating deprivation of citizenship and expropriation of their property.
Salim Fattal argues against an artificial 'Arab - Jewish' identity invented by a collection of new post-Zionist historians to rewrite history through politically-motivated flattery and subservience to the Arabs.
Salim Fattal says that the phrase 'Arab Jew' did not exist for the Jews of Arab countries and therefore was not used in Iraq, nor by the people, nor the press or media, not in the textbooks and governmental institutions. " They were 100% Jewish," says Fattal. |
| | Anat Matar on Social TV | | |
| | "Israeli Criticism of Zionism, The Academics and Activists" by a Canadian anti-Zionist Jew | | There was an interesting book review published in Haaretz, on February 29, 2008, written by Tom Segev. It was a review of a book titled, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? (published by Resling in Hebrew). It is authored by Israeli historian Shlomo Zand (also spelled Sand). Prof. Zand teaches history at Tel Aviv University. The book became a best seller in Israel. Segev writes:
...in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of nationalidentity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts. |
| | IAM Rosh Hashana Special: Ilan Pappe is guilty * çåùê äáéèåé * Neutrality is political * ìëáåã äø÷èåø * çáøé äñâì äà÷ãîé | | *Ilan Pappe is guilty of inventing and spreading the most atrocious lies about Israel and Zionism / By Michael Sherbourne
If ever there was a case for a man to be extradited and brought back to his own country as a "Criminal Traitor" and put on trial for Treason of the worst kind, it is this man named Ilan Pappe, who is guilty of inventing and spreading the most atrocious lies about the State of Israel and Zionism in general.
* çåùê äáéèåé: ñèåãðèéí ùîôçãéí ìäáéò ãòä, îøöéí ùî÷ãîéí àâ'ðãåú ôåñè öéåðéåú. æå äà÷ãîéä áéùøàì àøàì ñâ''ì
àìåäéí ðîöà áôøèéí ä÷èðéí åäñåã, áãøê ëìì, ðòåõ áôùèåú. ääåðàä äøàùåðä ùì äðåëì äàâãé, ñèéá ÷åîéñø, äúðäìä îòì ãôé îâæéï ðôåõ áàøöåú äáøéú. ÷åîéñø ôøñí îåãòä úîéîä äîöéòä îú÷ï ééáåù ëáéñä äôåòì òì àê åø÷ òì ëåç ñåìàøé áîçéø îáöò ùì 49.95 ãåìø ìéçéãä. "îåëç îãòéú", ÷áòä äîåãòä. "ùéèú ãåø äçìì. ùéîåù îåçìè áëåç ñåìàøé". äôúàéí ùäæîéðå àú äîåöø ÷éáìå ìäôúòúí áãåàø çáéìä ùäëéìä çáì ëáéñä ÷öø. ä÷ìàñé÷ä ùì äåðàú çáì äëáéñä îäãäãú áöååçåú äùîàì òì ôùéæí, î÷àøúéæí åôâéòä áçåôù äà÷ãîé.
* Neutrality is political
The true problem thus lies not with the post-Zionist syllabi, but with all sociology syllabi. I challenge anyone to find more than a handful of sociology courses that do not have serious political implications (vis-a-vis nationalism, economic policy or social stratification). By Eva Illouz
The brouhaha raised by the Institute for Zionist Strategies report, in which the sociology departments of Israel's universities are charged with being dangerously dominated by post-Zionist syllabi, offers scholars in this field the opportunity to answer an important question: Is sociology political?
* ìëáåã ôøåô' öáé äëäï – ø÷èåø
ëàï
ìöáé ùìåí,
áùáåò ùòáø ôøñîä ðùéàú äàåðéáøñéèä îëúá ù÷éáìä îúðåòú "àí úøöå", åùáå çùôä úðåòä æå ðúåðéí îãåé÷éí òì îòììéä ùì äîçì÷ä "ìôåìéèé÷ä åîîùì" (=îãòé äîãéðä) àöìðå. äîëúá ÷áò âí ùàí ìà éúå÷ï äîöá éôðå àðùé äúðåòä ìúåøîéí áôåòì åáëåç òì-îðú ìäðéàí îìúøåí.
÷øàúé áñåó äùáåò á"éãéòåú ðâá" àú äøàéåï àéúê åáå äúâåáä äðæòîú, äàéîôåìñéáéú, ìîëúá æä. àúä æåò÷ ëé "î÷àøúé òìä àøöä". àúä îùååä áéï ä"àéåîéí" ùáîëúá ìçøîåú ùì ðéá âåøãåï. àúä îæìæì ôåîáéú áëåúáéí. àúä ÷åáò ëé îòåìí ìà ðáðúä îçì÷ä àå áåöò àéåù òì áñéñ ôåìéèé. |
| | Israel Academia Monitor Friday Special | | | ëê çùôúé àú çúøðé äùîàì * îé áàîú ãåàâ ìà÷ãîéä? * Is it only McCarthyism? * úåëðéú øãéå * Racist Universities? * |
| | BGU's Jane Leaf, Freedom to give Nazi salute, Hillels, Chronicle, shut down the U's, Protecting academia | | Ben-Gurion University donor: Im Tirtzu are hooligans
úåøîú ìáï-âåøéåï: àúøåí éåúø áâìì "àí úøöå"
Freedom to give Nazi salute
Hillels prepare to answer anti-Israel campus forces
Israeli Professors Protest Calls for Increased Zionism in Teaching
Shut down the universities
Protecting academia |
| | Abir Baker [U of Haifa] & [Ex-TAU, Central European U] Daniel Monterescu expose the Shabak to Palestine Maan news | | Religious figures are targeted because the Shabak is guided by the Orientalist assumption that Islamic Movement activists are always nationalist and potentially dangerous,” but in reality, most religious leaders are "pretty docile," only becoming a problem when alienation and anger from the system become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Not only do interviews create a general environment of fear, Monterescu explained, the so called “chats” can have a lasting impact on the interviewees. Some even suffer from depression following a Shabak interview, Monterescu added.
Shabak usually intensifies its activity—putting stress on Palestinian citizens of Israel and the nation's left—during times of political turmoil, and the recent spike in interviews could reflect Israel’s march right. Critics have said that increasing hostility to dissent—on both the state and public level—is a symptom of the erosion of democracy in Israel. |
| | Maariv: Israel Academe Exposed ùèéôú îåç à÷ãîéú | | Israeli universities were not established with the purpose of promoting any Zionist vision of Israel.
A call for an academic boycott of Israel or a call to dismiss professors from the left or right is worthy of condemnation.
Yet when respected branches of Israeli academia allow themselves to become tools of an anti-Zionist vision and branches of radical left-wing NGO’s - it is imperative to make that known.The problem arises when the right to publicize and criticize is met with a counter campaign designed to intimidate exposure and criticism, and that is what threatens both freedom of expression and the public discourse. |
| | IAM Friday Special: âéìåé ãòú, ìà îçì÷éí öéåðéí, McCarthyism in Tel Aviv, Right-wing group threatens BGU, äà÷ãîéä: ä÷øá òì äôåñè-öéåðåú, àí úøöå ãîå÷øèéä | | âéìåé ãòú: îåãòä îèòí äîåòöä äîúàîú ùì àøâåðé äñâì äà÷ãîé áàåðéáøñéèàåú áéùøàì
ìà îçì÷éí öéåðéí: úâåáä ìàåø ä÷îôééï ùîðäì òéúåï 'äàøõ' ñáéá äîëåï ìàñèøèâéä öéåðéú.
McCarthyism in Tel Aviv: Unprecedented attack on academic freedom threatens Israel's entire scientific enterprise
Right-wing group threatens Ben-Gurion University: Right-wing group Im Tirtzu has issued an ultimatum to Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, threatening to drive away donors if it refuses to hire more right-wing professors and alter its curriculum
äà÷ãîéä: ä÷øá òì äôåñè?öéåðåú: îç÷ø ùì úðåòú "àí úøöå" îàùéí: äèéä àðèé?öéåðéú áîçì÷ú äîîùì ááï âåøéåï • áîëåï ìàñèøèâéä öéåðéú èåòðéí ëé äîâîä ÷ééîú ëîòè áëì äàåðéáøñéèàåú • àåð' áï âåøéåï: "äàùîåú î÷øúéñèéåú"
àí úøöå ãîå÷øèéä: äñòøä ùôøöä åáöã÷ áðåùà ääèéä äôåìéèéú áàåðéáøñéèàåú ìëéååï çã-àâ'ðãúé, ùåèí éùøàì, ôåñè éäåãé, öéåðé åãîå÷øèé äéðä áî÷åîä åçééáú äéúä ìôøåõ åìäéãåï ëáø îæä æîï øá. |
| | Palestinians in Israeli universities: TAU Omar Barghouti, [Haifa U] Yousef Jabareen and [Hebrew U] Kais Nasser | | | Below you will find Tau student of Ethics, Omar Barghouti's boycott call in the Guardian. [U of Haifa, Law] Dr. Yousef Jabareen and [Hebrew U, Law] Adv. Kais Nasser prepared a document against Israel to the UN. |
| | Friday Special: Antisemitism and Introspection,
ôøåôñåøéí ðâã çåôù äáéèåé, "ðå, àæ ëîä ôåñè-öéåðéí òåùéí ëåúøåú, äèôä ìçøí - åçåôù à÷ãîé | | Antisemitism and Introspection / By Robert S. Wistrich
This year, Tisha B'Av (the annual Jewish fast day commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem) once again reminded us of the dangers of “gratuitous hatred” without rhyme or reason for one’s fellow Jews; the kind of hatred for its own sake, which seems more recently to have become part of our everyday Israeli reality. Divisions between Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Jews or the bitter antagonism towards the settlers in the West Bank are of course not new, but they have lost nothing of their malevolent edge. No less distressing are the actions of those Israeli lecturers who defend the international anti-Israel boycott in the name of academic freedom and the much larger numbers of those who denounce any criticism or sanctions against these boycotters as “McCarthyism”.
çééí âðæ | ôøåôñåøéí ðâã çåôù äáéèåé
ìàçøåðä èòï áòîåã æä àùø îòåæ, ôøåôñåø ìîùôè çå÷úé, ëé àîéøåú ùì îøöéí ëîå æå ä÷åáòú ëé çééìé äùééèú ùôùèå òì äñôéðä îøîøä äí "øåöçéí áãí ÷ø", àå æå äîëðä çééìéí äîôðéí îúðçìéí "ðàöéí" - îúééîøåú ìçñåú úçú ëðôé äçåôù äà÷ãîé, àê ìîòùä àéï ìäï ãáø àúå ("îä ìçøí åìçåôù à÷ãîé", "äàøõ" 21.7). ùø äçéðåê âãòåï ñòø ÷ãí ìîòåæ áòðééï æä. ìà îæîï àîø, ëé "÷øéàä ìçøí à÷ãîé, ôòåìåú ìçøí òì îãéðú éùøàì, áòéðé ìà ìâéèéîéåú". åàîðåï øåáéðùèééï, âí ôøåôñåø ìîùôè çå÷úé åâí ùø çéðåê áòáø, äöèøó ìî÷äìú äìéååé ùì "éùøàì áéúðå" áèéåèú îàîø à÷ãîé ùäôéõ áéîéí àìä áàúø "îãòé äçáøä - éùøàì". øåáéðùèééï îöéò ùí ìàôùø ìèøéáåðìéí îùîòúééí àåðéáøñéèàééí ìäòðéù îøöéí, àôéìå áôéèåøéí, òì ñåâéí îñåéîéí ùì äúáèàåéåú, ùàéðï áâãø òáéøä ôìéìéú.
éôòú àøìéê òéúåðàéú | "ðå, àæ ëîä ôåñè-öéåðéí òåùéí ëåúøåú"
ã"ø âãé èàåá ôåøñ ëúá ÷èâåøéä ðâã äùîàì äôåñè-öéåðé, ùìãáøéå ðéú÷ òöîå îäöéáåø äéùøàìé ("ëùéúçéì ìäéåú øò, äí éìëå îëàï"), àê îùåëðò ùæå àéðä äøåç äùåøøú áà÷ãîéä áéùøàì. "ìàðùéí áòìé ãòåú éîðéåú öôåééí àåîðí çééí ÷ùéí áà÷ãîéä, àáì ìà øåãôéí áä àó àçã, åáèç ùìùîàì äáìúé öéåðé àéï áä øåá"
øîé äìôøéï ôåáìéöéñè / äèôä ìçøí - åçåôù à÷ãîé
òùáéí ùåèéí âãìéí áòøåâåú äà÷ãîéä. àéï ëì ëååðä ìôâåò áçåôù ãòåú åäáòúï áöéáåø, ëîå âí áçåôù äáòú äãòä ìöéáåø áëìì. çåôù äáéèåé àéðå çåôù äùéñåé. éù ìäâáéì çåôù áéèåé, ëàùø äåà âåøí îñéú åîèøúå âåøîú ì÷ò÷åò àåùéåú îãéðä åçáøä. |
| | Israel Academia Monitor Friday Special | | * "The Nakba Obsession" / By Sol Stern
* "ìà÷ãîéä àéï çåôù äñúä ðâã äîãéðä åöä"ì" / îúé ãåã
* I Blame / By Matti David
* âãòåï ñòø- àðå úåîëéí áîàá÷ê áîøöéí ä÷åøàéí ìçøí òì îãéðú éùøàì
* Haaretz Ad by members of the International Board of Governors of TAU supporting Gideon Sa'ar
* "ìäâï òì äçåôù äà÷ãîé" / àåøé äééèðø
|
| | Israeli scholars against Israel in foreign media: Oren Yiftachel, Daniel Bar-Tal, Ilan Saban, Yousef Jabareen | | * An ethnocracy," he explains, is a regime promoting “the expansion of the dominant group in contested territory ... while maintaining a democratic façade." Yet Americans, with only a little knowledge of the facts, still refer to Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East".
* Israelis, he says, “do not look in the mirror” and do not wish to be reminded by NGOs about their image. The result, he says, is that “the foundations” of democracy in the country are under siege.
* unlike most - if not all - other democracies, Israel lacks a political culture that respects limits on the power of the majority.
* "In some areas you could identify some characteristics of apartheid that should raise a lot of concern about the future," |
| | Israel Academia Monitor Friday Special | | áøéçú äîåçåú éëåìä ìäúøçù âí àöì îé ùðùàø ôä
ëîä äí òåìéí ìðåå
Ben Gurion University's response in relations to the Dr. Leavitt affair
What do boycotts have to do with academic freedom?
àùø îòåæ | æä çåôù à÷ãîé?
åòãú äçéðåê úãåï áôøùú äîøöä ùôåèø
Right Wing Hebrew University Professor Fired |
| | Israel Academia Monitor Friday Special: A selection of articles on Academic Freedom âí áòáøéú | | * Candidly Speaking: Stalinism at Ben-Gurion University
by Isi Leibler
Just a few weeks ago, Professor Neve Gordon, head of Ben-Gurion University's department of politics and government, was again challenged for continuously engaging in initiatives calling for a global boycott of Israel including his own University.
* Hating Israel on our campus
Ben-Gurion University turning into village fool, hotbed of anti-Israel activity
By Israel David
The protests following the Turkish flotilla incident included activists marching outside the Ben-Gurion University senate building while giving the Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Bibi.” These were apparently outside provocateurs, yet members of the university’s teaching staff participated in the demonstration
* .Terra Incognita: When only the critics are heard
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
That there is so much focus on the Holy Land is a fact of life. The trouble is that the narrative of Israel is being communicated by those who dislike it.
Among the themes that top the list of the coming year’s publications dealing with the Middle East are Iranian history, Lebanon’s vibrancy, Saudi Arabia and stories of American combat soldiers. But there is one that, unsurprisingly, towers above all the rest: Israel and the Palestinians. Of the 700 books that will be published in English on the Middle East in the next year, 107 (15 percent) of them will be devoted to the conflict or aspects of it. This is based on a careful examination of forthcoming publications at Amazon.com, although there are probably other obscure publications lurking out there.
* The fight for academic freedom
After decades of a feeling of stifling anti-Zionist bias at the universities, change is knocking at academia's gates.
By Ronen Shoval
This opinion page has recently carried articles attacking the legitimacy of the Im Tirtzu movement and distorting the report we submitted to the Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee. These articles continued a hysterical assault against our movement by academics on Internet forums. The authors' main argument boils down to the tired old mantra of labeling with McCarthyism anyone trying to criticize what happens in academia.
* Academic Freedom at BGU: Walking A Fuzzy Line
By Jack Friedman
Ben-Gurion University’s reputation as a premier center of higher education has been tarnished in the last few years by a small number of radical Left faculty who, in their classrooms and through their writings and external ventures, defame Israel, calling it an apartheid state, agitate for economic and academic boycotts and, generally, question the legitimacy of the country’s democratic institutions.
* âáé ùôø äà÷ãîàéí ùåú÷éí
ãáøé äùø âãòåï ñòø òì ëååðúå ìáçåï àú äèòðåú äîåôøëåú ùì "àí úøöå" åìôòåì ðâã äèéä à÷ãîéú àðèé öéåðéú ëáéëåì, áòé÷ø áçåâéí ìîãò äîãéðä áàåðéáøñéèàåú, äí òåã öòã çîåø áäéãøãøåú äúøáåúéú, äôåìéèéú åäçéðåëéú áéùøàì.
éù ìãçåú îëì åëì àú ãáøé ñòø òì äâéùä áîçì÷åú ìîãò äîãéðä. éù òãééï à÷ãîàéí øáéí äîðñéí ìäâï òì äîîùì åäçáøä äéùøàìéú, åâí òì òøëé äãîå÷øèéä äéùøàìéú äîéãøãøú. îöã àçø, éù ëîä ñéáåú ìùúé÷ä äâåáøú ùì äà÷ãîàéí áä÷ùø äúøáåúé, äçáøúé åäôåìéèé. ø÷ à÷ãîàéí îòèéí àéðí éøàéí ìäùîéò àú ÷åìí ááé÷åøú çøéôä òì ù÷éòú äçáøä, äôåìéèé÷ä åäãîå÷øèéä.
* î÷øúéæí à÷ãîé
áï ãøåø éîéðé
äçåôù äà÷ãîé, ùëåìì äùîòú òîãåú îáçéìåú, ùîåø ø÷ ìöã ùîàì. ã"ø éøåçí ìåéè ôåèø îëéååï ùäáéò òîãä. äéëï ùø äçéðåê?
ùåøä ùì îøöéí áëéøéí áàåðéáøñéèàåú éùøàìéåú îçøôéí åîâãôéí àú éùøàì. äúøâìðå ëáø çì÷í âí ãåøùéí àú äçøîú éùøàì. âí ìæä äúøâìðå. ëàùø îéùäå îòæ ìåîø òìéäí îéìú áé÷åøú, áéï ùæä ùø äçéðåê âãòåï ñòø àå áéï ùæä äôøåôñåø àìï ãøùåáéõ, äí îééììéí òì äôâéòä áçåôù äà÷ãîé ùìäí. |
| | First of all, academic integrity | | | Circles in the extreme right have been trying for a long time to harm the academic freedom of faculty members in institutions of higher education in Israel. Now it is clear that that academic freedom faces a threat from the extreme left as well. |
| | US Supreme Court Decision Delivers Blow to Human-Rights and Aid Groups | | | Human-rights and humanitarian organizations lost a Supreme Court case Monday when the justices upheld a federal law that prohibits U.S. organizations from providing “material support” to designated terrorist groups. Some nonprofit groups had argued that the law prevents them from engaging in peace-building work and jeopardizes aid in conflict zones. |
| | Hebrew U Philosophy professor denounced by colleagues as traitor for maintaining Israel was not born in sin at the expense of the Palestinians | | Elhanan Yakira, professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has all the credentials of a man of the Israeli Left: born and raised in Tel Aviv as a Zionist and socialist , a lifelong secular Jew, an opponent of West Bank settlements, an advocate of government intervention in economic policy. Yet many of his colleagues on the Left denounce him as a right-winger and a traitor.
Why? Because he maintains that Israel was not born in sin at the expense of the Palestinians Arabs and that it has a right to exist as a Jewish state. Yakira's critique of his fellow leftists, Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust (subtitle: "Three Essays on Denial, Forgetting, and the Delegitimation of Israel"), was rejected by five Israeli publishers before finally being brought out in 2007-- only to be greeted in the Hebrew press by a months-long silence. The controversy, when it at last erupted, was fierce; Yakira, a philosopher who did not set out to be a polemicist, had started a debate on the Left. |
| | A Muslim Historian: Israelis prefer to live in ‘self-denial’ according to a new study conducted by TAU Professor Daniel Bar-Tal and IDC Dr. Eran Halperin | | A new study conducted by Professor Daniel Bar-Tal (Tel Aviv University) have found out that an average Israeli prefer to live in ‘self-denial’ as he/she is not interested to know the facts about the Israel-Palestine conflict. They’re brainwashed with Zionist narrative of the conflict and hatred toward Arabs and Muslims from an early age. The Zionist rabbis are known for using Talmudic texts to create hatred toward Arabs, Blacks and Christians. Last year, Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Manis Friedman responded to a question “How Jews should treat their Arab neighbors?”, in the Moment magazine for its “Ask the Rabbi” feature, said: “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way. Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle). I don’t believe in western morality. Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disatrous morality of human invention…….”
Professor Daniel Bar-Tal conducted this study with Dr. Eran Halperin of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya (Israel). “The political system and the education system use all their tools, such as Jerusalem Day, to socialize people with the idea that a unified Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal, indivisible capital. People are not born with a concept of ‘Jerusalem is ours forever’ and many know no political solution is possible without a compromise on Jerusalem,” wrote Professor Daniel Bar-Tal.
Dr. Eran Halperin adds to the study: “For years, people have been inculcated with information by a selective steamroller and a reality is constructed for them, They are told repeatedly, ‘Jerusalem is united,’ but they’re not told that no other country recognizes the annexation of the eastern part of the city. The result is that any criticism of Israeli activity in East Jerusalem is perceived as pure anti-Semitism.” |
| | Academic freedom and tenure and response | | | The true meaning of academic freedom has been lost in the rumpus surrounding Mr. Tannebaum's courageous resignation as a governor of TAU because of the university President's undemocratic refusal to allow a vote about professors who advocate Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and the university. |
| | Israeli academics support Amir Makhoul, suspected spy for Hizbullah | | Demonstrators Protest for Amir Makhoul at Courthouse
A handful of Arab and Jewish protestors, among them university professors, are demonstrating outside the Petah Tikvah Magistrates' Court against the detention of anti-Zionist Arab activist Amir Makhoul, who was arrested earlier this week by Israel’s Shin Bet secret service on charges of espionage on behalf of Hezbollah.
Professor Yehuda Shenhav of Tel Aviv University told fellow demonstrators that "the state is using the Shin Bet in order to assassinate political activists."
In the last couple of days messages arriving from Hebrew University's Amiel Vardi, Tel Aviv University's Merav Amir and Van-Leer's Bashir Bashir, all asking to distribute widely an invitation for a demonstration outside court hearing of Amir Makhul. This was written in Hebrew (See below) by TAU Adi Ophir, Hebrew U Hannan Hever and TAU Yehouda Shenhav. The invitation in Hebrew begins as follow:
The Mechanism of Darkness Operates in (Day) Light
We all recognize the escalation of the Shabak's haunt of political leadership of the Palestiniancitizens of Israel. Palestinian political activists are frightened, deported, disappear or detained and this is kept as secret. Political meetings or meetings with representatives of human rights organizations are described as threats to the security of the state. |
| | Mada Al-Carmel filed lawsuit in Canada alleging that federal org terminated grants due to anti-Israel stance. Radio Intifada: Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian | | Mada Al-Carmel Academic Committee:
Dr. Amal Jamal (Tel Aviv University), Dr. Ahmed Sa'adi (Ben Gurion University), Prof. Mohammed Haj-Yahia (Hebrew University), Prof. Michael Karayanni (Hebrew University), Mada Director Prof. Nadim Rouhana (Tufts University), Dr. Nedera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (Hebrew University), Dr. Samera Esmeir (University of California in Berkeley)
The Mada Al-Carmel Arab Center for Applied Social Research has filed a lawsuit in Canada's Federal Court alleging that a federal research organization arbitrarily terminated grants for two projects worth $796,500. None of the allegations have been proven in court.
Mada Al-Carmel was being funded by the International Development Research Centre to research the human rights of Palestinian women in Israel and Arab political participation there.
The organization, based in Haifa, Israel, says the funding cut followed a campaign by the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor.
In its application, Mada Al-Carmel accuses NGO Monitor of sending written submissions to MPs that wrongly accused the centre of demonizing and "delegitimatizing" Israel.
Radio Interview with Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
24 March 2010
Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian speaks on Judaisation of Jerusalem, the building of settlements, housing demolitions, Israel's occupation, etc. to listen click here |
| | Film “Targeted Citizen” [Technion] Yousef Jabareen and Khaled Abu Asbeh: Inequality in land and housing, employment, education and civil and political rights | | About this video:
"The film “Targeted Citizen” (15 minutes), produced by filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones for Adalah, surveys discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. With the participation of experts Dr. Yousef Jabareen of the Technion and Dr. Khaled Abu Asbeh of the Van Leer Institute, as well as Adalah attorneys Sawsan Zaher, Abeer Baker and Hassan Jabareen, inequality in land and housing, employment, education and civil and political rights are eloquently addressed. These interviews are reinforced by the contrasting informality of on-the-street conversations conducted by Palestinian comic duo Shammas-Nahas and punctuated by the hard-hitting rhymes of Palestinian rap trio DAM. The film's theme song “Targeted Citizen,” written and recorded by DAM especially for Adalah, tells it like it is without missing a beat." |
| | Yisrael Hayom editorial: Israel Apartheid Week, organized mostly by Israeli lecturers, presents an opportunity to hear the claims of the extreme Left | | | Yisrael Hayom argues that "Israel Apartheid Week, organized mostly by Israeli lecturers, presents an opportunity to hear the claims of the extreme Left…Academic theories attempting to simplify a complicated reality are thrown around, and do not allow facts to confuse them." The author notes that "According to Israeli Apartheid Week, money and humanitarian aid should not be afforded to the Palestinians because this perpetuates the status quo…As one who believes in coexistence and peace, I am saddened that the interest common to us and the Palestinians has been kidnapped by a group of academics living in an ivory tower. If they were living in Nablus or Ramallah, they would see the complexity of the conflict and recognize the need for assistance so that the Palestinian state, which will be established, will be sustainable." |
| | [U of Haifa] Alexander (Sandy) Kedar, [BGU] Oren Yiftachel & [TAU] Shlomo Sand pervert historical facts in "An ethnocracy or multiethnic democracy?" | | THE NEW ethnocratic slander appears to have its origins, sadly, in grants given by the Israel Academy of Sciences. In 2002 Alexander (Sandy) Kedar of the University of Haifa received a grant from the Israeli Science Foundation which was founded by the Israel Academy of Sciences. His proposal was for research into “The Rise of a New Land Regime: Changes in Israeli Legal Geography 1992-2002” and he received the grant for four years with Prof. Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion University. In the same year he received a grant from the French Embassy’s Center for Cultural Cooperation for research comparing Israel to the French regime in Algeria.
In 2003 Kedar published some of his initial research, titled “On the legal geography of ethnocratic settler states: notes towards a research agenda,” in a journal called Current Legal Issues. Kedar focused his research initially on the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He writes of the Jews forming an “ethno-class” stratification and the Arabs being an “indigenous” group akin to Native Americans.
He perverts historical fact by claiming that Israel committed “Judaization” of the land whereby Jews came to control 93 percent of the land of Israel. This relies on the unreasonable claim that only 13.5% of the land of Israel was publicly owned in 1948; in fact the actual percentage was closer to 50%. Because Kedar sees the Jews and the state as one and the same, he falsely believes that all of the land of Israel in the hands of the state is open to all the Jews, while the Arabs supposedly only retain 7%, ignoring the fact that such public lands as national parks are open to all. |
| | Selection of recent op-eds on the issues of Israel Apartheid week, anti-Israel Israeli academics, and Post-Zionism | | *What apartheid state?
By BRENDA KATTEN, JPOST
Students will be marking occasion with call for boycott, divestment, sanctions.
Today marks the beginning of the Sixth Annual Israel Apartheid Week taking place in more than 40 cities worldwide. Students will be marking this occasion with a strong call for the boycott, divestment and sanctions against the one Jewish state. The week is said to be from March 1 to 14. One can only imagine that the organizers’ definition of the “week” is as incorrect as their definition of “apartheid “when applied to the State of Israel.
*How to inflame the conflict
By DANIEL DORON, JPOST
SO IT was not surprising that a panel “Economic Peace: Foundation or Distraction” organized by Hebrew University Business School professor Bernard Avishai included five prominent Arab businesspersons who represented only the “distraction” party. They devoted all their time to a litany of complains about “occupation” as the sole source of all evil, attacking Binyamin Netanyahu’s economic peace ideas as a dastardly plot.
Prof. Avishai, an eloquent advocate of granting statehood to the Palestinian Authority and a passionate liberal, does not seem bothered by the fact that under the Authority Palestinian Arabs lost even the minimal civil rights and rule of law that they enjoyed under Israeli occupation; or that they are brutally oppressed by a police state; or that unemployment skyrocketed while their standard of living plummeted, making them destitute and miserable. It seems that nationalism, which Avishai and his like detest when it is embraced by Jews, is a great blessing, even in its most jingoistic form, when it is foisted on the Palestinian Arabs by their rapacious and corrupt elites. It apparently also does not matter that they are subjected to totalitarian brainwashing that redirects their rage against Israel.
*Bash Israel (and your brain)
By AMNON RUBENSTEIN, JPOST
In recent years, prestigious university presses have waived all academic criteria in order to publish any book - no matter what its academic merits are - which knocks Israel.
The latest product in the flourishing bash-Israel literature is Iranophobia. The book debunks Israeli and Western anxieties about the Iranian dangers. The author, Prof. Haggai Ram of Ben-Gurion University, argues that Israeli anti-Iran phobias are largely projections of perceived domestic threats to the prevailing Israeli ethnocratic order. In plain language, he holds that Israel has to demonize Iran so as to identify the Islamic Republic with its suppressed minorities in Israel: the Mizrahi and the haredi communities. Iran, on this theory, is the hated "role model" with which these suppressed minorities can be associated: "the production of Iran as a radical external other in Israeli imagination is to be understood in relation to the emergence of ("Iran-like") ethnic and religious internal others that violated the Jewish state's self-image as 'the West.'"
*A Nation Of Self-Flagellators
Jason Maoz, Senior Editor, Jewish Press
There really is no parallel to the phenomenon witnessed by the world in those years: A small country, surrounded by enemies who given the chance would tear it to pieces like a pack of ravenous wolves, rehabilitating as its "peace partners" the most ruthless killers of its women and children while flagellating itself for every lie ever told by those who pined for its destruction.
Against the backdrop of such boundless naiveté and relentless self-criticism did the New Jew of Zionist ideology metamorphose into the Galus Yid of Zionist mythology. The wide-eyed wonder of young Israeli soldiers at the Western Wall in 1967, captured for eternity in David Rubinger's iconic photograph, suddenly seemed hopelessly passé, as did the emotional reference in Hatikvah to "a free nation in our land."
It took forty-plus years of statehood, but the old Zionist spirit of moral certainty and national pride had, by the mid-1990s, given way to a new ethos, one of cringing embarrassment and deepening doubt.
And while post-Zionists and Israeli leftists in general were mortified by Arafat's rejection of the sweeping concessions offered by Ehud Barak at Camp David and Taba, and even more so by Arafat's launching of a second intifada, the harping on Israeli culpability, instigation and oppression have continued to this day, nowhere more shrilly and adamantly than in the opinion-shaping precincts of Israeli media and academia.
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| | Shiko Behar, Ilan Halevi, Nizar Hassan, Kochavi Shemesh: Displaced Persons: Arab-Jews, Arab-Palestinians, Mizrahis and Palestinian Refugees | | Dr. Moshe (Shiko) Behar is a lecturer in Israeli and Middle East Studies at the University of Manchester, director of the Palestinian organization 'Alternative Information Centre'. Nizar Hassan is lecturer at Sapir College. Ilan Halevi is Jewish member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Kochavi Shemesh is an attorney and leader of the Black Panthers in Israel.
Shiko Behar: When we thought about the topic “1948 Refugees: Mizrahi Perspectives,” it was clear to me that we had to screen the outstanding film of Nizar Hassan, “Cut.” In this discussion we will raise topics that are almost never discussed openly and critically within the Israeli public. As we know clearly today, during the 1948 war approximately 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from here and they left all of their property behind. In December 1948 the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 194, which determined amongst other things that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
Several months later the UN General Assembly conditioned its acceptance of the State of Israel as a UN member on implementation of Resolution 194. We know this did not happen. In the next years the situation of Jews in Arab countries deteriorated. Approximately half a million of them came to Israel. Israel generally contends that this is a “population exchange” and asks to exchange the private property of the Arab Jews and with that of the Palestinians. The simple idea of returning the property directly to its rightful owners never arises in Israel, just like the thought that a fair solution to the Palestinian refugee problem will greatly assist in the compensation of Mizrahis by both Arab states and Israel, the latter which did everything possible to separate between Jews and non—Jews in accordance with the central idea of Zionism. |
| | Dr. Klafter’s dilemma - Reply to Prof' Joseph Klafter | | Dr. Joseph Klafter has a problem. He’s president of Tel Aviv University (TAU), where Dr. Anat Matar and Prof. Rachel Giora are members of the faculty, and Omar Barghouti is a graduate student
Matar, a professor of Philosophy has called the IDF a ‘criminal army’, agrees with the conclusions of the Goldstone report that accuses Israel of deliberately targeting the civilian Palestinian Arab population for violence, and supports the boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) movement — including the academic boycott of Israeli institutions. She was arrested at a violent demonstration against the security barrier in Bili’in in 2005.
Giora, about whom I wrote previously, also a stalwart of the BDS movement, is member of the Linguistics Department. Her name appears first (followed, of course, by Matar’s) on a petition calling for “civil society institutions as well as concerned citizens around the world” to
Integrate BDS in every struggle for justice and human rights by adopting wide, context-sensitive and sustainable boycotts of Israeli products, companies, academic and cultural institutions, and sports groups, similar to the actions taken against apartheid South Africa; |
| | The double boycott challenge | | | How do I, as president of TAU, maneuver through calls to boycott my university and others, as part of the delegitimization campaign against Israel, on the one hand, and demands from donors to expell our the students and faculty who support it, on the other? |
| | IAM weekend: 1) Palestinian detainees seek higher education in Israel. 2) Confronting Jews who defame Jews | | 1) The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) reported that more Palestinian detainees, imprisoned at the Ramon Israeli prison, are joining the Hebrew Open University. The detainees are also holding seminars and educational sessions. There are several detainees who have received higher degrees, including doctorate degrees, while imprisoned by Israel.
2) Whenever criticized, those who call for boycotts of their own country and demonize the IDF as war criminals have the chutzpah to try to defame their critics as McCarthyites and fascists, and threaten libel proceedings. It is their behavior which is morally reprehensible, and we must not be intimidated by such hypocritical tactics.
Israelis and the global Jewish community should be under no illusions. The damage inflicted by Jews collaborating with Israel's enemies to demonize or delegitimize their country is immense. The only way to neutralize the impact of these renegade groups is to expose and confront them.
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| | IAM Weekend collection on some Israeli academics associated with anti-Israel Israeli organizations | | | Last summer, as the United Church met at its national conference, reports revealed it had provided IJV with a startup grant. IJV is harshly critical of Israel, and one of its latest postings on its website, an article from Israel by Nurit Peled Elhanan “is similar to the racist garbage we had to put up with in the 1980s and ’90s by [Holocaust denier] Ernst Zundel, that Israel is evil, malevolent and conspiratorial,” Farber said |
| | [U of Haifa, Women studies] Dalit Baum "Israel's Occupation of Palestine: Who profits and who doesn't" & Merav Amir [TAU, Cohn] Stop Danish Funding | | *On 19 November 2009 the London School of Economics (LSE) hosted a seminar on "Israel's Occupation of Palestine: Who profits and who doesn't". It was organised by the LSE Student Union and featured two activists from Israel talking about the the Israeli Occupation, its corporate supporters, and its effect on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The event was chaired by Daniel Machover, the chairperson of 'Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights'.
*One of the main speakers at Thursday's public event at the London School of Economics' Student Union, titled "Israel's Occupation of Palestine: who profits and who doesn't?" is Dr. Dalit Baum from Haifa University, who coordinates the "Who Profits from the Occupation" project as part of the Jaffa-based Coalition of Women for Peace.
Described in the promotional material as "a feminist anti-occupation activist", Baum is set to discuss the project at the event as well as "present its mapping of corporate involvement in the occupation and tell the story of specific discoveries and challenges in ongoing campaigns."
*People saving for their pensions in this country are indirectly giving billions of kroner to firms that work in illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank, reports Berlingske Tidende newspaper.
The largest Danish pension funds such as PensionDanmark, PKA, Nordea Liv & Pension and Danica Pension have together invested about 2 billion kroner in companies delivering building materials, machines and financing to the settlements, which Denmark, the US and UN consider illegal.
‘These companies are making money on the occupation of Palestine. It must stop,’ said Merav Amir, a coordinator at Who Profits, an Israeli peace organisation. |
| | Freedom of expression belongs to professors and students alike | | | In other words, the students, too, have a measure of academic freedom. If the allegations made by the students - probably mainly in TAU's social sciences departments - are true, the university is violating the students' lawful rights. |
| | The (ir)responsibility of the academy | | Recent debates surrounding politics at university have usually juxtaposed two different political viewpoints against one another. The Right argues that the academy is overflowing with extreme-leftist professors who work to undermine the existence of the state at home and abroad. The Left argues that its freedom of expression is being threatened by the Right and that its campaigns for "justice" or "human rights" are part of making the state more humane.
The Left believes that if a few of its extremist voices call for boycotts of their own universities then that might be "misplaced," but it is part and parcel of a democratic society. Perhaps both sides are right. The academy is at the forefront of anti-Israel intellectual extremism. It is also a bastion of freedom of expression in a free society. |
| | President of IDC Herzliya speaks of the anti-Zionist group of Israeli university professors, during the closing eve of ICT's 9th International Conference | | The most extreme allegations against Israel are often made by a small anti-Zionist group of Israeli university professors. Their ideas are widely circulated and are especially effective because they are made by Israelis. Recently, in an article published in the Los Angeles Times, an Israeli professor called his audience to boycott Israel on all levels, to "save that apartheid state from itself."
How should a university respond to such writing? Is it a case of constitutionally protected free speech or academic freedom? There is a difference between internal democratic debate, what course should a nation adopt, when being called in for
sanctions by other countries. The professor who wrote the L.A. article would probably support the use of international military forces, in case the sanctions fail its "save Israel from itself" campaign. Calling other nations to take action against your
own country - be it by economic sanctions or military force – means turning your back on the internal democratic system. Such an attitude is morally right only if you believe that the situation has reached a point in which the system has entirely lost its
legitimacy and thus merits revolt. If that is the case, it is very odd that such a professor is requiring a salary from a state university funded by the tax payers' money.
Freedom of speech is guaranteed to enable free debate in a society; it does not extend to calls for force, which will actually terminate debates. Such calls have also nothing to do with academic freedom. It is a joke to regard a call for academic
boycott as being part of academic freedom. |
| | THE PEOPLE OF ILLOGIC: NOTES ON JEWISH SELF HATE / Neve Gordon is not the problem / Think Again: Aiding the destroyers among us | | Ruth Bronner, a Jerusalem based researcher has shown that in fact the self-hatred of the Jews begins with the German Jews and the Holocaust. For leading Jews such as Hannah Arendt and Victor Klemperer the Nazis "were not German." In addition "everything Jewish was foreign." Consider how this works. The Nazis, who sprang from the bosom of Germany, were not the "real" Germans, because that was reserved for the Arendts and Klemperers, assimilated German Jews. Yet the actual Jews, mostly Ostjuden, who were hated and disdained by the German Jews, were "foreign". So the Nazis and the real Jews were both foreign. So how does that translate down to the present? For the German Jews and those who pretended to be German Jews like Langer (Klemperer too was born in Poland, like Rosa Luxembourg-Klemperer and Langer were also supporters of the Communist regime in East Germany and collaborated with it in its creation of the largest police state ever created) the Nazis and Jews were equally foreign and thus Israel, a Jewish state, can easily be transfigured into a Nazi state, as it has been in the language of many German Jewish intellectuals such as Hebrew University Professors Moshe Zimmerman, Zuckerman, Baruch Kimmerling and others. Thus the logic by which non-Israeli Jews object to Israel being a Jewish state has a logic, they believe that they are the true Jews and Israel, as a foreign thing, a Nazi apartheid fascist thing, is not Jewish and cannot be Jewish because to be Jewish is to be German-Jewish and therefore to be a Holocaust survivor. For these people there are two Judaisms, there are the foreign Jews and there is the self-Jews, those Jews for whome everything Jewish is foreign but who nevertheless need their Jewishness to be unique, because otherwise they fade into the larger mass of humanity and can no longer pretend to be "Jews for Justice in Palestine" or "Rabbis for Human rights".
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Dr. Gordon is correct - Israel needs to be saved from itself. What Israel needs now is a reconceived notion of the educated Israeli.
It needs a liberal arts college, and the young people prepared to speak constructively about Jewish sovereignty, its challenges, its failures and its future that only that kind of college can produce.
A century ago, who could have imagined that the Jewish state would one day have a world-class army but a failing, collapsing educational system? Whether or not American Jews have the foresight to use their philanthropy to promote genuine change in Israeli academe still remains to be seen. But if they do, Neve Gordon's op-ed may ironically have goaded both Israel and the American Jewish community into taking the first steps needed to begin to save the Jewish state.
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Nor do professors' statements become immune to criticism because they are uttered in a classroom. Professors, like everyone else, should expect to have their work evaluated. Just as parents and students have an interest in knowing which professors have a tendency to get too friendly with female students, so do they have a right to form judgments about which professors are using their classrooms for political indoctrination, not education. |
| | Scientific Provocation as Academic Discipline | | | Among the lecturers' population there are more than an insignificant number of big fools. The “researcher” describing historical events that are the products of his fertile imagination, or his colleague who calls for a boycott of Israel, are not presenting learned research but are only seeking more publicity for themselves. |
| | [Bar Ilan and Tel Aviv U] Ariella Azoulay and [U of Haifa, Women] Dalit Baum "Constituent Looting: Nakba, occupation and the Israeli economy" | | A discussion in conjunction with the exhibit, Kama Yajib
Participants:
Dr. Dalit Baum, University of Haifa and the Women’s Peace Coalition
Involvement of commercial firms in the occupation, and how we, as members of civil society, can raise the cost of the occupation and affect these firms economically.
A joint exhibition by Parhessia, Zochrot and Ariella Azoulay at Bayit BaNamal
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| | Rachel Giora "BDS Campaign", Dalit Baum and Merav Amir "Corporate Responsibility on the Israeli Occupation" | | Rachel Giora Department of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University.
Dalit Baum, Women studies, University of Haifa.
Merav Amir, the Cohn Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University:
A million and a half residents of the Gaza Strip have been suffering for years from ongoing siege and Israeli assaults, which peaked in the recent War. Israel's severe military aggression has become possible due to a gradual process of isolating Gaza – politically, geographically, economically and socially. While Israel portrayed the disengagement as if it were the end of occupation, it actually made Gaza into the largest prison on earth.
The Gaza Strip was occupied by Israel in 1967, along with the West Bank. Its residents are part of the Palestinian people which lost their lands in 1948.
Since then, the state of Israel persists and intensifies its control over the Palestinians. By doing so Israel confirms that the Nakba is not yet over. Ending the occupation, lifting the siege and realizing the right of return are all vital elements in achieving a just peace. |
| | About Prof's Neve Gordon, Ben Gurion University, Rachel Giora and Eva Yablonka, Tel Aviv University in "Terra Incognita: Begging for internationalization" | | | Just after Israel's 2009 elections, Prof. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University declared it was time for the US under Barack Obama to impose a solution on Israel, and "if such intervention includes sanctions, it is the only way to secure Israel's existence in the long run." The latest manifestation of this was Haaretz political columnist Akiva Eldar's June 29 call for Obama to "play on Israel's fears, not its hopes for peace.... The time has come for him to directly address the Israelis, bypassing their leadership."...The belief that international pressure is a godsend is quite widespread. A February 2009 petition signed by five academics, including Prof. Rachel Giora and Eva Yablonka of Tel Aviv University, in support of a recent anti-Israel motion at Manchester University, noted that "we strongly believe that without some pressure from outside Israel and without concrete support for Palestinians nothing will change in our part of the world." |
| | 2006 Film "Palestine Is Still An Issue" Produced by John Pilger (52 minutes) | | | Ilan Pappe, Ishay Rozen-Tzvi |
| | Ford Israel Fund, a partnership between Ford Foundation and New Israel Fund is paying academics and activists to make Israel a non-Jewish State | | TIKKUN READERS KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE PROBLEMS IN ISRAEL OFTEN KNOW FAR less about the dynamic community of Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which are the engine for challenging this reality. With the diminishing of the Israeli welfare state and collapse of the collective national ethos, on the one hand, and the absence of any cohesive left political movement, on the other, these organizations are now the driving force of legal, advocacy, and educational work for social change in the country. The past two decades has brought a dramatic increase in the number of these social change organizations. There are hundreds of organizations working on issues as diverse as economic justice, civil and human rights, community economic development, environment, and religious pluralism. They range from small, grassroots organizations to large professional ones.
The list below provides just a flavor of the work of some of the groups, supported over recent years by the Ford Foundation Israel Fund (www.fordisraelfund.org). Some of these groups, and numerous others, receive financial support from the New Israel Fund (www.nif.org) and ongoing capacity-building assistance from its empowerment and training arm, Shatil. Ha'aretz recently stated: "There is hardly any significant, socially-oriented organization in Israel today that does not owe its existence to the New Israel Fund." |
| | [Hebrew University, Classics] Amiel Vardi and [Technion, Math] Kobi Snitz help Palestinians in their struggle against Israel | | For Israeli activist Kobi Snitz, who has worked for years with Anarchists Against the Wall, and in co-operation with Palestinian popular committees, the key issue in ‘joining in the Palestinian struggle’ has always been rejecting any concept of normalization.
‘Even when we are marching arm in arm, we are not equal,’ relates the 37-year-old doctoral student in mathematics, who credits a stint at a Canadian university and work against the sanctions imposed on Iraq for his activist outlook. ‘Israeli soldiers are less likely to shoot at Israeli citizens than at Palestinians and if I am arrested it will only be for a several hours, not days or months.’
Snitz makes a clear distinction between ‘friendship’ and ‘joint struggle’. ‘Friendship in itself is not a political act,’ he asserts, criticizing some dialogue groups that work from a false premise of parity.
‘If Palestinians say: “Hey, we’re not on an equal footing,” they’re called accusatory. One of the committee members in Belin has said: “There will be lots of time to drink tea together once we end the occupation.” We’re not in this to drink tea together. It’s insulting to the people under occupation to pretend things are normal. Israelis are the ones with money, who can travel, who decide when they meet and don’t meet, the one to ask favours from – in that sense the occupation extends into the personal relationship and perpetuates itself even further.’
That said, Snitz admits he has formed strong friendships with Palestinians through his work with Anarchists Against the Wall, and was initially ‘embarrassed’ by the warmth and hospitality with which he and his Israeli colleagues were received in many West Bank villages.
‘I’ve been to weddings, parties, funerals, important community events.’ But he is painfully aware of his position. If Israeli soldiers approach him, wrongly assuming that he is the ‘leader’ of the group, he points them to a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian. And he seeks the counsel of committee members before participating in any action. ‘I would never deign to “speak” on their behalf,’ he explains.
Disenchanted with mainstream Israeli groups like Peace Now, that he says are ‘fundamentally not anti-war’, Snitz thinks that a ‘popular movement of Israelis and Palestinians is still the best hope that there is’ for ending the occupation.
While progress has been slow and often frustrating, Snitz has seen some positive outcomes. ‘In Budrus the wall was pushed back as a result of demonstrations – without a court case. In Bil’in after four years of struggle, we won a high court decision that ordered the army to push back the fence [although to date the fence remains where it is].’
However, he cautions: ‘It’s their [the Palestinians’] movement – we can only join it. But we can make a contribution.’
Amiel Vardi, a lecturer in classics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is one of those Israeli activists working with Issa Amro. A member of Ta’ayush (Arabic for ‘life in common’) since 2002, Vardi is the first to admit that the organization’s goal of Israelis working together with Palestinians with Israeli passports was not practical.
‘Unfortunately, because of the economic divide between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, we no longer have any Palestinian members. Volunteering like this requires time and money, so it’s now mainly Jewish Israelis working in joint struggle with Palestinians on the West Bank.’
But it was actually a settler’s bullet to his belly that ‘deepened’ Vardi’s commitment to ending the occupation. ‘After I was shot while assisting some Palestinians with their olive harvest in 2002, I knew there was no turning back.’
The Gaza offensive only increased his passion to continue protesting against the occupation. ‘The settlers took advantage of all the public attention focused on Gaza, so we had to be there. It’s more important now than ever.’
While Ta’ayush has been involved in a wide range of activities, from ‘solidarity’ aid convoys to besieged West Bank villages to public demonstrations against the Wall, Vardi says that, at the moment, ‘raising public awareness through the press is a major goal’.
Vardi maintains that ‘settlers are not as legitimate as they used to be’. Through a variety of activist media campaigns, and the distribution of video cameras to Palestinians in the Hebron area, ‘we’re trying to show how the army and police are working for settlers; how the whole system collaborates with them.’ |
| | Israeli academics of Machsom Watch filmed "Palestine: The World's Largest Open Air Prison" | | Dalia Kaveh, Biology teacher.
Dr. Elat Benda The Department of Philosophy Tel Aviv University.
Meged Gozani lectured on Political Art during the Hebrew University's 2007 The statewide seminar for student activists of the Academy-Community Partnership for Social Change and Mahapach-Taghir.
Merav Amir, Cohn Institute of History and Philosophy of science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University.
Dr. Mika Ginsburg, Department of Cell and Animal Biology, The Silverman Institute of Life Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Naama Morag, The Center for Rationality and the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University.
Dr. Nurit Wagner, Department of Social Medicine, Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem.
Ofra Ben Porat, teaching assistant, Social Work, Ben Gurion University.
This is the first of 5 short episodes showing the actual situation of Palestine. The purpose of those videos is to arise international awareness about the prison like closure of Palestine. Palestine need the internationals action and help to break the inhuman and illegal siege imposed by Israel.
Please help us divulgating. thank you |
| | [Tel Aviv U] Yishai Rosen-Tzvi, Adi Ophir and Yehuda Shenhav / Opportunity to watch the begining of this current wave of treason of Israeli academics and intellectuals | | Shortly after the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2001, filmmakers Benny Brunner and Joseph Rochlitz travelled through the country and spoke to a number of them:
Meir Shalev – one of Israel's best-known writers.
Gideon Levy – columnist for Haaretz newspaper.
Jessica Montell – Director of B'Tselem (Israeli Human Rights Center).
Yehudit Katzir – writer.
Yizhar Be'er – Director of the Israeli Center for the Protection of Democracy.
Adi Ophir – Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University.
Noa Levy – leader of the High School students "refusal-to-serve" movement."
Yitzhak La'or – writer and poet.
The filmmakers also attended a major peace rally in Tel Aviv, and recorded the fiery words of Yishai Rosen-Tzvi, one of the first to sign the Letter of Refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories: "Fighting against terrorism? What a joke! Government and army policies create a hothouse for terrorism (...) It is forbidden to treat men, women and children like dirt. The more people understand it, the sooner there will be an end to this cursed occupation." |
| | Unexpected anti-Israel activity during 6th International Seminar to Research Students of Leo Baeck Institute, involving TAU and Hebrew U academics | | Please note, Mosche Zimmermann (Hebrew University), José Brunner (Tel Aviv University) and Gideon Freudenthal (Tel Aviv University) chaired panels of this seminar:
The alternative archaeology project also appeared to be not purely archaeological fieldwork, but also a political opposition to the, as they described it, right-wing organization that runs the official archaeological site of the „City of David“.
The cultural program turned out to be an interesting contrast to general narratives, whether they are leftist, right-wing, or the official Zionist one. It was indeed an example of democratic courage to allow not only people who agreed with the received wisdom, but also people who were very critical of it, to guide a group of guests like us. You might not find the same in German official institutions
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| | Another "Surprising" Study Conducted by Rafi Nets-Zehngut (Columbia University) and Daniel Bar-Tal (Tel Aviv U) | | | However, Daniel Bar-Tal believes that the Israeli-Jewish society still has a significant way to go in changing its collective memory to become less biased and self serving. Many Israeli Jews still believe a Zionist narrative of many issues in the history of the conflict – a simplistic memory of the conflict which portrays Israelin a positive light and the Arabs/Palestinians in a negative one. “Holding such a Zionist narrative serves as an obstacle to peace since it promotes negative emotions, mistrust, de-legitimization and negative stereotypes of Arabs and Palestinians,” Bar-Tal said. |
| | Professors Eyal Benvenisti, David Kretschmer, Claude Klein, Yaffa Zilbershats, Barack Madina and Yuval Shany quoted by Ezzedeen AL-Qassam Brigades | | Concerns of the Zionist entity are continuing on the prosecution of the leaders of the occupation army to the international war crimes courts. According to the Zionist newspaper Yediot Aharonot, six senior experts and professors of law in the Zionist entity, called the attorney for the Zionist government, "Menachem Mazuz" to investigate in war crimes committed by the Zionist occupation army in its war on the Gaza Strip, in order to put an end to litigation in the courts of other states or the International Criminal Court.
The paper disclosed on Wednesday (2-25) that Zionist professors of constitutional and international law (Eyal Npnstei, David Kretschmer, Claude Klein, Jaffa Zilbrchats, Barack Madina, Yuval Chany) demanded for a formation of a foreign commission of the fact-finding in the commission of crimes in the army occupation war on Gaza, particularly since it resulted in the death and injury to more than seven thousand Palestinians, the destruction of infrastructure in Gaza strip as a whole.
And legal experts said "An external investigation can only be capable of neutralizing any future claims for Zionist entity in this case.
The six teachers revealed, in the petition, their belief that the fourth treaty of "Geneva" says explicitly that any state under this treaty has the duty to search for persons suspected of committing serious violations of this treaty, and brought to trial. |
| | About Neve Gordon, Sami Shalom Sheetrit and Shlomo Sand in "Support the liberation from the Jewish and Zionist settlement project" | | The international Jewish network
anti Zionism is a positive step forward,
And its members to complete careers
Through to the end of the political clarity
And historical, does not like to stay in mid -
Neve Gordon.
The time has come to renounce the Jews
Zionism virtually and physically, not verbally
Only, so vivid recollection of humanity through
Their physical liquidation as a settlement
On the ground and raped colony.
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| | "Racism in Israel", a new book edited by [Tel Aviv U, Sociology] Yehouda Shenhav and [Ben Gurion U, Education] Yossi Yonah | | The book also offers an interesting treatment of a key phenomenon of racism in Israel - the attitude of Jewish Israelis toward Palestinian citizens of the state, in articles like "Us? Racists?!" about the discourse of racism as it is reflected in print journalism, by Hanna Herzog, Inna Leykin and Smadar Sharon, and "What Color is the Arab?" by Honaida Ghanem.
And the book also offers a wealth of commentary on the development of a new kind of racism here. Reading it stimulates challenging thought about the connection between Judaism and Zionism, on the one hand, and racism on the other. |
| | Adalah: [Emek Yezreel College] Marwan Dwairy, [BGU] Thabet Abu Ras, [Hebrew U] Muhammad M. Haj-Yahia, [TAU] Hala Khoury-Bisharat, [Haifa U] Mahmoud Yazbak | | Palestinian Arab law students from various universities and colleges in Israel and Al Quds University participated in Adalah's third annual Law Students’ Conference in Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salaam on 10-12 October 2008. The students participated in many activities, including a tour of the Separation Wall, lectures by academics and legal practitioners on diverse subjects like land and housing rights in mixed-cites, the October 2000 killings, and workshops on human rights legal issues, such as the rights of people with special needs and prisoners’ rights. Students had the opportunity to share their views on different issues, and several gave their insights on the following question:
"As a Palestinian Arab student what has been your experience of studying law at an Israeli University?" |
| | About [Hebrew U] Nurit Peled-Elhanan, [Tel Aviv U] Daniel Bar-Tal, [U of Southampton, U.K] Oren Ben Dor and [U of Haifa] Prof' Adir Cohen, in: You Harvest What You Plant: Debunking the myth of “Palestinian Hate” | | | While Palestinian textbooks are often under fire and wrongly accused of this and that, only few bothered to look into Israeli textbooks and investigate their contents as to their attitude towards Arabs and Palestinians. The Israeli culture of hate is to be found in school textbooks, children’s books and in Israeli literature. This culture is state-approved and state-funded. It is not an issue of one political party or one organization airing a program or printing a book with disputable content. These are school textbooks that are part of the Jewish school curricula, adopted by the Israeli government, as guidelines for Israeli children. |
| | 'Zochrot' where [Bar Ilan U] Ariella Azoulay, Normah Musih, [TAU] Adi Ophir and Haim Deuel Luski are prime activists | | Until July, 1948, the village of Ayn Karim, south of Jerusalem, was home to some 3700 Palestinians. They were expelled northward 60 years ago by an Israeli army force, and overnight became homeless refugees. After Israel captured the village it became part of Jerusalem, and is today considered to be a special neighborhood, one of the city’s most attractive areas. Many of the Palestinian homes still stand today, and Israelis live in them.
On Saturday, 29 November 2008, the 61st anniversary of the United Nations decision to partition Palestine, Zochrot will conduct a study tour in Ayn Karim. We’ll hear refugees from the village tell about their lives prior to the nakba, about the capture of the village and the expulsion of its inhabitants. We’ll erect signs to commemorate sites that existed in the village and distribute a booklet that we published in preparation for the tour. |
| | [Hebrew U] Dr. Efrat Ben Ze'ev, [Ben Gurion U] Dr. Ahmad Sa'di, and [Durham U, U.K] Dr. Uri Davis at Sabeel's "remembering the Nakba" | | The film was followed by a panel discussion on memory, featuring Dr. Ahmad Sa'di and Dr. Efrat Ben Ze'ev. Dr. Sa'di spoke of the way in which Palestinians remember the Nakba as "A total destruction, the uprooting of people from their homeland, the destruction of a social fabric that had existed for centuries, and the frustration of national aspirations," in addition to the personal stories of trauma presented by survivors of the Nakba. He went on to argue for the need for moral accountability in response knowledge of the events of 1948. The Nakba narrative is, according to Dr. Sa'di, "not triumphalist, but rather looking for a place to begin....For a story of trauma to be told, there is a need for a sympathetic audience." This audience, according to Dr. Sa'di, must be found not only among other Palestinians and the wider Arab world, but in the Western world and the Israeli Jewish public.
Dr. Ben Ze'ev presented her research among Israeli veterans of 1948, and found a much more complex narrative than the official and popularly accepted Zionist version of 1948. She found that, after 60 years, the self-imposed silence of the veterans is beginning to crack, and that many veterans, seeing changes in the Israeli public and seeking some sort of relief or forgiveness, have begun to tell the truth about what the saw and experienced in 1948. While usually portraying themselves as sympathetic witnesses to massacres, abuses, and expulsions, she found that veterans are increasingly willing to tell the truth about the war experiences, even when that truth runs counter to the official or popular narrative. Although Dr. Ben Ze'ev observed that "much of the old version of truth still holds in Israeli society," she urged the audience to "pay attention to the process by which some silences were broken, and some buried voices were surfaced," arguing that it is time to reincorporate the veterans narrative into an understanding of 1948 because "agreeing on the meaning of 1948 is a crucial step to reconciliation." |
| | Efrat Ben Ze'ev [Ruppin Academic Centre], Nadim Ruhana [TAU], Uri Davis [U of Durham, U.K], Adel Mana'a [Van Leer] in THE NAKBA: MEMORY, REALITY AND BEYOND, Jerusalem, November 12-19, 2008
| | The conference will focus on the
commemoration of 60 years since the Nakba, and the complex issues of memory, narrative, and identity raised by the events of 1948. The conference will include: 4 nights in Nazareth, with trips to villages that were destroyed in 1948 and visits with the localChristian community; 4 nights in Jerusalem, with trips to Jaffa, Ramle, and Lidda; Lectures, workshops, discussions, and cultural events focusing on the last 60 years and the future for Christians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories; Optional preconference travel to holy sites in the Galilee; Optional post-conference travel to understand
the Occupation including visits to holy sites in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Troubled Past, Complex Future Among those who struggle for justice and peace in Palestine, our focus has been the fight to end the illegal Occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, in order to truly understand the complexities of memory, narrative, and identity faced by the Palestinian community, it is vital to examine the events of 1948—what the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or Catastrophe. For 60 years, the Nakba has cast its shadow over the struggles of
identity and narrative undertaken both by Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel and those in the Occupied Territories. As the nonviolent resistance to Occupation continues, the question of what it means to be a Palestinian remains. |
| | Dr. Assad Ghanem [Haifa U], Dr. Adel Manna [Van Leer] and Prof. Dan Rabinowitz [TAU] in an anti-Israel Jerusalem seminar in The Hague | | In October 2008, Gemak will host a seminar for Palestinian, Israeli & Dutch activists, officials, scholars, students, writers, urban planners and analysts to discuss Jerusalem. A very public
and very contemporary theatre of struggle and domination, Jerusalem presents issues which are too often neglected, although acutely relevant and familiar to western audiences.
While the world focuses on Gaza, the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations in fact may be playing itself out in Jerusalem, away from the spotlight. Since the occupation in 1967 of the remainder of Jerusalem, consecutive Israeli governments set out to effectively depalestinize the city, also by a massive extension of its municipal borders into the West Bank, incorporating as much land and as few Palestinians as possible. Nevertheless, the
Palestinian population of Jerusalem has since 1967 increased to 250.000, from 22% of the total city population in 1967, to 33% in 2005. Upon completion of the Separation Barrier (or Wall) as currently planned, about 200.000 Palestinians would still reside in Jerusalem, making up a quarter of its total population. And their share is expected to rise. Even disregarding Palestinian Jerusalemites with Israeli citizenship and Palestinians who work but not reside in the city, it is clear that this is and will continue to be a Palestinian city. |
| | A book by Ariella Azoulay [Bar Ilan U] and Adi Ophir [Tel Aviv U] : "This Regime Which is not One - Occupation and Democracy Between the Sea and the River (1967-)" | | The book cover for This Regime Which is not One - Occupation and Democracy Between the Sea and the River (1967 - ), written by Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir. This Regime Which is not One - Occupation and Democracy Between the Sea and the River (1967 - ) On 25 September 2008, the Alternative
Information Center spoke with Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir about their book, This Regime Which is not One - Occupation and Democracy Between the Sea and the River (1967 - ), published this year in Hebrew by Resling Press. Ariella Azoulay teaches visual culture and contemporary philosophy
at the Program for Culture and Interpretation at Bar Ilan University. Adi Ophir teaches philosophy at Tel Aviv University's Cohn Institute for the
History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas. |
| | 'Bending the truth'? Nine anti-Israel Israeli academics who form the B'tzelem board, to establish a U.S representation
| | B'Tselem's end-of-the-year press release on Palestinian casualties specifically claims that the organization has tallied civilian Palestinian casualties. For instance, the press release from Dec. 31, 2007 misleads, stating that in 2007 Israeli security forces killed 373 Palestinians and that "about 35 percent of those killed were civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities when killed."
Yet, Islamic Jihad leaders from Bethlehem or Qabatiya, even if they weren't murdering anyone at the moment they were killed, are no more civilians than the man who shot dead six people celebrating at a bat mitzvah.
Unfortunately, journalists are time-strapped, and most are unlikely to look past B'Tselem's user-friendly press release to discover the inconsistencies and blatant falsehoods that stand behind it.
This leaves yet one more casualty of the conflict - the truth. |
| | Israeli professors behind a new anti-Israel report. (B'Tzelem Board: David Kretzmer, Anat Biletzki, Orna Ben-Naftaly, Menachem
Fisch, Tamar Hermann, Menachem Klein, Alla Shainskaya, Oren Yiftachel, and Rayef Zreik)
| | "Settlers, and sometimes members of Israel's security forces
violently attack and harass Palestinians who venture near settlements, erecting fences and other physical and electronic devices around the land, blocking Palestinian access." |
| | About the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Amongst his admirers, [BGU] Amnon Raz Krakotzkin and [TAU] Yitzhak Laor | | | In other places in the Arab world, liberal intellectuals are engaged in soul-searching regarding the “culture of death” that so epitomizes Arab politics in recent decades. As, all of a sudden, they revealed that said culture primarily harms the most delicate fiber of Arab existence. However, the bill for all this bloodshed should be presented to the poets of destruction and devastation like Mahmoud Darwish, who is considered by many significant people as one of the most important poets among the region’s Arabs. |
| | HOW TO GET THE WORLD TO HATE ISRAEL | | On campuses where a coddled and insulated professoriate often
express antipathy for the perceived ills of capitalism, the usurpation of “Palestine” by Israel, “land grabs” through
occupation, and the denial of the civil and economic rights of the
Palestinians, you contend that Israel’s very existence is not at
all about self-determination (something you deem appropriate only for the Palestinians) and all about greed, globalism, colonialism, exploitation, and undeserved political and economic might. No longer able to fight apartheid in South Africa, you now try to transmogrify that racist social system onto Israel, holding rallies and encouraging the signing of petitions which call from divestiture from companies doing business in Israel.
You fund Middle Eastern Studies centers on university campuses and use them as anti-Israel, anti-American “think tanks” where
scholarship is tainted with ideology and singularly focused on the
Palestinian cause. You fund the active and vocal Muslim Students
Association on campuses across the country that hold “Israel
Apartheid Week” and “Holocaust in the Holy Land”
festivals at which propaganda, Jew-hatred, apologies for terrorism, and further demonizing of Israel takes place. |
| | Israeli academics educate Israeli and Palestinian lawyers to undermine Israel, under the guise of Peace, in: Palestinian, Israeli Lawyers in ‘Dialogue and Action’ | | The third component of this program starts July 18th and will be
followed by monthly meetings. It will be a series of eight
uni-national and bi-national lectures and seminars given by prominent lawyers and human rights activists, including: Advocate Hassan Jabarin, the Director of Adalah; Dr. Michael Kariani, resident of WAS-NS and professor at the Hebrew University; Dr. Dafna Golan, Dr. Jose Brunner; Professor Orna Ben Naftali in WAS/NS; Attorney Mussa Dwake; Attorney Elia Theodor; Attorney Rafif Mujadeh and Dr. Rafq Abu
Ayash in Ramallah. Two of these meetings will be field trips to
Ramallah, where Israeli lawyers (accompanied by their Palestinian counterparts) will be able to see the of occupation with their own eyes. The lawyers are very eager to sit with each other and have asked for more joint meetings, which gives hope. What we have here is something unique. These are the beginnings of a grassroots organization whose intention is a positive peace initiative that fights against racism and the mechanism of oppression, and one that struggles against the apathy and acquiescence of suffering. |
| | In academia, hiring token Jews: Neve Gordon, Oren Yiftachel and Ilan Pappe | | | In Middle East studies, politicized writing and teaching have displaced scholarship, and academic freedom has been redefined as the liberty to dispense with academic standards. Hiring token Israeli Jews who share these views eliminates debate while providing the illusion of balance. |
| | IAM's readers are requested to act upon a very disturbing anti-Israel conference to take place with 15 Israeli academics lecturing: States of Exception, Surveillance and Population Management: The Case of Israel/Palestine Larnaca, Cyprus
December 6 - 7, | | Eyal Weizman, Professor and Director, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Ahmad Sa'di, Professor, Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University
Hillel Cohen, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tamir Sorek, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Florida
Neve Gordon, Professor, Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University
Ronit Lentin, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Nir Cohen, Postdoctoral Scholar, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Daniel Monterescu, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University
and European University Institute, Hungary
Ariel Handel, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University
Nir Gazit, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Rassem Khamaisi, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of Haifa
Anat Leibler, Postdoctoral Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ilana Feldman, Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, The George Washington University
Khaled Furani, Postdoctoral Scholar, Tel-Aviv University |
| | THE SHAME OF DISLOYALTY: WHEN NICE JEWISH MEN AND WOMEN ARE TOO NICE | | When reading material written by these people, one gets the impression that they are deeply concerned about their fellow human beings. But like with most anti-Israel activists, in their version of the situation, there is never any mention of the Arab aggression which from the very outset set off the conflict, and only one side of the conflict is always completely in the wrong – Israel. But what was surprising with the Rose boycott initiative
was that the hundreds of academics who signed the Israel boycott agreement, included ten Israeli academics tenured in top Israeli universities.
One of the most outspoken of these Israelis is Ilan Pappe, formerly from Haifa University, now a professor of history at Exeter University in England. He often mentions massacres perpetrated by Israel that never occurred, including the lie that Israeli committed a massacre in Jenin in 2002, despite copious refutation (including United Nations reports) of the bogus claim.
What drives Pappe and others like him to propagate the damaging lies and libel against his own country. It is not because he doesn’t have the facts. After all, the man was born in Israel, served in the army and is a professor of history. Yet he has stated that for him, facts are irrelevant |
| | "Gisha"-Protecting the freedom of movement of Palestinians.
Kenneth Mann (TAU, Law), Yishai Blank (TAU, Law), Dan Rabinowitz (TAU, Anthropology), Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (Hebrew U, Law) | | | Since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel's military has developed a complex system of rules and sanctions to control the movement of the 3.4 million Palestinians who live there. The restrictions violate the fundamental right of Palestinians to freedom of movement. As a result, additional basic rights are violated, including the right to life, the right to access medical care, the right to education, the right to livelihood, the right to family unity and the right to freedom of religion. |
| | Academic conference "Sixty Years of Nakba" with Professor Nadim Rouhana [TAU], Dr. Yousef Jabareen [TAU], Dr. Nedera Shalhoub-Kevorkian [Hebrew U] | | | "Sixty Years of Nakba" In commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, Mada al-Carmel – The Arab Center for Applied Social Research convened an academic conference entitled, "Sixty Years of Nakba – Homeland as Exile: Loss, Alienation and Forms of Resistance" at the Al Ein Hotel in Nazareth. The conference was held as part of the general Palestinian effort to preserve the memory of the Nakba, to ensure the regaining of usurped rights for the Palestinian people, and in an attempt to emphasize that the Nakba affected the Palestinian people in Israel in profound ways that have yet to be discussed. |
| | Historical record comes back to bite the Israel-haters | | FOR many decades after (the creation of the state of Israel) it was the Israeli propaganda narrative that the Palestinians had simply abandoned their country, not fought enough for it and left for friendly Arab countries.
The narrative conveniently defined the Palestinians as ignorant and cowardly.
But since the opening of the Israeli archives in the past decade, that narrative has been demolished by a younger band of Israeli historians - Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Tom Segev and others - who have argued that the period from December 1947 to May 1948 involved a series of massacres designed to terrorise the native population into abandoning their homes and fleeing to safety.
And in Pappe's latest book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2006), he draws from the archives of David Ben-Gurion, Haganah and Irgun papers and other sources to reveal how deliberate and articulated was the famous Plan Dalet of March 10, 1948: the plan by Jewish leaders to ethnically cleanse Arab cities (like Haifa and Jaffa) and villages getting in the way of the creation of the Jewish state. |
| | Articles by Orna Ben-Naftali, Aeyal M. Gross and Keren Michaeli appear in a new Palestine book
| | The occupation is a form of tyranny. Recent scholarship by Israeli academics and human rights attorneys (see Ben-Naftali, Orna, Aeyal M. Gross and Keren Michaeli. Illegal occupation: framing the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 23 Berkeley J. Int'l L. 551-614 (2005)) have pointed to the unambiguous illegality of the occupation and to the fact that Palestinians have been essentially dehumanized and divested of their human and political rights by virtue of the Occupation. Palestinian aspirations to self-determination have never been considered in a serious manner (and I believe never will be) by Israel. The powers of the
Palestinian Authority are effectively reduced by Israel to nothing more than that of a local municipality. In short, the situation created by Israel is one of repression without representation. Throughout history similarly oppressed peoples have resisted such intolerable conditions. |
| | Le Monde Diplomatique’s The ‘ethnic Cleansing’ Of Palestine
| | With access to 60 years of official archives, Israel’s new historians have shed light on old myths. As a result, a new generation of writers, academics and artists is able to look afresh at the country’s past.
|
| | Jewish Anti-Zionism Unravelled (Part 1 + 2)
| | | Jewish anti-Zionist moralisers attract the praise of Israel's adversaries and enemies; they are perceived by them to be an admirable, embattled remnant. They are credited with knowing the truth about Israel, the truth about Jews. The ex-Israeli Akiva Orr, wrote Tariq Ali admiringly, "had long abandoned Israeli patriotism, but he had been an insider and knew a great deal." Ilan Pappe has received the kind of praise usually reserved for dissident truth-tellers in totalitarian societies. This esteem tempts some Jewish anti-Zionists into a certain kind of posturing. |
| | A State Almost Sixty: The Anti-Zionist Congress
| | | About the Post-Zionist school of thoughts within the Israeli academe and society. They want to cut the ties between the Jewish People and the State of Israel. They claim Zionism sinned heavily to the local Arabs. They demand to withdraw the Jewish and Zionist symbols from the State of Israel and make it a state of all its citizens. Are they some kinf of joke or a beginning of a process. |
| | Tel Aviv U, South Asian Studies lecturer YIGAL BRONNER and Ben Gurion U political science lecturer, NEVE GORDON believe archaeological digs are being carried out as part of a campaign to expel Palestinians
| | | Archaeology has become a weapon of dispossession," Yonathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeologist, said in a recent telephone interview with us. He was referring to the way archaeology is being used in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in the oldest part of Jerusalem, where, we believe, archaeological digs are being carried out as part of a concerted campaign to expel Palestinians from their ancestral home. |
| | The 60-Year War For Israel's History | | The New Historians
In the late 1980s the Palestinian narrative was bolstered by the advent of a group of Israeli "new historians" who systematically rewrote the history of Zionism, warping the saga for Israel's survival. Aggressors were characterized as hapless victims and victims became aggressors. Rarely found in these revisionist accounts was the outspoken Arab commitment to destroy the Jewish national cause since the early 1920s, or the dogged efforts of the Jews to achieve peaceful coexistence. Instead, Zionism is depicted as an aggressive and expansionist movement, or an offshoot of rapacious European imperialism. |
| | [COMAS, Rishon LeZion] Orna Ben-Naftali and [TAU] Aeyal Gross: "The Second Intifada and After" in the book "Crimes of War Project"
| | | Following these developments, the Israeli government dismissed the idea of unilateral disengagement from the West Bank as “not on its agenda.” At the time of writing, no end to the occupation is in sight. |
| | The future of Jewish anti-Zionism - a Zionist analysis
| | | Arguably, the most vociferous and effective opponents of the existence of the state of Israel today are anti-Zionist Jews. Who has done more to advance the myth of Zionist "ethnic cleansing" than Ilan Pappe? Who has done more to combat the "Holocaust Myth" than Norman Finkelstein?? Who has been at the forefront at spreading the libel of "Apartheid Israel," if not our own 'dear' Jeff Halper? Who has made hatred of Israel respectable in US Academia if not Joel Beinin? Who has done more to advance the image of Israel as a tool of the colonialist imperialist warmongers than Noam Chomsky? Who has been the ideological soul of the British boycott campaigns, if not Jacqueline Rose? Who has done more to discredit the IDF than Dorothy Naor with her "New Profile" movement? It is the Golden Age of anti-Zionist Jews. All over the world, the watchword is "Just Peace in Palestine." Jews are leading the fight to brainwash the world into thinking that genocide is justice. Anti-Semitism was abandoned by the respectable right; now it is the Jews who must lead the anti-Zionist fight, the struggle to deny the rights of the Jewish people. Surely it is absurd that Jews lead the anti-Zionist movement! |
| | Homemade Israel-bashers
| | First, IDF soldiers do not rape Palestinian women because for them, these women have been dehumanized, and "consequently, a sexual act cannot be carried out with someone that is perceived as less than human." Second, the soldiers refrained from raping the Palestinian women in the service of a higher, demographic goal, because the rape could cause pregnancies that would subsequently increase the numbers of our enemies. In other words, not only are there no rapes, there are no condoms either.
The significant aspect is not this surreal research project. It is not unusual. Incitement against Israel can be found on the lowest level in some of the social science departments in Israel's universities. A well-known philosopher in Tel Aviv University called Israel the dustbin of Europe - and students, as we know, are influenced by their teachers, even when the latter are seized by a frenzy of hatred toward the state that provides their livelihood, and at the expense of which, thanks to their attacks on it, they make their names.
The interesting thing is that this "research" project won a prize from a sociology association, with a number of distinguished professors voting in favor of granting the researcher a prize. |
| | Stern Hell | | The flow of new initiatives from academics throughout the world seeking to delegitimize Israel continues unabated. Now the emphasis is directed towards anti-Israeli boycotts as exemplified by the recent outrage from the British Association of University Teachers. Sadly, in many universities, academics of Jewish origin have assumed key roles denigrating Israel often claiming to do so out of "a sense of Jewish justice."
But the most harmful academic purveyors of hatred against the Jewish state are located at our own universities. They demonize their own country and try to persuade their students that Israel was born in sin. Their negative impact abroad is devastating. |
| | NADERA SHALOUB-KERVORKIAN and GABRIEL PITERBERG participate in a Conference Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of Al-Nakba: FROM OCCUPATION TO LIBERATION
| | FROM OCCUPATION TO LIBERATION:
VOICES WE NEED TO HEAR!
FEBRUARY 15 & 16, 2008
Friday: 3:30pm - 9:00pm & Saturday: 8:00am - 6:00pm
All Saints Episcopal Church
132 N Euclid Ave., Pasadena, CA
Dr. Gabi Piterberg was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and grew up in Israel. Currently he is Associate Professor of History at UCLA. He has also taught at the University of Durham, England, and Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
DR. NADERA SHALOUB-KERVORKIAN
Dr. Shalhoub-Kervorkian is currently a lecturer in law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Criminology. She also holds a teaching position at the Hebrew University School of Social Work. |
| | An appetite for self-destruction | | Beyond the grandstanding over President Bush’s visit to Israel this week, there is an even more important concern than over what America may be pushing it to do. This is Israel’s own attitude towards its identity and history and, by extension, its right to exist at all.
Among the Israeli intellectual elite, the instinct for national
self-destruction reaches near-hallucinatory levels. |
| | Motto of Anti-Israel Academics: "Free Speech For Me, But Not for Thee!" | | | Do anti-Israel professors "tremble in fear" when they criticize Israel at Harvard and other American universities? Not likely, if you have any sense of what's going on on college campuses today where Israel-bashing is rampant among hard left faculty and students. But a Harvard professor named J. Lorand Matory who teaches anthropology and Afro-American studies, whined to the Harvard faculty last week that he "tremble[s] in fear" whenever he criticizes Israel. Well, he must tremble an awful lot, since he spends so much of his time criticizing Israel, a country he has never even visited and a country that he recently told an interviewer he has never even read a book about. Matory submitted a motion stating that "this faculty commits itself to fostering civil dialogue in which people with a broad range of perspectives feel safe and are encouraged to express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas." Nothing wrong with encouraging free speech as long as speech is free to people representing different perspectives. But Matory's motion received support from other paragons of political correctness, who are well-known for their advocacy of censorship of the "offensive" speech of others, but who are now complaining that there's not enough free speech for them at Harvard. |
| | The Oslo Syndrome: The Psychology of Self-Hatred
| | | Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of the new book The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege |
| | Middle East Quarterly asks if Israel Can Survive its Post-Zionists | | | Israel is today in the midst of a cultural civil war in which one side would like to see their country continue to exist as a Jewish state and the other believes that Zionism, the founding idea of the state, has reached its end. For the latter group, the time has come for Israel to enter its post-Zionist stage; for this reason, it describes itself as "post-Zionist." By their own definition, post-Zionists are anti-Zionist, meaning they believe that the Zionist enterprise has lacked moral validity since its conception and, therefore, must be undermined. Further, post-Zionists also question the moral bases of their religion. |
| | Yet another “bash Israel” conference, only this time in Jerusalem, features numerous Israeli academics. November 14-16th, 2007 at Al Quds University, “Dialogue Under Occupation.” | | The Symposium is being held with the sponsorship and cooperation of American universities like George Mason U in Washington DC which recently hosted the US national conference of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation where International Solidarity Movement activists were trained in how to lobby the US Congress and build even more academic consensus against Israel in America. George Mason U has a satellite campus in the UAE and gets plenty of money from Arab interests that are opposed to Israel’s existence. The “American” professors attending this international conference in Jerusalem are for the most part Palestinian Arab irredentists who are activists for destruction of Israel as a Jewish state...
In keeping with the successful mode of propagandizing with Jewish “shills” presenting an “Israeli point of view” that is decidedly against Zionism and Israel being a Jewish state, a number of Israeli academics will appear to once again be little more than a cheering section for the Arab side against Israel. A review of the symposium’s schedule reveals several of these “scholars.”
Ehud “Udi” Adiv, Chaim Noy, Dafna Yitzhaki, Nurit Peled-Elhanan
and Tamar Katriel |
| | CAMERA held a conference 'Israel's Jewish defamers' -
Exposing Jewish anti-Zionists and anti-Semites | | | The media watchdog group CAMERA held a conference this weekend titled "Israel's Jewish Defamers." The target: Jews who blast Israel with comparisons to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. |
| | In cooperation with the Ariel Center, we are pleased to announce the publication of the ACPR's latest policy paper (No. 171) | | | The opinions and claims of Israel academics against Jews, Zionism and Israel are discussed and analyzed in this study. It is estimated that some 20 to 25% of people who teach the Humanities and Social Sciences in Israel's universities and colleges have expressed extreme anti-Zionist positions, largely, though not exclusively, relating to Israel's policies and actions in regard to the Arab Palestinians. In addition to their expression of anti-Zionist, and often outright anti-Semitic attitudes, they have engaged in public demonstrations, prepared and signed petitions addressed to soldiers in the IDF to disobey their commanders' orders and not serve in Judea and Samaria, and have been active in encouraging academic organizations abroad (particularly in England) to boycott Israel Universities and academics. |
| | Zionism's bleak present -
Daniel Pipes on the situation, exposes the "New Historians" | | | Prominent Israeli historians focus on showing how Israel was conceived in sin and has been a force for evil |
| | The Lies Of Post-Zionist Revisionists
by Herbert London | | It is always possible to rewrite history based on new
interpretations of the past. A snippet of evidence can alter
perspectives and truth is an elusive muse. There is, of course,
some justification for the claim some Arabs were victims, but
there must be a moment when resentment is converted into realism, when the demons in the collective Arab soul are purged, when Israel is accepted as a state and hostility is converted into
stability.
But none of this can occur as long as propagandists roil the
waves of history and provide ammunition for the warriors of a new
final solution. |
| | Deconstructing Apartheid Accusations Against Israel
by Prof. Gideon Shimoni
| |
The accusation that Israel is an apartheid state is an insidious tool in the hands of those who deny the entitlement of Jews to a viable national home. The tool is so effective because it contains within it the precedent of the use of boycotts as a method of attack as was the case against apartheid South Africa.
Those who use the apartheid accusation employ the old anti-Zionist arguments. These constitute a multi-layered construct of fundamental ideological positions and analytical constructs, one of which is the purposeful displacement of the real nationalist context for historical comprehension of Zionism with the vilifying label of colonialism. Many anti-Zionists, but not necessary all of them, apply identifiable double standards of judgment to Israel traceable to the characteristic anti-Semitic premise that all things Jews do are inherently evil, including their nationalism.
Even Israel's relinquishment of all of the occupied West Bank would not dispel the fallacious Israel=apartheid accusation because it is rooted in a priori denial of Jewish nationalist need and entitlement, proscription of the entire Zionist enterprise as loathsome colonialism, and false equation of the Jewish national purposes and symbols of the State of Israel with racism. |
| | The problem with post-Zionism
| | The solution to the problem lies in the Israeli education system. Create a new generation of Jews knowledgeable about their heritage and inculcated with a love of Zion, and the post-Zionists will be marginalized. If that does not eventuate, the number of so-called elitist draft dodgers will grow and grow, to Israel's mortal peril.
And Israeli leaders will continue pronouncing that "We have become tired of fighting; tired of being arrogant; tired of winning; tired of defeating our enemies." |
| | Convicted Spy and Traitor Udi Adiv and others in a Conference - 'Dialogue under occupation' | | November 14-16, 2007 in East Jerusalem
Israeli participants:
Udi ADIV, Chaim NOY, Dafna YITZHAKI, Elana SHOHAMY, Rahel WARSHAW-DADON, Nurit PELED-ELHANAN, Aura MOR-SOMMERFELD, Tamar HAGER, Maya KAHANOFF, Michal ZAK,
In a conference - 'Dialogue under occupation' sponsored by Northeastern Illinois University
International Association for Dialogue Analysis
University of Malta |
| | The "Naqba" Offensive and the lies of the "Post-ZIonists" | | | Israel’s critics have increasingly adopted the term Naqba (or Nakba), which means "catastrophe" in Arabic, to refer to the Jewish state's creation and existence. The idea is that if "Palestinian Arabs" are thought to have suffered as a result of Israel's creation and gaining of independence, then Israel's very existence must be a disaster, a tragedy, one that must be "corrected" and cured through Israel's annihilation. |
| | Why Israeli anti-Zionists do not recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state | | | Henry Lowi says that Israeli anti-Zionists are against Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state because it is predicated upon settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing and racist discriminations, and because it is “the main engine of anti-Semitism in the world today”. |
| | My Jewish narrative: Response to education minister who added Palestinian narrative to Arab textbooks
| | My narrative claims that those who have a problem with the Israeli nationality and therefore do no perform national service instead of military service should not be receiving social benefits either.
According to my narrative, those who wish to live in peace with me are welcome, but those who wish to arrange yet another Holocaust for me should take into account the possibility of other Nakbas as well.
My narrative is very simple: To survive. |
| | Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) Funding for anti-Israel NGOs—(GERMANY) | | The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), funded by the German
government, claims to “work towards contributing to the attainment of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.” While many of FES's activities are consistent with this mandate, other projects involve politicized NGOs, some of which focus their activities on ideological attacks against Israel, rather than on peace, good governance and
development. FES partners include the Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Center (SHAML), Gisha, Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), and the Health Development Information and Policy Institute (HDIP). The activities of some of these groups include taking part anti-Israel boycotts, demonizing Israel as an apartheid state, promoting Palestinian claims to a "Right of Return," and issuing reports which use the
vocabulary of international law and human rights for partisan political and ideological agendas. In February 2007, FES engaged a consultant, who undertook a research mission that produced a one-sided, highly politicized report which condemned Israel's anti-terrorism activities. In addition, FES funded the 2004 Beirut International Conference on The Islamic World and Europe, jointly organized with Hezbollah's "Research Department". The support of this German organization for NGOs that deny Israel's right to self defense and embrace anti-Israel propaganda is particularly disturbing.
|
| | Yuli Tamir, Tel Aviv University and Ilan Pappe, Haifa University | | Here's a little event that may have big implications. The Israeli
Education Ministry has approved a textbook for Arab third-graders in Israel that for the first time describes the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as a "catastrophe" for the indigenous Palestinians and their society. The Palestinians have always referred to 1948 as the "Nakba," or a catastrophic national shattering, dispersal, exile, occupation and disenfranchisement.
This may be the first ever tangible sign that the Israeli establishment is prepared to move in the direction of acknowledging what happened to the Palestinians in 1948, which is a vital Palestinian demand for any serious peace-making effort to succeed. Israelis in turn would expect a reciprocal Palestinian acknowledgment of Israel's core narrative in due course...
Much of this debate has been resolved by respected scholars. The most recent and complete treatment of this issue is a book by the Israeli historian and University of Haifa lecturer Ilan Pappe, entitled,
appropriately: "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine." Using mostly Israeli official sources, Pappe recounts the entire process that started in the minds of pre-state Zionist leaders who knew they would have to forcibly expel the Palestinians to create a Jewish state in Palestine. That's because in 1948 the Jewish minority in Palestine owned just 5.8 percent of the land. Pappe describes in detail the planning before 1948 - including the preparation of files on every Arab village and its inhabitants - that would allow the Jewish militias in 1947-1948 to attack, terrorize and drive out Palestinians as soon as the British Mandate formally ended. |
| | Anti-Zionism by 'progressive' Jews
| | | Ynetnews interviews Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, author of controversial article that noted growing trend of rhetoric resembling 'anti-Zionist hate speech employed by the worst anti-Semites' among progressive Jewish academics |
| | Post-Zionism doesn't exist
by Shlomo Avineri | | There is nothing new in this moral blindness and these historical
distortions, but it is worth remembering: This is not a matter of
post-Zionists, but rather of anti-Zionists of the old school. The
absurdity is that anti-Zionists of a different breed, the people of the ultra-Orthodox movement Agudat Yisrael, for example, have accepted the historical fact of the existence of the State of Israel. The other anti-Zionists, who are accustomed to calling themselves the people of the world of tomorrow, are still captive in the snares of the past. Indeed there is nothing new under the sun.
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| | When Prof. Shlomo Avineri | | | But Avineri stops short of drawing the logical conclusions and applying his logic to his own and to other universities in Israel. The simple fact is that the Israeli universities today are in large part sewers of Post-Zionism, with entire departments and schools under the hegemony of the Post-Zionists, people who turn their classrooms into North Korean style indoctrination camps in hatred of Israel and of Jews. The academic Post-Zionists have managed to corrupt academic hiring and promotion processes in the universities, so that Post-Zionist leftists with the most embarrassing academic records get recruited and tenured, where academic standards are trashed for the sake of promoting "politically correct" comrades and intellectual fads and leftist agitprop. Avineri's own department at the Hebrew University (Avineri is actually retired) contains quite a few of these extremists and moonbats. Avineri proposes nothing in his article to correct the situation in Israel's universities, nor to deal with Israel's academic fifth column. |
| | Has the Sun Set on the British Isle? | | Truth be told, there is a strong identification in England for Arabic and Islamic causes. At the very moment a BBC reporter was being held hostage by jihadists in Gaza, a British union of professors and academics voted to officially ban any cooperative work with Israeli professors and outlaw their appearance at any of its academic conferences. This act of academic apartheid by British scholars against all Jewish scholars from the Jewish state is part of an ongoing effort within many upper-crust circles in English society to isolate, weaken and de-legitimatize Israel, the only democracy and culturally western outpost in the entire Middle East.
The fact that many of the outlawed Jewish professors are themselves leftists who have publicly taken the side of radical Arabs over fellow Israelis has not spared them. Some would describe such an all-inclusive, blanket brush of taint over an entire country as racism. Beyond question, its intent is to cast Israel out from the family of nations and pressure it to do what is contrary to its national safety and survival. This ever increasing sentiment was expressed last year by an official at a diplomatic dinner party in England: “Who cares about that shi--y little country, anyway!”
Not to be outdone in its loathing of Israel, the union of journalists in England recently announced that when covering the Palestinian Arab situation it expects its journalists to portray Arabs as victims and Israelis as occupiers. Just as the British academics seem to have thrown out the western enlightenment rule which champions scientific inquiry over political and racial identity so, too, the journalists there seem to have cast aside the first tenet of their craft, that of objectivity and getting both sides of the story. |
| | Ilan Pappe and Oren Yiftachel in 'Out of sight maybe, but not out of mind' | | Historians who are very critical of the Zionist movement, such as Dr. Ilan Pappe, claim that disregarding the existence of Palestinian villages is part of a deliberate effort to erase their history in favor of creating a new one that suits the Zionist narrative of a country that was barren, and only flourished thanks to groups like the JNF. In a study he published, Pappe analyzes the information that JNF provides on several sites, including the Biria Forest, the Jerusalem Forest, the area of Ramat Menashe and the Sataf site near Jerusalem. "The Palestinian orchards are presented as a product of nature, and the history of Palestine is
relocated to the period of the Bible and the Talmud," he writes in his discussion of the site of the village of Ein Zeitun in the Biria Forest. Pappe also points out that the JNF publishes information about unique sites in the Jerusalem Forest and Sataf that testify to the extensive agricultural activity in the region. The information emphasizes the presence of terraces, describing them as ancient, even if they were built and maintained by Palestinian villages. A recent study conducted by Noga Kadman (as part of her studies in the Department of Peace and Development Research at Goteborg University in Sweden, under the tutelage of Prof. Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev), found about 86 Palestinian villages inside the JNF forests |
| | AIC Board of Directors: Prof' Yossi Schwartz, Dr. Shimshon Bichler and Prof' Daniel Boyarin | | | However, we acknowledge that this can only come to pass in the region if the root cause of the conflict is targeted and challenged - that being the long Occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian people |
| | BGU Oren Yiftachel and Zvi Efrat from Bezalel Academy, in "Opposing the architects of the occupation" | | About 200 British and Israeli architects and academics, including people of international renown, have signed a manifesto initiated by the British organization Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, which calls on Israeli architects and planners to put an end to being "partners in social, political and economic oppression" in the occupied territories, "which violates the professional ethics acceptable to all."
...Among the signatories to the manifesto, which was initiated by architect Abe Hayeem, the chair of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, are architectural historian Charles Jencks; president of the Institute of Royal British Architects Jack Pringle; American sociologist Saskia Sassen; geographer Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion University in the Negev; and architects Will Alsop of Britain, Zvi Hecker of Israel and Berlin, Yaron Turel of Israel, as well as Israeli Zvi Efrat, who heads the architecture department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. |
| | HOW TO FIGHT CAMPUS ISRAEL-BASHERS | | | Every spring, representatives of Israel ’s universities crisscross the Diaspora seeking donations. The appeals are deliciously, explicitly, inspirationally Zionist, inviting Zionist givers to fulfill the modern Zionist dream by funding Israel ’s centers of higher learning. Yet, as administrators sing this lovely, lucrative Zionist song, some Israeli professors, funded by these same donor-dollars, preach an ugly anti-Zionist line |
| | Jewish Divide Over Israel | | In any case, I can think of nothing more desperately needed in Israel than a companion book to this excellent one, focusing on Israel's own variety of the species exposed in it. If anything, the Israeli variety is worse than its overseas cousins, and it is certainly far more dangerous. Israeli "progressive" self-bigotry is more openly anti-Semitic. After all, clueless American Jewish leftist "intellectuals" can afford to wallow in their delusions about the Middle East without creating any clear and immediate danger to anything. The Israeli Jewish leftist anti-Semites are a Fifth Column, operating in a country at war and under threat of destruction.
|
| | The New Bishara Treason Chic | | | Well, the peek-a-boo game is over and the press in Israel have at last been allowed to print the charges against Knesset Member Azmi Bishara. Bishara is an Anti-Semitic pro-terror Arab fascist, so naturally he is beloved by the Israeli far Left. An ad was run in Haaretz this week declaring "Azmi Bishara you are our Brother," and signed by a handful of Israeli anti-Israel leftists and communist moonbats, including Anat Biletzki, professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Because Bishara is so openly a traitor, he is also being celebrated by Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University, who previously cheered and celebrated such people as nuclear spy Mordecai Vanunu (Gordon declared he deeply admires him and thinks Vanunu was a patriot) and terrorist collaborator Tali Fahima. |
| | Using Israel's anti-Zionist academia | | | Quoting Baruch Kimmerling, Uri Ram, Avishai Ehrlich, Gershon Shafir, Yoav Peled, and Tom Segev |
| | Orna Ben-Naftali, Aeyal M. Gross and Keren R. Michaeli | | | The occupation is a form of tyranny. Recent scholarship by Israeli academics and human rights attorneys (see Ben-Naftali, Orna, Aeyal M. Gross and Keren Michaeli. Illegal occupation: framing the Occupied Palestinian Territory, have pointed to the unambiguous illegality of the occupation and to the fact that Palestinians have been essentially dehumanized and divested of their human and political rights by virtue of the Occupation. |
| | Israel's Post-Zionst Academia | | A Call for Papers for an international students' competition has gone out. The International Law Division at the Law School of the College of Management Academic Studies in Israel, in cooperation with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and The International Review of the Red Cross, have all announced the launching of an international competition for the "best international law paper" and invite the submission of papers focusing on legal aspects of the 40 year old Israeli occupation of Hebron.
The competition is open to all law students world-wide. One paper, selected by the competition steering committee as the winning paper, will award its author a $500 prize (sponsored by the Law School, the College of Management Academic Studies). Up to three papers, selected by the
competition committee, will be published in The International Review of the Red Cross, subject to the journal’s review procedures.
The winning papers will be announced by October 1 2007.
Why is this profound academic activity being launched?
|
| | ICRR activities: Rachel Giora, Jacob Katriel, Dana Ron, Yehuda Kupferman and Aharon Eviatar | | | ICRR is making huge efforts to help Palestinians with foreign passports who have problems to enter the WB and Gaza. |
| | The anti-Israel lobby | | The U.K. has seen a number of public initiatives toward the
delegitimization of the Jewish state in recent years. These have included the attempted lecturers' boycott in 2005, a subsequent attempt at a similar boycott by architects and the demonstrations during last summer's war in Lebanon, featuring support for a Shi'ite Islamist organization with the slogan "We are all Hezbollah now." A number of Jewish organizations openly hostile to Israeli government policy already exist - such as Jews for Justice for the Palestinians, and the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights. Such is the climate of debate in the U.K. on Israel. |
| | Israeli Committee for Right of Residency | | Meeting on Thursday, January 11, 2007
on Entry Requirements of Foreign Nationals into the West Bank
Participants: Aharon (Arkee) Eviatar ,Rachel Giora, Yehuda Kupferman, Attorney Gabi Laski, Ruchama Marton, Dorothy Naor, Israel Naor, Yosefa Sartiel, Dana Ron, Snait Gissis. |
| | Post-Zionism Greater Threat Than Nukes | | | "The name of the game in game theory is motivation, incentives. Earlier, we discussed the motivations of those standing on the opposite side. Motivating ourselves is the most important thing, and the thing we are losing the most. Without motivation, we will not endure. What are we doing here? Why are we here? What are we aspiring to here? We are here because we are Jewish, we are Zionist, because of our ancient bond to this land; we aspire to realize our 2,000-year-old hope of becoming a free nation in our land, the Land of Zion and Jerusalem. Without this profound understanding, we will not endure. We will simply no longer be here; post-Zionism will finish us off." |
| | ICRR: Aharon (Arkee) Eviatar ,Rachel Giora, Yehuda Kupferman, Attorney Gabi Laski, Ruchama Marton, Dorothy Naor, Israel Naor, Yosefa Sartiel, Dana Ron, Snait Gissis. | | This is a letter from Dorothy Naor to members of ICRR (Israeli Committee for Right of Residency), at the bottom summary of their meeting.
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| | Israelis are expressing concern about the treatment of Israel’s Arab | | Baruch Kimmerling
Oren Yiftachel
Adi Ophir |
| | New IDF Gadna youth program criticized as overly militaristic | | One gets the impression that the program was prepared in the 1950s, in the previous century," said Professor Daniel Bar-Tal, of the Tel Aviv University's School of Education. "It perpetuates a security-minded outlook," he added.
..."This is a takeover by the army of the high school, that is meant to be the foundation for a civil society," said Hebrew University Professor Matanya Ben Artzi in response to the proposed program. His son Yoni was arrested for refusing to be drafted because he is a pacifist.
...The program makes it clear, in no uncertain terms, at the supreme value is the state, and that the norms are established by the state and the army, whatever they may be," said Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, of the Tel Aviv University School of Education. He adds that the subjects being taught during the Gadna program suggest that "there is no room for hesitation, for criticism or any signs of these. All, including the parents, must contribute to the effort of conscription."
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| | ICRR - Anti-Israel Israeli Academics get together | | | October 2006 in ICRR Israeli Committee for Residency Rights |
| | Academics Against Israel Attack ZOA | | | Some bad guys called the Zionist Organization of America are now demanding that Jewish organizations in American campuses will ban Shovrim Shtika. That will seriously hamper the plans for next year |
| | Arab Propagandist acknowledge the advantages of anti-Israel academics | | Professor Ilan Pappe of Haifa University wrote a documented book on ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1947 and 1948. Professor Rachel Giora of Tel Aviv University called for boycotting Israeli academics in protest of the Israeli government's policy. Prior to this, the Jewish British Professor Stephen Rose of the Open University, along with his wife, has organized a boycott of Israeli academics that comprised thousands of professors. After the eruption of the second Palestinian Intifada in September 29, 2000, some Jewish journalists have made the best possible coverage. The Israeli Amira Hass was clearly sympathetic with the Palestinians to the extent that she moved to Gaza. The Jewish British Susan Goldenberg wrote in 'The Guardian' with extreme objectivity and humanity. Equally objective was the Jewish American Debra Sontag who wrote in 'The New York Times'. I add to these, the Jewish American-Canadian Naomi Klein, whose comments were the best among what has been written. I should not forget to mention Uri Avnery, who served in the Israeli army and who used to be a member of the Knesset. He was a peace advocate par excellence.
As Ilan Pappe amends for a thousand like Lieberman, James Wolfensohn amends for a thousand Wolfowitz who he succeeded in the presidency of the World Bank. Wolfensohn moved to the Palestinian territories to help its people and left frustrated with the American policy.
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| | Anti-Israel Hatefest at the Van Leer Institute | | |
| | Misuse of Israeli Campuses | | for the past few years the campus of Tel Aviv University and some other universities have been misused by allowing the "Socioeconomic College" programs to operate on campus grounds. The "Socioeconomic College" is a front for the Israeli Communist Party, and the "College" teaches boilerplate Marxism and anti-Israel propaganda, using public campus facilities.
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| | Self-selection: anti-Semitic academics face extinction | | In the "publish or perish" academic world, access to and participation in the development of new ideas is critical. And if the inventiveness of Israeli scholarship and achievement is withheld, these academics and their journals will miss out. They may not become second rate and wither on the vine, but is it too much to dream that they will be overshadowed by those who meet their Israeli counterparts on an equal footing?
Wherever practical, let every supporter of Israel direct academic achievements, papers, studies, grants and donations to people and institutions that demonstrate honest and true academic freedom.
Let's make sure that these misguided academics – whether they shun the Jewish state and its citizens out of misguided political correctness, jealousy of their Israeli counterparts' achievements, or simple anti-Semitism – will not have a part in the miracle of modern Israel and its scientific discoveries..
Let the anti-Semites self-select themselves out of the race. Preferably out of the human race.
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| | Pappe and Reinhart in "Ayoon Wa Azan (An Existence Born of Nil)" | | To summarize 3000 years of history, current Israel exists, and its crimes against humanity attest to its existence. Once again, I am not giving my personal opinion, because Israeli Professor Ilan Pappe documented these crimes in 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine'. Also, Israeli Professor Tanya Reinhart said, in a lecture she gave this month in Melbourne, that Israel practiced ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in 1948 and in 1967, and that it is on its way to practice a third cleansing. The last issue of Oxford University's journal includes 28 articles documenting the accusation.
I ask the readers to note that I am citing two Israeli scientists who refute the legend of ancient Israel. I also cite the most famous university in the world, and two professors at the Haifa and Tel Aviv universities, to confirm that when Israel was created, it committed crimes against humanity.
There are Israeli and Jewish academicians around the world with refined humane attitudes, and we must all appreciate their work and courage. However, we should focus on the daily crimes perpetrated by Israel. Our Israeli reference in this regard is the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem), the figures of which I always cite. If Israeli academicians do not tell lies against Israel, then figures do not lie to all the people.
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| | The Scourge of Jewish Anti-Semites
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| | Dissecting Jewish Demonization of Israel | | "Cowardice" is the word that springs to mind most often as the suitable epithet for Israel's Jewish enemies. This is not only because coming to the defense of this tiny and beleaguered nation (or of the Jews themselves) has never been an exercise for the timid, but also because of the abundant accolades these accusatory Jews have received for their courage from persons not exactly famous as discerning judges of character.
Alexander opens his Introduction to the volume with a 1970 quote from Irving Howe: "Jewish boys and girls, children of the generation that saw Auschwitz, hate democratic Israel and celebrate as ‘revolutionary' the Egyptian dictatorship.... A few go so far as to collect money for Al Fatah, which pledges to take Tel Aviv. About this, I cannot say more; it is simply too painful." Now these children are grown and have extended their sympathies beyond the Egyptian dictatorship and Fatah to Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the Iranian mullahs. In contrast to the cowardice of those discussed in the book, the authors of this collection demonstrate considerable courage in not being deterred by either their perspective's unpopularity or their subject's painfulness. |
| | Israeli intellectuals petition for contacts with Syria, Hamas | | |
| | Professors for the Appeasement of Terror | | |
| | One war, two fronts | | |
| | Latest News from Israel's Academic Fifth Column | | it is hard to resist the conclusion that some of the above mentioned "academics" were hired to teach in their universities and promoted not for their research merits but their political extremism.
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| | Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism - From Jewish to Israeli Self-Hatred: The Psychology of Populations under Chronic Siege | | The phenomenon of Diaspora Jews embracing as truth the indictments of Jew-haters has been so commonplace that a literature on the subject emerged under the rubric "Jewish self-hatred." A similar predilection evolved in Israel, particularly among the nation's cultural elites, in the context of the Arab siege.
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| | Theory, reality at Tel Aviv University | | This week, scanning the list of the thirty Tel Aviv University professors whose letter excoriated the school for allowing Mofaz to speak, one of whom actually became violent in the auditorium, I recognized the names of professors who had organized the Husseini appearance.
I was shocked when I saw the name Yisrael Gershoni, the same professor who convinced me that the right to free speech on campus – even for one's opponents – was a supreme value, and should not just be acknowledged but actually defended by placing one’s own body in harm’s way.
Now, with the shoe on the other foot, he has signed a letter stating that “the participation of the minister of defense as the keynote speaker at the opening of this conference…must not be permitted.”
Professor Gershoni: I still believe in the principle that you taught me in 1991. I am saddened that you no longer do. |
| | Israelis Against Themselves, Chapter Three of THE JEWISH DIVIDE OVER ISRAEL: Accusers and
Defenders (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006). | | Most readers of post-Zionist outpourings have little to fall back on except their native mistrust of intellectuals. Thus, when Hebrew University professor Moshe Zimmermann declares that Zionism “imported” antisemitism into the
Middle East, it requires knowledge (not much, to be sure) of history to recognize the statement as preposterous. But sometimes the post-Zionists are tripped up by overconfidence into lies that even the uninstructed can easily detect. Thus Avishai Margalit, a Hebrew University philosophy professor spiritually
close to, if not quite a card-carrying member of, the post-Zionists, in a New York Review of Books essay of 1988 called “The Kitsch of Israel,” heaped scorn upon the “children’s room” at Yad Vashem with its “tape-recorded voices of children crying out in Yiddish, ‘Mame, Tate [Mother, Father].’” Yad Vashem
is a favorite target of the post-Zionists because they believe it encourages Jews to think not only that they were singled out for annihilation by the Nazis but also—how unreasonable of them!—to want to make sure they do not get singled
out for destruction again. But, as any Jerusalemite or tourist who can get over to Mount Herzl will quickly discover, there is no “children’s room” and there are no taped voices at Yad Vashem. There is a memorial to the murdered children
and a tape-recorded voice that reads their names.23 Margalit’s skullduggery is by no means the worst of its kind among those Israelis involved in derogating the memory and history of the country’s Jewish population. |
| | Professors Showing Solidarity with Convicted Nuclear Traitor Mordecai Vanunu | | Consider the petition in Haaretz this week supporting Mordecai Vanunu. Vanunu is now out of jail, thanks to Israel's stupidity, but he served a very long jail sentence for nuclear espionage. Vanunu had joined Israel's HADASH Stalinist party while a student at Ben Gurion University, that same school that has produced so many traitors. He somehow got a job at Israel's nuclear facilities in Dimona. He then decided to try to reveal to the world the details of Israel's nuclear programs. He was arrested and convicted of treason and espionage. Meanwhile, he converted to Christianity and has continued his anti-Israel activities since being released from prison.
The signers of the petition include communist Jews and Arabs, Arab fascists, tenured traitors, anti-Zionist self-hating Jewish moonbats, and Jews for a Second Holocaust. Among the signers are many of the familiar names from Israeli universities, anti-Israel "post-Zionists" and academic extremists who hate their own country. These include Ilan Pappe from Haifa University, long in favor of Israel's annihilation, Teddy Katz, Pappe's mini-me, Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University, the groupie of Holocaust Denier Norman Finkelstein who has long endorsed Vanunu's treason, Anat Matar from Tel Aviv University, recently arrested for violently attacking soldiers protecting Israel's security wall, Baruch Kimmerling from the Hebrew University, who has justified suicide bombers, Colman Altman, retired Stalinist from the Technion, and his Technion comrade-in-Stalin Jacob Katriel, Uri Ram, anti-Zionist from Ben Gurion University, Tanya Reinhart, who has never met a terrorist she does not like, Rachel Giora, who has replaced Tanya Reinhart as Tel Aviv University's main jihadnik of linguistics, Gadi Algazi, another Tel Aviv University ultra, Shlomo Zand, a Tel Aviv University pro-Palestinian Marxist historian, Ruhama Merton, who writes anti-Israel propaganda with Neve Gordon, Vered Krauss and Yuval Yonay, fanatic anti-Zionist sociologists from Haifa University, Adi Ophir, extremist Tel Aviv University professor who was a founder of Peace Now and others. All of these are people whose income comes from taxes paid by Israeli taxpayers, salaries paid by the Israeli state these signers want to see destroyed. |
| | Israeli academics participate in the UN 'NGO Action News' | | Guest experts include: Amiram Goldblum, Professor at Hebrew University;
Yossi Schwartz, Tel Aviv University and AIC member on "After the Deployment";
Ammon Raz-Krakotzkin of Ben Gurion University on "Current Political and Social Challenges in Israeli Society".
Henriette Dahan-Kalev, School of Management, Ben Gurion University, on "The Rule of Settlers and Militarism in Israel";
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| | Finkelstein’s Fan in Israel - FrontPageMagazine.com | | Gordon and Finkelstein have, of course, some things in common, including an attraction to anti-Israeli terrorists. On February 3, 2002, Israel’s ynet reported that “250 left-wing activists violated the Israeli army’s orders and entered Ramallah for a meeting with Arafat. . . . Neve Gordon . . . was photographed with Arafat with hands clasped [see picture]. . . . In reply to the question of whether he felt comfortable hugging the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, responsible according to Israel for acts of terror, he replied: ‘I don’t know who’s responsible for the terror attacks, that’s what the media says. . . . ’ ”
Gordon, who has written that “Israel’s gravest danger today is not the PA or even Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, but the one it faces from within: fascism,” and whom Ma’ariv columnist Ben-Dror Yemini accused (along with Haifa University’s Ilan Pappe) of “spread[ing] their articles dripping with anti-Zionist poison all over the world, some of which appear on anti-Semitic websites,” also shares with Norman Finkelstein a Zundel connection.
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| | Norman Finkelstein's world - THE JERUSALEM POST | | | "Historically, self-hating Jews besmirching their kinsmen have ranged from apostates in the Middle Ages to communists in Stalinist Russia. Today their successors have assumed pivotal roles in the global campaign to delegitimize Israel. ..." |
| | Academics against Israel, The Jerusalem Post | | The problem of scholars injecting politics into their classroom and published works is an old one. But a powerful new article by Ofira Seliktar demonstrates that Israeli scholars - historians, political scientists, and others - have gone far beyond protesting against their state in these ways.
In conjunction with pro-Palestinian and "peace" activists many have actively worked to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the world, and have proposed its destruction. This is being paid for by Jewish support of higher education in Israel, and of organizations such as the US-based Association for Israel Studies. ...
Many Israeli academics have long been active in, or have even run, local NGOs such as Gush Shalom, B'Tselem, Yesh Gvul, the Committee to Stop Demolition of Houses in Palestine, the Committee to Stop Torture, and
Courage to Resist. But the activism of a core group of a few dozen took the message far beyond the constraints of Israeli society. Through determined writing and endless speaking, a stream of petitions, and above all, skillful
use of the Internet, their bitterness toward Zionism and Israel has spread far and wide. False accusations, such as the preposterous "Urgent Warning against the War in Iraq and the Support for the Right to Return of
Palestinians to Israel," which warned that Israel planned to remove Palestinians should America attack Iraq, have been spread in close conjunction with Palestinian groups such as BADIL. ...
These professors have also spread their message in the US thanks to groups such as Faculty for Israeli Palestinian Peace and sponsors, including American Jewish philanthropists, such as the Helen Diller Foundation, which
helped pay for Yiftachel and Gordon to spend time at the University of California. As Jewish critics of Israel they are protected from accusations of anti-Semitism, and have been endorsed by frequent appearances in publications such as Tikkun magazine.
Ironically, anti-Israel scholars are cited approvingly by the anti-Zionist American Council on Judaism, as well as by neo-Nazis. But they are also given center stage by the Association for Jewish Studies, and by Middle East scholars and Middle East Studies centers, who frequently host them and
provide visiting appointments. Their presence gives the scholars the "legitimacy" they seek, while allowing their hosts to claim fairness in presenting an "Israeli viewpoint." ...
Seliktar notes the dearth of alternative institutions in Israeli society that might encourage greater intellectual pluralism. Until such an
infrastructure is developed, until donors start asking questions about what is being done with their money, and until it is better appreciated how a few tenured professors have gone beyond the bounds of their academic
appointments, little will change. |
| | Columbia and the Academic Intifada | | Even if the Columbia leadership were to do the decent thing, by acknowledging the ongoing bigotry of its professors and by disciplining the offenders, such action would only address the symptoms and not the causes of the pervasive anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias in the field of modern Middle East studies. Not only is the academic intifada against the Jewish state thriving, the reigning terms of discussion it has introduced for understanding Middle Eastern reality have become perfectly normal, perfectly conventional, perfectly accepted in academic discourse. It will take more than a single student protest to undo the rot that has settled into the study of the Middle East and that is now quite comfortably at home in Western universities.
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| | Berkeley's War Against Israel | | | The University of California at Berkeley has developed a new academic specialty, providing a home for anti-Israel Israelis. The anthropology department at the University of California, headed by leftist Lawrence Cohen, a leading scholar in “queer studies,” recently hired an Israeli anthropologist who had been forced to resign from the Hebrew University, reportedly over fabricating research results. UC-Berkeley has misused the “Diller Grant” it receives from a fund established by Helen Diller, a Berkeley alumnus, contributed to promote Jewish and Israeli studies on campus, to host one of Israel’s worst anti-Zionist extremists: Oren Yiftachel, a geographer from Ben Gurion University. According to Martin Kramer, an expert on Middle East Studies and on pseudo-scholarship, “Yiftachel is...a shining light in the post-Zionist pantheon, a ‘critical scholar’ whose criticism runs overwhelmingly in one direction: against Israel. Yiftachel was the kind of Israeli that an Edward Said-boosting, Saudi-connected Middle East center could not only tolerate, but embrace.” |
| | The Myth of Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks
| | Ruth Firer
Daniel Bar-Tal
Nurit Elhanan
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| | Paradise Now: The Movie - A review of the Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated film / by Freddy Rokem and by Galit Hasan-Rokem
| | A feature film about suicide-bombers: Is that possible? Can the medium of fictional film capture this kind of destructive activity, which we as Israelis – except for the victims themselves – have usually experienced by watching the TV broadcasts live from the sites where a suicide-bombing has taken place? This is something we have usually just heard from a distance, following the sirens of the ambulances to the place where a suicide -bombing has just occurred, while opening the radio or the TV to take part in the aftermath, counting the dead and the wounded. We also probably all know someone who has been killed or wounded in a suicide attack.
When we are made aware of what has happened, the suicide-bomber does not exist anymore – only his or her name is announced as a reminder of what has been a human being who was willing to sacrifice him or herself. And sometimes there is the pre-suicide recording full of fanatic determination and religius language. What we see on the screen as we watch the scene of a suicide- bombing is the gradually unfolding narrative of how many victims this suicide- bombing has caused - never the actual preparations for it nor the arrival to the scene. |
| | The Jewish Divide Over Israel | | Alexander is professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington in Seattle. Bogdanor is a journalist who lives in London. The authors name Israel’s Jewish accusers – those who demonize Israel precisely as Jews. Their list includes Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Tony Judt, Meron Benvenisti, Amos Oz, Judith Butler, Steven and Hillary Rose, Marc Ellis, Michael Lerner, Joel Beinin, Seymour Hersh, Jerome Segal, Martin Jay, Tanya Reinhart, Israel Shahak and Thomas Friedman.
“Anti-Zionists have a variety of motives,” Bogdanor said. “At one extreme, there are the ideological fanatics of the radical left, who feel no concern whatsoever for Jewish tradition or Jewish survival. They invoke their Jewish identity solely as a polemical weapon. These are the
pseudo-intellectuals of the anti-corporate and anti-globalization
movements who advocate sanctions against democratic Israel and oppose the embargo on totalitarian Cuba. They denounce America, Britain and Israel as the ‘real Axis of Evil,’ while their followers march alongside supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. They care nothing for freedom, justice or human rights. They are driven by hatred and resentment, arising from an inner awareness that their ideology is dead. |
| | War by other means | | When the council of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) in the UK meets on Friday to reconsider the boycott of Bar Ilan and Haifa Universities adopted last month, there is a good chance it will retreat. The opposition to this desecration of free academic inquiry has been surprisingly widespread, despite the pervasive anti-Israel bias in Britain and Europe. Perhaps there is more sanity and common sense in post-modern and post-colonial intellectual discourse than has been apparent.
But a tactical defeat of the boycott this time should not be confused with a strategic change – the extremists who are waging the political dimension of the war against Israel lost an earlier round, but kept trying. They realized that the 45,000 members of the AUT have either been unwilling or unable to tell their leaders that further exploitation of universities for vitriolic attacks against Israel is unacceptable.
To win this wider political war, the sources of the incitement and hatred directed against Israel need to be understood and defeated. In the case of the AUT boycott, its main proponents – Susan Blackwell and Steven Rose – are obsessed anti-Israel campaigners. Their claims regarding Bar Ilan and Haifa Universities were simply hooks on which to hang the wider campaign to label Israel "an apartheid state." |
| | "Anti-Semitic studies" | | But relax, Professor. The AUT has solemnly concluded that there is a clear distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. They don’t mind Jews. They just detest the Jewish state.
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| | Professors of hate | | It would therefore be timely for the government to set up a commission to enable a public discourse on the role of publicly funded institutions which are being exploited to undermine the security of the nation in the name of academic freedom.
Is that fascism? Only if one associates democracy with a license to incite and subvert the state in the name of freedom of expression.
Besides, in most countries, the growing threat of global terror will in the near future undoubtedly necessitate encroachments, on what has hitherto been considered as unfettered freedom of expression. If the survival or physical welfare of citizens is at risk, most governments (in contrast to Israel) would implement whatever measures are deemed necessary to protect their welfare
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| | Post-Zionist Perspectives on Contemporary Israel
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| | Post-Zionist Perspectives on Contemporary Israel | | | Shafir and Peled do admit that 'the victory' of Israeli liberalism is 'by no means guaranteed', but even this seems unjustifiably sanguine given the events of the past four years.63 Since summer 2000, around 3,000 Palestinians and 900 Israelis have been killed in renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence.64 The military has reassumed its place at the centre of Israeli society, and the previously disgraced Ariel Sharon has been rehabilitated as trustworthy guardian of the Israeli national interest. This has happened side by side with the launch of a new privatisation programme overseen by Binyamin Netanyahu - with little sign of it being in contradiction with repression in the West Bank and Gaza. Meanwhile in the academy, the best-known of the New Historians, Benny Morris, seems to have become an advocate of ethnic cleansing and has given credence to Ehud Barak's frankly racist view that the Palestinians, being not of Judeo-Christian culture, do not understand the concept of truth.65 More critical voices, like that of Ilan Pappe, have found themselves ostracised within their universities and even threatened with dismissal. The study of Israeli society may have become more heterogeneous and contested, but a postcolonial liberal Israel seems almost as far away as ever. |
| | Yuval Yoaz Celebrates the Politicalization of the Law School and legal education: The quiet revolution | | | The Israel-U.S. Civil Liberties Law Program, spearheaded by the New Israel Fund and American University in Washington, D.C., has changed the map of human rights in Israel |
| | The Challenge of Post-Zionism | | |
| | A book: CHALLENGE OF POST-ZIONISM Alternatives to Fundamentalist Politics in Israel | | | As an antidote to the growing Israeli fundamentalism, in recent years a lively debate has developed in the Israeli media, intellectual circles and academia about the defining characteristics of Israel and the future. The argument, known as Post-Zionism, challenges some of the fundamental myths surrounding the early history and contemporary identity of the Israeli State. This argument is voiced by individuals and groups with different political agendas, but at the centre of the argument is the desire to downplay the influence of Judaism in the definition of the state, and to move towards the idea that Israel should become a secular state of all its citizens. This argument has profound and radical implications for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for Israeli politics, for it implies an improvement in the status of the Arab citizens of Israel and downgrades the status of Jews who are not citizens of Israel. |
| | Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled / Being Israeli; The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship | | |
| | Review of Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled / Being Israeli: the Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship | | The history of the state of Israel represents a continuation of the European model of colonial settler state building, with relatively minor variation. A group of settlers dominated a territory under the sponsorship of a powerful European state. Religion was used as a mobilizing ideology to recruit members to the emergent settlements. Eventually their numbers and organization reached a critical mass that enabled them to fight a war of independence against their original sponsors. Although Zionism is not unique in utilizing religion as a justification for European domination of foreign land and its population, Israel is unique in utilizing religion as the basis of ethnic identity, and consequently as the primary basis of citizenship.
How can you claim the establishment of a modern liberal democracy where citizenship is solely based on religious affiliation? How can the West, which has always fought for secularizing political citizenship (particularly in the United States) scarcely ever refrain from enthusiastic support for a state where religion is considered the sole basis of full citizenship?
Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled have produced a major work that analyzes how Israel attempted to solve its citizenship dilemma, building a secular state based on a religious claim. |
| | Doctrine and Impact of the New History: The Politicizing Of History | | |
| | Doctrine and Impact of the New History
The Politicizing Of History | | |
| | Jews against Israel / | | Anti-Semitic Jews have also become an important tool in the anti-Israeli campaigns of Western media. On the British media, Robert Wistrich observes: "Only those Jews who smash Israel appear in the media, and Israel is routinely represented as an ethnic-cleansing rogue state - when not compared to Nazi Germany and South Africa - and at the same time is held to a higher standard than other countries."
...One also finds anti-Israeli Jews in various human rights organizations and other NGOs. Jews with a strong anti-Israel bias in the media are another group requiring in-depth research.
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| | The Hebrew Ward Churchills of the Hebrew University | | | Politicalization by far leftists on Israeli campuses is notorious and is no doubt one reason for the growing academic mediocrity to be found there. Some Israeli leftist faculty members openly support anti-Jewish terror atrocities, call for Israel to be annihilated, denounce their own country as "fascist", compare democratic Israel to Nazi Germany while cheering Arab regimes. Some of these are engaged in law breaking, and in organizing mutiny and insubordination among Israeli soldiers. Others help promote the boycotts of Israel by overseas anti-Semites. The seditious activities of Israel's leftist extremists are now documented at Israel Academia Monitor, Israel's analogue to Campus Watch. |
| | Israeli Web site watchdogs | | Neve Gordon responds:
I have met Professor Steven Plaut a number of times in an Israeli court room, since I am suing him for publishing slanderous articles in which he calls me a “fanatic anti-Semite,” “a Judenrat wannabe,” “a promoter of Hitler” and “a groupie of the world’s leading Holocaust denier.” An article by Plaut, asking his readers to harass me, also appears on the racist Kahane Web site (and they obediently complied). He has even initiated an international campaign to have me fired. It seems he spends much of his time monitoring my articles and smearing my name. In his letter to NCR, he continues his defamation campaign, for which, as mentioned, he will have to answer in court
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| | Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism | | Rape, massacre, theft, torture, ethnic cleansing: these are not crimes which nations can defend with ease - especially when unearthed by their own historians. Israel recently faced this most troubling predicament. Combing through declassified state archives, Israeli scholars of the past twenty years have discovered their nation was founded upon the mass expulsion and deliberate destruction of the native Palestinian people. (1) Israel, it turned out, was far more Goliath than David. Since this presented somewhat of a public relations problem for a state still engaged in brutalizing Palestinians and stealing their land, a new self-justifying rationale needed to be authored.
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| | Rattling the Cage: Blacklist at the university | | I have no doubt that upwards of 95% of Israeli Jewish professors at this country's universities are Zionists; the Jewish state will not collapse if place is also made at the universities for the handful of anti-Zionists.
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| | Carbon dating backs Bible on Edom | | The Bible says Edom's kings interacted with ancient Israel, but some scholars have confidently declared that no Edomite state could have existed that early.
The latest archaeological work indicates the Bible got it right, those experts got it wrong and some write-ups need rewriting. The findings also could buttress disputed biblical reports about kings David and Solomon.
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| | Sniping from the ivory tower | | So it is not surprising that many intellectuals have chosen to ignore the genocidal wars in Africa or the Balkans, focusing exclusively on the least bloody ethnic conflict, the Arab-Israeli one.
Israel has come to represent the West, or America, in their eyes. They have become so obsessed with anti-Israel sentiment
that in trying to help the Palestinian people they have come to support a Palestinian terrorist regime that in actuality oppresses Palestinians in a worse manner than Israel ever would.
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| | Down Goes Another SLAPP Suit | | Zimmerman was suing the paper because the paper had the nerve to report truthfully Zimmerman's comments about settlers and soldiers being "Nazis". Zimmerman claimed these comments were reported by the paper "out of context," as if there could be any proper context in which they would not be outrageous. So, he filed a 1.2 million shekel suit against the newspaper. In the first week of February, the suit was thrown out of Tel Aviv District Court by Judge Anat Brun. She not only dismissed the suit as frivolous, but she hit Zimmerman with court costs. In her ruling, she went out of her way to denounce Zimmerman's malicious SLAPP tactic.
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| | Self-Hating Israelis | | | Haaretz is always ready to open its paper to academic Israel self-haters. Ze'ev Sternhall and Baruch Kimmerling frequently tell us why the Israelis are the stupidest, cruelest, most inhumane people in relation to the kind, peace-loving and gentle-souled Palestinian Arabs. |
| | Al Ahram celebrates Israeli anti-ZIonist Protests | | "...Israel makes the life of Palestinian teachers and students unbearable. They cannot reach their educational institutions. Israeli army forces are responsible for harassment during curfews, random shootings and unjustified assaults on the sanctity of Palestinian universities. The occupation itself disrupts the framework necessary for any successful academic structure.
"In order to preserve academic freedom ... we the undersigned defend the academic freedom of Palestinians and support the academic boycott of Israel. We call for an appropriate response to the deterioration of the Palestinian cultural and educational situation resulting from Israeli policies."
Israeli professors who have signed the petition include Dan Rabinowitz, Dept of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University; Prof Elana Wesley, Tel Aviv University; Prof Tanya Reinhart, Tel Aviv University; Rachel Giora, linguistics professor, Tel Aviv University; Anat Even, filmmaker and film lecturer, Camera Obscure; Prof Raad Basem, English Dept, Al-Quds University in Jerusalem; Emmanuel Farjoun, mathematics professor, Hebrew University; Diana Dolev, Wizo College, Haifa; Prof Ilan Pappe, Haifa University; Vered Kraus, professor of sociology, Haifa University; Riva Bachrach, clinical psychologist, Beit Berl College of Education.
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| | Israel's Enemies Within
| | | Israel won’t fall from Hamas, Hezbollah, or some other foreign band of barbarians. Its defeat, may it never come, is within. |
| | 'We have our eye on you...so watch out' | | To which Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, replies: "He is borrowing from the lexicon of
totalitarianism: Soviet dissidents were accused of 'passionately hating
their country' because of their criticism of state policies. For the
totalitarian mind, the state is identified with the country, its culture
and its people."
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| | Academic Gulags of Israel | | How can they believe it is impossible to make moral distinctions between those fighting terrorism and totalitarian regimes and those perpetrating terrorism and leading such dictatorships?
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| | Commotion on campus, Maariv, 2004-05-07 | | | The Minister of Education, Limor Livnat, responds: In my opinion, there are boundaries. If someone were to call for transfer, he would be set upon. Yet when it comes from the other side, they defend it with “academic freedom”. Academic freedom protects research, discussion and challenges to accepted assumptions but not attacks on the country that pays your salary. |
| | ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN ISRAEL'S UNIVERSITIES DURING THE OSLO DECADE: 1993-2003 | | As a member of the Natural Sciences Faculty, I was not aware of this issue until the "Merry Days" of Oslo, when the Bolshevik mood prevailing in the so-called Humanities Faculty has penetrated the exact sciences (Natural, Engineering and Medical). My attention was captured when I realized that major essential assets and interests for the survival of Israel were 'sold away' by colleagues, perhaps for gaining some temporary and questionable personal "Fame and Fortune" among our worst enemies abroad.
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| | Campus anti-Israel activism intensifies | | |
| | Hitler's Professors, Arafat's Professors -
| | The most paradoxical example of the boycott's effect was
Oren Yiftachel, a political geographer from Ben-Gurion
University, described by Ha'aretz (the Women's Wear Daily of the Israeli left) as "hold[ing] extreme leftist political views." .............................CLICK FOR FULL ARTICLE
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| | Fifty Faces Of Post-Zionism, Azure | | Most Israelis expect that their institutes of higher learning will contribute to the advancement of the public discourse in Israel; that the tens of thousands of young people who enter the universities each year will benefit from their education by becoming better citizens, and learning to make intelligent political decisions within a democratic framework. Yet Israel’s campuses are gradually becoming hothouses for political anarchism, as the Israeli intelligentsia busily educates towards resentment of the Jewish state and the values that permit it to exist. Academic “post-Zionism” does not even play the important positive role that intellectual opposition sometimes does in a pluralistic society; it does not bother to advance realistic alternatives or formulate a creative, inspiring vision which offers a kernel of hope. In its cultivation of chronic and sterile resentment, bereft of both responsibility and imagination, the trend represented so powerfully by Theory and Criticism in the end offers nothing more than “theory” and “criticism.”
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| | Boycotting Israel: Back to 1933?
| | Many of the targets of the boycott would inevitably be people with political views similar to those of the boycotters themselves, especially the assumption that it is "occupation" that leads to Arab hatred of Israel, and not Arab hatred of Israel that leads to occupation. The most paradoxical example of the boycott's effect was Oren Yiftachel, a political geographer from Ben-Gurion University, described by Ha'aretz as "hold[ing] extreme leftist political views."
Yiftachel had co-authored a paper with an Arab Israeli political scientist from Haifa University named As'ad Ghanem, dealing with the attitude of Israeli authorities to Arabs within Israel proper and the disputed territories. They submitted it to the English periodical Political Geography, whose editor, David Slater, returned it with a note saying it had been rejected because its authors were Israelis. Here was a case to test the mettle of a boycotter - a mischling article, half-Jewish, half-Arab, wholly the product of people carrying Israeli passports and working for Israeli institutions, yet expressing opinions on Israel as the devil's own experiment station indistinguishable from Slater's.
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| | The Status of Zionist and Israeli History in Israeli Universities
| | | we should shape the specific criteria by which we decide whether a historical work qualifies as a bona fide piece of knowledge - or as a piece of propaganda and historical fiction. |
| | The Politicizing Of History | | The new Israeli historiography, which consists in overturning the basic principles of Zionism, is harshly attacked in this article. The old truths, the author claims, have been replaced by new lies, and the implications for Israeli society are indeed ominous: it is in the field of education that the destiny of the country will be decided-we will either collapse under the weight of our own guilty consciences….or perhaps, we just might gather enough strength to survive.
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| | ASSISTED SUICIDE, ISRAELI ACADEMIC STYLE
| | In other words, peace meant the Palestinians could take whatever they regarded as theirs. Israel -- apparently not having any fundamental national principles -- would give up Yesha and East Jerusalem and, abiding by a one-sided interpretation of various UN resolutions, would let the 1948 Arab refugees flood into Israel. I don't understand the fourth principle of peace; but I suspect that these sane secularists didn't much care about the religious aspects anyways.
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| | THE UNENVIABLE FATE OF ISRAELI LEFTISTS
| | | Actions by Jews against Israel have intensified. The campaigns on the campus and the boycott against academics continue. But the language has changed. It is becoming clear that the objective is no longer to purify Israel, to maintain her ethics; it's not even to punish her for doing wrong. Now it is unabashedly to show Solidarity with Palestine. What started years ago as an intellectual argument between nationalism versus universalism -- with most of the Israeli academics dedicated to universalism -- has become a simpler issue: are you for Israeli nationalism or for Palestinian Arab nationalism? |
| | The Left is pathological | | |
| | Israeli Professors Censured for Joining Call to Disinvest in Israel, | | Jerusalem Post - 2001-11-22: Tanya Reinhart and Rahel Giora, both professors of linguistics at Tel Aviv
University; Anat Matar, associate professor of philosophy at TAU; and Jacob Katriel, a professor at the Technion:
"We hope you will pass the strongest possible resolution to divest Ann Arbor from any investments, transactions, or pension funds it may hold in companies or funds which do business in Israel." |
| | Israeli Professors Join U.S. Call For Ban On Investments
by Charlotte Hall
Palestine Chronicle | | |
| | Rewriting Israel's History
by Efraim Karsh
Middle East Quarterly | | | June 1996 |
| | Antisemitism, Israeli-Style
Edward Alexander | | | from "THE JEWISH WARS: Reflections By One of the Belligerents" (Southern Illinois University Press). |
| | Lev Grinberg and the Meaning of “Symbolic Genocide”
By Joel Fishman, | | | 07.05.2004 |
| | Urgent Warning from Israeli Academics @ Palestine Chronicle and on Scoop NZ | | | The Israeli Government May Be Contemplating Crimes Against Humanity |
| | THE FAILURE OF ISRAEL'S "NEW HISTORIANS" TO EXPLAIN WAR AND PEACE.
The Past Is Not a Foreign Country
by Anita Shapira | | On "Righteous Victims: A History
of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999"
by Benny Morris
(Knopf, 751pp.)
And on :"The Iron Wall: Israel and
The Arab World since 1948"
by Avi Shlaim
(Norton, 704pp.) |
| | The Last Word: Risen and fallen angels - The Israel-hating Left
THE JERUSALEM POST
Sep. 9, 2004 | | |
| | The “left” as enemy of the Arabs -
Ben-Dror Yemini, Maariv | | |
| | Can Israel Survive Post-Zionism?
by Meyrav Wurmser
Middle East Quarterly
March 1999 | | |
| | Rewriting Israel's History
by Efraim Karsh
JUNE 1996 • VOLUME III: NUMBER 2
The Middle East Quarterly | | a group of Israeli academics and journalists gave this approach a scholarly imprimatur, calling it the "new history." Its foremost spokesmen include Avi Shlaim of Oxford University, Benny Morris of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Ilan Pappé of Haifa University. Other prominent adherents include Tom Segev of the Ha'aretz newspaper, Benjamin Beit Hallahmi of Haifa University, and researchers Uri Milstein and Yosi Amitai.
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| | Israel's 50th, the New Historians and NPR
by Andrea Levin
CAMERA, May 11, 1998 | | | many reporters have quoted the "new historians," a self-styled group of Israeli writers who claim to have exposed the falsity of Zionist "myths" about the founding of the nation. Israel, according to writers such as Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim and Tom Segev |
| | Israel's academic eccentrics not so harmless By GERALD M. STEINBERG
THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 3, 2002 | | | This week, a small group of Israeli academics circulated an "urgent warning" that "the Israeli government may be contemplating crimes against humanity." |
| | A Jewish plague -
March 5, 2004 | | | March 5, 2004: Individuals betray their own nations and communities for well-known reasons ...............................CLICK FOR FULL ARTICLE |
| | ISRAELI INTELLECTUALS AND ISRAELI POLITICS | | The seeds of trouble amongst intellectuals in Zion antedated
the state itself. On May Day 1936 the Labor Zionist leader Berl
Katznelson asked, angrily, "Is there another people on earth
whose sons are so emotionally and mentally twisted that they
consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful,
while every murder, rape and robbery committed by their enemies fills their hearts with admiration and awe? As long as a Jewish child...can come to the Land of Israel, and here catch the virus of self-hate...let not our conscience be still." |
| | Post-Zionism only rings once | | The post-Zionists had the feeling that their ideas were taking hold among the public - until the Al Aqsa Intifada erupted. What is post-Zionism, anyway? Why does it frighten its opponents and make even its advocates writhe uncomfortably? And has it really vanished like last year's fad?
The end of this month will mark the first anniversary of the eruption of the Al Aqsa Intifada. It will also mark the first anniversary of the death of post-Zionism as a movement and a social attitude, according to Dr. Ilan Pappe, an outspoken
post-Zionist. |
| | Fifty Faces of Post-Zionism | | | The Jewish intellectuals who opposed the activist Zionism of the 1930s and 1940s and the academic elite that today constitutes the vanguard of post-Zionism share a deep loathing for the exercise of political power as embodied by the state. Nevertheless, there is one significant difference: While the former were guided by the naive belief that peace and fraternity among all peoples and at all times could in fact be realized, the latter are motivated chiefly by resentment. At their core, the views of the intellectual Left in Israel consist of little more than a posture of unbridled “criticism,” rarely tainted by so much as a hint of a concrete program that could serve as an alternative to the political reality they find so horrifying. |
| | Historical Fictions
| | Benny Morris
Ilan Pappe
Avi Shlaim
The 'Abdallah-Meir' Meeting
Great Britain's Role
"propaganda or historical fiction [which uses] facts of the past to embroider a kind of writing which has nothing to do with history" |
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