[The Association of University Teachers in Britain voted today to begin an academic boycott of two Israeli universities, Haifa University and Bar-Ilan University. They voted not to initiate a boycott of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The boycotts are based on specific causes in the case of each university. At Haifa, it is due to the controversy surrounding a masters? thesis by Teddy Katz documenting a massacre during the 1948 war at Tantura, a document which was roundly lambasted by many Israeli academics. It was defended by Ilan Pappe of Haifa U, who has been harassed due to this and other political causes. At Bar-Ilan, the call for boycott is based on that institution?s allegiance with the College of Judea and Samaria, an Israeli/Jewish college in the Occupied Territories. Below, we find two views of the academic boycott. One, by Prof. Baruch Kimmerling of the Hebrew University opposes the boycott; the other by Ilan Pappe defends it. Finally, we include a JVP view of the whole issue of targeted sanctions, boycotts and divestment, by Jewish Voice for Peace Board of Directors member, Henri Picciotto. JVP has long taken the stance that outside pressure on Israel is absolutely crucial if the occupation is ever to end. But we also believe that such pressure needs to be properly targeted, both for ethical and tactical reasons. We offer these various views to you to stimulate discussion, debate and creative thinking on this controversial subject. -- Mitchell Plitnick, Director of Education and Policy, JVP]

 

The Meaning of Academic Boycott

By Baruch Kimmerling

The British Association of University Teachers' annual council, which convenes on April 20 in Eastbourne, will also debate whether to boycott Israeli universities as a protest against oppressive policies directed against the Palestinians. The motion submitted to the AUT additionally specifies three reasons for boycotting three Israeli Universities. The allegation against the Hebrew University is based on a simple dispute over a real-estate plot which was settled some time ago and has nothing to do with the occupation or oppression of the Palestinians. Namely, the institution is planning to construct a large complex of dormitories, partly on land formerly settled by several Palestinian refugee families uprooted during the 1948 war. In fact, the entire Mt. Scopus campus was an Estate of the British Lord Gray and was purchased by a Russian-Jewish philanthropist in 1919 and donated for the purpose of establishing a university. It was never owned by any local population under any title and was never cultivated by them. Moreover, the dormitories on campus provide much-needed housing for hundreds of Palestinian students who face difficulties renting apartments in town. By this way the motion mixed the general issue of protest against Israeli policy that having nothing to do with the universities with some presumed wrongdoing of specific institutions.

Admittedly, a more serious charge, which is directly connected to the occupation, is the one regarding the academic recognition extended by Bar Ilan University to the College of Judea and Samaria located in Ariel, a West Bank settlement. Charges against Haifa University seem partially justified as well. It seems to me that Dr. Ilan Pappe is indeed harassed for his political views by some faculty and administration staff. However, as a tenured staff member, his position is secure. The controversial MA thesis by Mr. Theodore Katz (submitted at the same institution) which included a chapter about a massacre committed by Israeli forces in the village of Tantura during the 1948 War was retracted under threat of a libel suit. Additional misconduct on the part of this institution, such as the dissolution of the Jewish-Arab theater ensemble, does exist. However, the situation in Haifa looks more like a lack of proper leadership combined with the inter-departmental and interpersonal rifts that common at many universities.

Contrary to a few of my Israeli colleagues, I do respect the right of every member of the scientific international community to call for an academic and cultural boycott on Israeli institutions. I even agree with most of the reasons raised in support of this call. However, the very same reasons that lead some academics to call for a boycott lead me to urge the international academic community not only to refrain from boycotting us but to offer us its moral support and protection.

I will be the first to admit that Israeli academic institutions are part and parcel of the oppressive Israeli state that has, among other acts of foolishness and villainy, committed grave crimes against the Palestinian people. A major cause for the Israeli academy's inseparability from the state is that we are so heavily funded and heavily subsidized by the government. A successful boycott will have a boomerang effect by cementing the dependence of Israeli academic institutions and their members on an increasingly capricious government.

Since Mrs. Limor Livnat?s appointment as Minister of Education, the Israeli academy has become the target of a reconstruction and "reeducation" campaign. This policy was in no way accidental. In Israel today, mass media is generally chauvinistic and unwilling to challenge the policies of the Sharon government. Dissenting journalists who document the daily afflictions and human rights violations suffered by the Palestinian population, are the subject of petition drives designed to pressure the country's most liberal private newspaper, Ha'aretz, to stop publishing their work. In this repressive climate, the Israeli academy remains almost the last bastion of free thought and free speech. Most of the humanistic and dissident voices in Israel sound from the ranks of the academy, or are supported by its faculty members.

This is not to say that all the members of the Israeli academy are great humanists or necessarily support the idea of self-determination of the Palestinian people. We are a highly heterogeneous community, as is true of any other fine academic establishment. Some of us are highly active in ethnocentric groups. Others (perhaps the majority) are alienated from any public or intellectual activities. Nevertheless, a small but salient minority remains consistently very active and highly committed to the humanization and democratization of various aspects of Israeli society. Finally however, the most important feature of this community is that, in spite of the deep ideological rifts separating us, we continue to co-exist and to conduct a spirited dialogue amongst ourselves as well as with the world outside the ivory tower. This is made possible by the protective umbrella of academic freedom

In addition, I believe that the Israeli academy has stood fast in a time of crisis and has conducted itself more responsibly than, say, the British academy (when the British government was engaged in acts of brutality against the Irish-Catholics, during the Falkland/Malvinas war, or throughout the long Thatcher regime), or the patriotic American academy (during the current war against Afghanistan, the McCarthy era witch-hunts, or even during most phases of the Korean and Vietnam wars). Yet, I have never heard of any calls to boycott either the British or American academies. As for the cause celebre of the "successful" boycott against the South African academy, it is well known that it mainly damaged the progressive forces within South Africa and probably hindered its democratization process.

Certain scholars have suggested that the boycott should be institutional, rather than personal. Their call is to exempt "conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies" from the boycott. Some of these academics have offered ?generously- to cooperate with me (presumably because I am in some catalogue listing the "good guys"), while boycotting my institution. Obviously it is their right to boycott whichever institution or person they wish, but they must realize that if the call to freeze funds to my institution is effective, the resulting constraints on research and conferences will also hurt the "good guys." Moreover, the very idea of making selections among members of the academy is a horrifying prospect and I hereby pledge not to cooperate with any institution or person who will make such selections, disregarding whether I myself am ruled out or accepted by them. Once again, the crucial point here is that the call for a selective boycott, while wrong in itself, also undermines the logic of making a case against the universities at all. Ultimately, selections made on the basis of non-academic criteria endanger academic freedom.

I am fully aware that academic freedom is not above other moral considerations and does not exist within a political and social vacuum. I can understand British academics who feel strong moral resentment when confronted by oppressive policies and war crimes directed against Palestinians and who desire "to do something" within their own profession. Moreover, I can sympathize with Palestinian academics who daily witness the destruction of Palestinian academic institutions and the harassment of faculty and students, while knowing that at the same time, and only a few miles away, my institution operates more or less normally. Their feelings are especially comprehensible in light of the fact that my institution never took any institutional measures to relieve the harsh conditions suffered by Palestinian universities and colleges. And so, while not joining their call for a boycott, I can understand the emotions and motivations behind it.

I have less understanding, however, for my Israeli colleagues who are asking to be boycotted. I do not condemn them, as some my colleagues do, because they are fully entitled to express their opinions and to try to convince us of their correctness. Moreover, they and I share the goal of democratizing and de-colonizing Israeli society. The only divergence between us (besides our different conception of the very meaning of the academy) is that, should their call be taken seriously it would weaken our common academic autonomy and freedom. This sad outcome is the precise goal of our adversaries and will have catastrophic consequences for our common struggle.

On a final note, an agreement was signed between the four major Israeli universities and four Palestinian universities on June 4th in Roma at La Sapienza University. The agreement promotes close collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli researchers and institutions in various fields and disciplines and is endorsed by the Italian government and UNESCO. It declares a strong commitment to turn the campuses on both sides into places of peace, tolerance and pluralism. I strongly believe that supporting and implementing such positive steps will prove infinitely more effective in empowering the rational elements in the region than would futile and anti-academic boycotts.

Therefore, I am calling on the British and international academic community to strengthen its connections with both the Israeli and the Palestinian academic communities, in order to empower them. Both peoples need a strong and secure academic space as a part of their civil societies in order to promote the elements that are able to initiate major social and political changes in the region.

Baruch Kimmerling is George S. Wise chair of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published numerous books and articles on Jewish-Arab conflict, sociology of war and peace, Israeli and Palestinian societies, culture and history, including The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (SUNY, 1989), The Invention and Decline of Israeliness (California, 2001), The Palestinian People: A History (with Joel Migdal, Harvard, 2003), Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War against the Palestinians (Verso, 2003) and Immigrants, Settlers and Natives (Am Oved, Hebrew, 2004).

 

Haifa University academic Ilan Pappe is one of the few Israelis supporting the university boycott of Israel. Here he explains why.

Guardian, UK April 20, 2005

I appeal to you today to be part of a historical movement and moment that may bring an end to more than a century of colonisation, occupation and dispossession of Palestinians. I appeal to you as an Israeli Jew, who for years wished, and looked, for other ways to bring an end to the evil perpetrated against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, inside Israel and in the refugee camps. I devoted all my adult life, with others, creating a substantial peace movement inside Israel, in which, so we hoped, academia will play a leading role. But after 37 years of endless brutal and callous oppression of the people of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and after 57 years of colonisation and dispossession of the Palestinians as a whole, I think this hope is unrealistic and other means have to be looked at to end a conflict that endangers peace in the world at large.

Violence and armed struggle have also failed, and they can't be easily condoned by people like myself who are basically pacifists at heart. Historical examples, such as in South Africa and Gandhi's movement in India, prove that there are peaceful means for achieving an end to the longest oppression and violation of human rights in the last century. Boycotts and outside pressure have never been attempted in the case of Israel, a state that wishes to be included in the civilised democratic world. Israel has indeed enjoyed such a status since its creation in 1948 and, therefore, succeeded in fending off the many United Nations' resolutions that condemned its policies and, moreover, managed to obtain a preferential status in the European Union. Israeli academia's elevated position in the global scholarly community epitomises this western support for Israel as the "only democracy" in the Middle East. Shielded by this particular support for academia, and other cultural media, the Israeli army and security services can go on, and will go on, demolishing houses, expelling families, abusing citizens and killing, almost every day, children and women without being accountable regionally and globally for their crimes.

Military and financial support to Israel is significant in enabling the Jewish state to pursue the policies it does. Any possible measure of decreasing such aid is most welcome in the struggle for peace and justice in the Middle East. But the cultural image in Israel feeds the political decision in the west to support unconditionally the Israeli destruction of Palestine and the Palestinians. The message that will be directed specifically against those academic institutes which have been particularly culpable in sustaining the oppression since 1948 and the occupation since 1967, can be a start for a successful campaign for peace (as similar acts at the time had activated the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa).

Calling for a boycott of your own state and academia is not an easy decision for a member of that academia. But I learned how the concerned academic communities, worldwide, could mobilise at the right moment when I was threatened with expulsion by my own university, the University of Haifa, in May 2002. A very precise and focused policy of pressure on the university allowed me, albeit under restriction and systematic harassment, to purse my classes and research, which are aimed at exposing the victimisation of the Palestinians throughout the years. This is a particular important avenue, as I am the only one who does it in my own university, and one of the few who does it in the country as a whole, and also because the university has a large community of Palestinian students, who are prevented by draconian regulations from expressing their anger and frustration at what had been, and is, done against their people. These students have felt totally isolated since the university established close links with the security apparatuses in the country. The fact that the university is closely connected to the security services - by providing postgraduate degrees - is by itself not a crime, but as these are the agencies that exercise on a daily basis the occupation in the Palestinian areas, their presence in the campus means academia is significantly involved in perpetuating the evil.

As I learned from my own case, outside pressure is effective in a country where people want to be regarded as part of the civilized world, but their government, with their explicit and implicit help, pursues policies which violate every known human and civil right. Neither the UN, nor the US and European governments, and societies, have sent a message to Israel that these policies are unacceptable and have to be stopped. It is up to the civil societies, through organisations like yours, to send messages to Israeli academics, businessmen, artists, hi-tech industrialists and every other section in that society, that there is a price tag attached to such policies.

I thank you in advance for your support. Should you decide to embark on the bold policy suggested, you empower me and my friends who will, I am convinced of this, be able to build together with our Palestinian comrades a just basis for peace and reconciliation in Palestine.

Ilan Pappe is senior lecturer in the department of political science in Haifa University and the chairman of the Emil Touma institute for Palestinian studies in Haifa.

 

THE CASE FOR SELECTIVE SANCTIONS

A JVP position paper by Henri Picciotto

Some members of Jewish Voice for Peace raised the question of how to escalate our nonviolent activism, and the possibility of calling for sanctions against the Israeli government. Many of us are frustrated by the contrast between the horrors of the situation and our inability to effect immediate, sweeping change. Still, we have to keep reminding ourselves that frustration alone is not sufficient foundation for policy, as it provides no useful way to evaluate competing strategies. Nor can we make our decision based on whether we will be attacked: we will be attacked no matter how we choose to proceed.

Instead, our criterion has to be "does this strategy build or undermine the movement for justice and peace?" To evaluate this, we need to first acknowledge that we are not anywhere near being able to build an economic pressure movement that could actually force the hand of the Israeli government. The sanctions against South Africa were a tactic at the tail end of a decades-long movement, when the South African government was thoroughly isolated in the US population. As of now, the Israeli occupation has powerful support in the United States. Not only the US government, not only the military-industrial complex, not only both major parties, not only the Christian right, but also millions of ordinary citizens. Not everyone by a long shot, but enough that it is a significant obstacle to any forward motion, and a guarantee that sufficient economic leverage against the Israeli occupation is not yet within our reach.

Our central task by far, and for the foreseeable future, is to educate the public so as to eventually be able to influence United States policy, and thus Israeli actions. Our strategic criterion needs to be whether a given campaign helps us educate people, or whether instead it helps our opponents? disinformation machine. On this score, we face a more hostile environment than our European colleagues, and thus we cannot uncritically adopt the decisions of the European Social Forum. (They approved an economic sanctions platform, at the urging of Palestinian activist Mustafa Barghouti.)

A look at recent campaigns is instructive:

On-campus "Divest from Israel" campaigns have crashed and burned, generating fantastic opportunities for our opponents to collect thousands of signatures in defense of the Israeli government (e.g. Harvard) while our allies struggled to collect hundreds. On the other hand, campaigns to "divest from companies that deal with the Israeli military" met with success (Oberlin, University of Pennsylvania).

A campaign to get a San Francisco grocery store (Rainbow) to boycott Israeli goods completely failed, and ended up being a great opportunity for our opponents to portray its sponsors as anti-Semites, a spurious charge, but one that worked for them.

The academic boycott of Israel has likewise been a total bust, while inviting pro-justice Israeli academics has proven useful.

In other words, the situation in Palestine has indeed gotten much worse, but the political situation here in the US is mostly unchanged as far as Israel/Palestine. Choosing a strategy that plays into the hands of our opponents is just wrong: when they attack us, and they will, we want to come out of that confrontation having more supporters, not fewer. The problem is not at all that being attacked is rough going for us -- we can stand a little rough going. The problem is that an effective attack sets us back.

How we frame our campaigns has an enormous impact on the outcome of the struggle. At this point, generic anti-Israel campaigns only weaken our movement and in fact perpetuate the occupation by shifting the debate away from it and towards the phony issue of "Israel's right to exist" and the like. This is a debate we do not need.

Just saying that such sanctions are not aimed at Jews or the Israeli people does not solve the problem. We should instead keep the focus of our campaigns laser-like on the occupation itself (and other human rights violations.) A boycott of goods from settlements does precisely that, as do campaigns against companies that do business with the Israeli military, such as Caterpillar. We should focus on the crimes we seek to stop. Every attempt our opponents make to defend the settlements and the occupation further exposes the nature of these human rights violations.

Of course, even though we do not think generic sanctions campaigns are effective at this time, we continue to reject the absurd charge that they are inherently anti-Semitic. Yes, anti-Semites may call for sanctions against Israel, but most supporters of Palestinian rights are motivated by a humanistic solidarity impulse, and they are our allies in the struggle for justice and peace.

Opposing generic anti-Israel campaigns at this time does not mean we cannot build campaigns that have teeth?quite the opposite. The campaign against the Caterpillar sales of weaponized bulldozers to the Israeli military is one example. Human rights groups are pursuing this through shareholder resolutions and direct actions, and a divest-from-Cat campaign is definitely a possibility. Another example is the campaign led by the International Solidarity Movement last year, asking the City of Berkeley to support the call for an investigation of Rachel Corrie's death. They did excellent work lobbying the city council, mobilizing allies (including JVP), and actually showing up at the council meetings.

Of many such attempts, this was the first to succeed in Berkeley. All the experts were warning ISM to expect to lose, and yet they won. Because the campaign was focused on a specific human rights violation, rather than generically anti-Israel, it left the pro-occupation forces with nothing effective to do or say -- they raised generalities about anti-Semitism which were just not credible and clearly irrelevant, especially given the presence of a strong Jewish voice for peace at the council meetings. Even if the ISM proposal had not passed, the campaign would still have been a success, because the focus was on justice and human rights, not Zionism and terrorism -- and many people were educated in the process.

The selective divestment strategy is quickly gaining adherents. In Israel, the feminist and anti-militarist organization New Profile has endorsed selective divestment. Here in the US, the Presbyterian Church resolved to explore "selective divestment of church funds from those companies whose business in Israel is found to be directly or indirectly causing harm or suffering to innocent people, Palestinian or Israeli". (Note that they wisely "did not approve a blanket divestment from companies that do business in Israel".) This was the first in what may soon be a torrent of church-based activism: the gigantic World Council of Churches has recently spoken in support of the Presbyterians. The genie is out of the bottle, and we may be entering an entirely new phase in the movement for justice and peace in Palestine/Israel.

Henri Picciotto is a math teacher, a Jew from Lebanon, and a member of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Voice for Peace.