The Anti-Israel Panel at the International Sociological Association 

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06.07.22

Editorial note

IAM reported in January that Prof. Sari Hanafi, the President of the International Sociological Association (ISA), published a letter to members discussing “the intensification of the settler colonial Israeli project in the Occupied Palestinian territories.” 

IAM noted that Hanafi is a Syrian Palestinian who moved to France to pursue an academic career and returned to Lebanon as a Professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut. He was elected as President of the ISA in 2018. The office of ISA is based in the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology at the University Complutense, Madrid, Spain.

At the time, Hanafi discussed the planned ISA’s 20th conference in June 2023 in Australia. Hanafi explained that the conference would feature two presidential panels with “particular interest in connecting sociology to moral and political philosophy.” 

Indeed, last week, the ISA held its conference (June 25 to July 1, 2023) at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center.

One of the sessions was titled “Whither the Arab-Israel Conflict?” and took place on Thursday, June 29, 2023, from 12:30 – 13:50. This session was described as, “Some read the Arab-Israeli conflict as a continuous settler-colonial project since 1948 that has ended up establishing an apartheid system against the Palestinians, while others read it as conflicting nationalism between Arabs and Israeli Jews.” Still, “a creeping space-cede process in the Occupied Palestinian territories is obvious at all levels… Many among Israeli and Palestinian scholars argue that the two-state solution has collapsed with the failure of the Oslo process and that one should aim for one secular state for all its citizens.” 

The invitation stated clearly “one should aim for one secular state for all its citizens.”

The session organizer was Prof. Rhoda Reddock from the University of the West Indies, who also chaired the session.  

The first speaker was Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, titled “Decolonizing Epistemology: A Sociology of Persisting Crisis in Palestine/Israel.”

The second speaker was Prof. Ian S. Lustick, University of Pennsylvania, USA, titled “The Future of Israel-Palestine: Solutionism and the One-State Reality.”

The third speaker was Prof. Lev Grinberg, Ben Gurion University, Israel, “From Military Occupation to upgraded Apartheid, a path dependent eventful sociology of the Dynamic Zionist Colonizing Project.” 

Prof. Mohammed Bamyeh of the University of Pittsburgh, United States, spoke of “Death to Realism! Toward a Social Psychology of Palestinian Resistance.” 

Clearly, the panel was one-sided and biased against Israel, with the Israeli panelists recruited to serve the Palestinian narrative. Not a single academic presented the complex reality in the Middle East. In different ways, they all advocated “for one secular state for all its citizens.”

The panel was typical of the highly politized academic discourse on the Middle East in general and the Palestinian-Israeli discourse in particular. First, there was the ritualized bashing of Israel, accused of a panoply of sins such as colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, to mention a few. The charges are never contextualized; as IAM had repeatedly argued, there is hardly a mention of the poor decisions made by the Palestinians, such as the rejection of the 1947 U.N. Partition Proposal or the rejection of the Peace Agreement during the Camp David II meeting in 2001. Second, the solution to the conflict, a secular one-state for the Jews and the Palestinians – is a typical “pie-in-sky” solution. At the very least, they should have considered the religious ideology of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad that would never settle for a secular state with or without Jews. Considering that the ultra-orthodox Jews are growing exponentially, this would be a hard sale in Israel as well. 

Sadly, this is one more case in which liberal arts scholars use academic platforms to sell solutions that are removed from political reality. 

References:

https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2023/meetingapp.cgi/Session/18615

13 – Whither the Arab-Israel Conflict?

ORAL SESSION

Description

Some read the Arab-Israeli conflict as a continuous settler-colonial project since 1948 that has ended up establishing an apartheid system against the Palestinians, while others read it as conflicting nationalism between Arabs and Israeli Jews. No matter how this conflict is read, a creeping space-cede process in the Occupied Palestinian territories is obvious at all levels and the Peace Process (known as the Oslo process) did not stop it. Many among Israeli and Palestinian scholars argue that the two-state solution has collapsed with the failure of the Oslo process and that one should aim for one secular state for all its citizens. Panelists are invited to reflect on this topic.

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IAM objectives: To collect information about Israel which relates to, inter alia, activities, publications and presentations of Israeli academics. To monitor their academic activities and publications. Activities for academic freedom and scientific resonance of institutions of higher learning and to prevent abuse of the academic platform for foreign interests. Activities for academic ethics.

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