by Ran Farhi (5/11/2006)

The 'Israel Academic Monitor' website contains important 

information on the Post-Zionist bias that exists on a number 

of campuses in Israel. 

The website - popular among students - encourages a lively 

intra-academic debate and exposes the cynical abuse by those who turn 

Israeli Academia into weapon to be used against their country.

By Ran Farhi 

In one of his impassioned speeches, Berl Katzenelson, 

the Labor Movement's ideologue, 

wondered: "Is there a nation among the nations, whose 

people have become so warped, 

both intellectually and mentally, that all their nation has done, 

all its creations and all its sufferings, 

are hated and despised, and everything done by

their enemy, every robbery, every killing, and every rape, 

fills their mind with admiration and addiction?... 

And here the germs of self-hatred shall adhere to it… 

to the point where it craves salvation from the 

Palestinian Nazis, those that have managed here, 

in this country, to combine European zoological Anti-Semitism 

with the Eastern ardor for the dagger" 

(from his speech on the 1st of May 1936). 

These propheticwords by Katzenelson have clear relevance for us to this day. 

If we examine the conduct of Israeli academics during 

the last two decades, we witness the creeping domination of some 

Radical Left-Wing and Post-Zionist professors over campus discourse 

and their recruitment of the campuses behind anti-Zionism.

A Cynical Manipulation of Israeli Academia

On the 19th of October, the Ynet.co.il web site run by Yediot Ahronot, 

Israel's largest daily, published an article on a group monitoring the 

professors belonging to the Post-Zionist camp in Israeli universities. 

The watchdog group calls itself the "Israeli Academia Monitor". 

 The group's website is managed and operated by 

Dana Barnett and Prof. Steven Plaut. Their main objective is to expose academics 

whose salaries are paid by the State but who spread lies about the State of 

Israel around the world. They also attempt to expose the 

contents of those professors' 

courses who, under the guise of a "different view of Israeli reality," 

disseminate anti-Israeli classroom propaganda to their students. 

The website, arranged by campus, contains the list of Post-Zionist professors 

in every university in Israel. It contains a list of articles written and published 

by some of these professors, and another list of articles written against them. 

The website's coverage encompasses all of these professors' political activities 

– including their promoting and sponsoring petitions 

supporting the 'Radical Left-Wing Military Service Refuseniks' on campus, etc. 

The reporter Anat Bershowski managed, in the process or writing her Ynet article, 

to convince some of the professors catalogued on the site 

to admit that they are abusing 

Israeli academia in order to propagate their political agenda.  

Thus, for example, Dr. Lev Greenberg, 

the chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department

at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, admitted that 

he aims to get students to 

"reconsider" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

He speaks of students who have come to his classes 

"with Right-Wing opinions, 

developed with little forethought, and changed their minds". 

Even the most famous 'star' amongst those 

professors defaming the State of Israel across Europe, 

Dr. Ilan Pappe from the University of Haifa, 

admitted that he has a political 

agenda expressed in the courses he teaches, 

such as his course on the "Nakbah [disaster] of 1948", 

which he defines as his true vocation: "Where, if not in

academia, should I promote my political agenda?", 

asks Dr. Pappe, with surprising naïveté.

The article also mentions a study 

carried out by Dr. Udi Lebel, a lecturer in political 

psychology at the 

Ben Gurion Institute in Sde-Boker and Sapir College, which describes this 

trend as being on the increase. Dr. Lebel examined the reading materials 

(syllabi) of the introductory courses in the Social 

Sciences and Humanities at 

Israeli universities 

over the last decade, and found a significant increase in classes supporting 

Post-Zionist ideas. Lebel adds that some of the professors abuse their 

academic freedom in order to imbue 

their students with their radical political messages. According to Dr.

Lebel, "The [typical] Israeli student of political science is exposed to 

critical theories, but not to the idea of nationalism or to Zionist Theory". 

A Similar Condition Exists in the United States

The American-Jewish journalist 

David Horowitz, a neo-conservative former Marxist, 

has been for several years engaged in a similar 

struggle in the 

United States, focused on the Radical-Left Wing bias in 

American universities concerning their treatment 

of America-Israel relations. This year, 

he has even published a book called "The 101 Most 

Dangerous Professors in the United States", in 

which he discusses those professors 

who have abused their academic position in order to 

promote, inter alia, anti-Capitalist, anti-American and 

anti-Israeli ideologies, often accompanied by their 

supporting Islamic terrorism or sympathizing with its motives. 

Thus, for example, there are 

Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado, 

who has praised Bin-Laden and called the victims of 9/11 

'little Eichmanns' and the linguist Noam 

Chomsky, who supports the Hizballah terrorist organization, 

and many others. Horowitz has also prepared an Academic 

Bill of Rights, which aims to prevent 

political bias in universities. In his recommendations, he

also demands the exclusion of politics from the world of academia. 

The "Frontpage Magazine" website, 

established by Horowitz, is used not only for tracking 

Left-Wing radicalization on campuses, but also for exposing 

such radicalization in the Democratic Party, 

in the media, and on various websites. In his letter of support 

for Israel, published 

during the Second Lebanese War, Horowitz provides several 

examples of statements which de-legitimize the existence of the

State of Israel, such as the Daily Kos' [a liberal-leftist 

blog] article entitled "Let us Imagine a World Without Israel". 

The Ynet article is no doubt 

very important for providing some well-deserved coverage of a 

monitoring group, which might as well be called 'Academia -Watch' 

[a play on the name 

Checkpoint Watch or Machsom Watch, a leftist activist group]. 

One would be hard-pressed to find any opposition 

to the Post-Zionist professors in the Israeli printed media, 

save that expressed by the Ma'ariv columnist 

Ben-Dror Yemini and the academics Dr. Gadi Taub 

and Prof. Amnon Rubinstein. 

A Lively and Informed Intra-Academic Debate

The 'Monitor' site, which has already 

managed to amass a significant amount of information, and 

succeeds in placing the Post-Zionist bias in Israeli Campuses 

squarely on the public agenda. In this respect, 

the famous remark by Prof. Moshe Zimmerman, the Chair of the 

German History Department at the Hebrew University 

of Jerusalem, is particularly memorable. On the one hand, 

Zimmerman identified with the Radical Left-Wing army refuseniks 

(those refusing to do military service for political reasons). 

 But, on the other hand he told the

students enrolled in one of the courses he taught that he would grant 

no extensions or considerations to any students who missed 

classes on account of being called up for reserve military duty 

in the occupied territories. This act was not only unethical 

and unfair, but also 

represented a severe abuse of the power given to a professor, 

and was an attempt to discriminate against soldiers who have 

fulfilled their legal duties towards their country. 

In his behavior Prof. Zimmerman 

has indirectly encouraged his students to break the law. 

The website has recently become increasingly popular among students, 

and has begun recruiting volunteers. This has sparked a lively 

and informed intra-academic debate concerning the Post-Zionist bias on 

Israeli Campuses. The 'Monitor' tracking group is acting wisely 

by targeting professors who have crossed the line of legitimate

Zionist discourse by sympathizing with or supporting terrorism, or by 

preaching against the legitimacy of Zionism, or by denying the 

legitimacy of the continued existence of a Jewish state, 

while at the same time peddling the Palestinian narrative. 

Hopefully, certain parties on campus may now 

establish a Zionist alliance 

between Right-Wingers, Centrists, and Moderate Left-Wingers, 

and return Zionism to Israeli academic discourse, thus detaching 

the Post-Zionists from the left-leaning Zionists. An important 

reason why people should support this website is deterrence. When those 

professors who have crossed all the lines of legitimacy, including 

Dr. Neve Gordon, who raised his hands in triumph with Yasser 

Arafat in his headquarters during Operation Defensive Shield, or 

Dr. Ilan Peppe, who has encouraged the academic boycott of Israel), 

understand that enough is enough and that there is someone observing 

and monitoring their behavior, perhaps they will be more cautious?

This monitoring website represents an important step towards making 

transparent the manner in which Post-Zionists among Israeli academia 

distort and mold students' political awareness. It has the potential to 

become the bedrock of an Israeli-Academic-Zionist counterattack.