Archive: Boycott, also by Universities / ....We respect the right to education. Does Israel....? 11 jan 2010 - 19-3-2010
Reageer (0)Electronic Intifada
Book review: Higher education under occupation
By Marcy Newman
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Gabi Baramki's Peaceful Resistance: Building a Palestinian University under Occupation (Pluto Press, 2009) is a memoir of Palestine's flagship university, Birzeit, by its former acting president. The memoir is an indispensable tool for teaching Westerners about the ways in which Palestinian education exists and flourishes under a constant state of siege and the barriers to academic freedom that Palestinians experience on a daily basis.
Baramki begins his memoir by explaining why Birzeit University is a threat to the Israeli regime: "If a university subjected to continual harassment by the Israeli state, including its closure by military order for almost five years, can survive, continue to maintain its principles of freedom, respect and dignity, and even flourish, one can only imagine what would happen if it were given the space to grow. The threat is to the Zionist dream of having Palestine -- the land -- without its people, to 'spirit' the Palestinians out of Palestine as Theodor Herzl suggested. What Birzeit did was to make sure that the people stayed on the land" (1).
Although the book focuses on the history of Birzeit University, the narrative is intertwined with glimpses of Baramki's own biography beginning with his childhood in Jerusalem as a member of a Greek Orthodox family who can trace its roots back five hundred years. Born in 1929, he centers his narrative on his own educational experiences that began when he enrolled in the Birzeit Higher School in 1934, established by the Nasir family, which at the time was groundbreaking for its use of both English and Arabic as the languages of instruction.
Later, the village of Birzeit became a temporary home for the entire Baramki family, after his graduation, when the Nakba (the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland) turned his family into refugees. In spite of this, Baramki managed to study chemistry at the American University of Beirut since there was no university in Palestine. In 1951, after his return, with the help of the Ford Foundation, Birzeit emerged into a private two-year college, which Baramki joined as a member of its teaching staff.
Tracing the evolution of Birzeit from high school to college to university, Baramki weaves in various stories about the pedagogical changes the institution sought to inculcate, particularly doing away with rote memorization and encouraging critical thinking. But the story of building a Palestinian academic institution was not so straightforward; first they had to contend with the Jordanian Ministry of Education's "negative attitude towards Birzeit" (21) and after the 1967 war (which broke out while students were sitting for exams) it had yet another barrier to education when all of historic Palestine came under occupation.
Building a university under military occupation meant, among other things, that its stewards were forced to submit to visits by the military governor and a barrage of military orders. Nevertheless in 1972 Birzeit began the process of becoming a four-year university since it became even more difficult for students in the West Bank to travel to Lebanon or even Jordan for university after 1967. One of the early battles for Birzeit was over textbooks as the military governor wanted to approve them, as Baramki explains: "As time went by the military government became increasingly obsessed with our reading lists. Books we ordered from abroad were often permanently confiscated without us even setting our eyes on them. Among those banned were works on archaeology and history, as well as several journals on Arabic literature" (38). To contend with this obstacle, Baramki describes an informal network of couriers who carried books and journals into Palestine.
In these early years president Hanna Nasir steered the university through various barriers, including numerous closures of the institution, the first of which occurred in 1973. By the following year, accused of "inciting students," Nasir was deported to south Lebanon. In his absence Baramki took over the helm. To be sure, Nasir was not the only faculty member targeted by the Israeli occupation forces and Baramki details many of the faculty members who have been detained or whose residency permits have been withdrawn over the years.
Although the Israeli regime feigns concern about matters related to academic freedom, Baramki makes it clear that "no head of any other Israeli university ever enquired about the difficulties we might be facing as a university under occupation, or showed any interest in visiting us. All remained aloof, even when Birzeit was closed down. There was no sympathy whatsoever for our plight" (79). This was true for the 15 military-ordered closures Birzeit endured, including the longest one during the first Palestinian intifada context as Baramki describes the continuing collective punishment directed at closing schools and universities: "There was no protest from the Israeli universities against any of these actions against the Palestinian universities, which were making the daily lives of the university community unbearable. Our Israeli colleagues ignored our problems, although there were constant appeals by Birzeit against its treatment" (154). These comments are important, especially when it comes to demonstrating to a Western audience the hypocrisy of those who claim they cannot support a boycott of Israeli academic institutions because of academic freedom.
When the closures first began Birzeit set up an underground network, which the Israeli regime denounced as "cells of illegal education": "secretaries would grab their files and teachers their books. News would then be circulated about the locations in which secret classes would be held. Science students, whose practicals could not be shifted elsewhere, would be smuggled into the campus at night to do their lab work. A student who needed specific books would indirectly contact our librarian, who would climb into the closed library through a back window, find the volumes in question and pass them to the student outside" (81).
In 1980 yet another barrier to academic freedom was the issuing of Military Order 854 placing the Israeli regime's military commander of the West Bank in charge of all educational institutions. Collectively all Palestinian universities chose to resist this order, although not without consequences. Under this military order foreign staff were required to sign a "loyalty oath" that demanded they refrain from any contact with a "terrorist" organization like the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Of course the story of Birzeit is also the story of its students and Baramki's narrative also details the ways in which students have been targeted, from the first Birzeit student murdered by occupation forces on campus in 1984 and the constant arrest and detention of students. He reveals that, not including the recent assault on Gaza, 199 Palestinian university students were murdered between 1976 and 2007. There have been 372 Birzeit students in particular imprisoned between 2003 and 2009. Birzeit responded by pioneering a network to help prisoners' families by setting up a prisoners' committee on campus.
Such networks were necessary especially given what little outside support Birzeit had. At times European partners advocated on behalf of Birzeit. Baramki illustrates how different the US and Europe are with respect to both international law and academic freedom with a story about one Italian foreign minister who, after visiting Birzeit, was encouraged to argue for "freez[ing] the agreements they had with Israeli universities in the fields of research and cooperation until Israel reopened the Palestinian universities. Sure enough, the subject was brought up in the European parliament and the decision was taken to freeze this cooperation agreement in 1990" (125).
This action led to the re-opening of Bethlehem University, but not other universities, although Zionist propaganda made it appear as if it applied to all of them. This episode is particularly important in contradistinction to the action -- or lack thereof -- on the part of American academics and/or congressmen. Baramki explains that the only support coming from the American Congress has been financial, but he warns of the serious strings attached to that funding: "Many US (and even some European) grant-giving bodies will offer funds to Palestinian universities only for projects which also involve Israelis. This is seen as promoting peace and understanding by the donors, but actually humiliates the potential Palestinian recipients without any real advancement towards peace" (126). This scenario is told in the context of explaining to his readers how the Israeli regime "likes to present itself as the champion of academic freedom everywhere. This stance is the basis for its public criticism of the growing international movement for an academic boycott of Israeli universities" (124).
The history of Birzeit University is also in some ways a history of the Oslo accords, given the many Birzeit alumni and faculty who participated in that process from its earliest stages. Baramki's reflections on that process and the key Birzeit players reveal a range of moods from great expectations to disappointment. One of the ways this hit the education sector most clearly is in the limitations of a government under occupation's inability to write its own curriculum. Since 1967 Palestinian schools had been dependent upon Egyptian (for Gaza), Jordanian (for the West Bank), and Israeli (for 1948 Palestine, or "Israel proper") curricula, all of which deleted references to Palestine. After Oslo, with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, there was the hope that a real curriculum about Palestine could be developed, but Baramki explains: "Teaching geography, for instance, could mean having to teach borders which were still unknown. We resorted to teaching 'Palestine under the mandate,' and referred to all towns and villages as parts of historic Palestine. The Israelis objected that this meant we did not recognize Israel. Our argument was that, until Israel decided where its borders were, we would continue to use historic Palestine as our base" (153).
For readers well versed on the subject of Palestine much of Baramki's narrative contains contextual historical material that is documented elsewhere. But by placing this context within the frame of the assault on Palestinian education and the various ways in which Palestinian academics resist this siege makes this essential reading for those who are new to the subject as well as those who are on the fence about joining the academic boycott of Israel. Indeed, although the memoir only discusses the creation of the Palestinian academic and cultural boycott of Israel briefly towards the end of the volume, it is an important culmination of the material that comes before it. It is the obvious conclusion for educators reading this volume, or indeed anyone else, to consider the boycott as the logical response and a way that those outside Palestine can participate in the "peaceful resistance" that Baramki chronicles.
Marcy Newman is a professor of literature at Amman Ahliyya University and a member of the organizing committee for the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
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WRH
20-3-2010
Even if this vote is not binding, it sends a very clear message to Israel: you cannot continue to lay siege to Gaza, persecute and kill innocent Palestinians, or attempt to wage wars to "neutralize" your alleged "existential threats" in the region without the entire world seeing what you are doing.
It is simply logical that some organizations are supporting divestment as a way of tangibly expressing their displeasure at these actions, which, in the day of instant communications, Israel can no longer hide.
So you don't like the negative publicity these divestment votes generate for Israel?
Then I have a suggestion for the current Israeli government:
1. End the siege of Gaza.
2. Stop building on occupied land.
3. Come to the bargaining table with the Palestinians, define Israel's borders (which you have consistently refused to do), and create a just and lasting peace, with a peaceful, prosperous Palestine as your neighbor.
Because unless and until these things happen, you will see more and more public announcements regarding divestment from Israeli-related companies; and all the bile and vitriol you can conjure will not be able to stop that momentum.
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Helena Cobban
Berkeley divestment, contd.
18-3-2010
Here (Doc) is the press release that U.C. Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine put out about the historic, late-night vote in which the student senate last night voted to
ensure that its assets, and will advocate that the UC assets, do not include holdings in General Electric and United Technologies because of their military support of the occupation of the Palestinian territories...
And here (Doc) is the whole, very carefully drafted text of the bill adopted by the senate.
The press release notes that,
In 2009, Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, became the first US educational institution to divest from companies directly involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Hampshire College action was advocated by the group Students for Justice in Palestine, and ultimately adopted by the Board of Trustees. Today, through its Student Senate bill, UC Berkeley becomes the first large, public US institution to endorse a similar measure.
Bill supporter Liz Jackson reported that,
The Senate meeting started at 9 pm, and it was packed with hundreds of students and community members. I think it went on all night but I left at midnight. Confrontations between Students for Justice in Palestine and the pro-Israeli students are always wired with intense vitriol. Last night was the same. The emotions of war, and history, of personal stakes, displacement and persecution are all right there in the room. The pro-Israeli students shock me with their hatefulness and violent energy. The Palestinian students impress me with equanimity and ability to turn the other cheek. Their life experience is their training. I know that characterization is probably unfair but it felt true last night. The room cheered and jeered at every speaker.
I spoke as an American Jew and as the co-chair of the Berkeley National Lawyer's Guild chapter. I based our chapter's endorsement of the bill on the NLG fact-finding mission in Gaza, the first legal group on the ground to document human rights violations just two weeks after the attack on Gaza ended last January. I closed with something like, "When the next Israeli bomb lands on a house full of screaming children may it not be funded by one cent of UC dollars."
Jackson described her elation at being at an important gathering where each person delivers the very best argument he or she can, in the two minutes each speaker is allowed. "Some of the older people there from Jewish Voices for Peace were really amazing," she said.
She said that one of the most inspiring speeches came from Tom Pessah, one of the two co-authors of the bill (and an Israeli citizen.) She noted that Pessah recalled the important legacy established at Berkeley in the 1960s by the Free Speech Movement, and quoted from the historic "bodies upon the gears" speech made by FSM leader Mario Savio on the steps of Sproul Hall in December 1964:
"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part.
"And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop..."
Jackson also said that many of the speeches made by the anti-divestment speakers seemed like hostile, demeaning invective aimed at the 20 voting members of the senate, along the lines of "You stupid idiots! You don't know anything about this matter! It's so much more complicated than you think and you don't have anything like the knowledge that's needed to even talk about it!"
I guess those arguments proved less than persuasive...
It was a long night. It started at 9 p.m., and I think the vote was finally recorded at 4 a.m. or so.
Jackson noted that Students for Justice in Palestine has worked and organized on the campus for many years to reach the present point-- and that a lot more, much broader statewide organizing still needs to be done to persuade the U.C. Regents to divest the whole of the university's large assets from companies involved in providing military support to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
By the way, also note this in the third 'Whereas' in the text of the bill there:
WHEREAS, within the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Israeli government continues a policy of settlement expansion...
These Berkeley students really have a very clear-eyed idea of what's going on in the occupied territories!
By the way, Jackson was one of many members of Berkeley SJP who took part in the campus's recent "Israeli Apartheid Week". Here is a photo of her taking part in a quiet standing action with her friend Sarah Abdullah:
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Helena Cobban
BDS comes to U.C. Berkeley
18-3-2010
Yes, Alan Dershowitz, eat your heart out, the student senate at U.C. Berkeley voted 16-4 last night to "urge the University of California to divest from companies who have supplied the state of Israel with materials used in alleged war crimes."
Scroll down in the comments section here (Carl Randall) to get the news on the final vote.
That report, from the Daily Cal, says,
proponents said the bill is the first step in an expected long-term process to convince the UC Board of Regents to pull total investments of about $135 million from five companies currently supplying Israel with electronics and weapons, opponents contended it unfairly targets Israel.
Also read Russell Bates's comments there.
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Mondoweiss
More Moor on academic boycott
by Ahmed Moor
17-3-2010
I received several different queries from friends about my recent post on academic boycott. Both Adam Horowitz and Sami Hermez, who has an excellent article about the difference between boycott and censorship at the Electronic Intifada, pointed out that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) seeks only to boycott institutions, not individuals. Consequently, I was asked to clarify my position on this issue.
My purpose in writing that essay was to describe the comprehensive moral framework for academic boycott. I feel strongly that our strategic decisions ought to be informed by purist principles. At the same time, our strategies are restricted by pragmatic considerations. The PACBI campaign is the tangible product of principles constrained by real-world application. I endorse their approach, but want to note that there is a sound moral basis for a broader boycott should it ever be deemed practicable by the interested parties.
Related posts:
1. Ahmed Moor: Why I am for academic boycott
2. US academic boycott movement gets started while Israeli profs try to keep a war criminal off campus
3. Another legacy of ‘Operation Cast Lead’: 500+ US-based academics, authors & artists endorse the academic and cultural boycott of Israel
4. Leonard Cohen won’t be playing Ramallah after all, boycott group reports
5. Omar Barghouti, Tel Aviv student, on the university’s refusal to expel him
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MuzzleWatch
University of California faculty support arrested Muslim students
by Cecilie Surasky
17-3-2010
If you keep heckling the Israeli ambassador to the US during a talk at UC Irvine, the school has a right to throw you out of the room. And if you violate school standards, they have a right to take you to task on such violations as long as they consistently apply the standards to all students. Any student protester knows this and makes the choice to risk those outcomes when they choose disruption over, say, really uncomfortable questions.
But do they have the right to arrest you?
Amazingly, 11 Muslim students at UC Irvine weren’t handed the usual disciplinary action for violating student codes (they each got up, made a statement and then would walk to the door to be escorted out by police). NO, they were actually arrested.
I remember doing almost the exact same thing when I was that age- a bunch of liberal students repeatedly interrupted former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft at a campus talk-only we weren’t so mad. People we knew hadn’t been killed or imprisoned. We recited Jabberwocky and got hauled out. Our punishment? Nothing.
Just change the names: “11 members of the Young Israel Alliance were arrested for heckling the Palestinian ambassador at UC Berkeley today.” No matter who it is, there’s something not right here and the answer to the over-reaction is likely outside pressure (which students who are genuinely concerned about Jewish-Muslim relations report tends to polarize and hinder, not help.)
Apparently, conservative students who committed a similar disruption last year got very different treatment. No arrest for them.
LA Jewish Journal reports in: UC Riverside Faculty Voice Support for Protesters Against Oren
" Faculty at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), joined voices at UC campuses statewide in support of 11 students arrested for heckling Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren during his Feb. 8 speech at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).
Thirty-one professors and graduate students from several UCR departments signed a “Statement on Free Speech, Palestine and the ‘UC Irvine 11,’ ” drafted by Dylan Rodriguez, chair of the university’s Ethnic Studies department. The March 11 pronouncement calls on the UC administration and the Orange County district attorney’s office to drop disciplinary and punitive action against eight UCI and three UCR students, which it calls “discriminatory, cynical, and politically and intellectually repressive.”
The UCI students have been charged with violations of the student codes of conduct. Officials at UCR could not confirm whether action would be taken against their students.
“We believe that this is a cynical and opportunistic attempt at political repression that reflects the racial criminalization of young Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim men and women as actual or potential ‘terrorists.’ By way of contrast, Ethnic Studies faculty have taught courses in Ethnic Studies in which classroom proceedings were disrupted by students with opposing views, and the university administration did not pursue any disciplinary or punitive measures against them. In fact, we have sometimes been told that such disruptions are an expression of academic free speech,” the statement said.
Rodriguez said the statement was intended to take issue with the tendency, since at least 2001, to affiliate Muslim men with terrorism within popular discourse, as well as to challenge what he sees as selective enforcement of codes of conduct by university administrators.
“People protesting is something to be expected,” he said, noting that UCR administrators did not take disciplinary action against what he called “conservative” student protesters following a similar incident last fall. “When people get selectively subjugated to enforcement of codes of conduct, it has a chilling affect on political discussion and freedom.”
It remains to be seen whether UC Irvine administrators can prove that this is a routine response to such disruptions, or exceptional treatment consistent with our undeniable and absolutely shameful criminalization of Muslims and Arab Americans.
Meanwhile, to his credit, Michael Oren has offered to come back and have a dialogue with students. I hope the arrested students, some of whom lost close relatives during the attack on Gaza, will take him up on his offer. I really do. It would take an incredible amount of courage and character to sit down face to face with a man who defends a massive military attack that killed your family members and destroyed schools and hospitals. If I were in their place, I’m not sure I would have that kind of inner strength. But what a meeting it could be.
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Electronic Intifada
Boycott or censorship?
By Sami Hermez
15-3-2010
On 5 March 2010, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that producer Shuki Weiss, who has been involved in producing many of the Israeli concerts headlined by international stars in recent years, has attacked human rights activists for calling on the Pixies to cancel their 9 June concert at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds.
Weiss is reported to have said that "There's no difference ... between a regime in China that silences a performance from fear of westernization, an Islamist regime that stops a performance because of revealing dress and a political group attempting to express itself at the expense of music lovers." Weiss is responding here to the growing movement to boycott, divest from and sanction (BDS) Israel, and in particular to advocates of a cultural boycott who have reached out to the Pixies, Elton John, U2, Santana and Leonard Cohen, calling on them to boycott Israel. At the heart of Weiss' comments is a more common statement that is a misleading conflation in the realm of cultural production between censorship and boycott.
It is important for people on all sides of the spectrum, but especially those trying to decide about their position vis-a-vis boycott, to understand the differences between censorship and boycott. Censorship (McCarthyism being one of its forms) is the act by an institution, generally governmental, to control and manage morals and conduct. It is the act of securing and suppressing, from the public eye, anything that is deemed immoral, heretic or offensive to the government. To this belong the first two cases, of China and "Islamist regimes" referred to by Weiss. Advocating for the Israeli government to ban the Pixies, or launching a campaign to ban the group for the values it represents or may disseminate, would be an act of censorship.
On the other hand, a boycott is a form of protest that may be promoted by a government or nongovernmental entity, as is the case of the movement to boycott Israel, which was put forth a Palestinian grassroots movement. Unlike censorship, the boycott of Israel does not try to hide or suppress anything from the public eye, it does not protect the interests of a government or any type of regime and its objective is not to control the flow of information or culture.
Let me elaborate on this by returning to the two cases of censorship, which Weiss tried to conflate with "a political group attempting to express itself at the expense of music lovers." In the case of censorship, the unclean, deviant or corruptible object is either the band itself or some other undesirable, such as westernization, that is reflected onto the band. What this means is that in the case of China, the band serves as the evil mask that will reveal westernization to the Chinese (accepting Weiss' assumptions about China for the purpose of argument). In this instance, the band must change its principles or content if it is to perform in China. In the case of boycott, however, there is no issue to be had with the band. The band is always welcome and does not need to change anything about it. The undesired object remains Israel's policies of apartheid and occupation and it is this that should change before the band itself accepts any invitation to play in Israel. Shuki Weiss is trying to conflate things by transferring the grievances of "the political group" from the occupation onto the band itself.
We must be clear. The boycott movement is calling for a boycott of Israel; specifically in the case of academic and cultural boycott it is a boycott of institutions.
The movement is not calling on a boycott of the Pixies, Elton John, or U2, but for a boycott of Israel. It is asking these artists along with others to heed the call from Palestinian civil society and not accept invitations to perform in Israel until the demands of the movement are met and until "Israel withdraws from all the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; removes all its colonies in those lands; agrees to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian refugees rights; and dismantles its system of apartheid" (see the website of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). It is asking these performers to be morally conscientious and recognize their roles as public figures, and what their willingness to play in Israel would mean. Essentially, it would serve to rebrand Israel as a place of culture and peace, completely depoliticized, thereby whitewashing its continuing crimes -- not least of which is the siege of Gaza now in its 1,000th day.
Unlike censorship, which suppresses information and knowledge, boycott is a communicative act par excellence that seeks to re-imagine and re-envision a dialogue between oppressors and oppressed; it is predicated on mutual principles and a confrontation with the political and its structures of power. In this way the boycott movement has been able to bring together Israelis and Palestinians into a reconstituted public sphere for truly collaborative political actions, recognizing the power, privilege and spaces of maneuverability for each side. In doing so, a real movement has developed that has empowered people to imagine change and then act upon it in a nonviolent, moral, yet confrontational posture.
Those who still fear what this movement is about should be embraced and made to understand the progressive and moral nature of boycott. The movement to boycott Israel must be fundamentally understood in its opposition and rejection to state censorship.
Sami Hermez is a doctoral candidate of anthropology at Princeton University working on questions of violence and nonviolence and can be reached at shermez A T princeton D O T edu.
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Ma'an
West Bank university staff declare hunger strike, 6 days of protest
14-3-2010
Nablus – The Union of University Employees in the West Bank announced an escalation in industrial action on Sunday, with six days of strikes to begin on Wednesday.
The latest decision will include a two-day hunger strike and the complete suspension of classes, the union announced, after the Ministry of Higher Education failed to respond to their demands, employing a "foot dragging policy," a statement read.
The union said the following action will be taken by university staff in the West Bank, agreed upon during a meeting on Tuesday:
Wednesday will see the suspension of classes, a sit-in by all university staff across the West Bank in Birzeit University, near Ramallah. Following which, a two-day hunger strike will commence;
From 24 March, a two-day general strike will be held in all Palestinian universities;
Between 29 and 3 March, the strike will continue, with no staff attending university their respective university campus.
The union added that it remains dedicated to Palestinian academia and is prepared to hold talks with the ministry to resolve the matter. It further added that the ministry's "method of rejection" during each meeting held between the two sides "will ultimately lead to negatively impacting higher education, that will be difficult to avoid in the future."
Among the demands are inclusion on the Palestinian Authority's retirement and pensions' scheme, and an increase in salary in accordance with the rise of living costs, which was afforded to civil servants at the beginning of 2010.
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YNet
Yitzhak Benhorin
'Israel Apartheid Week' events commence
'In some respects it’s worse.' Chomsky Photo: AFP
Leftist, Muslim groups launch campaign equating Israel to apartheid regime in South Africa. Jewish intellectual Noam Chomsky tells Ynet Israel should not be defined as 'Jewish state'. Israeli diplomats: Activity no cause for alarm
4-3-2010
WASHINGTON – Events marking "Israel Apartheid Week" have commenced on campuses all over the world, including in Canada, and to a lesser extent in the United States.
During the course of the week organizers will be distributing material depicting Israel as an apartheid state and call on the international community to impose sanctions against it.
Most of the activity in the US is taking place in New England, including at Boston University and Brown University. On the west coast events will be held at The University of California, Berkeley.
The keynote speaker at the Boston University gathering was Jewish intellectual and political activist Noam Chomsky (82), who called on US citizens to confront Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians.
"Over time, the apparatus of Israeli control has become more sophisticated and effective in affecting Palestinian life,” said Chomsky, a noted author and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor emeritus. Israel has finally begun to adopt the South African policy of what they call ‘indigenization of repression,’” he said.
Addressing the comparison between Israel and South Africa, Chomsky said, “It’s not exactly like the South African apartheid. In some respects it’s not as bad, but in some respects it’s worse.”
"For decades, Israel has been killing and kidnapping civilians in Lebanon…bringing them to Israel, imprisoning them, keeping them as hostages…but two Israel soldiers are captured at the border (and it) justifies a US invasion,” he said. “It’s a comment of us and what we go along with.”
Chomsky criticized US foreign policy toward Israel but stressed it could also use its power abroad to lessen the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The world works like the mafia,” he said. “There is the don, or us (the United States), and when the don says not do something, you don’t do it.”
'It must be monitored'
Chomsky told Ynet on Wednesday, "What I expect the US and Israel to do is to end their extreme rejectionism and join the overwhelming international consensus on a two-state settlement, along the lines that have been discussed in great detail, in Israel too - e.g., the Geneva proposals.
"Note that I say 'US and Israel,' because, despite pretenses, in the real world they act in tandem: Israel can go as far as the US permits, no farther, and relies on constant and decisive US support and participation," he said.
"As for a 'Jewish state,' that's a separate matter. In principle, I don't like the idea of Christian, white, Islamic, Jewish, etc. states. I think states should be the states of their citizens, and do not agree with the Israeli High Court that Israel should be 'the State of the Jewish people,' in Israel and the Diaspora - that is my state, but not the state of its Palestinian citizens. If that were merely symbolic, it wouldn't matter much. But it's far from that as every Israeli should know. However, that's not an international issue. It's an internal problem for Israelis, much like the failure in the US to implement the 14th amendment after almost 150 years."
Israeli Consul-General in Boston Nadav Tamir said Muslim groups and extreme leftist organizations in the US. "This is a coalition of organizations, some Muslim and some anarchist who have targeted Israel. But I do not believe they have significant influence over American students who are part of the mainstream."
Tamir said Israel's response to "Apartheid Week" is relatively mild "because our polls show that most American decision-makers are graduates of law and business schools.
"Our strategy is to act in places that have an influence and not respond to every provocation," he said.
Anti-Israel activity is not so prevalent in San Francisco either. A Berkeley newspaper made no mention of the protest against Israel. Instead, students were busy demonstrating either against the State of California's intention to raise dorm costs, or against racism toward African-American students on campus.
Israeli Consul General to San Francisco Akiva Tor told Ynet that "anti-Israeli activities are being held in a kind of bubble. It must be monitored; yet there is no cause for alarm. This is not Britain and it is far from the anti-Israel protests I remember as a student during the Lebanon war of 1982," he said.
Tor expressed his satisfaction with the organization of the Jewish and pro-Israel students on the campuses. "They are operating very effectively. The students at Berkeley are preoccupied with other matters," he added.
"Apartheid Week might sound sexy but it did not hold ground. This is not Britain or Canada over here," said a senior Israeli source in the US.
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Ha'aretz
Universities across the globe mark Israeli Apartheid Week
By Danna Harman
1-3-2010
LONDON - A filmmaker, anthropologist and economic researcher are among those headlining events marking what pro-Palestinian organizers have declared as "Israeli Apartheid Week" - and all three speakers are Israeli.
University campuses in more than 40 cities around the world are marking the week with lectures, films, multimedia events, cultural performances and demonstrations.
Since they were first launched in 2005, the events have become some of "the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar," according to its organizers.
Its aim, they state on their Web site, is to "contribute to this chorus of international opposition to Israeli apartheid and to bolster support for the boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) campaign."
Though many of the details about those events were not being promoted on the Apartheid Week Web site, it did list several events being offered by Israelis.
Among them is Shir Hever, an economic researcher at the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, who is scheduled to give a series of lectures at the University of Amsterdam entitled "Could the Economic Policies of Israel be Considered a Form of Apartheid?"
In addition, Israeli activist and filmmaker Shai Carmeli-Pollak is screening his 2006 documentary "Bil'in Habibti," about Israel Defense Forces violence, at Boston-area universities.
Jeff Halper, the Israel-based professor of anthropology who is co-founder and coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, was scheduled to speak on "Israeli Apartheid: The Case For BDS" at Glasgow University.
The participation of several Israelis in the anti-Zionist events is "atrocious," said David Katz, a member of Britain's Jewish Board of Deputies who grew up in South Africa and has long fought the comparison between that country's racial segregation and Israel's ethnic divisions.
"They are free to do as they please, but it's atrocious," he said of the participating Israelis. "I think they don't understand the analogy they are making... which is insulting to those who suffered under apartheid."
"It's like calling things 'holocaust' which are not the Holocaust or terming something 'genocide' which is not genocide," said Katz.
As part of efforts to counter the Apartheid Week events, one Jewish charity brought over Benjamin Pogrund, a South African immigrant to Israel who is the former deputy editor of the Johannesburg-based Rand Daily Mail, to speak to British university students about why Israel is not an apartheid state.
"The game plan of those who seek the destruction of Israel is to equate us with South Africa, a pariah state which had to be subjected to international sanctions," Pogrund has said. "Israelis coming to take part in this week should know better."
In Canada, the legislature in the province of Ontario unanimously condemned Israeli Apartheid Week, voting for a resolution that denounced the campus events.
"If you're going to label Israel as Apartheid, then you are also... attacking Canadian values," Conservative legislator Peter Shurman told Shalom Life, a Toronto-based Jewish Web site.
"The use of the phrase 'Israeli Apartheid Week' is about as close to hate speech as one can get without being arrested, and I'm not certain it doesn't actually cross over that line," he said.
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Electronic Intifada
Geographers and academics protest union's Tel Aviv conference
Open letter, various undersigned, 25 February 2010
The following is an open letter to the International Geographical Union (IGU) signed by geographers and academics. A list of signatories can be viewed here.
As geographers, faculty, students and people of conscience, we are profoundly dismayed by the International Geographical Union's (IGU) decision to hold its July 2010 regional conference in Tel Aviv, in violation of the widely endorsed Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. We are equally troubled by IGU's response to the open letter issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which urged the Executive Committee to relocate the upcoming regional conference out of Israel ("PACBI calls for Boycott of the International Geographical Union's Regional Conference in Tel Aviv", 8 November 2009).
PACBI's letter was a compelling reminder that Israel's academic establishment (and geography in particular) is implicitly and explicitly complicit with the Israeli state's colonial, discriminatory and oppressive policies towards Palestinians. As important social institutions they advance, sustain and provide the intellectual and moral justification for Israeli actions against Palestinian people and their representatives both within Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is noteworthy that "no Israeli university or academic union has ever taken a public position against the occupation, let alone against Israel's system of apartheid or the denial of Palestinian refugee rights." PACBI underlines the prevailing, and deeply disturbing role of Israeli universities in developing the very weapons and military doctrines used against Palestinians. Moreover, they highlight the tragic irony of geographers holding a conference about "Bridging Diversity in a Globalizing World" in a country built on urban destruction and gradual ethnic cleansing, a state which defines itself as an exclusively Jewish state, not a state of all its citizens, one that continues to violate human rights with total impunity and stands accused of war crimes for its latest offensive in Gaza.
The IGU Executive's response claims that they are "morally and possibly financially bound to honor the commitment the IGU made to its colleagues in Israel" in 2000. Pragmatic impediments to relocate such an event are understandable yet solvable. It is however far less clear what the executive means by the "moral" standard that binds them to ignore the widespread international outcry against Israel's longstanding mistreatment of the Palestinian people as well as the open calls for support by Palestinians in their quest for basic justice. Against these concrete ethical imperatives the Executive Committee invokes its statutes, which proscribe boycotts, along with the guidelines of ICSU (International Council for Science) on the free circulation of scientists. Yet, we know that statutes are open to amendment in the face of critical circumstances and geographers have, over the last five decades, debunked positivist reductionism and struggled successfully to free our discipline from the false "objectivity" of traditional science. The fact of Israel's colonial and apartheid system, the oppression of the Palestinian people, including the denial of their inalienable rights, the irrational violence against and enclosure of the people of Gaza along with widespread international condemnation are ample and pressing reasons for canceling or relocating the Tel Aviv conference.
The IGU Executive says they are concerned that the boycott forecloses the possibility of debate and feel "the most effective way to resolve policy and political differences allegedly justified by science is through direct and open confrontation of the conflicting ideas and their proponents." These arguments are based on three crucial misconceptions. First, the assumption that the relationship between Israel and Palestine is a symmetrical one ignores the overwhelming economic, social, military and political power of Israel relative to the poverty-stricken, war-ravaged state of the Palestinian people, their state and its institutions. A historical colonizer-colonized relationship along with the constant threat of military assault robs Palestinians of their basic livelihoods let alone the privilege and right to disagree politically or otherwise. Secondly, the intimation that the Israeli-Palestinian question is about "policy and political differences" and therefore not the concern of geographers since politics and science are two pure and separate spheres is an anachronistic vision of the discipline, and an insult to the very many geographers around the world whose work does not adhere to that simple binary and is ethical, policy-oriented and/or politically engaged. And thirdly, the suggestion that boycotts are not effective or legitimate is decisively invalidated by the example of the South African anti-apartheid movement, which shows it to be among the most useful and least violent tactics in resisting oppression and injustice at an international level. A rising tide of international support for the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign calls on us to take a similar stance in the case of Israel.
To date all other forms of international intervention have failed to convince or force Israel to comply with international law and to end its repression of the Palestinians. As educators and intellectuals we must take exception to the impunity with which Israel has targeted Palestinian educational rights. Since its establishment Israel's policies have been aimed at the destruction of Palestinian historical manuscripts, journals and books, suppression of academic freedom and closure of Palestinian universities, mobility restrictions on staff and students, destruction of educational infrastructure, systematic discrimination against Palestinian students, as well as arrest and deportation of local academic and international staff. The latest example of these policies in our field is the travel ban imposed by Israel on geographer Khalil Tafakji, Director of the Cartographic Section of the Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem, and regular lecturer in international forums about Israeli discrimination and ethnic cleansing policies in East Jerusalem.
In light of the above, and in the tradition of engaged geographical scholars such as the well-respected late James M. Blaut whose intellectual efforts were guided by solidarity with oppressed people including the Palestinian people and South African anti-apartheid groups, we the undersigned, believe that it is our moral responsibility as scholars, intellectuals and activists to talk truth to power against injustice. In this spirit of international solidarity and resistance to oppression we stand in support of Palestinians' nonviolent anti-colonial struggle through a public campaign of boycott, divestments and sanctions.
Historically, geography as a science was established and consolidated in direct service of European imperial and colonial expansion. The discipline's critical turn in the latter 20th century has worked to expose and repudiate this history and its militaristic and colonial tradition. It is in this spirit that we, the undersigned, collectively petition the IGU Executive Committee to take immediate steps to relocate the 12-16 July 2010 regional conference outside Israel. Given the circumstances if the conference goes ahead inside Israel we will not attend or otherwise participate in any manner. We urge you to act promptly and ethically in this matter.
View the signatories to this letter
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Los Angeles Times
Protest at UC Irvine against Israeli official still reverberates
The strongest reaction to the disruption of the ambassador's speech has come from outside groups, all but drowning out sentiments of students on campus.
UC Irvine police separate factions at a 2006 Muslim Student Union event called "Holocaust in the Holy Land." In the wake of the recent protest, an assemblyman has called for banning the union from campus. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times / May 18, 2006)
By Raja Abdulrahim
26-2-2010
More than two weeks after 11 students were arrested at UC Irvine for disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador, the incident continues to draw sharp reactions from Jewish, Muslim and civil liberty organizations.
But the loudest voices are being raised far from campus, all but drowning out the sentiments of students.
A New York City-based Zionist group quickly urged college-bound students to drop UC Irvine as a consideration and asked donors to rethink their pledges. A leading Muslim civil rights group asked that charges be dropped against the protesters -- even though charges have not been filed. A state assemblyman requested that the Muslim Student Union be banished from campus. And some painted the university as embroiled in Muslim-Jewish conflict.
"I'm Jewish, and I only hear about this stuff at UCI when I'm off campus," said David Meyer, a UC Irvine political science professor who studies social movements.
The repeated interruptions of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's speech Feb. 8 are the latest in a series of incidents dating back nearly a decade between Muslims and Jews on campus. But the sense among some is that the publicity UCI draws is out of proportion with the attention drawn by other universities, where protests and conflict might pass largely unnoticed.
"Orange County is such a conservative area and Irvine is such a conservative city, there's not that much in the form of activism and rocking the boat, you might say," said Reem Salahi, a civil rights attorney representing the students, known as the Irvine 11.
"I think it's very hard not to stir up controversy when you're talking about Israel-Palestine, and then, compound that with a very conservative county, it causes fireworks," Salahi said.
Although the pro-Palestinian students at Irvine are organized and vocal, their activism doesn't necessarily reach the level of some other universities, like those that have begun divestment campaigns, Salahi said.
Isaac Yerushalmi, former president of Anteaters for Israel (the school mascot is the anteater), said that although protests and clashes are not uncommon on college campuses, UC Irvine tends to have passionate students.
"UCI has developed this reputation," said Yerushalmi, "I think for the most part, because the Muslim Student Union -- they're not afraid to introduce controversial things."
Reaction to the protest of the ambassador's speech was swift.
The Zionist Organization of America -- which for years has logged complaints against the campus' Muslim Student Union as being anti-Semitic -- urged donors and students to avoid UCI, saying the university allows bigotry and discrimination. The Anti-Defamation League and five UCI student leaders publicly opposed the boycott and called it counterproductive. But the ADL said the university is not a hospitable place for Jews.
In 2007, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights investigated the Zionist Organization's accusations of anti-Semitism at UCI and found that the allegations "did not raise an inference of national origin discrimination" or were dealt with promptly and effectively by the university.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the National Lawyers Guild asked that charges against the Irvine 11 be dropped, though the Orange County district attorney's office has not filed charges.
Salam Al-Marayati, who heads the Muslim Public Affairs Council, penned a piece for the Huffington Post titled, "Free 11 Muslim Students Representing America's Conscience." The piece ran a week after the incident, in which the students were held by campus police only for the duration of the speech and never taken into custody, a university spokeswoman said. The council has asked the university to investigate the students' arrests.
This week Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) sent a letter to UCI Chancellor Michael Drake requesting that the Muslim Student Union be banned from campus because it goes against "the university's imperative to provide an education in an atmosphere of academic liberty, free of coercion and conducive to meaningful debate and free inquiry."
DeVore said he was qualified to weigh in on the matter because, among other things, he studied Arabic overseas and helped secure U.S. support for Israel's antiballistic missile.
The Muslim Student Union has said that the protest was carried out by individuals and that the group was not involved.
"I think these kind of things happen on all campuses," said current Anteaters for Israel President Moran Cohen, who was born and raised in Israel. "It seems like sometimes people forget that the conflict is over there and not at UCI."
Students on campus say that tension between Muslims and Jews does exist but that it does not rise to the level characterized by outside groups.
Positive interfaith dialogue events get little or no attention off campus, Yerushalmi said.
"That's not to say there aren't problems, but the media definitely makes it seem like UCI is not a safe place for Jewish students, which is not true," he said.
Neither Drake nor Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez would comment, a stance the school said it adopted to avoid feeding the controversy.
Salahi, the attorney, said much of the attention given to the Feb. 8 incident was because of the university's arrest of the students. That in turn, was a product of outside pressure, she said.
"If this had happened in a vacuum and there wasn't this history . . . I can guarantee you the university wouldn't have done half or a fourth of what they did," she said. "I do believe the university is trying to make political martyrs of these students."
raja.abdulrahim@latimes.com
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the Daily Star
American University of Beirut to take part in global Israeli Apartheid Week March 1-6
26-2-2010
BEIRUT: The American University of Beirut will launch the first-ever Israeli Apartheid Week on March 1-6. A statement from AUB said Beirut will be joining more than 40 cities around the world in marking the event, which began in 2005.
A program of lectures, film screenings, student round tables, workshops and music will response to the call of Palestinian civil society for the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) against Israel. The event will host Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, former resistance fighter Soha Beshara, activists Amer Jubran, Hana Ibrahim, and Nahla al-Chahhal and participants from the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa.
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UMD Underground Info
Divestment Resolution Passed
University of Michigan - Dearborn Student Government
General Assembly Resolution # 2010-003
25-2-2010
Whereas, this wise body has been known to be one of strong moral and social conscience and has in the past supported justice and international law, and
Whereas, U.N General Assembly Resolution 194 resolves that the Holy Places - including Nazareth - religious buildings and sites in Palestine should be protected and free access to them assured, in accordance with existing rights and historical practice, and
Whereas, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 further resolves that all refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be provided for the destroyed properties of those choosing not to return and for loss of, or damage to property that under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible, and
Whereas, the aforementioned situations prove that Israel clearly and inexcusably is in continued violation of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194, and
Whereas, Israel is further in violation of many related U.N. resolutions, including Security Council Resolutions 242, 338, and 446, and
Whereas, Israel is further in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which calls on all occupying powers to protect the rights and well-being of the occupied population, and
Whereas, the U.N.’s own assessment, the Goldstone Report, found evidence of potential war crimes and crimes against humanity, and
Whereas, University of Michigan Regent policy, as expressed in their meeting of March 16, 1978, states:
“If the Regents shall determine that a particular issue involves serious moral or ethical questions which are of concern to many members of the University community, an advisory committee consisting of members of the University Senate, students, administration and alumni will be appointed to gather information and formulate recommendations for the Regents’ consideration.”; and
Whereas, there are serious moral and ethical questions concerning the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and
Whereas, the University is known to have several million dollars of investment in corporations that sell weapons, goods, and services to Israel—including BAE, Raytheon, Boeing, General Electric, United Technologies, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman, among others–whom in turn uses the weapons, goods, and services inhumanely and
Whereas, any University investments in entities contributing to human rights violations by either Israelis or Palestinians is inappropriate,
THEREFORE be it Resolved, (1) that the University of Michigan-Dearborn Student Government will lead a movement to collect petition signatures calling on the Board of Regents to form such an advisory committee, and
Be it further Resolved, (2) that the University of Michigan-Dearborn Student Government calls on the Board of Regents to create an advisory committee to determine if any University investments are questionable and in need of appropriate corrective actions, and
Be it further Resolved, (3) that on behalf of the students at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, we will urge this committee to recommend immediate divestment from companies that are directly involved in the ongoing illegal occupation, because we deem these investments to be profoundly unethical and in direct conflict with the mission of this University.
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Electronic Intifada
Behind Brand Israel: Israel's recent propaganda efforts
By Ben White
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The Israeli government and global Zionist groups are mobilizing to fight the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
23-2-2010
"The Delegitimization Challenge" report from the influential Israeli think tank the Reut Institute has put the spotlight on efforts by Israel and the Zionist lobby to counter the growing movement for justice in Palestine, and specifically, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
The work done by Reut has rightly attracted attention, but it is only one (particularly prominent) example of a wider trend, as the Israeli government and global Zionist groups mobilize to fight the threat to the apartheid system.
It was an issue discussed when Israeli policymakers convened for the recent Herzilya Conference where there was a session called "Winning the Battle of the Narrative: Strategic Communication for Israel." There was also an associated working paper, prepared by a team that included Ido Aharoni from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), along with senior officials from the prime minister's office, public relations firms and two key lobby groups -- The Israel Project in the US, and Bicom from the UK ("Winning the Battle of the Narrative" (PDF)).
An additional working paper produced for the Herzliya conference was called "The 'Soft Warfare' against Israel: Motives and Solution Levers," produced by a mix of academics and representatives from the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE), the Institute for Policy and Strategy, NGO Monitor and Israel's MFA ("The 'Soft Warfare' against Israel: Motives and Solution Levers" (PDF)).
At the end of last year, another significant conference was convened by Israel's MFA in Jerusalem, called the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism. Convened by far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Likud Minister of Knesset and settler Yuli Edelstein, included in the program was a working group called Delegitimization of Israel: "Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions." The aim was to "come up with imaginative, effective and successful solutions to counter this evil [of BDS]," forging strategies of "defense" and "offense."
Co-chaired by Mitchell Bard and Professor Gil Troy, director of the Jewish Virtual Library and McGill University professor, respectively, the anti-BDS group included figures like Canadian lawmaker Irwin Cotler, the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman, and right-wing pressure group NGO Monitor's Gerald Steinberg. From North America, there were representatives of the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism. UK-based participants in the anti-BDS group included members of the Jewish Leadership Council, the Fair Play Campaign Group, the Union of Jewish Students, and the President of the National Union of Students, Wes Streeting.
The participation by key lobby groups outside of Israel is indicative of a growing concern. At the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in November last year, there was a special "forum" on "The International Campaign to Delegitimize Israel," specifically focusing on BDS. As described on its website, the forum sought to "explore effective strategies that can be utilized by the North American Jewish community, including through the Jewish Federations/JCPA Israel Advocacy Initiative" in response. Speakers at the meeting included senior figures from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA).
Delegates at the assembly passed a motion entitled "Resolution Against Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement." The resolution declared that "that the BDS movement be regarded with the utmost urgency," and emphasized "the importance of solid relationships with decision leaders." It also called for "an effective response and [to] devise a proactive strategy to the BDS movement through appropriate vehicles within the system, especially the Israel Advocacy Initiative, a joint project of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) and The Jewish Federations of North America." AIPAC's "Policy Conference" to be held in Washington, DC in March is also going to host sessions on the "delegitimization campaigns" and the pro-Israel student lobby.
There are further, smaller organizations and groupings that have been set up in large part to counter BDS. These include Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Fair Play (UK) and Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine (TULIP). The names of these groups are themselves indicative of a realization that being seen to purely promote Israeli interests is no longer viable -- rather, in the words of the UK's Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI), the key is to stress "co-operation" and "links" in contrast to the "the counter-productive and damaging 'boycott Israel' calls."
The main tactics
In October 2005, the Forward reported that directors from the Israeli foreign ministry, prime minister's office and finance ministry met to work out "a new plan to improve the country's image abroad -- by downplaying religion and avoiding any discussion of the conflict with the Palestinians." Although the "Brand Israel" initiative was launched in 2006, its origins can be dated to 2001 when Boaz Mourad, the founder of the Insight Research Group, and Ido Aharoni of the Israeli Foreign Service, "pulled together a branding team for Israel" (including a partner from public relations heavyweight Burson-Marsteller).
During her term as foreign minister, Tzipi Livni appointed Aharoni as head of the "Brand Israel" project, as well as assigning $4 million for the first two years (which is additional to the annual $3 million budget for "hasbara" or propaganda). When it was launched in October 2006, the Israeli MFA promised that Brand Israel would "advance several objectives" including trade, tourism and strengthening "Israel's positive image" for political reasons.
On 16 March 2008, The Jerusalem Post reported that Brand Israel identified cities like Toronto, Tokyo, London, Boston and New York as locations for "pilot" programs, which could include "organizing film festivals, or food and wine festivals featuring Israel-made products." Accordingly, by the end of that year billboard advertisements appeared in Toronto promoting Israel as a leader in technological innovation. At the time, Aharoni voiced his expectation that the plan would be rolled out in 2009.
The use of public relations agencies has continued to grow. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, in October 2008, it was the turn of British firm Acanchi, hired by the foreign minister "to craft the new image" ("Foreign Ministry, PR firm rebrand Israel as land of achievements," 6 October 2008). The firm's founder toured Israel as part of the mission "to create a brand disconnected from the Arab-Israeli conflict that focuses instead on Israel's scientific and cultural achievements." At last month's Herzliya conference, another leading public relations professional, Martin Kace of Empax, was on stage alongside Aharoni discussing "delegitimization."
In that session, the Israeli government announced that its central Brand Israel message would be "Creative Energy." Aharoni presented the concept, described in the "Winning the Battle of the Narrative" paper as repositioning "Israel away from an image of a country in a state of war and conflict to a brand which represents positive values and ideals like 'building the future,' 'vibrant diversity' and 'entrepreneurial zeal.'" The idea is to shift the weight "from what Israel wants to say to what audiences abroad are interested in consuming."
A 21 January 2005 article in The Jewish Week explained that the "Brand Israel" campaign then is all about "fewer stories explaining the rationale for the security fence" and "more attention to scientists doing stem-cell research on the cutting edge or the young computer experts who gave the world Instant Messaging" ("Marketing A New Image, 21 January 2005). Another important group is "Israel21c." According to its website, Israel21c's "mission is to focus media and public attention on the 21st century Israel that exists beyond the conflict." The rationale being that by "promoting positive images of Israel and Israelis, people will come to view Israelis as more like themselves and understand the relevance of Israel to their own lives." According to a 14 October 2005 article in the Forward, Israel21c was working with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) "on a plan to generate collaborative content" for the lobby group ("Israel Aims To Improve Its Public Image").
Delegitimizing the delegitimizers
There is also an "offensive" element to Israel's strategy, one that is currently less developed than Brand Israel tactics, yet likely to come increasingly to the fore. In a 14 December 2009 Jerusalem Post article, Shimon Samuels, the director of international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, suggested that "propagators of deliberate slurs targeting Israel and, by association, world Jewry, must realize that they may incur a price." He urged that "a consortium of the best Jewish and pro-Israel legal brains should be on call," and ready, among other things, "to use the courts in ad hominem defamation."
A key strategy discussed at the Herzilya conference and the MFA's Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism is "delegitimizing the delegitimizers." In addition, the "soft warfare" working paper presented at Herzliya included the recommendation that "research to identify all the key players that initiate and generate hate (as compared to those that disseminate it), with a breakdown by country, religion and ethnicity, in order to analyze their motivations and objectives, estimate the threat and consider possible ways of handling each" ("Delegitimization of Israel: 'Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions'" (Word document)). One of the purposes of this kind of "systematic, ongoing research, of all anti-Israeli publications, including media analyses, reports, boycotts and on campus activities" is to facilitate the "identification and exposure of and levying pressure on the sponsors of the inciters." The paper also endorsed legal action "by the Israeli government and by independent entities in Israel and abroad, against media networks, publications, NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and individuals that make defamatory reports."
This aggressive dimension was also included in the Global Forum's BDS Working Group document, which included in its vision for a five year plan the proposals to "name and shame" nongovernmental organizations, and meeting "lawfare" with "lawfare." (In that regard, see "The Lawfare Project" and its upcoming conference in March, where neocon and right-wing Zionist lobbyists, academics, and diplomats, will discuss how to shield Israel from the "abuse" of human rights law: http://www.thelawfareproject.org/about/program.) There is also the idea to form "groups of Jewish/pro-Israel professionals within various national and international professional association/organizations/unions," in order to pass "anti-discrimination bylaws within the organization that are general in nature, and that do not mention Israel per se, but rather oppose discrimination on the basis of race, religion, nationality, etc."
Students on campus
Unsurprisingly, given the increasing strength of the Palestine solidarity movement amongst students, campuses are a target of the anti-BDS battle plan. One element of this is the role played by Zionist "ambassadors" like the Jewish Agency's emissaries (or "shlichim") scheme. In a 16 December 2009 Jerusalem Post article, Natan Sharansky, head of the Jewish Agency, expressed his desire to increase "the number of young Israelis sent to communities in the US and especially the more than 100 shlichim based at universities there." He also raised the possibility of the likes of Irwin Cotler and US lawyer and Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz "teaching the shlichim before they go [to the US]."
The Herzilya "soft warfare" paper also discussed university campuses (and schools) as the subject of a suggested "proactive public relations" drive. It added that "such public relations should cover both the subject of Israel and its history, and the subject of radical Islam and the dangers it unfolds." Yet as has been evident for a while now, the anti-BDS push on campus is just as -- if not more -- likely to emphasize "dialogue" and "narrative-sharing," as opposed to openly pushing an "Israel first" line. In other words, instead of far-right former-MK Effie Eitam we'll have the dovish pro-Israel advocacy group J Street "Invest, Don't Divest" campus programming and two-state solution-peddling One Voice tours.
The reported response of campus Zionists in Canada to Israeli Apartheid Week is instructive and encouraging. Apart from promoting Israel's "global renown in science, medicine, technology, business, humanitarian aid" and culture, public talks are being scheduled ("Students get ready to counter 'apartheid lie,'" The Canadian Jewish News, 18 February 2010). There are apparently talks scheduled in Toronto by a Sudanese human rights activist, Arab reporter Khaled Abu Toameh of the The Jerusalem Post, and a self-proclaimed "ex-terrorist" whose mission is to "wake up the body of Christ" to the danger of "radical Islam" ("Students get ready to counter 'apartheid lie.'"
It is also worth noting the Global Forum's BDS Working Group's recommendation that "more money needs to be spent on the programs that already exist in countries like Canada to send non-Jewish student leaders (members of student government, campus organizations, campus newspapers etc.) to Israel to learn the facts on the ground."
A call for coordination
A common theme in the recently intensified discussion by the Zionist lobby is the perceived need for improved, and centralized, organization and coordination. The Reut Institute's "Delegitimization Challenge" report pointed to the imperative of reorganizing "the foreign policy establishment" in Israel, including "comprehensive reform within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
The "soft warfare" paper urged the creation of "a state-led, integrated capability," reflecting what they described as a "broad consensus that a sufficiently-funded government agency is required in order to manage the battle against hate incitement." The two specific options put forward were "a special unit under Israel's National Security Council" to run a public relations strategy in association with "pro-Israeli organizations and activists abroad," or "an entity within the Israeli intelligence community, which would collect, analyze and distribute information, and initiate 'operations' in areas relevant to Israel's public relations campaign." This latter "entity" could cooperate with groups like Middle East Media Research Initiative (MEMRI), as well as "direct the intelligence agencies to thwart anti-Israeli propaganda efforts."
The Global Forum's anti-BDS group talked of the "Jewish community" needing "a war room" that would be "tracking this movement, sharing best practices, coaching communities." It mentioned that "in North America, the Federation system is talking about launching a coordinating body to fight BDS." One of the group's co-chairmen, McGill professor Gil Troy, commented on his blog on The Jerusalem Post's website earlier this month that there was a new initiative "rumored to be in the works in North America and Israel to help galvanize and centralize pro-Israel sentiment."
For all those involved in some capacity in the international campaign for justice in Palestine/Israel, and the growing BDS movement, these state-backed efforts can appear rather daunting. The Israeli government and its allies in lobby groups are not short of powerful contacts and money, and there is now a concerted effort to think "strategically." However, for all the research, conferences and working papers, there is a comical ignorance shaping these responses. A great example of this is can be found in the Global Forum's BDS paper, which includes the idea to "circulate information on Muslims acting contrary to Islam." This is on the basis that "if the people of countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia knew their 'pious' leaders were really alcoholics, gamblers and perverts, they might hasten regime change." As if the people in the Middle East are not fully aware of the corruption of their autocrats and dictators -- many of whom, of course, enjoy US and Israeli support for their antidemocratic "moderation."
Moreover, all of this strategizing and energy is needed in order to avoid the manifestly unimaginable truth -- that Israel is increasingly unable to maintain a regime of ethno-religious exclusion, apartheid separation and colonial violence without paying a price. Its supporters are also unable to see that it will prove to be unsustainable.
Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer whose articles have appeared in the Guardian's "Comment is free," The Electronic Intifada, the New Statesman, and many others. He is the author of Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide (Pluto Press). He can be contacted at ben A T benwhite D O T org D O T uk.
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Electronic Intifada
Harvard center condemns, then defends, fellow's pro-genocide statements
23-2-2010
Leaders of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University (WCFIA) have condemned and then defended statements by Martin Kramer, one of the center's fellows, which endorsed a cut off of UN food and other humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugee children besieged in the Gaza Strip as a means to reduce the Palestinian birthrate and thus the Palestinian population.
In a 22 February article about Kramer's comments made in Israel earlier this month, The Electronic Intifada (EI) observed that "The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, defines genocide to include measures 'intended to prevent births within' a specific 'national, ethnic, racial or religious group'" ("Harvard Fellow calls for genocidal measure to curb Palestinian births").
In an initial response to an email from EI's Ali Abunimah, Professor Beth Simmons, the director of WCFIA, wrote, "I agree with your assessment of the appalling nature of these [Kramer's] statements," but added, "the WCFIA does not have a policy of censoring or censuring our affiliates on the basis of their opinions." Simmons also stated, "I very much hope you bring these [Kramer's] words to the attention of others affiliated with the WCFIA, Harvard and the broader community, where I hope they will garner their just reaction." She encouraged individuals to make their concerns known to Professor Stephen Rosen, who is in charge of the National Security Studies Program of which Kramer is a fellow.
A short time later, however, a statement jointly signed by Simmons and Professors Jeffry Frieden and James Robinson (who are acting directors while Simmons is on sabbatical) appeared to reverse course.
The statement read: "Over the past several days, we have heard from several members of the public, and of the Harvard community, who object to the statements of Martin Kramer at a recent conference."
The statement continues, "Accusations have been made that Martin Kramer's statements are genocidal. These accusations are baseless. Kramer's statements, available at http://www.martinkramer.org/sandbox/2010/02/superfluous-young-men/ express dismay with the policy of agencies that provide aid to Palestinian refugees, and that tie aid entitlements to the size of refugee families. Kramer argues that this policy encourages population growth among refugee communities. While these views may be controversial, there is no way they can be regarded as genocidal."
The statement then goes on to implicitly criticize those who have criticized Kramer: "Those who have called upon the Weatherhead Center to dissociate itself from Kramer's views, or to end Kramer's affiliation with the Center, appear not to understand the role of controversy in an academic setting. It would be inappropriate for the Weatherhead Center to pass judgement on the personal political views of any of its affiliates, or to make affiliation contingent upon some political criterion. Exception may be made for statements that go beyond the boundaries of protected speech, but there is no sense in which Kramer's remarks could be considered to fall into this category."
For his part, in a response to EI's initial article, Kramer superficially denied the allegation of supporting measures to prevent births among Palestinians, but went on to reaffirm and amplify the views expressed in his speech in Israel that food and schooling from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, was a "pro-natal subsidy" encouraging the production of "superfluous" Palestinian children whom he shockingly characterized (quoting a German scholar) as an "extreme demographic armament" against Israel. Kramer wrote, "UNWRA [sic] assures that every child with 'refugee' status will be fed and schooled regardless of the parents' own resources, and mandates that this 'refugee' status be passed from generation to generation in perpetuity. Anywhere in the world, that would be called a deliberate pro-natal policy" ("Smear Intifada," 22 February 2010).
In his letter to WCFIA director Simmons, Abunimah had asked, "I wonder how long Mr. Kramer's views would be tolerated if -- all other things being equal -- he were an Arab scholar who had called for Jews to be placed in a giant, sealed enclosure which virtually no one is allowed to leave and enter, and deprived of food and schooling for their children in order to reduce their birthrate?"
If calls for the deliberate starvation of a blockaded refugee population, in front of an audience made up substantially of Israeli military and political officials responsible for the siege of Gaza, does not cross any line, the Weatherhead Center has yet to provide any indication of what forms of extremism and racism it would not consider to be appropriate academic "controversy."
Full text of statement from WCFIA
Over the past several days, we have heard from several members of the public, and of the Harvard community, who object to the statements of Martin Kramer at a recent conference. Kramer is a Visiting Scholar at the National Security Studies Program, which is a program of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA). (Kramer is not, contrary to the understanding of some of our correspondents, an employee of the Center or of Harvard University.) Many of those who have written us have called upon the Center to dissociate itself from Kramer's remarks, or to end his affiliation with the Center.
The WCFIA has many hundreds of affiliates: faculty members, graduate students, undergraduates, post-docs, visiting scholars and others. They represent the widest possible range of opinion on almost every subject. The Center takes no position on any issue of scholarship or public policy, nor does it attempt to monitor or control the activities of its affiliates.
Accusations have been made that Martin Kramer's statements are genocidal. These accusations are baseless. Kramer's statements, available at http://www.martinkramer.org/sandbox/2010/02/superfluous-young-men/, express dismay with the policy of agencies that provide aid to Palestinian refugees, and that tie aid entitlements to the size of refugee families. Kramer argues that this policy encourages population growth among refugee communities. While these views may be controversial, there is no way they can be regarded as genocidal.
Those who have called upon the Weatherhead Center to dissociate itself from Kramer's views, or to end Kramer's affiliation with the Center, appear not to understand the role of controversy in an academic setting. It would be inappropriate for the Weatherhead Center to pass judgement on the personal political views of any of its affiliates, or to make affiliation contingent upon some political criterion. Exception may be made for statements that go beyond the boundaries of protected speech, but there is no sense in which Kramer's remarks could be considered to fall into this category. The Weatherhead Center's activities are based upon a firm belief that scholars must be free to state their views, and rejects any attempts to restrict this fundamental academic freedom.
Beth Simmons, Director, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (on leave 2009-2010)
Jeffry Frieden, Acting Director, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (Fall 2009)
James Robinson, Acting Director, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (Spring 2010)
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Intfada Palestine
UCLA Associated Students has condemned any and all academic sanctions/reprecussions against the Irvine 11
Stand With The Eleven
23-2-2010
Breaking News: The Associated Students at the University of California, Los Angeles has officially passed a resolution that condemns any action that is to be taken place against the Irvine Eleven. This momentous decision follows suit after the same position has been taken by the Associated Students at the University of California, San Diego.
It is only due to everyone’s continued support that we have been able to achieve such an enormous impact locally, nationally, as well as globally. Please continue spreading the word about The Eleven and demand that justice be allowed for those who speak truth against power.
UCI Professors Defend The Eleven
February 23, 2010 at 8:31 pm (News)
Mark LeVine, a professor in modern Middle Eastern history, wrote his opinion in the Los Angeles Times in response to the UCI’s law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky.
Also, Professor Rei Terada of Comparitive Literature sent the following letter to Chancellor Drake:
February 22, 2010
Dear Chancellor Drake:
I write to express my concern about your letter of February 17 and other aspects of the University’s response to 11 UCI students’ protest of the appearance of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, and to student protest generally.
Much of the public discussion of the protest has debated whether or not the students’ protest tactics would be legally protected by the First Amendment. The narrow question of legal protection, however, does not define the set of issues that a university should think about on such an occasion. No university believes that its values are exhausted by what is legally required. Rather, universities should be sensitive to all speech and action that is principled, and should be mindful of traditions of civil disobedience. The complex and often illustrious history of civil disobedience in the U.S. includes illegal actions by definition. Many historical, philosophical, literary, and sociological texts commonly taught in the UCI curriculum acknowledge the benefits of such an approach. The idea that the spaces of democracy are kept open through challenges to their bounds and rules *by those who are formally excluded from these very spaces* is familiar and crucial to scholars of democracy.
The case of the protest at Michael Oren’s lecture raises questions about the availability and viability of other means by which the concerns of the 11 could be raised. In addition to Oren, a second speaker affiliated with the Israeli government appears on the UCI calendar this quarter—Daniel Taub, Principal Deputy Legal Adviser of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Feb. 10, 2010). I believe that no Palestinian official has spoken at UCI since Manuel Hassassian, ambassador of the Palestinian General Delegation to the UK, appeared at a forum with Prof. Edward Kaufman (formerly of Hebrew University) in 2006. Further, I’m concerned about the diversity of expression more generally. Over the last decade mainstream scholars have addressed concerns similar to the 11 students’—namely, that gains by the religious right in Israel have resulted in “new discriminatory policies and practices toward the Palestinian minority” and a climate in which extreme “policies of expulsion” are newly thinkable (see Nadim N. Rouhana and Nimer Sultany, “Redrawing the Boundaries of Citizenship: Israel’s New Hegemony,” Journal of Palestine Studies 33 [2003], 5-22). As far as I can tell, the last speaker sponsored by UCI whose main topic was the plight of Palestinians may have been Prof. Saree Makdisi, as part of the conference “”Whither the Levant?,” in December 2008.
Most of the UCI events sponsored by the Ford Foundation have featured speakers from the political center whose main topic has been the desirability of reconciliation. The UCI “difficult dialogues” are not really dialogic and not really difficult, however, unless they include the full spectrum of political opinion. This context may help one understand why the 11 students may have wanted to publicize their point in the way they did. It is worth assessing whether the “Difficult Dialogues” project is serving the needs of the student groups that truly differ, rather than those already occupying the center; and whether, by seeming to align itself with this center, UCI could be seen to be taking a de facto position in the Middle East conflict itself.
The perception that UCI may be more interested in suppressing the appearance of conflict than in working through it is exacerbated by the OC Register’s report that UCI has rehired a public relations consultant, Alan Hilburg, whose previous experience with damage control includes work on the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Love Canal, and smokeless tobacco. Alan Hilburg’s previous work for at least one client has included cost-benefit analyses of a company’s taking, or seeming to take, one stance or another; a paper he has given for the national conference of public relations specialists promotes “trust” for its connection to “lower transaction costs” and “high brand value” (“The High Cost of Low Trust: Managing the Climate of Skepticism”). It’s appropriate for a university to maintain its own public relations staff, but not to retain a consultant with such a record.
Finally, although people may agree or disagree with the views and/or tactics of the 11 students who protested Oren’s appearance, no reasonable person could believe that the students were unprincipled. The university must show that it is able to recognize the difference between principled civil disobedience and unprincipled disruption and be careful to treat protestors with respect. Your letter of February 17 falls short in this regard. Its title, “Why do values and civility matter?,” and statement that “some” at UCI have the goal of “closing channels of communication,” seem to assume that the people being referred to lack “values” and “civility” and are ill-motivated. This broadly phrased letter might be taken to extend to recent protests over UC finances (its terms are problematic, however, whether it refers to the smaller or to the larger group). It would be more productive to assume that students engaged in protest—both the 11 students at Oren’s talk and the wider community of protestors—care about the civil society of the university and are expressing, in time-honored ways, values that matter.
Sincerely,
Rei Terada
Professor of Comparative Literature
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Tadamon
Carleton students launch divestment campaign
view Carleton University divestment campaign video on-line
Photo: Israeli apartheid wall on
Palestinian lands.
24-2-2010Carleton students have released a report detailing how the Carleton University Pension fund invests in companies involved in violations of human rights and of international law.
The report was created by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA Carleton), who are launching a campaign to end Carleton’s unethical investments and adopt a socially responsible investment policy.
BAE Systems, L-3 Communications, Motorola, Northrop Grumman and Tesco supermarkets are the five companies profiled in the report. The report documents how these companies manufacture weapons and weapons components that are used to kill and maim Palestinian civilians, that support the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and that perpetuate Israel’s illegal siege of the Gaza strip.
“Students are appalled to learn that Carleton is affiliated with companies providing support for illegal military occupation” says SAIA – Carleton member Yafa Jarrar. “We thought our University was guided by more than just the balance sheet.”
Carleton Faculty who have heard about SAIA Carleton’s campaign have been shocked to learn their pension fund is tied into such unethical investments.
“I do not want my pension fund profiting from the sale of Hellfire missiles and Apache Helicopters,” say Trevor Purvis, who teaches Law at Carleton. “By investing in the firms, not only does Carleton violate its own ethical principles, but it essentially makes Carleton complicit in breaches of international law and human rights violations.”
The divestment campaign will be launched this Thursday with an informational discussion featuring members of SAIA – Carleton, Faculty for Palestine, and the Carleton South African Anti-Apartheid Action Group. It will be held at 7 PM, in 360 Tory Building, Carleton University. All are welcome to attend.
To support our campaign, sign our hard-copy petition at the event on Thursday night, or look for us in the Atrium. If you are a member of a Carleton student group, club, association, or union that you think might endorse the campaign, please contact saia.carleton(at)gmail.com. For more background on our campaign, visit carleton.saia.ca
* link to Divestment Document (PDF)
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KABOBfest
The UCI Protests were Clearly Civil Disobedience
By Will
There has been much virtual ink spilled on the protesters who disrupted the Israeli Ambassador to America (or is the American ambassador to Israel given the nearly perfect overlap in their duties and dual loyalties).
His talk at the University of California, Irvine on February 8th was at the invitation of the university. During his talk eleven students stood up and shouted such ideas that propaganda for murder is not free speech. Now the university is considering expelling the students who were arrested.
The students were all Muslim, it seemed. This suggests a turn in Muslim student activism, I have to say. In my experience, Muslim students are usually too timid or polite to engage in such civil disobedience. This is a broadstroke, but usually white students can do it with the most confidence. I am glad to see this change.
The best video I’ve seen on it was produced by the pro-Israel group, Stand with Us. Thanks guys.
Of course, it excludes some of the nasty and racist things pro-Israel members of the audience were saying, such as “go back to the West Bank.” One older man told them they were going to fail their exams, which I hope he was not grading.
The slandering of the students continues.
The Dean of the law school wrote an op-ed suggesting the protesters have no first amendment defense. Some suggest their protests canceled the ambassador’s free speech. What is lost on me is how does interruption = blocking free speech? If someone stands up an shouts and is hauled out in 20 seconds, that cases a pause in speech. Can we really say that cutting someone off briefly when they talk is violating free speech? That happens every day, all the time. In pure practical terms, that is what happened.
Anyways, the only first amendment issues here are the protesters since there are no constitutional prohibitions against interrupting other speakers, only on the government’s actions in these regards.
I am sure the university has regulations and codes they could throw at protesters. They are designed to produce a student body that falls into line with what they deem appropriate modes of political behavior, which usually means ineffectual and ordinary.
Frankly the legal aspects of all this are pretty uninteresting, so full of loopholes, exceptions and hypocritical applications as to make relying on the law any good. If a white power group came calling for the de-nationalization and ethnic cleansing of Jews from America, they would not have free speech rights on a campus as a hate group. Yet, the ambassador of a country build on ethnic cleansing that actively entertains proposals to de-nationalize Arab citizens, and massacred nearly 1500 people one year ago has such a freedom?
What is even more despicable is how a university can open its arms to the official representative of a country that has bombed universities in other countries, has deported students from territory they occupy, and placed under curfew and blocked the movement of faculty and students to universities. For the official representative of these activities to claim freedom to speak on a campus is beyond hypocrisy.
For these reasons, the students who disrupted the ambassador were acting in ways consistent with the very moral foundations of civil disobedience as articulated by its most prominent advocates. Civil disobedience as defined by John Rawls (1971), is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies. Clearly the protesters acted civilly (they walked over to the cops after yelling), out of a clearly articulated moral impulse, to breach university codes in protest of a university action and apparent policy.
The action they protested was the university’s decision to invite the representative of a country that tramples international law in its regime of collective punishment by embargo on Gaza, four decade-long occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and continued negation of UN Resolution 194, which codifies the rights of Palestinian refugees to return. Those who invite them may think this only a matter of politics, but clearly the protesters see it as a moral act. Just as the university is free to invite, morally-acting citizens are free to disrupt.
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Electronic Intifada
PACBI: Intellectual responsibility and the voice of the colonized
17-2-2010
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has recently encountered a number of projects that while intending to empower the colonized Palestinians, in essence end up undermining their will and choice of method of struggle for freedom, justice and self-determination.
The publication of a new book entitled The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories belongs to this category. The book project represents a classic example of how the collective voice of the colonized is ignored in the production of a scholarly work supposed to empower them.
While it is crucial for scholars in relevant fields to expose and analyze the colonial situation in Palestine, this academic imperative should not imply that one overlooks how scholarship engages this colonialism. That is, this book, as a collaboration of various scholars -- Israeli and non-Israeli contributors -- was completed with support from the Van Leer Institute. In other words, through working under the aegis of the Van Leer Institute, this project has cooperated with one of the very institutions that PACBI and an overwhelming majority of Palestinian academics and intellectuals have called for boycotting. As such, the research project which led to the production of the volume violates the criteria of the academic and cultural boycott as set by PACBI and widely endorsed in Palestinian civil society, including by the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) and University Teachers' Association in Palestine (UTA).
Contrary to the claims of some left-wing Israeli academics that the Van Leer institute is an incubator for cutting-edge critical thinking and oppositional politics, the institute is firmly planted in the prevailing Zionist consensus and is part and parcel of the structures of oppression and domination. It subscribes to the "vision of Israel as both a homeland for the Jewish people and a democratic society, predicated on justice, fairness and equality for all its residents," ignoring the oxymoron presented by this inherently exclusionary vision -- a "Jewish State" of necessity discriminates against its "non-Jewish" citizens. The Van Leer Institute receives financial support from other Israeli universities and state institutions that are subject to boycott. Among its financial contributors and institutional "friends" are the Cohn Institute at Tel Aviv University; the Edelstein Center at the Hebrew University; the Israel Ministry of Science; the National Insurance Institute, Israel; and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
Furthermore, Van Leer, like all other Israeli academic institutions, has never taken a stance against Israel's policies of occupation and racial discrimination, nor against the recent war of aggression on Gaza or the ongoing illegal siege of 1.5 million Palestinians there. The Van Leer is, therefore, an institution with strong links to establishment institutions in Israel. As such, it is complicit in maintaining and entrenching Israel's regime of occupation and apartheid against the Palestinian people.
Though intellectual projects may aim to rigorously articulate the complex matrix of control that exists in Palestine, the intellectual process has a fundamental ethical and political component. As such, it is incumbent upon all scholars to realize that any collaboration which brings together Israeli and international academics (Arabs or otherwise) under the auspices of Israeli institutions is counterproductive to fighting Israeli colonial oppression, and is therefore subject to boycott.
A project involving only Israeli academics, on the other hand, receiving support from an Israeli academic institution, may be seen as a justifiable exercise of a right or an entitlement by Israeli scholars as tax payers and, as a result, may not per se be boycottable.
As the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement gains momentum globally, an increasing number of voices are emerging in support of this strategy as the most effective, nonviolent route to bring about change towards justice and durable peace based on international law and universal principles of human rights. The endorsement by various artists and academics of specific boycott actions in the past few years is welcome and well-known. It is the responsibility of the boycott supporters to understand the broadly-accepted boycott criteria and guidelines upon which this boycott is based and adhere to it, rather than attempting to invent or suggest idiosyncratic criteria of their own, as the latter would undermine the Palestinian guiding reference for the global boycott campaign against Israel.
It is crucial to emphasize that the BDS movement derives its principles from both the demands of the Palestinian BDS Call, signed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in July 2005, and, in the academic and cultural fields, from the Palestinian Call for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, issued a year earlier in July 2004. Together, the BDS and PACBI Calls represent the most authoritative and widely-supported strategic statements to have emerged from Palestine in decades; all major political parties, labor, student and women groups, and organizations representing Palestinian refugees all over the world have endorsed and supported these calls. Both calls underline the prevailing Palestinian belief that the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian people is direct action aimed at bringing an end to Israel's colonial and apartheid regime, just as the apartheid regime in South Africa was abolished, by isolating Israel internationally through boycotts and sanctions, forcing it to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights.
Since the formulation of these calls, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on defining the principles of the boycott movement. Rooted in universal values and principles, the BDS Call categorically rejects all forms of racism, racial discrimination and colonial oppression. PACBI has also translated the principles enshrined in its Call into practical guidelines for implementing the international academic and cultural boycott of Israel. However intellectually challenging and avant-garde some projects may be, by being oblivious to the Palestinian-articulated boycott criteria they in effect work against the internationally-embraced Palestinian struggle for justice.
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Huffington Post
Free 11 Muslim Students Representing America's Conscience + VIDEO
Salam Al MarayatiExecutive Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council--DC
15-2-2010
Civic and Political life at the University California of Irvine (UCI) will never be the same after 11 Muslim students chose to speak out at a UCI event sponsoring Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.
The Orange County Register reported on the incident:
Eleven people were arrested Monday evening during a raucous lecture at UC Irvine where Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren came to talk about U.S.-Israel relations. (UCI earlier said that 12 were arrested.)
Oren was interrupted 10 times Monday while trying to give his speech before 500 people at the UCI Student Center, where there was heavy security. Oren took a 20 minute break after the fourth protest, asked for hospitality and resumed his speech, only to be interrupted again by young men yelling at him every few minutes. Many members of the audience also applauded Oren.
After the 10th interruption, several dozens students who opposed Oren's talk got up and walked out and staged a protest outside. It is not clear whether they were members of the UCI Muslim Student Union, which issued an email earlier in the day condemning Oren's appearance on campus.
(See video below.)
One may disagree with the style and tactics demonstrated by the 11 students, but the central issue is not responding to the disruption by the students. Rather, the main focus should be on understanding what led to that action. The protest of Ambassador Oren's speech did not occur within a vacuum, but rather as a reaction to a string of numerous attempts to stigmatize Muslim students of UCI and squelch their free speech.
In May 2006, FBI Agent Pat Rose, head of the Al-Qaeda Unit, told a group at the Pacific Club in Orange County that her squad was monitoring Muslims students at UC-Irvine. Rose was quoted as saying, "We live in Irvine. I can't tell you how many subjects' names come up, and they live right down the street from me." She was garnering support for the Patriot Act.
* In response, FBI Assistant Director Stephen Tidwell had to make a public appearance at the mosque in Irvine to announce that there was no profiling of Muslims by the FBI. I arranged a meeting between Mr. Tidwell and the Muslim students and thought it could help develop mutual understanding and cooperation.
* At the same time, the Zionist Organization of America was applauding the Department of Justice for launching an investigation of Muslim students for anti-Semitism. Any criticism of Israel and its policies is consistently connected to anti-Semitism. The students and human rights activists in general speak out against Israel's policies, not against its people and not against Judaism. If anything, the best of what it means to be a Jew or Muslim is lived when speaking for justice.
* In May 2007, Muslim students at Irvine complained of nearly being run over by a car later determined to be driven by an FBI agent.
* An FBI informant named Craig Monteilh announced in 2009 that he set up video cameras in Orange county gymnasiums frequented by young Muslims to monitor their activities.
* A member of congress singled out the Muslim Student Union for supporting George Galloway's humanitarian convoy into Gaza even though the campaign was gaining national and international support without opposition by many in the government.
The university needs to acknowledge the history of institutional harassment of Muslim students as they engage in campus activism. Muslim students complain that their requests for Palestinian speakers to be hosted by the university, similar to the hosting of Ambassador Michael Oren, are typically rejected or ignored.
In contrast to the treatment of Muslim students at UCI, anti-abortion hecklers against the President of the United States do not receive the same scrutiny as pro-Palestinian Muslim students at Irvine. Two individuals heckled the President at Notre Dame's commencement last year when President Obama resided as principal speaker. "Abortion is murder!" and "Stop Killing Babies!" they yelled, after which they were escorted out. They were opposing Obama's pro-choice stance, and no arrests were made. Over 100 protesters demonstrated at Notre Dame as well.
No doubt the Palestinian-Israeli discourse is volatile and many political leaders shy away from the discourse. But the lack of discourse on the issue requires more engagement with the students, not arrests and threats of expulsion or failure in their classes. Each side, Muslim and Jew, pro-Palestine and pro-Israel, have had their share of firebrand speakers, agitating and provoking the other side. The Muslim side has no institutional support for addressing their concerns. In fact, they have dealt with institutional marginalization and prejudice in the form of selective enforcement of policies and heavy-handed repercussions.
Our government leaders are concerned about the alienation of young people in our country, especially young Muslims -- who are offered no platform for voicing their concerns and views. Shunting student voices, especially when it is presented in a non-violent manner, tells them their opinions are disconnected and irrelevant to the mainstream discourse. I've met with government officials who "protested and took over buildings" in their college lives to get attention for their causes.
Suppressing the voice of these students by threatening them with failure and arrest in order to prohibit them and future students from expressing their views on Palestine is tantamount to telling them not to be American. The Muslim students' actions at UCI epitomize the confrontation against institutional injustices by means of peaceful exercise of free speech, a great American tradition.
The 11 Muslim students took a stand for another people's human rights, for what the best of America represents, and for what millions of people around the world admire Americans. So I thank the students for reminding me of why I am a proud American -- because I have the responsibility of celebrating my freedom by demanding it for others.
Email the Chancellor of UCI and the Dean of Students now to offer your support for free speech of the 11 Muslim students -- chancellor@uci.edu and deanstu@uci.edu. Then call the District Attorney of Orange County at (949) 476-4650 to drop all charges against the students.
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Mondoweiss
Divestment campaign gains traction at U of Arizona
by Philip Weiss
16-2-2010
Divestment is biting at the University of Arizona. Several articles about the campaign in the student newspaper. Here’s the lead:
UA administrators are resisting a recommendation by UA students to terminate the university’s contract with the Motorola Corporation. Students say the company is complicit in human rights violations because of contracts they have with the Israeli government, which is militarily occupying Palestinian lands.
And this piece, Dial D for Death– Motorola. And some important history:
Following waves of anti-apartheid activism led by students and community around the UA and ASU pressuring the Arizona Board of Regents to divest, on Monday Sept. 9, 1985, the Daily Wildcat reported that, at its meeting on Sept. 6, ABOR ordered both universities “to divest their holdings in companies doing business in South Africa,” some $3.4 million.
And this reference to Rachel Corrie in a piece by Gabriel Schivone (who wrote the last two links, too) dedicated to the memory of Howard Zinn:
Ironically, 2004 is the year during which global outcry against the company, led by the world’s most prominent human rights organizations, dramatically increased. Among the concerned groups, the United Nations wrote to Caterpillar, which it has done more than once, pleading with the company to recognize and respond to the horrendous use of its products by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that include massive home demolitions, property destruction, crop devastation and unlawful killings of Palestinian civilians — as well as the death of American college student Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by a Caterpillar bulldozer during peacekeeping activities in the Gaza Strip in March 2003. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also written letters urging the company to respect not only international law but Caterpillar’s own internal code of conduct.
Such credible pleas seem to consistently have fallen on deaf ears.
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Desert Peace
CALIFORNIA STUDENTS REFUSE TO SWALLOW ISRAEL’S LIES
Michael Oren: sorry, but you represent a Nazi state
By Khalid Amayreh
14-2-2010
In trying to whitewash Israel’s cruel crimes against the Palestinian people, including the ongoing cruel campaign against the Gaza Strip, Israel’s ambassador to the United States Michael Oren made a mockery of human decency, freedom of speech and objective truth.
During a lecture at the University of California-Irvine on Monday, 8 February, Oren tried to present Israel’s ugly face as that of a civilized, democratic state that shares basic western values such as human rights and civil liberties.
However, many students in the audience couldn’t just bear hearing the pornographic lies.
They heckled him, shouting “killers” and “how many Palestinians did you kill.”
Some of the pro-Zionist officials of UC-Irvine lost their nerves as the hasbara activity was transformed into a great embarrassment.
Earlier, the Muslim Students Union at the UC-Irvine condemned the presence of the ambassador of the apartheid state on campus.
“Oren personally participated in the Israeli Defense forces in wars that took place in Lebanon and Palestine. Oren and his partners should only be granted a speakers platform in the International Criminal Court.”
Infuriated by the students’ outcry against Israel’s nefarious crimes against the people of Gaza and other Palestinians and Lebanese, Zionist apologists have accused Muslim students on UC-Irvine campus of “demonizing Israel.”
Well, the truth of the matter is that it is not the students who are demonizing Israel; it is Israel that is demonizing itself by acting and behaving like a criminal, murderous state that murders children by the hundreds and then claims it did by mistake.
Hence, we can say that Oren was interrupted not because he was Jewish, but rather because he represented a criminal state.
In fact, the students who confronted the representative of the thuggish entity should be applauded, cheered and saluted for their very moral behavior.
Indeed, if sufficient people would act similarly, namely confront and disrupt Israeli representatives wherever they set foot in the capitals of the world and on campuses, perhaps the lives of many helpless children, women and other civilians can be saved.
Some Zionist supremacists would invoke freedom of speech as if defending mass murder and genocide was protected by the American First Amendment. Well, the issue here is not freedom of speech; the issue is defending and justifying genocide.
Moreover, if Zionism and its evil representatives have a right to freedom of speech, then Nazism and its representatives should be accorded a similar right. After all, Zionism and Nazism are very much like tweedledee and tweedledum. They are two sides of the same coin.
Besides, since when did the Judeo-Nazi regime in occupied Palestine respect freedom of speech or any other freedom whenever non-Jews are concerned? Didn’t Israel bomb and destroy the Palestinian Radio station in Ramallah at the beginning of the Aqsa intifada? Didn’t the Israeli air force bomb and destroy the Aqsa TV studios and transmitters during Israel’s genocidal campaign last year?
More than two decades ago, Israel actually went as far as imposing a general power blackout all over the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to prevent Palestinians from watching a speech by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Geneva. Hence, Israel is probably the last country on earth which can claim to be truly concerned about freedom of speech and other civil liberties.
Today, the Zionist messengers of lie, people such Michael Oren, are trying rather doggedly to justify or whitewash organized Jewish terror, which often assume a genocidal scale. Hence, good and honest people who value truth, peace and justice must challenge these evil and professional liars who are trying to turn the black into white and the murderers into victims.
The forces of peace and justice must strive as much as possible to narrow the horizons of these cruel racists and hateful liars.
Don’t let them get away with mendacity. Surround them wherever they go, make your presence felt in halls where they give lectures, confront them with the facts about what their Nazi state is doing, don’t hesitate to call the spade a spade. Be aggressive when need be, don’t be afraid to speak up, for it may very well be up to you whether a second genocidal onslaught against the already thoroughly tormented Gazans will be carried out.
The Palestinian people rely almost completely on the good will of honest people, very much like those brave students who confronted Oren, the ambassador of the country that thrives on murder, land theft and mendacious propaganda.
Finally, we must never underestimate the impact of student actions, especially on campuses in Europe and North America and elsewhere.
There go the people who will shape the future of the world in a few years’ time. These are the next generation of public-opinion shapers in our world.
We should also remember that it was very much thanks to campus action that the defunct apartheid regime in south Africa was isolated and finally defeated and dismantled.
More to the point, don’t you ever get confused between Judaism and Zionism? Judaism is not our enemy. Our problem with Zionist Jews is not because they are Jews, but rather because they are murderers, oppressors and land thieves. We don’t hate Israel because it is predominantly Jewish; we hate it because it is overwhelmingly evil.
Zionist Hasbara officials would love to hear pro-Palestinian activists attack or vilify Jews in order to smack the anti-Semitism canard in their faces. So, be careful, don’t play into their hands.
In fact, there are many conscientious Jews who sincerely support the Palestinian cause. We must never ever lump those good people with racist Zionists who embrace the Nazi-like Israeli policies against the Palestinians and other peoples of the Middle East.
Finally, never break the law, since doing so would be a self-defeating act. In the final analysis, our goal is not just to vent our frustration, but rather to expose the Nazi nature of the Israeli state.
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Mondoweiss
Rads
by Philip Weiss
14-2-2010
I was a little freaked out by the student uprisings this week at speeches by Israeli officials at Oxford and at University of California-Irvine. One protest targeted an Israeli deputy foreign minister.
The other Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. In both cases there was suppression of free speech, and the rage was palpable. A student at Oxford shouted an Arabic curse involving Jews and later defended it. At UC, on the video, a woman can be heard angrily complaining, as she is led out, about the harassment she suffers in the West Bank.
Is anyone surprised that there is rage against the occupation and the Gaza slaughter? At some level the muscularity of the Israel lobby is about suppressing rage that we all know is coming, and is overdue. A former AIPAC staffer was the publisher of a newspaper I once worked for and he said offhand to me years ago, Well we kicked them out of their houses. I was shocked to hear the news, 50 years after it happened. But “We” meant Jews, which equaled Zionists, in my publisher’s view; so now we are inheriting the whirlwind.
The crimes of “our” state are coming home. Especially on campuses where, thankfully, there are more and more Palestinian and Arab students.
The other day Max Blumenthal made the wise point that the Palestinian students are a lot like the SDS nearly 50 years ago. Think about it: Both movements were outraged by a neocolonial situation involving the U.S. Both have righteous anger. The SDS said, Up against the wall motherfuckers, and they scared a lot of people. Both involve radical analysis: in each case the power structure had responded with violence and denial to a basic justice issue: Vietnamese nationalism in the first case, Palestinian nationalism in this one.
Blumenthal’s analogy went further, to American sociology. The SDS had a lot of Jews in it. Jews were all over Ivy League campuses suddenly, and motivated by a desire to break down anti-Semitic discrimination in the top ranks of American society.
The best analysis of this issue is in former SDS radical Mark Rudd’s 2005 lecture on Why there were so many Jews in the SDS. He said that no one talked about Jewishness at the time, but that when he joined the SDS at Columbia, almost every single one of them was Jewish. They were Jews like himself, from a rising middle-class family in suburban Maplewood, New Jersey. His parents were active members of their synagogue. His grandmother ran a candy store. His father was born in Poland and changed his name from Rudnitsky, otherwise he would never rise above Captain in the Army. Shades of Dreyfus. Rudd’s father became a lieutenant colonel!
Rudd and his Jewish buddies hated the “genteel civility” of the WASP establishment that had excluded their fathers. “Even bourgeois Jews were still excluded from civil society by customs and especially by manners,” Rudd said. The president and provost of Columbia were Grayson Kirk and David Truman. “The place was dripping with goyishness," Rudd cracked–and he called Kirk a "shithead" in a speech, scaring people. The top officials told the students they were aginst the war, but they basically lied about their degree of institutional involvement with the defense establishment.
University officials all over this country will tell you they’re for Palestinian freedom, or a two-state solution; but they do nothing to advance it, or even to try and stop Palestinian dispossession, or let the news get out on their campuses.
The beauty of Mark Rudd’s lecture is that he recognized the aspiration and privilege of the Jewish students’ response. He said that Jews have often been privileged, even in Eastern Europe, and that today—the era of the Iraq war—it’s a Jewish adviser at George Bush’s elbow suggesting who to bomb next.
That’s about the neocons, and it’s honest. The honesty came out of Mark Rudd’s own eye-opening trip to Israel in 2005. He saw apartheid up close. He saw the separate roadways and the expansionist settlements destroying a Palestinian state on a fraction of the land they once lived on. “I challenge anyone who thinks of me as a traitor to my people or a self-hating Jew, both of which I’ve been called, to visit Palestinians in the West Bank or East Jerusalem for as little as one-half day. Every Jew needs to see the misery and humiliation which our Jewish nationalism and racism have wrought," he said.
I hope the analogy here is clear. Jews are not outsiders in American society any more. Whatever else it achieved, the shock of the radical 60s helped to break down an old corrupt order that privileged an ethnic-religious group. We knocked out their genteel civility and helped create a new leadership culture, of shrewdness and toughness and humor– in a word Rahm.
And all that time, through decades of denial, the recognition of neocolonial conditions in Israel and Palestine has been delayed and delayed. Mark Rudd only visited Israel in 2005.
The shock of the Palestinian campus radicals is also aimed at a corrupt order, one in which Jews are now members in good standing. If we can learn from that earlier experience, it is that this struggle is necessary and just, and it need not be a violent struggle; and Jews of conscience can take a part again.
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Ha'aretz
Jordanian protesters burning an Israeli flag at an anti-Israel protest in Amman last year.(Reuters)
By Barak Ravid
12-2-2010
Israel is facing a global campaign of delegitimization, according to a report by the Reut Institute, made available to the cabinet on Thursday. The Tel Aviv-based security and socioeconomic think tank called on ministers to treat the matter as a strategic threat.
The report cites anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, protests when Israeli athletes compete abroad, moves in Europe to boycott Israeli products, and threats of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders visiting London.
Reut says the campaign is the work of a worldwide network of private individuals and organizations. They have no hierarchy or overall commander, but work together based on a joint ideology - portraying Israel as a pariah state and denying its right to exist.
Reut lists the network's major hubs - London, Brussels, Madrid, Toronto, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley. The network's activists - "delegitimizers" the report dubs them - are relatively marginal: young people, anarchists, migrants and radical political activists. Although they are not many, they raise their profile using public campaigns and media coverage, the report says.
The "delegitimizers" cooperate with organizations engaging in legitimate criticism of Israel's policy in the territories such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, blurring the line between legitimate censure and delegitimization. They also promote pro-Palestinian activities in Europe as "trendy," the report says.
The network's activists are not mostly Palestinian, Arab or Muslim. Many of them are European and North American left-wing activists. The Western left has changed its approach to Israel and now sees it as an occupation state, the report says. To those left-wing groups, if in the 1960s Israel was seen as a model for an egalitarian, socialist society, today it epitomizes Western evil.
The delegitimization network sees the fight against the former regime in South Africa as a success model. It believes that like the apartheid regime, the Zionist-Israeli model can be toppled and a one-state model can be established.
The Reut team says the network's groups share symbols and heroes such as the Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura, American peace activist Rachel Corrie and joint events like the Durban Conference.
Israel's diplomats overseas, meanwhile, must counter the attempts to delegitimize the country. "The combination of a large Muslim community, a radical left, influential, English-language media and an international university center make London fertile ground for Israel's delegitimization," says Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador in London.
Prosor gives many interviews to the British media and lectures at university campuses throughout the country. Although he says he has encountered anti-Israel demonstrations on almost every campus, Prosor has told his people to increase their campus activity.
"What is now happening in London universities will happen, at most, in five years at all the large universities in the United States," he says.
The Reut report says Israel is not prepared at all to deal with the threat of delegitimization. The cabinet has not defined the issue as a threat and sees the diplomatic arena as marginal compared to the military one.
"The Foreign Ministry is built for the challenges of the '60s, not the 2000s," the report says. "There are no budgets, not enough diplomats and no appropriate diplomatic doctrine."
Reut recommends setting up a counter-network, in which Israel's embassies in centers of delegitimization activity would serve as "front positions."
The report says the intelligence service should monitor the organizations' activities and study their methods. The cabinet should also confront groups trying to delegitimize Israel but embrace those engaged in legitimate criticism.
The report adds that Israel should not boycott these groups, as Israel's embassy in Washington does with the left-wing lobby J Street. Boycotting critics merely pushes them toward joining the delegitimizers, Reut says.
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Mondoweiss
by Alex Kane
Student disruptions of Israeli officials continue to make waves
See also here
11-2-2010
The student protests at Oxford University and the University of California, Irvine that interrupted Israeli officials’ speeches are continuing to make waves in a variety of ways.
An apparent anti-Semitic remark in Arabic was hurled at Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon during the interruptions to his speech. Various media outlets are reporting that a protester yelled, “kill the Jews” at Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and a member of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party.
Ayalon is now considering pressing charges against the student who yelled at him. According to the Independent (UK), he said the move against the student demonstrated “our new policy on hatred and racism. We will have zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, something that should have happened a long time ago.”
The local police and the Oxford Union have launched investigations into the matter.
Of course, what these media reports don’t mention is the irony that as Ayalon is denouncing “hatred and racism,” he is a member of a political party whose leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is on record saying numerous racist remarks against Palestinians. For instance, Lieberman called for the execution of Arab members of the Knesset who met with Hamas, and ran a campaign centered around the slogan, “no citizenship without loyalty,” wanting Palestinians living inside Israel to be forced to sign a “loyalty” oath to the Jewish State. And Yisrael Beiteinu has introduced legislation that would ban commemoration of the Nakba.
Then there’s J Street U, the student branch of J Street, which released a statement seemingly painting the disruptions of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and Ayalon’s speeches as anti-Semitic and racist. The statement reads, in part:
J Street U is deeply concerned about recent incidents on college campuses aimed at obstructing civil and open debate around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We believe that universities should be a place for an honest discussion about tough issues. While appropriate and respectful protests are a legitimate and important part of the conversation on campus, anti-Semitic, racist, disruptive and inflammatory actions and language are simply unacceptable.
In particular, we were profoundly offended by the anti-Semitic rhetoric used by a student to attack Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon during a recent talk at Oxford University. We were also deeply disappointed to hear about attempts to interrupt Ambassador Michael Oren’s remarks at the University of California, Irvine, with heckling aimed at drowning out the Ambassador’s speech.
The statement comes as Oren said that the rift between Oren and J Street– a result of Oren’s refusal to attend a J Street conference last October–is healing. Oren told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal that, “J Street has now come and supported Congressman [Howard] Berman’s Iran sanction bill; it has condemned the Goldstone report; it has denounced the British court’s decision to try Tzipi Livni for war crimes, which puts J Street much more into the mainstream.”
During Oren’s speech at the University of California, Irvine, 11 students were arrested for interrupting his speech. The Muslim Public Affairs Council has demanded an investigation over the arrests in a letter to school officials, saying:
University police had every right to escort the individuals out of the room, and bar them from re-entering. However, it is unclear what law they broke that would allow for them to be arrested for their actions. For this reason, we are calling on your office and that of the UCI Police Department to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the arrest of these students.
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Mondoweiss
Oxford students: Our protest of Ayalon was a massive success
by Philip Weiss
10-2-2010
The official report of Oxford University’s Palestine Society on last night’s demonstrations against the speech by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon:
Danny Ayalon, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister and member of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party, came to the Oxford Union on 8 February, on a desperate PR mission to resuscitate Israel’s image after global public condemnation for its war crimes in Gaza last year. The Oxford Students’ Palestine Society, together with other student groups and members of the public, organised a protest, both on the street outside the Union and within the debating chamber itself.
It is our belief that Yisrael Beitenu, Danny Ayalon’s party, is a racist party which advocates apartheid policies. Ayalon himself refuses to recognise the West Bank and Jerusalem as Occupied Territory and is attempting to introduce legislation which would criminalise Palestinians who celebrate their national day of remembrance, Nakba Day. The fact that such a figure was invited to the Oxford Union unopposed is a disgrace. As such, we, the Oxford Students’ Palestine Society, felt it necessary to present our own challenge, and demonstrate the continuing resistance to apartheid, to occupation, to the crippling blockade on Gaza, to house demolitions and to settlement building.
The protest was a massive success. Outside, over a hundred people joined together to chant slogans in support of Palestine, carrying banners condemning Israeli policy and waving the Palestinian flag. Inside, numerous individual students interrupted the talk, challenging Ayalon’s assertions that the West Bank and East Jerusalem were not Occupied Territory, and that Israel had ‘given up’ a third of its country in its peace deal with Egypt. Before long, Ayalon was not able to continue his rehearsed speech, and was forced to contend with a gathering storm of intelligent questions and statements contradicting his evasions and outright lies. At one point a member of the Palestine Society read out a full page of the Goldstone Report dealing with Israel’s deliberate killing of civilians, to thunderous applause from the audience. Another student raised a Palestinian flag and called out a list of Israel’s war crimes, including the use of chemical weapons during the war on Gaza in January 2009. Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor, sitting in the front row, looked bewildered and embarrassed by his colleague’s feeble performance.
Beyond the hosting of Ayalon, and his outrageous remarks, the real scandal of the evening was the thuggery of Ayalon’s security staff. After the talk, as one protestor photographed their car, the security staff drove straight into him. This sort of violence is commonplace in the Occupied Territories, but rarely exposed outside them, seeming particularly surreal in Oxford. The protestor was carried on the car bonnet a hundred yards down New Inn Hall Street, clinging on as the security staff sped up. When he managed to fling himself clear, the protestor was badly bruised, but luckily escaped serious injury. Two other Oxford students had been forced to jump for cover as the car accelerated. After the car swiftly disappeared, the three lodged an official complaint. Thames Valley Police are now investigating the incident, having been provided with photographic evidence.
Nevertheless, despite the violence, the incident could not detract from the success of the protest, nor distract from the clear message that students sent to Ayalon and his state: until Israel ends its illegal occupation and the Palestinians receive the justice they have been denied for the last six decades, Israel’s representatives and propagandists will not be welcome at Oxford University. This is the same message which British students sent to President Shimon Peres in November 2008, and which American students sent to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in October 2009. It was sent again to Ambassador Michael Oren by students in California, on the same day as our protest at Ayalon’s appearance in Oxford. The call for justice continues.
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PACBI
Boycott "Ariel" and the Rest! All Israeli Academic Institutions are Complicit in Occupation and Apartheid
10-2-2010
In response to the recent decision by the Israeli government to upgrade the status of the so-called Ariel University Center of Samaria (AUCS) to a full university, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) reiterates its call for a boycott of AUCS and all other Israeli academic institutions due to their complicity in maintaining Israel‘s occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people.
While PACBI welcomes the recent protests against the decision to recognize AUCS--located in the fourth largest Jewish colony in the occupied Palestinian territories–-as a university, it cautions against attempts to divert the boycott movement away from its basis in the comprehensive, UN-sanctioned rights embodied in the Palestinian call for boycotting Israel to a selective focus on a subset of these rights.
Academics, journalists and others on the Zionist "left" who have opposed the academic boycott for years are now enthusiastically advocating a boycott that solely targets Ariel College because it is illegally built on occupied Palestinian territory. This, however, reduces the scope of the academic boycott to one against settlement institutions, while exonerating the Israeli academy at large, which is just as complicit, if not more, than Ariel in maintaining and justifying the Israeli colonial and apartheid apparatus. But even if the boycott were to apply only to universities built on occupied Palestinian territory, why hasn‘t the fact that the Hebrew University‘s Mount Scopus campus sits on occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem provoked any Ariel-like condemnation?
All Israeli universities are deeply linked to the military-security establishment, playing indispensable -- direct and indirect -- roles in perpetuating Israel‘s decades-old violations of international law and fundamental Palestinian rights. No Israeli university or academic union has ever taken a public position against the occupation, let alone against Israel‘s system of apartheid or the denial of Palestinian refugee rights. Israeli universities are profoundly complicit in developing weapon systems and military doctrines deployed in Israel‘s recent war crimes in Gaza [1]; justifying the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land and gradual ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians [2]; providing moral justification for extra-judicial killings and indiscriminate attacks against civilians [3]; systematically discriminating against "non-Jewish" students in admissions, dormitory room eligibility, financial aid, etc.; and many other implicit and explicit violations of human rights and international law. [4]
As BDS gains momentum globally, an increasing number of Israeli voices are emerging in support of this strategy as the most effective, non-violent route to bring about change towards justice and durable peace. The endorsement by Israeli artists and academics of specific boycott actions in the past few years is welcome and well known. After Israel’s war of aggression on Gaza, several Israeli academic and cultural figures came out in support of BDS. [5] Long before the Gaza massacre, though, staunch Israeli supporters of Palestinian rights such as Rachel Giora, Ilan Pappe, Haim Bresheeth, Oren Ben-Dor, Anat Matar and the late Tanya Reinhart had embraced BDS and defended it against Israeli critics, particularly so-called "leftists" in the academy. [6] The recently formed group, Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within [7], is particularly praiseworthy, as it unconditionally accepts BDS as defined and guided by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, and is therefore regarded by the BNC as a reliable and principled partner in the movement.
These emerging voices from inside Israeli society point to the growing appeal of BDS and the recognition of its power to effect real change towards just peace. It is nevertheless crucial to emphasize that the BDS movement derives its principles from both the demands of the Palestinian BDS Call, signed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in July 2005, [8] and, in the academic and cultural fields, from the Palestinian Call for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, issued a year earlier in July 2004. [9] Together, the BDS and PACBI Calls represent the most authoritative and widely supported strategic statements to have emerged from Palestine in decades; all political factions, labour, student and women organizations, and refugee groups across the Arab world have supported and endorsed these calls. Both calls underline the prevailing Palestinian belief that the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian people is direct action aimed at bringing an end to Israel’s colonial and apartheid regime, just as the apartheid regime in South Africa was abolished, by isolating Israel internationally through boycotts and sanctions, forcing it to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights.
Since the formulation of these calls, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on defining the principles of the boycott movement. Rooted in universal values and principles, the BDS Call categorically rejects all forms of racism, racial discrimination and colonial oppression. PACBI has also translated the principles enshrined in its Call into practical guidelines for implementing the international academic and cultural boycott of Israel. [10] All the while, the Palestinian boycott movement has been clear as to what the focus and goals of the BDS movement are.
In this respect, the importance of the 2005 BDS Call lies in its comprehensive approach to the Israeli colonial and apartheid system as a whole, and its subjugation of the Palestinian people, whether as second-class citizens inside Israel, subjects under its military occupation, or dispossessed refugees. This was summarized in the concise demands outlined in the Palestinian BDS call that Israel recognize the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self determination and fully comply with international law by: respecting, protecting and promoting the right of return of all Palestinian refugees; ending the occupation of all Palestinian and Arab lands; and recognizing full equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel. In this sense, the BDS Call effectively counters the systematic Israeli fragmentation of the Palestinian people and the reduction of the struggle for freedom and self-determination to an endless bargaining game over land in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Central to the Palestinian BDS movement’s three demands is an understanding of Israel as an apartheid state. Israel fits the UN definition of apartheid not just in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; it defines itself as a Jewish state, not a state of all its citizens. Most importantly, Israeli laws, policies, and practices discriminate openly against Palestinian--i.e., "non-Jewish"-- citizens of the state. The pervasive and institutionalized racism and discrimination are particularly evident in the vital domains of land ownership and use, education, employment, access to public services, and urban planning. The apartheid character has been part of the design of Israel since its inception. [11]
The state of Israel was established in 1948 by forcibly displacing the overwhelming majority of Palestine’s indigenous Arab population from their homeland. Today, these Palestinian refugees are prevented from returning to their homes and lands from which they were expelled. In contrast, any person who claims Jewish descent from anywhere in the world may become an Israeli citizen and national under the so-called Law of Return. Moreover, Israel’s brutal war on Gaza was not an anomaly; rather, it represents the most recent example of the systematic policies of ethnic cleansing and colonial oppression that Israel has carried out against the Palestinian people for more than six decades. During this recent military onslaught, Israel killed over 1,440 Palestinians, of whom 431 were children, and injured another 5380. [12] Israel subjected the besieged population of Gaza to three weeks of unrelenting state terror.
Despite the clarity with which the Palestinian BDS movement has enunciated the goals of the Palestinian struggle, some Israeli and other advocates of boycott have tried to limit its scope. They have attempted to limit the goals of the BDS movement by restricting it geo-politically and confining it to a call to end the Israeli occupation over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This "interpretation" of BDS is most dangerous as it attempts to appropriate the right to redefine the terms of the struggle in Palestine and to impose an ideologically suspect political agenda that lets Israel off the hook on the charges of apartheid and practicing the most pernicious form of racism and discrimination in all the territory under its control.
Some Israelis also base their support for BDS on a purely utilitarian rationale, that of ‘saving Israel from itself,’ rather than principled solidarity with the Palestinians. This Israel-centered, “pragmatic” perspective, however, reproduces a colonial attitude of superiority where the indigenous population and their inalienable rights and struggle for freedom are not even recognized. What matter, according to this perspective, are Israel’s own self-interest, international image, and future. Yet if some are committed to preserving Israel’s character into the future without challenging its colonial and apartheid laws and policies, how can they be counted on as true allies in the Palestinian-led, global BDS movement?
As for the targets chosen for BDS actions, the strength of the BDS movement lies in the fact that it does not impose specific targets or tactics on solidarity groups around the world. Based on the principle of context-sensitivity and respect for the autonomy and integrity of democratic international groups supporting Palestinian rights, the Palestinian BDS collective leadership has always believed that people of conscience and organizations advocating human rights know their respective situation best and are the most capable of deciding the appropriate ways and pace to build the BDS movement in their contexts. Sometimes the tactical targeting of settlement-only products may be the best way for a campaign to progress. At other times, it may be resolutions at local unions endorsing BDS, or cultural boycott targets, etc. But even if one were concerned only about Israel’s occupation, not its denial of refugee rights or its apartheid system, this cannot justify a principled focus on boycotting “settlement products” only, as if Israel’s colonies themselves were the party guilty of colonialism, not the state that established them and sustains their growth. In no other boycott context in the world does anyone call for boycotting a manifestation of a state’s violations of international law, rather than the state itself. After all, under international law states are the legal entities that are supposed to be held accountable for crimes and violations that they commit.
Regardless, it is never up to Israeli academics or activists, no matter what their principles are, to set out the reference parameters and priorities of the movement, particularly for activists worldwide. More often than not, members of the Zionist left have refused to recognize the BDS Call issued by the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society organizations, and its anchor and leadership, the Palestinian BDS National Committee, BNC. [13] In so doing they fail to respect the aspirations of the Palestinian people and our right to define the goals of our struggle. Moreover, in response to the Zionist left’s insistence on focusing on the symptoms of the Israeli system of colonial oppression, by calling only for an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it is worth emphasizing that in apartheid South Africa it would have been ludicrous to focus solely on the Bantustans. The struggle against the Bantustans was an intrinsic part of the struggle to end the apartheid system as a structure of dominance whereby the white minority subjugated and oppressed the Black South African population.
As a people living under Israeli apartheid and exiled from their land, it is up to the Palestinians and their mass organizations to set their priorities, objectives and strategies to attain our rights under international law. Israeli support is a welcome and necessary part of this movement. But it must be extended in the spirit of real solidarity, as in the case of Boycott From Within, respecting the wishes and aspirations of the Palestinian people themselves.
[1] See, for example, the following incriminating evidence against Tel Aviv University‘s partnership with the Israeli army and weapons industries: http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090708-soas-palestine-society.pdf
[2] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=63
[3] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1062127.html and Reuven Pedatzur, The Israeli Army House Philosopher, Haaretz, 24 February 2004.
[4] http://www.alternativenews.org/images/stories/downloads/Economy_of_the_occupation_23-24.pdf
[5] See, for example, Neve Gordon’s BDS article at: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gordon20-2009aug20,0,1126906.story and Udi Aloni’s at: http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=37582
[6] See, for example, Tanya Reinhart’s letter to Israeli academic Baruch Kimmerling at: http://www.mediamonitors.net/tanya13.html
[7] http://www.boycottisrael.info
[8] http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/52
[9] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869
[10] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1047 and http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1107
[11] For more on Israel‘s regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid see this important BNC strategic position paper: http://bdsmovement.net/files/English-BNC_Position_Paper-Durban_Review.pdf
[12] http://www.ochaopt.org/gazacrisis/index.php?section=3
[13] For example Uri Avnery’s sweeping dismissal of the Palestinian BDS Call and the Palestinian BDS National Committee: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1252168050
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Ha'aretz
British academics urge Elton John to cancel Israel concert
Elton John
(AP)
9-2-2010
A group of British academics have called on singer Elton John to cancel his scheduled performance in Israel this June.
"Political or not political, when you stand up on that stage in Tel Aviv, you line yourself up with a racist state," the British Committee for Universities of Palestine wrote in an open letter to John on Monday. "Do you want to give them the satisfaction? Please don't go."
In the letter, the group urged John to read the Goldstone Commission's report on Israel's conduct during the war in Gaza last year in order to understand why his performance carried an inherently political undertone.
"You may say you're not a political person, but does an army dropping white phosphorus on a school building full of children demand a political response? Does walling a million and a half people up in a ghetto and then pounding that ghetto to rubble require a political response from us, or a human one?
"You're behaving as if playing in Israel is morally neutral - but how can it be? How can the cruelties Israel practices against the Palestinians - fundamentally because the Palestinians are there, on Palestinian land, and Israel wants them to go - be morally neutral?"
"Okay, you turn up in Ramat Gan, and it gets to that 'Candle in the Wind? moment, and thousands of lighters flicker - but there won't be any Palestinians from the Occupied Territories swaying along with the Israelis - the army won't let them leave their ghettoes.
"Please read what Judge Goldstone said about the onslaught on Gaza; what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been saying for decades about the crimes committed against the Palestinians. Of course the Israeli state denies it has a case to answer, though it's knee-deep in ethnic cleansing and land-theft and the endless daily suffocating of Palestinian lives and hopes."
Israel boycotters succeeded just weeks ago in convincing Santana to cancel his own performance. Similar attempts to get Leonard Cohen and Paul McCartney to stay away, however, failed
Source
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Ha'aretz
What is the reason to start the header of this article with "Muslim students"
Were this only Muslims? How do you know that? Or is it just spinning and polarisation?
You can see it yourself below on the Video found on the internet
Note the difference in reporting by al Jazeera just below this article (H.).
