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	Ben-Gurion University

[FOR OLDER ARCHIVED MATERIAL PRE-2004 ]

Neve Gordon "Analysis McCarthy In Israel": Attacks are part of a broader assault on Israeli higher edu and its professors

Although the recent scuffle seems to be about academic freedom, the assault on the Israeli academe is actually part of a much wider offensive against liberal values. Numerous forces in Israel are mobilizing in order to press forward an extreme-right political agenda.
They have chosen the universities as their prime target for two main reasons. First, even though Israeli universities as institutions have never condemned any government policy—not least the restrictions on Palestinian universities' academic freedom—they are home to many vocal critics of Israel's rights-abusive policies. Those voices are considered traitorous and consequently in need of being stifled. Joining such attacks are Americans like Alan M. Dershowitz, who in a recent visit to Tel-Aviv University called for the resignations of professors who supported the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli goods and divestment from Israeli companies until the country abides by international human-rights law. He named Rachel Giora and Anat Matar, both tenured professors at Tel Aviv University, as part of that group.
Second, all Israeli universities depend on public funds for about 90 percent of their budget. This has been identified as an Achilles heel. The idea is to exploit the firm alliance those right-wing organizations have with government members and provide the ammunition necessary to make financial support for universities conditional on the dissemination of nationalist thought and the suppression of "subversive ideas."

[BGU Chemistry] Eyal Nir arrested with 2 students Mohammad Mahajna & Mohammad Masarna, on interference to police

Reported by Palestine Monitor:
2 Palestinians and 1 Israeli have been arrested during a protest which took place on Monday afternoon against the repeated demolitions of the village of Al Arakib in the Nakab-Negev. During the night Israeli authorities demolished the village of Al-Arakib for the third time in two weeks.
Lawyers and activists are currently negotiating the release of 3 men who were arrested for protesting against the states demolitions of a Palestinian village in the North of the Nakab (Negev). Mohammad Mahajna from Um Il Fahim and Mohammad Masarna are both students at Ben Gurion University; Eyal Nir is a teacher at the university located in Beer Sheba.

Gabriel Piterberg and the settler colonialism fallacy at Ben Gurion U 15th Annual Workshop of Middle Eastern Studies

But despite the fact that the arguments in favor of Israel being a settler colonial society are very weak since the Jews lacked an imperial metropole, did not enjoy imperial strategic direction or support, and a series of other key elements that are crucial for a situation to be labeled to be settler colonialism, this did not stop Piterberg from using the settler colonialism argument in relations to Israel during his interview with the Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on June 9, 2010. In this interview, Piterberg referred to Israel as “an unresolved settler case in the sense that in the other cases the settlers either succeeded in eliminating the natives or were overcome by the natives and eventually left.” ...But as if Piterberg’s arguments in favor of a connection between Israel and settler colonialism were not problematic enough, he claimed that the Israeli reaction to the Flotilla was based on “absurdities and lies:” that “atrocities were hidden behind a smokescreen that Goebbels would have been proud of.” ... Nevertheless, the most problematic aspect of the interview was the fact that Piterberg has decided to list a series of false reasons in order to call upon people to support BDS. According to Piterberg, because Israel “has been getting away with murder for too long” and “has paid no price” for her actions, it creates a hindrance to a change in Israeli policy. He claimed that Israel is holding “a million and a half people at ransom for no real reason,” that Israel is controlling US policy through its Israel Lobby, that Helen Thomas and other critical reporters have been silenced for “not towing the Zionist line,” that the US was ok with Rachel Corrie’s “murder” because Israel did it, and Israel is utilizing the “persecution complex” in order to manipulate people into supporting Israel.

Some thoughts on Neve Gordon's "And the state, is she loyal?" today in Haaretz in Hebrew

"No Loyalty no citizenship":
"When I heard those shouts I understood I will never be able to accept the distorted perception of loyalty today among the Jewish public in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liberman are asking that we support a policy concentrating on suppression and humiliation. But I, from my perspective, am not willing to be loyal to suppression of Israel's poor and to humiliation of people who can not bring a slice of bread home. I refuse to give my blessing to imprisonment of one million and a half residents of Gaza and to the land grab in the Negev, the West Bank and Galilee and surely I will not be loyal to mouth shutting and discrimination against Arabs, and the expulsion of Palestinians from Eastern Jerusalem...The worse signs of Proto-Fascism is the fact it is happening on all fronts. Beginning with the attacks of NGO Monitor and "Im Tirtzu" against human rights organizations, through the unrestrained response of the police over the protests in Sheih Jarrah and finally in the McCarthyist atmosphere in the Knesset Education Committee...Similar logic to the one Mussolini used"

Oren Yiftachel in the service of Bedouins against the state of Israel

An article by Oren Yiftachel in Haaretz in Hebrew and the translation in English, where it is added that Yiftachel represents Bedouins in Israeli court in another case and the decision over ownership of land is pending. The question raised here is this ethical for him to bring his case forward in the press?
Yiftachel thinks Israel should always give up her rights to land to every Arab claim even without the need for ownership documents, otherwise it is considered discrimination:
"So as history would have it, even if the dry letter of the law does not concur, it is the State of Israel which is invading the Bedouin land, and not the other way around.
But let us put history and legal arguments aside for the moment, and ask -- is there no other way?.."
He concludes that
"...this may not happen under Israel's continuing shift to the right, and the re-enforcement of its “ethnocratic” principles of greater Jewish control, often violent, on both sides of the Green Line. If ethnocracy prevails over democracy, dangerous ethnic discrimination will continue to mould life in the Negev.
For some reason Yiftachel refuses to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish State.

[BGU, Education] Prof' Haim Gordon (father of Neve Gordon): "Few Jews in Israel are willing to confront the evil we are responsible for"

"Today, in the midst of the forceful and often brutal Israeli oppression of the Palestinian uprising, I believe that genuine dialogue between Jews and Palestinians can be established only on the basis of a willingness to confront evil and to struggle against it. I also believe that is the reason why dialogue is so scarce, because few Jews in Israel are willing to confront the evil that we are directly responsible for."

[BGU] Ahmad Sadi, Nizar Hassan [Sapir College]: Abbas adopts a central tenet of Zionism, a grave betrayal of the rights of the Palestinians

[BGU, Politics] Ahmad Sadi,
Nizar Hassan [Sapir College]
[TAU, PhD candidate] Omar Barghouti
Yasmeen Daher, lecturer at Birzeit University residing in Jaffa
During a 9 June meeting with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, you reportedly said: "I would never deny [the] Jewish right to the land of Israel," a statement that you have yet to retract. We regard this announcement, which adopts a central tenet of Zionism, as a grave betrayal of the collective rights of the Palestinian people. It is tantamount to a surrender of the right of Palestinian citizens of Israel to live in equality in their own homeland, in which they have steadfastly remained despite the apartheid regime imposed on them for decades. It also concedes the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

Neve Gordon: Israel "Ethnically Cleansing" Bedouin Arabs. Also, [Sapir College] Yeela Raanan, Awad Abu-Freih

Writing in The Guardian's Comment is Free, notorious anti-Zionist academic Neve Gordon, not even bothering to address the wider context of the demolition, even went as far as to state that he
suddenly understood how far the state is ready to go to accomplish its objective of Judaising the Negev region; what I witnessed was, after all, an act of ethnic cleansing...
Al-Arakib spokesman and local resident Dr. Awad Abu-Farikh said following the razing: "Today we got a close glimpse of the government's true face. We were stunned to witness the violent force being used. The black-clad special unit forces are the true face of Lieberman's democracy. This operation is the first step in the uprooting of many villages. We shall return to our villages, build our homes and not leave this place."
Alternative Information Center is co-chaired by Prof' Yossef Schwartz of Tel Aviv University:
According to Dr. Abu Freih, "it is crucial that we unite and struggle together, in order to survive and so we can remain in our village." Dr. Abu Freih stated that the villagers are currently "in need of everything, from money to rebuild and visits by activists to local and international media attention."
Of late someone is pushing for a violent resolution of the many years of conflict between the Bedouins in the Negev and the state. Voices are heard of a new tsunami rolling toward us, it is already a major offensive, against the Bedouins wherever they may be.

Neve Gordon: BDS campaign wants Israel to abide by international law

There is a considerable amount of misunderstanding about Boycott Divestment and Sanctions. BDS is not a principle but a strategy; it is not against Israel but against Israeli policy; when the policy changes BDS will end.
BDS is not about a particular solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the demand that Israel abide by international law and UN resolutions.
It is, accordingly, something that you can support if you are for a two-state solution or a one-state solution. You can even support it as a Zionist.
It arises from the realisation, following years of experience, that the occupation will not end unless Israelis understand that it has a price.
In a sense, the need for a boycott is a sign of weakness following the polarisation and marginalisation of the left in Israel. We are witnessing the development of a proto-fascist mindset. I am, for example, extremely anxious about the extent that the space for public debate in Israel is shrinking.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev response Clarification of the issues concerning Dr. Yerucham Leavitt

In recent days, the internet and press have been awash with reports that Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has "fired" Dr. Yerucham Leavitt. The reports have erroneously linked what happened with Dr. Leavitt to the University's response to Dr. Neve Gordon last year when he expressed his support of an international boycott of Israel.

[BGU, Politics] Anti-Israel talk by Neve Gordon on Israeli Apartheid and the bi-national state titled "Israel-Palestine: Prospects for Peace". Sabeel, Seattle

Recently posted on Youtube: February 19, 2010 at the conference "The United States, Israel and Palestine: What Does Justice Require of US?" at St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle, WA.

[BGU] Haggai Ram calls for war: “For Israelis, anti-Iran is a consensus. You don’t have to be a neoconservative to wish for the destruction of Iran”

“Iran is perhaps the most central issue [in Israel], yet there is really no critical debate about this,” says Ram, and for those Israelis who do challenge the idea that Iran is an “existential threat” to Israel, “they are immediately rendered into these bizarre self-defeating, self-hating Jews, and seen as a fifth column.”
According to Ram, “For Israelis, anti-Iran is a consensus. You don’t have to be a neoconservative to wish for the destruction of Iran.”

[BGU] Dani Filc speaks of Israel as Fascist: "The Fascism. Will Not Prevail?" 9.6

The Fascism. Will Not Prevail?
The last week events force's us to stop and think. Is the Fascism already here?
Maybe from the great depths that we have reached already we can start a new way?
Does the exist political organizations can stop the erosion?
Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality invites you to hear and to be heard.
Participants:
Dr. Dani Filk, the department of Politics and Government

[Ben Gurion University professor of Chemistry] Eyal Nir arrested by the army for insulting a soldier with a racial slur during anti-Israel protest

I was in Nebi Saleh, where the army arrested Ben Gurion University professor of Chemistry Eyal Nir (pictures below), and shot tear gas at protesters.
Eyal Nir was the only person who came from the villagers’ protest to speak with the army. After several minutes of shouting passionately at the army to leave the village, Nir was taken into an army jeep for insulting a soldier with a racial slur

PACBI: U of Johannesburg considers cutting ties with Ben-Gurion U in protest against alleged association with Palestinian human rights abuses

The university's current partnership with Ben Gurion dates from August when the two signed an academic cooperation and staff exchange agreement, relating to water purification and micro-algal biotechnology research.
This re-established a relationship forged between the former Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) and Ben Gurion in the apartheid 1980s. RAU merged with Technikon Witwatersrand in 2005 to form the University of Johannesburg.
In October, 52 academic staff members signed a petition opposing the current partnership. It states in part: "The Palestinian people are currently victims of an Israeli occupation, which violates their human rights as well as international law. Their plight has been repeatedly compared with that of black South Africans under apartheid."
Professor Steven Friedman presented the pro-boycott argument in the senate on behalf of the petitioners. "We are not asking UJ to join a boycott campaign against Israel," said Friedman, who is the director of the joint UJ-Rhodes University Centre for the Study of Democracy.
"But we are asking them not to sign agreements with institutions which collaborate with governments that commit human rights violations," he told the Mail & Guardian.

BGU Oren Yiftachel: The Green Line is colonial line of racist control of Israel, except for a ghettoized Palestinian "autonomy" in the colonized territories

it underplays the colonial nature of the Israeli "ethnocratic" regime stretching between Jordan and the Sea (see my 2006 book Ethnocracy for a discussion of this topic). While Grinberg does note the need to decolonize Palestinian territories, he rarely refers to Palestinian politics as working under violent colonial settings. Consequently, Israel is portrayed as merely blurring its borders. This account conceals the critical fact that borders remain closed for Palestinians while wide open for Jews. Hence, the Green Line is not a border but a colonial line of racist control, with Israel ruling on both sides with the exception of small pockets of ghettoized Palestinian "autonomy" in the colonized territories.
Second, Grinberg focuses on the need to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a prerequisite for peace but generally overlooks the injuring legacy of the 1948 Nakba in the ongoing conflict between the two nations. Hence, if Israel clearly defines its borders and decolonizes the territories, it will still have to deal with the polarization between Jewish and Palestinian citizens, and the rights and demands of millions of external refugees, especially the right of return.

[BGU, Chemistry] Dr. Eyal Nir is charged in court with directing Palestinians to throw stones and molotov cocktails on the post of the Israeli military

Yesterday, Eyal Nir, a long time activist was arrested in the Mate Binyamin police station. He is charged (among other things) with pointing Palestinians throwing stones and Molotov cocktails in Nilin on the position of the Israeli military. The demonstration took place in November, and the testimonies on this by Israeli soldiers were taken at February and March. According to the police the commander in Nilin was surfing the internet when he came upon a video from that demonstration. He contacted the security forces (I assume the Shabak) with the video, the security forces gave him Eyal’s personal information. This commander also found another picture that supposably shows Eyal trying to cut the security fence in Bilin

IAM's 2nd in the series on BGU's Oren Yiftachel class for oversees students, which is entitled "Selected Topics in the Geography of the Middle East"

"Mizrachim needed to de-Arabize when they came to Israel."
"Israeli society is ultra-racist, veterans make life of new immigrants difficult. If grandparents suffered, we will make you suffer. Need to be a victim to be a true Israeli."
"Ashkenazis have a superiority complex."
"We were taught in early decades that Mizrachim fit Zionism. Where do we fit? We weren't allowed to tell our story."
"Arabs are discriminated against and are excluded. Not a single community has been built for Arabs since 1948. There are increased gaps between Arabs and Jews from 1948 onwards."
Nir Cohen refers to the Arabs as "the natives" in the slideshow, which thus denies the fact that the Jews were the original owners of the land.
Nir Cohen asserted that the budget for minority cultural education is only three percent of the budget. He did not respond to my request for a comparative analysis to see if Israel was any worse than other democracies.
Claims that Zionism has an ambivalent attitude towards the Diaspora and that we need to return to the Diaspora. He obviously forgot about Jewish suffering in the Diaspora.
Nir Cohen claimed that Zionism viewed diasporatic Jews as "human dust, shivering, weak, disconnected from land," without providing evidence to back this up.
He claimed that 800,000 and 900,000 Palestinians fled Israel in 1948 but there are now between 3.4 and 4.5 million Palestinian refugees. Nir Cohen admitted after class that he used Palestinian sources for his numbers and not objective historians like Benny Morris.
He claimed that Arabs settle illegally because Israel gave them no choice and that their illegal settlement is ok because it is not like Jewish settlements are legal. Dr. Cohen provided no proof that Jewish settlements were illegal. He claimed that the rapid population growth of Israeli Arabs, combined with the lack of building Arab towns legally, has forced Israeli Arabs to create illegal villages, without showing evidence that Israeli Arabs were denied the right to build legally.

IAM's first in the series on BGU Oren Yiftachel class for overseas students in English entitled "Selected Topics in the Geography of the Middle East"

Oren Yiftachel is co-teaching a class with Nir Cohen for overseas students, which is entitled in English as "The Selected Topics in the Geography of the Middle East."
I missed the first class. Keep in mind that this course can be especially damaging for Israel because it is being taught to international students living in Israel, some of them whom are not Jewish. So far, I got the following objectionable quotes from a reading they assigned entitled "Towards Ethnographies of the Future" by James Clifford, published in Cultural Anthropology Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 302-338. This article basically compared anti-Zionist Jewish communities in the Diaspora to the Black community in Great Britain, although it also mentioned other Diaspora communities here and there.
Here are the most objectionable quotes from the article:
1) "It is certainly debatable whether the cosmopolitan Jewish societies of the 11th to 13th century Mediterranean [...] was oriented as a community, or collection of communities, primarily through attachments to a lost homeland."
The problem with this quote is that the author is implying that while other diasporas maintained feelings for a lost homeland, the Jewish Diaspora did not. In other words, he questioned whether Jews prior to Zionism living in the Diaspora had feelings for Israel.

[BGU, Geography] April 16, 2010 Oren Yiftachel to speak on "creeping apartheid" at the University of Johannesburg: "Ethnocracy, land and identity in Israel/Palestine"

The Afro-Middle East Centre and the Centre for the Study of Democracy Invite you to a seminar which will discuss new perspectives on Palestine and will feature two important voices: Ali Abunimah on One country - the path to peace in the Middle East Oren Yiftachel on Ethnocracy, land and identity in Israel/Palestine Date: 16 April, 2010 Time: 2:30
According to Yiftachel, the primary manifestation of ethnocracy in Israel/Palestine has been a concerted strategy by the state of "Judaization." Yiftachel's book argues that ethnic relations—both between Jews and Palestinians, and among ethno-classes within each nation—have been shaped by the diverse aspects of the Judaization project and by resistance to that dynamic. Special place is devoted to the analysis of ethnically mixed cities and to the impact of Jewish immigration and settlement on collective identities.
Tracing the dynamics of territorial and ethnic conflicts between Jews and Palestinians, Yiftachel examines the consequences of settlement, land, development, and planning policies. He assesses Israel's recent partial liberalization and the emergence of what he deems a "creeping apartheid" whereby increasingly impregnable ethnic, geographic, and economic barriers develop between groups vying for recognition, power, and resources. The book ends with an exploration of future scenarios, including the introduction of new agendas, such as binationalism and multiculturalism.

An interview with BGU Neve Gordon on the one state camp "Is the Two-State Solution Dead?" And Dr. Gordon's boycott call on Teheran Times "Moment of truth: Time to boycott Israel’s entire range of injustice"

Dr. Neve Gordon: Israel is a democracy for Jews and an apartheid regime for Palestinians - different to South Africa, but functioning in a similar way

[Ben-Gurion U] Ahmad Sa'di and others call for boycott of a faculty member from Ariel University and the boycott of Israeli academic institutions

by hosting a representative of such “university,” your organization not only shows disregard for international law, but also effectively lends legitimacy to the brutal military occupation of a people’s homeland. By recognizing this “university,” the ISIS is endorsing the illegal and immoral occupation of Palestine. Such recognition would also show ISIS disregards the call of the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions complicit in the occupation and other violations of international laws.
As concerned academics, we urge you to reconsider a decision which disregards international law and lends legitimacy to a prolonged and brutal military occupation of the Palestinian
homeland.
List of the Israeli endorsers:
Oren BEN-DOR (School of Law, Highfield, UK)
Haim BRESHEETH (University of East London, UK)
Yael KORIN (UCLA, USA)
Adi KUNTSMAN (University of Manchester, UK)
Yosefa LOSHITZKY (University of East London, UK)
Gabriel PITERBERG (UCLA, USA)
Ahmad SADI (Ben-Gurion University, Israel)
Simona SHARONI (SUNY Plattsburgh, USA)

[BGU, Politics] Neve Gordon debates "On boycotts, divestiture and sanctions": More than 115 BDS programs in Europe are aimed at Israel

Gordon is a senior lecturer on politics and government at Ben Gurion University and is a supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanction method, referred to in shorthand as BDS.
Gordon, 45, who has been active in peace initiatives in Israel since adolescence, believes that the Israeli government is an apartheid regime, where two peoples live in the same space under different legal systems.
He sees BDS as a strategy for bringing a two-state solution to fruition.
“The average Israeli is not affected by the current system, so nothing will change until they feel economic hardship in their daily lives,” he told the audience.
Gordon says the root of the problem is political demographics and an obsessive preoccupation with security.
“There is no Zionist left anymore, Labor is gone,” he said. “The right has taken over.”
Gordon, who latched on to that statement as saying that Barzilai was supporting a de facto form of BDS, only at a higher level.
Gordon said currently more than 115 BDS programs in Europe are aimed at Israel, but that it is still early in the game. The BDS strategy against South Africa took two decades to force change — the current programs targeted at Israel have only been at it for four years.
Gordon came to Seattle as a part of a conference hosted by St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle titled “The United States, Israel and Palestine: What Does Justice Require of Us?”

[BGU Politics] Neve Gordon lectures in Hebrew "The Israeli Occupation-Structural Analysis" at Ben Gurion Institute, Sde Boker on March 9, at 10:30

"הכיבוש הישראלי – ניתוח מבני"
הרצאתו של ד"ר ניב גורדון מהמחלקה לפוליטיקה וממשל
במסגרת סמינר מכון בן-גוריון.
האירוע יתקיים בתאריך 09/03/2010 משעה 10:30 עד שעה 12:30

[Ben Gurion University, Politics] Neve Gordon speaks on Chicago Public Radio on boycotting Israel "to end the extreme oppressive occupation"

Neve Gordon is a long time activist in the Israeli peace movement. He’s an academic and author of Israel’s occupation. Last year Gordon published an editorial in the Los Angles Times that explained his decision to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement. The Palestinians led, BDS movement began in 2005. Its goal calls for international action “until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law.” Neve Gordon explains his decision last year to support the strategy.

IAM Friday special: Ben Gurion University responses to allegations made on Al-Jezeera and Ynet titled "Israel distroyed Palestinian books"

As I have said before, there is no thesis or story under the Al-Jeezera title. There is a student doing his PhD on the topic of the National Library and University, 1945-1955, which looks at the way the early State dealt with collection of books, including those from the Holocaust, those of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries and those of the Palestinians after the War of Independence. (this is a loose translation.)
The paper in question (to which, apparently the Al Jeezera was referring to) examines how the members of the Hebrew University and the Library staff devoted themselves to collecting Palestinian books in order to save them. Given that the thesis is a serious academic work still in progress, which is as far removed from the statements published in Al Jeezera as one can think of, we have no further comment.

[Ben Gurion U, Politics] "Israel's Occupation through the Lens of the Education System" with Neve Gordon, Monday, Feb 22, 2010 Chicago, IL

Over the past four decades Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem has changed dramatically. Using the Palestinian education system as a case study, Neve Gordon argues that these changes were triggered by a series ofcontradictions and excesses emanating from the structure of Israel's occupation, and not from the policy choices of military or political leaders. He shows how during the occupation's first two decades Israel attempted to mold the dispositions of the Palestinian students and teachers so as to normalize the occupation. The education system, in other words, became a prime site of management and control (and resistance). Next, he briefly focuses on the Palestinian universities in order to show how Israel's forms of control produced excesses and contradictions that precipitated social unrest and political crisis, leading Israel to change its policies and forms of management in the territories. Finally, he discusses Israel's current approach towards the Palestinian education system. Focusing, once again on the universities, he illustrates how Israel is no longer interested in influencing the aspirations, views and attitudes of the students and teachers, which suggests that the population is no longer conceived as an object that needs to be managed. This does not mean that Israel is no longer interested in continuing the colonization project, but rather that Israel no longer considers the management of the population as a necessary component of the colonizing mission.

Ben-Gurion University constructs collective identity for Naqab Bedouins & Palestinians: "Rethinking the Paradigms: Negev Bedouin Research 2000+"

Prof. Ilan Pappe, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter
Safa Abu Rabia, Ben Gurion University
Prof. Ismael Abu-Saad, Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University
Dr. Sarab Abu Rabia Qweider, Ben Gurion University
Prof. Oren Yiftachel, Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages and Ben Gurion University
Yuval Karplus, Department of Geography, Ben Gurion University
Questions:
· What are the conventional paradigms of history scholarship in the Naqab or Palestine?
· What is the politics of writing history, and specifically denied histories, in the context of the Naqab Bedouin and Palestinians?
· What is the role of memory for constructing collective identity for Naqab Bedouins and Palestinians more generally?
· · Is there a changing relationship between research and advocacy in the Naqab or Palestine?
· Are there ‘old’ and ‘new’ research perspectives and advocacy agendas in Naqab Bedouin and Palestine studies?
· · Is there a coherent audience for Nagab Bedouin and Palestine studies?
· · How can and should the academic and legal discourse on Bedouin landownership be constructed to strengthen their legal struggles? What insights can be gained from studies on Palestinian landownership in Israel and the Occupied Territories?
· · What are the conventional paradigms of scholarship on women, gender and sexuality in the Naqab or Palestine?
· What is the politics of researching women’s position and struggles among the Naqab Bedouin and Palestinians?
· What are differences and similarities between women’s resistance strategies in the Naqab, in Israel and in the Occupied Territories? Is the new comparative research resituating the Bedouin in Israeli-Palestinian space?
What directions might / should new Negev Bedouin Studies and Palestine Studies more generally take?
What role is there for Negev Bedouin Studies and for Palestine Studies more generally?

Feb 21 [Ben Gurion U] Ahmad Sa’di, Ilan Pappe in “After Gaza Continuing the Struggle on Campus” conference, SOAS PalSoc & Nakba60, London

The recent Israeli massacres in Gaza show the need for a sustained and unified movement for Palestine.
Whilst the past three weeks have seen unprecedented action in support of Palestinians, our campaign needs to focus on providing long-tem solidarity, even when the cameras of the world’s media are focused elsewhere. This is most relevant on the student level where a strong student movement for Palestine holds the promise of bringing energy and vibrancy to the wider movement.
Over the past year, Palestine student groups in UK universities have cooperated to run successful nationwide campaigns, bringing the Palestinian cause to the forefront of campus politics. Many twinning links with Palestinian universities have been forged, making the plight of Palestinian students more real and relevant to UK students.
These campaigns and others and have flourished. Sharing of knowledge and expertise between Palestine student groups has been central to expanding our capabilities.
Day Two Sunday 22nd Feb
10:45am-12:45pm: Social and Economic History of Palestinian Resistance (organised by SOAS PalSoc and Nakba60)
Ahmad Sa’di (Ben Gurion University)
Roundtable discussion: The Meaning of Gaza: History Reconsidered in Times of Catastrophe
(organised by SOAS PalSoc and Nakba60)
Chair (tbc)
Karma Nabulsi, Saleh Abdel-Jawad, Gilbert Achcar, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe

[BGU] Anti-Israel activist & Israel-defamer Assaf Oron is a candidate for academic position at BGU

Prof. Israel David, a professor in the department of Industrial Engineering and Management at Ben Gurion University filed a suit against the head of that department Prof. Gadi Rabinowitz. The suit sought damages in the sum of 100,000 NIS, David claimed that the Rabinowitz made libelous statements about him in response to his objection about giving tenure to Dr. Assaf Oron. As noted, Prof. David asserted that Oron defames Israel regularly and compares the IDF's actions to Nazi war crimes.

[BGU, Politics] Neve Gordon's Course on "Occupation" at BGU & US tour Feb 18, 19, 22 in Sabeel etc., on "just peace" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

What are the formal and informal structural barriers to Jewish-Arab equality in Israel? How do segregation, racism, and
biased allocation of state resources affect access to opportunity and advancement for Israel’s majority and minority communities?
What are the prospects for coexistence within Israel, and what
projects currently exist to pave the way for a positive future? As an active participant in the development of a bilingual Arab-Jewish school in Beersheva, Israel, Neve Gordon’s personal experience offers a hopeful, if sobering, view of what lies ahead as Israel—inevitably—grapples with the aspirations of its Palestinian minority for full equality in a democratic society Neve Gordon is widely respected for his brilliant and original dissection of the evolving nature of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza
Strip. Gordon is the chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and author of Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press, 2008). He has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor; and the Watson Institute at Brown University. During the first intifada, he was the director of Physicians for Human Rights–Israel. Gordon is the co-editor of Torture: Human Rights, Medical
Ethics and the Case of Israel, the editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights.

"Israel Destroyed Palestinian Books" - According to a doctoral thesis to be submitted next month by a Ben-Gurion University researcher

Israel plundered and destroyed tens of thousands of Palestinian books in the years after the State's establishment, according to a doctoral thesis to be submitted next month by a Ben-Gurion University researcher.
In an interview with the researcher published on al-Jazeera's website Thursday, he claimed that Israel destroyed the Palestinian books in the framework of its plan to "Judaize the country" and cut off its Arab residents from their nation and culture.
According to the doctoral dissertation, Israeli authorities collected tens of thousands of Arab books in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, Safed, and other towns that were home to Arabs. Israeli officials proceeded to hand out about half the books, while destroying the second half, characterizing them as a "security threat," the researcher said.

[BGU, Politics] Audio & notes of talk by Dani Filc at Harvard: Israel's use of health care as a potent tool for occupation and control over Palestinians

he allowed himself an excessive criticism of
Israeli government and Israeli people without praising them
for bringing a “German-like” health coverage to the
third world's Africans and Arabs including Beduins who
continue to benefit tremendously from the presence of
Israel. Such a negative stance guaranteed his book
publishing.

[BGU, Politics] Ahmad Sa’di in: 1) "Palestine and the left" with Israeli academics SOAS 27 Feb. 2) Ahmad Sa’di fabricates racist encounters by BGU

We, Israeli, Palestinian and British academics, are writing to express our deep concern at the treatment of Dr Ahmad Sa’di, a Senior Lecturer at Ben-Gurion University’s Department of Politics and Government, who was subjected to racist treatment on 3 January 2010 when he arrived at Ben-Gurion University train station, as he does every teaching week. He was humiliatingly searched, yelled at and embarrassed by the security staff at Mexico Gate, which we find offensive and unacceptable.We believe that Dr Sa’di’s reaction on the date was exemplary; he did not block the entrance nor did he insult the security staff.
Following the incident Dr Sa’di complained to the university authorities on 3 January 2010 and again on 10 January 2010. Dr Sa’di strongly believes that his treatment at Mexico Gate on 3 January was only the last in a whole series of racist encounters and harassment he has faced in the past ten years of his employment at Ben-Gurion University.

[BGU, Politics] Dani Filc speaks in the U.S: Israel's use of health care as a potent tool for occupation and control over Palestinians. Jan 24-25, 2010

Filc explores how Israel’s adoption of a neoliberal model has pushed the system in a direction that gives priority to the strongest and richest individuals and groups over the needs of society as a whole, and to profit and competition over care. Filc pays special attention to the repercussions of policies that define citizenship in a way that has serious consequences for the health of groups of Palestinians who are Israeli citizens — particularly the Bedouins in the unrecognized villages — and to the ways in which this structure of citizenship affects the health of migrant workers.
“The health care situation is even more dire in the Occupied Territories, where the Occupation, especially in the last two decades, has negatively affected access to medical care and the health of Palestinians. Filc concludes his book with a discussion of how human rights, public health, and economic imperatives can be combined to produce a truly equal health care system that provides high-quality services to all Israelis.”

[Ben Gurion U, Politics] Latest items on Neve Gordon: Muslim Brotherhood, Sabeel, Xinhua, Gordon’s Jinn, The Psychology of Collaborators

"Why," I have often been asked, "haven't the Palestinians established a peace movement like the Israeli Peace Now?"
The question itself is problematic, being based on many erroneous assumptions, such as the notion that there is symmetry between the two sides and that Peace Now has been a politically effective movement. Most important, though, is the false supposition that Palestinians have indeed failed to create a pro-peace popular movement....
Gordon believes that Gaza is already plunged deep into a period of ongoing violence. Whilst it may not take the form of gunfire, rocket attacks or similar, the very fact that Israel surrounds Gaza and prevents freedom of movement out of the strip is in itself an act of violence.

[BGU] Al-Ahram: Oren Yiftachel described Israel's atrocities during the war. "Israeli behaviour...that believes in annihilation of the Palestinian people

Oren Yiftahel, political science professor at Ben Gurion University in the Negev, described Israel's atrocities during the war. "It was expected Israeli behaviour and an extension of Zionist policy that believes in the annihilation of the Palestinian people, and erasing their history and existence. It ignores the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, which they are entitled to, and not out of Israeli charity."
Yiftahel argued in an article in Haaretz newspaper that, "Israel's invasion of Gaza was not purely a military operation to end missile attacks, or an attempt to restore Israel's deterrence capability or even an effort to impose order on others and oust the elected Hamas government. The war was a continuation of a long-standing strategy to deny, erase and eliminate any historic reference to the Palestinians and their existence."
He further accused all Israelis of participating in the hostile plot against the Palestinians, noting that Israeli politicians, artists, the media, university researchers and intellectuals supported this war with enthusiasm. Yiftahel asserted that Israel's war on Gaza, and Hamas specifically, came in reaction to Hamas's rise to power that undermined the possibility of reaching a two-state solution. "This solution is ideal for Israel because it would mean Israel could continue its settlement project indefinitely," he stated.

[BGU, History of ME] Haggai Ram's book "Iranophobia: The logic of an Israeli obsession": The Jewish state (ab)used the “Iranian threat” to cover up apartheid regime in the Palestinian Territories

In my recent book, Iranophobia (2009), I have demonstrated how the Jewish state has time and again (ab)used the specter of the “Iranian threat” in order to cover up, and divert attention away from, both domestic oversights and the continuing apartheid regime in the Palestinian territories. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s incumbent Foreign Minister, is a case in point. When asked in the wake of the devastation that the Israeli military had sown in Gaza last year, “What you think is the first most strategic threat to Israel,” Lieberman responded: “Iran, Iran, Iran… As long as there’s no solution to the Iranian problem we will deal with neither the settlements nor the settlers… Only after we will have taken care of … Iran it will become possible to talk about… the problem in Judea, Samaria, and the Golan Heights.”
These fanciful expressions concerning the existential threat posed to Israel by Iran are misleading for two reasons: First, because when compared to the extraordinary misery and depredation which the Iranian government has exacted on its own people, the actual threat which it poses to the Jewish state pales into insignificance; and second, because such expressions have thus far enabled the Jewish state to exacerbate, rather than help to alleviate, the Palestinian problem. It is this yet-to-be resolved problem — and not Iran — that presents the Jewish state with the most serious challenge to its survival.

[Ben Gurion University, Politics] Neve Gordon, the lecturer that called to boycott Israel, is justifying the draft 'refuseniks'. In Seattle Sabeel, February

In the opinion of Dr. Neve Gordon from Ben-Gurion University, three draft 'refuseniks' who are active in South Africa against draft to IDF, are "fighting for the morality of the state. They are the true heroes of Israel".

Re-edited version of our earlier posting "Ben Gurion University lecturer Hosted Convicted Palestinian Terrorist in his Home", about Neve Gordon in "Sheltering Extremism"

Around the same time as the boycott call, Gordon turned his own home into a refuge for convicted Fatah organizer Mohammed Abu Humus, a resident of the Issawiya neighborhood of East Jerusalem. As a local Fatah organizer, Abu Hums had previous convictions for several security related offenses including arson and assault. Despite the latest conviction for directing demonstrators to throw rocks, Gordon described Abu Humus as a “political prisoner” and “a Fatah leader.”
A Jerusalem district judge earlier this year convicted Abu Humus and handed down a nine-month sentence, converted to house arrest. Gordon organized a group of far-left academics to testify on behalf of Abu Humus, and Gordon offered the court to host Abu Humus in Gordon’s own home in Beersheva for the duration of the house arrest. It is evidently the only case on record of a Palestinian terrorist being released to house arrest in the home of a Jewish Israeli citizen.
Abu Humus and Gordon have collaborated in the past in an organization called Ta’ayush, which Gordon himself is on record as describing as a seditious group, but according to its website its activities appear to have petered out in 2007.
Abu Humus provided an interesting complement to Gordon’s position. Interviewed at his office in the Alternative Information Center, a pro-Palestinian lobby group in Jerusalem, Abu Humus stated that archeological excavations in the Old City prove that despite Jews worshipping at the remaining wall of the ancient Jewish temple, the Jews had no claim to Jerusalem. After years of archeological digging, he insisted no evidence of the Jewish temple exists.
“Have they found anything of the Jews? They didn’t find anything,” Abu Humus said.

[BGU] Dr. Neve Gordon's new anti-Israel MA Program at Ben-Gurion University’s Department of Politics and Government: "The Politics of Conflict"

Reading:
Yuval Elizur, Israel Banks on a Fence, Foreign Affairs March/April 2003.Yehezkel Lein and Alon Cohen Lifshitz, Under the Guise of Security (can be downloaded from www.btselem.org)
The Separation Barrier
Reading:
Khaled Hroub “Hamas After Shaykh Yasin and Rantisi,” Journal of Palestine Studies, XXXIII no. 4, summer 2004 (download from Jstor)
Gal Luft, The Palestinian H-Bomb: Terror's Winning Strategy, Foreign Affairs July/August 2002.
Neve Gordon and Dani Filc, “Hamas and the Destruction of Risk Society,” Constellations Volume 12, No 4, 2005.
Shaul Mishal, “The Pragmatic Dimension of the Palestinian Hamas: A Network Perspective,” Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 9, No. 4. Summer 2003: 569-589
International Crisis Group, After Gaza, Middle East Report N°68 – 2 August 2007
The Rise of Hamas
From September 11 to the 2009 Campaign in Gaza

[Ben Gurion U, Politics and Government] Haim Yacobi: "The establishment of Israel as a home for the Jewish people is a problematic definition"

Despite the historical circumstances and the logic that stand behind the establishment of Israel as a home for the Jewish people, what is clear is that it is a problematic definition, with some inherent contradictions with global/transnational trends of migration, as well as in relation to questions of human rights.

[Ben-Gurion U, Chair Dept. of Politics] Neve Gordon “From Individual Prosperity to Communal Stagnation: The Economy as a Form of Social Control”

On 24 October 2009, Prof. Neve Gordon, presented the lecture “From Individual Prosperity to Communal Stagnation: The Economy as a Form of Social Control” at the two day seminar “United in Struggle against Israeli Colonialism, Occupation, and Racism: Economic Perspectives and Advocacy Strategies,” which took place in Bethlehem, 24-25 October. The seminar was jointly sponsored by The Alternative Information Center (AIC) and the Occupied Palestine and Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI). Professor Gordon is chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University in Israel.

[Ben Gurion University, Geography] Oren Yiftachel's "Voting for Apartheid: The 2009 Israeli Elections"

Given the ongoing suffering of the Palestinians, a serious external effort is needed to reshape the future of Israel/Palestine. This includes the mobilization of the international arena, both among governments and civil societies, to take stronger measures against Israel’s unlawful colonial control over the Palestinians.
In this regard, another and perhaps more fundamental change is needed within the democratic camp. The rise of Hamas represents a new/old anticolonial vision, but its call for the imposition Islamic rule over Israel/Palestine,
possibly by violent means, may simply represent a reverse type of colonialism.
This agenda has also caused immense suffering among the Palestinians, as it has legitimized in the eyes of many Israelis their violent control of the territories.
Other groups and interests have begun to develop different alternatives, based on nonviolent struggle for democracy in Israel/Palestine. Such efforts should now constitute the most urgent matter for those working for the genuine
welfare and security of all residents between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, in order to seriously challenge the “creeping apartheid” process made explicit during the 2009 Israeli elections.

[Ben Gurion U, Politics] The anarchist Neve Gordon promotes civil disobedience like [Technion, Math] Kobi Snitz's heroism against Israeli occupation

Thirty-eight-year-old Snitz was arrested with other activists in the small Palestinian village of Kharbatha back in 2004 while trying to prevent the demolition of the home of a prominent member of the local people’s committee. The demolition, so it seems, was carried out both to intimidate and punish the local leader who had, just a couple of weeks earlier, began organizing weekly demonstrations against the annexation wall. Both the demonstrations and the attempt to stop the demolition were acts of civil disobedience.
In a letter sent to friends the night before his incarceration, Snitz writes: “I and the others who were arrested with me are guilty of nothing except not doing more to oppose the state’s truly criminal policies.” Snitz also explains that paying the fine is an acknowledgment of guilt which he finds demeaning. Finally, he concludes his epistle by insisting that his punishment is trivial when compared to the punishment meted out to Palestinian teenagers who have resisted the occupation. These 12-, 14-, 15- and 16-year olds, he claims, are often detained for 20 days before the legal process even begins.
Snitz is not exaggerating.

Arabic Aljazeera published Neve Gordon's Call for boycott of Israel

Israeli writer Neve Gordon called the world to move to boycott Israel, and said that Tel Aviv was practiced racism against the Palestinians, and there was no way to resolve the two countries to put pressure only on the tremendous global all means against the country.
Gordon, a professor of political science at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, the author (The Israeli occupation) said , in an article published in the Los Angeles U.S. that it had to such an invitation because it has become convinced that they only way they could save from the evils of Israel itself.

[Ben Gurion U, Hebrew Literature] Tova Rosen and other academics called for “civil disobedience” to thwart pending Knesset legislation

For a large group of Left-leaning Israeli academics affiliated with most of the country’s universities and a number of its colleges, the call for civil disobedience has been triggered by the submission of three proposed bills in the Knesset. One would deny citizenship to those who refuse to declare fealty to Israel as a Jewish, democratic and Zionist state and do not serve in the IDF or perform national service. The other two would recognize as punishable offenses the commemoration of Independence Day as a day of mourning or Nakba, and, similarly, the rejection of Israel as a democratic Jewish state if such denial can lead to hostile acts against the state or its official bodies.

[Ben Gurion University, Politics] Neve Gordon continues calling for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel in audio interview

Guests: Neve Gordon is a long-time Israeli peace activist, Senior Lecturer in Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University, and the author, most recently, of Israel’s Occupation.
Hosts: Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark
In a recent op-ed in the LA Times, Neve Gordon explained why he has come to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. We talk with Neve about his decision and about the fire-storm of protest his op-ed has evoked.

Rivka Carmi, Ben-Gurion University's president responds to one of her professor's call for a boycott of Israel

I strongly believe a call for a worldwide boycott of Israel written by a Ben-Gurion University faculty member, Neve Gordon, that appeared in The Times oversteps the boundaries of academic freedom -- because it has nothing to do with it.
Academic freedom exists to ensure that there is an unfettered and free discussion of ideas relating to research and teaching and to provide a forum for the debate of complicated ideas that may challenge accepted norms. Gordon, however, used his pulpit as a university faculty member to advocate a personal opinion, which is really demagoguery cloaked in academic theory.
Gordon argues that Israel is an "apartheid" state and that "a boycott would save Israel from itself." But the empirical facts show that it would destroy the very fabric of the society that he claims to want to protect. Instead of investing in activities that promote coexistence, this "call for a boycott" is already being used to isolate Israel.
This is particularly pernicious for our university, a proudly Zionist institution that embodies the dream of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to bring development and prosperity to all the residents of the Negev region. This work -- which includes community outreach and scientific innovation in Israel and around the world carried out by nearly 25,000 students, faculty and staff -- is being threatened by the egregious remarks of one person, under the guise of academic freedom.

Studying with Prof. Neve Gordon at the University of Michigan

In a lecture on November 14th, 2007 Gordon told the class that he wasn’t interested in giving an unbiased academic history of the Arab-Israeli conflict: “Jeremy asked why I would give a revisionist history. And I give a revisionist history because I think it’s true. What’s said in a textbook is not what it’s about.” His “revisionist” syllabus included the controversial book by Sandy Tolan The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, in which history is attempted to be told through the story of an Arab man who meets the woman who he claims took over his home after he was forced out by Israel. On November 19th Gordon was absent from class and instead had an appallingly biased film shown, on which the class was to take notes. “Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land” is a politically charged anti-Israel propaganda film that stars such anti-Israel celebrities as Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Hanan Ashrawi, and Neve Gordon himself.
In a lecture on October 10th, 2007 which was supposed to be about the historical Suez Crisis, Gordon purposefully digressed at length to blame Israel for the current crisis with Iran. He explained to the class that Israel gained nuclear weapons as the20outcome of a deal with France at the end of the crisis in 1956. He then stepped away from his podium to drive home his message, "You can not understand what is happening with Iran today if you don't understand what happened with Israel in '56." As this comment was charged with controversial anti-Israel bias, Gordon was delighted to open the class to questions. When a student, who prefaced his statement with the premise that he was Jewish, challenged Gordon’s ridiculous blame of Israel for Iran’s actions today, Gordon disregarded the Jewish student’s challenge by smirking and stating to the class, “Ben is always trying to bring us back to the present.” It was in fact Prof. Gordon who clearly brought the class discussion to that of present times. Gordon then welcomed a question from a student who claimed Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust was “not a big deal.” By first demonizing Israel, then not allowing any student objections to his anti-Israel statements, then welcoming an out rightly anti-Semitic comment in his lecture hall, Gordon was in no way teaching an unbiased historical course, as one would have expected in an institution of higher learning.

Israel Academia Monitor Petition to Condemn Neve Gordon's Attack on Israel עצומה מטעם מוניטור האקדמיה הישראלית לגינוי מתקפתו של ניב גורדון נגד מדינת ישראל

We call upon Ben Gurion University to:
1. Fully condemn Gordon's call for the boycott of Israel
2. Dismiss him as chair of the department of Politics and Government
3. Dismiss him from membership in any university committee
4. Make all his courses non-compulsory
5. Deny him any travel and research funding
We advise students to refrain from enrolling and attending Neve Gordon’s courses.

L.A. Jews mull boycott of Israel university over 'apartheid' op-ed / BGU lecturer slammed for boycott call

Members of the Los Angeles Jewish community have threatened to withhold donations to an Israeli university in protest of an op-ed published by a prominent Israeli academic in the Los Angeles Times on Friday, in which he called to boycott Israel economically, culturally and politically.
Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, a veteran peace activist, branded Israel as an apartheid state and said that a boycott was "the only way to save it from itself."
Gordon, a political scientist, said that "apartheid state" is the most
accurate way to describe Israel today...
Reactions to the piece, both from LA Times readers and BGU staff, have been swift, with BGU President Prof. Rivka Carmi calling Gordon's views "destructive" and an "abuse [of] the freedom of speech prevailing in Israel and at BGU.
"We are shocked and outraged by [Gordon's] remarks, which are both irresponsible and morally reprehensible," Carmi wrote, in a statement sent to reporters over the weekend.
"This kind of Israel-bashing detracts from the wonderful work that is being done at BGU and at all Israeli universities," Carmi added. "Academics who entertain such resentment toward their country are welcome to consider another professional and personal home."

Neve Gordon calls for Boycott Israel

Nothing else has worked. Putting massive international pressure on Israel is the only way to guarantee that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians -- my two boys included -- does not grow up in an apartheid regime.

[BGU, History] Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin: Israel is bad! "The Lack of a Vision: Utopia and Peace in Israeli Discourse"

...it was not the realization of Palestinian self-determination that was celebrated by Israelis, but the return to a homogeneous Jewish society. The idea of peace was to get rid of the Occupation in order to get rid of the Palestinians, in order to recover the Israeli self-image as innocent and progressive, an image that had been seriously damaged by thirty years of occupation, particularly after the first intifada. The "peace process" was not associated with a desire for reconciliation, a vision of equality and partnership between Jews and Arabs, nor a desire for a common future.
On the contrary, the leading concept of the peace process was not the co-existence of two states, but separation. In other words, the idea of a Palestinian state in Israeli discourse was not perceived as a means of fulfilling Palestinian rights, not a vision of co-existence based on the recognition of the responsibility for Palestinian suffering and hope for a peaceful common future for both people. Thus the Israeli vision of peace did not include the intention to undermine the division between Jews and Arabs, but rather to emphasize it. The rationale for the agreements, as the initiator (Yitzhak Rabin) of the Oslo Accords presented it, was to prevent the creation of a binational state, and in fact, to deny any vision and any perspective that includes both Israeli-Jews and Palestinians living together in peaceful coexistence....Not only were the Israeli Arabs not included, but the idea was to ignore them, as exemplified by Barak's slogan "we are here--they are there," identical to the slogan of the Moledet party's ideology of transfer. The vision of peace and the vision of transfer were not so different--and in spite of the essential moral difference, they shared a common vision of a homogeneous Jewish society. The difference was in the positioning of the border, not the vision. Both expressed the desire for a Jewish state without Arabs.

[Ben Gurion University, Politics and Government] Israeli activist Neve Gordon to talk on Middle East peace at Cape Cod Community College, 12 Aug.

During the first intifada in the late 1980s and early '90s, Gordon worked as the director of Physicians for Human Rights — Israel.
He is the co-editor of "Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel"; the editor of "From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights"; and, most recently, the author of "Israel's Occupation."

Assaf Oron and Ehud Krinis help the Palestinians battle against Israel in "Dozens of West Bank roadblocks removed?"

It is good news that Palestinians now can get from (some) major cities to (some) others in 1-2 hours instead of 1 day - infinity, but this appears to be a temporary "carrot and stick" game designed to fool the Americans, and perhaps pave the way to a full-fledged Palestinian protectorate in the West Bank.

[Ben Gurion U, Department of Jewish Thought] Ehud Krinis

All those needs should be considered as essential, against the background of the settlers aggression, the passive-active reaction of the Israeli occupation forces (which aim to make the life of the local Palestinian residents unbearable), and a Palestinian Authority which just ignore this area altogether.
Ehud Krinis
Villages Group

Anti-Zionist leftist professors speak in a conference on academic integrity in Israel

On May 18, Ben-Gurion University held a day-long conference on academic freedom and responsibility. Of the many speakers, only one seemed a non-leftist. [What does that indicate about the state of academic freedom there?]
The near-consensus was that professors have a right to promote their views and hire instructors not for their qualifications but for their ideology, while critics do not have a right to monitor this and question whether such behavior and the results fulfill the University’s function. If instruction is based on opinions and not scholarship, what is its value, why should it be left unmonitored or allowed, and why grant professors tenure and not rotate their jobs among office clerks?
The conference view was that leftist professors may seek, without standards of scholarship, to indoctrinate students against Jewish sovereignty, without private and public underwriters of universities being informed of it. Thus the conference did not take up academic freedom, it advocated academic irresponsibility.

[Ben Gurion U] Police arrested an anti-Israel teaching assistant for trespassing and humiliating the security guard after distributing leaflets

The arrest resulted in a student protest later that night that took place alongside a ceremony attended by the school's board of governors and VIPs being awarded honorary doctorates.
Noah Slor, 27, a master's student in Middle Eastern studies and a teaching assistant, was handing out fliers along with four Arab student activists on Sunday afternoon. After being asked to stand at least a meter away from the school's gate and taking up the issue with a university security guard, she was arrested by police for trespassing and humiliating a public official - the security guard - and questioned at the Beersheba police station for three hours.

Ben Burion U incites Bedouins in a Panel on "THE ARABS OF THE SOUTH: TOWARDS NEW CONSCIOUSNESS?”

Speakers:
Pnina Motzafi-Haller, Michael Fiege – Hagar's Editors
Safa abu-Rabi’a
“Between memory and resistance, an identity shaped by space: The case of the Naqab Arab Bedouins”
Mustafa Kabaha
“The Hebrew online media's treatment of Arab citizens in the Negev”
Yizhak (Yanni) Nevo
“The Politics of Unrecognition and its Implications”

[BGU, Geography] Watch Oren Yiftachel speaks against Israel in the symposium "Palestine & the Palestinians Today".

Dr. Oren Yiftachel: “Bedouins in Southern Israel/Palestine: Apartheid in the Making?”

[Ben Gurion U, Geography] Oren Yiftachel examined the Israeli authorities’ campaign to expropriate the lands of the ethnically Palestinian Bedouins in: "ISRAEL-PALESTINE: One-State Supporters Make a Comeback"

[Ex-Tel Aviv U] Palestinian-Israeli professor Nadim Rouhanna, now teaching at Tufts University in Massachusetts, is a leader in the new thinking. "The challenge is how to achieve the liberation of both societies from being oppressed and being oppressors," he told a recent conference in Washington, DC. "Palestinians have to… reassure the Israeli Jews that their culture and vitality will remain. We need to go further than seeing them only as ‘Jews-by- religion’ in a future Palestinian society."
Like many advocates of the one-state outcome, Rouhanna referred enthusiastically to the exuberant multiculturalism and full political equality that have been embraced by post-apartheid South Africa.
Progressive Jewish Israelis like Ben Gurion University geographer Oren Yiftachel are also part of the new movement. Yiftachel’s most recent work has examined at the Israeli authorities’ decades-long campaign to expropriate the lands of the ethnically Palestinian Bedouin who live in southern Israel - and are citizens of Israel. "The expropriation continues - there and inside the West Bank, and in East Jerusalem," Yiftachel said, explaining that he did not see the existence of "the Green Line" that supposedly separates Israel from the occupied territory as an analytically or politically relevant concept.

[Ben Gurion U] Oren Yiftachel's course, 2008-9: ISRAEL/PALESTINE: THE POLITICS OF LAND AND IDENTITY (Colonialism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid)

The course offers a systematic analysis of the changing ethnic identities and politics in Israel/Palestine. It explores with the students -- through lectures, readings and debates -- the mobilization of Jewish and Palestinian ethno-nationalism, as well as the making of 'ethno-classes' within each nation. Within this context, the course focuses on immigration, development, colonization and globalization as key processes shaping power relations, collective identities and ethnic politics in the contested homeland.
Conceptual:
Settler societies, colonialism and post-colonialism
Israel/Palestine:
Post-Nakbah Palestinian society(ies)
Conceptual:
Colonialism and ethnic cleansing
Israel/Palestine:
Israel/Palestine and apartheid

[Ben Gurion University, Political Science] Neve Gordon: 4 goals of the Israeli attack on Gaza. Published in Arabic.

The most prominent absentee from the list of goals is to prevent
Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel.
In contrast to the other four objectives, which I have not discussed the Israeli officials, the goal is made by the Israeli government a pretext for this operation. But they deceived the Israeli public, because the missiles had been parked for almost the past six months has not breached, "Hamas," but as a reaction to Israeli attacks, assassinations and the blockade and other acts of repression in Gaza and the West Bank.

Ben Gurion University's one sided and Palestinian orientated conference: "THE NEGEV BEDOUINS: DEVELOPMENT OR DISCRIMINATION?"

The fact-finding mission team is composed of the following members:The members of the international team include:• Anthony Coon, emeritus professor of urban planning at Strathclyde University, Glasgow (Scotland);• Steve Kahanovitz, lawyer with the Legal Resources Center in Cape Town, South Africa;• Miloon Kothari, former UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing (2001-08) and, currently, coordinator of HIC-HLRN South Asia Regional Programme in Mumbai, India;• Rudolfo Stavenhagen, former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people (2001–08) and Mexican sociologist and professor at Colégio de México (Mexico City).The members of the local team include:• Khalil al-'Amur, resident of al-Sirra unrecognized village and a teacher of mathematics;• Salman Abu Sitta, founder and President of Palestine Land Society (London) and researcher on Palestine land and people;• Jihad al-Sana', lecturer at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba) and resident of Laqiyya, one of the seven government-planned townships in al-Naqab;• Oren Yiftachel, professor of urban planning, geography and political science at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba;• Suhad Bishara, lawyer with Adalah: The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

Ahmad Sa'di from Ben Gurion University participates an anti-Israel conference in SOAS

Action Palestine conference at SOAS this weekend-support the student occcupations Speakers include: Illan Pappe, Gilbert Achcar, Karma Nabulsi, Saleh Abdel-Jawad, Norman Finkelstein, and many speakers from Ben Gurion and our twinned uni Birzeit
The recent Israeli massacres in Gaza show the need for a sustained and unified movement for Palestine.
Whilst the past three weeks have seen unprecedented action in support of Palestinians, our campaign needs to focus on providing long-tem solidarity, even when the cameras of the world’s media are focused elsewhere. This is most relevant on the student level where a strong student movement for Palestine holds the promise of bringing energy and vibrancy to the wider movement. Over the past year, Palestine student groups in UK universities have cooperated to run successful nationwide campaigns, bringing the Palestinian cause to the forefront of campus politics. Many twinning links with Palestinian universities have been forged, making the plight of Palestinian students more real and relevant to UK students.

Head of Political Science Neve Gordon teaches his Ben Gurion University class Liberman is more dangerous to Israel than Hamas

We cannot understand this as an island, as something totally new, but rather something that has been building up. We see that the younger generation is supporting these neo-fascist tendencies. And we cannot blame the schools for it, but we have to blame the whole atmosphere in Israel, which is indeed a racist atmosphere, an anti-Arab atmosphere, anti-Palestinian Arab atmosphere. And Lieberman, what he has learned to do well is to feed on the hatred and the fear of the Arabs, to use a xenophobic method. And this is extremely dangerous. And to tell you the truth, I fear for Israel. I fear for the citizenry in Israel. And I think we are in a watershed moment in Israeli politics.

[Ben Gurion University, History] About Dr. Amnon Raz-Karkotzkin in: "Jews who support Arab parties: We seek true equality"

Dr. Amnon Raz-Karkotzkin, a history professor at Ben Gurion University, plans to vote for Balad on February 10. "The ongoing incitement against Balad stems from a fear of equality, which is why Azmi Bishara is being persecuted," he stated.
"Find someone who seriously thinks that he spied for Hizbullah. Anyone looking for a spy wouldn't have used Azmi Bishara," he added.
Raz-Karkotzkin said that the party hopes to see more Jews voting for Arab parties in the upcoming elections. Balad held a campaign rally in Hebrew last week, and plans to hold another one on Wednesday.
"The Jewish public's support for Balad is support for challenge," said Raz-Karkotzkin. "Balad doesn't give me an identity and I don't vote in the elections in order to secure self-identity. Balad's platform talks about full civil equality – and in my opinion, as a historian that deals with the history of the Jewish people - this is the right track to take.
"I feel compelled to identify with Balad's demand for a state of all its citizens," he said.

[Ben Gurion University, Social Research] Farewell Party in Gaza? / By Lev Grinberg to Palestine Think Tank

It’s possible that Barack Obama understands the trick Israel is trying to pull, and therefore opts to be silent for as long as he has no executive powers. I hope that this is the case, and that upon beginning his office, Obama would behave as a true friend to Israel and save it from itself. He must stop Israeli aggression. Israel’s problem is an excess of military power stemming from the trauma of the Holocaust. Israel is behaving like the neighborhood bully expecting someone to stop him, because it does have the power to destroy everything around it, while destroying itself in the process. Anyone who sincerely wishes to help Israel must release it from its position as the central forward striker in the war on Islam, in which the Bush era of war on terror has framed it. Let us all hope that the war in Gaza is a farewell ceremony marking the end of President Bush’s destructive era. It is indeed high time for the promised "change". Obama, yes YOU can.

[Ben Gurion U, Political Science] Neve Gordon to smear Israel in Palestine Awareness Week. Feb. 12, Michigan

Event topics include Introducing Palestine, Exploring the Structure of Israel's Occupation, The Cultural Resistance of Palestinian Film, Aspects of Apartheid: South Africa and Israel, and Visions of Peace.
Speakers include Thomas Abowd (WSU professor), Neve Gordon (visiting associate professor), Rima Hassouneh (UM professor), Tirtza Even (UM School of Art), Hani Bawardi (UM-Dearborn professor), and Ali Abunimah (prominent Palestinian academic).
Tuesday, Feb 12th, 8pm, 100 Hutchins Hall
From Colonization to Separation, Exploring the Structure of Israel's
Occupation - Neve Gordon

[Head of Ben Gurion U, Political Science Dept.] Fmr. Clinton Special Counsel Lanny Davis vs. Israeli Professor Neve Gordon: A Debate on the Israeli Assault on Gaza

I agree with the idea of a basic right to self-defense. And the right to self-defense is a right to self-defense from violence. We have to understand that the occupation itself is violence. It’s an act of violence. Putting people in a prison, in a prison of one million and a half million people and keeping them there for years on end without basic foodstuff, without allowing them to enter and exit when they will, is an act of violence. Without electricity, without clean water, it’s all an act of violence. And these people are resisting. I am against the way they’re resisting, but we have to look at their violence versus our violence.

Israeli Professor Under Hamas Rocket Fire, Neve Gordon Condemns Israeli Invasion of Gaza

The problem is that most Israelis say what Meagan said before. They say, “Israel left the Gaza Strip three years ago, and Hamas is still shooting rockets at us.” They forget the details. The details is that Israel maintains sovereignty. The details is that the Palestinians live in a cage. The details is that they don’t get basic foodstuff, that they don’t get electricity, that they don’t get water, and so forth. And when you forget those kinds of details, and all you say is, “Here, we left them. Why are they still shooting at us?” and that’s what the media here has been pumping them with, then you think this war is rational. If you look at what’s been going on in the Gaza Strip in the past three years and you see what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians, you would think that the Palestinian resistance is rational. And that’s what’s missing in the mainstream media here. And so, although there are voices of resistance in Israel and although there was a quite big protest on—actually, two big protests on Saturday, one in Sakhnin and one in Tel Aviv, it is still a really small minority.

Neve Gordon's "Israel's New War Ethic"

There is something extremely cynical about how Israel explains its use of humanitarian assistance, and yet such unadulterated explanations actually help uncover an important facet of postmodern warfare. Not unlike raising animals for slaughter on a farm, the Israeli government maintains that it
is providing Palestinians with assistance so that it can have a free hand in attacking them. And just as Israel provides basic foodstuff to Palestinians while it continues shooting them, it informs Palestinians--by phone, no less--that they must evacuate their homes before F-16 fighter jets begin bombing them.

Oren Yiftachel: Gaza's Lost Time

The conclusion is obvious: beyond the ceasefire that is needed immediately, the real end to violence will pass only through returning history , back into our political discourse, that is, through an open and profound investigation of the history that generated Jewish-Palestinians relations in this land. As well Israel needs to confront its own negation of history and Palestinian rights.
During such an investigation, which, of course, will be dependent on the termination of Israeli colonial rule, the question of the refugees and with it the question of the entire Gaza Strip will rise again, along with questions regarding the traumatic Jewish history and the prospects of ensuring a Jewish future in an Arab Middle East.
In other words, recognition of Palestinian time is the only way to also acknowledge Jewish time. Only when history replaces territory as the central topic of discourse, that is, when the history of the country included that of all of its residents and exiles, the foundations will set for mutual recognition between two nations with equal rights in a common homeland. Then the rockets will stop, and there may even be a time of reconciliation.

[BGU, Geography] Oren Yiftachel: "The Jailer State"

This type of political geography tends to result in a chain of absurdities. Here is one: the invasion and destruction of Gaza is carried out by an ousted Israeli Government, and is actively supported by a defeated US Administration. The two governments which lost power are violently attacking in their dying days the democratically elected Government of Palestine. This leads to the next absurdity: instead of condemning and placing sanctions on Israel, which has put Gaza under siege for the last two years, the world has imposed sanctions over the Hamas Government. In this way the occupied are punished twice: once by the brutal occupation, and a second time attempting to resist.

[Ben Gurion University, Political Science] Opinion: Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza? By Neve Gordon and Jeff Halper

Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who organized the petition, has been silent, as have his co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern, and Cornell Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel’s attack on the leading university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which organized the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault.

[Ben Gurion University, Linguistic Dept.] Dr. Idan Lando: "Time for Refusal"

Dear soldier,
Maybe you didn’t get yet “Tzav 8” (The emergency military call to arms in Israel, taken from its form number designation; DB); maybe it’s on its way. Maybe they contacted you already from the unit, and you are now packing. And maybe you are in the congregation areas, warming the tank engine. Wherever you are, you are convinced, probably, that you are doing the right thing at the right time. You agree with the saying “It cannot go on like that”, and you think that after this war, and the heavy losses that the Palestinian will incur, it will really stop.
Think twice.

Israeli Professor Neve Gordon Condemns Israeli Invasion of Gaza on Democracy Now 1/5/09

Earlier this morning three Qassam rockets exploded in open areas in the western Negev in Israel. We go to the region to speak with Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and the author of Israels Occupation.

[BGU, Politics] Neve Gordon / "The dire cost of domestic rivalries": The Israeli government doesn't care about its citizens and is worse than Hamas

What is clearly missing from this list of Israeli objectives is the attempt to halt the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel's southern towns. Unlike the objectives I mentioned, which are not discussed by government officials, this one is presented by the government as the operation's primary objective. Yet, the government is actively misleading the public,
since Israel could have put an end to the rockets a long time ago. Indeed, there was relative quiet during the six-months truce with Hamas, a quiet that was broken most often as a reaction to Israeli violence: that is, following the extra-judicial execution of a militant or the imposition of a total blockade which prevented basic goods, like food stuff and medicine,
from entering the Gaza Strip. Rather than continuing the truce, the Israeli government has once again chosen to adopt strategies of violence that are tragically akin to the ones deployed by Hamas; only, the Israeli ones are much more lethal.
If the Israeli government really cared about its citizens and the country's long term ability to sustain itself in the Middle East, it would abandon the use of violence and talk with its enemies.

[BGU, Education] Yossi Yonah: A two-State solution, Palestinian State established on the territories occupied by Israel and Jerusalem as its capital, and a just solution to the refugee problem

YOSSI YONAH, Associate Professor at the Department of Education of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Tel Aviv, asserted that, in the wake of the demise of forces of civil society supporting the cause of peace for both Israelis and Palestinians, efforts must be directed to mobilize global civil society in support of a peaceful solution to the conflict. The main principles accepted to some extent by Israeli and Palestinian forces supporting the cause of peace were relatively clear and included a two-State solution, with the Palestinian State established on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 and Jerusalem as its capital, and a just solution to the refugee problem. The task today for civil society activists was to push the peace process forward, creating an atmosphere in which those reasonable principles might be endorsed by both sides and finally result in a viable peace agreement. “The peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have reached, today, a point in which no one takes them seriously. Both sides believe that the other side is not negotiating with each other in good faith,” said Mr. Yonah. That was the result of the failure of the Camp David Summit in 2000, followed by a second intifada, which had worsened the sense of hopelessness, escalated violence on both sides, and set the scenario for the electoral victory of Prime Minister Sharon and the demise of the forces of civil society in Israel that had supported peace negotiations. While most Israelis believed that any peace negotiations must bring about the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, though were often unwilling to pay the price for it, they also believed that there were no true Palestinian counterparts with whom to negotiate, and that belief had been reinforced by the electoral victory of Hamas in 2006, Mr. Yonah explained. That had had an equivalent repercussion among Palestinians, he said, particularly in light of the harsh measures of the Israeli army and the continuation of settlements in the West Bank. Given those circumstances, he said, “Both civil societies ought to be transcended. We need to engage international civil society and international political leaders in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [...] Special efforts need to be directed to Diaspora communities, both Israeli and Palestinian, [...] in support of reasonable solutions.”

[Jewish Thought, Ben Gurion U] Ehud Krinis and [Dept of Statistics, U of Washington] Assaf Oron battle against Israeli army

a team from the Israeli-Palestinian NGO Ta'ayush managed, after great difficulties, to reach the Jinba area. They report that the military has carried out in the last few days a massive earth-removal initiative, designed to effectively wipe out the network of dirt roads connecting the southern part of Massafer Yatta (the part closest to Israel) with the northern part and the rest of the West Bank.
This is the worst deterioration in the situation of the cave dweller community, since the mass expulsions of 1999. They fly in the face of the 2000 Israeli High Court verdict reaffirming the cave dwellers' right to continue their way of life. The most plausible conclusion that this is a transparent attempt to ethnically cleanse this region of its Palestinians, in order to facilitate the annexation of the Jewish settlements to its north to Israel.

As'ad AbuKhalil* reviews Neve Gordon's "Israel's Occupation" and Neve Gordon replys

I emphasize that one cannot solve the occupation without taking into account the "ethnic cleansing" that took place in 1948, but I explain that 1948 has been discussed at length and that I want to concentrate on how the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has ticked. That is the objective of this book

Settler Violence Leads to Arrest of Activists / By Neve Gordon

At dawn the activists arrived. Around thirty Ta’ayush (Arab-Jewish Partnership) and international volunteers came to the Palestinian groves adjacent to the Jewish settlement in Tel-Rumeida, Hebron, to help the landowners pick their olives. Previous attempts by the Palestinian farmers -- who live behind fences and are subjected to daily violence -- to reach their olive trees had been blocked by the residents of Tel Rumeida, a stronghold of the most militant and extremist Jewish settlers. Even the Israeli police are afraid of these settlers while the military routinely bows down to their commands.

Neve Gordon - Book review: Israel's occupation, inside out

colonization "attempts to manage the lives of the colonized inhabitants while exploiting the captured territory's resources," separation interests itself solely "in the resources" without "in any way ... assum[ing] responsibility for the people."

[BGU, Politics] Dr. Haim Yacobi / "Separate and unequal" posted on a Palestinian website

Writing in the Tel Aviv daily Ha'aretz, the author below reminds us of the apartheid reality lurking behind the term “mixed cities” in reference to cities inside what today is Israel , where Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel live in the same cities. “it's a misleading idiom, as it hides from the Israeli public the extent of segregation and poverty”. But even this is rare; usually Jews and Palestinian citizens live in different areas separated along ethno-national lines. The recent clashes in Acre should be viewed, the author tells us, from the light of deliberate Israeli policy to squeeze this population –what remains of Palestinians spared ethnic cleansing of 1948-- economically and socially, to satisfy an ever demographic Zionist goal of Jewish majority uber alles. But this is quite in line with Israel's ideology of Zionism. And Israeli allies in the US get upset when, for example, the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism includes a chapter on Zionism. Note that these are the minority Palestinians who were 'lucky' to get Israeli citizenship. The majority suffer much, much more in the West Bank, Gaza, E. Jerusalem, and in exile everywhere. –Sami]

[Ben Gurion U, Political Science] ZNet interview: Israel’s Occupation, A New Book By Neve Gordon, about Israel's particular form of colonization

The book has two distinct sources. First and foremost, it is a product of many years of activism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. My understanding of the forms of control deployed in the Gaza Strip and West Bank began during the first Intifada, initially as a member of the Gaza Team for Human Rights and later as the director of Physicians for Human Rights, Israel. During the second Intifada, I became an active member of Ta'ayush (Arab-Jewish Partnership) and spent much time in the Occupied Territories resisting, together with Palestinians, Israel's abusive policies. This kind of first-hand experience is invaluable and cannot be replaced by books and reports. The book is also the outcome of discussions and research carried out by a group of Israeli and Palestinian students and scholars that I was fortunate to join a few years ago. The aim of this group was to try and theorize Israel's particular form of colonization.

[BGU, Department of Jewish Thought] Ehud Krinis and his friends help a suspect of terrorism

We did what we could do. Our hands too are tied. From here on only the intervention of a lawyer, preferably Israeli, can be of any use.
And so we did.
Very late, very tired, I got into bed, but the pain does not cease.
Amid, they say, threw stones and tried to burn the pillbox (the
military watchtower).

[BGU, Geography] About Israel's "Colonialism" in Oren Yiftachel and Batya Roded "ETHNOCRACY AND RELIGIOUS RADICALISM"

Hebron is the only West Bank Arab city (outside Jerusalem) in which Jews settled. The first group of religious Jews invaded an empty building shortly after Israel's conquest of the West Bank, in 1968. This began four decades of an urban colonial project, which received state protection. To date, it managed to attract some 7,500 Jewish settlers to the city and the abutting Kiryat Arba town (Swiesa, 2003; OCHA, ( 2005, which enjoys full Israeli citizenship. While the city's 140,000 Palestinian residents were placed under military rule, with no political rights to affect Israeli policies governing their own city.
With expanding colonization in parts of the Old City of Hebron, and a construction of large scale housing in Kiryat Arba, ethnic relations polarized. A violent nadir was reached when in 1994 a Jewish settler massacred 29 Muslim worshippers inside the sacred Abraham's Tomb (B'Tselem, 2007).

Professor Dan Bar-On died on Thursday in Tel Aviv following an illness

Dan Bar-On is professor of psychology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ben-Gurion University and has twice been chair of the department. Over the years Bar-On has made statements in his writings, and signed petitions, that cannot even
by a generous interpretation be considered loyal to Israel.

[BGU Political Science] Neve Gordon speaks of [Hebrew U, Classics] Dr. Amiel Vardi's best education for his daughter: Prison

Eighteen-year-old Sahar Vardi is currently in an Israeli military prison. She is being punished for the crime of refusing to be conscripted into the Israeli military.
A few weeks before her imprisonment she wrote Israel’s Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, explaining her decision to become a conscientious objector. “I have been to the occupied Palestinian territories many times, and even though I realize that the soldier at the checkpoint is not responsible for Israel’s oppressive policies, that soldier is still responsible for his conduct…” She summed up her letter to Barak with the following words: “The bloody cycle in which I live--made up of assassinations, terrorist attacks, bombings, and shootings--has resulted in an increasing number of victims on both sides. It is a vicious circle that is sustained by the choice of both sides to engage in violence. I refuse to take part in this choice.”
While Vardi is the first woman to be imprisoned this year, she is part of a broader movement of Shministim, high-school seniors who refuse to be conscripted due to the military’s oppression of the Palestinians. Two other conscientious objectors, Udi Nir and Avichai Vaknin, were imprisoned earlier this month and a few others are likely to follow suit.

About Neve Gordon's [BGU] delegitizimation of Israel in CAMERA's report on the National Catholic Reporter

Neve Gordon, the writer in question, is a professor at Ben Gurion University has used the pages of NCR to falsely portray Israel as attempting to starve its neighbors. In a Feb. 8, 2008 NCR piece titled “The iron wall in Gaza,” Gordon wrote “The experiment in famine began on Jan. 18. Israel hermetically closed all of Gaza’s borders, preventing even food, medicine and fuel from entering the Strip.”
On this score, Gordon accepts as fact, Hamas’s complaints about a lack of food and fuel in the Gaza Strip, even as other Palestinian leaders blamed Hamas for manufacturing the crisis. Khaled Abu Toameh, reporting in the Jerusalem Post on Jan. 21, 2008, quoted a Palestinian Authority official who insisted that the bakeries were sufficiently stocked with fuel and flour

[Ben Gurion U, Jewish Thought] Ehud Krinis helps "righteous" Palestinians in their struggle against "colonist" Israelis

The first colonist to arrive on the scene this time was Dalia's shepherd, who took his shirt off and used it to mask his face as has become the habit in colonist attacks lately. This colonist alerted Michael, the security guard, who arrived with another ten colonists, including two who participated in the previous assault. Among them was the one had driven the Subaru and was now threatening the Palestinians: "We'll do to you what we did to Tamam". Another bearded colonist explained to the landowners of the Nwaj'ah family that all of this land belongs to the Jews, and the only way for the family to repossess it is to become Jews themselves.
The other colonists resorted to the familiar language of stoning the shepherds and their flocks.

Neve Gordon helps Palestinian fight against Israel, in: "A West Bank Town's Fight to Survive"

The story of Ni'lin is, in other words, the story of a colonized people resisting colonization. This is not the way the mainstream media has been accustomed to portraying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and judging from the Google news results, most editors are not ready to change their approach. The historic campaign in Ni'lin--as well as many other nonviolent, mass civil disobedience campaigns against the occupation in places like Bi'lin and A'ram--is still unfit to print.
Afterword
When the military realized that violence on the ground cannot stop the residents' emancipatory drive, it began arresting both Palestinian and Israeli protesters in the hope that hefty legal costs would do the job. To support the legal expenses incurred at Ni'lin, click here (link to donation page Anarchists Against the Wall).

[Geography] Dr. Oren Yiftachel, member of the Board of Directors of IFCCS which promotes Palestinian Right of Return

Board of Directors

Dusan I. Bjelic
Jelisaveta Blagojevic
Umar Ighbarieh
Miki Jacevic
Norma Musih
Isis Nusair
Oren Yiftachel

Support of the Right of Return is the moral and political basis for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Recognition of the Right of Return is, therefore, the basis for this conference. The goal of this conference is promoting public debate around questions concerning the return of Palestinian refugees, to open a wide array of ideas and proposals about different possibilities of return. Central questions this conference raises are how can the return occur in practice, and what shapes of shared life will be possible to develop with the return of Palestinian
refugees.

Watch anti-Israel propaganda film with Dr. Neve Gordon "Peace, Propoganda and the Promised Land"

Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how–through the use of language, framing and context–the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one.
The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel’s PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.

[Department of Politics and Government] The Sixtieth Anniversary of the Nakba: A Posting by Ahmad H. Sa’di

Across the world, people are marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Palestinian’s “nakba” (catastrophe). The Palestine/ Israel conflict has occupied center stage in international affairs at least since the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Its macabre manifestations confront us on TV screens and newspapers’ pages daily. The efforts invested to solve it peacefully have so far failed. And despite apparently huge diplomatic efforts (genuine, self-serving, or cynical) doomed approaches continue, paradoxically, to prevail. These approaches most commonly—and with various degrees of sophistication—construct a political landscape that is dominated by elites who are described as either for or against peace. Leaders are classified in loaded and dichotomous terms: as moderate or radical; westernized or traditional; secular or fundamentalist. Very little, if anything at all, is said about those who construct these categories and their interests in doing so, let alone their role in perpetuating the conflict. Nothing is said about the morality of those who categorize. Most importantly, very little is said about ordinary Palestinians who have continued to endure the consequences of the catastrophe for more than six decades.

Website promoting Neve Gordon's new pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel propaganda book "Israel's Occupation"

While an analysis based on the de facto situation provides, in many respects, a more accurate depiction of reality, my decision to treat the territories that Israel occupied in 1967 as a separate unit, even though such an interrogation helps mask certain historical and spatial truths, was determined by the book’s primary objective. I am interested in trying to understand how Israel’s military occupation ticks. The goal is to uncover the daily practices through which the Palestinian inhabitants within the OT have been managed, and to explain why Israel’s mechanisms of control were altered over the years. In this way, I not only wish to unravel some of the major processes leading to the terminal shifts in Israel’s occupation, but also to underscore the structural causes leading to the escalation of violence as well the dangerous implications of Israel’s insistence on continuing to control Palestinian land. Readers who are uninterested in my theoretical argument can skip the introduction and go directly to the first chapter, where I begin the historical portrayal by outlining the infrastructure of control.

[Ben Gurion U Department of Sociology and Anthropology] Anti-Israel prof. Uri Ram awarded a Prize by the Association for Israel Studies

Sociologist Uri Ram wants an "academic alternative" to Israeli 'Apartheid':
The state of Israel is witnessing the rise of an apartheid regime the likes of which has not been seen since the fall of apartheid in South Africa --- Uri Ram .

[Ben Gurion U, Department of Jewish Thought] Ehud Krinis helps a Palestinian village against the Israeli Army and Settlers

during the present Israeli Occupation regime, Yatta landowners sold to Israelis some plots on the top of the same hills. This area was used to build Carmel settlement in 1981. Thus, the Hadhalin of Umm Al Kheir found themselves living adjacent to the Carmel colonists.
While Carmel flourishes and grows, and has had a new neighborhood added to it recently, the Bedouin villagers of Umm al-Kheir are victims of Israel's consistent policy of preventing nearly any non-Israeli construction throughout Area C in the West Bank. All the structures in this locality, except the ones built during the Jordanian rule, have been either demolished already or are threatened with demolition orders. The village is not supplied with running water nor electricity, and its abject poverty is terribly and flagrantly visible (especially in view of the standard of living enjoyed by their neighbors in the settlement 20 meters away). Furthermore, settlers of Carmel often harass the residents of Umm al Kheir.

[Ben Gurion U, Geography] Oren Yiftachel lectures about Israel's colonialism this week in Belfast

Professor Oren Yiftachel, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel on Planning and ‘Gray Space’: policy, colonialism and urban change.

Oren Yiftachel and Batya Roded / ABRAHAM'S URBAN FOOTSTEPS: POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND RELIGIOUS READICALISM IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE

we must analytically differentiate between the various
depths of colonization which have resulted from the gradual, incomplete and contested imposition of Jewish rule. Where as in Hebron, the Jewish presence is based on a heavily militarized occupation and settlement vis-a-vis rebellious rightless
Palestinians; in Jerusalem, the edge of the systematic and powerful colonial project is somewhat blunted by the partial civil status of the Palestinians; while in the Beer
Sheva region, Judaization has been accompanied with the endowment to the local Bedouin population of citizenship and some legal, political and urban development
rights. While the Judaization logic proceeds in all three cities and results in conspicuous inequalities

Meretz USA member and editor: Neve Gordon writes from a gratuitously anti-Zionist perspective

Gordon’s articles are difficult reading for Zionists, even a progressive Zionist such as myself. It’s not that he’s wrong in most of his facts regarding inequities in the Jewish State and injustices in the Palestinian territories, but he writes from a gratuitously anti-Zionist perspective.

[Ben Gurion U] Uri Ram reviews Ilan Pappe's book Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

The book ends up with the "Green House" . the faculty club building of Tel Aviv University, which is the reconstructed house of Shaykh Muwannis, the only remaining house from a village with this name that is buried under the university. Pappe rebuffs Israeli academia for disregarding and concealing the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and its continuous consequences, poking fun at the economists for failing to assess the extent of
Palestinian properties lost in the 1948 destruction; of the geographers for failing to chart the amount of refugee land Israel confiscated; the philosophers for failing to contemplate the moral implications of the Nakba that Israel perpetrated; and the historians for failing to supply the fullest picture of the war and the ethnic cleansing. He omits the sociologists whom he could have blamed for failing to provide an account of the 40 years occupation of the Palestinian territories from 1967. On the background of the campaigns to boycott Israeli academia, Pappe counterbalances here the argument against the boycott that upholds Israeli academia as a (the last?) bulwark against the occupation. In sum, Ilan Pappe provides here a most important and daring book that challenges head-on Israeli historiography and collective memory and even more importantly Israeli conscience.

Neve Gordon to speak about his new book "Israel's Occupation" on Feb. 27, at Western Michigan University

A visiting professor from Israel will speak about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a Wednesday, Feb. 27, talk at Western Michigan University. The free public lecture by Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University will be at 7:30 p.m. at the Fetzer Center.
The author of a new book, "Israel's Occupation," about to be published by the University of California Press, Gordon will address the prospects for peace and explore the impact of a number of recent developments and their impact on the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians. Those events include Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas' landslide victory in 2006 elections, ongoing missile fire on Israeli towns and a siege imposed on Gaza.

[Ben Gurion U] Notes from Neve Gordon’s lecture: "From Colonization to Occupation: Ex ploring the Structure of Israel’s Occupation"

“Israel created Jewish roads.” He meant that only Jews could travel without “enduring hardships that Arabs and Palestinians have to take.” Israel did this to “control the land and separate the Palestinians from their land and families.” All the policies that Israel made were to “weaken the Palestinians and to make it easier for Israel to take over their land.” He finally mentions that “the one states solution is the best. If it goes to the two-state solution, Israel continues to be an apartheid state.” The final statement he makes in his lecture is that “the only way to get peace is to quote Karl Marx in that both sides must find the best solution: not fantasy.” And one last bit Neve Gordon says: “International law says that they are occupied territories that Israel has captured.”

Neve Gordon at Columbia U "Colonialization and Separation"

[Ben Gurion University] Neve Gordon's talk in 'Palestine Awareness Week', University of Michigan

From Colonization to Separation, Exploring the Structure of Israel's Occupation - Neve Gordon

[Ben Gurion University] Neve Gordon takes part in a group's call for Israel to give citizenship rights to all Palestinian people

On 11th-15th February 2008, Neve Gordon is co-staring at the Palestine Awarness Week of a University of Michigan group, its guiding principles are: "The end of confiscation of all Palestinian lands and the return and/or compensation of all previously confiscated lands to their original owners.
An end to the Israeli system of occupation and discrimination against the Palestinians, via granting citizenship rights to all peoples under Israeli civil or military control. Furthermore, reforming Israeli policies to ensure equal benefits, treatment, and rights for all citizens, regardless of race or religion...."

Experimenting with Famine' / Neve Gordon

The experiment in Gaza is, in other words, not really about the bombardment of Israeli citizens or even about Israel’s ongoing efforts to undermine Hamas. It is simply a new draconian strategy aimed at denying the Palestinians their most basic right to self-determination. It is about showing them who is in control, about breaking their backs, so that they lower their expectations and bow down to Israeli demands. The Palestinians understood this and courageously destroyed their prison wall while crying out into the wilderness for international support. Instead of the expected outrage, the only response they received was a weak echo of their own cry for help.

Oren Yiftachel (BGU, Geography) incites Bedouins against the Israeli state in 'Bedouin in Limbo'

"These people are being denied their basic rights and ignored by the planning system." This master plan is wrong environmentally, socially and politically, contends Oren Yiftachel, professor of Political Geography, Planning and Public Policy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), who has contracted with the Council of Unrecognized Villages to produce another alternative plan for the Council of Unrecognized Villages. "The real issue here is a planning crime, because the state's discrimination has caused great suffering."

Ben Gurion University repudiates anti-Israel activism of Dr. Neve Gordon

'During the past few years, Dr. Neve Gordon, a tenured lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government, has been criticized on a number of occasions for expressing views that some believe are against the interests of State of Israel

An "academic conference" in London gives an Israeli quisling a chance to shine: Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (Jewish History Lecturer) of Ben Gurion University

'The panel has its academic Jewish quislings to lend support to its real purposes. One of those academics is Israeli history professor Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin of Ben Gurion University. Raz-Krakotzkin objects to Jews (but not Palestinian Arabs) seeking a national homeland for both religious and secular reasons, and has used the Arab term "Nakba" ("catastrophe" in Arabic, meaning the founding of Israel). ...
In discussing secular Israeli Jews, perhaps the majority of he not only declares the Torah as replete with Jewish "myths" about the land of Israel belonging to the Jews, a fairy tale among the religious (who, and in contradiction by him, if they were true to the faith would not want a Jewish state), but expands his interpretation to debunk secular Jews who also feel a connection to a Jewish national homeland as a result of world genocide and persecution as also being founded on the same myth. '

Gender Studies' Henriette Dahan Kalev detects a 'Fear of Arabness in Zionism' in her Post-Zionist Perspective - no Arab Hatred of Jews though

Dahan Kalev: 'In this talk I discuss the fear of Arabness of the Ashkenazim, the way in which it has affected Mizrahim as well as Israeli-Palestinians. I explore this topic from a post Zionist perspective and examine the difficulties to trace the roots of the fear of Arabness.
I argued than, that although Mizrahim and Ashkenazin are Jews, they differ profoundly from each other. Fear of Arabness is the sediment lying in their daily encounters amongst themselves and with the Israeli-Palestinian. I conclude by explaining how this approach opens new context with new options for the understanding of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.'

BGU's Sociologist Uri Ram is told off - It’s not about Israel, stupid

David Hirsh runs the pro-Israel Engage Online web site in the UK and is a leftwing Zionist:
'Uri Ram’s mistake is to assume that the boycott campaign is really about Israel. But it’s not about Israel, stupid, nor is it about Palestine; it’s about Britain. Nationalism can be an insidious temptation and it can narrow our perspective; it has narrowed Ram’s perspective. He is not considering the effect or the symbolism of a campaign to exclude a significant proportion of the world’s Jewish scholars from European universities; he is not thinking about how the argument to exclude is made in British public life. Ram seems only concerned with fighting an Israeli battle against the Israeli government'

BGU Psychology Professor Bar-On Equates Naqba with Holocaust

Ben-Gurion University is host to many of the worst anti-Israel extremists, tenured traitors, "New Historians", and "Post-Zionists" in Israel academia. Some openly call for Israel to be annihilated. Unlike other universities where such people are repudiated by the institution officers and officials, at Ben Gurion University they are celebrated and endorsed by the university officers as fine scholars and sensitive peace lovers. This has earned Ben Gurion University its frequent nickname, the "Bir Zeit of the Negev." BGU is so obsessed with hiring and promoting anti-Israel extremism that it sometimes trashes academic standards of scholarship altogether.
While Ben Gurion University is also home to many serious ...Among the many extremists at BGU is Professor Dan Bar-On, a "Post-Zionist" professor of psychology who used to be Dean of Social Sciences at BGU. Writing in the pro-Palestinian Middle East Times of April 27, 2007 with an Arab co-author, Bar-On mimicks so many of the vogue radical haters of Israel in drawing moral-historical comparisons between the Nazi Holocaust of Jews in World War II and the "Naqba" (catastrophe in Arabic), the fashionable nonsense term that is often used by such people when describing the "sufferings" of Arabs when Israel was first created.

Political Science Lecturer Neve Gordon claims the poor "Anarchists" are Victims of Israeli State Terror

Even though the anarchists are frequently beaten and arrested, they do not desist. To date, about 10 Palestinians have been killed in demonstrations against the separation barrier and thousands have been wounded, a number that would no doubt have been much greater had it not been for the fearless dedication of the anarchists.
These unsung heroes are currently regarded in Israel as a fifth column. And when the Israeli police began to realise that beating and detaining them would not stop their stubborn resistance, a different strategy was adopted. Scores of legal indictments were issued by the state prosecutor.

Sociologist Uri Ram promotes 'Post-Zionism' and denounces Israel as an Apartheid Regime

Post–Zionism is a counter–hegemonic political culture that emerged in Israel during the 1990s. It exposed the inherent tension between the Jewish domination over the state and the latter’s democratic pretensions. While since the beginning of the current decade post-Zionism was declared to have exhausted itself with no tangible achievements, it turns out that in 2007 a second wave of post-Zionism is unfolding, albeit with noticeable changes from the first wave, yet with an even more invigorated impetus.

Sociology Lecturer Uri Ram: Boycott Good, Israel BAD

Do the universities somehow serve the occupation and in so doing take part in violating international law, and whether they are part of an overall state apparatus headed by the Defense Ministry and army, and followed by the Yesha Council and "hilltop youths" in the West Bank, who are all dedicated to the maintenance of the occupation, or whether Israel is home to academic freedom and institutional distinction that allows for a critical discussion of the occupation and oppression.

Demolishing Review of BGU Geographer OREN YIFTACHEL's New Anti-Israel Book

Finding fault with Israel has become the vogue among so-called radicals or liberals in Western society, especially since the downfall of South Africa’s Apartheid regime over a decade ago. Of course, Israel-bashing has been part and parcel of Arab rhetoric and actions since the establishment of the state in 1948 as the Zionist effort to create a Jewish homeland had been for most of the seven decades that preceded it. ... In recent years, they have been joined by Israeli intellectuals and academics who, for different reasons, are unhappy with what the state stands for, the policies that it chooses to pursue and the way in which it is governed. All these have become facts of life and Israel is increasingly regarded as the cause of much of the region’s ills and a major danger to world stability.

Political Science Professor David Newman celebrated by the ex-PLO spokesman Mahmoud Labadias as a Post-Zionist in 'Post-Zionism a chance for peace'

Newman criticized Livnat and Leibler and all their camp that they are deeply rooted in the mentality of siege. By clinging to the image of the besieged Jew, threatened and isolated they believe that this is the only way to preserve the Jewish personality. He also says that Livnat and Leibler commit the same mistake perpetrated by those who call themselves teachers. “They equate nationalist education with Jewish education, as if the lack of Jewish Education and Jewish Science depends on their intention to make peace and the recognition of others’ rights”. Newman concludes by saying that, “it is also not a great honor that 80% of Jewish Children in this country know nothing about the 20% of the non-Jewish minority, and know nothing about their feasts or the foundation of their culture and there fore, they cannot treat them in a tolerant and comprehensible way.” Indeed, Newman was referring to the discriminated Arab minority inside Israel.

BGU Political Science Lecturer Ahmad H. Sa'di: on the 'Crimes committed by Zionist gangs'

Through 356 pages book, edited by Ahmad H. Sa'di and Lila Abu-Lughod, provides facts on the crimes committed by Zionest gangs aginst Palestinian civilians and the establishing of Israel on the rubble of at least 450 Palestinian villages in 1948.

Gender Studies' Henriette Dahan Kalev promotes 'Post-Zionism' and denounces Zionist males

Zionist ideology as formulated by the founding fathers and aspires produces an effective critique of the status quo. It looks into the relation of an image-dominated Israeli Jewish Male to political practice, and the end of a Zionist tradition that now appears more heterogeneous than previously thought even while it appears insufficiently tolerant of multiplicity. At the very least, postzionism highlights the multiplication of voices, questions, and conflicts that has shattered what once seemed to be (although it never really was) the placid unanimity of the grand narrative and of Zionism that gloried in it.

BGU political science lecturer NEVE GORDON and TAU's YIGAL BRONNER denounce the Israeli legal system

Apparently, Judge Solburg has no patience for naivete and ensured that political reality would win the day. He did not allow the autopsy results or, in his own words, "the objective dimension" of the case to alter his verdict and thus sent a very clear message to Arab citizens of Israel that evidence is not the most important criteria for determining guilt. It will, accordingly, be no surprise if the next victim's family refuses to consent to an autopsy.
The verdict also sends a clear message to the police: "don't worry." Israeli policemen can rest assured that everything will be done to cover up violence against Arabs. If internal affairs won't do the job, then a judge, who will acquit the policeman, can be found, even when the officer is guilty of shooting a man in cold blood.
Moreover, the verdict reinforces the idea among the Jewish public that not all blood is the same. Not that this should really surprise anyone.

Psychologist Dan Bar-On claims it is all Israel's fault, equates Holocaust with the "Naqba"

Israeli Jews have generally refused to take even partial
responsibility for the Nakba (the Catastrophe) that befell the Palestinian Arabs in 1948

Neve Gordon, Political Science, wants to see Israel De-Zionized, defends spy Azmi Bishara

"...Bishara, it seems, is a threat not because of any particular action or statement but because he has become a symbol of a new kind of opposition within Israel..."

Sociologist Uri Ram wants an "academic alternative" to Israeli 'Apartheid'

The state of Israel is witnessing the rise of an apartheid regime the likes of which has not been seen since the fall of apartheid in South Africa . More than 3.5 million Palestinians have been living for the past four decades under an oppressive occupation, in the best case living a life behind fences, wires, and concrete. The torture and murder of Palestinians has become regular news, and the shameful exploitation —under the protection of the law —of foreign workers and trafficked women has become a new tradition. The new liberal social order and the new colonialist political order in Israel are living side by side as part of the new world order which has been crystallizing since September 11, 2001

Linguistics Lecturer Idan Landau says Israel is as Guilty of Terror as the Terrorists

This is not a war, but rather, a unilateral invasion into a Palestinian town, and even in wars there are explicit bans on unnecessary harm to the civilian population. The IDF has not heard about it; the Palestinian population, including its assets and needs, are like thin air for the invading forces...The tank shells produced by Israel Military Industries do not serve loftier goals than those served by pipe bombs in Nablus. Both are used, maliciously and arbitrarily, against innocent civilians. The difference is merely in power: The immense damage caused to West Bank towns by Israel's military technology cannot be compared to the limited damage caused by Palestinian terrorism in Israel's cities.

Kobi Snitz (BGU Mathematics Department) was arrested in Bil'in on Friday

"our comrade kobi snitz was arrested at the demo in Bilin Yesterday and was charged with assult, he was held for the night and will be brought in front of a judge tonight at 19:00 in Migrhash Harroisim in Jerusalm. although it's not possible to go into the court people are welcome to come and support kobi tonight".

BGU President Disses Overseas Donors

Professor Rivka Carmi, the new president of Israel's Ben-Gurion University, actually views overseas Jewish donors to BGU as the real threat to academic freedom at her school.
She says so in the Hebrew quarterly Academia (number 17, winter 2006-7), which is published by the Committee of University Heads, a sort of lobby group on behalf of the universities.
But let's back up a little here. Ben-Gurion University is arguably the worst den of anti-Israel campus radicalism, "New History" (meaning pseudo-history) and "Post-Zionism" in Israel, though the competition for that title is keen.
Despite being named after David Ben Gurion, BGU is home to many of the worst academic extremists in Israel, including Neve Gordon, Lev Grinberg, Oren Yiftachel, Amnon Raz-Karkutzkin, and a host of others.

Math Department's Kobi Snitz wounded while battling Zionist soldiers in Bil'in

Eleven people were injured today, after the army attacked the
demonstration with a volley of teargas, concussion grenades and rubber coated steel bullets. An Israeli anarchist, Kobi Snitz, was repeatedly hit in the head with metal concussion grenades, used as brass knuckles. The scene took place as Snitz tried, together with others, to prevent a provocative arrest of a Palestinian demonstrator. He was later evacuated to Tel Hashomer hospital and had three of his wounds stitched

Cartoon inspired by a professor from Ben Gurion University

A professor of the Israeli Ben Gurion University said:
During the second world war many Zionists were high ranking Nazi officers

Geographer Oren Yiftachel to speak in Ramallah Illegally at "End the Occupation" Conference

International Conference: Ending the Occupation and Siege: The Need for New Coalitions.
Internationals, Palestinians and Israelis Working in Solidarity for a Complete End of Occupation And Just Peace.
Ramallah, January 5-7, 2007.
First day presentations: Naomi Chazan, Salim Tamari, Oren Yiftachel, Akiva Eldar, and Eyad El-Sarraj.
Organized by FFIPP-I and Combatants for Peace

Neve Gordon is collecting financial support for Ta'ayush in order to help Palestinian anti-Israel actions - does the Income Tax Office Know?

We need your financial support. As the brutal attacks on Gaza continue, the less visible but nonetheless violent assaults on the West Bank also persist. For over five years now Ta’ayush activists together with activists from other organizations, both local and international, have been struggling against the ongoing attempts to expel the Palestinian cave dwellers from the South Hebron region. In their attempt to force the Palestinians to leave their land, settlers have poisoned water wells and sheep herds, uprooted olive tress, and routinely beaten local Palestinians and activists. In the past year, another silent expulsion has been taking place just south of Bethlehem, where 20,000 Palestinians are rapidly being closed off in an enclave that will ultimately be annexed to Israel (see map below). These Palestinians are cut off from medical services, education, and work. In the past months, Ta’ayush’s money has dwindled and it has become difficult for the movement to pay for basic costs like transportation (to and from Jerusalem) as well as other activity-related expenses. We are therefore asking you to send donations and support our activities in the region.
We would like to raise $12,000 in this current fund drive. Checks made out to Ta’ayush (in shekels, dollars, and euros) can be sent to Neve Gordon, Mishol Motza # 7 apt 56, Beer-Sheva, Israel. nevegordon@gmail. com

In-Classroom Political Indoctrination at Ben Gurion University

At Ben Gurion University, the Department of Politics and Government offers a course entitled "Critical Aspects of the Occupation," taught by Neve Gordon

Dr. Kobi Snitz and the "Anarchists Against the Wall" are not welcomed in Bil'in Village

The group of demonstrators headed by Dr. Kobi Snitz that has been going to Bil'in evey Friday during the last year, was attacked by Palestinians during the last couple of demonstrations . It is said that the villagers of Bil'in were not happy lately of Israelis showing solidarity. Therefore the group of activists named "Anarchist against the Wall" decided not to go to further demonstrations.
Bil'in is located 12 kilometres west of Ramallah district, adjacent to the Israeli West Bank barrier and the Israeli city of Modi'in.
Bil'in has become internationally known due to its proximity to the Israeli West Bank barrier, and its continuing protests against the barrier's construction on its land. The barrier separates the village from around 60 percent of its farming land. A new neighborhood of the Modi'in Illit settlement is being constructed on part of this land, however the developers claim that they legally purchased the land from the villagers.
Since January 2005, the village has been orchestrating weekly protests against the barrier's construction.

Neve Gordon in a pro-Palestinian documentary demands the prosecuting of Israeli leaders

The film, "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: U.S. Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," makes a relentless case against what it sees as bigoted, brutal Israeli soldiers who demand papers and permits from Palestinians who are merely trying to live ordinary lives. The film casts Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, as the decisive destabilizer who has thrown the region seriously, murderously out of balance. Mr. Sharon, the filmmakers assert, has crossed military and symbolic boundaries in a way that seemed destined and perhaps intended to ignite hostility. The film also finds fault with American broadcast networks for, it says, minimizing protests against such actions and, in effect, condoning increased violence.

"Exile, History and the Nationalization of Jewish Memory" - Quotes from a recent lecture by Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin

Dr. Raz-Krakotzkin contradits himself. On the one hand he says: "Zionism did not wage its struggle against “Europe”, but against the Palestinians, thus alienating them from “history"". On the other hand, he speaks of Brith Shalom ("Covenant of peace"), the important Zionist movement, which was active in the mid 1920's, and was calling for agreements with the Palestinian Arabs.
In other words, it wasn't the Zionists waging a war against the Palestinian Arabs, but Palestinian Arabs waging wars against the Zionists. Moreover, it was the Palestinian Arabs who brought catastrophy upon themselves through bad decisions, its not the Jews to be blamed.

BGU's Idan Landau (linguistics) thinks the problem is that Israel opposes peace

Israel's never had a peace partner because it refuses to be a peace partner

A communist conference titled "Contemporary Capitalism: USA, Europe and the Middle East in the Beginning of the 21st Century" - January 9-10, 2006

Participating anti-Israel Israelis such as Uri Ram, David Newman, Dani Filc, Dov Khenin, Neve Gordon, Shlomo Swirski, Yoav Peled, Oren Yiftachel, etc.

BGU Political Scientist NEVE GORDON and his TAU sidekick YIGAL BRONNER accuse Israel of committing Murder in Jerusalem

"Most prominent among these is the deep-seated racism that encourages violence. This racism is inextricably linked to Israel's repetition compulsion, which transforms the victim into the aggressor. A Palestinian is killed and immediately he is described as violent; the police beat a Palestinian and he, not they, is portrayed as brutal; Israel occupies and represses the Palestinian people, but they are to blame. Thus, it is no surprise that after Samir Dari was shot in the back from just a few yards away the police instantly claimed that he was trying to run them over. It is almost as if lying has become an involuntary reflex for the authorities.
But in order for the culture of deceit to be effective it needs the assistance of the culture of dissimulation and suppression. ....
The cultures of deceit and suppression fan the flames of violence. The clear message -- that Jews are eternal victims, and therefore they cannot be found guilty regardless of the brutal means they employ -- renders Palestinian life cheap and encourages a trigger-happy attitude. We have accordingly reached a stage where we can predict that the Israeli security forces will continue killing Palestinians. .."

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin wants Israel to be Demolished, Replaced by "Bi-National State"

This lecture is from Dr. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, titled Against
Models and Solutions: Towards a Bi-National Thinking which took place in Bethlehem, on 2-3 December 2005.

Koby Snitz (math) fundraises in DC for anti-Israel 'anarchists' jihad against the wall

"...One of the anarchists, Dr. Kobi Snitz, will be in DC
on September 19 to speak about the struggle
against the wall and to raise money for legal costs. ..."
in his invitation he says: "As you might know, a "separation fence" is being built by Israel on Palestinian land. The
reason given for the construction of the Wall is
protection against Palestinian terror attacks
(though the Israeli government recently admitted in
court that "national" considerations are also involved). However, the international court of justice ruled last summer that all Israeli construction on Palestinian land is illegal. Outside of Israel and the US it is understood that
under the guise of "security" Israel has been
carrying out a long-term project of Palestinian dispossession with American support.
What is less well known is that a new resistance
movement has risen to oppose the Wall. It is a
popular non-violent movement of Palestinians,
Israelis and internationals.
The Israeli government considers any Palestinian
resistance, violent or not, as a crime and tries
to violently repress it. So far, nine Palestinians
have been killed in the struggle against the Wall
and thousands more were injured. ..."

NEVE GORDON endorses Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein, in: "Seeing through the 'new anti-Semitism' "

In a letter to Georgetown University the Anti-Defamation League wrote: "We are shocked and troubled that on November 18, 2002, Georgetown
University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Department, Justice and Peace
Center, and the Young Arab Leadership Association (YALA) sponsored a lecture by a
known Holocaust denier and anti-Israel propagandist, Norman Finkelstein
..."
Here Neve Gordon writes: "Norman Finkelstein critiques Israel's human rights record and Alan Dershowitz's defense of it. ...Dr. Finkelstein’s second move exposes how the rhetoric of the new anti-Semitism is used as a political tool to ward off and delegitimize all criticism of Israel. He writes: “...The consequences of the calculated hysteria of a new anti-Semitism haven’t been just to immunize Israel from legitimate criticism. Its overarching purpose, like that of the ‘war against terrorism,’ has been to deflect criticism of an unprecedented assault on international law.”
...
Dr. Finkelstein convincingly maintains that a connection has been drawn between Israel’s illegal actions in the Occupied Territories and the new anti-Semitism. This link has a dual character. On the one hand, the literature discussing the new anti-Semitism is used to fend off all criticism of Israel; on the other hand, many believe Israel’s violation of the occupied Palestinians’ basic rights has generated anti-Semitism
...
Finkelstein cites claim after claim made in The Case for Israel and examines their accuracy by comparing them with human rights reports published both by organizations that have a global mandate like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as local groups like B’tselem, Physicians for Human Rights and Al Haq. Mr. Dershowitz maintains, for instance, that “there is no evidence that Israeli soldiers deliberately killed even a single civilian.” Dr. Finkelstein replies that according to Human Rights Watch, there were many civilian deaths that amounted to “unlawful and willful killings.”..."

Kobi Snitz struggles against evil (that is, evil Israel)

Even ten Israelis at a demonstration can make a real difference. We know from the army’s own declarations that their open fire regulations change as soon as they think there are Israelis around. For example, they are not to use live fire when there are Israelis around, and they are not to fire rubber bullets in a direction where they think there are Israelis.

Geography Professor Oren Yiftachel wants to end Israeli "Colonialism" - does he mean existence?

The root of the problem - the Jewish colonialism in the territories. These initiatives leave the Palestinians as a kind of silent backdrop or incidental stage setting. There is not only a moral problem here of ignoring the inhabitants of this land for many generations, but also an analytical failure to understand the development of the political geography
...
Such an attitude allows most Jews to believe to this day the illusion that they have a "Jewish democracy," despite the apartheid reality that is created by Jewish rule before their very eyes.

Ehud Krinis says Israel is "destroying' Palestinian "Infrastructure"

A Report by BGU's Ehud Krinis, an Israeli 'anti-occupation' activist participating in a group which supports Palestinian aims.

BGU Political Science lecturer Neve Gordon justifies Palestinian Refusal to Recognize or Negotiate with Israel

No Palestinian leader can accept such a solution. But since negotiations, at least regarding these crucial issues, are not on Sharon's agenda, the Palestinian position is, in a sense, besides the point.
The outcome of such a move will no doubt be devastating, since unlike Israel's withdrawal from Gaza which has been endorsed by all of the Palestinian political factions, including Hamas, Sharon's West Bank plan will be unanimously rejected. Resistance will most likely mount and the bloody cycle of violence will resume, this time with even greater vengeance.

BGU's Neve Gordon and Oren Yiftachel War against Israel from Berkeley

Neve Gordon has been under increasingly under attack in recent days in the Israeli media for his anti-Israel activities. As a columnist for Alexander Cockburn’s anti-Semitic Counterpunch magazine, Gordon routinely declares Israel to be a fascist, racist, apartheid terrorist country. Gordon was paid by Notre Dame's far-left Kroc Institute, which has attempted to hire Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss Arab anti-Semite with ties to al-Qaeda, in order to produce a “research report” claiming to prove that Israel is a terrorist state. Gordon is so anti-Israel that his columns have been published on the neo-Nazi Zundelsite website operated by Ernst Zundel, the Nazi whom Canada recently deported to Germany, and on Islamic fundamentalist pro-terror web sites. Gordon ran an international campaign of defamation and vilification against his own army commander, a private citizen and not a public figure, accusing him on communist and other anti-Semitic web sites of being a “war criminal.” He might have been trying to get this officer indicted before the World Court in the Hague or some other den of kangaroos. Gordon was arrested for illegally trying to interfere with the Israeli army’s anti-terror activities by serving as a human shield for Arafat and the wanted terrorists being hidden in PLO offices.

David Newman and Benjamin Pogrund claim the Jewish communities strangle "liberal voices," meaning - we suppose - anti-Zionists and anti-Semites

It is ironic that it is precisely these voices of liberalism that are under attack by the voices of rightwing patriotism in Israel and elsewhere, in an attempt to delegitimise all pro-peace and anti-occupation voices, even to the extent of seeking to have some of them dismissed. But, to their credit, the Israeli academic establishment has refused to take this option. Instead, it defends freedom of expression as a basic right for all Israeli and Palestinian academics.

...This knee-jerk, somewhat hysterical, reaction goes down well with the Israeli Jewish public, large sections of whom remain convinced that they stand alone against a hostile world that wishes for nothing more than the extinction of the Jewish state.

BGU Geography Professor Oren Yiftachel denounces Israel as an Apartheid "Ethnocracy"

The colonial Judaization process is the central 'spine' of a regime I have labeled Jewish 'ethnocracy'. This regime, which stretches over the entire land of Israel/Palestine, is established for, and by, a dominant ethnic group. ....
A central argument of the paper is that both Palestinian-Arabs and Mizrahi Jews (who arrived in Israel as Arab-Jews) became victims of the Jewish settlement project. But one should not assume symmetry between the two groups: the harm caused to the Arabs has been much deeper, while the Mizrahim themselves participated in Judaizing the country. Yet, much of the marginalizations of Palestinian-Arabs and Mizrahi Jews derive from the very same Judaization (and de-Arabization) project, which positioned these communities in geographic, cultural and economic peripheries.

BGU's Benny Morris and his Reign of Error, Revisited

The Birth Revisited is a misnomer. Rather than offer a reassessment of Morris's previous writings on the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, The Birth Revisited is but a longer replica of its dishonest and shoddy predecessor. To downplay his failure to consult the most important archives in the preparation of The Birth, Morris argued that "the new materials … tend to confirm and reinforce the major lines of description and analysis, and the conclusions, in The Birth." And so, The Birth Revisited continues the stubborn refusal of Morris to base his arguments and conclusions on archival evidence and the historical record. Far from confirming and reinforcing his arguments, archival documents demonstrate that "the Palestinian refugee problem" was the creation of Palestinian and other Arab leaders, not of the Zionists.

Neve Gordon claims Israel Government Suppressing Academic Freedom (this, from the guy who files nuisance SLAPP suits when someone criticizes his writings!!)

Neve Gordon also points out: "Israeli universities have been under an unprecedented assault by the Sharon government... An academic boycott will only strengthen [the Israeli right], and in this way assist the destruction of academic freedom in Israel"....
"To fight the anti-intellectual atmosphere within Israel, local academics need as much support as they can get from their colleagues abroad. A boycott will only weaken the elements within Israeli society that are struggling against the assault on the universities..." Far from helping the Palestinians, a boycott will hinder the democratic dialogue and accommodation on which prospects for a free and independent Palestinian state alongside Israel depend.

BGU Sociologist Uri Ram leads his readers through the Post-Zionist, Post-Modern, Marxist Looking Glass

Looking at Israel society from post-ideological, post-modernist, post-colonial and post-Marxist perspectives.

BGU's Lev Grinberg and his Campaign to Have Israel Demonized as a Genocidal State

Lev Grinberg, Director of the Hubert Humphrey Center for Public Affairs at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, published an article entitled, “Symbolic Genocide”, in the Belgian daily newspaper, La Libre Belgique of March 29, 2004. There he accused Israel of perpetrating “symbolic genocide” against the Palestinian people.

Why? Because Israel had targeted some terrorist leaders.

BGU Sociologist Lev Grinberg Uncovers some Genocide ... that perpetrated by the Jews

'It is the responsibility of the world, and primarily of Europe, to stop the government of Israel. The world has the means to do so, and it’s time to show some will as well. A few months of economic embargo would suffice to convince the majority of Israelis of the wisdom of international intervention. Silence under the present circumstances means acquiescence. '

BGU faculty "deconstruct" Israel to show how "hegemonious" and oppressive it is! Adriana Kemp, David Newman, Uri Ram and Oren Yiftachel

This book challenges some of the traditional analytical paradigms
prevalent in Israeli social science for the past fifty years. Although the State continues to define itself in terms of a homogeneous political and cultural entity, as the voices and narratives of marginalized (especially Palestinian, Eastern-Jewish and women) groups come to the fore, agencies of state socialization are no longer able to impose an unchallenged state identity or hegemony. The deconstruction of a state-sponsored social identity, whose aim is social cohesion, is here investigated by critical scholars who develop an alternative understanding of this highly dynamic society.

BEN GURION University - OLDER ARCHIVED MATERIALS

Neve Gordon defames General Kochavi

Now, it goes without saying that this is all Gordon's fabrication. There have been no charges at all filed against Kochavi for his behavior in the battle that Gordon describes, in Israel or anywhere else. Kochavi's troops were hunting for bands of vicious terrorists, including suicide bombers, who had killed hundreds of Israelis, a carnage that does not interest Gordon at all in the article. Gordon accuses Kochavi of ordering assorted human rights violations that even the worst anti-Israel propaganda outfits did not claim took place in this battle. Gordon's claim that Kochavi ordered troops to utilize Palestinian civilians as human shields is not only preposterous, but a downright blood libel.

NEVE GORDON thinks Israel Academia Monitor should be prevented from criticizing Israel's anti-Israel Critics

This assault, however, is not only aimed at academic freedom but at democracy itself. For the danger confronting contemporary democracy is not some new wave of overt authoritarianism, as it was in the early and mid-twentieth century. It is not even terrorism. Rather, the danger comes from those for whom the freedoms that accompany democracy represent a threat, an obstacle to their uninhibited pursuit of dominance and wealth.

Traitors R Us? The Negev's radical oasis = BGU

Dr. Neve Gordon of BGU's political science department, for example, has written: "Israel's gravest danger today is not the PA or even Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, but the one it faces from within: fascism." And in a column on the far-Left Counterpunch Web site, he accused General Aviv Kohavi, currently IDF commander in the Gaza Strip, of "blatant violations of human rights" and of being a "war criminal."

Not surprisingly, Gordon's articles have been posted on anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi sites.
Jeff Halper of BGU's anthropology department, who has written: "'Fortress Israel,' as we call it, is by necessity based on a culture of strength, violence and crudity. In the final analysis, it will be the bulldozer that razes the structure that once was Israel." Lev Greenberg, director of BGU's Humphrey Institute for Social Research, who has written:

"There is a difference between Israeli and Palestinian acts of aggression – the difference is that Israeli aggression is the responsibility of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Shimon Peres, and Shaul Mofaz, while individual terrorist acts are done by individuals in despair, usually against Arafat's will";
Oren Yiftachel of the Department of Geography and Environmental Development writes: "The actual existence of an Israeli state... can be viewed as an illusion... Israel has created a colonial setting, held through violent control";Oren Yiftachel of the Department of Geography and Environmental Development writes: "The actual existence of an Israeli state... can be viewed as an illusion... Israel has created a colonial setting, held through violent control";

BGU Political Science Neve Gordon - Forget terrorism and Iranian nukes, the real threat to the world is Israel's 'Democratic Occupation'

Considering that the Bush administration is unwilling to pressure Israel to dismantle all of its settlements and to respect its recognized international borders—the necessary conditions for true negotiations between the two parties—it seems that the Sharm El-Sheikh summit was convened because the administration wants to replicate the “democratic occupation” model in the Israeli-Palestinian context.

Neve Gordon does not think that Critics of Israel Haters should have the Right to Criticize

This assault, however, is not only aimed at academic freedom but at democracy itself, for the danger confronting contemporary democracy is not some new wave of overt authoritarianism, as it was in the early and mid-twentieth century. It is not even terrorism. Rather, the danger comes from those for whom the freedoms that accompany democracy represent a threat, an obstacle to their uninhibited pursuit of dominance and wealth.

BGU Sociologist Lev Grinberg (better known for his treatise on "Symbolic Genocide") bewails Israel's Racist Evil Essence

The racist view that ignores the existence of occupied peoples or represents them as inferior, wild and dangerous emerged in Europe of past centuries to justify the white man's takeover of land and natural resources he did not own in Africa, America and Asia. That's how they sought to legitimize their acts of plunder, looting, repression and killing. In Europe, that racist approach was applied to "the Semitic" nations "invading" Europe, starting with the Jews. We were the victims of that racism, and history - or divine intervention - has now given us a difficult test.

Academic Witch-Hunt in Israel by BGU political science's NEVE GORDON (he means when non-leftists are permitted to express their ideas)

MICHAEL DAHAN accuses Israel of conducting "Genocide" against Arabs

A few weeks ago, Israeli professor and political sociologist at Ben Gurion University, Lev Grinberg, wrote an article that created an furore in Israel. Entitled "Symbolic Genocide," [1] it provided an unsettling argument: "Unable to recover from the Holocaust trauma and the insecurity it caused, the Jewish people, the ultimate victim of genocide, is currently inflicting a symbolic genocide upon the Palestinian people…What is symbolic genocide? Every people has its symbols, national leaders and political institutions, a home land, past and future generations, and hopes. All these symbolically represent a people. Israel is systematically damaging, destroying and eradicating all of these, with unbelievable bureaucratic jargon."
......
Indeed, "genocide" seems too accommodating a word to describe such examples of the arrogance of power.

Classroom Political Indoctrination

The lecture began smoothly, with Neve Gordon giving a theoretical explanation of human rights (including the fundamental human right of free speech). It soon, however, turned very political. He presented a slideshow about the "Separation Wall" and the injustices it causes to the
Palestinians. He made many mentions of land being "confiscated" by the Israelis and the "humiliation" caused to the Palestinians due to lack of movement throughout the territories. On his power-point presentation, he mentioned that parts of the fence were electrified. However, I then corrected him that they were just electric monitors. He conceded on this point.

The OTHER Gordon! HAIM GORDON celebrates Palestinian Terrorism

This book presents the personal narratives of six Palestinians whose stories are central to describing the greater Palestinian plight in the Gaza Strip, the Intifada, the beginning of the 1993 peace process, and beyond.

Martin Kamer uncovers BGU Geographer OREN YIFTACHEL's political biases and Saudi ties

Yiftachel was the kind of Israeli that an Edward Said-boosting, Saudi-connected Middle East center could not only tolerate, but embrace.

BGU sociologist LEV GRINBERG in Tikkun says Israel is Conducting "State Terrorism." The Palestinians are not.

"There is a difference between Israeli and Palestinian acts of
agression - the difference is that Israeli aggression is the direct responsibility of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Ben Eliezer, Shimon Peres, and Shaul Mofaz, while individual terrorist acts are done by individuals in despair, usually against Arafat's will."

Political Science Professor DAVID NEWMAN in anti-Israel pro-LSD Tikkun Magazine: The Threat to Academic Freedom in Israel-Palestine comes from non-leftists who exercise it!

In reality, the call for an academic boycott has had a limited effect. Israeli academics continue to participate in international research and conferences and they still publish in peer journals. But there is another, perhaps greater, threat to the integrity and quality of academic research and freedom of expression that has emerged in recent years—it is a growing McCarthyism, both in Israel and North America, that opposes any expression of critical social or political thought. This is aimed at silencing the Israeli liberal Left in their critique of Israeli government policy vis-à-vis the Occupied Territories and the fate of the Palestinians. It is a campaign that has gained in strength in the post-9/11 era (in the United States) and the post-Camp-David era (in Israel) as the right wing has grown in self-confidence at the expense of a confused and disoriented Left.

DAVID NEWMAN denounces Israeli Patriotism

Israelis argue that the responsibility for the deaths of Palestinian children is that of their parents who allow them to be used as cannon fodder and, sometimes even encourage them to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers.
"Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to compare their behavior with that of the right-wing settler mothers who irresponsibly place their own children on the front line, in the settlements and buses where the chances of a terrorist attack are so high. An excess zeal of patriotism cannot be allowed to take place at the expense of the well-being of our children."

HAIM GORDON (BGU, education, emeritus) claims Rabbis are savage enemies of peace

The scientist Haim Gordon was harsh in his criticism of the behavior and statements of rabbis. At a conference that was held in Beersheva in June 1997 he put it this way: "The uniqueness of this idolatry is that it is determined by nationalistic, political opinions and comes from Jews who call themselves religious." This idolatry spread like a 'cancerous ulcer' and became the norm. None of the leading rabbis or politicians spoke out against this idolatry. "The rabbis are not 'spiritual leaders'. They are swindlers… hundreds of rabbis in Israel are idolaters because they do not ask their followers to live a life of justice in accordance with the Commandments - instead these rabbis encourage their followers to disregard the Commandments and to worship the Land of Israel." This kind of Judaism has become a "fanatic and insane religion, that is completely devoid of the spirituality of the Bible." Many Israelis had 'sinned' against their neighbors, which would have to lead to reparation measures. Stefanie Christmann wrote in the Freitag of 6 June 1997 that the religious forces not only block the return of the territory "but also fight and undermine the secular constitutional state in order to establish in its stead a fundamentalist Jewish state."

BGU's Jewish History Lecturer AMNON RAZ-KRAKOTZKIN explains how ZIonism is the embodiment of Evil

"I Feel Responsible for the Victims of Zionism"

"Binationalism is the only solution - for now...
I try to show the way the Zionist historical consciousness is based on suppression and the erasure of history: the history of the land, and particularly the Nakba, the transfer of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948."

AMNON RAZ-KRAKOTZKIN (BGU, Judaic Studies) calls for implementation of a Rwanda Solution to the problem of Israel's existence

"The binational framework is the only one that allows the separation of Jewish existence from the demographic issue. In demography, the Jews are losing. It exposes all the internal contradictions of Zionism. The binational approach is aimed at solving this problem, and there really are
Arabs who accuse me of supporting binationalism in order to preserve the Jewish people."

BGU Sociologist LEV GRINBERG on Israeli "War Crimes" and Aggression. Israel is the REAL Terrorist, not the suicide bombers!!

Sharon's responsibility for Israeli war crimes is being completely ignored.

Suicide bombs killing innocent citizens must be condemned unequivocally; they are immoral acts, and their perpetrators should be sent to jail. But they cannot be compared to state terrorism carried out by the Israeli government.

NEVE GORDON / Ariel Sharon's Subjugation Strategy

"The strategy is clear: confer on the Palestinians the costly role of managing civil life, but eliminate their political freedoms while controlling them from afar. South Africans called them Bantustans."

LEV GRINBERG / Israel's State Terrorism

"Israel's State terrorism is defined by US officials as "self defense", while individual suicide bombers are called terrorists."

BGU sociologist LEV GRINBERG celebrates mutiny and insurrection among Israeli leftist soldiers

Refuseniks: "The new voice of conscience finds echoes in the Jewish and humanistic tradition on which most Israelis were brought up, and this is the dormant voice now awakening. This new-old voice may be powerful enough to tear down the protective wall of blind militarism that demands national unity, and create an atmosphere for negotiations and coexistence. It is the voice of new hope."

Middle East Quarterly cites URI RAM as declaring the entire "Zionist enterprise" to be immoral colonialism

Sociologist Uri Ram questioned the moral validity of the Zionist enterprise, finding it a form of colonialism, and concluded that the Jews have no more of a claim to Palestine than do the British to India.

About NEVE GORDON in: The Left is pathological

Neve Gordon is a prime example of this paradox. Gordon, one of the rabidly post-Zionist revisionist historians who teaches political science at Ben-Gurion University. Most of the articles Gordon has published are devoted to denouncing Israel as a fascist terrorist state.
Gordon would probably claim that he is fighting for the rights of oppressed Palestinians, but tellingly he devotes most of his energy to recycling calumnies that subvert Israel's legitimacy. Gordon does not seem
to care for the Palestinians except as instruments of his rage.
He goes beyond the radical-chic support for the PLO given by most Israeli
academic leftists. On a visit to Ramallah he embraced Arafat and
implicitly protected with his body the terrorists hiding in the compound

NEVE GORDON (political science): Deconstructing Terrorism and Assigning the Label to Israel

Scrutiny of Israels actions in Lebanon indicates that it has often used methods of terror.... Israel, one should note, has practiced terrorism in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well."

NEVE GORDON wants to stop the Fence! (And let the terrorists in?)

Neve Gordon in: The Guardian
Israel's goal, it appears, is to expropriate the land "uninhabited". It is highly unlikely, however, that the villagers will actually be forced out of their homes. A more intricate strategy will be employed.

NEVE GORDON / Whose Promised Land?: In South Africa, They Call It Apartheid

Without recognizing the significance of these territorial conflicts, one cannot understand the irruption of the second Palestinian intifada (popular uprising) in September 2000; indeed, one cannot understand the ongoing cycle of violence that has plagued the Middle East.

NEVE GORDON / Letter to a War Criminal (his army commander)

To Colonel Aviv Kohavi, brigade commander of the Israeli paratroopers..... Aviv, what happened to the sensible and judicious officer?How did you become a war criminal?

NEVE GORDON / Israel Must Face The Threat (of Survivalism?) From Within

From: The Baltimore Sun, 2002
In Israel: " the opposition is systematically silenced and security forces given free rein."

NEVE GORDON - about that Fascist State of Israel

Palestine Center:" For Israel, September 11 was a Hanukkah Miracle"....." no one has discussed the effect Israel's fascisization has had on the political scene. Indeed, Israel's gravest danger today is not the PA or even Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, but the one it faces from within: fascism".

The fascisization of politics takes many forms

NEVE GORDON / "Fascism" in Israel (no, he does not mean from the anti-democratic Left!)

Israel's gravest danger today is the one it faces from within: fascism. The fascisization of politics takes many forms,

NEVE GORDON has a fan who writes about The Nazification of Israel

Professor Neve Gordon of the Ben Gurion University wrote on March 6:
As to the situation here, it is getting unbearable by the day. We tried to dismantle a roadblock the other day near Hebrew U and were beaten by the police. Three women had their hands broken, one had her head opened. I was beaten while in custody with my hands handcuffed behind my back.
Sharon bombed Gaza this morning."
Israel's Nazification needs no dictatorship since plenty of sturdy little Hitlers seem to be securely ensconced in a great many number of hearts."

NEVE GORDON / Ariel Sharon's Subjugation Strategy

Bultimore Sun: "The strategy is clear: confer on the Palestinians the costly role of managing civil life, but eliminate their political freedoms while controlling them from afar. South Africans called them Bantustans."

NEVE GORDON says Israel does "outsourcing of human rights abuses." It is nice that he learned a new word.

From a political perspective, outsourcing is beneficial because, even if abuses are exposed they are frequently presented to the public as having been carried out by someone else--i.e., the subcontractor. In this manner, subcontracting the violations helps a country deflect the shaming technique, considered by many the most effective tool employed by human rights organizations.

OREN YIFTACHEL / From Fragile ‘Peace’ to Creeping Apartheid

What followed was quick deterioration. Ariel Sharon, then leader of the rightist opposition, lit the fire, with a provocative, well-publicized, visit to the sacred Muslim mosques in occupied East Jerusalem. A deprived and frustrated Palestinian population, encouraged by opposition (especially Islamic) organizations, began to mobilize.

OREN YIFTACHEL / The Shrinking Space of Citizenship Ethnocratic Politics in Israel

The failed Oslo process, the violent intifada andmost acutelyIsrael's renewed aggression and brutality toward the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, have cast a dark shadow over the joint future of the state's Palestinian and Jewish citizens....The actual existence of an Israeli state (and hence citizenship) can be viewed as an illusion. Israel has
ruptured, by its own actions, the geography of statehood, and
maintained a caste-like system of ethnic-religious-class stratification. Without an inclusive geography and universal citizenship, Israel has created a colonial setting, held through violent control....Occupation and settlement, which necessitate ever intensifying oppression of Palestinians
with or without Israeli citizenship, have clear potential to make
Israel gradually cave from within.

OREN YIFTACHEL (geography) - Memo to Barak: Bash Orthodox Jews!

Orthodox Jewish groups gain legitimacy, power, and resources precisely through their explicitly Jewish agendas, and through their activity to further judaize the state, geographically and religiously. However, their political agenda is often undemocratic, as they aspire to expand religious law and limit the freedom of Israeli citizens in the conduct of their religious, personal, and leisure activities.

US students warned to beware of anti-Israel academics speaking there like BGU Geographer OREN YIFTACHEL, in: Beware of the soft, velvet fist against Israel on the college campus

Yiftachel and Hammami are far greater threat to the image of Israel in this country then their more rowdy compatriots, because they understand the art of propaganda. They scrupulously avoid the code words that tend to turn off all but the most committed Israel-haters...[Yet] they proceed to lay
out the 'facts', for those who are unfamiliar with the facts, in a such way that any reasonable person would conclude that Israel is a monstrous obstacle to peace in the Middle East."

OREN YIFTACHEL (BGU, geography) helping US students hate Israel

Without a Palestinian state, Israel will become an increasingly racist regime and continue the downward spiral into the economic, social and moral morass. Or in other words, without an independent Palestine, there
will be no Israel within a generation or two.

About OREN YIFTACHEL in :British academic boycott of Israel gathers pace

"The Guardian": Mr Yiftachel said that, after months of negotiation, the article is to be published but only after he agreed to make substantial revisions, including making a comparison between his homeland and apartheid South Africa.

OREN YIFTACHEL / Sharon's victory boosts apartheid

Even if Sharon moves to evacuate small settlements, as may well happen, his “peace plan” will translate into an undeclared apartheid.

OREN YIFTACHEL / Between Apartheid and Peace

The establishment of a binational (as distinct from a "secular") democratic state (where Israel ceases to exist as a Jewish state IAM) this option appears more attractive than ever."

About NAOMI SHIR in: Israeli Professors Join U.S. Call For Ban On Investments

Palestine Chronicle: Professor of linguistics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Nomi Shir, says she signed up to the Harvard-MIT initiative, in the hope it will have a similar impact to boycotts against South Africa under apartheid. Even though Shir views the petition as a "symbolic act," which she does not
believe will ever be implemented, she says she would not sign if she "didn't think [divestment] should happen."

OREN YIFTACHEL / Democracy or Ethnocracy: Territory and Settler Politics in Israel/Palestine

The Judaization program was premised on a hegemonic myth cultivated since the rise of Zionism that the land (ha'aretz) belongs solely to the Jewish people. An exclusive form of territorial ethnonationalism developed in order to quickly "indigenize" immigrant Jews and to conceal, trivialize
or marginalize the existence of a Palestinian people on the land prior to the arrival of Zionist Jews.

I argue that the Israeli polity is governed not by a democratic regime, but rather by an "ethnocracy," which denotes a non-democratic rule for and by a dominant ethnic group, within the state and beyond its borders

LEV GRINBERG / Imagined Democracy Imagined Peace - Reframing Israeli Politics...........PART 1

Democracy in Israel is not only imagined, but the crucial point is that it cannot be concretized due to structural and institutional factors.

A non critical theory of democracy, misconceptualized in a procedural (a-political) form, may be one of the strongest tools in legitimizing the denial of rights of the marginalized and invisible

LEV GRINBERG / Imagined Democracy Imagined Peace - Reframing Israeli Politics ....................................PART 2

Barak is unable to produce viable formulas of coexistence between the parties. In addition, the Labor party was almost totally neutralized. Instead of internal reform and organization the ruling Party was completely marginalized. Barak is unable to negotiate, articulate and lead Israeli politics, and the negotiations with the Palestinian counterparts also seem to be one-sided orders imposed by the powerful Israeli side.

http://www.bgu.ac.il/humphrey/seminar/article%20lev.htm

Genocide By Public Policy By SAM BAHOUR and MICHAEL DAHAN, Arabic Media Internet Network

"Nevertheless, deliberate and systematic destruction, as the definition of genocide illustrates, does not necessarily mean physical killing of people, albeit Israel is having no problem, and is facing no international outcry, in doing just that. Destruction, Israeli- occupation style, is equally focused on demolishing Palestinian homes under the false pretext
of security."

LEV GRINBERG / Israel's State Terrorism

"Israel's State terrorism is defined by US officials as "self-defense", while individual suicide bombers are called terrorists. "

"I want to ask: Who will arrest Sharon, the person directly responsible for the orders to kill Palestinians? When is he going to be defined a terrorist too? "

LEV GRINBERG on those Arrogant Jews

"International intervention to stop Sharon is urgently needed for the sake of the Palestinians and the Israelis as well."

LEV GRINBERG (sociology): Israel is a Criminal State

Israel constantly commits illegal acts in order to maintain the
occupation, while the local population and the majority of
international public opinion perceive acts of resistance to the occupation as legitimate.

Geographer OREN YIFTACHEL and political science lecturer NEVE GORDON find a threat to peace - Israel

The State of Israel has reached an important crossroad. For some months now the nationalist camp, aided by the media, has been trickling into the public discourse the idea of expulsion - branded in Israel as "transfer"

LEV GRINBERG (sociology): Bad Israel! Bad, bad America!

"Let them bleed" was the Bush administration's motto early on in its reign, until it became politically incorrect on 9/11.

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