THES: “Confront the colluders in Israel’s academy”

by Lisa Taraki, The [London] Times Higher Education Supplement, June 23, 2006. Reposted on the PACBI site.

Although Menahem Milson’s career path and mine have been on a collision course, we have never met. In 1976, I joined Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank as a junior instructor in sociology. The same year, Milson, a professor of Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University, became “adviser on Arab affairs” in the Israeli Government.

By 1981, when the academic community I was part of was struggling under the crushing yoke of Israeli punishments, he was appointed head of the military administration in the West Bank. One of the highlights of his tenure was the notorious “Village Leagues” scheme, a failed experiment in promoting a class of Palestinian collaborators to mediate Israeli rule.

Milson’s service fits into the classic paradigm of a colonial regime enlisting scholars to assist in ruling the “natives”. He told an American Jewish publication in 1995 that to “serve an Arab population responsibly, one needs to know language and civilisation. That is why so many professors have been called to do this”. Indeed, the list of Israeli academics who have served government agencies and the occupation regime is impressive.

Today, that list includes demographers, psychologists and a host of strategic analysts.

What is most significant for those of us who argue for a boycott of the Israeli academy is that these academics, instead of facing censure and opprobrium from their peers for their complicity in oppression, are rewarded with the highest privileges. The toleration of racism and bigotry under the guise of scholarship is also remarkable; the legitimacy and normalcy of the discourse of “the demographic threat” is a striking example.

Opponents of an academic boycott complain that it violates academic freedom by restricting Israeli scholars’ access to international academic networks.

They also claim that since Israeli universities are generally “liberal”, the action punishes those who are least in agreement with the policies of their Government. These complaints betray a striking disregard for the indivisibility of academic freedom (the academic freedom of Palestinians being of no concern) and misrepresent the reality of the Israeli academy and Israeli academics.

When I arrived at Birzeit, the first institution of higher education established by Palestinians in the occupied territories, the university president had been deported by the Israeli Army. He was accused of “inciting” students against the occupation. He lived in exile for 19 years until he was allowed to return in 1993. As resistance to the occupation escalated in the 1980s, universities were treated to a constant diet of “closure orders” as punishment for student demonstrations.

As soon as a military closure order was issued, we young faculty would go into top gear and fire off appeals to Western consulates, the media and human rights organisations. Because arrests invariably followed closure orders, we also fell into a routine of preparing for students’ encounters with the system of military “justice”. We attended trials in seedy military courtrooms where some of the prosecutors and judges were academics on reserve duty. I can still remember watching those colourless individuals as they assiduously avoided the eyes of the Palestinian academic observers on the benches.

Later, and after we had organised makeshift lectures and laboratories scattered throughout Ramallah and Jerusalem, we would evade Army patrols bent on criminalising our efforts to rescue the semester or the entire academic year. I remember teaching a seminar on the Iranian revolution in the kitchen of an empty apartment in Ramallah, just as I recall travelling to Gaza to help a graduating student being held under house arrest finish his matriculation requirements (this trip, as the one to Jerusalem, is no longer conceivable, and we no longer have students from Gaza).

So where have Israeli academics been during the long siege of Palestinian higher education? Aside from a handful of progressive academics, the Israeli academy has remained silent. Business as usual has been the order of the day for nearly four decades. Virtually all Israeli academics have continued to serve in the Army’s reserve forces and, as such, have been perpetrators of, or witnesses to, the many crimes committed by their military.

What is there left to do? Global centres of power have stood firmly by Israel as it has wreaked havoc with the lives and futures of Palestinians.

Our only hope is pressure from international civil society. And that includes academics. We want our colleagues abroad to know that, with every conference they attend at an Israeli university, with every review they write for an Israeli institution, they are unwittingly helping to maintain the system of injustice.

The academic boycott aims to make Israelis realise that there is a price to be paid for complicity, complacency and silence. Milson may have retired, but his successors continue to enjoy the fruits of academic freedom in the Israeli academy. The rest do not care.

Lisa Taraki is associate professor of sociology at Birzeit University.

http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2030850

The Campaign for a Boycott of Apartheid Israel Gathers Momentum

Boycott Israeli Goods National Day of Action [UK]

As the British Government continues to boycott Palestinians by refusing to recognise their democratically elected government, by joining the EU in a blockade of aid and by entertaining Israeli leader Ehud Olmert in London whilst bombs rain down on Gaza, activists around the country have answered a call from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign (BIG) to join a day of boycott action against Israeli apartheid.

Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, West Bank in 1967 and has been rapidly annexing this occupied territory ever since. The Israeli state has moved 380 000 Jewish settlers into the West Bank as part of this policy of colonisation. The apartheid wall continues to be built, annexing huge swathes of Palestinian land and ghettoising whole communities, despite the advisory ruling of the International Court of Justice in the Hague in 2004. Fifty Five illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank will be on the Israeli side of the wall separated from the West Bank.

Since 2000 Israel has demolished 628 Palestinian houses, home to 3, 983 people, in acts of collective punishment. These demolitions constitute a war crime. 3, 808 Palestinians have been killed as a direct result of Israeli military actions and 29, 456 injured during the current upraising which began in September 2000 (all figures from www.btselem.org and www.palestinercs.org)
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The PSC and the BIG campaign are responding to calls from Palestine and Israel for a boycott of Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. The call for an international boycott has been signed by 180 civil society organisations in Palestine, large numbers of trade unions in Palestine spoke out in support of CUPE, a Canadian trade union who had passed a motion calling for a boycott. The Alternative Information Center, a joint Palestinian/Israeli project based in Jerusalem and Beit Sahour, recently published a pamphlet in support of the boycott. Similarly, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), has joined the international call for boycott. divestment and sanctions against Israel.

The boycott is aimed at showing that Israeli military actions do not happen in a vacuum and that the Israeli state, corporations and institutions will be penalised by civil society for supporting the occupation of Palestine. PSC and BIG are also calling for divestment from Israel, Ariel Sharon once said that Israel could not carry on its policies without support from foreign corporations.

The boycott is not an attack on Israeli civil society but an attempt to break the isolation of groups in Israel and Palestine who oppose the occupation.

During the day of action on Saturday 24th June, pickets and demonstrations took place at stores selling Israeli products across the UK, in Liverpool, Brighton, Camden, Hackney, Islington, Southport, Cardiff, Darlington, Brixton, Oxford, Nottingham, Birmingham, Exeter, Halifax, Brent, Durham, Sheffield and Manchester. Concerned individuals took part in creative actions to persuade the public not to buy Israeli goods and demand that retailers do not stock them.

In Brighton campaigners picketed Waitrose calling on the corporation to adhere to its ethical buying policy by not buying goods from apartheid Israel. The management of the store came to talk to campaigners and seemed interested in entering into dialogue. Another picket was held outside a highstreet store selling CATerpillar goods, CATerpillar have a contract with the Israeli military for the supply of military bulldozers used in illegal demolitions of Palestinian homes and have been the subject of intense international campaigning. CATerpillar’s board meeting this month was forced to consider the issue of geopolitics at a time when CEO Jim Owens would rather be talking of expanding the company.

In the West Midlands activists drove a replica CATerpillar bulldozer through the high street as a creative way of highlighting the way in which CATerpillar fuels the occupation.

Across London activist picketed supermarkets selling Israeli goods and delivered letters to store managers informing them of the boycott.

The actions today were part of a concerted campaign calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions. In 2004 activists supporting the boycott occupied a factory belonging to Caterpillar, a company supplying Israel with military bulldozers for the destruction of Palestinian civilian homes. Later that year a group of activists shut down Agrexco Ltd.s plant in Middlesex by erecting a blockade around their depot. The company is responsible for exporting 75% of fresh produce grown in illegal Israeli settlements. Last month NAFTHE, a union of university lecturers, voted to support an academic boycott of Israeli universities and academic institutions who supported the occupation. There is small but real support in Israel for the academic boycott, last month an Israeli professor spoke out in support of the boycott.

PSC and BIG aim to build a mass campaign similar to that of a boycott of apartheid South Africa. The campaign focuses on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Apartheid Israel. In addition to its brutal occupation and theft of Palestinian land, the Israeli state also operates an entrenched system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian civilians which is among the reasons many South African activists label it an apartheid state.

24th June Day of Action
24th June Boycott Actions, PSC Sheffield Calls for Boycott Actions

Agrexco related Links:
Corporate Complicity in the Ethnic Cleansing of the Jordan Valley, Letting Apartheid Bloom, The Uxbridge Seven Day One, The Uxbridge Seven Day Two, Seven Blockaders Acquitted

Caterpillar Related Links
Caterpillar Manchester Protest 2005 – Anniversary of Rachel Corries’ Death, Caterkiller Shrewsbury Shut Down on the Anniversary of Rachel’s Death 2004, Anti Caterpillar Motorcade, Rhythms of Resistance Anti Cat Shoes Protest, Caterpillar Trade Fair Action, Caterkiller Awarded Housewrecker of the Year, ESF Florence Action

Supermarket Protests
Boycott Van, Marks and Spencers’ Stencilled, Repression of M and S Protesters

Academic Boycott
AUT Boycott, NAFTHE Boycott, CUPE Ontario, COSATU (South Africa)

Sporting Boycott Campaign
Stop Arsenal supporting Israeli Apartheid, Scotland Pitch Invasions

Connex and Alstrom
Free Jerusalem – Stop Connex and Alstrom

Chicago Tribune: “Palestinian issue dominates Caterpillar meeting”

By James P. Miller, Tribune staff reporter, Published June 15, 2006

Caterpillar Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Jim Owens told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting Wednesday that because the heavy-equipment giant has “strong economic winds at our back,” prospects for continued growth appear promising.

Owens clearly wanted to discuss the record earnings the Peoria-based company has recorded in each of the past two years because of a worldwide surge in commodity prices and the company’s strategy for coming years.

To his obvious frustration, however, with the exception of his prepared remarks the stockholder meeting held in downtown Chicago was devoted almost entirely to a discussion about geopolitics.

Although Caterpillar’s earthmoving equipment, mining trucks and other products are made for peaceful applications, opponents of Israel’s Palestinian policies have focused on the fact that Caterpillar sells bulldozers to Israel and that Israeli military forces use them to demolish Palestinian homes and property.

For more than two years, those opponents have made Caterpillar the focus of a high-profile public relations campaign.

As was the case at last year’s shareholder gathering, the street outside Wednesday’s meeting site was thronged with protesters holding signs that condemned Caterpillar. Counterprotesters, meanwhile, told passersby that the attacks on Caterpillar were “anti-Israel propaganda.”

The issue is a hot button only for a small minority: At last year’s meeting, 97 percent of shareholders voted down a proposal that called for the company to review its sale of bulldozers to the Israeli government. There was no similar proposal on this year’s agenda, but the topic dominated the meeting nonetheless.

More than a dozen people stepped to the microphone to call the company to task for selling equipment to Israel.

The first up was Craig Corrie, a Washington state resident whose daughter Rachel died in 2003 after being crushed by an Israeli bulldozer as she sought to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home.

“Maybe you don’t want to choose sides,” Corrie argued quietly while Owens listened from the podium, but by selling the equipment to Israel, he said, “you’re choosing the side that uses these machines as a weapon.”

Before the meeting ended, many more people, including Rachel Corrie’s mother, took the floor to send the same message.

At one point, a representative from a pro-Israel group addressed the restless stockholders, saying, “We knew this meeting would be used as a platform for politics,” and urging the crowd to “get both sides of the story” on the issue.

Another stockholder complained that the meeting was being “hijacked” by people with a non-business agenda.

Caterpillar has argued it doesn’t have the right, or the means, to police how buyers use its bulldozers.

Owens emphasized at one point late in the meeting that “99.995 percent of our products are used for peaceful, constructive purposes.”

Shareholders voted down a number of corporate-governance proposals that management had opposed. Perhaps the most interesting vote involved a proposal that would require director nominees to receive a majority of votes to win their seats, rather than a simple plurality. Such measures, designed to make boards more accountable, have been proposed with increasing frequency in recent years.

The proposal was put forward at last year’s meeting, but 68 percent of shareholders voted against it. This year, the vote was dramatically closer, with 46 percent opposed and 42 percent in favor.

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jpmiller@tribune.com

Al Jazeera: “Israel introduces new travel restrictions”

by Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank for Al Jazeera.net, Sunday 11 June 2006

Palestinian families have accused Israel of taking draconian measures, further restricting their freedom of movement.

According to Palestinian human rights organisations, the new restrictions involve barring Palestinians carrying foreign passports, including those married to a Palestinian spouse, from re-entering the West Bank after leaving for their adopted country of citizenship, even for a brief visit.

The new measures also affect long-time foreigners residing in the West Bank such as college professors, NGO employees, religious figures and naturalised spouses of Palestinian residents in the West Bank.

Adel Samara is a noted Palestinian economist residing in Ramallah. His American wife wants to go the US for a visit. However, because she is married to a Palestinian, she is worried that the Israeli authorities wouldn’t allow her to return to her family once she left the West Bank.

“I really dont know why they are doing this to us. I am sure there is a special think-tank in Israel specialised in devising and inventing creative ways to make us suffer,” said Samara.

Right to bar

Samara believes Israeli military authorities were targeting ordinary people, most of whom are not politicised and leading a normal lives with their families and friends.

“There are hundreds of cases. You see, I am barred from travelling abroad for so-called security reasons and my wife won’t be allowed to return to Ramallah if she left the West Bank even for a brief visit to Jordan next door.”


Even spouses of Palestinian residents are feeling the heat

Aljazeera.net tried repeatedly to get the Israeli army spokespersons to clarify policy with regard to foreigners staying in or wanting to enter the West Bank.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli interior ministry said Israel had the right to bar whoever it wanted from entering the “territories”.

She said: “Those wishing to enter must apply for a permit and their application could be either accepted or rejected.”

Academics targeted

According to sources at the Bir Zeit University (BZU) in the West Bank, Israeli measures are also targeting academics and lecturers working at Palestinian universities, whether foreigners or Palestinians carrying foreign passports.

At least two professors and an administration official at BZU have been barred from returning to the West Bank without any explanation.

One of the three is Sumaydi Abbas, who holds Swedish citizenship. Aljazeera.net could not locate Abbas, but Ghassan Andouni, public relations officer at BZU, said the Israeli military authorities refused to allow the Palestinian professor to return “because he didn’t have residency rights”.

“You see, they wouldn’t even give him a tourist visa to enter his own country, his own homeland. They view Palestine, including the West Bank, as Israeli territory and us as foreigners.”

Bahjat Tayyem, who holds US citizenship and teaches at the BZU political science department, was recently turned back at the Jordan border while trying to enter the West Bank at the Allenby Border crossing.

“I think Israel wants to effect a total siege on us, a total isolation. They are not content with physical isolation which this evil concrete wall embodies,” said Anduni.

Andouni accused the Israeli military administration of trying to “empty the West Bank of foreigners”, especially those working at NGOs as well as peace activists.

“They want to reduce our towns and villages to inaccessible detention camps and large open-air prisons until we succumb to their bullying or implode from within.”

Israeli authorities have also barred international peace activists which they consider sympathetic to the Palestinians from entering the West Bank.

Peace activists

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which brings to the West Bank peace activists from around the world to encourage Palestinians to adopt non-violent means in their struggle against the Israeli occupation, seems to have been blacklisted.

ISM activists have been for years holding peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins against Israeli repression of Palestinians, including the construction of the separation wall and the bulldozing of Palestinian groves and farms.

Some Israeli officials, especially within the foreign ministry, believe ISM activities have been instrumental in getting a British union of university teachers and a Canadian workers’ union to boycott Israel.


Activists of the ISM are thought to be in Israeli officials’ sights

Last week, Israeli interior ministry authorities at the Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv incarcerated Paul Larudee, an American peace activist, barring him from entering Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories.

According to Larudee’s lawyer, Gabi Lasky, the Israeli authorities gave no explanation why her client was incarcerated.

However, according to the Jerusalem Post, Larudee’s name appeared on a Shin Bet [Israel’s main domestic intelligence agency]-compiled blacklist of foreigners identifying with the Palestinian struggle.

Danger to state

The paper quoted unnamed Israeli security officials as saying that Larudee was an ISM leader who took part in anti-Israeli demonstrations during the Israeli army assault on the West Bank between 2002 and 2004.

“This person is a danger to the state. He is one of the ISM leaders who had been involved in anti-Israeli activities and therefore will not be allowed into the country,” the security official was quoted as saying.

Lasky said Larudee visited Israel and the occupied territories four times and had never been arrested. She dismissed the security official’s explanation as “dubious”.

“To blacklist non-violent peace activists as ‘person non grata’ raises questions regarding the sincerity of Israel’s intentions to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians through dialogue and non-violence,” an ISM statement given to Aljazeera.net said.

Support CUPE’s Call to Boycott Israeli Apartheid

Action Alert from the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA)

In late May, the 200,000 member strong Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) approved Resolution 50 supporting a growing global campaign initiated on July 9, 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations, including the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid.

Predictably CUPE has come under intense pressure to back-down from this decision.

WE CALL UPON SUPPORTERS TO TAKE THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS:

THANK CUPE:

Please contact the leadership of CUPE Ontario and support this decision. Individuals, organizations, unions, congregations, etc. are all encourage to send letters of support to:

Sid Ryan, President CUPE Ontario: sryan@cupe.on.ca
CUPE Ontario Executive Members akirby@cupe.on.ca
Katherine Nastovski, Chair, CUPE Ontario International Solidarity Committee
knastov@yahoo.com

Or fax CUPE at: (416) 299-3480

SIGN THE PETITION:

Print and circulate the attached petition to your contacts. Send completed petitions to:

CAIA
427 Bloor Street West
Box 13, Toronto
Ontario, M5S 1X7
Canada

ORGANIZE A WORKSHOP:

Email us directly at endapartheid@riseup.net to arrange for a workshop on Israeli apartheid in you CUPE local, union hall, community center, school, congregation, etc.

DONATE TO SUPPORT THIS WORK:

Donate to CAIA to ensure that this grassroots movement against Israeli apartheid continues to grow. Checks can be made payable to the “Peace and Justice Committee” and sent to:

CAIA
427 Bloor Street West
Box 13, Toronto
Ontario, M5S 1X7

MONITOR AND RESPOND TO THE MEDIA:

Please continue monitoring any press on this issue, write letters to the editor in support of CUPE’s resolution and alert us to any particularly offensive, slanderous or racist materials published in response to this resolution (endapartheid@riseup.net)

PASS IT ON:

Please forward this note to your distribution lists and inform other members of your organization, community, school, congregation, union, workplace, etc.

FIND OUT MORE:

We are heartened by the numerous calls and e-mails of support that we have received from CUPE Ontario and other union members, as well as calls of support from unions around the world. We urge you to contct us directly if you’d like to get involved in this growing campaign.

To learn more about the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid or inquire about organizing educationals please contact endapartheid@riseup.net.

To learn more about the growing movement to boycott, divest and sanction Apartheid Israel visit the following websites:

End Israeli Apartheid website (Canada)
http://www.endisraeliapartheid.net

BIG, the Boycott Israeli goods campaign – supported by the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign (UK)
http://www.bigcampaign.org

Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (Palestine)

Home – EN

Palestine Solidarity Committee (South Africa)
http://www.psc.za.org

For recent press-coverage on Israeli Apartheid and the growing BDS movement against it see:

Protesting against Israeli apartheid (Toronto Sun)
http://torontosun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Ryan_Sid/2006/06/02/1610863.html

Canadian Union Takes Important Step Against Israeli Apartheid
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet022.html

Chris McGreal’s incesive and detailed two-part report on Israeli Apartheid for the UK daily The Guardian:

Worlds apart (6 February 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1703244,00.html

Brothers in arms – Israel’s secret pact with Pretoria (7 February 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1704037,00.html

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Full Text of the Resolution Below:

CUPE ONTARIO WILL:

1. With Palestine solidarity and human rights organizations, develop an education campaign about the apartheid nature of the Israeli state and the political and economic support of Canada for these practices.

2. Support the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self- determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law including the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

3. Call on CUPE National to commit to research into Canadian involvement in the occupation and call on the CLC to join us in lobbying against the apartheid-like practices of the Israeli state and call for the immediate dismantling of the wall.

BECAUSE:

– The Israeli Apartheid Wall has been condemned and determined illegal under international law.

– Over 170 Palestinian political parties, unions and other organizations including the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions issued a call in July 2005 for a global campaign of boycotts and divestment against Israel similar to those imposed against South African Apartheid;

– CUPE BC has firmly and vocally condemned the occupation of Palestine and have initiated an education campaign about the apartheid-like practices of the Israeli state.

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Sample letters

Dear CUPE-Executive:

Thank you for passing the resolution to support the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. It has become plainly obvious to anyone who has studied the actions of the Israeli government that their goal is not security but rather confiscation of as much of the West Bank as possible.

Like South Africa, Israel will have to be subjected to intense international pressure before it recognizes Palestinians as a people with the right to their own state and/or equal rights in a joint Palestinian/Jewish state.

No doubt you will come under intense pressure from pro-Israeli organizations to reverse this courageous decision, but rest assured that the overwhelming majority of people in the world are not fooled by right-wing, racist rhetoric and the mainstream media bias surrounding this issue.

Thank you again!

**************

To whom it may concern

I wish to express my profound gratitude to CUPE Ontario for passing Resolution 50 in support of the global campaign against Israeli Apartheid.

Only the grossly uninformed or misinformed can fail to comprehend the inexcusable suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian people for nearly six decades. For the sake of all of humanity, it must end.

Again, I commend your courage and principle. Rest assured, the vast majority of thinking people who want to see a peaceful world stand with you.

Most certainly you will come under great pressure from the pro-Israel lobby to reverse your decision. Please stand firm for justice and International Law.