Boycotting Zionism
- Thread starter hundredmillionlifetimes
- Start date
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I suppose what I meant was, is it impossible that the real motives of the invading powers and the well-being of the Iraqi populace could have been to some extent compatible? Even an oil company with no concerns whatsoever other its profits must be dismayed at the level of violence and chaos in Iraq at the moment, because it's making business there so difficult, dangerous and expensive to conduct. I don't think anyone in Britain or America (with the possible exception of a few of the most dogmatic anti-war demagogues) are exactly rubbing their hands in glee over the slaughter going on at the moment.
I still don't think the invasion, in and of itself, was necessarily a bad thing. But the unbelievable levels of cultural insensitivity shown by some of the occupying troops (as well as numerous outright atrocities), the lack of any sort of proper planning as to what to do one Saddam had been toppled and the sheer levels of (at best) incompetence and (at worst) criminal dishonesty in the various organisations supposedly 'rebuilding' the country have scotched any hope of a good outcome - this is why I'm saying it'd be better if the invasion had never taken place. Given the current American administration, however, it's probably pointless to speculate on what 'could' have been, and perhaps it's just naive to think that anything good would have come from an action so manifestly motivated by greed and power-hunger.
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hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
"We all know what happened in the McCarthy era, when scholars were fired for political positions that a dominant group didn’t like. "--Martha Nussbaum.
But some of us are apparently totally unaware of the present pro-Zionist Neo-Con era, when scholars once again are being fired for political positions that a dominant group doesn’t like.
Nussbaum's piece amounts to a defence of passivity and impotence [by invoking the usual impossible pseudo-constraint: you are not permitted to boycott any particular country engaged in Apartheid unless you also boycott all countries practicing Apartheid] in the guise of protecting academic freedom and 'free speech', conveniently ignoring the fact that what is being objected to here via a boycott is a state-wide structural apartheid that denies much more than academic freedoms to Palestinians. Shouldn't she, then, be defending Norman Finkelstein, ousted for his critiques of Zionism and - like a latterday McCarthyite - Dershowitz's campaign of slander and vilification against Finkelstein? Equally, and at the other extreme, shouldn't she also be defending David Irving, the British historian and Holocaust denier - recently returned to the UK after being expelled from Austria - who received a three-year sentence imposed in Austria, of which he served 13 months, for both making a speech in 1989 and publishing ridiculous travesties of academic scholarship in which he denied the Holocaust. [BTW, Finkelstein exposed numerous travesties of scholarship in Dershowitz's academic work defending Israeli atrocities]. The point here is that the idea that the West is committed to free speech, to academic freedom, to questioning everything – this is simply not true, and never has been.
No chance of any of that, no, because Nussbaum's principal objective in her article, an exercise in bland sophistry and geopolitical naivete, is to deflect attention away from Israeli abuses of Palestinians and the proven effectiveness of boycotts by looking at other - lesser - tactics (five nonboycott alternatives - Nussbaum is seemingly unaware that all of those tactics she lists are ALSO being employed, but have clearly been insufficient and ineffective).
It would. You would have a world full of total fucking idiots and scientific discovery would go back by 500 years and 'Intelligent Design' would remain the norm.
vimothy
yurp
Good article. I like Dissent Magazine, they're sensible people.
vimothy
yurp
Nonsense: the Serbs are European, Christian and white.
borderpolice
Well-known member
Yeah, why on earth should a university care about scholarly achievements?
vimothy
yurp
That's not quite the story though, borderpolice. Whether Finklestein deserves a chair at DePaul University or not is ultimately, regardless of what Dershowitz wants, up to DePaul University. And are his works "scholarly achievements"? Well, Chomsky and hmlt think so, so I guess that they must be. Pity poor DePaul for losing out, but their loss will surely be another non-Zionist university's gain.
borderpolice
Well-known member
Hahaha! You are clearly not familiar with how university funding works.
Well, by all reports F's work is not of a quality that would call for getting rid of him. Of course DePaul has no obligation to keep him on, but, as I understand the situation, they have no reason (in terms of their policies) not to. (Or was there some policy I missed?)
At any rate, I'm not convinced that boycotting universities/academics is a very effective approach to this problem. If, as hml says (and I have no reason to doubt him), the other approaches mentioned in that dissent article are already being tried and have failed, I don't see any reason to think that the boycott approach will do any better; more likely it will just target a group that, as a whole, is not the main source of the problem.
Am I wrong in thinking that one reason for targeting academics is that they are a group that is relatively easy to single out? It also strikes me that in general this sort of boycott is not very inconvenient for most involved, unlike what, say, a boycott of goods would be.
At any rate, I'm not convinced that boycotting universities/academics is a very effective approach to this problem. If, as hml says (and I have no reason to doubt him), the other approaches mentioned in that dissent article are already being tried and have failed, I don't see any reason to think that the boycott approach will do any better; more likely it will just target a group that, as a whole, is not the main source of the problem.
Am I wrong in thinking that one reason for targeting academics is that they are a group that is relatively easy to single out? It also strikes me that in general this sort of boycott is not very inconvenient for most involved, unlike what, say, a boycott of goods would be.
Meaning, of course, inconvenient for the boycotters, not the boycotted.
vimothy
yurp
Hohoho - not in America, no. Is Dershowitz responsible for funding Finklestein's professorship?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well I for one wasn't aware Israel existed 500 years ago - but if your point is that there have been a great many important Jewish scientists and intellectuals, this is obviously true.
However we're talking only about a boycott of Israeli universities.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well yes, I think Buick6 may have been exaggerating a teeeensy bit.
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
This exceptionally well-argued article, written by a professor of surgical science at the University of London, presents the urgent case for a boycott against Israel (and not just an academic one, in my opinion) in the clearest possible terms.
"We are not targeting individuals, in some McCarthyite programme, but organisations that have political aims and collude in the occupation, however loudly they protest their innocence."
"We are not targeting individuals, in some McCarthyite programme, but organisations that have political aims and collude in the occupation, however loudly they protest their innocence."
The time is now
Just as I campaigned for boycotts against apartheid in South Africa many years ago, now I shall do so against Israeli apartheid, says Colin Green
Monday June 11, 2007 EducationGuardian.co.uk
The strong and hostile response from pro-Israeli groups, as well as the UK government fearful of offending Israel, to a recent motion carried by a two thirds majority at the University and College Union (UCU) congress is in marked contrast to the joyful response of Palestinians, which has been almost totally supportive.
Perhaps the former have misunderstood that motion. After an open and very serious debate, one outcome upon which all agreed was that Israel is an oppressive state, illegally occupying territory for 40 years while ignoring numerous UN resolutions, international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Disagreement centred entirely on what the trade union movement could or should do about it. More specifically, we discussed the role of academic boycotts, which to all academics is normally an anathema. Free exchange of ideas and debate, however fierce, is central to our life. However, after 40 years without resolution, many of us believe that the Israel-Palestine conflict is the epicentre of a global conflagration so dangerous for all of us that abnormal responses have become an urgent, indeed desperate, moral imperative.
Even then, urgency notwithstanding, the motion passed was not calling for a boycott, but for a 12-month debate about an academic boycott. I suggest that that is in the best tradition of academic freedom and free speech. We will encourage Israeli academics to visit us, as indeed they did for weeks before the recent debate, and put their case for or against.
There are, after all, many Israeli humanitarian organisations and many Israeli individuals who believe that boycotts, sanctions and disinvestment are the only non-violent ways to force Israel to escape its descent into a pariah and rogue state.
In all this response to the UCU motion, or indeed the call for action against Israeli policies from the National Union of Journalists, architects, artists and doctors, the opinion of the Palestinians is little mentioned.
As one in daily communication with them at all levels, from government ministers, university presidents, professors, teachers, doctors, nurses and many involved in further education, not least the students, I can assure you that they are overwhelmingly in favour of the call for a debate, preferring that to a straight call for a boycott without debate. At last they will have the opportunity to travel outside the occupied territories and describe to the world the almost complete lack of academic freedom they endure.
Israeli apologists frequently quote the opinion against boycotts of a tiny handful of Palestinians, but these have no credibility whatsoever across campuses in the occupied territories.
This motion was tabled because of a call of desperation from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) as long ago as 2004. PACBI is not some fringe, lunatic or radical university group, but a confederation of more than 50 organisations from across Palestinian civil society. The boycott called for by PACBI and supported by the British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), which tabled this motion, is institutional. We are not targeting individuals, in some McCarthyite programme, but organisations that have political aims and collude in the occupation, however loudly they protest their innocence.
Since starting academic work in the occupied territories during the first intifada in 1987, I have travelled a trajectory of hope to near despair. From a naïve optimism for a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians 20 years ago, in which I welcomed with great enthusiasm Israeli postgraduates to my institute for specialist surgical training and research, I now refuse any collaboration with any Israeli university or research institution because of the violations of human rights I have seen over the past two decades and in which they collude.
As in the past, I still work with Israeli humanitarian organisations genuinely seeking justice for the Palestinians. I am no longer prepared to stand idly by and not come out publicly against the level of oppression I have seen, including ethnic cleansing and the establishment of a brutal apartheid regime, a terrible injustice against the indigenous population of the occupied territories.
What experiences can have brought about this revolution in attitude? In 1987, I was buoyed by the gentle, non-bigoted, optimistic attitude toward the Israelis of virtually all the Palestinians I met.
Even in the face of the violence and killings in the first intifada carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), they believed that reason and good will would prevail and the international community would come to their rescue. I was amazed how tolerant academics were toward their oppressors. None of them did, or could have, forecast the descent into hell which the Palestinians would endure in the next two decades, nor believe that a people who themselves had known such a hell could possibly descend to the level of barbarity we are now witnessing.
Just as film documentary images of British soldiers opening the gates of Belsen in 1945 was a defining moment in my life, so the immediate aftermath of the Jenin massacre and the terror of overwhelming military force in the destruction of Rafah, in Gaza, which I have witnessed in recent years have had the most profound effect on my opinions. You have to see it for yourself. We cannot go on muttering platitudes about academic freedom and exchange of ideas. What freedom?
In those two decades, the wretched suppression of academic freedom has been so obvious and overt that the wonder was that international academe did so little to stop it or even to comment on it.
The list of restrictions is too long to detail. Examples include: the closure of Birzeit University for four years; refusal of entry to that and all other universities for teaching faculty and students on the whim of heavily armed Israeli teenagers in uniform at checkpoints; refusal to allow passage to medical students to their teaching hospitals; raiding of campuses in the middle of freezing winter nights forcing women undergraduates to stand for five or six hours outside in their nightdresses simply to humiliate them while their dormitories were ransacked; refusal to allow doctors to attend their clinics and teach students on the ludicrous claim that their ID cards (valid for the previous 15 years) were fake; refusal to allow UK academics entry to Ben-Gurion airport and forced return on the grounds they were engaged in subversive acts simply coming to be medical teachers.
Then has been the refusal to allow a final-year student to attend his graduation ceremony and to add to his humiliation and torment by being forced at gunpoint to stand and watch the proceedings from only 400 metres away; refusal or long delays in granting exit permits for Palestinian research workers and teachers travelling abroad to conferences; the threat that if they travel overseas (especially if they have a Jerusalem ID) they may not be allowed back into their own homes again; endless restrictions on travel within the occupied territories so that attendance at lectures or important exams are a daily nightmare; the forced return of Gaza students "illegally" studying in the West Bank, some after seven years of separation from their families and in their final year of medical training; the deliberate shooting at school buses carrying six to 10-year-old children by Israeli snipers; recently, the kidnapping and imprisonment without charge of five senior university lecturers in Nablus; the killing of a young female medical student by CN gas. All of this I have witnessed at first hand.
My outrage is not fuelled by bigotry or racism, but by what I have seen. I am consumed with anger that I have not come out of the closet many years ago to protest publicly the wickedness I knew full well was going on in the occupied territories.
Without inquiring my opinion about China and Tibet, or Russia and Chechnya, or Darfur and Sudan, critics demand to know why I feel so strongly about Israel. First, it is what I know first hand, initially as sympathiser now bitter critic; second, because Israel does not even pretend to be part of the Orient, but is the one lingering outpost of European colonialism that participates in Euro song contests, football cups, preferential trade agreements, and EU and NATO research grants, and, therefore, has to carry the same human rights obligations and responsibilities we Europeans recently demanded of Serbia; and most important, the Levant has long been historically, and even more urgently so now, the epicentre of world conflict.
Just as I campaigned for boycotts against apartheid in South Africa many years ago, now I shall do so against Israeli apartheid. I strongly support the motion carried by a two third majority by my trade union, the UCU. Now, at last, we can actually have a robust, honest and fearless debate and engage with all shades of opinion on the conflict.
· Colin Green is professor of surgical science at the University of London
Just as I campaigned for boycotts against apartheid in South Africa many years ago, now I shall do so against Israeli apartheid, says Colin Green
Monday June 11, 2007 EducationGuardian.co.uk
The strong and hostile response from pro-Israeli groups, as well as the UK government fearful of offending Israel, to a recent motion carried by a two thirds majority at the University and College Union (UCU) congress is in marked contrast to the joyful response of Palestinians, which has been almost totally supportive.
Perhaps the former have misunderstood that motion. After an open and very serious debate, one outcome upon which all agreed was that Israel is an oppressive state, illegally occupying territory for 40 years while ignoring numerous UN resolutions, international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Disagreement centred entirely on what the trade union movement could or should do about it. More specifically, we discussed the role of academic boycotts, which to all academics is normally an anathema. Free exchange of ideas and debate, however fierce, is central to our life. However, after 40 years without resolution, many of us believe that the Israel-Palestine conflict is the epicentre of a global conflagration so dangerous for all of us that abnormal responses have become an urgent, indeed desperate, moral imperative.
Even then, urgency notwithstanding, the motion passed was not calling for a boycott, but for a 12-month debate about an academic boycott. I suggest that that is in the best tradition of academic freedom and free speech. We will encourage Israeli academics to visit us, as indeed they did for weeks before the recent debate, and put their case for or against.
There are, after all, many Israeli humanitarian organisations and many Israeli individuals who believe that boycotts, sanctions and disinvestment are the only non-violent ways to force Israel to escape its descent into a pariah and rogue state.
In all this response to the UCU motion, or indeed the call for action against Israeli policies from the National Union of Journalists, architects, artists and doctors, the opinion of the Palestinians is little mentioned.
As one in daily communication with them at all levels, from government ministers, university presidents, professors, teachers, doctors, nurses and many involved in further education, not least the students, I can assure you that they are overwhelmingly in favour of the call for a debate, preferring that to a straight call for a boycott without debate. At last they will have the opportunity to travel outside the occupied territories and describe to the world the almost complete lack of academic freedom they endure.
Israeli apologists frequently quote the opinion against boycotts of a tiny handful of Palestinians, but these have no credibility whatsoever across campuses in the occupied territories.
This motion was tabled because of a call of desperation from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) as long ago as 2004. PACBI is not some fringe, lunatic or radical university group, but a confederation of more than 50 organisations from across Palestinian civil society. The boycott called for by PACBI and supported by the British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), which tabled this motion, is institutional. We are not targeting individuals, in some McCarthyite programme, but organisations that have political aims and collude in the occupation, however loudly they protest their innocence.
Since starting academic work in the occupied territories during the first intifada in 1987, I have travelled a trajectory of hope to near despair. From a naïve optimism for a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians 20 years ago, in which I welcomed with great enthusiasm Israeli postgraduates to my institute for specialist surgical training and research, I now refuse any collaboration with any Israeli university or research institution because of the violations of human rights I have seen over the past two decades and in which they collude.
As in the past, I still work with Israeli humanitarian organisations genuinely seeking justice for the Palestinians. I am no longer prepared to stand idly by and not come out publicly against the level of oppression I have seen, including ethnic cleansing and the establishment of a brutal apartheid regime, a terrible injustice against the indigenous population of the occupied territories.
What experiences can have brought about this revolution in attitude? In 1987, I was buoyed by the gentle, non-bigoted, optimistic attitude toward the Israelis of virtually all the Palestinians I met.
Even in the face of the violence and killings in the first intifada carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), they believed that reason and good will would prevail and the international community would come to their rescue. I was amazed how tolerant academics were toward their oppressors. None of them did, or could have, forecast the descent into hell which the Palestinians would endure in the next two decades, nor believe that a people who themselves had known such a hell could possibly descend to the level of barbarity we are now witnessing.
Just as film documentary images of British soldiers opening the gates of Belsen in 1945 was a defining moment in my life, so the immediate aftermath of the Jenin massacre and the terror of overwhelming military force in the destruction of Rafah, in Gaza, which I have witnessed in recent years have had the most profound effect on my opinions. You have to see it for yourself. We cannot go on muttering platitudes about academic freedom and exchange of ideas. What freedom?
In those two decades, the wretched suppression of academic freedom has been so obvious and overt that the wonder was that international academe did so little to stop it or even to comment on it.
The list of restrictions is too long to detail. Examples include: the closure of Birzeit University for four years; refusal of entry to that and all other universities for teaching faculty and students on the whim of heavily armed Israeli teenagers in uniform at checkpoints; refusal to allow passage to medical students to their teaching hospitals; raiding of campuses in the middle of freezing winter nights forcing women undergraduates to stand for five or six hours outside in their nightdresses simply to humiliate them while their dormitories were ransacked; refusal to allow doctors to attend their clinics and teach students on the ludicrous claim that their ID cards (valid for the previous 15 years) were fake; refusal to allow UK academics entry to Ben-Gurion airport and forced return on the grounds they were engaged in subversive acts simply coming to be medical teachers.
Then has been the refusal to allow a final-year student to attend his graduation ceremony and to add to his humiliation and torment by being forced at gunpoint to stand and watch the proceedings from only 400 metres away; refusal or long delays in granting exit permits for Palestinian research workers and teachers travelling abroad to conferences; the threat that if they travel overseas (especially if they have a Jerusalem ID) they may not be allowed back into their own homes again; endless restrictions on travel within the occupied territories so that attendance at lectures or important exams are a daily nightmare; the forced return of Gaza students "illegally" studying in the West Bank, some after seven years of separation from their families and in their final year of medical training; the deliberate shooting at school buses carrying six to 10-year-old children by Israeli snipers; recently, the kidnapping and imprisonment without charge of five senior university lecturers in Nablus; the killing of a young female medical student by CN gas. All of this I have witnessed at first hand.
My outrage is not fuelled by bigotry or racism, but by what I have seen. I am consumed with anger that I have not come out of the closet many years ago to protest publicly the wickedness I knew full well was going on in the occupied territories.
Without inquiring my opinion about China and Tibet, or Russia and Chechnya, or Darfur and Sudan, critics demand to know why I feel so strongly about Israel. First, it is what I know first hand, initially as sympathiser now bitter critic; second, because Israel does not even pretend to be part of the Orient, but is the one lingering outpost of European colonialism that participates in Euro song contests, football cups, preferential trade agreements, and EU and NATO research grants, and, therefore, has to carry the same human rights obligations and responsibilities we Europeans recently demanded of Serbia; and most important, the Levant has long been historically, and even more urgently so now, the epicentre of world conflict.
Just as I campaigned for boycotts against apartheid in South Africa many years ago, now I shall do so against Israeli apartheid. I strongly support the motion carried by a two third majority by my trade union, the UCU. Now, at last, we can actually have a robust, honest and fearless debate and engage with all shades of opinion on the conflict.
· Colin Green is professor of surgical science at the University of London
vimothy
yurp
But I thought we were boycotting Zionism!