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| Localized Academic Boycott Initiatives Are Spreading |
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For months now, IAM has reported on a number of localized initiatives spurred either by Palestinian academic activists or their supporters. So far this activity was limited to liberal arts.
The tactics have now spread to engineering, threatening to politicize this formerly neutral field.
Dr. Ran Ginosar, an associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Technion was invited to keynote the IEEE MCSoC Workshop, an International Symposium on Embedded Multicore/Manycore System-on-Chip in the Embedded Multicore SoCs Software, in Japan in September 2013 that is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
After accepting the invitation extended by the chair of the event, Professor Tomohiro Yoneda from NII, Tokyo, his keynote role was canceled; the chair of the Steering Committee of the IEEE, Professor Abderazek Ben Abdallah from Aizu University in Japan, a Tunisian- born, overruled Yoneda as he did not want the conference website to show a prominent speaker from Israel. |
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| Jerusalem Post: BDS’s aims, a response to the whitewashing of the BDS movement by BGU David Newman |
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The whitewashing of the BDS movement by David Newman (“Fighting on two fronts,” Borderline Views, May 14) cannot go unchallenged.
Who are the main advocates of this movement? Democratic, left-wing, liberal, pro-peace groups, as suggested? Factually, look at the supporters – a coterie of communists, Marxists, anarchists, simpletons and a sprinkling of do-gooders. Their last interest is democracy. If it were not, they would be up in arms concerning the slaughter in Muslim lands.
BDS advocates have one aim: the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement with another Arab “democracy.” Thus it is also with Stephen Hawking. His negative influence counts for more than that of the numerous great people who will be attending the President’s Conference.
The so-called Right is the only movement defending Israel against those who by all means and with the most radical associates are trying to replace our embattled democracy with something that has never existed – a democratic Arab government for all. |
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| Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Chronicle: Stephen Hawking's Decision to Cancel Visit to Israel |
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Stephen Hawking's decision to withdraw from the conference "Make Tomorrow Happen" organized by President Shimon Peres, is arguably the most important victory of the academic boycott movement to date. Announced by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), Hawking's decision was prompted by a barrage of messages and pledges of Palestinian academics and their supporters. The world- famous physicist admitted that it was the unanimous advise of his "Palestinian colleagues" that made him snub Israel in this most public and humiliating way.
The intense pressure applied on Hawking is part of a new round of the academic boycott initiative led by Palestinians. As IAM reported,the new recruits to the cause are the Irish faculty, some Australian academics and the American Asian Studies Association.
It is hardly a coincidence that the push in the academe has been occurred at a time when the Arab spring is just a distant memory, replaced by growing Islamist sensibility, in which Christians, women and homosexuals have became a target. The civil war in Syria - where the regime has massacred its people and, by all accounts, used chemical weapons - is another black mark on the allegedly peaceful Arab culture. Boycotting Israeli academic and cultural events is a perfect diversionary tactic as it distracts attention from the brutal nature of the Middle East.
Those naive enough to believe the current round of boycott aims at forcing Israel to return to the negotiation table, should read Antonio Gramsci's Letters from Prison. The Italian communist imprisoned by Mussolini suggested such tactics to shield the European Left from the embarrassing behavior of the Soviet Union; he advised his disciples to attack the "capitalist West."
Hawking, reportedly in very poor health and susceptible to pressure, probably did not understand the real motives of his "Palestinian friends." But those familiar with Gramsci can recognize the radical hypocracy of the radical left. |
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| Academic Boycott and the "Good Professors" |
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Like many well-meaning liberal academics, Raphael Cohen-Almagor, a former professor who now heads the Middle East Study Group, is woefully mistaken about the real goal of boycotting Israel, most recently initiated by the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI).
He laments that the boycott is unfair,unjust and hurts scholars like himself who have been involved in human rights and the peace movement. He argues that, by undermining liberal Israeli faculty - a group dedicated to conflict resolution - the boycott strengthens the right- wing and further diminishes the chances for peace. The authors of the two posts quoted below are equally misinformed. They claim that the academic boycott would exempt "good Israeli professors," that is those who work for peace. They need to be reminded that Political Geography refused to accept an article by Oren Yiftachel, a leader in the activist camp, because its editor decided to boycott Israeli scholars. After a lengthy exchange, Yiftachel's article was accepted on the condition that he makes specific references to Israel as an apartheid state.
Cohen-Almagor and others fail to understand that the boycott movement has little do with solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; rather it is an effort to delegitimize Israel in the international arena. As the British novelists Iain Banks noted, "Feeling increasingly isolated, Israel is all the more vulnerable to further evidence that it, in turn, like the racist South African regime it once supported and collaborated with, is increasingly regarded as an outlaw state."
Behind the TUI or the British University and College Union (UCU) -a pioneer of the academic boycott movement- are numerous pro-Palestinian and radical leftist groups whose raison d'etre is the delegitimization of Israel. The multitude of NGO's that they represent has commanded impressive financial support from Arab countries, European governments, trade unions and foundations.
It would be naive to expect that the professional activists and the academics will give up their involvement, even if it hurts the peace efforts. For them, "good professors" such as Cohen-Almagor and his colleagues are just "collateral damage." |
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| Association for Asian American Studies Passed Resolution Supporting Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions |
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IAM has reported that, following a new campaign of pro-Palestinian groups, there has been an increase in academic boycotts of Israel around the world. The General Membership Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) is the latest to embrace the Palestinian appeal. This is a highly significant step as the AAAS was previously not involved in the Middle East conflict.
The practical applications of this move are not yet clear. Israeli scholars may face difficulties in appearing at the AAAS conferences and have their papers rejected by journals sponsored by the AAAS and/or editors of journals who may feel bound by the decision. Israeli scholars who plan to spend a sabbatical leave in Asian studies departments may face similar difficulties.
According to pro Palestinian websites the resolution has passed. |
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| The BDS Movement Marches On |
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A recent debate among policy makers and academic experts wrestled with the issue of assessing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the West. Assessing the impact of such an amorphous and multilayered phenomenon is never easy. Most observers rightly argue that, in spite of years of agitations and an enormous financial input by Arab states, the BDS has made little impact on the economy of the State of Israel and its international relations. They note that Israel today is much less isolated and indeed, its extensive network of diplomatic relations has never been stronger.
The one caveat to this assessment pertains to the academy. It should be noted that the BDS originated on the campus as a result of an alliance between Palestinian and Muslim groups and left-wing faculty for whom the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became the new fulcrum of activity following the end of the Vietnam War and the collapse of Communism.
Of late, the normally neutral Australian campus has entertained such notions. IAM reported that Jake Lynch a professor at Sidney University and an unabashed backer of BDS has launched a nation-wide campaign aimed at cutting contacts with academic institutions such as the Technion and Tel Aviv University.
Here are some recent campus developments:
The student body at the University of California recently voted in support of divestment from companies that have business relations with Israel.
The union of Irish faculty (see below) has joined its British colleagues in calling for a cultural boycott of Israel.
Afflicted with cancer and not expected to survive much longer, the British novelist Iain Banks urged to impose a cultural boycott on Israel because to this would matter to its self-esteem: "Feeling increasingly isolated, Israel is all the more vulnerable to further evidence that it, in turn, like the racist South African regime it once supported and collaborated with, is increasingly regarded as an outlaw state."
In a recent move, Canada's York University’s Federation of Students decided to join BDS which also claims support of graduate students unions at York, Concordia University, the University of Regina and the University of Toronto.
Clackmannanshire, a small council in Scotland recently resolved that “Clackmannanshire Council condemns the Government of Israel for its continuing illegal occupation of Palestine’s East Jerusalem and the West Bank and for its continuing illegal blockade of Gaza....Just as individual sanctions against apartheid in South Africa led ultimately to its demise there, so individual and collection sanctions against the state of Israel will end apartheid and suffering in Palestine. Clackmannanshire Council therefore resolves to resist, insofar as legislative considerations permit, any action that gives political or economic support to the State of Israel.”
Since universities educate the next generation of leaders, exposure to a one-sided "narrative" of the conflict is bound to influence their view on the issue. The BDS events, including Israeli Apartheid Week and open forums condemning Israel expand the reach of the "narrative" beyond students who attend courses on the Middle East- a field notoriously politicized by radical leftist faculty and/or instructors who hail from the Middle East.
Jewish students and faculty who try to stand up to the BDS often find themselves in the unhappy position of defending Israel before belligerent campus crowds. Many, unwilling to pay the cost, withdraw from the arena. Studies indicate that the Israeli problematique affects the identity of younger Jewish cohorts in several ways, most notably by loosening the once strong ties of affinity between Diaspora Jews and Israel.
The BDS movement has also imposed a heavy burden on the local Jewish community and the diplomatic service of the State of Israel as each of the numerous campus BDS events has to be responded to. Israeli diplomats had a particularly hard time presenting their case, requiring local Jewish activist to engage in remedial actions such as petitioning campus administration or mounting legal challenges. In a first of its kind, Kenneth Marcus founded the Louis D. Brandeis Center (LBC) for Human Rights Under the Law that advocates for the civil and human rights for the Jewish people. The LBC has launched an extensive legal outreach to Jewish students and faculty and has been involved in litigation arising out of particularly offensive cases of BDS activity.
While quite successful, such efforts drain the limited resources of pro-Israel advocates that could have been used to create a more realistic and positive picture of Israel. |
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| The BGU attack on the CHE as an excuse for academic boycott in the Sociological circles |
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The recent effort by Ben Gurion University to mobilize the international academic community in defense of its Department of Politics and Government stirred up renewed calls for academic boycott of Israel. As BGU Professor Rivka Carmi wrote in her letter to the Presidents of Israel’s research universities “there are many internal and external threats against Israeli academic institutions".
The following article is representative of the numerous new initiatives. The author quotes Carmi's letter: "This is not Ben-Gurion University’s private battle, but a struggle of all Israeli academic institutions […] Ratification of the current decision by the CHE is like hoisting a black flag over the independence of Israeli academics.”
Supporters of academic boycott evidently understand that adding Carmi to their arsenal of radical Israeli critics such as Ilan Pappe or Neve Gordon, is a potential game changer. It is too early to predict the results of the Ben Gurion University attack. One thing, however, is already clear. It will be more difficult for those who fight against the boycott movement on Western campuses to make their case for a country which is "hoisting a black flag over the independence of Israeli academics," as Carmi wrote. |
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| Israel Apartheid Week |
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| Boycott call: TAU Amir Paz-Fuchs and BGU Uri Gordon, radical critics of Israel - the new recruits to British universities
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Amir Paz-Fuchs, formerly of Ono College and Tel Aviv University's Legal clinics and Uri Gordon, formerly from the Arava Institute, Ben Gurion University were the subject of a IAM reports before. Paz-Fuchs, who specializes in social justice and anti-privatization research, had occasionally ventured into the laws of the civilian administration, where he used his legal training to provide a misleading account of the legal underpinnings of the administrations. Gordon, a self-proclaimed anarchist, is the author of a how-to-do anarchist manual. The hiring of Gordon stood out even by questionable BGU practices of providing employment for radical activists.
Both are now in Great Britain, Paz-Fuchs (Associate Research Fellow, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, as well as a visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford) and Gordon (Lecturer in Politics, Loughborough University) are not bound by the Israeli BDS law, they wasted little time to join hands with the Jews for Justice for Palestine (jfjfp), a group that initiated the boycott drive in the British academy and has been a staunch supporter of the University and College Union (UCU) current call for academic boycott of Israel. Indeed, the list of signatures of the jfjfp, reads like a who is who in the radical community.
This is hardly a coincidence, as the many British institutions of higher learning have employed radical critics of Israel, a practice that has only increased in recent years. Academic Freedom in Israel: A Comparative Perspective noted that Israeli Jewish academics are highly sought after to provide legitimacy to the various efforts to delegitmize Israel. |
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| Israeli academics and the BDS call in Australia |
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Australia is a relative newcomer to the BDS movement; however, in recent years Australian universities have been catching up. As IAM reported, Associate Professor Jake Lynch, a prominent pro-Palestinian activist, has used his position at the University of Sidney to launch a campaign of academic boycott. He was instrumental in nixing plans by a Hebrew University professor Dan Avnon, to spend a Sabbatical at the university.
Lynch, in cooperation with Students for Justice in Palestine, has launched a new campaign to severe links with the "criminal Technion - Israel Instituted of Technology."
A number of Israeli and former Israeli academics have lent legitimacy to anti-Israeli atmosphere in Australia. In addition to the ubiquitous Ilan Pappe, Marcelo Svirsky did his part. Gadi Algazi (TAU) has recently "discovered" the continent as well. Introduced as a professor at Tel Aviv University and peace activist, Algazi gave an interview (see below) which rejected Israel's right to build a separation fence on grounds of security. To the contrary, Algazi claimed that the fence is there to destroy the livelihood of Palestinian farmers and has nothing to do with security.
Naturally, Algazi has the right to free expression, but given he was interviewed on ABC' s national news where he was introduced as a TAU professor, it would behooved him to provide a more balanced coverage of events. As it is, once again, Algazi chose to provide a most biased and twisted "narrative."
The response of the Technion to the petition states that many universities in the world are engaged in projects that have security applications yet they are not routinely targeted.
That the Technion is singled out is part of a strategy of double standards by which Israeli institutions of higher learning are judged. |
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| BDS in Australia: The Center for Peace at Sydney University boycotts a Hebrew University proposal |
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Professor Jake Lynch, director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University refused to sponsor an application by Associate Professor Dan Avnon from the Hebrew University for a Sir Zelman Cowen Fellowship to carry out research on coexistence of diverse communities in Australia at the Center. Lynch, who hosted Professor Ilan Pappe, justified his position on the grounds of solidarity with the Palestinian call to boycott Israeli academic and cultural institutions.
Avnon, who created one of the few program for Israeli-Arab dialogue at the Hebrew University was taken aback, noting that a department focusing on peace and conflict would boycott him. Avnon's reaction is probably sincere but at the same time naive about the so-called peace research. IAM reported that Johan Galtung, the intellectual architect of peace studies, has used the semantics of peace to push for a radical anti-Israel agenda. Galutung's crowning achievement was to inspire a dense and highly interlocking network of "peace" and conflict resolution departments, centers and programs to voice pro-Palestinian grievances and delegitmize Israel.
Indeed, Lynch has a long record of extreme pro-Palestinian advocacy using the academic legitimacy of the the Center to spread views that occasionally border on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. For instance, he accused Jews of engineering the removal of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and replacing him with Julia Gillard.
Under Lynch's helm, the Sydney Peace Foundation made Noam Chomsky the 2011 winner of its Gold Medal. Other winners include the rabidly anti-Israeli journalist John Pilger, the WikiLeaks Julian Assange and Irene Khan, the former head of Amnesty International (AI) who was accused of ignoring Taliban atrocities while concentrating on American alleged abuses at Guantanamo Bay.
Lynch is on the board of the Translation Institution for Peace and Future Research, where the highly controversial UN Rapporteur Richard Falk also serves. Lynch is also on Toda International Advisory Council, a perch for some of the most ardent opponents of Israel and pro-Iranian advocates. In 2005, Toda Institute brought out Facts, Rights and Remedies: Implementing International Law in the Israel/Palestine Conflict, to spur the use of legal remedies to protect Palestinians.
Lynch, who is deeply involved in the BDS movement, is a prolific media publicist for the Palestinian cause. In 2011 he protested the hosting of "Israel Research Forum'' at the University, arguing that it would offend Muslim students.
Lynch's high profile activities have attracted public attention before. Calls to investigate the use of Australian taxpayers money to support the Center have recently increased, some of them carried by the Rupert Murdoch - owned newspaper, the Australian. The threat was apparently enough to elicit a fast response from the University. A spokesman stated that Lynch did not represent the University position and spoke for "himself and maybe two of his colleagues" when he rejected Avnon's application. |
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| HUJ Nurit Peled defies the law making it illegal to advocate for BDS "Now is the time for a military embargo on Israel" |
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| Since the Knesset passed a law making it illegal to advocate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in 2011, a number of academics came out in public in support some facet of BDS. As IAM reported, they included, Neve Gordon, Merav Amir, Anat Matar. Nurit Peled Elhanan, who has defied the law more than once, joined a petition calling to impose a military embargo. |
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| Ilan Pappe in a call to 6.5 million UK workers to boycott Israel and to express solidarity with Palestinians living in Gaza |
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The Palestine News Network (PNN):
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) said in a press release that next week, the Trades Union Congress, which represents 6.5 million workers in the UK, will vote on a motion to express solidarity with Palestinians living in Gaza.
The motion builds on existing TUC policy to boycott companies which profit from Israel's illegal occupation, settlements and wall (passed in 2010 and 2011). Successful consumer pressure has already seen most supermarkets in Britain remove settlement produce from their shelves.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign will also be holding a fringe meeting at lunchtime on Tuesday 11 September, with a wide range of key trade union figures, to discuss how trade unions can build solidarity with Palestine.
Tabled by the Communication Workers Union, and seconded by the PCS, the motion P76 notes the call from 50 international charities and UN Agencies to end Israel's blockade on Gaza, and violations of international law affecting 1.6 million Palestinians, over half of whom are children. It also instructs the TUC General Council to 'organise a delegation to Gaza, in conjunction with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, to determine how the TUC may most effectively contribute to the end of the blockade'.
PSC fringe meeting at lunchtime on Tuesday 11 September, Syndicate 4 inside the Brighton Centre. Speakers include Prof Ilan Pappe, Director Exeter Uni Centre for Palestine Studies |
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| [Haifa U, Gender] Dalit Baum in support of The Presbyterian Church BDS motion |
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For those of us who spent yesterday listening to the debate at the Presbyterian General Assembly in Pittsburgh, it was exciting to hear the powerful testimonies on the floor and the strong consensus in the conference against the occupation. It was bitterly disappointing, however, to see the vote split in the middle 50/50 with two votes for the opposition (333-331 with 2 abstentions). The action called for by Palestinians themselves, divestment from Caterpillar, HP and Motorola did not pass yesterday, and it was replaced by a colonial-mentality idea of investment in the Palestinian economy.
But the close vote shows again how investment in the occupation is a crisis of conscience for the church. It is important to see how all the major church institutions have supported divestment and today have kept trying to solve this crisis by offering other ways forward. The assembly voted today by 57% to accept a recommendation by the Board of Pensions to create a "choice of conscience" option for Pension holders troubled by investments in Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett Packard, which would be voted on for approval at the next General Assembly.
Finally, for the good news – the vote this morning was overwhelmingly in favor of the boycott of all settlement products. See the press release below.
Dalit |
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| Israeli academics and the Presbyterian Church proposal to divest from companies for doing business with Israel |
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The General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church USA rejected by two votes a proposal to divest from American companies – Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard – to punish them for doing business with Israel. The GA voted to boycott products like Ahava cosmetics because they are “profiting from the occupation.”
Since 2004, the BDS campaign has been driven by the Palestine-Israel Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church USA; this time its head, Katherine Cunningham expressed hope that the divestment vote would pass during the next GA meeting in 2013.
As part of its legal warfare (lawfare) project, IAM has periodically reported on the leading role of Israeli academics in the BDS drive. As a matter of fact, the idea to boycott products from the territories was conceived by Matzpen in February 1988; it was modeled on the successful struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Matzpen sympathizers in the academy took up the call; in March 1988, a group called “The 21st Year” organized by Hannan Hever, from the Hebrew University and Adi Ophir (now at TAU) published a Covenant for the Struggle Against the Occupation; its members declared their refusal “to collaborate with the Occupation and pledged to do either part or all of the following: never enter the occupied territories without an invitation from their Arab inhabitants, not allow their children to be exposed to the racist bias of the school system, boycott institutions and products of companies whose Palestinian employees are denied human dignity and decent working conditions, boycott goods produced by Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, never confuse acts of protest and resistance by Palestinians with acts of terror, refuse any military command ordering them to take part in acts of repression or policing in the occupied territories and protest every act of violence and injustice committed by the Israeli regime in the occupied territories”.
Over the years, Rachel Giora, a professor at Tel Aviv University has become the leading voice in the BDS movement at home and abroad. In 2008 she joined a number of other activist faculty including Anat Matar (TAU) and Kobi Snitz (Weizmann Institute) to create BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestine BDS call from within. These and other pro-boycott faculty such as Neve Gordon (BGU), Ilan Pappe (former Haifa U), Dalit Baum (Haifa U), Merav Amir (Hebrew U) have launched or helped numerous BDS initiatives ranging from the British academics call to boycott Israeli universities to the latest actions of the Presbyterian Church USA. Israeli pro-boycott scholars have been in high demand in the BDS drive. Indeed, the website of the Palestine-Israel Mission Network, Presbyterian Church USA carries Gordon’s endorsement of a book Steadfast Hope, which is used to promote divestment. |
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| [Ex-Haifa U, Now Exeter U] Ilan Pappe: "The Boycott Will Work" an Israeli Perspective |
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Introduction from Sonja Karkar with Australians for Palestine.
(MELBOURNE) - Editor’s Note: Ilan Pappé, celebrated Israeli Historian and author, argues that the BDS movement is the best means to end Israel's oppressive occupation and prevent another Nakba. He says: “For an activist, the realization that change from within is unattainable not only grows from an intellectual or political process, but is more than anything else an admission of defeat. And it was this fear of defeatism that prevented me from adopting a more resolute position for a very long time. . . I came to realize that the problem was not a particular policy or a specific government, but one more deeply rooted in the ideological infrastructure informing Israeli decisions on Palestine and the Palestinians ever since 1948.” |
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| 'Palestine Chronicle' on the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement Against Israel |
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Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator for Justice for Palestine Matters and an activist in the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) Movement against Israel.
Even by the standards of pro-Palestinian groups, her writing is full of egregious misrepresentations, starting with the statement that "Israeli universities are military laboratories funded by Israeli and US warmongers and profiteers." Israeli faculty who support boycotting Israel should take note of her virulent language.
In the interest of self-disclosure, IAM is not a right- wing organization that keeps a "black list" of dissenters, but rather an academic NGO which follows the publications of radical academics who use the classroom as an extension of their political agenda.
"Academic boycott of Israeli institutions and of the infestation of Israeli military interests in our own universities, as well as BDS generally, is a matter of life and death for the people of Palestine. It is an action, we the people can achieve while our governments and the UN stand by and collude in war crimes against Palestine that for 65 years have accelerated and gone unpunished." |
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| Palestinian Appeal to Legal Scholars: Boycott INjustice Conference at Hebrew University! |
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The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urges international legal scholars and professionals to boycott the Minerva Jerusalem Conference on Transitional Justice, scheduled for 29-31 October 2012 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an academic institution that is deeply complicit in Israel’s occupation and systematic racial oppression of the Palestinian people.
The Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University, the sponsor of the conference, is part and parcel of the academic establishment in Israel. As such, it is implicated in the institutional structures that maintain and uphold the system of colonial control and apartheid over Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory and over those who are citizens of Israel [i], and which denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right to return to their homes and their lands.
We ask international scholars to consider the symbolism of the venue of this conference. The Hebrew University is itself implicated in serious violations of international law. |
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| IAM Purim Special: Various items on Israel Apartheid Week / in Canada / Dalit Baum |
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** Published in Palestinian Press: Maariv: “Muslim Woman, Israel’s Secret Weapon To Counter Apartheid Week”. Israeli paper Maariv published a report stating that a Muslim woman from Dir Hanna Arab town, north of the country, is part of an Israeli team that was set up to counter the “Israeli Apartheid Week” held in colleges in South Africa.
** Commentary Magazine: Why Do Arabs and Muslims Keep Trying to Move to the “Apartheid State”? By Evelyn Gordon. As Israel Apartheid Week circumnavigates the globe this month, a Jordan-based Palestinian journalist has offered an eloquent rebuttal that every Israel supporter should memorize and quote. If Israel is really an “apartheid state,” asks Ramzi Abu Hadid, “Why has it become the dream of many Arab Christians and Muslims to emigrate to the ‘apartheid state’?
** :Canada Minister Kenney Issues Statement on 'Israeli Apartheid Week': The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, issued the following statement on 'Israeli Apartheid Week': "Like many Canadians I am concerned with the rise of anti-Israel activities on campuses across Canada, culminating in the so-called 'Israeli Apartheid Week' (IAW), which is often promoted in a manner that disregards the rights and safety of Jewish students and professors.
** CANADA: Global Regina: Opposition to Israeli Apartheid Week grows. Israeli Apartheid Week has been called “offensive” and “anti-Semitic” by the Prime Minister. Tuesday, Liberal leader Bob Rae said it continues to defy logic. In the last several days, two Saskatchewan Members of Parliament have also spoken out against the University of Regina’s Israeli Apartheid Week, calling it simplistic, prejudicial and insulting to all Israeli citizens.
** U OF O WATCH - CREATING TRANSPARENCY: Faculty for Palestine (Canada) calls for action to redress the Allan Rock administration. Today Faculty for Palestine put out this call: *URGENT CALL FOR SOLIDARITY: UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA TRIES TO SILENCE SOLIDARITY FOR PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS (SPHR) AND WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!* Defend the right to critical discussion around Israeli apartheid on our campuses! Call on the University of Ottawa Administration to uphold free expression and follow clear and transparent procedures.
** The National, United Arab Emirates: It may all be academic, but the US is shifting on Palestine. By Effie-Michelle Metallidis. On university campuses, few things stir the blood like talk of social justice. And so the announcement that students at Harvard's Kennedy School would host a "one-state" conference on Israel and Palestine sent pitchforks flying through the air in Boston last weekend. |
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| IAM Purim Special: The ‘One State Conference’ / BDS: agents of destruction / Tufts & Concordia Universities
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** The ‘One State Conference’: much ado about nothing
Harvard assembly disappoints on drama
By ELHANAN MILLER
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Margot Einstein stands under a colorful umbrella across from Harvard’s Kennedy School carrying a sign that reads “Shame on Harvard.” She has passed her 80th year, but decided to venture out of her home in Newton on this drizzly morning to protest the “One State Conference” taking place nearby.
** BDS: agents of destruction
By Tabitha Korol
It's time to take a look at the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanction) speakers and their credentials.
** BDS Campaign National Committee
One-state conference at Harvard signifies possible new front in campus Israel wars
By Penny Schwartz
Opening panel of the one-state conference at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, March 3, 2012. BOSTON (JTA) -- To critics, the one-state conference held at Harvard University was a thinly veiled assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
** Students for Justice in Palestine hosts Israeli Apartheid Week
By Senait Debesu
The Tufts chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) last week hosted its first annual Israeli Apartheid Week, an international initiative aimed presenting Palestinian narratives, examining Israeli policies toward Palestinians and fostering discussion among the Tufts community.
** Israel Apartheid Week, Inside Israel Speaker Series Kicks Off
JACOB ROBERTS
“The Israeli government, as a project, has been systematically oppressing the Palestinian people in several different ways,” said Doug Smith, a member of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and the spokesperson for IAW, which ends on March 13.Concordia will be hosting two very different views on the Middle East in coming weeks, as eighth annual Israel Apartheid Week kicks off on March 5, followed by the inaugural Inside Israel Speaker Series. |
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| Israel Academia Monitor Purim Special on the "Israeli Apartheid Week" |
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** The Middle East’s real apartheid. By EFRAIM KARSH
The Jewish State's supporters find it difficult to agree on the best response to Israel Apartheid Week.
** OnCampus Maclean's, Canada: It’s ‘apartheid’ time again. Pick your villain. By Emma Teitel
Students boycott Israel, but are blasé about Syria. Why?
** Israeli Apartheid Week and BDS are not the answers: A response from the Progressive Zionist Club on campus
** We, McGill Students for Israel, strongly condemn Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) and the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as a whole. Though IAW’s stated intent is to advocate for Palestinian human rights, their actions end up serving to demonize and delegitimize Israel
** Economic Mapping of Apartheid - Israeli Apartheid Week : Opening night of the 8th annual Israeli Apartheid Week. Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is being held in 80 cities around Canada and throughout the world, occurring in multiple venues in Toronto from March 5th to March 10th 2012. |
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| Neve Gordon, Merav Amir in the new upcoming book "The Case for Sanctions Against Israel" Dalit Baum, Ilan Pappe too |
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Neve Gordon (BGU, Politics and Government) and Merav Amir (HUJ, Lafer Center) have joined a virtual "who is who" of Israel bashers to advocate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Among their co-contributors to a book that purports to make a case for BDS is Angela Davis, a former leader of the Communist Party USA and the Black Panther, Omar Barghouti, the founder of the Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Dalit Baum, a former U of Haifa lecturer who left her job to take an active role in the American BDS movement, Ilan Pappe of Exeter University who is accused of fabricating a reference to support his "narrative" of pre-planned wholesale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.
Evidently, the Knesset legislation that makes it illegal to support BDS did not deter Gordon and Amir. Academic authorities should investigate their action since it seems to violates the law and breaches public trust. Israeli taxpayers deserve better than having their monies spent on hostile propaganda that hurts the national interests of the country. |
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| Israeli Apartheid Week with [U Haifa] Dalit Baum, [Sapir College] Eyal Sivan and [U Leicester UK] Claudia Prestel
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Israeli Apartheid Week has become a very successful way to delegitimize Israel on campuses across the world.
Spurred by the success of the boycott movement against South Africa, Palestinian activists pushed for the idea of branding Israel as an apartheid state. They were helped by radical Israeli scholars such as Oren Yiftachel who published a number of works describing Israel's alleged creeping apartheid. The apartheid label was instrumental in launching the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is popular on campuses. As IAM reported, radical Israeli academics have supported the BDS movement. |
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| [TAU] Anat Matar, Rachel Giora & [Weizmann] Kobi Snitz sign petition against Cornell U & Technion collaboration |
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When Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the Cornell University - Technion partnership the winners of an intense international competition to built a highly prestigious graduate science center in New York, few were surprised. Israel and its leading institutions including the Technion has become a scientific powerhouse, a fact that many observers have commented on. As Mayor Bloomberg noted, the new cutting- edge facility will become "transformative" in a variety of fields such as science education and biotechnology that would benefit not just New York and the United States but the global community.
For radical academics such as Anat Matar (TAU) Rachel Giora (TAU) and Kobi Snitz (Weizmann Institute) none of this matters. Using the shopworn slogans of the BDS movement, they signed a petition asking Cornell University to boycott the Technion. Among others, they state that the Technion suppressed the freedom of speech of Palestinian students during the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. This is highly ironic, as Haaretz published documents indicating that the Flotilla secured the cooperation of Bashar Assad, who was eager to score a public relation point against Israel.
Worse, Matar and her academic peers, always eager to show solicitousness toward the plight of the Palestinians, have ignored the death of thousands of Syrians at the hands of the brutal regime. |
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| A BDS group to meet HUJ & TAU academics in an "Educational Tour/Delegation To Palestine/Israel" June 15–21, 2012 |
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Israeli academics meet with Faculty For Israeli-Palestinian Peace, a group that advocates for BDS, under the guise of "educational tours". Its mission statement includes:
"We strongly believe that no justice and no peace can be achieved without Israeli withdrawal from all occupied territories, and that anybody truly and honestly favoring peaceful coexistence must support such withdrawal."
The Israeli academics are HUJ Daphna Golan, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Yonathan Mizrachi, Amos Goldberg and TAU Yehouda Shenhav.
In Ramallah, FFIPP Meets with Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the BDS campaign |
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| TAU Rachel Giora Debates on Cultural Boycott: Methods, Aims and Effectiveness. BRICUP Newsletter 47 |
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Rachel Giora of Tel Aviv University, a leading
member of Boycottt from Within, started this
debate by asking BRICUP whether an action that
requires relaxation of principles can be effective.
She argued that the demonstration inside the Hall
did indeed involve the relaxation of an important
principle – the freedom of expression. This is
certainly an interesting question: here is Rachel’s
argument-
Protesting the performance of the Israeli
Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) was a major event,
and, in various respects, historical and
unprecedented. As a member of the global BDS
movement I am taking the liberty here to share my
thoughts (for future sake) on a very touchy topic: Is
it possible that some of the actions, so carefully
crafted, reaching high levels of ingenuity, might
have curbed, if not violated freedom of expression? |
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| [Haifa U, Gender] February, U Penn: Dalit Baum to speak in a Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Conference |
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On the first weekend in February, academics, activists, students and community leaders from across the US will converge on the University of Pennsylvania for the 2012 National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference.
Picking up where the 2009 Hampshire conference left off, we will continue growing the movement with two days of panel discussions, debates, activist workshops, and keynotes by Ali Abunimah and novelist Susan Abulhawa touching on every aspect of the multifarious global effort to heed the BDS Call and bring an end to Israel’s system of oppression, segregation and dispossession.
Our speakers include journalists, professors, artists, writers, lawyers, and human and civil rights activists from various ethnic, religious, cultural and social communities. Special attention will be devoted to building alliances and uniting in struggle with other constituencies engaged in resistance to bigotry in all its forms, from African Americans to those fighting for LGBT rights.
Saturday’s sessions will focus on comparative historical, sociological and philosophical analysis of BDS, both in its Israeli-Palestinian context and as a general tactic. Voices critical of certain aspects of BDS will be represented, and “tough questions” for the movement will be dealt with in a progressive, universalist framework. Sunday’s sessions will foreground movement-building and provide participants with the practical tools they need to launch or enhance BDS campaigns in their communities.
We believe the conference will be an invaluable resource for new activists and a momentum-building opportunity for those already engaged with the fight for Palestinian freedom and equality. |
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| Swedish call for academic boycott of Israel: Demands that Royal Inst. of Technology cancels agreement with Technion |
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218 signed the call for a Swedish academic boycott of Israel
Swedish universities must not participate in research or any other type of cooperation with Israeli academic institutions. The Swedish government should act for the cessation of EU’s research support to Israel, which will inevitably strengthen the continued occupation of Palestine. This is what 218 Swedish persons demand in a Call for academic boycott of Israel. Twelve of the signatories are professors, while 14 are associate professors, 23 senior lecturers or researchers and 70 are students.
The boycott is not aimed at individuals but against institutions. So far no Israeli academic institution has dissociated itself from Israel’s apartheid policy or the discrimination of Palestinians in Israel. Therefore all collaboration with Israeli academic institutions should be stopped, the signatories say. |
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| [Duke, Math] Rann Bar-On, currently working with North Carolina BDS, emphasizing BDS as a tool to pressure Israel |
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Rann Barr-On
Duke Department of Mathematics
Rann Bar-On is an Israeli citizen of Jewish origin. He has been active on Palestine-Israel issues since a very young age. In recent years, he has worked with the International Solidarity Movement and the Palestine Solidarity Project in the West Bank, as well as with Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall. He was an organizer and spokesperson for the Palestine Solidarity Movement conference at Duke University in 2004 and is currently working with North Carolina Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, a new local activist group emphasizing BDS as a tool to pressure Israel into ending its occupation of Palestinian land. He also serves as faculty advisor to Duke Students for Justice in Palestine. |
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| Members of "BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within" call South African students to boycott Israel |
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| We are members of BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within, a group of Israeli students, professors, citizens, and residents who are active against our government's policies of apartheid, occupation and racism. We would like to express our solidarity with South Africa's leading student groups, who intend to challenge and boycott a delegation of Israeli students arriving in South Africa on a propaganda mission, titled, "What Is Rael", on 11/8/2011. The Israeli student delegation is part of a well-orchestrated Israeli establishment attempt to whitewash severe violations of human rights, including war crimes, through a fictitious display of "diversity and democracy". |
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| [U of Haifa, Gender] Dalit Baum and others promote cultural Boycott of Israel. Brooklyn, Sept. 15, 2011 |
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| Background: Many artists and musicians and others oppose the Israeli occupation and support the cultural boycott of Israel--which is part of the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign-as a non-violent way to press Israel to abide by international law and recognize Palestinians' human rights and self-determination. This boycott includes the decision not to perform or exhibit in Israel or in settlements in the Occupied Territories. This also includes a call to boycott Israeli institutions that are complicit with the occupation. Supporters of BDS and of cultural boycott have joined an appeal called for by Palestinian civil society asking the international community to use this nonviolent tool at a time when the Israeli government, as well as the U.S. and European governments, have failed to act to stop the abuses that are intensifying and when other forms of pressure have not been successful. |
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| HUJ Nurit Peled-Elhanan "Israeli Activists Support South African Student Call to Boycott Israeli Propaganda Mission" |
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"We support your resistance to the Israeli government's propaganda in your universities and your efforts in advocating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel campaign at your campuses.
"In Solidarity!
"Professor Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan and 25 others on behalf of BOYCOTT! |
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| "Pluralistic" International Panel on Academic Boycotts, all panelists in favor academic boycott of Israel (Wits U, South Africa) |
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Over 50 critical social analysts and scholars are congregating at Wits until 20 July 2011 to interrogate various issues with the aim of overcoming fractures within the world of global scholarship as part of the annual Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, hosted by the Wits Faculty of Humanities.
Esteemed scholars including Judith Butler, Farid Esack a South African scholar, David Goldberg from the University of California, Premesh Lalu Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape and Ran Greenstein and Trustee of the District Six Museum will debate Academic Boycott:
Denormalisation and the Ordinary State this Thursday 14 July at 18:00 in the Wiser Seminar Room. Butler will also deliver a lecture titled Is Judaism Zionism? on Tuesday,19 July. |
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| Israeli academics join the Palestinian call for a BDS campaign against Israel: "POINTS OF UNITY" |
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(see the names at the bottom of this page and click for affiliation)
Among the signatories:Bar-On Rann , Baum Dalit , Beirach Barak Yoav , Bresheeth Haim , Davis Uri , Giora Rachel , Hadar Uri , Katz Teddy , Lentin Ronit , Loshitzky Yosefa , Matar Anat , Misgav Chen , nir eyal , peled-elhanan nurit , Razinsky Hili , Sivan Eyal , Snitz Kobi , Svirsky Marcelo.
For Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on behalf of Palestinian rights
We, Palestinians, Jews, citizens of Israel, join the Palestinian call for a BDS campaign against Israel, inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid.1 We also call on others to do the same.
We are devoted to the promotion of just peace and true democracy in this region. We are particularly opposed to Western governments' decision to boycott the Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, most especially in besieged Gaza. This is particularly outrageous given the same Western governments' prolonged support of Israel's apartheid and other daily violations of international law. |
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| [Duke University] Rann Bar-On: I call for boycott against the State of Israel in order to harm Israel by means of boycott |
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| I (Ran Baron, ID number: 036490597) hereby call for any person to deliberately avoid economic, cultural or academic ties with another person or another factor only because of his ties with the State of Israel, one of its institutions or an area under its control, in such a way that may cause economic, cultural or academic damage. I knowingly publish a public call for a boycott against the State of Israel, hoping that according to the content and circumstances of the publication there is reasonable probability that the call will bring about a boycott; I am aware of this possibility. |
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| [Weizmann Institute] Kobi Snitz, a BDS leader behind the cancellation of lecture by Dr. Richard Stallman at U of Haifa |
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| Mr. Snitz advises both myself and RMS that in order to make sure the talk in Israel meets the standards of the BDS-supporting organization which is "hosting" RMS then the talks in Israel must be both sponsored by a BDS supporting organization and held in a hall "owned/run" by a BDS supporting organization. Snitz's words were, "in order to not violate the boycott the sponsors and the place should be dissenting israeli groups and institutions". |
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| [TAU] Anat Matar and [Weizmann Inst] Kobi Snitz reiterate support of the Palestinian call for BDS against Israel |
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We hereby support and promote the recent Palestinian call for an immediate and comprehensive military embargo on Israel due to its consistent resort to violence and deadly attacks on Palestinians and Arab civilians; we stand with Jewish Voice for Peace in their campaign to bring TIAA-CREF to divest from the Israeli occupation; and, we support and encourage all other BDS-related divestment campaigns, such as the campaign to Derail Israel’s Unlawful A1 Train Project.
Lastly, we urge artists scheduled to perform in Israel to send a clear message that the Israeli occupation, the institutionalized discrimination of Israel's own Palestinian citizens and Israel's denial of the right of return and compensation of the Palestinian refugees |
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| Knesset votes in favor of 'boycott bill' |
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The Knesset approved on Monday the second and third readings of the ‘Boycott Bill’ which prevents companies from participating in government bids if they take part in a boycott of a business in Israel.
The bill, which passed by a majority of 47 to 38, stipulates that anyone calling for an economic, cultural or academic boycott against the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria will be unable to participate in government tenders. In addition, any person who considers himself a victim of a boycott could sue the boycotter for compensation. |
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| UCU - University and College Union, UK - UCU Congress 2011: Threats to academic freedom in Israel and Palestine |
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Congress instructs NEC to:
circulate to all members
the call by the Israeli academics
the PACBI call for academic and cultural boycott of Israel
information about the current legislation passing through the Knesset threatening heavy fines and other penalties on Israelis taking non-violent action against the occupation.
seek a delegation to meet the Israeli Ambassador to raise our concerns
press the Foreign Office to protest to the Israeli Government
raise the issue with Education International and press them to seek similar action by all affiliates
publicise these threats and our actions in response. |
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| [Sapir] Eyal Sivan, a big supporter of the cultural boycott thinks it is just and important boycott, should be implemented widely |
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| As a big supporter of the cultural boycott - because I think it is a just and an important boycott - it should be implemented widely. At the same time, we have to give a new sense to the notion of what it means to be in a common struggle. Maybe we have to think that, in order to reinforce the boycott in parallel, we have to reinforce the common cultural struggle. |
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| [TAU student, Gender] Leehee Rothschild boycotts Israel from within "joining the BDS movement is an act of caring" |
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As an Israeli, Rothschild considers joining the BDS movement to be an act of caring. It is tough love for the country she was born and raised in.
"I hope that, for some people, it will be a slap in their face and they will wake up and see what's going on," Rothschild says, adding that the oppressor is oppressed, as well.
"The Israeli people are also oppressed by the occupation - they are living inside a society that is militant; that is violent; that is racist." |
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| Boycott: U of Johannesburg voted to allow its formal relationship with BGU to lapse on 1 April 2011 |
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In a protracted and spirited debate, the Senate of the University of Johannesburg (UJ) today voted to allow its formal relationship with Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in Israel to lapse on 1 April 2011
This was one of two options put to the vote in the Senate, the second being to allow the formal relationship with BGU to continue and to develop bilateral relations with both BGU and Palestinian universities.
Sixty percent of the Senate (72 members present) voted to allow the Memorandum of Understanding with BGU to lapse, while the balance 40 percent (45 members present ) voted for bilateral agreements.
The Senate vote effectively upholds an earlier resolution that placed conditions on its continued relationships with BGU, among them the inclusion of Palestinian university partners. |
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| [Ex-Dean at Sapir College, now UEL] Haim Bresheeth to the Coen Brothers: Don't Accept Tel Aviv U Dan David Prize |
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| Your appearance in Israel will unfortunately help camouflage the brutal realities of a powerful and illegal military occupation. However much you believe you can go there simply as artists, your presence will be spun to reassure the Israeli public that their ruthless colonial society is ‘normal’, and to promote Brand Israel abroad. You will be saying, to Israelis and to the world, that Israel’s violently racist treatment of the Palestinians is acceptable. |
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| The Congress of South Africa Trade Unions called on Johannesburg University to terminate "any relationship" with Israel's Ben Gurion University |
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It [BGU] has consistently refused to oppose the Israeli government's attempts to silence academics that support sanctions against Israel and so it is a much compromised institution whose reputation and credibility are in tatters," said Cosatu spokesperson Bongani Masuku in a statement.
He described BGU as "a university that actively collaborates with the Israeli Defence Force in its enforcement of apartheid occupation against Palestinians, by offering special privileges and services to the army". |
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| Bill to punish anti-Israel boycotters passes first Knesset hurdle, left-wing organizations promise to disobey |
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The articles follow a Hebrew notice: Sent by Tamara Traubmann, not only Haaretz journalist, but also a Media and Communications Coordinator to the Coalition of Women for Peace and a researcher at its "Who Profits of the Occupation?" project. Under the flagship of both the Coalition and a newly established group "We Will Oppose The Occupation", it is announced that left-wing organizations promise to disobey the new anti-boycott law.
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| On Academic Boycott: Exchange program between University of Ottawa, Canada and University of Haifa frozen |
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WHEREAS it has not been determined if Palestinian students from the University of Ottawa or the University of Haifa shall have full and equitable access to the program in question, and;
WHEREAS there is presently local and international expressed concern about Israel’s domestic and foreign policy and a broad international call for an academic boycott of Israel,
THEREFORE in order to ensure fair and equitable access of all persons to the program in question without discrimination, the Senate requires the affirmative action guarantee that applications be selected in such a way that the percentage of Palestinian students accepted into the program at the University of Haifa be equal to or greater than the percentage of Palestinian people living in Israel, and;
THEREFORE the Joint Masters in Laws (LL.M) exchange program shall be frozen and the application process put on hold until the above actions have been carried out by the Senate. |
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| TAU Prof. Rachel Giora asks Poland to boycott Israel while bill to prohibits boycott approved in preliminary reading |
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| On Tuesday, as the Knesset debated a law against boycotts on Israel, a group of radical left Israeli academics turned to the government of Poland (the incoming president of the European Union) and demanded action against what they termed the “crimes of the occupation” perpetrated by Israel. The group is headed by Professor Rachel Giora of Tel Aviv University. |
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| [TAU Philosophy] Omar Barghouti, PhD student of Marcelo Daskal expresses support of 155 Professors calling to boycott Ariel U |
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World academics should seriously consider an academic boycott of the Ariel college-colony, at the very least, as a first step towards a full boycott of all Israeli academic institutions involved in planning, implementing, justifying or whitewashing Israel's colonial rule and apartheid. While at it, they may want to consider the compelling boycott case against Hebrew University, too, as an institution that has been guilty -- for several more decades than Ariel -- of maintaining a campus mostly on Palestinian
territory occupied by Israel in 1967, in clear violation of the Fourth
Geneva Convention, among other violations.
Omar |
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| [U of Haifa, Gender and TAU, Minerva Humanities] Dalit Baum and Merav Amir - For taking the profit out of occupation |
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-each speaker paid homage to Dalit, Merav and Who Profits as having provided the information essential to his or her work. It finally dawned on me that without Dalit, Merav and their impeccably documented research the work done by activists around the world to support the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Movement (BDS) would be a hundred times more difficult if not impossible.
In fact, in mid-December, the Palestinian Boycott National Committee (BNC), in a press advisory about the A-1 Train Project (the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem light rail) and the theft of Palestinian land involved in its construction, said,
The BNC thanks and warmly salutes the Coalition of Women for Peace and its Who Profits from the Occupation? project, whose valuable and timely research on the A1 train project and complicit companies will facilitate a successful campaign. |
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| [TAU] Eyal Naveh's "Dual Narrative History Project". There is a strong Palestinian movement to boycott cooperation with Israeli academics |
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| Sami Adwan says that he will be travelling to Sweden in a few days...The idea was that he would travel with a Palestinian delegation, but now it seems that the others have backed out. There is a strong Palestinian movement that wants to boycott all cooperation with Israeli academics because this ‘normalises’ the occupation of the West Bank and delays a solution to the conflict. |
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| Friday Special: Arab Media working to promote Boycott Divetment and Sanctions against Israel |
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Alternative Information Center: Five Australian Unions Support BDS of Israel
Middle East Monitor: Student activism and the pro-Palestinian movement gains momentum
Arab American News: Campuses work to further the BDS movement
Electronic Intiffada: Montreal activists launch campus boycott campaign |
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| African academics launch boycott campaign against Israeli universities |
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Hundreds of African academics with the support of international influential figures announced an initiative to boycott Israeli universities until their state ends its occupation of the Palestinian territories.
More than 200 academics from 13 African universities pledged in a statement reported by different media outlets on Sunday to support the initiative made the university of Johannesburg which calls for ending academic cooperation with the Israeli occupation. |
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| Statement of Nobel Laureates on Academic BDS Actions Against Israeli Academics |
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Believing that academic and cultural boycotts, divestments and sanctions in the academy are:
* antithetical to principles of academic and scientific freedom,
* antithetical to principles of freedom of expression and inquiry, and
* may well constitute discrimination by virtue of national origin,
We, the undersigned Nobel Laureates, appeal to students, faculty colleagues and university officials to defeat and denounce calls and campaigns for boycotting, divestment and sanctions against Israeli academics, academic institutions and university-based centers and institutes for training and research, affiliated with Israel. |
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| Over 150 faculty members from universities across the country vowed not to lecture in settlements |
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In the academics' letter, released yesterday, over 150 faculty members from universities across the country vowed not to lecture or participate in any discussions in settlements, and voiced support for the theater artists who have said they would refuse to perform in the West Bank city. "We will not take part in any kind of cultural activity beyond the Green Line, take part in discussions and seminars, or lecture in any kind of academic setting in these settlements," the academics wrote.
Signatories of the academic petition included Zeev Sternhell and Yael Sternhell, Nissim Calderon, Anat Biletzki, Ziva Ben-Porat, Yaron Ezrachi, Aeyal Gross, Shlomo Sand, Dan Rabinowitz, Neve Gordon and Oren Yiftachel. |
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| Anti-Israel 'Times Higher Education' supports boycott of Israel: "Is the Israeli academy facing a McCarthyite era?" |
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At the front line of the conflict are a handful of academics, such as Rachel Giora, professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, who support international calls for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Pointing to “the growing number of Israeli assaults on Palestinians’ cities, towns, villages and refugee camps both within and outside the occupied territories”, as well as events such as the attack on Gaza during the winter of 2008-09 and the deaths on the “Freedom flotilla” in May this year, Professor Giora argued that “the state’s legitimacy has been gradually undermined”, leading to “waves of vocal criticism” across the world.
International condemnation has also created a far less comfortable environment for internal critics, she said, having led to “massive defence tactics aimed particularly at bashing academics supportive of boycott initiatives”.
Professor Giora said: “Repression of protest was no longer implicit. All hell broke loose.” |
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| Omar Barghouti, TAU student: If the occupation ends BDS will not end, because the right of return is its real cause |
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Omar Barghouti, founder of BDS, who attends Tel Aviv University, is interviewed on the video explaining how “it is extremely important, …an institutional boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions…” as we are shown Professor Steven Rose, founder of the British Committee for University for Palestine, arguing successfully for Al-Quds University Board to sever ties with Hebrew University, a relationship which Al-Quds president Sari Nusseibeh worked hard to establish.
Under the guidelines of a two-state solution, which has widespread support, both peoples can live together. Yet, Barghouti clearly states that “if the occupation ends” BDS will not end, because the right of return is its real cause. “I clearly do no buy into the two state solution,” Barghouti said. “This is something we cannot compromise on,” he said.
In his own words, Barghouti understands that “If the refugees were to return, you would not have a two state solution, you’d have a Palestine next to a Palestine.” |
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| Divest occupation campaign signed by Israeli Academics: [TAU] Rachel Giora, Anat Matar, [Weizmann] Kobi Snitz |
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We are a group of citizens and residents of Israel, Palestinians and Jews. We join our friends at Jewish Voice for Peace, and many others around the world, in urging you to divest from companies which profit from Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It is particularly as Israelis that we appeal to you, we find it extremely offensive when the occupation is said to be carried out in our names or for our sake.
It is likely that you are not aware that your funds are invested in companies such as Caterpillar and Northrop Grumman. Companies like these play a crucial role in the decades long continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people, whether by selling bulldozers used for destroying houses or delivering spare parts to airplanes which are regularly deployed against civilian population. |
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| Israeli Bill Reflects Frustration With Academics Who Support Boycotts |
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An effort to discourage Israeli public-university professors and others from supporting boycotts of the Jewish state is roiling the country's academics.
While an academic boycott and other efforts to isolate the country have long been debated, recent public condemnation of Israel's botched military raid on a flotilla of ships bound for Gaza has heated up the political situation.
Israeli legislators, feeling embattled by hostile world opinion, are considering a series of measures responding to what they regard as inappropriate sanctions against their country and its leaders, some of whom have been threatened with arrest for alleged war crimes. |
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| Knesset promotes anti-boycott bill |
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| The Knesset on Wednesday approved in a preliminary hearing a bill meant to deter Israelis from taking part in boycotts of Israel. The bill is slated to apply to anyone who will initiate or promote a boycott of individuals, factories, companies or organizations in all Israeli territories, apart from the West Bank. The vote was virtually unanimous. |
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| Witch-hunt Begins in Israeli Schools and Colleges |
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Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva who called for an academic boycott of Israel last year, has reported receiving death threats, as has a school teacher who refused to participate in Mr Saar’s flagship programme to encourage high-school recruitment to the Israeli military.
Daniel Gutwein, a professor of Jewish history at Haifa University, said: “A serious red flag is raised when the education minister joins in the de-legitimisation of the academic establishment. This is a method to castrate and abolish Israeli academia.”
Prof Gordon, who wrote a commentary in the Los Angeles Times a year ago supporting a boycott, said Im Tirtzu had contributed to a growing “atmosphere of violence” in the country and on campuses.
Prof Gordon said: “I have tenure and Im Tirtzu cannot easily get me fired. But they are trying to become the ‘guards at the gate’ to make sure other academics do not follow in my path.”
Only three Israeli acadmics have so far openly endorsed a boycott, he added, with many others fearful that they will be punished if they do so. But Im Tirtzu and its supporters were using the issue as a pretext for cracking down on academics critical of rightwing policy. He called Israel an increasingly “proto-fascist” state.
Prof Gordon cited the recent case of Assaf Oren, a statistics lecturer and peace activist who had been told he was the leading candidate for a post in Ben Gurion’s industrial engineering department until right-wing groups launched a campaign against him.
In a further sign of what Prof Gordon and others have labelled a McCarthyite climate, MPs in the parliamentary education committee -- which has come to closely reflect Mr Saar’s views -- summoned for questioning two head teachers of prestigious schools after they criticised official policies. |
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| Article by a Jewsih pro-Arab journalist: Israeli academics hit back over bid to pass law that would criminalise them |
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Daniel Gutwein, a history professor at Haifa University who is one of the signatories, described the minister's intervention as an attempt "to make Israeli academia docile, frightened and silent".
Although the BDS campaign – in various forms – has been running for over half a decade, it has become an increasingly fraught issue inside Israel in the past year since a small number of academics publicly declared support for a boycott, including Neve Gordon, author of Israel's Occupation and a former paratrooper who was badly injured while serving with the Israeli Defence Force.
Speaking to the Observer last week, Gordon said that many Israelis saw support for the BDS as "crossing a red line". Adding that he had received recent death threats, he said: "I am worried about what is happening to the space for debate in Israel. I find that there is a proto-fascist mindset developing. One of the slogans you hear a lot now is no citizenship without loyalty. It is an inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen."
"It's a different world to what it was even a month ago," says Kobi Snitz, member of an Israeli BDS group. "Suddenly, all sorts of people are supporting it – people that you wouldn't expect." |
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| Academics to Gideon Sa'ar: Don't withhold academic freedom. Sa'ar responded: Those who harm academic freedom are lecturers calling for boycott òáøéú |
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In a petition to Gideon Sa'ar, the Minister of Education, a group of 542 Israeli academics, requested that the minister does not act against lecturers who called for boycotts of Israel, for the sake of Academic Freedom. Although the petition declares not to show support in any boycott call, some of the signatories are those who do call for boycott.
Out of the long list, below are some names of leading anti-Israel activists since many years and it includes Haggai Ram, Micah Leshem, Dani Filc, Rachel Giora, Kobi Peter (Peterzil), Uri Hadar, Eyal Nir, Mike Dahan, Ilan Saban, Amir Paz-Fuchs, Raef Zureik, Uri Ram, Lev Grinberg, Yoav Peled, Anat Matar, Rafi Grinberg, Moshe Zimmerman, Daniel Bar-Tal, Yehuda Kupperman, Fredie Rokem, Galit Hassan-Rokem, Yali Hashash (student), Roni Hammerman, Tamar Katriel, Jacob Katriel, Julia Chaitin, Ofer Neiman (student), Ronit Marian-Kadishay, Ayala Shani (non academic, leading anti-Israel activist), Dudi Tzfati, Yuval Yonay, Kalman Altman, Marcello Daskal (Omar Barghouti's supervisor), Daniel Dor, Ran Hacohen, Yehoshua Rozin (non academic, anti-Israel Activist), Idan Lando, Haim Jacobi, Yossef Schwartz, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Ronit Lentin, Eva Yablonka, Dalia Sacks, Gadi Algazi, Hannah Safran, Anat Biletzki, and Yeela Raanan. |
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| Canada: Quebec teachers union promotes boycott of Israel - recently devoted more than one-third of its in-house magazine to condemning Israel |
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MONTREAL — One of the province’s largest teachers unions – the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ) – recently devoted more than one-third of its in-house magazine – seven of 20 pages – to condemning Israel and supporting the international boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) campaign against it.
While a Quebec union being unfriendly to Israel may come as no surprise, the spring issue of Carnets stood out for the scope of its polemics and its use of vitriolic language.
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| Gideon Sa'ar, the Education minister vows to punish Israeli professors who back academic boycott, the government will act during the summer |
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A few days after saying he intends to take action against Israeli professors who call for an academic boycott of Israel, Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar is scheduled to appear on Monday before the Knesset Education Committee to discuss the limits of freedom of expression in schools.
Sa'ar refused to provide Haaretz with details of what action he plans to take. His statements, made in the Knesset plenum Wednesday, "speak for themselves," a spokesperson said.
The comments came some time after Ben-Gurion University Professor Neve Gordon, a vocal proponent of an academic boycott against Israel, received a death threat through the mail. |
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| New bill proposed in the Knesset criminalizes BDS and targets Israeli academics who are calling for boycott against Israel |
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| The initiator of the bill, MK Elkin, explained that the law works on three levels. "The first is to confront Israeli citizens invoved in a boycott. For example, it can apply to Israeli lecturers who call for an academic boycott of Israel. The second level is about foreign citizens initiating a boycott action, then you can ban them from entering the country for economic activities. The third level is about foreign countries or the Palestinian Authority, initiating a boycott on Israel. In this case we can prevent the transfer of funds available to Palestinians and anyone who is damaged by the boycott can claim these funds. |
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| Weizmann's Kobi Snitz, TAU Anat Matar & Rachel Giora: "Open Letter to the Boston Museum of Science objecting to Sponsorship of Israeli Propaganda" |
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| Senior academics from Tel Aviv University, Weizmann Institute, and other top institutions around world denounce Boston Science Museum's sponsorship of Israeli exhibit, calling it propaganda campaign. 'This is an attempt to distract from Israel's war crimes and human rights violations,' they say |
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| Final list - Israeli Citizens Say: Do Not Approve Israel's OECD Membership Until It Abides by International Law |
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TAU: Gadi Algazi, Eli Fabrikant, Rachel Giora, Dr. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Dr. Anat Matar, Dr. Yossef Schwartz, BGU: Dr. Idan Landau, Dr. Yeela Livnat Raanan, Eyal Nir, Eyal Niv, Hebrew U: Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Hili Razinsky, Amiel Vardi, Iaroslav Youssim, Dr. Ilana Hammerman, Prof. Hannan Hever,
Israeli Citizens Say: Do Not Approve Israel's OECD Membership Until It Abides by International Law
In May 2010 the OECD ministerial committee will vote on the admission of Israel as a member of the organization.
As Israeli citizens, we are concerned by the policies of the Israeli governments, policies which violate international law, violate the basic human rights of Palestinians under occupation and serve to instigate instability, violence and suffering in the Middle East. We are also concerned by the double standards applied by some countries in the international community, especially the developed countries, towards Israel's violations. Such double standards imbue violent and blatantly illegal Israeli policies of land theft, torture and physical abuse of civilians with an aura of legitimacy.
We believe that only when the international community makes Israel accountable for its actions, can we hope to see a change in Israeli policies.
As Israeli citizens, we wish to voice our strong support for the call issued to OECD countries by numerous Palestinian organizations, and numerous international organizations, including Palestinian solidarity campaigns around the world |
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| Legal opinion on the article “Academic Boycott” of Uri Yacobi Keller, an MA student at Hebrew University, posted by IAM on December 20, 2009 |
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Despite Keller’s caveats or words of caution in resorting to an academic boycott of Israeli universities, his entire article is one which provides for its justification and implementation. It is thus clearly an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist clarion call that promotes sympathetically the Arab cause (according to him, the “Palestinian” cause) and at the same time unjustly maligns the Israeli Defense Forces as something evil. In this respect, Keller shows symptoms of a psychological malady, enjoying the benefits of an Israeli university education while biting the very hand that nourished it. He is a sad reflection of what Israel’s academic society has become today.
As the citation of Keller’s article indicates, he has provided ample grist for the mill of TAU Professor Yossi Schwartz, the co-chairperson of the Board of the Alternative Information Center that expounds on “the Complicity of Academic Institutions in the Occupation”. Schwartz’s group and the activity he despicably promotes, together with the supporting article by Keller, are emblematic of the treason that afflicts and pervades a substantial part of Israeli academia against the State of Israel. These academics disregard and demean our existing legal rights to settle and rule Judea and Samaria, rights that were established under international law as far back as 1920, are also part of Israeli constitutional law, and are still intact today. |
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| TAU Adi Ophir and Michal Givoni in "Is Collaboration a Form of Collaboration?" Inside Higher Education |
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In a sign of how sensitive the situation has become, Zone Books has added a statement to its Web site as well as the book's page on the site of MIT Press (which distributes for Zone) to say that Zone Books received no support from and has no ties to the Van Leer Institute.
Kiley, Zone's general manager, said that the statement was added after Hanafi told him about the criticism of his role in the project and the view that it was somehow tainted by Israeli ties. Kiley not only added the statement to the Web site, but made a printed version and inserted it into 1,200 copies of the book in the warehouse.
Of the controversy, Kiley said: "I think it's sad and it's really discouraging, because we would hope that a book like this would serve to help ameliorate the situation or assist in some kind of dialogue, and I think everything has gotten so polarized. It's sad that there can't be some kind of middle space that would help." |
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| List of Israeli academics participating the "U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel" |
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Ammiel Alkalay, Queens College/ CUNY Graduate Center, Ryvka Bar Zohar, New York University, Hagit Borer, University of Southern California, Nava EtShalom, University of Michigan, Yael Korin, University of California, Simona Sharoni, SUNY Plattsburgh, Ella Shohat, New York University, Haim Bresheeth, University of East London, Uri Davis, Al-Quds University, Palestine, Emmanuel Farjoun, Hebrew University, Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University, Ronit Lentin, Sociology, Trinity College Dublin, Moshte; Machover, London School of Economics and Political Science, Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University, Ilan Pappe;, University of Exeter, Ur Shlonsky, University of Geneva, Kobi Snitz, Technion,
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions;
Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression, We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.
These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law |
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| Items on Israel's enemies from within: Prof. Rachel Giora, Dr. Anat Matar & Dr. Kobi Snitz of "Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS call from within" |
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We are a group of Palestinians and Jews, citizens and residents of Israel, who are struggling to end Israeli apartheid and the decades-long occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. We are writing to express our unequivocal support of SAIA's admirable divestment campaign at Carleton University. We will stand by you, as SAIA struggles to insure that the Carleton University pension fund disinvests initially from five companies deeply involved in Israel's subjugation of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, in gross violation of universal human rights and of International Law. Four of these five companies went as far as supplying the crucial means of destruction for the Dec. '08-Jan. '09 Israeli onslaught on Gaza.
Since the beginning of the "peace talks" period, we watch with dismay the charade in which Israel and its backers abroad attempt to portray oppressor and oppressed as two equal sides in a conflict to be remedied if they would simply straighten out their mutual differences. International Law is crystal-clear but Israeli policy openly flouts the law, in grave violation of universally recognized conventions and basic human rights. In addition, the faux peace negotiations lend no voice to Palestinian refugees, who are still forbidden to return home and denied proper compensation for their land and property. This empty "peace process" likewise ignores Palestinian citizens and residents of Israel, who are not and never have been equal citizens under Israel's ethnocratic regime. |
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| New threats of academic boycott against Israel due to the upgrade of the status of Ariel College to a university |
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Left-wing Israeli academics protested that a new university would siphon away funds earmarked for other educational institutions and possibly hurt their relations with foreign academics, especially in Europe, where university groups have threatened to boycott Israel in the past over settlement policy.
Neve Gordon, a political scientist at Ben-Gurion University and member of a group that sought a court order to cancel the Ariel College decision, called it "another instance of Israel deepening its roots in the West Bank".
"You create facts on the ground, then say we can't return these areas. It's a part of the old wall-and-tower approach to building settlements," Gordon told Reuters in a reference to the Zionist strategy of building outposts to claim territory.
He also criticised Barak personally, saying he was ignoring his own left-wing Labour party's past commitments to a deal on Palestinian statehood: "I thought Barak was for a two-state solution," Gordon said. "But apparently he is not."
Yaron Ezrahi, a professor at Hebrew University, called the decision the “academisation of the occupation”.
Amal Jamal, the head of political science at Tel Aviv University, said the upgrade would also highlight the extent to which universities inside Israel colluded with the West Bank college. “There is strong support for the college among some academics at Israeli universities, which co-operate with it in holding conferences, conducting research, supervising doctoral students and teaching,” he said.
LONDON – Israeli-British Professor Haim Bereshit, one of the initiators of the British academic boycott against Israel more than two years ago, had slammed Defense Minister Ehud Barak's decision to recognize the Ariel College as a university.
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| Israeli academics endorsing academic boycott of Israel: Emmanuel Farjoun, Hebrew U; Rachel Giora, TAU; Anat Matar, TAU; Kobi Snitz, Technion; & Pappe |
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The United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was formed in the immediate aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, bringing together educators of conscience who were unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel's indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions. Today, over 500 US-based academics, authors, artists, musicians, poets and other arts professionals have endorsed our call....
Israeli academics listed among the organization's International Endorsers have also joined us, including Emmanuel Farjoun, Hebrew University; Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University; Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University; Kobi Snitz, Technion; and Ilan Pappe now at Exeter. |
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| UCU hold 'boycott' meeting: The spectre of a wide-ranging boycott of Israel has been raised again by the University and College Union. (U.K) |
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While the union skirted around passing a full-on boycott motion, in line with legal advice it had been given previously, delegates agreed to hold an “inter-union conference of boycott supporters to investigate the implementation of the strategy within the law, including an option of institutional boycott”.
Jeremy Newmark, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, said: “It’s astounding that after repeated legal warnings that a boycott of Israeli academics would be discriminatory, UCU is still spending its members’ fees on promoting such a boycott to academics and trades unionists. |
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| Norway university won't boycott Israel |
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The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) unanimously voted against an academic boycott of Israel at a meeting on Thursday.
Had the proposal passed, NTNU would have been the first Western university to sever ties with Israeli universities.
"As an academic institution, NTNU's mission is to stimulate the study of the causes of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and how it can be resolved. This means that the university is also dependent on being able to cooperate with Israeli academics and hear their views on the conflict," the 12 board members said in a statement released by the university. |
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| Boycott News: Norway U boycott vote in a month / Anat Matar signed a boycott letter / Omar Barghouti's PACBI boycott / Sussex students boycott |
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*Norway university to vote next month on boycott of Israel
*[Tel Aviv U, Philosophy] Anat Matar signed an open letter to the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, asking to cancel their performance in Israel
*[Tel Aviv U, MA student, Ethics] Omar Barghouti's PACBI against the agreement between the University of Johannesburg and Ben Gurion University
*SUSSEX STUDENTS VOTE TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL
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| The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel congatulates Neve Gordon and other Israeli Academics for their support |
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Israeli support for BDS, and in particular
academic and cultural boycott of Israel, is to be
welcomed. Long before Gordon’s statement
supporting BDS, staunch Israeli supporters of
Palestinian rights such as Rachel Giora, Ilan
Pappe, Haim Bresheeth, Oren Ben-Dor and
Tanya Reinhart had embraced boycott and
defended it against Israeli critics, particularly
leftists in the academy [2]. Israeli artists’ and
academics’ endorsement of concrete boycott
actions called for by international academics and
artists in the past few years is well known. The
recent formation of the group Boycott!
...First, it should be noted that some Israeli
supporters of BDS studiously avoid the political
framework set by the Palestinian BDS movement
by casting their support for BDS as a strategy to
end only the 42-year military occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip. For example, while
some Israelis do employ the term colonialism or
apartheid, they limit these terms’ application to
the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, not to
historic Palestine which now encompasses the
state of Israel. Such a formulation sidesteps the
issue of the right of return of Palestinian
refugees, as well as that of the legalized and
institutionalized system of racism and
discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of
the Israel It thus not only fails to adhere to the
comprehensive rights-based approach adopted in
the 2005 Palestinian Civil Society Call for
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel,
but also ignores the UN-sanctioned rights of the
great majority of the indigenous people of
Palestine. The Palestinian call advocates nonviolent
punitive measures to be maintained until
Israel meets its obligation to recognize the
Palestinian people's inalienable right to selfdetermination
and fully complies with the
precepts of international law by ending its
occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and
dismantling the Wall; recognizing the
fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian
citizens of Israel to full equality; and respecting,
protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian
refugees to return to their homes and properties
as stipulated in UN resolution 194 [4].
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| U.K academics try AGAIN to launch an Israeli university boycott |
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Academics will attempt to relaunch a boycott of Israeli universitiestomorrow at the University and College Union's annual conference inBournemouth. It's the ninth year running that the deeply contentiousproposal has surfaced, but this year it comes after the Israeli assault onGaza and a wave of student protests at 35 universities across the UK.
Two motions, numbers 28 and 29, call for a boycott of Israeli academics.The main motion, 29, was compiled by academics at Brighton University, theCollege of North East London and the University of East London. It accusesIsraeli educational institutions of "complicity … in colonisation andmilitary preparation". |
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| Israeli acdemics who are "Peace activists" spread lies and call the singer Leonard Cohen to boycott Israel |
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Israel is facing one of its most immoral historical moments. Its ruthless, criminal bashing of the Palestinians has met with little international criticism or curbing. The silence of most of the world’s governments continues to embolden successive Israeli governments to commit more violent acts. Israel has violated numerous international laws, but so far for Israeli Jews life in Israel goes on as if nothing happened. Indeed, your people, Cohen, have built “a new Dachau, And call it love, Security, Jewish culture”, as you have so perceptively put it yourself in ‘Questions for Shomrim’,[1] but only a few voices have been raised against these injustices.
It is left for us, citizens of the world, to condemn Israeli atrocities and crimes against humanity. Dissociating ourselves from Israel’s brutal policies is the only non-violent way now to avoid becoming complicit in the killing, the wounding and the maiming, and the robbing of Palestinians. Faced with all this and more, Palestinians are calling on all people to support their struggle for their basic rights. |
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| The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which launched the Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign, adopts the Petition Issued by Israeli Academics |
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This important petition (below) issued by Israeli academics provides further support for PACBI's consistent denunciation of the Israeli academy for its complicity in the system of oppression against Palestinians and its silence about the long-standing violation of the basic freedoms — including the academic freedom — of Palestinians.
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| Living in a Hostile Environment |
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What about the boycott of Israeli academics? If an individual endorses the proposal for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, then he/she expresses a view which is misguided and, to many of us, deeply unpleasant. This does not suffice to place it in the category of harassment. However, if someone denies access to academic forums to Israelis simply because they live and work in Israel, or have Israeli citizenship, then they are not only generating a hostile environment. They are engaging in racist (in the extended sense of nationality-based) discrimination.
It is worth recalling a relevant incident in this context. In 2002 Mona Baker, then a lecturer in translation studies at UMIST, dismissed two Israelis from editorial boards of journals which she owns and publishes, because of her objections to Israeli Government policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. This was an act of blatant discrimination. |
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| Latest Call For Academic Boycott of Israel a 'Cynical And Perverse Violation' |
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| This reintroduction of the call for an academic boycott of Israel by the UCU is a cynical and perverse violation of academic freedom and anti-discrimination principles. Four years after the first such academic boycott resolution, it is clear the UCU's anti-Israel activists remain as determined as ever to demonize everything and everyone Israeli, while shunning constructive measures to promote Israeli-Palestinian academic partnerships. |
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| On Wednesday, British UCU Congress debates academic boycott of Israel to demand of Jewish and Israeli academics that they explain their politics as a pre-condition to normal academic contact
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The motion asks colleagues “to consider the moral and political
implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating”. If Jewish and Israeli academics support the Palestinian point of view they will be protected from further action, if they are against it or non-committal then they maybe considered unsuitable for continued association.
It beggars belief that such a blatant “McCarthyite” demand which clearly is discriminatory and antisemitic and is also in clear violation of the UK Race Relations act is allowed to be published and debated by a union that prides itself on supporting academic freedom, and according to its rules “equality for all” and actively opposes “all forms of harassment, prejudice and unfair discrimination.” |
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| The Palestinian campaign behind the academic boycott against Israel
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| For the past few years student and academic groups in North America and Europe have been openly campaigning for the boycott of Israeli academia. Some actions produced results (even if not long lasting) and some were unsuccessful. It is important for us working towards the defense of Palestinians' human rights to learn from these experiences so we may meet our goals in the future. One thing is clear, the stakes are very high and all the major Zionist organizations are responding accordingly. |
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| The Academic Boycott of Israel is back in the UK |
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27 March 2008
Last Friday at their meeting the UCU national executive committee voted in favour of a boycott motion aimed at Israeli academic Institutions which will be discussed at the UCU annual congress at the end of May. |
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| Britain :Update on the University College Union and the academic boycott discussion |
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| 'We should be very clear that the legal advice only specified that organising a boycott of Israeli academic institutions and using union finances or other resources to consult members on a boycott was not legal.' It calls on branches and local associations to 'organise meetings on Palestine calling for direct solidarity with Palestinian educational unions and institutions as soon as possible'. |
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| The Return of the British Boycott Against Israel
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Two weeks after the British Association of University Teachers announced that it was stopping its efforts to impose an academic boycott against Israel for legal reasons, the sponsors of the boycott announced that they were renewing their efforts to impose it.
The leaders of the campaign to boycott Israel met yesterday in London at an event that drew some 150 people, mainly senior lecturers from universities across the UK. Among the speakers were also a number of Israelis, such as Dr. Oren Ben-Dor from Southampton University, Professor Ilan Pappe from Exeter University and Professor Haim Bereshit from the East London University |
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| Israel boycott illegal and cannot be implemented UCU tells members. 28 September 2007 |
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| UCU announced today that, after seeking legal advice, an academic boycott of Israel would be unlawful and cannot be implemented. |
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| New pariah on the block |
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The campaign for sanctions against Israel is growing. But it faces resistance and is less effective than it looks
FOR once, Israel's critics and cheerleaders agree on something: the Jewish state risks greater international isolation. Pro-Israel groups such as NGO Monitor and the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs say a new assault is on the way. In the other camp, Shir Hever of the Alternative Information Centre, an Israeli-Palestinian activist group in Jerusalem, says that advocating a boycott is no longer always treated as anti-Semitism. Both sides have a motive to exaggerate such claims. But “boycotts, divestments and sanctions” (known in the activist world as “BDS”) do seem to be growing. |
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| The Case for Academic Boycott against Israel / by: AIC
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The Case for Academic Boycott against Israel is an initial compilation of facts documenting the discriminatory practices implemented by the Israeli academic system, as well as this system’s active and ongoing involvement in the occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Through this document, the Alternative Information Center (AIC) aims to support the Palestinian and international academic boycott campaigns with concrete facts and details proving that not only have Israeli academic institutions not publicly condemned Israel’s occupation, but that these very institutions are themselves part and parcel of Israel’s colonial system of oppression against the Palestinians. |
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| Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel within San Diego Women's Film Festival |
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My good friend Bassemah Darwish, who is a member of the jury of the San Diego Women's Film Festival sent me the following appeal:
She and fellow jury members, but in particular the Film Festival director, Jennifer Hsu (also a personal friend) are under severe pressure and attack by Israeli lobby groups and supporters in the US because they voted to observe an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel within the festival.
We could help them if we send short letters to the Festival's board of directors (listed below with contact details)
explaining why the Boycott of Israeli films in the festival is justified (give links to supporting documentation) and why they should reconsider their position of firing Jennifer as the Film Festival director.
If anyone of you know Israeli activists who support the Boycott campaign, please pass on this message and ask them to do the same |
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| The Israel-Bashing Club |
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Brussels
"Israel is an apartheid state," was the most often-heard charge, closely followed by calls for a boycott. The West should cut its economic ties with the Jewish state, the speakers urged, and engage the "democratically elected" Islamists now running Gaza.
No, this was not a Hamas rally somewhere in the Palestinian territories. This was Brussels, where the European Parliament last week played host to the "United Nations International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace. |
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| 'UK, US academic cooperation in jeopardy' |
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| A leading British academic and member of the University and College Union warned over the weekend that the UCU's call for an academic boycott of Israel could seriously damage working relationships between UK and US universities and colleges. |
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| Ilan Pappe in 'Israel boycott campaign momentum grows' |
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In response to Avnery's claims that the Israeli population would not be moved to reconsider the basic premise of Zionism by a worldwide boycott, Pappe argues a boycott "will not change this position in a day, but will send a clear message to this public that these positions are racist and unacceptable in the 21st century ... They would have to choose."
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| The ivory tower behind the Apartheid Wall |
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| In the last few weeks, university presidents across the US and Canada have rushed to issue statements about the proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions by the British University and College Union. They view this boycott as a serious violation of academic freedom. Yet, given the general failure of these leaders to comment on any number of infringements of academic freedom that have occurred in recent years, including those close to home in the form of the politically-motivated denial of tenure to Norman Finkelstein and the colleague, Mehrene Larudee, who very publicly supported him, the harassment of Columbia University professors Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi, and the intimidation of faculty by Campuswatch, one might be excused for concluding that university presidents prefer to remain above the political fray and reserve their office for grave and important but non-controversial pronouncements on tsunamis. But now, even in the midst of the hot and hazy summer recess, university presidents have mobilized their most imposing academic rhetoric in expressing solidarity with Israeli academics and upholding the rights of all to engage in "an open exchange of ideas" and "freedom of association." |
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| US Congress berates British academics' Israel boycott |
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US lawmakers Wednesday slammed a boycott of Israeli universities promoted by pro-Palestinian British academics as an anti-Semitic step that would undermine Middle East peace efforts.
In a unanimous voice vote, the House of Representatives passed a resolution attacking the boycott call from the leadership of the University and College Union (UCU), Britain's largest trade union for academics |
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| Howard Jacobson: Those who boycott Israeli universities are doing intellectual violence - to themselves
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| No longer to listen is no longer to engage in the dialogue of thought. It disqualifies you as a scholar |
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| An Academic Hijacking |
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| Many of the academics who have been pushing the boycott most energetically are members of hard-left socialist-worker groups. These radicals devote more time and energy to international issues than to the domestic welfare of their own members, who have suffered a serious decline in salary and working conditions. Their pet peeve, sometimes it appears their only peeve, is the Israeli occupation -- not of the West Bank and, before its return, of Gaza but rather of all of Palestine, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. These are not advocates of the two-state solution, but of a one-state dissolution of Israel, with the resulting state being controlled by Hamas. |
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| We're Not Doing Enough To Combat Our Adversaries
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| Meanwhile, Brandeis, the "Jewish" university, gave Jimmy Carter a stand-alone platform to spout his anti-Israel views. And then there's the Forward - a Jewish newspaper that has previously honored me and in whose pages my work has appeared - which covered the latest British attempt to boycott Israeli academics mainly by focusing on the allegations of one Israeli-American academic, Dr. Yigal Arens, a professor of computer science who insists that he has been "boycotted" - disinvited to a conference at Ben Gurion University because of his anti-Israeli politics. This is passing strange since so many Israeli academics are themselves left wing and specialize in criticizing Israel. |
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| Britain's Anti-Israel Blacklist
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| The British boycotters may be frustrated that Israeli academics have not been influenced by their own government’s oppressive actions, but the same cannot be said of students at al-Najah University, for example, who fondly remembered the outbreak of the Intifada by constructing a macabre attraction called "The Sbarro Cafe Exhibition," named for the location of a 2001 suicide bombing of a Jerusalem pizza parlor where 15 Jews were murdered and dozens more wounded. Created not as a memorial but as an inspiration for further terror-laden savagery, the diorama included scattered pizza slices amid Israeli body parts, splattered blood, calls to martyrdom with Koran and Kalashnikovs close by, and, beaming out of a loudspeaker behind a mannequin version of an Orthodox Jew, the inspiring take on an oft-repeated Islamic exhortation: "O believer, there is a Jewish man behind me. Come and kill him." |
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| Deja vu - NAIVE ACADEMIC BOYCOTTERS VS. RUTHLESS OPPONENTS |
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| Of course, this inconvenient truth is not part of the Palestinian script of What Really Happened in the Middle East, and it is that script that the Economist writers want the boycotters to rewrite with the help of boycott opponent Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestinian president of Al-Quds University in east Jerusalem which hosts branches of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror organizations throughout Gaza and the West Bank. Perhaps together they can come up with a less blatantly anti-Semitic strategy which would not endanger important British academic and commercial interests. "When confronted with such unreasonable, aggressive, prickly Jews," the Economist seems to be saying, "one must tread lightly." Is the Economist following a familiar Anti-Semitic script? I think so. |
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| UK trade union backs total boycott of Israel |
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The UK's largest trade union, UNISON, advocated on Wednesday a total boycott of Israel over its continued occupation of Palestinian territories.
A statement issued by delegates meeting in Brighton read: "The conference believes that ending the occupation demands concerted and sustained pressure upon Israel including an economic, cultural, academic and sporting boycott".
In addition, delegates called on the British government to press for an arms embargo against Israel. |
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| 51 Nobel Prize laureates against British boycott |
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| Petition led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel calls boycott 'shameful', says it encourages extremists, glorifies prejudices; Wiesel says more signatures to come. Israeli Foreign Ministry to distribute petition to offices around the world |
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| Israeli citizens who support UNISON’s boycott of Israel proposal |
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| We are a group of Israeli citizens who support UNISON’s boycott of Israel proposal. We are sending you a letter we wrote in support of the proposal. We circulated the letter among our networks and in a few days gathered 86 signatures of Israeli citizens. We decided to stop gathering more signatures and to send you the letter today so that you will have time to circulate the letter among your constituents before your June 19th meeting. We wish you well in your efforts, and thank you very much for taking action to try to bring the Israeli occupation to an end. We hope to keep in touch and we would be very happy to cooperate further with you on this matter. |
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| The JC identifies the key players in the escalating British campaign to boycott Israel |
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Israeli Haim Bresheeth, professor of media and culture at the University of East London, seconded the UCU motion, which called for consideration of the morality of ties with Israeli academia and for discussions on boycotting.
Prof Bresheeth told the JC that a boycott was not an easy decision. “I am Jewish and an Israeli, and I don’t wish harm on either side. But how long can this occupation go on?”
Characterising opposition to a boycott as insincere, he added : “What we are asking for is not violent. It is civil action against a military occupation.” |
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| Statement of Columbia University's President on the British Boycott |
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| At Columbia I am proud to say that we embrace Israeli scholars and universities that the UCU is now all too eager to isolate -- as we embrace scholars from many countries regardless of divergent views on their governments' policies. Therefore, if the British UCU is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy, then it should add Columbia to its boycott list, for we do not intend to draw distinctions between our mission and that of the universities you are seeking to punish. Boycott us, then, for we gladly stand together with our many colleagues in British, American and Israeli universities against such intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central mission of higher education |
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| The British call for boycott provoked the threat of legal action and counter-boycotts |
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Alan Dershowitz, the prominent lawyer and Harvard law professor, says he has mustered a team of 100 high-profile lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic to "devastate and bankrupt" anyone acting against Israeli universities.
"If the union goes ahead with this immoral petition, it will destroy British academia," Dershowitz told the Guardian last night. "We will isolate them from the rest of the world. They will end up being the objects of the boycott because we will get tens of thousands of the most prominent academics from around the world to refuse to cooperate and refuse to participate in any events from which Israeli academics are excluded. It will totally backfire." |
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| Boycott backlash begins |
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| UK academics faced an unprecedented backlash this week as a threatened boycott of Israeli universities raised the spectre of international sanctions against British goods and research |
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| To the UCU members - A day in the life of Hebrew U' |
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| Part of the motion called for a UK wide campus tour for Palestinian academics. Maybe on the basis of fair-mindedness the members of the UCU should spend a day at the cafeteria of the Hebrew University and try to come to grips with what it must be like to live under the constant threat of Palestinian terrorism, which not only ended nine lives that day, but has killed over 1000 Israelis in more than 25,000 attacks. It seems almost unbelievable that people who claim to be "academics" can totally ignore these indesputable facts and at the same time belittle themselves, by revering people who have made terrorism a way of life. |
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| Boycott a blessing in disguise |
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I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate some overjoyed far-left Israeli academicians, headed by Professor Moshe Zimmerman, Dr. Ilan Pappe, and their colleagues: Congratulations, dear colleagues, you succeeded big time.
You managed to make the world hate us, you managed to completely twist the truth regarding our difficult battle with Palestinian murderers, and you managed to find a scapegoat for a world that sees fit to ignore the genocide in Darfur, the cutting off of hands in Saudi Arabia, and executions in the Palestinian Authority. Perhaps now you will even get a tempting offer from a leading Islamic college. When we have the opportunity, I'll be glad to meet with you for a talk regarding freedom of speech, its boundaries, and manner of enforcing it. |
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| The Beneficial Side of the British Boycott |
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So to help these British boycotters, I have prepared a list of Israeli academics whom they can immediately begin boycotting:
Ilan Pappe (University of Haifa), Neve Gordon (Ben Gurion University), Oren Yiftachel (Ben Gurion University), David Newman (Ben Gurion University), Avraham Oz (University of Haifa), Anat Matar (Tel Aviv University), Anat Biletzki (Tel Aviv University), Ran HaCohen (Tel Aviv University), Moshe Zimmerman (Hebrew University), Yuval Yonay (University of Haifa), Yoav Peled (Tel Aviv University), Shlomo Sand (Tel Aviv University), Lev Grinberg (Ben Gurion University), Colman Altman (Technion, emeritus), Jacob Katriel (Technion), Ron Kuzar (University of Haifa), Yehuda Shenhav (Tel Aviv University), Kobi Snitz (Bar Ilan University), Menachem Klein (Bar Ilan University), Dan Rabinowitz (Tel Aviv University), Uri Ram (Ben Gurion University) |
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| A repugnant proposal / by Michael Yudkin and Denis Noble |
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| The boycott motion at the UCU makes a feeble gesture towards such an explanation by alleging "complicity" of Israeli academia in the occupation of the West Bank. In fact there is widespread opposition to the occupation amongst Israeli academics. Have a look (via Google) at the work of Neve Gordon, Lev Grinberg, Menachem Klein, Adi Ophir, Ilan Pappe, Yoav Peled, Dan Rabinowitz, Uri Ram, Yehouda Shenhav or Oren Yiftachel. Academics are prominent in all the major anti-occupation organisations. At last count 358 members of the faculties of Israeli universities had signed a petition on-line stating: "We wish to express our appreciation and support for those of our students and lecturers who refuse to serve as soldiers in the occupied territories." |
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| Support the Boycott! End the Occupation!
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We, Israeli professors for justice and peace, do hereby appeal to researchers, academics, scholars, and teachers in Israel and throughout the world to take a firm and clear stand against continuing occupation and denial of rights. We are of course referring to the continuing occupation of territories by Britain in which Britain clearly has no right to be. We demand that all British universities be boycotted and all academics at those
universities be boycotted until these same people and institutions come out clearly and openly in favor of immediate unconditional removal of all British occupation from these territories. We demand a moratorium on all funding of academic research in Britain by sources for funding everywhere and divestment from Britain in all its forms. |
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| British UCU congress voted this afternoon in favour of boycott |
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Delegates at the inaugural UCU congress voted this afternoon in favour of a motion calling for 'the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches for information and discussion'.
The delegates earlier overwhelmingly (just one vote against) voted to accept the recommendations of a report from a body set up in the fallout of the 2005 decision by AUT to impose an academic boycott of Israel |
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| Israel boycott launch in London falls flat |
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| However, pro-Israel groups doubted the call for a boycott would have much impact, particularly because of the increasing desire by British academics to work with outstanding Israeli universities. |
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| British Journalism v. Israel |
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| The National Union of Journalists (NUJ)—Britain’s main professional association of journalists and reporters—recently joined an international boycott of Israeli goods. |
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| Israeli academics off to U.K. to battle boycott bid
04/05/2007 |
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A delegation of Israeli academics will head to the U.K. later this month in a bid to fight a proposed boycott of Israeli universities by British academics.
Seven academics from six Israeli universities plan to meet with members of the 120,000-strong union ahead of its vote to boycott Israeli academic institutions at its annual congress in Bournemouth at the end of the month. The three-day congress is the first for the newly-formed University and College Union, a merger of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE).
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| Is an academic boycott of Israel justified? - By Michael Yudkin |
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The principle of the Universality of Science and Learning – that academics do not discriminate against colleagues on the basis of factors that are irrelevant to their academic work (such as race, religion, nationality etc.) – is well established and almost universally respected. To boycott academics by reason of their country of residence breaches this principle and harms the interests of the academics concerned. Two kinds of argument speak in favour of maintaining the principle of the Universality of Science and Learning: 1) that undesirable consequences would flow from violating it, and 2) that to harm people who are innocent of wrongdoing is morally unacceptable. Those who wish to boycott Israeli academics attempt to defeat the second type of argument by claiming that these academics are complicit in discrimination against the Arab minority in Israel or the occupation of the West Bank, and/or that Israeli universities suppress dissenting voices. Analysis of these claims shows that they are without serious substance.
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| The Upside-Down, Inside-Out World Of Israel Bashers |
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In case you missed it, college campuses in the United States, Canada and Britain recently hosted an “Israeli Apartheid Week,” during which prominent scholars and artists all got together to agree about the State of Israel’s beastliness.
That such nonsense is presented at places like Hunter College in New York City, the University of Toronto, and even at supposedly more illustrious venues such as Oxford and Cambridge is hardly shocking.
What is curious is the unprecedented growth of Israel-bashing in recent years – not merely at universities – and the increasing role of Jewish opponents of Israel in these events. |
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| Israeli Apartheid Week Comes to California
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| universities, a series of events staged by anti-Israel activists to equate the Jewish state with the racist regime of apartheid-era South Africa. Evidently, however, one week was not enough, and the campaign of demonization has now stretched into a third week, with California campuses the current location |
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| SOAS Palestine Society Presents: Israeli Apartheid Week
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De-Arabization of Land and De-Arabization of Jews.
Speaker: Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin
Professor of History, Ben Gurion University
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| More Israeli academics participating "Israeli Apartheid Week" |
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The 3rd annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) will take place in New York City from February 10-17 2007. It will be a week-long series of events organized by a coalition of different groups in the city and will feature lectures, film screenings, and cultural activities. Concurrent events are being held in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Participants:
TANYA REINHART, Emeritus, Tel Aviv University
GABI PITERBERG, Department of History, UCLA
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| University campuses in UK, USA and Canada launch Israeli Apartheid Week
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| Canadian teachers reject anti-Israel motion |
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| We must speak out - By John Berger |
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| Nurit Peled-Elhanan and Haim Bresheeth signed the Palestinian Filmmakers, Artists and Cultural Workers Call for a Cultural Boycott of Israel |
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We, the undersigned Palestinian filmmakers and artists, appeal to all artists and filmmakers of good conscience around the world to cancel all exhibitions and other cultural events that are scheduled to occur in Israel, to mobilize immediately and not allow the continuation of the Israeli offensive to breed complacency. Like the boycott of South African art institutions during apartheid, cultural workers must speak out against the current Israeli war crimes and atrocities.
We call upon the International community to join us in the boycott of Israeli film festivals, Israeli public venues, and Israeli institutions supported by the government, and to end all cooperation with these cultural and artistic institutions that to date have refused to take a stand against the Occupation, the root cause for this colonial conflict.
236.Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Israel
255.Prof. Haim Bresheeth, UK
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| The European Commission Rejects Boycott Proposed by Irish Academics |
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| British 'silently boycott' Israeli academics |
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The International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom warns against a “silent boycott” in Britain against Israeli institutes of higher education.
The council said that Israeli researchers wishing to publish articles in Britain were asked to remove the name of which ever Israeli academic institute they belonged to as a condition for publishing their articles.
The latest “unofficial boycott” was initiated by the “Bibliography of Translation Studies" journal, owned by a British publishing house headed by Mona Baker, a supporter of the academic boycott on Israel. |
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| US teachers condemn Israeli boycott call |
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| The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is calling on Irish academics to oppose demands to boycott Israel. The union, which represents 1.3 million members across the US, sent a letter to four Irish teachers and academics unions, urging them to oppose the boycott which has been proposed by several Irish academics in recent weeks. |
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| Irish call to ban Israeli academia condemned |
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"The Irish government does not support any move to isolate Israel or Israeli institutions," a spokesperson for the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv told Anglo File. "Our aim is always to come to a maximum possible inclusive dialogue. We want to find a true solution to the situation and closing off dialogue would be counterproductive."
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| Oslo, Norway: University employees criticize Israel
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- I think it's cowardly of the UiO to not take a stand in the Middle East debate, but I'm not surprised, says Kaveh Ataei, chairman of Blindern SV.
Ataei wants the University board to discuss the possibility of an academic boycott of Israel. |
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| Boycott of Israel |
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Amongst the signatories:
Dr Meir Amor
Prof Hagit Borer
Tzvi Cohen
Neta Golan
Irit Katriel
Prof Moshe Machover
Dr Anat Matar
Yael Oren Kahn
Prof Tanya Reinhart
Inbar Tamari
Tirtza Tauber
Benjamin Zephaniah
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| Irish academics call on EU to stop funding Israeli academic institutions |
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In a letter published in the Irish Times today, (see below) 61 Irish academics from a wide variety of disciplines call for a moratorium on EU support of Israeli academic institutions until Israel abides by UN resolutions and ends the occupation of Palestinian territories.
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| Support for Sanctions from Israelis
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The following letter of support was issued in response to the resolution passed on May 27 by the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
"CUPE Ontario will, with Palestine solidarity and human rights organizations, develop an education campaign about the apartheid nature of the Israeli state and the political and economic support of Canada for these practices; Support the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law including the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194; Call on CUPE National to commit to research into Canadian involvement in the occupation and call on the CLC [Canadian Labour Congress] to join us in lobbying against the apartheid-like practices of the Israeli state and call for the immediate dismantling of the wall."
Signatories as of July 3, 2006 (out of over 100) include Jonathan
Amitay; Steve Amsel; Haim Baram; Hanna Braun; Ehud Ein-Gil; Prof. Emmanuel Farjoun; Dror Feiler, musician, artist; Pnina Feiler; Neta Golan; Jeff Halper; Matan Kaminer; Teddy Katz; Adam Keller; Hava Keller; Moshe Machover; Dorothy Naor; Israel Naor; Susan Nathan, author; Rabbi Baruch Rabinowitz; Elena Wesley; Sergio Yahni; Rabbi Moshe Yehudai; Beate Zilversmidt. |
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| Israeli Academics Support Candian Boycott |
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As Israelis we express our support of the CUPE boycott of Israel, honor your courageous initiative, and fervently hope that it will set an example for many others to follow.
Jeff Halper, a retired professor at Ben Gurion University
Ofer Neiman, The Institute of Computer Science, The Hebrew University
Sergeiy Sandler, University Instructor, Beer-Sheva
Prof. Tanya Reinhart, Linguistics, Media and cultural studies Tel Aviv University
Elat Benda The Department of Philosophy Tel Aviv University
Prof. Yehuda Kupferman, Department of French, Tel-Aviv University
Haggai Katriel, Mathematics Department, The Hebrew University
Roman Vater, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Rachel Giora, Department of Linguistics Tel Aviv University
Michal Peled Ginsburg, Professor of French and Comparative Literatures, Northwestern University
Kobi Snitz Postdoc Ben Gurion University, Mathematics Department visitor at University of Maryland, Mathematics Department
Prof. Moshe Machover, Philosophy Department, University of London
Dr. Amos Goldberg, The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew University
Michal Schwartz, Professor of Neuroimmunology, Weizmann Institute
Nomi Shir, Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, Ben Gurion University
Uri Katz, Department of biology, Technion
Anat Matar. Philosophy Department Tel Aviv University
Amir Orian, Visiting scientist from Technion at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Veronika Cohen, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance
Victoria Buch, The Fritz Haber Center & Department of Physical Chemistry, Hebrew University
Dr. Ruchama Marton, Tel Aviv University Medical School Institute for Psychotherapy
Dr. Diana Dolev. teaches at two schools of design in Israel Her PhD dissertation analyzed the militarization of the Mt. Scopus campus of the Hebrew University
Zalman Amit, a retired Concordia psychology professor |
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| Spreading Hate, Destruction & Terrorism.
The U.N.-NGO cadre.
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But there is a much darker side to the U.N.-NGO nexus than the rise of these obvious interlopers in NGO circles. It is the large number of NGOs that have been empowered by U.N.-accreditation to spread anti-Semitism, hate, and encourage terrorism from a U.N. platform. The call for boycotts and sanctions against Israel is a central plank of this campaign.
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| UK ban of Israeli academics lifted
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| A boycott of Israeli academics declared by a UK teachers' union in May was cancelled on Sunday after the union's merger with a lager body whose delegates oppose the motion. |
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| Thousands of academics oppose boycott of Israel
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| Today's Guardian carries a letter from up to 600 academics who, although condemning "Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza", oppose a boycott. It reads: "We oppose the inconsistency of blacklisting Israelis but adopting a different attitude to academics in the ... long list of other states that are responsible for equal or worse human rights abuses ... Natfhe and AUT are currently involved in a bitter dispute with university managements over pay. This boycott proposal degrades our unity at a moment when academics need to stand together." |
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| US lobby group enters Israeli academic boycott row
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A powerful American civil liberties group has called on US academics to boycott British lecturers who boycott Israeli universities.
In a backlash following this week's vote by the lecturers' union Natfhe to boycott Israeli academia, the Anti-Defamation League urged American universities and grant-giving bodies to "cut funding, support and contact with any academic who advocates a boycott of Israel."
The organisation's national director, Abraham Foxman, said in a statement: "Those who seek to damage and discredit their Israeli colleagues with a blacklist must know that there is a price to pay."
Meanwhile Anthony Julius, famous for his representation of Princess Diana and the successful defence of Deborah Lipstadt against David Irving, is acting as solicitor for the boycott's opponents in Britain.
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| The Communist connection to NATFE's Boycott
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Tom Hickey, a member of the Socialist Workers Party SWP was the one who proposed the motion.
Delegates also voted to pass a motion noting Respect’s success in the local elections. The motion said that Respect provided an “anti-racist, anti-fascist left alternative culture to New Labour and the BNP”.
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| Ontario boycotts Israel |
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| The Ontario division of Canada's largest union has voted to support an international campaign that is boycotting Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. |
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| Is Natfhe against Scientific Progress ?
by Professor Zvi Ziegler
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We may consider the repercussions and implications of this kind of boycott. Boycotters, who by their action demonstrate disregard for the principles guiding the scientific community, might be boycotted , and the process can get out of control, with many losers, and no winners.
To quote a prominent British Scientist , a Fellow of the Royal Society, Prof. Peter Kennedy, "the proposed motion is unethical, unfair, inappropriate and just plain wrong" .
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| Academic boycott debate returns to UK, Jerusalem Post |
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| Information from "The Academic Friends of Israel" which follows and acts against the boycott within the U.K |
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| this NATFHE motion 198C calling for a “personal boycott” should be withdrawn because it is inaccurate, dishonest, and in conflict with NATFHE's constitution by specifically advocating discrimination of one nation: Israel. |
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| New U.K. bid to boycott Israeli universities, profs |
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"The largest university and college lecturers union in Britain is likely to decide shortly to recommend that its 67,000 members boycott Israeli lecturers and academic institutions that do not publicly declare their opposition to Israeli policy in the territories.
The boycott motion, which was drafted by the southeast region of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), will be brought to a vote at its annual national conference, which will be held May 27-29. It comes about a year after the last boycott by British lecturers..."
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| Toronto, Canada: ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK Monday, February 13 2006: Professor Uri Davis (Founder of Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine)
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The Arab Students’ collective is holding its second Israeli Apartheid Week from February 12th 18th in order to develop the understanding of Israel as an apartheid state and to build a boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israeli apartheid. The Israeli apartheid regime continues to deny
Palestinian refugees to return to their stolen lands; continues to
systematically discri minate against its Palestinian citizens, continues to entrench the walls dividing the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza into open air prison Bantustans, and continues to imprison over 8000 Palestinians at any time. The Palestinian people have continued to resist apartheid, and it is time for people in Canada and all over the world to stand with them. |
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| About Eyal Weizman, the Technion, Haifa: "Architects threaten to boycott Israel over 'apartheid' barrier" |
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| Eyal Weizman, the Israeli director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmith's College in London, urged action. "A boycott would be totally legitimate," he said. "The wall and the settlements have been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice and we should boycott any company which does business, any architects that participate - anyone facilitating these human rights violations and war crimes." |
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| Ford Foundation Will Pay for Parley Of Anti-Israel Scholars at Lake Como |
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Ford Foundation is paying for at least eight scholars who favored a boycott of Israeli academics to attend a conference scheduled for Monday at a villa on the shore of Lake Como in Italy.
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| Delay Sought Of Parley Seen As Anti-Israel |
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| Three major New York-based foundations sponsoring an academic conference in Italy that was scheduled to begin Monday are now calling for its postponement after the conference came under criticism as a forum for critics of Israel and after one of the articles circulated in advance of the meeting was found to have been what executives of two of the foundations called "an anti-Semitic paper by a Holocaust denier." |
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| Ford Foundation Funds Anti-Israel Event |
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The Ford Foundation is paying to send at least eight anti-Israeli scholars to a conference at an Italian villa.
A total of 21 scholars will meet in the villa in Bellagio, on the banks of Lake Como, to discuss academic boycotts and their relation to academic freedom.
More than a third of the participants publicly support boycotts of Israeli universities out of opposition to the Jewish state, according to the New York Sun.
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| The Palestinian Call for Academic Boycott Revised |
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| We, Palestinian academics and intellectuals, call upon our colleagues in the international community to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid |
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| A very important conference: Academic Freedom
& the Politics of Boycotts, January 25th-26th, Bar Ilan University |
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Bar-Ilan to Host International Conference Analyzing Academic Boycott Attempts.
International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom Conference will Discuss Academic Freedom and the Politics of Boycotts
Following the successful campaign to persuade the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) to rescind its proposed boycott of Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities, Prof. Yosi Yeshurun, Rector of BIU and Chair of the IAB (International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom), has scheduled an international conference on Academic Freedom and the Politics of Boycotts.
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| Israel boycott feud resurfaces |
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| The British Committee for Universities of Palestine (Bricup), the pro-boycott organisation, is relaunching its campaign with a campus tour of public meetings involving speakers from Palestinian universities. The aim is to put the boycott back on the agenda by presenting the reality of living under the occupation, says Hilary Rose, one of the architects of the academic boycott and a founder of Bricup. |
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| Yehudit Har'el from the Hebrew University, Ilan Pappe from Haifa University and Yoav Peled from Tel Aviv University |
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| On July 19, 2005 took place at the Left Bank Club (Hagada Hasmalit) in Tel Aviv an open discussion on the issue of boycotts and sanctions against the Israeli occupation policy. The idea was to have an initial discussion of Israeli peace activists and peace groups on this issue, which is already the subject of sanctions campaigns held by various organizations around the world |
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| Palestine: Letter to AUT delegates |
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| Prof. Avraham Oz says: “ the repressive policies of my country against the Palestinian population, especially in the territories occupied in 1967, is appalling, racist, sometimes horrifying in its cruelty, and often having crossed the boundaries of war crimes....” |
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| European Jews for a Just Peace call upon Israeli academics to boycott |
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European Jews for a Just Peace, being a part of the international solidarity movement supporting the human and political rights of Israelis and Palestinians alike, calls upon Israeli academics to boycott the continuing presence of the Israeli army on Palestinian territory.
Academic freedom is indivisible. Yet for Palestinians the right of access to education at any level, let alone to freedom of speech at the highest level, is denied by Israeli authorities.
The signatories include:
3. Jacob Katriel, Professor Emeritus, Technion, Haifa, Israel
6. Mona Baker, Bir Zeit University, Israel
15. Dr. Anat Matar, Dept. of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University, Israel
37. Micah Leshem PhD, Psychology Department, University of Haifa, Israel
38. Dr. Michael Dahan, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
39. Prof. Michael Saltman, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Haifa, Israel
40. Dr. Irit Katriel, University of Aarhus, Denmark (Israeli citizen).
41. Dr. Yehiam Soreq, Beit-Berl college, Israel
37. Micah Leshem PhD, Psychology Department, University of Haifa, Israel
38. Dr. Michael Dahan, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
39. Prof. Michael Saltman, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Haifa, Israel
40. Dr. Irit Katriel, University of Aarhus, Denmark (Israeli citizen).
41. Dr. Yehiam Soreq, Beit-Berl college, Israel
51. Prof. Hanan Frenk, Dept. of Psychology, Tel Aviv University and Head of the School of Behavioral Sciences, The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
52. Professor Uri Hadar, Department of Psychology, Tel A viv University, Israel
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| The United Church of Christ to consider Israeli divestment |
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The United Church of Christ (UCC) will vote in July whether to pull the church’s investment money from U.S. companies involved in building Israeli settlements and security activities in Palestinian territories.
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| in a letter to the Editor, the Independent News paper / by DR OREN BEN-DOR, SCHOOL OF LAW UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
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| Sir: At its meeting on 26 May the AUT should extend its boycott to include all Israeli universities. These universities persistently marginalise the debate about Zionist crimes, by denying sufficient resources and opportunities for it to enter the public discourse in Israel. A proper academic platform would enable debating the monopoly that the Shoah (Hebrew, "catastrophe") has had on memory in Israel, thus leaving no room for the Palestinian catastrophe, the displacement of 750,000 people by Zionism's creation of the state. |
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| [alef] British group cancels boycott of two Israeli universities / Lev Grinberg
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| I must say that despite the fact that I am aginst the boycot (sic) I am very sad of the AUT cancellation. I am sad mainly for our Palestinian colleagues that were encouraged by the boycot (sic) and now they must be strongly discouraged. However more than sad I am also very upset with all my "poltical friends" that supported the boycot (sic) without taking in consideration the demages it will cause. Now the situation is even worst than before the AUT desicion, but this probable outcome was clear from the begining. The AUT Boycot (sic) desicion was an expression of our impotence and incapacity the design effective strategies of resistance against the Busharon Axis of Evil. |
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| Israeli boycotts revoked - AUT statement |
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After a lengthy debate involving deeply held views on both sides of the argument, AUT’s special council has today voted to revoke all existing boycotts of Israeli institutions.
AUT council has decided to base its policy on providing practical solidarity to Palestinian and Israeli trade unionists and academics, by agreeing a motion committing the union to having a full review of international policy, working alongside NATFHE and the TUC.
UK higher education has a long and proud tradition of defending academic freedom. The struggle to maintain academic freedom whenever it is under threat is one that AUT will always support and this principle will continue to guide our work.
Sally Hunt, AUT general secretary, said: 'It is now time to build bridges between those with opposing views here in the UK and to commit to supporting trade unionists in Israel and Palestine working for peace.' |
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| Bar-Ilan Fights for Academic Freedom in Response to the AUT's Decision to Boycott Bar-Ilan and Haifa Universities |
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| The International Advisory Board (IAB) for Academic Freedom will undertake actions and steps to guarantee freedom of thought and expression in Bar-Ilan, as well as of other Israeli and non-Israeli institutions of higher education. |
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| Joint HU-Al Quds U. statement to counter British boycott |
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| Cognizant of the moral leadership universities should provide, especially in already turbulent political contexts, we, the President of Al-Quds University and the President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, have agreed to insist on continuing to work together in the pursuit of knowledge, for the benefit of our peoples and the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East. |
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| Mishcon de Reya to AUT |
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We act for the following AUT members: Professor Terence Kavanagh, Dr Jonathan G. Campbell, Professor Geoffrey Alderman, Professor John Charap, Professor Ian Reid and Dr Eric Heinze.
Our clients' require the AUT to acknowledge the resolutions' invalidity, confirm that no implementation instruction will be issued, and provide the appropriate assurances in relation to the expenditure of AUT funds.
The resolutions are a threat to the AUT's integrity, as well as to the cause of academic freedom. Our clients are prepared to take the steps necessary to ensure that the threat does not become a reality.
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| Soas faces action over alleged anti-semitism |
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Grounds for suit: A row over a conference held at the college about the academic boycott of Israel titled Resisting Israeli Apartheid.
An article in the student magazine Spirit which said: "Those who benefit from the immoral actions of a colonial state in which they have chosen to reside cannot be considered as innocent".
The union's banning of Roey Gilad, an Israeli embassy representative, because of their policy which equates Zionism with racism. Professor Bundy overturned the ban.
...· Gilad Atzmon, a pro-Palestinian activist and musician, who gave a talk to students this month, arguing: "I'm not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act".
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| Legal warnings over Israeli boycott
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The Guardian has reported increasing concerns about
the legality of a boycott against academics working in
Israeli universities.
Before Friday's vote, Steve Miller, the deputy
vice-chancellor of City University, said there could
be problems for any academic who followed the boycott.
"I would have thought that any academic treated
differently on the ground of race would be in breach
of their university's equal opportunities policy," he
said. "I believe that for City University treating an
Israeli academic differently on the grounds of their
nationality would be in breach of our policy."
And following the decision on Friday Jocelyn Prudence,
the chief executive of the Universities and Colleges
Employers Association, said that the boycott "would
appear to run contrary to contractual law, race and
religious discrimination law, and academic freedom
obligations, which are built into the contracts of
staff in pre-1992 universities". |
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| Boycott threat to Israeli colleges |
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Jewish groups point out that last December the university played host to a conference entitled 'Resisting Israeli Apartheid', while Gilad Atzmon, a pro-Palestine advocate, gave a talk to students this month, arguing: 'I'm not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act.'
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| Jews resign over 'racism' in the NUS, England |
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| Allegations of anti-Semitism in higher education were brought to the fore this week as three Jewish officers resigned from the National Union of Students and leaders of the faith branded a proposed boycott of three Israeli universities "deplorable". |
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| Lecturers may boycott Israeli academics |
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| Israeli academics who refuse to condemn their government's actions in the occupied territories risk a boycott by the UK's leading lecturers' union. |
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| British Committee for the Universities of Palestine call for Boycott |
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Council resolves:
(i). To call on all AUT members to boycott Bar-Ilan University until it severs all academic links with the College of Judea and Samaria and with any other college located in an illegal settlement in the Occupied Territories.
(ii) That the boycott should take the form described in the Palestinian call for academic boycott of Israeli institutions. |
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| University of Wisconsin Faculty Call for Israel Divestment |
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| The Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville adopted a resolution last week demanding that the University divest from companies that provide the Israeli Army with weapons, equipment, and supporting systems. |
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| The student union at the School of Oriental and African Studies is being accused of censorship after attempting to ban a senior Israeli embassy official from taking part in a debate later this month.
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Ms Meelu confirmed that the union set a policy last November which made the elimination of "foreign occupation, apartheid, [and] Zionism" as a prerequisite for peace a fundamental belief of the union. Hosting an official from the Israeli embassy would compromise this, she said in an email.
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| Cut All US Aid To Israel
Posted on: 11/25/2000 Jewish Intellectuals
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"We Jews, citizens of the state of Israel and of other countries,are sickened that the Barak government would let the war criminal Ariel Sharon enter a Palestinian area and provoke terrible violence.
Unfortunately this just illustrates the determination of the current Israeli government to keep Palestinians permanently separate, unequal, closed up in small territories, and exiled in foreign lands.
We protest the ever escalating violence against Palestinians.
We urge the US Congress to suspend all foreign aid to Israel." |
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| Zionism today is the real enemy of the Jews / Avi Shlaim |
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The obsession is to keep the whole of the Land of Israel in the hands of the Jewish people. This transformed the Zionist movement from a legitimate national liberation movement for the Jews into a colonial power and an oppressor of
the Palestinians.
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| Intelligence squelched - by Melanie Phillips
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In Tuesday evening I had the misfortune to take part in a high-profile and packed debate in London in the 'Intelligence Squared' series. The motion was 'Zionism today is the real enemy of the Jews'.
The fact was that by proposing this motion, Shlaim has associated himself with a statement which -- despite his denials -- singles out the Jews as having no right to their own country, and singles out Israel as the one country in the world whose existence is illegitimate. Zionism is today, as it has always been, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and Israel is its territorial expression. There are many different types of Zionism today, as ever; Sharon's version is but one. The motion condemned Zionism today, full stop. As a result, this debate will be used by the enemies of Israel and of the Jewish people to do them further harm -- and Shlaim, Rose and Hass made that possible.
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| the “3rd International Conference on An End to Occupation, |
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on behalf of a group calling itself the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and endorsed by 60 of the most important academic, cultural, professional and trade unions and associations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza
Oren Yiftachel, Israeli Professor of Political-Geography, Planning and Public Policy at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has built a reputation on exposing the dark side of Israeli urban and regional planning and the politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine. Examples include attempts by the State and its founding elites to simultaneously incorporate and control minority immigrant groups (Mizrahi, Sepharadi Jews) within Israel's nation-building and State-building projects.
Yiftachel spoke of Israeli attempts to legitimize the truth on the ground and of Jewish blindness to their situation. He outlined 10 different types of Israeli citizenship that challenge the notion of Israel being a true democracy where the Ashkenazi Jews are on top. Orthodox Jews are second-class citizens, pseudo-Jews third, the Druze fourth, the Palestine Arab Israeli fifth-class citizens, the Bedouins sixth, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights residents seventh, Palestinians in the West Bank eighth, Gaza residents ninth, and labor migrants tenth on the so-called Israeli scale of citizenship, according to Yiftachel.
TA University professor Anat Biletzki, chair of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem stated that most human rights violations are carried out by Israeli policies and declared the Apartheid Wall to be the icon of the occupation. Ben-Gurion professor Yanni Nevo, also with the Co-existence Forum in the Negev spoke of the horrors of the crop sprayings in the unrecognized villages in the Negev and said that being Jewish and democratic was incompatible.
Nevo described Israel’s “Un-Recognition Policy” whereby the ancestral homeland and ancient villages of the Bedouin population of the Negev are not recognized and neither is their Israeli citizenship. This allows for mass expulsions and rejection of housing permits by the Israeli government so that the activity of demolition squads is justified. As a result basic shelter is denied to a desert population as well as State services such as electricity, water, roads, medical care, telephones and transportation.
“Today, when Bedouins plant crops they are sprayed with Monsanto’s Roundup,” Nevo continued. “And against Monsanto recommendations this involves aerial spraying of crops, livestock, dwellings and people.” Nevo described a policy of ‘Chemical Treatment’ whereby the Bedouins have been dehumanized and treated with chemical aggression so that their land can be Judiazed. Health effects of the utilization of a weed exterminator on the population include birth defects and a variety of cancers such as Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. “This is not only non-democratic,” Nevo asserted, “but immoral experimentation on non-consenting individuals. They are weeding crops to get rid of the population,” Professor Nevo stated.
Yuval Adam, a student activist from Tel-Aviv University and founder of the Student Coalition claimed that in the past apathy reigned on Israeli college campuses but that is starting to change because some members of the student body now understand that remaining silent is to agree with Israeli policies. There is an emerging student movement for peace, he said, but the official response has been police brutality where protesting students are beaten up. Adam’s hope is that students will not be deterred and the movement will grow.
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| Linguists against boycotts / Ron Kuzar |
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Most of us strongly oppose Israel's continued occupation of the
West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. |
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| The 4th International Academic Conference on An End to Occupation, A Just Peace in Israel-Palestine:
January 3rd - 5th, 2005
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| A call for effective international pressure on Israel |
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Attached is an open letter to Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair, calling for effective international pressure on Israel, based on the understanding that Israel has neither the will nor the ability to end the occupation without such pressure.
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| On Dec. 5, some 270 academics from around the world convened in London |
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Israeli professor of history Ilan Pappe called on his academic colleagues to "boycott us." This may seem an odd recommendation coming from an Israeli scholar-indeed, someone likened Pappe's call to a "turkey voting for Christmas"! Pappe explained his action, however, by arguing that change will not come from within, that external pressure is essential for Israel to change. Although Israeli academics may be more liberal than the population at large, Pappe didn't believe that demand for change would come from this quarter. If Israeli academics actively were working for change, he explained, then the boycott might be seen as counterproductive. It was clear from several presentations, however, that Israeli academic institutions are part of
the problem. Support for the boycott also came from a handful of academics in Israel, some Israeli academics working abroad, and a significant number of Jewish academics.
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| Alarm at bid to revive boycott, 03 December 2004
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Dr Paulin was quoted in an Egyptian newspaper in 2002 as saying that "Brooklyn-born" settlers in the Gaza Strip and West Bank were "Nazis and racists" who should be "shot
dead".
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| Israel boycott row hits college. December 4, 2004 |
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London University School of Oriental and African Studies has come under fire for agreeing to host a conference tomorrow at which academics begin a campaign to break links with Israeli universities, significantly increasing an academic boycott of Israel.
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| Conference at Duke University equates Zionism, apartheid - Oct. 17, 2004 |
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A weekend conference urging divestment from Israel was set to wrap up Sunday at Duke University after a series of speakers who equated Zionism with South African apartheid and called for an end to a so-called exclusively Jewish state.
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| Anti-Israel Conference at the University of London
On December 5th 2004 |
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| Ilan Pappe, Israel, University Haifa |
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| An open Letter to Professor Menachem Magidor and the members of Israel's Forum to combat the academic boycott |
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Given the destructive nature of Israeli government action against Palestinian education and academic freedom, and your simultaneous expression of concern for Israeli academic freedom in the face of the boycott, we feel that it is only fair to ask the Israeli academic leadership where it stands on the issue of current Israeli policy as described above, and to share with us what Israeli academic institutions are doing to challenge the behavior of your government.
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| Open Letter from Faculty Members
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"We, faculty members from a number of Israeli universities, wish to express our appreciation and support for those of our students and lecturers who refuse to serve as soldiers in the occupied territories."
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| URGENT APPEAL FOR INTERNATIONAL INVOLVEMENT: |
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The elimination of the Palestinian national presence west of the Jordan River is implicit in the long-term aims of the Israeli right wing
"Millions of Palestinians have been reduced by Israeli government policies to life in fearsome ghettos."
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| Break the Conspiracy of Silence, Act Before it is too Late
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Demand that governments end military assistance to Israel, suspend
economic ties, and support the prosecution of war criminals, and urge
other states to do so. |
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| Academic Boycott |
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We, the undersigned are defenders of Palestinian academic freedom and supporters of the academic boycott against Israel
Yuval Yonay (Haifa U) Bachrach, Riva, Clinical Psychologist, Beit Berl College of Education Dolev, Diana, , Wizo College for Design, Haifa Giora, Rachel, Professor of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University Israel Habib, George, Lecturer, School of medicine, Technion Haifa, Jablonka Eva, Associate Professor, Cohn Institute Israel (TAU?) Kraus, Vered, Professor of Sociology, University of Haifa Rabinowitz, Dan, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
Tanya Reinhart (TAU) Pappe (Haifa U) |
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| Open Letter from Faculty Members endorsing Mutiny and Insurrection by IDF Troops |
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| We hereby express our readiness to do our best to help students who encounter academic, administrative or economic difficulties as a result of their refusal to serve in the territories. We call on the University community at large to support them. |
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| Sabra - Shatila Belgium |
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International support for the complaint in Belgium against Ariel Sharon and others responsables because of their alleged “crimes against humanity” in the massacre in Sabra and Shatila.
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| Sharon May Be Contemplating Crimes Against Humanity |
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| We, members of Israeli academe, are horrified by US build-up of aggression towards Iraq and by the Israeli political leadership's enthusiastic support for it. |
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| Boycotting Israel: Back to 1933? By Edward Alexander
The Jerusalem Post | January 7, 2003 |
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| Will the boycotters emulate the (occasional) pragmatism of their predecessors, or will they stick firmly to their principles in order to reduce Israel to pariah status? More importantly, will the European Union, many of whose prominent members either participated or acquiesced in the destruction of European Jewry 60 years ago, put a stop to the conspiracy of these spiritual descendants of those Max Weinreich famously called "Hitler's Professors," to expel the Jews (once again) from the family of nations? |
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| Battles rage on U.S. campuses for and against investments in Israel |
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The editorial is the latest item in a battle underway at some of the most prestigious universities in the United States. Petitions on the same theme as the UCLA student newspaper has been circulating at universities like Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Princeton, and University of California campuses. Counter-petitions have followed. Hundreds of faculty members have signed the pro-divesting petition and so have 6,000 students.
A number of Israelis, who belong to faculties in America well as in Israel, have added their signatures, including Prof. Immanuel Farjun from Hebrew University and MIT Prof. Yosef Grodzinski, of Tel Aviv University, and Ben-Gurion University Prof. Naomi Shir.
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| The Intifada Reaches The Ivory Tower: European Scientists Are Calling For A Boycott Of Israel
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| The manifesto was signed by over 270 European scientists, including about 10 Israelis. Although it is the most moderate of the boycotts being formulated these days against Israel, the manifesto aroused a great deal of anger in the Israeli scientific community. |
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