13.11.24

Editorial Note

The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) has recently announced a vote on a motion concerning “collaborations with Israeli academic institutions in light of the ongoing systematic human rights violations in Palestine, Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and plausible genocide committed in the Gaza strip.” The ballot will take place during its next annual general meeting in July 2025.

EASA argues that “international intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations, have documented and verified Israel’s systematic annexation and colonization of Palestinian lands, massive violations of Palestinians’ human rights, a 17-year blockade of the Gaza strip, segregationist and discriminating policies, the ongoing massacres of civilians in Gaza as well as continuing violations of International Law with the International Court of Justice considering plausible a genocide, and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor acknowledging Israel’s responsibility in war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

EASA accuses Israel of “systematic violations, which include the destruction of all Gazan universities and the intentional obliteration of schools, teachers and students, characterized as ‘scholasticide’ by international law experts” and that “these systematic violations also include restricting freedom of movement for Palestinians; isolating, undermining, or otherwise attacking Palestinian educational institutions; harassing Palestinian professors, teachers, and students; harassing Israeli professors and students criticizing Israeli policies; destroying, confiscating, or otherwise rendering Palestinian archival material inaccessible; and maintaining inequality in educational resources between Palestinians and Israelis; considering that Israeli universities are imbricated in these systematic violations through their provision of direct assistance to the Israeli military and intelligence establishments, that they (Technion, Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University) hold joint programs with arms industries and that they actively contribute to the state’s military propaganda (a practice commonly known as hasbara).”

EASA also claims that “European governments have systematically shielded successive Israeli governments from being held accountable for such violations and facilitated them through unprecedented diplomatic, military, and economic support.” 

EASA ended the motion by stating it “recognizes the right of scholars to academic freedom and is committed to the defense and promotion of human rights, and that the need for immediate action using peaceful means has never been greater.”

The motion asks to resolve that EASA “Does not collaborate with Israeli academic institutions until Israel complies with International Law and International Humanitarian Law and ends the occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” That EASA “Directs the EASA Executive Committee to work in consultation with the Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom to give effect to the spirit and intent of this motion, in a manner consistent with EASA’s bylaws as well as the relevant national laws of its members.” And that EASA “Encourages EASA members not to enter into institutional arrangements, e.g. through common research projects and grants, with Israeli academic institutions.” 

Signed by the EASA members who submitted the motion to the EASA’s General Assembly: Miriyam Aouragh, Roberto Beneduce, Yazid Ben Hounet, Marianna Betti, Véronique Bontemps, Heath Cabot, Ian Cook, Jane Cowan, Antonio De Lauri, Malay Firoz, Martin Fotta, Mattia Fumanti, Don Kalb, Nichola Khan, Shahram Khosravi, Heidi Mogstad, Alessandro Monsutti, Annelies Moors, Fiona Murphy, Yael Navaro, Carmeliza Rosario, Simona Taliani, Anna-Esther Younes. 

The organization is a long-time agitator against Israel. To recall, in October 2018, EASA passed a motion on “Israeli academic institutions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” when EASA voted online in “overwhelming numbers to express their solidarity with colleagues in occupied Palestinian territories… The motion called for EASA to express its own opposition to the establishment of academic institutions exclusively serving Israeli citizens, situated within occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and to pledge its own non-cooperation with these institutions; and to express its solidarity with Palestinian academics and students suffering the brunt of these discriminatory policies as well as with the Israeli colleagues of the Israeli Sociological Association and Israeli Anthropological association who oppose the same policies.” 

To recall, IAM reported that Dr. Matan Kaminer was behind the EASA motion in 2018 and that Dr. Nir Avieli the President of the Israeli Anthropological Association, thanked EASA for boycotting academic institutions such as Ariel University. Both he and Kaminer were not sanctioned, although it was illegal to support a boycott after the Knesset passed the Boycott Law in 2011. 

However, on the “About Us” page, EASA states it is registered as a charity in the UK. It says, “EASA is a self-governing democratic body. It is both registered with Companies House and with the Charity Commission. As such it is bound by its constitution, relevant laws and EASA adheres to guidance on proper governance.” 

IAM checked the charity governance code: “The board acts with Integrity. It adopts values, applies ethical principles to decisions and creates a welcoming and supportive culture which helps achieve the charity’s purposes. The board is aware of the significance of the public’s confidence and trust in charities.  It reflects the charity’s ethics and values in everything it does. Trustees undertake their duties with this in mind… Delivering the charity’s purposes for public benefit should be at the heart of everything the board does…Everyone who comes into contact with a charity should be treated with dignity and respect and feel that they are in a safe and supportive environment. Charity leaders should show the highest levels of personal integrity and conduct. To achieve this, trustees should create a culture that supports the charity’s values, adopt behaviors and policies in line with the values and set aside any personal interests or loyalties. The board should understand and address any inappropriate power dynamics to avoid damaging the charity’s reputation, public support for its work and delivery of its aims… The board acts in the best interests of the charity’s purposes and its beneficiaries, creating a safe, respectful and welcoming environment for those who come into contact with it. The board makes objective decisions about delivering the charity’s purposes. It is not unduly influenced by those who may have special or personal interests… Collectively, the board is independent in its decision making. No one person or group has undue power or influence in the charity.”

Clearly, the proposed EASA motion violates the charity governance code.

It should come as no surprise that the pro-Palestinian camp doubles its efforts to boycott Israel by all means. As IAM noted before, the pro-Palestinian camp hijacks professional associations, in this case through EASAmembers4Palestine, and turns them into a tool for bashing Israel.

REFERENCES:

https://easaonline.org/newsletter/86-0724/item2

2. Motion concerning collaborations with Israeli academic institutions

The Motion has been added to the AGM agenda and will be discussed in Barcelona.

The EASA executive committee has received a Motion concerning collaborations with Israeli academic institutions in light of the ongoing systematic human rights violations in Palestine, Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and plausible genocide committed in the Gaza strip. The Motion has been added to the AGM agenda and will be discussed in Barcelona. The Motion submitted to EASA can also be found on a EASAmembers4Palestine with more detailed information, FAQs, and endorsements from various EASA members. In particular the FAQ section is useful in preparing the debate on this Motion at the next AGM.

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https://easamembers4palestine.wordpress.com/

Motion

Motion concerning collaborations with Israeli academic institutions in light of the ongoing systematic human rights violations in Palestine, Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and plausible genocide committed in the Gaza strip.

Considering that the European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA) has on numerous occasions manifested its commitment to academic freedom and human rights; 

considering that in 2018 the Assembly voted a motion expressing its opposition to the establishment and regularization of Israeli academic institutions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and supported calls to end collaborations with such institutions; 

considering that international intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations, have documented and verified Israel’s systematic annexation and colonization of Palestinian lands, massive violations of Palestinians’ human rights, a 17-year blockade of the Gaza strip, segregationist and discriminating policies, the ongoing massacres of civilians in Gaza as well as continuing violations of International Law with the International Court of Justice considering plausible a genocide, and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor acknowledging Israel’s responsibility in war crimes and crimes against humanity; 

considering the systematic violations, which include the destruction of all Gazan universities and the intentional obliteration of schools, teachers and students, characterized as ‘scholasticide’ by international law experts; 

considering that these systematic violations also include restricting freedom of movement for Palestinians; isolating, undermining, or otherwise attacking Palestinian educational institutions; harassing Palestinian professors, teachers, and students; harassing Israeli professors and students criticizing Israeli policies; destroying, confiscating, or otherwise rendering Palestinian archival material inaccessible; and maintaining inequality in educational resources between Palestinians and Israelis; 

considering that Israeli universities are imbricated in these systematic violations through their provision of direct assistance to the Israeli military and intelligence establishments, that they (Technion, Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University) hold joint programs with arms industries and that they actively contribute to the state’s military propaganda (a practice commonly known as hasbara); 

considering that European governments have systematically shielded successive Israeli governments from being held accountable for such violations and facilitated them through unprecedented diplomatic, military, and economic support; 

considering that EASA recognizes the right of scholars to academic freedom and is committed to the defense and promotion of human rights, and that the need for immediate action using peaceful means has never been greater; be it

Resolved, that the EASA:

1. Does not collaborate with Israeli academic institutions until Israel complies with International Law and International Humanitarian Law and ends the occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
2. Directs the EASA Executive Committee to work in consultation with the Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom to give effect to the spirit and intent of this motion, in a manner consistent with EASA’s bylaws as well as the relevant national laws of its members.
3. Encourages EASA members not to enter into institutional arrangements, e.g. through common research projects and grants, with Israeli academic institutions.

Submitted to EASA’s General Assembly by:

Miriyam Aouragh, Roberto Beneduce, Yazid Ben Hounet, Marianna Betti, Véronique Bontemps, Heath Cabot, Ian Cook, Jane Cowan, Antonio De Lauri, Malay Firoz, Martin Fotta, Mattia Fumanti, Don Kalb, Nichola Khan, Shahram Khosravi, Heidi Mogstad, Alessandro Monsutti, Annelies Moors, Fiona Murphy, Yael Navaro, Carmeliza Rosario, Simona Taliani, Anna-Esther Younes.

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https://easaonline.org/newsletter/86-0724/item1

1. President’s Letter

President Ana Ivasiuc addresses the membership

Our mid-summer newsletter reaches you right before our most anticipated event: the EASA2024 conference. Many of you have already started tweeting and posting on upcoming events (remember to use the hashtag #EASA2024 on X!) and it is heartening to see so much enthusiasm building up to the conference.

Although understandably the highlight of this month is the EASA conference, I want to draw your attention to four topics of interest further detailed in this newsletter.

The first is the Motion that was submitted to EASA for debate at the next AGM on the topic of collaboration with Israeli academic institutions. The Motion builds on past debates and decisions taken by the EASA membership to curtail collaboration with Israeli academic institutions situated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Motion debated in 2018 in Stockholm) and recommends, in light of the current genocidal violence that the Israeli state is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, that our association takes appropriate measures to exert non-violent pressure on Israeli academic institutions to end the violation of human rights and the violence against Palestinians. We take this subject seriously and I urge all our members to consult EASAmembers4Palestineset up by the signatories of the motion, and to prepare for our debate during the AGM by going carefully through the FAQ section of the website.

The second news of interest is the constitution of the Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom, which started its activity on the 1st of June. The group (on whom you can read more below), composed of Julie Billaud, Chandana Mathur, Ruba Salih, Helena Zohdi, and our executive committee liaison, Hayal Akarsu, is already active and its first task, decided during the group’s first meeting, is to monitor the debate within EASA on the Motion concerning EASA’s ties with Israeli academic institutions.

Another important initiative of the current executive committee is the setup of a mentorship program. Recognising the need for mentoring in the early stages of the academic career and taking stock of similar initiatives elsewhere, we are launching a call for mentees that will receive guidance and mentoring from a group of dedicated EASA members with a wide array of skills and expertise. My immense gratitude goes to those of you who have accepted to be mentors and are generously offering your time to pilot this initiative for the next academic year, and to my wonderful colleagues, Hege Høyer Leivestad and Hayal Akarsu for setting up the program.

Finally, many of you suggested over the last few years that a renewal of our website is long overdue. I am happy to let you know that we have started working on the complete overhaul of EASA’s website. After the first meetings with Juhani Juurik, a graphic designer trained as an anthropologist, and with our NomadIT colleagues, I can attest to how complex and time-consuming this task is. Nevertheless, we are aiming at delivering a new website – or at least a first version of it – by the beginning of December. To help us centre the needs of our membership regarding our website, we need your support with the member survey further described below.

And now very briefly again on the upcoming conference. The timetable, so carefully curated by the Local and the Scientific Committees, is brimming with incredible panels, round tables, and events that touch upon crucial issues of our time. We will debate, among other things, the kinds of public anthropology that EASA should embrace (the round table “EASA Voices in a Troubled World”, Tuesday 11.00-12.30, Room 304), the state of academic freedom and censorship around Palestine (the round table “Academic Freedom, Censorship and Palestine: Anthropology in Crisis Again”, Thursday 18.30-20.00, Museu Marítim de Barcelona), anthropological engagements with the confluence between the far-right and capitalism, the impact of precarity on anthropologists, and many more topics that demonstrate more than ever anthropology’s relevance in our worlds and times.

Our conference begins on Thursday, 18 July, with a rich online offering starting early in the morning and featuring no less than 140 panels, labs, round tables and events in a single day. A highlight on the schedule is The Mantas Kvedaravičius Film Award 2024, which we are honoured to continue from its first edition in 2022. The winning film will be screened to EASA members on the online day of the conference and followed by the award ceremony and a Q&A with the directors.

One of the things that makes me incredibly proud of our association and grateful to the Barcelona Local Committee for its work is the organisation, within EASA 2024, of events in Spanish and in Catalan. This reminds us that EASA was conceived as a multilingual association, and that amidst calls for decolonising anthropology, we should return to the polyphony afforded by our different languages. On this note, I am looking forward to wishing you Benvinguts i Benvingudes a Barcelona for #EASA2024.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQs on the Motion to End Collaborations with Israeli Academic Institutions

Who is behind the motion?

A group of EASA members proposed the motion in response to Israel’s ongoing human rights violations in Palestine, including crimes against humanity and plausible genocide committed in Gaza. We can be reached at this email address: easamembers4palestine@gmail.com

You can follow us on X: @EASA4Palestine

What is the motion’s purpose?
The motion specifically targets Israeli academic institutions rather than individual scholars. It holds these institutions accountable for their complicity or involvement in Israel’s systematic violations of human rights and international law. Suspending collaborations with Israeli academic institutions is a non-violent means to pressure Israel into complying with international law and ending its unlawful assaults and occupation whilst showing solidarity with the Palestinian people, including fellow scholars and students.

Why should members of EASA support the motion?
As scholars and members of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), we are at a critical juncture that demands immediate action and a principled stance. This motion responds to several urgent issues, from academic complicity in human rights violations to the systematic destruction of Palestinian education. Below, we lay out the core reasons why members should support this motion and debunk some common myths. 

Addressing academic complicity
As members of a professional association, we have a particular responsibility to address academic complicity. Israeli universities are complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and human rights in Palestine through their provision of direct assistance to the Israeli military and intelligence establishments. Israeli universities have been involved in developing military technologies and strategies used in the occupation of Palestinian territories, conducting archaeological digs that displace Palestinian communities, and engaging in research that supports state policies of segregation and discrimination. Several research centres and universities hold joint programs with arms industries and actively contribute to the state’s military propaganda. Others are built on top of depopulated Palestinian villages or partially based in illegal settlements. The ideological and material contributions of these institutions, across numerous academic disciplines, have long been part of the expansion of the Zionist settler-colonial project and the expulsion of Palestinians from their land.

This motion urges Israeli academic and research institutions to consider their roles and responsibilities and make efforts to align their actions with universal principles of justice and human dignity. It also demonstrates the commitment of anthropologists associated with EASA to hold academic institutions ethically accountable. 

Addressing ‘scholasticide’
Israel’s violations include the destruction of all Gazan universities as well as the targeted assaults on schools, teachers and students. This has been characterised as ‘scholasticide’: the deliberate and systematic destruction of education and the annihilation of cultural heritage sites. As professionals who decry programme closures, constraints on academic freedom and funding cuts in other contexts, we have a responsibility to respond to this willful destruction of Palestinian education and knowledge systems. 

Solidarity with Palestinian Colleagues
Palestinian scholars and civil society have long been advocating for a halt in collaboration with Israeli academic institutions as a means to pressure Israel to stop violating Palestinian rights. This motion supports this effort and signals a commitment to solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues. 

Historical Responsibility
Anthropology as a discipline has an obligation to address racism, colonialism and oppression in all their forms. Supporting the motion aligns with the field’s commitment to decolonization, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, human rights, conflict resolution, anti-militarism and peace-making.

Commitment to Human Rights
EASA has a strong tradition of advocating human rights. This motion aligns with this long-held tradition and is aimed at Israeli academic institutions to enact internal reforms that ensure  adherence to international human rights standards and principles.

Research Ethics
Israeli academic research has been used to justify land seizures, the expulsion of Palestinians and violation of international law and research ethics. For example, the discourse and excavation practices of archaeology departments contribute to the erasure of Muslim/Arabic history. Law and criminology scholars have recast definitions of war crimes and labels such as ‘human shields’ to incite and justify destructive force on civilian infrastructures. This unethical misuse of research violates the basic ethical principle of ensuring that our research ‘does no harm’ and warrants ethical refusal and resistance from the anthropological community. The motion sends a clear message that EASA does not condone such unethical research misuse. 

European Complicity
The European Union and several European countries provide substantial support to Israel–diplomatically, militarily, and economically. Israeli universities are engaged in many partnerships with European universities and research institutions, even though many have recently moved to suspend their collaboration with Israeli institutions (for example here, here, here, here and here). Israel continues to receive substantial European research funding, such as through Horizon 2020. Many of these research projects involve the Israeli arms industry. EASA’s stance can help raise awareness about this and foster public discussion about European policies and funding schemes. 

Repression in European Academia
Over the past year,  the repression and silencing of Palestinian rights activism has intensified across European cities and universities. European academia is currently characterized by a  “spiral of silence” where scholars, particularly those in precarious positions, fear speaking out about Palestine due to potential repercussions. In different European contexts, executive boards of universities have sent in riot police in response to the poems, chants and speeches of their peaceful students and staff members. Silence and active repression stifle academic debate and hinder the pursuit of justice for everyone. This motion signifies a refusal to stay silent and may empower individual EASA members to speak out as part of a larger collective. 

Urgency
The rapid destruction of life and habitable spaces in Gaza demands immediate action.  Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, and its differential treatment of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship have long been happening with impunity, despite recognized as crimes of apartheid. In response to the current scale of devastation and racialized dehumanisation, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) deemed genocide by Israel ‘plausible’. 

As scholars and members of EASA, we are morally and politically obligated to speak out against the systematic eradication of an entire population, to support our colleagues and students, and to uphold the principles of academic freedom and human rights. Peaceful forms of protest, such as suspending further collaborations with implicated universities and research centres, are crucial to addressing our complicity, breaking silences, and advocating for meaningful, sustainable change.

Correcting Common Misconceptions

It is important to address and counter common myths about petitions to suspend collaborations with Israeli institutions to ensure that the debate is informed by accurate information and ethical considerations. Misconceptions can undermine legitimate political actions and distract from the real issues at hand, such as institutional complicity in human rights violations. By debunking these myths, we uphold the principles of academic freedom, human rights, and justice, ensuring that our actions are grounded in truth and moral responsibility.

Tale #1: Refusing to collaborate with Israeli academic institutions is antisemitic

• In actuality: The suspension of collaboration with Israeli academic institutions is a form of principled non-violent protest aimed at the state of Israel and the universities and research institutions complicit in its policies. This action targets their decisions and actions, not Jewish people, distinguishing it from antisemitism. Collaboration in academia involves partnerships underpinned by shared ethical standards and mutual respect for human rights. When institutions are found to be complicit—meaning that they actively support or are directly involved in actions that violate international law and human rights—suspending collaboration is a legitimate form of non-violent protest. Equating such acts of protest and criticism with antisemitism undermines academic freedom and distracts from the real issue of institutional complicity in oppression. 

Tale #2: The motion undermines academic freedom.

• In actuality: Academic freedom includes the right to engage in political activities and express views, including support for motions like this. The motion targets institutions, not individual scholars. Israeli scholars can continue attending conferences, publishing work, and collaborating with peers. The motion’s aim is to influence the policies of Israeli institutions complicit in human rights violations without restricting the academic freedom of individual scholars. Furthermore, Israeli policies violate the academic freedom of Palestinians by restricting access to education and international academic collaboration and through the destruction of Palestinian universities. Academic freedom for critical Israeli scholars is equally restrained. Research on sensitive themes such as the Nakba of 1948 is structurally undermined, whereas projects that further Israel’s military campaign and/or settlement practices are actively supported. This motion is a motion for academic freedom for all. 

Tale #3: The motion prevents Israeli and European academics from working together.

• In actuality: The motion targets institutions, not individual scholars. It does not prevent Israeli and European scholars from collaborating together. In fact, several Israeli organizations, such as Boycott from within and Academia for Equality, are also urging to address institutional complicity for similar reasons.  

Tale #4: Motions like this are purely symbolic and ineffective.

• In actuality: Discontinuing academic partnerships or suspending institutional  agreements and research projects help to expose institutional complicity in mass violence and raise international awareness of Palestinian struggles, thereby building pressure for change. Israel’s extensive efforts to counter such initiatives indicate their potential material and symbolic effectiveness. As a major European professional association of anthropologists, EASA can leverage its influence to advocate with others for Israel to end its abuses against Palestinians.

Tale #5: Academic pressure stifles debate and isolates Israeli anthropologists.

• In actuality: Academic freedom is a complex issue in Israeli institutions.Academics and students who critique state policies and speak out against the Israeli system of oppression are often forced into exile or subject to silencing, censorship, detention and persecution. Moreover, not a single university in Israel has spoken up against the grave human rights abuses in Gaza or has called for a cease-fire, since Israel’s incursion into Gaza. The motion advocates for dismantling these punitive restrictions and encouraging free and open discussion for all scholars.

Tale #6: Dialogue is a better way to support Palestinian rights 

• In actuality: Dialogue without substantive change entrenches the status quo. Moreover, academic pressure can have a material and immediate impact on complicit Israeli institutions, as evidenced in the historical case of South Africa. 

Tale #7: The end of all institutional collaboration unfairly singles out Israel.

• In actuality: EASA has taken positions on various human rights issues worldwide.  Publishing open letters or voting on resolutions on political issues has long been a practice of the EASA. This is in line with calls for public engagement of anthropologists on a wide range of issues such as threats to academic freedom or departmental closures. The motion is part of the discipline’s broader commitment to advocating against human rights violations.

Tale #8: Supporting the motion will divide and harm EASA.

• In actuality:  It is important for EASA to maintain its commitment to human rights and ethical academic practices. The motion will be debated within EASA, reflecting a democratic process that underscores the urgency of action. We believe that for most members of EASA, healthy debate and disagreements are normal and desirable. As exemplified by other scholarly associations that have adopted similar resolutions, such discussions will not be harmful for a professional association that encourages and embraces diversity of opinion. 

Further, this motion is not unprecedented. In 2018, the Assembly voted on a motion expressing its opposition to the establishment and regularization of Israeli academic institutions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and supported calls to end collaborations with such institutions. Four years prior, in 2014, another motion to end the culture of silence and condemn the ongoing war and blockade against the inhabitants of Gaza was proposed but not approved.

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Endorsements

Endorsements

If you would like to write an endorsement for us, send an email to: easamembers4palestine@gmail.com

“I come from a formerly colonized country whose independence was undermined by South Africa’s apartheid regime backing a murderous destabilizing war. The Palestinian plight, for me, is not just about humanism; it is a deeply felt pain born out of continuously reliving a trauma.”

Carmeliza Rosario, Postdoctoral Researcher, Chr Michelsen Institute

“As a scholar based in Switzerland, I have been profoundly disturbed by how contrasted were the statements by swissuniversities, the umbrella organisation of the national universities, on Ukraine and Gaza. In the first case, swissuniversities “call on European governments to take immediate action to protect the lives and careers of Ukrainian university staff, students, researchers, and civil society actors.” The statement proceeds noting that “the warlike developments will have serious consequences for Ukrainian universities. Swiss universities will do everything in their power to host teachers, researchers and students from Ukrainian universities.” In the second case, the tone is quite different: “In view of the evolution of the situation within certain Swiss higher education institutions, we would like to position ourselves … First, the attempt to exploit an institution for political purposes does not offer the basic conditions for constructive dialogue. Second, maintaining academic dialogue is essential. Higher education institutions cannot accept to exclude people or institutions who are part of the academic community. Third, universities are not political actors. Higher education institutions are mandated to fulfil academic missions of research and teaching.”
How is it possible that the umbrella organisation of academic institutions in Switzerland, a country that enshrines neutrality as the core principle of its foreign policy, adopts so unapologetically such a double standard? How can we make sense that the legitimate concern for Ukrainian teachers, researchers and students was not extended to Gazan teachers, researchers and students? Decades of public and academic debates on the legacy of colonialism seem suddenly wiped out. I could not help but recall the colonial matrix of power, originally formulated by Anibal Quijano and brought forward by Walter Mignolo to describe the darker side of Western modernity.”

Alessandro Monsutti, Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Geneva Graduate Institute

“What is our responsibility as anthropologists in the face of the risk of genocide, according to some, or proven genocide, according to serious reports (here and here), of the Palestinian people? What is our role in the face of scholasticide in Gaza? How can we continue to teach about colonialism, apartheid, human rights, democracy and the anthropologist’s position on these issues if we remain mute and inactive in the face of the annihilation of Palestine and its indigenous people? It’s up to European social anthropologists to show the way and take concrete action to alert our European governments, which are, for most of them, inactive and even complicit in the ongoing genocide. That’s what it means to be on the right side of history! I know this as a citizen and I know this as an anthropologist working on Algeria. To quote Frantz Fanon in a letter written to his friend Roger Taïeb short before his death (1961): “We are nothing on this earth if we are not first and foremost slaves to a cause: the cause of the peoples, the cause of justice and freedom” “.

Yazid Ben Hounet, Researcher at CNRS (Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale, EHESS)

“Cutting ties with Israeli universities is a blunt instrument to some anthropologists. It inevitably conjures up images of erasures, severs, and the impossibility of carrying on dialogues and collaborations, some of which may allow for redressing past and present injustices and inequities.  Some consider severing ties and collaborations as a futile or even counterproductive action driven by ideology; for others, this will go against what many see as the central tenet of our discipline, anthropology’s emphasis on complexity and nuance.

While I am all in favor of anthropology’s emphasis on finely engrained ethnographies, nuanced scholarship, and complex multivocal narratives, the events of the past eight months make it particularly compelling for anthropologists to heed the Palestinian civil society call for cutting ties with Israeli universities to pressure Israel into ending its occupation and apartheid policies and its current military campaign in Gaza, which the ICJ ruling considers at plausible risk of genocide against the Palestinian people. 

Many reports and publications by civil society organizations, journalists, and scholars have stressed how Israeli universities are major, willing, and persistent accomplices in Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid. Both Nick Riemer’s Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation and Maya Wind’s Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom illuminate how Israeli universities are central to Israel’s colonial project. Israeli universities, Riemer and Wind argue, are involved in developing weapon systems; they advise and support Israeli ethno-nationalist policies, justifying the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land; provide moral justification for extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations; and systematically discriminate against Palestinian students and staff. Moreover, as both Riemer and Wind show, Israeli universities support Israeli policies that undermine Palestinian education by intentionally crippling or dismantling all forms of Palestinian education. Indeed, since October, Israel’s targeted destruction of education in Gaza has intensified to new levels. With over 80% of schools destroyed, the damage and destruction of all universities in Gaza, and the killing of university lecturers, schoolteachers, and students, UN experts, scholars, and journalists have now called this unprecedented destruction of all aspects of education a ‘scholasticide‘ and ‘educide‘.

As a scholar of Namibia and Southern Africa, I am particularly sensitive to the themes of settler colonialism, oppression, and apartheid. The long history of the anti-colonial struggle and the contribution of transnational solidarity networks to it moves me deeply. In building on alliances between civil society and religious organizations, students, workers’ movements, and academics, these transnational networks supported and amplified the voices of colonial subjects fighting for their liberation. Organizations, like the Anti-Apartheid movement in Britain, were at the center of the international movement opposing the South African apartheid system. It is this rich history of solidarities across borders, to which many anthropologists contributed, that today has inspired many academic associations, student governments, and unions, as well as thousands of international academics across the world, to support cutting ties with Israeli universities and refuse to normalize oppression.

The proposal to cut ties with Israel’s academic institutions is not simply a moral position but the response to an organized movement within Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora that sees it as one of the many strategies to end Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism, forced displacement, dispossession, and apartheid. Palestinians themselves are directly asking the world for solidarity; as anthropologists, we should respond to this call and support the Palestinian people in their struggle.”

Mattia Fumanti, Senior Lecturer, The University of St Andrews

“The call for a full academic boycott of Israeli institutions was first made by PACBI in 2004. At the time, the need for international solidarity with the Palestinian people, those living under the scourge of a brutal colonial occupation, struggling against an internationally inoculated and western armed Israeli state, was deeply pressing. The academic boycott call asks us, the global scholastic community, to boycott Israel and its institutions that make up the apparatus of control that allows for Israel’s occupation to remain unchecked. It does so because it recognises the critical role that the Israeli academy plays in terms of providing the intellectual apparatus, and key research strategies that are required to continue the illegal occupation of Palestine, including; research into hydrology, arms and ammunitions, and architectures of oppression, to name but a few. 

Since the beginning of the genocide against the Palestinian population, with the focus being on Gaza, Israel has undertaken a systematic campaign to destroy the entire Palestinian education system. Thousands of students, school teachers and university professors have been martyred, and every university in Gaza has been partially or wholly destroyed. The Gaza Municipal Archive and hundreds of libraries, bookstores, and publishing houses are no more, in the blatant act of attempted settler colonial erasure. 

It is often argued that those who choose to boycott Israeli academic institutions are, in fact, limiting the opportunities to foster peaceful dialogue between adversaries. But we must be clear, and to borrow the words of Ghassan Kanafani, we cannot allow for a flawed conversation between the sword and the neck, all in the purported pursuit of ‘academic freedom’.

Moreover, arguments against the call for boycott fail to take into consideration the fact that Palestinian academics are routinely denied even the most basic access to the wider international academic community, with many scholars and students routinely denied the opportunity to travel by the Israeli occupation. Yet, far from an international outcry, the silence of the international community in this regard is deafening, and certainly stands in stark contrast to the clamour of those who scream ‘academic freedom’ when it comes to chastising the BDS demands.

In the face of ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, as western leaders continue to display almost complete inertia and unwillingness to reign in their genocidal ally, ignoring this call for boycott, as one of many forms of Palestinian resistance, would be a supreme act of negligence and a dereliction of our duty as scholars committed to social justice. 

If not now, when?”

Dr Brendan Ciarán Browne, Trinity College Dublin

“My 8-year-old daughter recently asked me, “What is the world going to do for Palestinian children?” I struggled to answer this. She has seen me leave the house on many Saturdays since last October to march in solidarity with friends seeking a ceasefire in Palestine. As careful as we are with media in our home, she has heard and seen snippets about the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Wise beyond her years, she worries about the world in ways that never bothered me as an 8-year-old. As a parent, I want to promise my daughter a world full of hope, fairness, and equality, but we are living in bleak times, so answers do not settle easily on the tip of the tongue.

In my work as an anthropologist, I engage with many different kinds of people with lived experience of conflict and forced displacement. I teach and chair an MA in Refugee Integration in Dublin City University.  For many of us in the university community that I work in (on the island of Ireland), the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people is not a distant issue; it is a mirror reflecting and connecting across historical trajectories and continuities of settler colonialism, conflict, and forced displacement. It is thus incumbent on us, because of the very nature of the work we do, to speak, to act, and to remain steadfast in our daily solidarity with those enduring conflict, violence, and forced displacement. This is not the time for weariness or despair but for advocacy, activism, and action.

Our students, from all corners of the globe, have reminded us of this with fierce bravery. In many universities, they have redefined their relationship with protest and solidarity (and indeed the neoliberal university) to recognise the interconnectedness of conflicts, violence, forced displacement, and the climate crisis on a global scale. Hannah Arendt, writing about the student protests of the 1960s, once asked, “Who are they, this new generation? Those who hear the ticking. And who are they who utterly deny them? Those who do not know, or who refuse to face, things as they really are.” Our present moment is a testament to this generational dynamic. The ticking is no longer a distant sound; it is a deafening alarm, demanding our attention and action, and so we must all act and not leave it only to our brave students.

The motion before us, addressing the suspension of collaborations with Israeli academic institutions, is more than a political stance; it is, for me at least, a moral imperative. The European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA) has always championed academic freedom and human rights. In my own time on the executive committee, I saw many letters and statements of solidarity written addressing different conflicts and crises in the world that we live in. In so doing, EASA has always attempted to weave a fabric of support and thick solidarity both between its members and many of the people and communities that we work with. This issue should be no different.

International organisations have thoroughly documented Israel’s systematic annexation and colonisation of Palestinian lands, the severe human rights violations, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and the segregationist/apartheid structures and policies that perpetuate violence and inequality. The International Court of Justice has returned a judgment of plausible genocide. The destruction of Gazan universities and the targeted attacks on schools, teachers, and students—termed ‘scholasticide’—are part of a broader assault on education and enlightenment. Palestinian institutions are not just under siege; they have been systematically annihilated. Meanwhile, Israeli universities, deeply intertwined with military and state propaganda efforts, continue to support these violations. Despite these grim realities, many European governments continue to provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to Israel, shielding them from accountability.

When my daughter next asks about the world’s actions for Palestinian children, I will tell her about our small attempts to shift the dial on what is happening in the world today. Supporting this motion is a vital step towards that. As Hannah Arendt once poignantly noted, “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” By endorsing this motion, we make a conscious collective choice as a community of anthropologists to reject complicity and embrace our role as scholar-advocates for accountability and justice.”

Fiona Murphy, Assistant Professor in Refugee Studies, Dublin City University

I fully support the motion put forth by EASAmembers4Palestine to the European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA) to: cut ties with Israeli academic institutions; work with the Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom to implement this motion; and encourage EASA members not to enter into institutional arrangements with Israeli academic institutions. 

If not now, when? After all, we are witness to Israel’s annihilation of the Palestinian people, its failure to comply with International Law and International Humanitarian Law, its operation of occupation, apartheid, and now, genocide.

I write as a long-time EASA member, as past president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), as an anthropologist, as a Jew, and as a concerned citizen of the world. In all those affiliations and identities, I understand my special obligation to consider the suffering of others. I also understand that safety and security can only come when all people are safe and secure; militarism, occupation, apartheid, and genocidal violence are obviously counter-productive to that goal. I am aware of the power structures that reproduce inequities and the social suffering that results, leading to a sense of responsibility to take action on behalf of those who are dehumanized, dispossessed, displaced, and murdered by state violence. 

Endorsing this motion is the least I can do. Passing this motion is the least we can do. To do otherwise is to be complicit with the silencing of the plight of Palestinians, leaving them isolated, lonely, abandoned, and invisible.

Alisse Waterston, Presidential Scholar and Professor of Anthropology Emerita, City University of New York, John Jay College

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https://easaonline.org/about/

EASA is a professional association open to all social anthropologists either qualified in, or else working in, Europe. It is a society of scholarship, founded on January 14th, 1989 at the “Inaugural General Assembly” in Castelgandolfo/Italy of twenty-one founder members from thirteen European countries and one from the US, supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. This meeting drafted the Constitution and elected the Association’s first Executive Committee (1989-90), chaired by Prof. Adam Kuper, Brunel University.

The Association seeks to advance anthropology in Europe by organizing biennial conferences, by editing its academic journal Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, its Newsletter and the two publication series. The Association further encourages and supports thematic networks.

EASA is a self-governing democratic body. It is both registered with Companies House and with the Charity Commission. As such it is bound by its constitution, relevant laws and EASA adheres to guidance on proper governance. No member may be elected to office more than twice in succession; the only exception are up to two members co-opted by the elected Executive so as to ensure the continuity of EASA’s administrative and publishing functions. The composition of the successive Executive Committees shows the pan-European character of EASA.

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https://www.charitygovernancecode.org/en/3-integrity

3. Integrity

Principle

The board acts with integrity. It adopts values, applies ethical principles to decisions and creates a welcoming and supportive culture which helps achieve the charity’s purposes. The board is aware of the significance of the public’s confidence and trust in charities.  It reflects the charity’s ethics and values in everything it does. Trustees undertake their duties with this in mind.

Rationale

Delivering the charity’s purposes for public benefit should be at the heart of everything the board does. This is true even when a board’s decision might be unpopular. Everyone who comes into contact with a charity should be treated with dignity and respect and feel that they are in a safe and supportive environment. Charity leaders should show the highest levels of personal integrity and conduct.

To achieve this, trustees should create a culture that supports the charity’s values, adopt behaviours and policies in line with the values and set aside any personal interests or loyalties. The board should understand and address any inappropriate power dynamics to avoid damaging the charity’s reputation, public support for its work and delivery of its aims.

Key outcomes

1. The board safeguards and promotes the charity’s reputation by living its values and by extension promotes public confidence in the wider sector.
2. Trustees and those working for or representing the charity are seen to act with honesty, trustworthiness and care, and support its values.
3. The board acts in the best interests of the charity’s purposes and its beneficiaries, creating a safe, respectful and welcoming environment for those who come into contact with it.
4. The board makes objective decisions about delivering the charity’s purposes. It is not unduly influenced by those who may have special or personal interests. This applies whether trustees are elected, nominated, or appointed. Collectively, the board is independent in its decision making.
5. No one person or group has undue power or influence in the charity. The board recognises how individual or organisational power can affect dealings with others.

07.11.24

Editorial Note

Last week, Prof. Idan Landau, a Tel Aviv University linguist, appeared on the pages of the left-wing British newspaper, The Guardian. He was referred to as a “political commentator,” and his blog, Don’t Die Stupid was referenced.  

The newspaper stated that questions are raised over whether the Israeli government’s “war aims include territorial expansion.” Because “suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from,” named the generals’ plan. which is “intended to depopulate northern Gaza.” The Guardian revealed that “The government insisted the plan had not been adopted, but some IDF soldiers in Gaza, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, say it is being implemented.” To prove their point, the Guardian cited Landau’s blog, which stated, “the ultimate goal of the plan is not military but political – resettling Gaza… All the signs indicate that Israel is not planning to let the displaced return… In this sense, the destruction in northern Gaza is unlike anything we have seen before.” According to the Guardian, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, publicly called to prevent “ethnic cleansing.” For the Guardian, “western allies of Israel have so far been reluctant to use the leverage of their arms supplies to influence policy.”

To recall, Landau was a member of Courage to Refuse, a group of radical left-wing political activists who called to refuse army service.  IAM reported on the role of academics in the refusal movement before, including in the 2021 post “The Nexus of Army Refusal and Israeli Academics.”

It’s easy to connect the dots. Landau was a favorite student of the Tel Aviv Linguist and the radical left-wing political activist Tanya Reinhart. Reinhart was a favorite student of the renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, a radical left-wing political activist. For example, Chomsky met with Nasrallah in Beirut in 2006 to show his support, where he advised Nasrallah on how to influence the American public. He said: “You need to reach the American public before American politicians. The public in the US is generally ahead of the politicians. Often public opinion conflicts with policies set in Washington. US politicians are usually elected by a minority of the population and represent two parties that are virtually indistinguishable on fundamental issues. If you can inform the public and get them to understand your position, they will put pressure on the politicians and hopefully prevent them from conducting their most destructive policies. Without internal public pressure, US policy is not likely to change significantly.”

The Guardian loves Landau because he is on the extreme end of the radical Israeli academics. 

In his recent article “Exterminate, Expel, Resettle: Israel’s Endgame In Northern Gaza,” Landau discussed “an extermination plan.” A plan by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, calling for, according to Landau, “collective punishment against the entire population of Gaza, for treating the enclave as if it were Nazi Germany, and for allowing disease to spread as a step that will ‘bring victory closer and reduce harm to IDF soldiers’… while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one.”

For Landau, “this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the “Siyag Plan” that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted.”

Landau argues, “The catastrophe in northern Gaza is growing… extermination of thousands of people inside the besieged area — is no longer beyond the realm of possibility… In view of this brutality, the Israeli propaganda machine spurred into action to offer a slew of excuses as to why civilians were not evacuating.” Landau accuses Israel of conducting “A policy of extermination.” He explains, “The extermination operation that is currently underway in northern Gaza should not come as a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to Israel’s war crimes over the past year, and the countless investigative reports that the world’s most respected media outlets have written about them.. these past atrocities show us what the Israeli army will continue to do if they’re not stopped… Israel, of course, deems every house and every alley in Gaza a potential threat and a legitimate target.”

Landau also accuses Israel of running “A policy of starvation… which appears to have been an intentional starvation policy… as clear a war crime as you’ll find, forming a significant part of the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.”

Landau then asks, “So what was the real motivation for the operation?” Israel is “Preparing to Settle Gaza… after cleansing the enclave of Palestinians.” For Landau, “Israelis have always united around the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.” For Landau, Eiland is “a full-blown advocate of ethnic cleansing… If the army expels them from there as well, this will be yet further evidence that the cleansing operation is not being guided by operational considerations. 

Landau blames the Israelis, “It was the reincarnation of an old fundamental Israeli theme: the eternal victims can never sin. It is the mindset that turned the trauma of October 7… seamlessly infusing the Hamas attack with Holocaust imagery.”

Landau dismisses the arguments “But what about Hamas’ charter?!” or “But, Iran!” and “But they’re barbarians!” For Landau, “None of this is relevant in the face of the genocide that our army is carrying out… How, exactly, does the massacre of October 7 justify the burning of schools and bakeries? What does Hamas’ charter have to do with denying medical equipment from entering Gaza, leading to wholesale death of wounded people?”

Then Landau attacks the center left. “We must also ignore the caricature that is ‘the opposition.’ The ‘alternative’ that Israel’s ‘center left’ offers lies between a ‘strategic occupation’ of more territory on the one hand, and a policy of ‘separation’ on the other that still allows the army complete freedom of action in the occupied territories or even contemplates a revival of the ‘Jordanian option’.”

Landau puts much of the blame on Israel, “It is a refusal to face our own actions, a refusal to claim responsibility for the catastrophe — for which Hamas indeed carries considerable blame, but we carry much more. And ultimately, a refusal to see Palestinians as humans, just like us.”

Landau even compares Israel to the Nazis, “I’ve spent countless hours reading testimonies from Gaza over the past year, and one phenomenon that struck me as particularly horrifying, even though it does not result in the most horrible crimes, is the way Israeli soldiers treat the Palestinians as if they were sheep or goats, herding them from one location to another. Like a flock of animals… Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

Landau blames the Israeli public, “The web of crimes described here is not so abstract — a vast part of the Israeli public takes part in them. Hundreds if not thousands recorded themselves in action, while many more called for extermination outright. The majority, however, is not so explicit or smug. Most just serve the military over hundreds of days of reserve duty ‘because we must protect our country.’ They commit crimes… we all bear the weight of responsibility for this, albeit some more than others.”

Landau ends by urging for an army refusal movement, “The army refusal movement arose too late and too slowly, yet it requires all encouragement and support and any voice it can be lent. The consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.”  

Just like Chomsky who helped Nasrallah, Landau is protecting Hamas with the help of the Guardian, while bashing Israel. He ignores Hamas’ intentions to eradicate Israel, as evident in their slogan “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free.”

In 2017, IAM published an article in the Israeli media outlet Mako titled “The Useful Idiots of the Boycott Movement.” IAM reminded the readers how the “comparison to apartheid was rejected by the US Senate, which accused the UN of being obsessed with Israel.” IAM argued that “it is necessary to understand the beginning of the equation between Israel and apartheid.” When “pro-Palestinian activists toyed with the idea of a link between Israel and South Africa under apartheid, researchers from Israeli universities provided the academic legitimacy for the equation.”

IAM referred to several Israeli academics including Landau, who published an article in 2007 detailing the goals of the academic boycott of Israel. He wrote that “the issue of the academic boycott of Israel raises most practical questions. After peeling off the layers of insult, the victim’s rage, and the routine distraction exercises, there is not a single principled argument left in the words of the boycott opponents, challenging the moral validity of the academic boycott against the State of Israel and the apartheid regime it led in the territories.” 

IAM concluded that Israeli universities must recognize the central role of Israeli researchers in legitimizing the analogy of “Israel as an apartheid state,” which serves as an intellectual justification for the boycott movement. The Palestinian leaders of the boycott movement welcome this cooperation with Israeli researchers because they provide legitimacy to what is essentially an antisemitic campaign that uses false charges.  In this sense, Israeli academics serve as the contemporary incarnation of Lenin’s “useful idiots.”

The question is, why should any Israeli university employ Landau?

REFERENCES:

https://countercurrents.org/2024/11/exterminate-expel-resettle-israels-endgame-in-northern-gaza/

Exterminate, Expel, Resettle: Israel’s Endgame In Northern Gaza

by Idan Landau 

03/11/2024

Debates over the details of the ‘Generals’ Plan’ distract from the true brutality of Israel’s latest operation — one that drops the veneer of humanitarian considerations and lays the groundwork for settlements

Look at these two photos, which were both taken on Oct. 21, 2024. On the right, we see a long line of displaced people — or, more accurately, women and children — in the ruins of Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip. Men over the age of 16 are separated, waving a white flag and holding up their ID cards. They are on their way out. 

On the left, we see a camp built by the settler organization Nachala just outside Gaza, as part of an event celebrating the festival of Sukkot. The event was attended by 21 right-wing ministers and Knesset members and several hundred other participants, all of whom were there to discuss plans for building new Jewish settlements in Gaza. They are on their way in.

Left: Israeli settlers gather at an event celebrating Sukkot near the Gaza Strip, calling for annexation and resettlement, October 21, 2024. (Oren Ziv) Right: Displaced Palestinians line up at gunpoint in the ruins of Jabalia refugee camp. (Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten. Yet this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the “Siyag Plan” that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers, sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them. 

But the story of what is happening right now, on either side of the Gaza fence, revolves around what has come to be known as the “Generals’ Plan” — and what it conceals.

The blueprint

The “Generals’ Plan,” published in early September, has a very simple goal: to empty the northern Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population. The plan itself estimated that about 300,000 people were still living north of the Netzarim Corridor — the Israeli-occupied zone that bisects Gaza — although the UN put the number closer to 400,000. 

During the first phase of the plan, the Israeli army would inform all of those people that they have a week to evacuate to the south through two “humanitarian corridors.” In the second phase, at the end of that week, the army would declare the whole area a closed military zone. Anyone who remained would  be considered an enemy combatant, and be killed if they didn’t surrender. A complete siege would be imposed on the territory, intensifying the hunger and health crisis — creating, as Prof. Uzi Rabi, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University, put it, “a process of starvation or extermination.”

According to the plan, providing the civilian population advance warning to evacuate guarantees compliance with the requirements of international humanitarian law. This is a lie. The first protocol of the Geneva Conventions clearly states that warning civilians to flee does not negate the protected status of those who remain, and therefore does not permit military forces to harm them; nor does a military siege negate the army’s obligation to allow the passage of humanitarian aid to civilians.

Besides, the lip service to humanitarian law falls flat when considering that the man spearheading the plan, Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, has spent the past year calling for collective punishment against the entire population of Gaza, for treating the enclave as if it were Nazi Germany, and for allowing disease to spread as a step that will “bring victory closer and reduce harm to IDF soldiers.” After rattling off like that for 10 months, he recognized an opportunity — in consultation with a number of shadow advisors, to whom we will return — to pilot an extermination plan in northern Gaza. He diligently delivered it to politicians and the media, disguised in a mask of lies about adhering to international law. 

The media and the politicians did what they always do: manufactured a distraction. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant hastened to deny, anonymous officials and soldiers in the field were already briefing the media that the plan was starting to be implemented.

The reality, however, is even more appalling. What the army has been implementing in northern Gaza since early October is not quite the “Generals’ Plan,” but an even more sinister and brutal version of it within a more concentrated area. One could even say that the plan itself and the intense international media and diplomatic storm it has created has helped keep everyone in the dark as to what is actually going on, and obscure the two ways in which the plan has already been redefined. 

The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza a week to evacuate southward. The second departure concerns the real purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one. 

Attention diverted

The catastrophe in northern Gaza is growing by the minute, and the confluence of circumstances means that the unimaginable — extermination of thousands of people inside the besieged area — is no longer beyond the realm of possibility.

The current military operation began in the early hours of Oct. 6. Residents of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, and Jabalia — the three localities north of Gaza City — were ordered to flee to the Al-Mawasi area in the south of the Strip through two “humanitarian corridors.” Israel presented the attack as a means to dismantle Hamas infrastructure after the group had reestablished itself in the area, and to prepare for the possibility of Israel taking over responsibility for acquiring, moving, and distributing humanitarian aid around the Strip — in other words, for the return of the Israeli Civil Administration that governed Gaza until the “disengagement” of 2005. The first cause was only partially true, and the second was no more than a smokescreen.

For Palestinians in those areas, things looked rather different. The army attacked residents in their homes and in shelters with airstrikes, artillery, and drones, while soldiers moved from street to street demolishing and setting fire to entire buildings to prevent residents from returning. Within a matter of days, Jabalia had turned into a vision of the apocalypse.

As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: anyone who so much as stepped out of their home risked being shot by Israeli snipers or drones, including young children and those holding white flags. Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also came under attack, as well as journalists trying to document the events.

One particularly harrowing video, verified by The Washington Post, shows a child on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others. This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the “humanitarian zone.”

An IDF drone shows displaced Palestinians forced to evacuate Jabalia, October 21, 2024. (X/Avichay Adraee/used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

In view of this brutality, the Israeli propaganda machine spurred into action to offer a slew of excuses as to why civilians were not evacuating — primarily that Hamas was “beating with sticks” those who tried to leave. If Hamas did indeed stop civilians from evacuating, how can the army then claim that those who chose not to evacuate are terrorists condemned to be killed? But listening to the residents themselves, one could hear the same desperate cry repeatedly: “We cannot evacuate because the Israeli army is shooting at us.” 

On Oct. 20, the army circulated a photo of a long line of displaced Palestinians, beside a caption worded as mundanely and numbingly as a weather forecast: “The movement of Palestinian residents continues from the Jabalia area in the northern Gaza Strip. So far, more than 5,000 Palestinians have evacuated from the area.” 

Observant viewers would have noticed that all of the heads in the picture were covered: it is a line of women and children, who were not “evacuated” but forcibly uprooted. Where are the men? Taken away to unknown locations. We may yet hear of their time in Israeli detention camps a few months from now, describing the torture and abuse that have killed at least 60 Gazan prisoners since October 7. 

Unlike what was stated in the “Generals’ Plan,” civilians were not given a week to evacuate, as Eiland later acknowledged; from the get-go, the army treated the northern areas as a military zone in which any movement is met with deadly fire. This is the first way in which the plan has been used as a lightning rod to divert attention and criticism from a much more brutal reality than what it proffers.

A policy of extermination

Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has killed over 1,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are sleeping, slaughtering entire families in their homes and making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on Oct. 24, rescue services announced that the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease all operations in the besieged areas.

Some of the most notable attacks include the bombing of a home in the Al-Fallujah area of Jabalia camp on Oct. 14, killing a family of 11 along with the doctor who came to treat them; an attack on the Abu Hussein School in Jabalia camp on Oct. 17 that killed 22 displaced people who were sheltering there; the killing of 33 people in three houses in Jabalia camp, among them 21 women, on Oct. 19; the leveling of several residential buildings in Beit Lahiya on the same day, killing 87 people; airstrikes on five residential buildings in Beit Lahiya on Oct. 26, which killed 40 people; and the massacre of 93 people in the bombing of a five-storey residential building in Beit Lahiya on Oct. 29.

The extermination operation that is currently underway in northern Gaza should not come as a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to Israel’s war crimes over the past year, and the countless investigative reports that the world’s most respected media outlets have written about them. From dropping 2,000-pound bombs where there are no military targets nearby to the regular killing of children by sniper fire to the head — these past atrocities show us what the Israeli army will continue to do if they’re not stopped. 

There are only three major medical facilities within the encircled area of northern Gaza, to which the hundreds of casualties of the past few weeks have been directed: the Indonesian Hospital and Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia. Yet the Israeli army has also subjected these hospitals to attacks, rendering them unable to treat the wounded. Reports by Doctors Without Borders and the UN have defined the situation as “immediately life threatening.”

At the start of the operation, the Israeli army ordered the three hospitals to evacuate within 24 hours, threatening to capture or kill anyone found inside them — not quite the “week of grace” stated in the “Generals’ Plan.” The army bombed Kamal Adwan and its surroundings in the early stages of the operation, before subjecting it to a three-day raid which removed it from service entirely and saw most of the doctors detained. 

The army has also repeatedly bombed both the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda. Two patients in the former died due to the resulting power outage, before the hospital stopped functioning altogether. This is the reason why even mild injuries often end in death — because medical teams simply do not have the resources necessary to treat them.   

Israel, of course, deems every house and every alley in Gaza a potential threat and a legitimate target. And what will be the excuse for denying six medical aid groups that work with the World Health Organization from entering Gaza? Most likely, it is a punishment for sending Western doctors to the Strip who later published testimonies about Israeli snipers targeting children. A UN report published shortly beforehand concluded that Israel is carrying out “a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza” as part of “the crime against humanity of extermination.” 

A policy of starvation

These attacks have been accompanied by a complete siege that has blocked all food and medical supplies from entering northern Gaza, which appears to have been an intentional starvation policy. According to the UN’s World Food Program, Israel began cutting off food on Oct. 1 — five days before the military operation.Palestinians queue for bread at the only open bakery in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

This fact received official, albeit indirect, acknowledgement in the form of a U.S. ultimatum on Oct. 15, demanding that Israel allow aid shipments to enter northern Gaza within 30 days or face a halt in U.S. weapons deliveries to Israel. This indicates, as humanitarian groups had warned, that no such aid was being allowed in before then. The 30-day grace period is laughable; as the EU’s foreign policy chief stated, within 30 days thousands of people might die of starvation.

Moreover, an exposé by Politico strengthened the feeling that like previous such “threats,” the latest demand from Washington was but an empty ceremonial gesture to reassure liberal consciences. Already in August, the top U.S. official working on the humanitarian situation in Gaza told aid organizations in an internal meeting that the United States would not countenance delaying or stopping weapon shipments to Israel to pressure it on humanitarian aid. As for the breaking of international humanitarian law, the sentiment expressed by the representative, according to one of the attendees, was that “the rules do not apply to Israel.”

Israel’s starvation policy in northern Gaza has not been limited to preventing the entry of food. On Oct. 10, the army bombed the only flour store in the area — as clear a war crime as you’ll find, forming a significant part of the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Four days later, the army bombed a UN food distribution center in Jabalia, killing 10 people. 

Aid agencies have provided urgent warnings about this escalating disaster, alerting as to their inability to fulfill their basic functions amid the impossible conditions Israel has created in northern Gaza. A new IPC report about hunger in Gaza predicts “catastrophic outcomes” of severe malnutrition, especially in the north.

On Oct. 16, Israeli media reported that following U.S. pressure, 100 aid trucks had entered northern Gaza. But journalists in the north were quick to correct the record: nothing at all had entered the besieged areas. On Oct. 20, Israel denied a further request by UN agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, and medicines. Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state admitted to the High Court that no humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point. By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food siege.

Since then, Israel claims to have allowed a trickle of aid trucks into northern Gaza — but without photographic evidence, it is very hard to know how many have reached their stated destination.

Winking at the right, feigning security justifications to the left

From the very start, the military rationale for such a drastic operation was questionable. Eiland spoke of “5,000 terrorists” hiding in the north, but anyone following the situation on the ground closely could see that encounters with Hamas operatives in these areas were few and far between.

Indeed, as Haaretz’s Yaniv Kubovich revealed, “commanders in the field … say that the decision to start operating in northern Gaza was made without detailed deliberations, and it seems that it was mainly intended to put pressure on the population of Gaza.” Military forces were told to prepare for the operation, the report continued, “even though there was no intelligence to justify it.” 

Furthermore, there was no unanimity among senior defense officials regarding the necessity of the maneuver, and there were plenty in both the army and the Shin Bet who thought it might endanger the lives of hostages. Sources who spoke to Haaretz testified that the soldiers who entered Jabalia “did not encounter terrorists face-to-face,” though at least 12 soldiers have since been killed in northern Gaza.

So what was the real motivation for the operation? To answer that question, we need look no further than the Sukkot event organized by settlers and their supporters on Oct. 21, titled “Preparing to Settle Gaza.” There, they laid out a vision for building Jewish settlements all across the Gaza Strip after cleansing the enclave of Palestinians. Gaza City, for example, would become “a Hebrew, technological, green city that would unite all parts of Israeli society.” And in this, at least, they are telling the truth: Israelis have always united around the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians. 

That event was only the latest to call for annexation and settlement of the Strip, coming after an ecstatic January conference in Jerusalem that was attended by thousands, including no fewer than 26 coalition members. And while only a quarter of the Israeli public supports resettling Gaza, the significant presence of ministers and supporters from Netanyahu’s Likud party shows that at the political level, it is growing increasingly mainstream.

Daniela Weiss’ Nachala movement has already drawn up the plans: six settlement groups, with 700 families waiting in line. All they need is a window of opportunity — one moment when national attention is distracted (in Lebanon, the West Bank, Iran), one moment of determination in Bezalel Smotrich’s “decisive” style, and the stake will be planted across the fence.

They will call it a “military outpost” or an “agricultural farm,” a time-tested strategy of winking at the right while feigning security justifications to the left. The army will never abandon them: these are our “finest boys,” the military is their flesh and blood. And so the return shall come to pass.

The brains behind the ‘Generals’ Plan’

The observant among us could see the way the wind was blowing from the very first week of the war. While most Israelis were still wrapping their heads around the magnitude of the disaster of October 7, the settlers were already drawing maps and sticking settlement pins on them.

The wound of the “disengagement,” when the military uprooted 8,000 settlers from the Strip, was left deliberately open, never allowed to heal: a “trauma” being re-lived and passed down year after year, bleeding its poison into the infamous Kohelet Policy Forum — a right-wing think tank responsible for much of the current government’s masterplans — and to a whole row of right-wing politicians imbued with hatred and an insatiable desire for revenge. 

It was the reincarnation of an old fundamental Israeli theme: the eternal victims can never sin. It is the mindset that turned the trauma of October 7, in the words of Naomi Klein, into “a weapon of war,” seamlessly infusing the Hamas attack with Holocaust imagery.

And of course, far-right minister Orit Strook knew it before anyone else, predicting in May 2023: “About [resettling] Gaza — I don’t think that the people of Israel are mentally there right now, so it won’t happen today or tomorrow morning. In the long-term, I suppose there will be no choice but to do it. It will happen when the people of Israel will be ready for it, and sadly we will pay for it in blood.” How sad she really was about it is hard to tell, since the very same Orit Strook, in the midst of the war, rejoiced at the surge of new settlements and outposts in the West Bank and described it as “a time of miracles.”

What is the connection between this overflowing cauldron of messianism and the “Generals’ Plan”? That was revealed earlier this month, when Omri Maniv of Channel 12 found that although the military generals are the face of the plan, the brains behind it is the right-wing organization Tzav 9 — the group responsible for setting humanitarian aid trucks on fire before they could enter Gaza, and which was consequently sanctioned by the United States along with its founder, Shlomo Sarid.

According to Maniv’s report, it was Sarid who connected Eiland with the Forum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters, which published the plan. Among the founders of the Forum is Maj. Gen. (res.) Gabi Siboni from the Misgav Institute, which was descended from the now defunct Zionist Strategy Institute, a front organization for — surprise, surprise — Kohelet.

Over the course of years, Kohelet has perfected the ability to significantly influence the public agenda in Israel through extensions and sub-branches operating under seemingly innocuous names, with its researchers sometimes even denying any relation to it. Sarid practically quoted Kohelet’s operating manual when he explained in an internal Zoom meeting of Tzav 9 members: “We’ve come up with a clever strategy here: taking a controversial core issue, and then as civilian organizations we come and offer the solution to the government. We come from all sides. We’ve offered solutions from both the right and the left.” 

Eiland was aware that Sarid and members of the Forum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters were striving to reestablish settlements in Gaza, but denied that his plan was intended to prepare the ground for it. This is what a denial by a useful idiot sounds like. 

Like any good commander in the IDF Central Command, who is sent to secure a religious celebration of settlers at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, or to block the exits from the Palestinian villages of Kafr Qaddum and Beita, he will keep claiming that he merely provides “security” solutions that have nothing to do with the settlers’ agenda. “It’s not political,” they explain to us over and over again, while the messianists rejoice, shedding an occasional tear over “the bloody price to be paid.”But was he really a useful idiot? This week we learned that Israel’s political leadership is pressuring the military to prevent the residents of Jabalia from returning to their homes, “despite the fact that the objectives of the operation … have mostly been achieved.” Eiland now expects that for Palestinians, northern Gaza “will slowly turn into a distant dream. Like they have forgotten Ashkelon [Al-Majdal], they will forget that area too.” This is no longer the voice of a mindless military tactician but rather of a full-blown advocate of ethnic cleansing.

And so we have cut through all the layers of deception in the “Generals’ Plan”: contrary to what was stated, the plan itself is a war crime; the army did not provide any grace period for evacuating civilians; the military justification is questionable, and certainly in no way proportionate to the intensity of the drastic operation; and the ultimate goal of the plan is not military but political — resettling Gaza.

Israel’s window of opportunity

Right now, around 100,000 residents remain besieged in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia, starving and thirsty. Entire families are being massacred and entire neighborhoods flattened every day. Israel’s destruction of healthcare infrastructure and blocking of medical aid has rendered hospitals defunct, unable to care for the wounded. All the while, a partial communications blackout and the near total absence of journalists within the besieged areas keeps us largely in the dark.

Is it possible to foresee what comes next? Some will inevitably look to the United States for answers. In a few days, Americans will go to the polls in what is sure to be a close race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. If Trump wins, the Israeli leadership can breathe a sigh of relief. He will not stop any Israeli plan, however brutal — even for the simple reason that he is not clear on what the difference between Gaza and Israel is.

Harris, for her part, will not risk the final days of her campaign by making any strong statements. She certainly won’t jeopardize the Democrats’ Jewish vote by issuing Israel a real ultimatum — in fact she has already said so. And if she wins? There’s no rush. The new president will need to study the situation. “We are closely following what is happening in Gaza, and working with our allies toward a solution to this tragic situation,” she’ll be sure to say.

Europe has no levers of influence on Israel in the immediate future, and in any case the internal difference of opinions within the EU — and, first and foremost, Germany’s resolute support for Israel — thwart any drastic shift in policy. In The Hague, the mills of justice grind slowly. 

Salvation can only come from Washington, but Washington is busier every passing day with Trump’s latest scandalous statement. The poison machine of the American right, aided by Elon Musk, is already in high gear in the production of disinformation and fake news. The inevitable result will be that once again, no one will care about Palestinian bodies piling up.

All this provides Israel with a window of opportunity of a month or two, during which it can even intensify the extermination operation in northern Gaza. As far as I can see, nothing will stop it during this period, or probably even after. The intensifying war in Lebanon and Israel’s north also acts as a further smokescreen.

How many Palestinians will Israel exterminate in northern Gaza before then? The killing of over 1,000 in the four weeks since the current operation began may not sound like a lot compared to the numbers we saw at the beginning of the war, but we have to remember that the area currently under siege contains less than a fifth of Gaza’s population. Proportionally, then, this is equivalent to the record numbers in the first two months of the war, when the army killed an average of 250 people per day through incessant airstrikes. It is therefore no wonder that the residents of northern Gaza say the last few weeks have been the most difficult since the beginning of the war. 

Forced out, never to return?

Barring the possibility of mass annihilation by means not yet seen, Israel appears to be choosing something of a middle ground between extermination and transfer. The extermination was intended as a form of terror and intimidation, the army’s way of persuading the residents of northern Gaza to evacuate “voluntarily.” But even that was not enough. And so soldiers were sent to shelters to round up the refugees at gunpoint and send them south, after the men were separated and taken for questioning or arrest.

On Oct. 21, the Israeli public broadcaster, Kan, published drone footage of Palestinians being rounded up and forced southward. Kan titled it “Gazans leaving Jabalia.” They are “leaving” in the same way the residents of Lyd, Al-Majdal, and Manshiyya “left” in 1948. Gazan residents themselves testify: “Whoever does not follow orders is shot.” 

And so it is: women and children in one line, separated from men over the age of 16 holding up ID cards in another — a forced displacement captured by the cameras of the displacing force. In years to come, Israel will write in the history books: they left of their own accord.Displaced Palestinians line up at gunpoint in the ruins of Jabalia refugee camp.

And just as Israeli TV broadcasted images of this “calm departure,” journalists in Gaza reported on another bombing of a shelter in the very same refugee camp, in which 10 people were killed and 30 wounded. The testimony of a paramedic who was there reveals the horror: a drone announced from the air that residents of the compound had to evacuate, and no more than 10 minutes later, before most people had managed to leave, the site was blown up. 

The “Generals’ Plan,” is thus not only a deceit but also an operational flop. The threatened population was not inclined to voluntarily evacuate into the path of flying bullets and mortar shells, preferring familiar to unfamiliar horrors as is human nature (then again, who in the Israeli army is capable of perceiving Palestinians as human?). Even extermination as an instrument of terror was not enough to persuade the residents of northern Gaza to evacuate “voluntarily.” And so infantry forces were sent to the shelters to force the displaced, at gunpoint, to come out and start marching south (after the men were separated and taken for questioning or arrest).

All the signs indicate that Israel is not planning to let the displaced return. In this sense, the destruction in northern Gaza is unlike anything we have seen before. The army really does make sure to burn, destroy, and raze every building after the Palestinians leave — and sometimes while they’re still inside. Even the Americans and the Europeans can see the writing on the wall this time.

How long will it take to totally cleanse northern Gaza of its population? It is difficult to predict exactly, between the stamina of local residents to remain, the maximum daily death toll that the army allows itself based on its own considerations, and the international reaction. Certainly, it appears that the current assault will continue for weeks to come.

In the meantime, many of those displaced are not settling south of the Netzarim Corridor but rather on the outskirts of Gaza City, afraid that if they leave the north altogether, they may never be able to return. If the army expels them from there as well, this will be yet further evidence that the cleansing operation is not being guided by operational considerations.

A fight for life

What is left for us to do? Inside Israel, we are few who see the reality in front of us with clear eyes. But what little we can do, we must.

First of all, we must tune out the heckles from the peanut gallery: from “But what about Hamas’ charter?!” to “But, Iran!” and “But they’re barbarians!” None of this is relevant in the face of the genocide that our army is carrying out as you read these words (and I don’t choose that term hastily; here are four Israeli historians that reached this conclusion, who are greater experts than I). How, exactly, does the massacre of October 7 justify the burning of schools and bakeries? What does Hamas’ charter have to do with denying medical equipment from entering Gaza, leading to wholesale death of wounded people?Palestinians displaced from Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun shelter in tents at Al-Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City, November 1, 2024. (Omar Al-Qataa)

We must also ignore the caricature that is “the opposition.” The “alternative” that Israel’s “center left” offers lies between a “strategic occupation” of more territory on the one hand, and a policy of “separation” on the other that still allows the army complete freedom of action in the occupied territories or even contemplates a revival of the “Jordanian option.”

The incessant rambling about grand multilateral political arrangements only serves one purpose: an evasion from the bloody reality. It is a refusal to face our own actions, a refusal to claim responsibility for the catastrophe — for which Hamas indeed carries considerable blame, but we carry much more. And ultimately, a refusal to see Palestinians as humans, just like us. 

I’ve spent countless hours reading testimonies from Gaza over the past year, and one phenomenon that struck me as particularly horrifying, even though it does not result in the most horrible crimes, is the way Israeli soldiers treat the Palestinians as if they were sheep or goats, herding them from one location to another. Like a flock of animals, snipers and drones corral them, firing live ammunition at anyone who refuses to move or takes too long. Planes and drones deliver evacuation notices and then almost immediately bomb those who did not yet manage to escape. Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.

The web of crimes described here is not so abstract — a vast part of the Israeli public takes part in them. Hundreds if not thousands recorded themselves in action, while many more called for extermination outright. The majority, however, is not so explicit or smug. Most just serve the military over hundreds of days of reserve duty “because we must protect our country.” They commit crimes while giving it no thought, or half a thought, or only a silenced, trampled-upon thought.

They can come up with myriad excuses, but each one crumbles in the face of more than 16,000 dead children — over 3,000 of them under the age of 5 — who have all been identified by their name and ID numbers. And they crumble in the face of the destruction of all civilian infrastructure, which does not and cannot have a purely military purpose.

So we all bear the weight of responsibility for this, albeit some more than others. The army refusal movement arose too late and too slowly, yet it requires all encouragement and support and any voice it can be lent. The consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.  

Idan Landau is a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University and writes the political blog “Don’t Die Stupid.”

A version of this article first appeared in Hebrew on the author’s blog. It was translated into English for +972 by Gali Avatichi and Keren Hering.

Originally published in +972 Magazine

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/02/fears-grow-israel-plans-seize-land-gaza-siege-netanyahu-war-aims

‘Death is everywhere’: fears grow that Israel plans to seize land in GazaIncreasingly violent siege of north raises suspicions about Netanyahu’s war aims

Malak A Tantesh in Gaza and Julian Borger in Jerusalem

Israel has tightened its siege of northern Gaza in the face of warnings from the UN and other aid agencies that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives at are risk, raising questions over whether the Netanyahu government’s ultimate war aims include territorial expansion.

The IDF says it is hunting Hamas militants but suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”.

The plan, named after the retired senior officers promoting it, was intended to depopulate northern Gaza by giving the Palestinians trapped there an opportunity to evacuate and then treating those that stayed as combatants, laying total siege.

The government insisted the plan had not been adopted, but some IDF soldiers in Gaza, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, say it is being implemented on a daily basis, but with a major difference: the Palestinians in northern Gaza were not given a realistic chance to evacuate. They are trapped.

“It is impossible for me to leave my house because I do not want to die out there. There are many people who lost their lives away from their homes, even in the south. Death is everywhere,” said Ramadan, a 19-year-old in Beit Lahiya whose family has been displaced seven times over the course of the 13-month war. “There is a lot of shooting and all kinds of bombing. Gatherings are being bombed, shelters are being bombed, and schools are being bombed. The area is overcrowded, so that even a small bomb kills and injures a lot of people.”

“Even if there are people who want to go south, they can’t because there is no safe road,” Ramadan said.

Israeli ground troops have laid siege to three areas – Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and the Jabalia refugee camp – in the northern Gaza governorate, where there are estimated to be about 75,000 people. But the reality for almost all the 400,000 trapped across the northern half of Gaza is that there is no escape.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN relief agency Unrwa, made an emergency appeal on 22 October, calling for “an immediate truce, even for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places”.

There was no response from the Israeli authorities, whose official position is not to deal with Unrwa, by far the biggest aid agency in Gaza. “Nothing happened when we sent that SOS out,” said Unrwa spokesperson Juliette Touma. On Monday, the Knesset voted to ban Unrwa altogether within the next 90 days.

The amount of aid reaching north Gaza has been heavily restricted since the start of the war on 7 October last year. Now the quantities of relief supplies entering the whole strip have hit a new low, and barely anything is reaching the north.

The UN humanitarian affairs coordination agency, OCHA, reported that, as of Thursday, “no bakeries or public kitchens in north Gaza are operational, and only two of 20 health service points and two hospitals remain operational, albeit partially”.

“With no electricity or fuel allowed since 1 October, only two of eight water wells in Jabalia refugee camp remain functional, both of them partially,” OCHA said.

In an emergency statement on Friday, the heads of OCHA and 14 other UN and independent aid agencies raised the alarm that the area was at the brink of an abyss.

“The situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic,” the appeal said. “The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.”

The residual health facilities inside the besieged zone, the Kamal Adwan, al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals, have been targeted. The third wave of a polio vaccination campaign got under way on Saturday, but not for children trapped in that zone.

In the past week, Kamal Adwan was raided by the IDF, its medics detained, and then, after the soldiers withdrew, the hospital was bombed, destroying supplies recently delivered by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Kamal Adwan hospital has been reduced from a hospital helping hundreds of patients, with dozens of health workers, to a shell of itself,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general.

The situation is hardly any better at al-Awda hospital. Mohammad Salha, its acting director, said: “There is a shortage of fuel, of medication, medical supplies and food. There is no healthy water in the north.”

Salha added: “There are no ambulances,. The people are bringing the injured from the field on donkeys and on their shoulders. Some are dying in the streets because no one can take care of them, or they are carrying them the wrong way.”

The beds in the inpatient, maternity and other wards are all full of patients injured by bombing, and there is just a single surgeon left. Al-Awda has no O-positive, O-negative, B-positive or B-negative blood units left, Salha said, “so if any cases come in and need these blood groups, they will die”.

“We are making a lot of appeals to the WHO, and we have a promise [of deliveries], but the Israelis refuse to allow a mission through to the hospital,” he said, adding: “We don’t know how to deal with this situation.”

The “generals’ plan” was presented as a means of using siege warfare to put pressure on Hamas to release its Israeli hostages. Defending it in an article in Haaretz on Friday, its principal author, the retired major general Giora Eiland, argued that siege was not a war crime if civilians were evacuated first, and that the occupation would be temporary, as a way of putting real pressure on Hamas.

“Had Hamas understood that not returning hostages means losing 35% of the strip’s territory, it would have compromised long ago,” Eiland wrote.

Other analysts argued that the plan made little military sense, as Hamas could reconstitute anywhere and return later.

For those under fire in northern Gaza, it does not seem like a counter-insurgency measure. “They kill all people without separating a civilian or a fighter,” said Ahlam al-Tlouli, a 33-year-old from Jabalia camp.

He said his father, stepmother and sister were killed by snipers and his brother had been missing since Ramadan. “We had opportunities to head south but refused because we know that the bombing is everywhere and there is no safe place.”

The ferocity of what is happening in northern Gaza has added to suspicions that there are more wide-reaching objectives at play. Idan Landau, a Tel Aviv University linguistics professor and political commentator, wrote on his blog, Don’t Die Stupid, that “the ultimate goal of the plan is not military but political – resettling Gaza”.

That is how it looks to Ramadan in Beit Lahiya. He said: “I am afraid that if we go, they will not let us return. They will take our lands and homes and annex them to Israel or turn them into settlements.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called on Wednesday for the international community to stand firm to prevent “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, but the US and other western allies of Israel have so far been reluctant to use the leverage of their arms supplies to influence policy.

On 21 October, the radical movement Nachala held a festival on the Sukkot holiday titled: “Preparing to Settle Gaza”. It was attended by senior members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet as well as representatives of his Likud party. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on his way to the event that the Gaza strip is “part of the land of Israel”, adding that settlements were the only true form of security.

“All the signs indicate that Israel is not planning to let the displaced return,’ Landau wrote on his blog, translated and republished by the +972 magazine. “In this sense, the destruction in northern Gaza is unlike anything we have seen before.”

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https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-scholar-northern-gazaIsraeli Scholar Lays Out ‘True Brutality’ of Ethnic Cleansing Now Underway in Gaza”Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

JAKE JOHNSON Nov 01, 2024

Much alarm has been raised over the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” an ethnic cleansing proposal for northern Gazathat has reportedly garnered attention in the highest reaches of the Israeli government.

But Israeli scholar Idan Landau argued in a column published in English by +972 Magazine on Friday that what the Israeli military is actually doing in northern Gaza “is even more appalling” than the plan outlined by a group of retired generals. Landau argued that focus on the details of the Generals’ Plan has served to obscure the “true brutality” of Israel’s deadly operations in northern Gaza, which has been rendered a hellscape of death and destruction by the military assault and siege.

Landau, a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, opened his column—first published in Hebrew on his blog—by pointing to two photos: one showing a celebratory event at a camp built by an Israeli settler organization just outside of the Gaza Strip, and the other showing displaced Palestinians lined up at gunpoint amid the ruins of northern Gaza.

“These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten,” wrote Landau. “Yet this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the ‘Siyag Plan‘ that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers, sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them.”

The Israeli military’s dehumanization of the people of Gaza, Landau wrote, “cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

Landau wrote that what the Israeli army has been implementing in northern Gaza in recent weeks is “not quite” the Generals’ Plan, which entails giving Palestinians still in the region a week to leave before declaring the area a closed military zone—and designating everyone who remains a militant who can be denied humanitarian assistance and killed.

The actual strategy Israeli soldiers have been deploying in northern Gaza is “an even more sinister and brutal version” of the Generals’ Plan “within a more concentrated area.”

“The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza a week to evacuate southward,” Landau wrote. “The second departure concerns the real purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one.”

“As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: Anyone who so much as stepped out of their home risked being shot by Israeli snipers or drones, including young children and those holding white flags,” Landau noted. “Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also came under attack, as well as journalists trying to document the events.”

The scholar cites one “particularly harrowing video” in which a Palestinian child is seen “on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.”

“This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the ‘humanitarian zone,” Landau wrote. “Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has killed over 1,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are sleeping, slaughtering entire families in their homes and making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on October 24, rescue services announced that the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease all operations in the besieged areas.”

The deadly military assault, Landau stressed, has been accompanied by a “starvation policy” that has severely hindered the flow of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.

The heads of prominent United Nations agencies and human rights organizations warned Friday that conditions on the ground in the region are “apocalyptic” and that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.”

Landau noted that on October 16, following pressure from the Biden administration, the Israeli government reportedly allowed 100 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza.

“But journalists in the north were quick to correct the record: Nothing at all had entered the besieged areas,” Landau wrote. “On October 20, Israel denied a further request by U.N. agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, [and] medicines. Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state admitted to the High Court that no humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point. By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food siege.”

Addressing the question of “what is left for us to do” in the face of such a catastrophe, Landau wrote that “the consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.”

“We can also look for partners in this fight abroad, where the critical lever of pressure is the pipeline of American weapons,” he added. “The struggle to end this intensifying war of extermination and transfer in Gaza, particularly in the north, is first and foremost a human fight. It is a fight for life, both in Gaza and Israel: for the very chance that life can continue to exist in this blood-soaked land. Nothing could be more patriotic.”

+972 Magazine published Landau’s column a day after Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, warned in a statement that “time is running out” to stop the far-right Israeli government’s attempt to “erase the Palestinians from their own land and allow Israel to fully annex Palestinian territory.”

“Genocide and a man-made humanitarian catastrophe are unfolding in front of us and in Gaza,” said Albanese. “I regret to see so many member states are avoiding acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinian people and instead look away.”

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http://www.mako.co.il/video-blogs-specials/Article-cfcc51608651c51006.htm

האידיוטים השימושיים של תנועת החרם

כאשר פעילים פרו-פלסטינים השתעשעו ברעיון לקשר בין ישראל ודרום אפריקה תחת האפרטהייד, חוקרים מאוניברסיטת בן גוריון היו אלו שהפיצו את המשוואה. האוניברסיטאות חייבות להכיר בתפקיד חוקריהם בהענקת ההצדקה האינטלקטואלית לחרם על ישראל

דנה ברנט | mako | פורסם 17/05/17 11:37 

סוף סוף הרוחות בעולם נושבות בכיוון אחר. דו”ח הוועדה הכלכלית-חברתית של האו”ם למערב אסיה (הכוללת 18 מדינות ערביות), המאשים את ישראל במדיניות אפרטהייד גזענית נגד הפלסטינים, הוסר מאתר הוועדה. דובר האו”ם הסביר ש”הדו”ח כפי שהוא אינו משקף את עמדת המזכיר הכללי”. ההשוואה לאפרטהייד גם נדחתה על ידי הסנאט האמריקאי שהאשים את האו”ם בעיסוק אובססיבי בישראל. יתכן והאו”ם יאמץ גישה מאוזנת יותר בעתיד, אולם יש צורך להבין את ראשית המשוואה בין ישראל לאפרטהייד.

כאשר פעילים פרו-פלסטינים השתעשעו ברעיון לקשר בין ישראל ודרום אפריקה תחת האפרטהייד, חוקרים מאוניברסיטת בן גוריון סיפקו את הלגיטימציה האקדמית למשוואה. בימים הקרובים, כשחבר הנאמנים של אוניברסיטת בן גוריון מתכנס לדון בהישגי האוניברסיטה, כדאי שידון גם ב”הישג” זה.

אורן יפתחאל, פרופסור במחלקת הגיאוגרפיה באוניברסיטת בן גוריון, הוא ללא ספק הארכיטקט האינטלקטואלי של המשוואה. בשנת 2002, כאשר שלח למגזין ”פוליטיקל ג’יאוגרפי” מאמר שתיאר את ישראל כ”מדינה שמתמקדת בהתרחבות ושליטה של קבוצה אתנית אחת” והגיע למסקנה שחברה כזו “אינה יכולה להיות מסווגת כדמוקרטיה”, הופתע כשמאמרו הוחזר עם הסבר לפיו המגזין לא יכול לקבל מאמרים מישראל. לאחר דיון ממושך, המגזין ניאות לקבל את המאמר בתנאי שיפתחאל יערוך “תיקונים משמעותיים” הכוללים השוואה בין ישראל והאפרטהייד בדרום אפריקה. יפתחאל הסכים, ומאז הוא רוכב על הצלחת חקר ה”אפרטהייד הישראלי” בדרך לתהילה בקרב קהילת הגאוגרפיה הפוליטית בעולם. מייקל קרייג הדסון, לשעבר מנהל המרכז ללימודי מדינות ערב באוניברסיטת ג’ורג’טאון וחוקר הידוע כאנטי-ישראלי, הוקיר תודה ליפתחאל על תרומתו והעניק לו מדליה ב-2012.

ניב גורדון, פרופסור במחלקה לפוליטיקה וממשל באוניברסיטת בן גוריון, הוא חוקר נוסף שהפיץ את אנלוגיית “האפרטהייד הישראלי”. גורדון הינו פעיל פוליטי במשך שנים רבות, שהחל את דרכו כמנהל “רופאים לזכויות אדם – ישראל”, ארגון אשר גונה על ידי מגן דוד אדום. ב-2004 גורדון עבד כחוקר אורח באוניברסיטת ברקלי במחלקה ללימודי המזה”ת, אשר ידועה כאנטי-ישראלית, וזו סיפקה לו תמיכה. שם הוא כתב את ספרו “הכיבוש הישראלי”. אליבא דגורדון, ניתן למצוא רק “הבדל קטן” בין ישראל למשטר האפרטהייד בדרום אפריקה, והוא “שבגדה המערבית לא נחקק חוק ליישום פרקטיקה זו, ולא אומצה החלטה רשמית של הממשלה”. ההיגיון של גורדון הביא אותו בשנת 2009 לפרסם מאמר שקורא לחרם נגד ישראל ב”לוס אנג’לס טיימס” בו הוא טען ש”הדרך המדויקת ביותר לתאר את מדינת ישראל היא  כמדינת אפרטהייד”. 

עידן לנדו, מרצה בחוג לספרות ובלשנות באוניברסיטת בן גוריון, פירסם בשנת 2007 מאמר שעוסק במטרות החרם האקדמי. הוא כתב כי “סוגיית החרם האקדמי על ישראל מעלה לכל היותר שאלות פרקטיות. לאחר שמקלפים את שכבות העלבון, הזעם הקורבני ותרגילי הסחת הדעת השגורים, לא נותר בדברי המתנגדים לחרם טיעון עקרוני אחד, המערער על תוקפה המוסרי של סנקציית החרם האקדמי נגד מדינת ישראל ומשטר האפרטהייד שהיא הנהיגה בשטחים”.

שרי אהרוני מהתכנית ללימודי מגדר באוניברסיטת בן גוריון כתבה מאמר משותף ב-2015 שתמך בחרם חלקי נגד ישראל, בו נטען כי “תנועת החרם שנשענת על שפה של חופש וצדק, ממסגרת את הכיבוש הישראלי כהצהרת שליטה של ציונות קולוניאליסטית אשר עם השנים הופכת למדיניות אפרטהייד ממוסדת הנסמכת על לאומנות ואפליה אתנית”. אולם עבור אהרוני ושות’, “חרם אקדמי הוא חרב פיפיות” משום ש”חרם יגרום לחוקרים בין-לאומיים להימנע משיתופי פעולה עם חוקרים ישראלים שמתנגדים לכיבוש”, שהרי אלה “עם הזמן מושתקים ומודרים בתוך האקדמיה הישראלית”. היא ושותפתה אף אישרו ש”אלה שתומכים בחרם אקדמי ותרבותי נגד ישראל טוענים שמוסדות להשכלה גבוהה משרתים את הכיבוש. זה כמובן נכון מבחינה כלכלית”.

אל מול התנהלות “האקטיביסטים” לא נשמעה התנגדות מצד הנהלת אוניברסיטת בן גוריון. אולם, כאשר ועדה בינלאומית מטעם המועצה להשכלה גבוהה דרשה מהאוניברסיטה לשים גבולות לסגל האקטיביסטי-רדיקלי ואיימה לסגור את המחלקה לפוליטיקה וממשל, נשיאת האוניברסיטה ודיקן הפקולטה למדעי הרוח גייסו את הקהילה האקדמית הבינלאומית למחאה. 

אוניברסיטת בן גוריון בפרט והאוניברסיטאות הישראליות בכלל חייבות להכיר בתפקידם המרכזי של חוקרים ישראלים בהענקת לגיטימציה לאנלוגיית “ישראל כמדינת אפרטהייד” המשמשת הצדקה אינטלקטואלית לתנועת החרם. ראשי תנועת החרם מברכים על שיתוף פעולה זה עם חוקרים ישראלים משום שאלה הודפים האשמות בדבר אנטישמיות. במובן זה, יפתחאל, גורדון ואחרים משמשים כגלגול העכשווי של “האידיוטים השימושיים” של לנין.

ד”ר דנה בָּרנֶט היא מנכ”לית ”מוניטור האקדמיה הישראלית”. המאמר מבוסס על מחקרה ”פוסט-ציונות והאוניברסיטאות הישראליות: הקשר האקדמי-פוליטי”.

31.10.24

Editorial Note

The IAM posts occasionally receive responses from readers, but when several academics respond to our publications, it merits our attention. 

Recently, IAM reported that “Israeli Academics Sign Petition Calling to Sanction Israel.” The post discussed an online petition titled “Call for International Pressure,” signed by over four hundred petitioners, including a group of Israeli academics. Their names are Anat Matar (TAU), Smadar Ben-Natan (U of Oregon), Moshé Behar (U of Manchester), Tamir Sorek (Penn State U), Rafi Greenberg (TAU), Shira Klein (Chapman U), Lior Sternfeld (Penn State U), Ophira Gamliel (U of Glasgow), Hilla Dayan (U of Amsterdam), Regev Nathansohn, Uri Hadar (TAU), Snait Gissis (TAU), Amalia Saar (U of Haifa), Avishai Ehrlich (Academic College Tel Aviv-Jaffa), Efraim Davidi (BGU), Maya Rosenfeld (BGU), Avraham Oz (U of Haifa), Ronnen Ben-Arie (Technion), Yael Berda (HUJI), Anat Biletzki (Quinnipiac University), Sivan Rajuan Shtang (Sapir College), Hannan Hever (HUJI), Orly Lubin (TAU), Raz Chen-Morris (HUJI), Hannah Safran, Revital Madar (European University Institute), Ilana Hairston (Tel Hai College), Amos Goldberg (HUJI), Tamar Hager (Tel Hai College), Miriam Eliav-Feldon (TAU), Noga Kadman.

The petition stated, “We, Israeli citizens, living in Israel and abroad, are calling on the international community – the United Nations and its institutions, the United States, the European Union, the Arab League and all the countries of the world – to intervene immediately and apply every possible sanction… save us from ourselves, put real pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire.”

In other words, the group condemned Israel and absolved the Palestinians and Iran from any responsibility. Moreover, the petitioners urged weakening Israel. 

Soon after the publication of this post, IAM received an email from Shlomo Sand, an emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University, who had expertise in French culture and cinema. Sand made a name for himself by claiming that Jews are not a people and have no rights to the land of Israel – although there is ample evidence otherwise. Sand wrote IAM and asked for his name to be added to the signatories list.

Worth noting that Sand is among the more notorious examples of anti-Israel Israeli academics. The damages he has caused are considerable. He published two polemical books masquerading as academics – the Invention of the Jewish People and the Invention of the Land of Israel. Sand, who has no academic background in the history of the Jewish People, wrote many errors. As a result, antisemites loved his books. They needed an academic stamp of approval for their antisemitic theories. Not surprisingly, Sand did not publish these two books in academic presses.

Several responses from an anti-Israel Israeli academic came from Micah Leshem, professor emeritus of Psychology at the University of Haifa. When IAM reported on “Claremont Colleges as Battleground for BDS,” Leshem wrote back to say it was “encouraging.” In an earlier post, when IAM reported on “Anti-Israel Academic Erica Weiss from Tel Aviv University,” Leshem responded, “glad to see there are more and more scholars in the field. Your Mantra of Anti-Israel falls rather hollow – what you are really preaching is for hate among people living here. That’s what it boils down to. Again, thnx for showcasing this, it is heartwarming, and I often post it on, albeit without your facile commentary.” IAM could not resist the temptation to respond with irony, “I know, you were always very fond of antisemites, I noticed it already twenty years ago. You should check what is wrong with you.”

Other responses came from academics like Ian Lustick, professor emeritus at the Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, who wrote IAM, “Thanks so much for bringing this courageous initiative to my attention and to the attention of so many others so that the world can know that Israel is more than what it now seems to be.” To an earlier IAM post titled “Moshe Zimmermann Empowers Antisemites,” Lustick responded, “Thanks for providing such an accurate and compelling account of Zimerman’s powerful analysis.” To recall, as IAM concluded in this post that Zimmemman’s obsession with finding parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany blinds him to the fact that despite his egregious comparisons, his academic career flourished and he retired with full benefits. Zimmermann ignored the fact that Israel was not even slightly similar to Germany in the 1930s.  If he were teaching there and trashing the Nazi regime, he would have been sent to any of the extermination camps. Zimmermann’s new book empowers antisemites by comparing religious Jews to radical Islamists.

But, the final misunderstanding comes from Prof. Hannah Herzog, professor emeritus of Sociology at Tel Aviv University, who complained about the IAM post “Israeli Efforts to Combat Academic Boycotts.” IAM detailed in a post how the Technion is leading an initiative to battle BDS. IAM referred to a discussion by academics about the initiative, which was circulated by the Academia-IL forum. IAM cited a message by Herzog, who stated she “was amazed to receive this email – is this what the Neaman Institution was created for? To be part of the Shin Bet or any other state body. And all for money. Where did we get to?” When IAM cited Herzog, we stated it was “egregious” of her because “The BDS crowd made no secret of their desire to degrade Israel’s leading role in advanced technology in a variety of fields, including medicine, environmentally friendly agriculture, and environmental amelioration.” Herzog, who IAM never accused of supporting BDS, blamed IAM for suggesting she supports BDS. 

As IAM repeatedly stated, many Israeli academics were recruited and promoted due to their political activism rather than merit. 

Unfortunately, academic authorities turned a blind eye to the abuse of academic positions.  With few exceptions, Israeli universities are public institutions and should follow the guidelines for public universities in Western countries.  In the United States, for example, the governors have a say in the institutions through the board.  In Great Britain, where tenure was abolished decades ago, advocacy writing masquerading as scholarly endeavor is rare.

Given the extreme wave of antisemitism on Western campuses, the Israeli academic authorities should do more to prevent scholars from fueling the flames.

REFERENCES:

———- Forwarded message ———
From: shlomo sand<shlomosand@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 16, 2024 at 3:57 PM
Subject: Re: Israeli Academics Sign Petition Calling to Sanction Israel
To: Israel Academia <iam.israel.academia.monitor@gmail.com>

אני חותם: שלמה זנד  shlomo  sand

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———- Forwarded message ———
From: Lustick, Ian<ilustick@sas.upenn.edu>
Date: Wed, Oct 16, 2024 at 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: Israeli Academics Sign Petition Calling to Sanction Israel
To: Israel Academia <iam.israel.academia.monitor@gmail.com>

Thanks so much for bringing this courageous initiative to my attention and to the attention of so many others so that the world can know that Israel is more than what it now seems to be.  

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

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Micah Leshem<micahl@psy.haifa.ac.il>
Date: Wed, Oct 23, 2024 at 5:01 PM
Subject: RE: Claremont Colleges as Battleground for BDS
To: Dana Barnett <email.israel.academia.monitor@gmail.com>

Thank you, Dana – encouraging!

Kol tuv

Micah

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

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Hanna Herzog<hherzog@tauex.tau.ac.il>
Date: Thu, Aug 8, 2024 at 6:32 PM
Subject: FW: Israeli Efforts to Combat Academic Boycotts
To: Israel Academia <iam.israel.academia.monitor@gmail.com>

שלום רב,

קבלתי את ההתכתבות שלהלן. בו אני מצוטטת –

Herzog’s comment lamenting that the Neaman Institute is “part of the Shin Bet” is even more egregious. The BDS crowd made no secret of their desire to degrade Israel’s leading role in advanced technology in a variety of fields, including medicine, environmentally friendly agriculture, and environmental amelioration. Not incidentally, many of the scientific-military developments, including the Iron Dome, saved the lives of countless Israelis from targeted attacks of Iran and its proxies on the civilian population

מבקשת להביא הוכחות על כך שתמכתי בBDS  מעולם לא! זו הוצאת דיבה.

אני אף פעם לא חתמתי על עצומה של תמיכה בBDS,  וגם הערתי היתה בעצם שאלה מי הם הגופים שצריכים לעשות מחקרים מסוג זה.

תהיתי אם גופי מחקר אקדמיים זה (מכון נאמן) תפקידם להיות הגוף שעושה מוניטור בסוגיות אלה.  בדיוק ההיפך מהפרשנות שלכםן. חשבתי שזה תפקיד של גופים הממונים על בטחון המדינה ולא גופים אקדמיים.

אגב, “בשער” אף פעם לא קיבל את מה שכתבתי כי אינני חברה רשמית בפורום.  אבל ציטוט אחד הכניס אותי לרשימה “שחורה שלכםן” ופגעתם בשמי הטוב. עילה לתביעה משפטית. אני כמובן לא אעשה זאת, זה מתחת לכבודי.  אבל, נראה לי שמתחייבת התנצלות על פגיעה בשמי הטוב.

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———- Forwarded message ———
From: Lustick, Ian<ilustick@sas.upenn.edu>
Date: Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 10:37 PM
Subject: Re: Moshe Zimmermann Empowers Antisemites
To: Israel Academia <iam.israel.academia.monitor@gmail.com>

Thanks for providing such an accurate and compelling account of Zimerman’s powerful analysis. IL

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

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Micah Leshem<micahl@psy.haifa.ac.il>
Date: Thu, Sep 19, 2024 at 6:20 PM
Subject: RE: Anti-Israel Academic Erica Weiss from Tel Aviv University
To: Dana Barnett <email.israel.academia.monitor@gmail.com>

Thnx, Barnett – glad to see there are more and more scholars in the field.

Your Mantra of Anti-Israel falls rather hollow – what you are really preaching is for hate among people living here. That’s what it boils down to.

Again, thnx for showcasing this, it is heartwarming, and I often post it on, albeit without your facile commentary.

Kol tuv

Micah

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Dana Barnett<email.israel.academia.monitor@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 30, 2024 at 12:10 PM
Subject: Re: Anti-Israel Academic Erica Weiss from Tel Aviv University
To: Micah Leshem <micahl@psy.haifa.ac.il>

I know, you were always very fond of antisemites, I noticed it already twenty years ago. You should check what is wrong with you.

23.10.24

Editorial Note

The Claremont Colleges complex is located on contiguous campuses in the Southern California city of Claremont. They include five undergraduate liberal arts colleges and two graduate institutions. These are Pomona College, Claremont Graduate University, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, and Keck Graduate Institute. 

Earlier this month, a discussion titled “Should Universities Boycott, Divest, or Sanction Israel” was hosted at the Claremont McKenna College. As well known, the BDS movement calls for institutions to cut their ties with “companies that participate in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.” The discussion was part of the Claremont Colleges Open Academy, a program focusing on “core commitments to Freedom of Expression, Viewpoint Diversity, and Constructive Dialogue.”  In Open Academy, “Students are given the tools to listen respectfully, ask incisive questions, and engage with greater curiosity and openness to differences of opinion. This is how we strengthen the national practice of our democracy.” 

Two professors appeared on the panel, one advocating for BDS and the other arguing against it.  

Prof. Yuval Avnur, an associate professor of philosophy at Scripps College specializing in agnosticism and epistemology, represented the anti-BDS position.  Prof. David Lloyd, an emeritus professor of English at UC Riverside whose expertise focuses on Irish culture and postcolonial and cultural theory, represented the pro-BDS stance.

As expected, the event was emotionally charged.

Avnur started with a statement on why universities should reject BDS and encourage engagement with Israel. He disagreed with Pitzer College’s decision to remove the Study Abroad program with the Israeli University of Haifa, which was driven by the BDS movement. “The University of Haifa is an incredibly diverse school that provides substantial opportunities for its students… If the aim was to encourage Israel to provide better opportunities for Arab-Israelis, this, I think, was a spectacular and hypocritical failure. We should instead engage with the University of Haifa to strengthen the positive role it plays for Arab-Israelis.” Avnur closed his statement by emphasizing why he believes the BDS movement can cause harm to the Claremont community. “As an academic community, we must do better than getting into simple good versus evil narratives and into false colonizer-colonized dichotomies where they don’t exist… We need to think critically and seek out knowledge about the problems we wish to solve, not accept sloganeering and propaganda. This is why we should reject BDS.” Avnur said. 

Lloyd followed up with his pro-BDS arguments, countering Avnur’s claims that the BDS movement is divisive. “BDS is a civil rights movement… It seeks to transform a situation by placing external pressure, not divisive pressure, by any means, in the interest of having people learn to live together.” Lloyd explained how the practices of BDS hold power when targeted toward a country such as Israel.“ BDS is “only really effective where it is possible to put pressure on a population that might conceivably make them change… It is possible for Israel to decolonize.” Lloyd noted that academic spaces were ideal for these difficult conversations. “If we are going to proximate truth or social justice, and I don’t think the two are fully separable, then this is how we do it… We talk. We try to persuade and we try to introduce people to facts they haven’t heard before. The boycott strategy is precisely designed to do that,” Lloyd said.

Worth noting that Lloyd is a longtime anti-Israel activist. Jadaliyya, an independent journal produced by the Arab Studies Institute, describes Lloyd as a “Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, and a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.” Adding, he published numerous articles on Palestine and Israel, including “Settler Colonialism and the State of Exception: The Example of Israel/Palestine” in The Journal of Settler Colonial Studies and, with Malini Johar Schueller, an essay on the rationale for the academic boycott of Israel in the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom.”  For Jadaliyya, it doesn’t matter if Lloyd has no academic background in Palestinian, Israeli, or Middle Eastern Studies. As Jadalliya admits, “Lloyd works primarily on Irish culture and on postcolonial and cultural theory. His most recent book is Irish Culture and Colonial Modernity: The Transformation of Oral Space.”

In October 2023, soon after the Hamas massacre of Israelis, several events took place at the Claremont Colleges. For example, a panel at Pomona titled “Conflation of Antisemitism with Criticism of the Israeli Government: Unpacking a Campus, Domestic, & International Problem.” Another event at Pomona was titled “Standing in Solidarity with Palestine,” co-hosted by Claremont SJP and Claremont Jewish Voices for Peace.

Unfortunately, BDS already scored some wins. In April 2024, Pitzer College removed from its pre-approved list the study abroad programs in 11 countries, including the University of Haifa in Israel. Pitzer’s administration stated otherwise. President Strom C. Thacker wrote in a statement that the decision to remove 11 international programs from the pre-approved list “was made by the Faculty Executive Committee in April. I wish to reiterate, as stated in communications from the Dean of Faculty, that none of the removals from the pre-approved list, including that of the University of Haifa, were for reasons of academic boycott.”

However, in May 2023, a delegation of professors and students from Pitzer College and Claremont McKenna College visited Birzeit University. They came to learn more about higher education institutions in Palestine. The delegation met with Dr. Beshara Doumani, Birzeit University’s President, who addressed the “challenges facing Palestinian universities in light of settler colonialism and for-profit education.”

Doumani emphasized the “significance of academic exchange as a means to break the siege on Palestinian universities.” He stated, “Although the Israeli occupation imposes severe restrictions on Palestinian universities, we developed strong south south academic relations and partnerships with other parts of the world to conquer geography.” During the meeting, the delegation learnt about the BDS movement and mobility programs available to Palestinian students. The delegation has met members of the Right to Education campaign to learn about “Israeli violations against Birzeit University students and Israeli directives that isolate Palestinian universities.” Pitzer College professors also held individual meetings with several Birzeit University professors “to learn more about the academic programs offered at Birzeit University and to explore collaborative research projects.” 

To recall, Doumani previously taught at Brown University, where he recruited the anti-Israel Israeli Professor Ariella Azoulay, a specialist in art and culture, to the Middle East Center, which he headed. Azoulay made a career of bashing Israel.  She is one of the numerous Israeli scholars rewarded with positions in Western institutions due to their political agenda, a phenomenon IAM has frequently reported. 

The BDS discussion underscores the difficulties in providing a balanced discourse as the Open Academy required. Liberal arts on American campuses are full of academic activists such as Doumani or Lloyd. Students are often indoctrinated by their professors to the point that they are unwilling to listen to the other side. As one of the students stated in the BDS discussion: “Some questions, which were back-to-back, were asked in what felt like an antagonistic manner… It didn’t really feel as if some of the questions were coming from a state of wanting to know more but instead an unwillingness to hear out the other perspective.”

REFERENCES:

‘Should Universities Boycott, Divest, or Sanction Israel?’: Professors debate productivity of BDS on college campuses

October 11, 2024 12:16 am

‘Should Universities Boycott, Divest, or Sanction Israel?’: Professors debate productivity of BDS on college campuses

By Audrey Park and Chloe Eshagh

On Saturday, Oct. 5, Claremont McKenna College’s (CMC) Open Academy hosted a discussion titled “Should Universities Boycott, Divest, or Sanction Israel” at CMC’s Kravis Center. Featuring two professors, one advocated the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement while the other argued against it.

The BDS movement calls for institutions to cut ties with “companies that participate in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.” The debate around this sentiment is especially prevalent among U.S. college and university students, including those at the 5Cs.

Yuval Avnur, an associate professor of philosophy at Scripps College who specializes in agnosticism and epistemology, represented the anti-BDS position. David Lloyd, a professor of English Emeritus at UC Riverside whose expertise focuses on Irish culture and postcolonial and cultural theory, represented the pro-BDS stance.

Facilitated by Heather Fergusen, associate professor of history at CMC, the emotionally charged event had community members challenging the professors’ perspectives, sharing their own experiences and asking questions.

Following Fergusen’s brief introduction to the professors and outline of the event’s structure, each professor delivered opening statements, addressing their stances on the movement.

Avnur gave an opening statement on why universities should reject BDS and encourage engagement with Israel instead of resisting. Avnur said he disagreed with Pitzer College’s decision to remove its study abroad program at the University of Haifa in Israel, which was driven by the BDS movement.

“The University of Haifa is an incredibly diverse school that provides substantial opportunities for its students,” Anvar said. “If the aim was to encourage Israel to provide better opportunities for Arab-Israelis, this, I think, was a spectacular and hypocritical failure. We should instead engage with the University of Haifa to strengthen the positive role it plays for Arab-Israelis.”

Avnur closed his statement by emphasizing why he believes the BDS movement can cause harm to the 5C community.

“As an academic community, we must do better than getting into simple good versus evil narratives and into false colonizer-colonized dichotomies where they don’t exist,” Avnur said. “We need to think critically and seek out knowledge about the problems we wish to solve, not accept sloganeering and propaganda. This is why we should reject BDS.”

Lloyd followed up with his pro-BDS argument, countering Avnur’s argument that the movement is divisive.

“BDS is a civil rights movement,” Lloyd said. “It seeks to transform a situation by placing external pressure, not divisive pressure, by any means, in the interest of having people learn to live together.”

Lloyd explained how the practices of BDS hold power when targeted toward a country such as Israel.

“Sanctions and divestment and boycott are only really effective where it is possible to put pressure on a population that might conceivably make them change,” Lloyd said. “It is possible for Israel to decolonize.”

When asked why universities are the appropriate setting for discussions and boycotts, Lloyd noted larger academic spaces as the ideal place for these difficult conversations.

“If we are going to proximate truth or social justice, and I don’t think the two are fully separable, then this is how we do it,” Lloyd said. “We talk. We try to persuade and we try to introduce people to facts they haven’t heard before. The boycott strategy is precisely designed to do that.”

Following the professor’s opening statements, Ferguson opened the conversation for comments and questions. During this time, several students detailed their personal experiences relating to the situation, resulting in some tension and high emotions.

Event attendee Alyssa Wu PO ’28 said that while the space allowed for a productive and necessary conversation, at times, questions felt targeted toward Lloyd.

“Some questions, which were back-to-back, were asked in what felt like an antagonistic manner,” Wu said. “It didn’t really feel as if some of the questions were coming from a state of wanting to know more but instead an unwillingness to hear out the other perspective.”

Wu said that overall, the event was helpful in education on the topics and left her feeling prepared to engage in discourse surrounding them.

“A lot of history, terms and specific documents were talked about,” Wu said. “Just being able to hear them explained in a more simplified manner was really nice, and I plan to use this as a gateway to do my own reading and research.”

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A Statement on a Proposed Boycott

A Statement on a Proposed Boycott

by jpitney | Mar 8, 2024 | Higher Education, Israel | 0 comments

Students at Pitzer College have proposed suspending the college’s direct enrollment study abroad program with the University of Haifa, At The Student Life, Ansley Washburn and Annabelle Ink report on one reaction.

[On] Wednesday, Feb. 28, TSL received a statement from Claremont McKenna College (CMC) Professor of Mathematics Lenny Fukshansky that expressed his and dozens of other faculty members’ opposition to the proposed suspension of the Haifa study abroad program and condemned the recent results of the Associated Students of Pomona College’s (ASPC) referendum.

The statement, titled “Promoting Learning, Rejecting Division: Claremont Faculty Against Academic Boycott,” had a total of 38 faculty member signatures. A majority of support came from CMC professors, representing 26 of the signatures. Following behind CMC, Scripps College had six signatures, Pitzer and Pomona College each contributed two and Keck Graduate Institute and Claremont Graduate University had one signature each. No one from Harvey Mudd College signed the statement.

Originally, the letter was drafted in collaboration between a small group of faculty members before being sent to colleagues whom Fukshansky said he knew personally and thought would be interested in signing it. In an interview with TSL, Fukshansky also noted that several individuals expressed support for the letter but ultimately refused to sign it for fear of backlash.

“There were a certain number of people who said that, while they do agree with the statement of the letter, they did not feel comfortable signing it because of, I guess, potential consequences,” Fukshansky said. “To me, it sounded like people are afraid of possible intimidation.”

The statement began by expressing some professors’ opposition to the suspension of the Haifa program, stating that the institution has a diverse array of students and viewpoints.

“The University of Haifa is among the most multicultural campuses in the world,” the statement read. “Its professors express a wide spectrum of opinion on Israel and Zionism. No college committed to promoting inquiry, dialogue and debate should refuse to send their students to the University of Haifa.”

The statement stood in support of President Gabrielle Starr’s Feb. 16 email to the Pomona community in which she opposed ASPC’s hosting of the referendum and suggested that targeting Israel could have antisemitic implications. Similarly, the Feb. 28 statement criticized the referendum’s focus on Israel, noting the historic vilification of Jewish people.

“As Pomona President Starr’s letter notes, branding Israel as the world’s only pariah state is troubling because of a long history of treating Jews as a singular threat to human progress and flourishing,” the statement read.

The statement also argued that, while “there is a spectrum of reasonable disagreement on the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” recent calls to suspend the study abroad program at the University of Haifa and to cease academic and economic relations with Israeli institutions did not recognize this spectrum.

“[These initiatives] are part of the broader Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is opposed to any relations with Israel, its people, its institutions, and its supporters,” the statement read. “We fear that the intellectual retreat and calcification BDS encourages would make it harder for all of us to engage and understand both Israel and its Palestinian neighbors.”

In the interview, Fukshansky elaborated on his aversion to boycotts specifically.

“I am fairly pro-Israel in this situation and I know a number of people who also are,” he said. “For us, seeing boycott measures or calls for boycott measures feels very divisive. I can think of few things that are more illiberal than a boycott, because a boycott shuts down a conservation before it gets started.”

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Hundreds of 7C students call for end to Gaza siege, demand Pomona financial disclosure, divestment from Israeli government

October 27, 2023 1:01 am

Hundreds of 7C students call for end to Gaza siege, demand Pomona financial disclosure, divestment from Israeli government

By Sara Cawley

On Wednesday afternoon, over 350 Claremont Colleges students walked out of classes to demand that the 7Cs divest from companies and manufacturers that support the Israeli government, citing the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The demonstration and delegation effort was part of a nationwide student walkout calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of historically Palestinian land and U.S. support of what many international groups recognize as Israeli apartheid.

Wednesday’s walkout was the most recent student action of many protests, teach-ins, vigils and panels at the Claremont Colleges since Oct. 7, when Palestinian armed group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing approximately 1,300. The Oct. 7 onslaught was one of the largest militant resistance efforts from a Palestinian group since the origin of Israeli military occupation in the West Bank in 1967. As of Oct. 26, Gaza’s Ministry of Health estimates that over 7,000 have been killed by retaliatory attacks by Israel Defense Forces since Oct. 7.

Less than 30 minutes before the walkout was scheduled to begin, Pomona College President Gabi Starr sent an email to students reminding them that they “must adhere to [Pomona’s] student code and demonstration policy at all times,” and that campus safety staff would now be present during protests “to help ensure the safety of all.”

7C community members have called out Starr for her lack of recognition toward and support of Palestinian students. A 5C student who participated in the walkout said they felt dispirited by Claremont administrators’ responses, or lack thereof, to the grief of Palestinian students.

“We’ve seen no [administrative] acknowledgement of the 75 years of apartheid which have been happening in Palestine, which is incredibly disheartening and honestly racist, the way that white lives are being valued more than brown lives,” the student, who requested anonymity for safety and doxxing concerns, said.

Wednesday’s walkout began at 1:30 p.m. when students left their classes to gather on Bowling Green Lawn at Scripps College, participating in protest chants such as “Stop the killings stop the hate / Israel is an apartheid state,” “Hey students, come outside / Claremont pays for genocide,” and “Gaza Gaza head held high / Palestine will never die.” Many wore masks to protect their identities. Several onlookers took photographs and recordings of protestors.

“The protest was peaceful, it was respectful, it was a joyous moment of community and advocacy for people who are being marginalized and whose voices have been overlooked for so long and whose humanity has been continuously stripped from them in the media,” the anonymous student said.

Around 2:15 p.m., students walked through Claremont McKenna College’s (CMC) campus to Pomona’s Alexander Hall, where hundreds of students stood outside administrative offices. One unidentified student leader spoke directly to Pomona’s Vice President and Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer Jeff Roth about protesters’ demands. They asked Roth to disclose whether Pomona was investing their endowment in any companies that fund Israel and to divest from those companies if so. The speaker said that students would escalate action if Pomona failed to disclose investments by Friday.

“Until disclosure, we have every reason to believe that our tuition money is being used to support this internationally recognized apartheid regime and the war crimes of the Israeli State,” the student stated. “We are here because Pomona is complicit with the mass slaughter of an entire people, with the ethnic cleansing and the forced displacement of Palestinians.”

The protest dispersed after closing protest chants on Pomona’s Marston Quad just before 3:00 p.m.

Mark Kendall, Pomona’s chief communications officer, told TSL via email that the institution’s endowment investment policies are set by the Board of Trustees. Kendall referred TSL to Pomona’s audited financial statements for more information on monetary disclosure.

“The pooled funds include international equities, and the investment policies do not single out any country or region with nation-based investment restrictions,” Kendall said. “Donations for current use (such as the annual fund) are not invested alongside the endowment. Tuition and fees also are separate from the endowment and are used solely to support college operations.”

The protester’s request was the latest instance of the BDS movement at the 5Cs, which has taken over some academic and student government discourse at Pitzer College and Pomona, to administrative pushback.

Hours after President Starr’s email in the early afternoon and the completion of the student delegation at Alexander Hall, Pomona students received another email outlining changes in policies for event promotion/advertising, speech and events. The email was sent jointly by Pomona’s Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Avis E. Hinkson and Associate Dean of Students & Dean of Campus Life Josh Eisenberg.

Amid last week’s return from fall break, over 150 7C students arranged a vigil for Palestine on Friday at Pomona’s Smith Campus Center (SCC). The vigil was followed by a teach-in, informing students on the historical context of the Free Palestine movement.

During the vigil, student representatives from different affinity groups and social justice organizations read out messages in solidarity with Palestine. Before the teach-in, some event organizers also handed out information packets to attendees, which highlighted the event’s thesis. 

“In order to understand the Palestinian struggle, you must understand it through a framework that captures the historical processes that produced our current conditions,” the pamphlets read. “That framework is ‘settler-colonialism.’ In its current manifestation, this settler colonialism is enforced or sustained through systems of occupation and apartheid. This in turn requires us to understand the Palestinian struggle as one of national liberation.”

After listening to a line-up of speakers, the vigil attendees decorated the SCC fountain with flowers, stuffed animals and letters in support of Palestinians affected by the violence, including a message mourning “insurgents who have died for the liberation of Palestine.”

Some students disagreed with parts of the vigil’s messaging. Riaan Dhankhar PO ’25 spent time working for the House Foreign Affairs Committee on policies around Israel and wanted to look at differences between student and policymaker perspectives on current issues. He cited compassion for Palestinian people and hopes for a ceasefire as his primary reasons for attending the vigil, and said he was disappointed by the nature of the event.

Dhankhar said he felt that some student speakers at the vigil leaned in to propaganda. While he thinks there is “a lot of merit” to calling what is happening in Palestine a genocide, he believes student groups in Claremont should focus on directly helping Palestinians in this moment rather than utilizing combative anti-apartheid rhetoric.

“Everyone in this situation is going through hell. This is the darkest moment in Israeli history since 1967, but it’s also what Palestinians view as the third Intifada, or as the second Nakba,” Dhankhar said. “That I think is getting lost because everyone is so mad and so vigilant and so interested in pointing fingers, that the need for aid and help and the moment to actually mourn the loss and actually have a real vigil has been lost.” 

After the teach-in, students and organizers marched around the SCC. Their chants included “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “From Palestine to Mexico / All these walls have got to go.”

The march continued through the campuses to its destination at Commencement Plaza during Pitzer President Strom Thacker’s inauguration. Around 50 students protested Thacker’s Oct. 13 response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Thacker’s statement was his second response to the attack, with the first on Oct. 9 receiving criticism for neutrality.

Wearing all black and silently holding signs raising awareness for the Free Palestine movement, protestors maintained a stark visual for everyone on stage for the remainder of the ceremony.

One student demonstrator, who requested to remain anonymous for safety concerns, felt the need to protest because of Pitzer’s response to the situation. 

“As a Palestinian student, I’m deeply hurt that we continue to talk about this genocide as a conflict when a population is being ethnically cleansed, there’s no place for justification. Of course, we must mourn all lives lost, but we cannot dismiss the source of the violence which is settler colonialism and genocide. And Pitzer has a responsibility in addressing the truth as it is,” they said.

The student expressed gratitude for the demonstrations happening for Palestine, in contrast to what they felt was silence on the part of the college administrators.  

“While it has been heartwarming to see students teaching other students and faculty just having open conversations about this, it’s also been really disappointing to see that the very leaders of this place are the ones that are either choosing to be silent, or to take a neutral stance on genocide.” 

Another student demonstrating at the inauguration, who requested to remain anonymous for the same concerns, cited Pitzer’s need to divest from funding to Israel.

“I think at this school, President Thacker and all of us have a really big responsibility to do what we can to prevent the genocide that is being funded by our tax dollars as an institution we have ties to the State of Israel,” they said. “And I think it’s important that we bring awareness to the genocide that’s happening and we emphasize how important it is for Pitzer College to divest from apartheid Israel, and to stand with Palestinians.” 

Five days after these events, the vigil at the SCC was taken down by Pomona facilities staff on Tuesday morning.

Claremont students and faculty have also created platforms to share both research and personal experiences with conflict and occupation in Israel and Palestine. On Wednesday evening in Pitzer’s Benson auditorium, four students and three professors from CMC and Pitzer participated in a panel highlighting an 11-day solidarity tour in Palestine they participated in this summer.

A Pitzer student on the study tour, Jordan PZ ’23, talked about the impactful and joyful time he spent with Palestinian students at Birzeit University in the West Bank during the trip.

“It just felt like college students hanging out and joking around just like we would in Claremont,” he said. “This seems sort of banal, but it is profound because most of us who are Americans are taught to dehumanize Palestinians.”

One of the panelists, Pitzer Associate Professor of English and World Literature Amanda Lagji, spoke to her positionality and perspective on the Palestinian solidarity study tour.

“I’ll mention just briefly how I’ve taken what I’ve learned from the trip back to Pitzer into the classroom,” Lagji said. “My work is not simply to integrate Palestinian voices into my syllabi, not only to understand Palestine’s occupation as settler colonialism, but also to address the perception that to speak about Palestine is impossible.”

Other events that took place this week include a panel at Hahn Hall at Pomona on Monday, “Conflation of Antisemitism with Criticism of the Israeli Government: Unpacking a Campus, Domestic, & International Problem” and a Thursday Community Lunch at the Pomona Womxn’s Union “Standing in Solidarity with Palestine” co-hosted by Claremont SJP and Claremont Jewish Voices for Peace. Today, Claremont Hillel is sponsoring a weekly Lunch and Learn at CMC: “Israel and Us: A Faculty Moderated Discussion.”

Maxine Davey, Ben Lauren and Enoch Kim contributed reporting.

This article has been updated Oct. 27 at 11:00 a.m. to include the perspectives students who demonstrated at Pitzer’s inauguration last Friday.

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https://www.birzeit.edu/en/news/birzeit-university-hosts-delegation-pitzer-and-claremont-mckenna-college-united-states

Birzeit University hosts delegation from Pitzer and Claremont McKenna College, United States

6 Jun 2023

On Thursday, May 25, 2023, a delegation from Pitzer College and Claremont McKenna College, California, US, comprising professors and students, visited Birzeit University to learn more about higher education institutions in Palestine.

The delegation met with Birzeit University President Dr. Beshara Doumani, who addressed the challenges facing Palestinian universities in light of settler colonialism and for-profit education.

Dr. Doumani emphasized the significance of academic exchange as a means to break the siege on Palestinian universities. He added, “Although the Israeli occupation imposes severe restrictions on Palestinian universities, we developed strong south south academic relations and partnerships with other parts of the world to conquer geography.”

During the meeting, the delegation inquired about the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and mobility programs available to Palestinian students.

To answer student inquires, Dr. Amir Khalil, director of the External Academic Relations Office, elaborated on partnerships between Birzeit University and American and European universities, emphasizing the interpersonal skills students develop while studying abroad.

Later, the delegation met members of the Right to Education campaign to learn about Israeli violations against Birzeit University students and Israeli directives that isolate Palestinian universities.

Pitzer College professors also held individual meetings with Birzeit University professors to learn more about the academic programs offered at Birzeit University and to explore collaborative research projects.

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https://mesana.org/advocacy/committee-on-academic-freedom/2013/04/26/urging-claremont-mckenna-college-to-uphold-free-speech-and-academic-freedom-principles-regarding-sjp-protest

Committee on Academic Freedom

Urging Claremont McKenna College to Uphold Free Speech and Academic Freedom Principles regarding SJP Protest

• April 26, 2013 
• Committee on Academic Freedom

• •  Interventions
  •  US
• • Students for Justice in Palestine

Pamela Brooks Gann, President
Claremont McKenna College 
500 E. Ninth Street
Claremont, CA 91711
via fax: (909) 621-8790

Dear President Gann:

I am writing on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to express concern about the response of Claremont McKenna College (CMC) to an incident that took place on its campus on March 4, 2013, and to urge the CMC administration and faculty to investigate this incident in a thorough and even-handed manner so as to uphold the principles of free speech and academic freedom.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 3000 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

As we understand it, Students for Justice in Palestine at the Claremont Colleges, a recognized student organization, was conducting a demonstration on the CMC campus to protest Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, having secured prior authorization from the CMC administration. During that demonstration someone who turned out to be a CMC faculty member is alleged to have urged a security guard to stop the protest and to have repeatedly directed a degrading epithet at a Pitzer student participating in the protest.

The principles of academic freedom protect the right of all members of a college or university community, including students and student organizations, to express their political views and engage in peaceful protest, in keeping with an institution’s reasonable rules and regulations. Those principles also require that such rules and regulations, and any investigation into alleged violations thereof, be applied equally to all; selective application of regulations is itself a violation of the principles of academic freedom and free speech. It is our understanding that the CMC administration’s initial response to this incident was to focus on whether the students had violated college policy on demonstrations, rather than on the alleged incident of verbal assault and harassment, despite a complaint having been lodged regarding the latter. We would point out that CMC’s own Guide to CMC’s Civil Rights Policies and Civil Rights Grievance Procedures deems the use of degrading and insulting epithets directed at people as members of racial, religious, ethnic, gender or other groups, and the creation thereby of a hostile environment for them, to be unacceptable. We also note that such language is particularly troubling when it comes from a faculty member and is directed at a student.

Given this, we urge the CMC administration to conduct a thorough investigation of all aspects of this incident, including the actions of the CMC faculty member involved, and to uphold the right of students at the Claremont Colleges to express their views without being subjected to verbal or physical harassment. More broadly, we urge the CMC administration to publicly reaffirm its commitment to the principles of academic freedom, which require that institutions of higher education protect and foster the vigorous and respectful expression and exchange of ideas and opinions on all topics, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Sincerely,

Peter Sluglett 
MESA President
Visitin Research Professor, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore

Documents & Links

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•  US20130426
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https://www.jadaliyya.com/Author/3863

The Palestinian Litmus Test

After three years of unprecedentedly open debate, the membership of the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) membership is finally voting on the Palestinian call to endorse a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

• By David Lloyd May 14

Racism in the Defense of a Racist State: Some Reflections on BDS at the Modern Language Association

It is beginning to seem as if the arrival of winter spells academic boycott season as well as the festive season.  This year in November, the business meetings of two major associations voted overwhelmingly to endorse the call of Palestin..

•  By David Lloyd Jan 16

Anthropologists Speak Out for Justice in Palestine

The American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) annual business meeting voted on 20 November 2015 to send to the membership for a full vote a resolution to endorse the Palestinian call for the

•  By David Lloyd Nov 25

Cary Nelson: The Lackey of Power

Israel recommenced its offensive against Gaza by taki..

•  By David Lloyd Aug 11

On the American Association of University Professors’ Opposition to Academic Boycotts

On 10 May 2013, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a “Statement on Academic Boycotts” which states, not for the first time, its “opposition to academic boycotts as a matter of princ..

16.10.24

Editorial Note

A new petition titled “Call for International Pressure” is seeking more signatures.

Over four hundred petitioners, including a number of Israeli academics, are listed. Among them are Anat Matar, Smadar Ben-Natan, Moshé Behar, Tamir Sorek, Rafi Greenberg, Shira Klein, Lior Sternfeld, Ophira Gamliel, Hilla Dayan, Regev Nathansohn, Uri Hadar, Snait Gissis, Amalia Saar, Avishai Ehrlich, Efraim Davidi, Maya Rosenfeld, Avraham Oz, Ronnen Ben-Arie, Yael Berda, Anat Biletzki, Sivan Rajuan Shtang, Hannan Hever, Orly Lubin, Raz Chen-Morris, Hannah Safran, Revital Madar, Ilana Hairston, Amos Goldberg, Tamar Yaron, Tamar Hager, Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Noga Kadman, Tamar Yarom. 

The petition begins with the statement, “Israeli citizens are calling for actual international pressure for an immediate ceasefire.” 

The petition states, “We, Israeli citizens, living in Israel and abroad, are calling on the international community – the United Nations and its institutions, the United States, the European Union, the Arab League and all the countries of the world – to intervene immediately and apply every possible sanction in order to achieve an immediate ceasefire between Israel and its neighbors, for the benefit of the future of the two peoples in Israel/Palestine and of the peoples of the region, and for their right to security and life. Many of us are veteran activists against the occupation and for peace and coexistence in this country. We are motivated by love for the country and its inhabitants, and we are concerned about their future. We were horrified by the war crimes committed by Hamas and other organizations on October 7, and we are horrified by the countless war crimes committed by Israel. Unfortunately, the majority of Israelis support the continuation of the war and the massacres, and change from within is currently not possible. The State of Israel is on a suicidal course and is wreaking havoc and destruction that is increasing day by day. The government of Israel has abandoned its kidnapped citizens (and killed some of them), abandoned the residents of the south and the north, and is abandoning the fate and future of its citizens.” 

According to the petition, “The Palestinian citizens of Israel are persecuted and silenced by both law enforcement and the general public. The repression, intimidation and political persecution prevent many who share our opinion from signing this call. Every day that passes further away any possible horizon for an agreement and reconciliation, for a future in which Jewish-Israelis can live safely in this space – and in any case, it is a long and protracted process, but the slaughter and destruction must be stopped immediately! The lack of real international pressure, the continued supply of weapons to Israel, the continued economic, security, scientific, and cultural cooperation make the majority of Israelis believe that Israel’s policies have international backing. Leaders of many countries come back and express shock and condemn Israel’s actions, but the condemnations are not accompanied by any practical action. We are fed up with empty words and statements. Please, for our future and the future of all the inhabitants of the country and the region, save us from ourselves, put real pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire.”

In other words, the group condemns Israel and absolves the Palestinians and Iran from any responsibility. Instead, the petitioners urge for the weakening of Israel.

Most of the signatories sound familiar.  For two decades now, IAM has reported on these and other Israeli academics who abuse their positions to push for their political agenda. It is an open secret that many were recruited by Palestinian and pro-Palestinian scholars in the West.  Some were offered positions in prestigious universities, others spent Sabbaticals in Ivy League institutions or invited to participate in conferences or contribute chapters in books critical of Israel. The majority of them are mediocre researchers who provided the Palestinians with a twisted academic work full of bashing Israel verbiage – to meet their comrades’ demands. 

It is well known that Israel is fighting a war on two fronts: the physical battlefield and the public relations campaigns, most notably on Western campuses. The academic authorities in Israel have always shied away from confronting these activist scholars, leaving holes in the public relations campaigns.

And all this is paid by the Israeli taxpayers.  

REFERENCES

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdIrtAYyee1xNEahOsf8Mcl34Gk6Vboj5NofTtfiVVAu19iEA/viewform

קריאה ללחץ בינלאומי – טופס איסוף חתימות

אזרחים ישראלים קוראים ללחץ בינלאומי ממשי למען הפסקת אש מיידית

אנחנו, אזרחיות ואזרחים ישראלים, המתגוררים בישראל ומחוצה לה, קוראים לקהילה הבינלאומית – לאו״ם ולמוסדותיו, לארצות הברית, לאיחוד האירופי, לליגה הערבית ולכל מדינות העולם – להתערב באופן מיידי ולהפעיל כל סנקציה אפשרית למען השגת הפסקת אש מיידית בין ישראל ושכנותיה, לטובת עתידם של שני העמים בישראל/פלסטין ושל עמי האזור,  ולמען זכותם לביטחון ולחיים.

רבים מאיתנו פעילים ותיקים נגד הכיבוש ולמען שלום וקיום משותף בארץ הזו. אנחנו מונעים מתוך אהבת הארץ ותושביה, ואנחנו מודאגים מעתידם. נחרדנו מפשעי המלחמה שביצעו החמאס וארגונים אחרים ב-7 באוקטובר, ואנחנו נחרדים מאינספור פשעי המלחמה שמבצעת ישראל. לצערנו, רובם של הישראלים תומכים בהמשך המלחמה ומעשי הטבח, ושינוי מבפנים אינו אפשרי כרגע. מדינת ישראל נמצאת במסלול התאבדותי וזורעת הרס וחורבן שגוברים מיום ליום.

ממשלת ישראל הפקירה את אזרחיה החטופים (ואת חלקם הרגה), הפקירה את תושבי הדרום והצפון, ומפקירה את גורלם ועתידם של אזרחיה. אזרחיה הפלסטינים של ישראל נרדפים ומושתקים הן על ידי רשויות החוק והן על ידי הציבור הרחב. הדיכוי, ההפחדה והרדיפה הפוליטית מונעים מרבים השותפים לדעתנו לחתום על הקריאה הזו. 

כל יום שעובר מרחיק כל אופק אפשרי להסכם ולפיוס, לעתיד בו יהודים-ישראלים יוכלו לחיות בביטחון במרחב הזה – ובכל מקרה מדובר בתהליכים ארוכים וממושכים, אך את הטבח וההרס יש לעצור מייד ! 

העדר לחץ בינלאומי של ממש, המשך אספקת הנשק לישראל, המשך שיתופי הפעולה הכלכליים, הביטחוניים, המדעיים והתרבותיים, גורמים לרובם של הישראלים להאמין שיש למדיניותה של ישראל גיבוי בינלאומי. מנהיגי מדינות רבות חוזרים ומביעים זעזוע ומגנים את מעשיה של ישראל, אך הגינויים אינם מלווים במהלך מעשי כלשהו. שבענו ממילים ומהצהרות ריקות.

אנא, למען עתידנו ועתידם של כל יושבי הארץ והאזור, הצילו אותנו מעצמנו, הפעילו לחץ אמיתי על ישראל למען הפסקת אש מיידית.

חתימות ראשונות:

יעל לרר    Yael Lerer
ענת מטר    Anat Matar
רון נייולד    Ron Naiweld
יואב שמר-קונץ    Yoav Shemer-Kunz
מיכל רז     Michal Raz
רות רוזנטל    Ruth Rosental
יעל פוגל    Yael Foigel
סמדר בן-נתן    Smadar Ben-Natan
יעל וידן     Yael Vidan
נהרה פלדמן    Nehara Feldman
זהר ינוביץ    Zohar Ianovici
עדי הגין    Adi Hagin
יותם בן-דוד    Yotam Ben-David
אני אוחיון דקל     Annie ohayon dekel
עידית בלוך    Idit Bloch
משה בהר     Moshé Behar
שירה חבקין    Shira Havkin
נעה פרימן     Noa Friehmann
תמיר שורק    Tamir Sorek
קרין לוי    Karin Loevy
רפי גרינברג    Rafi Greenberg
סהר בוסטוק    Sahar Bostock
אורית ברור בן דוד    Orit Brawer Ben David
מיכל בוסטוק    Michal Bostock
יעל לביא    Yael Lavi
גלית ספורטה    Galit Saporta
שירה קליין    Shira Klein
יובל חושן    Yuval Hoshen
רותם שטרן    Rotem Stern
נעמה פרג’ון    Naama Farjoun
דורון בן דוד    Doron Ben David
מאיה בן-מאיר    Maya Ben-Meir
תמר ברגר    Tamar Berger
שרון גורדון    Sharon Gordon
ורדית שלפי    Vardit Shalfy
דורי פרנס    Dori Parnes
רותי לביא    Ruti Lavi
תלמה ברדין    Talma Bar-Din
רועי צורף    Roei Tzoref
רוני צורף    Roni Tzoreff
צביקה מרקוביץ     Tzvi Markovitz
נעם לוי ארז    Noam Levi Erez
תרצה פוסקלינסקי    Tirtsa Posklinsky
מתן קמינר    Matan Kaminer
נגה בליליוס    Noga belilius
אלון מרכוס    Alon Marcus
לירונה רוזנטל     Lirona Rosenthal
גיא הירשפלד     Guy Hirschfeld
ליאור קיי     Lior Kay
צביה חורש    Tsvia Horesh
מיה מוכמל    Maya Mukamel עינב קפלן רז     Einav Kaplan Raz
דורית גורני     Dorit Gurny
מעיין צדקה    Maayan Tsadka
חמוטל צמיר    Hamutal Tsamir
לירון טל     Liron Tal לינא דלאשה    Leena Dallasheh
מרים להט    Miriam lahat
עמית פרלסון    amiT Perelson נעמי ליפין    Naomi lippin
דיתי תור    Diti Tor
אהרן כהן-ינאי    Aaron Cohen-Yanay
שהם סמיט    Shoham Smith
נופר שמעוני    Nufar Shimony
עינת יורקביץ    Einat Jurkevitch
ליאור שטרנפלד    Lior Sternfeld לילי ליברזון סלפק    Lili Libersohn Slepack
עופר ניימן     Ofer Neiman
איריס רונן    Iris Ronen
אנה דובינסקי     Anna Dubinsky עדינה איזנברג    Adina Eisenberg
טלי אקנין    Tali Aknin
טל הלפרן    Tal Halpern
קרן הרינג    Keren Herin
אשר פריד    Asher Fried
שירה ארד    Shira Arad
אופירה גמליאל     Ophira Gamliel
מיכל וינר    Mikhal Weiner
עידו ששון    Ido Sasson
דניאל דרבי    Daniel Darby
עומר נגב    Omer Negev
אורה מור    Aura Mor אפי זיו    Effi Ziv
הילה דיין    Hilla Dayan
יפעה סהר    Yifah Sahar
יניב אידלשטיין    Yaniv Eidelstein
אלמוג שרביט    Almog Sharvit
דוד זונשין    David Zonsheine
טל שובל    Tal Shuval
ורד גמליאל    Vered Gamliel
עלמה גניהר    Alma Ganihar
נירית אורן שטרנברג     Nirit Oren Sternberg
בלהה גולן זונדרמן    Bilha Golan Sündermann
יובל ציגלר    Yuval Ziegler
שי גרינברג    Shai Grunberg
דנה מלצר    Dana Melzer
יובל אברהם    Yuval Abraham
לילך מרקמן    lilah Markman
דני רוזין     Danny Rosin
ריבה הוכרמן    Riva Hocherman
סופי קוק    Sophie Cooke
שירה שהמי    Shira Shohami
אבי ליברמן     Avi Liberman
תמר שניידר    Tamar Schneider
ירדן לויטל    Yarden Levital
חגית לוי בן נר    Hagit Levi Ben Ner
ליאורה הורביץ    Liora Horwitz
ארנונה זהבי    Arnona Zahavi
עדינה רינת    Adina Rinat
רגב נתנזון    Regev Nathansohn
יריב ויסוקר    Yariv Visoker
אמיר הלל    Amir Hallel
רחל אברמוביץ    Rachel Abramovitz
דני רשף     Danny Reshef
חני רבינוביץ    Chani Rabinovich
רוני תמרי    Roni Tamari
סמדר שרון    Smadar Sharon
רותי קנטור    Ruti Kantor
עינת ליכטינגר    Einat Lichtinger
לאה אבן חורב    Leah Even Chorev
מיה אובר    Maya Ober
אורי הדר    Uri Hadar
מיכל ורשבסקי     Michal Warshavsky
שירה ויזל    Shira Vizel
ענת גרינשטיין    Anat Greenstein
תמיר לויטל     Tamir Levital
איזדורה כהן    Isadora Cohen 
חוה לרמן    Hava Lerman
נועה וודניצקי    Noa Vodnizky
רונית רובין    Ronit Rubin
דבי אילון    Debbie Eylon
הגר נטר    Hagar Neter
טלי לוין    Tali Levin
ליאורה גביעון    Liora Gvion
תמי קדיש    Tammy kadish
סינדי כהן    Cindy Cohen
ערן טורבינר    Eran Torbiner
מיקי רוטר-פרי    Miki Rotter Perry
יובל תמרי    Youval Tamari
ענת לוין    Anat Levin
ערבה נבו    Arava Nevo
אסף רומאנו    Assaf Romano
דבורה קדם    Dvora Kedem
אוסי רון    Ossir ron
מיתר אברהם    Meitar Avraham
הדר עירון    Hadar Iron
מאיה הרמן    Maya Herman
גל קובר    Gal Kober
סנאית גיסיס    Snait Gissis
עמליה סער    Amalia Saar
הודל אופיר    Hodel Ophir
רחלי בר-אור    Racheli Bar-Or
הדס גור    Hadas Gur
אבישי ארליך    Avishai Ehrlich
רות בן אשר    Ruth Ben Asher
גלית ארבלי     Galit Arbeli
אסתי שוחט רוזנפלד    Esti Shohat Rozenfeld
אירה קונטורובסקי    Ira Kontorovsky 
אבי מזרחי    Avi Mizrachi
רובין איציקסון    Robin Janson
מלאני מייסון    Melanie Mason
ליאורה שילמן    Liora Szylman
מילי מאסס    Mili Mass
רעות בן יעקב     Reit Ben Yaakov
אפרים דוידי    Efraim Davidi
יעל מגנס     Yael Magnes
שי ווזנר    Shai Wosner
מאיה רוזנפלד    Maya Rosenfeld
ענבר חורש    Inbar Horesh
איתן ברונשטיין    Eitan Bronstein
ניר הראל    Nir Harel
משה קיים    Moshe Kayam
אהוד סיבוש    Ehud Sivosh
שאול עמיר    Shaul Amir
שירה חדד    Shira Haddad
משה אכר     Moshe ikar
מרים פרנק    Miriam Frank
דורית ארגו    Dorit Argo
עינת ויצמו    Einat Weitzman
יעל שומרוני    Yael Shomroni
רוני קורקוס    Roni Corcos
נטע חממי טביב    Neta Hamami Tabib
שרה כרמלי    Sara Carmeli
לאה יעל לוי    Leah Yael Levy
רולי רוזן     Rolly Rosen
חיים ויטלי כהן    Haim Vitali Cohen
דניאל מעוז    Danielle Maoz
נעה פורט    Noa Fort
שירה בן שחר     Shira Ben Shachar
דניאל פלנקר     Daniel palenker
אילה שני    Ayala Shani
יהודית אילני    Yudit Ilany
דניאל פרסאי    Danielle Parsay
רוני פדרמן    Roni Federman
רונית מריאן קדישאי    Ronit Marian-Kadisgay
אברהם עוז    Avraham Oz
רונן בן-אריה    Ronnen Ben-Arie
יצחק גולדברגר    Itzik Goldberger
לליב מלמד    Laliv Melamed
ניצן בויז    Nitzan Boys
מאיה לרמן    Maya Lerman
קיקי קרן-הוס    Kiki keren-huss
לילה מזל יינישן    Laila Mazal Yenishen
יהודית דבש    Judith Debash
תמר כהן    Tamar Cohen
עמית חברוני    Amit Hevrony
מיכל גרינבאום    Michal Grynbaum
שרון אסתריק    Sharon Estrik
עדי וינטר     Adi winter
איה זמיר    Aya Zamir
אורי לוי    Ori Levy
אסתי מיצנמכר    Esti Micenmacher
תמר להן    Tamar Lehahn
שרית רוזן    Sarite Rosen
לירון אחדות    Liron Achdut
אברהם ברמן    Avi Berman
תהילה אזרחי    Tehila Ezrahi
ים קדוש    Yam Kadosh
שרון לרנר גרבט    Sharon Lerner Gerbat
אור בן דוד    Or Ben David
דוד ריב    David Reeb
קרן תורגמן    Karen Tordjman
עינת טוכמן    Einat Tuchman  
רחל חגיגי    Rachel hagigi
עדן מיצנמכר    Eden Mitsenmacher
יסמין שמעון ברונשטיין    Yasmin shimon bronstein
גד לוי    Gad levy
סיגל גדי    Sigal Gedi
סיגל קוק אביבי    Sigal Kook Avivi
כרמל דדלי    Carmel Dudley
אסף אוזן    Assaf Uzan
יעל ברדה     Yael Berda
אבי מוגרבי    Avi Mograbi
הדס שינטל    Hadas Shintel
ענבר מרים שרייבר    Inbar Miryam Schreiber
ענת בילצקי    Anat Biletzki
איתמר סתת    Itamar Satat
לירון סטולר כוורי    Liron Stoller Cavari
להי שחר    Lahi Shachar
ג’ון סיימונס    Jon Simons
רות בן-נתן    Ruth Ben-Natan
אביגיל כספי    Avigail Caspi
שי גינזבורג    Shai Ginsburg
יובל פילבסקי    Yuval Pilavsky
אריק סגל     Arik Segal
אטילה עאבדי    Attila Abdi
עליזה דרור    Aliza Dror
ד”ר סיון רג’ואן שטאנג    Dr. Sivan Rajuan Shtang
עודד כרמי    Oded carmi
עוז שלח    Oz Shelach
דפנה סטרומזה    Daphna Stroumsa
רויטל מטר    Rivital Matter
רנן עמיר     Renen Amir
אריאל חיון    Ariel Hayun
מרב נוב    Merav nov
חנן חבר    Hannan Hever
איתמר שוורץ    Itamar Schwartz
אורלי לובין    Orly Lubin
שרה הירש מידן    Sarah Hirsh Meydan
איתן אפרת    Efrat Eitan
רותם לוין    Rotem levin
ביאנקה מורנו    Bianca moreno
שירלי נדב    Shirli Nadav
אריקה סיגמון    Erica Sigmon
יונה קדרון שלו    Yona Kidron Shalev
מיה בן יאיר     Maya Ben Yair
אמירה סונדרס    Amira Saunders
יניב אדר    Yaniv Adar
אוריאנה וייך    Oriana Weich
נורית אביב     Nurith aviv
אורנה גורלניק    Orna Guralnik
מרב דביר    Merav Devere
יעל ניב    Yael Niv
רז חן-מוריס    Raz Chen-Morris
חנה ספרן    Hannah Safran
דניאלה ליכטמן    Daniela Lichtman
נוני טל    Nuni Tal
קטי בר    Katty Bar
מריבן דוד     Miriam Ben David
אילה מצגר    Ayala Metzger
שרון חבצלת    Sharon havatselet
מרים מור    Miriam Moore
עתר שימל    Atar Schimmel
דן שאכטר    Dan Schachter
אנה מאי שמלה    Anna :May chamalet
אור סיני    Or Sinay
אור וינפלד     Or Winfield
אלי למדן    Eli Lamdan
שני פייס    Shany Payes
נירית פוטרמן    Nirit Puterman
נגה מרדוק     Noga Murdoch
עפרה טנא    Ofra Tene
נאוה טולדנו    Nava Toledano
גלי טאס שני    Gali Tas Shani
ליאור אלפנט    Lior Elefant
חדוה יערי    Hedva Yaari
רחל בן שטרית    Rachel Ben-Shitrit
תחיה יעקבסון    Tchya Jacobson
רוית כהן    Ravit Cohen
אנדריי בליצקי    Andrei Belitski
יעל אורן    Yael Oren
טלי ברומברג    Tali Bromberg
מיכל פומרנץ     Michal Pomeranz
דפנה ויס-רייזנר    Daphna Weiss-Reisner
רעיה שטייר    Raya Shtaier
שלומית ניצן    Shlomit Nitzan
איריס כץ    Iris katz
רוויטל מדר     Revital Madar
איריס גור    Iris Gur
מאירה אשר    Meira Asher
יעל פתאל    Yael Fattal
אילנה הירסטון    Ilana Hairston
נתי מושקוביץ    Naty moskovich
דבי ג’יואן dw    Debbie Jivan
גילי אופיר    Gili Ofir
מיכל בלומנטל    Michal Blumenthal
בקה סוזה    Becca Sousa
דגנית שץ    Dganit dhats
רועי שינמן    Roy Sheinman
עמוס גולדברג    Amos Goldberg
אפרת שושן    Efrat Shoshan
שרון כהן    Sharon Cohen
ליהי יפה    Lihi Joffe
זהר רגב    Zohar Regev
תאיר קמינר גולדפיינר    Tair Kaminer Goldfainer
רות רגולנט לוי    Ruth Regulant Levi
סמדר שני    Smadar Shani
שירלי ערן    Shirly Eran
ג׳ואנה ג׳ונס    Joanna Jones
מאי אילון    Mai Aylon
נעה פרוידנטל     Noa Freudenthal
תמים אבו חיט    Tamim Abukhait
סהר ורדי    Sahar Vardi
שלומית סטרוטי    Shlomit Strutti
נגה ברונו    Noga Bruno
תמר ירון     Tamar Yaron
אייל מרכוס    Eyal Marcus
אפרת לוי    Efrat levi
רעות מימון    Reut Maimon
אורלי אברהם    Orly Avraham
תמר סלבי    Tamar Selby
עלמה פוגל    Alma Fogiel
דרור קאופמן    Dror kaufman
סיגל רוטמן    Sigal rotman
ארנינה קשתן     Arnina kashtan
יודית הופמן יהב    Judy hoffmann yahav
אסתי רכט    Estee Recht
אורי יואלי    Uri Yoeli
שולה לויטל    Shula Levital
ניצן אברמסון    Nitsan Abramson
אילונה פינטט    Ilona Pinto
מעין טורנר    Ma’ayan Turner
עידית וינקלר    Edith Winkler
לילך צ’לנוב     Lilach Tchlenov
עירית חכים     Irit Hakim
תמר הגר    Tamar Hager
מיה ברבי    Maya barabi
 דני דניאלי      Dani Danieli
יעל דוידס    Yael Davids
ישראל וינקלר    Israel winkler
גליה אנקורי    Galia Ankori
לאה דקל    leah Dekel
טליה סוויסה    Talya Swissa
שרה לוינטל    sarah Levinthal Shartal
מירי אליאב-פלדון    Miriam Eliav-Feldon
חני סגל    Hani Sagal
זמיר  חבקין    Zamir Havkin
לסלי מרקס    Lesley Marks
מיכל פלדון    Michal Feldon
נינה הלוי    Nina Halevy
יעל שניאורסון    Yael Shneerson
פאולה פיטשני    Paula Pitashny
רותי הרבשטיין    Ruth Herbstein
רבקה ורשבסקי    Rivka Warshawsky
שמואל צמל     Shmuel Tsemel
אלישבע וינטראוב    Weintraub elicheva
דנה כהן    Dana Cohen
מרים אביצור    Miriam  avitsur
תופאחה סאבא    Tuffaha saba
רות פרסר    Ruth Preser
ורד הדיה    Vered Hedaya
אורי נוריאל     ori nuriel
שילה יערי    Shilo yaari
אדוה מרגליות     Adva Margaliot
יעל הדיה     Yael Hedaya
נגה חביון    noga chevion
עפרה הופמן    Ofra Hoffman
הדר שגיא    Hadar sagi
יערה פרץ    Ya’ara Peretz
אורית יושינסקי     Orit Yushinsky
נגה קדמן    Noga Kadman
חנה שביב    hannah shaviv
קלייר אורן    Oren Claire
אמיר בולצמן    amir bolzman
הילה לרנאו    Hila Lernau
נילי לוגסי    Nili lugasi
יעל קורן    Yael Koren
רפי ליין אושרוב    Lane Osherov
רות שריר    Ruth Sharir
חנה גלפרין     Hana Galperin
אירית סגולי    Irit segoli
שי כרמלי פולק     Shai Carmeli Pollak
נעמה שפירא    Naama Shapira
רויטל סלע    Revital Sella
יעל טל    Yael tal
תום קלנר    Tom Kellner
אפרת בן שושן גזית    Efrat Ben Shoshan Gazit
נועה מזור    Noa Mazor
אירית אופיר    Irit Ofir
הדר עמית    Hadar Amit
חדוה ישכר     Hedva Isachar
תום טליתמן זוטא    Tom Talisman Zuta
אמיל פיסקר    Emil Pisker
דפנה ברק    Daphna Barak
אסנת בר-אור    Osnat Bar-Or
יעל קאופמן    Yael kaufman
אורית שלו    Orit shalev
דוד פרנקל    David Frenkel
שרה מירון    Sara Meron
הדס רענן שחר    Hadas Raanan Shachar
יעקב אפסטין    Jacob Epstein
שחר שלוח    Shahar Shiloach
ויקטוריה טרקן    Victoria Tarakan
טובה בליי    Tova Blay
נוי כצמן    Noy Katsman
יעל סדן    Yael sadan
תמר ירום    Tamar Yarom
אביגיל טלמור    Avigail talmor
טלי הרכבי כרמלי     Tali Harkavi Carmeli
שמעון אזולאי    Shimon Azulay
אמנון לוטנברג    Amnon Lotenberg
אייל רצ׳קובסקי    Eyal Ratzkovsky
עדית קאופמן-סטרול     Idit Kaufman-strull
עלמה כץ    Alma Katz
אורלי כהן    Orly cohen
נעמה שושנה פוגל לוין    Naama Shoshana Fogiel Lewin
ארזה קוטנר    Arza Kuttner
כרמל גורני     Carmel Gorni
טל ברגלס    Tal Berglas
איה ארז    Aya Erez
נועה שובל    Noa Shuval
מרינה ארגס    Marina Ergas
עילם מורביץ להב    Eylam Murvitz Lahav
עמית לירז    Amit LIrat

09.10.24

Editorial Note

For two decades, IAM has repeatedly covered various anti-Israel Israeli professors teaching at British universities, including Ilan Pappe, the so-called New Historian, and Haim Bresheeth, a filmmaker, who pro-Palestinians have recruited them to bash Israel. 

Recently, both were interviewed on a TV program by Five Pillars, a UK-based news site covering current affairs related to Islam and Muslims. The message of the program claimed: “There is only one way this is going and that is the end of Zionism.” The program is titled “Al-Aqsa Flood, Gaza Genocide & The End of Zionism.” The written introduction states, “Israeli historian Ilan Pappe and filmmaker Haim Bresheeth reflect on the horrors Israel has inflicted upon the Palestinians since October 7, 2023, and explain how by showing its ugly face to the world Israel is sealing its own demise.”

Five Pillars journalist opened the interview by stating: “365 days of mechanized Slaughter yet 27,905 days of the continued Nakba five pillars spoke with Israeli historian Ilan Pappe and Israeli filmmaker and academic Haim Bresheeth to situate the last year in the grand timeline of the Nakba.” 

Bresheeth: “In many ways, the 7th of October, which people consider as Nakba two, is so much worse. In the first Nakba, about 15,000 Palestinians died. In this last year, since the 7th of October, 23, in all likelihood, around 300,000 Palestinians already died.” 

Pappe: “But what is more important, I think, is to understand that this is an attempt to complete what was incomplete. The present Israeli government believes it has an opportunity to complete the Nakba.” 

Bresheeth: “The other thing is, of course, in the first Nakba, 750,000 people left their homes. Now we’re talking about 2.3 million people.” 

Pappe: “So in that respect, we are in the same historical period, where you have an attempt to create by force a Jewish state in the middle of the Arab world against the will of the Palestinians.” 

Bresheeth: “And they have left their homes, but they can’t go back to them because the homes don’t exist, the schools don’t exist, the hospitals don’t exist, the mosques don’t exist, the universities have gone, so what we are talking about is a terrible event not just on the Palestinian timeline but in world global terms.” 

Five Pillars: “Just from the top of your memory, what are some of the worst atrocities and debacles that we’ve witnessed this past year? 

Pappe: “I think the worst is anything to do with toddlers and babies. I mean, seeing babies being operated without anesthetics, being left alone on a hospital corridor, being buried with the hands of their parents and grandparents tears your heart. If the power and hatred and ruthlessness of a state is directed against such a person, you understand we hit the bottom.” 

Bresheeth: “What really stands out for me are a few things. First of all, the great massacres in and around hospitals, so they not only bombed hospitals but they bombed them with one or two tons of bombs, which are actually the bombs that they used in Lebanon a week ago to kill Hassan Nasrallah. You know, we’re talking about a hole in the ground which is 20 meters deep, it’s never been used on any civilian population ever before, and let alone in a hospital. But I’m not just talking about that, I’m talking about the tens of thousands of people who were killed in safe areas that the Israelis sent them there, saying your house, your home, your room, your shop, is not safe anymore, we’re going to wipe it out, now go there and stay there because this is safe, and then they kill thousands of people in those areas, and Israel is lying as a matter of course, when they correct it after a day or after a month or after a year, most people don’t hear the corrections. People don’t know that half of the Israelis killed on the 7th of October were killed by the IDF. President Biden apparently has seen beheaded babies on television, I think he needs a technician to look at his television. What are we talking about, I think, the behavior of Israel is without precedent, and it’s not very surprising that the ICJ has already said that this is plausible genocide, meaning in English, they are committing genocide.” 

Five Pillars: “You mentioned, you know, the charges against Israel, do you think its reputation has been damaged?” 

Pappe: “The support for Palestine in the global civil society has increased dramatically.”

Bresheeth: “Basically what we see, billions of people, even in the West, an understanding that wasn’t there before.” 

Pappe: “And even more importantly, I think, is the fact that the institutions that represent international law, such as the ICJ, for the first time, adopted the language to describe Israeli actions either in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip in a way that reflects much better the reality compared to the language used by governments and mainstream media.” 

Bresheeth: “I consider it the South African moment of Palestine, you know, until a certain moment, in the case of the South African Apartheid, people didn’t understand that this needs to be wiped out, and then they understood, billions of people understood, people understood that things are not great in Palestine, but they did not understand how brutal and how inhumane the Israelis can be and now they understand it.” 

Pappe: “I think its International reputation has been severely damaged, in fact, anyone with a modicum of decency in them cannot support Israel.” 

Bresheeth: “But even in the UK, there are seven Jewish organizations supporting Palestine and most of them are anti-Zionist. This has never happened before, so there are little lights. For example, tomorrow in the European Parliament, Jews from all over Europe are going to celebrate the Jewish New Year for Palestine, they are going to speak to as many parliamentarians as possible as European Jews, saying to them, you cannot support this genocide.”

Five Pillars: “Where do you see all of this going five years from now?” 

Bresheeth: “There’s only one way it should go, and I think it’s going that way, and that is the end of Zionism.”

Pappe: “I distinguish between short-term and long-term processes. I’m afraid the short term doesn’t bring any good news. I think, I am optimistic about, I don’t know if it’s 5 years, or 7 years, or 8 years, but I think there are deeper processes in place, processes that are disintegrating the Israeli state from within, but we have to be patient, it will take a while.”

This is the end of the interview. From this program, it is evident that Pappe and Bresheeth wish for the demise of Israel. The odious descriptions of Israel have fueled the large-scale pro-Palestinian protests in the country, contributing to an alarming rise of antisemitic incidents.

Those who castigate Israel as alleged apartheid should note that their hateful words created a new reality, a need to protect Jews by segregating them from the general population.  The British government, which has firmly quashed attacks on minority migrants during the recent race riots should do more to prevent such attacks against Jews rather than resort to protective segregation. 

Over the decades, British universities have recruited numerous Israeli-bashing academics to escape the label of antisemitism. All these, despite the fact that Great Britain adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of Antisemitism. 

REFERENCES:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/4Rayj4jCr2JTbXXg/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNub9OPvKMU

Al-Aqsa Flood, Gaza Genocide & The End of Zionism

5Pillars183K subscribers

4,088 views Oct 7, 2024 #Palestine #Israel #GazaIsraeli historian Ilan Pappe and filmmaker Haim Bresheeth reflect on the horrors Israel has inflicted upon the Palestinians since October 7, 2023, and explain how by showing its ugly face to the world Israel is sealing its own demise. #Palestine#Israel#Gaza FOLLOW 5PILLARS ON: Website: https://5pillarsuk.com YouTube:    / @5pillars   Facebook:   / 5pillarsuk   Instagram:   / 5pillarsnews   X: https://x.com/5Pillarsuk Telegram: https://t.me/s/news5Pillars TikTok:   / 5pillarsnews  

02.10.24

Editorial Note

Last week, the media reported that Dr. Lior B. Sternfeld, a US-based Israeli academic, met Masoud Pezeshkianin, the Iranian President, in New York as part of an interfaith dialogue hosted by Iran during the UN General Assembly. Sternfeld, an associate professor of History and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University, is the author of Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran. Sternfeld gave the Iranian president a copy of his book. With Sternfeld were several rabbis, including Abby Stein, a transgender female rabbi who is pro-Palestinian progressive, along with Muslim and Christian representatives. The Iranian PressTV posted photographs from the meeting, showing also members of Neturei Karta, the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox group.

Channel 12 reported that Sternfeld was invited by Iranian researchers with whom he has been in contact. It is said he checked with officials in Israel and got their approval to participate. “It was interesting. It was difficult. It was respectful.” Sternfeld quoted Pezeshkian as saying, “the war is terrible and has to stop.” Sternfeld stated, “Iran wants to play a mediating role on the issue of the hostages.” He also said that Pezeshkian asserted that when Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement on an end to conflict that is acceptable to most Palestinians, Iran won’t carry the flag of the Palestinian struggle.

In contrast, Iran, in addition to advocating for Israel’s destruction and backing terror groups sworn to do likewise — such as Hamas and Hezbollah — has passed several pieces of legislation sanctioning commercial and cultural relations with Israel. 

Sternfeld’s 2019 book, Between Iran and Zion, deserves attention. In 2021, Dr. Alessanda Cecolin from the Department of History, University of Aberdeen, UK, whose 2013 Ph.D. focused on Iranian-Jewish Identity, reviewed Sternfeld’s book and found a lacuna. 

She stated, “Chapter 4 examines Iranian Jews’ participation in and response to the Islamic Revolution. The main focus of the author is to look at the role of the Jewish intellectuals and their support to the revolution. This chapter follows the development of the leftist intellectual movements and Marxist Jews and claims that the majority of Iranian Jews supported the revolution… The chapter, however, does not account for those Iranian Jews who remained loyal to the Shah. As such, the overall impression is that the whole community supported the revolution when, in fact, mainly the members of the Association of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals (AJII) actively supported the revolution. Evidence suggests that thousands of Jews left Iran during and in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. Despite this lacuna in the chapter… Between Iran and Zion is an important contribution to the current post-Zionist debate on the status and history of Middle Eastern Jews.”

Likewise, Prof. David Yaghoubian from California State University, San Bernardino, who teaches Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict, also reviewed the book. He wrote, “The book presents a revisionist interpretation of Jewish Iranian history that explores the interrelationship between Jews and broader Iranian society. Sternfeld’s approach and findings challenge existing historiography that either views Jewish Iranian history in a vacuum, or extends lachrymose interpretations that selectively center on Jewish oppression and dispossession before ultimate salvation through Zionism and immigration to Israel.”

But, the core problem with Sternfeld’s work is an article he wrote in August titled “Threatened by a moderate Iranian president, Israel is pulling him into a fight.” Sternfeld stated that “Through Haniyeh’s assassination in Iran’s capital, Israel appears to have sought to drag the Islamic Republic into a regional war — one that Iran hoped to avoid — on the first day in office of the new, moderate president.” And that “Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran was intended to urge Iran to respond, and perhaps escalate hostilities, thus finally bringing about the full-blown regional war that Israel craves.”  Or that “The Iranian government thus remains reluctant to go to war, in part because it recognizes its domestic risks: war would likely strengthen the ultra-conservative opposition to Pezeshkian, and justify further escalation of oppressive measures at home and abroad. But right now, Israel remains eager to pull Iran into a direct confrontation.”

He wrote that there is a “long and seemingly counterintuitive tradition of Israel preferring conservative, fervently anti-Israel presidents in Iran over reformists, whom it sees as detrimental to its strategic interests. After all, part of Israel’s support among American and European governments derives from the idea that it is a Western democratic outpost in a ‘dangerous neighborhood,’ which can defeat bad actors in the Middle East before they reach Europe and the West. According to this logic, Iran is the chief enemy: an anti-Western, antisemitic, theocratic dictatorship that poses a clear and immediate danger to the world. When Iran elects moderate leaders, it undermines this monolithic caricature — and Israel, which refuses to change its outlook toward its regional neighbors, sees a diplomatic threat.” 

He argues that the president of Iran, “As part of his policy of economic openness, and in order to revitalize Iran’s oil industry and economy, he prepared a huge concession for the American oil company Conoco, which included the development of two new oil fields. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei approved the offer, recognizing the value of extending an olive branch to the United States, and by 1995, the U.S. State and Treasury departments had given Conoco approval to move forward with the deal. Then the Israel lobby — AIPAC and the Israeli government — panicked and acted to thwart the franchise. After they warned members of the U.S. Congress of the ‘danger’ of trade agreements with Iran, President Bill Clinton bowed to the pressure. In 1995, he issued two executive orders banning all trade by American companies with Iran, and then allowed a series of new sanctions to be imposed on Iran. The Conoco deal collapsed, and the opportunity to develop U.S.-Iranian diplomacy was lost. The story repeated itself a few years later under the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, who was elected on a platform that emphasized the need for dialogue between Iran and the West. Shortly after entering office, U.S. President George W. Bush signaled he was interested in revisiting and potentially restoring US-Iran relations. Therefore, Israel and AIPAC swiftly built up a broad coalition in Congress to renew sanctions on Iran.” 

Because of the Israelis, according to Sternfeld, President George W. Bush gave his “Axis of Evil” speech and a “series of new sanctions on Iran. The United States, Israel, and the West had a much easier time with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khatami’s successor, whose provocative style and harsh anti-Zionist statements made it easier to portray Iran as a danger to Israel and the world. But moderate politician Hassan Rouhani was elected president in 2013 on a promise to reach an agreement with the United States and the West that would allow Iran to maintain its nuclear program for scientific and civil purposes, in return for sanctions relief — a situation that Israel was once again unwilling to accept. The Iran nuclear deal in 2015 represented a victory for diplomacy, but it was presented by Israel as a ‘charm offensive’ meant to disguise Iran’s true ambitions. The Israeli government was determined to prevent a thaw in relations between Iran and the West and the possibility of another vision for the Middle East, which could limit Israel’s ability to maintain its policies toward Palestinians.”

According to Sternfeld, “Unlike the picture that Israel and its allies paint, Iran is a rational actor. It is a country with domestic and international interests, and it employs many tools to achieve them: internal repression, ties with militias and non-state actors throughout the region, and various aid and support enterprises.” 

Sternfeld is not alone among Israeli academic legitimizers of a brutal regime that terrorizes its own people, uses proxies to destabilize the Middle East, and wages conflicts small and big against Israel.  Shlomo Sand and Ilan Pappe come to mind.  As IAM repeatedly demonstrated, these and others like them are rewarded with academic positions in American and British universities. The trend to employ bitter critics of Israel in many Middle East Studies departments has added to the antisemitic and anti-Israeli turmoil on Western campuses and raised questions about the direction of liberal arts education.  

No doubt that Sternfeld’s description of the Iranian regime as moderate and Israel as the villain earned him the invitation to meet the Iranian president.

REFERENCES:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-based-israeli-professor-says-he-spoke-with-irans-president-at-interfaith-meeting/amp/

US-based Israeli professor says he spoke with Iran’s president at interfaith meeting

Lior Sternfeld says he gave a copy of his book to Pezeshkian, who knew he was Israeli; transgender rabbi, fringe anti-Zionist Haredi group also participated in event

By TOI STAFF 25 September 2024, 1:14 am  

A US-based Israeli academic said Tuesday he met in New York with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, as part of an interfaith dialogue hosted by Iran on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Lior Sternfeld, an associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University, said Pezeshkian knew he was Israeli and had also told the UN delegation ahead of the session. Despite this, the invitation was not canceled, according to partial remarks posted by the liberal Hebrew media outlet Relevant.

The author of “Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran,” Sternfeld said he gave the president a copy of the book.

Several rabbis also attended the meeting, according to Channel 12 news, along with Muslim and Christian representatives. Among them was Abby Stein, a transgender female rabbi and activist who is a leading figure among pro-Palestinian, progressive Jews.

Iran’s Press TV posted photographs from the meeting, which showed that members of the virulently anti-Zionist fringe ultra-Orthodox group Neturei Karta were also present.

Channel 12 reported that Sternfeld was invited by Iranian researchers with whom he has been in contact. The network said he checked with officials in Israel and got their approval to participate. It also said Sternfeld raised the issue of the hostages held by Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza.

“It was interesting. It was difficult. It was respectful,” Sternfeld said of the meeting, while quoting Pezeshkian as saying that “the war is terrible and has to stop” in the Relevant video.

Sternfeld claimed: “Iran wants to play a mediating role on the issue of the hostages.”

He also said Pezeshkian asserted that when Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement on an end to conflict that is acceptable to most Palestinians, Iran won’t carry the flag of the Palestinian struggle.

Iran cut off diplomatic relations with Israel after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In addition to advocating for Israel’s destruction and backing terror groups sworn to do likewise — such as Hamas and Hezbollah — Tehran has several pieces of legislation sanctioning commercial relations with Israel and forbids its athletes from competing against Israelis in international competitions.

Then-Iranian president Mohammad Khatami caused a domestic storm when he was accused in the conservative Iranian media of saying hello to then-Israeli president Moshe Katsav at the Pope’s funeral in 2005. Khatami denied the interaction occurred.

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https://buildingthebridge.eu/the-friday-edition/general-3/our-friday-news-analysis-what-the-world-reads-now/2157

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-25/ty-article/.premium/iran-isnt-a-unique-evil-says-israeli-professor-who-met-iranian-president-at-un/00000192-2898-ddff-a9fb-b8be7f7c0000

ISRAELI PROFESSOR WHO MET IRAN’S PRESIDENT: ‘IRAN ISN’T A UNIQUE EVIL, IT’S A REGIONAL PLAYER LIKE ANY OTHER’

Part of the Jewish delegation that sat with President Masoud Pezeshkian in New York, Penn State professor Lior Sternfeld tells Haaretz that being in the room with Iran’s president was an opportunity he couldn’t miss

By Etan Nechin
Haaretz | Israel News
25 September 2024

NEW YORK—On Tuesday, one of the most surprising gatherings on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly was a meeting between Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and a group of Jewish delegates. And arguably, no one was more surprised than the Israeli professor who attended.

Lior Sternfeld, an associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Penn State University and an expert on Iran, told Haaretz he was taken aback when he received an invitation two weeks ago. The meeting was billed as an “interfaith dialogue” (It was later described in Iranian media as “a meeting with several religious leaders and scholars”).

“At first, I wasn’t sure if [the invitation] was genuine. But after some inquiries, I confirmed its legitimacy,” Sternfeld said. The academic’s work on Jews and Iran includes the book “Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran,” which assesses how Iranian Jews contributed to Iranian nation-building projects.

Sternfeld said he was also surprised by the reaction when he disclosed his nationality after receiving the invite. “To avoid embarrassment, I informed them that I am, in fact, an Israeli citizen. They assured me it was not an issue.”

The next step was to confirm that his participation was permissible under Israeli law, which prohibits contact with officials from an enemy state. After consulting with the Israeli authorities, Sternfeld determined that his attendance was acceptable.

“It wasn’t an easy decision – I wondered if it was just a ploy,” he said. “But being in the room with Iran’s president, to speak and to listen, was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.”

Several American-Jewish figures, including transgender and pro-Palestinian activist Abby Stein, also attended the meeting in New York. Others present included Ezra Tzfadya, a Rutgers University professor who specializes in Shia Islamic and Jewish political and legal thought, plus representatives from the Neturei Karta Haredi sect (which refuses to recognize the State of Israel and is a permanent presence at pro-Palestinian protests).

Sternfeld, who recently penned a column arguing that Israel is “threatened by a moderate Iranian president” and “Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran was intended to urge Iran to respond… bringing about the full-blown regional war that Israel craves,” said he was the only Israeli present. The meeting, which lasted 90 minutes, was very formal, he noted: “Every delegate had a chance to speak, and Pezeshkian responded to everyone collectively.”

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https://www.972mag.com/pezeshkian-israel-iran-haniyeh-war/

Threatened by a moderate Iranian president, Israel is pulling him into a fight

Israel prefers hardline leaders to maintain a monolithic view of the enemy. Its assassination in Tehran now forces the reformist Pezeshkian into a corner.

By Lior SternfeldAugust 13, 2024

On July 5, Masoud Pezeshkian won the run-off elections in Iran to replace Ebrahim Raisi as president of the Islamic Republic, after the latter’s death in a helicopter crash in May. During the short campaign, Pezeshkian sought to win over voters with the basic platform of his reformist camp: restarting negotiations with the West to lift sanctions, building the economy, fighting poverty, and investing in housing, healthcare, welfare, and civil society. He was officially sworn in as president at the end of the month. 

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, came to Tehran to attend Pezeshkian’s inauguration. Based on multiple reports, Israel hired local agents to plant explosives in the hospitality compound in which he was staying, used by the Revolutionary Guards to host high-ranking guests. Through Haniyeh’s assassination in Iran’s capital, Israel appears to have sought to drag the Islamic Republic into a regional war — one that Iran hoped to avoid — on the first day in office of the new, moderate president. The expectation is that Iran will have to respond, and more forcefully than its previous choreographed attack on Israel in April. 

This continues a long and seemingly counterintuitive tradition of Israel preferring conservative, fervently anti-Israel presidents in Iran over reformists, whom it sees as detrimental to its strategic interests. After all, part of Israel’s support among American and European governments derives from the idea that it is a Western democratic outpost in a “dangerous neighborhood,” which can defeat bad actors in the Middle East before they reach Europe and the West. 

According to this logic, Iran is the chief enemy: an anti-Western, antisemitic, theocratic dictatorship that poses a clear and immediate danger to the world. When Iran elects moderate leaders, it undermines this monolithic caricature — and Israel, which refuses to change its outlook toward its regional neighbors, sees a diplomatic threat. 

Decades of thwarted diplomacy

In the mid-1990s, Iran was reeling after a turbulent 15 years: the revolution of 1979, an eight-year war with Iraq in which hundreds of thousands were killed and wounded, the death of Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, and an economic crisis that threatened to crush the Iranian economy. Under President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had assumed office in 1989, the country aimed to rebuild itself — and chart a new path forward internationally. 

In particular, Rafsanjani sought to turn a new page in relations between Iran and the United States. As part of his policy of economic openness, and in order to revitalize Iran’s oil industry and economy, he prepared a huge concession for the American oil company Conoco, which included the development of two new oil fields. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei approved the offer, recognizing the value of extending an olive branch to the United States, and by 1995, the U.S. State and Treasury departments had given Conoco approval to move forward with the deal.

Then the Israel lobby — AIPAC and the Israeli government — panicked and acted to thwart the franchise. After they warned members of the U.S. Congress of the “danger” of trade agreements with Iran, President Bill Clinton bowed to the pressure. In 1995, he issued two executive orders banning all trade by American companies with Iran, and then allowed a series of new sanctions to be imposed on Iran. The Conoco deal collapsed, and the opportunity to develop U.S.-Iranian diplomacy was lost.

The story repeated itself a few years later under the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, who was elected on a platform that emphasized the need for dialogue between Iran and the West. Shortly after entering office, U.S. President George W. Bush signaled he was interested in revisiting and potentially restoring US-Iran relations. Therefore, Israel and AIPAC swiftly built up a broad coalition in Congress to renew sanctions on Iran. 

After the attacks of September 11, the political and public discourse in the United States completely changed, but there were still avenues for U.S.-Iranian cooperation. Khatami, for his part, asked to help the United States stabilize Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion, which could have helped achieve a sustainable resolution to the war. 

Iran had been the most important regional enemy of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, and in December 2001, the United States, Iran, and Russia sat down together in Bonn to establish an Afghan Interim Authority to replace the Taliban — an agreement that led Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to accuse Bush of appeasement, à la Neville Chamberlain. The White House officially rejected those comments, but the next month the collaboration came to an end. On January 29, 2002, Khatami’s efforts were answered by President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech and a series of new sanctions on Iran.

The United States, Israel, and the West had a much easier time with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khatami’s successor, whose provocative style and harsh anti-Zionist statements made it easier to portray Iran as a danger to Israel and the world. But moderate politician Hassan Rouhani was elected president in 2013 on a promise to reach an agreement with the United States and the West that would allow Iran to maintain its nuclear program for scientific and civil purposes, in return for sanctions relief — a situation that Israel was once again unwilling to accept. 

The Iran nuclear deal in 2015 represented a victory for diplomacy, but it was presented by Israel as a “charm offensive” meant to disguise Iran’s true ambitions. The Israeli government was determined to prevent a thaw in relations between Iran and the West and the possibility of another vision for the Middle East, which could limit Israel’s ability to maintain its policies toward Palestinians. 

After Donald Trump was elected president, in his obscurantism and ignorance, he canceled the agreement, signaling to Iran that it has no partner in the United States, or even in Europe — where American sanctions prevented European economic cooperation with Iran. In turn, Iran accelerated its nuclear project in a way that would not have been possible under the agreement.

This helped contribute to the election of President Ebrahim Raisi in 2021, whose campaign emphasized the failed attempt at diplomacy with the West. However, even under Raisi, there were contacts between the United States and Iran, which had long-term diplomatic potential. Then came Pezeshkian’s inauguration — and the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran only a few hours later.

Urging escalation

Unlike the picture that Israel and its allies paint, Iran is a rational actor. It is a country with domestic and international interests, and it employs many tools to achieve them: internal repression, ties with militias and non-state actors throughout the region, and various aid and support enterprises. When one strategy fails, Iran shifts to another. 

Iran can survive and enjoy profitable cooperation with Russia and China. But its preferred way of rehabilitating its regional and international standing is through reestablishing relations with the West. Whenever it has had to choose between developing relations with Russia and China or an agreement with the United States and the West, Iran chose the latter.

Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran was intended to urge Iran to respond, and perhaps escalate hostilities, thus finally bringing about the full-blown regional war that Israel craves. Pezeshkian, on his first day in office, was forced to choose whether to abandon the platform he was elected on, and be dragged into a war that would mainly please his opponents within Iran (especially within the regime’s conservative establishment), or stick to his original path. 

It is very possible that Pezeshkian will have to defend Iran’s reputation vis-à-vis the Palestinians, especially Hamas, and perhaps upgrade its support for the group. And so while Israel’s security services have proven that they can assassinate a Hamas leader in a hotel room in the heart of Tehran, they have failed to protect millions of Israeli civilians. 

Days after the assassination, multiple officials from Pezeshkian’s administration affirmed that the current president’s priorities remain focused on domestic issues, especially Iran’s economy. Iran’s Foreign Minister even went on record to say that the Islamic Republic would withhold its response if Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza — a message reiterated by Iran’s UN delegation in recent days. The Iranian government thus remains reluctant to go to war, in part because it recognizes its domestic risks: war would likely strengthen the ultra-conservative opposition to Pezeshkian, and justify further escalation of oppressive measures at home and abroad. 

But right now, Israel remains eager to pull Iran into a direct confrontation — with devastating consequences for civilians across the Middle East. 

A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

• Iran
• October 2023 war
• JCPOA
• Local Call

Prof. Lior Sternfeld teaches modern Iranian history in the Department of History and the Jewish Studies Program at Penn State University. He is the author of “Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran.”

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https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/39864
Lior B. Sternfeld, Between Iran And Zion, Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (New Texts Out Now)

Lior B. Sternfeld, Between Iran And Zion, Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, November 2018)

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Lior B. Sternfeld (LS): As a historian of Iran, it has bothered me greatly that historiography of this country makes no effort to reflect the complex social composition of Iranian society. Diversity has shaped Iranian society for centuries, and understanding it is crucial to the understanding of this society today. Iran is a country of minorities. There are almost thirty minorities (religious, ethnic, lingual) and only about half of the population is Persian Shi’i. If you read any of the “big histories” of Iran, you do not get this sense. This historiographical mold can be attributed in part to the nation-building projects of the twentieth century, and also to the dominant trends of Iranian nationalism, to which many of the minorities responded and wanted to interact with.

The case of the Jewish minority presents multiple historiographical and methodological challenges. Historiography of Iranian Jews has been heavily influenced by Iranian national historiography, on the one hand, and very secluded views and methodologies of Jewish studies and Zionism, on the other. The result of this has been a very shallow understanding of the Jewish experience in Iran in the twentieth century. Daniel Tsadik’s book on the nineteenth century had recently come out, revising the entire way scholars should look at the Jewish communities. I read this book in a very transformative period of graduate school and decided to write a paper, a paper which became my first article of this project on Jewish participation in the 1979 revolution.

I found out that the Jews were involved in the revolution in several ways. The Jewish hospital played a key role, and there were other fascinating aspects that, until that stage, remained very silent. The response to my article convinced me that I should write the histories of Iranian Jews in the twentieth century, in all their plurality. I wanted to try and analyze the profound social, political, and cultural transformation of these communities in a very turbulent century.

…just like Iranian society which is far less homogenous than it is usually portrayed, Jewish society is also very diverse.

J:  What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

LS: This book addresses the responses of Iranian Jews to mainly three political/cultural/intellectual streams that shaped Iran in the twentieth century: Iranian nationalism, Communism, and—in the Jewish case—two phases of Zionism, pre-1948 and post-1948. Iranian Jews articulated many responses to each of these streams. The responses came from different communities, rooted in different contexts, and manifested themselves in myriad ways. For example, we see that Jews felt deep gratitude in a way to the Pahlavi monarchy, which—as they perceived—had liberated them by removing the barriers that blocked them from integrating and assimilating. At the same time, the communist Tudeh Party was the strongest and fiercest opposition to fascism and anti-Semitism in Iran and outside; it talked about social justice, and the vision of an egalitarian society—something that resonated with the Jewish communities, who remained mostly in the lower classes at that time. It was thus the only political party that accepted Jews (and other religious minorities) as members, and so gained many of their support.

This book attempts to show that, just like Iranian society which is far less homogenous than it is usually portrayed, Jewish society is also very diverse. While I am looking at the ethnically Persian Jews as the majority, we also have Kurdish Jews, Iraqi Jews (that can even be categorized as two or three different groups) Ashkenazi Jews (also made of two groups—German professionals that came to Iran in the 1930s, and the other Polish refugees), and many Israeli Jews. All of them helped create these nuanced and multi-hyphenated identities that characterized Iranian Jews—and in a way, still do.  

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

LS: I was trained as a social historian of Iran, and I was very much interested in writing social history of the national movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Reflecting back on it, I am not sure that I knew at the beginning that one of the missing pieces of this story is the aspect of minorities—but I was excited to study this new angle.

My training also brought me into the major debates of the rejuvenating subfield of Jewish studies in the Middle East. Without the works of Joel Beinin, Orit Bashkin, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Aomar Boum, Joshua Schrier, Michelle Campos, and others (most of them published also with Stanford University Press), this field would have looked tremendously different.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

LS: I hope that readers interested in Jewish life in the Middle East in modern times and in Jewish-Muslim relations, aside from the Israel-Palestine conflict, would pick up this book. I am also hoping that Iranian Jews in Israel, and other Iranian Jewish diasporas, would find this account enriching. I hope that Iranians in Iran and abroad would find this analysis of their national story useful, allowing additional voices to be heard and illuminating parts of their histories that—for social, cultural, and political reasons—have been unearthed until now. This is something that I have already seen beginning to happen on my book tour. Folks of Iranian-Jewish heritage, first- or second-generation immigrants from Iran, tell me how they relate to the stories I tell; each adds another story that could have entered the book. There is always the Tudehi uncle, the “liberal student” cousin, the many interactions with Zionist organizations, and the perceptions of Iran as a homeland, etc.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

LS: I am now working on two projects. The first one is an attempt to find the origins of “third-worldism” in the Middle East. The story of the third world usually gives prominence (or even ideological monopoly) to the decolonized nations of Southeast Asia. I am not necessarily disagreeing with that analysis, but I think that the Middle East played a greater role than the anecdotal piece it received in the grand historiography. In this project I examine intellectual-popular discourse of the 1930s and 1940s, including that regarding Zionism (which many Middle Eastern intellectuals considered to be a post-colonial movement), through the establishment of the “Third Force” party in Iran in 1948-9, and Prime Minister Mosaddeq, who actively tried to form a Middle Eastern bloc to counter the influence of Britain, France, the United States, and also the Soviet Union on the other side.

My second project focuses on Iranian-Jewish diaspora communities, especially in the United States and Israel. I want to see how the immigration experience shaped their memories of the “old country,” cultural preservations, relations with non-Jewish immigrants from the same places, etc.

J: You tell a story of centuries-long journey for integration and you underscore the immense cultural attachment and Iranian national identity and pride. Yet the overwhelming majority of the Iranian Jewish community left Iran after the revolution. So, did this project fail? If they felt so attached and part of the society, why did they leave?

LS: I tell a story of a journey. And it is a journey—not a linear steady development—and if there is one thing I want the reader to take from this book is that understanding Iranian-Jewish history is not black and white; it is not a story of persecution and redemption, but rather it is a story that always existed in the middle. It is the story of the hyphen between identities and ideologies.

There were two waves of Jewish emigration out of Iran. The first was in 1948 to 1951, when about a quarter of the Jewish population of Iran left, mostly for the newly-established Israel. The Jews who left in the first wave were—broadly speaking—the poorest and the neediest of the Jewish communities. For them, immigration to Israel could offer some kind of redemption—be it religious, national, financial, or cultural. As I show in the book, even this was very complicated, as some returned to Iran at some point in the future.

The second wave was profoundly different in sociological terms. By the 1970s, the vast majority of the Iranian Jews were part of the upper middle classes and the elites. Most of those who left in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution left as part of their “class” exodus, and not necessarily because they were Jews. We also see that they left for the same places that the non-Jewish Iranians of the same socio-economic class moved to (and much fewer to Israel). This is not to say that, as Jews they did not face increasing dangers and discrimination, but the fact that we see today a community in Iran that is still substantial (unlike any other Middle Eastern country) suggests that we cannot read their history in the same terms that we read Jewish histories of other societies.

Excerpt from the book

Iranian Jewish Zionist: An Identity Mélange

During this period of extensive migration to Israel, even as Iran served as a base for that considerable effort, Zionist and non-Iranian Jewish officials were hardly concerned with the complexity of Jewish Iranian identity. Could Iranian Jews be proud, patriotic Iranians while practicing Jewish traditions? Could they be sympathetic to Zionism and to Israel at differing levels? What about Iranian Jews identifying first and foremost as Tudehi but, in accordance with Tudeh’s official party line, strongly supporting the establishment of Israel? For all Iranians, and Iranian Jews in particular, identity categories were not mutually exclusive (in contrast to what had been expected by Israel and modern Zionism). While many viewed the establishment of Israel favorably, and rejoiced over their homeland’s good relationship with Israel (at least in the beginning), they had no intention to exchange Iran for Israel. The percentage of Iranian Jews choosing the Zionist option was relatively low, and those who did immigrate envisioned that they would see an elevation in their status by doing so.

The slowdown of immigrants prompted Zionist organizations to investigate and analyze this unexpected turn of events. Ultimately they arrived at the identity issue. In 1953 Habib Levy wrote a comprehensive report on Zionist activism in Iran and submitted it to Israel’s president, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, whom he knew from the latter’s visits to Iran. President Ben-Zvi forwarded Levy’s report to the chairman of the board of the Jewish Agency, Berl Locker. Surprisingly, Levy’s tone in this report sharply contrasts with the spirit of his historical writing. In his books (both his memoir and his three-volume history of the Jews of Iran), he praises Iranian Jews’ commitment to Judaism and Zionist ideals. Conversely, his report submitted to Israel’s president seems rather gloomy:

When news arrived of the establishment of the State of Israel, the Jews rejoiced… 30% of Persia’s Jewish communities prepared for their Aliyah—in camps without any sanitation, exposed to the death angel on one side and on the other side, greedy officials of the Jewish Agency that in odd ways and on weird pretexts robbed them of their few belongings. Despite life in Iran being comfortable, they [Iranian Jews] went to Israel and were going to forget the bitterness of the Galuth [exile]. After two thousand and four hundred years of exile, and after 24 hundred years of suffering and tears, they were drunk from excitement and did not pay attention to obstacles, betrayals, and deeds of pocket-picking… Unfortunately today the excitement has dissipated and their fiery nationalistic and religious feelings that were a source of endless power and energy have faded.

Beyond the serious accusations targeting Jewish Agency officials and Israel (accusations upheld by corroborating evidence), Levy lamented the loss of this rare opportunity to keep Zionist fires kindled in the hearts of Iranian Jews. The rest of the report also bears examination. In analyzing the reasons that Iranian Jews were turning away from or losing interest in Zionist ideology, Levy cites the following: “lack of physical, national, religious, and spiritual guidance or training.” In other reports, and as a matter of policy, the Jewish Agency tended to blame insufficient knowledge of Hebrew and the practice of Reform Judaism (as opposed to its Orthodox counterpart) for loosening the bond between Iranian Jews and Zionism/Israel. With that in mind, it is interesting to turn once again to Abramovitch, the JDC observer, whose 1952 report contradicts this assessment. In fact, he describes a heightened emphasis on Hebrew language acquisition and Judaism education among Iranian Jewish youths:

We can point to a whole series of achievements. My recent tour of the provincial towns has been an unexpected pleasure. The younger children, those of the primary schools, not only understood our questions but also answered them correctly. Years of guidance and regular examinations have convinced teachers that our instructions should be carried out, that curriculum we’ve suggested should be taught, and that idiotic superstitious stories abandoned. Children read correctly; they translate correctly; there is proper order to their biblical stories, as well as sequence in their history and religious knowledge. Mr. Cuenca, A.I.U. director, and we can point to a whole series of achievements. My recent tour of the provincial towns has been an unexpected pleasure. The younger children, those of the primary schools, not only understood our questions but also answered them correctly. Years of guidance and regular examinations have convinced teachers that our instructions should be carried out, that curriculum we’ve suggested should be taught, and that idiotic superstitious stories abandoned. Children read correctly; they translate correctly; there is proper order to their biblical stories, as well as sequence in their history and religious knowledge. Mr. Cuenca, A.I.U. director, and Mr. Szyf, who accompanied me on this last trip, were as pleasantly surprised as I was at the answers.

How should we reconcile Levy’s and Abramovitch’s contradicting reports? One way to square the two is to conclude that there was, in fact, no credible connection between Hebrew fluency and a deep understanding of Judaism’s teachings and traditions. Later in his report, Levy offers other fascinating though equally far-fetched criticisms that do not necessarily correlate with his other writings. First, he states that Iranian Jews suffer from the absence of a centralized organization. This unfortunate fragmentation, reflected in the proliferation of small community organizations, meant that Iran’s Jewish community lacked a unified front. Without a strong, central organization, Levy opines, requisite political and social influence will never be achieved. Additionally, the majority of wealthy Iranian Jews had distanced themselves from Jewish nationalism. Finally, and perhaps most critically, he laments, “The young Jewish students overwhelmingly [will] tend to support the Tudeh Party, when there is a void of worthy Jewish organizations.”

Levy fails to entertain the possibility that Iranian Jews purposely avoided creating a strong central organization—which would have distanced their community even further from the larger nationalist sphere. Is it not possible that the Jewish community desired to assimilate, to fit seamlessly into the Iranian social fabric, to count themselves as respected and respectable citizens, and thereby enjoy the same rights and experiences as their non-Jewish Iranian peers? Levy also overlooks key reasons why Jewish students overwhelmingly tended to support Tudeh. As demonstrated in Chapter 2, during the early years from 1941 through 1953, Tudeh offered young Jews a stronger connection to their generation and to Iranian society. Since Tudeh was the largest and single most important political organization in Iran, it is little wonder that young Jews found Tudeh so attractive.47

Another section of Levy’s report is devoted to the hardships that Jews faced upon arriving in Israel. Interestingly, Levy mentions racism and discrimination toward Mizrahi and Persian Jews, regardless of their social status, education, or training. Levy points out that these émigrés could not speak Yiddish, a strike against them. Also, their places of origin made them especially vulnerable to discriminatory practices. Levy proffers the following example: Iranian Jews wanting to enroll their children in an elite boarding school near Haifa were told that the school was at full capacity. Nevertheless, in the ensuing days and weeks their Ashkenazi neighbors enrolled sons and daughters with no problem.48 This type of news made its way to Iran, undeniably hurting Israel’s already questionable reputation around immigration. During those early years, not only did many Iranians return to Iran but, as discussed in Chapter 1, Iraqi Jews also migrated from Israel to Iran. These Iraqis, after finding life impossible to adjust to in Israel, and legally prevented from returning to their Iraqi homeland, settled on their second-best option. Iran at least provided a somewhat familiar cultural climate, and furthermore, a significant Jewish Iraqi community had already established itself. Therefore, Iran became a preferred destination for many Iraqi immigrants, to the dismay of Israel and Zionist organizations.

26.09.24

Editorial Note

BDS in Brazil is gaining strength. Already in 2018, Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) passed a resolution reaffirming its support for the BDS movement.

Last year, on April 3, 2023, the State University of Campinas, known as Unicamp, based outside Sao Paulo, shut down the “Israeli University Fair,” an event on campus promoting Israeli universities.  The University of Haifa, The Hebrew University, Bar Ilan University, and the Technion organized the fair.  Dozens of protesters camped outside the building, blocked the entrance, and declared they would not leave as long as Israelis were inside. They put up Palestinian flags on the walls and carried Palestinian flags while chanting anti-Israel slogans, such as, “we will not allow Brazilian universities to be used to market occupation, colonialism apartheid and Zionism.” Campus security intervened and helped out the Israeli representatives, leading to the event’s cancellation. 

The organization Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, Brazil chapter, reported that the action at UNICAMP University was a “direct example of the future of the Zionist entity and its colonial project in Palestine, which will inevitably fall.” Stating, “Our Palestinian people were supported today by their friends and allies, Brazilian revolutionary forces dedicated to confronting racism and fascism. We salute the central leadership role of the Al Janiah cultural center in Sao Paulo, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – Brazil, the Alkarama Palestinian Women’s Movement, student organizers and committees, women’s organizations and labor and union activists in bringing about this victory. Dozens of leftist organizations and movements had earlier gathered at the Al Janiah Cultural Center about one week ago to organize a mass response to the marketing of Zionist universities at Unicamp.”

The Gaza War turbocharged the anti-Israel protest. On June 7, 2024, the Association of Professors at Brasilia University (ADUnB) held a public class titled “Eight Months of Genocide in Gaza: Boycott, Development and Sanctions against Israeli Apartheid and the Role of Brazilian Universities.” Jamal Juma and Maren Mantovani, National and International Secretariats of the Palestinian National BDS Committee, spoke at the event that former ambassador Tadeu Valadares chaired. 

Another BDS case took place recently. Dr. Jorge Gordin, an esteemed scholar from the Hebrew University, Department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, was forced to cancel a series of lectures at the Institute of Political Science (IPOL) of the University of Brasilia on September 11, 12, 18, 19 and 20. 

IPOL published a statement on Instagram, “To ensure the safety of the university community, IPOL has decided to cancel the activities planned with Prof. Jorge Gordin. At the same time, the Institute regrets and is available to all interested parties to promote debates, always respecting divergent opinions and academic freedom.”

The cancellation came after some students complained that Gordin was “republishing military propaganda from the Israel Defense Forces” on social media.  The group behind the protest is CAPOL, a non-profit organization of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Brasília, representing undergraduate students. The head of CAPOL, Maynara Navi, stated that the protest was “spontaneous,” noting that the cancellation was received with great satisfaction. She said, “It must be said that Brazilian public funds were used to bring this professor to give a lecture at the university, which must be stopped and reviewed… This professor comes from a university located in illegally occupied territories.” 

Navi is unaware that the Hebrew University was founded in 1925. 

CAPOL breaches its own regulations, which state in Article 4 that it would “Encourage participation and discussion on issues that affect society as a whole, without distinction of race, color, sex, nationality, sexual orientation, political or religious beliefs.” 

The Brazilian case is one more demonstration of the “cancel culture” of academic institutions and the BDS supporters around the world.  It is an example of antisemitic hypocrisy when Jews and Israel are concerned. Using “safety concerns” is a thinly disguised excuse for failing to live up to the IPOL commitment to “promote debates, always respecting divergent opinions and academic freedom.”  

It also exposes the lies of the BDS movement, which would let us believe that individual Israeli scholars are not targeted in the BDS campaigns.  

REFERENCES:

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240919-brazil-university-cancels-course-by-israeli-academic-after-protests/

Brazil university cancels course by Israeli academic after protests

September 19, 2024 at 10:19 am

The Institute of Political Science (IPOL) at the University of Brasilia (UnB) cancelled a course which was due to be taught by Israeli Professor Jorge Gordin after students protested his presence despite being a vocal supporter of “Israeli military propaganda”.

Gordin, who teaches at the Hebrew University in occupied Jerusalem, is known for his open and unwavering support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and its military.

The head of the Academic Centre for Political Science (CAPOL) at UnB, Maynara Navi, said the students campaign against the visiting professor was “spontaneous”, noting that the cancellation was received with great satisfaction, as both the Association of Professors (ADUnB) and the University Council have already declared that Israel is an apartheid regime.

“It must be said that Brazilian public funds were used to bring this professor to give a lecture at the university, which must be stopped and reviewed,” she continued.

“This professor comes from a university located in illegally occupied territories, so …. all the academic production he does costs the Palestinians a heavy price,” Navi added.

In April 2023, Palestinian and Brazilian organisations succeeded in forcing the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) to cancel the Israeli Universities Festival, after peaceful demonstrators blocked the entrances to the building, and announced that they “will not allow Brazilian universities to be used to market occupation, colonialism apartheid and Zionism.”

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Google Translate

https://www.metropoles.com/distrito-federal/unb-cancela-palestra-de-professor-apos-propaganda-militar-de-israel

UnB cancels professor’s lecture after “Israeli military propaganda”

Professor Jorge Gordin was supposed to teach at the Institute of Political Science at UnB. Students complained about “Israeli propaganda” on his profile

Samara Schwingel

09/14/2024 17:50 ,updated09/14/2024 17:50Metropolises

The Institute of Political Science at the University of Brasilia ( Ipol/UnB ) has cancelled a lecture that was to be given by Professor Jorge Gordin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The event was suspended after students complained that Gordin was “republishing military propaganda from the Israel Defense Forces ” on social media.

He was scheduled to give lectures on September 11, 12, 18, 19 and 20. Students were notified of the cancellation last Wednesday (9/11). According to the statement made by Ipol on social media, the event was discontinued to “guarantee the safety of the university community”.

In the same publication , the Ipol Academic Center released an open letter in which it revealed the reasons for the cancellation.

“Yesterday, at the request of students, Capol’s academic coordination identified posts by this professor on social media, in which he republished military propaganda from the Israel Defense Forces,” the text says.

Students issued a call to attend his first class with paraphernalia and flags in defense of Palestine. “The management of Ipol became aware of this entire context and decided to cancel Jorge Gordin’s presentation and release a statement reinforcing the need to respect divergent opinions and academic freedom.”

“Capol is pleased with the decision to cancel Jorge Godin’s activities and hopes that IPOL’s selection of external exhibitors will be rigorous, with a close eye on possible attacks on the image of the Palestinian community, which is going through a period of genocide and barbarity,” the text concludes.

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ipol_unb
To ensure the safety of the university community, IPOL has decided to cancel the activities planned with Prof. Jorge Gordin. At the same time, the Institute regrets and is available to all interested parties to promote debates, always respecting divergent opinions and academic freedom.
1w

psipatricialembert
If he were a Hamas fan, I guarantee that they would not ask for this boycott!
1w 3 likes Reply
psipatricialembert
Censorship!!!!! Anti-Semites!!!!
1w1 likeReply
September 11

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 https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/vida-e-cidadania/unb-cancela-aula-professor-defendido-israel-redes-sociais/
UnB cancels class of professor who allegedly defended Israel on social media

Guilherme Grandi
09/13/2024 15:27

Suspension occurred after students claimed to have discovered posts by Jorge Gordin with propaganda for the Israel Defense Forces. | Photo: reproduction/LinkedIn

The University of Brasília canceled activities with Professor Jorge Gordin last Wednesday (11) for allegedly defending the actions of the Israel Defense Forces on social media. He was scheduled to teach classes for five days at the Institute of Political Science at UnB (IPOL) and his participation was suspended to “guarantee the safety of the university community,” the institution reported in a post.

IPOL did not provide details on the reason for canceling the activities, stating only that “it is available to all interested parties to promote debates, always respecting academic freedom”. Gazeta do Povo has been contacting UnB since Wednesday (11) to comment on the cancellation and is awaiting a response.

The reason for the suspension of activities with Gordin was explained by the institute’s Academic Center, stating that students requested the cancellation after posts of his were identified in which he republished on social media posts of “military propaganda of the Israel Defense Forces”.

IPOL stated that, after this request, the students made a call to participate in the class on Wednesday (11) carrying accessories and flags in defense of Palestine.

“The IPOL management became aware of this entire context and chose to cancel Jorge Gordin’s exhibition and release a statement, in which it reinforces the need to respect divergent opinions and academic freedom,” the institute pointed out.

According to his profile on a professional social network, Jorge Gordin describes himself as an expert in regional and local politics, having conducted research on federalism and decentralization in countries such as Israel, the United States, Germany and Brazil. He graduated from, among other institutions, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has worked as a researcher at the German Institute for Global and Regional Studies and at Diego Portales University in Chile.

The report also tried to contact Gordin and is awaiting a response.

Gordin had scheduled a mini-course on the 11th, 12th, 18th and 19th with the theme “Comparative territorial politics” and “The paradox of Argentina revisited”, on September 20th.

The Academic Center also stated that it was “satisfied” with the institute’s decision to cancel activities with Professor Jorge Gordin, and stated that it “expects that the selection of external exhibitors by IPOL will be rigorous, with a close eye on possible attacks on the image of the Palestinian community, which is going through a period of genocide and barbarity.”

IPOL’s decision to cancel activities with the professor, however, divided opinions. Comments on the post in which the suspension was announced classified it as both “regrettable”, “intolerance”, “embarrassing” and “unilateral democracy”, as well as “Zionism”, “victory for all Arab students at UnB” and “effort to stop this supporter of genocide”.

The Israeli response was immediate following the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 6, 2023. The offensive included airstrikes and a ground invasion of Gaza to dismantle the group’s military infrastructure. Hamas, which has killed civilians, raped women and tortured Israelis, is still holding people kidnapped in the attacks.

The conflict subsequently expanded to other fronts as well, and Hamas-allied groups in Lebanon, such as Hezbollah, launched attacks on Israel, raising fears of a wider regional conflict.

Copyright © 2024, Gazeta do Povo. Todos os direitos reservados.

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Conheça as 4 vítimas da queda do helicóptero que sumiu antes do Réveillon em SP

Pro-Palestine protests force UnB to cancel course with professor from Israeli university

Published by

Caroline Saiter–

September 12, 2024

The Institute of Political Science (Ipol) at the University of Brasilia (UnB) has cancelled a course that was to be taught by Professor Jorge Gordin from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. The decision was made following a protest by pro-Palestinian students who opposed the professor’s presence.

In a public statement, Ipol regretted the development and stated that it had cancelled the course “to guarantee the safety of the university community”.

Jorge Gordin was scheduled to present a short course entitled “Comparative Territorial Politics,” which would be held on September 11, 12, 18 and 19 in the institute’s auditorium. A lecture entitled “The ‘Argentina’ Paradox” was scheduled to take place on the 20th.

“Due to the reactions that were raised, and although the topic of the lecture was not war, out of caution and in agreement with the professor we decided to interrupt the activities. We reaffirm our commitment to respectful dialogue, freedom of expression and academic freedom,” the institute said in a note sent to Mônica Bergamo’s column in Folha de S.Paulo.

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A post shared by ADUnB | Seção Sindical (@adunboficial)

💻 PUBLIC CLASS | ADUnB-S.Sind. will hold, on the afternoon of this Friday, June 7, the Public Class: “Eight months of genocide in Gaza: Boycott, Development and Sanctions against Israeli Apartheid and the role of Brazilian universities”.

The event will be attended by Jamal Juma and Maren Mantovani, National and International Secretariats of the Palestinian National BDS Committee, respectively.

The mediation will be carried out by retired ambassador Tadeu Valadares.

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https://www.timesofisrael.com/protesters-force-cancelation-of-brazil-university-event-promoting-israeli-academia/

Protesters force cancelation of Brazil university event promoting Israeli academiaAmid demonstration by pro-Palestinian activists, security at State University of Campinas escort out representatives from four of Israel’s top institutions of higher learning
By CANAAN LIDOR 5 April 2023, 1:57 am

One of Brazil’s most prestigious universities shut down a promotional event on its campus organized by several Israeli institutions of higher learning, following protests by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

The State University of Campinas, situated near Sao Paulo and know as Unicamp, on Monday unexpectedly cancelled the “Israeli University Fair,” an annual promotional event scheduled that day. It was organized by the University of Haifa, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bar Ilan University and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology to attract students and academics.

Dozens of protesters demonstrated outside the building until campus security intervened and extracted the promoters of the Israeli universities, leading to the event’s cancellation, the R7 television channel reported. Unicamp’s rector, Tom Zé, had declined pro-Palestinian activists’ demand that the university scrap the event but said he supported the right of students to demonstrate against it.

The decision to cancel the event was taken because of security concerns, his office told R7.

The protesters camped outside the building and said they would not leave as long as Israelis were inside. They scrawled Palestinian flags on the walls and carried Palestinian flags as they chanted anti-Israel slogans.

The Israelite Federation of Sao Paulo, or FISEPS, condemned the protesters.

“The images of protesters fomenting hostility to Israeli university representatives are revolting and need to be investigated and firmly condemned by authorities and society,” FISEPS said.

Samidoun, an international pro-Palestinian group whose Brazil chapter was involved in the protests at Unicamp, celebrated the cancellation as a “victory.” Masar Badil, another local pro-Palestinian group, wrote in a statement that just as the event was canceled at Unicamp, “the Zionist entity and its colonial project in Palestine, will inevitably fall”.

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Victory in Brazil: Popular mobilization leads to cancellation of “Israeli Universities Festival”

Victory in Brazil: Popular mobilization leads to cancellation of “Israeli Universities Festival”

Apr 3, 2023 

Palestinian and Brazilian organizations and mobilization led to the cancellation of the “Israeli Universities Festival” at the UNICAMP university near Sao Paulo, Brazil. Palestinian activist Rawa Alsagheer announced that the festival, scheduled for today, 3 April, was “cancelled under organized popular pressure,” emphasizing that this is “an important achievement in Brazil on the popular boycott front, thanks to the sacrifices of the Palestinian people, the steadfastness of the prisoners’ movement and the revolutionary solidarity forces that stand with us.”

She said, “The Zionist university fair was cancelled a short while ago, under the pressure of the crowds of demonstrators who occupied the building and surrounded its main entrances until the announcement of the cancellation.”

The Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, affirms that this action at UNICAMP University is a direct example of the future of the Zionist entity and its colonial project in Palestine, which will inevitably fall.

Our Palestinian people were supported today by their friends and allies, Brazilian revolutionary forces dedicated to confronting racism and fascism. We salute the central leadership role of the Al Janiah cultural center in Sao Paulo, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – Brazil, the Alkarama Palestinian Women’s Movement, student organizers and committees, women’s organizations and labour and union activists in bringing about this victory.

Dozens of leftist organizations and movements had earlier gathered at the Al Janiah Cultural Center about one week ago to organize a mass response to the marketing of Zionist universities at Unicamp.

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https://www.al-adab.com/ahmad/ar/index.php/ar/test/other-articles/1613-growing-brazilian-political-party-reaffirms-support-for-bds-movement-for-palestinian-rights

 Growing Brazilian Political Party Reaffirms Support for BDS Movement for Palestinian Rights

 آذار/مارس 07,2018-12:00 AM

The call for BDS measures in Brazil is particularly significant because the country is one of the largest buyers of Israeli weapons and military technologies in the world.

 March 7, 2018 — Last month, Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) passed a resolution reaffirming its support for the BDS movement for Palestinian rights. PSOL is a growing progressive party in Brazil, with six representatives in the National Congress, nine in different state assemblies and 53 in municipal chambers. In 2017, it was the party with the largest number of new members in the country.

 The call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) measures in Brazil is particularly significant because the country is one of the largest buyers of Israeli weapons and military technologies in the world.

 PSOL’s resolution states that the party is committed to “intensifying efforts to place a military embargo on Israel” and references “technologies and techniques” exported by Israel to Brazil that “deepen repression, racism and militarization against the interests of the Brazilian people.”

 Pedro Charbel, Latin America Coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), which leads the global BDS movement for Palestinian rights, said:

 The BNC is heartened by the PSOL’s reaffirmation of its support for the BDS movement for Palestinian rights. The party has heard the call from Palestinian civil society for a meaningful and effective expression of solidarity, and it has responded affirmatively. We hope the party and all its members will keep working to advance BDS in Brazil.

Brazilian authorities use Israeli armed vehicles to repress demonstrations in São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro’s deadly military police, notorious for targeting poor Black and Brown people, receives training from Israeli companies. Brazil spends millions on Israeli weapons and military technology.

The Brazilian government should heed the call by Brazilians and Palestinians alike to stop trading in military weapons, technology and training with Israel.

Whether in Rio’s favelas or in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, we are working together to defeat a global industry of injustice.

Juliano Medeiros, PSOL’s president, stated: PSOL’s resolution reaffirms the Brazilian Left’s long-standing commitment to the Palestinian people and to the pursuit of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.

BDS – 7 March 2018

19.09.24

Editorial Note

Another social experiment by an anti-Israel Israeli academic has emerged.

Her name is Erica Weiss; she is a professor of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. Much of her work focuses on Israel’s army refusal. For example, “Competing ethical regimes in a diverse society: Israeli military refusers;” “Best Practices for Besting the Bureaucracy: Avoiding Military Service in Israel;” Refusal as Act, Refusal as Abstention;” “Incentivized Obedience: How a Gentler Israeli Military Prevents Organized Resistance;” “Beyond Mystification: Hegemony, Resistance, and Ethical Responsibility in Israel;” “Sacrifice as Social Capital among Israeli Conscientious Objectors,” and similar.

Weiss is leading a research project on coexistence called “Praxis of Coexistence.” In Israel, she looks at coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. Her team focuses on “working-class and poor cities where residents don’t always buy into the ideology of liberal multiculturalism yet still find ways of living together,” she writes. “We carry out research in six countries, in cities such as Birmingham in England, Ramle in Israel, and Timișoara in Romania, where significant tensions exist between religious and ethnic groups cohabiting the same spaces.” Her project “investigates how communities accommodate differences in culturally resonant ways and asks what everyday practices and justifications they draw on to maintain civil relations and avoid conflict and violence.”

In a recent article, she claims “Criticizing Israel is risky business in academia.” She takes issue with the alleged risks of academics who criticize Israel.  She brings three examples: the case of the anthropologist Ghassan Hage, who was dismissed from the Max Planck Society in Berlin for his anti-Israel posts on social media; the Palestinian feminist scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian who claimed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza as well as called for the abolishment of Zionism; and the anthropologist Regev Nathansohn, an untenured professor at Sapir College in Israel, who signed a petition calling for the United States to stop arming Israel and characterized the war on Gaza as “plausible genocide.” 

Weiss claims, “Many of the scholars who have been punished for criticizing Israel, including Hage, Shalhoub-Kevorkian, and Nathansohn, have long track records of research and writing oriented toward finding ethical paths forward in the ongoing disaster in Israel/Palestine. Their work promotes the kind of dialogue that’s critical to any progress that Jews and Palestinians may hope to make toward peace and justice in the region. These scholars are trying to enact and give life to ethical projects beyond the academy to oppose state violence and ethno nationalism. This is grounded research in the deepest possible way. The only threat they pose is to the ability of Israel to act with impunity.” 

She stated, “When I see the work of these scholars being misrepresented and attacked, I feel a duty to speak out.” 

Weiss misrepresents the cases: Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian made her decision to retire from the Hebrew University and Regev Nathansohn is still teaching at Sapir College.

Her defense of Ghassan Hage is egregious. Hage was indeed dismissed by the Max Planck Society in Berlin, which reacted to his posts, including a poem published on October 7, 2023.  

Hage wrote, “When the Zionists occupied Palestine and the Palestinians resisted, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said. And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard and unyielding occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said. And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, and strict occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said…. And here we are today. And the Palestinians, like all colonized people, are still proving that their capacity to resist is endless. They don’t only dig tunnels. They can fly above walls. And the Zionist response is to say: we’ll show you! No more Mr. Nice Guy! We’re going to further upgrade our occupation to at least monstrous, homicidal and diabolical. And does anyone among the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists think of saying: Don’t you think we need to find a way out of this infernal cycle? No, for indeed, the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists is part of the infernal cycle, and all it has in it to do is to acquiesce and say: Israel has the right to defend itself”

Max Planck Society explained that Hage was fired because of his “posts on social media expressing views that are incompatible with the core values of the Max Planck Society.” 

Weiss then discusses “Human rights experts and activists [who] have named the situation in Palestine ‘scholasticide’ or ‘educide,’ terms that refer to the systematic destruction of a people’s educational system… According to numbers released by the Palestinian Education Ministry in April 2024, Israeli forces have killed more than 5,000 students and 260 teachers since October 2023. They have bombed all 12 of Gaza’s universities and attacked more than 500 schools—including buildings where displaced families are sheltering.”

She asks, “What should concerned people do about attacks on educators who express critiques of the Israeli state?”

Weiss argues that “Scholars and educators who have worked constantly toward a vision of multi ethnic and multi religious coexistence, like Hage, are being accused of hatred… we need to be helping the public understand our fellow scholars’ work and why it matters when they are censored. When these scholars are accused of criticizing Israel, their commentary and analysis must be understood within the context of their body of work and the political reality in Israel/Palestine.”

Weiss continues, “University administrators and politicians who accuse critical scholars such as Hage of antisemitism seem incapable of distinguishing between those who use their critical voices to question violence and racist and colonial policies and create conditions for justice and peace in the region, and those who promote actual antisemitism, including in some academic circles.”

Weiss argues, “As someone who has worked on questions of state violence, coexistence, tolerance, and peace in Israel/Palestine for two decades, I was struck by how Hage’s descriptions of multi ethnic and multi religious communities resonated with historical accounts of the region before the state of Israel was created. I still find these possibilities of pluralism in the communities where I work.” In Ramle, Israel, she found “coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, looking at daily interactions between neighbors in places like this food market… in Ramle, I have seen deep friendships and relationships of care and reciprocity between Jewish families that arrived from Middle Eastern countries decades ago and their Palestinian neighbors. These relationships call on older traditions of religious tolerance in the region.” 

She ended her article by urging, “we must expand our responses beyond anemic defenses of academic freedom and freedom of expression. As essential as these principles are, they do not enable us to fully demonstrate the ‘post-truth’ distortions of ethical reasoning and commonsense that are occurring in the censorship of critical voices of Israel. We can and must do more. We must use our knowledge of history, politics, and culture to name and challenge the ethical distortions being brandished in cynical rhetorical ploys. Those consuming media related to Israel/Palestine can also do more to fact-check and analyze the content and sources they encounter, following guidance from organizations such as the News Literacy Project. In this era of rampant misinformation, we need more scholars, journalists, and other informed citizens to step up and communicate about distortions of facts beyond the academy. And we need an academy that puts decisions about sanctions in the hands of those who are qualified to make these evaluations, such as experts in the Middle East and antisemitism, rather than administrators and lawyers.”

Over the years, IAM has profiled many Israeli academics who abuse their positions to contribute to the anti-Israel propaganda masquerading as scholarship. Erica Weiss represents an addition to this club of veteran Israel-bashers.   However, her position is especially perverse given the brutality of the Hamas attack against civilians.  How can one describe the barbarity of killing innocent women, men, the elderly, and children, abducting others, or gang-raping women as “resistance”?  Weiss, who is so enamored of “ethical solutions” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fails to realize that ethics should apply to the treatment of Israeli Jews as well. 

These Israel-bashers are following the formula that the Palestinians (including Hamas) can do no wrong and the Israelis can do no right. This pernicious formulation allows Hamas to be portrayed as “resistance heroes” and their victims (even the peace activists in the kibbutzim) as villains in the settler-colonial drama. 

The case of Weiss highlights the failure of the academic community to oppose activist scholars who abuse their position to spread propaganda.

REFERENCES:

https://www.sapiens.org/culture/palestine-israel-censorship-free-speech/

Speaking Truth to Israel Requires More Than Academic Freedom

Educators and students critical of Israel’s war on Gaza face censorship, harassment, and dismissal. An anthropologist who researches coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians argues such critics need more than free speech protections.

ByERICA WEISS

11 SEP 2024

CRITICIZING ISRAEL IS risky business in academia. As a professor at an Israeli university who leads a research project on coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, I’ve witnessed the threats firsthand.

Students motivated by right-wing organizations have recorded me and my colleagues in classrooms and hallways, waiting for us to say something they can take to the administration, press, or police. Faculty critical of Israel are surveilled by activists from ultranationalist organizations such as Im Tirzu and Israel Academia Monitor. Israel’s legislature is currently considering a bill requiring the Council for Higher Education to fire professors who show “support for terrorism,” a coded phrase often interpreted to include criticisms of the state.

I lead a collaborative, international research project called Praxis of Coexistence. Our team looks at working-class and poor cities where residents don’t always buy into the ideology of liberal multiculturalism yet still find ways of living together. We carry out research in six countries, in cities such as Birmingham in England, Ramle in Israel, and Timișoara in Romania, where significant tensions exist between religious and ethnic groups cohabiting the same spaces. The project investigates how communities accommodate differences in culturally resonant ways and asks what everyday practices and justifications they draw on to maintain civil relations and avoid conflict and violence.

In December 2023, I attended an online seminar featuring the anthropologist Ghassan Hage, a leading expert on race and migration. I found his work enlightening and suggested reading Hage’s recent book, which focuses on coexistence and religious pluralism, with the Praxis group. Everyone was enthusiastic to do so. But a few days before we met on Zoom to discuss the book, the news broke that Hage had been fired from his position at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany.

In a short statement, the Max Planck Society stated that Hage’s views, as expressed in social media posts, were incompatible with the values of the institution. Hage had denounced Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, and the society implied his criticism was antisemitic according to German law. Hage responded to this claim, standing by his critique of Israeli ethnonationalism and condemnation of the violence and humiliation imposed on Palestinians. He reasserted his commitment to the “ideal of a multireligious society made from Christians, Muslims, and Jews living together on that land” of Israel/Palestine—an ideal that I share.

My group and I exchanged this news on WhatsApp. We were deeply confused by the decision to terminate his contract, which was particularly disorienting in light of our recent engagement with Hage’s valuable work.

Unfortunately, Hage’s experience is far from unique right now.

In Israel, attacks on educators and students critical of the state have intensified since October 7, 2023. In March 2024, Palestinian feminist scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was suspended from Hebrew University in Jerusalem after claiming Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and calling for the abolishment of Zionism on a podcast. Later Shalhoub-Kevorkian was arrested at her home by the police, though quickly released.

Another example: Anthropologist Regev Nathansohn, an untenured professor at Sapir College in Israel, signed a petition calling for the United States to stop arming Israel and characterizing the war on Gaza as “plausible genocide.” He was attacked by students, condemned by his college, and put on unpaid leave, making him ineligible for unemployment benefits.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is without speaking of the situation for Palestinian academics in the West Bank and Gaza, for which the term censorship is wholly inadequate.

Human rights experts and activists have named the situation in Palestine “scholasticide” or “educide,” terms that refer to the systematic destruction of a people’s educational system. According to numbers released by the Palestinian Education Ministry in April 2024, Israeli forces have killed more than 5,000 students and 260 teachers since October 2023. They have bombed all 12 of Gaza’s universities and attacked more than 500 schools—including buildings where displaced families are sheltering.

GOING BEYOND “ACADEMIC FREEDOM”

What should concerned people do about attacks on educators who express critiques of the Israeli state?

After Hage and other scholars were fired, suspended, and threatened, many individuals and scholarly associations came to their defense. The American Anthropological Association, the European Association of Social Anthropologists, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, a group of Jewish Israeli scholars, and others wrote and circulated statements and letters of support.

Most of these statements focus on condemning censorship and emphasizing the rights of academic freedom and freedom of expression. The Board on Academic Freedom in Germany, where scholars critical of Israel face particularly restrictive conditions, urged “universities and research institutions to commit themselves to building and maintaining spaces for discussion and encounter, which welcome plurality and contradiction.”

Protecting academic freedom and freedom of expression is crucial—especially given the widespread silencing of Palestinian human rights advocacy. But doing so does not address the full extent of the problem.

One could imagine a situation in which a scholar espoused offensive or problematic views but was protected by these freedoms. On its own, a commitment to protecting free speech is politically and ethically neutral; this is why the American Civil Liberties Union defends the Black Lives Matter Movement and the Ku Klux Klan.

Protecting freedom of speech alone is not enough.

The free speech discourse misses the way the recent wave of dismissals and suspensions are in many cases a complete upside-down distortion of reality. Scholars and educators who have worked constantly toward a vision of multiethnic and multireligious coexistence, like Hage, are being accused of hatred. Protecting their freedom of speech alone is not enough.

Scholars in the social sciences and humanities must put our ethical values and critical thinking tools to work to explicitly challenge such “post-truth” distortions. To start, this means insisting that a scholar’s work is more than their social media presence. But beyond that, we need to be helping the public understand our fellow scholars’ work and why it matters when they are censored. When these scholars are accused of criticizing Israel, their commentary and analysis must be understood within the context of their body of work and the political reality in Israel/Palestine.

CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP ON COEXISTENCE

What does it mean to “support Israel” today?

Jacqueline Rose, a humanities professor who has explored internal Jewish critiques of Zionism, argues Israel is locked in a “spiral of destruction.” This spiral harms and traumatizes Palestinian people and Israeli people. Israel, Rose argues, is ruled by a government that is systematically eliminating any chance for justice and peace.

Within this political context, antisemitism and anti-Zionism are wrongly conflated. University administrators and politicians who accuse critical scholars such as Hage of antisemitism seem incapable of distinguishing between those who use their critical voices to question violence and racist and colonial policies and create conditions for justice and peace in the region, and those who promote actual antisemitism, including in some academic circles.

When the Praxis research group met to discuss Hage’s reading, we were struck by his commitment to understanding how communities learn to coexist with others who are different from themselves. His work describes a mode of living within dense, urban settings that is attuned to others and in conversation with people who sometimes express dramatically opposing claims and aims. This approach to navigating conflict contrasts with the tendency within modern capitalist societies to impose order by avoiding direct engagement and using the law to live impersonally and transactionally.

Hage’s insights resonated deeply with the empirical data we’ve gathered. In the places we work around the globe, people from varied religious and ethnic backgrounds live intimately in ways similar to those Hage describes. Neighbors and strangers often seek to deal with conflicts directly and avoid involving the police or the state. In these places, a stolen bike will start a long chain of calls and conversations involving intermediaries, parents, and community and religious leaders, all seeking to find a path to repair that avoids violence.

The author’s research focuses on coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, looking at daily interactions between neighbors in places like this food market in Ramle, Israel.

In other words, Hage highlights and theorizes modes of living together with difference that actually work. As someone who has worked on questions of state violence, coexistence, tolerance, and peace in Israel/Palestine for two decades, I was struck by how Hage’s descriptions of multiethnic and multireligious communities resonated with historical accounts of the region before the state of Israel was created.

I still find these possibilities of pluralism in the communities where I work. For example, in Ramle, I have seen deep friendships and relationships of care and reciprocity between Jewish families that arrived from Middle Eastern countries decades ago and their Palestinian neighbors. These relationships call on older traditions of religious tolerance in the region. They persist in part because Ramle remains peripheral in contrast to economic centers like Tel Aviv or symbolic centers like Jerusalem.

These fleeting and partial spaces of Israeli/Palestinian coexistence—ones that defy the ethnonational logics of the Israeli state—could be nourished, but they run the risk of disappearing entirely.

LIVING OUR ETHICAL AND POLITICAL VALUES

Many of the scholars who have been punished for criticizing Israel, including Hage, Shalhoub-Kevorkian, and Nathansohn, have long track records of research and writing oriented toward finding ethical paths forward in the ongoing disaster in Israel/Palestine. Their work promotes the kind of dialogue that’s critical to any progress that Jews and Palestinians may hope to make toward peace and justice in the region.

These scholars are trying to enact and give life to ethical projects beyond the academy to oppose state violence and ethnonationalism. This is grounded research in the deepest possible way. The only threat they pose is to the ability of Israel to act with impunity.

When I see the work of these scholars being misrepresented and attacked, I feel a duty to speak out. I know many anthropologists and other scholars agree. But we must expand our responses beyond anemic defenses of academic freedom and freedom of expression. As essential as these principles are, they do not enable us to fully demonstrate the “post-truth” distortions of ethical reasoning and common sense that are occurring in the censorship of critical voices of Israel. We can and must do more. We must use our knowledge of history, politics, and culture to name and challenge the ethical distortions being brandished in cynical rhetorical ploys.

Those consuming media related to Israel/Palestine can also do more to fact-check and analyze the content and sources they encounter, following guidance from organizations such as the News Literacy Project.

In this era of rampant misinformation, we need more scholars, journalists, and other informed citizens to step up and communicate about distortions of facts beyond the academy. And we need an academy that puts decisions about sanctions in the hands of those who are qualified to make these evaluations, such as experts in the Middle East and antisemitism, rather than administrators and lawyers.

Erica Weiss

Open Bio

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Home

I am a cultural anthropologist researching the ways people navigate the ethical dilemmas they encounter during their everyday lives and with people who are different than themselves.  

I am originally from New Paltz, New York.  I did my Ph.D. in Anthropology at Princeton University (2011). I joined the faculty of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University in the fall of 2013.  I do my research in Israel and Palestine, using ethnographic methods.

I live in Caesarea with my husband, Michael, and our three children, Jordan, Boaz, and Adar.

 

Research:

Peace and Inter-Religious Coexistence- I am interested in how people think about and imagine peace.  I am particularly interested in the ways that people who are far from the professional spheres of peace and reconciliation think about peace.  I am interested in understanding the ways secular and religious groups think about peace differently and through different traditions.

Ethics and Ideas of Justice– My research involves a non-normative examination of the way people understand their ethical obligations.  In my previous research, I looked at the way Israeli soldiers struggle to reconcile the responsibility they feel towards Palestinians and the responsibility they feel towards other Israelis.  In my new research I am asking how people understand coexistence through the lens of faith.  I ask how religious study and prayer inform people about their ethical responsibilities to their neighbor, and how they come to understand who falls under this category of care.

I am interested how political ideology effects people’s understanding of community and responsibilities to the state and to one another.  Israel has both liberal and non-liberal components both within the legal and political structure and within the Israeli population.  This diversity means many ethical models coexist and compete in public and private.  I am very interested in tracing these influences in my work.

Democracy- I am interested in the ways different groups imagine the public sphere.  How people think about topics like religion and state, community, public discourse, and civic conflict resolution through their different traditions and beliefs are of particular interest.  

 

 

Current Collaborations: 

Carole McGranahan, “Rethinking Disciplinary Ethics in Anthropology” and editing essay collection
“Rethinking Pseudonyms in Anthropology” in American Ethnologist, University of Colorado,
United States
Nissim Mizrachi, The Perception of Tolerance in Israeli Society, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Yifat Biton, Building a Research Driven Model for Conflict Resolution, Bridging Insights, Israel
Gili Re’i and Eilon Schwartz, Expanding the Imagination of Peace, Van Leer Institute, Israel

I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University.

 

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https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Erica-Weiss-3

Erica WeissTel Aviv University | TAU · Department of Sociolgy and Antropology

Publications (14)

State-authorizing citizenship: the narrow field of civic engagement in the liberal age

Article

Full-text available

• Aug 2018

• Erica Weiss

Liberal citizens are held ethically accountable not only for their own acts and behaviors, but also those of their state. Reciprocally, a proper liberal subject is one that metonymizes with the state, merging their fates and moral worth, and taking personal responsibility for the state’s actions. I claim that as a result, the liberal subject is not…

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Competing ethical regimes in a diverse society:: Israeli military refusers

Article

• Feb 2017

• Erica Weiss

All Jewish military refusers in Israel defy state law and incur public acrimony for their transgression. Yet different social groups use distinct ethical regimes to justify this controversial act. While liberal Ashkenazi refusers cite personal conscience, ultra-Orthodox refusers rely on scriptural authority, and Mizrahi refusers often appeal to fam…

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Best Practices for Besting the Bureaucracy: Avoiding Military Service in Israel

Article

• Sep 2016

• Erica Weiss

This article considers the evasion of mandatory military service in Israel. Exemption from service is granted on a number of grounds at the discretion of military bureaucrats. Each year, many young people seek to obtain such an exemption for a wide variety of reasons, both ideological and pragmatic. At their disposal is a body of knowledge, collect…

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Refusal as Act, Refusal as Abstention

Article

• Aug 2016

• Erica Weiss

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‘There are no chickens in suicide vests’: the decoupling of human rights and animal rights in Israel: ‘There are no chickens in suicide vests’

Article

• Jul 2016

• Erica Weiss

en In this article, I consider the shifting politics of animal rights activism in Israel in relation to human rights activism. I find that whereas in the past, human and animal rights activism were tightly linked, today they have become decoupled, for reasons I explore in this article. Although human and animal rights activism once shared social an…

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Incentivized Obedience: How a Gentler Israeli Military Prevents Organized Resistance

Article

• Mar 2016

• Erica Weiss

In this article, I offer an ethnographic examination of neoliberal techniques of control through absence by the Israeli military, the state institution most associated with discipline, indoctrination, and direct coercion. I highlight the ways that the apparent withdrawal of the state from practices of indoctrination and the punishment of conscienti…

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Provincializing empathy: Humanitarian sentiment and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Article

• Sep 2015

• Erica Weiss

This article considers the role of the humanitarian sentiment empathy in peace initiatives in the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Recently, a sustained critique of humanitarianism has emerged. While many of these accounts focus on the ethical effects of specific manifestations of humanitarian governance, there is a significant strain criticizing the in…

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Beyond Mystification: Hegemony, Resistance, and Ethical Responsibility in Israel

Article

• Mar 2015

• Erica Weiss

This article reevaluates the usefulness of the theoretical continuum between hegemony and resistance in light of recent Israeli experiences. Specifically, through the comparison of “conscientious objection” and “draft evasion,” I find that the breakdown of hegemonic consciousness is not sufficient to understand why some disillusioned Israeli soldie…

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Sacrifice as Social Capital among Israeli Conscientious Objectors

Article

• May 2014

• Erica Weiss

This article considers counterhegemonic sacrifices as a means of social intervention, and in doing so explores the social efficacy of non-ritual sacrifice in the modern era. Ethnographically, this article examines the way Israeli conscientious objectors succeed in having their refusal of military service and the social costs they incur understood a…

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Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty

Article

• Mar 2014

• Erica Weiss

In Conscientious Objectors in Israel, Erica Weiss examines the lives of Israelis who have refused to perform military service for reasons of conscience. Based on long-term fieldwork, this ethnography chronicles the personal experiences of two generations of Jewish conscientious objectors as they grapple with the pressure of justifying their actions…

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Security and Suspicion: An Ethnography of Everyday Life in Israel by Juliana Ochs

Article

• Sep 2012

• Erica Weiss

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Principle or Pathology? Adjudicating the Right to Conscience in the Israeli Military

Article

• Mar 2012

• Erica Weiss

The Israeli military’s Conscience Committee evaluates and exempts pacifists from obligatory military service, based explicitly on concern for liberal tolerance. However, I found that liberal pacifist applicants’ principled objections to violence challenged the state, and as such, applicants who articulated their refusal in such terms are rejected b…

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The Interrupted Sacrifice: Hegemony and Moral Crisis among Israeli Conscientious Objectors

Article

• Jul 2011

• Erica Weiss

In this article, I explain why some of the most elite and dedicated soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces ultimately became conscientious objectors. I argue that because the sacrificial moral economy, and not the state as supersubject, was hegemonically inculcated in these young people, resistance was possible. This case prompts a reconsideration…

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The Deployment of Moral Authority: Veteran Activism in Israel

Article

• May 2009

• Erica Weiss

View

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https://hageba2a.blogspot.com/2023/10/israel-palestine-endless-dead-end-that.html

Saturday, October 7, 2023Israel-Palestine: The Endless Dead-End That Will Not End

When the Zionists occupied Palestine and the Palestinians resisted, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard and unyielding occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, and strict occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict and brutal occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal and severe occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe and unrelenting occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting and ferocious occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious and callous occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious, callous and merciless occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious, callous, merciless and heartless occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious, callous, merciless, heartless and cruel occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious, callous, merciless, heartless, cruel and brutish occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious, callous, merciless, heartless, cruel, brutish and inhuman occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious, callous, merciless, heartless, cruel, brutish, inhuman and heinous occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious, callous, merciless, heartless, cruel, brutish, inhuman, heinous and hideous occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And when the Palestinians continued to resist, the Zionists decided to teach them a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious, callous, merciless, heartless, cruel, brutish, inhuman, heinous, hideous and barbarous occupation, and the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists acquiesced: Israel has the right to defend itself they said.

And here we are today. And the Palestinians, like all colonised people, are still proving that their capacity to resist is endless. They don’t only dig tunnels. They can fly above walls.

And the Zionist response is to say: we’ll show you! No more Mr. Nice Guy! We’re going to further upgrade our occupation to at least monstrous, homicidal and diabolical.

And does anyone among the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists think of saying: Don’t you think we need to find a way out of this infernal cycle?

No, for indeed, the self-congratulatory transnational consortium of colonialists is part of the infernal cycle, and all it has in it to do is to acquiesce and say: Israel has the right to defend itself

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

Comment:

J October 10, 2023 at 1:47 AM 

You reduce the actions of Palestinians to the word “resist”, yet indiscriminately firing rockets into populated areas is not “resistance.” You overlook the overt intolerance of Palestinians towards Jews (a two way street, undoubtedly), but you cannot attribute a noble cause to Palestinians and an un-noble cause to Israel, as it is a biased simplification in both cases.

12.09.24

Editorial Note

Last week, Cornell University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies hosted the Palestinian Studies Speaker Series. The speakers were Tamir Sorek, a professor of Middle East history at Pennsylvania State University, and Sonia Boulos, an associate professor of international human rights law at Antonio de Nebrija University, Madrid, Spain. Deborah Starr, professor and chair of the Cornell Near Eastern Studies Department, was the moderator.

Sorek and Boulos are the co-editors of a new academic journal, The Palestine/Israel Review, published by The Pennsylvania State University Press.  In their talk, they explained that the Journal “was created to challenge the typically separated approach to Israel and Palestine studies in academia.”  To this end, the Journal includes Israeli as well as Palestinian scholarship. 

Sorek said in his talk, “About three years ago, a group of scholars at Pennsylvania State University started thinking… Let’s build a journal that will try to bring these two scholarly fields together.” The journal’s “relational approach,” according to Sorek, aims to emphasize “the intertwined conflicts and progress of Israeli and Palestinian societies. He said that their study in academia has branched due to opposing political agendas.” Sorek argued that Israel studies has largely ignored the “settler colonial context, crucial for understanding Zionism, Israeli society and any kind of interaction between Israelis and Palestinians.” He said that “conversely, Palestine studies focuses on the historical injustices faced by Palestinians.” 

Buolos explained that the Journal’s key goal is “to increase awareness of how Israeli internal conflicts and policies impact Palestinian oppression.” The Palestine/Israel Review encourages writers to use literature in Arabic. “There exists an entire academic world in Arabic.“ Buolos pointed to the lack of Western use of Arabic materials. “We’re trying to fight against this [to] give voice to the people writing about these things.” 

Boulos and Sorek wrote in the Journal’s Introduction: “The current war in Gaza, with the International Court of Justice ruling that a genocide is plausible, has highlighted the pivotal role of settler colonialism as an analytical framework to understand and contextualize the current wave of apocalyptic violence. At the same time, references to settler colonialism have triggered discursive resistance among certain academic circles. To debate this issue, Palestine/Israel Review organized a special webinar titled “Israel–Hamas: A Colonial War?” While the title focuses in its first part on Israel versus Hamas, the second part challenges the claim that Israel is fighting a war against Hamas, and suggests that the recent violence inflicted on Gazans is an escalation of a continuous physical and symbolic erasure of Palestine and Palestinians.” 

They argued, “Ever since the recent cycle of apocalyptic violence erupted in Gaza, there has been a political struggle between those who believe that the history of recent violent events begins with the Palestinian Nakba 75 years ago or even earlier, and those who want to set the clock on 7 October. We at Palestine/Israel Review place ourselves in the first camp. We believe that the 7 October attacks, including the atrocious targeting of Israeli civilians, and the ensuing Israeli violence in Gaza that could be framed as genocidal (as the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice indicate) cannot be understood outside the context of Israel’s settler-colonial history. Coloniality can also explain how the colonial roots of the international order and of international law have enables this violence. But those who believe that the history of this unfolding human catastrophe begins on 7 October suggest that Hamas’s crimes fall outside history, politics, and sociology, and rationalize Israel’s violence as an act of self-defense. This discourse often ignores the Palestinians’ right to be free from oppression and domination, paying little or no attention to the fact that Israeli occupation in itself ‘constitutes an unjustified use of force and an act of aggression,’ as highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese.”

Furthermore, they argued, “to dismiss the relevance of settler colonialism and broader historical perspectives, members of this camp have relentlessly attempted to discredit scholars who refer to settler colonialism by accusing them of legitimizing violence against civilians.” 

To debate these issues, Palestine/Israel Review organized a special webinar titled ‘Israel–Hamas: A Colonial War?’ As stated, “While the title focuses in its first part on Israel versus Hamas, the second part challenges the claim that Israel is fighting a war against Hamas, and suggests that the recent violence inflicted on Gazans is an escalation of a continuous physical and symbolic erasure of Palestine and Palestinians.”

Several scholars participated and published papers in the Journal, as Boulos and Sorek described: 

Oren Yiftachel argued that “the 7 October attack and accompanying discourses by Hamas leaders places them under the rubric of counter-colonization.”

Ian Lustick argued that Israel “was imagined and created by Jews as a means of salvation, retribution, and protection… now appears as probably the most dangerous threat facing Jews, both in Israel and in the diaspora.”

Honaida Ghanim argued that “Palestinian hopelessness has intensified to an indescribable extent,” leading to an “intractable organic crisis that culminated in an eruption of extreme violence. Recognizing the colonial character of this dynamics is crucial for confronting it.”

Michal Frenkel was, for Boulos and Sorek, a “snapshot of mainstream Israeli academia, which resists the contextualization of the 7 October attacks in a broader historical perspective marked by continued oppression and dispossession of Palestinians.” Frenkel argues that the “colonial lens is sometimes applied, especially by those not directly involved in the study of Palestine/Israel, in ways that appear to justify actions like the Hamas massacre of Israeli and foreign civilians on 7 October.” Instead, she offers an “imperial analysis” that “involves scrutinizing the shifting relations between various empires across different historical periods.”

Boulos and Sorek concluded, “The war in Gaze continues as these lines are going to press. While we are still looking for words to describe and explain the horrors, vocabulary borrowed from other settler-colonial conflicts remains the optimal—even if not perfect—working tool.”

Worth noting that the talk and the Journal reflect the evolution of the pro-Hamas advocacy among scholars known for their long record of delegitimizing Israel, using the critical, neo-Marxist jargon.  Hamas is a terror organization and, as such, has been condemned for its atrocities and the murderous attack on October 7. To call the Gaza attack and Israel’s response a “colonial war” is farfetched even by the notoriously biased standards of academics in the field of Middle East Studies.  As IAM documented, these scholars are nothing more than propagandists for the Palestinians. 

These scholars should be reminded that nearly a year into the Gaza War, there is a large body of empirical evidence that Hamas runs a brutal dictatorship in Gaza, stifling critics who complained about the diversion of billions of international aid to build the enormous network of tunnels and the vast corruption of the Hamas government which helped its officials to build a luxurious neighborhood in Gaza City nicknamed “Beverley Hills.”

The academics featured in the Cornell symposium and the Journal forgot to mention some five hundred kilometers of tunnels built by Hamas. In what is arguably the most radical case of embedding within the civilian population, access to the tunnels was located in public spaces, mosques, schools, and hospitals, forcing the noncombatants to act as human shields for the terrorists.

As usual, in the “colonial” rendition of the conflict, the Palestinians have no responsibility. They are depicted as powerless – like individuals subjected by their colonial master, Israel. Nothing can be further from the truth.  The Palestinians had plenty of opportunities to make better choices. First, in the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which, under the pressure of the Arab countries and their leader Haj Amin al Husseini, an ardent admirer of Hitler, they rejected, forcing them into the 1948 war in which they lost.  After the 1967 War, the Israeli Labor government proposed to trade most of the territories taken in the war for a peace agreement. The Palestinians who participated in the Khartoum Conference responded with the “three no’s:” No Peace with Israel, No Recognition of Israel, No Negotiations.  After the signing of the Oslo Accord in I993 between Israel and Yasser Arafat’s PLO, the Iranian theocratic regime mounted a huge effort to sink the agreement. Its’ proxies, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, launched a wave of suicide bombing that morphed into the Second Intifada, where thousands of Israelis were killed and wounded.

There is little doubt that the October 7 attack was also a response to the Abraham Accords.

By omitting the historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these scholars are not interested in historical truth or facts. Equally important, they have not helped the Palestinians to make more reasonable choices. But these are never their goals; their purpose is bashing Israel.

REFERENCES:

https://events.cornell.edu/event/palestineisrael-studies-carving-out-a-new-intellectual-space
Palestine/Israel Studies: Carving Out a New Intellectual Space

 Tuesday, September 3, 2024 5pm to 6:30pm

About this Event

Goldwin Smith Hall, G64 Kaufmann AuditoriumView map Free Event

232 East Ave, Central Campus

Sonia Boulos (Nebrija University, Spain) and Tamir Sorek (Penn State University), co-editors of the new journal Palestine/Israel Review, will give a talk, “Palestine/Israel Studies: Carving Out a New Intellectual Space” on Tuesday, September 3. This lecture is the first in the Palestinian Studies speaker series.

Knowledge about Palestine/Israel is often shaped by conflicting political struggles. Separate scholarly fields for Palestine and Israel studies reflect different political agendas. Israel studies tend to normalize colonial power dynamics, while Palestine studies challenge them. This separation overlooks the intertwined nature of Palestinian and Israeli societies. Boulos and Sorek question if a new, integrated approach to studying these societies is possible, focusing on structural barriers like the unequal positioning of scholars and resource gaps.

Sonia Boulos is an associate professor of international law at Nebrija University, Spain. Her research focuses on international protection of human rights. She has worked on human rights issues related to the Palestinian minority in Israel, such as, gender equality, due process in Ecclesiastical family courts, and the policing of the Palestinian minority in Israel.  Boulos is a co-editor of the new journal Palestine/Israel Review.

Tamir Sorek is a professor of Middle East history at Penn State University. He studies culture as a field of conflict and resistance, particularly in the context of Palestine/Israel. He is the author of The Optimist: A Social Biography of Tawfiq Zayyad (Stanford University Press, 2020), Palestinian Commemoration in Israel: Calendar, Monuments, and Martyrs (Stanford University Press, 2015) and Arab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave (Cambridge University Press 2007). Sorek is a co-editor of the new journal Palestine/Israel Review.

Sponsor:

Department of Near Eastern Studies

Co-sponsors:

Jewish Studies Program

Einaudi Center‘s Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) initiative

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

Scholars Discuss New Journal Which Joins Israeli and Palestinian Studies

Scholars Discuss New Journal Which Joins Israeli and Palestinian Studies

By Christine Savino

The Palestine/Israel Review was created to challenge the typically separated approach to Israel and Palestine studies in academia, according to Tamir Sorek, an editor for the journal.

Sorek, along with co-editor Sonia Boulos, spoke in Goldwin Smith Hall on Tuesday as part of the Palestinian Studies Speaker Series hosted by the Department of Near Eastern Studies. 

Boulos is an associate professor of international human rights law at Antonio de Nebrija University and Sorek is a professor of Middle East history at Pennsylvania State University. The talk was moderated by Deborah Starr, professor and chair of the Near Eastern Studies Department.

The Palestine/Israel Review is published by The Pennsylvania State University Press and includes Israeli as well as Palestinian scholarship.

“About three years ago, a group of scholars at Pennsylvania State University [and I] started thinking, why not?” Sorek said. “Let’s build a journal that will try to bring these two scholarly fields together.”

Sorek explained that the journal’s “relational approach” emphasizes the intertwined conflicts and progress of Israeli and Palestinian societies.

He said that their study in academia has branched due to opposing political agendas.

Sorek argued that Israel studies has largely ignored the “settler colonial context [that is] crucial for understanding Zionism, Israeli society and any kind of interaction between Israelis and Palestinians.”

He said that conversely, Palestine studies focuses on the historical injustices faced by Palestinians.

Buolos explained that one of the journal’s key goals is to increase awareness of how Israeli internal conflicts and policies impact Palestinian oppression. 

The journal also addresses the structural challenges that Palestinian scholars face, such as language barriers, which hinder their participation in academic discourse, according to Buolos. The Palestine/Israel Review encourages writers to use literature in Arabic.

“There exists an entire academic world in Arabic,“ Buolos explained. “We’re trying to fight against this [lack of Western use of these materials to] give voice to the people writing about these things.” 

This Palestinian Studies Speaker Series, alongside the Antisemitism and Islamophobia Examined speaker series, is being hosted amid high tensions on campus.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, the University has seen incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia, causing students of both groups to express fear for their safety on campus.

Pro-Palestine demonstrations have continued into the Fall 2024 semester, including the vandalism of Day Hall on the first day of classes.

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https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/pir/issue/1/1

Palestine/Israel Review: Carving Out a New Intellectual Space 

Tamir Sorek; Honaida Ghanim

Abstract

View articletitled, <em>Palestine/Israel Review</em>: Carving Out a New Intellectual Space

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ARTICLES

“Judeo-Arabic” and the Separationist Thesis 

Ella Shohat

Abstract

View articletitled, “Judeo-Arabic” and the Separationist Thesis

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Walking with Ghosts along the Bazaar: Urban Life in Ludd, Palestine, at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 

Tawfiq Daʿadli

Abstract

View articletitled, Walking with Ghosts along the Bazaar: Urban Life in Ludd, Palestine, at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

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Walking to Unsettle Jerusalem 

Dorit Naaman

Abstract

View articletitled, Walking to Unsettle Jerusalem

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Egyptian Popular Culture in Late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine 

Joel Beinin

Abstract

View articletitled, Egyptian Popular Culture in Late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine

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Circumventing Israeli Control: Palestinian Furniture Exports via Israeli Settlements 

Walid Habbas

Abstract

View articletitled, Circumventing Israeli Control: Palestinian Furniture Exports via Israeli Settlements

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Settler Mimicry: Colonization and Decolonization through Imitation 

Achia Anzi

Abstract

View articletitled, Settler Mimicry: Colonization and Decolonization through Imitation

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Old and New Strategies for Exploiting Structural Change in Palestine/Israel: A Review Essay 

Ian Lustick

Extract

View articletitled, Old and New Strategies for Exploiting Structural Change in Palestine/Israel: A Review Essay

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Is the Israeli Discipline of “Middle East and Islam Studies” Decolonizing? 

Eyal Clyne; Assaf David

Abstract

View articletitled, Is the Israeli Discipline of “Middle East and Islam Studies” Decolonizing?

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A Special Project on the War in Gaza

Introduction: A Colonial War 

Sonia Boulos; Tamir Sorek

Abstract

View articletitled, Introduction: A Colonial War

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Settler Colonialism and Decolonization 

Raef Zreik

Abstract

View articletitled, Settler Colonialism and Decolonization

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Colonial—And Counter-colonial: The Israel/Gaza War through Multiple Critical Perspectives 

Oren Yiftachel

Abstract

View articletitled, Colonial—And Counter-colonial: The Israel/Gaza War through Multiple Critical Perspectives

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Must Every Golem Die? 

Ian Lustick

Abstract

View articletitled, Must Every Golem Die?

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The Urgency of the Settler Colonialism Framework in Understanding 7 October and the War on Gaza 

Honaida Ghanim

Abstract

View articletitled, The Urgency of the Settler Colonialism Framework in Understanding 7 October and the War on Gaza

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The October 2023 War—From a Colonial to an Imperial Analysis 

Michal Frenkel

Abstract

View articletitled, The October 2023 War—From a Colonial to an Imperial Analysis

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• Cover Image
• PDF Icon PDF LinkFront Matter
• PDF Icon PDF LinkTable of Contents

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

Introduction: A Colonial War 

Sonia Boulos;

Tamir Sorek

Palestine/Israel Review (2024) 1 (1): 219–222.

https://doi.org/10.5325/pir.1.1.0010

Abstract

The settler-colonial paradigm has gained traction in the study of Palestine/Israel in recent years. The current war in Gaza, with the International Court of Justice ruling that a genocide is plausible, has highlighted the pivotal role of settler colonialism as an analytical framework to understand and contextualize the current wave of apocalyptic violence. At the same time, references to settler colonialism have triggered discursive resistance among certain academic circles. To debate this issue, Palestine/Israel Review organized a special webinar titled “Israel–Hamas: A Colonial War?”. While the title focuses in its first part on Israel versus Hamas, the second part challenges the claim that Israel is fighting a war against Hamas, and suggests that the recent violence inflicted on Gazans is an escalation of a continuous physical and symbolic erasure of Palestine and Palestinians. Five scholars from different disciplines participated in the webinar.

Gaza, Hamas, settler colonialism, webinar

Issue Section:

A Special Project on the War in Gaza

Ever since the recent cycle of apocalyptic violence erupted in Gaza, there has been a political struggle between those who believe that the history of recent violent events begins with the Palestinian Nakba 75 years ago or even earlier, and those who want to set the clock on 7 October. We at Palestine/Israel Review place ourselves in the first camp. We believe that the 7 October attacks, including the atrocious targeting of Israeli civilians, and the ensuing Israeli violence in Gaza that could be framed as genocidal (as the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice indicate) cannot be understood outside the context of Israel’s settler-colonial history. Coloniality can also explain how the colonial roots of the international order and of international law have enables this violence.

But those who believe that the history of this unfolding human catastrophe begins on 7 October suggest that Hamas’s crimes fall outside history, politics, and sociology, and rationalize Israel’s violence as an act of self-defense. This discourse often ignores the Palestinians’ right to be free from oppression and domination, paying little or no attention to the fact that Israeli occupation in itself “constitutes an unjustified use of force and an act of aggression,” as highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese. Furthermore, to dismiss the relevance of settler colonialism and broader historical perspectives, members of this camp have relentlessly attempted to discredit scholars who refer to settler colonialism by accusing them of legitimizing violence against civilians.

To debate these issues, Palestine/Israel Review organized a special webinar titled “Israel–Hamas: A Colonial War?” While the title focuses in its first part on Israel versus Hamas, the second part challenges the claim that Israel is fighting a war against Hamas, and suggests that the recent violence inflicted on Gazans is an escalation of a continuous physical and symbolic erasure of Palestine and Palestinians. Five scholars from different disciplines participated in the webinar.

In his contribution, Raef Zreik argues that settler colonialism is a useful frame for analyzing Israeli society, economy, politics, and law. However, resort to this paradigm as an analytical tool should not exclude other frames of analysis, such as class struggle, feminist approaches, cultural analysis, global politics, economic analysis, and nationalist analysis. But more importantly, no particular political solution can emerge “from the mere fact that a situation can be analyzed under the frame of settler colonialism.” A solution would ultimately depend on the particularities of each settler-colonial society.

Oren Yiftachel argues that the recent cycle of violence in Israel/Palestine is indeed a horrific outcome of the settler-colonial relations between Jews and Palestinians. However, he argues that settler colonialism alone “cannot provide a sufficient account of the complex forces driving Israel/Palestine in general, and the Gaza flashpoint in particular.” He distinguishes between decolonization and counter-colonization. The former “entails the political and legal dismantling of the tools of colonialism,” while the latter entails “the (violent) overthrowing of the regime of a legitimate political entity and the potential eviction or subjugation of settler-immigrant population, even after several generations.” Accordingly, Yiftachel argues that the 7 October attack and accompanying discourses by Hamas leaders places them under the rubric of counter-colonization.

Ian Lustick refers to the legend of the golem in Jewish tradition, who was created by Rabbi Loew, the Maharal of Prague, to defend the Jews against ferocious antisemitism. While successful in his mission to protect Jews from anti-Semites, with time the golem becomes more and more violent, destructive, and uncontrollable. This eventually forces his creator to end his life to save the community from his violence. Lustick argues that just like the golem, Israel “was imagined and created by Jews as a means of salvation, retribution, and protection.” However, the Zionist settler project with its violence “now appears as probably the most dangerous threat facing Jews, both in Israel and in the diaspora.”

In her contribution, Honaida Ghanim argues that the new far-right leadership under Benjamin Netanyahu has deployed the strategy of “conflict management” to dismantle the Palestinian cause. This strategy involves the Judaization of the space and demography on the one hand and the division of Palestinians into isolated communities under Israeli dominance on the other. This was paralleled with international and regional abandonment of Palestinians. Therefore, Ghanim argues that “Palestinian hopelessness has intensified to an indescribable extent,” leading to an intractable organic crisis that culminated in an eruption of extreme violence. Recognizing the colonial character of this dynamics is crucial for confronting it.

The contribution of Michal Frenkel is a snapshot of mainstream Israeli academia, which resists the contextualization of the 7 October attacks in a broader historical perspective marked by continued oppression and dispossession of Palestinians. She argues that the “colonial lens is sometimes applied, especially by those not directly involved in the study of Palestine/Israel, in ways that appear to justify actions like the Hamas massacre of Israeli and foreign civilians on 7 October.” Instead, she offers an “imperial analysis” that “involves scrutinizing the shifting relations between various empires across different historical periods.”

The war in Gaze continues as these lines are going to press. While we are still looking for words to describe and explain the horrors, vocabulary borrowed from other settler-colonial conflicts remains the optimal—even if not perfect—working tool.