Archive: Boycott, also by Universities / ....We respect the right to education. Does Israel....? 5 july - 8 sept 2010
Reageer (0)Electronic Intifada
Divestment: from the campus to the streets
By Mohammad Talaat
8-9-2010
Following a sharp increase in divestment efforts across North American college campuses last spring, this academic year promises an even greater number of initiatives.
The success and near-success of efforts at several campuses last year, coupled with Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla this summer, has inspired new efforts among peace and justice activists to target companies that profit from and abet Israel's apartheid regime.
Perhaps the largest divestment initiative is taking shape in California. The California Israel Divestment initiative is seeking to put a ballot measure to California voters that requires the state pension funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), to divest from companies enabling or profiting from Israeli occupation and systematic violations of Palestinians' human rights. Although not a university-based effort, it is being led in large part by faculty members and students. Their goal is clear: faced by stonewalling from university administrations, the case is being taken directly to California voters.
Students from the University of California (UC) and California State (CSU) campuses are coordinating a major drive to collect the 440,000 signatures required for the ballot initiative, and the list of volunteers keeps growing. The initiative has already received the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Professor Noam Chomsky, a number of other public and religious figures, and CalPERS and CalSTRS members.
Meanwhile, campus divestment efforts continue to grow in number and scope. University administrators, typically beholden to conventional donors and afraid of the "anti-Semitism label," have moved to limit the "damage" of the mushrooming boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Hampshire College, for instance, sold its State Street fund but publicly denied that it was motivated by divestment from Israel. Some other administrations have tried to ignore the issue, wishing it away. However, these attempts have only backfired.
The response of the University of California (UC) administration to campus divestment initiatives is a prominent example of how desperate the status quo forces are, and the shrinking moral and intellectual ground under their feet.
Last spring, student governments at two UC campuses introduced measures calling for divestment from companies profiting from Israel's occupation and war crimes committed during its winter 2008-09 invasion of Gaza. In response, UC President Mark Yudof, together with the chair and vice-chair of the UC Board of Regents, issued a formal "UC Statement on Divestment" which rejected the singling out of Israel, even though the bills exclusively focused on US companies providing material support to Israel's illegal occupation and documented war crimes. The statement also referred to the pain the divestment initiatives brought upon the Jewish community, despite the strong support that the bills received from local and international Jewish individuals and organizations. The statement ignored the 41 student organizations, 86 UC faculty members, not to mention five Nobel peace laureates, who publicly supported the resolutions. In addition to attempting to minimize the scope of the divestment initiative's support on campus by its dismissive language, the statement declared UC opposition to considering any divestment measures to the regents unless the US government declares that the state in question is committing genocide.
However, the notion that an academic institution can follow a socially responsible investment policy only after the US government has made a finding that acts of genocide -- no less - are taking place goes against UC's legacy and the values of citizen-led democracy and activism. It ensures inaction in the name of unspeakable horror and surrenders human conscience and responsibility to the calendar and temperament of American politicians. After all, Washington has yet to make a determination on the Armenian genocide of the First World War!
According to this policy of deference to the US government, UC would have found it unacceptable to divest from companies supporting the Nazi occupation of Europe and the extermination of civilians in death camps prior to the US declaration of war -- or even the official recognition of genocide after the war ended. Moreover, had Yudof been UC President in 1986, he would not have voted to divest from companies supporting South Africa's apartheid regime when the UC Regents memorably did, to ground-breaking success. As an academic and presumed defender of free speech, the UC president should be protesting this policy, not advocating it.
These proclamations by university administrators aim to empty academic conscience and activism of any substance, and to reduce them to empty slogans and colorful parades. The policies they advance are a thinly-veiled effort to incapacitate university campuses from leading any effort to challenge racism and social injustice. As autonomous actors, universities and independent citizens should retain the right to influence the policy of their government. If what is going on in California is any indication, authoritative attempts by campus administrations to muzzle or stonewall the exercise of this right on campus will likely result in their constituency taking their activism to the street! It is this right that faculty and students alike will be exercising this academic year and every year on campus and off campus, until Israeli apartheid is dismantled.
Mohammad Talaat is Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at Cairo University and a UC Berkeley Alum. He currently is on academic leave in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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al Jazeera
Israel academics snub settlements
More than 150 Israeli academics say they will stop working in Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank.
The Palestinians have said that if Jewish settlement building continues in the occupied West Bank they will exit forthcoming peace talks with the Israelis [EPA]
31-8-2010
More than 150 Israeli academics have said that they will cease to work in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The announcement in a letter released on Sunday came after 57 Israeli actors and playwrights signed a boycott refusing to perform in the Jewish settlements, which the group of academics said they supported.
The academics said that agreeing to the settlements caused "critical" damage to Israel being able to achieve peace with the Palestinians.
The group said that it wanted to remind the Israeli public that all settlements are in occupied territory.
"Legitimatisation and acceptance of the settler enterprise cause critical damage to Israel's chances of achieving a peace accord with its Palestinian neighbours," it said.
Peace talks
The academics said that they would not engage in any form of cultural activity or lecture in the occupied West Bank.
US-sponsored peace negotiations are set to begin on Thursday between Israel and the Palestinians.
Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, criticised the decision by the actors boycott, also announced on Sunday.
"The last thing we need at this time, when we are under such assault, is a boycott attempt from within ourselves," Netanyahu said.
The actors decided to boycott performing in the settlements after the Israeli government laid plans to build a theatre, to open in November this year, in the settlement of Ariel.
The group called for six major theatre companies to work only within Israel as defined by international law according to the division of land at the end of the 1967 war.
The Palestinians have threatened to leave forthcoming peace talks if Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank continues.
More than 500,000 Jews live in settlements within the occupied West Bank deemed illegal by international law.
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Ha'aretz
Everything should be taught
An academic institution does not belong to the state, but to all of mankind.
By Menachem Mautner
19-8-2010
The Institute for Zionist Strategies sent a position paper to the heads of Israel's universities that examines the degree to which campus activity is Zionist in orientation. Allow me to propose a response.
Your position paper is based on an underlying assumption that is unacceptable to me, one which posits that the level of support for Zionism is the standard by which to judge a university. The university does not belong to the state, nor does it belong to the Zionist movement that created the state. It belongs to mankind, and it pursues three primary goals: generating academic knowledge that is likely to provide human beings with intellectual enrichment and a better understanding of the human condition; preserving the academic knowledge of the past; and disseminating knowledge to mankind.
The university is an institution that the liberal state must fund without taking any interest in the content of the research it produces or the material it teaches, even if this content is unsavory in the eyes of the state's leaders or even contradicts the foundations on which the state was established. The only criterion by which content should be judged in a university is the humanist one - namely, whether the content is intended to advance the welfare of mankind.
Allow me to discuss the content produced by universities - a question more difficult than another often raised in this context, that of the opinions faculty members express as citizens.
In a university, it is permissible to write, and even to teach, that in the 19th century, the Jewish people had better options than establishing a national movement that aspired to political sovereignty; that at the present moment in history, Israel needs to bring an end to the Zionist worldview that lies at the foundation of its existence; that the founding of Israel dealt a harsh blow to Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel; that Israel needs to cease viewing itself as a Jewish and democratic state and begin characterizing itself as a state of all its citizens; that Israel needs to be a binational state; or that Israel needs to be incorporated into a Middle Eastern federation.
It is permissible to write and teach all these things, on condition that these ideas are founded upon concern for the welfare of Israel's citizens and their spiritual enrichment; and on condition that they meet the standards of the university's relevant research paradigms.
Content that does not meet the humanist criterion has no place in a university. Material that does not meet the standards of the relevant academic paradigms also has no place in a university, but that is because it constitutes shoddy academic work. Universities have institutions that are tasked with ensuring that academic work complies with the relevant academic paradigms and is done at an appropriate academic level.
Based on your mode of thinking, it would be possible to demand that the university teach only material that serves the immediate and practical interests of the state. Such an approach would place departments like business management, law, engineering and medicine at the center of the university. Such an approach would turn the university into a technical school.
Yet the university should give pride of place to the humanities, social science and natural science, fields where knowledge is sought for its own sake, without any considerations of how that knowledge might be put to immediate use. And once this material is produced by a university, it is no longer available solely to the citizens of Israel, but to all human beings the world over.
At the basis of your position paper lies the assumption that the State of Israel has one task: the exercise of political sovereignty and the nurturing of national culture. I disagree. The state is a tool for advancing a diverse set of human interests.
Aside from a national culture, human beings also need effective health services, quality education, housing, art and culture. Thus Israel does not only need to be a Zionist state; it must be a state that works to promote all the different types of well-being its citizens need. The production and dissemination of enriching academic knowledge is one of them.
You must cease judging the universities by the criteria of Zionism. The question of what specific content should be infused into Zionism today is an important one. I suggest that you focus on that instead.
The writer is professor of law at Tel Aviv University.
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Ha'aretz
Politruks in academia
17-8-2010
The preoccupation with syllabi at Tel Aviv University is nothing more than a cover for a dangerous worldview, which says academic research must comply with the winds blowing in the Knesset and the street.
It is to be hoped that Tel Aviv University President Joseph Klafter's decision to examine senior researchers and lecturers' syllabi was indeed intended - as Prof. Yehouda Shenhav was quoted by Or Kashti as saying (Haaretz English Edition, August 15 ), "to protect academic freedom from McCarthyism," and does not indicate a surrender to the Institute for Zionist Strategies.
Those who issued the report titled "Post-Zionism and Academia" (which deals only with sociology courses ) can only be defined, to put it mildly, as "politruks" (Russian for political commissars ). The report, which was distributed to university heads and senior lecturers, is a sanctimonious paper, apparently a tedious expansion of a previous, no less shameful report, submitted by the Im Tirtzu movement to the Knesset and education minister.
Implementing the report - by examining syllabi - would be foolish and troubling. It will make it impossible for academics to do any research unless it is in line with the representation determined by the report, which resembles something taken out of an old Jewish National Fund propaganda movie. This narrow-minded demand could damage Zionism research even more.
But the preoccupation with syllabi is nothing more than a cover for a dangerous worldview, which says academic research must comply with the winds blowing in the Knesset and the street.
The report claims there is a prestigious, influential academic elite that trains generations of young researchers and personnel for public administration, and that maintains and runs research centers with considerable influence on the state's decision-makers. "This elite, which represents Israel in the international academic community, advocates radical leftist positions that would doubtfully pass the broader (Jewish ) public test - in the polls," says the report.
These crude statements expose the principles of the new politruk activity and make its intentions clear. Evidently the report has the goal of spreading fear in the universities, further deligitimizing Israeli intellectuals, and undermining the freedom of expression, research and thought. It aims to do these things by means of populistic denunciations and an irrelevant, illegitimate ethnocratic distinction ("the Jewish public" ).
As the rector of the University of Haifa said, this is a McCarthyist report, which academia must reject out of hand.
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Tadamon
A million dollar festival will not rescue Israel’s image as an apartheid state
Photo Palestinian walks along Israeli apartheid wall.
15-8-2010
Once again, the Brand-Israel machine is in high gear, this time organizing a million-dollar international youth extravaganza in Eilat in September 2010 called “Funjoya.”
This unabashed propaganda exercise is sponsored by the Israel Ministry of Tourism and the Israeli Student Union, among other official and semi-official bodies. The Ministry of Tourism explains one of the aims of the festival: “branding Israel as an attractive tourism destination for students, an improvement in Israel’s image among this target group and facilitating multi-cultural encounters for students from Israel and European countries.” [1]
There is no question that Israel is working hard to whitewash its crimes and to justify its occupation, colonization and system of apartheid. Since 2005, the official “Brand-Israel” campaign [2] has tried to present Israel in a new light, as a vibrant state promoting culture and the arts. However, Israel’s own actions make a mockery of this branding exercise, proving that no amount of re-branding will cover up the escalating agenda of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and violence against the Palestinian people, the last of which were the deadly assault on the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-2009, and the lethal attack on humanitarian aid workers aboard the Freedom Flotilla in Gaza in May 2010, which resulted in the murder of nine Turkish citizens. This viciousness is customary to Israel. The report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission led by Judge Richard Goldstone, released in September 2009, found strong evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza, and called for holding Israel accountable before international law.
We call upon students from around the world not to take part in this festival. We invite you to join the international movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel (BDS) until Israel respects international law [3]. As students, you should be aware that Palestinian students do not enjoy the rights taken for granted by many of you: Palestinian students’ freedom of movement is severely restricted by the Apartheid Wall, checkpoints and road blocks and hundreds are detained in Israeli jails for resisting the occupation. [4]
We urge you to heed the words of the Gaza-based Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel in their open letter to students a few days ago: “From under a most brutal siege humanity has witnessed during this modern age, we urge all students around the globe to boycott this festival We ask: will it speak about the cultural confiscation, the occupation of Palestinian history, the system of racial discrimination, home demolition, settlement expansion, settler colonialism and land expropriation? Will it tell of how apartheid Israel slices the West Bank into Bantustans separated by more than 600 checkpoints and a monstrous Apartheid Separation Wall preventing Palestinians from access to local hospitals, schools and universities, not to mention their families and relatives?” [5]
Don’t come to Eilat and honour the apartheid state! Support the Palestinian people in our struggle for self determination by boycotting “Funjoya” and exposing this vulgar Israeli hasbara effort!
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel – PACBI
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Ma'an
Students urge PLO envoy not to attend Jewish lecture
11-8-2010
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian student union has called on PLO ambassador to South Africa Ali Ahmed Halimeh not to attend a conference organized by a Jewish student group scheduled for Thursday.
The Palestinian Student Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel in Gaza said in an open letter that Halimeh's participation in a South African Union of Jewish Students lecture entitled Towards Peace in the Middle East – The Status of Current Democracy "as antagonistic to the values of our people, and it cannot be subsumed under the framework of diplomatic duties as SAUJS is neither a governmental nor parliamentary organization."
The student union said the South Africa Palestine Solidarity Campaign views the group as "part of the Zionist lobby, which is known to work relentlessly to support Israel and whitewash Israel’s crimes."
"SAUJS considers Zionism as one of its three main pillars - in addition to “Jewish Identity” and “South Africa” - as is mentioned on their website. This ensures SAUJS’s unconditional support or apartheid, and Israel’s killing and ethnic cleansing policies, which have led to the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and suffering caused by 62 years of ongoing Nakba."
According to the group's website, the Jewish organization hosts "interesting speakers, do interfaith events, have great socials, provide religious learning in own Beit Midrash, participate in political debates, do outreach work, help get exams moved from Jewish holidays and fight anti-Zionism on campus."
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Times Higher Education
Is the Israeli academy facing a McCarthyite era?
By Matthew Reisz
Political interference could put freedom of speech in universities at stake, says Matthew Reisz
7-8-2010
When it comes to the Israeli academy, said David S. Katz, director of the Lessing Institute for European History at Tel Aviv University, “we are entering a McCarthyite phase – and I do not exaggerate”.
“There is legislation being discussed that would limit freedom of expression in universities,” he said. “The education minister [Gideon Sa’ar] has expressed satisfaction with a report that looks at the course content of professors, sniffing out ‘anti-Zionist’ ideology. The Knesset Education Committee is behind this initiative as well. It is very bad indeed, and the universities have done little to reject this, apart from the rector of Haifa University [Yossi Ben-Artzi], who was very forthcoming.”
At the front line of the conflict are a handful of academics, such as Rachel Giora, professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, who support international calls for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Pointing to “the growing number of Israeli assaults on Palestinians’ cities, towns, villages and refugee camps both within and outside the occupied territories”, as well as events such as the attack on Gaza during the winter of 2008-09 and the deaths on the “Freedom flotilla” in May this year, Professor Giora argued that “the state’s legitimacy has been gradually undermined”, leading to “waves of vocal criticism” across the world.
International condemnation has also created a far less comfortable environment for internal critics, she said, having led to “massive defence tactics aimed particularly at bashing academics supportive of boycott initiatives”.
Professor Giora said: “Repression of protest was no longer implicit. All hell broke loose.”
Amid public calls for their dismissal, abuse and even death threats, Mr Sa’ar explicitly announced his determination to take action, claiming that “when an Israeli academic preaches for academic boycott, he crosses a red line”.
This led to a petition of protest signed by 542 Israeli academics, including the former education minister Yuli Tamir, stating that “if the higher education system in Israel wants to maintain a high quality, it must include opinions that are not acceptable to everyone, social and political criticism, and critical and even controversial research and instruction”.
Protesters also looked askance at the minister’s support for a recent report by the Im Tirtzu youth movement, which has suggested that political science departments in Israeli universities suffer from a “post-Zionist bias”.
Thin end of the wedge
Mr Sa’ar, however, robustly defended his stance.
It was the petitioners, he told Radio Israel in July, who were “harming the institutions for which they teach and are funded by the citizens of Israel…The question here is whether there are absolutely no limits. Let’s get rid of the double standards. Can everything be placed under the cover of academic freedom, including murder incitement?”
Many see the attack on the tiny minority of Israeli academics who support the boycott as just the thin end of the wedge, likely to lead to further attempts by politicians to monitor and control what is said within universities.
“The main problem”, Professor Katz said, “is that the Right is unable to understand that what we are demanding is freedom of expression. Almost none of us are in favour of an academic boycott of Israel, but we are defending the right of Professor Giora and others to advocate this outside the classroom without fear of losing their jobs.
“If the education minister can say that advocating an academic boycott is beyond the pale, then where will we be when he says that it is unacceptable to support conscientious objection…or call the West Bank ‘occupied territory’…or remind students that there is another way of looking at the 1948 War [whose interpretation remains a matter of deep dispute among historians and between Israelis and Palestinians]?
“We can’t let politicians draw any lines at all. We have a perfectly good system of peer review for judging academic contributions within the scholarly setting, and whatever professors say outside the classroom is their own business. The charge that professors are exploiting captive student audiences for political indoctrination is totally baseless.”
Aron Shai, rector-elect of Tel Aviv University, has added his voice to these concerns.
Although he admitted that he has “no idea what our education minister is up to regarding freedom of speech and academic freedom at our universities” and noted that “there are conflicting reports concerning his intentions in this regard”, he emphasised that “freedom of speech has been observed in Israeli universities since the establishment of the state in 1948. I sincerely hope that as an esteemed and enlightened statesman, our education minister will not interfere in the traditional autonomy of the universities and will carry on tolerating it exactly as his predecessors have done.”
He went on: “Indeed, at a recent debate by the Education Committee of the Knesset [Israeli parliament], I made my position clear. I underlined that each and every university is a self-contained community. One can find in each a colourful, pluralistic fabric of academicians, scholars, teachers and researchers. If one seeks supporters of the government, critics of the Cabinet and its policies, dissidents or so-called extremists of the Right and Left, one can certainly find them, in different doses and quantities.”
Shared concerns
Although he is more optimistic, Professor Shai shares Professor Katz’s concerns about the possibility of a “McCarthyite” atmosphere within the Israeli academy.
In the Knesset, he recalled: “I stated quite ironically that we could create an ‘un-Israeli’ activities committee, similar to the House Un-American Activities Committee or the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, but that we should at the same time be aware of the dangerous repercussions of such a move. Would we wish upon ourselves the atmosphere that existed in the United States in the early 1950s?”
Also at stake, suggested Professor Shai, was the need to respect students and treat them as responsible adults.
“When we consider students at Israeli universities,” he noted, “we are not dealing with school pupils or teenagers. We are talking about grown-ups, mature young men and women who have served their country in the army, navy or the air force, citizens who are on average 23 to 25 years old. In my opinion, they are capable of rationally analysing any views they are exposed to, whether these be from the Right or Left, moderate or extreme.
“I further believe that when academic texts are presented in class or assigned as reading material in, say, basic courses in political thought, history, sociology and other such disciplines, a wide spectrum of views should be introduced and taught. This is the correct, honest, scientific approach.
“I made it clear that I objected to a regulative policy introduced or encouraged by some Knesset members relating to any aspect of the higher education system. Regulation by committees or otherwise might lead us towards a slippery slope and would harm not only free speech and freedom of expression, but also the very essence and spirit of research and scientific advancement.”
Despite his eloquently expressed anxieties, Professor Shai said he believes “the present Israeli leadership is not going to resort to such disproven and obsolete policy”.
Others are notably more pessimistic about what lies ahead.
matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com
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Electronic Intifada
Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
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Palestinian students are strongly in favor of the academic boycott of Israel. (Luay Sababa/MaanImages)
6-8-2010
Al-Quds University is maintaining a joint Israeli-Palestinian master's degree program with Haifa, Hebrew and Tel Aviv universities, despite a decision taken by its own University Council in February 2009 to distance itself from Israeli academic institutions.
"[The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, PACBI] views this joint Palestinian-Israeli academic project as a clear violation of the Palestinian criteria for the academic boycott of Israel, which are widely supported by Palestinian civil society," Omar Barghouti, a founding member of PACBI and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, told The Electronic Intifada.
"PACBI also believes that the timing of this announcement can only confirm the suspicion that it is intended to relieve Israel's increasing isolation -- after its criminal attack on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla," Barghouti explained.
Supported by the UN's agency for education and culture, UNESCO and the Italian Development Cooperation (DGCS) in Jerusalem, the program in question is the third round of a joint master's degree that would allow 20 Israeli and Palestinian students to study in Italy and learn about "cooperation, humanitarianism, peace and cultural preservation." It is coordinated by Rome's La Sapienza University.
This program is the result of the Declaration of Principles of Palestinian-Israeli International Cooperation in Scientific and Academic Affairs, which was signed in May 2004 by the Rector of the University of Rome La Sapienza and the Rectors and Presidents of five Israeli universities (Haifa University, Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Weizmann Institute of Science) and four Palestinian institutions (Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, Bethlehem University, Hebron University and the Palestine Polytechnic Institute) (download the Declaration of Principles [PDF]).
According to Hasan Dweik, Al-Quds University's executive vice-president, shortly after the declaration was signed in 2004, all other Palestinian universities withdrew their cooperation in line with the academic boycott.
"At this time, we said that we, as Al-Quds University, would take the responsibility of running this course," Dweik told The Electronic Intifada, from the university's campus in Beit Hanina, occupied East Jerusalem.
"Now, and after the Israeli attack on Gaza [in winter 2008-09], my university took a position that we should stop and re-evaluate our cooperation projects with Israel because the horrible thing that took place in Gaza cannot pass like that. We said, 'We need to stop and boycott the Israeli academic institutions,' not because we wanted to boycott them but because we wanted to give a message to the Israeli public and to the international community," Dweik said.
Indeed, on 2 February 2009, Al-Quds' University Board voted to cut all forms of academic cooperation with Israeli academic institutions.
The board explained that the Israeli attack on Gaza, during which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed (including more than 300 children), combined with settlement expansion in East Jerusalem and the intensification of restrictions in the rest of the West Bank, fueled the decision to gradually phase out the programs.
"It's just basically to put some pressure on NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and academic institutions both in Israel, the United States and Europe, to pressurize Israel to bring about peace in our area. This was our intention," Dweik said.
Still, he explained that while Al-Quds University will no longer enter into new academic initiatives with Israeli universities, it would not restrict extensions or the continuation of existing projects, such as the joint master's program in Rome.
"Any program that started a few years ago will continue. It will not stop," Dweik said, adding that the university chose not to impose a complete boycott on its faculty and staff because it wants to preserve "academic freedom."
According to Barghouti, however, the academic freedom argument does not hold water. Instead, he said that joint Israeli-Palestinian academic programs legitimize Israeli colonial policies.
"Joint projects help provide Israeli universities with a crucial fig leaf to undermine the boycott. We often read a recurring theme in Israeli criticism of British and other academic unions that support the boycott: 'Why are you trying to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians? If Palestinian academics themselves are cooperating with the Israeli academy, why do you want to boycott it instead of promoting joint collaborations and the free flow of ideas?'" Barghouti stated.
"This was the exact same -- flawed and distinctly deceptive -- logic used by South African apartheid in rebuking international boycotters, particularly in the academic and cultural fields."
A history of collaboration
The official Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was launched in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank in April 2004.
Since that time, nearly 60 Palestinian civil society organizations have signed onto the PACBI boycott initiative, including the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and the General Union of Palestinian Women, among others.
The Palestinian Council for Higher Education, a group established in 1977 with the mandate of coordinating between, and representing, Palestinian higher-learning institutions, has also repeatedly reaffirmed that it is against cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian academic institutions.
Still, in May 2005, Al-Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh continued to ignore the growing call for an academic boycott, as he and Hebrew University of Jerusalem President Menachem Magidor released a joint statement denouncing the British Association of University Teachers' (AUT) decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
"Cognizant of the moral leadership universities should provide, especially in already turbulent political contexts, we ... have agreed to insist on continuing to work together in the pursuit of knowledge, for the benefit of our peoples and the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East," the statement read.
The statement added: "Our disaffection with, and condemnation of acts of academic boycotts and discrimination against scholars and institutions, is predicated on the principles of academic freedom, human rights and equality between nations and among individuals."
According to Anan Quzmar, the Coordinator of Birzeit University's Right to Education Campaign, which demands "the right to education and unimpeded access for all Palestinians to their educational institutions," all forms of cooperation with Israeli academic institutions should be severed.
"We simply cannot support Palestinian universities working with Israeli institutions under any circumstances while those same institutions either endorse of fail to condemn the ongoing denial of Palestinians' basic human rights," Quzmar said.
He added that Palestinian students are strongly in favor of the academic boycott, and are working on campaigns to gain international support.
"Recently a statement against any form of normalization was signed by all student councils in universities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and all major Palestine student and youth organizations around the world," Quzmar said.
"Palestinian students have long supported an academic boycott on Israeli academic institutions and stood against any collaboration between Palestinian academic institutions and Israeli ones. I would go as far as saying that the academic boycott is the most widely supported form of boycott in the Palestinian society."
Complicity in the occupation
According to a report released by the Alternative Information Center in October 2009 titled "Academic Boycott of Israel and the Complicity of Israeli Academic Institutions in Occupation of Palestinian Territories," "Israeli academic institutions have not opted to take a neutral, apolitical position toward the Israeli occupation but to fully support the Israeli security forces and policies toward the Palestinians, despite the serious suspicions of crimes and atrocities hovering over them."
The report found that all main Israeli universities are involved in supporting the occupation through various means.
For instance, the three universities involved with the joint master's program with Al-Quds University -- Tel Aviv, Haifa and Hebrew University -- have sponsored various academic programs for Israeli military reserves, granted scholarships to students who served in the Israeli attack on Gaza and maintain ties to leading Israeli weapons manufacturers. Indeed, a report released by a student group at London's School of Oriental and African Studies demonstrated Tel Aviv University's "deep investment in the facilitation and prosecution (at both the material and conceptual level) of what amount to war crimes" ("Study: Tel Aviv University part and parcel of the Israeli occupation," SOAS Palestine Society, 9 July 2009).
Dweik told The Electronic Intifada that Al-Quds University is presently involved with about ten joint Israeli-Palestinian projects, and that university faculty members, researchers and administrators will meet to re-evaluate these existing projects every two to three months.
This review will include the Israeli-Palestinian Master's program in Italy, which Dweik said will almost certainly go ahead despite the destructive influence he readily admitted such projects have on the lives of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
"If you look at all the environment now, it does not help at all having cooperation with the Israelis," he said. "I think the Israelis use [joint academic programs] in the media to say that things are normal and we are cooperating. I think it helps them internationally."
According to Quzmar, all Palestinian universities must take a stand against joint academic initiatives, especially when it is clear how such projects legitimize Israel's systematic violations of Palestinian rights.
"Palestinian universities and students are suffering every single day from the abuses of an absurd occupation," he said. "To object to the collaboration with those who support this occupation is a very small step and simple step, especially that such collaboration can be so dangerous in allowing Israeli academia the opportunity to whitewash its support to the very same occupation Palestinian academia suffers under."
Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D'Amours is a human rights activist and multimedia journalist currently based in occupied East Jerusalem.
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Ha'aretz
Israeli author Esther Orner says she did not expect such a decision by the University of Provence Aix-Marseille.
By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service
25-7-2010
A French university has canceled a conference of Mediterranean writers after participants protested the presence of an Israeli author.
Pro-Palestinian activists burn an Israeli flag during a demonstration in Paris, Saturday.
The author, Esther Orner, said Sunday she wasn't expecting the decision by the University of Provence Aix-Marseille. She says those seeking to boycott her are trying to delegitimize Israel.
The university had planned an international conference for March 2011 called Writing Today in the Mediterranean Region: Exchanges and Tensions.
University president Jean-Paul Caverni says that the conference was canceled after some unnamed participants refused to take part in dialogue with an Israeli author.
He says the university would not hold a conference with those who exclude dialogue.
Over the last few years, outrage against Israeli participation in various events has brought to their cancelation.
Last year, British director Ken Loach withdrew his film Looking for Eric from the Melbourne International Film Festival to protest Israeli funding of another film participating in the festival.
Loach demanded that the festival reject the Israeli Embassy's sponsorship of Tatia Rosenthal to visit the festival to answer questions about her animation feature $9.99, but the festival organizers refused, saying that they would not bow to "blackmail," the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Also last year, Palestinian artists called for a boycott of the Toronto International Film Festival for screening a series of movies about Tel Aviv.
Around 1000 international artists and activists signed a letter in protest against the festival claiming that Tel Aviv was built on violence, ignoring the "suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants."
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Kabobfest
Indian Call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
By Will
22-7-2010
All signs indicate that Israel is starting to take seriously the threat of Palestine solidarity activists, the types of people brushed off for so long by media and policymakers as marginal and irrelevant.
Now, Israel is moving towards the criminal prosecution of those who advocate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) as tools to press Israeli compliance with international law and norms in its Apartheid rule and occupation of the Palestinian people. It is targeting BDS activists for lengthy interrogations and arrest for nonviolent resistance. Its diplomats are considering intervening against BDS successes in localities, such as Olympia, Washington, where a food coop joined the boycott of Israeli goods.
This movement, people must understand, is spurned by the failure of governments to bring justice to the Palestinians, a point recently made by Antony Lowenstein.
As BDS grows, it’s shaping up as a truly global movement. This is an open call from Indian academics, writers and artists reprinted from USACBI’s website.
Both the academia and the arts are profoundly rooted in the values of democracy, equality and justice, and the pursuit of excellence in both these fields has meaning only if it is imbued with conscience. As Indian academics, intellectuals and artists in the decolonised world, we have historically played a crucial role in the liberation of our peoples, and to this day continue to lend our voices in support to all those who are struggling to be rid of the yoke of colonialism and foreign domination.
In a reality in which the Israeli state daily tramples on the academic freedom and cultural life of the Palestinian people, a continued association with the instruments of such a state is unconscionable. When Palestinian students and teachers are not allowed to reach their universities because of permit laws and checkpoints, universities and schools are levelled by bombs and tanks, food, textbooks, and medical supplies are prohibited from entering Gaza, and artistic events are closed down in Jerusalem, none of the foundational principles on which academic and cultural contact are based can ever be fulfilled.
In response to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel we have come together to form the India Chapter of this international movement. Just as it was in the case of the international call against South Africa in the apartheid years, we are confident that this boycott will be effective in contributing to international pressure on Israel to abandon its oppression and expulsion of the indigenous population based on military aggression, legal discrimination and persecution and economic stranglehold.
We appeal to you, Indian academics and artists, to join us in this cause, which has become even more urgent today, when our nation’s foreign policy has abandoned the ideals of self-determination and anti-colonialism. We stand in firm and relentless opposition to India’s strategic, scientific, military, and economic relations with Israel and are determined to reverse these morally repugnant policies of the Indian state. Our act of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle is a reaffirmation that the Indian people have not abandoned the Palestinian people or forgotten their own history. This is to request you to join us in the India Chapter Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. We also request you to let us know your friends and colleagues we may send this letter to.
Yours sincerely,
1 Upendra Baxi (Patron)
2 Vina Mazumdar (Patron)
3 Ayesha Kidwai (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Convenor)
4 Gargi Sen (Filmmaker, Convenor)
5 Mohan Rao (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Convenor)
6 Janaki Abraham (Delhi University)
7 Ayisha Abraham (Artist)
8 Dinesh Abrol (Scientist, NISTADS)
9 Aijaz Ahmad (New Delhi)
10 S Anand (Publisher)
11 G Arunima (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
12 Pushpa M.Bhargava (Scientist)
13. Ira Bhaskar (Film maker)
14 Prashant Bhushan (Lawyer)
15 Praful Bidwai (Journalist)
16 Uma Chakravarthy (Delhi University)
17 Anand Chakravarthy (Delhi University)
18 C.P Chandrasekhar (JNU)
19 Indira Chandrasekhar (Publisher)
20 Kamal Mitra Chenoy (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
21 Anuradha Chenoy (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
22 Rohan D’Souza (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
23 Satish Deshpande (Delhi University)
24 Shashi Deshpande (Writer)
25 Vasanthi Devi (Former Vice-Chancellor, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tamilnadu)
26 Saba Dewan (Film maker)
27 Jayati Ghosh (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
28 Githa Hariharan (Writer)
29 Zoya Hasan (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
30 Moloyshree Hashmi Theatre Person
31 Mushirul Hassan (Former Vice Chancellor, Jamia Millia Islamia)
32 T Jayraman (Tata Institute of Social Studies)
33 Mary John (Centre for Women’s Development Studies)
34 Amita Kanekar (Writer)
35 Kalpana Kannabiran (Hyderabad University)
36 Nuzhat Kazmi (Jamia Millia Islamia)
37 Farida Khan (Jamia Millia Islamia)
38 Romi Khosla (Architect)
39 Brijesh Kumar Theatre Person
40 Ein Lall (Filmmaker)
41 S.N. Malakar (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
42 Rita Manchanda (South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu)
43 Harsh Mander (Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi)
44 Satyajit Mayor (Scientist)
45 Meena Menon (Writer, Focus on Global South)
46 Nivedita Menon (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
47 Ritu Menon (Publisher)
48 Saeed Mirza (Filmmaker)
49 Jeroo Mulla (Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai)
50 Seema Mustafa (Journalist)
51 Gautam Navlakha (Economic and Political Weekly)
52 Aditya Nigam (Centre for the Study of Developing Studies, Delhi)
53 Rajni Palriwala (Delhi University)
54 Prabhat Patnaik (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
55 Anand Patwardhan (Filmmaker)
56 Pamela Philippose (Journalist)
57 Prabir Purkayastha (Engineer)
58 N Pushpamala (Artist)
59 Imrana Qadeer (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
60 D Raghunandan (Delhi Science Forum)
61 Alok Rai (Delhi University)
62 M.K. Raina (Theatreperson)
63 R Ramachandran (Journalist)
64 Vidya Rao (Editor, Singer)
65 Arundhati Roy (Writer)
66 Rahul Roy (Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi)
67 Kalpana Sachidanandan ( Writer)
68 Madhu Sahni (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
69 Tanika Sarkar (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
70 Sumit Sarkar (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
71 Amit Sengupta (Journalist)
72 Amit Sengupta (Delhi Science Forum)
73 Lakshmi Subramaniam (Jamia Millia Islamia)
74 Nandini Sundar (Delhi University)
75 Achin Vanaik (Delhi University)
76 Vikram Vyas (Delhi University)
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Electronic Intifada
US university suspends Muslim student group for Palestine protest
By Brian Napoletano
14-7-2010
In response to intense political pressure by multiple pro-Zionist organizations, the administration at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) recently decided to suspend Muslim students' right to assemble and practice their faith together on campus.
Alleging that emails anonymously "leaked" to the university prove that the Muslim Student Union was responsible for a protest of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's campus appearance by eight UCI students, the administration plans to suspend the more than 250-member Muslim Student Union for a year beginning in September, and place it under intense scrutiny and disciplinary probation if the student group is allowed to re-apply for recognition in the fall of 2011.
The student group is appealing this ban, contending that the MSU did not sponsor the protest, and that the students arrested for interrupting Oren's speech were acting as individuals. Members have also challenged UCI's decision to impose what their attorney Reem Salahi has described as "nothing but collective punishment" by suspending the entire group over a political protest.
Pointing to sustained efforts by powerful organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Zionist Organization of America, many are contending that UCI is allowing outside organizations to decide how it treats its students. Many of these organizations have publicly described their role in pushing the administration to suspend the student group, and have announced their intentions to undertake similar efforts on other campuses where students are organizing in defense of Palestinian rights.
While delivering a presentation on US-Israeli relations in February, Oren was interrupted several times by students who were outraged by his disregard for human rights and his attacks on the UN-commissioned Goldstone report. As a previous military spokesman for Israel, Oren defended Israel's 2006 invasions of Lebanon and Gaza, its winter 2008-09 attack on Gaza, and touted his own role as a paratrooper during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon in the mainstream media. Although Oren eventually finished his presentation, the university had the 11 students who interrupted him arrested (eight were from UCI, three were from UC Riverside), and the eight UCI students were subsequently brought before the University Office of Judicial Affairs, which informed them that they may face criminal charges in addition to any other punishments the university decides to impose. Although they are all members of the MSU, the students maintained that the protest was not a MSU activity, and that they were acting as individuals ("11 Arrested for Disrupting Israeli Ambassador," The Orange County Register, 8 February 2010).
The university publicly condemned the students who protested and, in response to demands from the Jewish Federation Orange County (JFOC) and other organizations initiated a Student Judiciary Review of the MSU. While this review was underway, someone anonymously delivered a collection of emails and other documents to the JFOC, the Investigative Project on Terrorism and the UCI that they claimed to have hacked from the MSU's email account.
Despite its highly-suspect nature and unknown source, Lisa Cornish, head of the Judiciary Review and Senior Executive Director of Student Housing, based her findings almost exclusively on this "evidence" when she concluded that the MSU had violated parts of the Code of Conduct by "plan[ning] every detail of the disruptions" and then "covering up" its involvement by claiming that the protests were not an MSU activity. In her 27 May letter to the students, Cornish said that she planned to have the group's recognition revoked on 1 September, require the members to complete fifty hours of community service, and have the group placed on disciplinary probation for an additional year if it was permitted to re-register in the fall of 2011 ("Letter to Muslim Student Union Officers" [PDF]). She did not, however, comment on whether the university planned to file criminal charges against the eight students who were actually responsible for the protests.
In light of these possible criminal charges, MSU's attorney Salahi was unable to discuss the alleged evidence in detail. However, she maintained that the protesters were not acting on behalf of the MSU. She also said that much of the evidence presented was deeply flawed, and that the university's punishment was entirely inappropriate, arguing that "all Muslim students on campus have been punished for the actions of a few."
Salahi also pointed out the central role the MSU plays in the Muslim student community. While advocacy for Palestinian rights is one of their more frequently noticed activities, the MSU has also worked with different student and cultural groups on several social justice movements and community service projects. Last spring, UCI's Cross Cultural Center recognized the MSU's contribution to the university by awarding it the Social Justice Award.
The student group also facilitates daily and weekly prayers on campus, offers religious classes and organizes social events. Given its centrality to the Muslim student community, many students feel that their right to participate in the campus community as Muslims is being undermined. As newly-elected MSU President Asaad Triana observed, "depriving Muslim students a venue to associate jeopardizes their rights under the First Amendment and is an act of marginalization at a time when Muslim students and Muslim youth already feel besieged."
The university's decision to suspend the entire MSU has raised several questions about the role that outside pressure from several well-known anti-Palestinian organizations played in its decision. Husam Ayloush, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, observed that the disruption of Oren's speech "was nothing but a peaceful and symbolic protest of the Israeli ambassador at UCI," suggesting that the university's response "appears to be politically motivated to silence any future peaceful and legitimate criticism of Israel's brutal practices."
Much of this political motivation came from well-known Zionist organizations like the Jewish Federation Orange County (JFOC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) -- all of which openly demanded that the university suspend the entire student group after February's protest.
The JFOC began attacking the MSU for its alleged "anti-Semitism" when the student group first began publicly criticizing Israeli policy nearly a decade ago. The JFOC immediately allied with campus groups like Hillel to pressure the administration to silence criticism of Israel, claiming that it intimidated Jewish students. The JFOC soon partnered with the ADL, which began to put even more media and political pressure on the administration to take action against the MSU.
The ZOA also joined in the effort, and began pressuring various contacts within the University of California administration to suspend the MSU. In a personal letter to UC President Mark Yudof, for instance, ZOA President Morton Klein condemned the UCI's MSU along with the UC Santa Cruz's Committee for Justice in Palestine, and accused the chancellors of both universities of being "grossly deficient" in their efforts to silence criticism of Israel ("Letter to Mark Yudof, Re: UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz," 8 August 2008 [PDF]).
Outraged by the protests against Oren, virtually every Zionist organization involved began calling for the MSU's suspension in February. Although the ZOA placed itself at odds with several other organizations when it initiated a Jewish boycott of UCI, the different factions still managed to coordinate a fairly organized campaign to have the student group suspended.
The campaign against the MSU became so intense that its vice president, Hadeer Soliman, described it as an outright attack on the students' "most basic rights of Freedom of Association," and said that the MSU's antagonists are "not seeking justice but rather censorship."
As opposition to Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people continues to grow, its apologists in the United States are focusing more of their energy and resources on silencing dissent on college campuses. While personal attacks on faculty are fairly common, the only other time an entire student group has faced punishment for a political protest was when UC Berkeley temporarily suspended its Students for Justice in Palestine group during an investigation in 2002. As MSU spokesperson Mahdis Keshavarz pointed out, the extent to which the university has allowed outside organizations to dictate its treatment of its students is both unprecedented and alarming. "By allowing an outside institution to come onto campus and influence its students standing," she explained, "UCI is failing to protect them and setting a dangerous precedent."
Such a precedent appears to be exactly what supporters of Israel are hoping for, as many of the organizations involved expressed their conviction that the MSU's suspension will have a significant impact on other campuses. In its press release, the ZOA said the ruling "sends a powerful message to other colleges and universities ... making it clear that this bigotry against Jews and the Jewish State will not be tolerated" (" Muslim Student Union Suspended at UC Irvine"). The subtext to this message, it seems, is that all pretenses of academic freedom on the nation's campuses have finally been discarded, and further objections to Israeli apartheid will be met with swift retaliation.
Describing the UCI's vilification of its Muslim students as yet another "criminalization of Arab and Muslim political speech which has permeated the American university system in defiance of principles of racial and religious equality," the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel recently released a statement of solidarity that condemned the administration's attack on students' "rights of free speech" and calling on them to "restore the integrity of the academy" by repealing its ban ("Statement Condemning Disciplinary Action against the Irvine 11 ...," 13 July 2010).
UCI's decision to punish one of its student groups for a political protest is a direct threat to academic freedom and the right of students to organize and speak freely. As more right-wing organizations begin to target the academy, students in other social justice movements may soon find themselves under attack by outside organizations. While the precedent set by the UCI's decision could intimidate some students into submission, others may respond by building stronger solidarity with students engaged in different and related struggles for social justice at home and abroad.
Brian Napoletano is a member of the International Socialist Organization and the former Public Relations officer for Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine. He has previously written for The Palestine Chronicle, MRZine, and Socialist Worker. He can be reached via email at b.napoletano A T gmail D O T com.
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Mondoweiss
32 faculty, 200+ students sign Penn State petition condemning flotilla raid
by Philip Weiss
10-7-2010
Today on NPR Martin Indyk told Scott Simon that during his last visit to Israel he saw Israelis feeling isolated by world opinion over the flotilla raid and wanting their government to respond to the criticism not with force. And Indyk concludes, lobbyistically, that the answer is for Obama to cultivate Netanyahu and the Israelis all the more. Why? when people are responding to savage conditions for Palestinians. The isolation of this conduct is the achievement of the grass roots. Here's the Penn State petition, with signatories (many of the names Jewish, by the way). Excerpt:
-Since the intensification of the siege in June 2007, “the formal economy in Gaza has collapsed”. (Association of International Development Agencies-UN) ·
-“61% of people in the Gaza Strip are food insecure”, of whom “65% are children under 18 years”. (UN Food and Agriculture Organization)
· Since June 2007, “the number of Palestine refugees unable to access food and lacking the means to purchase even the most basic items, such as soap, school stationery and safe drinking water, has tripled.” (UN Relief and Works Agency)
Not only is the inhumanity and illegality of the siege appalling, but the animosity and suffering it creates in Gaza is a breeding ground for terrorism. It is exactly in these conditions that the more radical and violent sects of Palestinian society in Gaza gains sway. In this way, the siege is ultimately worsening the security of Israeli citizens.
Therefore, the undersigned would like to take this opportunity to stand in solidarity with the activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla as they attempt to peacefully enforce humanitarian law. Furthermore, we ask for an immediate, international investigation into the flotilla assault conducted by an independent UN-led body and cessation to the blockade of Gaza.
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the Guardian
Israeli academics hit back over bid to pass law that would criminalise them
Backlash over threat to outlaw supporters of boycott movement aimed at ending the continued occupation of the West Bank
By Rachel Shabi and Peter Beaumont
Palestinian protest against the expansion of the Israeli settlements A Palestinian woman shouts at an Israeli soldier as clashes erupted with Palestinian protesters on Friday during a demonstration against the expansion of the Israeli settlements at Nabi Salih village near the West Bank City of Ramallah. Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA
An academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel has gained rapid international support since Israeli troops stormed a Gaza-bound flotilla of aid ships in May, killing nine activists. Israeli attention has focused on the small number of activists, particularly in the country's universities, who have openly supported an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.
A protest petition has been signed by 500 academics, including two former education ministers, following recent comments by Israel's education minister, Gideon Saar, that the government intends to take action against the boycott's supporters. A proposed bill introduced into the Israeli parliament – the Knesset – would outlaw boycotts and penalise their supporters. Individuals who initiated, encouraged or provided support or information for any boycott or divestment action would be made to pay damages to the companies affected. Foreign nationals involved in boycott activity would be banned from entering Israel for 10 years, and any "foreign state entity" engaged in such activity would be liable to pay damages.
Saar last week described the petition as hysterical and an attempt to silence contrary opinions. While the vast majority of the signatories do not support an academic boycott of Israel, they have joined forces over what they regard as the latest assault on freedom of expression in Israel. The petition states: "We have different and varied opinions about solving the difficult problems facing Israel, but there is one thing we are agreed on – freedom of expression and academic freedom are the very lifeblood of the academic system."
Daniel Gutwein, a history professor at Haifa University who is one of the signatories, described the minister's intervention as an attempt "to make Israeli academia docile, frightened and silent".
Although the BDS campaign – in various forms – has been running for over half a decade, it has become an increasingly fraught issue inside Israel in the past year since a small number of academics publicly declared support for a boycott, including Neve Gordon, author of Israel's Occupation and a former paratrooper who was badly injured while serving with the Israeli Defence Force.
Speaking to the Observer last week, Gordon said that many Israelis saw support for the BDS as "crossing a red line". Adding that he had received recent death threats, he said: "I am worried about what is happening to the space for debate in Israel. I find that there is a proto-fascist mindset developing. One of the slogans you hear a lot now is no citizenship without loyalty. It is an inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen."
Israeli campaigners believe the Gaza flotilla incident represents a tipping point in raising support for boycotts. Musicians including Elvis Costello, Gil Scott Heron and the Pixies have cancelled shows in Israel. Hollywood actors also snubbed Jerusalem's international film festival and internationally acclaimed writers have supported the BDS movement, which is gaining support in dozens of countries.
"It's a different world to what it was even a month ago," says Kobi Snitz, member of an Israeli BDS group. "Suddenly, all sorts of people are supporting it – people that you wouldn't expect."
What is most interesting, however, has been the impact in Israel itself. Israeli journalist and blogger Noam Sheizaf wrote recently that such actions are now forcing Israelis "to think about the political issues and about their consequences… For a country in a constant state of denial regarding the occupation, this is no small thing." Sheizaf does not promote the boycott, but says: "I will gladly return concert tickets if that is the price for making Israelis understand that the occupation cannot go on."
Adi Oz, culture editor on the Tel Aviv weekly Ha'ir, appeared on Israeli national radio explaining her support for recent boycott activity. "When the Pixies cancelled their concert here I was disappointed," she says. "But I was not critical of the Pixies, I was critical of our government, because they are responsible for Israel's isolation." She adds that, post-flotilla, the cultural boycott is "something that everyone has a stand on – and some people are realising that they are in favour of it, without having thought about it before." There has also been a spate of boycott-related discussion in the financial press. The daily business newspaper Calcalist ran an uncritical profile of the Israeli campaigners behind Who Profits, an online database of Israeli and international companies involved in the occupation of the West Bank.
The project's co-ordinator, Dalit Baum, of the Coalition of Women for Peace, says: "Every day there is an article about this issue in the Israeli media, which creates a discussion about the economy of the occupation and raises the fact that there's a problem."
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Electronic Intifada
Statement:
The following statement was issued on 6 July 2010 by the Palestinian Students' Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel and University Teachers' Association in Palestine:
7-7-2010
Over and over again, champions of the boycott movement have condemned cooperation with apartheid Israel in acts of normalization. We, the Palestinian Students Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel and the University Teachers' Association in Palestine, have adamantly and insistently written to artists, musicians, writers and student bodies urging them to cancel concerts, refuse prizes and divest from companies cooperating with Israel's racist institutions and government.
Not more than a week ago, it came to our attention that the Italian Development Cooperation (DGCS), with the support of UNESCO, engineered the partnership of three Israeli universities with that of Al-Quds University in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in a masters program that allows 20 Israeli and Palestinian students to participate in learning about "cooperation, humanitarianism, peace and cultural preservation" amongst other things. The program is to be coordinated by La Sapienza University in Rome.
We are appalled that this project is being carried out in spite of Israel's indiscriminate killings of civilian Palestinians in Gaza 2009 in acts of "war crimes and crimes against humanity" and in spite of Israel's destruction of Palestinian universities in Gaza, its military occupation of the West Bank and its policy of racial discrimination against the indigenous population of Palestine 1948.
Most Israeli academic institutions, including the Hebrew University, Haifa and Tel Aviv University are built on stolen land; they don't recognize the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, and are complicit in the apartheid policies of the state of Israel against the 1948 Palestinians -- not to mention the siege on Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.
In sending Palestinian students over to Italy in order to have them learn about "peace making and cooperation" with a state that killed their grandparents, ethnically cleansed the land of their forbearers and demolishes their houses is an insult to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid and occupation. This act of normalization aims to blur the boundaries between oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized, occupier and occupied, executioner and victim, and ultimately aims at whitewashing Israel's war crimes, the last of which was committed in the high seas against international peace activists on their way to break the deadly hermetic siege of Gaza. The projected program speaks about "peace and cooperation" without mentioning Israel's gross violations of human rights, and deals with the Palestine question as one of conflict, rather than one of colonization and apartheid. It does not mention Israel being the only nuclear power in the region, owning the fourth strongest army in the world. It claims to be about "peace and humanitarianism" without a mention of justice and accountability. Therefore, it is a sham, an insult to the spilt blood of tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians, including students, since 1948.
On another note, we, as Palestinian students and teachers, would accept this course only if it does not include cooperation with Israeli universities. We ask: is the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's book about the 1948 Nakba The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine an essential course text book in this MA program? Is there a course about the end of apartheid in South Africa and lessons that students can learn from the South African experience? Does the program include a discussion of Palestinian right of self-determination and right of return?
Israel must abide by international law and end its policy of occupation, colonization and apartheid. That is our understanding of peace with justice.
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Ha'aretz
Israeli professors slam education minister over stance on academic boycott
Petitioners include Haifa University rector Prof. Yossi Ben Artzi, Israel Prize laureates professors Benjamin Isaac and Yehoshua Kolodny, and former education minister Prof. Yuli Tamir.
By Or Kashti
7-7-2010
Hundreds of Israeli professors and academics have signed a petition slamming Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar's stated intention to take action against professors who support an academic boycott of Israel.
"If the higher education system in Israel wants to maintain a high quality it must also include opinions that are not acceptable to everyone, social and political criticism, and critical and even controversial research and instruction," the petition, signed by 542 college and university professors, states.
Petitioners include Haifa University rector Prof. Yossi Ben Artzi, Israel Prize laureates professors Benjamin Isaac and Yehoshua Kolodny, and former education minister Prof. Yuli Tamir, who is now president of Shenkar College of Engineering and Design.
The petition was initiated by the Forum for the Protection of Public Education.
Haaretz reported a few weeks ago that Education Minister Sa'ar vowed to punish Israeli professors who back an academic boycott of Israel.
"When an Israeli academic preaches for academic boycott he crosses a red line," Sa'ar said at the time, adding that he discussed taking measures - mainly disciplinary - against these professors with the head of the Higher Education Council's Planning and Budgeting Committee.
Sa'ar added that he would also discuss such measures with the heads of the academic institutions directly.
The petition states: "We have different and varied opinions about solving the difficult problems facing Israel, but there is one thing we are agreed on - freedom of expression and academic freedom are the very lifeblood of the academic system."
"Israeli academia will suffer great damage if politicians dictate to it what is right and wrong to say, think, research and teach, and force it to adopt that kind of criteria for admitting, promoting or rejecting researchers and professors. Your statement about intending to use your authority to act against professors who support an academic boycott of Israel are causing just such damage," it says.
The petition also makes reference to the education minister's support of the recently distributed Im Tirzu movement report that claims political science teachings at Israeli universities are tainted with a "post-Zionist bias."
These reports, purporting to be scientific, have been distributed by "people pretending to care about Zionist values, but who are advancing under this guise a culture of gagging and intimidation on campuses," the petition says.
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Electronic Intifada
Boycott the International Geographical Union's regional conference in Tel Aviv!
Press release, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
The following press release was issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) on 2 July 2010:
6-7-2010
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) issued an open letter on 29 October 2009 urging the Executive Committee of the International Geographical Union (IGU) to relocate its upcoming regional conference (July 2010) out of Israel ("PACBI calls for Boycott of the International Geographical Union's Regional Conference in Tel Aviv"). The IGU Executive rejected that demand.
A few months later, nearly 500 geographers, faculty, students and people of conscience collectively petitioned the IGU to reconsider its position and to take immediate steps to relocate the regional conference outside Israel. The open letter emphasized the complicity of Israel's academic establishment (and geography in particular) with the Israeli state's colonial, discriminatory and oppressive policies towards Palestinians. In addition it underlined the prevailing and deeply disturbing role of Israeli universities in developing the very weapons and military doctrines used against Palestinians. Moreover the letter highlighted 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 war on the people of Gaza.
Among those who signed the call were associations representing hundreds of Palestinian, Israeli and international university teachers, students and employees such as the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, the Israeli Boycott campaign from within, the French Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine and the Canadian coalition Faculty for Palestine. Moreover, scholars from more than 30 countries, including geographers such as David Harvey, Neil Smith, Derek Gregory, Erik Swyngedouw, Ghazi-Walid Falah, Richard Peet and Laura Pulido endorsed the call. The IGU did not reply to this call.
Today, a month after the massacre of nine human rights activists in international waters aboard a flotilla carrying aid and supplies sailing to break the four-year closure of the Gaza Strip, we call once again upon the IGU to take a courageous and principled stand and to cancel the Tel Aviv conference. While the world looks at Gaza, Israel continues with the repression, imprisonment and expulsion of Palestinian political and human rights figures in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel. Moreover, house demolitions and expulsions intensify in East Jerusalem and the West Bank which are ever more fragmented and isolated as a result of the unrestrained colonial infrastructure and the Kafkaesque bureaucracy that encompass the tiniest details of Palestinian everyday lives. The IGU cannot remain passive in the face of the impunity with which the State of Israel continues to violate international law, with the disgraceful complicity of a majority of governments from the international community. Nor can it be accepted any longer that these criminal actions are presented and justified as a self-righteous battle saturated in a narrative of eternal victimhood.
We urge the IGU Executive and its members not to disregard the Palestinian call for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel and to join the growing international campaign led by scholars, intellectuals, trade unions and other civil society organizations until Israel is held accountable for its violations and abides by international law.
We encourage all geographers and people of conscience not to attend the Tel Aviv conference and to write letters of protest to the members of the IGU Executive. If it takes places, the Tel Aviv conference will only serve to whitewash Israel's crimes.
In solidarity
Geographers for the Academic Boycott of Israel
Members of the IGU Executive Committee
Ronald F. Abler rabler@aag.org
Professor Woo-ik Yu iguseoul@snu.ac.kr
Professor Irasema Alcantara-Ayala irasema@unam.mx
Professor Giuliano Bellezza giuliano.bellezza@uniroma1.it
Professor Ruth Fincher r.fincher@unimelb.edu.au
Professor Aharon Kellerman akeller@univ.haifa.ac.il
Professor Vladimir Kolosov vladimirkolossov@gmail.com
Professor Markku Loeytoenen markku.loytonen@helsinki.fi
Professor Michael Meadows michael.meadows@uct.ac.za
Academician Dahe Qin qdh@cma.gov.cn
Professor Dietrich Soyez qdh@cma.gov.cn
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Tikkun Olam
Rightist Ben Gurion Professor Derails Faculty Candidacy of Peace Activist
5-7-2010
Assaf Oron is a research statistician at the University of Washington. He is also an Israeli peace and human rights activist who blogs at Daily Kos, the Villages Group, and was an IDF sarban, refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. Before he was named to his current academic post, he applied for a tenure track position as a statistician in Ben Gurion University’s department of industrial engineering. He was told a year ago he was the department’s top candidate. What he did not reckon was that his candidacy would generate a firestorm of controversy due to the machinations of a far-right member of the department nominations committee.
Prof. Israel david
Prof. Israel David publicized internal departmental deliberations to smear BGU job candidate
Prof. Israel David is an industrial engineer who teaches operations research at BGU. He was a major in the IDF before he retired after 11 years of service, and lives in an Orthodox suburb of Tel Aviv. He has worked for the Israeli defense industry and a significant portion of his research is funded by either the IDF or military contractors. Prof. David’s political screeds are published regularly by Daniel Pipes-Campus Watch-type groups in Israel called Israel Academia Monitor and Isracampus. They take upon themselves the weighty responsibility of ridding Israeli campuses of Arab-loving, Israel-hating faculty like Dr. Oron. David’s views are also congenial to another far-right Israeli gang which targets Israeli academics with progressive political views, Im Tirzu.
Once David caught wind of Oron’s candidacy he went into high gear. Sitting on the department appointments committee, he lobbied his colleagues hard to deny the former the position. In meetings, he noted Oron’s political engagements and cited them as grounds for not hiring him. It rapidly became clear to the department chair, Dr. Gadi Rabinowitz that David was biased against the candidate and would not restrict his consideration to academic-professional criteria alone.
So Rabinowitz disbanded the appointment committee, created a new one and left David out of it. This infuriated the latter. He went to the media. He placed a story in Globes, the Israeli Wall Street Journal, in September 2009 for which he was an anonymous source. The article called Oron “a second Neve Gordon.”
This was shortly after Prof. Gordon wrote a controversial op-ed in the Los Angeles Times supporting the global BDS movement. After the latter published his article, the University’s president publicly invited Gordon to quit his position, which he uncooperatively refused to do. Prof. Rivka Carmi explicitly stated that academic freedom did not give a professor the right to support such an enterprise which posed a danger to the State of Israel.
Undoubtedly, Prof. David was emboldened by Carmi’s attacks on Gordon and saw an opportunity to continue the controversy by opening a second front against Oron.
But that first Globes story did not drum up the brouhaha that the engineering professor expected so he wrote his own story under his own name at the News1 site. In it, he quoted from confidential internal committee deliberations about Dr. Oron’s record, including his political views. Here is just a nugget:
The department chair summarized the proceedings by saying that Dr. Oron matched the position’s professional requirements but that he suffers from other “personality problems” [so reads the transcript of the meeting]. The committee asked one of the senior members of the department to take advantage of his summer sabbatical in the U.S. by speaking with Oron and asking whether he’d be willing to restrain his political activism in order to better assimilate into the department.
In most universities (though apparently not BGU), this is among the most sensitive functions that faculty members and a department can perform. Such transcripts are treated with sensitivity and guarded jealously. In most universities where I have studied or worked, publishing such material publicly would be grounds for disciplinary action. Not so Ben Gurion. Apparently there, faculty can skewer job candidates, smear their reputation, dredge up personal matters and political involvement, and use them as ground for denying someone a job.
In his article David levels a full frontal assault on the notion of confidentiality and claims that the concept violates court rulings. I have never heard of any such ruling either here in the U.S. or Israel and I’m reasonably certain that no court has ever ruled that enforcing confidentiality in such circumstances is a violation of law. Further, he argues that non-academic and even political considerations are rightfully within the purview of such committee discussions. In fact, I believe that David is here daring the University to either discipline him or take legal action against him. Which of course it would never do. A University dean confirmed to me that no disciplinary action is contemplated against David.
I also find it astonishing that an academic department would ask a job candidate to restrain his private political statements. What business is that of anyone either in academia or outside? Does this department and Ben Gurion as a whole not cringe in embarrassment at the thought that such a discussion occurred during deliberations concerning the hiring of a faculty member?
The University’s response to David’s onslaught against Dr. Oron was to claim that it “does not compromise the privacy of candidates.” Which of course ignores the fact that a duly appointed member of a University committee did just that. At no time during any of this madness did the University or department make any attempt to reach out to Oron, explain to him what was happening, or seek to mollify his concerns about the attack on his reputation. It never defended him personally or encouraged him in any way.
In addition, David accused the University of Washington lecturer of “disseminating hate against Israel” and comparing the IDF and its officers with Nazis. In truth, it was IDF officers themselves who made the comparison in a 2002 Haaretz article in anticipation of Operation Defensive Shield. They admonished the army to learn from all previous military sieges in history including, specifically the Nazi assault on the Warsaw ghetto. Oron merely called attention to this fact in his essay. Here is the salient passage from the Haaretz article:
…One of the Israeli officers in the territories said… it’s justified and in fact essential to learn from every possible source. If the mission will be to seize a densely populated refugee camp, or take over the casbah in Nablus, and if the commander’s obligation is to try to execute the mission without casualties on either side, then he must first analyze and internalize the lessons of earlier battles – even, however shocking it may sound, even how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto.The officer indeed succeeded in shocking others, not least because he is not alone in taking this approach. Many of his comrades agree that in order to save Israelis now, it is right to make use of knowledge that originated in that terrible war, whose victims were their kin.
Frankly, I’ve been writing on this subject for a very long time and this article was new to me until I read the essay in which Oron quoted the article. The idea that the army of the State of Israel should learn lessons from one of the most desperate and vicious assaults against Polish Jewry during the Holocaust era is not simply tin-earned or offensive, it is really a hillul ha-Shem, a desecration of God’s name. Does the IDF really want to be compared to Hitler’s killing machine at the height of its vicious assault against the brave Jews of the Warsaw ghetto?
Returning to David’s accusations in his column, much like abortion and other socially conservative ideas have been exploited as wedge issues against Democrats, Israeli rightists manipulate the Holocaust as a wedge issue in an Israeli political context. Like abortion for American conservatives, the Holocaust elicits a visceral response from Israelis. Whenever you can tar your opponent with terms like those David exploits, you’re almost guaranteed to put him on the defensive.
Finally in his article, David excoriates Oron for supporting the military refuser movement and notes longingly that there are countries in the world (North Korea and Iran undoubtedly) where refusal to serve is punishable by death.
Then Prof. David upped the ante, suing Rabinowitz for libel for 100,000 shekels and claiming that in removing him from the appointment committee the chair had slandered his good name. The rightist professor retained as counsel a leading far-right attorney who is also representing Im Tirzu in its libel lawsuit against an Israeli activist who created a Facebook group calling the group “fascist.” David’s brief, all the while claiming his own reputation was damaged, slanders Oron savagely.
As part of his legal campaign, yesterday Haaretz published an op-ed by David which called BGU “Bir Gurion University,” as if the campus’ left-wing faculty wished to turn it into an Arab university. The article was briefly available on the website’s main page, but now it’s been relegated to an inaccessible back page. A slightly different version has also been published by Yediot Achronot. Among the other smears David offers in Haaretz is to call a campus protest against the Gaza flotilla attack a “Nazi march.” Finally, he accused, again without proof, the campus peace activists of calling a faculty member’s son who died a “hero’s death” in Operation Cast Lead, a “Nazi criminal.” Even more shockingly, he calls the entire affair of Oron’s job candidacy and his own elimination from the appointment committee a “Nazi circus.”
In the year since he heard that he was the department’s top candidate, no one from the University had any contact with Oron, and certainly no one breathed a word of apology to him. In April, no doubt goaded by Prof. David, the student body president quoted the school’s president as saying that his candidacy was dead. Last week, on an Israeli Social Sciences listeserv, David waved this as evidence of the president’s support for his campaign.
After a year of absorbing these body blows to his reputation and not responding, Oron finally confronted his BGU nemesis on the listserv last week. He simultaneously wrote Pres. Rivka Carmi expressing concern with the smearing of his reputation and her supposed connivance with David to undermine him. Prof Rivka Carmi replied that she couldn’t possibly interfere with any candidate’s consideration by a department even if she wanted to do so. She also added the rather mysterious statement that Oron’s candidacy was “no longer relevant.”
Curiously Dr. Rabinowitz, the department chair, wrote to Oron yesterday claiming that when Pres. Carmi inquired about the status of Oron’s candidacy Rabinowitz told her that he was still very much an active candidate. The chair blames Oron’s supposed lack of communication with the department for his not getting the job, without realizing that after a candidate has been smeared it might be the responsibility of the department to contact him rather than the other way around. I’d say the truth is that after David went on the warpath neither the University nor the department wanted to hire him and they can find many reasons in retrospect to blame the victim for not getting the job.
What is also troubling is that after all of this madness, the chair expresses disappointment that Dr. Oron addressed David’s charges against him in the Social Sciences listserv where the latter had attacked him. It appears he would’ve preferred Oron to have remained silent and waited patiently for the school’s rejection letter.
A few days ago, Prof. David wrote triumphantly to Oron that the department had hired someone else for the job. Which means that David has won, that academic bullying has won; that anyone at Ben Gurion who has a political vendetta against a young aspiring academic can vent their rage and frustration in the most public of settings. They can sling mud at them, potentially harm their careers and no price will be paid.
In fact, after the University of Washington statistician defended himself on the Israeli listserv, an Israeli graduate student wrote to him that he had been denied a graduate fellowship by a Diaspora academic fund because his name appeared on the Israel Academia Monitor site. Though I do not know for certain which group participated in the witch hunt, one of the best funded such academic programs is the American-Israeli Cooperative Exchange, whose director is former Aipac flack, Mitchell Bard. Given Bard’s pro-Israel advocacy and ideological partisanship it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he used Isracampus, Israel Academia Monitor or NGO Monitor as arbiters of who should be denied funding for academic research.
Returning to Dr. Oron, luckily he has a good position at the University of Washington. Despite Prof. Israel David’s best efforts, one hopes he will fail in harming Oron’s career. But imagine the next young scholar applying for a job at BGU who has ‘questionable’ affiliations in his or her background. If such a person has several job interviews with Israeli academic institutions, why would they want to include BGU given the treatment afforded Oron?
Ben Gurion’s president honors academic freedom in the breach when it doesn’t cost her anything. When the chips are down, she folds like a house of cards. For example, when BGU Prof. David Newman was attacked by a British trustee of the University, who suggested he’d be happy if Newman died because the faculty member had aired views critical of Israeli policy in a TV documentary, Carmi remained mum. 140 of Newman’s colleagues demanded that she make a statement in support of Newman. In the face of alienating a wealthy donor, she shut up. Perhaps as a direct result of her pusillanimousness, Newman was recently named dean of the faculty of humanities and social sciences in a vote by his peers.
Instead of leadership and conviction, Pres. Carmi tests the political winds to see which way they are blowing and follows suit. Currently in Israel there is a savage campaign against human rights and peace NGOs. The legal political activism of activists is under assault as never before. Astute individuals like David and Carmi understand this. The first exploits it and the second acquiesces to it. Neither response does either Israeli academia or Ben Gurion proud.
On a related note, yesterday the founder of Im Tirzu published a Haaretz column, The Fight for Academic Freedom, in which he contended, much like David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes in the U.S. context, that anti-Zionists have taken over Israeli campuses and that soon political correctness will prevent anyone not sharing such views from speaking their minds. Assaf Oron’s case proves the absolute falseness of this claim. If anything, it is the Im Tirzus and Israel Davids who are in the ascendancy on Israeli campuses, not the other way around.
Finally, what is one of the most obvious and elementary violations of both the candidate’s privacy rights and academic due process is that the job he was applying for had absolutely no political component. He was applying to be a statistician, not a political science or sociology professor. As such, his personal political involvement had nothing to do with the job and should’ve been ruled treif as grounds for review or consideration.
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Chinaview
Jordanians burn Israeli flag, protest against normalization with Israel
4-7-2010
AMMAN -- A top anti-normalization Jordanian committee, grouping opposition parties and professional associations, staged a sit-in Sunday, slamming the Hashemite University for allegedly promoting for Israeli-made graduation gowns.
Jordan's Higher Executive Committee for Defending the Homeland and Confronting Normalization said in a statement posted Sunday on the website of the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political wing of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, criticized the state-run university for "normalizing" with Israel.
"The university offered for sale graduation gowns it purchased from a factory that is affiliated to the Zionist entity," the committee said in a statement Sunday.
The factory, the committee said, is located in one of the Qualifying Industrial Zones in Jordan. Factories at these zones are obliged to purchase no less than 8 percent of raw materials used in their production from Israel.
Hamzah Mansour, head of the committee, stressed rejection and condemnation of the university, calling for holding those involved accountable.
"The sit-in is in rejection of the university's step that is considered a sort of normalization," the committee said in the statement, calling on the graduating students to refuse wearing the gowns at the graduation ceremony.
Participants during sit-in burnt the Israeli flag. Several representatives of the IAF, professional associations and students took part in the sit-in, which took place in front of the university in Zarqa governorate.
Jordan's opposition parties and professional associations are strong advocates of cutting ties with Israel and have repeatedly called for abolishing the Wadi Araba peace treaty Jordan and Israel signed in 1994.
They constantly call on the government to end all types of normalization with Israel.
Editor: Mu Xuequan
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