The AUT boycott
I’ve noticed it too late to matter, but The Sharp Side has a
well written article up on the AUT boycott of two Israeli universities and why it is important that it should continue:
Let?s begin by clarifying what the boycott is about. It asks academics in British universities to have nothing to do with academics at Bar-Ilan university or Haifa university (though if I?ve understood it correctly, the boycott excludes academics who have a record of concern for Palestinian human rights). The reasoning behind the boycott is that Bar-Ilan has built a college in the Israeli settlement of Ariel, which has been constructed in defiance of international law on occupied Palestinian land. The academics of Bar-Ilan are thus centrally implicated in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland, and the ferocious violence of the Israeli army and the settlers which accompanies it. It appears to be the case that no academic at Bar-Ilan has any objection to the university extending its campus into Palestinian land.
The other university, Haifa, stands accused of persecuting Ilan Pappe, the leading Israeli dissident and revisionist historian, and his student Teddy Katz. Pappe set up a course ? the first one in Israeli academic life, apparently (that tells you something, doesn?t it?) ? on the 1948 Naqba, or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which accompanied the violent birth of the Israeli state. The university responded by trying to expel Pappe for exercising his intellectual freedom, and has continued ever since to try and get rid of him. He is a reputable historian, but as a critic of the orthodox Zionist version of the founding of Israel he is an embarrassment. Doing research into the events of 1948, Teddy Katz discovered evidence of a massacre of Palestinians by Zionists which no one knew about. Haifa University responded to this contribution to historical knowledge by removing his M.A.
[…]
What makes Israel unique is that it is the world?s only institutionally sectarian state. Those who defend it are often people who have a vested interest in the sectarian and racist privileges which they enjoy as visitors to Israel, including British and American academics and journalists. Where else in the world are people arriving at an airport divided up at passport control on the basis of their religion? Nowhere. You don?t have to be a Catholic to be Italian or Irish. You don?t have to be a member of the Church of England to be British. Everywhere else on the planet citizenship is defined on the simple basis of where you were born. Not so in Israel. There, to be a Jew is to enjoy the privileges of a superior identity. Everyone else is a second class citizen. And Jews have the right to fly in from anywhere in the world and start privileged highly-subsidised new lives on stolen land, while the original inhabitants live in giant prison camps. There?s a telling incident in Anton La Guardia?s excellent book ?Holy Land, Unholy War? (Revised edition, 2002). Arriving at Ben-Gurion airport he joined the non-Jews queue. He was aggressively asked: ?You are not Jewish, so why are you visiting Israel?? That narrow, vicious sectarianism spills over into every aspect of Israeli life, including the academic.
Unfortunately, it’s all too late, as the boycot was overturned last Thursday.