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Israelis in Non-Israeli Universities
SOAS Academic Board Manipulated by Pro-Palestinian Activists
A Hebrew University program teaching Hebrew to students from SOAS London University was terminated due to pressure from pro-Palestinian groups. Behind the termination is Dr. Yair Wallach, the chair of the Jewish Studies at SOAS, and Dr. Tamar Drukker, a Hebrew lector who both succumbed to Palestinian pressure.
Wallach was trying to conceal his role in the termination, but the protocols of the Academic Board meetings reveal he provided the Board with false and politically motivated information.
In a recent exchange of Tweets with Pinsker Center, a pro-Israel student group in the UK, Wallach accused the Pinsker Centre of circulating unfounded rumors. A day before, Pinsker Center Tweeted that "It has been reported that @SOAS has bowed down to student pressure, and terminated its relationship with @HebrewU. Why should pressure from a minority fringe of activists deprive other students of the opportunity to enrich themselves at a world class institution in Israel?" Wallach responded that he was "disappointed" to see such "unfounded rumors," claiming that "SOAS's Year Abroad agreement with the Hebrew University ended as planned. SOAS signed a new agreement with Haifa University. Decision made on academic reasons. That's it." He added that the "Programs in both universities are excellent. We chose what seemed to us more suitable."
Obviously, Wallach was unaware that the Palestinian group "Apartheid Off Campus" was claiming victory for this termination.
Unfortunately, Wallach was not telling the truth. In both January and March 2019, the Academic Board of SOAS convened to discuss the 'Hebrew Year Abroad.' Wallach prepared the reports for the two Board meetings, along with Dr. Tamar Drukker, his colleague from Jewish studies. The report is supportive of the Year Abroad program, "The premise of the Year Abroad is to allow students to study the language in an immersive environment, where they encounter it not only in language classes. This is the pedagogical value and logic of the Year Abroad."
However, Wallach and Drukker informed the Board that "The main objection raised in the case of the Hebrew University is that the campus is on occupied territory." Because "the campus's periphery extends into occupied territory (part of the dormitory as well as the sports center). The main campus is not on occupied land (neither the Rothberg institute nor any other Hebrew University teaching facility). EU policy, according to the EU embassy in Israel, is to consider Mt. Scopus Campus as within the 1967 lines, that is, within "Israel proper," and not to see the campus as located on occupied territory."
Surprisingly, while Wallach and Drukker announced that Hebrew University is not situated on "occupied land," they still proposed "two alternative options," for teaching Hebrew - at the Palestinian Territories universities of Bir Zeit and al-Quds.
The report by Wallach and Drukker stated that "In Bir Zeit, which is in the Palestinian occupied territories, Hebrew is taught as a foreign language. Otherwise, teaching is conducted in Arabic or English." This was not sufficient because students would have limited exposure to Hebrew. "In that sense, there is no point in sending them on a year abroad in the first place." The second option was the Al-Quds university. "Teaching in al-Quds is conducted in Arabic, and again, Hebrew would be taught as a foreign language, which defeats the purpose of the year abroad. However, given al-Quds's location in Jerusalem, at least students would have exposure to Hebrew. Depending on the quality of the program, and how it is tailored and organized, we would have considered such an option, had it existed." But, according to the report, "there is no Hebrew program advertised in al-Quds. There is no mention of any Hebrew tuition in al-Quds's website. We have emailed al-Quds to express our interest and to ask if they offer Hebrew, but have not received reply." The report concluded that "Unfortunately, these are not viable options."
Wallach and Drukker provided the Academic Board with a misleading proposal as if it was possible to teach Hebrew at Palestinian universities, that are in fact, no-go areas for Israelis. To recall, Amira Hass, the Haaretz pro-Palestinian journalist was asked to leave a conference at Bir-Zeit University, and so was Professor Ilan Pappe, because they were Israelis.
The report states that the proposal to teach Hebrew in Palestinian universities was made by Sai Englert. Dr. Simon (Sai) Englert is a BDS activist and an anti-Zionist Jew who currently teaches at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is a socialist-activist who completed his Ph.D. at SOAS in 2018. He researches the changing relationship between the labor movement and the state in Israel under neoliberalism. Englert was recorded on a 5 minutes video discussing how anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism and how the dispute with the Palestinians is all Israel's fault. In 2017 Englert was quoted by the BBC as a Jewish Ph.D. student at SOAS and a member of the university's Palestine Society, who said: "The idea that somehow supporting BDS, supporting boycott etc is a blanket boycott on individuals I think is very dangerous. It's not. "It's about saying 'we don't want institutional links, economic links, political links with institutions, governments, companies that are complicit in attacks on rights'."
This is not surprising, Wallach is a long-standing political activist, he should not have taught Israel Studies at SOAS. For example, he has little appreciation for Israeli Ambassadors. When Israeli ambassador Mark Regev was invited to speak at SOAS, Wallach responded, "I was not in favor of the invitation... Ambassador Regev is not a scholar or a public intellectual. He is a PR speaker representing the viewpoint of his government... but the intellectual value of an address by an official state spokesperson is questionable. This is why I saw little merit in the event. I declined to chair the talk, and advised the organizers to reconsider it."
Clearly, the SOAS Academic Board has been led by the nose by these pro-Palestinian activists. This is not the first time that Palestinians recruit Israelis and Jews in their war against Israel. British Universities should not allow radical-political activists to manipulate their decision-making.
King's College London's Anti-Israel Group "Action Palestine" Recruits Israelis to Besmirch Israel
The Group "Action Palestine" at King's College London (KCLAP) has only one mission, to attack Israel. The group has been recruiting Israeli academics to present Israel in a negative light. A recent online event was held by KCLAP, titled "Black Jewish Lives Matter."
The event was reported by Georgia Leatherdale-Gilholy, an associate with the CAMERA on Campus UK, a pro-Israel organization that follows campus campaigns to delegitimize Israel, titled "An academic attempt to frame Israel as a devious colonial enterprise." The keynote speaker was Efrat Yerday, a doctoral candidate and lecturer at Tel Aviv University. She is a leading activist for Ethiopians in Israel who holds an M.A. in Politics and Government from Ben Gurion University. In her talk, Yerday was quoted as saying, "Ethiopians are sick of being depicted as people who should be grateful to their white 'saviours' for … barely qualifying as Jews." Last year, Yerday has published an article with the publisher Berghahn Journals, Visual Anthropology in the Middle East, guest edited by Profs. Esther Hertzog and Yael Katzir. Yerday's article, "To Be Black and Beautiful in Israel," reviews works by female artists of Ethiopian origin. She argues that "these artists are presenting their attitudes towards the 'white gaze.' Though constantly subjected to it by the Israeli hegemony." Yerday draws on postcolonial theory, among others. As a former student of BGU Politics and Government, the use of post-modernist jargon to debunk Israel is not surprising.
The host was Nimrod Evron, an Israeli member of KCLAP, and a master's student of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College. He, according to Leatherdale-Gilholy's report, "was out to dismiss the reality of Israeli society so as to frame it as a devious colonial enterprise." Evron also teaches middle school pupils at the London Acorn School for alternative schooling. Evron is a radical activist who gave a talk in 2015, before a Quaker audience. He was described as a "Jewish Israeli activist and Educator who's activism includes involvement in New Profile's Refusal Support Network and Alternative Summer Camp for Youth." He explained his opposition to the Israeli State's policies of "occupation and oppression." He discussed "Direct action with Palestinians, worker immigration rights, the current situation on the Israeli left, Israel and the international community, international activist engagement with the Israeli public."
Evron was also recruited by KCLAP to teach a workshop "Occupation 101," teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the basics. This course aims to give a "comprehensive basic understanding of the conflict and occupation, both for people new to the conflict and people that already find themselves involved but feel they just need a better understanding." Evron is presented as an activist in the anti-militarization and refusers movement, in various direct actions with Palestinians and various social justice campaigns, combining politics with critical education. In this course, he is accompanied by different Palestinian guest speakers.
According to KCLAP publication, this course is hosted by Babel's Blessing, a grassroots language school.
The course prospectus includes a warning: "This is not a neutral course (there is no such thing). It does not aim to be "balanced" or "equal" to "both sides". The violence between Israelis and Palestinians is far from being symmetric. There is a military occupation and a systematic disenfranchisement of Palestinian's basic rights upheld by the state of Israel and the vast majority of Jewish-Israeli society. There is a dire need to resist this. However, the discourse promoted in this course aims to show that the clarity of having strong moral and political positions is not dimmed, but strengthened, by being supported by nuance and complexity."
In June, KCLAP sent a letter to Prof. Edward Byrne, the KCL Principal, regarding partnerships with Technion. KCLAP stated, "We do not stand for any normalization of oppression. We do not want KCL to play any role in oppression worldwide. KCL must therefore listen to Archbishop Tutu and cut it's partnership with the Technion immediately."
In May, KCLAP promoted another initiative, "Apartheid Off Campus," a new front for the Palestinian youth movement in the UK. It urges students "to get involved and find out how complicit your university is in Israeli Apartheid." They argue that "Despite previous successful divestment efforts, King's College London still insists to invest over 2.2 million pounds in companies complicity with the illegal Israeli occupation although they have an ethical investment policy which includes ESG issues like human rights. They clearly need to start acknowledging the rights of Palestinians as Human Rights too!"
As mentioned above, Israelis from Ethiopian descent are being recruited by Palestinians to present Israel in a negative light. This, against the backdrop of Ethiopians Jews, waiting for Israel to fly them in from Ethiopia. Some are relatives of those who are already living in Israel.
King's College London, like many other universities in the West, should note that Palestinians are hacking their students' organizations for their war against Israel.
Top Western Universities Recruit Israel-Bashers
A Haaretz article has focused attention on Israeli radical academic-activists who have left Israel in recent years. Titled "After Losing Hope for Change, Top Left-wing Activists and Scholars Leave Israel Behind." Haaretz postulated that "They founded anti-occupation movements and fought for the soul of Israeli society, but ultimately decided to emigrate. The new exiles tell Haaretz how they were harassed and silenced, until they had almost no choice but to leave."
Over the years, IAM has covered in length the scholars that the article mentioned.
Ilan Pappe, who made a name for himself by besmirching Israel, is the most known among this group. IAM published a 2002 article by Tom Segev, which negated Pappe's contention that he was dismissed. As a professor at the University of Haifa, he published dozens of articles and books describing Israel as a criminal state. He supported Teddy Katz, a MA student at the university who wrote a dissertation falsely accusing the Alexandroni Brigade of a massacre in the village of Tantura in 1948. Members of the Brigade sued Katz, and the university withdrew his thesis. Pappe responded by sending a letter to the American Historical Association asking to censure Haifa University. Yossi Ben-Arzi, the then dean of the humanities faculty, noted that Pappe's appeal would damage the chances for the advancement of members who need recommendations from abroad, as well as affect their chances to publish abroad or receive invitations to conferences and sabbaticals. Ben-Arzi said that this was not a matter of freedom of speech or an attempt to attack Pappe for his anti-Zionist opinions, "This is a matter of non-collegial, unethical and immoral conduct, lies, badmouthing and impudence." Ben-Arzi filed a disciplinary complaint against Pappe, but the internal disciplinary court found no reasons to discuss the accusation "in the form in which it has been submitted" and dismissed the complaint. Pappe has left the University of Haifa upon receiving an invitation to head the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, U.K.
Dr. Ariella Azoulay and Prof. Adi Ophir both featured in the Haaretz article. Ophir, who headed the Political Lexicon Project at the Minerva Humanities Center at TAU, once declared that Israel operates at the same ontological plane of evil as Nazi Germany. Azoulay, his frequent collaborator, whose title at the Minerva Humanities was Director of Photo-Lexic Research, has manipulated photographic images to prove that the Nakba and the occupation are the Holocaust of the Palestinians. They have both left Israel to teach at Brown University. IAM reported earlier this year that Azoulay was a signatory in a letter to a Brown University committee, pushing for BDS. Other signatories included Prof. Beshara Doumani, a Saudi born Palestinian who headed Brown's Middle East Studies program. Doumani presented an argument for divestment. To recall, Doumani has helped recruiting Azoulay to his Brown University department. Interestingly, Azoulay is not an expert of Middle East Studies but rather, "an expert on visual culture and photography, she is a theorist, film-maker, and curator whose scholarship focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." But in fact, Azoulay is an Israeli academic supportive of the boycott of Israel. IAM also reported in 2018 on a conference at Brown promoting BDS which was chaired by Doumani and Azoulay also participated, "Do boycotts foreclose or open up socially productive conversations about the ethics of cultural and academic production?" Based on a book, Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production, questioning, "What are the political possibilities embodied in emerging forms of intersectional solidarity around boycott movements, such as BDS?" It is unthinkable that a prestigious university such as Brown would hire faculty based on their political agenda.
Indeed, Azoulay, now renamed as "Ariella Aïsha Azoulay," has declined to be interviewed for the Haaretz article. Instead, she sent in a written statement: "I don't trust the press and I don't want to be represented by it; I support the boycott and have no interest in being interviewed for a Zionist newspaper." She wrote in her book, "about the fact that I was born to be an 'Israeli' as a form of control by the state over the body and mind of its subjects and citizens, and about my refusal to identify myself in the 'Israeli' category." Azoulay refuses to live in the place where she was born because of those "who were expelled." She does not want to share "that pain with a Zionist audience," that "Israel inflicted and is continuing to inflict, above all on its Palestinian inhabitants, and in a different way on its Jewish citizens."
Another Haaretz interviewee was Neve Gordon, a professor of political science at Ben Gurion University who was one of the early proponents of the notion that Israel is an apartheid state, and later, called for the boycott of Israel. IAM reported that Gordon was invited to Berkeley to write his book Israel's Occupation, in 2004. Using neo-Marxist, critical jargon, Gordon essentially accused the Israeli government of running a Nazi-like state in the West Bank, where Palestinians are monitored continuously, abused, and worse. In the introduction to the book, Gordon clearly stated that, "I began writing the book in 2004 during a sabbatical at the University of California, Berkeley, where Nezar AlSayyad from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Eric Stover from the Human Rights Center welcomed me and provided me the necessary resources to write." AlSayyad was the head of the Middle East Center at that time. In 2003 AlSayyad was interviewed by the Saudi Aramco World, a cultural organ of the giant American-Saudi oil corporation.
The Aramco article gave an insight into the extent of Arab oil money invested in Middle Eastern centers in American universities since the 1990s, enabling it to exert influence on what the neo-Marxists call the "production of knowledge." The article detailed the amount of donations given to Berkeley by the Saudis. "Among major donations, Berkeley received two large gifts in the late 1990's from Saudi benefactors, one for technology-transfer studies and one for Arab studies. The Al-Falah ("Success") Program was established with a $2 million endowment from the Alireza family to support a better understanding of Muslims and to promote technology transfer to the Muslim world, particularly Saudi Arabia. The Sultan Endowment for Arab Studies, established by a $5 million gift from the Sultan ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz Charity Foundation, is dedicated to broadening understanding of the Arab and Islamic worlds."
Throughout the years, Saudi Arabia invested billions of dollars in US universities, prompting a New York Times to question "Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?" The article discussed the benefits to Saudi Arabia. "The kingdom gets access to the brain trust of America's top academic institutions as it endeavors to modernize its economy… Perhaps as important, the entree to schools like M.I.T. serves to soften the kingdom's image." But, the NYT neglected to consider another benefit, that until not too long ago and for more than two decades, the Saudi gifts enabled Palestinian and their activist-faculty supporters to recruit anti-Israel academics, who in return, would produce anti-Israel scholarships. Similarly, to this day, with other Gulf states such as Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait.
Neve Gordon has moved to the U.K. and he is currently a Professor of International Law and Human Rights - a field he has no expertise in - at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London.
The Haaretz article hit a raw nerve. Lawrence Davidson, a retired professor of history from West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania, penned an article in Counterpunch "Israel loses its best as chauvinism and religious extremism take over society." Whether Israel has lost its best is questionable.
As for Ilan Pappe, IAM posted in 2004 a review by Prof. Benny Morris of Pappe's book, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Morris wrote, "Unfortunately, much of what Pappe tries to sell his readers is complete fabrication." Morris quoted Pappe as saying, "my [pro-Palestinian] bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the 'truth' when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers.... Mine is a subjective approach." Pappe's reconstructionist and subjective approach can hardly be beneficial for any scholarship.
As IAM has pointed out, these individuals were primarily activists who used their academic positions to bash Israel. In 2012 the Council of Higher Education threatened to close the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University where Gordon taught. The Evaluating Committee noted that the research and teaching in the Department were politically motivated, essentially, an extension of their political activism.
Over the years, IAM has reported of dozens of academic Israel-bashers who were recruited by respectable universities in the West. The Palestinians and their supporters understood well that portraying Israel as a Nazi-like state, or an apartheid state, and pushing BDS may be perceived as anti-Semitism. Having Israeli academics supporting, or even leading this effort, was definitely a bonus. As for the Israeli academics, contrary to the Haaretz article, they quickly learned the lesson: bashing Israel was a good career move, rewarded with a plush appointment abroad.
Intervention with Israeli Higher Education: The Case of Hilla Dayan
IAM reported before on how, for several decades, Gulf States oil money was invested in Western universities to gain influence. It also enabled Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists on campus, both faculty and students, to recruit like-minded peers. Furthermore, it enabled to recruit radical Israeli activists, known as "peace activists," to produce scholarships that promote the Palestinian agenda using the neo-Marxist, critical tools; such as Ilan Pappe, Neve Gordon, Ariella Azoulay, to name a few. This blatant interference should have raised the concern of academics, but it did not.
This endeavor also enabled the Israeli Communist Party (Maki) to influence the academy for many years. MAKI often collaborated with Academia for Equality (A4E), a group known as "an organization of left-wing lecturers." The Maki organ, "Zo Haderekh," regularly discusses academic-related issues written for and by various academic-comrades such as Efraim Davidi and Avishai Ehrlich, among others. Maki has often been behind the demonstrations of students. Last month MAKI promoted on an "extraordinary" online discussion of three "leading A4E activists," who discussed the Coronavirus crisis and the future of higher education in Israel. The three A4E Participants were Prof. Isaac (Yanni) Nevo of Ben-Gurion University, Dr. Hilla Dayan of Amsterdam University College, and Dr. Lin Haluzin-Dovrat of the TAU Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas organized and led the event.
Prof. Nevo first discussed the impact of the Coronavirus on teaching, then stated that the public status of the academy is not limited in the social func'tioning known as research and teaching, as in the production of knowledge and training for the society's service. "These roles enclose the academy in a social and political framework that is interested in them. The deal is worthwhile to all sides, but this does not limit the academy's public status. This status is derived from the academy's additional role. The production of knowledge provides the checks and balances for its independence, to guarantee the autonomy required for such measure, thus marking the boundaries of political power as a way of marking the boundaries of power in a democratic society."
The second speaker, Dr. Hilla Dayan, who lives in Amsterdam, said that in the Israeli academy, "The most dramatic crisis is the decision-maker crisis. The burning question is - Who decides? Who decides the policy? Budget? Who controls resources? We are all shocked at the homogeneity and blatant lack of representation among decision-makers. Therefore, we must continue to produce and develop new tools and concepts for the struggle that will require reflection on academia as a structure that preserves the social and economic power of dominant groups."
Dayan pursued Ph.D. at the New School for Social Research in New York, the epicenter of the neo-Marxist, critical scholarship. Her unpublished 2008 Ph.D. dissertation "Regimes of separation" was published as a chapter in the book The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Zone Books) by Adi Ophir (Editor), Michal Givoni (Editor), Sari Hanafi (Editor), along with Ariel Handel, Orna Ben-Naftali, Aeyal M. Gross, Keren Michaeli, Ariella Azoulay, Neve Gordon, Hilla Dayan, Yehuda Shenhav, Yael Berda, Leila Farsakh, Caroline Abu-Sada, Dani Filc, Gadi Algazi, Eyal Weizman, Ronen Shamir.
Only a few Ph.D. graduates enjoy the opportunity to get published along with such distinguished scholars, those who hold the correct political views. Clearly, the type of work that got Dayan's academic career sprouting was her reports, such as the one published in 2008 by Kibush Occupation Magazine, titled "Unilever divests from Beigel & Beigel, after study exposes settlement connection" which she co-authored.
Clearly, Dayan's scholarship follows the neo-Marxist, critical trend to fit the Palestinian narrative. Her book chapter compares Israel to South Africa. Subtitled "Israel/Palestine: The Sovereignty of 'Auschwitz Borders,'" where she claimed that "From the outset, the specter of political incorporation of out-group populations haunted prestate Zionist institutions and, later, successive Israeli governments. The Palestinian catastrophe, al-Nakba, during the short seven months in 1948 in which estimated seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced into exile by Jewish militias following an apparently organized military plan, remained incomplete." For Abba Eban, the memorable foreign minister of the 60s, "the 1948 boundaries were reminiscent of the borders of Auschwitz. Curiously, when the 'Auschwitz borders' were swiftly overturn in 1967, the encroachment over a mass of undesired population did not immediately present itself as an existential concern."
Among the many distortions of history, Dayan completely misunderstood Eban's statement, who wrote: "We have openly said that the map will never again be the same as on June 4, 1967. For us, this is a matter of security and of principles. The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz. We shudder when we think of what would have awaited us in the circumstances of June, 1967, if we had been defeated; with Syrians on the mountain and we in the valley, with the Jordanian army in sight of the sea, with the Egyptians who hold our throat in their hands in Gaza. This is a situation which will never be repeated in history."
Already Dayan admitted that "I am a product of an epistemological revolution, which was brought about by an entire generation of scholars dubbed post-Zionist in the 1990s, and of the intellectual milieu of the Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow, which, at that time, unraveled all I knew about myself and my society. One is not born but becomes non-Zionist." She goes against the "neoliberalized academia." Israel's university education is the "end point of segregation, exclusion, and denial of education." She proposes "occupation studies" to have an effect of "antiknowledge" which the average Israeli will not consider due to the "Zionist indoctrination."
In another article, "Israel Against Democracy," published by The Amsterdam Law Forum, Dayan postulated that Israel is "becoming the only dictatorship in the Middle East" and urged, "Policy makers and international stakeholders" to demand "justice, accountability and an end to a brutal occupation by Israel… punish this government for its anti-democratic excesses. Ensuring that Israel pays a heavy international price for domestic repression is not only a matter of a moral and legal obligation of the international community, but possibly the only way to bring the country to its senses."
As can be seen, Dayan is an activist calling for the boycott of Israel. In a 2015 article by Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions, titled "Hilla Dayan: 'I support the boycott from within,'" she detailed why she supports the boycott. Dayan urged the academic community to devise strategies to deal with "complicity with the occupation, academic profiteering from the occupation, institutionalized racism, incitement against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, inequality and exclusion." And urged to "change the neoliberal academic culture." She promoted the academic boycott because of "the involvement in the occupation of the Israeli academia in general, and Tel Aviv University in particular" since the academia "heavily services the security establishments."
The Israeli taxpayers who pay for the high quality of their higher education system should not accept those who call for isolation and punishment of Israel. Therefore, academics who push for BDS should be kept away. Prof. Nevo should not tolerate such interferences, for the sake of independence and autonomy of the academy.
Anti-Zionist Haim Bresheeth Admits Being anti-Semite
Professor Haim Bresheeth is an Israeli BDS activist who teaches film at SOAS University of London. Even by his own admission, he is a "filmmaker, photographer, film studies scholar, activist".
Recently, Bresheeth has published a call to the British Labor Party: "My life's work as an anti-racist and anti-Zionist activist makes me an antisemite according to Labour," because he is "an ex-Israeli Jew who has been active for over five decades as a socialist, anti-Zionist and anti-racist activist." After detailing his biography as an activist, he admitted, "It is evident that my background qualifies me as an antisemite according to the Labour coda."
The Bresheeth list of "in your face" anti-Israel activities is long. Earlier in life Bresheeth was an activist with the radical leftist group Matzpen.
In 2003, Bresheeth was among the founders of Jews Against Zionism, an organization of "Jews and others opposed to the Zionist movement and ideology, and to its impact on both Palestinians and Jews. We believe that the conflict in Palestine cannot be resolved without a return of Palestinian refugees and dismantlement of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel; and that this is impossible in the context of 'two states' and a re-partition of Palestine."
In 2006, Bresheeth published a letter defending an anti-Israel activist, Ghazi Walid Falah, a professor of Geography at Akron, Ohio, who was detained in Israel during a family visit on the eve of the Second Lebanon War. According to the police, he allegedly took pictures of an antenna near Kibbutz Adamit close to the border with Lebanon. Since Falah was a regular visitor to Iran and Syria he was detained for a longer investigation. Falah used his case during a session at the annual American Geographical Association gathering claiming he was kidnapped without trial. Bresheeth wrote in his support, "I may be eligible for years in jail... I have been an anti-Zionist for 3 decades"
As a member of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), Bresheeth has participated at the First Palestinian Conference for the Boycott of Israel (BDS) in Al-Bireh, Ramallah in 2007. The meeting attracted some 300 activists from all round the world. In his speech, Bresheeth compared the South African apartheid and Israel's "Zionist regime" which is "unable to provide solutions to Jews, to the Palestinian people, or to the people in the region."
As an anti-Israel activist at the University of East London he was hosting the Nakba Day Events.
In an interview in 2012, Bresheeth claimed that "the end of racist and unjust, brutal practices and policies of Zionism will not come from within... without an end to this colonial project, there can be no just peace for anyone, and no just resolution of the Palestinian question, created by Zionism and its western allies in crime. As long as the Zionist state stays intact, we have a situation reminiscent of South Africa under apartheid" Bresheeth continued, "This neo-colonial enterprise, serving the aims of western capitalism, has not only caused the Palestine continued Nakba, but has also poisoned middle- Eastern politics with anti-Arab, Islamophobic attitudes and positions which have fed the right in Europe, North America and elsewhere."
He was among the signatories, as IAM reported, of a call to boycott a congress of the Federation of the European Biochemical Societies promoting biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, molecular biophysics, and other related research, in Israel in 2017.
As a non-historian, Bresheeth has written books about various historical topics. In a book about the Palestinian Nakba, Bresheeth's chapter discussed how "Israel managed to capitalize on the few important acts of armed resistance by Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe, and to make them, ipso facto, a justification and raison d'etre for its own actions in 1948 and afterwards"; his book The Gulf War and the New World Order, was described by one reviewer, it "has the advantage of revealing the dilemmas faced by the Marxist Left;" his book Introducing the Holocaust: A Graphic Guide, argues "that the Nazis did not intend to physically destroy the European Jewish population but did so only because Hitler was unable to expel all the Jews because Western nations refused to accept the Jewish refugees", the book was described by a reviewer as "Horrific descriptions of the organized and 'efficient' murder of Jews"; his forthcoming book, An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation, is "an unflinching exploration of the war-driven origins of the Israeli state as well as the on-going story of Israeli militarism."
Not surprisingly, Bresheeth likes to collaborate with the Iranians. In 2018, Bresheeth took part in the making of the Iranian Press TV series "Israel From Inside." The program has taken a "critical look at developments within Israel, whether political, economic or social." Bresheeth talks to experts familiar with Israeli internal affairs, discussing issues such as "discrimination and government corruption in Israel."
In striking contrast to his loathsome for Israel, something that repeats in his writing is the hope for Israel as "a democratic, autonomous political and cultural entity twinned with a similar Palestinian entity." While Israel is achieving this goal, nothing, in reality, should prevent the Palestinians from fulfilling this dream. Yet in the eyes of the anti-Israel activist, Israel can do no right and the Palestinians can do no wrong.
British universities have been home to too many anti-Israel propagandists. Of course, criticism of Israel is acceptable but espousing lies isn't. There is no question whether people who admit opposing Zionism, who believe in the "dismantlement of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel," are anti-Semites, whether Jews or non-Jews. After the adoption of the global definition of anti-Semitism, the time has come to end such unacademic practices and to hold those people to account.
Eyal Weizman's Academic Tool Against Israel
IAM has often reported on how scholars have abused their academic positions to push their political agenda. One such case is Dr. Eyal Weizman. Weizman is an Israeli scholar of architecture working at the UK's Goldsmiths University of London, where he founded the center for Forensic Architecture (FA). Recently, Weizman has hit the news when he was refused a US visa.
Weizman intended to use his trip to the US to advance an investigation into a Florida detention center where migrant children are held.
Weizman's exhibition True to Scale, currently showing at the Museum of Art and Design in Miami, includes an investigation into a CIA drone strike in Pakistan, presented by a UN Special Rapporteur in the General Assembly; an analysis of the Chicago police killing, lead to an investigation by the mayor and the city's police department; and an inquiry into Israeli bombing in Gaza, that informed the International Criminal Court's recent decision to open an investigation into the possibility of Israeli war crimes.
While he was refused a visa, the American security officer asked him to provide information on the people he was in contact with, places to which he had traveled, whether he had recently been in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, or Somalia or met their nationals? And the hotels at which he has stayed. He was also asked to supply the US Embassy with information on fifteen years of travel history. Where he had gone to and who had paid for it. Weizman declined to provide this information and explained, "Working in human rights means being in contact with vulnerable communities, activists and experts, and being entrusted with sensitive information. These networks are the lifeline of any investigative work. I am alarmed that relations among our colleagues, stakeholders, and staff are being targeted by the U.S. government as security threats."
Weizman is a notoriously anti-Israel activist who, as a student in London, mapped Israeli settlements, producing a study that was presented as evidence to the International Court of Justice.
FA started around 2010 with the London riots and the big protest after the police killing of Mark Duggan. Weizman's group is trying to use cutting edge technologies to help social movements and civil society to "invert the balance of epistemological power, against the monopoly of knowledge that states have." Their work seeks to "invert the forensic gaze and turn it against the actors – police, military, secret service, border agencies" For this, "our training as critical scholars in deconstructing police statements, or military statements taken by secret services or the government."
Weizman's clients have an anti-Israel agenda. He is currently working with the AM Qattan Foundation (AMQF), a registered UK charity, founded in 1993 by Abdel Mohsin Al-Qattan, a Palestinian refugee who made a fortune in the Gulf construction industry. AMQF employs more than 100 people in the West Bank and Gaza, running programs on science, drama and the arts. The FA exhibition is in Ramallah. Yazid Anani, the curator of the exhibition and director of A.M. Qattan Foundation's public program division, said that the exhibition "presents a paradigm shift and refutes post-colonial theories, especially the attempt to assert that 'The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house'." As Palestinians, "we must learn from the experiences of others who struggle in the Global South and from cases where resistance has been able to expose crimes perpetrated by authoritarian regimes, holding them accountable for human rights violations. This is especially significant in light of the ongoing human rights violations and the violent acts that the Israeli colonial authorities are carrying out daily against Palestinians."
Weizman's clientele also includes Amnesty International, which has published a letter of protest against Weizman's visa refusal demanding its' reversal; the International Criminal Court, Weizman serves on the Technology Advisory Board; the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem where he serves on its Advisory Board; The New York Times, their co-production video One Building, One Bomb, won an Emmy award.
Weizman's anti-Israel bias was spotted by Yagil Henkin, a military historian who reviewed Weizman's 2007 book Hollow Land. Henkin noted that the book "is part and parcel" of Weizman's political activities, where Weizman intends to show "how the Israelis have succeeded in subjugating the Palestinians through the calculated use of space." Henkin concludes that "grab bag of speculations is firmly grounded in modern critical theory. Indeed, throughout the book Weizman cites such neo-Marxist, post-structuralist, and post-colonial heavyweights as Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Edward Said, and Adi Ophir. Yet if the book's radical appeal ensures its admission into the post-Zionist canon, its theoretical baggage inevitably weighs it down. Indeed, its barely concealed biases and distortions would irritate any reader."
In an interview, Weizman stated, "I support the BDS movement. It is a form of civil action directed at Israeli colonial practices and simultaneously at those Western governments, above all that of the United States, which support nearly all of Israel's actions and continually reward the state with unparalleled financial, diplomatic, and cultural support."
Clearly, Weizman's FA is a tool to attack Israel, he has no investigation into Palestinian misconduct. He also attacks the UK and the US, discrediting their police and border control. The Goldsmiths University of London enables him to refute the phrase borrowed from Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." We should expect more bias coming from his direction.
New Platform for Debunking Israel at Harvard Law School's Mizrahi Legal Studies Conference
Mizrahi Jews, the descendants of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, are the center of a new initiative. A newly-emerging field, Mizrahi Legal Studies, is having its first-ever international conference at Harvard on December 10-11, 2019. The central tenet of the conference is that the identity of Mizrahim has "traditionally been neglected in legal academia". One of the organizers is Lihi Yona, a doctoral student at the Columbia Law School, a Shusterman fellow, and a former student at the University of Haifa where she co-founded an Arab-Jewish student political movement.
All the panels at the conference discuss the following issues: Mizrahi Interventions in Political/Legal Thought; Mizrahi Legal History/ies; Mizrahi Methodologies; Knowing Mizrahi Identity: Criterions, Records, Adjudication; Mizrahi Jews and Jewish Law; Shas; Mizrahi Discrimination and Clinical Education; Mizrahi Representation and Speech Regulation; Spatial Dimensions and Mizrahi Positionality.
According to conference guideline, the first wave of legal writing on Mizrahi issues has focused primarily on the "absence" of Mizrahi Jews from Israeli law, "Despite a robust tradition of critical writing on Israeli law, as well as prolific research in Mizrahi Studies in other disciplines such as history, sociology, and anthropology, the Mizrahi perspective has been traditionally neglected in Israeli legal academia."
The conference keynote speaker is Prof. Yifat Bitton, a pioneer in the field, who's Hebrew language article, "Mizrahis and Law: Absence as Existence," published in Mishpatim Law Review, in 2011. Her thesis is "The Mizrahi population is discriminated in Israel. This population, which is suffering from ongoing and proven discrimination, is invisible in Israeli law and is not recognized in it as a category of discriminated groups." Bitton notes that the Israeli Prohibition of Discrimination Law indicates that the judicial system reflects and at the same time allows ignoring its existence in Israel as a discriminated group." She calls this phenomenon, "denial dynamics" which "allows hardship to the structure in which the struggle of Mizrahim for equality is a limited struggle, and the analysis of the use of the law to prevent discrimination reflects these limitations in a sharp and systematic way. "
The conference brochure shows a photograph of the 1971 Black Panther's movement demonstrating in Haifa, while holding signs "How long would a ten member family reside in one room?" The Panthers were protesting the dire living conditions of the poor. The fact that the conference is using a dated image of the Mizrahhim is telling. It allows Bitton and her cohorts to conveniently ignore that in the past forty years since the Black Panthers were founded, the Mizrahim have made tremendous progress. Some of the wealthiest Israelis are Mizrahim, and many Mizrahim have also reached the top positions of the political, cultural, financial, and legel realms of Israeli life. Bitton herself was a candidate for a position on the Supreme Court until the media disclosed she is a member of the New Israel Fund International Board, a politically-tainted organization.
The conference is hosted by the Harvard Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law. Its director, Prof. Noah Feldman, has been writing articles postulating that a Palestinian democracy is possible and that Islamic law is compatible with democracy. As befitting an activist professor, the conference has a political agenda of building a Palestinian-Mizrahi alliance. This has been a long staining goal of radical Israeli scholars like Yehuda Shenhav who, as well known, went to great length to "prove" that the Mizrahim are " Arab Jews."
To push for the new alliance, the conference invited papers on the "Mizrahi positionality and identity vis-à-vis Israel/Palestine." Several speakers address the issue. Yael Berda, a partly Mizrahi, will be speaking of "Reversing Internal Colonialism – Towards Administrative Principles of Affirmative Inclusion" Berda's scholarship is mostly focusing on entry permits obtained by Palestinians to travel or work in Israel; Lana Tatour, Palestinian Israeli, will speak on On "the (Im)possibility of Palestinian-Mizrahi Alliance". Tatour is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, who was a post doctoral student at the Hebrew University and received grants from the AVI Fellowships for Ph.D. Studies; British Friends of Hebrew University; and the Anglo-Israel Association; Alexandre Kedar, of Ashkenazi origin, speaks of "Mizhrahi Jews under the Israeli Land Regime: Between Asheknazi Founders and Indigenous Palestinians"; Fady Khoury, a Palestinian Israeli and a Doctoral student at Harvard Law faculty and formerly a student at the University of Haifa, presents "The Ambiguity of Segregation Regulation in Israel in Relation to Palestinians and Mizrahim." Khoury has been a Palestinian human rights lawyer living in Israel.
The conference, not surprisingly, is "Drawing on critical race theory and critical legal studies," which suggests that empirical evidence is highly unlikely. As IAM repeatedly reported concerning the neo-Marxist, critical scholarship, it tends to lean on polemics rather than evidence.
Focusing on the Black Panthers intends to draw the connection between Mizrahim and Palestinians as expressed in the article "When Israel's Black Panthers found common cause with Palestinians," published by the Palestinian Electronic Intifada earlier this year. It uses the same photograph of the Black Panthers. It interviewed Black Panther founder Reuven Abergel, who reatrated the fact that the Black Panther's demonstrations were taken place because people were incredibly poor. He said, "The movement came from the people who were suffering. It all started from the pain... The reality was so hard. We didn't have time to sit and plan. We protested because it was a response to the difficulties we faced in our everyday lives." Another Electronic Intifada interviewee was Sami (Shalom) Chetrit, a Mizrahi scholar who wrote a book on the Mizrahi experience in Israel, titled Intra-Jewish Conflict in Israel: White Jews, Black Jews. Chetrit has told The Electronic Intifada that around 55 percent of Mizrahi children have dropped out of school during the time the Black Panthers was founded. "Kids were just on the streets and no one really cared," Chetrit said. Likewise, 80% of welfare-supported families were Mizrahim. "It was not just quantitative poverty; they were also deprived of their families and structure. The family and community structure that was so strong in their countries of origin completely collapsed... People [Mizrahim] who came from very stable communities for many years found themselves living in slums. It all happened in front of your eyes, within four or five years, hundreds of thousands of people suddenly had no community. Their whole lives collapsed," Chetrit said. The purpose of the article is to show how the Mizrahim have been treated badly by the authorities, just like the Palestinians.
The conference invites all those who are "interested in the inner-Jewish racial rift," ignoring the fact that the extensive intermarriage levels in Israel have shrunk the ranks of the Mizrahim. As noted, the need to resurrect the Black Panthers movement and the socio-economic reality which existed in the early 1970s is a symbol of the desperation of the conference organizers. Ironically, the only large identifiable "pure" Mizrahi group are the followers of Shas, an ultra-orthodox Mizrahi party, who harbor extreme anti-Palestinian positions. In fact, Shas has been a constant fixture in the right-wing Likud coalition.
To admit this reality would, of course, undermine the critical, neo-Marxist approach of the conference organizers. With no empirical limitations on their writings, they can indulge in the old dream of "Arab Jews," a.k.a. the Mizrahim, ready to create an alliance with the Palestinians.
Israel's Radical Fraternity is Operating on UK Campuses
An interesting development had occurred in the past two decades. Several Israeli radial academics, from Ben Gurion University, among others, have relocated to British universities. Paving their way is the generous donations that wealthy Arab countries have made to universities over the years. Arab Gulf money which buys influence is a topic discussed in many articles, such as "Saudis donate most to UK universities" and "Some of Britain's top universities are becoming no-go zones for Jews, Baroness Deech claims". It is quite possible that some of this money is used to recruit Israeli anti-Israel academics.
The list of activist-Israelis who found university positions in Great Britain is rather long. To name a few, Ilan Pappe, formerly of the University of Haifa, was invited to the University of Exeter as a Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies. Pappe was one of the original "New Historians" who went on to "prove" that Israel has committed Nazi-like atrocities against the Palestinians. Naturally, this secured him this prestigious job.
Another example is Eyal Weizman, Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures, who founded and directed the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University of London. In 2010 he founded the research agency Forensic Architecture. His book The Least of All Possible Evils, examines the damage following the 2010 "bombardment" by Israel and it's "regime imposed upon Gaza". Weizman "pieces together the systematic process of destruction, revealing the political atrocity within the debris." In his other book, Hollow Land, he "unravels" Israel's transformation of Palestinian homes into a war zone under constant surveillance" and how Israel is using architecture "as lethal weapons in the formation of Israel." Of course, Weizman is a rising star among the pro-Palestinian cohorts.
Prof. Neve Gordon, a prominent anti-Israel radical from Ben Gurion University who compared Israel to the apartheid regime in South Africa, is now teaching International Law at Queen Mary University of London, a field in which he has no expertise.
Others like Moriel Ram followed suit. Ram HAS relocated to SOAS and UCL. Ram's M.A. at BGU titled "The Eyes that became a gaze: Mt. Hermon and Israel's geopolitical discourse," was co-supervised by Prof. Oren Yiftachel. Like Gordon, Yiftachel has promoted the idea of Israeli apartheid. The "gaze" is a critical neo-Marxist term referring to Michel Foucault. Ram's Ph.D., also at BGU, describing the Golan Heights as a "Colonial Conquest," was supervised by Neve Gordon and Haim Yacobi.
Some find Ram's scholarship questionable, as one scholar complained, "Ram's review regrettably fails [it is] replete with contradictions, misinterpretations, and mistakes." This scholar accused Ram of "flawed" reading, "unfounded, thereby doing disservice to readers". In particular, the scholar noted that Ram is "evidently more concerned with raising alternative interpretations that have no foundation in the historical record than with the evidence itself."
Of late, Ram found a new venue to smear Israel. He is now researching Israel's medical aid to Africa from 1957 to 1973. He states that Israel's medical work utilized "health aid for its strategic interests" and mobilized medical knowledge, personnel, and infrastructure for "racializing" Africans, while "culturally dislocating itself from Africa." Ram suggests that Israel's medical knowledge is based on "data collection, manipulation of limited resource and governance of immigration in ways that reorganise cultural hierarchies and national identities." For Ram, Israel's "interventions in Africa" is a political exercise to gain influence. This paper was delivered at The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) 2019 Annual Meeting, a bastion of anti-Israel gathering.
As noted, Ram's expertise is the Golan Heights. For him, the "Israelification" of the Golan "entailed massive population displacement, spatial demolition, and European rebranding," It is a "battle-tested template to how annexation could look like in the West Bank". President Donald Trump's "blatant flaunting of international law in Iran, Jerusalem, and now the Golan" points to America's weakening. Ram also egregiously claims that "Britain and France tried to take over the Suez Canal in 1956, a scheme that also involved Israel's active participation and occupation of the Sinai Peninsula."
Ram recently promoted the book Emptied Lands - A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev by Alexandre Kedar, Oren Yiftachel and Ahmad Amara. The book investigates the territorial conflict between the "settler Israeli state" and the "indigenous Bedouin" citizens, over ownership of lands in southern "Israel/Palestine". According to the authors, the "dead Negev doctrine" is used by Israel to "dispossess and forcefully displace Bedouin inhabitants in order to Judaize the region." The authors "reveal" that this is done "through manipulative use of Ottoman, British and Israeli laws." The Bedouins perform an "ongoing resistance to the Jewish state" over their "indigenous property." However, as IAM reported before, Yiftachel has testified as an expert in one of the trials on behalf of a Bedouin family, but the court dismissed the case over lack of proof of ownership. The presiding Judge censured Yiftachel for his sloppy research.
The harm done to Bedouin communities by the likes of Yiftachel cannot be exaggerated. As noted by leading scholars, some of the illegal Bedouin constructions are erected in dangerous locations unfit for residence, for example underneath high-voltage lines or next to industrial zones, such as Ramat Hovav, the petrochemical plant of hazardous substances. Some are even built on approved routes of future roads, military zones, or nature reserves, thus obstructing the planned development of the area. Families residing in unauthorized areas cannot benefit from public services enjoyed by the community at large, and they are unable to pay for travel to places for these services because of the physical distance. As a result, many Bedouin families with young children cannot enjoy the standard of living which they could have had. To solve this, Israeli governments appointed several committees to find accepted solutions, but the steady increase in the compensation tariff causes the Bedouins to think it is worth resisting the offers and wait for better offers in the future. Yiftachel and ilk encourage the Bedouins to "resist" Israel's proposed solutions.
The one-sided and tendentious representations of Israel as an apartheid state which maltreats the Palestinians, the Bedouins, and Arab citizens, feeds into the rising anti-Semitism in the UK. As well known, the anti-Jewish atmosphere in Britain is so bad that, by one account, a large number of Jews would leave the country if Labor wins power in the forthcoming election.
As Jews and Israelis, the members of the radical academic fraternity provide cover for the insidious anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiments that have affected parts of the British society.
(Manchester U) Eyal Clyne: Middle East Centers as Agents of Zionist Hegemony
An interesting exchange was posted recently on the blog of the Forum for Regional Thinking. Shimon Shamir, professor emeritus of Middle East History at Tel Aviv University criticized the 2019 book by Dr. Eyal Clyne of Manchester University, Orientalism, Zionism and Academic Practice. Clyne, who interviewed Israeli Middle East experts, portrayed these experts as motivated by selfishness. Since experts see the creation and dissemination of qualified knowledge in Middle East studies as a "mission", for Clyne, the "mission" is selfish because it involves receiving rewards from the state. It comes to strengthen the expert and expertise and provides more power and status. Shamir rejects Clyne's assertion that the "mission" is an exercise in seeking the power that is reinforced by various strategies of "hegemony and authority building". Shamir takes issue with Clyne's overall assessment that the "mission" is a latent expression of a desire for power and national recognition, combined with a "commitment to the state and security system of Zionist ideology".
Even by the lamentably low standards of anti-Israel scholarships, Clyne's book stands out. He refers to scholars as studying and teaching "within the racist, militarist and capitalist bounds of their society," or, writing on the "imbalance of power (e.g. global imperialism, capitalism, global 'western' hegemony, or Israeli colonialism)." He claims that several Israeli Middle East Centers, "agents and agencies express manifest racist views, [such as] the propaganda works of Efraim Karsh or [Mordechai] Kedar". Clyne even describes Kedar of Bar-Ilan University, as a purveyor of hate statements. To prove Kedar's alleged "hate speech," Clyne misquotes Kedar: "The existence of a living Jewish people in a functioning Jewish state threatens the very raison d'être of Islam, which came into being Judaism obsolete', in a piece where Arabs and Muslims are also systematically conflated." But in fact, Kedar wrote that "The existence of a living Jewish people in a functioning Jewish state threatens the very raison d'être of Islam, which came into being TO RENDER [emphasis added] Judaism obsolete." Kedar continues, "For that reason, Arabs and Muslims will never accept Israel as the Jewish State." Kedar explained that "The religious reason is rooted in Islam's conception of itself as a faith whose mission is to bring both Judaism and Christianity to an end and inherit all that was once Jewish or Christian: land, places of worship, and people. In Islam's worldview, Palestine in its entirety belongs to Muslims alone because both Jews and Christians betrayed Allah when they refused to become followers of the prophet Muhammad. Their punishment is to be expulsion from their lands and the forfeiture of all rights to them." Instead of debating Kedar over his statement, Clyne dismissed his argument as hate.
Clyne is one of a large number of anti-Israel academic activists recruited to trash Israel, as noted in the November 2018 IAM report, "Employment Opportunities Abroad: Critics of Israel Wanted," the transaction is mutually beneficial. The activist-scholars gain legitimacy by having an Israeli who asserts that Israel is an immoral apartheid state. The Israeli scholars get access to coveted research or teaching positions in a tight job market.
Interestingly, Clyne's Ph.D. supervisor at Manchester University, Prof. Erica Burman, is an expert on Developmental Psychology with Cognitive Studies and has been teaching developmental psychology, educational psychology, psychology of childhood, counselling and psychotherapy, human development, and qualitative and discursive research methods. She became a professor of Psychology and Women's Studies. She also co-founded with Ian Parker the Discourse Unit (transinstitutional and transdisciplinary center for the study of the reproduction and transformation of language and subjectivity). As can be seen, nothing in her background relates to Middle East Studies, yet, according to her university webpage, she supervised the thesis "Orientalism, Zionism and the academic everyday: Middle eastern studies in Israeli Universities (Eyal Clyne, full-time, PhD awarded 2016)." Not surprisingly, Burman is also an anti-Israel activist, she was among the signatories of the 2015, the Guardian ad calling for the boycott of Israel, titled "A Commitment by UK Scholars to the Rights of Palestinians," which was signed by 343 academics affiliated with UK academic institutions, pledging that: "Responding to the appeal from Palestinian civil society, we therefore declare that we will not: • accept invitations to visit Israeli academic institutions; • act as referees in any of their processes; • participate in conferences funded, organised or sponsored by them, or otherwise cooperate with them." Burman was also a signatory in a 2016 open letter by "psychotherapists, researchers and other mental health professionals, write to express our dismay at the decision of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) to hold its next international conference in Jerusalem."
Clyne, did a review of Burman's colleague, Ian Parker's book Revolutionary Keywords for A New Left, noting that "Parker is an experienced Marxist activist... having surfaced in his years of activism in British radical-left groups," and also praised Parker for "maintaining anti-Zionism without racism."
Clyne has worked overtime to uphold his end of the transaction. In addition to publishing the above book, Clyne has been recently engaged in bashing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. He has circulated a "protest" version of the IHRA definition which pro-Palestinian activists bitterly resent because it limits their ability to portray Israel as an irredeemable "racist," "apartheid," "colonial," imperialist" state. The "protest" version is called "Anti-Palestinian Racism", and replaces the words "anti-Semitism", "Jews" and "Israel" with the words "Palestinians", and "Palestine." Clyne sent a version of the "bill" to the Jewish Voice for Labour. As well known, the Labour Party is embroiled in a scandal over its anti-Semitism.
As for Clyne's statement that scholars are having a selfishly motivated mission, it takes one to know one. Middle East Centers in British universities are a hotbed for pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activism often fueled by Arab Gulf money.
Employment Opportunities Abroad: Critics of Israel Wanted
IAM has occasionally reported on pro-Palestinian activists who recruit Israelis and Jews to defame Israel. Nothing is more persuasive than an Israeli academic crying out loud that Israel is an immoral, apartheid state. Ilan Pappe is a prominent case in point, along with Amir Paz-Fuchs, Uri Gordon, Merav Amir, Hagar Kotef, Eyal Weizman, among others.
As expected, a new generation of academics have been groomed by tenured professors to continue with Israel bashing. Eyal Clyne (formerly Niv), the subject of the IAM report
"[TAU, Anthropology, assistants to Prof' Haim Hazan] Eyal (Niv) Clyne & Matan Kaminer, anarchists and radical activists" in January 2011, is one of them. As MA students, Clyne and Kaminer taught the courses Introduction to Anthropology at Tel Aviv University in 2009-2010. Clyne has published an article "Honorary PhD in Victimhood for Alan Dershowitz" where he denounced TAU, "besides the fact that Tel-Aviv University is already entangled with the army, the arms industry," – it choose to further strengthen its ties with the movement for justifying the colonialization industry in its backyard; and besides that its xenophobia studies institution is a leading partner in the industry of the mystification of anti-semitism (and of course places all criticism of Israel under this banner); this is also a real case of academic disgrace."
Clyne spoke at a conference at the Open University in Raanana, on "'Arab' experts: the crisis of representation and the Jews who mediate the 'Arabs'." Focusing on Israeli Middle East scholars. The "central tenet in the discussion is the claim that Arab-experts role does not originate from the need to define, limit and preserve the Arabs as enemy or lower class. On the contrary." His MA thesis, supervised by Prof. Dan Rabinowitz, was awarded summa cum laude. Rabinowitz himself has been a political activist for years, as IAM reported in 2008, he was participating in an anti-Israel seminar on Jerusalem in the Netherlands, as an Israeli who presents "the 'normality' of repression". Clyne's 2015 publication is exploring the everyday interactions of Palestinians working in Jewish spaces in Jerusalem. He postulates that "Palestinian labourers take pride in, and emphasise their identity as unequalled workers, with which they are welcome in the Jewish space. This identity is, at least temporarily, placed above the Arab/Palestinian identity, which is, of course, rejected and unwelcomed in the Jewish space, and with which they enjoy no benefits." Clyne continues, "paradoxically, the very perception of them being 'good-workers' depends precisely on their being Arabs... Nationalism is therefore a central category with palpable implications for the social being of Palestinian-labourers, not merely a matter of consciousness, and certainly not 'false,' as Marxism-based theories may imply."
Clyne has moved to study at Manchester University where Prof. Erica Burman, a critical development psychologist supervised his PhD dissertation. Not incidentally, Burman is a long time anti-Israel activist. In 2002 she was a signatory to a petition of Jews renouncing Israel's 'Law of Return.' More recently she has been engaged with the BDS movement, for example, she is signatory to a petition, in 2015 of "more than 340 senior academics at UK universities have published a pledge not to cooperate with Israeli institutions". As reported by the Electronic Intifada, "other signatories include those whose academic work has nothing to do with Palestine and the region, but who have still felt compelled to take a stand," such as Burman.
Clyne's PhD thesis "Orientalism, Zionism, and the Academic Everyday: Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in Israeli Universities" explores the political in the field Middle East studies in Israeli universities. "I argue that the field functi'ons as an academic industry, and then I ask about its products, producers, consumers, etc. I also argue that it is powerful agents/agencies and dynamics in society, such as national security agencies (broadly defined), securitism, cultural-Capitalism, orientalism, socio-politics and the 'demand' for certain cultural products... [T]he social import of 'mizraḥanut' (literally: orientalism) in the Israeli-Jewish society pervades and shapes the local academic field in a mutual relationship." Now available as a book.
Clyne's latest article in the September 2018 issue of the journal CADAAD published by the University of Lancaster, continues the same line. Titled the "Ideology, the Nation and the Unsaid: Sensing the Mission in Israeli Middle East Studies" is purposed to "examine the discursive assumptions arising from a prevalent narrative in Israeli Middle East studies, as carrying a public mission. Drawing on Foucauldian, psychosocial and cultural critical discourse analysis, it deconstructs an interview with a key individual in the field to dislodge the political unconscious layers in the pivotal power knowledge agency, and draw conclusions about the politics of knowledge production, practices of academic elites, and the particularities of language with the specific cultural historical conditions in which it operates." Clyne defines the Middle East scholarships in Israel as "subjectified Zionist ideology, which are narrated with urgency, pride and missionary charges. First, the narrated mission expresses a cognizance, assumption or hope that MES students will shape the future of the (Zionist) society and state, and explicates an ambition for an ambiguous national intervention behind the scenes through habituation and authority-building. The 'mission' is then to 'know' and educate about the 'Arab/Muslim,' and thus contribute to 'coexistence;' yet, while simultaneously being articulated with exclusivist Zionist assumptions that perform the Zionist ownership of Israeli academia."
As noted above, embarking on an academic career, Clyne intends to climb the academic ladder by focusing on themes such as Israeli employers humiliating Palestinian laborers or critiquing Israeli Middle East scholarship. In his view, this scholarship is an "interested hegemonic and academic discourse, as well as manifests a particular Zionist devotion".
By providing employment to Israelis willing to criticize Israel, Western universities, notably British ones, are privileging a deeply radical scholarship which does not serve the academic goal of providing a balanced view of reality.
Leading the One State Solution Movement is Ilan Pappe the Political Activist of Exeter University
IAM has written extensively about the political activism of scholars who have used their academic positions to push for their politics. One such an activist is Professor Ilan Pappe of Exeter University, formerly of the University of Haifa, who is now behind a new initiative of an old idea, the one democratic state campaign which will be launched in the autumn. Pappe goes by the name Ilan Binyamin on Facebook, and is the leading force behind the movement. Pappe has drafted the principles of the future one state.
Pappe summarised his philosophy in an eulogy of late Uri Avneri a few days ago, where he blamed Israel alone for all the Palestinian misfortunes. He expects Israeli submission to the Palestinian demands and explains his rationale, "there were and are two 'peace camps' or 'left' in Israel. Those who recognize that the ethnic cleansing of 1948 was the worst crime Zionism committed against the Palestinians and those who regard the 1967 occupation as the source of all evil, but deny the Nakba. Avenri took part in the ethnic cleansing, never admitted it or repented for it. This was a pity as he was very influential on the Israeli Left. On the other hand, he was a brave opponent of the occupation and for this we should be grateful for his work and activism. There will be however no peace and no reconciliation until the Israeli Jews acknowledge the crime they committed in 1948, be accountable for it (mainly by allowing the right of return) and stop the on going Nakba today."
But how did Pappe got so radicalized? A summary of his evolution is in order.
When Pappe was a student of Middle East history at the Hebrew University he was, in his own words, "exposed to the plight of the Palestinians." Motivated to produce a pro-Palestinian narrative, he rejected the traditional regard for "truth" because he viewed "any such construction as vain and presumptuous" and in the way of his "compassion for the colonized not the colonizer."
Working under Roger Owen at Oxford University on a doctoral dissertation about the 1948 war enabled him to take a decisive step towards challenging the "pro-Israel narrative." As Pappe put it, Owen "had strong ties to the British left and the pro-Palestinian scholarly world". His second adviser, Albert Hourani, who had testified in the 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on behalf of the Arab cause "was well acquainted" with the "Palestinian narrative."
He found kindred spirits in the newly formed group of self-described New Historians, whose intellectual leader was Benny Morris. Pappe's contribution was relatively modest and his description of British policy quite subdued. He described British policy in Palestine as "ad hoc" with "scarcely any planning" yet opposing the creation of a Jewish state because of a potential communist connection.
In subsequent version, however, Pappe provided a more radical account of events. Pappe's stand on the refugees was particularly blunt. Though allowing that some Palestinians left before they were expelled, naming it Plan D. "Plan D was an important factor accounting for the exodus of so great a number of Palestinians".
Pappe was emphatic that the Jews did not face the "Holocaust or Masada," discrediting the empirical fact that Jews were overwhelmed by the large Arab forces amassed against. In his view, this was just a myth of Jews waging a "heroic struggle." Pappe proclaimed that the outcome "had been predetermined in the political and diplomatic corridors of power long before even one shot had been fired." This is, of course, a blatant misrepresentation of the war in which the Jews lost 6,000 people, a fully one percent of the population.
Pappe's habit of tailoring his historical writings to current event only increased with time. He was very excited when the PLO and Israel signed the Declaration of Principles (DOP) on 13 September 1993, allowing that the "reconstruction of the past was now clearly connected to contemporary efforts to reach a political settlement" and that this "constituted the most valuable aspect of the new history". For Pappe, by then an established activist in the Communist Hadash Party, the new agreement offered a golden opportunity for delegitimizing the birth of Israel.
Pappe put his academic-political activism to work by co-founding, in the summer of 1997, the Palestinian Israeli Academic Dialogue (Palisad). A group of twenty Israeli and Palestinian historians committed to provide "bridging narratives" between the two people that, "worked almost frantically, motivated by a sense of urgency in the wake of the deadlock and dissatisfaction with the Oslo peace process." The "bridging narrative", among other things, was meant to help the Israeli participants to accept the Palestinian perspective of the 1948 war. Somewhat to their surprise, the Israeli participants learned that the Palestinians were totally committed to the narrative of "ethnic cleansing of Palestine."
By this time, Pappe renounced all fidelity to facts, known as positivism. Indeed, he renounced the positivist methodology in the strongest possible terms. As he put it, "From a positivist point of view, there was no clear evidence for some of the major claims made by the Palestinian narrative, such as the existence of a master plan for the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 or the forty massacres alleged to have occurred during the conflict". Instead, he decided to write in ways "connecting my research on Palestine to the present Palestinian predicament and the contemporary attempt to reach a solution". Overcoming some "epistemological and methodological challenges," Pappe was able to frame his research within the "post-colonialist perspective," claiming that from the outset, the Zionist project was aimed at expelling the Palestinians to create an ethnically pure Jewish state. Reiterating that in 1948 the Jews faced no threat of annihilation, he suggested that the military parity on the ground was bolstered by American and British support for the Jews.
Pappe suggested that despite the "myth of Arab intransigence," the Arabs were willing to compromise; the failure to prevent the war or to resolve the conflict, in his opinion, laid solely with the Jews.
It was only a short leap for Pappe to come up with a full blown theory of "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians. In a lengthy chapter titled "Were They Expelled? The History, Historiography and Relevance of the Refugee Problem" he rejected the argument that the Palestinians fled either on their own or at the urging of their leadership, claiming that even the limited call of the Mufti for women and children to leave was ignored by the Palestinians: "Before women and children could be evacuated, they were expelled with the men from their homes." He took to citing Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar who was an early exponent of the expulsion theory, stating: "So, Plan D was, in many ways, just what Khalidi claims it was - a master plan for the expulsion of as many Palestinians as possible." Pappe's newly-found conviction that Israel was exclusively responsible for the refugee problem was closely related to the peace negotiations. In preparation for the final agreement Palestinian academic-activists launched a major effort to highlight the "right of return" of Palestinians to their former homes in Israel, the standard Arab/Palestinian euphemism for Israel's demographic subversion.
By "proving" beyond "reasonable doubt" that the refugees were expelled, Pappe hoped to lend legitimacy to a broader definition of "the right of return," admitting that "The demand for associating the Palestinian narrative with the contemporary peace process was made throughout the Palestinian world."
Efforts to catch up with political activism compelled Pappe to produce yet another version of the 1948 war. He now urged Israel to "perform this liberation act… to rewrite, indeed salvage, a history that was erased and forgotten." Pappe warned that as long as Israel refused to assume responsibility for its ethnic cleansing, no "liberation" and reconciliation would be possible. To make the liberation and reconciliation real, rather than an empty gesture, Israel should agree to the Palestinian "right of return." To make the case for this "right," Pappe published his own version of the 1948 war. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine promised to replace "the paradigm of war with the paradigm of ethnic cleansing" and "war crime". In his perspective, "the Zionist movement did not wage a war that 'tragically but inevitably' led to the expulsion of parts of' the indigenous population, but the other way around: the main goal was the ethnic cleansing." As a result, "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine must become rooted in our memory and consciousness as a crime against humanity." Pappe repeated his claim that Plan D represented a blueprint for wholesale expulsion of the native population that, in his opinion, was expedited by a considerable number of deliberate massacres.
Teddy Katz, a postgraduate student at the University of Haifa, who exposed an alleged 1948 massacre in the coastal village of Tantura, helped Pappe to push for his ethnic cleansing theory. The supposed massacre - glaringly missing from contemporary Palestinian Arab historiography of the war - was allegedly committed by soldiers of the Alexandroni brigade. Katz was sued by brigade fighters and agreed an out-of-court settlement. This lead the university of Haifa to appoint a re-examination committee that disqualified Katz thesis. Ignoring these facts altogether, Pappe quickly transformed Katz into a victim of the oppressive Israeli system, adding the hitherto unclaimed Tantura "massacre" to the roster of supposed Jewish atrocities. In one of them, in the village of Mi'ar, Pappe had the "Israeli troops shooting indiscriminately at the villages…When they got tired of the killing spree, the soldiers then began destroying the houses." Pappe's new narrative presented the balance of forces as overwhelmingly favouring the Jews; contemporary fears of extermination, just a few years after the Holocaust, were dismissed as a myth because the "reality on the ground was, of course, almost the opposite." He noted that in "public, the leaders of the Jewish community portrayed doomsday scenarios… In private, however, they never used this discourse. They were fully aware that the Arab war rhetoric was in no way matched by any serious preparation on the ground." Indeed, in making fantastic claims of crimes allegedly committed by the Jews - from rape, to murder, to labor camps, to massacres, to biological warfare by poisoning of water supplies - Pappe clearly insinuated to Nazi-like behaviour, not to mention harping on longstanding anti-Semitic libels.
Pappe accused David Ben Gurion of the planning to expel the Palestinians and based his theory on a supposedly letter which Ben Gurion has written his son Amos in 1937: "The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as war." The problem is, there is no such a sentence in Ben Gurion's letter. Pappe has falsified this quote. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America appealed to the Chancellor of Exeter University to look at this and other academic infractions, but without success
Ironically, it was Benny Morris, one of the original New Historians, who called out Pappe for his fantastical version of the 1948 war.
In an article titled "The Liar as a Hero," Morris described Pappe as "at best sloppiest, at worse one of the most dishonest" scholars who maliciously distorted research to appeal to Western audiences. Morris, who noted that Pappe had hardly mentioned ethnic cleansing in his earlier books, called him an "a retroactive poseur." Morris went over the chronology of Pappe's writing and concluded that the latter became radicalized only after getting tenure. In other words, not only was Pappe a "poseur" but lacked the moral courage to stand up for his convictions before receiving job security.
Pappe appealed to British academics to intervene on his behalf during the 1999 Tantura affair which led to an early call to boycott the Israeli academy. Writing to Mona Baker, a pro-Palestinian scholar from Manchester University, he asked British academics to boycott the University of Haifa, where he was a tenured senior lecturer at the time, along with Bar-Ilan University for opening an extension college in Ariel, outside the pre-1967 "green line." The request was taken up by a newly organized group of scholars eager to boycott Israeli universities which quickly issued a petition "endorsing the decision of European academics to boycott Israeli academic institutes." The Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was founded in 2004, where Pappe, was a leading supporter.
Pappe worked hard to convince the Association of University Teachers (AUT) to boycott Israel by addressing their meeting. There, he falsely claimed of persecution by his university and provided the pretext for the boycott: "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." The plea came to a naught as the AUT rescinded its decision.
By the early 2000s Pappe had created the narrative of Israel's history as an unceasing ethnic cleansing from 1948 to the present.
Despite of a long record of misrepresenting and falsifying history, Pappe has become a "super star" in the circles that support BDS. Being Jewish and Israeli, he provides legitimacy to their cause. This is not to say that Pappe, or anyone else for that matter, has no right to join the pro-Palestinian cause. Pappe's exploits, however, shine a light on the fact that Exeter University, the largest British recipient of Arab money, is willing to overlook his academic record. Unfortunately, Exeter University is not the only one which hired strident critics of Israel so they can push political activism masquerading as academic research.
Ilan Pappe in TAU on a Global Tour Defaming Israel
Former Israeli academic Ilan Pappe, professor of History at the Exeter University Center for Palestine Studies is currently on a world tour promoting his new book Ten Myths About Israel. Pappe, a long standing promoter of the boycott of Israeli Universities, gave a lecture on "ethnic cleansing of Palestine" at Tel Aviv University on May 8, 2017. He was invited by the Arab student association to commemorate the Nakba. There was no uproar by the boycott community about him speaking in an Israeli university. His tour includes Seattle, Washington DC, Brazil, Buenos Aires, Cornwall, and Wales.
Pappe is a controversial historian. To recall, IAM reported on an attempt by the NGO CAMERA requesting Exeter University to inquire into Pappe's falsification of a quote by David Ben Gurion, Exeter University refused to act.
Pappe himself admitted his pro-Palestinian bias in the introduction to his book A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, "My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the 'truth' when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers; and sides with the workers not the bosses. He feels for women in distress, and has little admiration for men in command. He cannot remain indifferent towards mistreated children, or refrain from condemning their elders. In short, mine is a subjective approach, often but not always standing for the defeated over the victorious. At most historical junctures of this history, the Palestinians were in the inferior position, and the Zionists and later the Israelis had the upper hand."
Benny Morris, his former colleague at the New Historians fraternity described Pappe's methodology, "Pappe regarded history through the prism of contemporary politics and consciously wrote history with an eye to serving political ends." Morris added, "Unfortunately, much of what Pappe tries to sell his readers is complete fabrication... This book is awash with errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography. And, in Pappe's case, it is not just a matter of sloppiness or indolence in checking facts; the problem goes deeper. It can almost be called a deliberate system of error. The multiplicity of mistakes on each page is a product of both Pappe's historical methodology and his political proclivities."
Morris also noted "For those enamored with subjectivity and in thrall to historical relativism, a fact is not a fact and accuracy is unattainable. Why grope for the truth? Narrativity is all." To provide evidence to Pappe's sloppiness Morris lists numerous errors. Pappe was wrong on the founding date of the Stern Gang and the Palmach; wrong on the dates of the Palmach fighting against the British; wrong on the date Ben-Gurion was chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive; wrong on the date of establishment of the Arab Higher Committee; wrong the date the Arab Legion withdrew from Palestine along with the British; wrong on the voting results of the UN partition proposal; wrong to think the Jewish forces were better equipped than the Arab armies; wrong on the date of the first truce; wrong on the date of battles; wrong on the date the Grand Mufti fled Palestine; wrong on the date of the founding of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; wrong on the date Tel Aviv was founded; wrong on who established the first Zionist settlements in Palestine; wrong to suggest that the Israeli Foreign Office translated to Hebrew the U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 implying it did not have to withdraw from all the territories occupied in the Six Day War; wrong on the number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in 1979 and 1982; wrong on the date of the Black September in Jordan; wrong on the date of the first Israeli settlements in the West Bank; wrong on the date of the anti-Hashemite riots in Jordan; wrong to state that Palestine's future was determined in the Husayn-McMahon correspondence and the Sykes-Picot Agreement; wrong not to notice the battle Armaggedon or Meggido of September 1918; wrong on the number of casualties in the Arab rioting of 1929. Morris ends his list with "and so on and on and on."
Morris's review of Pappe's A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, is scathing, "Pappe allowed his politics to hold sway over his history." He noted, "Pappe's errors are not merely a matter of sloppiness born of a contempt for that leaven of dullards, 'the facts.' The book is also awash with errors resulting from the writer's ideological preferences, his interest in blackening the Zionists and whitening the Palestinians." As an example of such bias Morris noted that Pappe described events of 1920 riots as resulting from clashes "with the most aggressive of the Zionist organizations, Beitar, whose members marched provocatively in the streets of Arab Jerusalem." But Morris scolded him, "Beitar, the youth movement of the right-wing Revisionist Movement, was founded in 1923, so clearly it could not have had a hand in the events of 1920. (Even a postmodernist can see that!)".
Unperturbed by criticism, Pappe writes books and tours the world accusing Israel of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. To the contrary, like many of his radical peers, he is using the Palestinians to divert attention, in this case from the bloodshed and ethnic cleansing in Syria.
Simona Sharoni, Former Israeli Scholar Promotes False Allegations Against Israel
We see often Israeli academics recruited by Palestinians to promote their cause. But this time there is a twist. An article on various media outlets, including Inside Higher Education, reports on harassment of a former Israeli scholar, Simona Sharoni from SUNY Plattsburgh University. It says that "on 6 September, Sharoni says she was informed by a school administrator that an individual had made five requests under New York's Freedom of Information Law asking for records on her hiring, employment history and participation in academic conferences. According to Sharoni, Sean Brian Dermody, assistant to the vice president for administration and director of management services at SUNY Plattsburgh, asked Sharoni to help with the request by locating the records and turning them over. The next day, Sharoni says, Dermody sent a follow-up email asking her to give him all correspondence in her possession related to her hiring."
Sharoni explains that this harassment is due to her highlighting "parallels between Palestinian victims of Israeli violence and victims of sexual assault." Quite contrary to Sharoni's assertion, some years ago an MA thesis by Tal Nitsan at the Hebrew University blamed Jewish Israeli men, in particularly soldiers, for racist behavior, that is, refusing to rape Palestinian women.
Outlandish as her analogy is, Sharoni is another Israeli activist promoting the Palestinian cause and calling for BDS. In 2014 she was among the 100 members of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) who signed a petition calling to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
Sharoni has also travelled to promote her message. An IAM post from August 2015 noted that Sharoni gave a talk at the Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter University, a well known hub of anti-Israel activity connected to Ilan Pappe. In her talk "Violence, Resistance, and Solidarity in Israel and Palestine: Feminist Perspectives," Sharoni explains that "By focusing on gender and resistance, this book addresses dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are often overlooked or altogether ignored by politicians, ordinary scholars, and the mainstream media. Unlike conventional accounts that portray the conflict as a primordial, intractable war between two collectivities with competing claims over the same territory, the analysis featured in this talk exposes the power asymmetries and systemic injustices at the heart of the conflict. The talk chronicles the gendered aspects of the conflict and resistance acts in both Palestine and Israel with special attention to the situation on the ground in the aftermath of the July 2014 Massive Israeli attack on Gaza. Using an original framework that foregrounds feminism as a theory of anti-oppression and liberation the talk offers an original analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the prospects for its resolution." Sharoni gave this same talk on a number of campuses at the time.
Not unexpectedly, this Institute does no deem it important to organize an event on the treatment of women by ISIS, Al-Qaeda or other occupying forces. As IAM noted, the constant emphasis on Israel is a good diversion technique, it is politically correct, and pleases the Arab funders of Western universities.
Equally interesting, there is even a direct link between Rachel Corrie and Sharoni. Corrie, which was accidently killed while protecting a house from demolishing in Gaza, was a former student of Sharoni at Evergreen State College in Washington State. In a press release after Corrie died, Sharoni stated that she influenced Corrie's decision to go to Gaza. On this issue, Haaretz's Nathan Guttman explained that "After the terrorist attacks of September 11, she [Corrie] decided to join a group of activists in Olympia. She contacted all the organizations but decided to focus on one that deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to a large extent as a result of conversations with Simona Sharoni, a former Israeli who taught Corrie at Evergreen College and told her about what was going on in the territories. From there she came to the International Solidarity Movement and got the idea of coming to the territories."
The Sharoni case at SUNY Plattsburgh University joins a number of other cases which touch upon the boundaries between academic freedoms and political activism against Israel. IAM will report on future developments.
Oren Ben-Dor Loses High Court Case Against University Over Anti-Israel Conference
IAM recently reported on the law-suit filed by former Israeli academic, Oren Ben-Dor and a colleague, against their university, Southampton University, for cancelling their conference questioning Israel's right to exist, on grounds of public safety.
The High-Court hearing took place last week and the British High Court Judge has ruled against the professors. The Judge explained that the University was "motivated by well-founded concerns for the safety of people and property, and exemplify good and responsible decision-making."
The Palestinians and their supporters are reaping what they have sown. They instigate provocations, disruptions and "interventions" during lectures by pro-Israelis that the university can now claim that there is a well founded concern for public safety and the recent King's College London brawl is still fresh on the public mind.
Oren Ben-Dor Granted Permission to Judicially Review Cancellation of Southampton Anti-Israel Conference
Last week, Dr. Oren Ben-Dor, an ex-Israeli professor who teaches law at the University of Southampton, U.K. was given a green light by the court to proceed with law-suit against the University of Southampton. As IAM reported, Ben-Dor, a radical leftist, tried to organize twice a conference on whether Israel has a right to exist - a topic that created a substantial backlash. Citing security concerns, the authorities cancelled the conferences. No date of court hearing is set yet.
It is not clear what type of legal arguments would be used in court, but Ben- Dor has a long history of a writing that verge on anti-Semitism.
To examine what mounts to anti-Semitic speech, there are three separate bodies that took this issue to test. The 2005 EU Working Definition of Anti-Semitism; the 2010 Fact Sheet of the State Department; and the 2016 University of California Principles Against Intolerance.
The EU Working Definition of Anti-Semitism states that "Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include: Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor." The Working Definition also declares that anti-Semitism is "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."
According to the Fact Sheet of the State Department, anti-Semitism is, "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis"; "Blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions"; "Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation"; "Multilateral organizations focusing on Israel only for peace or human rights investigations"; "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist."
According to the University of California Principles Against Intolerance, "In particular, opposition to Zionism often is expressed in ways that are not simply statements of disagreement over politics and policy, but also assertions of prejudice and intolerance toward Jewish people and culture...Anti-Semitism, anti-semitic forms of anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California."
When assessing Ben-Dor's writing with the indices mentioned above, he is an anti-Semite on three counts.
First, he denies Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Ben-Dor has written in 2007 "Why Israel Has No Right to Exist as a Jewish State," where he stated that "The non-recognition of the Jewish state is an egalitarian imperative that looks both at the past and to the future. It is the uncritical recognition of the right of Israel to exist at a Jewish state which is the core hindrance for this egalitarian premise to shape the ethical challenge that Palestine poses. A recognition of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state means the silencing that would breed more and more violence and bloodshed." He then ends his article by a typical neo-Marxist critical utopian goal of a bi-national Jewish Palestinian state, stating "Only a single egalitarian and non sectrarian state over all the whole of historic Palestine will achieve justice and peace."
Second, his criticism targets Israel alone.
Third, Ben-Dor wrote in an article in 2008 that "the Holocaust's significance lies beyond the actions by the Nazis who actually perpetrated the violence and who justified these actions by turning this significance into a militarist object of an idea. The same claim can be made in relation Zionists and their Jewish opponents." By suggesting that Israel can do to its opponents what Nazi Germany did to Jews, Ben-Dor fits to the description of anti-Semitism. Also, Ben-Dor appeared in the conference "One State for Palestine / Israel: A Country for All Its Citizens," which was shown on the TV program Arabic Hour on April 18, 2009 (Ben-Dor speaks at 19:45 mins into program) where he stated "It is the denial that there is something so Jewish in that which has provoked the holocaust and the dealing with which has been so successfully postponed by the holocaust." Ben-Dor cites Jean-Francois Lyotard, the French political activist-turned-philosopher, in stating that Lyotard "called the jews with a small j to distinguish it from actual Jews, as a phenomenon that belongs to human being and thinking. In the same way that terrorism is a phenomena that may be distinguished from actual terrorists. We must not be external and representational, of rights and duties, in thoughts and action. We must connect to what is, but not the is of unjust acts. but the is the deepest primordial self concealing is, the how of the people that perpetrate these acts, who justify rationalize them as no choice as we saw in the Lebanon destruction and the Gaza massacre." Ben-Dor invokes Lyotard who universalized the meaning of Auschwitz, for the need to remember all other victims ranging from political prisoners in Stalin's labour camps to causalities of Western neo-colonial control under the guise of development, including the Palestinians.
Ben-Dor should be aware that being a Jew does not automatically grant immunity from being labeled an anti-Semite. One can be both Jewish anti-Semite and Ben-Dor fits this description on many counts. Hopefully, the court would take this into consideration.
Ariella Azoulay: How to Become a Full Professor at an Ivy League School
Ariella Azoulay, (Ph.D. 1996 at the Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv University, supervised by Moshe Zuckermann, "On the Possibility of Critical Art in Israel in the1970s & 1980s"), had a hard time making an academic career in Israel. A self-described lexicographer, her work has been devoted to demonstrating the alleged Nazi-like treatment of Palestinians by Israelis. Her critical approach to picture taking included commentary on "hidden reality" behind images. For example, in one shot of a group of Palestinians detained by the IDF, she imagined their torture. In another case, the caption behind a picture depicting a number of Palestinians behind a chain link fence made a direct comparisons to Auschwitz. Azoulay is a frequent collaborator of Adi Ophir, a radical philosopher from Tel Aviv University who "found" Israel to be ontologically on the same spectrum as Nazi Germany. On one occasion Ophir urged NATO strikes on Tel Aviv to force Israel out of the territories.
Even the normally tolerant Israeli universities could not accommodate the brand of blatant activism masquerading as academic research. In the recent years she was an adjunct at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv University and listed as a fellow in Adi Ophir's Political Lexicon at the Minerva Humanities Center of Tel Aviv University.
But her luck changed dramatically when Beshara Doumani, the Director of Middle East Studies, Brown University offered her a position. Doumani, a leading pro-Palestinian activist in the United States, was apparently instrumental in getting Azoulay a full professorship in Modern Media/ Literature in Brown. In an announcement on the Middle East Studies website, directed to "colleagues and friends of Middle East studies," he calls her promotion "great news."
As a signatory of the 2014 petition "Over 100 Middle East Studies Scholars and Librarians Call for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions" along with Doumani, Azoulay is the latest in a well-known trend whereby radical Israeli academics are rewarded with positions in "friendly" departments abroad. Under normal circumstances her rather modest academic achievements would not qualify Azoulay for the position. But in the highly politicized Middle East scholarship, bashing Israel has its rewards.
Orli Fridman in the Balkans: Spreading anti-Israel Message while Whitewashing Genocidal Serbian Leaders
A young Serbian who participated in a gay Pride Parade in Belgrade carrying a Star of David flag complained about harassment. Much to his surprise the person who verbally hectored him was Dr. Orli Fridman, an Israeli academic working in Belgrade. Fridman is a lecturer in the Center for Comparative Conflict Studies (CFCCS) which is part of Media and Communications (FMK) at Singidunum University in Belgrade. She received her BA degree at the Hebrew University in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies and her MA at Tel Aviv University department of History of the Middle East. She got her PhD at the School of Conflict and Resolution (SCAR) George Mason University.
Fridman uses a typical critical spin in her work which, as well known, provides one sided account of conflicts seen from the perspective of the "victims" de jour. For example, in an article published in the journal Balkan Transitional Justice on 30 March, 2015 "How Belgraders Remember the NATO Bombings" Fridman writes about "how did ordinary Belgraders" have experienced the days and nights under fire "as the Serbian state tries to construct a narrative of national victimhood around the 1999 NATO air strikes." Needless to say, in her critical account, there is no place for an explanation as to why did NATO bomb Belgrade. As well known, NATO undertook the attacks because the Serbians were massacring Muslims in the savage civil war. So much so that the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica in July 1995, which was determined to be an act of genocide.
Like many radical Israeli academics, Fridman does not miss an opportunity to add Israeli Jews to the category of blood lusty perpetrators: She added to her article that "In my years of working as a facilitator of encounters of groups in conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, as a Jewish Israeli, I have experienced the lack of empathy of my own people towards the suffering of Palestinians as the most challenging aspect of my work. It remains difficult to accept the lack of acknowledgement of the suffering of the other, even more so in recent years during Israeli attacks on Gaza, as I witness expressions of indifference and even joy towards the suffering of the Palestinian people."
Not surprisingly, Fridman is a frequent collaborator of BGU Oren Yiftachel and a supporter of a binational state. In June 2004 Fridman presented a paper at a Haifa University conference on Comparative Aspects to the Bi-National State Option. Previously, in 2003–2004 she served as Yiftachel's research assistant while he held a visiting position at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) in Washington DC. Yiftachel also worked together with Fridman at the Center for Comparative Conflict Studies (CFCCS) in 2013.
According to the CFCCS website, the center would be leading a one-week intensive Study seminar on Comparative Memory Activism in Israel/Palestine and Serbia/Kosovo from November 22-29, 2015 under the sponsorship of the German Robert Bosch Stiftung: "Members of civil society organizations, activists, journalists and scholars engaged in Memory Work from Serbia and Kosovo are invited to apply to participate in this unique week-long program on the topics of Politics of Memory, Conflict Transformation and Memory Activism as related to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The seminar will focus on memory work among Israelis and Palestinians as related to themes such as: hegemonic memories vs. alternative ones: the memory of 1948, the memory of 1967, the memory of the Jewish holocaust and others."
Fridman has shown a remarkable understanding of the different academic rules in Israel as opposed to Serbia. In the former, her peers can portray Israel as an apartheid state and accuse the IDF of Nazi-type behavior without jeopardizing their academic career. In the latter, mentioning that the former Serbian leaders, Slobodan Milosevic, General Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic were charged with war crimes and genocide in the International Criminal Court of Justice in the Hague is much more perilous. Indeed, whitewashing Serbian crimes by writing about Serbian "victimhood narrative" is a right step toward safeguarding one's job and getting promoted.
By keeping her position at Singidunum University, Fridman can also legitimize the Balkan beachhead of anti-Israeli rhetoric which she had helped to establish.
Ilan Pappe & the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies at Exeter University: A Match Made in Activist Haven
When Pappe left Haifa University in 2004 amid the controversy surrounding the student Teddy Katz who, according to an Israeli court, "fabricated" a massacre in Tantura allegedly committed by the Alexandroni Brigade in 1948, academic authorities breathed a sigh of relief. But Pappe secured a position at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter University, where his career of exaggerations, inventions and fabrications took off dramatically.
Of late, Pappe has expanded beyond the incessant focus on the alleged misdeeds of Israel in 1948 that, in his view, included wholesale ethnic cleansing, massacres and labor camps. He teamed up with Noam Chomsky to publish a book on the Gaza War, and edited a book on South Africa and Israel to show the alleged apartheid similarities.
If Pappe was employed by Walmart he would surely be made the "employee of the month" for his faithful service. As it happens, he is employed by the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter University, but the principle is the same. Exeter University is one of the largest recipient of Arab money in Great Britain and the Institute, founded by Tim Niblok, has had a highly activist agenda of whitewashing the developments in the Middle East and blackening Israel.
This much should be clear from the list of conferences and events organized by the Institute since January 2014. As well known, the period has coincided with the immense turmoil introduced by ISIS and its brutal hold on large swath of territories in Syria and Iraq.
The list indicates that about a quarter of the talks were devoted to Israel, including Pappe's conference discussed in the previous post. Uri Davis, the former Matzpen member who converted to Islam and a member of the Fatah since 1984 was invited to speak on "(What is Palestine?; What is political-Zionism?; What are Zionist Institutions?; What is ethnic cleansing?; What is apartheid?) and after considering the analogies and the specificities of Israeli apartheid versus past South African apartheid as well as the political implication of declaring Israel an apartheid state under international law."
The talk by Professor Simona Sharoni on March 25, 2015, is especially ironic in this context. Sharoni spoke on "gender and resistance" in the occupied territories: "There is much to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the analysis of community-base research conducted by the Women's Studies Institute at Birzeit University in Palestine or from listening to the accounts of Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories."
Needless to say, the Institute did not deem it important to organize an event on the treatment of women by ISIS. According to a detailed report compiled by Amnesty International and carried by numerous media, ISIS has codified sexual slavery for non-Muslim women, including the Yazidi minority, Christian and Jews, and created a bureaucracy for auctioning women in ISIS run auction houses.
Still, it is not likely that the Institute would discuss the treatment of women in the ISIS- occupied territories. The constant emphasis on Israel is a good diversion technique, it is politically correct, and pleases the Arab funders to boot.
University of Southampton to cancel anti-Israel conference on ground of health and safety risks
The controversial conference in University of Southampton questioning Israel's right to exist may be cancelled on ground of safety concerns, according to the major media.
The conference was due to take place in April 17-19. The organizers are all known political activists: Oren Ben-Dor, University of Southampton, a staunch supporter of a bi-national state and a member of the One State Group, wrote in 2005 in The Independent, The boycott should continue; George Bisharat, Professor of law at University of California and Hastings College of the Law, wrote in 2010 on the Mavi Marmara affair in the USA Today, that Israel is "a state committed to privileging Jews" and that "Israel is implanted...in a country that, can only be sustained by violence"; Suleiman Sharkh, Professor of Power Electronics Machines and Drives, University of Southampton, signed in 2012 a Letter in CounterPunch "The World Cannot Stand by as Palestine is Battered to Death".
University of Southampton authorities were besought by letters and petitions from Jewish groups to cancel the event because of its one-sided selection of speakers and overall bias. The gist of all these appeals was that universities should not provide legitimacy to blatant political events. The only pro-Israel speaker scheduled was professor Geoffrey Alderman from University of Buckingham, hardly a balance for the otherwise hostile three days conference.
The Southampton case is reflective of the broader issue of whether extreme bias on campus can be tolerated under the guise of academic freedom. There are no simple answers to this conundrum, prompting academic authorities to invoke the safety hazard remedy. This, however, created a powerful irony since pro-Palestinian activists have forced the cancellation of several pro-Israeli events by promising disruptions. For instance, in 2007 the University of Leeds cancelled a lecture of Dr. Matthias Kuntzel, a German scholar that was invited by the German Department, entitled "Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Anti-Semitism in the Middle East." The university's Islamic Society complained about the "offensive title," although the title was changed, university authorities cancelled the lecture on grounds of security concerns.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, the organizers announced that they "will explore legal emergency measures to prevent the university from cancelling the conference." They are learning the hard way what a two edged sword is.
Southampton University Conference "International Law & the State of Israel" - Activism Dressed up in Academic Garb
The planned three day conference between the 17th and 19th of April 2015 at Southampton University is a case in point of the long standing practice of pro-Palestinian scholars-activists to use academic legitimacy to further their cause.
The brain child of Oren Ben-Dor, a former Israeli, it promises to use critical international law, the recently fashionable tool of choice in the activist circles, to revisit the legal foundation of the State of Israel. Unsurprisingly, the selection of panelists reflects the position that the international community, as embodied in the United Nations, was rooted in "international injustice."
Ben-Dor's claim to provide a spectrum of views is belied by the fact that most of the participants are BDS supporters, as one critic demonstrated.
The Southampton conference presents a challenge to those who fight the delegitimization of Israel. Though not officially under the auspices of Southampton University, for all intent and purpose the event looks academic and professional. Few outsiders would know that critical international law is a minority field and, more to the point, that it is used virtually exclusively to denounce Israel.
The only remedy would be to organize a "counter-conference" on the subject as befitting a proper academic discourse. However, pro-Israeli activists are hugely outnumbered on campus and are unable to sustain the efforts needed.
What is more, the few steps to address the situation have focused disproportionately on denouncing the anti-Semitic aspects of the BDS movement. This maybe emotionally satisfying, but inadequate to challenge the volume of critical legal research.
Ilan Pappe, the chief Israeli academic apologist to totalitarian regimes
As the previous IAM post indicates, the former Haifa university professor, Ilan Pappe, has been widely associated with denouncing Israel on behalf of a number of totalitarian regimes. They seek legitimacy by referring to Jewish and better even, Israeli academics to promote their anti-Israel agenda while fighting off anti-Semitic accusations. As Pappe admits, "I think the fear of being accused of anti-Semitism is still very strong".
Teheran Times recruited Pappe for this endeavor. The article below spreads it out clearly that Pappe is "A prominent anti-Zionist Israeli historian and intellectual, who is best known for his outspoken criticism of the Israeli government and his opposition to the occupation of Palestinian territories, believes that the Western mainstream media are giving a lopsided and unfair coverage to the war on Gaza, which has many different reasons, including the influence of the Israeli lobby and the fear of these media outlets of being branded anti-Semitist."
As expected Pappe "delivers the goods". In order to delegitimize Israel he makes the comparison between Israel and South Africa, "The only way of stopping Israel is adopting towards it the same attitude adopted against South Africa at the time of Apartheid."
It is worth noticing that Pappe recently got back from a tour in South Africa where he has made similar claims.
Academic Forensics: Ilan Pappe and Exeter University
Ilan Pappe, a subject of a number of posts by IAM, has exceeded his past performance in his long quest to portray Israel as Nazi Germany reincarnate. For those familiar with Pappe's career, the trajectory that brought this former professor at Haifa University is breathtaking.
Styling himself as a New Historian, along with Benny Morris and Avi Shlaim, Pappe made the relatively modest claim that Israel was not as overwhelmed by Arab forces during the 1948 war as traditional historiography would have it. But as his political activism in the Communist Party took off, Pappe revised his own revisionist history of 1948, embellishing it with progressively defamatory incidents of alleged IDF behavior. Things came to a head when, in the early 2000s, Pappe defended his protégé, Teddy Katz in the "Tantura Massacre" case. Katz, a postgraduate student, claimed that the Alexandroni Brigade committed a massacre in the Arab village of Tantura, but retracted when the Brigade veteran sued in court.
To amplify his position, in April 2005 Pappe appealed to the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) to boycott Haifa University for it alleged violation of academic freedom—a process that lead to a subsequent annual vote of the University and College Union to boycott the Israeli academy.
In 2007 Pappe left Israel to teach at Exeter University, England, a position he used to create the narrative that Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians is on par with the treatment of Jews by the Nazis. For instance, in his book Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Pappe claimed that the alleged wholesale expulsion of Palestinians was accompanied by massacres, concentrations camps etc. His new statements (below) on the alleged racist policies of sperm donations are a natural progression of creating the equivalence between Israel and Nazi Germany.
Needless to say, Pappe has become a tireless activist for academic BDS, signing countless petitions, appearing in countless BDS events and supporting the self-appointed virulently anti-Israel Russell Tribunal where he accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinians.
Along the way reputable historians condemned Pappe for shoddy scholarship and fabricating facts. In Dec 2011 Dexter Van Zile, the Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) complained to the Exeter University authorities that Pappe invented key quotes to prove that David Ben Gurion authorized a wholesale expulsion of the Palestinians. But the University declined to pursue the case that would have required a disciplinary action against Pappe.
This stand should not surprise those familiar with the University's Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies and its founder, Professor Tim Niblock. A recipient of Saudi largess, Niblock spent years writing laudatory books about Saudi Arabia. Donations from the Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi prompted Niblock to state that "Libya has pursued one of the most engaged and outgoing foreign policies of the Arab world."
Niblock's deep admiration for the oppressive regimes in the Middle East was matched by deep animosity for Israel. Expressed in articles, editorials and op-eds, the theme was always the same—occupation of the Palestinians and American failure to exert pressure on Israel are at the core of West's problems in the Middle East.
The European Center for Palestine Studies (ECPS) in Niblock's Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter was tailored-made for Pappe. Niblock, now retired, is listed as one of the fellows, and the advisory board is made up of frequent critics of Israel like Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, John Dugard and Richard Falk, the infamous UN rapporteur for Palestinians.
Even a perfunctory glance at the ECPS's website indicates that Pappe's ambitious goal, is taking shape. "Toward a Common Archive" aims to create a replica of Spielberg's archive of Holocaust's survivors' testimonies. Interestingly, the "Testimonies by Zionist Fighters in 1948" was posted first, in an apparent bid to support Pappe's version of events of 1948. Also Interesting, that some of the ECPS projects are supported by European foundations.
For those who expect the academy to reflect the pure and objective standards of research, the Niblock-Pappe partnership may come as a surprise. But those who track the extensive finance network in the field see it differently.
In 2001, Martin Kramer, an esteemed scholar of the Middle East, lamented that Middle East Studies in the United States were being distorted by Saudi money. Since then, Arab money has been all but surpassed by generous donations from European governments and foundations.
Illuminating as this anecdotal evidence is, to fully understand the functioning of the old and new funding sources requires a systematic study.
History According to Ilan Pappe: The Latest Version?
Ilan Pappe formerly from Haifa University, now teaching now at Exeter University in Great Britain, gave a lecture titled Ethnic Cleansing Does not Stop on Its Own," at a political gathering in Jaffa.
That Pappe has made a career as one of the harshest critics of Israel is well known.
What is less known is that, over time he changed his version of the 1948 events, evidently to bolster his political career as a member of the Communist Hadash Party - on whose ticket he ran for Knesset.
A perusal of his writing clearly indicates that Pappe started his academic career in the 1980s with a rather traditional narrative of the 1948 war. After the failure of the Oslo peace process, he switched to a new narrative replete with the phrase ethnic cleansing - popularized during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. He was also involved in supporting the Haifa University graduate student Teddy Katz who claimed that there was a "massacre" in Tantura. It is noted that the judge who presided over the lawsuit of the veterans, who were accused by Katz of committing the "massacre", offered a scathing rebuke of his dissertation, citing lack of factual evidence and alleged tampering with recorded evidence.
Pappe retailed by successfully appealing to British academics to boycott Haifa University and other institutions of higher learning in Israel in the early 2000s. Since then, he has been a leading voice for academic BDS in the West, travelling widely in support of various initiatives.
Needless to say, as his role in the BDS movement has grown, his 1948 narrative is evolving to prove that Israel is a South African style apartheid state deserving of a vigorous international movement to force it not just to give up the territories, but permit a return of all the refugees into a new bi-national state, a formula of choice of many radical scholars activism.
For traditional historians who try hard to produce an objective account of historical events, such behavior may be puzzling. But Pappe is a leading example of a new breed of scholars who engage in critical, neo-Marxist studies, known in Israel as post-Zionism. As Pappe noted, "scholars who delve into the archives [of the 1948 war] also were guided by a post-Zionist ideology and perception." He also freely admitted that New Historians "represent the peace-oriented camp" as opposed to the "insular, expansionist nationalist" camp of the Likud Party. In plain English, for the critical, New Historians, a historical narrative is hand-tailored for the political case de jour of the scholar. As the case changes, so does the narrative.
Testimony by Ilan Pappe on Genocide in Palestine by Israel at the Kuala Lumpur Tribunal
IAM has occasionally profiled Ilan Pappe, a former professor at Haifa University, currently the director of the European Center for Palestine Studies at Exeter University in England.
Pappe has built a career out of making outrageous claims against Israel. From his relatively modest input into the New History wave, he expanded into more extreme versions of Israel's alleged treatment of Palestinians. In the early 2000s, Pappe published a book making claims about "ethnic cleansing;" more recently he has argued that Israel has engaged in "genocide."
Like the Hebrew University lecturer Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Pappe has appeared before various people's tribunals, including the Russell Tribunals on Palestine (RToP) a self appointed groups of radical activists who "investigate" war crimes by Israel. The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWC) was established by Mahatir Mohammed, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia whose criticism of Israel has been underpinned by anti-Semitic tones.
While faculty have the right to free speech, there is something tawdry in an activity that is so blatantly antithetical to the spirit of academic inquiry. The academic legitimacy that scholars enjoy has enhanced their status and credibility; indeed, an argument can be made that Israeli scholars, especially those based in Israel, are a huge asset in the increasingly effective effort of delegitimizing Israel.
It is significant that the European Center for Palestine Studies (ECPS) in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter was especially created for Pappe. Under the leadership of Professor Emeritus Tim Niblock, the Arab and Islamic Studies became a hub of anti-Israel activities. According to British reports, Exeter University is one of the largest recipients of Arab money in higher education. Even without determining the source of funding, it is clear that the ECPS has ambitious goals.
According to its mission statement, the ECPS" aims to func'tion as a hub for intellectual engagement with the Palestine question, facilitating scholarly research, helping to refine public discussion, and offering programmes for postgraduate study. "It further proclaims that the ECPS was "established in 2009 as the first university-linked Palestine studies centre in the Western world. It remains the only such centre in Europe, and seeks to cooperate with partners worldwide to encourage a new generation of scholars to examine academically issues that have been treated so far only politically and publicly." The doctoral program at the Center has "founded an international network of doctoral researchers in Palestine Studies.
The promises of examining "academically issues that have been treated so far only politically and publicly" should fool no one. The Center will produce academic material that reflects Pappe's view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
[CEU, Budapest] The Education of Dr. Daniel Monterescu Continues
Dr. Daniel Monterescu, an Israeli currently teaching at the Central European University, was part of the left wing professorate that routinely excoriated Israel and dreamed of a common future for the Jews and the Palestinians. As he acknowledges in the following article co-authored with Noa Shaindlinger, a BDS activist. Both are leftist Israeli activists hoping that the "Arab Spring" will usher such co-existence.
Of late, Monterescu seems to have sobered up; IAM reported that he was upset by Palestinians and their supporters for failing to distinguish between "good" Israelis and "bad" Israelis when advocating boycott of Israeli universities.
Monterescu is also ready to acknowledge that the "Arab Spring" is not all that it was cracked up to be. Instead of the longed- for- democracy, there is chaos and worse, Christians and other minorities are being killed and harassed.
But it is the bulk of the article, an anthropological analysis of the joint Jewish-Palestinian protest against housing problems in Jaffa, which is probably most significant. The detailed description of the tensions between Jewish and Palestinian activists, including verbal exchanges and even a physical altercation, raises a question about whether any cooperation between Jews and Palestinians is possible.
Positivist scholars have often criticized their neo-Marxist, critical colleagues for abandoning empirical research to spin scenarios based on reverential quoting of Michel Foucault and other "gods" of the critical pantheon. For those in the radical fraternity who advocate a bi-national state, the article should be assigned home-work.
The Education of Dr Monterescu
There is a old joke in the United States defining a neo-conservative as a liberal that was mugged. The definition can be easily applied to a number of left wing Israeli academics.
Arguably the most interesting in this category is Benny Morris (BGU) who made a career as a New Historian. As well known, New Historians portrayed the Palestinians as the victims of a brutal Zionist regime engaged in ethnic cleansing and massacres. Interestingly, the scope of the alleged cleansing and the number of massacres was correlated with the level of political radicalism of individual New Historian, with Ilan Pappe holding the record.
After the collapse of the peace process. Morris had an amazing change of mind; in his new "narrative" Palestinians were perennial losers; they rejected the UN Partion Proposal and lost a war, and have kept rejecting reasonable proposals ever since. Morris even suggested that David Ben Gurion should have "cleansed" all of them.
Daniel Monterescu, an Israeli scholar teaching at the Central European University, is the newest member of the "mugged" academic club. His writings and posts on the Israeli social science network blamed Israel for all problems in the Middle East.
His moment of truth arrived during an academic conference in Turkey where - after discovering he was is an Israeli - one of the British participants, a professor from Oxford, boycotted his panel and two others - a French and British scholars - engaged in a blistering attack on him. The French academic subsequently admitted that the verbal assault had nothing to do with the subject matter but rather his nationality.
Monterescue was upset enough to warn about the "spread of racist left-wing discourse, in European university circles - a mixture of right-wing anti-Semitic propaganda with a self-righteous post-colonial discourse."
Monterescue's "education" should be a "teachable moment" for all those who assume that the Nazi racially-driven ideology - that condemned all Jews, regardless of their political opinions - vanished with the ruins of the Third Reich. Substituting the Jews with an Israeli, the politics of opprobrium and radical exclusion thrive on today's campuses.
The Post-Zionist Outpost & Israeli Apartheid Week in South Africa
South Africa has become the latest country targeted by radical faculty in pushing the "Israel- is- an- apartheid state" project.
Ran Greenstein, an associate professor at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who pursued his BA and MA at the University of Haifa, is a key player in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as well as the "Israeli Apartheid Week" (see below) in South Africa. Greenstein's book "Genealogies of Conflict: Class, Identity and State in Palestine/Israel and South Africa", published in 1995, compares the historical formation of Israel and South Africa "from the earliest stages of settlement through the critical political changes of 1948...the two share remarkably similar patterns of colonization."
Greenstein has been active in the Russell Tribunal hearings on Israel that were relocated to South Africa to provide a symbolic setting "for trying Israel as an apartheid state".
In his various writings for radical publications and websites, Greenstein has made extensive use of the work by Oren Yiftachel (BGU), Shlomo Sand and Yehouda Shenhav (TAU) to prove the alleged Israel-South Africa analogy.
In a book Pretending Democracy: Israel, An Ethnocratic State, published by the Afro Middle East Center, in Johannesburg, Greenstein seeks academic legitimacy for the apartheid concept, in a chapter entitled "Ethnic State: Descriptions, Paradigms, and Prescriptions." The chapter's footnotes are replete with references to Oren Yiftachel's work on alleged "apartheid regime" in Israel. Yiftachel and Sand are also listed as contributors in this book.
In 2010 Oren Yiftachel was invited to lecture at the University of Johannesburg co-organized with The Afro-Middle East Centre. Soon after a petition by faculty was published, the university's Senate declared a boycott against Ben Gurion University. In 2012 Yiftachel's article portraying the Israeli Council of Higher Education in negative light was disseminated widely by Ran Greenstein.
As IAM reported, Israeli scholars are pivotal in the apartheid-BDS movement. Though mainstream political science categorizes Israel as a democracy, they use their academic position to produce writings "proving" Israel to be an apartheid state. In turn, this so-called "academic literature" fuels the BDS effort.
[Ex-U of Haifa, now U of Exeter] The Parallel Reality of Professor Ilan Pappe
Following the Arab Spring of 2010, the radical left rushed to welcome the long- awaited arrival of democracy in the region. The rejoicing was especially loud as the events were said to finally end the "Arab exceptionalism," a name coined by political scientists puzzled by the fact that Arab countries failed to join the wave of democratization after the end of the Cold War. Indeed, radical scholars were also quick to point out that the new Arab democracies can teach Israel a few things about "real"democratic governance.
As the Arab Spring turned into an Islamist winter, even liberal stalwarts like the New York Times admit that there is little to rejoice. Egypt is convulsed in violence as the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi has usurped more and more power. In a new move the government banned YouTube. The Salafists in Tunisia instituted a brutal campaign of terror, including the assassination of the leader of the secularist opposition. Christians and homosexuals are being persecuted and killed and there is an alarming rise of violence toward women
Faced with this reality, most radical faculty fell into silence. However, Ilan Pappe is not deterred. Applying his unique brand of alternative reality -first demonstrated in his writings as a New Historian - to the present, he gushes with enthusiasm about the democracy in the region. To hear Pappe tell it, nothing is wrong with the Arab Spring, and the references to an Islamic Winter are a malicious fabrications of the Israeli propaganda machine. Needles to say, his interpretation of the coming of the new international order are as fanciful (posted below).
Those who marvel at his performance, should be reminded that Pappe, a veteran Communist, has simply adopted practices pioneered by the Soviet Union. As well known, denying reality was key; when things could not be totally denied, accusations that "capitalist," "imperialist" and "Zionist" agents are behind malicious efforts to misrepresent aforesaid events. Although the Soviet Union collapsed, eliminating the propaganda machines and the illusions it spun, Pappe is not expected to follow suit.
Professor Zygmunt Bauman and the "Nazification of Israel"
On the eve of the visit of Zygmunt Bauman, the Jewish-Polish sociologist, to Israel, Haaretz published a long article under the title. "On eve of Israeli visit, renowned academic Zygmunt Bauman laments protracted occupation," Haaretz, February 16, 2013.
Like most of Haaretz coverage of academic affairs, it is a largely uncritical and fawning piece of writing. Bauman's contributions to sociology are described in glowing terms; Yehouda Shenhav (TAU) is quoted to the effect that "Bauman wishes to return sociology to morality, and morality to sociology."
Not surprisingly, the article either glosses over or misrepresents the less savoury part of Bauman's political and academic career.
A hard-core Communist who fled to the Soviet Union during WWII, Bauman returned home with a Polish unit of the Red Army that imposed a puppet Communist regime in Poland. By all accounts, Bauman was a member of the Polish security service that specialized in hunting down members of the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), the military wing of the legitimate Polish government in exile in London, which fought against the Soviet takeover of Poland. His additional duties allegedly included informing on Poles opposed to the Communist government.
Bauman's academic career as a lecturer at Warsaw University reflected a rigidly dogmatic style initiated in his 1975 work Zagadnienia centralizmu demokratycznego w pracach Lenina which lauded Lenin's concept of "democratic centralism," the Communist name for totalitarianism. His strident anti-Zionist posture mimicked Moscow's barrage against "the Zionist state."
After leaving Poland in 1968 Bauman traveled to Israel, taught at Tel Aviv University and the University of Haifa, but settled in England, where he remade himself as an expert on modernity in the fashion of critical philosophers; he credited Jacques Derrida with influencing his new thinking. For those less enthralled by the academic pretensions of critical scholarship, Bauman simply made a transition from exhorting the virtues of communism to denouncing the vices of capitalism, materialism and consumerism. This was a smart career move as it absolved Bauman from renouncing his communist beliefs or denouncing - as his fellow academic refugee, Jacek Kolakowski, did - the evils of Stalinism.
Bauman's new trajectory took him to the currently fashionable and academically- lucrative commentary on the Holocaust. As other critical scholars, he adopted the Hannah Arendt approach that universalized the Holocaust as a crime of modernity rather than a genocide of the Jewish people. What brought him real exposure, however, was the habit of "nazifying Israel" that is comparing the treatment of the Palestinians to that of Jews during the Holocaust. For instance, in a September 2011 interview with the prestigious Polish magazine Polytika. he equated the separation fence in the West Bank to that of the Warsaw Ghetto wall, adding that "Israeli politicians are terrified of peace, they tremble with fear from the possibility of peace, because without war and without general mobilization they don't know how to live." Though Bauman subsequently claimed that his words were taken out of context, the text of the interview" Gaszenie Pozaru Benzyna" (Dousing the Flames with Gazoline) clearly belies such an assertion.
This should come as no surprise, since moral courage was never Bauman's strong suit. He grudgingly admitted to the Guardian that he had worked for the Polish security services, but described his role as a "junior clerk." As noted, he never denounced Stalinism and never apologized for his own role in persecuting the victims of Stalin. Given this record, Shenhav's words that "Bauman wishes to return sociology to morality, and morality to sociology" ring particularly hollow.
Former U of Haifa professor, Ilan Pappe, a rising star on Iranian Press TV
In a decision to upgrade its quality, Iranian Press TV has employed Dr. Anisa Abd el Fattah, a former editor of the Middle East Affairs Journal. Abd el Fattah forays into history are based on quoting Ilan Pappe and other radical Israeli scholars.
IAM has commented on Pappe's tendentious reading of history before. In his book, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples Pappe blamed British colonial-imperial powers for helping Jews to colonize the region. The theme of Jews as colonial builders by proxy fits the colonial or post-colonial theory popularized by Edward Said. As for Lord Balfour and the British cabinet who offered the Jews a homeland in Palestine, Pappe portrayed them as the colonial puppet masters.
This time around Pappe "found religion," in a manner of speech. In what looks like a rather belated discovery of the influence of Evangelical Christians (known as Christian Zionists) on the decision to grant Jews a homeland in Palestine, Pappe now is ready to proclaim Balfour to be a Christian Zionist.
Those who may wander about the such a dramatic change should be aware that the another New Historian - Benny Morris - has also changed his "narrative" of history to fit his new views. So much as that Morris, who became disillusioned with the Palestinians, has all but admitted to being "an evolving historian."
As for Pappe, his capacity for "evolution" has landed him a front page gig on Press TV.
[Ex TAU, HUJ & CEU Hungary] A Legacy Tarnished of Yehuda Elkana
It is not everyday that an Israeli professor has his obituary published in British and Canadian papers. But he was an Auschwitz survivor who pioneered - along with Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Israel Shahak - the genre of "nazification of Israel." In 2004, the European Union Monitoring Center defined invidious comparisons between Israeli treatment of Palestinians to that suffered by the Jews during the Holocaust as anti-Zionism, a new form of anti-Semitism.
In his 1988 Haaretz signature article "The Need to Forget," Elkana listed the alleged misuses of the "Holocaust industry," including the March of the Living trips of Israeli youth to Auschwitz. He contended that the trips help the right-wing to bolster nationalism and- together with other forms of commemoration - create a deep seated paranoia about the Arabs. Stopping just short of an outright comparison of the Israelis and Nazis, Elkana nevertheless stated that right-wing philosophy wrapped in the mantle of the Holocaust leads Israel into a wholesale repression of the Palestinians.
Elkana used his credibility as a survivor in other ways as well. Recalling his experience in a Soviet "liberation camp" - where he shared quarters with Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and others - Elkana noted that "there was not much difference in the conduct of many of the people I encountered.. it was clear to me that what happened in Germany could happen anywhere and to any people." Ironically, he exempted the Arabs and Palestinians from his generalization; on the contrary, he deemed them to be "rational" and inclined to peaceful behavior.
Elkana had a leading role in helping a younger generation of scholars to create a radical critique of Israel. As founder and director of the Van Leer Institute, Elkana was instrumental in launching the critical journal Theory and Criticism. Van Leer has funded and supported a long list of events highly critical of Israel, including the group of Marxist faculty seeking ways to revive communism in the Middle East. Elkana used his influence to create The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University which employed some of the most radical critics of Israel including Adi Ophir. In turn, Ophir and Rivka Feldhay- a student of Elkana - branched out to create Minerva Center for Humanities, arguably the leading center of radical scholarship in Israel.
Not surprisingly, they and others have perfected the line that Elkana popularized in "nazifiication of Israel: Blaming the Holocaust for creating a nation of traumatized "victims" who blocked the peace process since they perceived the Palestinians as the threatening "other." Elkana's penchant for vilifying Israeli Jews while extolling the "rational" and "peace loving" Arabs and Palestinians has been enshrined in the analytic habit of critical scholars. As IAM has frequently observed, their writings portray a reality in which Israel can do no right and Palestinians can do no wrong.
Ilan Pappe on Belfast Telegraph "How destruction of Gaza was planned over six decades ago" and more on Pappe
Ilan Pappe, former professor at Haifa University, now at Exeter University, England, perfected a new style of historical research. He changes facts and adjusts interpretations to suit new contingencies. As he himself admitted, writing history is an exercise in molding current realities.
Pappe's involvement with doctoring facts is not new; he claims that the Alexandroni Brigade committed a massacre in the village of Tantura in 1948, though a court in Tel Aviv found no evidence to support it. David Ben Gurion's alleged authorship of Plan D, the subject of his current article was disputed by researchers from CAMERA, a group that fights anti-Israel bias in the media. CAMERA urged Exeter University to investigated Pappe, but the University dropped the inquiry.
This should not come as a surprise. Exeter University has a large Middle East and Islamic Studies program; it bills itself as a premier center for the study of the Arab world and the Gulf. As a rule, such centers are supported by large grants from Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.
The unwritten agenda of the program is to provide research that paints Israel in highly negative way, a technique developed by Professor Tim Nibloc (now retired), a leading anti-Israel propagandist. Nibloc was instrumental in creating the European Center for the Study of Palestine in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, where Pappe serves as director.
Obviously, the readers of article in Belfast Telegraph (below) are not aware of his particular view of historical research and his professional affiliation with a programs that is deeply hostile to Israel. It is a sad reflection on the fact that academic programs- supported by Arab money- have become centers of the ever growing movement to delegtimitze the State of Israel.
Also below, IAM has occasionally reported on Zochrot, a group created by radical scholars to ensure that the Nakba, the tragedy of the Palestinians will not be forgotten. Ostensibly, there is nothing wrong with Israeli academics working on behalf of Palestinians to create a visual archive of the Nakba.
However, as a rule, Zochrot has provided a one-sided picture of the events that took place in 1948-9. The organization -and the scholars behind it - have taken things out of context and omitted the very serious atrocities against the Jewish Yishuv.
[Ex Haifa U now Exeter U, UK] In Australia, Ilan Pappe likens Israel to Aboriginal dispossesion
If the creation of the state of Israel was akin to the ethnic cleansing of the resident Palestinians, does the establishment of colonial Australia amount to the same thing for the indigenous population?
This is the hypothesis put to Professor Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian who is no stranger to controversy and unpopular arguments, on his latest tour of Australia.
"I think it's a very very fair comparison," he says. "Both societies are settler colonial societies, dispossessing the indigenous people."
Professor Pappe has earned disfavour in Israel, where his credibility is questioned for his view that the Palestinians were forced from their land and did not give it up willingly in 1948 when the state of Israel was created as a homeland for Jews.
He and other "new historians" cite evidence from Israeli and British documents declassified in the '80s as showing detailed planning to expel or repel 700,000 Palestinians, who have remained refugees from their homeland. The premise of Terra Nullius, in which European settlers viewed Australia as an unoccupied space, is similar to the idea that the Palestinians willingly gave up their land.
Understanding and accepting this premise is one of the keys to reconciliation and forging a peaceful future, Professor Pappe says
[Ex U of Haifa, now U of Wollongong Australia] Marcelo Svirsky's foul language: "Fuck you fascist Zionists!"
We receive occasional hate mail which we normally do not publish in order to maintain a proper academic discourse. Marcelo Svirsky, who left University of Haifa not long ago, has corresponded with IAM. It is particularly foul but this was not the reason for positing it. Rather, what attracted our attention is the fact that he truly believes that Israel and Zionism are a fascist entity and even wrote a book "Arab-Jewish Activism in Israel-Palestine" to "prove" it.
For those who find the English in his introduction, below, too obtuse, a short explanation is in order. As his inspiration, Svirsky uses Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, two French intellectuals who, along with Michel Foucault, Jack Derrida, among others, form the pantheon of post-modern philosophy. As IAM reported, critical scholars in Israel invoke Foucualt and his cohorts whenever they produce an academic paper bashing Israel.
It is beyond the scope of this note to explain why critical philosophy provides such a licence. Still, it should be noted that the alternative "narratives" that critical methodology celebrates is a passport to describe reality in ways that suits one's political agenda. In other words, if one believes that Israel is a fascist state, then by quoting Foucault or Deleuze, one can write the following, as it appears in the introduction to his book.
"The ongoing fascist coding of democratic practices in Israel generates its own maintenance by circulating a strategic debt which commits Jewish–Israelis to participate in the everyday production of oppression of others. In order to work, segregation needs to implicate each and every one of us – thus it is personal. The mutual nourishing between individual micro-fascisms is the condition of existence of fascism at the collective level. Hierarchies and segregation are caustic to the point that though their particular practices are meant to benefit the Jewish majority to the detriment of the Palestinians, they nevertheless envenom all the inhabitants of the regime."
To the extent that it is possible to decipher this piece of turgid prose, Svirsky is saying that the "ongoing fascist coding" "envenoms" all inhabitants. Judging by Marcelo Svirsky's venomous and foul language, he may have a point, at least about himself.
For those who wonder how this shoddy writing sounding like a parody of scholarship gets propagated, the answer is the existence of a large international network of neo-Marxist, critical scholars who promote each other, publish each other and otherwise co-opt each other. They also recruit new cadres, as the case of Svirsky indicates. His mentor at Cardiff University was Ian Buchanan who describes himself as a follower of Deleuze. Buchanan is now associated with the the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, where Svirsky is employed. Buchanan and Ilan Pappe wrote a highly positive blurb for Svirsky's book and Pappe was invited to a conference on Arab Jewish activism in Israel-Palestine hosted by Buchanan and Svirsky in Wollongong University.
For those who wonder how anti-Israel animus is propagated in the academy, the story of Buchanan and Svirsky is instructive. University of Wollogong is a large public university with a big international students body that has become the newest outpost of the struggle against Israel.
[Duke U] Rann Bar-On: Palestinians, internationals & Israelis march toward Karmei Tzur colony chanting & waving flags
A handful of Palestinians, two dozen internationals and two Israelis marched toward Karmei Tzur colony chanting and waving flags. They were met by a large force, composed of mostly Border Police, a few soldiers and two or three civilian police from the settlement. The Border Police were well-armed, forming a strong row of riot shields blocking the way. A soldier read out a military closed zone order, giving the activist five minutes to leave. A Palestinian member of the local organizing committee gave a speech outlining the theft of Beit Omar land by Zionist occupiers. After around 10 minutes, the Palestinian leaders of the protest decided to end the protest on their own terms rather than let violence erupt from the Israeli Occupation Forces. The protestors marched back to the village, following for a short while by the armed force.
[Ex-BGU, now UCLA] Gabriel Piterberg's double standards have no place in universities
Rather than recommend that anti-Israel activists moderate their behavior, Piterberg went on the attack. He charged that the statement was biased and showed unwarranted, "disproportionate concern for Jewish students" and alleged that it ignored "harassment and threats to Palestinian and Arab students and their allies," though he could not cite any comparable examples of anyone disrupting their events. He denied that defacing Israeli symbols was an affront to Jewish students, declaring that it is racist to associate all Jews with Israel. He ridiculed the idea that anti-Semitism is a problem on campus, mocking such concerns as a figment of overwrought imaginations. To prove his point, he showed a Seinfeld clip satirizing such concerns.
Piterberg then argued that anti-Israel activists' actions do not deny the free speech of others. He accused pro-Israel groups of misrepresenting the extremism of these incidents. Then, in a breathtaking inversion of reality, Piterberg contended that when incidents did become menacing or violent, it was because pro-Israel groups fomented or initiated the threatening atmosphere, essentially blaming the victims. He excoriated StandWithUs because it brings mainstream, pro-coexistence speakers to campuses—he apparently considers programs featuring such speakers to be extremist. Indeed, the UCLA Center for Near East Studies no longer includes such mainstream speakers in their programs.
[Exeter University] Israeli scholar and political activist Ilan Pappe to tour Canada and Australia
Prof. Ilan Pappe continues to tour the world and sell his books, all the while engaging in political activism camouflaged as academic research. He plans to be in Australia at the invitation of the Australian Friends of Palestine. Marcelo Svirsky of Haifa University, another radical Israeli academic, arranged for a lecture at the University of Wollongoing, Australia.
Pappe's tour in Canada is hosted by Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), a radical group that has been engaged in anti-Israel activities.
Did Pappe Invent Another Quote?
On page 248 of The Rise & Fall of A Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis 1700-1948, Pappe reports the following: "'The principal cause [of the riots]", Shaw wrote after leaving the country, 'was twelve years of pro-Zionist policy.'"
Again, historian Benny Morris has challenged this quote. In 2011 Morris wrote:
It is unclear what Pappe is quoting from. I did not find this sentence in the commission's report. Pappe's bibliography refers, under "Primary Sources," simply to "The Shaw Commission." The report? The deliberations? Memoranda by or about? Who can tell? The footnote attached to the quote, presumably to give its source, says, simply, "Ibid." The one before it says, "Ibid., p. 103." The one before that says, "The Shaw Commission, session 46, p. 92." But the quoted passage does not appear on page 103 of the report. In the text of Palestinian Dynasty, Pappe states that "Shaw wrote [this] after leaving the country [Palestine]." But if it is not in the report, where did Shaw "write" it?
Looking at the citation Pappe provides and the Shaw Commission's report, it appears that Pappe is referring to the deliberations of the Shaw Commission, not the report itself.
"Session 46," appears to be a reference to a meeting of the Shaw Commission that heard testimony from leaders in Palestine. This meeting took place on December 26, 1929, where the commission heard the closing speech from the Palestine Arab Executive.
A list of these meetings was included in an appendix to the Shaw Commission's report. According to this list, there were a total of 47 public meetings of the Shaw Commission, so this was the second-to-last public meeting.
As stated in a previous CAMERA article, the record of a proceeding held in Palestine would be an odd place to find a quote from Sir Walter Shaw written sometime "after leaving the country."
Nevertheless, it's important to let the historical record speak for itself.
The proceedings of these meetings were compiled and issued in two volumes by the British government in 1930.
The first volume contains the proceedings of the first 29 public meetings of the Shaw Commission.
The second volume contains the proceedings of the last 17 meetings of the commission and some of the other evidence gathered by the commission.
An index to the first two volumes was compiled in a third.
CAMERA has inspected the record for the 46th meeting of the Shaw Commission (included in volume two) and looked for the quote in question.
The document in question includes both the morning and afternoon sessions of the Shaw Commission's meetings for Dec. 26, 1929.
CAMERA also inspected pages 92 and 103 of the first volume of the Shaw Commission's evidence, just in case Pappe got confused as to where the quote actually appeared.
The quote Pappe attributed to Sir Walter Shaw is not in any of these locations.
Yosefa Loshitzky lectures in King's College London, U of Roehampton "Avatar in the Palestinian (Imagi)nation"
Yosefa Loshitzky, ex-Hebrew University, a professor of film and cultural studies at the University of East London and SOAS, is one of a handful of former Israeli academics, like Ilan Pappe, and Haim Bresheeth, utilize their new base for a virulent criticism of Israel. She is also a pro-Palestinian activist, contributing to the Electronic Intifada and other venues.
Loshitzky is an avid practitioner of the neo-Marxist, critical studies paradigm that seeks to deconstruct reality to uncover the "capitalist/imperialist ideology" wherever it exists. Predictably, she finds it in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her book on the subject, Identity Politics of the Israeli Screen, is a case in point. She starts with two quotes to the effect that "the Holocaust of the Jews and the Holocaust of the Arabs of the Land of Israel" are one, an equation that has become fashionable among critical scholars. Loshitzky's book is studded with critical jargon that deconstructs Israeli "real" behavior as a colonialist, capitalist, sexist polity in a way that would make Edward Said proud.
As for the subject of her lecture, Loshitzky finds the movie Avatar to be "within the boundaries of the "dominant Capitalist/Imperialist ideology;" but the subtext seems to be more encouraging to her and the critical circles. She notes that the movie is popular among the Palestinians who identify with its subtext of" non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation and colonialism."
Even by the standards of critical scholarship, Loshitzky's failure to acknowledge that the Palestinians have waged a violent struggle against Israeli citizens including suicide bombings and shelling, is astounding. Still, it can be explained by the logical straightjacket of neo-Marxist, critical scholarship. To admit that Palestinians, Islamists, and other "victims" could be less than stellar citizens, is tantamount with undermining the paradigm that views everything Western as the heart of darkness.
Hagar Kotef, March 13 in NY "Visioning Session for Return": The Palestinian right of return & the Israeli law of return
SALONS 2: Visioning Session for Return features Gil Anidjar, Rochelle Davis, Lubna Hammad, and Hagar Kotef presenting positions on scholarly issues related to a Palestinian right of return and the Israeli law of return. Topics may include religion and secularism, the dynamics of nationalism and diaspora, definitions of citizenship, ideas of return, the possibility of financial compensations for displaced Palestinians, and the status of the Palestinian community in New York.
Israeli Academics Ilan Pappe, Dalit Baum, Naor Ben Yehoyada at Harvard's "One State Conference: Israel/Palestine"
Let there be no doubt that the call for a single state solution is a euphemism for ending the existence of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. The major proponents of this ruse acknowledge -- indeed proclaim -- that this is their true goal. Tony Judt, who was the academic godfather of the "one state" ploy, saw it as an alternative to Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, which he believed was a mistake. Many of those speaking at the Harvard conference are on record opposing the existence of Israel. Leon Weiselteir was right when he observed that the one state gambit is not "the alternative for Israel. It is the alternative to Israel."
The "one state" solution failed in the former Yugoslavia. It failed in India. And it would fail in the Mideast. That's why most Palestinians and nearly all Israelis are against it. They favor a two state solution, as does most of the rest of the world.
Many of the speakers at this conference will rail against "a Jewish State." But they will not protest the Palestinian Constitution which establishes Islam as the only "official religion" and requires that "the principles of Islamic Sharia shall be the main source of legislation." Moreover, it establishes Arabic as the sole "official language" of Palestine. Israel, in contrast, treats Judaism, Islam and Christianity equally, does not base its laws (except regarding family matters of Jews) on Jewish law, and has three official languages -- Hebrew, Arabic and English (with Russian constituting the 4th unofficial language and Ethiopian a 5th, manifesting its extensive ethnic diversity).
As this conference goes forward, and as the massive casualties mount in Syria, the resounding silence about the victims of the Assad brutality by those speakers, who use the G word (genocide) every time Israel acts in defense of its citizens, speaks louder than their hypocritical words. The extremists who will be speaking at this hate fest are so obsessed with Israel's imperfections that they ignore -- indeed enable -- the most serious human rights violations that are occurring throughout the world. That is the real shame of the double standard that is represented by this hateful conference.
Ilan Pappe - Controversial Israeli historian's Fresno State visit draws flak; his anti- Israeli views upset some
A controversial Israeli historian who has painted an unflattering portrait of the Jewish state's founding is speaking Thursday at Fresno State -- and some in the Jewish community aren't happy about it.
It isn't so much that Ilan Pappé is coming to the Valley campus, opponents of his visit say, but that it was organized by the dean of California State University, Fresno's College of Arts and Humanities and is being co-sponsored by the university's Middle East Studies Program.
"It is essentially state-sponsored anti-Semitism," said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a Hebrew lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz and co-founder of the Amcha Initiative, which speaks out on behalf of Jewish college students.
Because the university's name "is on this event," Rossman-Benjamin said, it is a misuse of taxpayer money.
University of Exeter Gives Ilan Pappe a Pass on Invented Ben-Gurion Quote
In the letter, Talbot noted the original quote that appeared in the original hardcover edition of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinediffers from what appeared in subsequent versions of the book.
In the hardcover edition of Ethnic Cleansing, (which Talbot writes "must be considered the original text") only the first six words of the sentence attributed to Ben-Gurion ("The Arabs will have to go…") are included in quotation marks.
Talbot reports "there may have been a different version in some of the many reprints" of Pappé's book.
"If this is the case," Talbot writes, "the Professor Pappé has assured us that it will be corrected in the next edition."
Talbot then states that the second half of the quote attributed to Ben-Gurion ("but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war") was a "fair and accurate paraphrase" of the sources he provided in Ethnic Cleansing – Ben Gurion's diary entry and the article in New Judea – the latter of which recounts a speech Ben-Gurion gave.
Interestingly enough, the letter does not say which passages in these sources Pappé was paraphrasing. Given the ongoing questions surrounding the quote in question, it would seem reasonable for him to show his work and provide these passages to his readers.
Ilan Pappe and Harvard Promote the Palestinians' Slow-Motion 'Final Solution'
There is no idea so hateful or useless that some university somewhere won't hold a conference on it. The latest example of this unfortunate truism is the recently announced "Israel/Palestine and the One-State Conference" scheduled for early March at the Harvard Kennedy School. Nineteen speakers and ten panels will spend two days explaining why "'two-states for two peoples' is no longer a viable option for Israel/Palestine," as the organizers assert, and discussing a "solution" to the Israeli-Arab crisis that has absolutely no chance of ever being implemented.
The adherents of this veiled assault on Israel argue that the "two-state solution," "in which Israel is secure and the Palestinians have sovereignty," as President Obama told Time magazine, has been a failure. Of course, the two-state solution has failed because since 1948, the first time Arabs rejected a Palestinian state, a critical mass of Palestinian Arabs have wanted something more than sovereignty: they want Israel destroyed and her land possessed by Arabs from "the river to the sea," as PLO chief Yasser Arafat used to say. The one-state solution, which envisions a single nation comprising Arabs and Jews under a single government, is a way to achieve the same aim. Such a state would obviously require the end of Israel's Jewish identity, and would result in an Arabic demographic explosion that in any kind of representative government would marginalize Jews
Ilan Pappe'slecture in Germany
Ilan Pappe on 20 Feb. at CSUN, on 24 Feb. at UCLA "THE FALSE PARADIGM OF PARITY & PARTITION: REVISITING 1967"
This talk will focus on the Israeli policy before and after the June 1967 war. Two theses would be argued through this revisit of the 1967 events: the first is that one can understand fully Israeli policies in that year only within the context of the overall Israeli strategy in 1948 and onwards. This means that the war of 1967 was a direct continuation of the 1948 Nakbah and not a separate event. The second argument will be that Israeli strategy, including the devise of what was later named as 'the peace process', was formulated already in 1967 and has not changed ever since that year and until today. This strategy it will be argued in the talk is the main obstacle for peace in Israel and Palestine.
Ilan Pappé's research focuses on the modern Middle East and the history of Israel and Palestine. Recent publications include:Peoples Apart (2012); The Bureaucracy of Evil (2012); The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinian minority in Israel (2011); The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).
Sponsored by: CSUN Students for Justice in Palestine, CSUN Greens, Muslim Student Association, South Asia Club, and CSUN Communications Association
[Queen's U] Dorit Naaman on $223,000 federal government grant to project "Qatamon in Colour"
A team comprised of professors and students from Queen's and Simon Fraser University (SFU) will work closely with families displaced by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dorit Naaman, a professor of film and media at Queen's, said the project has many steps, including an interactive website, digital media workshops for youth and a video installation.
The video project "Qatamon in Colour" will encourage Qatamon families to recall their memories and experiences. These video installations will then be projected onto the houses.
"I'm very interested in letting people tell their stories about their homes, but in a way letting the houses speak their history," she said. "The idea of this installation is kind of letting the houses … focalize these different histories."
In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition British Palestine into the two states of Israeli and Palestine, which was accepted by the former but not by the latter.
When Britain left in May of 1948, a war erupted and by April, Israel had begun taking over Qatamon.
Ilan Pappe's hysterical outburst, a grand scheme to reduce the influence of the US & the Zionist lobby, due to fabrication accusations
Ilan Pappe, the former Haifa University professor who moved to University of Exeter in England, to escape what he called Israeli intimidation, found new enemies. As he tells it, the entire Jewish and Zionist lobby in the West is persecuting him for his courageously stand for the Palestinians. Even his own university, "once a heaven of security" went "frigid" when confronted by "bunch of Zionist hooligans." Pappe's hysterical outburst refers to an inquiry launched by Exeter U. in response to CAMERA's accusation that he had fabricated key evidence indicating that David Ben-Gurion ordered an "ethnic cleansing" of Palestine. As IAM reported, so far Pappe has failed to provide the source of his claim.
Apparently embittered by the experience, Pappe proposes a grand scheme to reduce the influence of the United States and thus undermine the power of the Zionist lobby to intimidate him (and the Palestinians). As this is unlikely to happen any time soon, Pappe may have to produce the evidence or face dismissal for fabrication.
CAMERA may succeed to bring Ilan Pappe to account for his almost certain fabrication of a quote from David Ben-Gurion
After CAMERA challenged Speakman about the use of this quote in his movie, the filmmaker issued a correction.Speakman acknowledged that the quote could not be found in any of the sources Pappe cited and promised that it would be removed from future editions of the movie.
CAMERA has contacted Oneworld Publications, The Journal of Palestine Studies and officials at the University of Exeter, where Pappe serves as a professor.
Oneworld Publications has stated in a "tweet" that it is "looking into" the matter, but has provided no details.
The Journal of Palestine Studies reports that it has asked Pappe to write a clarification. If Pappe does not respond, JPS reports it will issue a statement of its own in its next issue, which is headed to the printer in late January.
An official from University of Exeter's Ethics Committee has stated that the matter is currently under review, that the university takes such concerns "very seriously" and that a report will be forthcoming.
[Beit Berl, U of Virginia] Ethnic Wars among Feminist Academics: Smadar Lavie's "Mizrahi Feminism and the Question of Palestine"
Lavie's class- driven resentment of the Ashkenazi feminist elite is most evident in her concluding comments on the possible solutions to the conflict. She asserts that a two-state solution would enable Jews to retain their majority, assuring a continuous Ashkenazi hegemony. On the other hand, in a one-state scenario, Jews would become a minority and the better educated Ashkenazi elite would immigrate. Lavie does not state her preference, but it is quite clear that she would welcome a hegemonic alliance of Arab Jews and Arab Palestinians - the natives of the region- against the Ashkenazi "other."
[Leicester U] Claudia Prestel: "Denial of human rights to Israel's Palestinian citizens" based on Oren Yiftachel & Asad Ghanem
Claudia Prestel limited her presentation to the scholarship of Oren Yiftachel, who has frequently compared Israel to an apartheid state and Asad Ghanem, ardent critic of Israel. Prestel would have been well advised to use the work of the respectable scholar Haim Sandberg "The Lands of Israel: Zionism and Post-Zionism" (2007) to provide another perspective.
[Linguistics, USC] Hagit Borer will be among boat passengers trying to break through Israel's blockade of Gaza
"Apparently, the State Department subscribes to the view that Israel's anticipated violence against unarmed protesters is an immutable act of nature," said Hagit Borer, a professor of Linguistics at the University of Southern California and a passenger on the U.S. boat. "This is a remarkable attitude, coming from a government that provides the Israeli government with billions of dollars in military aid and routinely uses its veto to protect the Israeli government from censure of its occupation policies by the UN Security Council."
ilan pappe on video
IAM Special Ilan Pappe: "Israeli Apartheid Week in Gaza", "The Liar as Hero", "Rael Awards Pappe Honorary Guide Title"
Israeli Apartheid Week in Gaza
The Israeli Historian and author of the ground-breaking book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Ilan Pappe, spoke eloquently of the explicit intentions of the Israeli regime to expel, isolate and besiege the indigenous Palestinian Arabs and erasing their historical ties to the land. As someone who had grown up in a Zionist family surrounded by this narrative that for so long had concealed the Palestinian narrative and deceived the world and his own people, he described his journey to reject Zionism as racist and oppressive. His clarity came from his research into first hand Israeli testimony as to what should become of the Palestinians to make way for an exclusively Jewish state. Like Naeem he was an advocate of one democratic state in Palestine, saying the two state solution was now defunct and would only lead to a more entrenched apartheid. In fact he stated that the situation now was one state, being run by a tyrannical regime that systematically discriminated against over half the population of Palestine and another 6 million Palestinian refugees in forced exile.
Ilan Pappe on the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Watch video
Israeli historian and author Ilan Pappe speaks about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and currently.
Ilan Pappe at the Palestine Children's Relief Fund: The Palestinian minority that remained in Israel was persecuted
Observing that Americans have never heard honest analyses of Israeli policies, he argued that what's missing is a tough stance toward Israeli actions. "American politicians aren't willing to stand up to Israel and pay the price of telling the ugly truth. I know what it's like to be called a traitor," added Pappe, who in 2007 was forced to leave his job at Haifa University due to pressure from to right-wing Israelis. He now is a professor of history at the University of Exeter and director of the European Center for Palestine Studies.
The Palestinian minority that remained in Israel was persecuted from 1948 to 1966, he said, and more ethnic cleansing was carried out in 1967. Thereafter, the policy was to make life so bitter for the Palestinians that they'd emigrate, thus making it possible for the Zionist state to appear innocent of visibly ejecting the indigenous population.
Zalman Amit & Daphna Levit "Israeli Rejectionism" - Israeli Rejectionism was the main enemy of the peace process
Israel did have a partner for peace, but the Palestinians did not. From there, it was a short journey to reversing 'Arab Rejection' – the mainstream media's narrative of the failing peace process – and using the title to assert that Israeli Rejectionism was the main enemy of the peace process.
Yahuda Elkana in India: Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli occupants are born out of the same mould "Varsity curriculum should reflect social realities"
A holocaust survivor, who came out of Nazi ( Auschwitz) concentration camps, Yehuda Elkana said that he is against Israel's occupation of Palestine. "When I came out of the camp and settled in Israel I had decided that what happened in Nazi Germany should never happen to Jews again. At the same time, I wished that the same brutality should not be unleashed on others. And hence, I believe that Palestinians should be protected from Israel's occupations as the violence is no less brutal than Nazi occupation," said Elkana. According to him, Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli occupants are born out of the same mould.
Ilan Pappe and Ronit Lentin on video: "The Current Struggle Against Nakba Denial"
On 17 November 2010, in the J M Synge Lecture Hall of the Arts Building in TCD, Ilan Pappé spoke strongly to an attentive audience on "The Current Struggle Against Nakba Denial" at the book launch of academic and activist Ronit Lentin's "Co-Memory and Melancholia: Israelis Memorialise the Palestinian Nakba". The meeting was chaired by academic and past chairman of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign David Landy.
Ilan Pappe promoted by Saudi Arabia: "Acclaimed political historian & expert on Palestinian-Israeli relations published 4 challenging books
Professor Pappe's autobiographical account of living in Israel (as a lecturer at Haifa University who challenged the Zionist position on the foundation of the Israeli State) is explored in 'Out of Frame'. This historical narrative also provides reasons why he had to leave the country in order to survive as a critical academic. It is this mix between personal history and Palestine that seeks to provide the most updated philosophical discussion on the historical and cultural representation of the state.
The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty: the Husaynis 1700 -1948' is the history of Palestine through the eyes of one family. It charts the tragedy of a nation, according to Professor Pappe whose position is that Palestine was never an empty territory waiting for a landless people to inhabit it.
(Trinity College, Ireland) Ronit Lentin speaks against Israel in a Palestinian event in Vienna, November 23rd 2010
Ronit Lentin was born in Haifa prior to the establishment of the State of Israel and has lived in Ireland since 1969. She is a political sociologist and a writer of fiction and non-fiction books. Ronit is head of Department and director of the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity, Conflict, Department of Sociology, and co-founder of the Trinity Immigration Initiative, Trinity College, Dublin. Ronit has published extensively on racism in Ireland, Israel and Palestine, gender and genocide, and
gender and the Holocaust. Her most recent publications: "Thinking Palestine" (London: Zed Books, 2008) editor, "Co-Memory and Melancholia: Israelis Memorialising the Palestinian Nakba" (Manchester University Press, 2010)
Anaylis: Ilan Pappe - Anti-Israel advocate opens BDS playbook at Rothko Chapel, Houston
A revisionist historian supports a propaganda strategy to delegitimize and ultimately destroy the State of Israel.
Ilan Pappe, lecturing at Houston's Rothko Chapel on the eve of the United Nations' International Human Rights Day on Dec. 9, gave instructions from the BDS, boycott, divestment and sanctions, playbook to advocate a one-state solution to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.
"The problem in Israel is the Zionist ideology," summarized Pappe, describing Israel as a colonial, racist, apartheid state.
Eyal Weizman in L.A.: The first U.S. exhibition by Decolonizing Architecture. Dec 7, 2010 – Feb 6, 2011: The conflict over Palestine as main case study
Initiated by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman in 2007, Decolonizing Architecture is a project set up as a research studio and residency program in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem. The studio examines architecture to articulate the spatial complexities of decolonization, taking the conflict over Palestine as their main case study. Collaborating with a range of individuals including artists, filmmakers, activists, academics, and non-profit organizations to embark on a broad spectrum of critically-engaged and highly-focused research projects, the studio works within a spatial reality that Weizman describes as "the politics of verticality" in his riveting study of the Occupied Territories titled Hollow Land. Offering new possibilities for insight and engagement, the studio aims to inaugurate an "arena of speculation" that incorporates varied cultural and political perspectives as interventions within the political, legal, and social force fields that exist there.
Dr. Tamar Amar-Dahl's anti-Israel propaganda tonight in Hamburg: "Shimon Peres and the contradictions of Zionism"
"I am shocked that here, in Germany, they chew through topics like the Holocaust and Jews. Sometimes, this is much too much for me."
This is not a quote from a Neo-Nazi or right-wing extremist in today's Germany. This is a quote from Tamar Amar-Dahl from 2005. Amar-Dahl then gave-up her Israeli passport in 2006, because she strongly disagrees with any military actions of the IDF against Hezbollah or any other enemies of the Jewish state of Israel.
Ilan Pappe to lecture in Houston. Pappe in Arab News "The awakening conscience of the Jewish Diaspora", Pappe's book review on Electronic Intifada
Rothko's upcoming speaker is regarded as a "new historian," whose aim is to debunk the purported "Zionist narrative" of Israeli history, specifically of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The "new historians" depict Zionism as the "original sin" underlying the Mideast region's recent bloody history.
Pappé's contributions to this effort include portraying the State of
Israel as a colonial usurper that deliberately and premeditatedly
disinherited the indigenous population from its land.
He accuses Israel of committing repeated massacres of Palestinians.
Other claims include arguing that, through collusion, Israel's 1948
War of Independence had a predetermined outcome. His views on Gaza are consistent with his other writings.
Pappé has publicly supported boycotts against Israel and has advocated for the destruction of Israel through calls for a "one-state solution and a "right of return" of Palestinians.
Agenda over facts
A political science professor and historian by profession, Pappé has self-identified as a "relativist." In a 1999 interview, he explained:
"I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what happened."
Videos of Ilan Pappe & Ronit Lentin. Trinity College Dublin. 17-11-2010
On 17 November 2010, in the J M Synge Lecture Hall, Arts Building TCD, Ilan Pappe spoke strongly to an attentive audience on; The current struggle against Nakba denial at the book launch of academic and activist Ronit Lentin's; Co Memory and Melancholia: Israelis Memorialise the Palestinian Nakba, the meeting was chaired by academic and past chairman of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign; David Landy
A new book by Ilan Pappe "Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel'"
Growing up in a conventional Israeli community influenced by the utopian visions of Theodor Herzl, Pappe was barely aware of the Nakbah in his high school years. Here he traces his journey of discovery from the whispers of Palestinian classmates to his realisation that the 'enemy's' narrative of the events of 1948 was correct. After completing his thesis at Oxford University based on recently declassified documents in the early 1980s, he returned to Palestine determined to protect the memory of the Nakbah and struggle for the rectification of its evils. For the first time he gives the details of the formidable opposition he faced in Israel, including death threats fed by the media, denunciations by the Knesset and calls for him to be sacked from his post at Haifa university.
WELCOME TO THE ISRAEL DIVESTMENT CAMPAIGN: Watch Israeli Yael Korin, a UCLA researcher, speaking against Israel
The Israel Divestment Campaign (IDC) is the first citizens' effort in the country to appeal directly to voters to hold Israel accountable for violations of international law and human rights.
With the official assignment of a title* and summary to our Initiative by the Attorney General on September 1st, the IDC has begun the process of collecting the signatures of at least 434,000 registered California voters by January 31, 2011.
Academics Bashir Bashir, Avi Shlaim, Moshe Machover, Haim Bresheeth, Ilan Pappe, Oren Ben Dor, Yael Korin, against Israel abroad
**Hebrew and Syracuse U, Bashir Bashir: Alternatives to Partition: New Visions for Israel/Palestine. Nov. 17
**Avi Shlaim, Moshe Machover and Haim Bresheeth signed advertisement accusing the BBC of a pro-Israel bias
**Ilan Pappe keynote speaker at the Banquet benefits Palestine Children's Relief, Orange County, California Oct. 23.
**Oren Ben Dor with Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Southampton oct. 04.
**[UCLA] Yael Korin, responsible for StandWithUs head evicted from pro-Palestinian meeting
[Exeter U, U.K] Ilan Pappe in India: "A one-state solution in Israel is difficult but not impossible", speaker at the "Just Peace for Palestine"
The official historical narrative of Israel had been that when Israel was founded in 1948 the Palestinians voluntarily left the land and Israel had the right to take over their possessions. We are a few historians who after researching Israeli, British and UN archives found that Israel had systematically dispossessed the Palestinians, expelling one million in 1948, which was half the Palestinian population. This is ethnic cleansing, a crime and imposes responsibility on Israel. The fate of these refugees is at the heart of the Arab-Israel conflict. I support their right to return to Israel.
[Australia, Monash U, Hebrew Dept] Keren Rubinstein: "Israelis are inhumane" (30 mins audio interview)
Academic Keren Rubenstein is interviewed on 3CR by a Palestinian Journalist and to the delight of her Palestinian host amongst other things reveals her hatred for Zionists, Israel and dislike of Australian Jews ,she said she doesn't relate to them and considers she has more in common with Australian Lebanese.
Keren who came to Australia from Israel when she was 15 ys told her Palestinian host she doesn't relate to Zionists or Zionism , she believed Israel was a fear driven society that thrived on disinformation and Misinformation . She said [ to the delight of her Palestinian host and listeners no doubt] Israelis are inhumane.
[Ex-Technion, now Goldsmiths, London] Eyal Weizman to deliver anti-Israel lectures in Sydney, Australia
Lectures titles:
The Endless Present: The Elastic Architecture of Occupation
Forensic Architecture: Only the Criminal can Solve the Crime
Future Archaeology: Decolonizing Architecture in the West Bank
Anti-israel activism in Britain: Ilan Pappe, Haim Bresheeth, Moshe Machover אילן פפה - יועץ מדעי למשרד החינוך
Below, an article by Ben-Dror Yemini in Maariv which reveals that Ilan Pappe was an adviser to the Ministry of Education in 2005 and a few other items on Ilan Pappe, Haim Bresheeth and Moshe Machover's anti-Israel activism in the UK.
Seminar & book launch: Ilan Pappe on Ronit Lentin's Co-Memory and Melancholia: Israelis Memorialising the Nakba
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland: Wednesday, 17 November, 1900-2100 J. M. Singe Theatre, Arts Building
Public seminar and book launch: Prof Ilan Pappe, Exeter University Launch of Ronit Lentin, Co-Memory and Melancholia: Israelis Memorialising the Palestinian Nakba:
The 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel also resulted in the destruction of Palestinian society when some 80 per cent of the Palestinians who lived in the major part of Palestine upon which Israel was established became refugees. Israelis call the 1948 war their 'War of Independence' and the Palestinians their 'Nakba', or catastrophe. After many years of Nakba denial, land appropriation, political discrimination against the Palestinians within Israel and the denial of rights to Palestinian refugees, in recent years the Nakba is beginning to penetrate Israeli public discourse. ..
Against a background of the Israeli resistance movement, Lentin's central argument is that co-memorating the Nakba by Israeli Jews is motivated by an unresolved melancholia about the disappearance of Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinians, a melancholia that shifts mourning from the lost object to the grieving subject. Lentin theorises Nakba co-memory as a politics of resistance, counterpoising co-memorative practices by internally displaced Israeli Palestinians with Israeli Jewish discourses of the Palestinian right of return, and questions whether return narratives by Israeli Jews, courageous as they may seem, are ultimately about Israeli Jewish self-healing rather than justice for Palestine.
[Exeter University, U.K] Ilan Pappe interviewed in Iranian media: 'Israel needs war to exist'
A former Israeli lecturer has said the entity depends on wars for its existence, warning that the hostility only invites disaster for Tel Aviv. It is only constant confrontations and standoffs which keep the Israeli society from falling apart, said Ilan Pappe, who used to work as a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa in northern Israel.
He also said that the current Israeli government is the result of a colonialist movement. Colonialists, who did not have a country anywhere across the world, were obliged to remain here.
The Israeli regime, therefore, is constantly seeking to ignite new wars; against Lebanon and maybe soon against Iran, but future wars would not succeed and would instead lead the entity into disaster, he added, speaking to the German daily Junge Welt last month.
Haim Bresheeth on Israeli Apartheid: The Israeli murder of international activists
After the Israeli attack and the murder of international activits who attempt to break the blocade of Gaza, we went to interview professor Haim Bresheeth, an Israeli activist fighting for Palestinians' rights. Go check Haim's website: gaza.haimbresheeth.com/
[Ex-Sapir] Haim Bresheeth: The resolution of the conflict will only be reached by annulling Zionism and its racism, military and 'civil' racist machineries
The change will come from us, from the enraged and caring millions, angry with the duplicity of their own governments and their collusion with Israeli crimes; the international community is now realising it is up to all of us to do what many did during the apartheid days – to isolate and ostracise and isolate this pariah military and piratical regime, this State of Lunacy and lawlessness. We will all need to stop any relationship with this entity of crime: no products to be purchased, no touring in Israel, no conferences there, no invites and collaboration with Israeli academics and institutions who do not declare their unequivocal opposition to the occupation and its iniquities. The resolution of this conflict will only be reached by the annulling Zionism and its racism, its military and 'civil' racist machineries, the total removal of all settler communities, and the return of Palestinian refugees, as well as the payment of full compensation to all those who were hurt by the Zionist enterprise over the last few decades.
The way to achieve this is by the careful and thoughtful but total BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, that will lead to a Just peace and a stable and long-lasting political order in Palestine. Anything else will just lead to more murder, and to a likely destabilizing of the region, and towards exporting militant radicalism and possibly terrorism to all parts of the globe, as a result of an obvious failure of the west to deal with this colonial and imperialist abscess.
[Queen's University, Canada] Dorit Naaman, a filmmaker from Jerusalem, partcipates Israeli Apartheid Week
"The Politics of Local and International Solidarity in Palestine"
Gabriel Ash, Dr. Dorit Naaman, and Dr. Dana Olwan
7:00 pm, Kingston Hall room 201
Presented by Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and Alternative Jewish Voices
Dorit Naaman is a professor in the Film Studies department at Queen's. One of her main areas of research is Middle Eastern cinemas, and she examines it mostly from post-colonial and feminist perspectives. Dorit is interested in identity politics, and in the effects of global economy (co-productions, international film festivals) both on aesthetics, and on ideological formations. Dorit's publications include "Unruly Daughters to Mother Nation: A Palestinian and an Israeli First person Films" in Hypatia Spring 2008, "Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender and Performance in the case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bomber" in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Summer 2007, and "The Silenced Outcry: A Feminist Point of View from the Israeli Checkpoints in Palestine." National Women Studies Association Journal, Fall 2006.
[Exeter U] Latest Ilan Pappe: New book with anti-Israel academics / The One Democratic State Group / "Save" Lifta signed with [TAU] David Wesley
ACROSS THE WALL a book by Ilan Pappé and Jamil Hilal with Udi Adiv, Dan Rabinowitz, Moshe Zuckermann, Oren Yiftachel, Lev Grinberg & Uri Davis
Ex-U of Haifa, now Exeter U, UK] Ilan Pappe in "The One Democratic State Group" - Gaza is committed to the struggle for Palestinian rights
A DRIVE TO SAVE LIFTA petition signed by Ilan Pappe and Yonatan Mendel, Dr David A Wesley, Tzvia Shapira, Dr. Julia Chaitin, Noga Kadman:
This petition aims to save Lifta through the World Monuments Fund , amongst others, and to draw attention to this site which has been threatened by neglect, vandalism and forced occupation by extremist settlers.
"RAUS MIT UNS" review of Ilan Pappe's "Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine"
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli academic who has made his name by hating Israel and everything it stands for. In his view, expressed with obsession and a degree of paranoia, Jewish nationalism, that is to say Zionism, has been from its outset a deliberate tool for dispossessing the Palestinians; and therefore it is to be condemned root and branch. He reserves the Palestinian term of Nakba, meaning catastrophe, for describing what to Israelis is their war of independence of 1948. To him, Israeli politicians and soldiers, one and all, are so many murderers. Forests have been planted only to cover up the past. Houses are 'monstrous villas and palaces for rich American Jews'. Everything Israeli is ugly, everything Palestinian is beautiful. One day, he supposes, the Israelis may well consummate their original crime with something even worse. The only possible alternative lies in the immediate return of every Palestinian to his original home, and that will mean the end of the state whose existence so offends Pappe. This, of course, is exactly the inflexible position taken by Hamas and the PLO.
Ronit Lentin's "Thinking Palestine" reviewed by anti-Israel Claudia Prestel
Ronit Lentin, a distinguished Israeli scholar and peace activist who lives in a chosen "exile" in Ireland, reflects on the reasons for the Israeli scholars' preoccupation with researching Palestinians. She mentions the close cooperation between the security services and Israeli universities. It is in this context that the academic boycott of Israeli universities has to be seen as they are often part and parcel of the Israeli occupation. In the book Lentin therefore calls for a "theorization of 'Palestinians' not merely as victims, or as spoken for and about." (p. 3) Apart from offering "theoretical approaches to thinking Palestine" the contributors are also politically committed to advocating a one-state solution (p. 14) which makes this book even more important in its originality for new ideas and solutions to the conflict.
Several scholars have tried to reflect on the nature of the Israeli state and challenge its definition of a "democracy".
Watch Ilan Pappe on Iranian TV
Hart of the Matter - Ilan Pappe by Alan Hart ,August 6, 2009
Professor Ilan Pappe is Israel's leading "new" or "revisionist" historian. The terms new and revisionist really mean "honest". The title of his latest book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, says everything about his integrity and commitment to the truth of history. As well as his passion for justice.
One of very many revelations in Ilan's latest book is in the form of a statement made by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father, in a letter to his son. It was written in 1937. "The Arabs will have to go", Ben-Gurion wrote, "but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as war."
Ilan Pappe silenced in Munich
Left-wing groups enraged by Germany municipality's decision not to allow anti-Zionist Israeli historian to speak at governmental institution. Pappe writes to Munich mayor his policy reminiscent of Nazi Germany
Ilan Pappe's latest activities- 9 years since October riots: Ilan Pappe speaks before thousands at Araba rally 9 שנים למהומות אוקטובר: אילן פפה נאם
Tens of thousands of people took part in a rally held in the village of Araba marking the ninth anniversary of the October riots that took place in 2000 in the Arab sector.
Speaking before the rally were members of Knesset, public figures, and historian and political scientist Ilan Pappe, the first Jewish representative to ever speak at such a rally.
[Al-Quds University, Israel Studies] Dr. Uri Davis, a Fatah member, is nominated for party's Revolutionary Council
A Jewish member of Fatah was nominated for a spot on the party's Revolutionary Council on Saturday, the Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.
Dr. Uri Davis told Ma'an that one of Fatah's weakest attributes has been its failure to establish ties with international parties, movements and human rights organizations, and promised to step up efforts, if elected.
Born to Jewish parents in Jerusalem, Davis describes himself as a Palestinian Hebrew.
Ilan Pappe on Sky News
April 23, 2009
Truth about Zionism (English). Zionism is racism. The courageous jewish historian "Ilan Pappe" about the ethnical cleansing in palestine.
Reviews of Ilan Pappe
Ilan Pappe: 'My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the "truth" when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers.'
Ilan Pappe: "The necessity of cultural boycott"
If there is anything new in the never-ending sad story of Palestine it is the clear shift in public opinion in the UK. I remember coming to these isles in 1980 when supporting the Palestinian cause was confined to the left and in it to a very particular section and ideological stream. The post-Holocaust trauma and guilt complex, military and economic interests and the charade of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East all played a role in providing immunity for the State of Israel. Very few were moved, so it seems, by a state that had dispossessed half of Palestine's native population, demolished half of their villages and towns, discriminated against the minority among them who lived within its borders through an apartheid system and divided into enclaves two million and a half of them in a harsh and oppressive military occupation.
[Ex-University of Haifa, now University of Exeter, U.K. History Department] Ilan Pappe's latest activities
The professor said the main reasons for the Gaza operation were twofold. One was to compensate for the "very poor performance" of the Israeli military in Lebanon and to show the Arab world that it could still react in a very powerful way. Another reason was the "genocidal" elimination of Hamas and Hizbullah. Unless Europe took a tougher stance, there would be worse to come. The Israelis had found a "formula", containing the people of Gaza in a prison camp and those of the West Bank in an apartheid-style bantustan, he said.
"People can be eliminated from history, they can be eliminated from consciousness," he continued. But this was not going to happen and, he warned, there could be world instability on a scale that was unimaginable at this time because of reaction from the Arab world. Author of a study, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Prof Pappé said that in 1948 the Israeli state expelled almost one million Palestinians "in what today we would call ethnic cleansing".
Articles by Hilla Dayan : "Europe and the Bitter Pill of the Israeli Occupation" and "The EU should not accept Israel's illegal occupation"
There are a number of ways in which Europe can take a distinct stand upholding conditionality in such a manner, which will force Israel to choose between European integration and the occupation. Respect for International Law must be defended from the potentially irreparable damage of accommodating a military dictatorship. Israel should be pressed to stop dragging its feet and accept the EU requirement that a formal sub-committee on human rights is created in the ENP process. The EU should take measures to ensure that the Jewish settlement economy will not benefit from preferential trade status. In short, the EU should not embrace the occupation in contradiction with its core principles and interests, as well as with legal commitments under International and European Law. The EU must make "greater Israel" a no go for upgrading relations, instead of swallowing this bitter pill and paying the bill.
[Virginia Polytechnic Institute] Daniel Breslau / An occupied house in an occupied land
One needs to scour the alternative news sites and blogs to know about the crowds of Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals that meet in multiple sites across the West Bank every Friday to confront the occupation forces using only their bodies and words. And every week the marchers are met with violence in the form of tear gas, rubber-coated bullets, batons, and sometimes live fire.
Ex Tel Aviv U] Nadim Rouhana: Arab Political Participation and the Future of Democracy in Israel: Increasing Political Efficacy and Influencing Democratic Change
Palestinians within Israel comprise 17% of the population, and this percentage is increasing rapidly. With growing demographic weight and rising political awareness, their role in politics is becoming increasingly important, especially in terms of shaping Israeli democracy and identity, and influencing Israeli-Palestinian relations and regional political dynamics. Nevertheless, recent years have seen a decrease in Palestinian participation in Israeli democratic institutions, such as voting in parliamentary elections, and increasing tension between Israel's Arab and Jewish communities. This grant will allow MADA Al-Carmel (the Arab Center for Applied Social Research) to undertake a 36-month investigation of the reasons why Palestinians in Israel seem unable to wield effective political influence, particularly on issues that affect their communities. The research will involve a comparative analysis of Palestinian political participation in Israel and political participation of other national minority groups around the world. Based on its research findings, MADA will propose strategies for increasing Palestinian impact on democratic governance within Israel and on peaceful relations between Israelis and Palestinians.
[History, Oxford University] Avi Shlaim: "Settlements turned Israel into apartheid state"
In his talk, entitled "Obsession with Territory Post-1967," Shlaim blasts the settlements, which he says have turned Israel into an apartheid state, as the primary source of failure for peace efforts with the Palestinians.
Shlaim believes Zionism was derailed from its course after the Six-Day war, when its universalist principles were replaced with "religious messianism and secular nationalism." Israel must give up land, he says, not just as a concession to the Palestinians, but because "a people that oppresses another cannot itself remain free."
[New School, NY] Hilla Dayan, [ISHSS, The Netherlands] Barak Kalir and [Vrije U, Amsterdam] Erella Grassiani organize anti-Israel events
In November-December 2008 gate48 will organize four screenings and discussions in Gemak that will draw a tragic portrait of Israel as a state that prefers to live with walls surrounding and dividing it over getting to know its
neighbors and minority groups; a state that is so fearful of its past as a victim, that it prefers to become a victimizer. Israel has become a state that builds real barriers, which in fact stand only as symbols for the mental barriers it has created over time. The event in Gemak will feature four different instances
where such barriers are created; physical and symbolic.
[Ex Ben Gurion U, History, UCLA] Talk at SOAS, Palestine Society: Gabriel Piterberg / The Returns of Zionism. Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel
In this original and wide-ranging study, Gabriel Piterberg examines the ideology and literature behind the colonization of Palestine, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Exploring Zionism's origins in Central-Eastern European nationalism and settler movements, he shows how its texts can be placed within a wider discourse of western colonization. Piterberg revisits the work of Theodor Herzl, Gershom Scholem, Anita Shapira and David Ben-Gurion, among other thinkers influential in the formation of the Zionist myth, to break open prevailing views of Zionism. He demonstrates that it was in fact unexceptional, expressing a consciousness and imagination typical of colonial settler movement. Shaped by European ideological currents and the realities of colonial life, Zionism constructed its own story as a unique and impregnable one, in the process excluding the voices of an indigenous people - the Palestinian Arabs.
Information concerning Dr. Nir Eisikovits
To my understanding the aim of Israeli Academia Monitor that I am proud to belong to, is to identify and bring to public attention to Israeli academics who systematically and maliciously harm Israel by presenting and framing information in a manner which is placing the country in a negative light.
Dr. Nir Eisikovits is certainly not the right target for such activity and should not be on the list of Anti Israeli academics.
The Israeli Regime between the Sea and the River / by Ran Greenstein, U of Witwatersrand, South Africa
While the current Israeli regime is a product of settlement processes which were historically part (at least in part) of European colonialism, and its practices are similar in many respects to other separation regimes such as apartheid SA, the use of labels such as colonialism, settler colonialism, apartheid and so on tells us nothing about the regime's specific nature, trajectory, direction in which it is going, and suitable strategies of resistance and change. For all those, we need to undertake a concrete analysis of the specific conditions under which it emerged, its mechanisms of domination, its ideological strategies, and the forces acting to entrench or challenge it.
Anti-Israel Dr. Nir Eisikovits is on Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Academic Speakers Bureau, Boston
There are, of course, well-known problems with this democratic self-understanding. Our basic constitutional docume'nts speak of a "Jewish democratic state" while about 20 percent of our citizens are non-Jews. We have no separation of synagogue and state. We have, for over 40 years, maintained illegal settlements and a harsh military occupation in most of the Palestinian territories captured in 1967.
Nir Eisikovits: Israel's slipping democracy: This beacon of freedom is becoming more like its authoritarian neighbors
One does not need to be a constitutional scholar to worry about a democracy that eliminates access to its courts, curtails the right to be elected, and chooses to protect its police rather than detainees. Since all these measures were widely popular with Israelis, it is worthwhile reiterating an obvious point: Democracy is not only about the rule of the majority.
Rather, its essence lies in empowering the majority without allowing it to tyrannize the minority. Such a balancing act is possible only if a robust set of political rights is in place. A state that jettisons these in favor of national security will probably stay safe, but it will rarely stay democratic.
Ilan Pappe's months of coming and going for the destruction of Israel
"Israel uses oppression to defend it against democracy ..., leading to the maintenance of the state of oppression." Pappe sees Israel as characterized by "the hegemony of the security apparatuses" -- not just an army with a state, but a secret service with a state. In short, a mukhabarat state, and therefore more at home in the neighborhood of the Arab dictatorships
Dr. Uri Davis, a Post-Zionist Jewish Academic Converts to Islam
Dr. Uri Davis, who has often termed Israel an "apartheid state" and refused to serve in the IDF, converted to Islam about a week ago and married a Fatah activist in Ramallah. The conversion ceremony involved two oaths in which Davis recognized Allah and the Muslim prophet Mohammed. Davis said he plans to follow the laws of Islam, but not devoutly.
The conversion took place in a Moslem religious court in Baka el-Garbiye, an Israeli-Arab town just outside northwestern Samaria (Shomron).
Davis's lawyer explained that the Arabs of the Palestinian Authority know him for his great sacrifices on behalf of the "Palestinian problem" and the "realization of their rights." He noted that the consent of the Arab woman and her family to the marriage to a Jewish activist is an "admirable social development."
Just two months ago, David took part in an Arab-sponsored "Haifa Conference," billed as "defend[ing] a secular democratic state in historic Palestine." A summary of the conference written by Yoav Bar states that the Conference "was our moment to raise our heads from the exhausting daily struggle and promise ourselves and the world that the suffering of the Palestinian people may be brought to an end and there can be a bright future for everybody in Palestine after we get rid of the racist Zionist disorder."
Dr. Oren Ben-Dor, Professor Ilan Pappe and Professor Smadar Lavie advance "A one-state solution"
The obstacles to a single state founded on justice for all its citizens are formidable. In particular, the Zionist project will have to be stopped. At first sight, the idea of a single state in Israel-Palestine is barely intelligible; the region is permeated by bitterness and hate, everyday life there involves pervasive fear and violence, and there is calculated interference by foreign lobbies and other states. Even the most conciliatory positions seem to offer some form of two-state solution.
Nevertheless, many are now advocating a single-state solution. Four of the most authoritative proponents of the idea gathered recently for a public debate, the first in a planned series on Israel-Palestine, hosted by two voluntary campus groups at the University of Southampton, namely Amnesty International and the One State Group. With Dr. Oren Ben-Dor in the chair, Professor Ilan Pappe, who has been called Israel's bravest historian and is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, explored the issues in the company of Dr. Ghada Karmi, who — like Prof. Pappe — is at the University of Exeter, Professor Smadar Lavie of Macalester College, Minnesota,
Daniel Breslau [Virginia Tech and ex-Tel Aviv U]: "The wall is an organized crime"
Israel's High Court of Justice has adopted the logic of colonialist courts, justifying innumerable harships imposed on the Palestinian residents for the sake of the purported security of the illegal settlers. In general, the court's definition of the settlers' security needs is taken directly from pro-settlement officials in the Defense Ministry. Occasionally, this apartheid court has been moved by evidence that the planned, or already constructed, path of the wall cannot be justified for security purposes, and unnecessarily harms the population living under occupation. The path of the wall has been adjusted, bringing slight reductions in the harm to property, livelihoods, and freedoms of the Palestinians.
Yehuda Elkana, Central European University President and Rector, and co-founder of The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University (emeritus), advisor to a Palestinian organization which works against Israel.
The Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace-International (FFIPP-I) is an International network of faculty, with an affiliated international
student network, whose objectives are an end to the occupation
Sixty and Beyond / by Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, New York University
Israel should make the strategic decision to withdraw from the territories while it enjoys a position of strength. The Arab Initiative offers a comprehensive peace with all Arab states in exchange for the territories captured in 1967. Peace is the single most important measure that will provide Israel with the ultimate security it seeks, for peace will particularly undermine Iran's regional ambitions and neutralize its threat to Israel's security. By working with the Initiative, Israel can establish and pursue a secure border, retain its Jewish national identity, normalize
relations with the Arab world, and find a mutually acceptable solution to the future of Jerusalem. As a sign of its commitment to end the occupation, Israel should start to evacuate two or three of the numerous West Bank settlements from which it must withdraw in any peace agreement.
Dr. Dalit Baum, Math, is head of project "Who Profits of the Occupation"
The Occupation Industry Research Project
Along with various political, religious and national interests, the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights is fueled more and more by corporate interests. Civilian companies and international corporations are involved in real estate deals, the development of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, the construction and operation of an ethnic separation system made of checkpoints, walls and roads, and the development and supply of equipment used in the control and repression of civilian population.
Report of Amnesty Southampton and Southampton One State Group Panel Discussion on Justice and Peace: One State for Israel/Palestine
In Order of Appearance
Oren Ben-Dor, Southampton One State Group
Prof Ilan Pappe
Dr Ghada Karmi
Prof Smadar Lavie
Dr Nur Masalha
Calling for Boycott - Dror Warschawski, The "Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique", Paris, France
However, the history of Judaism, which has
very beautiful pages exceeds by far that of the State of Israel, which only includes pages stained with blood. It is because we are afraid that you confondiez the two that we ask you to reconsider your participation in the next International Festival of Writers of Jerusalem in the monthof May. The boycott organized against this type of event is not aboycott of theculture nor the Israeli writers and even fewer Jews. It is an institutional boycott not to legitimize the State of Israel and its propaganda as he celebrated with joy 60 years of illegal
occupation of land, which also correspond to 60 years of dispossession of the people Palestinian and living in exile under military occupation or assecond-class citizens inIsrael, discrimination, hampered in their movements and so on…
[U of Exeter, U.K] The Bureaucracy of Evil: The History of the Israeli Occupation / Ilan Pappe 2009
Following his critically acclaimed investigation of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the 1940's, renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe turns his attention to the annexation and occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, to bring us the first comprehensive critique of the Occupied Territories. Based on groundbreaking archival research, NGO records and eyewitness accounts, Pappe's investigation of the 'bureaucracy of evil' explores the brutalizing effects of occupation, from the systematic abuse of human and civic rights, the IDF roadblocks, mass arrests, and house searches, to the forced population transfer, the settlers, and the infamous wall that is rapidly turning the West Bank into an open prison. Providing a sharp contrast with life in Israel, this is a brilliantly incisive and moving portrait of daily life in the Occupied Territories.
Israeli academics amongst other Jews: "We Jews Will Not Be Celebrating". (This organization is run also by Palestinians)
We Will Not Be Celebrating
In May, Jewish organizations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-Semitism and Hitler's genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasized, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Nakba is to the Palestinians.
In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa's market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorized the destruction of
Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.
Ilan Pappe in a Palestinian conference: "Zionist Apartheid and the One Country solution." Friday May 2nd, Canada
Prof. Ilan Pappe was born in Haifa to German-Jewish parents who had fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s. He graduated from the Hebrew University in 1978, and obtained his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1984. He was the Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva from 1993 to 2000, and is currently teaching at the University of Exeter in Britain. His early books dealt with Israeli policy in 1948, a subject he has returned to in his latest book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine".
Ilan Pappe Speaks In Bristol
Ilan Pappe was one of the keynote speakers at the Bristol Nakba Conference last Saturday (26th April). The conference, organised by Bristol PSC, attracted a respectable-sized audience to the Malcolm X Centre, and featured a range of speakers and several useful workshops.
But for me it was Ilan's speech which was the highlight of the day. An Israeli Jew and anti-Zionist activist, he has recently taken up a history post at the University of Exeter, and has published a new book, 'The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine'
The neo-Nazi newpaper National Zeitung published recently an interview with Ilan Pappe :
The major casualty of Jewish Communities by Zionism is today in the abuse of the rich Jewish heritage of humanity and world citizenship. Rather than allow Jews to the efforts against the oppression and injustice in the world should be mentioned, as they themselves had experienced in the Holocaust, the Jewish state has become a repressive government that deals with other global alliance oppressors. It must be noted, however, that the Zionism before the Second World War has saved many Jews who otherwise under the Nazi regime had been destroyed, including my own family.
Alon Confino, professor of modern German and European history, University of Virginia, believes in the right of Palestinians to return to villages in Israel
Instead of arguing about history, he suggests therefore that we concentrate on creating political, civic and cultural equality between the Jews and the Arabs in Israel, including the payment of compensation to the Arabs for property that was confiscated from them, and a recognition of their right to return to the villages they were forced to leave, "insofar as possible." In his opinion, more equality will reduce the tension between Jews and Arabs, will improve the integration of the Arabs into Israeli society, and then it will also be easier to work on shaping memory, in order to harness it for everyone's benefit.
Palestine House, the Canadian Arab Federation and the Canadian Islamic announce essay contest based on Ilan Pappe's book
Palestine House, the Canadian Arab Federation and the Canadian Islamic Congress jointly announced today an open invitation to all Canadian high school and university students (ages 17 through 27) to take part in an essay contest on the theme; "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."
This contest is being held in response to the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel within Palestine.
Five awards will be given. The first-place prize is $1,000; the second prize $750 and the third to the fifth are $500 each.
In addition, all winners will receive a complimentary copy of the book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Israeli historian, Prof. Ilan Pappe.
[Ex Ben Gurion U, now UCLA professor] Gabriel Piterberg's new book about the formation of the Zionist Myth
Available June 2008
The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel by Gabriel Piterberg: Leading Israeli scholar with a major re-evaluation of Zionist ideology and literature.
About Ilan Pappe, taken from Iranian News: Israeli urges cultural boycott of regime
An Israeli historian beleives that cultural boycott of the Zionist regime is the only way for force the regime to end the occupation, the Zionist Yediot Aharonot daily reported on its website.
Ian Pape also clearly announced its support for the academic boycott of the Zionist regime last year. After that he and his family were threatened to death and had to leave their home.
He left Israel and now live in England but after his recent remarks about Israel he had been threatened to death by phone every day.
Ilan Pappe: I'm not a traitor
Q. An article you wrote titled "Genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank" was published in the Tehran Times about a month ago. Are you providing the enemy with weapons against us?
"A. On the contrary, I wish to speak to the people in Iran. A Jordanian newspaper wrote in its editorial a year ago that absurdly, I am Israel's best ambassador in the Arab world, because they say – if such Israelis exist, maybe there's hope for peace with the Jewish state."
The mega prison of Palestine / Ilan Pappe
As always it is important to be reminded that the west can put an end to this unprecedented inhumanity and criminality, tomorrow. But so far this is not happening. Although the efforts to make Israel a pariah state continue with full force, they are still limited to civil society. Hopefully, this energy will one day be translated into governmental policies on the ground. We can only pray it will not be too late for the victims of this horrific Zionist invention: the mega prison of Palestine.
Ilan Pappe goes fund raising for Palestinian organization in Canada
From march 25th to 30th, the Near East Cultural and Educational
Foundation (NECEF) and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) will be touring Professor Ilan Pappe in commemoration of the 60th year of the Palestinian Nakbah (Catastrophe) . Prof. Pappe was born in Haifa to German-Jewish parents who had fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s.[1] He graduated from the Hebrew University in 1978, and obtained his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1984. He was the Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva from 1993 to 2000, and is currently teaching at the University of Exeter in Britain.
Idith Zertal to speak about her book "Lords of the Land, the first book to narrate and analyze the full history of the occupation and Jewish settlements"
MEI Event- Thursday, February 14: "Lords of the Lands"
"Lords of the Lands"
With, Idith Zertal, Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland
Professor Zertal is an Israeli historian and essayist, the author of many books and articles on Jewish, Zionist and Israeli history.
About Rann Bar-On from Duke University
In the aftermath of the 2004 PSM meeting, conference organizer Rann Bar-On -- who is an ISM member -- informed the Duke student newspaper, "I personally consider the Palestine Solidarity Movement conference a huge success, as it brought about a tripling of the number of Duke students visiting Israel-Palestine this year, making Duke the most represented American university in the West Bank this summer." By Bar-On's own admission, recruitment into the ISM is the PSM's raison d'etre.
About Ilan Pappe's book in: 'Origins of a crime'
AS Israel born in sin?" Dan Perry of the Associated Press asked Ilan Pappe, who taught political science at Haifa University. The answer was brutally honest and explicit without any equivocation whatever: "Yes. The Jews came and took, by means of uprooting and expulsion, a land that was Arab. We wanted to be a colonialist occupier, and yet to come across as moral at the same time"; pose as victims to cover up brazen aggression (AP report datelined Tel Avi v, December 24, 1985). The Jewish militia Hagana soon outnumbered the Arabs. King Abdullah of Transjordan had a secret pact with Israel that his Arab Legion, the only strong Arab army, would not go beyond the West Bank.
Ilan Pappe, who now holds the Chair in History at the University of Exeter, elaborated on the theme in Foreign Policy of March-April 2005, citing, irrefutably, facts that deserve to be quoted in extenso: "One has to distinguish between what would have happened had Israel not existed and the query of the state's legitimacy in the light of its problematic past. The first question should be viewed principally from the perspective of Israel's victims, the Palestinians.
Ilan Pappe's article 'Genoside in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank' appears on Teheran Times
Not long ago, I claimed that Israel is employing genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. The responses I received indicated unease in using such a term. I rethought the term for a while, but concluded with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli Recipe For 2008: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank / By Ilan Pappe
Not long ago, I claimed that Israel is employing genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. The responses I received indicated unease in using such a term. I rethought the term for a while, but concluded with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.
Oren Ben-Dor amongst signatories attacking the Israel Loby
The Israel lobby and associated Friends of Israel groups, in supporting a racist regime with racist policies in contravention of international law and human rights, are a disgrace to Parliament and an insult to the people whose Parliamentary democracy this is...It is about the activities of the Israel lobby – groups of political activists and MPs who are, for the most part, non-Jews. It is disturbing to see their support of a racist, foreign government, which is also in defiance of numerous United Nations resolutions, so high on their agenda within the sovereign government they represent. The Committee's job is to "make recommendations as to any changes in present arrangements which might be required to ensure the highest standards of propriety in public life." Accordingly we insist, please, that our case is put before the Committee for proper consideration. For truth and justice,
Oren Ben-Dor, Lecturer in law, School of Law, Southampton University
Ilan Pappe writes Avraham Oz
Thank God, one of the first things you learn in Europe
is that the Zionist narrative has been defeated in the more
sensible parts of the society.
Oren Ben-Dor [U of Southampton, UK]: "Why Israel has no 'Right to Exist' as a Jewish State"
We must see that the uncritically accepted recognition of Israel right to exist is, as Joseph Massad so well puts it in Al-Ahram, to accept Israel claim to have the right to be racist or, to develop Massad's brilliant formulation, Israel's claim to have the right to occupy to dispossess and to discriminate. What is it, I wonder, that prevent Israelis and so many of world Jews to respond to the egalitarian challenge? What is it, I wonder, that oppresses the whole world to sing the song of a "peace process" that is destined to legitimise racism in Palestine?
To claim such a right to be racist must come from a being whose victim's face must hide very dark primordial aggression and hatred of all others. How can we find a connective tissue to that mentality that claims the legitimate right to harm other human beings? How can this aggression that is embedded in victim mentality be perturbed?
The Annapolis meeting is a con. As an egalitarian argument we should say loud and clear that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state.
Ilan Pappe interviewed in Italy ETHNIC CLEANSING GOES ON AND ISRAEL WANTS YOU TO ACCEPT IT
During the Holocaust, the countries that are today criticizing Israel, either were accomplices or they kept silent. These are the reasons why the international community has renounced its right to judge us. It bears guilt which it can no longer find a remedy for. Thus losing, still today, the right to criticize Israel's government. The consequence is that when the state of Israel was established, nobody blamed it for the ethnic cleansing which it had been founded on, a crime against humanity carried out by those who planned and fulfilled it. From that time on, ethnic cleansing has become an ideology, an infrastructural decoration of the state. A matter that is still topical, since Israel's primary target is demographic: to seize as much territory as possible with the least number of Arabs living in it as possible."
Israeli Academics Call Openly for Israel's Annihilation: The One State Declaration
- The historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status;
- Any system of government must be founded on the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all citizens. Power must be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all people in the diversity of their identities;
- There must be just redress for the devastating effects of decades of Zionist colonization in the pre- and post-state period, including the abrogation of all laws, and ending all policies, practices and systems of military and civil control that oppress and discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, religion or national origin;
Omar Barghouti (PhD candidate TAU)
Oren Ben-Dor (U of Southampton)
Haim Bresheeth (EX Sapir College, University of East London )
Ghazi Falah (Ex TAU)
Ilan Pappe (Ex U of Haifa, U of Exeter)
Nadim Rouhana (Ex TAU)
Oren Ben-Dor discusses "Why Israel has no 'Right to Exist' as a Jewish State"
Israel's claim to have the right to occupy to dispossess and to discriminate. What is it, I wonder, that prevent Israelis and so many of world Jews to respond to the egalitarian challenge? What is it, I wonder, that oppresses the whole world to sing the song of a "peace process" that is destined to legitimise racism in Palestine?
To claim such a right to be racist must come from a being whose victim's face must hide very dark primordial aggression and hatred of all others.How can we find a connective tissue to that mentality that claims the legitimate right to harm other human beings? How can this aggression that is embedded in victim mentality be perturbed?
The Annapolis meeting is a con. As an egalitarian argument we should say loud and clear that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state.
Ghazi-Walid Falah, ex-Tel Aviv university geographer was arrested for spying
That night agents of the Israel Security Agency, also known as the Shin Bet, or Shabak, arrested Mr. Falah and took him to a police station in Nahariya. There they told him they had found something in his camera: a photograph of a "sensitive" military antenna near the coast.
Then they used the word meragel: Spy.
Mr. Falah's appointment at Tel Aviv University lasted only a year. He never found another one on an Israeli campus. So, in 1987, with help from the Ford Foundation, he founded the Galilee Center for Social Research, in Nazareth. There he began publishing scholarship on what he called Israel's "Judaization" policy in the Galilee region — the state's attempt, in his view, to tightly constrict Arab citizens' control of land there.
Avi Shlaim (Oxford) does not think anyone should be allowed to criticize anti-Israel academics in: "Debate rages across US on academic freedom"
Avi Shlaim, professor of International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford, told the JC that he believed that Mr Dershowitz was one of the "many prominent American Jews [who] defend Israel [with] an atavistic attitude of 'my country, right or wrong'."
Ilan Pappe (Haifa, Exeter) recruited to help PFLP terrorists in their trial in Denmark
"If the Copenhagen City Court determines that the PFLP is a liberationist organization it could have a positive impact for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict and worldwide," summarized Israeli
historian Ilan Pape, a defense witness for seven "Fighter and Lovers" solidarity activists charged with abetting terrorism by selling t-shirts with PFLP and FARC insignias. The police confiscated proceeds, which would have gone to media projects for these groups.
Pape gave testimony during the resumed trial sessions, November 14-16, in Copenhagen. The professor of the Arab-Israeli conflict for 25 years recently moved from his teaching job at Hafa University to head the history department at England's Exeter University. Son of immigrant German Jews, Pape has lived his entire life in Hafa.
Pape outlined the history since the state of Israeli was established in 1948. He said that Israel has systematically ignored and violated the UN Charter, the Geneva Convention, and hundreds of UN resolutions ever since. This gives the Palestinian people legal right to defend themselves and fight for their sovereignty.
Avi Shlaim (Oxford) defends Oxford Union "debate" in which no pro-Israel opinion was permitted
Israel is often portrayed by its supporters as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. But these very same supporters, in their excessive zeal for their cause, sometimes end up by violating one of the most fundamental principles of democracy – the right to free speech. While accepting free speech as a universal value, all too often they try to restrict it when it comes to Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.
Washington State's Assaf Oron makes denigrating the IDF his passion
One has to wonder at Assaf Oron's lack of concern for the community he came from. It's OK to mention Intel's presence there as a reference to advance his background and career, but he doesn't mind attacking the IDF that protects that community from Arabs who would gladly fire missiles into it from Gaza. While he served in the Givati Brigade, he seems to have never served in serious combat and sought to avoid service at checkpoints where he was at risk of being killed by bombs or terrorists to protect others, yet likens himself to the young Chinese man who faced down a tank at Tiananmen Square (who was executed as a result). Such comparisons with Israel's democracy and the Chinese dictatorship while Assaf Oron defends the totalitarians in the Palestinian Authority are extremely self-serving and scholastically bankrupt
ASSAF ORON (University of Washington) - thinks the Israel Defense Forces is a "disease" - Terrorism the cure?
No, refusal and evasion are not the same thing; but they are two sides of the same coin, two symptoms of the same disease. And the disease is called The IDF: a Military that owns a State. Two states, actually: Israel and the Occupied Territories. The IDF experience described here is not necessarily worse than in other armies. What sets the IDF apart is that it has two nations - Israelis and Palestinians - stuck inside its little pocket. A military is like a watchdog, for good or bad. What were are witnessing in and around Israel in the last generation or two, is what happens when you let the watchdog run the house.
Eyal Weizman, Goldsmith College, U.K, bashes Israel
Totalitarianism and anti-Semitism at Oxford University, recruiting Israeli academics as defamers
This month the same Oxford Student Union that, in 1933, famously passed a motion declaring '"this House will under no circumstances fight for its King and Country," is being true to the legacy of its forebears. As British blog Harry's Place reports, on October 23 the Union, in its annual Middle East debate, will put forth the following motion: "This House Believes that One State is the Only Solution to the Israel Palestine Conflict."
There are no surprises in the Union's choice of the three speakers seconding the motion. Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, and Ghada Karmi have for many years been anti-Israel agitators whose writings had only a shallow pretense of academic impartiality. If debate is meant to be shrill rather than thoughtful, venomous rather than witty, the Union chose the perfect line-up
Simona Sharoni (Evergreen State College), the 'Israeli Professor sees only one side of an issue, especially if it's against Israel'
Professor Sharoni uses extensively the buzz words and sound bites of the Palestinian revolution frequently hurled about by the International Solidarity Movement, the Commuist/Anarchist front for the PLO: Israel's Security Fence is an "apartheid wall " set up to promote racism against Arabs, not to stop terrorists; "humiliation" is also a big favorite word of hers when referring to the checkpoints set up to stop suicide bombers who kill Arabs and Jews alike. Professor Sharoni states with all the authority of a college professor who really doesn't know what she's talking about that the IDF sets up checkpoints "arbitrarily" in the West Bank simply to inconvenience the Arab population, not to preempt terrorism.
Noga Kadman, Department of Peace and Development Research at Goteborg University, Sweden, Promotes the "Naqba Narrative"
Noga Kadman, an activist and geographer with expertise on the 1948 Palestinian villages, has initiated a project in which she will produce with Zochrot a book on the erased Palestinian localities that have been turned into
recreational areas. The book will be completed in 2007 and will include a 11 Nakba map in Hebrew.
Sigal Ben-Porath, University of Pennsylvania, wants schools to serve as indoctrination camps
In Ben-Porath's view education is always political. "The main job of the public education system is political in the broadest sense of the word," she says, her hands slicing the air for emphasis. "We do necessarily political work, and if we don't do it reflectively and intentionally, we don't do it right."
Promoting education as an agent for political change has been the thrust of Sigal Ben-Porath's career. As a young social philosopher and educator in Israel, she participated in an interdisciplinary study group funded by the Ford Foundation.
Zalman Amit, Emeritus Professor of psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, smears Oded Tira because Tira opposes lawbreaking and sedition
Below is a quick translation of Tira's article. Its is pure slime, ignorance and the height of McCarthyism.
This character obviously thinks that (Ba'al Ha'meah hu ba'al ha'deah) "he who pays the piper calls the tune". It is also obvious that this scion of industrialism has no clue what a university is despite the fact that he identifies himself as a Technion graduate.
So much for the anguished cry for defense of freedom of speech. That is good for others but not for those protecting Israel's security
Zalman Amit
Eyal Weizman (University of London and Technion, architecture) celebrated by communist web site
Weizman is the Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College of the University of London, so he knows about architecture. His work with various NGOs and human rights groups in Palestine has given him the opportunity to observe Israel's ongoing campaign to disconnect (if not eradicate) the Palestinians from their land. As his book makes clear, this campaign is not accidental, nor is it something that only began because of the armed struggle waged by Palestinians against Tel Aviv's occupation. It is, in fact and deed, part and parcel of the Israeli project from its inception. Furthermore, this campaign has been waged in the military and architectural sphere in collusion with Israel's imperial cohorts--primarily the United States and Britain
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine lecture by Dr. Ilan Pappe -
The fact that Israel was let off easily in 1948, and not condemned for the ethnic cleansing it committed, encouraged it to ethnically cleanse a further 300,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza strip
Israel's Network of Expatriate Treachery - the Israel-hating Israeli Academics outside Zion
It seems that Israel-bashers and anti-Semites of the Left and of the Right never tire of the delight in discovering and recruiting yet another Jew willing to serve as spokesperson for their political agendas. They are invariably convinced that if they can point to any Jew who mouths their mantras about Israeli "apartheid" and Zionist "racism", never mind that Israel is the only Middle East country that is NOT an apartheid regime, then surely what they are saying MUST be true. And if those Jews also happen to be ex-Israelis, people who grew up in Israel and claim to know all about it, what chance can there be for anyone to debunk the lies and hate being marketed?
In recent years the world has seen the growth of networks of ex-Israeli Jewish far-leftists, disgruntled people living outside of Israel and devoting their energies to delegitimizing and undermining the very existence of the Jewish state.
Yigal Bronner, South Asian Literature, University of Chicago, invents some New History
Currently, Israel is dramatically and unilaterally changing the regional landscape. The project misleadingly called the "Security Fence" is perpetuating and vastly expanding the colonies Israel has established in the areas it occupied in 1967, while sacrificing a handful of settlements located in the remote and most populated Palestinian areas. The project also complements the system of Jewish-only roads and numerous checkpoints that already fragment the West Bank -- it concentrates the Palestinians in densely inhabited, impoverished enclaves, and ensures complete Israeli control over the region's most precious resources: open land and water...Note that what is happening in the territories occupied in 1967 is not essentially new. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not 40 years old but 120 years old. Throughout this period, the Israeli Yeshuv-turned-state used a variety of means to seize as much land as possible and displace or strangle the native population...
Uri Gordon, University of Oxford (environmental studies), wants an "anarchist" environment with no Israel in it
The point of all this is not only to dismantle barriers but to get the army out of Palestine, dismantling the entire regime of occupation with its apparatus of death, imprisonment and confiscation. We are not interested in better managing of the conflict - we want to end it by reconciliation among enemies.
...Many anarchists, by the way, opposed the disengagement - as they would any armed unilateralism toward citizens or non-citizens under military occupation.
The truth is that Israeli anarchists are demonized because their actions are coherent and bold. The joint Palestinian-Israeli struggle transgresses the fundamental taboos put in place by Zionist militarism. Alongside the living example of nonviolence and cooperation between the two peoples, the struggle forces Israeli spectators to confront their dark collective traumas.
Israelis who demonstrate hand-in-hand with Palestinians are threatening because they are afraid neither of Arabs nor of the Second Holocaust that they are supposedly destined to perpetrate.Notice how everything comes out when the anarchists are vilified: the fear of annihilation, the enemy as a calculated murderer, and victims' guilt expatiated through the assertion of self-defense and just war as unexamined axioms.
And this is threatening on a deeper level than any hole in the fence - but, then again, anarchists didn't get their reputation as trouble-makers for nothing.
Oren Ben-Dor (law University of Southampton, UK) thinks that "Israeli Apartheid is the Core of the Crisis" in anti-Semitic Counterpunch web site
The economic and diplomatic boycott imposed on the elected Hamas government, which has resulted in the recent violence in Gaza, was intended to force it to accept Israeli apartheid. Only when the world is ready to call by its true name the premise upon which Israeli statehood is based, will it not take violence to advance a morally coherent and credible criticism of Israel.
The denial of this core apartheid, of which the Gaza violence is a symptom, must stop. We should say it loud and clear. The apartheid system which lies at the core of Israeli statehood should be dismantled. It is unethical to rationalize the apartheid notion of a Jewish state. It is not consistent to be a friend of Israel, thereby endorsing its apartheid-based statehood, while criticising its apartheid practices in the Occupied Territories. Apartheid should have no sanctuary in any future vision for historic Palestine.
Only when this realization sinks in will it be possible to create a stable political solution, one in which redress can be made for past injustices and equal citizenship provided for all, Arabs and Jews.
Dr. Dalit Baum, at the 'Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice,' University of San Diego, denounces Israel from occupied California
"Well we have organised here a very very wide coalition of organizations from all different spectrums of Israeli political left, and we are going to march in Tel Aviv in order to remind people that this is forty years to the 67' war and the occupation of the territories in the West Bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights, and we are thinking that we need to walk around town -- this very quiet, very very content city -- and remind people
that the occupation goes on and it needs to stop."
Hilla Dayan (New School, NY) thinks Israel is an Outlaw Regime
Hilla Dayan is completing her Ph.D dissertation in political sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York
Dorit Naaman teaches that Israel is a 'Monster' (her word) at Queen's University in Kingston
This is not to say that there isn't non-violent resistance worth enacting. I am in awe at what Tali Fahima has done, what many organizations (like Zochrot, Machsom Watch, Anarchists Against the Wall, and many others) do relentlessly, even when they see no hope for change. I've seen some excellent and brave documentaries by Israeli filmmakers who dare to look straight into the monster's face. I just don't know that these will ever be more than marginal sites of sanity and morality. I can no longer see how the militaristic society of Israel will change, and I no longer know what it'll take to make this society less militaristic and more humane.
Uri Horesh promotes the campaign for U of Pennsylvania divestment from Israel
Welcome to the campaign for University of Pennsylvania divestment from arms corporations that conduct business with Israel or any other human rights violator.
the petition, with an opening statement calling on the University to re-establish the Committee on University Responsibility, and backed by hundreds of pages of documentation of human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza, has now been presented to President Rodin at the University Council Open Forum.
Haim Bresheeth (UK), calls in Al-Ahram for more boycotts of Israel
With Jewish intellectuals attacked as anti-Semitic by supporters of Israel, Israeli filmmaker and academic Haim Bresheeth* makes the case for a cultural boycott of his home country
Yigal Arens (USC, Los Angeles) has found a way to make his Daddy really angry - calling for boycotts of Israel
A boycott targetting institutions on the other hand, as the AUT conference originally attempted, is a legitimate idea, particularly if the institutions are shown to have government links or be involved in oppressive policies.
Yigal Arens thinks leftists are being denied freedom of expression in Israel. We wonder what planet he is on.
Maybe it is because the campus Left has still not succeeded in suppressing freedom of expression for non-leftists altogether?
Yigal Arens is a son of Moshe Arens. He refused to serve in the Israeli army about 30 years ago and left the country for the United States (where he now works at the Information Sciences Institute in the University of Southern California). In fact, Yigal Arens was listed as a speaker at the Palestinian Right of Return Conference that was held in Long Beach, California, on October 5-7, 2001
Smadar Lavie, radical feminist from Beit Berl College, and her sour grapes. She denounces "Academic Apartheid in Israel" (maybe because she could not get a university appointment?)
'All Israeli universities are public. One ought to assume that a public institution reflects the citizenry who finances it with its tax money. Half of Israeli citizens are women. If one is to add up the Mizrahim (Jews of Asian and North-African origins) with the Palestinian-Israelis, the majority of Israeli citizens these days is of Arab origins. Brandishing the widest relative income gap between rich and poor worldwide, most of these tax-payers dwell around what the collapsing Israeli welfare system define as "the poverty line." Nevertheless, the rank and file of both full and associate professors in Israel consists almost fully of upper middle-class Ashkenazi men. The common argument deployed to explain this chummy, country-club exclusivity is that Mizrahim and Palestinians just can't climb up to the high standards of the Israeli academic threshold.'
Moshe Machover, England
it is a conflict between the Zionist project to colonize Palestine and the people of this country, the Palestinian Arabs.
Assaf Oron (University of Washington) thinks anti-Israel leftists are being denied freedom of expression because others dare to disagree with them!
Israeli dissenters have been increasingly angry with the American Jewish leadership. Mainstream Jewish organizations ensure blanket U.S. support for Israeli government policies, creating a culture of impunity that repeatedly has gotten that country into trouble.
For me, the last straw was an invitation from all major Jewish organizations -- headed by Seattle's Jewish Federation -- to join a "support Israel" rally, just as the Israel Defense Forces were pounding Lebanon and killing mostly civilians in the process.
Zalman Amit (Concordia University, Canada) thinks the "Jewish Lobby" in Canada (there is one?) is guilty of "War Crimes"
There is no question that the item that dominated the news programs of the Canadian national networks in the past few days was: Did Israel commit war crimes, and if so, what is the price of admitting it?'...
This mini-shock may be the reason for the utterly stupid statement made by Ignatieff immediately following the killing in Kufr Qana where 28 innocent civilians were killed by the Israelis. When asked about it, Ignatieff responded in a Dan Halutz fashion and said that he "didn't lose sleep over it".
Michal Biletzky, PhD student at Boston University, denounces Israel "aggression" against Lebanon
YES - If they could cause more civilian casualties in Israel, they probably would. But they can't! Israel can, and does!
Haim Bresheeth brags about being Anti-Zionist on PLO web site
I have been an anti-Zionist for 3 decades, and have spoken on numerous occasions against the continuation of the illegal occupation, racism in Israel, and especially in Israeli universities, where people like you are a blot on Jewish history, supporting and abetting the worst atrocities, out of sheer hate of the Palestinian other.
Ella Habiba Shohat in her 'Reflections By An ARAB JEW', invents a new ethnicity
Sephardic Oriental women often dye their dark hair blond, while the men have more than once been arrested or beaten when mistaken for Palestinians. What for Ashkenazi immigrants from Russian and Poland was a social aliya (literally "ascent") was for Oriental Sephardic Jews a yerida ("descent").
Hagit Borer cheering for the Palestinian "Right of Return" (return to destroying israel, that is) and Palestinian "Resistance"
From nice safe Long Beach
Hagit Borer, smearing Israel and Zionism at Cal State
She believed that Zionism and democracy were incompatible, and that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian West Bank needed to end for peace to begin.
"If you say a Zionist state cannot be democratic, you're immediately branded an anti-Semite," she said. "And if you're like me, you are branded a self-hating Jew."
Professor Simona Sharoni joins the Solidarity-with-Terrorism Movement
Sharoni, who served in the Israeli Army, will be discussing the militarization of Israeli society. As one of the founders of Women In Black, she will also discuss solidarity organizing with Palestinians as a personal and political journey, and will be looking at the current situation in the occupied territories, focusing on aftermath of the Gaza Disengagement.
Terrorist websites love Avi Shlaim (Oxford, UK). After all, he has made an "academic" career out of bashing Israel -
One problem is that Israeli Arabs are treated as second-class citizens. Another problem arises in the Occupied Territories. The occupation calls Israeli democracy into question as it involves imposing coercive rule over another 3.5 million Arabs. Some sociologists refer to Israel as a 'master-race democracy', where democracy is for the Jews only as the master-race. This strikes me as too extreme and emotive a term. I would prefer to describe Israel as a flawed democracy and one which is increasingly going the route of South African with its apartheid practices.
If you look at Israel's specific policies on the West Bank - the illegal Jewish settlements, the brutal military repression of the Arabs, the abuses of human rights, the habitual disregard for international law, the building of the so-called 'security barrier', the roads for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers – all make up a pretty ugly picture. If that is not apartheid, I don't know what is.
Haim Bresheeth (UK) is Celebrated by Anti-Semites who call for the boycott of Israel
In boycotting Israel, we will not only act against the continued brutal occupation of Palestine, and against the refusal of Israel to agree to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, and allow Palestinians a mere 22% of their own country to live in. We will also strike a blow against those international forces that are hell-bent on wreaking havoc in the Arab and Islamic world, on fighting the terror of Bin Laden with a terror which is much worse. Israel has for many years initiated and supported the 'Clash of Civilisations' thesis, well before it became an item of religious belief in Washington – Israel's policies and actions were directed and focussed around this very understanding of international relations as a series of conflicts, dictated by ethnicity and cultural difference.
Avi Shlain is loved by the anti-Israel Guardian: "Withdrawal is a prelude to annexation"
'America's policy towards the Middle East is myopic, muddled and mistaken. Only a negotiated settlement can bring lasting peace and stability to the area. And only America has the power to push Israel into such a settlement. It is high time the US got tough with Israel, the intransigent party and main obstacle to peace. Colluding in Sharon's selfish, uncivilised plan to destroy the Jewish homes in Gaza is not a historic step on the road to peace. '
Avi Shlaim, St. Antony's College, Oxford, fabricates some "New History"
"Israel's error, then and now" is the headline of an article by British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, a professor and researcher at St. Antony's College, Oxford. Shlaim, whose article was published August 4 in the International Herald Tribune, is one of the "new historians." Like many of his peers, he is preoccupied with the systematic invalidation of the Zionist narrative in the Israeli-Arab conflict. This article is an example of a one-sided "academic" discussion, slanted against Israel and filled with hatred for the Jewish state. It's worth examining several examples of this hatred.
"Who are the real terrorists in the Middle East?" by Oren Ben-Dor (Law, Southampton, UK) Surprise, surpise, they are only the Israelis
The truth is that there never could have been a partition of Palestine by ethically acceptable means. Israel was created through terror and it needs terror to cover-up its core immorality. Whenever there is a glimmer of stability, the state orders a targeted assassination, such as that in Sidon which preceded the current Lebanon crisis, knowing well that this brings not security but more violence. Israel's unilateralism and the cycle of violence nourish one another.
Yael Korin calls Israel's birth a sin
Watch her video here at a speech in California. Listen to Yael Korin's lies.
BGU Post-Zionist Sociologist Uri Ram teaches post-Zionism and 'colonialism' at the New School in NY
One-sided anti-Israel indoctrination, for a change
OREN BEN-DOR (Southampton, UK, Law) thinks the Hamas's Victory offers new 'New Hope' ... that Israeli can at last be Destroyed
Now, when Hamas is elected, it is the time to legitimate its voice. It is time to reinforce Hamas resistance to the immorality and uncritically accepted legitimacy which the world leaders have hitherto bestowed upon the Zionist project. The portrayal of Hamas' voice as a blunt denial of the "right of Israel to exist" has indeed belligerent tone to it, signalling destruction and annihilation. However, understanding this voice as an ethical cry to the world to not allow Israel the right to persist in its racist self-definition is a much better way of articulating the moral message.
ASSAF ORON (University of Washington) urges the Presbyterians to Escalate their "Divestment from Israel Process"
"Regarding the American Jewish community: they are the most successful and powerful community in Jewish history, but they will forever feel vulnerable - as if the Holocaust may happen again any day. Fear drives all this community's actions regarding Israel. A Jewish peace activist recently wrote about how in many congregations, the people are afraid of speaking out because of their right-wing rabbi, and the same rabbi is afraid to speak out because of his right-wing congregation. In many ways, it is the Jewish spokespeople confronting you who are doubly out of touch – from the Jewish public's true opinions, and surely from Israeli and Palestinian reality. So be patient with them, but don't let them force their fears upon you."
Elad Orian, Faculty of Theology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Netherlands, thinks Israel's security fence is an environmental hazard. Better dead Jews than inconvenienced turtles.
Officially, the fence serves as a security barrier to safeguard Israel from terrorist attack and it is not a border of any kind in future negotiations. This official line, Orian underlines, is highly unconvincing. ... He further notes that in effect Israel prevents real possibilities for the peace negotiations to prosper
and in fact, postpones any possible dialogues in the future.
At present, Orian is involved in joint Israeli and Palestinian protests against the construction of the fence. There are demonstrations spearheaded by popular committees in the villages and activist assemblies at least once a week. Called "fence intifada", these are non-violent direct actions.
Rann Bar-On (Duke) and the Solidarity-with-Terrorism Movement
Another intercepted internal email by Rann Bar-On, the ISM leader at Duke University, recently bemoaned the fact that the ISM hasn't received enough internationals to carry out their activities of interfering with Israel's security fence and to shield PLO terrorists. (Rann, an Israeli national from a South African family, once refused to condemn suicide bombings against his fellow Israelis.) Thus, writes Bar-On, the ISM must rely on Israeli anarchists
Uri Gordon, Doctoral Candidate, University of Oxford: Leading the Struggle for an Anarchist State
Anarchism, in its re-emergence as a movement over the past decade, has been the site of manifold reconfigurations that distinguish it from previous cycles of left-libertarian political expression. ...
Yet another reconfiguration, less often mentioned by activists and commentators, is the unprecedented grounding of anarchist political commitments in the present tense. Having by and large abandoned the imagery of a "future anarchist society", contemporary anarchist political culture focuses its discourses of
resistance and liberation on the here and now. This paper examines several dimensions of this present-tense orientation, with the view of strengthening our understanding of the relevance of anarchism to contemporary political theory.
Oren Ben Dor (Law, Southampton) thinks boycotting Israel will make the Evil Jews abandon their Evil Natures (on the "Electronic Intifada")
'I write as an ex-Israeli, who happens to be a British academic. I write because experience has taught my conscience the harm that results from silencing free historical debate, the danger inherent in not letting the Other's voice challenge national heroic myths.
All my education in Israel was one sided, treating the Other as the enemy, the murderers, the rioters, the terrorists -- without alluding, in any way, to their pains and longings. For my teachers and, as a result, for me also, for many years, Zionism was beyond reproach; it was a return to the promised land as a result of persecution, it was draining the swamps, it was building a state based on Jewish genius.'
Oren Ben Dor (Southampton, Law, UK) demands more boycotts of Israeli universities so that they will become leftist indoctrination centers
To Create It, an Academic Boycott is Needed
All my education in Israel was one sided, treating the Other as the enemy, the murderers, the rioters, the terrorists -- without alluding, in any way, to their pains and longings. ...Instead, I write to make two urgent points which are germane to the upcoming debate on the AUT boycott of Israeli universities. First, overcoming naqba-denial in the Israeli academy is central to resolving the conflict in Palestine. Second as an academic of Israeli origin, I know that an academic boycott is needed to create the academic freedom which is needed to overcome naqba-denial.
The academic boycott is not simply another facet of a general boycott. It is much more important than that. The academic boycott is central to starting the process of Israeli self-examination that is a core prerequisite to a resolution of the conflict.
ZALMAN AMIT (Concordia, Canada) thinks Israel has no academic freedom because an anti-Israel MA thesis filled with fabrications was rejected by a school (writing in anti-Semitic Counterpunch web site)
On April 22, the Association of University Teachers in the United Kingdom voted to boycott the University of Haifa in Israel. Supporters of the boycott referred to the university's treatment of one of its staff, Dr. Ilan Pappe, in the controversy over an MA thesis which had been written by Teddy Katz about events in 1948 in the Palestinian coastal village of Tantura, a few miles south of Haifa.
Zalman Amit (Concordia, Canada) wants Canadaian Jews to stop Supporting the Zionist Entity
The Canadian Jewish community gives large amounts of money to Israeli institutions through official Canadian "charities" that have tax-deductible status. Since money is fungible, this means that the government of Canada is in effect subsidizing Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the tune of several million dollars a year.
Dalit Baum, Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice, University of San Diego, defames Israel from nice safe San Diego
DALIT BAUM, a peace activist with the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace, based in Tel Aviv, said her movement was a peace movement comprised of thousands of women and men who wanted to uproot racism in occupied Palestine. Ms. Baum gave a presentation of her movement's activities which described the wall as just one part of an elaborate system of dissection of Palestinian people. ... Women were no longer able to sustain their livelihood as a result of the wall. Ms. Baum said a growing number of Israelis, from all sectors of society, opposed the construction of the wall and added that her movement was a grass-roots, non-partisan movement. Several demonstrations had taken place throughout the region and in many cases unarmed protesters had been shot by Israeli soldiers with live fire.
Yael Korin, UCLA department of pathology, mourns dead Hamas Terror Chief at Rally for Terror
Jewish peace activist Yael Korin, right, also a member of Women in Black-Los Angeles, addresses a rally protesting the assassination of Palestinian Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader of Hamas, Saturday, March 27, 2004, outside the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles.
Tamir Sorek, Assistant Professor of Israel Studies Department of Sociology University of Florida denounces Israel for being undemocratic
The people upon whom the responsibility for suppressing the uprising has been inflicted are the students of the confusing educational system of "the Greater State of Israel." That system on the one hand preached democracy and condemned discrimination based on racial origin, yet on the other hand drew maps that gave legitimacy to a non-democratic racist regime. Today, hundreds of diligent students who learned the essence of democracy in civics classes are demanding to implement its principles in reality, or at least not to demand that they defend in practice the existence of a non-democratic regime. By this deed they are accused by the right wing of treachery and by the left wing of undermining the principles of a democratic regime (!)
Uri Strauss (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) defines Israel as an Apartheid Regime
The following document was compiled by Uri Strauss* for the Electronic Intifada, from a UN document and from a report by Palestinian human rights organisations LAW. The document presents the internationally-accepted definition of 'Apartheid' alongside relevant examples of Israel's human rights record in the occupied territories.
The definition of apartheid is taken from the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, ratified by United Nations General Assembly resolution 3068 (XXVIII) of 30 November 1973.
Lines in the sand
Israeli architect Eyal Weizman won a competition to represent his country at an international conference. But the invitation was abruptly cancelled when it was discovered that his work criticised Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank. He talks to Esther Addley about the politically loaded nature of planning in the region
About Tamir Sorek, organizing insurrection among Israeli soldiers from nice safe Florida
Tamir Sorek is one of over 400 Israeli reserve soldiers who have now signed a letter expressing their refusal to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their organization, Courage to Refuse, has ignited a small flame of hope in the otherwise unrelenting darkness of violence, terror, and repression in the Middle East.
Dr. Daniel Amit (at the time at University of Rome) - Letter calling for a boycott of the genocidal American imperialists
Science cannot stay neutral, especially after it has been so cynically used in the hands of the inspectors to disarm a country and prepare it for decimation by laser guided cluster bombs. No, science of the American variety has no recourse. I, personally, cannot see myself anymore sharing a common human community with American science. Unfortunately, I also belong to a culture of a similar spiritual deviation (Israel), and which seems to be equally incorrigible.
Hagit Borer
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