16.03.23

Editorial Note

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the American actor, and politician who served as the governor of California between 2003 and 2011, emerged as an unexpected combatant against antisemitism. In a compelling video, Schwarzenegger spoke about the rising hate and antisemitism that “we have seen all over the world.” He talked about his visit to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp where more than a million Jewish men, women, and children lost their lives. “Once you’ve spent the time to really think about all those things, then your imagination has no choice but to start the real work, how do we stop this from ever happening again? After a trip to Auschwitz, you will never question why never again is the rallying cry of all of the people who fight to prevent another Holocaust.”

Having been deeply touched by his experience in Auschwitz, he decided to appeal to those full of hatred. “I don’t want to preach to the choir. Here is the day I want to talk to the people out there who might have already stumbled into the wrong direction, into the wrong path. I want to talk to you if you have heard some conspiracies about Jewish people or people of any race or gender orientation and thought that makes sense to me. I want to talk to you if you found yourself thinking that anyone is inferior and how to get you because of their religion or the color of their skin, or their gender. I don’t know the road that has brought you here, but I’ve seen enough people throw away their futures for hateful beliefs.״ 

He ended by pleading, “I don’t care how many hateful things you may have written online. I don’t care how often you have marched with carrying that hateful flag or what hateful things you may have said in anger, there’s still hope for you, there’s still time for you to choose strength, choose life. Conquer your mind. You Can Do It.״

Schwarzenegger did not identify those who wave the flag of hatred by name, but some academic groups and individuals stand out. Earlier this month, the Palestinians and their supporters announced “Israeli Apartheid Week” on campus.

In the US, at UC Davis, Apartheid Week is about to begin. Organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, an on-campus political advocacy group for Palestinian Liberation, it is recognized by chapters nationwide. UC Berkeley’s Apartheid Week is also coming up, where an apartheid wall is erected in conjunction with Bears for Palestine. Apartheid Week is focused on the “right of return for Palestinian refugees and the end of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank in Gaza.”

In the Netherlands, Israeli Apartheid Week is taking place in the Hague, Groningen, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht, and Leiden under the banner #UnitedAgainstRacism.

In Ireland, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign organized an “Israel Apartheid Week” in Celbridge, Dublin, Ennis, and Wexford under the banner of “Boycott Israeli Goods Action” on March 4, 2023. The group asked shoppers “not to buy Israeli products on sale in Irish stores.” According to the organizers, the BDS campaign “aims to apply economic pressure through people power, on the Israeli state to compel it to comply with international law and end the apartheid regime it imposes upon the Palestinian people.”

Closter to home, the BDS campaign has targeted Ben Gurion University. The Philosophy Department at BGU is hosting a conference in Israel titled “Anti-theory in the Philosophy of Science and Ethics” between July 4, 2023, to July 6, 2023. The invitation explains that two philosophical movements emerged in the 1970s and 80s, the philosophy of science and ethics. Both challenged the prevailing conception of philosophical theorizing. Despite the undeniable differences between science and ethics, there is an important similarity between the two anti-theory movements. The aim of the conference is to “bring together scholars from philosophy of science and ethics to provide a comparative assessment of anti-theory movements in the philosophy of science and in ethics and to explore ways in which insights gleaned from one subfield can shed light on the other.” The confirmed speakers included Sophie-Grace Chappell (Open University, UK), K. Brad Wray (Aarhus University, Denmark), Nora Hämäläinen (University of Helsinki), Jamie Shaw (Leibniz Universität Hannover), Shlomit Wygoda Cohen (Polonsky Fellow, Van Leer Institute), it says.    

However, Prof. Sophie-Grace Chappell has declined the invitation. In a Facebook post, she explained her decision as a response to what she saw as a “brutal” oppression of the Palestinians. She said it is a protest “In light of the longstanding failure of the State of Israel to accord basic human rights to the Palestinian people living within its legitimate territory.” The BDS movement congratulated Chappell on her decision and urged others to follow. 

Like most pro-Palestinian advocates, Chappell has never seen fit to discuss the appalling lack of basic human rights in the Gaza Strip and the only marginally better situation in the West Bank. The latest statistics of the Freedom House, which measures civil, religious, and political freedoms around the globe, gave very low marks to the PLO, which runs the West Bank, and especially Hamas, which is in charge of the Strip. Corruption, an integral part of Palestinian self-rule, is also sky-high.

Schwarzenegger’s plea would behoove the BDS movement for an open-minded dialogue as an antidote to hatred of Israel. 

References:

https://philevents.org/event/show/105433

Anti-theory in the Philosophy of Science and Ethics

July 4, 2023 – July 6, 2023

Philosophy Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beersheba Israel

View the Call For Papers

Speakers:

Klodian Coko

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Uri D. Leibowitz

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Jamie Shaw

University of Toronto, St. George Campus

K. Brad Wray

Aarhus University

Shlomit Wygoda Cohen

(unaffiliated)

Organisers:

Klodian Coko

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Uri D. Leibowitz

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Topic areas

• General Philosophy of Science
• Meta-Ethics
• Normative Ethics

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During the 1970s and 80s two movements emerged—one in the philosophy of science and the other in ethics—that challenged the prevailing conception of philosophical theorizing in their respective fields. In PoS, Paul Feyerabend (1970, 1975) criticized attempts to identify a scientific method and to formulate a theory of scientific rationality. Scientists, he claimed, do not—and should not—follow strict rules of a fixed method. In ethics, a diverse group of prominent philosophers questioned the purpose and value of moral theorizing. They insisted that excellent moral behavior does not consist in following strict moral principles and that organizing our lives on dictates of moral theory is morally pernicious (MacIntyre 1981; Williams 1985; Baier 1985; Taylor 1989).

Despite the undeniable differences between science and ethics, there is, nevertheless, a deep and important similarity between the two anti-theory movements—they both reject the presumption that a chief task of their field is to formulate strict principles for practical guidance. Interestingly, this principal similarity has been overlooked and the debates in the philosophy of science and in ethics have developed independently one from the other.   The aim of the workshop is to bring together scholars from philosophy of science and ethics to provide a comparative assessment of anti-theory movements in the philosophy of science and in ethics and to explore ways in which insights gleaned from one subfield can shed light on the other.   

Confirmed Speakers: Sophie-Grace Chappell (Open University, UK), K. Brad Wray (Aarhus University, Denmark), Nora Hämäläinen (University of Helsinki), Jamie Shaw (Leibniz Universität Hannover), Shlomit Wygoda Cohen (Polonsky Fellow, Van Leer Institute)

The workshop is organized by Dr. Uri D. Leibowitz (urileib@bgu.ac.il) and Dr. Klodian Coko (klodian.coko.hps@gmail.com) from the Philosophy Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in conjunction with a research project funded by the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF 1943/20).   

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Registration

Is registration required? Yes

Registration deadline: June 15, 2023, 9:00am IST

How to register: antitheory.bgugmail.com

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https://bdsmovement.net/news/scholar-sophie-grace-chappell-withdraws-from-ethics-conference-apartheid-israel

Scholar Sophie Grace Chappell Withdraws From Ethics Conference in Apartheid Israel 

March 8, 2023

 / By

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) 

As Palestinians, we salute scholar Sophie Grace Chappell for her principled decision to withdraw from the Anti-theory in the Philosophy of Science and Ethics conference in apartheid Israel.

Chappell withdrew over “the longstanding failure of the State of Israel to accord basic human rights to the Palestinian people” and the “increasingly extreme, inhumane, and violently oppressive policies currently being deployed against innocent Palestinians by the Settler movement in the West Bank and elsewhere, with the connivance and at times active support of the Israeli [occupation forces] and of members of the present Israeli government.”

We appreciate the fact that Chappell chose to heed Palestinian and anti-colonial Israeli appeals urging her not to allow Israel’s decades-long apartheid regime, currently under its most racist, homo- and trans- phobic government ever, to use her name and standing as a stamp of approval.

With her withdrawal, Chappell joins the many principled scholars who are refusing to participate in complicit conferences that whitewash Israeli apartheid. It sends a message to Israel that, like apartheid South Africa, it cannot continue to commit the crime against humanity of apartheid without consequences. It also signals to Israeli institutions that are complicit in apartheid that scholars will not continue business-as-usual relations with them.

The conference host, Ben Gurion University, is deeply complicit in Israel’s system of oppression against Palestinians. As early as 2011, the University of Johannesburg in South Africa severed all institutional ties with Ben Gurion University after a fact-finding mission found it guilty of “institutional complicity and active collaboration with the Israeli military, occupation and apartheid practices.”

We urge all remaining speakers to follow Chappell’s ethical example by withdrawing from the conference at Ben Gurion University. Apartheid was the antithesis of ethics in South Africa, and it is the same with Israel. Organizing a conference on ethics in apartheid Israel makes a travesty of ethics.

===============================================

Sophie Grace

1 March at 15:39

In light of the longstanding failure of the State of Israel to accord basic human rights to the Palestinian people living within its legitimate territory, or adjacent to that territory; in light of the increasingly extreme, inhumane, and violently oppressive policies currently being deployed against innocent Palestinians by the Settler movement in the West Bank and elsewhere, with the connivance and at times active support of the Israeli Defence Force and of members of the present Israeli government; in light of the Netanyahu administration’s continuing attacks upon the judiciary and the rule of law in Israel; in light of my perception that if I went to Israel and was arrested for protesting about these things, the probability of effective lobbying for my release from the British Government is extremely low; and in light of the advice of friends both Palestinian and Israeli; I have reached the conclusion that I must withdraw from the speaking engagement at a conference in Israel in June that I entered into last November, when consequences of the result of the last Israeli General Election that are now obvious to all, were not yet apparent to me.

I must apologise to the organisers of the conference for any inconvenience caused to them by my decision, which is not reversible except by a drastic alteration in the political situation in Israel.

=================================================

Students for Justice in Palestine mark ‘Apartheid Week’

Students for Justice in Palestine mark ‘Apartheid Week’

BYMONICA STARK

MARCH 9, 2023

A large Palestinian flag hung from a tree in the quad, waving in the sunshine as students gathered around on Wednesday to hear personal stories about life in Palestine and precautions when visiting there.

Organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, an on-campus political advocacy group for Palestinian Liberation, the teach-in was day three in a weeklong event at UC Davis known as Apartheid Week, recognized by chapters nationwide. Focused on the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the end of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank in Gaza, throughout the week, educational events also included a Hunger Banquet: Living on $1.90 a Day and work on an apartheid wall at UC Berkeley in conjunction with Bears for Palestine.

The World Bank’s previous definition of “extreme poverty”, $1.90 per person per day, was updated last September, measuring at $2.15 per person per day. According to the World Bank, about 648 million people were in extreme poverty in 2019.

President of SFJ UCD Yara (who requested her last name be withheld for safety reasons) said Apartheid Week highlights how “the system perpetuates apartheid” and how different experiences of Palestinians differ depending on gender, age, where they are geographically in Palestine. “Even within the West Bank, Palestinians, some different towns and cities are living under different forms of restrictions of movement, economic suppression, political and civil suppression from the Israeli military. So throughout the week, we’re just going to be having educational events highlighting these forms of violent oppression that Palestinians are subjected to,” she said.

The Apartheid Wall invites community members to question its symbolism. “There’s an apartheid wall in the West Bank and around Gaza right now, so people struggle to get in or leave, especially when it comes to Gaza. Palestinians can’t leave Gaza, and Palestinians can enter if they live outside,” Yara said.

Seena

Born in the U.S., Seena, the vice president of Students for Justice in Palestine, travels each summer to visit family outside of Palestine. Their village was demolished and her grandparents became refugees in Jordan and Kuwait. She returns every summer to visit family and work in the refugee camps.

“(Working in the camps) is a world within itself,” she said. “Seeing your people that way is challenging, but they have so much hope and resistance. It’s very hard coming into contact with settlers or Israeli forces, but at the end of the day, Palestinian people are the most resilient people I know. It’s a beautiful culture and a beautiful place. While everything we talked about is so sad, I always have shown and shed light on the beauty of the land and the people in the culture.”

What follows is a personal account Seena shared at the teach-in regarding her visit to Palestine last summer. It has been edited for clarity:

I got to go to Palestine for three months, see my family, see my land, and be with my people. And a big thing for me is to go pray in Jerusalem. I got the privilege of doing that this summer, and I couldn’t be more grateful. But I must say it’s not easy for me to get in as a Palestinian woman. My American passport means nearly nothing to them. When I was in Jerusalem, going through all of the little vendors selling food, shirts and little knickknacks, I was stopped by an IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) soldier. I was asked to present my visa and passport, which I did without argument.

As I waited to get those things returned to me, I had a sweet older man who asked me what village I was from. And I, of course, I’m so proud of where I’m from, and I immediately began to tell him about how the beautiful village my family is from is sadly in ruins, and he was actually able to know and understand, which was very fun and interesting for me. And then, it came time for me to get my passport back.

Before giving my passport back, I was asked to recite the opening verse of the Quran. I was asked, as a Muslim woman, why I was there. Upon being asked to recite the opening verse in the Quran, I couldn’t really bite my tongue, and I looked at him, and I said, “Are you kidding me? Because in what way are you to make me feel so low? It makes me feel as though I have to prove myself as a Muslim woman, on my ground and land, to pray in a mosque for my people?”

And not long after the second those words left my mouth, the environment around me completely changed. He had a gun larger than me on him. He began to explicitly tell me, “Do you understand where you are? I don’t care if you’re from California. This isn’t California. I will have you forcibly removed. I will have you arrested, and I will not allow you to pray in your mosque.” This all happened to me in 10 minutes with my cousin right next to me in absolute and utter shock that I was being treated this way.

But at the same time, I expect nothing less. I expect nothing less of this military occupation. It is something that I do not fear. I do not fear these soldiers. I do not fear these people because, at the end of the day, their main basis, their main foundation, is absolutely nothing. It’s empty words. It’s empty promises. So at the end of the day, I looked at him and said “really” again, and he was starting to get very frustrated. I saw his hand moving to his gun, and I knew that they shoot before they ask.

And, immediately, all I could think about was my family. My mother, my cousin who is a martyr, and at that moment, I knew I couldn’t do that to my family. The countless stories you hear of them shooting up Palestinians are devastating. At that moment, my cousin and I began to recite the verse. And at that moment, he gave us our passports back. But I wasn’t going to go without that being said. Midway through the recitation, he asked me to stop after giving me my passport. I continued with my recitation.

I could see the anger on his face because he could tell that I was not bothered. He could tell that there was no effect on me. I walked away with a smile because, at the end of the day, I was still home. That’s my home. I have the right to return to my home, and I wish nothing but that for every Palestinian brother and sister.

My story is no different than thousands of others. My story is not the worst; if anything, it’s a great story. I’m here to tell you about it today. But I want you to know that this is ongoing. Palestinians face going through checkpoints through these interactions, just getting into Palestine. All of that is a struggle for us. But we continue to go because we know that’s home that will forever be home. I am sharing one of my many stories of Palestine’s beautiful land and beautiful people, and I am so proud to call it home.

=================================================================

https://www.dailycal.org/2023/03/11/student-activists-for-palestine-host-apartheid-week

Student activists for Palestine host ‘apartheid week’

VICTOR CORONA | STAFF

Events began Monday and continued throughout the week.

VICTOR CORONA

|

STAFF

MARCH 11, 2023

“Apartheid week” is being held this week, hosted by student groups Bears for Palestine, or BFP, and Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, with the goal of covering “the origins of Israeli apartheid and how it affects Palestinians today.”

Events began Monday and will continue throughout the week, ending with an “apartheid wall assemble” Friday.

“Apartheid week” was planned in collaboration with various Palestinian clubs across campuses in the United States and Canada, said a BFP representative who wished to remain anonymous due to security reasons, in an email.

They noted that the topics and discussions brought up during this week are important to Palestinian Americans and international students, since many have family members who have been “directly affected by the occupation.”

“This year, the United States has already given $3.8 billion to Israel. It’s only March. Since the year started, we have heard reports almost every week about different villages Israeli Defense Forces have been raiding,” the BFP representative said in the email. “We’re constantly worried that the next person we hear about dead will join our long list of family members who have passed at the hands of the regime.”

On Monday, they hosted a workshop discussing the debate around “greenwashing” in Palestine.

Tuesday’s event, titled “Apartheid: The Matrix of Control,” consisted of a workshop with Palestine DeCal facilitators, covering how Israel “controls” Palestinians in occupied territories, the representative said.

On Wednesday, they hosted a screening of “Farha” and had a Q&A with the director Darin Sallam. Thursday’s event, titled “Youth: The Yearn for Return,” consisted of a workshop about Palestinian activism over the years, the representative said, along with a panel discussing questions accumulated throughout the week.

Friday’s planned event consists of a makeshift wall, which they plan to plaster on campus. The BFP representative added that the event and wall were supposed to represent the separation of Palestinians.

“As Palestinians, we’re always attacked when we try to speak about our injustices. The truth is hard to hear, and many choose to be ignorant,” the BFP representative said in the email. “We’re just asking for our basic human rights. We demand our right to return and live in our ancestral homeland without the constant fear of death and erasure.”

A campus sophomore, who wishes to remain anonymous for safety concerns, said in an email that it was “wonderful” to see many people on campus coming together to discuss Palestine.

The source added that the events serve as a reminder of the reality of the “trauma, difficulties, and hardships” Palestinians face.

“It’s incredibly heartbreaking that people have become so desensitized to violence, specifically violence occurring in the MENA region,” the source said in the email. “These events not only bring people together, but they educate us on what a free Palestine really is, and challenges us to unlearn false narratives that have been embedded in our education system and the general media.

Contact Victor Corona at vcorona@dailycal.org, and follow him on Twitter at @victorcoronas.

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https://bdsnederland.nl/iaw2023/
March 12, 2023

Israeli Apartheid Week Begins! #UnitedAgainstRacism

Israeli Apartheid Week kicks off next week! For the 18th time, thousands of events and actions are organized worldwide under the banner of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and #UnitedAgainstRacism. 

Numerous panel discussions, demonstrations, workshops, film evenings, etc. will also be organized in the Netherlands this year. The Hague, Groningen, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht and Leiden are #UnitedAgainstRacism 

Support #IAW23 with a donation

Inspired by the ongoing resistance in Palestine, we hope to contribute to the Palestinian liberation struggle with Israeli Apartheid Week 2023. We have listed all events. View them below in the IAW Calendar. 

Activists, students, organizations and everyone else making #IAW23 possible: You are amazing!

The goal of IAW is to highlight Israel’s regime of settler colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people, and mobilize global action to help dismantle it. Thanks in part to IAW, it is becoming increasingly difficult for apartheid Israel to hide the institutionalized racism and systematic oppression of the Palestinians. 

IAW fuels the unstoppable growth of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality. 

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Events

• [Celbridge] Israeli Apartheid Week – Boycott Israeli Goods Action
  Sat, 4 March 2023, 11:00AM
  (Outside Castletown Gates) 
  [Celbridge] Israeli Apartheid Week – Boycott Israeli Goods ActionSat, 4 March 2023, 11:00 Outside Castletown GatesAs part of #IsraeliApartheidWeek 2023, the North Kildare Branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign will hold a Boycott Israeli Goods information stall outside Castletown Gates on Saturday 4th March from 11:00am, asking shoppers not to buy Israeli products on sale in Irish stores.The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign aims to apply economic pressure through people power, on the Israeli state to compel it to comply with international law and end the apartheid regime it imposes upon the Palestinian people.
• [Dublin] Israeli Apartheid Week – Boycott Israeli Goods Action
  Sat, 4 March 2023, 12:30PM
  (Outside the old Debenhams Shop, Henry Street, Dublin 1) 
  [Dublin] Israeli Apartheid Week – Boycott Israeli Goods ActionSat, 4 March 2023, 12:30 Outside the old Debenhams Shop, Henry Street, Dublin 1As part of #IsraeliApartheidWeek 2023, the Dublin Branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign will hold a Boycott Israeli Goods leafleting action, meeting outside the old Debenhams shop on Henry Street in Dublin on Saturday 4th March from 12.30pm, asking shoppers not to buy Israeli products on sale in Irish stores.The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign aims to apply economic pressure through people power, on the Israeli state to compel it to comply with international law and end the apartheid regime it imposes upon the Palestinian people.
• [Ennis] Israeli Apartheid Week – Boycott Israeli Goods Action
  Sat, 4 March 2023, 11:30AM
  (Tesco and Aldi, Frances Street, Ennis) [Ennis] Israeli Apartheid Week – Boycott Israeli Goods ActionSat, 4 March 2023, 11:30 Tesco and Aldi, Frances Street, EnnisAs part of #IsraeliApartheidWeek 2023, the Clare Branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign will hold a Boycott Israeli Goods leafleting action at Tesco and Aldi in Ennis on Saturday 4th March from 11:30am, asking shoppers not to buy Israeli products on sale in these stores and others such as Dunnes Stores, Lidl etc.The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign aims to apply economic pressure through people power, on the Israeli state to compel it to comply with international law and end the apartheid regime it imposes upon the Palestinian people.
• [Wexford] Israeli Apartheid Week – Boycott Israeli Goods Action
  Sat, 4 March 2023, 2:00PM
  (The Bullring, Wexford)

[Wexford] Israeli Apartheid Week – Boycott Israeli Goods Action

Sat, 4 March 2023, 14:00 The Bullring, Wexford

As part of #IsraeliApartheidWeek 2023, the South East Branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign will hold a Boycott Israeli Goods leafleting action at The Bullring in Wexford on Saturday 4th March from 2pm, asking shoppers not to buy Israeli products on sale in Irish stores.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign aims to apply economic pressure through people power, on the Israeli state to compel it to comply with international law and end the apartheid regime it imposes upon the Palestinian people

09.03.23

Editorial Note

The construct of Israel as an apartheid state has deep academic roots. Encouraged by the boycott and the subsequent collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa, academic activists decided to apply the formula to Israel. Members of Matzpen, the radical group, were the first to use the term ‘apartheid’ to describe the Israeli political system. For example, Uri Davis wrote Israel: An Apartheid State in 1987. However, the early radicals were too marginal and too few to affect a serious change in perception.

The Islamist government in Iran provided a more decisive impetus in the 1990s. Alarmed by the Oslo peace, which would have established a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the regime deployed its formidable propaganda apparatus to push the apartheid narrative, mostly by collaborating with the rapidly growing number of left-wing NGOs. Tehran was triumphant at the 2001 human rights Durban Conference when some three thousand NGSs declared Israel an apartheid state and called for BDS, seen in Tehran as a significant achievement. Propaganda aside, Iran, working through the Quds Force (QF), the foreign operations division of the Revolutionary Guards, did its best to undermine the Israeli trust in the Oslo peace process. The QF activated the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas in a wave of terror attacks, including the devastating suicide bombings which killed and injured thousands of Israelis. Yasser Arafat, who lost control of the Palestinian Authority, refused to sign the Camp David II peace agreement, an act that triggered the bloody Second Intifada. 

Unmoved by these developments, the activist-academic community worked assiduously on promoting the “Israel as an apartheid” construct. In 2002 the British newspaper the Guardian published an exposé on how David Slater, the editor of an academic journal Political Geography rejected articles by Israeli authors just because of their nationality. The exception was a co-authored article by Dr. Oren Yiftachel. After months of negotiations, the editor accepted the article on the condition that it would reference the Israeli polity as an apartheid state. Since then, Yiftachel has published numerous writings using the false narrative that Israel is an apartheid State.  

IAM reported in 2021 on Yiftachel’s activism in “BGU Oren Yiftachel’s Two Decades of Apartheid Analogy.” Yiftachel mentioned in his 2021 Haaretz article a report published by the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, which he referred to as an “apartheid document.” Yiftachel, a board member of B’tselem, co-authored this report. It was this report that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch cited and adopted the apartheid fallacy. 

Having emerged as the leader of the activists, Yiftachel was under pressure to explain why Israel should be considered an apartheid country. He took a stab at this in his book Land and Power: from Ethnocracy and Creeping Apartheid in Israel/Palestine, in Hebrew, which is full of confounding statements. For instance, in Yiftachel’s view, Ethiopian Jews, who are full Israeli citizens, are “white.” Israeli Arabs are not white. He never bothered to explain why a “white colonial government” would bring African blacks as immigrants to Israel and even proceed to give them full citizenship.  

Despite the glaring contradictions – the construct of apartheid based on racial differences in Israel – the academic community has forged on. According to Google Scholar, over twelve thousand scholarly articles and books discuss the apartheid analogy in Palestine/Israel. 

In February 2023, the Israeli social sciences network published a call for papers for a conference titled “A Partnership Based Israeli-Palestinian Peace – Toward a Changed Paradigm.” The conference will occur at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute on May 10, 2023, and at the Hebrew University on May 11, 2023. The invitation explains that it has been twenty years since the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the intensification of the “Jewish apartheid regime between the Jordan and the sea.”

Unsurprisingly, Yiftachel is on the conference’s steering committee. The committee includes, among others, Dr. Yael Barda of the Hebrew University, another political activist, as IAM reported in 2019.

According to the organizers, there is a growing recognition that “the two-state solution has reached an impasse.” Therefore, “an alternative paradigm for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on equality and partnership (the partnership paradigm), has begun to take shape in academic and public discourse. The most significant change is not rooted in a specific political model; instead, this new paradigm signifies a shift in the basic assumptions for evaluating the desired political arrangements and the social processes that may lead to their realization. The new partnership paradigm assumes that it is not possible, nor is it appropriate, to strive to abolish the existing integration of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs throughout the country, and recognizes the strong affiliation of the two nationalities to the entire space between the Jordan and the sea. It assumes that national (collective) and individual rights are of equal importance to everyone—Jews and Palestinians—and that their realization is justified insofar as it is consistent with equality between the nations and the individuals.”

The conference aims to “examine, from a multidisciplinary, theoretical, and comparative point of view the possible future implications of this paradigm shift for academic research, social action, and cultural production in the [sic] Israel.”

In other words, the conference promotes an imaginary vision that should replace reality. “According to the commonly accepted approach, Israeli-Palestinian peace will materialize only in a framework of two national states, based on political and geographic separation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. This separation paradigm has far-reaching implications for academic research and social action. One particular consequence is the restriction of constitutional, social, economic, and political discourse to the land within the Green Line—effectively categorizing anything beyond it as not representative of the ‘Israeli reality,’ and thus outside the acceptable boundaries for research, discussion, and action. Thus, the partnership paradigm requires corrections in all these aspects and their interplay.” 

Among other points, the conference aims to “encourage and facilitate the growing discourse in academia and civil society that focuses on paradigms of peace and decolonization based on equality and partnership.” Also, the conference seeks to establish an “egalitarian political framework” and the “Presentation and examination of grassroots activism aimed at propelling social, cultural, and economic processes for implementing the new paradigm.” 

The steering committee “invites proposals related to the conference topic from scholars in a variety of disciplines and using various research methods as well as from individuals involved with the topic in civil society organizations.” 

Of course, there is nothing wrong with holding a conference that promotes peace. But the neo-Marxist, critical jargon indicates that the organizers live in a bubble separated from the reality in the region and, indeed, the global scene. The Palestinians are not independent agents that can make peace. Hamas and the PIJ – along with Hezbollah, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen – are part of the network of Iranian proxies in the Middle East. Having established dominance in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, they would continue to serve as opponents to peace.  Indeed, more so now than during the Oslo process. Iran has vastly improved its position by becoming a close ally of Russia and China against the background of the war in Ukraine. The regime has supplied drones to the Russian army; there are concerns that, in return, Moscow would help Tehran to develop its nuclear project. Iran has recently been admitted as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Russian-Chinese alliance to counter the American-led international order.

No amount of critical rhetoric can hide these facts. Without explaining the pernicious doings of the Iranian regime, the conference would be just another exercise in Israel-bashing.

Van Leer has used its considerable resources to promote the narrative of apartheid by providing a platform for political activist academics like Yiftachel. It is unfortunate that the Hebrew University is legitimizing Van Leer’s endeavor.  

References:

[SocSci-IL] קול קורא להגשת הצעות להשתתפות בכנס ״שלום ישראלי-פלסטיני מבוסס שותפות – לקראת שינוי פרדיגמה״ – מאי 10-11, 2023 ירושלים

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 at 07:14, limor yehuda wrote:

מכון ון ליר, המחלקה לסוציולוגיה ולאנתרופולוגיה והמרכז לחקר המגוון והרב תרבותיות באוניברסיטה העברית מזמינים הצעות להשתתפות בכנס בנושא״שלום ישראלי-פלסטיני מבוסס שותפות – לקראת שינוי פרדיגמה״.הכנס יתקיים בימים 10-11 במאי, 2023 במכון ון-ליר ובאוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים, וילווה בתרגום סימולטאני מעברית וערבית לאנגלית.מצורף קול קורא בעברית, ערבית ואנגלית.

מועד אחרון להגשת הצעות 1.3.2023.

Limor Yehuda, PhD   |

   ليمور يهودا ، د.  | 

  לימור יהודה, ד״ר

Research Fellow, The Harry S. Truman Research Institute 

for the Advancement of Peace

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel

[m] +972.54.20.10.246

Collective Equality: Theoretical Foundations for the Law of Peace, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (2022)Forthcoming book: Collective Equality – Human Rights and Democracy in Ethno-National Conflicts, Cambridge University Press (2023)

THE VAN LEER JERUSALEM INSTITUTE

Call for Proposals

For Participation in a Conference Titled 

A Partnership-Based Israeli-Palestinian Peace – Toward a Changed Paradigm

The conference will take place at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute on Wednesday 10.5.23

and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Thursday 11.5.23

Background

A Partnership-Based Israeli-Palestinian Peace – Toward a Changed Paradigm

Twenty years after the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the intensification of the Jewish apartheid regime between the Jordan and the sea there is a growing recognition that the two-state solution has reached

an impasse. In light of this, in recent years an alternative paradigm for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on equality and partnership (the partnership paradigm), has begun to take shape in academic and public discourse. The most significant change is not rooted in a specific political model; instead, this new paradigm signifies a shift in the basic assumptions for evaluating the desired political arrangements and the social processes that may lead to their realization.

The new partnership paradigm assumes that it is not possible, nor is it appropriate, to strive to abolish the existing integration of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs throughout the country, and recognizes the strong affiliation of the two nationalities to the entire space between the Jordan and the sea. It assumes that national (collective) and individual rights are of equal importance to everyone—Jews and Palestinians—and that their realization is justified insofar as it is consistent with equality between the nations and the individuals.

Topic and Rationale

According to the commonly accepted approach, Israeli-Palestinian peace will materialize only in a framework of two national states, based on political and geographic separation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. This separation paradigm has far-reaching implications for academic research and social action. One particular consequence is the restriction of constitutional, social, economic, and political discourse to the land within the Green Line—effectively categorizing anything beyond it as not representative of the “Israeli reality,” and thus outside the acceptable boundaries for research, discussion, and action. Thus, the partnership paradigm requires corrections in all these aspects and their interplay.

The goal of this conference is to encourage and facilitate the growing discourse in academia and civil society that focuses on paradigms of peace and decolonization based on equality and partnership. In this context, the conference aims to examine, from a multidisciplinary, theoretical, and comparative point of view the possible future implications of this paradigm shift for academic research, social action, and cultural production in the Israel.

Possible Proposal Topics

1. Change in the analysis and understanding of the conflict and the local situation, in their various dimensions, arising from the adoption of an approach that assumes political partnership and equality

2. New approaches to measuring and evaluating local social, economic, political, cultural, and spatial data and processes

3. Learning comparatively—historically and theoretically—from other places that have undergone a transition from an exclusionary political framework to a more multinational or multi-communal inclusionary and egalitarian political framework

4. Presentation and examination of approaches to Palestinian and Jewish reconciliation and where they overlap or contradict each other

5. The place of local and regional government and of urban spaces in the approach to peace based on equality and partnership

6. Presentation and examination of grassroots activism aimed at propelling social, cultural, and economic processes for implementing the new paradigm

7. The influence of the new geopolitics, including the changes in regional politics and Israel’s status

8. Examination of the roles of the law and the international community, including states, the United Nations, and other international organizations

9. An examination of class, religious, and gender issues and their expression in the partnership paradigm

Submission of Proposals

The steering committee invites proposals related to the conference topic from scholars in a variety of disciplines and using various research methods as well as from individuals involved with the topic in civil society organizations. Each proposal must include the following

details: (1) the proposer’s full name and academic or organizational affiliation;

(2) an abstract of 200–250 words. Proposals for unconventional formats are welcome.

Deadline for Submission of Proposals: 1.3.23

Please send proposals to Nogaf@vanleer.org.il and write in the subject line “Proposal for the conference on partnership-based peace.”

The Conference Steering Committee

Dr. Limor Yehuda, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and The University of Haifa

Mr. Ameer Fakhoury, Polonsky Academy, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

Prof. Oren Yiftachel, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Dr. Rula Hardel, Shalom Hartman Institute

Dr. Yael Barda, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dr. Assaf David, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

===============================================

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/dec/12/highereducation.uk

‘It’s water on stone – in the end the stone wears out’ 

This summer, a little-known Manchester academic caused an international storm when she sacked two Israeli scholars from the editorial board of her journal. But was it an isolated freelance protest – or the first skirmish in a wider academic boycott?

Andy Beckett

The Guardian, Thursday 12 December 2002

Until a few months ago, Dr Oren Yiftachel was the kind of Israeli dissident that foreign critics of his country found admirable. He was born on a socialist kibbutz half a century ago. During his 20s and 30s, as that strain of cosmopolitan idealism began to lose its influence on Israel, he went abroad to live and travel. In 1994, he returned to Israel to work in the geography department at Ben Gurion University in the arid south of the country, where the particular proximity of Palestinian settlements and the challenges of desert life in general had made collaboration with Palestinian academics a local tradition.

Over the next eight years, with his open-necked shirt and his open, inquisitive face, Yiftachel became a familiar irritant to Israeli rightwingers. He made a point of working with Palestinians whenever possible. He published books and articles about his government’s illicit appetite for Palestinian land. He told Israeli newspapers that, “Israel is almost the most segregated society in the world.” He set up an Arab-Israeli journal that so enraged some Israeli conservatives that they campaigned to have it banned.

Given these radical credentials, Yiftachel did not anticipate any problems when, last spring, he submitted a paper to a left-leaning periodical called Political Geography. He had written for the respected British journal before. It specialised in the same probings of territory and power as he did. This time Yiftachel’s paper, co-written with a Palestinian academic, Dr Asad Ghanem of Haifa University, described Israel as “a state dedicated to the expansion and control of one ethnic group”; the paper concluded that such societies “cannot be classified as democracies in a substantive sense”.

Yet when Yiftachel heard back from Political Geography, he got a shock. The precise details of what happened are disputed but, according to Yiftachel, the paper was returned unopened. An explanatory note had been attached, he says, stating that Political Geography could not accept a submission from Israel.

“I hadn’t read the paper,” says David Slater, one of the periodical’s editors, who is also a geography professor at Loughborough University and a prominent British supporter of Palestinian causes. “But I was familiar with some of the author’s previous work… I was not sure to what extent he had been critical of Israel.” Slater says he hesitated about what to do with the paper, “for a while”.

“I protested,” Yiftachel says. Through the summer and autumn, it is agreed by both sides, there was a tense exchange of email. Among the editors of the periodical, Slater admits, there was “a slight disagreement” over how to proceed: his colleagues were keener on the paper than he was. Eventually, Yiftachel says, Political Geography was “forced” to consider his work; but between May and November, whenever he asked if it was actually going to be published, the journal simply responded that the paper was “under consideration”.

Finally, in mid-November, between six and eight months after Yiftachel first submitted his paper, depending on whose account you believe, Political Geography informed him that it would publish his article as long as he made “substantial revisions”. Yiftachel was asked to include a comparison between his homeland and apartheid South Africa.

Yiftachel agreed. Yet he still sounds slightly puzzled at how he ran into such difficulties with an apparent political kindred spirit like David Slater. Slater maintains that Political Geography is not officially hostile to contributions from Israel. But then, almost in passing, he mentions something interesting. At some point last spring or summer, while he was pondering Yiftachel’s paper, Slater signed a petition calling for an academic boycott of Israel.

The idea first surfaced as a polite, almost diffident letter to this newspaper on April 6. “Despite widespread international condemnation for its policy of violent repression against the Palestinian people, the Israeli government appears impervious,” the letter began, somewhat predictably. Yet then it proposed a novel solution: “Many national and European cultural and research institutions regard Israel as a European state for the purposes of awarding grants and contracts. Would it not therefore be timely if a moratorium was called upon any further such support unless and until Israel abides by UN resolutions and opens serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians… “

The letter had been written by two British academics: Steven Rose, professor of biology at the Open University, and his wife, Hilary, professor of social policy at Bradford University. Besides their signatures, the letter listed 123 other academics as supporters, mostly European but a few from the US and Israel.

All this did not come completely out of the blue. Nine months earlier, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign had called for a British boycott of Israeli agricultural produce, with some success. Other boycotts of Israeli tourist resorts, Israeli-manufactured goods and Israeli investment opportunities had been long been mooted on the internet. In liberal British academic and literary circles, which for years had contained critics of Israel, there had been renewed stirrings of protest against the Israeli government during 2001 and early 2002: circular letters of support for Palestinian writers, collective statements of outrage at Israeli military tactics, and occasional flashes of public anger, such as the poet Tom Paulin’s repeated comparisons of Israeli nationalists to Nazis. Finally, in the fortnight before the Roses published their letter, there were the daily television and newspaper images from Israel and the Palestinian territories. As invading Israeli tanks ground parts of Jenin to dust and Palestinians bombed chattering cafes in Tel Aviv and civilians on both sides were killed in greater numbers than for decades, it was hard for the politically conscious in Britain and elsewhere not to take sides. “There was this cumulative frustration,” says Steven, “that European governments were not doing more to stop things.”

However, what seemed straightforward in April now seems less so. The original, quite limited, boycott proposed then has grown into something larger and less well-defined. As the Roses’ petition has acquired hundreds more signatures, other, more radical calls for academic boycotts of Israel have been launched from Britain and abroad. Rival counter-petitions condemning the boycotts have been set in motion. And around all this has swirled a vast and ferocious debate about Israel and the Palestinians, about anti-semitism, about academic freedom, about boycotts in general. International political figures have been drawn in: from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who issued a statement supporting the Roses and comparing their protest to the struggle against apartheid, to Tony Blair, who last month reportedly told Britain’s chief rabbi that he was “appalled” at the academic boycott and would “do anything necessary” to stop it.

One obvious but significant feature of a political dispute involving academics is that they tend to relish arguments. They have access to the internet. They have international contacts and horizons. And since April, as the violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories has continued almost unabated, universities in both places have been directly affected. Israeli campus buildings have been bombed; Palestinian universities have been blockaded by Israeli troops. Whatever your view of the academic boycott, it has become increasingly difficult to dismiss it as pure ivory tower politics.

Yet the extent to which an actual academic boycott of Israel exists, beneath all the rhetoric for and against, has remained mysterious. In April, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education voted for “all UK institutions of higher and gurther education… to review – with a view to severing any academic links they may have with Israel”. In May, the Association of University Teachers voted for a funding boycott of Israeli universities. But when I rang both unions almost six months later to ask what concrete effect these resolutions had had, a Natfhe press officer said, “I’m unaware of any action being taken so far. Given the size and complexity of higher education institutions, implementing a boycott will take a long time… We’ve asked our branches to engage in a discussion as to what an academic boycott should be.” At the AUT, no one even seemed able to remember what boycott they had agreed.

There have been instances of individual British academics boycotting Israel. In June, two Israeli professors were removed from advisory positions on a pair of small academic journals put out by a Manchester publishing firm called St Jerome. The editor of the journals and the co-owner of St Jerome, Mona Baker, was and is – for the time being at least – a professor of translation studies at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (Umist). She briefly became the most infamous academic in Britain and is currently subject to an investigation by Umist, the limits of which have remained ominously unstated. The inquiry is expected to conclude within weeks.

In April, an English lecturer at Birmingham University called Sue Blackwell removed the links to Israeli institutions from her personal website. A dispute about her underlying attitude to Israel has flickered intermittently since, between her and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Blackwell’s website has been scrutinised by Birmingham University; last month it was cleared of alleged breaches of university regulations. As with Baker, the very length of the controversy generated by what originally seemed a small political gesture suggests that openly boycotting Israel may be a hard and lonely road to take.

More discreet withdrawals of cooperation, however, may be another matter. As Yiftachel discovered, the workings of academic journals and academia in general, with its intricate, stop-start machinery of international collaborations, research grants and references, paper submissions and promotions and assessments – much of this screened from outsiders by traditions of confidentiality, and by anxiety about damaging careers – provides plenty of opportunities for boycotts and semi-boycotts and temporary boycotts that never declare themselves as such. At some Israeli and British universities, and in some Jewish pressure groups, there are persistent and growing murmurs about boycott-related discrimination. Some cases are minor but revealing. “I am concerned about my return to England at the end of the academic year,” a British lecturer at an Israeli university writes to a friend in London. “English friends have made me feel like a settler for being here.” Other cases are more substantial – a thesis supervisor at a British university, it is alleged, is currently refusing to support an Israeli student’s work due to the student’s nationality – but impossible to prove without the breaking of professional confidences. Other cases are verifiable but add little to the overall picture: St Jerome Publishing recently refused to fulfil an order for a single book placed by Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

On British campuses, the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) claims that anti-Israeli posters and pamphlets and stickers are appearing and anti-Israeli meetings are being held with increasing frequency. Alleged hostility to Jewish student societies and Jewish individuals is also on the rise. “Students are incredibly worried,”says Michael Phillips, the campaigns director of the UJS. “The boycott may have started with reasonably legitimate aims, but it’s a very different thing now.”

In Israel, it is starting to have an effect on everyday academic life. “Every year we send most of our research papers abroad for refereeing,” says Professor Paul Zinger, the outgoing head of the Israel Science Foundation. “We send out about 7,000 papers a year. This year, for the first time, we had people writing back – about 25 of them – saying, ‘We refuse to look at these.'” At the Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East, a fund for joint projects between Israeli and British universities, the number of people applying for grants has fallen by a third. “There is a palpable slowing down of academic activity,” says John Levy, who helps run the fund. “We’re not even attempting to set up [joint] workshops. What we’re encountering is very many people who are saying, ‘Can we simply delay matters?'”

Not all of this change, Levy says, is directly because of the boycott. Anxiety about visiting Israel amid the current violence is putting off foreign academics, too. But security concerns can be a useful cover for people who want to withdraw cooperation without causing a fuss. “Since the intifada began we’ve had conferences that people have said they would come to but haven’t,” says Frank Schuldenfrei of the British Council in Tel Aviv. “If someone looks you in the face and says, ‘I’m not coming over because my wife doesn’t want me to come,’ who can say if that’s the reason? There is no doubt that in certain circles Israel has become less popular in the last six months.”

In one of the curious symmetries of politics, strong supporters of the boycott offer the same sort of vague-but-potent anecdotes about its impact as the boycott’s opponents. “We’ve had specific instances of people reporting in, as it were, saying they’ve cancelled such and such a project with Israeli colleagues,” says Steven Rose.

Colin Blakemore, an Oxford University professor of physiology who was one of the original signatories of the Rose letter, says with certainty, “I do not know of any British academic who has been to a conference in Israel in the last six months.”

This matters more to Israel than you might imagine. Academic activity, and particularly science, are areas in which the country excels. “In physiology and neuroscience, physics and computer science, the Israelis certainly punch above their weight,” says Blakemore. Schuldenfrei calls Israel “a very important player in the academic marketplace”. For a small nation without abundant natural resources, this has had obvious benefits. From agriculture to arms manufacturing, Israel has become more technology-driven and successful than comparable nations.

At the same time, though, the nature of Israel’s academic pre-eminence makes it vulnerable to a boycott. “We are top of the world league with Switzerland and, I think, Sweden for the proportion of research projects that are international collaborations,” says Zinger. “Close to 40% of papers published in Israel involve cooperation abroad.” For complicated and expensive scientific research, there is often no alternative; yet for the weightiest historical and political reasons, campus links between Israel and its Arab neighbours have always been limited. Instead, Israel has developed academic connections with the west, and Europe in particular – which has its own equally weighty historical reasons, notably the holocaust, to treat it generously. Israel receives subsidies from EU funds for scientific research, the only non-member state to do so. “In the most recent four-year framework programme, we paid in €150m,” says Zinger, “and we got research grants of €165m.”

Back in April, when Steven and Hilary Rose composed their letter, targeting this cashflow seemed clever politics. “We both had an academic-political interest in EU science policy,” says Hilary, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. “We tried out the letter on a few friends, and they said it was a goer.” There is a pause. Then her husband says: “It’s not the first time we’ve done something like this.”

The Roses are sitting side by side, sharp-eyed and slouching confidently in their casual, donnish clothes, on a low sofa in their living room in north London. Together and separately, they have been involved in left-wing political causes for decades. They speak in long, fluently argued paragraphs.Since April, the Roses have written newspaper letters and articles defending the boycott and the right of people such as Mona Baker to interpret it in their own way. In August, Steven Rose, who is Jewish, publicly renounced his entitlement to Israeli residence and citizenship. At times, he and Hilary can make the boycott sound almost beyond criticism. It has generated important debates, they say. It has put pressure on an unjust government. It has Palestinian support: “It is rather touching,” says Hilary, “to have the chancellor of Bir Zeit [the main Palestinian university] write to you.” Finally, the boycott has reasserted the important right of people to challenge Israel without being anti-semitic. Steven Rose gets up from the sofa and disappears upstairs to fetch a piece of paper. It is a copy of a letter from Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and dozens of other prominent Jews to the New York Times in 1948, condemning the then brand-new state of Israel for containing extreme Jewish nationalists of a “fascist” nature, who had recently carried out a “massacre” of Palestinian villagers. The boycott, the Roses say, is in this tradition of constructive criticism.

Yet occasionally an unease slows their rhetoric. “Our initiative has produced a certain number of would-be supporters,” says Steven, choosing his words carefully, “who are pathologically anti-Jewish.” He produces another letter, this time with a recent date and a plastic folder around it as if it were poisonous.

“Dear Professor Rose,” it begins, “I write to congratulate you on the campaign to boycott Israel which I believe you and your husband are sponsoring. The problem is that it does not go far enough. We need to set up a boycott of all Jewish businesses, organizations and individuals. Hit the Zionist Yids where it hurts them – in their pockets… ” The typed letter ends with a shaky blue signature and an address in south London. “We called the commission for racial equality,” says Hilary crisply.”We are keeping the letter in plastic so we can give it to the police.”

Since April, the boycott has awakened other ugly impulses. The Roses’ email addresses, like those of many people drawn into the debate have been flooded daily with abusive messages. “Become a suicide bomber and blow yourself up… if you died the world would be a better place… what you are doing is worse than what the Nazis did… you sonderkommando [concentration camp collaborator] scum… ” From the day the first boycott petition appeared, what you could call a counter-boycott has been organised against the Roses and their allies. Like the boycott itself, this campaign has its moderates and extremists, its public gestures and undeclared initiatives, its concrete steps and carefully directed threats.

In June, Patrick Bateson, a professor of animal behaviour and provost of King’s College, Cambridge, who had signed the Rose letter, became involved in a correspondence with Henry Gee, a senior editor at the science magazine Nature. Gee made clear his objections “as a Jew” to the academic boycott. Then he continued: “I would not, of course, do anything as crass as ‘boycott’ papers from you and your colleagues that might happen to pass across my desk at Nature, though I would get much less pleasure in reading them… knowing what I do of your attitudes… [These] confirm my view… that Cambridge, and particularly the university, would be an uncomfortable place for me to visit.”

“The implicit threat was plain,” Bateson says. When contacted recently, Gee declined to discuss their correspondence further. Bateson says he will continue sending articles to Nature: “It may be an interesting test case.”

Colin Blakemore’s experience since he signed the Roses’ petition has been more bruising. “I was contacted by Steven just two days before it was submitted,” he says. “I was a bit hesitant about signing, because I saw a lack of balance. I asked for a sentence condemning Palestinian terrorism. But there was not enough time – the letter was about to be sent out.”

So he signed it anyway. Shortly afterwards, a French translation of the petition began circulating, which was significantly more aggressive than the original, with Blakemore and the other initial signatories’ names attached.

“I found myself being sucked in,” he says. Over the summer, although he still had links with Israeli academia Blakemore found himself facing a public campaign. He was, and is, president of the Physiological Society. Without naming him, a motion was proposed by a Jewish member for the society’s annual general meeting stating that, by supporting the boycott, Blakemore was breaking an important international convention on academic freedom, statute five of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). Since the 30s, the Physiological Society and other ICSU members had agreed to behave “without any discrimination on the basis of… citizenship, religion, creed, political stance, ethnic origin, race, colour, language, age or sex”. For many opponents of the academic boycott, this is a clinching argument.

In the end, Blakemore never faced a hostile annual general meeting. “My train was late.” The motion was withdrawn, he says, “after a lot of talk”. But he remains anxious about the consequences of his involvement in the boycott and how his stance became distorted: “I am deeply concerned for relations with my Jewish colleagues. The misrepresentation sticks. You can’t explain your personal position to everyone.”

In truth, boycotts are blunt weapons. Even the most apparently straightforward and justified ones, on closer inspection, have their controversies and injustices. Since the academic boycott of Israel began, both its supporters and its opponents have frequently cited the cutting of campus links with apartheid South Africa as an example of a less contentious action. But the South African boycott did not necessarily seem like that at the time.

The first calls for a general boycott of South Africa came in the 50s. Yet it was not until 1980 that the UN passed a resolution urging “all academic and cultural institutions to terminate all links with South Africa”. Opposition to this boycott persisted throughout the 80s: conservatives around the world disliked such anti-apartheid initiatives; campus libertarians perceived a loss of academic freedom; and some liberal South Africans argued that their universities, as centres of resistance to apartheid, made precisely the wrong targets.

Then, as now over Israel, some boycott participants seemed to become infamous almost by accident. In 1985, it was Professor Peter Ucko of Southampton University, who reluctantly banned South Africans, including personal friends, from an archaeological convention. This time, the boycott’s anti-heroes have been Mona Baker and her husband Ken.

Unlike the Roses, and many of their petition’s signatories, the Bakers are not prominent or politically connected academics. They now move in a lurid new world of death threats, feverish messages of support, conspiracy theories about Zionist networks, and computer viruses sent almost monthly to sabotage their business. For critics of the Bakers, they have received support from some awkward quarters. The leftwing, anti-Zionist Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, is in regular, approving contact; Ken describes him as “fabulous”. In Israel, Pappe’s career has been regularly threatened by right-wingers who disapprove of his pro-Palestinian views. Like the harassment of Palestinian students by the Israeli army, this is a tricky fact to take on board for those who oppose the academic boycott on the grounds that it threatens campus freedoms in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

So far, the boycott feels less substantial than the issues around it. “It is annoying but there is no damage,” says Paul Zinger of the Israel Science Foundation. “It doesn’t seem that it has gathered any momentum.” The Roses insist it is too early to judge the boycott’s effectiveness. “Boycotts are slow,” says Hilary. “We didn’t eat South African oranges for about 1,000 years.” Steven adds: “It’s water on stone – eventually water on stone wears away.”

There are signs that the turbulent experiences of some of the boycott signatories have made them more, not less militant. At the Physiological Society, Colin Blakemore has set up a study group to examine when conventions about academic freedom should give way to boycotts. Its conclusions, he hints, are not likely to be favourable to Israel. More broadly, he has come to question whether academia should be insulated from politics at all: “Is it really true that scientific research is such a special activity that it should be last on the list when it comes to boycotts?” Steven Rose goes further: “Academic freedom I find a completely spurious argument in a world in which science is so bound up with military and corporate funding.”

Even Oren Yiftachel, for all his difficulties with Political Geography, agrees that academia cannot and should not function in a vaccuum. Yet that does not mean he has become a convert to the academic boycott of Israel. His objections are not just personal or philosophical, but tactical. Recently, he went to America with a Palestinian colleague to speak about Israel. “In all our lectures, we would talk about roadblocks, terrorists, a colonial situation. Everyone in the crowd would ask about whether the boycott was anti-semitic.”

In this report we referred to the treatment of a paper written by Professor Oren Yiftachel of Ben Gurion University and Dr Asad Ghanem of Haifa University, which was submitted to the journal Political Geography. We reported that Professor Yiftachel had, after a protracted dispute, agreed to revise the paper according to suggestions made by Political Geography, including the insertion of a comparison of Israel and apartheid South Africa, and that on this basis the paper had been accepted for publication. We now understand that the paper’s acceptance for publication has not been guaranteed, and that agreement has not been reached between Professor Yiftachel and Dr Ghanem and Political Geography over all the changes the journal suggested – in particular the comparison of Israel and South Africa. Professor Yiftachel and Dr Ghanem have received a list of comments and suggestions from three academic referees appointed by Political Geography, and they are considering what revisions are most appropriate for the paper, purely on scholarly grounds. Whatever revisions are finally made, the paper will then be refereed again. Professor Yiftachel, as we reported, has consistently opposed the academic boycott, and he remains committed to his position, as well as to the ending of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

The following correction was printed in the Guardian’s Corrections and Clarifications column, Wednesday January 15 2003

In this article, we quoted from correspondence between Patrick Bateson of King’s College Cambridge and Henry Gee, a senior editor of the science magazine, Nature. Dr Gee, has asked us to make it clear that the correspondence was quoted without his agreement or permission.

02.03.23

Editorial Note

In November 2022, IAM reported that “(Hebrew U) Amos Goldberg Continues Comparing the Palestinian Self-Inflicted Nakba to the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis.”

Professor Amos Goldberg, a Hebrew University Holocaust researcher, and Dr. Bashir Bashir of the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, co-authored a 2018 book that contends “the Shoah [Holocaust] and the Nakba are two interlinked catastrophes.” According to them, when a Palestinian is asked about the Holocaust, he often brings up the Nakba, “the displacement of Palestinians associated with the founding of the state of Israel.” Goldberg and Bashir have “developed a concept aimed at promoting dialogue about these two interlinked national traumas.”

According to Goldberg and Bashir, The “Shoah was, in terms of its scale, not comparable with any other event that as such is considered singular.” But since “the Holocaust has become the ultimate symbol of evil… any attempt to connect it even loosely with other chapters of the history of violence is quickly suspected of being an attempt to trivialize the Holocaust.” They argue, “while the Shoah is over as an historical event and the Jewish people have, despite the trauma, been able to get back on its feet again, the Palestinians are to this day, in a position of political, military, economic, and cultural weakness because of the consequences of the Nakba.” This “asymmetry in the national catastrophes of both peoples from a moral point of view: the Palestinians were not to blame for the Holocaust, but the Israelis were responsible for the displacement and flight of the Palestinians and for their discrimination in Israel and oppression in the Occupied Territories.” The “rapprochement between Israelis and Palestinians, who both see themselves as victim communities, is made more difficult above all because the Shoah and the Nakba are used equally to legitimize national claims.” They wish to integrate the catastrophe of the other into one’s own narrative without abandoning the “ultimate claim to justice.” 

As IAM explained, an event hosting Goldberg and Bashir titled “Understanding the pain of the others.” by the Goethe institute in Tel Aviv and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation was supposed to take place on November 13, 2022, but a week earlier, Goethe institute postponed the event. 

According to the Goethe Institute, “The public discourse that has developed in Germany and Israel in the run-up to the event has made it impossible to carry out the event appropriately. Since we are expecting disruptions to the event, we cannot guarantee a safe implementation of the panel discussion at this point. The important topic of remembrance culture cannot be addressed in the way it needs to under these circumstances. The Goethe-Institute and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation have therefore decided to postpone the event.” 

Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, announced that the event would be canceled entirely. 

However, disregarding the protest, the event took place in Germany on February 2, 2023. The Einstein Forum at the University of Potsdam held the roundtable discussion.

The speakers included Bashir, Goldberg, and Charlotte Wiedemann. According to the invitation, “In her book Understanding the Pain of Others, the author Charlotte Wiedemann pleads for a new inclusive memory culture that promotes solidarity instead of competition among victims. Doing justice to the victims of colonial crimes and their descendants does not call into question the specificity of the Shoah. On the contrary: the importance of human rights for all is a central lesson from the Holocaust. But tragically, Holocaust memory has not brought us much closer to such universal values. In their co-edited volume The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History Amos Goldberg, Bashir Bashir, and the contributors to the volume explore the possibility of creating a shared language for discussing the memories of two entangled, but entirely different historical events: the genocide of European Jews and the displacement of Palestinians. At the center of this new language is the concept of empathic unsettlement which challenges the mutual denial of the suffering of the Other, recognizes the political asymmetries in Israel-Palestine, and gives rise to an egalitarian binationalism.”

The following day, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt, wrote on Twitter: “‘Understanding the Pain of Others: The Holocaust, the Nakba and German Memory Culture’- An outstanding event yesterday night at the @einsteinforum , in Potsdam. I was deeply moved by it, & the eloquence & strength of the speakers on such a sensitive topic.”

As IAM indicated, efforts to equate the Holocaust and the Nakba are insidious cases of propaganda to demonize the Jewish state. 

Goldberg, a Professor of Holocaust Studies, should know well that Jews had no choice when loaded on trains to be murdered in extermination camps. On the other hand, the Palestinians made their own choice, albeit flawed. The Palestinian leader, Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini, a Nazi collaborator, ordered the riots of 1936-39, where numerous Jews were killed. His ultimate goal, which he discussed with Hitler in Berlin, was establishing extermination camps in Palestine. The British victory over the Nazis in El Alamein spared the Jews in Palestine the fate of their European brethren.  

In 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide Palestine into two states – a larger one for the Palestinians and a smaller one for the Jews – the Palestinians made another flawed decision. They rejected the Partition Proposal and – together with their Arab Allied States started a war against the new Jewish states, which they lost. 

It is easy to understand why the Palestinians would want to minimize their responsibility. It is more difficult to explain why Goldberg would spend much of his academic career producing propaganda-like literature to this effect. Unfortunately, he is not the only one. IAM has repeatedly pointed out that radical academic activists have used the lax rules of academic freedom to write about topics that further their political agenda. The Israeli taxpayer who supports the universities deserves better. 

 

References:

https://www.einsteinforum.de/veranstaltungen/den-schmerz-der-anderen-begreifen/

Understanding the Pain of Others. The Holocaust, the Nakba and German Memory Culture

Solidarity in Danger

Podiumsdiskussion

Donnerstag, 2.2.2023, 19:00h

Bashir Bashir, Amos Goldberg, Charlotte Wiedemann

Understanding the Pain of Others
The Holocaust, the Nakba and German Memory Culture

Gesprächsleitung: Susan Neiman, Potsdam

Live im Einstein Forum. Das Tragen einer medizinischen Maske wird empfohlen.
Auch im Live-Stream via Zoom (hier registrieren)

 
In her book Understanding the Pain of Others, the author Charlotte Wiedemann pleads for a new inclusive memory culture that promotes solidarity instead of competition among victims. Doing justice to the victims of colonial crimes and their descendants does not call into question the specificity of the Shoah. On the contrary: the importance of human rights for all is a central lesson from the Holocaust. But tragically, Holocaust memory has not brought us much closer to such universal values.
In their co-edited volume The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History Amos Goldberg, Bashir Bashir, and the contributors to the volume explore the possibility of creating a shared language for discussing the memories of two entangled, but entirely different historical events: the genocide of European Jews and the displacement of Palestinians. At the center of this new language is the concept of empathic unsettlement which challenges the mutual denial of the suffering of the Other, recognizes the political asymmetries in Israel-Palestine, and gives rise to an egalitarian binationalism.
This debate was originally scheduled to take place in the Goethe Institute Tel Aviv but was cancelled due to political pressure.

Charlotte Wiedemann is a journalist and author. She has published numerous books on international topics, most recently Den Schmerz der Anderen begreifen. Holocaust und Weltgedächtnis (2022). Afflicted by silence in her own family, she has followed debates about German responsibility for National Socialism for four decades.

Bashir Bashir is associate professor of political theory at the Open University of Israel and senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. His research interests are: democratic theory, nationalism and citizenship studies, liberalism, decolonization, and reconciliation. His most recent publication is The Arab and Jewish Questions: Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond (2020).
 
Amos Goldberg is associate professor of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For decades he has researched Holocaust memory at the intersection of history, critical theory, and literature. His publications include Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing during the Holocaust (2017) and his co-edited volume Marking Evil: Holocaust Memory in the Global Age (2015).

===============================================

Bashir Bashir, Amos Goldberg, Charlotte Wiedemann: Understanding the Pain of Others

Einstein Forum
3.29K subscribers

Feb 5, 2023

Understanding the Pain of Others: The Holocaust, the Nakba and German Memory Culture In her book »Understanding the Pain of Others«, the author Charlotte Wiedemann pleads for a new inclusive memory culture that promotes solidarity instead of competition among victims. Doing justice to the victims of colonial crimes and their descendants does not call into question the specificity of the Shoah. On the contrary: the importance of human rights for all is a central lesson from the Holocaust. But tragically, Holocaust memory has not brought us much closer to such universal values. In their co-edited volume »The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History« Amos Goldberg, Bashir Bashir, and the contributors to the volume explore the possibility of creating a shared language for discussing the memories of two entangled, but entirely different historical events: the genocide of European Jews and the displacement of Palestinians. At the center of this new language is the concept of empathic unsettlement which challenges the mutual denial of the suffering of the Other, recognizes the political asymmetries in Israel-Palestine, and gives rise to an egalitarian binationalism. This debate was originally scheduled to take place in the Goethe Institute Tel Aviv but was cancelled due to political pressure. Chair: Susan Neiman, Potsdam Charlotte Wiedemann is a journalist and author. She has published numerous books on international topics, most recently »Den Schmerz der Anderen begreifen. Holocaust und Weltgedächtnis« (2022). Afflicted by silence in her own family, she has followed debates about German responsibility for National Socialism for four decades. Bashir Bashir is associate professor of political theory at the Open University of Israel and senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. His research interests are: democratic theory, nationalism and citizenship studies, liberalism, decolonization, and reconciliation. His most recent publication is »The Arab and Jewish Questions: Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond« (2020). Amos Goldberg is associate professor of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For decades he has researched Holocaust memory at the intersection of history, critical theory, and literature. His publications include »Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing during the Holocaust« (2017) and his co-edited volume »Marking Evil: Holocaust Memory in the Global Age« (2015).

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"Understanding the Pain of Others: The Holocaust, the Nakba and German Memory Culture"- An outstanding event yesterday night at the @einsteinforum, in Potsdam.

I was deeply moved by it, & the eloquence & strength of the speakers on such a sensitive topic.
Recording available. https://t.co/RkYZnrUxzf

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) February 3, 2023

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt

@FranceskAlbs

“Understanding the Pain of Others: The Holocaust, the Nakba and German Memory Culture”- An outstanding event yesterday night at the

@einsteinforum, in Potsdam. I was deeply moved by it, & the eloquence & strength of the speakers on such a sensitive topic. Recording available.

Quote Tweet

Einstein Forum

·

@einsteinforum

Feb 2

Bashir Bashir, Amos Goldberg, Charlotte Wiedemann: Understanding the Pain of Others https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1YpJkgAWpOYJj…

10:33 AM · Feb 3, 2023

·

69.3K Views

Filippo Passerini

@f_passerini94

Feb 3

Replying to

@FranceskAlbs

and

@einsteinforum

there is not room at all ever to even think of equiparating the nakba with the holocaust. no. way. ever.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt

@FranceskAlbs

·

Feb 3

Replying to

@f_passerini94

and

@einsteinforum

If you took the time to listen to the event & the speakers you would realize that no one here or there is trying to equate anything. As Professor Goldberg masterfully said, it is about understanding the nexus between the two tragedies as key to understand ‘the pain of the other’.

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https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-722205

German event comparing Holocaust to ‘Nakba’ canceled after Yad Vashem intervenes

The planned panel faced stark criticism from the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Jewish organizations.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL

Published: NOVEMBER 13, 2022 03:16

The German state-funded Goethe Institute pulled the plug on a slated Sunday event in Tel Aviv that draws a line of connection between the Holocaust and the Palestinian “Nakba,” Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan announced on Friday.

Nakba (catastrophe) is the term Palestinians use for their defeat and exile at the hands of Israeli forces during the 1948 War of Independence.

Dayan wrote on Twitter: “At the end of our in-depth conversation, [Goethe Institute Board chairman Mr. Johannes] Ebert assured me that the event will not take place. Wise decision.”

Earlier today, I spoke at length with the Chairman of the Board of the worldwide Goethe Institute Mr. Johannes Ebert. At the end of our in-depth conversation, Mr. Ebert assured me that the event will not take place. Wise decision. https://t.co/O60L0CYtQM— Dani Dayan (@AmbDaniDayan) November 11, 2022

When The Jerusalem Post queried the institute on Monday, Jessica Kraatz Magri, a spokeswoman for Goethe, told the Post that the organization “postponed the event” until Sunday and provided an updated link to the discussion. The event was sponsored by left-wing German political party Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLS).

Foreign Ministry, Jewish and Zionist organizations express outrage at planned panel

Following a hailstorm of criticism on Wednesday about the event just as Jews around the world were commemorating Kristallnacht, Goethe stuck with its postponement.

The Foreign Ministry called for the cancellation of the event and expressed “shock and disgust” after the original announcement, calling it “blatant contempt of the Holocaust” and a “cynical and manipulative intent to create a connection whose entire purpose is to defame Israel.”

Dayan tweeted prior to the event that it “constitutes intolerable distortion of the Holocaust. Holding it on the anniversary of the November Pogrom (‘Kristallnacht’) is unforgivable.”

The event planned by the German cultural institute @goetheinstitut in Israel constitutes intolerable distortion of the Holocaust. Holding it on the anniversary of the November Pogrom (“Kristallnacht”) is unforgivable. pic.twitter.com/T1ifmEwVqc— Dani Dayan (@AmbDaniDayan) November 8, 2022

Israel’s Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor told 103FM Radio that the event is “an attempt to make an inappropriate comparison at the expense of Holocaust survivors.” He added that “if it wasn’t ironic it would be tragic. This must not become an accepted discourse under the pretense of ‘holding a civilized discussion.’ It’s not.”

Alrun Kaune-Nüßlein, the director of political communication for RLS, told the Post that “we try to enable a debate between different democratic and emancipatory positions, as it corresponds to the tasks of an institution for social analysis and political education. As a left-wing institution in and from Germany, dealing with the numerous Nazi mass crimes – and in particular the murder of six million Jews – is central to us. Relativizing the Shoah is unacceptable for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation,” she said.

“We regret that the date of the event caused irritation. We are therefore postponing the event to November 13, 2022.”

Journalist at center of panel has faced criticism for anti-Israel views

At the now-canceled event, journalist Charlotte Wiedemann was set to discuss her book Grasping the Pain of the Others with Bashir Bashir, associate professor of Political Theory at the Open University of Israel; Amos Goldberg, associate professor of Holocaust History and director of the Research Institute for Contemporary Judaism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Inge Gunther, a journalist covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.

Wiedemann has faced criticism for her attacks on Israel’s existence. She wrote in the left-wing German daily newspaper taz: “There is no need to agree on the extent to which the founding of the State of Israel was also an act of settler colonialism.”

The left-wing and pro-Israel weekly paper Jungle World criticized the author for her pro-Iran regime views. Danyal Casar wrote that “Charlotte Wiedemann can nowhere see such an opposition in the taz.” Wiedemann wrote that ‘there is no opposition’ which could take responsibility in Tehran if the current system implodes.”

Tzvi Joffre contributed to this report.

23.02.23

Editorial Note

The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) will hold a workshop in Israel between 11 to 14 March 2023. Titled “Mechanisms of Neuronal Remodeling,” it will take place in Kibbutz Nahsholim. According to the invitation, the workshop is “essential for establishing functional nervous systems across species. Remodeling involves specific elimination of existing connections, typically followed by strengthening of surviving synapses or even axon regrowth to develop new, adult-specific connections. While altered remodeling has long been suspected of contributing to neuropsychiatric conditions, such as autism, schizophrenia, and ADHD, studies only recently established firm molecular similarities between such disorders and developmental remodeling. Moreover, the mechanisms involved in developmental remodeling appear to be reiterated in neurodegeneration and during regeneration. Despite these significant advances in the field, many important questions remain open and will be discussed.” 

The workshop will also discuss topics such as “Cell biological mechanisms and signaling pathways that control remodeling. Pathways activated in different paradigms and across species. Types of remodeling in circuit formation and its impact on learning and memory. Contributions of non-neuronal cells during remodeling. Neuron-neuron and tissue-neuron interactions during remodeling. Mechanisms of regrowth during development remodeling and post-traumatic regeneration? 

The published list of speakers includes: Aakanksha Singhvi Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center | US; Andrew Chisholm UC San Diego | US; Asya Rolls Technion | IL; Avraham Yaron Weizmann Institute of Science | IL; Cagla Eroglu Duke University | US; Claude Desplan New York University | US; Debra Silver Duke University | US; Elly Tanaka Institute of Molecular Pathology | AT; Guillermina López-Bendito Instituto de Neurociencias UMH-CSIC | ES; Hongyan Wang Duke–NUS Medical School | SG; Jaeda Coutinho-Budd University of Virginia | US; Laura Andreae Kings College London | UK; Laura Cancedda Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia | IT; Laurent Nguyen University of Liege | BE; Lora Sweeney Institute of Science and Technology Austria | AT; Marco Terenzio Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology | JP; Oliver Hobert Columbia University | US; Oren Schuldiner Weizmann Institute of Science | IL; Peri Kurshan Albert Einstein College of Medicine | US; Stefanie Schirmeier Technische Universität Dresden | DE; Susana Cohen-Cory UC Irvine | US; Thomas Misgeld TUM/DZNE | DE; Timothy Mosca Jefferson University | US; Dietmar Schmucker Universität Bonn | DE.

However, the Palestinian BDS Movement is trying to sabotage the workshop. A letter was circulated by the Palestine Academy for Science and Technology (PalAST) calling on the EMBO to refrain from “holding workshops in Israel until its apartheid regime has been dismantled” and to uphold its “moral obligation to end its complicity in whitewashing Israel’s crimes.” 

Particularly egregious are the Palestinians’ claims that the workshop’s location is “particularly offensive to us as Palestinians.” Because it is close to “the site of a massacre and a mass grave.” According to the Palestinians, “In May 1948, during the ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Palestinians from our homeland, the Israeli army attacked the Palestinian village of Tantura. After seizing the village, Israeli soldiers gunned down as many as 200 unarmed captive Palestinian civilians. The testimony of Israeli soldiers present at the massacre, which was featured in a recent documentary, shows the savagery with which the soldiers acted. ‘They put them into a barrel and shot them in the barrel.’ Following the massacre, the bodies of the slaughtered Palestinians were buried in a mass grave. In June 1948, just weeks after the massacre and after expelling the remaining Palestinians from Tantura, Zionist settlers took over Palestinian homes, renaming the village Nahsholim. Today, the mass grave is located under the beach parking lot. This is where EMBO plans to hold its “Mechanisms of neuronal remodeling” workshop. Neither Tantura is the only site of a massacre committed by the Israeli regime, nor are massacres relegated to history.” 

To those unfamiliar with the history, the fighting in Tantura was part of the 1948 war when the Palestinians and their Arab allies were confident they could win after rejecting the 1947 UN Partition Plan. In the ensuing fighting, large Arab and Palestinian forces were deployed against the small Jewish army. Tantura, located on the main road between Haifa and Tel Aviv, was the scene of a fierce battle between the two sides.  The Palestinian “Nakba” was self-inflicted and caused the Jewish Yishuv to lose one percent of its population. This tragic act of war that the Palestinians and their Arab allies instigated harmed both people, Israelis and Palestinians. 

The gross misrepresentation of the Tantura battle is just one example of the continuous misinformation used by the Palestinians to push their BDS campaign.  

The Palestinian letter to the EMBO also states, “In just the past year and a half, Israel has carried out two extensive military assaults on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds, including more than 80 children, injuring thousands, and destroying vital infrastructure. Gaza, with its 2 million Palestinian residents, has been under a brutal 15-year illegal Israeli siege. EMBO’s partners in these workshops are deeply complicit in Israel’s ongoing crimes against Palestinians.”

The BDS movement represents the decades-old fixation with victimhood that prevented the Palestinians from solving the conflict, even when the Oslo Accords and Camp David II presented a fair solution. The BDS rhetoric obscures that Iran, the main supporter of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), has cardinally opposed ending the conflict. In the eschatology of the Islamist regime, liberating Jerusalem is thought to be the prelude to the return of the Hidden Imam. Theology aside, by aligning itself with the Palestinians, the Shiite regime has bolstered its bona fides in a Sunni region. The Quds Force (QF), the foreign division of the Revolutionary Guards, had trained and equipped Palestinian jihadist suicide bombers to undermine the Oslo Accords. When Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2006, QF helped to turn the area into a heavily armed proxy against the so-called “Little Satan,” the Iranian name for the Jewish State.  

Hamas and the PIJ have run a brutal and corrupt regime that subjugates its people. “Whispered in Gaza,” a recently clandestinely produced documentary, uncovers the lives of Palestinians under their Iranian-supported masters. The BDS would be well-advised to watch it to discover what real suffering means. 

References:

https://meetings.embo.org/event/23-neuronal-remodelling

EMBO Workshop

Mechanisms of neuronal remodelling

11 – 14 March 2023 | Kibbuz Nahsholim, Israel

About the Workshop

Developmental neuronal remodelling is essential for establishing functional nervous systems across species. Remodelling involves specific elimination of existing connections, typically followed by strengthening of surviving synapses or even axon regrowth to develop new, adult-specific connections. While altered remodeling has long been suspected of contributing to neuropsychiatric conditions, such as autism, schizophrenia, and ADHD, studies only recently established firm molecular similarities between such disorders and developmental remodeling. Moreover, the mechanisms involved in developmental remodelling appear to be reiterated in neurodegeneration and during regeneration. Despite these significant advances in the field, many important questions remain open and will be discussed at this meeting.

Specific topics that will be covered in this workshop include:

• Cell biological mechanisms and signaling pathways that control remodelling.
• Pathways activated in different paradigms and across species.
• Types of remodelling in circuit formation and its impact on learning and memory.
• Contributions of non-neuronal cells during remodelling.
• Neuron-neuron and tissue-neuron interactions during remodelling.
• Mechanisms of regrowth during developmental remodelling and post-traumatic regeneration?

About EMBO Courses and Workshops

EMBO Courses and Workshops are selected for their excellent scientific quality and timelines, provision of good networking activities for all participants and speaker gender diversity (at least 40% of speakers must be from the underrepresented gender).

Organisers are encouraged to implement measures to make the meeting environmentally more sustainable.

Speakers

Aakanksha SinghviFred Hutchinson Cancer Center | US

Andrew ChisholmUC San Diego | US

Asya RollsTechnion | IL

Avraham YaronWeizmann Institute of Science | IL

Cagla ErogluDuke University | US

Claude DesplanNew York University | US

Debra SilverDuke University | US

Elly TanakaInstitute of Molecular Pathology | AT

Guillermina López-BenditoInstituto de Neurociencias UMH-CSIC | ES

Hongyan WangDuke–NUS Medical School | SG

Jaeda Coutinho-BuddUniversity of Virginia | US

Laura AndreaeKings College London | UK

Laura CanceddaIstituto Italiano di Tecnologia | IT

Laurent NguyenUniversity of Liege | BE

Lora SweeneyInstitute of Science and Technology Austria | AT

Marco TerenzioOkinawa Institute of Science and Technology | JP

Oliver HobertColumbia University | US

Oren SchuldinerWeizmann Institute of Science | IL

Peri KurshanAlbert Einstein College of Medicine | US

Stefanie SchirmeierTechnische Universität Dresden | DE

Susana Cohen-CoryUC Irvine | US

Thomas MisgeldTUM/DZNE | DE

Timothy MoscaJefferson University | US

Dietmar SchmuckerUniversität Bonn | DE

Programme

Day 1 | 11 March 2023

Day 2 | 12 March 2023

Day 3 | 13 March 2023

Day 4 | 14 March 2023

====================================================================

https://www.palast.ps/en/news/palestinian-scientists-urge-embo-relocate-workshops-apartheid-israel-including-site-tantura-masscare
https://bdsmovement.net/news/palestinian-scientists-urge-embo-relocate-workshops-from-apartheid-israel-including-site

Palestinian Scientists Urge EMBO to Relocate Workshops from Apartheid Israel, Including at Site of Tantura Massacre 

February 16, 2023 / By Palestine Academy for Science and Technology (PalAST) /The Palestine Academy for Science and Technology (PalAST) calls on the European Molecular Biology Organization to uphold its “moral obligation to end its complicity in whitewashing Israel’s crimes” by refraining “from holding workshops in Israel until its apartheid regime has been dismantled.”

On the 19th of January 2023 and after finding out that the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) was organizing multiple workshops in Apartheid Israel, Palestine Academy for Science and Technology (PalAST) sent the following letter to the organizing board:

As Palestinian scientific and academic societies and unions, we note with grave concern that the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is planning three workshops in apartheid Israel. We urge EMBO to immediately relocate these workshops to any other country that is not committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Israel’s illegal settlement regime in the occupied Palestinian territory is considered a war crime under international law.

The EMBO workshops include “Bacterial cell biophysics: DNA replication, growth, division, size and shape” (11–15 December 2022), “The 20S proteasome degradation pathway” (8–12 January 2023), and “Mechanisms of neuronal remodelling” (11–14 March 2023).
Holding any of the EMBO workshops in apartheid Israel as it continues to deny the fundamental rights of millions of Palestinians will, regardless of intentions, contribute to prolonging Israel’s well-documented crimes against Palestinians.

Prominent human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, have all found Israel guilty of the crime against humanity of apartheid, as have UN experts.

The last workshop’s scheduled location is particularly offensive to us as Palestinians. While whitewashed as “beautiful” and “secluded” on “Israel’s most beautiful stretches of beach” in an area of “serenity and tranquility,” it is in fact the site of a massacre and a mass grave.

In May 1948, during the ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Palestinians from our homeland, the Israeli army attacked the Palestinian village of Tantura. After seizing the village, Israeli soldiers gunned down as many as 200 unarmed captive Palestinian civilians. The testimony of Israeli soldiers present at the massacre, which was featured in a recent documentary, shows the savagery with which the soldiers acted. “They put them into a barrel and shot them in the barrel.”

Following the massacre, the bodies of the slaughtered Palestinians were buried in a mass grave. In June 1948, just weeks after the massacre and after expelling the remaining Palestinians from Tantura, Zionist settlers took over Palestinian homes, renaming the village Nahsholim. Today, the mass grave is located under the beach parking lot. This is where EMBO plans to hold its “Mechanisms of neuronal remodelling” workshop.

Neither Tantura is the only site of a massacre committed by the Israeli regime, nor are massacres relegated to history. They are our everyday lived experience. In just the past year and a half, Israel has carried out two extensive military assaults on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds, including more than 80 children, injuring thousands, and destroying vital infrastructure. Gaza, with its 2 million Palestinian residents, has been under a brutal 15-year illegal Israeli siege.

EMBO’s partners in these workshops are deeply complicit in Israel’s ongoing crimes against Palestinians. Ben-Gurion University (BGU), for example, hosts the Homeland Security Institute whose partnerships include Israel’s top weapons companies and the Ministry of Defense.

The Weizmann Institute offers an MA program tailored specifically for active duty soldiers and recently opened a pre-military academy that will prepare high school seniors for “meaningful military service.”

The US-Israel Binational Science Foundation funds research in illegal Israeli settlements built on militarily occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law. 

This past March, EMBO endorsed a statement by seven national science academies just days into Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, defining it as “an assault on the fundamental principles of freedom, democracy and self-determination, which provide the basis for academic freedom and opportunities for scientific exchange and cooperation.”

By the same standard, EMBO must also recognize Israel’s decades-long regime of military occupation and apartheid as an assault on Palestinian freedoms and right to self-determination, and refrain from holding workshops in Israel until its apartheid regime has been dismantled, as was South Africa’s.

EMBO has a moral obligation to end its complicity in whitewashing Israel’s crimes. We urge EMBO to respect this obligation by relocating the upcoming workshops. We further call on speakers not to participate, if the workshops go ahead as planned.

There is no “serenity and tranquility” atop a massacre’s mass grave.

(PalAST will keep its fellow academics updated regarding any replies from EMBO)

An initial posting of this letter mistakenly included an incorrect image. PalAST took immediate steps to remove it and apologize for any offense that it has caused.
This does not take away from the well-documented case of the Tantura massacre as mentioned in our letter.

16.02.23

Editorial Note

On Sunday, February 12, the computer servers of the Technion in Haifa were targeted by a cyber attack, as announced by the university. The university disconnected the computer systems until it completed its investigation. An email allegedly sent by the hacking group Darkbit reveals they demanded 80 bitcoins, or some $1,750,000, in ransom. 

According to the Technion, classes are taking place as usual despite the attack. 

The wording of the Darkbit email that followed the attack included anti-Israel rhetoric. It said, “We regret to inform you that we’ve had to hack Technion network completely and transfer ‘all’ data to our secure servers… Keep calm, take a breath and think about an apartheid regime that causes troubles here and there. They should pay for their lies and crimes, their names and shames. They should pay for occupation, war crimes against humanity, killing the people (not only Palestinians’ bodies, but also Israelis’ souls) and destroying the future and all dreams we had. They should pay for firing high-skilled experts,” 

In an interview, Alex Steinberg, a product manager at the cyber security firm ESET,  explained that “the motivation to steal information from the institute could stem from a number of reasons. Firstly, countries like Iran, China, and Russia, could benefit greatly from the information. Additionally, they may want to steal the information to sell it for a profit,” he said. “In the ransom note, it seems that the attackers are demanding a monetary sum, but it could be a façade for other purposes… Some sources indicate that security and private entities in Israel are requesting to conduct in the Technion research whose results are not intended for publication. Hopefully, sensitive information didn’t leak as a result of the attack.” 

In 2021, Bar-Ilan University was also the subject of a cyber-attack when the hackers demanded $2.5 million. Bar Ilan refused to pay, and as a result, the hackers leaked hundreds of thousands of personal information of students and faculty. The media notes that the cyber-attack was carried out by an Iran-linked group named Agrius. 

Checkpoint, the Israeli cyber security firm, reported that, on average, Israeli educational institutions are targeted by hackers 3,383 times per week. Checkpoint explained that hackers prefer educational organizations due to their valuable personal data and the scant investment in cyber security.

Interestingly, Tasnim, the Iranian news agency based in Tehran, reported on the Technion cyber ransomware attack.  They noted the attack came about a fortnight after a massive cyber attack targeted several Israeli chemical companies operating across “the occupied territories.” Tasmin explained that on January 30, a group of hackers launched a massive cyber-attack on Israeli chemical companies and “warned” engineers and workers to “quit their posts before they suffer severe repercussions of the Tel Aviv regime’s relentless violence against Palestinians.” In their words, “Our message to chemists working in the chemical factories is to leave their job, look for a new one, and take refuge in a place where we are not present. This is while we have a strong presence anywhere.” A message by the “Electronic Quds Force” stated, “We confirm that your work in chemical factories poses danger to your lives; however, we will never hesitate to melt your bodies with chemicals next time an act of aggression is perpetrated against Palestinians.”

Meanwhile, Tomas Meskauskas, the founder, author, and editor of PCrisk, a cyber security portal that informs Internet users about the latest digital threats, offers removal and decryption options of the DarkBit ransomware.

IAM will report on the investigation once it is published.

References

https://www.ynetnews.com/business/article/syjobiuti

Leading Israeli research institute falls prey to cyberattack
In ransom note littered with anti-Israel rhetoric, hackers threaten to leak Technion’s data online if demands not met within five days

Roei Hahn, Yuval Mann | published: 02/12/23 | 16:02

Computer servers at the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa were targeted by a cyberattack overnight Sunday, a spokesperson for the university confirmed in a statement.

According to the statement, all of the university’s computer systems have been disconnected deliberately until a probe sheds light on the extent and intent behind the attack.

While the academic institute did not divulge information about the nature of the attack, in an email that reached Ynet and was allegedly sent by the group – going by the name Darkbit, hackers demanded that Technion pay 80 bitcoin, or about $1,750,000, in ransom.
The hacker group threatened to increase the requested sum by 30% if their demands are not met within 48 hours, and put all of the university’s data up for sale on the web after five days.
Despite the attack, classes at the Technion took place as usual on Sunday, with students being asked to disconnect their personal computers from the local network and minimize email traffic until further notice.
Cybersecurity experts recommend against paying ransom for two reasons: firstly, there is no guarantee the attackers will keep their word and return the stolen information, and secondly, paying ransom encourages hackers to continue targeting other companies and organizations.

The wording of the email that followed the attack is littered with anti-Israeli rhetoric, which suggests the attack was motivated by ideological reasons, and not greed.
“We regret to inform you that we’ve had to hack Technion network completely and transfer ‘all’ data to our secure servers,” the attackers wrote in the email, “Keep calm, take a breath and think about an apartheid regime that causes troubles here and there. They should pay for their lies and crimes, their names and shames.”
“They should pay for occupation, war crimes against humanity, killing the people (not only Palestinians’ bodies, but also Israelis’ souls) and destroying the future and all dreams we had. They should pay for firing high-skilled experts,” the mail read.
Alex Steinberg, a product manager at cybersecurity firm ESET, explained that “the motivation to steal information from the institute could stem from a number of reasons. Firstly, countries like Iran, China, and Russia, could benefit greatly from the information. Additionally, they may want to steal the information to sell it for a profit.”
“In the ransom note, it seems that the attackers are demanding a monetary sum, but it could be a façade for other purposes,” Steinberg added. “Some sources indicate that security and private entities in Israel are requesting to conduct in the Technion research whose results are not intended for publication. Hopefully, sensitive information didn’t leak as a result of the attack.”

This isn’t the first attack targeting an academic institute in Israel. In 2021, Bar-Ilan University also fell prey to a ransomware attack in which hackers demanded around $2.5 million.
The university refused to pay the sum, resulting in the hackers leaking hundreds of thousands of personal records of students and academic faculty. The cyberattack was reportedly carried out by an Iran-linked hacker group known as Agrius.
According to data from cybersecurity firm Checkpoint, Israeli educational institutions are targeted by hackers 3,383 times per week on average, twice as often as other organizations.
The company explained that educational organizations are a preferred target for hackers due to the valuable personal data they hold and relatively scant investment in cybersecurity.

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https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2023/02/14/2853272/cyberattack-targets-israel-s-technion-university

Cyberattack Targets Israel’s Technion University

February, 14, 2023 – 09:12 World news

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A top Israeli technology school and a center for cyber security education came under a ransomware attack by a group of hackers.

The attack on the Technion University came nearly a fortnight after a massive cyberattack targeted Israeli chemical companies operating across the occupied territories.

According to the Walla news site, the cyberattack was carried out by a group called Darkbit, which demanded 80 bitcoins from Technion, which is equivalent to $1,747,971.

The group has also said that the amount will go up by 30% if the ransom is not received within 48 hours.

“You will receive a decrypting key after the payment. Notice that you just have 48 hours. After the deadline, a 30% penalty will be added to the price. We put data for sale after 5 days,” DarkBit wrote in a message on the university website.

“We’re sorry to inform you that we’ve had to hack Technion network completely and transfer all data to our secure servers. So, keep calm, take a breath and think about an apartheid regime that causes troubles here and there,” DarkBit group wrote in the mail.

“They should pay for their lies and crimes, their names and shames. They should pay for occupation, war crimes against humanity, killing the people … and destroying the future and all dreams we had. They should pay for firing high-skilled experts,” the hacker group further mentioned.

The group also shared a TOX messenger ID through which individuals can contact them to recover their personal files. DarkBit has claimed that the files are encrypted using AES-256 military-grade algorithm.

“Any try for recovering data without the key (using third-party applications/companies) causes permanent damage,” DarkBit wrote.

The university said it is postponing scheduled exams due to the ransomware attack, but classes will continue as usual. Its website remained inaccessible at the time of writing.

Back on January 30, a group of hackers launched a massive cyberattack on Israeli chemical companies, warning their engineers and workers to quit their posts before they suffer severe repercussions of the Tel Aviv regime’s relentless violence against Palestinians.

“Our message to chemists working in the chemical factories is to leave their job, look for a new one, and take refuge in a place where we are not present. This is while we have a strong presence anywhere,” Russia’s Arabic-language RT Arabic television news network cited the message published by the Electronic Quds Force.

It added, “We confirm that your work in chemical factories poses danger to your lives; however, we will never hesitate to melt your bodies with chemicals next time an act of aggression is perpetrated against Palestinians.”

===================================================

New cybercrime group calling itself DarkBit attacks Israeli university

New cybercrime group calling itself DarkBit attacks Israeli university

It’s not yet clear who is behind the group, but the name could have connections to other ransomware variants such as DarkSide and LockBit.

BYAJ VICENS

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

A general view taken from the Mount of Olives shows an Israeli flag with houses in Jerusalem’s predominantly Arab neighbourhood of Silwan appearing in the background, on January 2, 2023. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)

Apreviously unknown cybercrime group attacked an Israeli technical university over the weekend, demanding $1.7 million in bitcoin as payment for what the attackers claim are the Israeli government’s “lies and crimes” ranging from occupation to war crimes to tech layoffs.

The Israel Institute of Technology, also called Technion, announced the attack on Twitter midday Sunday, and on Monday tweeted that the school remained “under a challenging cyber attack,” calling it a “complex event,” according to a Google translation. Around the same time, the online malware repository vx-underground posted a photo purporting to show the ransom note in which the group identified itself as “DarkBit” and demanded 80 Bitcoin.Image posted to the DarkBit Telegram channel

The school said Monday services were slowly returning to normal, but its website remained inaccessible Monday morning U.S. time. The school said in one of its tweets that it had “proactively blocked all communication networks.”

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DarkBit launched a Telegram channel on Saturday and claimed responsibility for the attack on the school, calling it “the technological core of an apartheid regime,” and threatening more attacks on entities affiliated with Israel. It’s not yet clear who is behind the group. The name could be seen as an amalgamation of older, established ransomware variants DarkSide and LockBit, and the demand of 80 Bitcoin follows an established ransomware pattern. But the ransom note seems designed to evoke the appearance of hacktivism, with the references to war crimes and occupation.

“While this attack had the characteristics of a ‘usual’ large scale ransomware attack (asking for 80btc to release the encrypted files), the way the group delivered their message and the overall political sentiment they used, and the threats, make us believe it’s ideologically driven and not a pure financial ransomware attack,” Messing said. “We expect them to continue to threaten the leakage of information, and also possibly act on the threat, in an attempt to embarrass the university and threaten its faculty, students and partners.”

Gil Messing, spokesperson at Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point, told CyberScoop in a statement that the company believes DarkBit “are linked to a different ideological group with possible connections to Iran” based on a both technical and non-technical factors. Messing noted the creation of the Telegram channel the day before the attack, as well as hacking into and manipulating the school’s LinkedIn account:Screenshot of a post made to the university’s jobs page on LinkedIn (Check Point)

Israel’s education sector is targeted roughly 3,400 times per week, compared to 1,600 per week for the overall national average, Messing noted, and universities there have been targeted by ideological hackers from Iran in the past.

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“The university is a quality target for hackers and they are still in the process of understanding the scope of the attack, which servers are impacted and what data is encrypted,” he said. “This will take some time before the full picture becomes clearer.”

==================================

*הודעה חשובה*
הטכניון נמצא תחת מתקפת סייבר. היקפה של המתקפה ואופיה מצויים בבדיקה. כדי לבצע את תהליך איסוף המידע והטיפול בו, אנו נעזרים במיטב המומחים בתחום, בטכניון ומחוצה לו, ומתואמים עם הרשויות המוסמכות. הטכניון חסם בשלב זה באופן יזום את כל רשתות התקשורת. pic.twitter.com/SBIbZVwzRc

— Technion Israel (@TechnionLive) February 12, 2023

Technion Israel

@TechnionLive

*הודעה חשובה* הטכניון נמצא תחת מתקפת סייבר. היקפה של המתקפה ואופיה מצויים בבדיקה. כדי לבצע את תהליך איסוף המידע והטיפול בו, אנו נעזרים במיטב המומחים בתחום, בטכניון ומחוצה לו, ומתואמים עם הרשויות המוסמכות. הטכניון חסם בשלב זה באופן יזום את כל רשתות התקשורת.

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7:37 PM · Feb 12, 2023

================================

*הודעת עדכון*
לבית הטכניון שלום,
הטכניון נתון במתקפת סייבר מאתגרת. מדובר באירוע מורכב והחזרה לשגרה מלאה תארך זמן. pic.twitter.com/no0anKlwWw

— Technion Israel (@TechnionLive) February 13, 2023

Technion Israel

@TechnionLive

*הודעת עדכון* לבית הטכניון שלום, הטכניון נתון במתקפת סייבר מאתגרת. מדובר באירוע מורכב והחזרה לשגרה מלאה תארך זמן.

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4:49 PM · Feb 13, 2023

================

DarkBit (.Darkbit) ransomware virus – removal and decryption options

Also Known As: DarkBit virus

Type: Ransomware

Damage level: 

 Written by Tomas Meskauskas on February 14, 2023

https://www.pcrisk.com/removal-guides/26015-darkbit-ransomware

Dear Colleagues,
We’re sorry to inform you that we’ve had to hack Technion network completely and transfer “all” data to our secure servers.
So, keep calm, take a breath and think about an apartheid regime that causes troubles here and there.
They should pay for their lies and crimes, their names and shames. They should pay for occupation, war crimes against humanity,
killing the people (not only Palestinians’ bodies, but also Israelis’ souls) and destroying the future and all dreams we had.
They should pay for firing high-skilled experts.

Anyway, there is nothing for you (as an individual) to be worried.
That’s the task of the administration to follow up our instruction for recovering the network.
But, you can contact us via TOX messenger if you want to recover your files personally. (TOX ID: AB33BC51AFAC64D98226826E70B483593C81CB22E6A3B504F7A75348C38C862F00042F5245AC)

Our instruction for the administration:
All your files are encrypted using AES-256 military grade algorithm. So,
1. Don’t try to recover data, because the encrypted files are unrecoverable unless you have the key.
Any try for recovering data without the key (using third-party applications/companies) causes PERMANENT damage. Take it serious.
2. You have to trust us. This is our business (after firing from high-tech companies) and the reputation is all we have.
3. All you need to do is following up the payment procedure and then you will receive decrypting key using for returning all of your files and VMs.
4. Payment method:
Enter the link below
hxxp://iw6v2p3cruy7tqfup3yl4dgt4pfibfa3ai4zgnu5df2q3hus3lm7c7ad.onion/support
Enter the ID below and pay the bill (80 BTC)
–
You will receive decrypting key after the payment.

Notice that you just have 48 hours. After the deadline, a 30% penalty will be added to the price.
We put data for sale after 5 days.
Take it serious and don’t listen to probable advices of a stupid government.

Good Luck!
“DarkBit”

09.02.23

Editorial Note

The Hebrew-language Behevrat Haadam (In the Company of Man) of the Israeli Association of Anthropology published “Congratulations on receiving the Distinction Award for your doctoral thesis!” to Dr. Eilat Maoz in June 2022. Behevrat-Haadam explained that Maoz, a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Technion, wrote her doctoral thesis in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Kaushik Sunder-Rajan and Stephan Palmie. Maoz’s doctoral thesis is a historical ethnography focusing on the police in Jamaica, where she “investigates the global, stratified and deceptive social order.” She proposes the concept of a “police economy,” replacing the “state police,” assuming that the state is the “main, if not the only, agent of organized violence.”

Interestingly, both supervisors research entirely different topics. Rajan’s recent book is Pharmocracy: Value, Politics and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine, as seen from contemporary India. Palmie’s work focuses on Afro-Cuban religious formations.

According to Behevrat-Haadam, Maoz’s doctoral thesis, “The Frontier and the Plantation: A Police Economy of Post-Slavery Jamaica,” shows how “formal and informal, global and national organizations, operating in offices Air conditioned and in the field, coalescing together to create violence that is perceived – more and more – as abstract, uncontrollable, or in Marxist terms ‘alienated.'”

Her “work is based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in several central locations: the Jamaican police, the police investigation department established in 2011 and managed “jointly” by Great Britain and Jamaica, and a civil society organization that deals with creating peace agreements between gangs, preventing blood feuds and helping young people. In addition, the work relies on archival research in England and Jamaica and in-depth interviews with police officers of various ranks, local and foreign security and reform consultants, gang members, and social and political activists. The work seeks to understand and describe the configuration of organized violence, and the way in which this violence takes on meaning and is perceived in a post-slavery, post-colonial society where concepts such as “emancipation” (1838) and “independence” (1962) have almost lost all meaning.”

Her Ph.D. thesis deals with “the rise and fall of the post-colonial state in Jamaica – a story told through the police so that the police are a means of understanding the state and not the other way around. Among other things, this part deals with the development of a radical black consciousness in the ranks of the police in the 1970s. It shows how the ‘return of the colonial masters’ at the beginning of the millennium is a necessary product of the destruction of the leftist political project in the 1970s and the imposition of the neoliberal dogma on the state (as it happened throughout South America). This part also deals with the role of liberal discourses (in particular, the ‘cancellation’ or abolitionist discourse, that of the 19th century as opposed to today) in abolishing the political autonomy of groups and peoples seeking to liberate themselves.”

She follows Frantz Fanon, a French West Indian Psychologist and Political Philosopher from the French colony of Martinique, whose work became influential in post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism.

Her Ph.D. thesis deals with the issues of “murder by the police through an ethnographic examination of two cases… Beyond the description of a global control structure, in which the state is only one factor, and not the most central one, the work claims, following Fanon, that decolonization requires us to confront the need to reorganize the structures of violence – in order to take control of alienated colonial violence. In this sense, the work criticizes the tendency of the left and contemporary critical theory to deny, retaliate, or attribute violence, especially to the state and to ‘the other’ in general. A tendency that has moral and racist elements, which undermines the role of politics and breeds a right-wing populism of ‘law and order.'”

Clearly, her attack on police viewed through the critical, neo-Marxist lens fits her current work.

Maoz’s work at the Smart Social Strategy at the Technion. Her work is “Critical Urban Safety: A Democratic Framework.” She starts by claiming that “conservative studies and programs emphasize territorial defense, spatial control, and increased surveillance, critical studies direct our attention to financial disinvestment, spatial inequality, racialized class stratification, displacement, and gentrification.” The “former views it as a collection of defensible and securitized properties and assets, whereas the latter views the built environment and urban society as one intermeshed fabric.” At Smart Social Strategy, “we join forces with critical scholars.” 

Although not a criminologist, she uses “comparative critical criminology and critical security debates.” In her words: “we also aim to envision and model forward-looking, critically inspired, urban change.” The case study is the Hadar neighborhood in Haifa, Israel. This urban quarter of some 40,000 residents is home to a diverse population of Jews, “Palestinian-Arabs,” and others. Established in the 1920s by Jewish entrepreneurs in the context of “Zionist colonization.” In her work, she plans to “promote security and justice for victimized populations,” suggesting that she might critically examine the police, as she did in Jamaica, stating that “crime rates tend to be inflated by excessive policing and over-reporting.” The “lower-class residents—most of them Arabs—fear the growing infiltration of gangs and arms. The latter fear for young men who may become victims and perpetrators or suffer police brutality on account of their national identity.”

 Maoz is a Hadash (a communist party) activist. She appeared in September 2020 in a radio program named “Hadash Party Wave,” which noted: “We hosted the anthropologist and left-wing activist Eilat Maoz to delve deeper into the forces that navigate and control the occupation, on the occasion of the release of her new book on ‘Living Law.’ We talked about the connection between privatization and neoliberalism within the Green Line and the Wild West policy in the West Bank, about the differences between the occupation during the formation days and the Likud days, about policemen and thieves in the occupied territories – and we tried to understand why the settlers opposed the annexation plan?”

After completing her post-doctorate, if Maoz secures an academic position, she would join the burgeoning ranks of political activists whose critical, neo-Marxist analysis is distant from political and economic reality. For instance, her analysis of the Hadar neighborhood should have tried to explain the skyrocketing criminality in the Arab sector instead of dismissing it with the worn-out critical, neo-Marxist tropes of “promoting security and justice for the victimized populations.”  

It looks like the Israel National Insurance Special Projects Fund sponsors her project and gets little in return for its money. 

References:

כלכלת המשטרה של ג׳מייקה – ברכות לאילת מעוז על קבלת פרס הצטינות על עבודת הדוקטורט!

ברכות על קבלת פרס הצטינות על עבודת הדוקטורט!

בחברת האדם
09/06/2022

אילת מעוז, כיום פוסט-דוקטורנטית בפקולטה לארכיטקטורה ובינוי ערים בטכניון, כתבה את עבודת הדוקטורט שלה במחלקה לאנתרופולוגיה באוניברסיטת שיקגו, בהנחיית קאושיק סונדר-רג׳אן ושטפן פלמיה. עבודת הדוקטורט של מעוז היא אתנוגרפיה היסטורית התמקדות במשטרה בג׳מייקה – כמושג, כמוסד, וכרעיון וחוקרת דרכו את הסדר החברתי הגלובלי, המרובד והמתעתע. בעבודתה היא מציעה את המושג של ״כלכלת משטרה״ (police economy) כתחליף למושג ״מדינת משטרה״ שמניח כי ״המדינה״ היא הסוכן המרכזי, אם לא הבלבדי, של אלימות מאורגנת; ובוחנת את השחקנים, ההגיונות והפרקטיקות המעצבים ויוצרים את מה שהיא מכנה אלימות מנוכרת.

העבודה זכתה בפרס ליכטשטיין של אוניברסיטת שיקגו לדוקטורט המצטיין באנתרופולוגיה בשנת 2021. מאמר ראשון מתוכה, Black Police Power: The Political Moment of the Jamaica Constabulary עתיד להתפרסם בכתב העת Comparative Studies in Society and History.

הנה פירוט על עבודתה:  

ב-7 במאי 2003, בשעה חמש אחר הצהריים, עצרה ניידת משטרה מול בית קטן בכפר קראל במרכז ג׳מייקה. השוטרים, שהשתייכו ליחידת ״עילית״ לניהול הפשע, ירדו מהרכב ופתחו באש לעבר תושבי הבית וחבריהם – כולל ילדה בת שבע המכונה פינקי – שישבו במרפסת. לדברי השוטרים, הם הגיעו לבית כדי לעצור גנגסטר ידוע בשם צ׳ן צ׳ן, שהגיע לאחרונה לאיזור והחל לגבות דמי חסות ממכרה זהב שהקים תאגיד אוסטרלי עלום בשם אוסג׳ם. אבל כמה דקות אחרי חמש השוטרים כבר הודיעו בקשר שבמהלך ״חילופי אש״ נהרגו ארבעה מיושבי הבית (צ׳ן צ׳ן לא היה ביניהם).

הגרסה שמסרו השוטרים היתה קונבנציונאלית ביותר. הם טענו שירו על התושבים רק כדי להתגונן. השכנים, ששמעו את הכל מבעד לגדר טענו בדיוק את ההפך: שהמשטרה ירתה בשתי נשים ושני גברים בדם קר, בעודם מתחננים על חייהם. מה שלא היה ידוע באותה שעה, אבל החל להתברר בהמשך, זה שזמן קצר אחרי הרצח התקשר מפקד היחידה לגנגסטר ידוע אחר וביקש לקנות ממנו אקדחים כדי לטמון בזירה – דבר שהפך זה מכבר לפרקטיקה מקובלת.

במדינה שבה שיעור הרצח על ידי המשטרה הוא השני הגבוה בעולם, רצח כמו זה שהתרחש בקראל היה יכול בקלות להצטרף לסטטיסטיקה מכוערת (250 מקרי מוות בידי המשטרה מידי שנה בממוצע, במדינה של פחות משלושה מיליון נפש). אבל, מסיבות שלא כאן המקום לפרט, אירוע קראל הניע תגובת שרשרת שהביאה חמישה קציני משטרה בריטיים לתפוס עמדות פיקוד בכירות – כולל את תפקיד סגן המפכ״ל – במשטרת ג׳מייקה. אירוע שתושבי האי הקריבי, ובעיקר השוטרים, כינו באירוניה מובנת ״שובם של הקצינים הקולוניאליים״ או אפילו ״שובו של המאסטר״. להזכירנו כי משטרת ג׳מייקה הוקמה עם סיום משטר עבדות בן יותר משלוש מאות שנה והמשיכה לשמש כלי דיכוי מרכזי של המדינה הקולוניאלית עד העצמאות ב-1962 – ובעצם, כפי שמתברר, אולי גם הרבה אחרי.

עבודת הדוקטורט ״הספר ואחוזת המטעים: כלכלת המשטרה של ג׳מייקה״ (The Frontier and the Plantation: A Police Economy of Post-Slavery Jamaica), היא אתנוגרפיה היסטורית שחוקרת את סדר חברתי גלובלי, מרובד ומתעתע באמצעות שימוש במשטרה – כמושג, כמוסד, וכרעיון – כעדשה אנליטית מושחזת. העבודה מציעה את המושג של ״כלכלת משטרה״ (police economy) כתחליף מתבקש למושג של ״מדינת משטרה״ שמניח כי ״המדינה״ היא הסוכן המרכזי, אם לא הבלבדי, של אלימות מאורגנת ומראה כיצד ארגונים פורמליים ולא-פורמליים, גלובליים ולאומיים, הפועלים במשרדים ממוזגים ובשטח, מתלכדים יחד ליצירת אלימות שנתפסת – יותר ויותר – כאבסטרקטית, בלתי נשלטת, או במונחים מרקסיסטיים ״מנוכרת״.

הריסות בקינגסטון, בירת ג’מייקה – עיר של מלחמת אזרחים מושתקת. צילום: אילת מעוז

העבודה מבוססת על 18 חודשים של עבודת שדה אתנוגרפית בכמה מוקדים מרכזיים: המשטרה הג׳מייקנית, מחלקת חקירות השוטרים שהוקמה ב-2011 ומנוהלת ״במשותף״ על ידי בריטניה וג׳מייקה וארגון חברה אזרחית שעוסק ביצירת הסכמי שלום בין כנופיות, במניעת נקמת דם ובסיוע לצעירים. נוסף על כך, העבודה נשענת על מחקר ארכיוני באנגליה ובג׳מייקה ועל ראיונות עומק עם שוטרים בדרגות שונות, יועצי רפורמה וביטחון מקומיים וזרים, חברי כנופיות, ופעילים/ות חברתיים ופוליטיים. העבודה מבקשת להבין ולתאר את התצורה של אלימות מאורגנת, ואת האופן שבו אלימות זו מקבלת משמעות ונתפסת, בחברת פוסט-עבדות פוסט-קולוניאלית שבה מושגים כמו ״שחרור״ (1838) ו״עצמאות״ (1962) כמעט ואיבדו כל פשר.

החלק הראשון של הדוקטורט עוסק בעלייתה ונפילתה של המדינה הפוסט-קולוניאלית בג׳מייקה – סיפור שמסופר דרך המשטרה, כך שהמשטרה היא אמצעי להבנת המדינה ולא להפך. בין היתר, חלק זה עוסק בהתפתחות של תודעה שחורה רדיקלית בשורות המשטרה בשנות השבעים ומראה איך ״שיבתם של האדונים הקולוניאליים״ בראשית המילניום היא תוצר מתבקש של הרס הפרויקט הפוליטי השמאלי בשנות השבעים וכפיית הדוגמה הניאו-ליברלית על המדינה (כפי שהתרחש בכל בדרום אמריקה). חלק זה גם עוסק בתפקיד של שיחים ליברליים (בפרט , שיח ״הביטול״ או האבולישן, זה של המאה ה-19 ולהבדיל זה של ימינו) בביטול האוטונומיה הפוליטית של קבוצות ועמים המבקשים להשתחרר.

חלקו השני של הדוקטורט עוסק באופן ישיר בסוגיות של רצח על המשטרה, על ידי בחינה אתנוגרפית של שני קייסים – רצח של ״עבריינים״ כפי שהוא נתפס על ידי מנהיג כנופיה מכהן ורצח שיטתי של גובי פרוטקשן. בשני המקרים, העבודה מתארת את הכלכלה הפוליטית של הרצח, אשר במקרה הראשון משמש כאמצעי משמוע ובמקרה השני כאמצעי ניהול של סקטור בכלכלה הגלובלית של הפשע. בחלק האחרון של הדוקטורט אני עוסקת במימדים מרכזיים של הרפורמה המשטרתית המקודמת בג׳מייקה, ועומדת על הפיכתה של קהילת העוני, או הסלאם, למעין נכס.

מעבר לתיאור של מבנה שליטה גלובלי, שהמדינה בו היא רק גורם אחד, ולא המרכזי ביותר, העבודה טוענת, בעקבות פאנון, שדה-קולוניזציה דורשת מאיתנו להתעמת עם הצורך לארגן מחדש את מבני האלימות – על מנת להשתלט על אלימות קולוניאלית מנוכרת. במובן זה, העבודה מבקרת את הנטייה של השמאל והתיאוריה הביקורתית בת זמננו להתכחש, להיפרע, או ליחס אלימות במיוחד למדינה ובכלל ״לאחר״. נטייה שיש בה יסודות מוסרניים וגזעניים, שחותרת תחת תפקיד הפוליטיקה ומצמיחה פופוליזם ימני של ״חוק וסדר״.

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פרק 23 – עוד דונם ועוד עז

SEP 27, 2020

גל חד״ש

אירחנו את האנתרופולוגית ופעילת השמאל אילת מעוז בשביל לנבור עמוק יותר בכוחות שמנווטים ושולטים בכיבוש, לרגל הוצאת ספרה החדש בנושא “חוק חי”. דיברנו על הקשר בין ההפרטה והניאו-ליברליזם בתוך הקו הירוק למדיניות המערב הפרוע בגדה המערבית, על ההבדלים בין הכיבוש בימי המערך לימי הליכוד, על שוטרים וגנבים בשטחים הכבושים – וניסינו להבין למה המתנחלים התנגדו לתכנית הסיפוח? מראיין:גולי דולב השילוני תודה רבה לצוות ההפקה שלנו: טל שדות, יהונתן שמילוביץ, תומר שור, תמר מארה, דוריאל לנקה, אורי נתן, סער יהלום, גלעד פולמבו, אמנון ברונפלד וזוהר אלון עיצוב לוגו: פלג ספיר הצטרפו לרשימת התפוצה שלנו – ותקבלו הודעה בוואטסאפ בכל פעם שעולה פרק חדש: https://chat.whatsapp.com/LaUdAfDuvMq… לרכישת ספרה של אילת מעוז “חוק חי: שיטור וריבונות תחת כיבוש”: https://www.kibutz-poalim.co.il/livin… אפשר להאזין גם בספוטיפיי http://tiny.cc/kea8oz או בסאונדקלאוד https://soundcloud.com/gal-hadash או במלא מקומות אחרים https://anchor.fm/gal-hadash נשמח אם תכתבו לנו! כאן בתגובות, או ל-gal.hadash2020@gmail.com גל חד”ש הוא הפודקאסט השבועי, השמאלי והפוליטי של סניף חד”ש-תל אביב

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https://www.3ssmart.social/the-team/eilat-maoz

Dr Eilat Maoz

Research Fellow, Urban Safety in a Transitional Era

PhD. University of Chicago, Anthropology
M.A. Tel Aviv University, Sociology and Anthropology
B.A, Tel Aviv University, History and Gender Studies

Research focus
‍Eilat Maoz studies and implements democratic security-making and urban conflict transformation. Drawing on a rich comparative stock of critical research and action, she develops participatory frameworks for making cities safe, creative, and egalitarian.  Recognizing momentous planetary challenges in the present era—combating inequality and fighting climate change—she turns critical insights, especially from anti-colonial theory and from the Global South, into collective action plans.
Combining ethnographic, historical, and cartographic methods, Maoz analyzes complex security regimes and multi-dimensional urban conflicts. Her dissertation, based on 18 months of ethnographic study of policing and organized crime in Jamaica, coined the term “police economy” to theorize the multi-scalar formal-informal formations of organized violence that stretch ‘above’ and ‘below’ the state. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and won the prestigious William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship (2019) and the Lichtstern Dissertation Prize in Anthropology (2021).
Her first book, Living Law, was published by the Van Leer Institute in 2020, and her articles are published across academic and popular venues. She teaches classical social theory, political-economic anthropology, critical criminology, and qualitative research design, and works closely with activists, local government, and civil society.  

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https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/black-police-power-the-political-moment-of-the-jamaica-constabulary/C680E2BA56F44020FE075B45781839F1

Black Police Power: The Political Moment of the Jamaica Constabulary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2022

Eilat Maoz

Abstract 

Contemporary debates on policing trace the rise of “law and order” populism and police militarization to colonial histories and imperial boomerang effects. In a time marked by the renewed imperative “to decolonize,” however, few studies examine what decolonizing policing did or could look like in practice. This article draws on oral history narratives of Jamaican police officers to recover their ideas about transforming the colonial Jamaica Constabulary Force in the 1970s. Born out of black power mobilizations and under a democratic socialist government (1972–1980), police decolonization was viewed as part of broader transformative effort to rid the country of colonial inheritances in economics, culture, and politics. Jamaican policemen, radicalized since the early twentieth century, then began revising their social mandate and ask who the police should serve and protect. Ultimately, due to internal contradictions and external pressures, the experiment failed, giving rise to police populism and increased violence against black men and women in the ghettos. The episode reveals how populism emerges out of a failure of emancipatory campaigns and how radical critique can turn into ideological justification. It also highlights the need to distinguish between diverse, contradictory, and overlapping demands to decolonize societies and institutions today.

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02.02.23

Editorial Note

Ariel University is holding a conference, “Israel-Korea Workshop for Astronomy and Space Science,” from January 29 to February 3, 2023. “Is-Ko-Space 2023” aims to enhance the collaborations between the Korean and Israeli “highly productive astronomical communities.” The workshop includes “two days of science presentations, a two-day visit to Israeli astronomical observatories, and plenty of time to discuss collaborations. The science-presentation part (January 29 – 30) will include four plenary sessions: Observational Facilities and Instrumentation Extragalactic Physics and Astronomy Stars and Planets Solar System Physics and Space Science For students: Award prizes will be given to the best poster and the best talk. The observatory visit will be held on February 02 – 03 and will feature: Visit of Wise Observatory in Mitzpe Ramon Visit of Weizmann Institute Observatory in Ne’ot Smadar Time to discuss possible collaborations In between (January 31 – February 01) participants are invited to: Attend the 18th Ilan Ramon International Space Conference Work on individual Israeli-Korean collaborations.”

Advocates of the academic boycott of Ariel University were quick to react. On January 29, 2023, Prof. Nir Gov of the Department of Chemical and Biological Physics at Weizmann Institute, sent an email to the Academia IL Network. “To all Academy members in Israel willing to cooperate with the institution called “Ariel University”.” Gov gave the example of “Is-Ko-Space 2023.” 

He wrote: “I hope you are aware that 1) Ariel University is located in the Ariel settlement in the heart of the West Bank, which was occupied in 1967, on an area most of which was declared state land and in this way was confiscated from the use of the local Palestinian residents by orders of the army. 2) The State of Israel exercises military rule in this territory against the Palestinian residents, including a military court, without basic human rights. 3) The area where Ariel is located has never been annexed to the State of Israel, as determined by the High Court of Justice in its ruling on Ariel University. Ariel is not inside the State of Israel. According to the UN, this area is defined as the “Occupied Palestinian territories” (OPT, Pt). 4) The Palestinian residents living around Ariel are prevented from entering the Ariel settlement, and certainly not to the university. This contrasts the situation in Israel, where all academic institutions are equally open to all residents, as in any democratic country. 5) The Ariel settlement, and Ariel University, were built as part of a political policy of the right-wing parties in Israel, who wish to make the Israeli occupation of the territories a permanent and irreversible situation. Hence, faculty members at Ariel University have to agree to a political worldview, which makes the entire institution have a clear political affiliation, unlike all other higher education institutions in Israel and any democratic country. 6) The settlements, and Ariel University, are illegal according to the Geneva Convention and international law.” He ended his appeal by stating, “I hope you will take these facts into account, and make the moral and decent decision, in favor of peace and human rights.”

Gov urged his academic peers to boycott the “Is-Ko-Space 2023“ in his plea to boycott Ariel University. Ironically, Gov’s employer, Weizmann Institute, is part of the conference.

Prof. Emeritus Amos Korczyn of the Department of Neurology at Tel Aviv University responded to Gov: “Thanks, Nir. I think writing to the scientific journals that publish scientific articles from Ariel University is important because the address “Ariel University, Israel” is false. Therefore these articles should be rejected and deleted if published. Amos Korczyn, emeritus Medicine, Tel Aviv.”

Gov then assured Korczyn, “Hello Amos; indeed, Prof. Ofer Aharony and I write to Scientific journals and request that they write a correct address and that Ariel is not in the State of Israel. Several journals agreed that writing this false claim should be prevented, but we must persevere. If you know of such cases, please email the journal editors, as many requests will help in this struggle. Thank you, Nir.”This is not the first time Israeli academics are calling for the boycott of Israel in general or Ariel University in particular.

To recall, Professor Oded Goldreich, also from Weizmann Institute, urged boycotting Ariel University, thus breaching the Boycott Law passed by the Knesset in 2011. Two Education Ministers rejected the prize committee’s recommendation to award Goldreich the prestigious Israel Prize. 

Without providing an explanation, the Israeli Supreme Court decided to bypass the Boycott Law and ordered the Prize to be awarded to Goldreich.

More generally, since the 2011 Boycott Law has never been implemented, Israeli radical-leftist academics preach for a boycott without impunity. 

References:

https://www.ariel.ac.il/wp/iskospace/

Israel-Korea workshop for Astronomy and Space Science

Dr. Lev Tal-Or

ISKOSpace

Is-Ko-Space 2023: the first Israeli-Korean 

Astronomy & Space Science workshop

January 29 – February 03

The goal of Is-Ko-Space 2023 is to enhance collaborations between the Korean and Israeli highly productive astronomical communities. The workshop will 

include two days of science presentations, a two-day visit to Israeli astronomical observatories, and plenty of time to discuss collaborations.

The science-presentation part (January 29 – 30) will include four plenary sessions:

• Observational Facilities and Instrumentation
• Extragalactic Physics and Astronomy
• Stars and Planets
• Solar System Physics and Space Science

For students: Award prizes will be given to the best poster and the best talk.

The observatory visit will be held on February 02 – 03 and will feature:

• Visit of Wise Observatory in Mitzpe Ramon
• Visit of Weizmann Institute Observatory in Ne’ot Smadar
• Time to discuss possible collaborations

In between (January 31 – February 01) participants are invited to:

• Attend the 18th Ilan Ramon International Space Conference
• Work on individual Israeli-Korean collaborations

Invited speakers:

Hagai Netzer (Tel-Aviv University, TAU), Chung-Uk Lee (Korea Astronomy and pace Science Institute, KASI), Eli Waxman (Weizmann Institute of Science, WIS), Thiem  Hoang (KASI), Shay Zucker (TAU), Myungshin Im (Seoul National University, SNU), Ehud Behar (Technion, Israel Institute of Technology), Hyung Mok Lee (SNU), Re’em 

Sari (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Jaejin Lee (KASI), Sagi Ben-Ami (WIS), Hagai Perets (Technion), Leon Ofman (TAU, CUA/NASA GSFC), Adi Zitrin (Ben-Gurion

 University of the Negev), Dafne Guetta (Ariel University, AU), Asaf Pe’er (Bar-Ilan University), Doron Chelouche (Haifa University), Ido Ben-Dayan (AU), Amit Kashi (AU).

SOC:

Inwoo Han (Co-Chair, KASI), Lev Tal-Or (Co-Chair, AU), Sagi Ben-Ami (WIS), Dafne Guetta (AU), Amit Kashi (AU), Chung-Uk Lee (KASI), Hyung Mok Lee (SNU), Jaejin Lee (KASI), Myeong-Gu Park (Kyungpook National University), Volker Perdelwitz (WIS), Noam Soker (Technion), Shay Zucker (TAU).

LOC:

Yossi Zaguri (Ariel University, AU), Bareket Tesfay (Ariel University, AU)

Important dates

31/12/2022 – Registration with title submission

07/01/2023 – Abstract submission

14/01/2023 – Registration deadline

29/01/2023 – 03/02/2023 – Workshop and collaboration discussions

For further inquiries please contact:

iskospace – at – ariel.ac.il

The Workshop is supported by Ariel University and by the Israeli Space Agency

==================================================

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Nir Gov
Date: Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 9:15 PM
‪Subject: [Academia-IL-Bashaar] לידיעת חברי האקדמיה בישראל שמתלבטים לגבי השתתפות בכנס ב”אונ’ אריאל”‬
To: Academia List List <academia-il@listserver.cc.huji.ac.il>

לכל חברי האקדמיה בישראל, שמוכנים לשתף פעולה עם המוסד הנקרא “אונ’ אריאל”,

כמו למשל שמופיעים באתר: https://www.ariel.ac.il/wp/iskospace/

אני מקוה שאתם מודעים לכך:

1) אונ’ אריאל ממוקמת בהתנחלות אריאל בלב הגדה המערבית שנכבשה ב-1967, על שטח שברובו הוכרז כאדמות מדינה ובדרך זו הופקע משימוש התושבים הפלשתינים המקומיים ע”י צווים של הצבא.

2) מדינת ישראל מפעילה בשטח זה שלטון צבאי כלפי התושבים הפלשתינים, כולל בית-משפט צבאי, ללא זכויות אדם בסיסיות.

3) השטח שבו ממוקמת אריאל מעולם לא סופח למדינת ישראל, כפי שנקבע ע”י בג”צ בפסיקתו בנושא אונ’ אריאל. אריאל איננה נמצאת בתוך מדינת ישראל. ע”פ האו”ם מוגדר שטח זה כ”שטחים הפלסטינים הכבושים” ( Occupied Palestinian territories – OPT, Pt).

4) התושבים הפלשתינים הגרים מסביב לאריאל מנועים מלהיכנס להתנחלות אריאל, ובוודאי שלא לאוניברסיטה. זאת בניגוד למצב בתוך ישראל, היכן שכל המוסדות האקדמיים פתוחים באופן שוויוני לכל התושבים, כבכל מדינה דמוקרטית.

5) ההתנחלות אריאל, ואונ’ אריאל, נבנו כחלק ממדיניות פוליטית של מפלגות הימין בישראל, המעוניינות להפוך את הכיבוש הישראלי בשטחים למצב קבוע ובלתי-הפיך. מכאן שלמעשה אנשי סגל באונ’ אריאל צריכים להסכים לתפישת עולם פוליטית, דבר ההופך את המוסד כולו לבעל זיקה פוליטית מובהקת, בניגוד לכל שאר מוסדות ההשכלה הגבוהה בישראל ובכל מדינה דמוקרטית.

6) ההתנחלויות, ואונ’ אריאל, אינן חוקיות לפי אמנת ז’נבה והחוק הבינלאומי.

אני מקוה שתקחו בחשבון את העובדות הללו, ותקבלו את ההחלטה המוסרית וההגונה, בעד שלום וזכויות-אדם.

עוד מידע על אונ’ אריאל:

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fisraeli-academics-for-peace.org.il%2F%25d7%2594%25d7%2590%25d7%259e%25d7%25aa-%25d7%25a2%25d7%259c-%25d7%2590%25d7%2595%25d7%25a0%25d7%2599%25d7%2591%25d7%25a8%25d7%25a1%25d7%2599%25d7%2598%25d7%25aa-%25d7%2590%25d7%25a8%25d7%2599%25d7%2590%25d7%259c%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR1X9nNVZtyN8tBPJm8i87bZt2M_Picvq7YJq9M-8-GLMTrBUa8WMs7oiMc&h=AT3YuqiZ0O29pudbkOEpqfeJvzaqo7eYWnG3v2d2D16rQkQZIaTclL0I5-zitnLCy69zVysQEwkqFIWHYwR0NCUk-M1EZdf9V_rZ7XEtpZl9xf3Ml6AsDy-1lyl2loMOVCmZ&__tn__=-UK-R&c%5B0%5D=AT1bViXM5a0U0mQVJ-mUYIncZnsXJJZU-qBgu75Tabr95OHuQekL_3NPD6204zujEmprc4J9SqjFKWaeTRo0PlmrfXu_s3DZH8MdgdbMEetGww6sIVOGzRMaBvDXUv3m_DoXPE3Tn__VV0XooXF65HombA

————————————–

Prof. Nir Gov

Department of Chemical and Biological Physics

Weizmann Institute of Science

Rehovot, Israel

=================================================

———- הודעה שהועברה ———

מאת: Nir Gov

תאריך: יום ב׳, 30 בינו׳ 2023 ב-17:40

נושא: Re: [Academia-IL-Bashaar] לידיעת חברי האקדמיה בישראל שמתלבטים לגבי השתתפות בכנס ב”אונ’ אריאל”

שלום עמוס

אכן פרופ’ עופר אהרוני ואנוכי כותבים לעיתונים

מדעיים ומבקשים שיכתבו כתובת נכונה, ושאריאל

איננה במדינת ישראל. מספר עיתונים הסכימו שאכן

צריך למנוע את הפירסום השקרי הזה, אבל

חייבים להתמיד בנושא. אם אתם.ן מכירים

מקרים כאלו, אנא שלחו מייל לעורכי העתון. פניות

רבות יואילו במאבק הזה. תודה רבה

ניר

————————————–

Prof. Nir Gov

Department of Chemical and Biological Physics

Weizmann Institute of Science

Rehovot, Israel

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From: amos korczyn
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2023 9:56:44 PM
To: Nir Gov
Cc: Academia List List; Daniel Michaelson; Dan F; Gozes Illana
Subject: Re: [Academia-IL-Bashaar] לידיעת חברי האקדמיה בישראל שמתלבטים לגבי השתתפות בכנס ב”אונ’ אריאל”

תודה ניר. 

לדעתי חשוב לכתוב אל העיתונים המדעיים המפרסמים מדעיים מאוניברסיטת אריאל, כי הכתובת ״אוניברסיטת אריאל, ישראל״ היא כתובת שקרית ולכן יש לדחות מאמרים אלה, ולמחקם אם פורסמו. 

עמוס קורצ׳ין, דימוסאי רפואה, תל אביב

Professor emeritus Amos D Korczyn 
CONy President 
Department of Neurology 
Tel Aviv University 

26.01.23

Editorial Note

In recent weeks Prof. Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian, the chair of the Law Faculty at the Hebrew University, hit the news when the George Washington University (GWU) Professional Psychology Program held an event in September 2022 which featured her, among others. In her presentation, Shalhoub-Kevorkian said that Israel uses its humanitarian aid to distract from its “oppressive power.” Shalhoub-Kevorkian also argued in support of Palestinians throwing stones at Jewish Israelis as a form of “violent resistance” against Israel. In her lecture, she “examines the framing, production and performance of security regimes that create and encourage systems of racialized oppression,” as quoted in the event’s flyer. Jewish students filed a complaint, and now GWU is investigating.

Not wasting any time, the GWU Institute for Middle East Studies, together with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Program, is hosting a webinar, “Gender, Violence, and the Geopolitics of Feminism,” also titled “Gender, Violence, and Governance Feminism,” on February 2, 2023. This webinar is the “kickoff event of Spring 2023 to celebrate 50 years at GW! We will feature Lila Abu-Lughod and Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian who will share their expertise.” 

The two speakers are, “Lila Abu-Lughod is a Professor of Social Science within the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University in the city of New York. Her work, strongly ethnographic and mostly based in Egypt, has focused on three broad issues: the relationship between cultural forms and power; the politics of knowledge and representation; and the dynamics of women’s and human rights, global liberalism, and feminist governance of the Muslim world. Current research focuses on museum politics in Palestine and other settler colonies, security discourses and Islamophobia, and religion in the global governance of gender violence. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Global Chair in Law- Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on trauma, state crimes and criminology, surveillance, gender violence, law and society. She studies the crime of femicide and other forms of gendered based violence, violence against children in conflict ridden areas, crimes of abuse of power in settler colonial contexts, surveillance, securitization and social control. the author of numerous books among them “Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case Study” published in 2010; “Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear”, published by Cambridge University Press, 2015.”

Earlier work by Shalhoub Kevorkian includes the following abstract in a journal of Criminology: “Colonial and settler colonial dispossession is performed through various forms of violence, justified by cultural, historical, religious and national imperatives. In this paper, I define one of these forms of violence as the occupation of the senses, referring to the sensory technologies that manage bodies, language, sight, time and space in the colony. This paper analyses the parades, marches and festivals performed in the Palestinian city space of occupied East Jerusalem; shares the slogans, chants and graffiti used by Israeli civil, religious and nationalist entities; and explores what is lived, seen, heard, felt and smelled by the colonized to uncover the political violence implicated in the occupation of the senses.” 

Last year, IAM reported that Shalhoub Kevorkian espoused fake news about Israel. IAM reported that in her co-authored article, “Colonial Necrocapitalism, State Secrecy and the Palestinian Freedom Tunnel,” she argued that “the very existence of the Palestinian endangers the colonial state” of Israel, “their death is necessary for the survival” of Israel. “Necrocapitalism” is “operationalized through violent policing of Palestinians.”

For Shalhoub-Kevorkian, necrocapitalism is the “means of accumulating capital and profit from the death” of Palestinians, where “profit flows from visible and invisible violence, as well as the killing of the colonized, as a state of fear generates continuous insecurity, which in turn generates a demand for security goods.” Because “Israel is one of the top arms exporters in the world.” As with other writings in the genre of neo-Marxist, critical theory, this egregiously convoluted article is full of made-up words like “necrocapitalism.“ To the extent that one can fathom Shalboub-Kevorkian’s reasoning, Israel became a leading economic power because it kills Palestinians. Nothing could be further from the truth. Israel achieved its position because of its outstanding capacity for innovation in Information Technology. Here is something to enlighten her, written in 2022 by Sheikh Riad, a Bangladeshi blogger, programmer, and web developer: 

“Science and technology in Israel are one of the country’s most developed sectors. Israel spent 4.3% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on civil research and development in 2015, the highest ratio in the world. In 2019, Israel was ranked the world’s fifth most innovative country by the Bloomberg Innovation Index. It ranks thirteenth in the world for scientific output as measured by the number of scientific publications per million citizens. In 2014, Israel’s share of scientific articles published worldwide (0.9%) was much higher than its share of the global population (0.1%). Israel is home to major companies in the high-tech industry and has one of the world’s most technologically literate populations. As mentioned earlier, there are more than 4,000 tech companies in Israel, including some of the world’s largest companies. Israel has 60 of the world’s top 500 tech giants with research centres and new technology centres in Israel!”

He speaks of Tel Aviv, as “one of the largest technology centres in the world, right next to Silicon Valley in the United States in terms of tech startups. Israel is even number 3 on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, which is made up of shares of US-based tech companies, with only the United States and China topping the list. Israel is also behind the list of combined technology companies of Germany, Spain, Italy and France! The most surprising thing is that a large part of Israel’s income comes from this technology sector. The money earned from the research and development sector of big companies including IBM, PayPal, Cisco, Amazon, Facebook and the import of technology is 12.5% of Israel’s GDP!”

Clearly, Shalboub-Kevorkian and the Middle East Institute who invited her as the opening event for celebrating the 50th anniversary of GWU demonstrate the bankruptcy of the advocacy-driven Middle East scholarship. It has created a false narrative replete with obscure jargon totally disconnected from reality. Bashing Israel is its only achievement. 

References:

https://forward.com/fast-forward/531840/george-washington-university-lara-sheehi-antisemitism-zionism/

Jewish students say anti-Zionist professor created hostile environment

A psychology professor at George Washington University allegedly dismissed concerns that her hostile anti-Zionism was antisemitic, and retaliated against Jewish students who complained

By Arno Rosenfeld January 13, 2023

An Israel advocacy group is alleging that an anti-Zionist George Washington University professor created a hostile environment for Jewish students who support the country. StandWithUs filed a federal complaint against the school Thursday, arguing that Zionism is an integral part of Jewish identity.

The filing claims that Lara Sheehi, who teaches a mandatory course on diversity, discriminated against several Jewish students because of their Israeli and Zionist identities in her class during the fall semester.

“It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” Sheehi allegedly told one student after she introduced herself.

Much of the complaint focuses on Sheehi’s disagreements with students over whether hostility toward Israel and Zionism is antisemitic. Many pro-Israel organizations, including Hillel, have argued in recent years that institutions such as universities must treat Zionism — support for a Jewish state in Israel — as an integral part of Jewish identity, and one that is protected from discrimination in the same manner as race, religion, gender and other protected categories.

Opponents of this approach say that Zionism is a political ideology that must be open to debate, and that shielding it from criticism will have a chilling effect on Palestinian activism.

In its account of Sheehi’s course, which is mandatory for psychology students at George Washington, StandWithUs wrote that it had identified an extreme case of a faculty member’s hostile anti-Zionism leading to discrimination against students.

“A professor singling out and targeting Jewish and Israeli students for adverse treatment because of their identity is textbook antisemitic discriminatory conduct,” Roz Rothstein, the head of StandWithUs, said in a statement.

Julia Metjian, a spokesperson for George Washington, said the school was aware of the complaint.

“George Washington University strongly condemns antisemitism and hatred,” she said in an email. “The university also recognizes and supports academic freedom, and the right of all members of our community to speak out on issues of public concern.”

The organization’s civil rights complaint, which was filed with the Department of Education, highlights an optional guest lecture for the class delivered by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who has generated controversy over her research on the Israeli military.

Complaint stems from lecture

At the lecture, Shalhoub-Kevorkian “demonized Israel, and Israelis in general,” according to the complaint, and claimed that Israeli philanthropy and humanitarian aid was meant to cover up human rights abuses. It also said that she defended the act of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.

During the first class following the talk, the complaint states that several Jewish students told Sheehi they believed Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s lecture was antisemitic, with one saying she “felt like it was an excuse to bash Jews.”

Sheehi reportedly responded that “in no uncertain terms, anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”

“There are many people who say that Zionism in and of itself is an antisemitic movement,” she allegedly responded. “Why? Because it locates that Jewish folks are that much more different that they need to have a space unto themselves.”

The complaint states that Sheehi, the author of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine, had previously made a series of remarks on Twitter that included hostile anti-Zionism, including: “Israelis are so f****ing racist” and “F*** every person who is not yet an anti-Zionist.”

(The Twitter account referenced in the report has since been taken offline. It did not include Sheehi’s name, but it repeatedly referenced her authorship of the psychoanalysis book, which won a 2022 Palestine Book Award.)

Elsewhere, Sheehi has said that psychoanalysts must actively practice anti-Zionism.

She graduated from the American University of Beirut in 2006 and received her doctorate from GW in 2010, during which time she was also active in the “campus anti-war network,” according to her LinkedIn profile. She has been teaching at the school since 2016.

When an Israeli student described her fear of “terrorist attacks” in Tel Aviv, Sheehi allegedly said that the use of that term was Islamophobic.

StandWithUs, which mostly focuses on campus Israel advocacy, also claimed that Sheehi retaliated against two of students who raised concerns with university administrators about Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Sheehi’s overall attitude toward Israel and antisemitism.

The report states that Sheehi subsequently claimed that the students had called Shalhoub-Kevorkian a terrorist, wrote “combative” journal entries for the class, and that they were racist. The students were then informed that the university had initiated disciplinary proceedings against them, and asked them to detail what they did wrong.

The complaint claims that George Washington violated the civil rights of the Jewish students in Sheehi’s class by failing to address her behavior. StandWithUs is calling on the school to investigate the student complaints and use the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism to adjudicate them.

Anyone can file a complaint with the Department of Education, and it is not clear whether the agency will investigate further.

Arno Rosenfeld is an enterprise reporter for the Forward, where he covers antisemitism, philanthropy and American Jewish institutions. You can reach him at arno@forward.com and follow him on Twitter @arnorosenfeld.

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https://www.jpost.com/international/article-728485

Complaint alleges George Washington U prof. discriminated against Jews, Israelis

StandWithUs has launched a complaint against George Washington University over its failure to deal with Professor Lara Sheehi’s alleged antisemitism.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF

Published: JANUARY 14, 2023 21:05

Updated: JANUARY 15, 2023 22:41

The George Washington University, in the United States capital of Washington, DC, was accused by pro-Israel nonprofit StandWithUs of providing a pervasive, hostile, and discriminatory environment for Jewish and Israeli students in a complaint filed with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Right on Thursday.

StandWithUs further claimed the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

The program in question is the university’s Professional Psychology Program, whose facilitator of the program’s mandatory diversity course prof. Sheehi was accused by StandWithUs of denying Jewish and Israeli students “the right to an equal educational opportunity.”

The complaint alleges that Israeli and Jewish students who came forward about their experience were punished for speaking out, with the letter claiming Sheesi slandered students’ reputations to other faculty members and launched excessive and irregular disciplinary procedures against them.

The complaint further claims that Sheehi invited a guest lecturer who invoked antisemitic tropes about Jews being dishonest and using their influence for nefarious purposes.  The guest speaker, who was identified as Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian by the Jewish Journal, “expressed support for violence against Israeli civilians,” as per the complaint.

As written in the complaint, “when the students raised concerns about the antisemitic harassment they were experiencing, Sheehi denied that what the students had experienced was antisemitism and distorted the Jewish students’ comments to accuse the Jewish students of attacking other identity groups.

Sheehi has been writing in support of the Palestinian cause for many years, according to her academia.org page, which serves as an open repository of free-to-read academic articles. These include: “The will to Live in Palestine (2021),” “Psychotherapeutic Commons in Liberated Palestine (2021),” “Enactments of otherness and searching for a third space in the Palestine-Israel matrix (2016)” and “The settlers’ town is strongly built: Fanon in Palestine (2020).”

Professor’s acts are ‘textbook antisemitic conduct’

Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs CEO and co-founder, noted that “a professor singling out and targeting Jewish and Israeli students for adverse treatment because of their identity is textbook antisemitic discriminatory conduct.”

“A professor singling out and targeting Jewish and Israeli students for adverse treatment because of their identity is textbook antisemitic discriminatory conduct,”Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs CEO and Co-Founder

“This is a dangerous and unacceptable trend on far too many campuses, especially as this discriminatory treatment increasingly originates from faculty and too often goes unchecked by administrators.

“It is imperative that university administrators take an unequivocal stand against antisemitism and in support of Jewish students, in both word and deed,” Rothstein added.

“In our 2022 Antisemitism on US College & University Campuses Report, GW was rated a ‘D’ with many Jewish students stating GW administrators do not take their safety seriously and often do not feel comfortable sharing their Jewish identity with others due to the climate on campus,” Executive Director of StopAntisemitism Liora Rez told the Jerusalem Post. “George Washington University is miserably failing its Jewish students and it is a relief to see legal action being taken. Jewish students deserve an environment free of anti-Jewish bias to learn and flourish; with Jew-hating professors like Lara Sheehi and clubs like SJP being allowed to spread their bigotry and cause havoc on campuses nationwide, this is nearly impossible to achieve.”

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https://www.timesofisrael.com/george-washington-university-probing-alleged-antisemitic-harassment-by-professor/

George Washington University probing alleged antisemitic harassment by professor

January 19, 2023

news

JTA – George Washington University says it has launched an investigation into whether a psychology professor displayed antisemitic behavior in his interactions with Jewish and Israeli students in the latest row over the state of Jewish life at the university in Washington, D.C. Was it or not

The investigation was prompted by a federal complaint filed by the pro-Israel watchdog group StandWithYou, citing graduate psychology students who were targeted last fall by their professor because of “their Jewish and Israeli identity.”

The group’s complaint, filed with the US. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights quotes Professor Lara Sheehy as saying to an Israeli student on her first day, “It is not your fault that you were born in Israel.” It is alleged that Jewish students felt targeted by a guest speaker Shehi had brought to class, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for comments she advocated throwing stones at Israelis as a form of resistance. Was. The complaint alleges that when the students brought their concerns to Shehi, he accused them of Islamophobia.

It has been said in the complaint that after this the meetings held with the higher officials in the university did not yield satisfactory results.

In a statement last week, GWU President Mark Righton said the university would open “an investigation by a third party” into the complaint’s “claims of discrimination and retaliation against unnamed students in the GW curriculum.” A GWU spokesperson previously told The Forward that the university “strongly condemns antisemitism and hatred” and also “recognizes and supports academic freedom.”

The Department of Education has yet to weigh whether it will open its own investigation, as there have been similar complaints of campus antisemitism in recent years.

The university, whose Hillel opened a new kosher cafe this week, has been the flashpoint of several incidents over the past few years highlighting Jewish student life. Groups posted anti-Zionist fliers near Campus Hillel and Jewish students rallied in 2021 following vandalism at a Jewish fraternity in which a replica Torah was damaged.

But during the 2021-2022 academic year, Jewish students from across the political spectrum told Forward that they found claims of rampant antisemitism on campus exaggerated. Some said they felt the continued involvement of pro-Israel groups was counterproductive.

A graduate of the American University of Beirut, Shehi is professor of clinical psychology and co-author of “Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine”. The events described in the StandWithUs report allegedly occurred in Sheehy’s required diversity training course for GWU’s psychology graduate students.

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https://www.gwhatchet.com/2023/01/17/gw-failed-to-act-against-alleged-antisemitism-from-professor-civil-rights-complaint/

GW failed to act against alleged antisemitism from professor: civil rights complaint

NEWS

 By Caitlin Kitson Jan 17, 2023 3:30 AM

A Jewish and pro-Israel advocacy organization filed a Title VI complaint Thursday with the Department of Education alleging that a professor was antisemitic toward Jewish and Israeli students in a graduate-level psychology course during the fall semester.

StandWithUs filed the complaint with the Office for Civil Rights, alleging Lara Sheehi, an assistant professor of clinical psychology, created a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students within her Diversity I course, part of GW’s Professional Psychology Program. The complaint alleges faculty and administrators “retaliated” with “disciplinary proceedings” against students who raised concerns about hostile conduct from Sheehi throughout the fall and a guest speaker and course materials that addressed the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The complaint alleges that the University violated Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in any “educational program or activity” that receives federal funds like GW.

“Jewish students informed the University about the harassment and discrimination they were experiencing,” the complaint alleges. “George Washington, however, failed to take prompt and effective steps to end the harassment and eliminate the hostile environment.”

The complaint calls on the University to null the “disciplinary proceedings” against the students who raised concerns and provide them with an alternative method of receiving course credit “out of Sherri’s orbit and influence.” The complaint also urges GW to investigate the discrimination allegations, institute mandatory bias and sensitivity training and use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism to identify discrimination claims.

Sheehi, who has worked at GW since 2016, also taught a section of the Third Year Psychotherapy course in the Professional Psychology Program during the fall semester, according to the University’s schedule of classes. Sheehi is not scheduled to teach any classes this spring, according to the schedule of classes.

Sheehi did not return a request for comment.

Interim University President Mark Wrighton issued a statement to the GW community Friday saying a “third party” will investigate the claims, but he did not comment on the details of the allegations.

“I want to be clear that we reaffirm that the George Washington University strongly condemns antisemitism and hatred, discrimination and bias in all forms,” Wrighton said in the statement. “We remain committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment where all feel safe and free of harassment, hostility or marginalization.”

University spokesperson Julia Metjian declined to comment on Sheehi’s employment status. She also declined to comment on StandWithUs’ allegation that students who complained about Sheehi were subjected to “disciplinary proceedings” or what the third-party investigation of the complaint’s claims will entail.

Metjian deferred to Wrighton’s public statement in response to The Hatchet’s questions.

Progressive organizations, like Jewish Voice for Peace, have criticized StandWithUs for its reported ties to the Israel government through its work with the government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the country’s marketing materials.

“They are allegations and reflect the advocacy group’s perspective,” officials said in a now-expired Instagram story posted Thursday on GW’s official account. “The University will respond to OCR regarding any complaint it may receive from OCR.”

The complaint states that after a student said she was from Israel on the first day of the fall semester when Sheehi asked students in the course to share where they were from, Sheehi responded by saying, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel.”

The complaint alleges that students continued to experience discriminatory actions at the Professional Psychology Program’s speaker event in September featuring a presentation from Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, the chair of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During the presentation, Shalhoub-Kevorkian said Israel uses its humanitarian aid to distract from its “oppressive power,” a statement that students believed played into antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish people “using money for nefarious purposes,” according to the complaint.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian also allegedly argued in support of Palestinians throwing stones as a form of “violent resistance” against Israel during her presentation.

“It examines the framing, production and performance of security regimes that create and encourage systems of racialized oppression,” Shalhoub-Kevorkian said of the presentation in the flier for the September speaker event. She did not return a request for comment.

In the class following the speaker event, one Jewish student told Sheehi the presentation made her feel “vulnerable and unsafe” because she believed it “targeted” Israeli and Jewish people, according to the complaint. Sheehi allegedly replied by saying “in no uncertain terms, anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”

The complaint states that students in the program received an email from a Columbian College of Arts and Sciences vice dean Oct. 22, which stated officials were aware of the criticism of Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s presentation and planned to host a discussion between students and faculty to address students’ concerns.

“As an institution of higher learning, we encourage robust debate on issues that impact our global society, but it is our expectation that all community members engage respectfully with one another, even when discussing issues that implicate deeply held beliefs,” the email states, according to the complaint.

The complaint states the Jewish students also raised concerns to Sheehi about three class readings, which included references to racist treatment against Arab and Muslim people and the Israel-Palestine conflict. The students said the readings portrayed Israel and Jewish people in a negative light “within the greater context of antisemitism in the class,” according to the complaint.

The complaint states students were frustrated that there were reportedly no required class materials covering antisemitism in their Diversity I course.

The complaint alleges that Jewish students from the course shared their criticisms of Sheehi with a staff member from the Professional Psychology Program in early October. They asked to fulfill the program’s diversity course requirement through other means, submit their classwork to another professor and invite a speaker to the program to give a presentation on antisemitism, according to the complaint.

The complaint states that the staff member allegedly told the students that he would sit in on Sheehi’s course, allow the students to submit their course work to him and invite a guest speaker to host a presentation on antisemitism. Later that month, he allegedly walked back those promises.

StandWithUs alleges that a student met a CCAS dean Oct. 26 and shared a joint letter signed by other Jewish students in the course explaining their “grievances” with officials from the school. The student reportedly told the dean that Jewish upperclassmen in the program reported they had also experienced antisemitism in Sheehi’s course years prior, according to the complaint.

The CCAS dean allegedly described the conflict as the result of “deeply held beliefs” and told the student who met with the dean that they could submit a bias report. In a separate Oct. 30 email to the student, the dean said they could either remain enrolled in the course or withdraw.

The complaint alleges the program’s faculty voted to subject the students who shared criticism of Sheehi with program staff members and the dean to “disciplinary proceedings.” The faculty allegedly threatened to place a “permanent negative mark” on the students’ academic records if they refused to explain “what harm they caused.”

A staff member from the psychology program refused a student’s request to appeal the disciplinary proceedings, the complaint states.

Carly Gammill, the director of StandWithUs’ Center for Combating Antisemitism, said the OCR will decide if it has the authority to examine the complaint before determining if the allegations constitute a Title VI violation. If a Title VI violation is found, the office will launch an investigation and consider terminating federal funding or referring the case to the Department of Justice, according to the DOJ.

“If and when a full investigation is open, then we would be notified of that, the University would be notified of that,” she said. “Then their investigation would proceed according to their protocols.”

This article appeared in the January 17, 2023 issue of the Hatchet.

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https://imes.elliott.gwu.edu/events/gender-violence-and-the-geopolitics-of-feminism/

EVENT

Gender, Violence, and the Geopolitics of Feminism

6:00 – 7:00 PM

2 FEB 2023

WEBINAR

Join the WGSS program for our kickoff event of Spring 2023 to celebrate 50 years at GW! We will feature Lila Abu-Lughod and Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian who will share their expertise on “Gender, Violence, and Governance Feminism.”

After submitting your RSVP, you will receive the Zoom connection details via email the week of the event.

Speakers

• Lila Abu-Lughod is a Professor of Social Science within the Department of Anthropololgy at Columbia University in the city of New York. Her work, strongly ethnographic and mostly based in Egypt, has focused on three broad issues: the relationship between cultural forms and power; the politics of knowledge and representation; and the dynamics of women’s and human rights, global liberalism, and feminist governance of the Muslim world. Current research focuses on museum politics in Palestine and other settler colonies, security discourses and Islamophobia, and religion in the global governance of gender violence.
• Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Global Chair in Law- Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on trauma, state crimes and criminology, surveillance, gender violence, law and society. She studies the crime of femicide and other forms of gendered based violence, violence against children in conflict ridden areas, crimes of abuse of power in settler colonial contexts, surveillance, securitization and social control. the author of numerous books among them “Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case Study” published in 2010; “Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear”, published by Cambridge University Press, 2015. 

RSVP

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Click to access september-brown-bag-flyer-prof.-nadera-shalhoub-kevorkian_0.pdf

The George Washington University Professional Psychology Program is pleased to announce our September 2022 Brown Bag presentation

Sponsored by The Psychoanalysis and the Arab World Lab Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

Global Mental Health “Expertise”, “Therapeutic” Military Occupation and its Deadly Exchange

How can we map, connect and trace the securitization of transnational mental health “interventions” and “collaborations”? How can the suffering of refugees, the wounding following natural disasters, or the smell of

decomposing bodies mobilize broader international possibilities not only to promote the emotional well-being of those affected, but also to serve a securitized apparatus maintaining and exporting colonial occupation?

My talk parcels out the broad range of questions on global mental health, sovereignty, security, and the resulting “deadly exchange” that arise when analyzing the cunning of global mental health programs. It examines the framing, production and performance of security regimes that create and encourage systems of racialized oppression.

Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian- a Palestinian feminist, is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Global Chair in Law- Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on liberation psychosocial intervention, critical trauma studies, state crimes and criminology, securitized surveillance, gender violence, law and society and genocide studies. She is the author of numerous academic articles and books among them “Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case Study” published in 2010; “Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear”, published in 2015; “Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding”, published in 2019; all by Cambridge University Press. She also co-edited two books, the latest entitled: “

In-person and on Zoom Friday, September 30, 2022 2:00 PM — 3:50 PM 1957 E Street, NW, Room 113

   When Politics are Sacralized: Comparative Perspectives on Religious

 Claims and Nationalism”, CUP 2021, and is completing an edited volume with Lila Abu-Lughod and Rema

 Hammami entitled: The Cunning of Gender Based Violence”, to be published with Duke University Press in 2023.

19.01.23

Editorial Note

Professor Gadi Algazi is a Tel Aviv University expert on European history from 1350 to 1600 and the Minerva Center for German History director. Algazi, a longtime political activist, abused his position to promote his politics, as IAM repeatedly reported before.

In the current academic year, Algazi is a research fellow at the International Center of Advanced Studies “Metamorphoses of the Political” (ICAS:MP), a German institution based in New Delhi, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. ICAS:MP was created in honor of Maria Sibylla Merian, the German 17th-century naturalist, and Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali Nobel laureate.

ICAS:MP is an Indo-German research collaboration of six Indian and German institutions. According to its website, ICAS:MP “critically intervenes in global debates in the social sciences and humanities.” For those unfamiliar with the jargon, using the term “critically” suggests following the neo-Marxist, critical scholarship.

While fellows are expected to use their field of expertise, true to character, Algazi seized upon the opportunity to present Israel in a negative light. 

In his research, Algazi will look at Israel’s first years when hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants found themselves in transit camps. While some camps were transitory tent compounds, other camps became “the nuclei of poor neighborhoods and peripheral townships with a lasting impact on the landscape of inequalities in the country.” To Algazi, the early 1950s were formative for “the making of class divisions in Israel.” According to Algazi, “Arab Jews” stayed for several years with little access to worthwhile education or work. “For many Jewish immigrants, this was the site where notions of citizenship and politics, dependence and solidarity were forged.”  To justify his research topic, Algazi claims that historians usually treated those Jewish immigrants as “objects of government policies, at best as unruly, tumultuous crowds.”

Algazi’s study looks at the social history of one of the largest camps located near an established agro-town on the border of the West Bank.   

Algazi writes that the camp was mainly populated by Iraqi Jewish immigrants, in “walking distance from refugee camps, which had been set up just two or three years earlier as a provisional shelter for Palestinians expelled from this very same agricultural region. Chronically unemployed, camp dweller were subject to tight control by government agencies, the security services and the local elite. Nevertheless, within months of arrival, they started a series of protests that soon spread beyond their isolated camp.”

Algazi declares he seeks “to understand the rise and demise of this movement.” He then launches into a conspiracy theory, writing about the “suppressed event – the secret military operation, in which the camp was dismantled.”

Algazi traces “the forgotten protests and their violent suppression – locally, in the impoverished neighborhood which arose at the same site, and in the different camps to which the banished where relocated. Finally, I follow the main protagonists – the families who led local protests and the party boss whom they confronted – into the 1960s, seeking explanations for the suppression of the memory of these early revolts.”

Algazi should note that by now, the history of early immigration to Israel is very well covered. It is widely known that the new state of some 650,000 people in 1948 was under extreme duress.  It had to defend itself from the Palestinians, who rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan, and their Arab allies, who invaded the country.   At the same time, Israel had to absorb about a million and a half immigrants, Holocaust survivors, and Jews from Arab countries.  Both groups posed a considerable challenge to the state: the Holocaust survivors, most of whom survived concentration camps and lost their families, were penniless and deeply traumatized, unable to be helped by the skeletal mental health system. The Jews of the Arab countries were expelled with only a suitcase.  The Iraqi Jews, arguably the most wealthy of the Jewish communities in the Middle East, were also subjected to bloody pogroms.

Looking at the broader issue of absorption of a traumatized and pauperized population, Algazi trivializes the subject by adopting a nebulous conspiracy theory of nefarious military misdeeds.  He is also egregiously wrong by blaming the government for creating class divisions in Israel.  Like his neo-Marxist, critical scholarship peers, he is unwilling to admit that the market economy developed in Israel favored the better-educated Jews. 

As a historian of medieval Europe, Algazi is unqualified to research a subject that touches on many aspects of social and political economy, immigration, and absorption, among others. 

Of course, as a radical activist, Algazi is not perturbed by a lack of skill since the real purpose of his work is to denigrate and demonize Israel. What is more perplexing is the involvement of the German government, which finances the ICAS:MP. Supporting scholars who use their academic positions to push a political agenda is not a good return on their money.

References

Prof. Gadi Algazi

PROF. GADI ALGAZI    A TRANSIT CAMP ON THE BORDER01 January 2023 to 30 June 2023
Research Description:During Israel’s first years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants found themselves in ‘transit camps’. Some camps were indeed transitory tent compounds, but others became the nuclei of poor neighbourhoods and peripheral townships with a lasting impact on the landscape of inequalities in the country. The early 1950s were a formative period in terms of the making of class divisions in Israel. While immigrants, mostly of European descent, typically spent less than a year in a camp, others, especially ‘Arab Jews’ from all over the Middle East, stayed for several years with little access to worthwhile education or work. For many Jewish immigrants, this was the site where notions of citizenship and politics, dependence and solidarity were forged.Historians have usually treated them as objects of government policies, at best as unruly, tumultuous crowds. The study is a social history of one of the largest camps, located on the very border between Israel and the West Bank. It was set up near an established agro-town. The local elite controlled the town council, the labour exchange, welfare services, local companies and credit providers and had direct access to political patrons in Israel’s government. The camp, on the other hand, was populated mostly by Jewish Iraqi immigrants, in walking distance from refugee camps, which had been set up just two or three years earlier as a provisional shelter for Palestinians expelled from this very same agricultural region. Chronically unemployed, camp dweller were subject to tight control by government agencies, the security services and the local elite. Nevertheless, within months of arrival, they started a series of protests that soon spread beyond their isolated camp. I seek to understand the rise and demise of this movement, the making of a short-lived collective subject. At the heart of this microhistory story lies a suppressed event – the secret military operation, in which the camp was dismantled, and its inhabitants dispersed in seven different locations. I trace the afterlife of the forgotten protests and their violent suppression – locally, in the impoverished neighbourhood which arose at the same site, and in the different camps to which the banished where relocated. Finally, I follow the main protagonists – the families who led local protests and the party boss whom they confronted – into the 1960s, seeking explanations for the suppression of the memory of these early revolts.Bio:Gadi Algazi is professor of history at the Department of History at Tel Aviv University and currently director of Minerva Center for German History. He is serving in the editorial board of Past and Present, co-editor of the Hebrew historical quarterly Zmanim, and earlier was senior editor of History & Memory: Studies in the Representation of the Past. His main fields of interest are the social and cultural history of Western Europe between 1350 and 1600, historical anthropology, especially the history of family, kinship and gender, the social history of science, colonialism and settler societies.

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About ICAS:MP

About

The M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’ (ICAS:MP) is an Indo-German research collaboration of six Indian and German institutions funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). ICAS:MP combines the benefits of an open, interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange with the advantages of a cutting-edge research centre. Located in New Delhi, ICAS:MP critically intervenes in global debates in the social sciences and humanities. Bringing together more than 70 scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and through its innovative modular and network structure, ICAS:MP generates sustainable research cooperation among leading social science and humanities scholars from India, Germany and other countries who investigate similar research problems rather than necessarily the same region. Scholarly exchange and joint exploration within ICAS:MP are defined by a shared interest in examining the shifting boundaries, historically contingent content, and intellectual lineages of the twentieth-century ‘political’. It is thus not another initiative to strengthen ‘Area Studies’, but rather serves as a centre of advanced international research.

12.01.23

Editorial Note

In mid-December, Haaretz published an article by Prof. David Enoch, which was taken from the website of the Faculty of Law, Hebrew University: “In Praise of Boycott Measures (also Academic).” Enoch spoke in favor of a boycott against Israel because “the State of Israel has an interest in being decent, to stop pursuing a policy of oppression and apartheid, to be saved from the anti-democratic jaws that grip its neck. If there is a chance that boycotts will help with that, great.”

Enoch complains that “only in Israel can one argue in the name of democracy for the arrangements that perpetuate the occupation and violent oppression of millions of people for 55 years, without any intention of ending a situation in which the governed have no influence over their rulers…. the reality of the lives of millions of people deprived of any political and legal rights who live under occupation and oppression.”

He argues, “The demand by those of us who still insist on fighting the occupation, on putting up with the decision of the oppressive Jewish majority – ostensibly because of democratic principles, and without any saying to the millions under the occupation – is hypocritical and ridiculous.”

For Enoch, “the basic justification for the boycott measures is as simple as it is convincing: the occupation will probably not end until it is very inconvenient for the Israelis to continue. Of course, there are measures that cannot be justified for this reason as well (such as, for example, terrorism against innocent citizens). But boycott measures are non-violent measures, and given the horrors of the occupation and oppression, and the fact that the State of Israel shows no intention of reaching a reasonable solution, certain boycott measures are completely legitimate.”

He then moves on to discuss the academic boycott. For him, “the decision not to come to Israel for an academic conference that ignores the reality of the occupation… will be justified.” Notably, Enoch justifies a boycott of Ariel University, writing, “Even if the boycott law states otherwise, there is no point in thinking that the right to boycott Ariel University is the same as the right to boycott Tel Aviv University or Haifa University.”

 He then argues that the boycott of the academy specifically is not justified, “although the academy is involved in the occupation, but in general, it is not involved in the occupation any more than the extent to which every Israeli is involved in the occupation (and when the involvement of an academic unit is indeed more central, as for example when it comes to Ariel University, boycott measures are indeed more justified).” 

Regarding the academic boycott, “I don’t think anyone can seriously think that the professional plight of a number of academics will shock the Israeli public or the decision makers until they reconsider their support for the occupation. There is, therefore, no point in singling out an academic activity that is particularly worthy of a boycott. But there is also no point in distinguishing it as particularly protected from justified boycott measures. I hope that the State of Israel will face more and more boycott measures of various kinds. I hope they will mainly be more effective measures – ones that will burden financially, especially business elites, which will make it difficult for Israelis to show their faces in the world, and those that will harm Israeli representation in world sports. Then, as part of the non-violent boycott struggle against Israeli policy, the thought that the academic circle should be exempted from the consequences of the struggle seems to me ridiculous and somewhat narcissistic. Under such circumstances, I would welcome an academic boycott.”

Two things stand out in Enoch’s views. First, typical of all writings of radical leftist critics is a total decontextualization of Israeli-Palestinian relations to prove that Israel alone is to blame for the prolonged state of affairs. Had Enoch paid more attention to the history of the conflict, he would have known that the Oslo Process was a genuine effort by the Israeli Labor leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres to reach a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat and the PLO. The Iranian theocratic regime was dead set against the move. It has used its Islamist proxies, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as peace spoilers. Helped by the Revolutionary Guards, they launched waves of suicide bombings in which thousands of Israelis were killed and wounded. The extreme violence undermined the Israeli faith in the Oslo peace. A large and growing body of literature on this and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is available, should Enoch be interested in learning. 

Second, As IAM discussed before, Enoch supports the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. The so-called Declaration is a ploy of the radical academic left, centered around the Van Leer Institute, to provide an alternative to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, a document that 38 countries adopted. IHRA has become the first line of defense against the growing antisemitism in the United States and other western countries.  

Quite shockingly, the World Zionist Organization – Department for the Struggle against Antisemitism and the Boosting of Jewish Resilience, invited Enoch to its annual conference, “Challenges of Fighting Boycotts Against Israel,” in December 2022. The organizers apparently did not know that Enoch supports the boycott.

Moreover, just a couple of weeks ago, Enoch won the Hebrew University President’s Award for an Outstanding Researcher, the Israel Pollak Prize in Memory of Prof. Yoram Ben-Porath. Enoch, of the Faculty of Law and the Department of Philosophy, is “recognized as a leading thinker and researcher in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and the philosophy of law.  

Awarding Enoch the President’s Award is highly problematic. Israel has accepted the IHRA definition, which argues that singling out Israel, as per the calls to boycott Israel, is an act of antisemitism. There is also the  2011 Boycott Law that makes advocating BDS illegal. Clearly, it is a slap in the face of numerous Jewish organizations worldwide that struggle against BDS. Sending mixed messages is detrimental to the fight for IHRA. 

References:

https://www.hujilawblog.com/single-post/בשבחם-של-צעדי-החרמה-גם-אקדמיים

בשבחם של צעדי החרמה (גם אקדמיים)

דיונים על צעדי החרמה שונים שמופעלים או שיופעלו נגד ישראל – הן בזירה האקדמית, הן באופן כללי יותר – יוצאים מהנחות מוצא שחשוב לאתגר.

הנחת מוצא שגויה אחת כזו היא שמדובר באיום שלמדינת ישראל יש אינטרס עליון להילחם בו. חרמות כאלה דווקא משרתים את האינטרס האמיתי של המדינה. הם לא משרתים את האינטרס של קבוצות מסויימות בתוכה, של השלטון שלה, אולי אפילו לא את האינטרס שלה כפי שזה מובן על ידי רוב אזרחיה. אבל זה לא משנה דבר – למדינת ישראל יש אינטרס להיות הגונה, להפסיק לנקוט מדיניות דיכוי ואפרטהייד, להינצל מהמלתעות האנטי-דמוקרטיות שלופתות את צווארה. אם יש סיכוי שחרמות יעזרו בכך, מהטוב.

הנחת מוצא שגויה שנייה היא שמדינת ישראל היא דמוקרטיה צודקת, ושעל כן נסיון להתערב בפעולותיה פסול (ואולי גם אנטישמי). אלא שרק בישראל אפשר לטעון בשם הדמוקרטיה להסדרים שמנציחים כיבוש ודיכוי אלים של מיליוני אנשים כבר 55 שנה, ללא כל כוונה להביא לקיצו מצב שבו לנשלטים אין שום השפעה על שולטיהם. הדרישה לאלה מאיתנו שעדיין מתעקשים להיאבק בכיבוש להשלים עם הכרעת הרוב היהודי המדכא – לכאורה מכח עקרונות דמוקרטיים, וללא פתחון פה למיליונים הנתונים תחת הכיבוש – צבועה ומגוחכת.

במילים אחרות: אולי אם רצונכם שאנשים הגונים ברחבי העולם (ורבים מהתומכים בצעדי החרמה, גם אם לא כולם, הם אנשים הגונים) יפסיקו לראות בנו מצורעים מוסרית, כדאי שנפסיק להיות מצורעים מוסרית.

ההצדקה הבסיסית לצעדי החרמה היא פשוטה כשם שהיא משכנעת: ככל הנראה לא יבוא קץ לכיבוש עד שלישראלים יהיה מאוד לא נוח להמשיכו. מובן שיש אמצעים שאי אפשר להצדיק גם מהטעם הזה (כמו למשל טרור נגד אזרחים חפים מפשע). אבל צעדי החרמה הם צעדים בלתי אלימים, ובהינתן זוועות הכיבוש והדיכוי, והעובדה שמדינת ישראל לא מראה שום כוונה להגיע לפתרון סביר, צעדי החרמה מסויימים הם לגיטימיים לחלוטין. המשמעות של הכחשת טענה זו היא של עם תחת דיכוי אין זכות לפעול בדרך כלשהי – גם בלתי אלימה – כנגד מדכאיו. אדם הגון לא יסכים לעמדה כזו (וגם לא לצביעות שכורכה בהכרזה על צעדים בלתי אלימים ומדודים בהחלט כ”טרור משפטי” או “טרור כלכלי”).

ואם כך הם הדברים באופן כללי, מה אפשר לומר באופן ספציפי על החרם האקדמי?

ראשית, יש לומר שאין כזה דבר “החרם האקדמי”. יש צעדי החרמה שונים, עם הבדלים חשובים ביניהם. כך, למשל, ההחלטה שלא לבוא לישראל לכנס אקדמי שמתעלם ממציאות הכיבוש היא סוג אחד של צעד, וההחלטה לסרב לשפוט בכתב עת אקדמי בינלאומי מאמרים שכתבו ישראלים היא החלטה אחרת. בנסיבות רבות הצעד הראשון יהיה מוצדק, והשני לא. בדרך כלל יהיה מועיל יותר לדון בצעדים השונים ובשאלה באילו תנאים הם מוצדקים, מאשר בשאלה הכללית הרבה יותר מדי מתי חרם אקדמי מוצדק.

באופן דומה, יש להבחין בין צעדי החרמה אקדמיים של ישראל, לבין צעדי החרמה חלקיים, למשל, של אוניברסיטת אריאל. הנסיון לטשטש את ההבחנה בין צעדים כאלה הוא עוד ניסיון להתעלם מהקו הירוק, ועימו ממציאות חייהם של מיליוני אנשים נטולי כל זכויות פוליטיות ומשפטיות שחיים תחת כיבוש ודיכוי. גם אם חוק החרם קובע אחרת, אין שום טעם לחשוב שדין החרמת אוניברסיטת אריאל כדין החרמת אוניברסיטת תל אביב או אוניברסיטת חיפה.

צעדי החרמה אקדמיים הם תמיד בעייתיים – הם עלולים לפגוע במדע, בקריירות של א/נשים צעירים/ות, אולי אף בקולגיאליות אינטקטואלית כלשהי. לכן אין להקל ראש בנקיטתם. יש לוודא שאין נזקם מרובה על תועלתם. לכן ייחודה של האקדמיה דווקא לחרם אינו מוצדק: אמנם האקדמיה מעורבת בכיבוש, אבל באופן כללי היא אינה מעורבת בכיבוש יותר מהמידה שבה כל ישראלי מעורב בכיבוש (וכשהמעורבות של יחידה אקדמית אכן מרכזית יותר, כמו למשל כשמדובר באוניברסיטת אריאל, אכן צעדי החרמה מוצדקים יותר). ואינני חושב שיש מי שיכול ברצינות לחשוב שמצוקתם המקצועית של מספר אנשי אקדמיה תזעזע את הציבור הישראלי או את מקבלי ההחלטות עד שישקלו מחדש את תמיכתם בכיבוש.

אין, אם כן, טעם לייחד פעילות אקדמית כראויה במיוחד להחרמה. אבל גם אין טעם לייחדה כמוגנת במיוחד מצעדי החרמה מוצדקים. אני מקווה שבפני מדינת ישראל יעמדו יותר ויותר צעדי החרמה מסוגים שונים. אני מקווה שהם יהיו בעיקר צעדים אפקטיביים יותר – כאלה שיכבידו כלכלית, בעיקר על אליטות עסקיות, כאלה שיקשו על ישראלים להראות את פרצופם בעולם, כאלה שיפגעו בייצוג ישראלי בספורט העולמי. ואז, כחלק ממאבק החרמות בלתי אלים במדיניות ישראל, המחשבה שיש לפטור את המעגל האקדמי מהשלכות המאבק נראית לי מגוחכת,וגם נרקיסיסטית משהו. בנסיבות כאלה, אקבל צעדים רבים מאוד של החרמה אקדמית בברכה.

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https://www.facebook.com/groups/bashaaracil/permalink/5671660686296235/

הפקולטה למשפטים באוניברסיטה העברית

2d  · 

ברכות חמות לפרופ’ דוד אנוך על זכייתו בפרס פולק לזכר פרופ’ יורם בן-פורת לחוקר מצטיין מטעם נשיא האוניברסיטה העברית.

פרופ’ אנוך מוכר ומוערך כחוקר והוגה מוביל בפילוסופיה של המוסר, פילוסופיה פוליטית ובפילוסופיה של המשפט, בישראל ובעולם.

טקס הענקת הפרס נערך בתחילת שבוע שעבר בהשתתפות הנהלת האוניברסיטה והפקולטה, ורבים.ות נוספים.

Warmest Congratulations to Prof. David Enoch for winning the Hebrew University President’s Award for an Outstanding Researcher, the 2022-2023 Israel Pollak Prize in Memory of Prof. Yoram Ben-Porath.

Prof. Enoch, of the Faculty of Law and the Department of Philosophy, is recognized as a leading thinker and researcher in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and the philosophy of law. The award was granted earlier in the last week at a ceremony attended by the leadership of the University and Faculty, and many others.

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https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-724535

December 11, 2022: Beyond blarney Movers and shakers in Israeli society. 

By Greer Fay Cashman 

The Jerusalem Post,

THERE IS no doubt that antisemitism in its diversity keeps Jews actively engaged in fighting it and in forming local, national and international networks for the exchange of information about increased verbal and physical aggression against Jews, means of combating such manifestations and what is needed to protect Jewish communities from assaults. Strangely, the social negativism that brings all this about helps to identify and develop Jewish leadership potential, which finds outlets not only in the struggle against antisemitism and boycotts, but also in other avenues of Jewish life and even in the broader community. If all the antisemites realized that what they do helps to develop Jewish leadership – they might stop delegitimizing and persecuting Jews. On Thursday, December 15, the World Zionist Organization and its Department for the Struggle against Antisemitism and the Boosting of Jewish Resilience, will hold its annual conference on the Challenges of Fighting Boycotts Against Israel.

The event, which will be held at the ANU Museum on the campus of Tel Aviv University, will examine the situation from legal, economic and social perspectives. There will be three separate panels, with panelists including inter alia several academics such as Prof. Rafi Melnick, the president of Reichman University, Prof. Oded Murdoch of Ariel University, Prof. Asa Kasher, emeritus professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University, and one of Israel’s most consulted experts on ethics, and Prof. David Enoch, of the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Law.

The day’s discussions will be summed up by Mark Regev, the head of the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy at Reichman University, and Prof. Albert Pinhasov, the rector of Ariel University.

Regev who writes a weekly column for The Jerusalem Post, is a former Israel ambassador to the UK, where he frequently encountered antisemitic and anti-Israel attitudes.

One of the highlights of the event will be a one-on-one discussion on the legitimacy of a boycott in which Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, a British-born lawyer by profession, will talk with controversial American lawyer Prof. Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus of the Harvard University Law School.

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Click to access david_enochs_cv.pdf

Education
– Ph.D. in philosophy, New York University, May 2003.
– B.A. in philosophy, Magna cum Laude, Tel Aviv University, March 1993.
– LL.B. (in law), Tel Aviv University, March 1993.