16.05.24
Editorial Note
Dr. Maya Wind, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Canada, published her new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom.
Wind discussed her new book with the anti-Israel media outlet Democracy Now. Wind said, “University education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been under siege, by the Israeli state, by the Israeli military, for decades, including in Gaza. Gazan universities have been subject to a debilitating illegal siege for over 17 years, subject to repeated aerial bombardment. And now, most recently, every single one, as you said, has been destroyed by either controlled detonation or aerial bombardment. This is very intentional. This is part of a broader project by the Israeli state to destroy Palestinian education as a means to destroy the Palestinian liberation movement.”
She said, “What we are seeing now, especially over the last two decades, is a coalescing of Israeli university administrations with the Israeli far right, with other forces to continually foreclose and limit what is permissible to research, to debate, to speak to, to protest on Israeli campuses. And we’re seeing that really manifest for some time. But in particular, over the last five months, this repression has grown. Palestinian students were asked to evacuate their dorm rooms, given 24-hour notice. Palestinian and critical Jewish Israeli students and scholars have been summoned to disciplinary committees and have been suspended for speaking out against this genocide, for conducting research about the Nakba, which is the mass expulsion of over two-thirds of the Palestinian population that enabled the founding of the Israeli state. And so, we are seeing this is a broad project of repressing critical research and debate, which is really the bedrock of higher education. But this is disallowed in the Israeli university system.”
Wind said, “it is important to speak to how imprisonment and incarceration and detention is really a tool, a central tool, of the Israeli state to destroy the Palestinian liberation movement. And we see this particularly play out on Palestinian campuses across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian universities are routinely raided by the Israeli military. Student activists and organizers in over 411 Palestinian student groups and associations that have been declared unlawful by the Israeli state are routinely abducted from their campus, from their homes in the middle of the night. They are subjected to torture. They are held in administrative detention without charge or trial for months. And so, what we’re really seeing is a systemic attack of the Israeli military and the Israeli military government on Palestinian higher education, and particularly on Palestinian campuses as sites of organizing for Palestinian liberation.”
She claimed, “it sort of speaks to the misconception in the Western academic community about Israeli universities. For too long, Jewish Israeli scholars have been allowed to gatekeep and to narrate to the West what their universities are, and this despite, again, over two decades of mobilization and critical research by Palestinian scholars and civil society organizations about the nature of Israeli universities and their deep embeddedness in the apparatuses of violence of the Israeli state. And so, in my book, I really take this critique seriously and did an in-depth investigation, using archival materials, observing campus protests and classrooms across Israel’s eight major public universities, speaking with Palestinian student organizers, Palestinian and Jewish Israeli faculty and students. And what I really saw and learned in the course of this research is the vast and multifaceted nature of this embeddedness with the project of the oppression of Palestinians.”
She added: “There is an important move, certainly, to resist and to conduct critical research, to protest, to insist on academic freedom on Israeli university campuses by primarily, really led by, Palestinian students and faculty, and sometimes joined by a small contingent of Jewish Israelis. But what this book speaks to is really the structure. This is a structural problem. This is about the very nature of the institutions of Israeli universities, from where they are built — they are built as land grab institutions to further Palestinian dispossession and expand Judaization, which is the continual shrinking of Palestinian land ownership and Palestinian land contiguity and the expansion of Jewish Israeli settlement and population distribution — to the ways in which these universities produce knowledge, expertise and help in the development of weapons, used against Palestinians and then sold abroad as battle-tested. And so, we’re really seeing this vast apparatus and a structural problem of universities subordinating themselves to the requirements and the needs of the Israeli state and Israeli apartheid. And that is what is at stake here… in one of the chapters of the book, I really trace the ways that knowledge production and dominant paradigms in entire disciplines of the Israeli academy have subordinated their research agendas to the requirements of the Israeli state to aid the Israeli state in differentially ruling not only Palestinian and Jewish citizens, but also Palestinian subjects under military governance. “
She continued, “And we’re seeing that play out in multiple disciplines… in archaeology, for instance, Israeli archaeology, institutes and departments are producing knowledge to aid in the dispossession of Palestinians and the expansion of Jewish settlement, using archeological research as a pretext and creating narratives that justify the Jewish — not only Jewish presence, but Jewish exclusive claims to the entirety of the land… Israeli archaeological research has been repeatedly critiqued by Palestinian scholars and others for not only violating the Fourth Geneva Convention, but also conducting unsound and unscientific research by explicitly and intentionally removing Palestinian artifacts and artifacts of the Islamic periods in order to substantiate Israeli state narratives.”
In another recent interview about her book, Wind was described as a “scholar-activist” and she stressed the importance of holding universities accountable. “What we’re witnessing today is not only a genocide, not only an attempt by Israel to erase the Palestinian people, but also [to erase] centuries of knowledge, culture [and] history central to who they are as a people,” Wind said. “Israel has always understood Palestinian education as a threat to its rule and it has targeted it at every turn.. Israeli institutions of higher education are deeply implicated in Israeli colonialism and apartheid and must be understood as settler universities… They are embedded in the infrastructure that sustains Israeli society as a settler society… Before the ’80s, in Israeli universities, Palestinian and some Jewish Israeli scholars really began to explore the histories and structures of Israeli state violence… Following government control, researchers faced harassment and violence that drove many Palestinian scholars and some of the most critical Jewish Israelis out of these Israeli academies.”
The amount of lies and fabrications that Wind is spreading is unbelievable. Wind has been a professional anti-Israel activist for many years.
In her interview, she told Democracy Now, “I myself was an active member of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine over a decade ago. And it was really hard to organize on that campus then, and it is impossible now, with Columbia University suspending both Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Indeed, she has a long history of anti-Israel activism. In 2009, the Israeli Communist Party (MAKI) published an invitation to a “Demonstration of support for conscientious objectors Maya Yechiali-Wind and Raz Bar David Varon.” MAKI urged its followers to register and attend a demonstration to show support for the two conscientious objectors. The demonstration was held at the entrance of the Army Recruiting Office in Tel Hashomer. MAKI informed its followers that Yechiali-Wind was one of the signatories of the 2008 High school refusal to enlist (Shministim) letter.
Later in 2009, the media reported how “IDF draft dodgers speak at US colleges,” detailing how Maya Wind was one of two Israeli women who refused mandatory army service and kicked off a North American speaking tour to more than a dozen college campuses. Their tour was organized by the anti-war groups CODEPINK and Jewish Voice for Peace. Starting with the University of California, Hastings, University of Maryland, they stopped at Cornell, Columbia, New York University, Brown, Brandeis, and other schools.
In 2010, Wind was part of a group of activists in Sheikh Jarrah, media reported of a small group of young people “with no legal experience who managed to embarrass the Jerusalem police and force them to agree to a large demonstration.” The report said. “This is just another case of fighting occupation, racism and discrimination,” the group said.
In 2010, Wind was the winner of the Palestine-Israel Journal (PIJ) essay writing contest. In her essay “The Necessity of Doubt,” she urged young people to ignore “facts.” She wrote, “Young people have a great capacity to initiate processes of change. Yet in observing my society during and after the last operation in Gaza, I felt that this capacity was not employed at all. Despite our vast potential to create change, with our energy level and tendency to question the previous generation’s values, opinions among Israeli youth regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain sadly static. We need to channel our natural tendency in constructive directions, by questioning our perception of the conflict and nurturing the notion of doubt. Developing doubt will increase young people’s capacity to think originally and to translate our ideas into innovative actions that may change the political reality of the region. One way of nurturing constructive questioning would be to create an online ‘Israeli-Palestinian Doubt Forum.’ Doubt should be developed particularly in relation to three concepts: facts, collective identity and personal responsibility. First, it is important for my generation to question the official historical ‘facts’ that generally serve as a framework for discussion of the conflict. These ‘facts’ have been internalized and are now considered to provide the background to the debate instead of being subject to debate themselves. We don’t realize that what we assume to be ‘facts’ are frequently only our own narrative, and this greatly restricts our ability to think about the conflict openly and critically.”
In 2011 Wind organized “Israeli Apartheid Week” in New York. At the time, she was an Israeli student at Columbia University. Israeli TV covered this event. Wind was interviewed and explained, “As soon as the occupation ends and we start respecting human rights and international law, I will stop my performances.”
Wind is one of the scores of Israeli “peace activists” becoming academics who adopted the dominant neo-Marxist, critical theory paradigm. As well known, the new approach disregards empirical facts to fit another paradigmatic assumption that the Palestinians are the eternal victims of Israeli aggression and brutality. Palestinian and pro-Palestinian scholars recruit them to demonize Israel. The consequences of the hijacking of Western academia have been clear.
REFERENCES:
How Israeli universities aid and advance Zionist entity’s settler-colonial project
Wednesday, 27 March 2024 1:08 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 27 March 2024 1:08 PM ]
By Humaira Ahad
Jabir Abu Hatim, a third-year student in agricultural sciences at the Hebrew University, has been taking anti-depressants for the last few years.
The 20-year-old was one of the very few Arabs who got admission to an Israeli university. The university acceptance, however, proved a nightmare for him as he was not allowed to study courses of his choice.
Abu Hatim was forced to opt for subjects he had no interest in. His hardship didn’t end there.
The young Palestinian became a victim of discrimination on the campus. Shoddy and prejudiced treatment from his professors and university administration greatly impacted his psychological health, forcing him to confine himself to his room and avoid social circles.
According to a 2017 report, about half of the Arab university students accepted into Israeli universities reported racism and discrimination, and some 40 percent said racist comments came from the faculty.
Israeli universities “are a central pillar of Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians,” Maya Wind writes in her book Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom.
The Israeli regime was created through massacres and violent expulsion of Palestinians from their native land. The institutions created by the Zionist entity have worked to push the settler-colonial project of depopulating the land of Palestinians and bringing in outsiders.
Wind, a Jewish Israeli scholar says Israeli universities directly constrain Palestinian rights by supporting and even developing the policies of occupation and apartheid used by the Israeli regime.
According to Wind, these universities train soldiers to create target banks in Gaza.
“And they are, in fact, actually granting university course credit to reserve soldiers returning from Gaza to their classrooms,” she noted, making these universities deeply complicit in the genocide in Gaza.
Israeli universities- tools of settler colonialism
Hebrew University, which was founded in 1918, played a significant role in establishing and promoting the Zionist identity. Built at Mount Scopus in the northeast of the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds, the university worked as a strategic outpost to occupy the historic city.
Frank Mears, one of the master designers of the Hebrew University wrote in a letter that it is the responsibility of the Zionists and the Hebrew University to build a campus atop Mount Scopus that would symbolize the “New Jerusalem upon the hill”.
“After visiting several universities in Israel (occupied territories), I found the history and campus of Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in occupied Jerusalem to be a great example of how higher education institutions became complicit in the Israeli settler-colonial project,” writes Somdeep Sen, associate professor of international development studies at Roskilde University, Denmark.
The Technion (1925) in Haifa and the Weizmann Institute (1934) in Rehovot were used to advance the Zionist plans of drawing Palestinians out of their land.
Weizmann Institute, built on the ruins of the Palestinian village Zarnuqa, was depopulated by the Givati Brigade, a Zionist militia group. The regime later rechristened the village as Rehovot.
In the lead-up to Nakbathese, “scientific and technological institutes” played a significant role in the mass exodus of Palestinians in 1948.
Haganah, the terror militia, established the ‘Science Corps” in all three universities, opening bases on all three campuses to research and refine the military capabilities” of Zionist militias.
The teaching staff and students helped in the production of arms and biological weapons. These weapons were used by the Zionist groups to massacre Palestinians.
Science Corps later merged into Israel’s ministry of war and also led to the creation of the regime’s leading weapons manufacturers, including Rafael and Israeli Aerospace Industries.
As per reports, Technion University, in cooperation with Elbit, one of Israel’s largest arms companies, implemented the apartheid wall and surveillance technology on Palestinians.
Universities as strategic Zionist outposts
By design, Israeli universities were built as strategic regional outposts for pushing Palestinians out of their ancestral homes and expanding Zionist settlements.
In the guise of expanding its campus, Hebrew University occupied Palestinian lands in Sheikh Badr or Issawiyeh and East Jerusalem.
During the Nakba, the Palestinian population of al-Khureiba was forcibly displaced by Zionist forces and the sub-district was occupied by the University of Haifa.
Ben-Gurion University (1969) was established with the sole purpose of occupying the Negev desert. The desert that stretches over an area of 14,000 kilometers in the southern regions of the occupied Palestinian territories borders Jordan in the east and the Sinai Desert in the west.
Falsely promoting the idea of development of the Negev desert through the university, the regime has been targeting the Palestinian Bedouins of the region shrinking their access to the ancestral land and extending its Zionist occupation in the area.
Ariel University, which started as a college related to Bar Ilan University, became an Israeli regime-affiliated official university in 2012. The university was formed in the occupied Palestinian villages of KIfl Hares and Marda, providing way for the establishment of settler colonies in the occupied West Bank.
The university dates back to 1978 when a colony was established in the aftermath of the Camp David agreement between Egypt and the Israeli regime.
The colony started on 1000 square meters which was grabbed from the Palestinians from Salfit City and Marda village to later seize 13.7 km. The university now comprises a college, a number of factories, hotels and residential blocs.
The borders of the colony are four times the size of its built-up area, paving the way for future settlement expansions. Ariel is the third biggest colony in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in terms of size and number of colonists.
Aerial “transformed…Israeli public perception from an illegal and heavily militarized settlement to a suburb of Tel Aviv. The institution confers degrees as a means of expanding Israeli sovereignty and advancing the annexation of the OPT (occupied Palestinian territories),” writes Wind in her book.
Israel’s Scholasticide
The regime has not stopped using its universities for forwarding the settler colonial agenda but has been working systematically to destroy the Palestinian education system, considering it as a threat to its illegitimate existence.
Palestine’s commitment to education is a significant part of its identity. The resilience of Palestinians is showcased by the country’s incredibly high literacy rate, which stands at 97.7 percent.
“The role and power of education in an occupied society is enormous. Education posits possibilities and opens horizons. Freedom of thought contrasts sharply with the apartheid wall, the shackling checkpoints, the choking prisons,” says Dr Karma Nabulsi, a professor who coined the term “scholasticide” in 2009.
The term denotes the systematic destruction of centers of education precious to Palestinian society by the apartheid Israeli regime forces.
According to the Scholars Against the War on Palestine (SAWP) findings, Israel has bombed all of Gaza’s 11 universities since it launched its genocidal war on the besieged strip on October 7.
At least twelve libraries were also razed to the ground by Israeli airstrikes. SAWP says that this eradication fits the description of scholasticide.
On Tuesday, in a new report, Gaza’s Ministry of Education said around 5,881 Palestinian students have been killed and 9,899 others have been injured since October 7.
According to the ministry, over 5,826 students have been killed and 9,570 others injured in Gaza, while in the occupied West Bank, at least 55 students have been killed and 329 others injured.
A total of 264 teachers and school administrators are also among those killed in Gaza, while 286 government schools and 65 UN schools have also been partially or destroyed in Israeli airstrikes.
Targeting educational infrastructure
Israel’s policy of scholasticide has continued over the years. In 2009, Israel bombed Gaza’s ministry of education, destroyed the infrastructure, and demolished many schools across the besieged strip.
As per a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Israeli forces and Zionist settlers launched an average of 10 attacks per month on the occupied West Bank kindergartens and school students, staff and facilities between January 2018 and June 2020.
“Over the span of 30 months, 296 attacks against education by Israeli forces or settlers and settlement private security guards took place during 235 separate incidents.”
The regime has also been targeting Palestinian intellectuals and academics in an attempt to muzzle the voice of resistance. The Israeli army has killed 94 academics, along with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students, since October 7, according to reports.
According to Euro-Med Monitor, a Geneva-based human rights group, the Israeli army has been intentionally targeting academic, scientific, and intellectual figures in the coastal territory.
One of them was Refaat al Araeer, a Palestinian poet, writer, professor, and activist, who was killed on December 7 in an Israeli airstrike in Al Shujaiya, a district in southern Gaza.
Al Araeer was a distinguished professor of world and comparative literature and also taught creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza.
Just two days before his brutal murder, Al Araeer penned a tribute to the Palestinian resistance.
“More horrific Israeli bombardments…We could die this dawn. I wish I were a freedom fighter so I die fighting back against those invading Israeli genocidal maniacs invading my neighborhood and my city.”
Over the years, Israeli universities have been directly complicit in implementing the racist and genocidal policies of the Tel Aviv regime, which assumed the ugliest form after October 7.
Wind believes that Israeli universities are complicit in the ongoing war, marking a new stage of scholasticide. The universities are enlisting their institutes, resources, and courses for the regime’s obnoxious propaganda.
“They are crafting legal scholarship to shield Israel from accountability for its war crimes. They are training soldiers and developing weapons for the Israeli military. Every day, Israeli universities make this genocide possible,” she asserted.
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How Israeli universities are an arm of settler colonialism
Maya Wind’s new book meticulously demonstrates how Israeli academic institutions were created to serve the Zionist colonization of Palestine. They continue to do so to this day while fueling Israel’s university-military-industrial complex.
AERIAL VIEW OF THE ROAD FROM JERUSALEM TO THE SETTLEMENT OF MA’ALE ADUMIM, WITH THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY CAMPUS ON THE LEFT, 2007. (PHOTO: ISRAEL NATIONAL PHOTO COLLECTION)
TOWERS OF IVORY AND STEEL
How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom
by Maya Wind
288 pp. Verso Press, $29.95
Little by little, state legislatures across the United States are intervening in university practices like tenure and DEI. Recently, Indiana’s House of Representatives has been trying to legislate “intellectual diversity” by mandating that scholars share a variety of perspectives that can be evaluated when they are up for review. On a national level, elite institutions have come under fire if their administration isn’t sufficiently Zionist.
Government encroaching on the sacred cow of academic freedom is precisely the way the Israeli government intervenes in the lives of faculty and students. The difference is that, in Israel, such interference is baked into the system. That’s why Maya Wind’s Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom is a critical tool for anyone affiliated with academic life — students, faculty, or staff. It is also a text that people involved in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement will find essential: its systematic analysis, history, and solid data are the ammunition we need to combat those who mistakenly assume that boycotting Israeli academic institutions undermines academic freedom.
Wind’s book is structured in two parts — complicity and repression. It opens and concludes with two brilliant essays by Nadia Abu El-Haj and Robin D. G. Kelley. Wind’s first section lays out the creation of Israeli academic institutions as foundations for the militarized settler colonial state while the second half covers how those institutions implement apartheid and suppress Palestinian students and faculty. From the outset, Wind is refreshingly unequivocal: “Israeli universities are not independent of the Israeli security state but, rather, serve as an extension of its violence” (p. 13). Throughout her book, readers glean insight into how Israeli universities create the knowledge necessary to rationalize and legalize Israel’s apartheid regime.
The compiled evidence in Wind’s powerful book includes a variety of materials that are accessible to an Ashkenazi Israeli like Wind, albeit one whose struggle against Zionism began when she was a teenager, including her refusal to serve in Israel’s army. Relying upon research produced by Palestinian scholars and activists, coupled with documents from Israeli state and military archives, Wind reveals precisely how Israeli universities are complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights inside and outside academia.
The university and the colony
Grounding the role of Israeli universities in settler colonialism, Wind illustrates that “before even the founding of Israel, the Zionist movement founded three universities, which were explicitly to serve the movement’s territorial objectives in Palestine.” (p. 23)
The Hebrew University (1918) was designed to be a “strategic outpost for the Zionist movement and to stake a symbolic political claim to Jerusalem,” while the Technion (1925) and the Weizmann Institute (1934) were “established to advance the scientific and technological development of Israel” (p. 23).
Each institution participated in the Nakba by hosting the Haganah’s “Science Corps, which opened bases on all three campuses to research and refine military capabilities” (p. 23). Faculty and students participated in the production of arms and biological weapons on their campuses, serving Zionist militias that would expel and massacre Palestinians. Science Corps was later incorporated into the Ministry of Defense and led to the creation of Israel’s leading weapons manufacturers, such as Rafael and Israeli Aerospace Industries — a consequence of the commingling of academia and the state. As Wind explains, “The Israeli state’s military industries and its universities have always been co-constituted. Universities have birthed, funded, and advanced their scientific research through the Israeli security state and Israeli weapons corporations.” (p. 105)
While one arm of Israeli academia has certainly been fixated on building its arsenal, its other arm has centered on advancing its demographic and territorial expansionist project: “Their campuses, research, and architectural and planning expertise have been committed toward the state’s territorial and demographic project.” (p. 60) In other words, Israeli universities are part and parcel of the Judaization process. Whether it’s occupying lands in Sheikh Badr or Issawiyeh for Hebrew University’s West and East Jerusalem campuses, all universities in Israel have annexed Palestinian land. Police outposts in university neighborhoods coordinate with campus security, “made up of former Israeli combat soldiers, many of whom still serve in combat reserve units” and police Palestinians on and off campus. (p. 148) It’s not too far-fetched to see the parallels between urban American universities and their role in the gentrification and policing of inner-city communities.
But Israeli universities are not only fixated on annexation near the Green Line. The University of Haifa “was designed to further Israel’s regional demographic project” (p. 71) on the land of al-Khureiba. Its “departments of urban planning and geography have contributed their expertise to assess, improve, and design ‘Judaization’ policies.” (p. 72) The scholarly output of its faculty has contributed to policies supporting the Ministry of Defense that “construct scholarly justifications for the expulsion, containment, and discrimination of Palestinian citizens, alongside exclusive and increased investment in Jewish settlements in the Galilee.” (p. 73)
Similarly, “Ben-Gurion University was established in 1969 with the explicit goal to ‘develop the Negev’ and, as the Zionist adage puts it, ‘make the desert bloom.’” (p. 76) As in the Galilee, Israel worked to contain the Palestinian Bedouin population by shrinking access to their land and re-settling it with its lesser desired Jewish people — initially, Arab and Indian — to the Naqab desert.
Israel’s most recent university came into existence in exactly the same manner as those that came before it — on stolen land from Palestinian villages like Kifl Hares and Marda. As Wind highlights, Ariel University’s foundation has the exact same agenda as its counterparts. Indeed, Ariel is seen as a progenitor for solidifying the annexation of much of the West Bank. It “transformed…Israeli public perception from an illegal and heavily militarized settlement into a suburb of Tel Aviv.” (p. 81) The university and the settlement are mutually reinforcing: “The institution confers degrees as a means of expanding Israeli sovereignty and advancing the annexation of the OPT.” (p. 84)
The university-military-industrial complex
Wind does an excellent job of demonstrating how institutions were created to serve Zionist aims, but it’s especially intriguing to read about the ways in which a wide variety of academic disciplines participate in the creation of facts on the ground for the Israeli state: archaeology, law, philosophy, Middle East studies, history, sociology, architecture, anthropology, politics and government, cultural studies, and specialty programs that fuse military and academic work with the high tech sector. Using evidence from each discipline, Wind illustrates the historical and ongoing use of how academia works to displace and disrupt Palestinian lives.
In some fields, like Middle East studies, the revolving door for employees between the state, the corporation, and the university enables the development of its university-military-industrial complex: “This entanglement of university, military, and state expertise shaped the discipline in its early years. Many of the founding Israeli Middle East studies scholars moved between or held parallel roles in academia and the security establishment or were otherwise bound by loyalty and secrecy commitments to state apparatuses.” (p. 49) Of the various contributions such intermixing facilitated was Tel Aviv University’s faculty preventing the return of Palestinian refugees after the passage of UN Resolution 194.
Collusion between the state and academia plays out today in the creation of programs such as Hebrew University’s Havatzalot intelligence program. The university was required to make concessions to host the program, including “far-reaching Israeli military intervention in the program’s content, structure, employees, and infrastructure on campus.” (p. 53) Palestinian students protested this program, including screening a film documenting what it felt like to encounter Havatzalot students in their classrooms; their actions garnered reprimands — including calls for criminal investigations from the Knesset. These actions ring true as we witness Congress’s overstepping by investigating university campus responses to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Repressing Palestinian students
Importantly, the treatment of Palestinian students takes up a critical portion of Wind’s book, especially the education sector more broadly, as it affects Palestinian citizens of Israel and their teachers, both of whom have undergone decades of surveillance and discrimination. Even secondary education in Israel has largely been the purview of the security state. Wind shares that “as recently as 2020, the director general of the Ministry of Education met with the Shin Bet to discuss screening Palestinian citizen teachers for ‘radicalism.’” (p. 137)
Acceptance into Israeli universities requires surmounting various hurdles, including having matriculated at underfunded schools, passing psychometric exams in addition to quotas for programs like medicine, and the rote racism applied to citizens who aren’t Jewish. For those who make it through these hoops and enroll in an Israeli university, there are daily barriers to contend with, from being accepted into student housing to facing harassment on campus. When they attempt to challenge these policies, Israeli universities never side with their Palestinian students: “What remains unaddressed and unspeakable for university administrations is their alignment and collaboration with the Israeli regime of discriminatory policies.” In fact, on an Israeli campus, Wind tells us, “Palestinian identity itself has always been conceived of as a ‘security threat.’” (p. 146)
Enabling suppression of Palestinian student expression, especially those who engage in campus activism, is Im Tirtzu, an organization affiliated with the Likud that seeks to “monitor ‘leftist’ Jewish faculty and intimidate Palestinian student groups,” maintaining branches on all Israeli university campuses. (p. 117) Faculty are not immune to such surveillance if their research and teaching threaten the state; Im Tirtzu’s informing led to the expulsion of political scientists Haim Yacobi and Neve Gordon from Ben-Gurion University. Of course, the work of Ilan Pappé and his student, Theodore Katz, at the University of Haifa are two additional notorious examples discussed by Wind.
Wind also covers Palestinian university education more broadly, including Israeli interference with the creation and running of universities in the West Bank and Gaza. Monitoring student activism on campuses in the West Bank has often led to violent military repression — monitoring that is enabled by the knowledge and weapons produced by Israel’s university-military-industrial complex. Such oppression is directly tied to the university-to-prison pipeline that many Palestinians endure at the hands of Israel’s apartheid regime.
According to Wind’s research, “no Israeli university president or senior administrator has offered to intervene” on behalf of Palestinian faculty or students facing Israeli military invasions of their campuses. Indeed, “Tel Aviv University president even called in 1986 for Birzeit [University] to be closed by the Israeli military government.” (p. 166) As Wind meticulously chronicles, there is a deafening silence within the halls of Israeli academia to any violation of a Palestinian’s right to education. That alone should be a call to arms for joining the academic boycott.
These instances and histories, which are also very much in the present reality of Israeli academia, should be reason enough for academics to join the boycott movement as individuals and as members of professional organizations. Wind’s book is crystal clear: “Israeli universities continue not only to actively participate in the violence of the Israeli state against Palestinians but also to contribute their resources, research, and scholarship to maintain, defend, and justify this oppression.” (p. 178)
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Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli universities undermine Palestinian freedom
24 January, 2024
Book Club: Drawing on Hebrew sources, Maya Wind shatters the myth of liberal expression in Israeli universities, revealing instead how they prop up apartheid.
Maya Wind show how the Israeli academy acts as a pillar for Israeli occupation and apartheid, whilst also cracking down on pro-Palestinian voices [Verso Books]
Often it is claimed that Israeli universities are the last bastions of academic freedom in an increasingly oppressive state.
Yet a growing number of critical scholars — Maya Wind first among them — have shown us that the freedom that is claimed to flourish in Israeli universities is only available for supporters of the Israeli state.
Wind’s new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, entered production shortly before Israel’s latest onslaught in Gaza began in October 2023.
“Wind shows us how the university has advanced Israel’s demographic project of appropriating Palestinian land and replacing Palestinian inhabitants between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with Israeli settlers”
Drawing heavily on Hebrew sources that have not been discussed in the English-language debate around Israel and Palestine, Wind documents a long history of collaboration by Israeli academic institutions in the occupation of Palestine and denial of Palestinian rights.
Wind documents, in painstaking detail how, from the beginning of the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 — if not earlier — Israeli universities have been designed as “regionally strategic outposts for the Israeli state’s territorial and demographic project.”
The locations, research focus, and academic hierarchies of Israeli universities all reflect this broader aim.
The occupation of knowledge
First and foremost among Israeli academia’s “regionally strategic outposts” is the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which was deliberately located in 1925 in “a remote enclave among Palestinian villages.”
As the Zionist expansion project grew, so too did the campus of Hebrew University. In more recent years, the university has been heavily involved in consolidating Israel’s illegal hold over East Jerusalem.
Wind documents how the administrators and staff of Hebrew University profited from the Nakba and later displacements of Palestinians from East Jerusalem throughout the 1960s and into the present.
As soon as Palestinians were expelled from Jerusalem in 1948, Israel’s National Library and Hebrew University embarked on a project to loot books from Palestinian homes and libraries.
As part of the Oriental Division of the National Library, these looted books currently form the core of the Middle Eastern studies collection at Hebrew University. The story of this criminal appropriation is also told by Benny Brunner and Arjan El Fassed, in their documentary The Great Book Robbery, which aired on Al Jazeera in 2012.
No Israeli university has managed to evade complicity in the occupation. Wind takes us through the history of Israel’s major public universities, including the University of Haifa, Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, the Technion in Haifa, the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Bar-Ilan University, Ariel University, and Hebrew University.
The only universities she does not mention are Reichman University, Israel’s only private university, and the Open University of Israel.
In each case, Wind shows us how the university has advanced Israel’s demographic project of appropriating Palestinian land and replacing Palestinian inhabitants between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with Israeli settlers.
As Wind explains, drawing on the scholarship of Nadia Abu El-Haj, the aim has consistently been to “create facts on the ground” that make Israel’s demographic engineering and violations of international law much more difficult to reverse.
The incorporation of Ariel University into mainstream Israeli academia illustrates how effectively Israel has created irreversible “facts on the ground.”
Originally established as a college in 1982 under the auspices of Bar-Ilan University of the Negev, Ariel was named after an existing Israeli settlement that was strategically located to disrupt Palestinian territorial contiguity.
Wind documents the process through which Ariel University came to be officially recognised and treated as a legitimate university within Israel, notwithstanding its location in the occupied West Bank.
There was a brief campaign within Israel to prevent Ariel University from becoming accredited but, as Wind notes, this initiative lost its momentum once it became evident that the groundswell of international opposition that Israeli academics feared would result from Ariel’s accreditation never materialised.
“Wind’s timely expose of the struggle for power over Palestinian rights, Palestinian land, and ultimately over Palestinian lives that is currently taking place in Israeli universities will serve as a guide to everyone responding to the call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel”
In March 2021, over 500 academics signed an open letter calling on the European Commission to ensure that EU funds were not used to support Israeli research activities in the occupied West Bank.
And yet, only seven months later, the European Commission concluded formal negotiations with Israel that resulted in it becoming an associated country, a status that gives researchers based in Israeli universities access to prestigious and lucrative funding from the European Research Council.
Unfortunately, there is no sign that during these negotiations the European Commission raised the concerns voiced by the international scholarly community about Ariel University, whose very location is in violation of international law, or that the illegal activities of any other Israeli university were mentioned as a potential barrier to Israeli participation in EU funding schemes.
Exporting the Israeli psyche
Meanwhile, in the US, a ban that prohibited US taxpayer funding of academic research conducted in Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements, including Ariel University, was lifted in 2020.
The Biden administration gradually reinstated the ban but decided not to adopt the pre-Trump era policy of describing Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal under international law.
A few months before the ban was lifted, Ariel University conferred an honorary fellowship on the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, a politician who has led the way in banning books promoting awareness of the US’s racist past, as well as in banning chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine across Florida university campuses.
The role that DeSantis has played in undermining academic freedom in Florida universities demonstrates that the tendency to look the other way while Israel violates its international obligations and oppresses Palestinians also affects academic freedom in North American and European universities.
The special status accorded by Western powers to Israeli universities makes Wind’s documentation of Israeli academia’s complicity in the denial of Palestinian freedom all the more urgent.
The book includes a preface from Nadia Abu El-Haj and an afterword from Robin D.G. Kelley that situates Wind’s project in mid-2023, just before the Gaza genocide.
In his caustic remarks, Kelley reminds us, not only why we must boycott Israeli universities and other academic institutions, but also why the struggle against Israeli apartheid in academic spaces matters for everyone.
As Kelley points out, although “universities are not necessarily bastions of democracy, equity, or inclusion,” they are “sites of power.”
Even those of us who doubt that universities matter in the broader struggle for collective liberation would do well to remember that “what appears to be a fight to secure intellectual freedom within the academy is fundamentally a struggle for power.”
Wind’s timely expose of the struggle for power over Palestinian rights, Palestinian land, and ultimately over Palestinian lives that is currently taking place in Israeli universities will serve as a guide to everyone responding to the call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
Initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2004, two decades of Israeli apartheid and an ongoing genocide have shown us that boycotting Israeli universities is an ethical as well as a strategic imperative.
Rebecca Ruth Gould is a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Poetics and Global Politics, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She is the author of numerous works at the intersection of aesthetics and politics, including Erasing Palestine (2023), Writers and Rebels (2016) and The Persian Prison Poem (2021). With Malaka Shwaikh, she is the author of Prison Hunger Strikes in Palestine (2023). Her articles have appeared in the London Review of Books, Middle East Eye, and World Policy Journal and her writing has been translated into eleven languages
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https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/15/maya_wind_towers_of_ivory_and
“Towers of Ivory and Steel”: Jewish Scholar Says Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom
MARCH 15, 2024Watch Full Show
Israeli scholar Maya Wind’s new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, documents how Israeli universities directly constrain Palestinian rights by supporting and even developing the policies of occupation and apartheid used by the Israeli state. “In the West, Israeli universities are considered bastions of pluralism and democracy. But in fact … they are a central pillar of Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians,” says Wind, who also discusses Israel’s “scholasticide, [or] the intentional destruction of Palestinian education,” and the movement of conscientious objectors to Israel’s mandatory conscription, in which she took part when she refused to enlist in the army at age 18 and served 40 days in a military prison.
GUESTS
- Maya Windpostdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.
- Nadera Shalhoub-KevorkianPalestinian author and academic.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.
We are looking now at how the attack on Palestinian rights comes not just from the Israeli military, but, our guest says, an Israeli author — but from Israeli universities, as well. That’s according to a new book called Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. It documents how, quote, “Academic disciplines, degree programs, campus infrastructure, and research laboratories all service Israeli occupation and apartheid,” it says, “while universities violate the rights of Palestinians to education, stifle critical scholarship, and violently repress student dissent,” unquote.
The book’s author is joining us now. She is Maya Wind, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Maya Wind is a Jewish Israeli scholar who grew up in Jerusalem. When she was 18, she refused to enlist in the army, served 40 days in a military prison.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Maya Wind. If you can respond to what’s happening right now to professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian, her suspension by Hebrew University, and how you see it in a larger context?
MAYA WIND: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Amy.
And let me really start by saying that I’m one of the countless young scholars who have learned so much from professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s uncompromising research and analysis. And it is truly a travesty that Hebrew University has not only been attempting to silence her for years, but is now effectively expelling her for exposing Jewish Israelis to uncomfortable truths.
And I think this really speaks to the larger problem, which is that in the West, Israeli universities are considered bastions of pluralism and democracy, but, in fact, Palestinian faculty, scholars, students, activists have for over two decades contended that they are a central pillar of Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians. So, PACBI, which is the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, issued a call back in 2004 to boycott Israeli universities on the basis of this complicity. And as my new book shows, Israeli universities are indeed deeply, deeply implicated in the violation of Palestinian rights.
And as you began in the opening segment, it is important to note that Israel has destroyed every single Palestinian university in the Gaza Strip. So it is not only committing genocide, but also what Karma Nabulsi and other Palestinian intellectuals have long called scholasticide, the intentional destruction of Palestinian education. And this genocide is not only enabled by the rise of the far right or overzealous military leaders, it is, in fact, central — it is part of a project, of an over 75-year project, of the Zionist movement and the Israeli state to eliminate and replace Palestinians with Jewish Israelis. So, genocide is structural to the Israeli state and is sustained by its most liberal institutions, including its universities.
And just now, it is not only that Israeli universities sustain apartheid and violence against Palestinians for decades, but they are currently participating in this genocide. Hebrew University, among others, are training intelligence soldiers to create target banks in Gaza. They are producing knowledge for the state, whether it’s Hezbollah, which is state propaganda, or legal scholarship to help thwart attempts to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes, such as the case brought to the ICJ by South Africa. And they are, in fact, actually granting university course credit to reserve soldiers returning from Gaza to their classrooms. So, Israeli universities are deeply complicit in this genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Maya Wind, you refused to serve in the Israeli military back 15 years ago, and you were imprisoned for that. Why then? And how does that inform what you do today?
MAYA WIND: So, yes, I was part of a small movement resisting the draft, a movement that unfortunately has not grown in the 15 years since. And this is one of the reasons, one of the many reasons, that it is absolutely essential for people, especially in the United States, which is fully enabling this genocide, to join the movement to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and particularly to participate in the academic boycott and sever ties from — of our own universities and our own institutions from Israeli universities, which are implicated in the violation of Palestinian rights and now in genocide, precisely because we need the intervention of international civil society to hold Israelis accountable for these crimes.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me bring back in professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian. What does it mean to have Jewish scholars and students like Maya Wind to be joining with you, speaking up in your behalf to challenge your suspension?
NADERA SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN: Yeah, well, I think that Maya’s book is a very important book, and those voices are extremely important to really challenge the system and that system of oppression and of the genocidal process. Amy, you know, in class, I do have students, Jewish — mostly Jewish, actually — and Palestinians. I am teaching for years in the Department of Criminology, where lots of our students are serving in different places — the army, the police and so on. The fact that the whole academic space is being turned — and I think teaching and talking and discussing and working and agreeing and disagreeing is very important, is very healthy, is a space to discuss. And this is why it’s not anti-Jewish behavior, saying no to the genocide. It’s not antisemitism to say no to genocide, because my Jewish students are — like Maya and like many others, are really with me in the same path.
What we’re saying here is that — and it’s very important, because it’s with the voices of dissent from around the world, from different — from South Africa, my colleagues to the U.S. and to the U.K. These voices are helping us really explain, number one, that this situation, that the fact that people can be threatened because of their — they can’t speak up, and they can’t talk about abuses and atrocities, should not continue, that the ongoing genocide — and we should call to stop this ongoing genocide, against any people, not only my people. But I’m saying it, that I would — as I was talking about the Rohingya and in Sudan and in other places, against apartheid, against ethnic cleansing. And I think that working together as an anti-oppressive scholars and groups, Jews, Palestinians, Blacks, Native scholars and so on, is the right way. Choosing to punish me and to punish the students is really very problematic, dangerous, and really threatens [inaudible] —
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, I want to thank you for being with us, as well as Maya Wind, author of Towers of Ivory and Steel. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
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https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/15/maya_wind_part_2
Maya Wind: Destruction of Gaza’s Universities Part of Broader Israeli Project to Destroy Palestinian Liberation
Web ExclusiveMARCH 15, 2024
Israeli scholar Maya Wind joins us for Part 2 of her interview about her new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. She discusses Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s universities; the coalescing of Israeli university administrations with the Israeli far right; the move to repress Palestinian organizing on U.S. campuses, including of groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace; and how archaeology, law, Middle East studies and other forms of knowledge production have subordinated their research agendas to the requirements of the Israeli state.
More from this Interview
- Part 1: “Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism”: Palestinian Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian on Hebrew Univ. Suspension
- Part 2: “Towers of Ivory and Steel”: Jewish Scholar Says Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom
- Part 3: Maya Wind: Destruction of Gaza’s Universities Part of Broader Israeli Project to Destroy Palestinian Liberation
GUESTS
Maya Windpostdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We continue now with Part 2 of our conversation with Maya Wind, author of the new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. Maya is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.
This week, around a hundred leading European academics signed a petition titled “Annihilation of Gaza Education: Israel is systematically erasing the entire educational system,” they wrote. They protested the Israeli military’s destruction of six universities in the Gaza Strip since October 7th: Islamic University, Al-Israa University, Rabat University, Al-Azhar University, Al-Aqsa University and Al-Quds Open University.
The Intercept recently reported that within the first 100 days of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the Israeli military destroyed every single university in the Gaza Strip. Nearly a hundred university deans and professors and three university presidents in Gaza have been killed in the Israeli assault. Over 4,300 students, more than 230 professors, teachers, administrators have been killed.
Maya Wind, we thank you for staying with us to talk about the significance of what has taken place right now in the Gaza Strip to academia, to the students.
MAYA WIND: Yeah. University education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been under siege, by the Israeli state, by the Israeli military, for decades, including in Gaza. Gazan universities have been subject to a debilitating illegal siege for over 17 years, subject to repeated aerial bombardment. And now, most recently, every single one, as you said, has been destroyed by either controlled detonation or aerial bombardment. This is very intentional. This is part of a broader project by the Israeli state to destroy Palestinian education as a means to destroy the Palestinian liberation movement.
AMY GOODMAN: When you raise these issues as a Jewish scholar, as an Israeli student and academic, how are you responded to?
MAYA WIND: What we are seeing now, especially over the last two decades, is a coalescing of Israeli university administrations with the Israeli far right, with other forces to continually foreclose and limit what is permissible to research, to debate, to speak to, to protest on Israeli campuses. And we’re seeing that really manifest for some time. But in particular, over the last five months, this repression has grown. Palestinian students were asked to evacuate their dorm rooms, given 24-hour notice. Palestinian and critical Jewish Israeli students and scholars have been summoned to disciplinary committees and have been suspended for speaking out against this genocide, for conducting research about the Nakba, which is the mass expulsion of over two-thirds of the Palestinian population that enabled the founding of the Israeli state. And so, we are seeing this is a broad project of repressing critical research and debate, which is really the bedrock of higher education. But this is disallowed in the Israeli university system.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, we interviewed Tal Mitnick, who I think was the first refusenik, young person to refuse, in this latest assault to serve in the Israeli military and was repeatedly jailed. You did this 15 years ago. What was it like to be in an Israeli jail then for you, and then also the difference between what happened to you and the thousands of Palestinians who’ve been imprisoned?
MAYA WIND: Yeah, so, it is important to speak to how imprisonment and incarceration and detention is really a tool, a central tool, of the Israeli state to destroy the Palestinian liberation movement. And we see this particularly play out on Palestinian campuses across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian universities are routinely raided by the Israeli military. Student activists and organizers in over 411 Palestinian student groups and associations that have been declared unlawful by the Israeli state are routinely abducted from their campus, from their homes in the middle of the night. They are subjected to torture. They are held in administrative detention without charge or trial for months. And so, what we’re really seeing is a systemic attack of the Israeli military and the Israeli military government on Palestinian higher education, and particularly on Palestinian campuses as sites of organizing for Palestinian liberation.
AMY GOODMAN: Maya, you are here in New York right now, and you’re going to be speaking in different areas, including at Columbia University. I wanted to turn to a lawsuit that has just been filed by New York Civil Liberties Union and Palestine Legal against Columbia University for suspending two pro-Palestine student groups. That’s Students for Justice in Palestine, SJP, and Jewish Voice for Peace, suspended last November after organizing peaceful protests against the Israeli occupation and the assault on Gaza. Can you talk about the significance of these kinds of suspensions? And it’s not only happening at Columbia and Barnard.
MAYA WIND: Yes, absolutely. So, I myself was an active member of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine over a decade ago. And it was really hard to organize on that campus then, and it is impossible now, with Columbia University suspending both Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. And students who are mobilizing for Palestinian liberation on campus are facing all forms of harassment, including by Columbia faculty and the administration.
And this move to repress Palestinian organizing on U.S. campuses is very clearly a response to a generational gap. What we are seeing is that young people across the United States recognize Israel for what it is. They know apartheid when they see it. They know genocide when they see it. And in response, they are not only being repressed by university campus administrations, but the state is increasingly moving in to criminalize the BDS movement, because it is gaining such wide traction, especially among young people and students in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: As you go around the country to talk about Towers of Ivory and Steel, your new book, talk about why you called it that.
MAYA WIND: Again, it sort of speaks to the misconception in the Western academic community about Israeli universities. For too long, Jewish Israeli scholars have been allowed to gatekeep and to narrate to the West what their universities are, and this despite, again, over two decades of mobilization and critical research by Palestinian scholars and civil society organizations about the nature of Israeli universities and their deep embeddedness in the apparatuses of violence of the Israeli state.
And so, in my book, I really take this critique seriously and did an in-depth investigation, using archival materials, observing campus protests and classrooms across Israel’s eight major public universities, speaking with Palestinian student organizers, Palestinian and Jewish Israeli faculty and students. And what I really saw and learned in the course of this research is the vast and multifaceted nature of this embeddedness with the project of the oppression of Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the Israeli Jewish professors, scholars, students who resist, like yourself — I mean, you, yourself, of course, you were jailed for your refusing to serve in the Israeli military, but then have gone on to be deeply critical — and those that express solidarity, for example, with professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who has been suspended by Hebrew University? Those protests out there, as she pointed out, were Jewish and Palestinian students, Jewish and Palestinian professors.
MAYA WIND: There is an important move, certainly, to resist and to conduct critical research, to protest, to insist on academic freedom on Israeli university campuses by primarily, really led by, Palestinian students and faculty, and sometimes joined by a small contingent of Jewish Israelis. But what this book speaks to is really the structure. This is a structural problem. This is about the very nature of the institutions of Israeli universities, from where they are built — they are built as land grab institutions to further Palestinian dispossession and expand Judaization, which is the continual shrinking of Palestinian land ownership and Palestinian land contiguity and the expansion of Jewish Israeli settlement and population distribution — to the ways in which these universities produce knowledge, expertise and help in the development of weapons, used against Palestinians and then sold abroad as battle-tested. And so, we’re really seeing this vast apparatus and a structural problem of universities subordinating themselves to the requirements and the needs of the Israeli state and Israeli apartheid. And that is what is at stake here.
AMY GOODMAN: Maya Wind, you’re a postdoctoral fellow in anthropology at the University of British Columbia. In your book, Towers of Ivory and Steel, you examine the role of archaeology, law and Middle East studies. Can you talk about this?
MAYA WIND: Certainly. So, in one of the chapters of the book, I really trace the ways that knowledge production and dominant paradigms in entire disciplines of the Israeli academy have subordinated their research agendas to the requirements of the Israeli state to aid the Israeli state in differentially ruling not only Palestinian and Jewish citizens, but also Palestinian subjects under military governance.
And we’re seeing that play out in multiple disciplines, as you mentioned. So, in archaeology, for instance, Israeli archaeology, institutes and departments are producing knowledge to aid in the dispossession of Palestinians and the expansion of Jewish settlement, using archeological research as a pretext and creating narratives that justify the Jewish — not only Jewish presence, but Jewish exclusive claims to the entirety of the land.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the other way around —
MAYA WIND: This is true in Middle East studies —
AMY GOODMAN: — in archaeology? Is finding whole Palestinian communities, evidence of, artifacts of?
MAYA WIND: Yes. So, absolutely, there is. Israeli archaeological research has been repeatedly critiqued by Palestinian scholars and others for not only violating the Fourth Geneva Convention, but also conducting unsound and unscientific research by explicitly and intentionally removing Palestinian artifacts and artifacts of the Islamic periods in order to substantiate Israeli state narratives.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to this questioning in January at the U.S. State Department, the Associated Press, Matt Lee, questioning State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller about Israel’s demolition of Al-Israa University in Gaza.
MATT LEE: I mean, it looks like a controlled demolition. It looks like what we do here in this country when we’re taking down an old hotel or a stadium. And you have nothing to say? You have nothing to say about this?
MATTHEW MILLER: I — I have —
MATT LEE: I mean, to do that kind of an explosion, you need to be in there. You have to put the explosives down, and it takes a lot of planning and preparation to do. And if there was a threat from this particular facility, they wouldn’t have been able to do it.
MATTHEW MILLER: So, I have seen the video. I can tell you that it is something we are raising with the government of Israel, as we do — often do, when we see —
MATT LEE: Well, “raising” is what? Like —
MATTHEW MILLER: When we see — to ask questions and find out what the underlying situation is, as we often do when we see reports of this nature. But I’m not able to characterize the actual facts on the ground before hearing that response.
MATT LEE: Yeah, but you saw the video.
MATTHEW MILLER: I did see the video. I don’t — I don’t know — I don’t know —
MATT LEE: I mean, it looks like people —
MATTHEW MILLER: I don’t know what was —
MATT LEE: It looks like, you know, a bridge being imploded or something.
MATTHEW MILLER: I don’t know what was under that — I don’t know what was under that building. I don’t know what was inside —
MATT LEE: Well, yeah, but —
MATTHEW MILLER: — inside that building.
MATT LEE: But it doesn’t matter what was under the building, because they obviously got in there to put the explosives down to do it in the way that they did.
MATTHEW MILLER: So, again, I’m glad you have factual certainty, but I just — I just don’t.
MATT LEE: I don’t.
MATTHEW MILLER: I just don’t.
MATT LEE: All have is what I saw on the video, right?
MATTHEW MILLER: I — I just don’t. But I can say say —
MATT LEE: And I think you guys saw it, too.
MATTHEW MILLER: We did see it. I can say that we have raised it with the government of Israel.
MATT LEE: And it’s not troubling to you?
MATTHEW MILLER: We are always troubled by the — by any degradation of civilian infrastructure in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesperson, responding to a question by the AP reporter Matt Lee. Maya Wind, he’s talking about the demolition of Al-Israa University in Gaza City, one of a number of universities that were blown up by the Israeli military. Why don’t we end with that point and your response to it?
MAYA WIND: What is really devastating is not only the destruction of Palestinian universities, all of them in Gaza, but also the absolute failure of any of the Israeli universities, that are in fact directly facilitating this destruction, to speak out against it. Where is the defense of Palestinian academic freedom?
AMY GOODMAN: Maya Wind, I want to thank you for being with us, author of the new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. To see Part 1 of our conversation, you can go to democracynow.org. Maya Wind grew up in Israel, was a refusenik 15 years ago, served time in Israeli military jail for refusing to serve in the Israeli military. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. She’s currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia in anthropology. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
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‘How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom’: Maya Wind and Robin Kelley explore the role of higher education in occupied Palestine
On Tuesday, Feb. 6, Maya Wind and Robin D.G. Kelley led a discussion titled “Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom.” The event, located at Pitzer College’s Benson Auditorium, centered around what speakers described as the complicity of higher education institutions in Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine.
According to event organizer Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and History Daniel Segal at Pitzer, Wind and Kelley were invited to speak at Tuesday’s talk because of their existence as “scholar-activists.”
Wind is the Killiam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and the author of the book “Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom.” Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Professor of History at UCLA and the author of numerous books of his own.
For Segal, Wind and Kelley’s scholarly work, combined with their attention to social justice and activism, distinguishes them from many other faculty members.
“Maya Wind and Robin D.G. Kelley define what we mean by scholar-activists as distinct from many faculty who can be recognized as excellent scholars but do not extend their work into activism, during this moment of global-local peril and scare,” Segal said in an email to TSL.
Segal’s emphasis on Wind and Kelley’s existence as “scholar-activists” was highly reflective of the event’s focus on the intersection between scholarship and activism. At the talk, the speakers stressed the importance of holding universities accountable.
“What we’re witnessing today is not only a genocide, not only an attempt by Israel to erase the Palestinian people, but also [to erase] centuries of knowledge, culture [and] history central to who they are as a people,” Wind said. “Israel has always understood Palestinian education as a threat to its rule and it has targeted it at every turn.”
Wind explained her own discoveries about the relationship between Israeli and Palestinian education, which she made while visiting Israel and researching for her book.
“Israeli institutions of higher education are deeply implicated in Israeli colonialism and apartheid and must be understood as settler universities,” Wind said. “They are embedded in the infrastructure that sustains Israeli society as a settler society.”
She said that Israeli universities deny Palestinian freedom by suppressing critical research pedagogy, debate and student mobilization, especially following increased government restrictions in the ’80s and ’90s.
“Before the ’80s, in Israeli universities, Palestinian and some Jewish Israeli scholars really began to explore the histories and structures of Israeli state violence,” Wind said, reflecting particularly on events like the Nakba. “Following government control, researchers faced harassment and violence that drove many Palestinian scholars and some of the most critical Jewish Israelis out of these Israeli academies.”
Wind then went on to describe the current state of Palestinian universities, which she says are facing the full force of Israeli state violence. According to her, Palestinian universities in the occupied West Bank have always been governed by the Israeli military and subjected to bureaucratic restrictions that isolate and obstruct them.
“Now, all 11 of the universities in Gaza have been targeted and either partially or entirely destroyed by Israeli bombardment,” Wind said. “Israel has killed over 240 Palestinian faculty members in Gaza — including deans and university presidents — killed over 4,800 students, injured over 8,400 and has left over 90,000 students with no university to attend.”
Kelley also commented on the silencing of Palestinians in academia, citing professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a Palestinian professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as an example. According to Kelley, Shalhoub-Kevorkian is currently receiving death threats and dismissal because she drafted and signed an open letter calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
“The letter described the mass killing, maiming and enforced starvation of children in Gaza as genocide and for this, she received death threats and threats of dismissal coming from the administration,” Kelley said. “They’re saying that she should be fired because she used the word genocide to talk about killing children; her research is on children — so much for free speech in enlightened Israeli universities.”
Kelley emphasized the responsibility of intellectuals in the face of genocide, which he explained is to speak truth to power and to unwaveringly advocate for principles of justice and critical thought.
“As long as we don’t stand up, we lose the possibility of thought, so we are complicit in the loss of academic freedom,” Kelley said. “We have to stand up for thought, stand up for thinking and stand up for justice. And that’s it.”
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The necessity of doubt
By Maya Wind
Winner of PIJ’s Simcha Bahiri Essay Writing Contest
Young people have a great capacity to initiate processes of change. Yet in observing my society during and after the last operation in Gaza, I felt that this capacity was not employed at all. Despite our vast potential to create change, with our energy level and tendency to question the previous generation’s values, opinions among Israeli youth regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain sadly static. We need to channel our natural tendency in constructive directions, by questioning our perception of the conflict and nurturing the notion of doubt. Developing doubt will increase young people’s capacity to think originally and to translate our ideas into innovative actions that may change the political reality of the region. One way of nurturing constructive questioning would be to create an online “Israeli-Palestinian Doubt Forum.” Doubt should be developed particularly in relation to three concepts: facts, collective identity and personal responsibility. First, it is important for my generation to question the official historical “facts” that generally serve as a framework for discussion of the conflict. These “facts” have been internalized and are now considered to provide the background to the debate instead of being subject to debate themselves. We don’t realize that what we assume to be “facts” are frequently only our own narrative, and this greatly restricts our ability to think about the conflict openly and critically. Advertisement In a Doubt Forum, Israeli and Palestinian youth could post articles, pictures and their own opinions and feelings, as well as ask others questions about the way they experience the conflict. Exposure to a diversity of information would encourage greater skepticism of the way their respective societies represent the conflict. This new kind of online interaction would challenge the notion of “fact,” leading to a more open-minded and less self-righteous approach to the political debate. It will also lead people to challenge what they “know” about those on the other side, including the reasons for their actions, and the compromises they would be willing to make for peace. In this way, the Doubt Forum would allow for a deeper and more original discussion. Second, the concept of collective identity should be questioned. The conflict is deeply personal to many people, yet the emotions regarding it are often experienced communally. In both societies there is a sense of insecurity, which leads to a feeling that nationalism is necessary to keep the state – or the struggle for one – alive. When collective identity plays such a central role, distinguishing between individuals and their actions or communities becomes difficult. Furthermore, over-identification with one’s society or government does not enable one to examine critically that society’s actions, as the subject becomes emotionally loaded. The Doubt Forum would help undermine collective identity and reveal the individual voices within the two societies. Breaking down collective identity would highlight the common denominator of human experience shared by Israelis and Palestinians. Finding this common denominator would promote understanding of the “other” and create a platform from which to debate the conflict effectively. Finally, perceptions of personal responsibility and of the individual’s ability to make a difference ought to be examined. Although the conflict feels very personal to most Israelis and Palestinians, many still consider their individual actions to be removed from it. People perceive it as affecting them but not the opposite. Therefore, they do not pause to doubt before acting and, as a result, do not feel personally responsible for the course of the conflict. Reading conflict-related personal stories from the other side would force individuals to consider the effects of their actions and recognize that not doing so only helps perpetuate the conflict. The Doubt Forum will promote self-examination and allow us to challenge the intractability of the conflict by doubting before acting. A joint Israeli-Palestinian Doubt Forum that questions the notions of fact, collective identity and personal responsibility would provide a way for Palestinians and Israelis to interact and recognize each other’s humanity – allowing them to meet somewhere other than on opposite sides of a checkpoint. This, in turn, would allow us the freedom to think as individuals – not as nations – and come up with original solutions to the conflict. Interaction in the Doubt Forum would help us question the “facts” and demonstrate the plurality of voices present in both societies. The Forum would strengthen individual identity and empower young people to effect change. With the heightened consciousness, new perspectives, and confidence that the Doubt Forum would give them, young people could make peace possible. Maya Yechieli Wind, 19, of Jerusalem, was the Israeli winner of the Simcha Bahiri Youth Essay Contest organized by the Palestine-Israel Journal. A conscientious objector, she is doing her national service with Rabbis for Human Rights and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
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צפו: סטודנטית ישראלית מפגינה נגד צה”ל בניו יורק
מאיה יחיאלי-ווינד בת ה-19 העדיפה לשבת בכלא מאשר להתגייס לצה”ל, אבל בקמפוס של אוניברסיטת “קולומביה”, ניו יורק, היא דווקא לבשה בשבוע האחרון מדים. יחיאלי-ווינד וסטודנטים פרו-פלסטינים קיימו מיצג במסגרתו “חיקו” את מחסומי צה”ל בשטחים. הם עצרו סטודנטים עוברי אורח, כפתו אותם וכיסו את עיניהם. כך זה נראה
חדשות| פורסם 22/11/10 09:49
אוניברסיטת קולומביה היוקרתית, ניו יורק, ארה”ב, השבוע. סטודנטים פרו-פלסטינים משתתפים ב”מיצג נגד הכיבוש”, בו חלקם מגלמים חיילים וחלקם מגלמים פלסטינים במחסומים. בראש המפגינים: סטודנטית ישראלית בת 19.
מאיה יחיאלי-ווינד, במקור מירושלים, סירבה להתגייס, ישבה בכלא צבאי וכיום כאמור לומדת בקולומביה. בנוסף ללימודיה, היא הצטרפה לארגון “סטודנטים מקולומביה בעד צדק לפלסטינים”, שארגן את המיצגים השנויים במחלוקת.
יחיאלי-ווינד ועוד סטודנטים לבשו מדי ב’ של צה”ל, הצטיידו ברובים מקרטון, ועצרו סטודנטים ברחבי הקמפוס. בסרטון הם נראים מורים להם לכרוע על הרצפה, מכסים את עיניהם ואוזקים את ידיהם.
המיצג, שאמור לדמות את ה”זוועות”, כך לפי הסטודנטים, נמשך מספר שעות, ומשך עוברי אורח והפגנות נגד. ווינד עצמה אמרה לעיתון האוניברסיטה שסיקר את המהומה, כי “הרבה אנשים מופתעים שאני ישראלית, ושאני בעד זכויות אדם ובעד חוק בינלאומי. זה שילוב נדיר בימים אלה”.
“רצינו לבוא עם חגורות נפץ”
מאיה מפגינה “נגד הכיבוש”, השבוע בניו יורק | צילום: חדשות 2
איגוד-העל שמאחד את ארגוני הסטודנטים היהודיים בקמפוס, ארגן במהירות הפגנה כנגד המיצג. “התגובה הראשונית שלנו הייתה לבוא עם חגורות נפץ ולומר ‘רואים, בגלל זה אנחנו צריכים את המחסומים'”, אמר ג’ונה לייבן, חבר האיגוד. “אבל לא רצינו לרדת לרמה הזו”.
במקום, עמדו הסטודנטים הישראלים והפרו-ישראלים ליד המיצג והסבירו לעוברי האורח שנקלעו למקום כי המחסומים הם “רע הכרחי” ושהם מונעים פיגועים בשטח ישראל. “אני חושב שזה הוגן לערוך הפגנות, זה חשוב, אבל לרוב זה חד צדדי”, אמר ליאור חמי, סטודנט ישראלי. “איך זה ישרת את המטרה שלי לראות את הצד השטני של הצד השני? זה באמת יגרום לי להיראות יותר טוב? לא נראה לי”.
אחת המפגינות הפלסטיניות ממזרח ירושלים, דינה זביידי, סיפרה לעיתון כי “הייתי צריכה לעבור מחסום בכל יום במשך שנתיים, אז אני יודעת איך הם מתנהגים”.
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https://www.mako.co.il/news-channel2/Six-Newscast/Article-dad08121c9c7e21004.htm
צפו: “שבוע האפרטהייד” בניו יורק
מעמדה של ישראל בעולם, לא משהו. העולם לא אוהב את מדיניות הממשלה, ראשי מדינות כועסים על ראש הממשלה, אבל אין ספק שהדבר הכי מתסכל הוא כאשר את הביקורת יוזמים ומזינים ישראלים בעולם. למשל מאיה יחיאלי ווינד, סטודנטית ישראלית באוניברסיטת קולומביה, שיזמה אתמול, ולא בפעם הראשונה, את המיזם הזה בניו יורק
עודד בן עמי|שש, חדשות 2| פורסם 03/03/11 18:59
00:07פרסומת
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https://www.mako.co.il/news-world/international/Article-d75dcd0f1cc7e21004.htm
המפגינה נגד צה”ל בניו יורק: “אוהבת את ישראל”
מאיה יחיאלי ווינד, סטודנטית ישראלית באוניברסיטת קולומביה, שתועדה על ידי מצלמות חדשות 2 בהפגנה אנטי-ישראלית בארצות הברית, מסבירה בראיון מיוחד כי היא דווקא כן אוהבת את ישראל. “ברגע שהכיבוש ייפסק ונתחיל לכבד זכויות אדם וחוק בינלאומי, אני אפסיק את המיצגים שלי”, היא טוענת. “אני רק עוזרת להפיץ מידע”
עודד בן עמי|חדשות| פורסם 03/03/11 19:48
במהלך “שבוע האפרטהייד” המתקיים באוניברסיטאות ומכללות ברחבי העולם, נערכים מייצגים התוקפים את מדיניות צה”ל וישראל. באוניברסיטת קולומביה בניו יורק, ניסתה סטודנטית ישראלית להראות לעוברים ושבים כיצד לכאורה, נוהגים החיילים באלימות כלפי פלסטינים.
במהלך המיצג שנערך אתמול שיחקו שתי סטודנטיות חיילים במחסום שמתעללים וכופתים עובר אורח פלסטיני. הסטודנטית הישראלית שעמדה מאחורי היוזמה מאיה יחיאלי ווינד, מסבירה כי למרות היוזמה שלה היא דווקא אוהבת את ישראל.
“אני כלל לא שונאת את ישראל על אף ששבוע האפרטהייד הזה מוצג כאנטי-ישראלי, הוא אנטי מדיניות ישראל בפלסטין”, מסבירה ווינד בראיון מיוחד לתכנית “שש עם”. “ברגע שהכיבוש ייפסק ונתחיל לכבד זכויות אדם וחוק בינלאומי, אני אפסיק את המיצגים שלי”.
לדברי הסטודנטית הישראלית, היא בעד חוק בינלאומי וזכויות אדם וכי דווקא מתוך אהבה למדינה היא רוצה לראות את המדיניות משתנה. “אני חושבת שקודם כל, אני לא מייצרת שנאה, אני בסך הכל עוזרת להפיץ מידע שהוא אמיתי ונכון. מה שאני מייצגת זה מה שבאמת קורה בשטחים והציבור האמריקני מממן את הכיבוש הישראלי, ולכן יש לו גם זכות לדעת מה קורה שם”.
ווינד מוסיפה: “אני רואה את חיי בארץ. אני רק כאן ללימודים. אני מאוד אוהבת את המדינה, מאוד חשוב לי העתיד שלה, ולכן אני רוצה לראות את המדיניות בשטחים משתנה. אם נשקיע את כמות האנרגיה והמשאבים שאנחנו משקיעים בהסברה בשינוי המדיניות אז לא תהיה לנו בעיה”.
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https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3858178,00.html
הפעילים משייח ג’ראח: “דרך חדשה לשמאל”חבורה קטנה של כמה צעירים ללא ניסיון משפטי הצליחה להביך את משטרת ירושלים ולאלצה להסכים להפגנה גדולה. “זה רק עוד מקרה של מאבק בכיבוש, בגזענות ובאפליה”, הם אומרים. בשמאל כבר מדברים עליהם כתקווה החדשה
רונן מדזיני פורסם: 05.03.10 , 00:38
מה שהחל בצעדה של כ-20 צעירים במחאה על כניסת מתיישבים יהודים לשכונה הערבית במזרח ירושלים, הפך בחודשים האחרונים לתופעה פוליטית שלא ניתן להתעלם ממנה. כמה מאות פעילים, אנשי רוח ופוליטיקאים מתאספים מדי יום שישי בצהריים כדי להפגין נגד מה שהם מגדירים “עוולת המדינה”. היד הקשה שהפגינה המשטרה רק חיזקה את המאבק, והפכה אותו ממאבק שולי, לסמל ולמוקד עלייה לרגל של אנשי שמאל רבים ברחבי הארץ. הם אפילו גררו את המדינה לבג”ץ – ורשמו הישג כאשר השופטים אישרו הפגנה במוצאי שבת של מאות משתתפים.
ההישג המשפטי הזה נזקף לזכותם של שלושה סטודנטים, חסרי כל רקע בתחום המשפט. אחד מהם הוא אבנר ענבר (29), דוקטורנט לפילוסופיה באוניברסיטת שיקגו, שסיפר ל-ynet על התנהלות העתירה. “הבנו שאין לנו יכולת לממן שירותים של עורך דין, ולכן החלטנו לכתוב את העתירה בעצמנו. ישבנו על זה יומיים-שלושה באופן מאוד אינטנסיבי – לילות כימים. למדנו את הנושא, קראנו פסקי דין באינטרנט בנושא החופש להפגין, ירדנו לשטח לצלם את האתרים הרלוונטיים, גבינו תצהירים ממפגינים ומתושבי השכונה וכתבנו את העתירה”
נפגשים אחת לשבוע לסיעור מוחין, תכנון הפגנות וחשיבה (צילום: נועם מושקוביץ)
כשהתברר שהמשטרה לא מתכוונת לאשר את ההפגנה, המאבק החריף. “תכננו אירוע גדול למוצאי שבת”, סיפר אבנר ענבר, “והסירוב של המשטרה היה מיידי ולא לווה בהסברים ונימוקים – למרות שעל-פי החוק הם מחויבים לכך. הבנו שמדובר בקמפיין של המשטרה נגד המחאה במקום. הגשנו את העתירה ביום ראשון, וביום חמישי כבר ייצגנו את עצמנו”. הייצוג העצמי, לדבריו, הוא סמל לאופיו של המאבק בשייח ג’ראח – לא-מאורגן, עצמאי ולא ממוסד.
“המאבק יימשך, עד שיסתיים הכיבוש”
מאחורי המאבק החתרני, שמצליח להביך שוב ושוב את משטרת מחוז ירושלים, עומדת קבוצה של צעירים בשנות ה-20 לחייהם. מזה כשנה וחצי הם פועלים ללא תקציב, ללא ידע או ניסיון, ללא עורכי דין או מפלגות העומדות מאחוריהן. כעת, מעודדים מהניצחון במערכה בבג”ץ, הם מבטיחים להמשיך את המאבק. “המאבק יימשך כל עוד המטרה, שהיא הפסקת הכיבוש, טרם הושגה”.
סהר ורדי, מיוזמות המאבק, צעירה בת 19 מירושלים: “זה התחיל לפני שנה וחצי בערך, כשמשפחת אל-כורד פונתה מביתה. זה היה מאבק קטן, בתוך אוהל מחאה”, היא נזכרת. באוגוסט האחרון, עם פינוין של שתי משפחות נוספות שלבתיהן נכנסו מתיישבים יהודים, התחדשה המחאה. “היינו קבוצה של פעילים שהגיעו לשייח ג’ראח די הרבה, והפכנו לפעילים המעורבים יותר סביב הנושא”.
מאבק עצמאי – לא מאורגן ולא ממוסד (צילום: נועם מושקוביץ)
“אחרי הפינוי האחרון בנובמבר עשינו ישיבה והעלינו רעיונות למה אפשר לעשות – אחד מהם היה לערוך צעדה. תוך שבוע וחצי התחלנו – היינו בערך 20 איש, וצעדנו מכיכר ציון לשכונה. שבוע אחרי זה הצטרפו מתופפים, והיינו בערך 40. אז התחלנו להזמין בתפוצה יותר רחבה”, היא מספרת.
להפגנה הבאה כבר הגיעו יותר מ-100 מפגינים – ואז גם נכנסה המשטרה לפעולה וביצעה לראשונה מעצרים. “זה פורסם באיזה מקום, מה שהקפיץ עוד יותר את המאבק – קיבלנו כותרות, וכך הנושא עלה וקיבל מודעות”. מאז, מגיעים לכל הפגנה כמה מאות אנשי שמאל, ובהם אנשי רוח ופוליטיקאים. בין המפגינים ניתן למצוא גם את הסופר דויד גרוסמן, חברי הכנסת לשעבר אברהם בורג ויוסי שריד, “אבל הרוב דומיננטי הוא סטודנטים ירושלמים”, אומרים הפעילים.
“זה רק מקרה אחד של מאבק בכיבוש”
יוזמי המאבק באים מרקע שונה. ורדי היא מיוזמי מכתב השמיניסטים שסירבו להתגייס לצה”ל, ופעילה כבר כמה שנים למען זכויות הפלסטינים. מאיה וינד (20), גם היא ממובילות המאבק, הגיעה מתחום הפעילות למען זכויות האדם.
בשיחה עם ynet מספרת וינד כי לא שיערה בנפשה שהמחאה תזכה לתנופה כה גדולה. “אם היית אומר לי לפני שישה חודשים שחצי מדינה ישמעו על שייח ג’ראח, הייתי צוחקת”, סיפרה. “התחלנו כקבוצה של חמישה-שישה אקטיביסטים בשכונה – ממש עברנו לגור בשכונה לתקופה מסוימת. המאבק שלנו מאוד עממי, דינמי וספונטני, וכל הזמן מצטרפים עוד תומכים. יש לנו מין ועדה קבועה כזו עם תושבי השכונה – אנחנו נפגשים אחת לשבוע לסיעור מוחין, תכנון הפגנות וחשיבה משותפת. זה מקסים בעיני שהצלחנו ליצור מאבק כזה משותף”, הוסיפה.
לטענת וינד, המאבק טומן בחובו כמה מטרות, שאינן מתחילות ומסתכמות בשכונה הטעונה. “המטרה הראשונה והבסיסית היא להביא לצדק בשכונה עצמה, למנוע פינויים נוספים, להחזיר משפחות שפונו לבתיהם ולהקפיא את מפעל ההתנחלות שם. אבל זה לא רק שייח ג’ראח, זה גם מאבק אחד מני רבים למען שחרור מזרח ירושלים ופלסטין. שייח ג’ראח היא רק עוד מקרה של מאבק בכיבוש, בגזענות ובאפליה, ואנו מעלים הרבה שאלות למערכת המשפט הישראלית באשר לאופן שבו צריך להתייחס ליהודים ולפלסטינים”, הסבירה.
הוואקום בשמאל מתמלא
הצעירים המעורבים במאבק מספרים כי עיקר הסיפוק נובע מתחושה שהצליחו לשבור את
המעגל הקטן והמסורתי של השמאל בישראל. ואכן, בחלוף כמה חודשים, עושה רושם שהוואקום שנוצר בשמאל מתמלא לאיטו. “זה הדבר הכי טוב שקרה לשמאל הישראלי בשנים האחרונות”, אמר ל-ynet מוסי רז, ח”כ לשעבר מטעם מפלגת מרצ ומפגין קבוע בשייח ג’ראח. “הם בלי שום ספק התקווה הגדולה ביותר כיום במאבק נגד הכיבוש ולמען חברה צודקת יותר”.
“שייח ג’ראח הוא כבר התחלה של דרך חדשה לשמאל. קבוצה צעירה ונחושה כזו לא ראינו כבר המון שנים”, מוסיף רז. “הם לא מקבלים משכורת, לא שייכים לשום ארגון או מפלגה. הם פשוט אנשים ערכיים שגילו עמידה איתנה מול העוול המוסרי העצום של השלכת אנשים לרחובות – והטמטום הישראלי שמכניס מתנחלים לשכונה ערבית. המאבק יצליח, נקודה. גם אם ייקח שנים ויכנסו עוד משפחות ויהיו עוד עוולות. אי אפשר אחרת, מדינת ישראל לא תתקיים אם לא תפסיק את הכיבוש. לחבר’ה האלה מגיע פרס”, קובע הח”כ לשעבר.
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IDF draft dodgers speak at US colleges
Sep. 15, 2009
E.B. SOLOMONT, Jerusalem Post Correspondent in New York , THE JERUSALEM POST
Two Israeli women who are refusing mandatory army duty have kicked off a North American speaking tour and plan to take their story to more than a dozen college campuses in the next month.
Hoping to highlight their opposition to Israel’s policies toward Palestinians, Maya Wind and Netta Mishly, both 19, will appeal to their American counterparts during their “Why We Refuse” tour from September 12 to October 10. Both women describe themselves as Shministim, a group of high school seniors who refuse to serve in the IDF.
“We believe it is important to spread information about the Israeli occupation and about the movements that work against it,” stated Wind, who said that she was detained for 40 days because of her refusal to serve in the IDF. She was released in March. “We hope to empower people our age to take responsibility by taking a more active role in the resistance movements,” she said.
Their month long tour is being organized by the anti-war groups CODEPINK and Jewish Voice for Peace. According to their itinerary, the young women will visit more than a dozen schools in California, New York and Washington DC, starting with the University of California, Hastings on Monday and finishing with the University of Maryland on October 8. They will make stops at Cornell, Columbia, New York University, Brown, Brandeis and other schools on the way.
“There’s a lot of interest outside of Israel to understand what’s happening inside, how different people express their opposition to what’s happening,” said Sydney Levy, the campaigns director of Jewish Voice for Peace. Last year, the organization collected tens of thousands of letters from North American Jews who supported the Shministim, calling their detention a violation of human rights and international law.
“When you speak with them, you get a sense of what is going on there from an Israeli point of view,” Levy said.
But others said the women’s perceived credibility was precisely why their campaign could have dangerous ramifications.
“I definitely do not agree with what they’re trying to do because I think they’re misguided,” said Dani Klein, the North America campus director for StandWithUs, which advocates for Israel on campuses. Klein said if the campaign gains traction, it could backfire by further empowering anti-Israel students.
“When they see Israelis come out against their own country or their own army, in this instance, it gives those who want to be anti-Israel the fodder to do it,” he said.
The two young women, he said, could inadvertently educate people to hate Israel.
He compared their campaign to Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli soldiers who openly criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. “I definitely understand that Israelis have the right not to agree with their government. That’s fine,” Klein said. “Every citizen in a democracy has that right. But you take that up in your country. Once you take that abroad, what does that gain you?”
So far, it is unclear what kind of reception Wind and Mishly will receive during their tour. Levy said demand to hear them speak was high and that time constraints forced him to turn down several speaking engagements on their behalf.
Indeed, campus observers said that political events of the past year – including Operation Cast Lead and the second Durban conference – fueled anti-Israel rhetoric that they expect to continue.
“Last year sort of motivated Israel’s detractors to be more vocal and do more programs,” said Lawrence Muscant, deputy director of The David Project. “My feeling is we’re going to see the same thing carry over into this semester.”
Like Klein, Muscant expressed concern about the campaign, based on knowledge of similar ones in recent years.
“On the one hand, if it were inside Israel, they’re talking about internal Israeli policies. When they speak to the outside world, it often gets lost in translation and it plays into the hands of those who delegitimize the State of Israel and question its right to exist, even if that’s not their goal,” he said.
“Whether this group prescribes to this idea or not, I believe there will be people who use their message to further their own agenda.”
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הפגנת תמיכה בסרבניות המצפון מאיה יחיאלי-וינד ורז בר דוד ורון
הפגנת תמיכה בסרבניות המצפון מאיה יחיאלי-וינד ורז בר דוד ורון תתקיים ביום רביעי הקרוב (14 בינואר) בשעה 9:00 בבוקר בפתח לשכת הגיוס שבתל השומר. מאיה יחיאלי-וינד, מחותמות מכתב השמיניסטים 2008, תגיע ביום רביעי הקרוב ללשכת הגיוס בתל השומר בפעם הראשונה ותצהיר על סירובה לשרת בצבא הכובש ומדכא עם אחר – בצבא המפציץ והורג עשרות אנשים ביום בשבועיים האחרונים.אליה תצטרף הסרבנית רז בר דוד ורון הצפויה להישפט זו הפעם החמישית על סירובה לשרת בצבא הכיבוש. דובר מכתב שמיניסטים מסר עוד “עכשיו יותר מתמיד חשוב להפגין נוכחות ולהראות שיש ישראלים שממאמינים בדרך אחרת ושמסרבים לקחת חלק בפשעים שנעשים בשמם”. הסעות ייצאו בשעה 8:00 ממסוף 2000 שליד תחנת רכבת ת”א מרכז. לפרטים והרשמה: עומר – 0546612101
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