On Yom Haatzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day), Prof. Emerita Ruth Kark from the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize in the field of geographical research and knowledge of the Land of Israel.
The Hebrew University congratulated Kark, writing: “This esteemed recognition highlights her exceptional contributions to the study of historical, cultural-settlement, and land geography of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Land of Israel during the 19th and 20th centuries. Prof. Kark has made an indelible mark on the field through her extensive research and academic contributions. She has published and edited 27 books and authored approximately 200 scholarly articles that explore critical aspects of geographical history. Her work has significantly enriched the understanding of settlement patterns, cultural transformations, and land utilization in the region. Beyond her scholarly achievements, Prof. Kark has dedicated considerable research to highlighting the role of women in shaping Israel’s history. Her studies have shed light on women’s activities in early Jewish settlements, the invaluable contributions of Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi to Jewish settlement efforts, and the entrepreneurial spirit of rural and Bedouin women in the region. Through her meticulous research, she has provided a deeper appreciation of the pivotal role that women have played in the development of Israeli society.”
While Kark was awarded the prize, Prof. Eva Illouz, a renowned Hebrew University sociologist who was nominated for the Israel Prize as well, has been disqualified over her past support for a petition asking the International Criminal Court to investigate possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
The academic community expressed support for Illouz. The forum Academia-IL-Bashaar posted numerous messages.
One message came from Prof. Oren Yiftachel of the Geography Department at Ben Gurion University, whom IAM reported on numerous times. He wrote, “There is no doubt that Eva Illouz’s disqualification is wrong because, according to the regulations, the Israel Prize is intended to honor outstanding scientific achievements and contributions to science in Israel. Eva Illouz is a prominent sociologist of all ages and is widely cited throughout the world. I do not share some of her views, but her scientific achievements in Israel and around the world are undeniable. In contrast to the scandalous and political disqualification of Illouz, another researcher from the Hebrew University – Ruth Kark – did win this year’s prize. Kark has no world reputation, and there is a question mark over the credibility of her research. However, her findings are consistent with the government’s goals, and therefore, it seems, it is a worthy target. The comparison between the two researchers from the same institution is particularly blatant and political. For more on Kark’s research and activities, see here: https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2025-04-23/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/00000196-6215-de3a-afd6-efdd264b0000.”
Yiftachel is a long-time political activist disguised as an academic. In 2012, IAM reported that,“[BGU, Geography] Oren Yiftachel squirming in the witness seat at the Al-Araqib court case March 15, 2012.” IAM explained that Yiftachel, a self-proclaimed critical geographer, is best known for asserting that Israel is a “creeping apartheid state.” He was involved with a group of activists promoting the rights of Bedouins to a large plot of Negev land, while they could not prove land ownership. Yiftachel was also among activists who persuaded UN officials to include the Negev Bedouin tribes on the register of indigenous peoples. IAM explained that critics suggested that the decision was political, as the same tribes in adjacent countries failed to qualify for the list.
Unlike traditional (or positivist) geography, critical geography (also known as radical geography) is part of the critical, neo-Marxist scholarship. It is a reaction to the empirical spirit and quantitative methodology of positivist geography. It sought to “counter quantitative methods with normative methods drawn from Marxist theory.” Quantitative methods were “not useful unless alternatives or solutions were given to problems.” Liberated from the need to support his conclusions with facts, Yiftachel made a career of accusing Israel of apartheid-like policies.
However, Yiftachel’s disregard for empirical reality did not serve him well in the District Court, where he testified on behalf of two Bedouin families claiming land. Professor Kark, an expert on the history of land ownership in Israel/Palestine and the Negev, testified on behalf of the state.
Sarah Dovrat, the presiding judge, took the unusual step of chastising Yiftachel for his sloppy preparation, evasion of truth, and other underhanded tactics and poor performance on the witness stand. At one point, she described Yiftachel as “squirming” in the witness seat. There was another awkward moment when an expert on aerial photography who testified for the plaintiffs implied that Yiftachel influenced him. For the judge, Yiftachel did not do his “homework,” producing shoddy and conflicting evidence. She wrote: “I felt uncomfortable in Prof. Yiftachal’s cross-examination… when it became clear that he relied on sources and quoted them without bothering to read them, but rather quoted from quotes that appeared in another source. The expert’s meanderings on the witness stand in this matter left an uncomfortable, or rather embarrassing, feeling for the expert in the position he found himself in. The expert should not only be objective in submitting his opinion but should at least read the references to which he refers or immediately say without evasion that he relied on secondary sources rather than undergoing a long and embarrassing interrogation and, at the end of the day, admitting it.”
The judge complimented Kark for her meticulous research and thorough presentation.
As expected, Yiftachel rejected the court decision as a “Zionist ploy,” aiming to deprive the Bedouins of their land. He announced, “Whatever the court decision, I am committed to the truth.” This is in line with the neo-Marxist paradigm, where objectivity and facts do not matter, and truth is in the eye of the beholder.
In 2013, IAM published “The Radical Left against Ruth Kark,” on the occasion of her receiving the prestigious Jerusalem Prize. While Kark considered herself apolitical. Yiftachel attacked her alleged political agenda. In a blog published during the trial, Yiftachel impugned Kark’s academic credibility and took credit for “’unpacking’ the main state expert.“ When the judge pointed out his sloppy evidence, he accused her of siding with Kark and the state.
Yiftachel, a self-proclaimed critical political geographer, is also a self-acknowledged neo-Gramscian – a follower of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist who urged intellectuals and academics to use their commanding role in societal discourse to fight for progressive causes. As Yiftachel admits on page 6 of his book Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel and Palestine, his “own approach draws from neo-Gramscian perspective.” Yiftachel’s homepage boasted of trying to “combine teaching and activism for social and political activism” and co-founding “a range of organizations working to assist Arab-Jewish peace, anti-colonialism and social equality in Israel/Palestine.”
Yiftachel’s contempt for Kark’s expertise has extended beyond the courtroom. Prof. Gadi Algazi, a veteran radical activist from TAU, and other pro-Palestinian activists in Israel and the UK have compiled an eBook, “JNF Colonizing Palestine since 1901.” In the first chapter, “Al-Araqib: All Palestine” Salman Abu Sitta quotes Yitachel, “Yiftachel argued that Kark, in quoting these travelers, was biased and deceptive which is not befitting of a university professor.” Abu Sitta added that “Yiftachel was closely monitoring this Zionist expert who was well-practiced in falsification.” The eBook became “required reading” for a large number of pro-Palestinian groups in Great Britain. Indeed, a number of them banded together and sent it to the then-Prime Minister David Cameron and other political figures.
Mick Napier, the head of the Scottish Solidarity Campaign for Palestine, used the disparaging comments about Professor Kark to protest against her participating in the conference “Communal Pathways to Sustainable Living” of the International Communal Studies Association (ICSA) at Findhorn Community in Scotland in 2013. He stated that Israel has committed “savage crimes” against Palestinians. “The crimes are ongoing, promoted by Ruth Kark and other Israeli academics. This is not an antiquarian exercise, history for history’s sake. Some of the ICSA presenters at Findhorn are still actively involved in promoting Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as part of the openly discussed effort to move land into exclusively Jewish ownership, a racist project that has gone on since the founding of the State of Israel. Let us take, as an example, the shocking case of Zionist academic, Ruth Kark, who will be presenting at this conference. Not only did Kark support the racist claim that Jews have rights to land that trump those who ‘have lived there for many generations’ but she fabricated evidence in support of a standard, and academically discredited, Zionist claim that Palestine had been empty before Zionist colonization… Kark puts her dubious ‘expertise’ firmly in the service of the Zionist narrative used to justify the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
Throughout the years, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has given a platform to Yiftachel and fellow anti-Israel activists. The Haaretz article that Yiftachel referred to is titled “Twenty Questions for the Israel Prize Winner in Geography, Prof. Ruth Kark,” written by Or Kashti and published on April 23, 2025. Kashti wrote, “Professor Ruth Kark, congratulations on winning the Israel Prize in Geography. Your academic activity is indeed extensive and rich, but only a few are aware of the decisive role you played in the struggle over the Negev. You are probably the academic who has had the greatest impact on the lives of the Bedouins in Israel. Time after time you have appeared in court and claimed that there was no permanent settlement of Bedouins in the Negev during the Ottoman period, nor was there a thriving agriculture, contrary to a long line of historical evidence. Time after time the courts have relied on your opinions to reject the Bedouin’s claims. Why did you work to dispossess the Bedouins of their land?”
Kashti continued, “In legal proceedings, you claimed that ‘tents are not settlements.’ What is the meaning of this strange statement? Are houses built of concrete more of a settlement than houses built of wood? Can someone who builds from wood claim that an igloo is not a home?” He then asks, “You rely on 19th-century maps from the Palestine Exploration Society. These maps have been criticized for leaving empty areas in places that were inhabited by tens of thousands of people according to a number of other surveyors.”
Kashti went on to argue, “Over the years, you have claimed that the lands of the Negev are ‘dead lands,’ paving the way for their declaration as state lands. Last year, you wrote that ownership of the lands in the Negev was determined through ‘violent takeovers between the Bedouins themselves.’ You added that ‘the Bedouins had no legal hold on the land.’ However, on several occasions, you have noted that Jewish individuals and Zionist movements bought over 100,000 dunams in the Negev that were registered in the names of Bedouins. In other words, the British and the Jewish buyers recognized Bedouin ownership of the lands. How do you reconcile this contradiction?”
Clearly, Kashti and Yiftachel are siding with the Palestinians in their mission to take over lands. As Salman Abu Sitta stated in his chapter, this is a battle over “land that was plundered by the Zionist invader.”
Responding to the Haaretz article, Naomi Shot, Kark’s sister, wrote, “The article on Prof. Ruth Kark is full of lies… I would like to strongly protest this harsh, humiliating, and full of lies article. I am 95 years old, and I was in the Palmach. Between August and November 1948, I was in Kibbutz Mishmar Negev as part of the First Battalion of the Palmach. By virtue of my duties, I traveled frequently between the settlements of Mishmar Negev, Ruhama, Shoval, Dorot, and Beersheba after its conquest. I am speaking from personal knowledge. I do not remember a single tent, herd, farming, or house of Bedouins in this area. Even in later years, when we traveled to visit the Hirbat Mahaz settlement where our comrades fell in battle, I saw no trace of what was written about the thriving settlement of the Bedouins in the Negev. I do not understand why you published the article at all, and you have ruined our joy and pride at the honor that my sister has earned with absolute justice.”
Kark’s employer wrote, “The Hebrew University takes immense pride in Prof. Kark’s accomplishments and her dedication to advancing geographical knowledge. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to her on this well-deserved honor.”
Prof. Kark has endured numerous attacks from anti-Israel academic activists who trashed her work and besmirched her reputation because she is a Zionist.
The Hebrew University Congratulates Prof. Ruth Kark on Winning the Israel Prize in Geographical Research
13 February, 2025
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is proud to congratulate Prof. Ruth Kark from the Department of Geography on being awarded the prestigious Israel Prize in the field of geographical research and knowledge of the Land of Israel. This esteemed recognition highlights her exceptional contributions to the study of historical, cultural-settlement, and land geography of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Land of Israel during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Prof. Kark has made an indelible mark on the field through her extensive research and academic contributions. She has published and edited 27 books and authored approximately 200 scholarly articles that explore critical aspects of geographical history. Her work has significantly enriched the understanding of settlement patterns, cultural transformations, and land utilization in the region.
Beyond her scholarly achievements, Prof. Kark has dedicated considerable research to highlighting the role of women in shaping Israel’s history. Her studies have shed light on women’s activities in early Jewish settlements, the invaluable contributions of Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi to Jewish settlement efforts, and the entrepreneurial spirit of rural and Bedouin women in the region. Through her meticulous research, she has provided a deeper appreciation of the pivotal role that women have played in the development of Israeli society.
Prof. Asher Cohen, President of the Hebrew University, expressed his admiration for Prof. Kark’s achievements: “Prof. Ruth Kark’s remarkable body of work has significantly enriched our understanding of the geographical and historical landscapes of Israel. Her dedication to uncovering the contributions of women in settlement and society is truly inspiring. We are immensely proud of her accomplishments and celebrate this well-deserved recognition.”
The Israel Prize, considered the highest honor awarded by the State of Israel, will be presented to Prof. Kark on the upcoming Independence Day in recognition of her outstanding academic achievements and her invaluable contributions to the study of the Land of Israel.
The Hebrew University takes immense pride in Prof. Kark’s accomplishments and her dedication to advancing geographical knowledge. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to her on this well-deserved honor.
French-Israeli academic Eva Illouz denied top prize over ‘anti-Israel ideology’
Profile
Middle East
Renowned sociologist Eva Illouz has been disqualified from receiving the Israel Prize, the country’s top cultural award, over her past support for a petition asking the International Criminal Court to investigate possible war crimes in Gaza, in a move critics say is indicative of the government’s efforts to muzzle academia and silence dissent.
A globally acclaimed academic, Eva Illouz has been a vocal advocate of Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks that sparked the war in Gaza.
That advocacy, however, has not shielded the French-Israeli academic from the wrath of Israel’s hard-right government, whose increasingly authoritarian bent she has frequently denounced.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch on Monday said he had chosen to disqualify Illouz from receiving the Israel Prize, the country’s highest cultural and academic award, over her decision to sign a 2021 petition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Kisch, a member of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, cited the court’s alleged bias against Israel in a letter to the prize committee, in which he accused Illouz of ideological “hostility” towards her home country.
“There is absolutely no place for awarding Israel’s highest state honour to someone who – clearly motivated by anti-Israel sentiment – chose to appeal to an institution (the ICC) that eagerly files false complaints against [Israeli army] commanders and soldiers,” he wrote.
Kisch added that he would reconsider Illouz’s candidacy if she retracted her position and “chooses to publicly apologise”.
ICC petition
Illouz, 63, was the jury’s unanimous choice for this year’s Israel Prize, whose past recipients include writers A. B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz, former prime minister Golda Meir, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust institute.
A French-Israeli dual national of Moroccan origin, the sociologist has published a dozen books and has been translated into more than 20 languages. She currently teaches at the prestigious École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris after a distinguished career in Israeli academia.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz described her as “arguably the leading authority in the sociology of emotions worldwide”.
In 2021, Illouz was among more than 180 Israeli scientists, public figures and intellectuals who signed a petition calling on the ICC to investigate whether Israel had committed war crimes in the Palestinian territories. The text, whose signatories included 10 past winners of the Israel Prize, urged the ICC not to rely solely on Israeli authorities to carry out such an investigation.
Earlier that year, in a landmark decision that angered Israel, the Hague-based court ruled that it had jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza because Palestine was determined to be a member of the court.
The ICC further infuriated the Israeli government last year by issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and then defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.
Defending Israel
A regular contributor to publications including Haaretz, French daily Le Monde and Germany’s Die Zeit, Illouz has been a relentless critic of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, whom she accuses of dividing the country, sapping its democracy and undermining the rule of law.
But she has also been fiercely critical of the anti-Israeli bias she attributes to parts of the progressive left in Western countries, lamenting a lack of empathy in the wake of the October 7 attacks and accusing pro-Palestinian protesters in US campuses of effectively denying Israel’s right to exit.
In a recent Le Monde op-ed co-authored with other French intellectuals, Illouz denounced the radical left’s use of the word “Zionist” as an insult, writing: “Only Jews who declare themselves to be ‘anti-Zionist’ are now forgiven for being Jewish.”
Speaking to the French newspaper on Wednesday, Shai Lavi, the head of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, described the government’s veto of Illouz as a tragic own goal for Israel.
“I know of no academic, let alone one of Professor Illouz’s international reputation, who has devoted as much time and energy as she has to fighting anti-Semitism and defending Israel in a balanced way over the past eighteen months,” Lavi told Le Monde, lambasting an “extremely stupid decision”.
‘Dismantling democracy’
The controversy comes amid growing concern in Israel about democratic backsliding and an encroachment on academic freedom under Netanyahu’s hardline government – echoing similar concerns in the US under President Donald trump.
“Not a week goes by without scandalous measures being taken against liberal institutions in Israel, particularly higher education establishments,” said Lavi.
Illouz described her case “as a small cog in a larger process of dismantling democracy”. The education minister’s actions, she told Le Monde, “show that Israel is now going down the road of authoritarian regimes, and all Zionist Jews should be very worried”.
While Netanyahu’s government presses ahead with its plans to rein in the judiciary, despite days of mass street protests, judges may yet thwart Kisch’s efforts to deny Illouz her Israel Prize.
Jury members have the option of appealing to the Supreme Court, which has ruled in the past that the prize should be awarded strictly on professional merit.
In 2022, the court ruled that the education minister had no right to deny computer scientist Oded Goldreich the prize over his alleged support for anti-Israel boycotts. In the ruling, Justice Isaac Amit, who now serves as the court’s president, warned that disqualifying Goldreich due to statements he made was “a surefire recipe for politicising the prize” and “an invitation to monitoring, surveilling and persecuting academics”.
אין ספק שפסילתה של אווה אילוז פסולה, כי פרס ישראל לפי התקנון נועד לכבד הישגים מדעיים בולטים ותרומה למדע בישראל. אווה אילוז סוציולוגית בולטת משכמה ומעלה ומצוטטת רבות בכל העולם. אינני שותף לחלק מדעותיה, אבל על הישגיה המדעיים בארץ ובעולם אין חולק. אל מול פסילתה השערורייתית והפוליטית של אילוז, חוקרת אחרת מהאוניברסיטה העברית – רות קרק — כן זכתה בפרס השנה, לקרק אין שם עולמי, וסימן שאלה קיים על אמינות מחקריה. עם זאת, ממצאיה תואמים את מטרות השלטון, ולכן, כך נראה, הוא חפץ ביקרה. ההשוואה בין שתי החוקרות מאותו מוסד בוטה ופוליטית במיוחד.
———- Forwarded message ——— From: Meir Buzaglo Date: Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 7:38 AM Subject: Re: [Academia-IL-Bashaar] אווה אילוז ורות קרק
אורן היקר,
אווה גדולה מהחיים, לא רק במספר ציטוטים, מכאן להשמצה של קרק שקיבלה פרס ישראל מה שייך? לא מכיר את קרק ואין לי מושג על מעלותיה, למה לפגוע, אני ממש לא מבין. שום חסם? הכל כשר?
גם אני מסכימה עם ההגדרה של פרס ישראל כפרס שניתן לא רק על מקצועיות טובה אלא גם כהוקרה לבניה ביום שבו קמה מדינת ישראל. העיתוי המיוחד של הענקת הפרס ביום העצמאות הוא סמלי והוא צריך להינתן רק לאזרחי המדינה שלא שוללים את קיומה ולא רודפים את חייליה ולא מוציאים דיבתה רעה בבית הדין בהאג.
אווה אילוז יכולה לקבל גם פרס נובל ו/או גם The Hirschman Prize, אך מי שפוגע בלגיטימיות של מדינת ישראל, פוגע בלוחמים/טייסים, פוגע ברשויות המדינה, פונה לבית הדין הפלילי הבינלאומי בהאג כנגד המדינה, שרודף את חיילי צה”ל בכל העולם, וטוען כי הם מבצעים פשעי מלחמה, לא ניתן להעניק לו פרס ישראל. זהו פרס שניתן ביום העצמאות במדינה יהודית ודמוקרטית, וצריך להיות איזון בין מקבלי הפרס לבין אישיותם. פרס ישראל אינו פרס מקצועי טכני בלבד, אלא פרס שמעניקה המדינה כהוקרה לבניה הנבחרים. מקרה שבו אדם משמיץ את המדינה אזרחיה וחייליה לא יכול לקבל פרס ישראל.
הכתבה על פרופ’ רות קרק רצופת שקרים. הייתי בפלמ”ח. ראיתי זאת במו עיני
10:39 • 29 באפריל 2025
אני מנויה ותיקה של עיתון “הארץ”, ומעולם לא נתקלתי בכתבה כמו זו שפירסמתם במוסף (“20 שאלות לכלת פרס ישראל בגיאוגרפיה, פרופ’ רות קרק”, 25.5). ברצוני למחות בתוקף על הכתבה הקשה,
המבזה ורצופת השקרים הזאת. אני בת ,95 והייתי בפלמ”ח. בתקופה שבין אוגוסט לנובמבר 1948 הייתי בקיבוץ משמר הנגב במסגרת הגדוד הראשון של הפלמ”ח. בתוקף תפקידי נסעתי לעתים קרובות בין היישובים משמר הנגב, רוחמה, שובל, דורות ובאר שבע לאחר כיבושה. אני מדברת מידע אישי. לא זכור לי אוהל, עדר, חקלאות או בית אחד של בדואים באזור הזה. גם בשנים אחר כך, כשנסענו לבקר במשלט חרבת מחאז שבו נפלו חברינו בקרב, לא ראיתי זכר למה שנכתב על ההתיישבות המשגשגת של הבדואים בנגב. איני מבינה מדוע פירסמתם בכלל את הכתבה, ועכרתם את שמחתנו וגאוותנו על הכבוד שבו זכתה אחותי בצדק מוחלט.
Many supporters of a militaristic movement which was central to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians are among those presenting papers at a conference which “The Findhorn Foundation and community will proudly host” in less than a week (26–28 June). Kibbutzim are based on stolen land whose owners were driven out with great violence, and virtually all kibbutzim operate a stringent racist policy of refusing membership to Palestinian citizens of Israel. Some of the presenters are still active in the Israeli State campaign to move the Palestinian Bedouin of the Negev into concentration zones to facilitate the ongoing seizure of their lands.
Palestinian refugees on the move in 1948Can anything deserving of the name of a humanistic experiment in “communal living” take place after the experimenters have violently expelled the indigenous tillers of the soil? The Findhorn Foundation needs to answer this question unambiguously.
Communal Pathways to Sustainable Living is the 11th Conference of the International Communal Studies Association (ICSA), which was jointly founded in 1985 by the US-based Communal Studies Association and the Kibbutz Studies Centre of Israel. The ICSA Secretariat address is in Israel at Yad Tabenkin, which is also the address of the Research and Documentation Centre of the United Kibbutz Movement.
Attendees will hear no less than 17 presentations over three days from active supporters of the kibbutz movement, who will be keen to conceal the nature of their “experiments in communal living” on land stolen after it was ethnically cleansed of its owners, many of whom live till today in refugee camps.
Some of those expelled remained in Israel after the population dispersals in 1948 and can today see and even visit their property, but they cannot recover it since it has been consigned to exclusively Jewish ownership, enshrined in Israeli law.
All Israeli kibbutzim enforced until recently a bar on membership against Israel’s 1.25 million Arab Palestinian citizens and virtually all still enforce such a rule. The late Israel Shahak, President of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights from 1970 to 1990 noted that:
The Israeli organization which practices the greatest degree of racist exclusion is … the Kibbutz. The majority of Israelis have been aware of the racist character of the Kibbutz as displayed not only against Palestinians but against all human beings who are not Jews, for quite a time.
The kibbutzim share in the general Israeli policy of forced residential separation of Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel whereby 93% of all Israeli land cannot be sold or leased to non-Jewish citizens of the Jewish State. One only has to imagine how almost everyone would react if Jews in Scotland were only allowed to live in small designated areas, but such a system of apartheid – legally enforced residential segregation – is the hideous reality of Israel today.
The savage origins of the kibbutz “utopian community” From the beginning, the kibbutz was a militaristic community designed to seize and hold Palestinian land as part of the process of colonisation that saw Palestinians driven out of most of Palestine. One ICSA presenter, Aharon Azati, has been a member of Kibbutz Beit Haemek since 1971; he must serve as an example of those who benefit from theft, dispossession and ethnic cleansing and who are determined that the legal owners of their kibbutz land must be deterred from returning, if necessary by violence. A similar story can be told for many other of the ICSA presenters and their kibbutz, but lack of time means that Kibbutz Beit HaEmek must serve as a representative example.
In January 1949, Kibbutz ha-Bonim, later renamed Beit HaEmek, was established on the ethnically cleansed village lands of the Palestinian village of Kuwaykat. Its settlers were Jewish immigrants from England, Hungary and the Netherlands.
Palestinian Kuwaykat had repulsed several Jewish attacks in January and February 1948 but was finally cleansed of its owners by Israel’s Sheva’ and Carmeli Brigades in early July, after heavy bombardment which resulted in several deaths. The villagers fled, fearing massacre after the series of exemplarymass killings of Palestinians carried out by Jewish militias bent on driving out Palestinians to make way for Jewish colonists from Europe. The Deir Yassinmassacre, for example, had taken place only two months earlier.
Those Kuwaykat villagers who were too elderly to flee were later expelled to Kafr Yasif to make way for the Jewish kibbutz and the experiment in communal living. Many of the Kuwaykat villagers ended up in the refugee camp of Bourj el-Barajneh in Lebanon.
Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described the village in All that Remains (1992):
Little remains of the village except the deserted cemetery, completely overgrown with weeds, and rubble from houses. Inscriptions on two of the graves identify one as that of Hamad ‘Isa al-Hajj, and another as that of Shaykh Salih Iskandar, who died in 1940. The shrine of Shaykh Abu Muhammad al-Qurayshi still stands but its stone pedestal is badly cracked.
This is the Arab-free zone that conference presenter Aharon Azati celebrates as an experiment in communal living.
One other quick note can underline how the same story applies to other kibbutz presenters at the ICSA Conference. Yaakov Oved was a founding member of the ICSA and served as its executive director from 1985 until 2004.. Oved has been a member of Kibbutz Palmachim since its establishment in April 1949 on the lands of the Palestinian village of Nabi Rubin. Eight months before Oved joined the kibbutz, in August 1948, the local Israeli military HQ issued the order for Mivtza Nikayon (Operation Cleaning), aiming at ´cleansing [letaher]´Palestinians from the newly conquered area which included Nabi Rubin. Many similar examples can be given.
The crimes are ongoing, promoted by Ruth Kark and other Israeli academics This is not an antiquarian exercise, history for history’s sake. Some of the ICSA presenters at Findhorn are still actively involved in promoting Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as part of the openly discussed effort to move land into exclusively Jewish ownership, a racist project that has gone on since the founding of the State of Israel. Let us take, as an example the shocking case of Zionist academic, Ruth Kark, who will be presenting at this conference.
Kark’s words were acted upon – Arakib Village was demolished more than 30 timesKark is an active participant in the programme of the Israeli State to concentrate the Negev Bedouin in restricted zones and deliver their lands to exclusively Jewish ownership and use. According to the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality “Kark had presented an expert opinion, supporting the state’s position that the Bedouins have no ownership rights over their lands in the Negev even if they have lived there for many generations.”
Not only did Kark support the racist claim that Jews have rights to land that trump those who “have lived there for many generations” but she fabricated evidence in support of a standard, and academically discredited, Zionist claim that Palestine had been empty before Zionist colonisation: “There are no Palestinians or anyone else here. There were shepherds who brought their sheep from Saudi Arabia, and then returned.”
Kark puts her dubious “expertise” firmly in the service of the Zionist narrative used to justify the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, that they are all recent arrivals to a previously empty land that only European Jewis colonisers had the ability to make productive. This academic fraud produced an opinion for the Israeli Government that there “had been no permanent settlements in the northern Negev, and that there was no evidence that any lands in the area were owned by anyone”.
One ought to ask why Findhorn is hosting a dodgy academic who still defends the proposition put forward in an utterly discredited work which, according to Noam Chomsky, led “Every major journal, the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review, the Observer everybody” to conclude that “this doesn’t even reach the level of nonsense, of idiocy”.
Against Kark’s absurd claims of an empty land on the shores of the Mediterranean prior to Zionist colonisation,Amnesty described the programme Kark endorsed as “a conscious Israeli government policy of dispossession …despite the residents’ Israeli citizenship and their long-established claims to their lands” and called on the Israeli government to “stop its policy of home demolitions both in communities inside Israel, such as Al-‘Araqib in the Negev, and also in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem”. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel described the current plan to forcibly remove tens of thousands of the Naqab ‘s non-Jewish population as “a declaration of war on the Bedouin in the Negev.”
The Coalition of Women for Peace joined with many other human rights groups to protest “the destruction of Al-Arakib” Village. They reported that “large police forces destroyed the village of Al-Arakib for the 11th time*, using violence, including the use of sponge bullets, beatings and arrests…The demolitions in Al-Arakib are part of the plan of the Government of Israel to “Jewdise” the Negev.
The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) rejected an application by the Jewish National Fund USA, a supporter of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities, for consultative status with thousands of other NGOs on the grounds that the JNF’s work in the Negev and elsewhere violated the principles of the UN Charter, which emphasizes respect for human rights and equality.
So it’s Ruth Kark against Amnesty, HRW, Women for Peace and the UN’s ECOSOC. Why has Findhorn provided a platform for Kark and her ilk to greenwash their commitment to ethnic cleansing and racism? Kark is an example of the complicity of the great bulk of Israeli academics in supporting, equipping, defending and seeking to justify Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing and helps to explain why Palestinian civil society has asked for its counterparts worldwide to support their call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it ends its violations of Palestinian human rights.
It also helps to explain why the Church of Scotland recently took a stand for the human rights of the Palestinian refugees whose property was stolen by the kibbutzim where many conference presenters live, why the Scottish Trade Union Congress has declared its opposition to Israel’s racist policies, and why the Friends of the Earth andGreen Parties in Scotland, England and Wales have condemned the greenwashing of Israeli policies of forced population removals.
The Findhorn Community should not aid and abet such greenwashing of ethnic cleansing and state-enforced residential segregation, i.e. apartheid. * As of end of June 2013, Arakib Village had been destroyed 51 times.
Yuval Dror was a member of Kibbutz Hamadia, which took its name from nearby Palestinian village of Al Hamadiyya, destroyed in 1948 by local Zionist militias to prevent Arab villagers returning.
Rami Degani, a member of Kibbutz Nir David, founded in 1936 as the first ‘tower and stockade’ type of military structure to enable colonisation.
Anton Marks a member of Kibbutz Mishol, situated in Nazareth Illit which, according to the director of the IDF Planning Department, Yuval Ne’eman, would “safeguard the Jewish character of the Galilee as a whole, and… demonstrate state sovereignty to the Arab population more than any other settlement operation.” Historian Geremy Forman wrote that Jewish Upper Nazareth was meant to “overpower [Arab] Nazareth numerically, economically, and politically.”
Lee Cahaner, born and raised in Kibbutz Magal, which was a militarised settlement set up in 1953 by the Nahal Infantry Brigade, which also set up illegal settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and the West Bank with the explicitly racist and illegal goal of changing the ethnicbalance of these regions.
Yuval Achouch, a member of Kibbutz Hanita, founded in 1938 in the teeth of Palestinian opposition as a militarised colony on the border with Lebanon
The Press and Journal Moray, Friday, June 28, 2013
Community defends itself in ‘racist speaker’ storm
Conference: Palestine supporters critical of invitation to guest
BY KAYE NICOLSON
A Moray spiritual community has defended itself after claims that it invited an a n t i – Pa l e s t i n i a n academic to a conference.
The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign raised concerns about the Findhorn Foundation’s Communal Pathways to Sustainable Living event, which ends today.
The conference, at the community’s Universal Hall, was organised to share academic research and experience about environmentally- minded communities such as housing co-operatives and kibbutzim.
However, several residents of the Findhorn ecovillage approached the SPSC after hearing that Israeli academic Professor Ruth Kark was one of the speakers, alongside a number of representatives from Israeli kibbutzim.
The SPSC claimed on a recent blog that Prof Kark was an academic who supported a “racist claim that Jews have rights to land that trump those who have lived there for many generations”.
The blog also claimed that kibbutzim share in a general policy of forced residential separation of Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Mick Napier, of SPSC, met with Findhorn Foundation representatives yesterday, calling on them to support Amnesty International and Church of Scotland views on the sensitive situation in Israel.
A spokesman for the Findhorn Foundation said yesterday: “After a constructive meeting with both local and national representatives from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Findhorn Foundation wishes to clarify that it unambiguously supports the principles enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Earth Charter, the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and all UN conventions, and instruments and principles of international law that relate to the rights of refugees and internally displaced persons.
“We also wish to state our unequivocal support for racially inclusive communities and communities that honour and celebrate the full diversity of humankind.
“We look forward to future dialogues to ensure a deeper understanding of the issues involved.” Mr Napier said: “Most of the people from inside the community who registered their great unhappiness were non-members of SPSC, but there were some members too.
“There will be a discussion between management and Findhorn community members to discuss the implications of this.
“Our members of the campaign inside the community will be trying to push that forward.”
IAM objectives: To collect information about Israel which relates to, inter alia, activities, publications and presentations of Israeli academics. To monitor their academic activities and publications. Activities for academic freedom and scientific resonance of institutions of higher learning and to prevent abuse of the academic platform for foreign interests. Activities for academic ethics.
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Palestinian refugees on the move in 1948Can anything deserving of the name of a humanistic experiment in “communal living” take place after the experimenters have violently expelled the indigenous tillers of the soil? The Findhorn Foundation needs to answer this question unambiguously.
Kark’s words were acted upon – Arakib Village was demolished more than 30 timesKark is an active participant in the programme of the Israeli State to concentrate the Negev Bedouin in restricted zones and deliver their lands to exclusively Jewish ownership and use. According to the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality “Kark had presented an expert opinion, supporting the state’s position that the Bedouins have no ownership rights over their lands in the Negev even if they have lived there for many generations.”
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