22.06.23

Editorial Note

After numerous accusations of antisemitism, some pro-Palestinian campus advocates became vocal in stressing that their critique was merely anti-Zionist. However, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the widely-accepted definition of antisemitism, there are clearly antisemitic elements in their activities. In addition to the usual charges of apartheid and colonialism, advocates took to describing those who disagreed with them as “Zionists.”  

In March, George Washington University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (GW SJP) launched the annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) to “combat the university’s ongoing discrimination and suppression of the Palestinian community.” The IAW began with a teach-in, “Confronting Zionism,” that partnered with the Palestinian Youth Movement’s local chapter to help students “resist Zionism on campus.” SJP also set up an apartheid wall, calling for “land back.” Laila, an organizer from GW SJP, said the university “is an incredibly Zionist campus in multiple facets… GW is a very Zionist campus.” The administration is “particularly open about their support for Zionism.” GW also prevented SJP from receiving funds as a student organization. GW SJP believes such actions “make the university complicit in the larger system of Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.”   

Other protest activities have the same flavor. On Dec 4, 2022, Counterculture Magazine at the University of Richmond (UR) published an article titled “Palestinian Activism on College Campuses.” It detailed how in late 2022, a protest at GWU, led by GW SJP and GW Jewish Voice for Peace, took place outside an event of GW for Israel and GW Hillel groups. The pro-Palestinian students protested a talk by Doron Tenne.” an IDF officer during the First Intifada. The protesters charged that “thousands of Palestinian people were killed during a series of mass protests against the Israeli occupation.”     

In other incidents, for example, in late 2022, the University of Maryland’s (UMD) SJP issued a statement regarding a speaker event for Israel Studies on campus. The speaker was Ambassador Michael Herzog, a former general in the IDF. The UMD SJP stated that the IDF “subjugate and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their ancestral homelands.” 

In the academic year 2021-2022, students at the UR established their own chapter of SJP. Razan Khalil, one of the leaders of the effort, vigorously rejected any accusations of antisemitism, ”UR’s chapter has been critiqued constantly for antisemitism while in its mission statement, it simply calls for more awareness about the injustices that Palestinian people face in their homeland. Seeing as opposition to Palestinian activism is present on many campuses, it is clear that there is a distinct pattern of discrimination against Palestinian people as a whole in the administration of many higher education institutions. What is quite interesting is that while Palestinian activist organizations call out the actions of other organizations that may promote the ongoing systemic oppression of Palestinian people worldwide, they oftentimes experience more repercussions than the organizations promoting the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in their choices of events and speakers themselves.” 

The pro-Palestinian activists argued that GWU SJP’s protest “elicited a response from the President insinuating that the rhetoric of the protest was discriminatory and therefore needed to be condemned, yet no higher administrative official spoke up about the fact that organizations at the University were hosting speakers that directly contributed to the deaths of innocent Palestinian people. When actions like these add up on a college campus, they promote a subtle message about how little many higher education institutions care about the human rights of Palestinian people, and what lengths they will go to in order to ensure that Palestinian activism is met with vitriol.” 

Moreover, for pro-Palestinian activists on campus, the “conflation of antiZionism and anti-semitism… is most certainly present on college campuses. With that conflation comes the restriction of activists’ rights to speak up about the atrocities committed by the state of Israel. It simply does not make sense to acknowledge freedom of speech and then explicitly deny it to a group of people on the false claim of religious discrimination.” 

Pro-Palestinian activists claim that they are accused of antisemitism falsely. They pointed out the case of Nerdeen Kiswani, a Law student at CUNY who was described as the “Antisemite of the Year” by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). They noted “what happened to student Nerdeen Kiswani, who was labeled as antisemite of the year by stopantisemitism.org. Her college eventually had to step in and issue a statement advocating for the protection of the right to free speech.”     

However, the ADL published in February a report that described Kiswani as an anti-Israel activist and co-founder and leader of Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine (WOL), a radical New York-based anti-Israel organization that routinely expresses support for violence against Israel. Kiswani’s antisemitism is clearly expressed via her expressions of extreme anti-Zionist rhetoric, including her calls for all ‘Zionists’ to be vilified and expelled from community spaces, as well as her support for indiscriminate violence against Israel aimed at the country’s dissolution.” Kiswani and her organization “explicitly call for the complete eradication of Israel, including for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map,’ and have called for Israeli Jews to leave the country” WOL and Kiswani expressed support for acts of terror perpetrated by terror groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). On several occasions, Kiswani and WOL have “promulgated classic antisemitic tropes, including those related to ‘Zionist’ control over media and politics.”

In February 2023: when five Hamas members were killed in an Israeli military operation in Jericho, WOL shared an image declaring them “freedom fighters,” stating that the organization was “in rage and mourning.” In November 2014: Following a PFLP shooting in a Jerusalem synagogue, Kiswani shared PFLP’s statement justifying the act of terror as a “natural response” to Israeli actions. in 2022: Kiswani shared a meme reading: “Little Miss telling everyone Israel is[sic] will be wiped off the map inshallah [God willing].” In 2022: Responding to a news story about free vacations to Israelis who live near the Gaza Strip, Kiswani commented that those Israelis should “leave and never come back.” In November 2022, in an appearance on the Iranian news channel Press TV, Kiswani said, “Resistance is the only way.”  

On numerous occasions, Kiswani and WOL have shared materials venerating PFLP and Leila Khaled, one of the hijackers of two civilian airliners, TWA Flight 840 in 1969 (from Rome to Tel Aviv) and El Al Flight 219 in 1970 (from Amsterdam to New York City). In September 2016, WOL shared an image of Leila Khaled carrying a rifle alongside a quote justifying violence. In 2017 WOL posted a Facebook post, “From occupied Palestine to Hollywood, israel’s dogs of war find lucrative positions upholding imperialism, sexual violence and misogyny.” In July 2015, Kiswani advertised an event on Facebook: “Please be here tomorrow if you can! It’s the same story of zionists using their political clout to get away from being held accountable for hate based crimes while ironically accusing others of what they have done.” Kiswani personally led chants of “Zionism out of CUNY.” Kiswani has expressed happiness that some places have become “toxic and unwelcome” for “Zionists.” She called Zionists “complete scum.” In March 2017, she wrote, “Im so happy feminism and feminist movements have created a toxic and unwelcome environment for Zionists.” In June 2022, WOL tweeted, “Zionism has no place in CUNY. Attempts to silence us only make us stronger! #ZionismOutOfCUNY.” WOL suggested chants, “Say it loud say it clear, we don’t want zionists here.” In July 2014, Kiswani wrote, “Any person who supports Israel in any way shape or form Any person who apologizes on behalf of Israel Any person who identifies as a Zionist in any way shape or form Is complete scum… Israel as a state needs to be dismantled. It needs to go.”

The above incidents represent the conflation of pro-Palestinian activists and antisemitic sentiments on campus per the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. They negate the Jews’ right to self-determination and aspire to annihilate the Jewish state.

References:

https://www.wrmea.org/north-america/george-washington-university-students-battle-zionist-bullying-on-campus.html

George Washington University Students Battle Zionist Bullying on Campus

PRIYA ARAVINDHAN NORTH AMERICA POSTED ON JUNE 2, 2023

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 2023, pp. 30-31

Special Report

By Priya Aravindhan

IN THE LAST WEEK of March, George Washington University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (GW SJP) launched Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) to combat the university’s ongoing discrimination and suppression of the Palestinian community.

The week began on March 27 with a teach-in, “Confronting Zionism.” GW SJP partnered with the Palestinian Youth Movement’s local chapter to help students identify and resist Zionism on campus. In the following days, students held various events, such as a dabke workshop and “A Night in Palestine” cultural celebration.

Throughout the week, SJP set up and maintained an apartheid wall with resistance art and calls for “land back.” IAW culminated in a rally on the school’s Kogan Plaza on March 31, in which various students formed a united front against the university’s ongoing oppression of Palestinian and anti-Zionist students and faculty.

This year’s IAW came at a time when Palestinian identity is becoming increasingly targeted by GW’s administration. A month prior to IAW, GW professor Dr. Lara Sheehi was wrongfully accused of discriminating against Jewish students by StandWithUs, a right-wing pro-Israel activist group. The university cleared Sheehi of all charges. In a statement, the Office of the University President said those bringing the charges “advocated for an expansive view of the definition of anti-Semitism, which, if accepted in the university environment, could infringe on free speech principles and academic freedom.” 

Despite this favorable ruling, many feel GW remains a hostile place for Palestinians. Laila, an organizer from GW SJP, said the university “is an incredibly Zionist campus in multiple facets” and that the administration is “particularly open about their support for Zionism.” (The student, like others quoted in this article, wished to remain anonymous due to fears of being slandered by pro-Israel groups, such as Canary Mission, that regularly target those advocating for Palestine on campus.) 

Indeed, in 2021 the university removed counseling services for Palestinian students experiencing trauma as a result of Israeli violence due to complaints from a pro-Israel group. The school was later reprimanded by the District of Columbia’s Office for Human Rights for discriminating against Palestinian students. The academic institution has also prevented SJP from receiving funds as a student organization. 

GW SJP believes such actions make the university complicit in the larger system of Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism. “GW’s administration continually puts obstacles in front of the work we’ve been doing,” Laila said. 

Last year, SJP held a postering event to protest GW Hillel for inviting Doron Tenne, a former senior intelligence officer in the Israeli military, to speak on campus. In response to a poster pasted on GW Hillel’s bench, the university administration claimed vandalism and threatened SJP with censure and its president with disciplinary probation. The charges, however, were false, as neither the president nor the organization was responsible for the poster pasting, as the university ultimately conceded. 

Supporters of Palestine are disinclined to applaud the administration for dismissing accusations in this and other cases. “Our success doesn’t really have to do with the administration,” Laila said. “It is very much a response to the organizing of our community members and the solidarity of our partners.” They pointed to other GW organizations, regional SJP groups and national political groups as being particularly vocal in defending GW SJP from spurious attacks. 

“GW is a very Zionist campus,” George, another SJP organizer said, “but there is a lot of silent support for Palestine.” People are often cautious to publicly mobilize for the Palestinian cause “due to certain risks that come with things like your career being threatened or being doxxed online,” he added.

One important event from IAW was the panel “The Palestine Exception,” which discussed the academic suppression of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices. Dr. Sheehi, Palestine Legal attorney Dylan Saba and Palestinian GW professor William Youmans spoke on the work they have been doing around Palestine for decades. “It was amazing to see our place within the larger movement for Palestine by seeing how the student movement has evolved,” George stated.

IAW not only served as a time to build a stronger united front against oppression, but also as a safe space for people to speak out against Israeli apartheid and show unapologetic support for Palestine. “We want to show people that there is a place on campus to demonstrate support for Palestinian liberation,” one student said. “We’re here and we’re not going to back down no matter what.”

“Our goal was to engage with people who have never really engaged with Palestine and to consolidate the Palestinian community on campus and create a week for them to celebrate our culture and our resistance,” one organizer expressed. “IAW is a time when we can be extra visible on campus.” With the apartheid wall and numerous cultural and academic events, GW’s SJP successfully asserted their presence on campus and their ongoing resistance to the systems that work against them and all Palestinians.

---

Priya Aravindhan is a rising senior studying anthropology and international affairs, with an interest in the Middle East and South Asia, at The George Washington University. She interned for the Washington Report this spring.

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

Issue Two of Counterculture Magazine, the University of Richmond’s first publication to focus exclusively on social justice issues.

https://issuu.com/counterculturemagazineur/docs/counterculture_magazine_issue_two.pptx/s/17769539Palestinian Activism on College Campuses

from Counterculture Magazine Issue Two

On October 11, 2022 at George Washington University, a protest led by GW Students for Justice in Palestine and GW Jewish Voice for Peace organizations occurred outside of an ev ent being hosted by the GW for Israel and GW Hillel groups.

The event was called “A Conversation with Doron Tenne.” Doron Tenne held various positions within the Israeli Defense Force during a period known as the First Intifada, when over 2,000 Palestinian people were when thousands of Palestinian people were killed during a series of mass protests against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza).

In response to the protest, both GW for Israel and GW Hillel issued statements. GW Hillel’s statement read that the protests “[limited] the ability of our Jewish students to freely learn,” calling the behavior of the protesters “aggressive action.” GW Jewish Voice for Peace responded in their statement that the specific wording of GW Hillel’s statement “[asserted] that the protest targeted Jewish students and the Jewish community on campus at large” when in reality, it “perpetuates the conflation of antiZionism and anti-semitism.” The President of George Washington University also released a letter to all students following the protest, but did not specifically address the event itself or the fact that a former IDF official was being hosted.

George Washington University is only one of many universities where Palestinian activism groups have protested hosting speakers that were directly involved in the oppression of Palestinian people. On October 27, 2022, the University of Maryland’s Students for Justice in Palestine issued a statement regarding a speaker event being hosted by the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies on campus. The speaker was Ambassador Michael Herzog, a former general in the Israeli Defense Forces. UMD Students for Justice in Palestine stated that the purpose of the Israeli Defense Forces was to “subjugate and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their ancestral homelands,” which was their purpose for opposing the event.

As Palestinian activism continues to gain traction on college campuses, concerns about the safety of the students openly participating in the cause rise. On George Washington’s campus, members of GW Hillel leadership argued in their statement that the protest regarding the Doron Tenne event crossed a line threatening the safety of Jewish students. This argument is a symptom of a larger debate occurring on many college campuses: are openly anti-Zionist events and protests inherently antisemitic? Many members of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters respond that they are not; in fact, these members point out that mistaking anti-Zionism for antisemitism is the teal problem, as while some definitions of Zionism state that it is the belief in the development and protection of the Jewish state in Israel, antisemitism is the systemic oppression of Jewish individuals.

On some college campuses, such as the campus of the University of New York, students engaging in Palestinian activism have to think about their actions strategically to protect their academic and professional standing. Some students worry about being listed on the website of the Canary Mission, which lists pro-Palestine students and calls them out for supposedly being anti-semitic. Others worry about campaigns being set up to besmirch their name and prevent them from navigating their campus or job safely.

This was exactly what happened to student Nerdeen Kiswani, who was labeled as antisemite of the year by stopantisemitism.org. Her college eventually had to step in and issue a statement advocating for the protection of the right to free speech.

For some pro-Palestine activists, the threats go so far as to alert the FBI, leading to interrogations that are prompted by their names being on the blacklists of some pro-Israel organizations such as the Canary Mission. All evidence points to an undebatable truth: students advocating for the freedom of Palestine are not necessarily safe on their campuses. They often engage in activist efforts at the expense of their own security.

Students at the University of Richmond established their own chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine in the 2021-2022 academic year. Razan Khalil was at the forefront of this effort, and they mentioned several roadblocks that they experienced while trying to get the club approved. Many of these roadblocks reflected those that the Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at George Washington University and the University of Maryland faced. During the year, Razan had to meet with a committee three times and was “‘interrogated’ on whether Students for Justice in Palestine was exclusive toward Jewish students, whether [it] was antisemitic, and whether [it] would directly target Israeli students.”

Reportedly, one of the members of the committee said that they couldn’t believe the University was allowing such an “antisemitic organization” on campus after one of several meetings with Khalil.

One of the recent events hosted by UR’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter was a virtual discussion with Dr. Angela Davis, world-renowned scholar and author of Freedom is a Constant Struggle. In an effort to curate a list of questions that students had for Dr. Davis, a form was released online for submissions prior to the event. In this form, Khalil noted that some questions that were submitted seemed to target Students for Justice in Palestine, which was a complete antithesis of the purpose of the event itself. This was only one of many instances of questioning that Students for Justice in Palestine has experienced on campus since its founding, as noted before. Just as on other campuses, UR’s chapter has been critiqued constantly for antisemitism while in its mission statement, it simply calls for more awareness about the injustices that Palestinian people face in their homeland.

Seeing as opposition to Palestinian activism is present on many campuses, it is clear that there is a distinct pattern of discrimination against Palestinian people as a whole in the administration of many higher education institutions.

What is quite interesting is that while Palestinian activist organizations call out the actions of other organizations that may promote the ongoing systemic oppression of Palestinian people worldwide, they oftentimes experience more repercussions than the organizations promoting the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in their choices of events and speakers themselves.

As seen at George Washington University, Students for Justice in Palestine’s protest elicited a response from the President insinuating that the rhetoric of the protest was discriminatory and therefore needed to be condemned, yet no higher administrative official spoke up about the fact that organizations at the University were hosting speakers that directly contributed to the deaths of innocent Palestinian people. When actions like these add up on a college campus, they promote a subtle message about how little many higher education institutions care about the human rights of Palestinian people, and what lengths they will go to in order to ensure that Palestinian activism is met with vitriol.

Another point is to be made about the freedom of speech argument that some organizations will utilize to target pro-Palestine students.

Many of these organizations insist that while students are entitled to freedom of speech, openly criticizing the Israeli government and military for the death of so many Palestinian people is directly correlated with the targeting of all Jewish students on campus. This line of thinking suggests that the conflation of antiZionism and anti-semitism that GW Jewish Voice for Peace addressed in their statement is most certainly present on college campuses.

With that conflation comes the restriction of activists’ rights to speak up about the atrocities committed by the state of Israel. It simply does not make sense to acknowledge freedom of speech and then explicitly deny it to a group of people on the false claim of religious discrimination.

That being said, members of UR’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter still express hope about the future of their cause. Khalil noted that “with every chapter they have seen, the resistance is met with the support of many,” meaning that an organized collective of students and community members is always ready to defend the organization when accusations of antisemitism begin. However, it is important to note that there are still concerns about the safety of pro-Palestine activists on college campuses such as UR’s, given that GW’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter is now facing disciplinary charges because of their protest against the Doron Tenne event.

George Washington University charged the organization with misconduct, and a Palestine Legal attorney representing Students for Justice in Palestine rightfully responded to the charge with a poignant statement: “SJP followed all the rules around postering and directed their members and allies to do the same. But GW is selectively targeting this group for punishment, when there is zero evidence of any wrongdoing. This looks like racist, anti-Palestinian profiling and the law does not support it.”

When legality enters the conversation, it becomes obvious that the rights of pro-Palestine activists on college campus are actively being challenged at every level. It just goes to show that Palestinian activism on UR’s campus is likely to continue facing criticism and opposition at every turn, meaning that awareness about the cause must be circulated constantly in order to protect those openly engaging with it.

***

Editor’s Note: This article has undergone revision for clarity. (December 2022)

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

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/nerdeen-kiswani-and-within-our-lifetime-united-palestine-what-you-need-know
Nerdeen Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine: What You Need to Know

Published: 03.02.2023

• Extremism
• Extremism, Terrorism & Bigotry

From: Center on Extremism

•    Nerdeen Kiswani is an anti-Israel activist and co-founder and leader of Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine (WOL), a radical New York-based anti-Israel organization that routinely expresses support for violence against Israel.
•    Kiswani’s antisemitism is clearly expressed via her expressions of extreme anti-Zionist rhetoric, including her calls for all “Zionists” to be vilified and expelled from community spaces, as well as her support for indiscriminate violence against Israel aimed at the country’s dissolution.
•    Kiswani and WOL (founded in 2015) organize rallies in New York City that have drawn thousands of attendees, including events outside the Israeli consulate and pro-Israel organizations such as the Jewish National Fund (JNF). 
•    Kiswani and her organization explicitly call for the complete eradication of Israel, including for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and have called for Israeli Jews to leave the country (both from the West Bank and in Israel proper).
•    WOL and Kiswani frequently express support for acts of terror perpetrated by U.S.-designated terror groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
•    Kiswani habitually asserts that all Zionists, including American Jews who support Israel, are inherently bigoted and should be ostracized.
•    On several occasions, Kiswani and WOL have promulgated classic antisemitic tropes, including those related to “Zionist” control over media and politics.
•    Kiswani has been platformed by leftist outlets, including Haymarket Books. 
•    Kiswani became widely known after she delivered a May 2022 commencement speech for CUNY Law in which she excoriated “Zionists” and condemned “normalizing” trips to Israel.

Promotion of violence, terrorism and removal of Israelis from Israel

Kiswani and WOL express full, unabashed support for all forms of “resistance” against Israel, regardless of the brutality of the violence. On social media, she and WOL make their veneration of violence against Israelis clear:

•    February 2023: After U.S. State Department-designated terror organization Hamas claimed as members all five Palestinians killed in an Israeli military operation in Jericho, WOL shared an image declaring them “freedom fighters” and that WOL was “in rage and mourning.” 

 •    November 2014: Following a PFLP shooting and meat cleaver attack that killed four worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue, Kiswani shared PFLP’s statement justifying the act of terror as a “natural response” to Israeli actions.  

 •    2022: Kiswani shared a meme on her Instagram account reading: “Little Miss telling everyone Israel is[sic] will be wiped off the map inshallah [God willing].” 

 •    2022: Responding to a news story about an airline offering free vacations to Israelis who live near the Gaza Strip, Kiswani commented that those Israelis should “leave and never come back.”

•    November 2022: In an appearance on the Iranian government-backed news channel Press TV, Kiswani said, “Resistance is the only way” and that no political process remains that will result in Palestinian liberation.

•    On numerous occasions, Kiswani and WOL have shared materials venerating PFLP and one of its leaders, Leila Khaled, known for her role in the hijacking of two civilian airliners, TWA Flight 840 in 1969 (bound for Tel Aviv from Rome) and El Al flight 219 in 1970 (traveling from Amsterdam to New York City). In September 2016, WOL shared an image of Leila Khaled carrying a rifle alongside a quote justifying violence.

•    March 2022: For International Women’s Day, WOL posted a collage containing images of at least three women who have engaged in terrorism against Israel, including Leila Khaled and Rasmea Odeh.

Historic/Classic Antisemitic Tropes

On at least four occasions, Kiswani and WOL have used social media to share classic antisemitic tropes related to alleged Israeli and “Zionist” control or nefarious influence over Hollywood, sexual violence against women, politics, media and more.

•    2017: WOL Facebook post: “From occupied Palestine to Hollywood, israel’s[sic] dogs of war find lucrative positions upholding imperialism, sexual violence and misogyny.”
•    2016 WOL Facebook post: “When the vast majority of politicians in the US are bought off by the zionist [sic] lobby, talk is cheap.”
•    July 2015: On Facebook, Kiswani advertised an event: “Please be here tomorrow if you can! It’s the same story of zionists[sic] using their political clout to get away from being held accountable for hate based crimes while ironically accusing others of what they have done…”
•    2013: Kiswani shared a quote on Facebook that included: “Despite the almost total control of the major media conglomerates by Global Zionism, the advocates of pro-Palestine are winning the war on social medias[sic].” 

Calling for Shunning of “Zionists”

Kiswani personally led chants of “Zionism out of CUNY” as she protested outside the university during her time as a student activist. “Zionism out of CUNY” can be viewed as an antisemitic call against the Jewish community at large, as the vast majority of American Jews identify as Zionist or consider a connection to Israel to be integral to their social, cultural or religious identities. Kiswani has also expressed joy that some spaces have become “toxic and unwelcome” for “Zionists.” In other commentary, she has called Zionists “complete scum.”

•    March 2017: “Im[sic] so happy feminism and feminist movements have created a toxic and unwelcome environment for Zionists”

 •    June 2022: WOL tweet: “Zionism has no place in CUNY. Attempts to silence us only make us stronger! #ZionismOutOfCUNY” 
•    The WOL website lists among its suggested chants for anti-Israel rallies: “Say it loud say it clear, we don’t want zionists here”

 •    July 2014: “Any person who supports Israel in any way shape or form Any person who apologizes on behalf of Israel Any person who identifies as a Zionist in any way shape or form Is complete scum[sic]… Israel as a state needs to be dismantled. It needs to go.”

15.06.23

Editorial Note

Dr. Uri Davis recently published a book, The JNF/KKL a Charity Complicit with Ethnic Cleansing. On June 8, 2023, Prof. Ilan Pappe held a conversation with Davis in Jerusalem at the Palestinian National Theatre – Hakawati. 

Davis is a veteran dissenter who made a career bashing Israel. His biography states “Uri Davis is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies at University of Durham, and at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. In addition, he is Chairman of Al-Beit, the Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel; Founder Member of the Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP); and an Observer-Member of the Palestine National Council. He has published extensively in the field of democracy and human rights in Israel and Palestine.” Davis has also joined Fatah and converted to Islam. 

Davis declared himself a pacifist during his army military service pre-1967, as he wrote in his 1972 article, “Journey out of Zionism: The Radicalization of an Israeli Pacifist.” His new book discusses the JNF. Davis discussed the JNF in many of his works, beginning in 1978.  

 As stated in the invitation, the academic discipline informing this book is critical Applied Anthropology. Critically applied anthropology “focuses on the evaluation of problematic situations to identify the root causes of problems… Essentially, it provides a critical evaluation of situations to advise on the best solution or way programs can improve their approach to problem-solving.”

According to Davis, while the Jewish National Fund (JNF/KKL) was created by a decision of the 5th Zionist Congress convened in Basel in 1901, incorporated in England in 1907 and in Israel in 1954 – “Some +/- 15% of the territory of 1948 apartheid Israel is registered on the name of the JNF/KKL emerging (in stages) as the second largest land owner in 1948 apartheid Israel after the State (+/-75%) leaving just +/-7% as private property rendering (through the 1961 KKL-JNF – Israeli Government Covenant) just over 90% (+/-93%) of the said territory effectively accessible in law and in practice to ‘Jews’ only.” (There is a disclaimer stating that “In former apartheid Republic of South Africa just under 90% (+/-87%) of the territory of the Republics was accessible in law and in practice to ‘Whites’ only.”) The “land tenure in apartheid Israel is dominated by a State-JNF duopoly.” (The disclaimer here states that “The views of Dr Davis and Prof Pappé do not necessarily represent the views of any of the persons and/or institutions involved with the organization of the launch of this book.”) 

For Davis, “the JNF is seen today as a ‘green’ and ecological organization that safeguards Israel’s nature, however, very little known about the role it is playing since the end of 1948 war, when it became a principal divider of the spoils of the lands, villages, towns and houses looted and destroyed by the Israeli army during and after the events of the Nakba.”

Davis’ book “is an incisive exploration of the JNF historical and current work, and a study of the agency complex set-up that eventually, in the 1960s, created the Israel Land Administration (ILA) of which the JNF is a crucial component.”

The JNF/KKL has some 45 offices worldwide registered as tax-exempt charities on the ground inter alia of its “mis-representation” as an environmentally friendly NGO committed to the greening of the environment, that, over 120 years “planted over 240 million trees, creating entire eco-systems in the desert, and Israel has become one of the few countries in the world to grow trees,” For Davis “most of JNF forests and their recreational areas have been planted and developed over the ruins and the lands of 1948 ethnically cleansed Palestinian-Arab villages, thereby rendering the JNF complicit with the crime against humanity of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

The book is destined for three audiences “Academic Staff and students specializing in Middle East/Palestine/Israel Studies”; “concerned Jurists and NGOs considering challenging the charitable/tax exempt status of the JNF in the relevant Courts of the respective States of which they are citizens”; and “visitors to apartheid Israel.” 

As many of his fellow activists, including Ilan Pappe, Davis has spent his entire academic career to prove that Israel is an apartheid state like South Africa. He made this point in his book Israel, an apartheid state, Published in 1987. 

His second book on this topic, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, was published by Zed Books in 2003. It described Davis as being at the “forefront of the defense of human rights in Israel since the mid-1960s and at the cutting edge of critical research on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this book, he provides a critical insight into how it was possible for Jewish people, the victims of Nazi genocide in the Second World War, to subject the Palestinian people, beginning with the 1948-49 war, to such criminal policies as mass deportation, population transfers and ethnic cleansing, prolonged military government (with curfews, roadblocks and the like), and economic, social, cultural, civil and political strangulation, punctuated by Apache helicopters strafing civilians and their homes. Since its establishment in 1948 Israel has acted in blatant violation of most UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, including amassing weapons of mass destruction in violation of international law. How is it then possible for this country, its apartheid legislation notwithstanding, to still maintain its reputation in the West as the only democracy in the Middle East and effectively to veil the apartheid cruelty it has perpetrated against the Palestinian people? In the course of outlining answers to these questions, Uri Davis traces the departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from its declared political program; its demise beginning with the Oslo peace process; and the struggle within Israel against Israeli apartheid.”

Davis sees no problem with the apartheid regimes of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, where Jews are not allowed to live.

The new book is published by MEMO Publishers, which trades under Ardi Associates, a UK-based publisher of news, opinion, and other content related to the Middle East and North Africa. Their brands include Middle East Monitor, published in English; Monitor De Oriente, published in Spanish; Monitor Do Oriente, published in Portuguese; Palestine Book Awards, Awards to recognize and honor the best new books in English about any aspect of Palestine. However, the Middle East Monitor has been at the front of anti-Israel attacks. It recruits anti-Israel academics who sing to its tunes. By targeting Israel exclusively, it presents an antisemitic approach. 

References:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=273785625040508&set=gm.810521120672564

Details

85 people responded

Event by THE EDUCATIONAL BOOKSHOP and Mahmoud Muna

‎المسرح الوطني الفلسطيني/ الحكواتي The Palestinian National Theatre‎

Public  · Anyone on or off Facebook

Book Launch & Conversation
Uri Davis | Ilan Pappe
Moderated by Inès Abdel Razek
Please note the new venue.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was incorporated in England in 1907 and was the principal tool of the Zionist project to obtain land in Palestine. From the onset of the agency’s activities, it was destined to become, and officially granted with the task of becoming the custodian of the land in Palestine on behalf of the “Jewish people”. For many, the JNF is seen today as a ‘green’ and ecological organization that safeguards Israel’s nature, however, very little known about the role it is playing since the end of 1948 war, when it became a principal divider of the spoils of the lands, villages, towns and houses looted and destroyed by the Israeli army during and after the evetns of the Nakba.

This book is an incisive exploration of the JNF historical and current work, and a study of the agency complex set-up that eventually, in the 1960s, created the Israel Land Administration (ILA) of which the JNF is a crucial component.

6:00 pm – Thurday 8th June
The Palestinian National Theatre – Hakawati

Extra information:
The Jewish National Fund/ Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (JNF/KKL) was created by a decision of the 5th Zionist Congress convened in Basel in 1901, incorporated in England in 1907 as the Juedischer Nationalfonds (Keren Kajemeth LeJisroel) Limited, (changed to Keren Kajemeth Le Jisroel Limited in July 1921 and to Keren Kayemeth Leisrael, Limited in August 1925); and in Israel in 1954 as Keren Kayemeth Leisrael.

Some +/- 15% of the territory of 1948 apartheid Israel is registered on the name of the JNF/KKL emerging (in stages) as the second largest land owner in 1948 apartheid Israel after the State (+/-75%) leaving just +/-7% as private property rendering (through the 1961 KKL-JNF – Israeli Government Covenant) just over 90% (+/-93%) of the said territory effectively accessible in law and in practice to “Jews” only* Thus land tenure in apartheid Israel is dominated by a State-JNF duopoly**.

The JNF/KKL has some 45 offices world-wide registered as tax-exempt charities on the ground inter alia of its mis-representation as an environmentally friendly NGO committed to the greening of the environment, having [f]or over 120 years … planted over 240 million trees, creating entire eco-systems in the desert, and Israel has become one of the few countries in the world to grow trees for over 100 years (https://www.jnf.co.uk/plant-trees-2) – except that most of JNF forests and their recreational areas have been planted and developed over the ruins and the lands of 1948 ethnically cleansed Palestinian-Arab villages, thereby rendering the JNF complicit with the crime against humanity of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The academic discipline informing this book is critical Applied Anthropology. As the Title and the Sub-title suggest, the author*** seeks to address correlatively three specific inter-related audiences (additional to the general public). One: Academic Staff and students specializing in Middle East/Palestine/Israel Studies (utilizing specifically the documentation and other essays); One, concerned Jurists and NGOs considering challenging the charitable/tax exempt status of the JNF in the relevant Courts of the respective States of which they are citizens (utilizing specifically the anthology of the Author’s first-hand eye-witness in situ Reports as supporting evidence); and One, visitors to apartheid Israel (utilising the book in toto as a guide-book on their sojourn in JNF forests and recreational areas).

*In former apartheid Republic of South Africa just under 90% (+/-87%) of the territory
of the Republics was accessible in law and in practice to “Whites” only.
**The views of Dr Davis and Prof Pappé do not necessarily represent the views of any of the persons
and/or institutions involved with the organization of the launch of this book.
***It is Educational Bookshop particular pleasure to have the launch of Dr Uri Davis’ seminal book in Jerusalem
coincide with the date of his birth in Jerusalem in 1943 80 years ago. Happy Birthday, Dr Uri & Many Happy Returns !!!

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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221229-the-jnf-kkl-a-charity-complicit-with-ethnic-cleansing/
The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit with Ethnic Cleansing

December 29, 2022 at 10:24 am

By Omar Ahmed

Book Author(s) :Uri Davis

Published Date :January 2023

Publisher :MEMO Publishers

Paperback :491 pages pages

ISBN-13 :978-1-901924-015

The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit with Ethnic Cleansing by academic and civil rights activist Dr Uri Davis is the latest offering by MEMO Publishers and brings to light the on-going “greenwashing” policies of the Apartheid State of Israel, which has been facilitated with the collusion of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an internationally-recognised charity that pre-dates the establishment of the Jewish state. As such, it is argued that the JNF is complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The “alternative guide-book” to the organisation is a product of Davis’ years of scholarship and field-research and consists of relevant documents and case-studies carried out by the author over the past two decades. An introduction is also provided by esteemed anti-Zionist Israeli historian Ilan Pappé who describes the work as “an exposure of what really lies behind the past, present and future actions of the JNF” and an “exploration of the crimes Israel committed against the Palestinians”, which are continuing to this day.

“The JNF is registered, falsely, with the UN as an NGO, projecting itself abroad as one that is committed to sustainable development,” writes Davis. As a registered charity, the organisation also “benefits from tax exemptions in most member states of the UN.”

The JNF/KKL (Jewish National Fund/Keren Kayemeth Le’Israel) was founded in 1901, projected as a non-profit organisation with the goal of purchasing and developing land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. It was initially registered in Britain as a company limited by guarantee, and following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, was incorporated as the JNF as it is currently known.

Following the signing of a covenant between the JNF and Israel in 1961, contends Davis, the charity and the state became “partners on an almost equal footing in the administration of 93 percent of the territory” in Israel’s pre-1967 borders. However, the JNF’s activities have extended beyond this, having been implicated in the destruction of several Palestinian Arab villages in the post-67 territories.

BOOK REVIEW: Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial

As part of its role in the development of Israel, the JNF continues to work on land reclamation, afforestation, and conservation projects. Yet the controversial charity has faced accusations of discriminatory land policies and practices, and of participating in the displacement of Palestinian communities.

These include the forced eviction of Palestinian communities from land that it controls, as well as its involvement in the construction of Jewish-only settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. According to Davis, the JNF’s environmental projects are used as a cover for these actions. The JNF “hides the core of Israeli apartheid under the cloak of an environmental charity”.

We learn that many of the afforestation projects overseen by the JNF are named after countries, such as Canada Park, British Park and the South African Forest as a part of a public relations scheme for the “only democracy in the Middle East”.

However, the ominous history behind these projects have been omitted by the JNF. Most of the forests planted by the organisation have been established over the ruins of some 500 Palestinian Arab villages, with photographic evidence of their undeniable existence still very much visible, based on Davis’ field research which is included in the book. This is despite the best efforts of the JNF to cover up these documented war crimes.

For example, Canada Park was planted over the ruins of three destroyed Palestinian Arab villages: ‘Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nabu. In the case of ‘Imwas, which has been completely obliterated, the only surviving structure is the shrine of Abu ‘Ubydah Ibn Al-Jarrah.

“The planting of the British Park over the lands of destroyed Palestinian Arab villages, including ‘Ajjur, and the development of recreational facilities in JNF forests cannot be described as ‘charitable’, and should not be granted tax exempt status under British law. Rather it ought to be classified as an act and as a policy of complicity in war crimes,” Davis explains.

The JNF/KKL… is an eye-opening and detailed expose of Israel’s attempt at greenwashing its past and present crimes against Palestinians. As Davis advocates, the JNF must be held accountable with its status as a charity in UN member states amended in reflection and recognition over its complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Moreover, the publication sheds light on the complicity of the countries where JNF affiliates are based, whose funding actively contributes to these dubious “environmental” projects.

Get a copy of the book here.

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

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230110-memo-launches-the-jnf-kkl-a-charity-complicit-with-ethnic-cleansing-by-dr-uri-davis/
MEMO launches ‘The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing’ by Dr Uri Davis

Davis highlights how the JNF has used setting up parks and planting trees to erase Palestinian villages and forms part of Israel’s apartheid regime

January Muhammad Hussein January 10, 2023 at 8:11 am

MEMO hosted the book launch of JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing, written by Dr Uri Davis, an Israeli academic and independent researcher who is noted to be a defender of Palestinian human rights, in London last night.

Held in London’s P21 Gallery, the event started off with an introduction by MEMO‘s Nasim Ahmed, who highlighted that the book reveals one of the pillars of Israel’s ethnic cleansing, and presented a video produced by Kholoud Al-Ajarma which exposes the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) key role in that crime.

The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit with Ethnic Cleansing

Dr Davis then shed light on the ongoing apartheid that Israel, its government and its forces are imposing on the Palestinian population. He called on people to show him any other member state of the UN which gives its constitutional rights to only one part of its population. “Show me just one more state. And [so far] there hasn’t been any answer.”

Stating that Israel is a racist endeavour, Davis expressed his belief that Jews do not have a specific right to self-determination. His main argument for that is that “there is no Jewish people other than in the framework of Zionist interpretation”, attempting to tackle mainstream Zionist arguments.

Instead, he said, “Zionism politicises Jewish religion”, and the “right of self-determination is the right of the indigenous people of Palestine.” He also submitted the idea that Israel should be constitutionally like Switzerland, which identifies citizens by their respective languages and does not discriminate.

READ: Jewish National Fund Board to vote on $18m purchase of Palestinian land in Jordan Valley

Praising the book, Professor Nur Masalha recalled his travels throughout Palestine and the evidence of ethnic and cultural cleansing he witnessed. The JNF, he said, told Israel that if it doesn’t bulldoze historic Palestinian houses quickly, then Palestinian refugees would return and try to take them back.

The event ended with a lively question and answer session, in which the audience had the chance to discover more about the JNF and the Palestinian history it has erased.

The audience and visitors also had the chance to buy copies of Uri Davis’ book, which Ilan Pappe – professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter – described as “an exposure of what really lies behind the past, present and future actions of the JNF. But more than anything else, it is an incisive exploration of the crimes Israel committed against the Palestinians and which still today are at best misrepresented and at worst denied outside the state of Israel. This book will be one of the best tools for those wishing to confront these misrepresentation and denial for the sake of peace and justice in the land of Palestine.”

To purchase the book click here.

OPINION: Planting trees in the Negev is not ‘forestation’, it’s about ethnic cleansing

08.06.23

Editorial Note

In early May, the Financial Times broke a story about the new legislative agenda of Michael Gove, the British Communities Secretary. Gove is about to propose a law to stop UK councils and public bodies from boycotting Israel. In his view, such public bodies adopt “their own foreign policy” and use their power to exert influence in the Middle East. The bill is now at its final stages. “We’re expecting the green light very soon,” officials said. The Communities Department said, “We are firmly opposed to local boycotts which can damage integration and community cohesion, hinder exports, and harm our economic security. The government remains committed to our manifesto pledge to ban public bodies from imposing their own boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions campaigns. We will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows.” Gove and Oliver Dowden, Deputy Prime Minister, are determined to enact the measure before the next election. 

Gove’s action occurs among a severe increase in incidents of antisemitism in Britain, as reported by the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors antisemitism. To recall, on 12 December 2016, the UK Government formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, which considers a certain attack on Israel antisemitic.

In stark contrast, also in May, UK’s University and College Union (UCU) Congress debated twenty motions. Three of these were directly related to Israel and Palestine and called for BDS against Israel. The UCU represents over 120,000 academics and staff in higher education across the UK. The Congress was held on Saturday, 27 May 2023, from 10:45 to 12:30. Worth noting that observant Jews could not attend the Congress because of the Shabbat. 

Motion 7, titled “Solidarity with Palestine,” was brought by the UCU Scotland executive committee. It says, “This year commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militia in the establishment of the State of Israel. For 75 years, Israel has denied refugees the right of return, in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 194. UCU notes with concern the continuing escalation of violence and repression against the Palestinians during this year. UCU reaffirms its commitment to policies in support of the Palestinian struggle against settler colonization, including supporting the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, and against the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.” This motion was approved.

Motion 8, titled “Israeli oppression and the right to boycott,” was brought by the University of Brighton, Moulsecoomb, and the London regional committee. The Congress notes: “intensifying and murderous pressure to drive Palestinians from Jerusalem and the West Bank, further colonizing Palestine, and the continuing blockade of Gaza plans to annex the illegally occupied territories conditions of Palestinians caused Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselm and the UN to declare the situation a form of apartheid UK Government’s introduction of an anti-BDS Bill, pursuing its Israel alliance, proscribing boycott unless sanctioned by Government policy.” 

The Congress stated it believes “civil society boycotts have an honorable tradition from anti-slavery campaigns through boycotts of Nazi trade to isolation of Apartheid South Africa the anti-BDS Bill, together with bans on environmental protest and anti-union laws, is an attempt to suppress civil solidarity and resistance.” The Congress resolves to “fully support the Right to Boycott campaign.” This motion was approved.

Motion 9, titled “Palestinian solidarity and the threat to critical opinion,” was brought by the Black members standing committee. The Congress notes that “the Tuck report in which the NUS is accused of antisemitism through its pro-Palestine stances; the conflation of support with Palestinians or critique of Israeli policies being described as antisemitism; the current Israeli government’s designation of Palestinian human rights organizations designated as ‘terrorist;’ and the attempts in the UK to close down critique of Israel through Prevent, IHRA and rendering BDS unlawful.” The Congress believes this “compounds systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Palestine and critical academics and students in particular in the UK; the isolation of Palestinian universities and undermining higher education.” 

The Congress decided that the National Executive Committee should “report on the moral and political consequences of Israeli policies with regards to the attack on academic freedom; authorize all appropriate action from branches to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people; reaffirm UCU policy on BDS.” This motion was approved. 

Motion 9A. was brought by the London retired members’ branch, adding to the Congress protocol “the importance of campaigns like the Big Ride for Palestine both in building Palestinian solidarity and raising funds for children’s sports activities in Palestine.” The Congress resolves: “to support, and encourage UCU members to join or support, the Big Ride for Palestine’s South Wales ride in August 2023.” This motion was approved.

Not all were supportive of the negative approach against Israel. The Welsh Bangor University tried to tone down the motion and requested some changes. It asked to delete: “of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militia in the establishment of the State of Israel. For 75 years, Israel has denied refugees the right of return, in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 194.” It asked to replace it with: “of the 1948 Palestine War, which resulted in 750,000 Palestinians and 260,000 Jews being forced from their homes. For 75 years, Israel and its neighbors have denied refugees the right of return” It also asked to delete: “the continuing escalation of violence and repression against the Palestinians during this year.” It asked to replace it with: “the continuing escalation of violence against both Palestinians and Israelis, the continuing repression of the Palestinians, and the global upsurge in antisemitism.” However, these changes were not approved and were withdrawn from the agenda.

The Jewish Chronicle, which reported on the Congress deliberation, noted that the UCU’s legal counsel had already warned the UCU that the motion could get it into trouble because of the incoming UK Government’s BDS and Sanction Bill, which would ban BDS to prevent further boycotts against Israel. 

Most crucially, The UCU motion demonstrates that history can be twisted to match the political agenda of academic activists. Nothing in the motion mentions the fact it was the Palestinians, with their allied Arab states, mounted the war against the nascent Jewish state. The Jews won the war, presenting the Palestinian Arabs with the consequences of their acts. Had they accepted the 1947 UN Partition Proposal, as the Jews did, a war would have been prevented. It was precisely to avoid the bloodshed, that David Ben Gurion and his colleagues decided to go with the Partition Proposal. Although Jews won the war, the cost was high, as the community lost one percent of its population, many of them Holocaust survivors. 

Equally worrisome, the Congress opposed the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. The Congress’s dismissive approach to Palestinian terrorism against Israelis and the loss of Jewish lives while bashing Israel should be construed as antisemitism.  

IAM will report on the developments.

References:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/12945/Business-of-the-strategy-and-finance-committee-open-session#7-ep-solidarity-with-palestine

Business of the strategy and finance committee (open session)

UCU Congress 2023: Saturday 27 May 2023, 10:45-12:30

Motions have been allocated to a section of the NEC’s report to Congress (UCU2068Opens new window). Paragraph headings refer to paragraphs within this report. CBC has added some new paragraph headings to facilitate the ordering of motions.

Section 2: Business of the strategy and finance committee to be taken in open session

(Starting from Section 7)

7  (EP) Solidarity with Palestine – UCU Scotland executive committee

This year commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militia in the establishment of the State of Israel. For 75 years, Israel has denied refugees the right of return, in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 194.

UCU notes with concern the continuing escalation of violence and repression against the Palestinians during this year.

UCU reaffirms its commitment to policies in support of the Palestinian struggle against settler colonisation, including supporting the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, and against the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.

CARRIED

7A.1 Bangor University

Delete:

‘of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militia in the establishment of the State of Israel. For 75 years, Israel has denied refugees the right of return, in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 194’

Replace with:

‘of the 1948 Palestine War, which resulted in 750,000 Palestinians and 260,000 Jews being forced from their homes. For 75 years, Israel and its neighbours have denied refugees the right of return’

Delete:

‘the continuing escalation of violence and repression against the Palestinians during this year’

Replace with:

‘the continuing escalation of violence against both Palestinians and Israelis, the continuing repression of the Palestinians, and the global upsurge in antisemitism’

WITHDRAWN

8  Israeli oppression and the right to boycott – University of Brighton Moulsecoomb, London regional committee

Congress notes:

1. intensifying and murderous pressure to drive Palestinians from Jerusalem and the West Bank, further colonising Palestine, and the continuing blockade of Gaza
2. plans to annex the illegally occupied territories
3. conditions of Palestinians caused Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselm and the UN to declare the situation a form of apartheid
4. UK Government’s introduction of an anti-BDS Bill, pursuing its Israel alliance, proscribing boycott unless sanctioned by Government policy. 

Congress believes that:

1. civil society boycotts have an honourable tradition from anti-slavery campaigns through boycotts of Nazi trade to isolation of Apartheid South Africa
2. the anti-BDS Bill, together with bans on environmental protest and anti-union laws, is an attempt to suppress civil solidarity and resistance. 

Congress resolves to:

1. fully support the Right to Boycott campaign. 

CARRIED

9  (EP) Palestinian solidarity and the threat to critical opinion – Black members standing committee

Congress notes 

1. the Tuck report in which the NUS is accused of antisemitism through its pro-Palestine stances
2. the conflation of support with Palestinians or critique of Israeli policies being described as antisemitism
3. the current Israeli government’s designation of Palestinian human rights organisations designated as ‘terrorist’ and the attempts in the UK to close down critique of Israel through Prevent, IHRA and rendering BDS unlawful.

Congress believes this compounds

1. systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Palestine and critical academics and students in particular in the UK
2. the isolation of Palestinian universities and undermining higher education.

Congress resolves:

1. for the NEC to report on the moral and political consequences of Israeli policies with regards to the attack on academic freedom.
2. authorise all appropriate action from branches to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people
3. reaffirm UCU policy on BDS.

CARRIED AS AMENDED

9A.1  London retired members’ branch

Add to Congress notes:

4. the importance of campaigns like the Big Ride for Palestine both in building Palestinian solidarity and raising funds for children’s sports activities in Palestine.

Add to Congress resolves:

4. to support, and encourage UCU members to join or support, the Big Ride for Palestine’s South Wales ride in August 2023.

CARRIED

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https://www.thejc.com/news/news/anti-israel-motion-adopted-by-union-could-be-outlawed-by-new-government-legislation-7kjDMRUgkXvYSsW859xKIuAnti-Israel motion adopted by union could be outlawed by new government legislation

The motion was passed during the UCU’s four-day annual conference

BY  RICHARD PERCIVAL

MAY 31, 2023 12:21

An anti-Israel motion adopted by the university and college lecturers union could be outlawed by proposed new government legislation.  

Delegates at the University and College Union’s (UCU) congress in Glasgow confirmed their full support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in a right to boycott motion.

The motion was titled “Israel oppression and the right to boycott” and was implies Israel is worthy of boycott because it is comparable to Nazi Germany.

It read: “Congress believes that civil society boycotts have an honourable tradition from anti-slavery campaigns through boycotts of Nazi trade to isolation of Apartheid South Africa.”

However, the UCU’s legal counsel warned it could fall foul of the incoming UK Government’s proposed BDS and Sanction Bill.

The proposed bill would ban BDS to prevent further boycotts against Israel. It also follows a 2019 Conservative Party manifesto commitment to prevent local authorities from “adopting their own approach to international relations”.  This move, pro-Palestine activists say, is in place to help businesses profiting from apartheid Israel.

If the proposed bill passed, the motion would be “void” as it would in effect ask members to break the law.

The motion also instructed the UCU national executive to produce a report on what it called “moral and political consequences of Israeli policies with regards to the attack on academic freedom.”

UCU branches were also called on to “authorise all appropriate action to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people.”

The motion also slated “the current Israeli government’s designation of Palestinian human rights organisations as ‘terrorist’ and the attempts in the UK to close down critique of Israel through Prevent, IHRA and rendering BDS unlawful.”

The UCU website said it agreed to “fully support the Right to Boycott campaign” but critics argue the motion featured “grotesque and antisemitic language”.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) told the JC: “UCU’s reputation in the Jewish community is in the gutter.

“By making the grotesque comparison between the Nazis and the Jewish state, UCU is shamefully telling Jews, once again, that they are not welcome.”

UCU general secretary Jo Grady was also one of several figures to make pro-Palestine comments at the conference.

She told delegates: “It’s a touchstone of my politics, and my understanding of socialism, internationalism & trade unionism, to always remember that none of us are free until all of us are free.

“Never is that clearer than when it comes to Palestine.”

A UCU spokesman said: “UCU is proud to stand with the Palestinian people and our congress reaffirmed support for BDS as a peaceful campaigning tactic supported by Palestinian civil society.

“Any attempts by the government to prevent UK citizens, post-16 education staff, students or public bodies taking part are an attack on civil liberties.

“The University and College Union is a proudly inclusive union with a long history of fighting antisemitism and is a welcoming place for Jewish members.”

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

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-university-union-may-be-beyond-redemption/

Andrew Tettenborn

The university union may be beyond redemption

• 30 May 2023, 12:14pm

Life is not terribly good these days for most university teachers. Colleges, once centres of collegiate administration run on a principle of de facto equality and open expression of opinion, are now top-down managed by a cadre of bosses more interested in spreadsheets than seminars, and image more than erudition, where an injudicious word can cause serious trouble. To add insult to injury, jobs at the lower end, previously fairly safe, are now precarious and pretty wretchedly paid.

You might have thought the lecturers’ union UCU would be an effective counterweight to all this, especially since universities are to all intents and purposes public sector employers, with union representation correspondingly high, at something over 120,000. Unfortunately you would be disappointed. True, UCU is formally demanding big pay rises and more job security, and backing its demands up with widespread, though not very productive, strike action. But its support for academics’ rights is at times curiously limited. Furthermore, it is diluting its efforts, not to mention its support, by all sorts of other posturing.

Recall, for example, the saga of Kathleen Stock, the philosophy professor who resigned from Sussex in 2021 following threatening student demonstrations and demands that she be prevented from expressing her opinion on trans issues, which the administration did little to counteract. What was UCU’s response to the affair, as an organisation set up to defend academics? The Sussex branch urged her employers to ‘take a clear and strong stance against transphobia at Sussex’, a statement later endorsed by UCU nationally. More recently, Edinburgh UCU has published, presumably approvingly, a letter urging the Provost to row back on a free speech protection project in the institution, arguing that it was a threat to academics’ ‘intellectual and personal safety’ and was apt to encourage a ‘rise of colonial nostalgia’. Nor is this new: Selina Todd, the excellent left-wing Oxford history professor who had at one time to lecture with physical protection against student violence because of her views on the trans issue, curtly tweeted three years ago that she had long left UCU ‘over their terrible attitude to women’s rights.’ With friends like that in the union world, which academic needs enemies?

UCU also makes up for its pusillanimity in supporting academics with views it does not like with a keen embrace of matters most people would think were pretty peripheral to its job of safeguarding its members’ interests. It has, for example, long had an obsession with Israel: at its conference last week, it yet again passed overwhelmingly a motion to boycott Israeli academics and ‘authorise all appropriate action to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people.’ So too with environmentalism: in August last year it voted for the shutting down of university careers advice about careers with companies in the mining and fossil fuel industries.

Most recently, and controversially, last Friday it poked an incredibly clumsy finger into the Ukraine pie. To the understandable disgust of large numbers of its ordinary members, a majority of its annual congress supported a motion, backed by members of Stop the War and other fringe factions, which called for an end to the arming of Ukraine on the basis that this was merely a fight between US and Russian imperialism.

One thing is clear: UCU has been gently taken over by activists more interested in revolution than rational thought, and frankly at times rather obtuse. (The unnamed person filmed speaking in support of the Ukraine motion in a clip later uploaded to social media was decidedly more Citizen Smith than Professor Calculus, something that might worry parents concerned at who is teaching their offspring.)

Why this has happened is anyone’s guess. A plausible reason, though, is that while most academics are opinionated, and a great many excellent and respectable ones on principle back UCU’s efforts to improve their position, as a trade union UCU is pretty ineffective and the only people prepared to give up the time to address its interminable meetings are the blindly committed or the slightly dotty.

What next? The Ukrainian debacle has undoubtedly touched a raw nerve, and a fair number of moderately leftish academics fed up with the latest UCU antics may well resign from it. They are probably right: however much some voices urge them to stay and fight for change from the inside, one suspects the union is now beyond redemption.

Unfortunately sidelining UCU is not likely to be easy. A point often forgotten is that its continued existence as the representative of university staff actually suits university management rather well. It is not a very effective organisation, and does not seriously threaten university structures or the bureaucratic machines that run them; indeed, in practice many of its branch representatives fit in very neatly and happily as useful cogs in those very machines.

And, of course, it is worth remembering that extreme political views such as those expressed by UCU are by no means limited to the union side. They equally affect management itself, whether in individual institutions or in umbrella organisations like Advance HE. Academic top brass accepts without much question, and indeed often embraces with reverential wonder, nostrums such as the need to decolonise curriculums, the idea that British society and institutions are structurally racist, and the necessity for universities to tear down privilege and empower the oppressed.

Ideally we would see a new union, rather on the lines of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers set up in 1985 as an alternative to Arthur Scargill’s NUM, to deal with this ungodly exercise in mutual back-scratching. It may be difficult, but if enough people are prepared to point out the UCU emperor’s decided shortage of clothes and walk away it is not impossible. Here’s to hoping, at least.

WRITTEN BY

Andrew Tettenborn
Andrew Tettenborn is a professor of law at Swansea Law School

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

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/ucu-vote-to-stand-in-solidarity-with-palestinians
UCU vote to stand in solidarity with Palestinians

MATT KERR
SUNDAY, MAY 28, 2023

UNIVERSITIES and Colleges Union (UCU) delegates have voted to stand in solidarity with Palestinians at congress in Glasgow.

UCU congress voted on Saturday to “reaffirm” its position on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on the Isreali state, and instructed its national executive to produce a report on what it called “moral and political consequences of Israeli policies with regards to the attack on academic freedom.”

The motion also called upon branches to “authorise all appropriate action to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people.”

The motion noted what it referred to as the “conflation of support with Palestinians or critique of Israeli policies as being anti-semitic,” a process it stated “compounds systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Palestine and critical academics and students.

It slammed “the current Israeli government’s designation of Palestinian human rights organisations as ‘terrorist’ and the attempts in the UK to close down critique of Israel through Prevent, IHRA and rendering BDS unlawful.”

The motion received overwhelming backing from delegates, despite a warning to congress from legal counsel that it could fall foul of the Tory Party’s proposed BDS and Sanction Bill.

If the law passed, counsel argued, the motion would be “void” as it would in effect ask members to break the law.

One delegate from University College London said: “As a Jewish UCU member, I’m really proud to move a motion against oppression and support the boycott.

“No country should be able exempt from human rights and international law.

“The right to boycott is an important tool.

“The community I belong to has suffered, and it believes in justice, but not just for one people, for all people.

“The attack on the Palestinians must be opposed.”

******

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01.06.23

Editorial Note

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) will vote electronically between June 15, 2023, and July 14, 2023, on a petition to boycott Israeli academic institutions.  On March 3, 2023, around two hundred members petitioned the AAA Executive Board requesting a full-membership vote on the resolution.

The full resolution by the AAA states:
“Whereas, Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the Israeli state’s regime of oppression against Palestinians… including by providing research and development of military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians;
Whereas, Israeli academic institutions do not provide protections for academic freedom, campus speech in support of Palestinian human and political rights, nor for the freedom of association of Palestinian students on their campuses;
Whereas, Israeli academic institutions have failed to support the right to education and academic freedom at Palestinian universities, obstructing Palestinian academic exchanges with academic institutions in the US and elsewhere;
Whereas, in 2018, the Israeli government enshrined the principle of Jewish supremacy in a law stating unequivocally that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and that “Jewish settlement is a national value,” mandating that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development,” thus further codifying the second-class status of Palestinians within Israel and normalizing the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank;
Whereas, from the onset of the Nakba, the catastrophic events of 1948 that led to the mass expulsion and displacement of Palestinians from their homes, Palestinians—including activists, artists, intellectuals, human rights organizations, and others—have documented and circulated knowledge of the Israeli state’s apartheid system and ethnic cleansing;
Whereas, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have confirmed that Israeli authorities are committing apartheid against the Palestinian people, and have documented the institutionalisation of systematic racial oppression and discrimination, which has been established to maintain the domination of one racial-national-ethnic group over another. These reports corroborate Palestinian knowledge of the Israeli state’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians;
Whereas, the United States funds, arms, defends, and otherwise plays a decisive role in enabling and sustaining the Israel state’s apartheid regime (and see also and also), including the Israeli state’s military occupation of the West Bank, its building and expansion of settlements throughout the West Bank, which international law defines as illegal, and its ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip;      
Whereas, U.S. academic institutions facilitate the complicity and normalization of Israeli apartheid by engaging in academic exchanges with Israeli universities, and otherwise maintaining close, extensive and privileged ties with Israeli universities;
Whereas, the Middle East Studies Association, the leading learned society concerned with the region, has extensively debated an academic boycott resolution and passed it, with a super-majority of 80% of its voting members supporting the resolution, indicating a broad scholarly consensus of area experts on this matter;
And whereas, the AAA is a leading U.S.-based learned society;
And, Anthropological frameworks and methods, ethnographic and archaeological, are actively used by the Israeli state to further its system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”

Adding that members of the AAA have, for many years, organized forums for discussions and debates of the Palestinian civil society’s call for BDS against the Israeli state.

The petition intends to resolve the following:
“Be it resolved that the AAA as an Association endorses and will honor this call to boycott Israeli academic institutions until such time as these institutions end their complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law; and
Be it further resolved that the AAA leadership, in accord with the governance procedures of the Association’s bylaws, is charged with implementing this boycott and determining how to do so with reference to the Association’s own mission; and
Be it further resolved that this boycott pertains to Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars, and also that individual anthropologists who are members of the AAA are free to determine whether and how they will apply the boycott in their own professional practice; and
Be it further resolved that in implementing this boycott.” It ends by stating that the AAA will “support the rights of all students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Palestine and Israel” and in support of BDS.

 In 2015 a similar resolution was voted on and endorsed at the AAA business meeting. It was again voted for but narrowly defeated in 2016.

The petition claimed that “Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the Israeli state’s regime of oppression against Palestinians, including by providing research and development of military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians. They gave the Tel Aviv University Institute for National Security Studies as an example.

The petition also claims that “Israeli academic institutions do not provide protections for academic freedom, campus speech in support of Palestinian human and political rights, nor for the freedom of association of Palestinian students on their campuses.”

Pro-Israel advocates issued an opposing statement.

Cary Nelson, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Has stated: “Our argument is that people shouldn’t use the opposition to government policies as a reason to attack Israeli universities, which by and large are opposed to those policies.”

The pro-Israel group argued that the call for an academic boycott which “pertains to Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars’ is untenable and has proven inadequate in preventing discrimination against Israeli academics… Indeed, the boycott of Israel’s universities cannot be meaningfully separated from the faculty and students who work, teach and study in them… Israel’s academics have long been among the most vocal critics of the Israeli state and its society… An academic boycott would undercut the important work for peace and social justice being undertaken by many Israeli academics, as well as constructive and potentially transformative efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian scholars together on joint projects.”

The many Jewish groups opposing a boycott include well-known NGOs such as the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) B’nai B’rith International, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, Hillel International, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, StopAntisemitism and Zionist Organization of America, among others.

The renewed boycott activity of the AAA should be viewed in the context of significant political development in the United States in the last few years.  The ADL’s Antisemitism Tracker has reported that antisemitic incidents have reached the highest level since the group started the monitoring project in 1979.  The situation became so acute that in 2022, the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism was elevated to the rank of ambassador.  Deborah Lipstadt, the renowned historian of the Holocaust, is currently holding the position.   In another sign of action, the Biden administration has signaled that it is moving closer to adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, albeit with some possible caveats.

As IAM has repeatedly clarified, pro-Palestinian advocates, including radical Israeli academics, vehemently reject the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism because it defines the double standards used to criticize Israel as an antisemitic act.  So much so that a group of Israeli scholars acting under the auspices of Van Leer Institute adopted the alternative Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.  

Should the Biden administration adopt the IHRA Working Definition, the AAA resolution could face some serious legal headwinds.  

IAM will report on this issue in due course.

References

https://www.anthroboycott.org/the-resolution
The Resolution

On March 3, 2023, 206 members of the American Anthropological Association submitted a petition to the Executive Board requesting a full-membership vote on a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. A similar resolution was endorsed by a vote of 1040-136 at the AAA business meeting in Denver on November 20, 2015, and narrowly missed adoption in the subsequent full membership vote by a margin of only 39 votes. The membership will vote on the resolution from June 15-July 14. 

The current resolution is below:

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (AAA) RESOLUTION TO BOYCOTT ISRAELI ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS 

Whereas,

In 2005, 175 Palestinian civil society organizations, including the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE), issued a call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli state, in support of the Palestinian struggle for human and political rights, including the basic right of freedom;

Whereas,

The Israeli state operates an apartheid regime from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the internationally recognized state of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, and 

The 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court (ICC) define apartheid as a crime against humanity. (See also, and further links below).

Whereas,

Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the Israeli state’s regime of oppression against Palestinians (and see also and also), including by providing research and development of military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians; 

Whereas,

Israeli academic institutions do not provide protections for academic freedom, campus speech in support of Palestinian human and political rights, nor for the freedom of association of Palestinian students on their campuses;

Whereas,

Israeli academic institutions have failed to support the right to education and academic freedom at Palestinian universities, obstructing Palestinian academic exchanges with academic institutions in the US and elsewhere; 

Whereas,

In 2018, the Israeli government enshrined the principle of Jewish supremacy in a law stating unequivocally that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and that “Jewish settlement is a national value,” mandating that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development,” thus further codifying the second-class status of Palestinians within Israel and normalizing the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank; 

Whereas,

From the onset of the Nakba, the catastrophic events of 1948 that led to the mass expulsion and displacement of Palestinians from their homes, Palestinians—including activists, artists, intellectuals, human rights organizations, and others—have documented and circulated knowledge of the Israeli state’s apartheid system and ethnic cleansing;  

Whereas, 

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have confirmed that Israeli authorities are committing apartheid against the Palestinian people, and have documented the institutionalisation of systematic racial oppression and discrimination, which has been established to maintain the domination of one racial-national-ethnic group over another. These reports corroborate Palestinian knowledge of the Israeli state’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians; 

Whereas,

The United States funds, arms, defends, and otherwise plays a decisive role in enabling and sustaining the Israel state’s apartheid regime (and see also and also), including the Israeli state’s military occupation of the West Bank, its building and expansion of settlements throughout the West Bank, which international law defines as illegal, and its ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip;

Whereas, 

U.S. academic institutions facilitate the complicity and normalization of Israeli apartheid by engaging in academic exchanges with Israeli universities, and otherwise maintaining close, extensive and privileged ties with Israeli universities;

Whereas,

The Middle East Studies Association, the leading learned society concerned with the region, has extensively debated an academic boycott resolution and passed it, with a super-majority of 80% of its voting members supporting the resolution, indicating a broad scholarly consensus of area experts on this matter; 

And whereas,

The AAA is a leading U.S.-based learned society;  

And,

Anthropological frameworks and methods, ethnographic and archaeological, are actively used by the Israeli state to further its system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing; 

And, 

The AAA’s Statement of Purpose affirms a commitment both to “take action on behalf of the entire profession” and to “promote the… constant improvement of professional standards in anthropology;” 

And, 

The AAA’s 1999 Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights states, “Anthropology as a profession is committed to the promotion and protection of the right of people and peoples everywhere to the full realization of their humanity” and “the AAA has an ethical responsibility to protest and oppose… deprivation;” 

And,

The discipline of anthropology, as the study of humanity, bears a distinct and urgent responsibility to stand against all forms of racism and racist practices;   

And,

Members of the AAA have organized various forums, over many years, for discussion and debate of Palestinian civil society’s call for BDS against the Israeli state, in full embrace of the AAA’s deep commitment to academic freedom and open debate; 

Now therefore,

Be it resolved that the AAA as an Association endorses and will honor this call to boycott Israeli academic institutions until such time as these institutions end their complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law; and 

Be it further resolved that the AAA leadership, in accord with the governance procedures of the Association’s bylaws, is charged with implementing this boycott and determining how to do so with reference to the Association’s own mission; and 

Be it further resolved that this boycott pertains to Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars, and also that individual anthropologists who are members of the AAA are free to determine whether and how they will apply the boycott in their own professional practice; and

Be it further resolved that in implementing this boycott, the AAA will support the rights of all students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Palestine and Israel and in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

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

https://www.anthroboycott.org/resources/the-threat-to-academic-freedom-from-palestinian-exception-to-global-norm

The Threat to Academic Freedom: From Palestinian Exception to Global Norm

by Lori Allen, SOAS, University of London; and Ajantha Subramanian, Harvard University

Since the American Anthropological Association narrowly missed passing a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions in 2014, the conditions of academic life in Palestine have sharply deteriorated. Anthropologists considering support of the 2023 boycott resolution should understand it as an issue of academic freedom that operates at many levels in cross-cutting contexts.

First, within Palestine and Israel, the academic freedom of Palestinian scholars and students is intentionally stifled—both as a direct aim and as a consequence of the Israeli military occupation and the Israeli state’s discrimination against its Palestinian citizens. Palestinian civil society organizations continue to call for a boycott of Israeli institutions as an urgent protest against the systematic repression of Palestinians and as a show of solidarity with their liberation struggle. 

Second, the academic freedom of scholars and students advocating for Palestinian rights is being violated, often on spurious grounds with false accusations of antisemitism. A campaign of harassment and surveillance against Palestinian scholars and scholars of Palestine has spread across North America and Europe. Speech about Palestine is a prime target of liberal actors and authoritarian forces alike.

Third, attacks against Palestinian scholarship and advocacy are being orchestrated in a political environment of widespread and increasing right-wing repression of dissent. Violations of academic freedom are on the rise everywhere—as a glance at the American Association of University Professors’ Journal of Academic Freedom attests for the United States and around the world.

That Palestine advocacy stands as a lightning rod at the center of far-right trends in Israel   and globally makes passage of the AAA boycott resolution an urgent necessity. 

The suppression of people categorized as intellectuals and left-wing elitists. The exclusions of people demonized as “other” to the nation or civilization. The targeting of Jews. That incidents of antisemitism, violations of academic freedom, misogynist legislation, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and Islamophobia are on the rise across North America and Europe should come as no surprise. They are manifestations of the far-right turn that has swept much of the globe into its stifling embrace, squeezing the air out of democracy. These are cuffs that authoritarian “strong men” and their supporters have clamped onto their victims in their efforts to reorder the world according to traditional hierarchies. In the spaces where the defense of human rights, democratic freedoms, and civil liberties should be happening, authoritarian politics and supremacist ideologies have muscled in. To vote for the AAA boycott resolution is to push back against these terrifying trends.

Repression of Palestine Scholars and Scholarship

In March 2022, a new Israeli government policy—the “Procedure for Entry and Residency of Foreigners in Judea and Samaria Region”—was passed, granting the Israeli occupation authorities new powers that further infringe on academic freedom. Condemned by the Middle East Studies Association Committee on Academic Freedom “as an attack on the Palestinians’ right to education,” the policy “grants the Israeli military the authority to prevent international faculty, students, and researchers who wish to teach, study, and conduct research at Palestinian universities from entering Occupied Palestinian Territories.” In their call for colleagues to oppose this draconian policy, members of Insaniyyat, the Society of Palestinian Anthropologists, explain that “the regulations will exacerbate the already besieged status of Palestinian higher education, further legitimize its de facto international isolation, while divesting it of the ability to exercise basic decisions that are a fundamental condition for academic freedom.”

In addition to severely restricting interaction between Palestinian and foreign students and scholars, Israel is also actively undermining the legitimacy of Palestinian academic institutions. There is a proposal before the Israeli cabinet to discredit degrees awarded by Palestinian universities on the grounds that students at these institutions “are exposed to anti-Israel materials and messages.” If this proposal is approved, it will extend an earlier December 2018 decision to not recognize degrees from Al-Quds University on the grounds that it “supports terrorism against the state of Israel.” Palestinian students, faculty, university leaders, and campuses are also the direct target of Israeli violence and interference. The blockade of the Gaza Strip in place since 2007 severely restricts freedom of movement, including that of people seeking higher education outside.

Members of the AAA might expect Israeli universities to be vocal in their condemnation of violations of Palestinian rights, including to academic freedom. They are not. Not a single Israeli university has ever spoken out against or condemned the occupation. Nor has the Israeli Anthropological Association. 

In fact, Israel’s academic institutions are directly and materially involved in the occupation. Virtually all Israeli universities are involved in defense-related research with the Ministry of Defense. Ben Gurion University, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and Haifa University all made explicit statements of support for the summer 2014 assault on Gaza, including providing financial benefits to soldiers. Universities have been part of the colonization of Palestinian territory: part of Hebrew University’s campus is built on confiscated Palestinian land; Ariel University is located in a West Bank settlement.

Israeli universities also discriminate against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Some 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian, yet they make up only a tiny percentage of university faculty; these scholars face barriers to promotion, especially if they are known as critics of the government. Palestinian students in Israeli universities have less access than their Jewish counterparts to scholarships and campus housing, as a result of privileges offered to those who serve in the military. The freedom of political and cultural expression by Palestinian citizens of Israel is regularly curtailed. The 2018 Jewish Nation-State Basic Law comprised a raft of principles further demoting the status of Palestinian citizens of Israel, granting exclusively to Jews the right to self-determination, and downgrading the Arabic language from an official language to one with “special status.” In the words of the civil society organization, Adalah, it “transforms discrimination into a constitutional, systematic and institutional principle” of Israeli law.” Israeli Jewish faculty members openly critical of state policies are also marginalized and threatened.

In addition to Palestinians in the region, scholars and students who teach about and study Palestinian society and who support Palestinian rights are also targeted. So extensive is the repression of peaceful advocacy for Palestinian rights that two organizations—Palestine Legal (founded in 2012) and the European Legal Support Center (ELSC, founded in 2019)—have come into being to fight back against the criminalization of the Palestine solidarity movement in the United States and Europe. 

New Gags on Freedom of Expression

In recent years, the controversial redefinition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is being used increasingly to facilitate and justify anti-Palestinianism. Ostensibly devised “to address this rise in hate and discrimination” of Jews, the IHRA’s working definition conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel and Zionism. In doing so, it short-circuits legitimate political debate. As a university working group on racism and prejudice at University College London found, the IHRA definition “may in fact undermine institutional responsibility to enforce [existing university] policies and procedures” to combat antisemitism and other forms of prejudice on campus. With a venomous energy resembling a purge, Palestinian academics in Germany—where the association of public and government-recognized universities has publicly supported the IHRA—are being surveilled and hounded relentlessly. Forty countries have adopted this IHRA definition, despite the fact that it is widely recognized as a method of liberal virtue signalling—attempts to claim social conscience without taking the necessary actions for being moral. The IHRA definition is not a serious tool to combat antisemitism.

Unfortunately, rather than strengthening the fight against antisemitism, the IHRA definition has been weaponized to stifle speech and intimidate scholars and student activists. As evidence of its use in an intensified campaign of lawfare against Palestine scholars and scholarship, the work of Palestine Legal shows how often antisemitism accusations are levelled against faculty and students as a form of legal bullying to suppress speech critical of Israel. The Trump administration’s cynical deployment of the IHRA definition makes obvious the political intent behind its abuse—reasons far from addressing antisemitism meaningfully. Some universities in the US have recognized the flaws of this definition and rejected it as a model for preventing prejudice on their campuses, but this has not stopped frivolous claims and campaigns against Palestine solidarity organizations. A forthcoming briefing paper to be issued by the ELSC and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies shows that the vast majority of cases accusing Palestine advocates of antisemitism in the UK are false allegations, the main purpose of which is to chill free speech.

A similarly repressive tool is the “Prevent Duty” (originally devised in 2003, revised in 2015 and updated in 2021) part of the UK government’s antiterrorism agenda. It requires public institutions, including institutions of higher education, “to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.” Its terms are vague, and some UK universities have bent over backwards to police student and faculty research and teaching and vet events, narrowing the space for critical public debate. In schools and universities, “Prevent” has encouraged institutional surveillance of Palestine solidarity on campuses. It has given academic administrators motivation and justification to interfere with conferences and other events about Palestinian rights and Israel, sometimes leading to their cancellation.

Why Vote for the AAA boycott

Supporting the AAA boycott resolution is support for anti-racism and for the fight against Islamophobia and xenophobia. But opponents would cast it as something sinister. Since Palestinian advocacy involves criticism of Israel, a state that falsely claims to represent Jews everywhere, a cloud of suspicion can immediately be summoned, especially in this disturbing climate of rising antisemitism. It may be easier, for some, to decry Palestinian advocacy as antisemitic than to address the problems of Israel as a state that deserves scrutiny and criticism as any other state. 

But if you stand against racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, then you should stand also against anti-Palestinianism as a manifestation of those social ills. It may be easier to ignore violations of Palestinian rights than to speak out for them and risk the label of antisemite. But it is those false accusations of antisemitism that stifle research and shield Israel from analysis and legitimate critique. Jewish Voice for Peace is one among a growing number of organizations that decries antisemitism and the suppression of Palestinians simultaneously.  So, too, should the AAA. 

Assaults on academic freedom—relentlessly lobbed from every direction—can be stultifying, leaving those who care about rights and democracy unsure how to respond. One modest action by which to stand up and shake the malaise is voting for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. In standing for Palestinian academic freedom, we anthropologists can do our part to refuse fascism and defend the rights of all.

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

http://s3.amazonaws.com/rdcms-aaa/files/production/public/FileDownloads/pdfs/IAA%20Response%20to%20Boycott%20Proposal.pdf

 To: Professor Ramona Pérez, President American Anthropological Association 2300 Clarendon Blvd, Suite 1301 Arlington, VA 22201 USA

Via email (perez@sdsu.edu)

April 3, 2023

A RESPONSE TO THE PROPOSED RESOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (AAA) TO BOYCOTT ISRAELI ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS

Following a long, divisive struggle on the issue in 2016, on March 3, 2023, 206 members of the American Anthropological Association have again submitted a petition to the Executive Board to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

The Israeli Anthropological Association opposes the boycott of Israeli academic institutions as counterproductive, especially at a time when Israeli academic institutions are at the forefront of the struggle to maintain democracy and equal rights for all citizens against an oppressive right- wing Israeli government. Our opposition is based on the following reasons:

The resolution calls for a ban on Israeli universities specifically but does not distinguish between the actions of the Israeli state and the actions of Israeli universities in its justifications. Israeli academia is very often in an active fight against the actions of the Israeli state, as indeed it is at

the present time. A boycott can only undermine these efforts and weaken the ability of academia to speak truth to power.

Israeli academia has for years been seen by those in power as a major threat to the right-wing administration, as well as the ultra-nationalist parties which currently control the Israeli government. This is due to Israeli academia’s long record of resistance to human rights violations by the Israeli government and the state’s suppression of and discrimination against the Palestinian people and their rights. The right-wing “Israeli Academia Monitor” surveilles and targets wide swaths of Israeli professors for their “anti-Israeli” activities and rhetoric.

Recently, the coalition parties of the Israeli government launched an unprecedented attack on the Israeli judiciary and the democratic nature of the country by threatening to severely limit the independence of the Israeli judiciary which has often intervened to protect civil and human rights. Many anticipate that Palestinians, both citizens and non-citizens of Israel, would be amongst the first to suffer from the government’s legislation. Israeli universities have been at the vanguard of the harrowing struggle to prevent this co-optation of the judiciary. Professors, students, and university administrations marched and protested, and all the universities went on a collective strike to prevent the further degradation of Israeli democracy. The fight is active and ongoing.

The proposed boycott resolution decries Israeli universities’ role in developing weapons for the Israeli military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians. Many Israeli universities, like hundreds of American universities, and other universities around the world, have Department of Defense contracts that develop weapons which are used in unjust wars. Many of those who organized the boycott resolution belong to universities that also have DoD contracts. Any call for boycott should start at home, and not attack Israeli targets already beleaguered in their defense of minorities.

Contrary to the claims of boycott resolution supporters, the public discourse at Israeli universities and in classrooms is open and free. Palestinian students and the large Jewish community that advocates for Palestinian rights and sovereignty hold organized activities and protests to articulate their positions on campus, educating a new generation on this vital issue and raising awareness among the broader population. Israeli universities also have major campaigns to enroll Palestinian students. They have much higher inclusion rates of Palestinian students than American Ivy League universities have of African American students.

While many of us are critical of the Israeli government, one cannot but note the hypocrisy of the call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. When American democracy was under threat by the Trump administration, did American universities collectively go on strike? Are American universities not deeply complicit in the activities of the American military with no end in sight? Do American universities do enough to protect the American minorities targeted by the state? While we are fully aware of our own inadequacies, we nevertheless reject the narrative of American moral superiority.

The Israeli academy has been and continues to be engaged in a desperate struggle against a repressive government that seeks to abrogate the rights of citizens who belong to the Palestinian minority or oppose their policies. Israeli anthropologists stand out for their criticism of the status quo and defense of minorities. An international boycott of the Israeli academy would only aid and abet the government’s attempts to target Israeli universities as the enemy. At this crucial point in the survival of Israeli democracy, we call upon our fellow anthropologists to reject the call for a boycott.

Sincerely,

The Executive Committee of the Israeli Anthropological Association

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

https://www.jns.org/israeli-anthropologists-to-pro-bds-us-colleagues-were-already-fighting-the-state/

Israeli anthropologists to pro-BDS, US colleagues: We’re already fighting the state

Nearly 100 groups are pushing the American Anthropological Association to reject a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

DAVID SWINDLE, MENACHEM WECKER

(May 11, 2023 / JNS)

Many people of all backgrounds oppose the BDS movement, which they consider concerted antisemitism against the Jewish state. So the news that nearly 90 groups, plus a contingent of Israeli anthropologists, signed a letter urging the American Anthropological Association to reject a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions seems to fall in line with that belief.

But there’s a twist: All of these groups cite, in part, the fact that Israeli professors are actively fighting the Jewish state as a reason to avoid the boycott.

This includes the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith International, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, Hillel International, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, StopAntisemitism and Zionist Organization of America.

Morton Klein, national president of the ZOA, told JNS exclusively on May 10 that the ZOA, which just realized that the letter opposes judicial reform in Israel, is now retracting its signature.

“ZOA believes this is an absolute democratic necessity,” he told JNS. “These reforms will make Israel more democratic, not less democratic. More elected officials will be involved in choosing Supreme Court justices, not mainly unelected Supreme Court judges and unelected Israeli bar association members.”

And Israel needs a “reasonable override provision,” Klein said, because “the Supreme Court regularly overrides Knesset-passed Israeli laws.”

Convened by the Alliance for Academic Freedom and the Academic Engagement Network, the letter from the groups urges the American Anthropological Association to “unequivocally reject” the resolution.

“Everyone agrees that it’s absolutely fine to be critical of Israeli policy. The key point is that boycotts—academic boycotts—are simply antithetical to academic principles,” says Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network

Among the reasons the letter cites is that Israeli academic institutions are not “complicit” in the oppression of Palestinians, but “the reality is that Israeli university leaders and faculty work hard to foster Arab-Jewish coexistence and ensure a diversity of opinion on their campuses, including support for Palestinian voices.”

“Moreover, Israel’s academics have long been among the most vocal critics of the Israeli state and its society. An academic boycott would undercut the important work for peace and social justice being undertaken by many Israeli academics, as well as constructive and potentially transformative efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian scholars together on joint projects,” it added.

Although Israeli academic institutions “commendably rarely take formal political stands nor do they routinely weigh in on government policy,” recently, upon perceiving “a threat to the democratic character of the state they did not hesitate to act, collectively deciding to shutter their schools in protest,” according to the letter. “Punishing Israeli universities now of all times is nonsensical when the schools have shown themselves to be fierce champions of democracy and democratic principles.”

‘Antithetical to academic principles’

Other signatories of the letter do not interpret it as supporting judicial reform.

“The letter accurately describes the perceptions of the heads of Israel’s research universities, and subsequent actions they have taken,” Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs, told JNS. “The letter does not take a political position on behalf of the groups that signed the letter.”

Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network—one of the letter’s organizers—told JNS that the letter’s reference to “most vocal critics” means disagreeing with specific decisions of the Israeli government but not broad critiques of the state or its legitimacy. For example, both supporters and critics of the judicial reform were welcome to sign, she said.

“Everyone agrees that it’s absolutely fine to be critical of Israeli policy,” she said. “The key point, of course, is that boycotts—academic boycotts—are simply antithetical to academic principles.”

Elman noted that left-wing, progressive Zionist groups, rather than conservative ones, were more hesitant to sign initially, due to the letter countering reference to Israel as an “apartheid regime” in the resolution.

“I would suspect that some of the groups on the far-left, who signed this, might be facing flak from others in their space,” Elman told JNS.

In June, members of the American Anthropological Association will vote on the resolution that calls on the organization to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

“The Israeli state operates an apartheid regime from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the internationally recognized state of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” according to the resolution, which adds that “in 2018, the Israeli government enshrined the principle of Jewish supremacy in a law.”

The resolution calls for boycotting “Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars, and also that individual anthropologists who are members of the AAA are free to determine whether and how they will apply the boycott in their own professional practice.”

‘Weaken ability of academia to speak truth to power’

In a March 20 letter, Ramona Pérez, association president, noted that the resolution received the 50 signatures of members in good standing required to move forward, and it will be put to a vote from June 15 to July 14. He noted that the association voted against boycotting Israel in 2016 with the membership “deeply divided on the issue.”

An April 3 letter from the Israeli Anthropological Association, which the American Anthropological Association posted on its website, opposed the resolution and called it “counterproductive, especially at a time when Israeli academic institutions are at the forefront of the struggle to maintain democracy and equal rights for all citizens against an oppressive right-wing Israeli government.”

“Israeli academia is very often in an active fight against the actions of the Israeli state, as indeed it is at the present time,” the Israeli group stated. “A boycott can only undermine these efforts and weaken the ability of academia to speak truth to power.”

The group added that American universities did not collectively go under strike during the Trump administration.

“Are American universities not deeply complicit in the activities of the American military with no end in sight? Do American universities do enough to protect the American minorities targeted by the state? While we are fully aware of our own inadequacies, we nevertheless reject the narrative of American moral superiority,” it stated. “While many of us are critical of the Israeli government, one cannot but note the hypocrisy of the call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”

The association, which is based in Arlington, Va., was founded in 1902 and is “the world’s largest scholarly and professional organization of anthropologists,” per its website. It publishes 22 journals.

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

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2023/05/10/revived-call-boycott-israeli-universities

May 10, 2023

A Revived Call to Boycott Israeli Universities

In 2016, American Anthropological Association members rejected, by a hair, a resolution “to boycott Israeli academic institutions.” The issue returns this summer.

By  Ryan Quinn

merican Anthropological Association members will vote this summer on a resolution “to boycott Israeli academic institutions,” after a similar effort failed by just 39 votes in 2016.

A group called the Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions says on its website that 206 members of the American Anthropological Association requested a full membership vote on the new resolution.

“Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the Israeli state’s regime of oppression against Palestinians, including by providing research and development of military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians,” the proposed resolution states. It links to a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement website’s criticism of, among other institutions, Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.

The resolution also says, “Israeli academic institutions do not provide protections for academic freedom, campus speech in support of Palestinian human and political rights, nor for the freedom of association of Palestinian students on their campuses.”

In an email, the group said, “There hasn’t been a simple ‘reviving’ [of the resolution], but the mobilization has been ongoing and intensified by the 2022 and 2023 apartheid reports from mainstream organizations, also due to the ramping up of abuses of Palestinians’ academic freedom by Israel.”

“Should AAA members pass a resolution in support of academic boycott, this would require the AAA as an organization to suspend official ties with Israeli academic institutions—but not individual Israeli scholars and students,” the group says. “For example, this would involve the AAA not running ads or promotions for academic programs at Israeli institutions, such as Haifa University, which has been criticized for its collaborations with the Israeli military and involvement in human rights violations against Palestinians.”

Jeff Martin, spokesman for the American Anthropological Association, said that if at least 50 members petition the organization’s executive board, a resolution can go before the full membership. That’s the route this year’s effort took.

“We are encouraging our members to inform themselves about the likely impacts of their vote on Israeli government policies and practices, on the Palestinian people and on the association, and vote accordingly,” he said. The electronic vote will take place June 15 to July 14.

The 2016 resolution came about differently. At the association’s annual business meeting the prior year, Martin said, there was a 1,040-to-136 vote to put that resolution before the whole membership.

The roughly 4,800 members who then voted in 2016 represented 51 percent of the association’s eligible members, “the largest turnout in AAA history,” Martin said. They rejected the resolution, 2,384 to 2,423.

Cary Nelson, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has been working against the resolution, said adopting “a controversial, divisive political position” with a low voter turnout would be a “hollow” victory that “splits an association.”

The Alliance for Academic Freedom, which he chairs, and the fellow Israel-defending Academic Engagement Network released a joint statement Monday opposing the resolution. It also bears the endorsements of about 90 other groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association of Scholars, the North Carolina Coalition for Israel, Partners for Progressive Israel and StandWithUs.

“Back in 2016, the AAA’s full membership was also asked to endorse a similarly deeply divisive measure and voted against a boycott,” the statement says. “Seven years later, the principles at stake are unchanged and cutting off relationships with Israeli universities is more ill-advised than ever.”

“The resolution’s claim that an academic boycott ‘pertains to Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars’ is untenable and has proven inadequate in preventing discrimination against Israeli academics,” the statement says. “Indeed, the boycott of Israel’s universities cannot be meaningfully separated from the faculty and students who work, teach and study in them.”

“Israel’s academics have long been among the most vocal critics of the Israeli state and its society,” the statement says. “An academic boycott would undercut the important work for peace and social justice being undertaken by many Israeli academics, as well as constructive and potentially transformative efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian scholars together on joint projects.”

Nelson did say, “The situation has changed now,” primarily because of opposition to Israeli policies he himself opposes, like the recent proposed judiciary changes that set off protests across Israel.

“Our argument is that people shouldn’t use the opposition to government policies as a reason to attack Israeli universities, which by and large are opposed to those policies,” he argued.

He also said, “We worry that if the AAA votes in favor of an academic boycott, it may spread to other organizations” that have been “quiet” on this issue in recent years.

“This could open the floodgates again, and I personally would like to do my scholarship,” he said.

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

About

About

Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic institutions works in support of justice and human rights in Israel/Palestine.

Our organizers and supporters are scholars working in all major sub-fields of the discipline, including tenure-track and adjunct faculty, graduate students, post-docs, and practitioners.

The campaign is managed by an organizing collective, whose members include:

Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard College and Columbia University
Lara Deeb, Scripps College
Ilana Feldman, George Washington University
Lisa Rofel, UC Santa Cruz
Ajantha Subramanian, Harvard University

For media and other queries, write to anthroboycott [at] gmail dot com.

The campaign acts in consultation with and under the guidance of an advisory group, whose members include:

Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University
Talal Asad, CUNY Graduate Center
Glenn Bowman, University of Kent
Brian Boyd, Columbia University
Karen Brodkin, UCLA
Steven Caton, Harvard University
Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University
Donald Donham, UC Davis
Abou Farman Farmaian, New School for Social Research
James Ferguson, Stanford University
Les Field, University of New Mexico
Roberto Gonzalez, San Jose State University
Sondra Hale, UCLA
Thomas Blom Hansen, Stanford University
Engseng Ho, Duke University
Rhoda Kanaaneh, Columbia University
Ahmed Kanna, University of the Pacific
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Wesleyan University
Saba Mahmood, UC Berkeley
Joseph Masco, University of Chicago
Sunaina Maira, UC Davis
Nadine Naber, University of Illinois at Chicago
Julie Peteet, University of Louisville
Jemima Pierre, UCLA
David Price, Saint Martin’s University
Junaid Rana, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Daniel Segal, Pitzer College
Michael Taussig, Columbia University
Erica Williams, Spelman College

* Institutions listed for identification purposes only

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

“Yes, but…”

“Yes, but…”

This website is intended to enable and encourage individual anthropologists to join the boycott of Israeli institutions, as called for by Palestinian civil society. We oppose the state of Israel’s widespread, systematic, and long-standing violations of the rights of the Palestinian people, especially the right to education. Those of us with ties to the United States in particular feel compelled to act due to Washington’s unconditional military, financial, and political support for Israel’s acts.

Some colleagues may share the boycott’s concerns but still have reservations about joining. Below we address some of these reservations.

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“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions but I don’t want to boycott individual Israeli scholars.”

This objection is unfounded. The boycott targets academic institutions only. The boycott does not apply to individuals. Nor is it directed at Jews or Israelis.

The boycott of Israeli academic institutions entails a “pledge not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.” Cooperation and exchange with individual scholars is encouraged, so long as it does not happen on the grounds of or through the auspices of an Israeli academic institution.

Under the boycott, individual Israeli scholars can still be invited to conferences outside Israel, publish in academic journals outside Israel, and the like. The guidelines are flexible: for example, because we do not call on Israelis to boycott their own institutions, an Israeli scholar with state funds can still be invited to a conference abroad. For more information, see the guidelines published by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel.

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 “Yes I oppose Israel’s actions, but cannot in principle boycott academic institutions.”

This objection is not an argument against this boycott; it is a blanket position against all academic boycotts that would also preclude, for example, the academic boycott against apartheid South Africa. We hold that academic boycotts can be legitimate tools for social change and wish to convince colleagues that this is such an instance.

We are boycotting Israeli academic institutions because they are an extension of a state whose policies we wish to affect and because we take as a starting point for change our own professional location as anthropologists.

Israeli universities are very much part of the state, including its military-security complex. Israeli universities are directly complicit in and at times willingly support violations of Palestinian rights and academic freedom. Some, like Ariel University and parts of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, are built directly on occupied Palestinian lands. Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University, and the Technion develop the technological capacities and military doctrines that are used in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya has set up programs where students gain course credit for defending the state’s wars and policies to an increasingly skeptical public. Among the targets of these doctrines and technologies are Palestinian universities.

Israeli academic institutions actively discriminate against their own Palestinian students. Israeli universities provide preferential admissions, scholarship, and even housing on the basis of military service. Because the vast majority of Palestinians do not perform military service, they experience de facto discrimination at all educational levels.

Israel enjoys close ties at the governmental and non-governmental levels with the United States and many countries in Europe, including academic ties. As anthropologists, we are in a position to disrupt those relationships as a means of signaling to Israel that its actions are not legitimate and that we refuse to carry on “business as usual” under these circumstances.

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“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions, but a boycott would undermine attempts to change Israeli society from within because many Israeli scholars are critics of the state’s actions.”

This objection assumes that any boycott is invalid if it inconveniences or otherwise adversely affects anyone who is not directly responsible for the harms being protested. We assume that boycotts can still be legitimate if they are reasonable under the circumstances and wish to persuade colleagues that this is the case here.

There are courageous scholars in Israel who oppose their state’s actions. We wish to support these allies and as mentioned above, the boycott does not preclude collaboration with them.

At the same time, critics of the boycott often point to the existence of any dissent within Israeli universities as a blanket argument against all boycott efforts. Yet decades of “engagement” with Israeli academic institutions (often in the name of nurturing dissent) have not succeeded in producing any appreciable positive change from within. Israeli academia is not only part of the state but acts to defend it against outside critique. So far, the Israeli Anthropological Association’s most notable action in this regard has been to attack the American Anthropological Association merely for permitting panels that discuss the boycott. As an important dissenting letter by Israeli colleagues points out, “the IAA [Israeli Anthropological Association] has never, as a body, dissociated itself from the Israeli society-military complex.”

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“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions, but this boycott is unbalanced since both sides have done wrong.”

This objection ignores the root lack of “balance” in Israel/Palestine: the state of Israel exercises supreme authority from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and subjects Palestinians to occupation, exile, or second-class citizenship, not the other way around. Moreover, the United States government provides Israel with advanced weapons, unconditional diplomatic support, and billions of dollars of annual assistance, far more than it does to any other state. Indeed, Israel’s attacks on Palestinian universities are conducted with aircraft and bombs supplied by the United States.

A “balanced” boycott makes no sense in an unbalanced situation. Israeli universities enjoy the legitimacy of close ties with their counterparts in the U.S. and Europe. Palestinian universities must contend with siege, arrest raids, and aerial bombardment by Israeli forces with U.S. military and political assistance. The academic boycott is a protest against this state of affairs.

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 “Yes I oppose Israel’s actions, but boycotts violate academic freedom.”

This objection is not an argument against this boycott; it is an argument against all academic boycotts.

This argument misconstrues how the boycott works. This boycott involves individuals exercising their right not to collaborate with Israeli academic institutions or participate in their activities. This does not violate anyone’s academic freedom.

Indeed, the boycott seeks to restore academic freedom, not to abridge it. Academic freedom is meaningless if it is enjoyed only by a privileged group. The occupation has made academic freedom and basic educational rights unavailable for students and faculty at Palestinian universities, and has curtailed the rights of Palestinians at Israeli universities. The Israeli government and academic institutions also routinely punish scholars – both Jews and Palestinians – who criticize the state’s policies.

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“Yes, I oppose Israel’s actions, but why aren’t you boycotting the United States or other countries that do bad things?”

One of the biggest myths about boycotts is that they are only appropriate in uniquely egregious situations or that boycotts are not valid if they do not encompass every other comparable situation in the world.

This boycott is a specific tactical call expressed in solidarity with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel. Supporting this boycott does not automatically entail accepting or rejecting any other boycotts; we encourage everyone to assess each boycott on its own terms. The American Anthropological Association did not examine the record of every hotel or beverage provider in the world before signing on to the Hyatt or Coca-Cola boycotts. Cesar Chavez did not examine every agricultural product in supermarkets before asking us to boycott grapes. When we are called to adopt a particular boycott, we should mainly ask if it is warranted and likely to be effective.

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“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions but it isn’t fair to demand that Israeli academic institutions act against their own government in order to avoid a boycott.”

This objection assumes that the main problem is how to help Israeli academic institutions, not how to end the systematic violation of Palestinian human rights.

The question that animates this boycott is not, “What can the universities do to avoid being boycotted?” but rather, “How can we, as engaged academics, support just outcomes in this situation, and put pressure on this regime?” It is true that boycotts, like strikes, are imperfect forms of collective action because they sometimes impose costs on people who are not directly responsible for the harms at issue – but their intent and effect is to call attention to the fundamental responsibility of those in power. And under the current political configuration, such a boycott would impose legitimacy costs on Israel that are worthwhile as well as on universities for their specific forms of complicity.

Positive actions by Israeli institutions would remove them from the boycott list. They could make explicit statements supporting Palestinian rights in their entirety.  Rather than coming out in support of the Gaza war and other campaigns, as many Israeli universities did, they could make statements condemning such actions. They could stop cooperating with the Israeli military, stop granting privileges and scholarships to those who have served in the army, and stop employing army officials to teach military strategies.

[Update: Nearly a year after the launch of this boycott campaign, the Israeli Anthropological Association in June 2015 issued a resolution against the boycott that also called in general terms for an end to the occupation, equality for Palestinians in Israel, and for a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. The resolution did not call for any concrete steps to end Israeli universities’ discriminatory policies or complicity with the occupation. Moreover, its criticism of the government was only issued under pressure from the boycott campaign. For more, see our statement on the IAA resolution as well as the statement of some 30 dissenting Israeli anthropologists.]

It is important to note that the demands of the boycott are purposefully broad because all complicity with the military occupation and discrimination against Palestinians needs to end.

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“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions but the boycott’s demands are not feasible. The boycott will be ineffective, since Israeli universities and academics can’t oppose their government.”

No program for political change can predict whether or when it might achieve its goals. This boycott is an attempt to pressure the state of Israel to change its behavior. Lack of accountability for Israel’s systematic discriminatory activity and policies is what has allowed the occupation to persist for forty-seven years. This boycott is a demand for accountability. Taking a public stance in favor of this boycott is also a means for opening up conversation about the United States’ unwavering support of Israel’s occupation.

Of course, no individual Israeli citizen can single-handedly change the behavior of their government. But since Israel claims to be a democracy, it is incumbent upon universities and their scholars to speak out against their government’s decisions and actions that negatively affect academic freedom and other rights of Palestinians living under its rule. Much of the Israeli academy actively supports, and materially and practically nurtures, the military occupation. This boycott is an attempt to put pressure on those institutions.

25.05.23

Editorial Note

At the end of this month, Moshe Zuckermann, a Prof. Emeritus at Tel Aviv University’s History and Philosophy of Science Institute, will speak via Zoom at two events in Switzerland organized by Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.

The meetings, to be held on 30 May in Basel and on 31 May in Zurich, are titled “The Right Wing and Repression in Europe.” According to the invitation, the discussion will be on “Israel is currently experiencing a massive shift to the right and violence against the Palestinian population continues to escalate. At the same time, pro-Palestinian activism in Europe, especially in the German-speaking world, is increasingly criminalized and anti-Zionist Jewish voices are marginalized.”

Samidoun’s website explains that “Palestinian prisoners are at the center of the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine – they represent the imprisonment of a people and a nation. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement has always been at the center of the Palestinian liberation movement and remains so today. Palestinian prisoners stand and struggle on the front lines daily for return and liberation for all of Palestine and all Palestinians. The Canadian and U.S. governments are deeply complicit and directly implicated in the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the crimes of the Israeli state. Rather than standing for human rights, they enable, fund, and support occupation, apartheid, mass imprisonment, land confiscation, dispossession and settlement-building. In response, it is our responsibility to create grassroots accountability, raise awareness, and take action to those Palestinian prisoners who daily struggle for the freedom of their homeland – and the freedom of the oppressed of the world.”

Zuckermann has a long history of appearing in pro-Palestinian events. IAM reported before on some of them. 

Last year, a website providing News In Germany in English reported an event in which Zuckermann took part. It said “To call Moshe Zuckermann controversial is an understatement. The sociologist, son of Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors and supporter of critical theory, regularly offends people with his polemics against Israel and against German ‘anti-Semites’, who defend the Jewish state against criticism. Above all, the Jewish scientist attacks the Israeli settlement policy. Zuckermann repeatedly claims that there is apartheid towards non-Jews in Israel. Many consider this opinion to be unfounded – and quite a few even anti-Semitic themselves.”

The News In Germany website accused Zuckermann of regularly defending the pro-Palestinian BDS movement. “On Thursday, Moshe Zuckermann will appear in Frankfurt, in a hall in the Südbahnhof that belongs to the municipal Saalbau Betriebsgesellschaft – although Frankfurt does not actually want to rent any rooms to organizers who are close to the BDS. In 2017, the city parliament passed a corresponding, so-called BDS resolution: enemies of Israel should not receive any financial grants or rooms from the city. However, a judgment by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig now practically overrides this decision. A BDS supporter had sued the city of Munich, which had decided similar to that of Frankfurt, because they did not want to rent out event rooms to him. He failed his lawsuit before the Munich administrative court, but the higher court in Leipzig agreed with him: A blanket ban on BDS events violates freedom of expression, the judges ruled. The Frankfurter Saalbau Betriebsgesellschaft therefore announced that it would again rent out to organizers from the BDS environment.” 

Zuckermann’s discussion was entitled “Apartheid in Israel too – not just in the occupied territories?”. As News In Germany reported, it was organized by the “Working Group Near East Bremen,” the Palestinian Community of Hesse and the Frankfurt Palestine Forum. “The Frankfurt branch of Amnesty International is also promoting the event, but has toned down the provocative title in its announcement. The Amnesty website no longer speaks of apartheid’ but of ‘ethnic discrimination’.” 

Zuckerman’s participation at the Samidoun event is not surprising. Like many of his pro-Palestinian comrades in Israeli academia, Zuckermann is a master of one-sided rhetoric which absolves the Palestinians from gross mistakes which contributed to their situation today. IAM repeatedly documented these facts: flirting with Nazi Germany during WWII; refusing to accept the UN Partition Proposal; launching a war; and, more recently, refusing to sign the Oslo Peace Agreement. Zuckermann and his colleagues should have listened to the IDF evaluation on the extent of the Iranian grip on the Palestinian territories via Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tehran, and to a lesser extent, Hamas. As could be expected, Zuckermann had nothing to say about the appalling human rights situation in Gaza, which is run by a brutal dictatorship, and the West Bank, under the undemocratic control of kleptocracy.  

Israeli academic activists should speak out about the brutality inflicted on the Palestinians by their leaders. Instead, they whitewash the Gaza Strip and the West Bank situation to trash Israel. 

References: 

https://samidoun.net/2023/05/30-may-basel-31-may-zurich-the-right-wing-and-repression-in-europe/

Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

• Events

30 May, Basel & 31 May, Zurich: The Right Wing and Repression in Europe

23 May 2023

Israel is currently experiencing a massive shift to the right and violence against the Palestinian population continues to escalate. At the same time, pro-Palestinian activism in Europe, especially in the German-speaking world, is increasingly criminalized and anti-Zionist Jewish voices are marginalized. Moshe Zuckermann, Dror Dayan, Tarek and a comrade from Samidoun Geneva will talk about these developments.

With: Dror Dayan, Tarek (FOR-Palestine), Samidoun Geneva und Moshe Zuckerman (Online)

Basel: 
Tuesday, 30 May 
7pm 
Gewerkschaftshaus 
Rebgasse 1 

Zürich: 
Wednesday, 31 May 
7:30 pm 
Volkshaus 
Stauffacherstrasse 60 

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https://samidoun.net/about-samidoun/

About Samidoun

Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom. Samidoun developed out of the September-October 2011 hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, seeing a need for a dedicated network to support Palestinian prisoners. We work to raise awareness and provide resources about Palestinian political prisoners, their conditions, their demands, and their work for freedom for themselves, their fellow prisoners, and their homeland. We also work to organize campaigns to make political change and advocate for Palestinian prisoners’ rights and freedoms.

Samidoun seeks to achieve justice for Palestinian prisoners through events, activities, resources, delegations, research and information-sharing, as well as building bridges with the prisoners’ movement in Palestine. We seek to amplify the voices of Palestinian prisoners, former prisoners, prisoners’ families, and Palestinian advocates for justice and human rights by translating, sharing and distributing news, interviews and materials from Palestine.

We work to organize annually for April 17, the Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Political Prisoners, organizing rallies, events and actions and distributing news and alerts about actions around the world marking April 17.

Palestinian prisoners are on the front lines of the Palestinian struggle for liberation on a daily basis. In the jails of occupation, Palestinian prisoners confront the oppressor and the occupier, and put their bodies and lives on the line to continue their people’s struggle to achieve justice and freedom for the land and people of Palestine. Within the prisons, the Palestinian prisoners’ movement engages in political struggle – demanding their rights, securing advances, and serving as leaders to the entire Palestinian movement, inside and outside Palestine. The Israeli occupation has criminalized all forms of Palestinian existence and Palestinian resistance – from peaceful mass demonstrations to armed struggle to simply refusing to be silent and invisible as a Palestinian. Palestinian prisoners are men and women – and children – from every part of Palestine, from every family. Their absence is keenly felt in the homes, communities, villages, towns, labour, women’s and student organizations from which they were taken by the occupation. They suffer torture, isolation, coercive interrogation, denial of family and lawyers’ visits, on a daily basis. And it is their hunger strikes, their calls to the world, their unity and solidarity, and their continued leadership in the Palestinian movement that must inspire us daily and remind us of our responsibility to take action.

Samidoun also stands in solidarity with Arab and international political prisoners, and, in particular, political prisoners in the United States, Canada and Europe targeted for their work with liberation struggles and freedom movements, including Arab and Palestinian movements, Native and Indigenous liberation and sovereignty struggles, Puerto Rican independentistas, Black liberation organizers, Latino and Chicano activists and many others targeted by racism, colonialism, and oppression, and we recognize the fundamental connections between imprisonment, racism, colonialism, and the criminalization of immigrants, refugees and migrants. We demand the freedom of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for over 35 years in France, for his commitment to the Palestinian struggle.

Building solidarity with Palestinian prisoners is, indeed, a responsibility. Palestinian prisoners are at the center of the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine – they represent the imprisonment of a people and a nation. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement has always been at the center of the Palestinian liberation movement and remains so today. Palestinian prisoners stand and struggle on the front lines daily for return and liberation for all of Palestine and all Palestinians. The Canadian and U.S. governments are deeply complicit and directly implicated in the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the crimes of the Israeli state. Rather than standing for human rights, they enable, fund, and support occupation, apartheid, mass imprisonment, land confiscation, dispossession and settlement-building. In response, it is our responsibility to create grassroots accountability, raise awareness, and take action to those Palestinian prisoners who daily struggle for the freedom of their homeland – and the freedom of the oppressed of the world.

Samidoun chapters, affiliates and links around the world:

• Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
• Samidoun Occupied Palestine
• Samidoun Gothenburg (Sweden)
• Samidoun Stockholm (Sweden)
• Samidoun Malmo (Sweden)
• Samidoun España
• Collectif Palestine Vaincra (France)
• Samidoun Région Parisienne
• Plate-forme Charleroi-Palestine
• Samidoun Netherlands
• Samidoun Greece
• Samidoun Deutschland
• Samidoun Hungary
• Samidoun Toronto
• Samidoun Vancouver
• Samidoun NY/NJ
• Samidoun Albuquerque
• Samidoun Brasil
• Samidoun Iran
• ACTA (France)
• Anti-Imperialist Action Ottawa
• Center for Study and Preservation of Palestine – Portland
• HIRAK: Palestinian Youth Mobilization (Germany)

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network has chapters and affiliates in the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Palestine and Lebanon and we work with groups around the world. Would you like to form a local chapter or become an affiliate? Contact us at samidoun@samidoun.net.

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https://newsingermany.com/criticism-of-bds-discussion-with-moshe-zuckermann/

Criticism of BDS discussion with Moshe Zuckermann

12 months ago

To call Moshe Zuckermann controversial is an understatement. The sociologist, son of Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors and supporter of critical theory, regularly offends people with his polemics against Israel and against German “anti-Semites”, who defend the Jewish state against criticism. Above all, the Jewish scientist attacks the Israeli settlement policy. Zuckermann repeatedly claims that there is apartheid towards non-Jews in Israel. Many consider this opinion to be unfounded – and quite a few even anti-Semitic themselves.

The fact that Zuckermann regularly defends the pro-Palestinian BDS movement also causes trouble. The acronym stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. BDS fights for an economic boycott against the Jewish state and, for example, puts pressure on musicians who perform in Israel or artists who exhibit their works in Israeli museums.

BDS lawsuit successful in court

At rallies of the BDS movement, which is primarily characterized by left-wing activists, calls have often been made to create a Palestine that reaches “from the river to the sea”. What is meant is an area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – de facto that would mean the end of Israel. But Zuckermann argues like a mantra as soon as the BDS movement is labeled anti-Semitic.

On Thursday, Moshe Zuckermann will appear in Frankfurt, in a hall in the Südbahnhof that belongs to the municipal Saalbau Betriebsgesellschaft – although Frankfurt does not actually want to rent any rooms to organizers who are close to the BDS. In 2017, the city parliament passed a corresponding, so-called BDS resolution: enemies of Israel should not receive any financial grants or rooms from the city.

However, a judgment by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig now practically overrides this decision. A BDS supporter had sued the city of Munich, which had made a decision similar to that of Frankfurt, because they did not want to rent out event rooms to him. He failed his lawsuit before the Munich administrative court, but the higher court in Leipzig agreed with him: A blanket ban on BDS events violates freedom of expression, the judges ruled. The Frankfurter Saalbau Betriebsgesellschaft therefore announced that it would again rent out to organizers from the BDS environment.

Antisemitism in art, culture and science

The discussion with Moshe Zuckermann is entitled “Apartheid in Israel too – not just in the occupied territories?”. It is organized by the “Working Group Near East Bremen”, the Palestinian Community of Hesse and the Frankfurt Palestine Forum. The Frankfurt branch of Amnesty International is also promoting the event, but has toned down the provocative title in its announcement. The Amnesty website no longer speaks of “apartheid” but of “ethnic discrimination”.

18.05.23

Editorial Note

Shlomo Sand, a Prof. Emeritus at the Dept. of History, Tel Aviv University, published an article recently, “A Second Nakba or a Binational Solution,” in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz.  Sand argued that a proposed “bi-nationalism” in 1947 did not materialize: “The war and the Nakba that occurred during it prevented its realization.” After the Six Day War of 1967, “Israel, which had expanded even further, began to create a bi-national existence again.” Today, according to Sand, “Despite the civil, legal, and political inequality, and the resulting bloody conflict, the two populations are becoming more and more integrated with each other.”

To recall, in his youth, Sand was a member of the radical left-wing group Matzpen, which tried to bring together Israeli Jews and Arabs. By trying hard to appease Arabs, a group of Matzpen activists was caught spying for Syria. The group included Udi Adiv who was recruited by the Syrian intelligence service. Sand, who was not part of the spy ring, befriended Mahmoud Darwish, the famous Palestinian poet.

As can be seen, Sand hasn’t changed his tune.  Sand wrote, “Many Israelis secretly dream of a second Nakba. They understand that the current situation cannot last much longer. The delusional right-wing partner in the current government promotes not only a boom in settlements but also a massive explosion, which will result in the deportation of the Arab population beyond the Jordan River. But Western interests in the Middle East thwart such a perspective. Deporting two to three million Palestinians to Jordan, Saudi Arabia or Egypt will probably lead to the collapse of their regimes.” This is a straw dog argument, designed to frighten the readers. A massive expulsion of the Palestinians is not on the agenda of the current government, not to mention previous governments.   

Sand’s other arguments in the article are equally specious, designed to explain why the Palestinians rejected the 1947 UN Partition Proposal. “My big surprise was when I found out that 497,000 Arabs were also supposed to belong to the Jewish state! In other words, the planned Jewish state was not really meant to be ‘Jewish,’ but much more ‘binational’. Nearly half a million Arabs were trapped in a project that nationally was not theirs, even if, at best, they would have been entitled to become ‘Israeli’ citizens in it. Therefore, it is no wonder that all the Arab institutions and movements in Palestine and the Arab world (apart from the Arab communists who were followers of Stalin) immediately opposed the partition that was perceived as unfair and started hostilities against the future Jewish state. It is likely that if the principles of the partition were reversed and inclined in favor of the Arab side, all wings of the Zionist movement, and not only the revisionist right, would reject it completely.”   

Any half-decent historian would have known that the Palestinians and their Arab supporters categorically rejected the idea of a Jewish presence under any condition.  

But then again, Sand is not a historian, and his books are mostly polemical and highly controversial. For instance, his most infamous book, The Invention of the Jewish People, argued that it was “a myth that the Romans expelled the Jewish people in the first century.” Rather they were converts who came from different countries, including Eastern Europe. While rejected by serious academic critics, Sand was embraced by the propaganda apparatus of Iran, among other enemies of Israel. His appearances on Press TV, the English language organ of the regime, attest to this fact. 

Needless to say, the Palestinians have been thrilled with Sand as well. Just a few days ago, the Palestinian news outlet, Rai Alyoum, based in London, published an article in Arabic. It cited Arab-Israeli journalist Zuhair Andrews who referred to the book The Invention of the Jewish People, stating that “Sand concludes that the Zionist historical narrative began to disintegrate at the end of the twentieth century in Israel itself and in the world and transforms to mere literary fables separated from the actual history by an abyss that is impossible to bridge,” adding that “the irrefutable archaeological facts on the ground confirm that Israel was founded on a myth and historical lies made by global Zionism to occupy Palestine to plant a strange entity that possesses military power and serves the West.” 

Another Palestinian article referred to Sand, stating, “Sand spoke one day about the friendship that brought him together with the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish on a humanitarian ground that sought love and peace for all, and admitted that Darwish had profoundly influenced his formation. And the suffering of Sand, who was serving as a soldier in the Zionist army in 67, and regretted that, as he lived dreaming of a society where love and peace prevailed. With a singing street and a lit house… I want a good heart, not loading a gun, I want a sunny day, not a crazy fascist moment of victory, I want a smiling child who laughs for the day, not a piece of the war machine.”

Sand’s new book in Hebrew, Israel-Palestine and the Question of Binationalism, is another polemical exercise.  He blames the Jews for all and sundry calamities that have befallen the Palestinians without explaining the historical origin of the conflict, namely the rejection of the UN partition proposal. Moreover, Sand does not bother to explain that the Palestinian Islamists, with support from Iran, sabotaged the Oslo Peace process. If Sand were a historian, as he claimed to be, he would have researched the large volume of literature on the role of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas in abrogating Oslo.  

Sadly, Sand has used his academic credentials as a professor of history at Tel Aviv University to push his polemics. He is not the only one, as IAM frequently pointed out.  

References:

https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2023-05-04/ty-article-opinion/.premium/00000187-e6a2-d8a1-a1cf-e6af07f40000

Yehudith Harel

5 May at 09:54

  · 

*נכבה שנייה או פתרון דו לאומי*

מאת שלמה זנד

הארץ, 5.5.23

בסוף כל משפט שאתם אומרים בעברית יושב ערבי עם נרגילה”, שורר בזמנו מאיר אריאל. ברוח זו אפשר לומר, שבשולי כל שיח על הקונפליקט הלאומי הכאוב שלנו עדיין רובצת לה הנכבה. 75 שנים עברו, והפלסטינים עדיין לא שכחו. 75 שנים, והישראלים עדיין אינם רוצים לזכור. מה עוד, שכולנו משוכנעים מעבר לכל ספק שהיתה זו אשמתם של הערבים: הרי הם פתחו במלחמה שהמיטה עליהם את אסונם.

אם עד שנות ה–90 של המאה הקודמת נהוג היה להכחיש את אופי הנכבה — לטעון בביטחון שהפליטים כלל לא גורשו והתעמולה הערבית היא שדחפה אותם לנוס, הרי מאז שהתפרסמו המחקרים של בני מוריס, אילן פפה ואחרים השתנתה הגישה: רבים התוודעו למעשי הגירוש ואפילו לשאיפות לא מוסתרות לטרנספר שעמדו מאחוריהם. ועם זאת, דבר אחד נותר יציב ושריר גם בחוגים ליברליים בעלי מצפון ומלאי הבנה: נכון שנעשה עוול, אך סירובם העיקש של הערבים לקבל את החלטת האו”ם 181 מ–29 בנובמבר 1947, שהציעה את חלוקת הארץ, והעובדה שהם פתחו בהתקפה רבתי על היישוב העברי הצעיר — הם שהוליכו לטרגדיה.

אודה על האמת, אף אני נטיתי זמן רב לקבל עקרונית את הגישה ההיסטורית הזו. כידוע, בשעה שהימין הרוויזיוניסטי דחה את הצעת החלוקה, כל השמאל אימץ אותה, אפילו השמאל היהודי הלא־ציוני. אפילו סטאלין תמך באותם ימים בהתלהבות בהקמת מדינה יהודית, ואף ציווה על כל גרורותיה של ברית המועצות ועל חסידיו המקומיים לתמוך בחלוקה. ידעתי שעשור וחצי מאוחר יותר, עם הצטרפותן של מדינות קולוניאליות לשעבר לאו”ם, קרוב לוודאי ההחלטה הגורלית לא היתה מתקבלת, לכן חשבתי שטוב שהכרונולוגיה היתה כזו, מדינת ישראל הרי הוקמה ב”נס” ברגע האחרון.

כמו רבים לא התעמקתי בעיקרי החלטת החלוקה. ידעתי בשלב מוקדם למדי שמבחינה טריטוריאלית ההחלטה העניקה יותר שטח ליהודים (62%), אך גם ידעתי שחלק גדול ממנו היה מדברי. ב–1947 היו בפלשתינה המנדטורית יותר ממיליון ורבע ערבים וכ–600 אלף יהודים, כלומר 67% ילידים מקומיים ו–33% מתיישבים, שרובם המכריע היו מהגרים חדשים יחסית. החלטת החלוקה לקחה בחשבון שעקורים יהודים נוספים יגיעו בשנים הבאות מהמחנות בגרמניה. רוב המדינות שתמכו בחלוקה לא רצו אותם בשטחן, ונוח היה להן לתמוך בהקמת מדינה יהודית במבואות העולם הערבי.

אולם מה היו עקרונות החלוקה הדמוגרפית של ההחלטה? בשטחה של המדינה הערבית המיועדת היו אמורים להיכלל 725 אלף ערבים ו–10,000 יהודים. ובשטח המדינה היהודית היו אמורים להיכלל 598 אלף יהודים, לכל הדעות מספר הגיוני למדי. הפתעתי הגדולה היתה כשגיליתי שהיו אמורים להשתייך למדינה היהודית גם 497 אלף ערבים! כלומר המדינה היהודית המתוכננת לא ממש נועדה להיות “יהודית”, אלא הרבה יותר “דו־לאומית”.

קרוב לחצי מיליון ערבים היו לכודים בפרויקט שמבחינה לאומית לא היה שלהם, גם אם במקרה הטוב הם היו זכאים להפוך בו לאזרחים “ישראלים”. לכן אין זה פלא שכל המוסדות והתנועות הערביים, בפלשתינה ובעולם הערבי (מלבד הקומוניסטים הערבים חסידי סטאלין), התנגדו מיידית לחלוקה שנתפשה כלא הוגנת, ופתחו בפעולות איבה נגד המדינה היהודית העתידית. סביר להניח שאילו עקרונות החלוקה היו הפוכים ונוטים לטובת הצד הערבי, כל אגפי התנועה הציונית, ולא רק הימין הרוויזיוניסטי, היו דוחים אותה מכל וכל.

ה”דו־לאומית” של 1947 לא התממשה. המלחמה והנכבה שהתרחשה במהלכה מנעו את מימושה. למרות שרוב האוכלוסייה המקומית של איכרים ערבים לא השתתפה בקרבות בפועל, כ–750 אלף מהם נעקרו ונאלצו לנטוש את אדמותיהם בשטח ישראל, שגבולותיה התרחבו, ורק כ–150 אלף מהם נותרו בשטחה.

ב–1967, ישראל, שהתרחבה עוד יותר, החלה שוב ליצור הוויה דו־לאומית. 150 אלף הערבים שנותרו בה ב–1948 נהפכו כיום לשני מיליון, וליותר מ–21% מאזרחי ישראל. בגדה המערבית ובמזרח ירושלים חיים תחת שלטון צבאי ישראלי עוד כ–3.25 מיליון פלסטינים, וברצועת עזה 2.25 מיליון נוספים. יחד — כ–7.5 מיליון פלסטינים. מספר זהה של ישראלים לא ערבים חיים בין הים לירדן (לא רחוק היום שקרוב למיליון מהם יתגוררו מעבר לקו הירוק). למרות האי־שוויון האזרחי, המשפטי והפוליטי, והקונפליקט המדמם הנובע מכך, שתי האוכלוסיות הולכות ומשתלבות זו בזו יותר ויותר.

ישראלים רבים חולמים בחשאי על נכבה שנייה, הם מבינים שהמצב הנוכחי לא יכול להימשך עוד זמן רב. הימין ההזוי השותף בשלטון הנוכחי מקדם לא רק תנופה בהתנחלויות אלא גם פיצוץ רבתי, שיביא לגירוש האוכלוסייה הערבית אל מעבר לנהר הירדן. אבל האינטרסים המערביים במזרח התיכון מסכלים פרספקטיבה מעין זו. גירוש שניים־שלושה מיליון פלסטינים לירדן, לסעודיה או למצרים יביא ככל הנראה להתמוטטות המשטרים בהן.

צרפת לשווייץ

בדרכי לז’נבה, ישבה מולי צעירה שווייצרית דוברת צרפתית. בהתקרב הרכבת ז’נבה, שאלתי אותה באיזו תחנה לרדת כדי להגיע למזרח העיר. היא ציינה בפני את שם התחנה, ואגב כך שאלה, בגלל מבטאי, מאין אני. עניתי לה שמישראל. כעבור כמה דקות היא חייכה והוסיפה בהומור: “תיזהר, אם תפספס את התחנה ותמשיך הלאה, תיפול ישר לידי הגרמנים”.

*פרופ’ זנד הוא היסטוריון. ספרו “ישראל־פלסטין ושאלת הדו־לאומיות” ראה אור באחרונה בהוצאת רסלינג*

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ישראל-פלסטין ושאלת הדו-לאומיות

ישראל-פלסטין ושאלת הדו-לאומיות

מאת:שלמה זנד

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ההשתלבות ההולכת וגדלה בין האוכלוסייה הישראלית והאוכלוסייה הפלסטינית נראית היום כבלתי ניתנת להתרה. יותר ויותר אנשי רוח, עיתונאים וסופרים שואלים את עצמם האם הסיסמה “שתי מדינות לשני עמים” עדיין ברת-תוקף ומהי מידת הכנות והיושרה הפוליטית להמשיך ולשאת אותה. מעטים, לעומת זאת, יודעים שרעיונות ביחס לפתרונות דו-לאומיים נולדו כבר עם ראשית הופעתו של החזון הציוני. מאחד-העם עד גרשום שולם, ממרטין בובר עד חנה ארנדט, ולאחרונה ממירון בנבנישתי עד א”ב יהושע, בכל שלב של התפתחותה ונפתוליה של ההגות הפוליטית קמו אנשים שהטילו ספק האם מדינה יהודית קטנה ובלעדית, מנוכרת לסביבתה ומסוגרת מול המזרח הערבי הגדול, מהווה מענה נכון למצוקותיהם של יהודים נרדפים בעידן המודרני. האם מלכתחילה אי-הכללתה של האוכלוסייה הילידית בתמונת העולם העתידית הייתה נבונה דיה? האם ניתן היה אי-פעם להפריד באמת בין שני העמים שהלכו והתהוו תוך קונפליקט אלים וכואב בין הים לירדן?

בתקופה הנוכחית הקיום הלא-שוויוני של שני העמים החיים תחת שלטון אחד הוא מציאות המתדרדרת למצב של אפרטהייד. 875.000 הישראלים החיים מעבר ל”קו הירוק” (500.00 בהתנחלויות ו-375.000 במזרח ירושלים) הם בעלי זכויות אזרח מלאות. שכניהם, לעומת זאת, חסרי ריבונות עצמית ונטולי כל הגנה אזרחית ומשפטית. אי-שוויון בסיסי זה המתקיים כבר למעלה מיובל שנים מייצר שוב ושוב אלימות מדממת ועלול להסתיים בקטסטרופה. האם נותר עדיין זמן לשנות את המגמה? האם ישראלים ופלסטינים עשויים יום אחד לחיות בשלום אזרחי ובשוויון פוליטי תחת מסגרת משותפת?

בספר מרתק ורב-ערך זה להבנת אפשרות התנהלותנו במרחב מעלה שלמה זנד את הסוגייה שרובנו מעדיפים להתעלם ממנה: היות ולא ניתן לחלק ארץ, האם אין להתחיל צעד אחר צעד, למרות הקשיים והמהמורות, ללמוד להתחלק בריבונות עליה?

שלמה זנד הוא היסטוריון ופרופסור אמריטוס באוניברסיטת תל אביב. מבין ספריו שתורגמו לשפות רבות ניתן למנות את “הקולנוע כהיסטוריה” (עם עובד 2002), “מתי ואיך הומצא העם היהודי?” (רסלינג 2008), “לחיות ולמות בתל אביב” (ידיעות ספרים 2019), “קיצור תולדות השמאל בעולם” (רסלינג 2021).

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https://www.hamigdalor.co.il/item/585-1695/%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C-%D7%A4%D7%9C%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%93%D7%95-%D7%9C%D7%90%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA/

ישראל-פלסטין ושאלת הדו-לאומיות

שלמה זנד

האם ישראלים ופלסטינים עשויים יום אחד לחיות בשלום אזרחי ובשוויון פוליטי תחת מסגרת משותפת?

רעיונות ביחס לפתרונות דו-לאומיים של הסכסוך הישראלי-פלסטיני נולדו עם ראשית הופעתו של החזון הציוני. מאחד העם עד גרשום שולם, ממרטין בובר עד חנה ארנדט, ולאחרונה ממירון בנבנישתי עד א”ב יהושע, בכל שלב של התפתחותה ונפתוליה של ההגות הפוליטית קמו אנשים שהטילו ספק האם מדינה יהודית קטנה ובלעדית, מנוכרת לסביבתה ומסוגרת מול המזרח הערבי הגדול, היא מענה נכון למצוקותיהם של יהודים נרדפים בעידן המודרני. האם מלכתחילה אי-הכללתה של האוכלוסייה הילידית בתמונת העולם העתידית הייתה נבונה דיה? האם ניתן היה אי פעם להפריד באמת בין שני העמים שהלכו והתהוו תוך קונפליקט אלים וכואב בין הים לירדן?

בישראל-פלסטין ושאלת הדו-לאומיות מעלה ההיסטוריון ו”הילד הרע” של השמאל הישראלי, פרופסור אמריטוס שלמה זנד, סוגייה שרבים מעדיפים להתעלם ממנה: בהנחה שלא ניתן לחלק ארץ, האם אין להתחיל צעד אחר צעד, למרות הקשיים והמהמורות, ללמוד להתחלק בריבונות עליה?

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الياس فاخوري: المقاومة: نحن القضاءُ المبرمُ.. سيفٌ يَقطَعُ ويُطيحُ بالثالوث الاقدس للكيان الاسرائيلي المؤقت “الأمن والاستقرار والرخاء الاقتصادي”!

May 13, 2023

الياس فاخوري: المقاومة: نحن القضاءُ المبرمُ.. سيفٌ يَقطَعُ ويُطيحُ بالثالوث الاقدس للكيان الاسرائيلي المؤقت “الأمن والاستقرار والرخاء الاقتصادي”!

وها هو الاستاذ “زهير أندراوس” يلاقي “ديانا” وقد. اشار بالامس لكتاب “اختراع الشعب اليهوديّ” (The Invention of the Jewish People) للبروفيسور “شلومو ساند” (Shlomo Sand) من جامعة تل أبيب حيث يخلص “ساند” إنّ الرواية التاريخية الصهيونية بدأت تتفسخ في نهاية القرن العشرين في إسرائيل نفسها وفي العالم وتتحول إلى مجرد خرافات أدبية تفصلها عن التاريخ الفعلي هوة سحيقة يستحيل ردمها مضيفاً ان “الحقائق الأركيولوجية الدامغة على الأرض تؤكِّد أنّ إسرائيل أُسست على أسطورة وأكاذيب تاريخية صنعتها الصهيونية العالمية لاحتلال فلسطين لزرع كيانٍ غريبٍ يملك القوّة العسكريّة ويخدم الغرب.”

 =========================== 

Translated by Google

https://www.amad.ps/ar/post/448050

Published by the Palestinian Amad News, translated by Google.

Shlomo Sand and the Deconstruction of Zionist Myths

   09:31 2022-03-09
By Dr. Muhammad Emara Taqi Al-Din
“Israel is the most racist society in this world.. The Jewish people is a term invented in the nineteenth century.. Today’s Jews have nothing to do with the ancient Hebrews.”

These are some of the sayings of the Israeli Professor Shlomo Sand, one of the most prominent new Israeli historians at the present time, those sayings were based on serious scientific historical studies through which he was able to blow up many Zionist myths that were deepened in the global consciousness in an attempt to justify the Zionist project and claim false eligibility for the Zionists In Palestine.

Shlomo Sand was born in Austria in 1946 to a Jewish family who survived the Holocaust, then immigrated to the Zionist entity, and is now working as a professor at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of the famous trilogy (Inventing the Jewish People, Inventing the Land of Israel, How Can I no longer be a Jew).

In his most famous book, The Invention of the Jewish People, he emphasized that the Zionist talk about the Romans expelling the Jews from Palestine in the past is something for which there is no historical or archaeological evidence, and then their call to return to Palestine is invalid, as they were never there, and that the current Jews are Most of them are descendants of the historical Khazar Empire in the Caucasus region that had converted to Judaism, which refutes the well-known Zionist thesis that the Jews of the modern world are the descendants of the ancient Jews who lived in Palestine and who spread in the world after the Roman expulsion of them.

Sand asked: Why is the Torah relied upon as a true historical reference that shovels of doubt should not extend to it and that it should not be criticized despite the many myths and legends it contains? Stressing that this mistake was deliberately committed by the Zionist movement in an attempt to employ these historical religious myths to give an aura of sanctity to its political theses and to root them in the Jewish public consciousness.

Sand confirms that the historical research has confirmed that the Jews belong to many nationalities, and they are framed only by affiliation and in general with the Jewish religion, and he believes that the myth of the ethnic purity of the Jews cannot withstand serious scientific and historical research, and that it is nothing more than a Zionist invention. It was invented in the nineteenth century by the Zionists through a group of fabricated researches carried out by well-known Zionist writers. Before that, this people did not have a real existence as a group that included a single national framework. Sand says: “The fact is that, over the past two thousand years, the Jews were not a people in the sense known to the word, but they were just a religious minority.”

Rather, Shlomo Sand confirmed that all the efforts of the Israeli antiquities committees were in vain, as they did not discover anything that reinforces the Zionist myths, but rather what was discovered confirms the opposite.

And that if we arrange the world as it was two thousand years ago, as Zionism did and granted the Jews the right to Palestine, then why don’t we return the Arabs to Spain and everyone who settled in a country in a certain historical era and other similar cases that are full of human history.

Shlomo Sand moves on to direct another stab at the term Land of Israel, stressing that this concept was newly invented as part of the Zionist colonial project to give it religious justifications. Peoples and nationalities, and then he wonders: Did the Jews suddenly wake up due to the efforts of the Zionists, only to discover that they had made a mistake on their way to Palestine? And then they have to turn to it strongly and intensively to establish their historical homeland, as the Zionists, according to Sand, dealt with the Torah as a binding legal document and a historical title deed according to which they must be granted Palestine on which to establish their state.

Zionism fabricated a lot of historical scientific research for this purpose, and it also twisted the neck of religious texts and re-read them in the light of its racist political ideology to justify its theses of settler colonialism.

The Zionist entity, according to Shlomo Sand, is nothing more than a colonial project to which false religious preambles have been fabricated.

The first: Employing Western persecution of the Jews and, consequently, their right to a homeland outside Europe as a way out of this persecution.

The second: Employing the imperialist colonial tendency that prevailed in Europe at the time, and then they identified a lot with what the Europeans called for at that time to set out to establish new colonies.

Through this proposition, Sand appears to be strongly influenced by his parents’ pro-communist views and against global imperialism in its colonial form.

Accordingly, he calls for making every effort to save the Zionist entity from racism that exaggerates in its inhumanity, and to abandon the idea of the chosen people, and then open the door wide for displacement in this tumultuous Arab environment, by starting to refute the historical lies promoted by the Zionists, and even disavow them in a way Full recognition of the existence of indigenous inhabitants of this place (Palestine), and dealing with them as owners of land and right.

Sand believes, according to what the researcher Mervat Auf reported, that the Zionist entity is like a foundling child, and his analysis of that is that the Zionist gangs committed a sinful act, which is the usurpation of Palestine in 1948, so this Zionist entity emerged from the womb of that rape and as a result of it, and that this foundling child (the Zionist entity ) If he wants to live and then continue his existential continuity as a state, he must stop following the criminal behavior of his rapist father and announce his absolute disavowal of this act.

Shlomo Sand also argues that the racist regime in Israel is very similar, and even more horrible, than the outdated racist regime (apartheid) in South Africa, and that Israel is the state It is one of the most racist societies, as he saw that the victory of Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967 was what led to the growth of the Zionist ego and the liberation of the tendency to worship and glorify the power and excessive violence among its inhabitants as a satanic force from its bottle, so it exaggerated its crime against the Palestinians, and then called to save Israel from itself before the great collapse by forcing it by all means to choose the option of peace with the continuous and escalating pressure on it from the international community.

He also called for Israel to renounce its racism and become a state for all the citizens who live within it by establishing a democratic, bi-national state and completely abandoning the Jewish thesis of the state, that racist thesis in its depth.

With regard to the policy of building illegal settlements pursued by the Zionist entity, Sand believes that this matter does not concern him much because the existence of Israel as a whole is illegal, as it is like a large illegal settlement, as it was established by force after the extermination of the indigenous population.

In 2012, Shlomo Sand received a number of threats, as a sealed envelope came to him that included white powder and an explicit death threat message as belonging to the Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism, and the message stated: “Make sure that you do not live any longer.”

In his latest book, “How I Stopped Being a Jew,” Sand disavows the racist, ethnic convictions dormant in the depths of the Jewish personality, stressing that that position is a moral commitment that he pledged himself to years ago, although with this proposition he swims in the opposite direction and against a sweeping stream of racism and chauvinism. within Israeli society.

Then we find him repeating the words of the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmat, those words full of general human concern: “If I do not burn, and if you do not burn, then who will enlighten the darkness for others?”

Hence, he calls for a general human vision and formula that accommodates everyone and puts them on an equal footing.

Sand spoke one day about the friendship that brought him together with the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish on a humanitarian ground that sought love and peace for all, and admitted that Darwish had profoundly influenced his formation. And the suffering of Sand, who was serving as a soldier in the Zionist army in 67, and regretted that, as he lived dreaming of a society where love and peace prevailed. With a singing street and a lit house… I want a good heart, not loading a gun, I want a sunny day, not a crazy fascist moment of victory, I want a smiling child who laughs for the day, not a piece of the war machine.

In the final analysis, these are the theses, then, of Shlomo Sand, which are very much aligned with Arab convictions and are very supportive of Palestinian rights. These are the theses that were based on serious scientific research by a historian who was very consistent with himself and respected the results that his research leads to without prior bias, so he dealt with historical documents a lot. From impartiality and objectivity, and then he developed a complete conviction that the foundational statements from which Zionism was launched are false in their depth, and that they were widely promoted through the massive Zionist propaganda machine, in order to forcibly root the Zionist entity in the Palestinian reality.

11.05.23

Editorial Note

On May 7, 2023, the Israeli Government moved to incorporate more sections of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism. In 2016, the IHRA Definition was officially adopted by the then 31-member countries organization. IHRA was the first intergovernmental body to adopt a working definition of antisemitism, a project of international experts and political representatives of member countries. The Israeli Government adopted the Definition in 2017. The Definition is non-legally binding but is adopted by a growing number of countries and organizations around the world. 

Israel decided to adopt IHRA’s two new clauses, “Holocaust denial and distortion,” as well as the working definition of “anti-Roma discrimination.” Clearly, acknowledging discrimination against the Roma communities who suffered persecution by the Nazis is also important. 

In 2011 IHRA published information on Holocaust distortion titled “Understanding Holocaust Distortion: Contexts, Influences and Examples,” which explains that “Although Holocaust denial remains a significant problem in many countries both within and outside of the IHRA, Holocaust distortion is a growing and perhaps more significant challenge today. This is in part due to the fact that Holocaust distortion surfaces in different contexts, and often in ways that are not punishable by law or other measures. It is also challenging because many forms of distortion overlap with one another, or moreover may be the result of unintentional ignorance of the subject and specificity of the Holocaust. Regardless, distortion is a growing challenge because its presence lends legitimacy to more dangerous forms of denial and antisemitism. Over the course of the past decade, Holocaust distortion has grown in intensity. Geographical aspects and regional historical context play important roles in the countries dealing with the Holocaust. It must be countered through clear identification of manifestations, contexts, influences, and narratives examined in this publication.”

Worth noting is that IAM reported on Holocaust distortion before. For example, in two recent IAM posts, we discussed the “Falsification of History at the Center for the Study of the Holocaust Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.” The City University of New York (CUNY) Center for the Study of the Holocaust Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (CHGCAH) hosted seminars such as “Beyond the Settler State: Anticolonial Pasts and Futures in Palestine/Israel,” accusing Israel of executing “a settler colonial policy of violent erasure.” In another conference, “The Bedouin Village of Rah’ma: Toward Recognition and Beyond,” CHGCAH discussed Bedouins who live in unrecognized villages in Israel. Hosting irrelevant conferences under the topic of the Holocaust – is a form of Holocaust distortion. Moreover, abusing the study of the Holocaust to promote political agenda is a manifestation of Holocaust distortion.

Another IAM post on Holocaust distortion was “Brown University Watson Institute Center for Middle East Studies Provides Holocaust Reductionism and Fabrication of History.” We pointed to the webinar panel in October 2022 that discussed “The New Antisemitism and the Contemporary Middle East.” The panelists distorted the Holocaust by stating that the Palestinians are victims of Israel and therefore are victims of the Holocaust. In fact, the Palestinians were influenced by the Nazis and instigated the riots of 1936-9. Their leader, Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was a Nazi collaborator and a Palestinian unit fought with the Nazi forces in the Balkan.

There are many more examples that IAM has covered throughout the years.

It is important to note that Palestinian and pro-Palestinian academics occasionally distort the Holocaust to blame Israel for the Palestinian refusal to accept the partition plan that proposed Jewish and Palestinian States.

IAM will report on new cases of Holocaust distortion as they occur.

References:

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-710172

Israeli gov’t adopts additional sections of IHRA antisemitism definition

The IHRA definition of antisemitism was adopted already in 2017. The additional sections relate to the alliance’s decision on “Holocaust denial and distortion” and anti-Roma discrimination.

By ZVIKA KLEIN

Published: MAY 7, 2023 18:01

Updated: MAY 7, 2023 22:04

The Israeli government on Sunday adopted a number of additional sections of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism that deal with “distortion and denial of the Holocaust,” as well as the “working definition of anti-Roma discrimination,” according to a joint statement by the Foreign Ministry and the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism was adopted already in 2017. The additional sections adopted on Sunday relate to the alliance’s decision on “Holocaust denial and distortion,” as received by the IHRA in 2013 as well as the working definition for “anti-Roma discrimination,” received in October 2020.

The IHRA definition has already been adopted by countries across the world. Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said that “the decision adopted today by the government will strengthen Israel’s standing in the international arena and help in the fight against antisemitism, as well as the fight against distortion and Holocaust denial.”

He added that “while the entire world is dealing with antisemitism, the Israeli government is sending a clear message. We must fight the distortion and denial of the Holocaust with all of the tools that are at our disposal.” He concluded that the Foreign Affairs Ministry and Israel’s embassies around the world “are committed to the daily fight against antisemitism and the preservation of the memory of the Holocaust.”

IHRA definition: One of the most essential tools to fight antisemitism

“The IHRA definition is currently one of the most essential and strategic tools for the fight against antisemitism, with an emphasis on ‘new antisemitism’ that strives to deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel to exist.”Amichai Chikli

Diaspora Affairs and the Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli added that “the IHRA definition is currently one of the most essential and strategic tools for the fight against antisemitism, with an emphasis on ‘new antisemitism’ that strives to deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel to exist.”

Chikli said that the “decision will help Israel in its efforts to get organizations and countries to withdraw their recognition of the BDS movement’s decisions concerning, among other things, the denial of the Holocaust.”

According to Chikli, the move “will help Israel in its efforts to get organizations and countries to withdraw their recognition of the BDS movement’s decisions concerning, among other things, the denial of the Holocaust.” In addition, the decision to add reference to the denial and distortion of the Holocaust “is very important, especially regarding the phenomenon of attributing positive attributes to the Holocaust, such as the false representation that the State of Israel was established thanks to the Holocaust – a statement that prime minister David Ben-Gurion fought against in the early years of the state.” Chikli asked to “congratulate the Foreign Affairs Minister and the people of his office on this joint decision.”

IHRA was established in 2000 at the initiative of then-Swedish prime minister Göran Persson. 35 countries are members of the alliance and 10 additional countries, as well as organizations, are observers and partners. Israel has been a member of the alliance since its foundation.

As part of the work of the experts in the organization, a number of basic definitions were drafted and adopted to deal with phenomena and issues that pose challenges at the international level for the preservation of the memory of the Holocaust, Nazi crimes and the fight against antisemitism.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism was adopted by the Israeli government in Resolution No. 2315 on January 22, 2017 and has since been used as an important tool in the work of Israel’s ministries and missions around the world in the international fight against antisemitism and the effort to promote Holocaust remembrance.

The IHRA definition for Holocaust distortion and denial, adopted in 2013, is intended to equip countries and entities with the tools to deal with the phenomenon of Holocaust denial. The definition is an expression of recognition by countries and organizations of the need to denounce distortion and denial of the Holocaust at the national and international level.

The IHRA definition of discrimination against the Roma people received in 2020, is intended to help deal with widespread hatred that also manifested itself in World War II, during which Nazi Germany marked this group for persecution and mass murder.

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https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0zHs94ajAffDr2LVMGAuGMSz2hN4NrqM8iQCeASk42tT7YwJh9firo7B3PpR7Yri6l&id=100064630724554

Ministry of Diaspora Affairs משרד התפוצות 

7 May at 19:36  · 

נלחמים באנטישמיות ובהכחשת השואה – ביוזמת משרד החוץ ומשרד התפוצות והמאבק באנטישמיות, ממשלת ישראל אימצה היום את הגדרת הברית הבינ”ל לשימור זכר השואה (IHRA) העוסקת ב”עיוות והכחשת שואה” ואת ההגדרה ל”אפליה כנגד הצוענים/בני הרומה”.

אימוץ ההגדרות בהחלטת ממשלה ייתן בידי כלל הגורמים העוסקים במאבק באנטישמיות כלים חשובים על מנת לעורר מודעות לנושאים אלה בקרב קהלים וארגונים כמו גם בקרב קובעי מדיניות.

שר התפוצות והמאבק באנטישמיות עמיחי שיקלי:

“הגדרת IHRA היא כיום אחד הכלים הכי חיוניים ואסטרטגיים למאבק באנטישמיות, בדגש על האנטישמיות החדשה החותרת לשלילת הלגיטימציה של מדינת ישראל להתקיים.

ההחלטה תסייע לישראל במאמציה להביא לכך שארגונים ומדינות יסוגו מהכרתם בהחלטות תנועת ה-BDS הנוגעות בין היתר להכחשת השואה.

בנוסף, ההחלטה להוסיף התייחסות להכחשת ועיוות השואה היא חשובה מאוד, במיוחד בכל הנוגע לתופעת ייחוס תכונות ״חיוביות״ לשואה, דוגמת מצג השווא כביכול מדינת ישראל הוקמה בזכות השואה – אמירה שרה״מ דוד בן גוריון נלחם בה כבר בשנותיה הראשונות של המדינה. אני מבקש לברך את שר החוץ ואנשי משרדו על ההחלטה המשותפת הזו”.

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https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-710172

Knesset finally adopts IHRA definition of antisemitism

The IHRA’s working definition fits the contemporary definition of antisemitism, holding that hatred toward Israel is antisemitic.

By ZVIKA KLEIN

Published: JUNE 23, 2022 12:10

Updated: JUNE 23, 2022 20:23

The Knesset adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism on Wednesday night, joining more than a thousand governments, parliaments, bodies and organizations around the world that have already adopted it.

The proposal was passed by a majority of 33 supporters from the coalition and the opposition against five opponents, which included MKs of the Joint List party.

It was formally endorsed by the government of Israel in 2017, but never by the Knesset.

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews,” the IHRA definition states. “Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Along with the definition, the IHRA published 11 examples of antisemitism. Some of these are relevant to Israel, including “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” and “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” by “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

Contemporary definition of antisemitism

“I am proud and excited that the Knesset approved my proposal and thus joined over a thousand parliaments, organizations, local and federal governments that have adopted this definition and adopted examples of modern antisemitism, including opposition to the right of self-determination of the Jewish people. This is an important step in the battle on combating antisemitism.”MK Zvi Hauser (New Hope)

The IHRA’s working definition fits the contemporary definition of antisemitism, holding that hatred toward Israel is antisemitic.

New Hope MK Zvi Hauser, who proposed the Knesset vote, said in February he was surprised that the Knesset, unlike parliaments around the world, had not adopted the IHRA’s definition.

“I am proud and excited that the Knesset approved my proposal and thus joined over a thousand parliaments, organizations, local and federal governments that have adopted this definition and adopted examples of modern antisemitism, including opposition to the right of self-determination of the Jewish people,” he said on Thursday. “This is an important step in the battle on combating antisemitism.”

The IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism has helped guide countless governments, organizations and individuals in their efforts to identify antisemitism. The definition has also been formally adopted or endorsed by many groups, both at the national and organizational levels. As of last June, the working definition has been accepted by the European Parliament and other national and international bodies, and has been employed for internal use by a number of governmental and political institutions.

The first country to adopt the definition was the UK (2016), followed by Israel (the Israeli government), Austria, Scotland, Romania, Canada, Germany and Bulgaria in 2017.

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https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/publications/understanding-holocaust-distortion-contexts-influences-examples

Understanding Holocaust Distortion: Contexts, Influences and Examples

08.11.2021

Understanding Holocaust Distortion – Contexts, Influences and Examples – IHRA.pdf597.22 KB

Published in November 2021, the IHRA’s publication “Understanding Holocaust Distortion: Contexts, Influences and Examples” builds on previous resources to provide a strong, expert-produced and reviewed foundation on international manifestations of Holocaust distortion.

Read an excerpt of Understanding Holocaust Distortion: Contexts, Influences and Examples

Although Holocaust denial remains a significant problem in many countries both within and outside of the IHRA, Holocaust distortion is a growing and perhaps more significant challenge today. This is in part due to the fact that Holocaust distortion surfaces in different contexts, and often in ways that are not punishable by law or other measures. It is also challenging because many forms of distortion overlap with one another, or moreover may be the result of unintentional ignorance of the subject and specificity of the Holocaust. Regardless, distortion is a growing challenge because its presence lends legitimacy to more dangerous forms of denial and antisemitism.

Over the course of the past decade, Holocaust distortion has grown in intensity. Geographical aspects and regional historical context play important roles in the countries dealing with the Holocaust. It must be countered through clear identification of manifestations, contexts, influences, and narratives examined in this publication.

Contents of Understanding Holocaust Distortion: Contexts, Influences and Examples

1. What is Holocaust Distortion?
2. Historical and Geographical Contexts
3. Political Influences
4. Narratives and Examples

Join us in countering Holocaust distortion

The IHRA seeks to challenge distortion and denial of the Holocaust and the genocide of the Roma, in order to to uphold the commitments of the 2000 Stockholm Declaration and 2020 IHRA Ministerial Declaration.

Further resources on Holocaust distortion include:

• Holocaust Distortion: A Lecture by Professor Yehuda Bauer
• Recognizing and Countering Holocaust Distortion: Recommendations for Policy and Decision Makers
• The IHRA working definition on Holocaust denial and distortion, IHRA Project on Holocaust Denial and Distortion Laws and the IHRA Statement on Rehabilitation.
• The campaign #ProtectTheFacts

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https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/genocide-of-the-roma

Genocide of the Roma

An estimated 220,000 – 500,000 victims of Nazi persecution

“We, the IHRA Member Countries, remember the genocide of the Roma. We acknowledge with concern that the neglect of this genocide has contributed to the prejudice and discrimination that many Roma communities still experience today.” 

— Article 4 of the 2020 IHRA Ministerial Declaration  

The IHRA’s Committee on the Genocide of the RomaRaising awareness of the genocide of the Roma, or Porajmos, is critical to countering antigypsyism/anti-Roma discrimination. The IHRA’s interdisciplinary Committee on the Genocide of the Roma works to sensitize IHRA stakeholders to the prejudice towards Roma and Sinti before, during and after the Second World War, as well as to demonstrate the link between the history of persecution and the present situation of Roma communities.
The Committee’s efforts to advance education, remembrance, and research of this genocide are complemented by the practical tools it develops, like the working definition of antigypsyism/anti-Roma discrimination, that can help in identifying incidents and manifestations of this form of racism, in collecting data, and in supporting the development of appropriate preventative countermeasures.
The current Chair of the IHRA’s Committee on the Genocide of the Roma is Anna Míšková (Czech Republic). 
Raising awareness of the Romani genocide through education 
In addition to having co-funded the development of the educational website www.romasintigenocide.eu, a comprehensive multi-lingual online teaching resource on the genocide of the Roma and Sinti, the IHRA, though its Committee on the Genocide of the Roma, is drafting Recommendations for Teaching and Learning about the Genocide of the Roma. This formed one of the IHRA’s pledges at the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, Remember – ReAct.
Supporting remembrance of Sinti and Roma victims and survivors
The IHRA helps memorial sites and museums develop adequate exhibits and spaces of remembrance and reflection. IHRA delegations have worked to establish a permanent exhibition on the genocide of the Hungarian Roma at Camp Komárom in Hungary, and were instrumental in the closing of an industrial pig farm on the site of a former concentration camp in Lety u Pisku in the Czech Republic.  
Encouraging research on the genocide of the Roma

Emerging scholarship is helping to build more complete understanding of the persecution and genocide of European Sinti and Roma under Nazi rule, but many historical questions still remain unanswered and public awareness about the genocide remains insufficient. The IHRA’s support for research on the genocide of the Roma has taken many forms. The IHRA regularly funds research efforts of organizations around the world with IHRA Grants, published an annotated bibliography summarizing research on the topic, and organized the 50 Years of Roma Genocide Research conference.

04.05.23

Editorial Note

Recently, Prof. Elad Lapidot gave a lecture, “Jews Out of the Question: How Critical Theory Fights Anti-Semitism by Denying Judaism,” at the Watson Institute Center for Middle East Studies, Brown University. Israeli Prof. Adi Ophir organized the lecture. The talk reflected on the “role that opposition to anti-Semitism has played in shaping critical theory after the Holocaust, in authors such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou, and, most recently, Jean-Luc Nancy. My basic argument is that post-Holocaust critical theory diagnosed the fundamental evil of anti-Semitic though not as thinking against Jews, but as thinking of Jews.”

While the talk discussed anti-anti-Semitism as promised, the speaker had to add some anti-Israel rhetoric, such as “the outcry, the struggle against anti-Semitism is used to instrumentalize politically by different voices, different organizations. To defend Israeli politics, anti-Palestinian politics and to delegitimize critics or critiques against the politics of Israel are stamped anti-Semitic and this is a way of instrumentalizing anti-anti-Semitism. Another way of using it is to justify hostility towards Muslims and Arabs by saying there is a new kind of anti-Semitism that’s coming from Arab and Muslim and this is a way of creating a hostile discourse towards Arabs and Muslims, this is under the title instrumentalization. This is one way of problematizing anti-anti-Semitism. There is another level, another discourse that goes in this direction that is more theoretical, one of the first to have perhaps said something in this direction is Edward Said in Orientalism. He already indicated how anti-Semitism is conceptually linked to the Oriental and anti-Islamism or anti-Arabism or Islamophobia. He already pointed out that we tend to forget that there is a connection between them.” 

Accusations that Israel is instrumentalizing anti-Semitism are not new, but the Watson Institute has taken this charge to another level.

In October 2022, Watson held a Webinar Panel to discuss “The New Antisemitism and the Contemporary Middle East.” The host was Nadje Al-Ali, the director of the Center, together with Dr. Katharina Galor from Brown University. The panelists included Noura Erakat, associate professor of Africana Studies and in the Program in Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, and non-resident fellow of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School. Amos Goldberg, Jonah M. Machover Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, and the Head of the Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sherene Seikaly, associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Raef Zreik, associate professor of Jurisprudence at Ono Academic College, Israel; and a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute.

Instead of discussing neo-anti-Semitism as they were planned to do, the panel mainly accused Israel of “occupation and annexation, apartheid, and settler colonialism.” 

Dr. Katharina Galor started by stating, “we have at our disposal today to highlight some of the most problematic misconceptions of anti-Semitism, especially as relevant to the critique of Israel.” She invited Goldberg to expand on this issue.

Prof. Amos Goldberg explained that the IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism is “vague and clumsily.” The “flaw” of this definition is that it “disconnects anti-Semitism from any other form of racism and the fight against it from any larger emancipatory or even liberal and democratic struggle. Six years since its adoption, one can assess its actual impact, and first, let me say that there is not even one piece of evidence that it helped fight anti-Semitism anywhere. On the contrary, it diverts attention from growing right-wing violent anti-Semitism and particularly and practically legitimizes it. It also makes it very difficult to bond with other minority groups in order to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of racism taken in practice. What it actually does, it delegitimizes the UN as anti-Semitic, the Palestinian historically well-founded narrative of the conflict, which receives Israel as a settler colonial state as it states that claiming that Israel is a racist endeavor is anti-Semitic. In fact, it equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism then it makes any critical susceptible to being labeled as anti-Semitic under the allegation of what is called a double standard, and here, there are hundreds of documented examples of that, indeed, Israel reached a point where it cannot justify policies within a liberal discourse of equality in human rights its last resort is the discourse of anti-Semitism and this tactic extremely useful because it has a double impact. First, it has a frightening, chilling effect as any engagement with the issue of Israel-Palestine is suspected to become an issue of anti-Semitism, and second, and this is even more severe, it managed to transform the whole discourse on Israel-Palestine from focusing on reality the occupation and annexation, apartheid, settler colonialism etc. to the endless debate” on anti-Semitism. 

Dr. Raef Zreik claimed that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism could be described “how something that appears to be defending Jewish rights ending up defending Israel’s right to do ethnic cleansing.” 

Prof. Sherene Seikaly argued that “Zionist Jews claims to a piece of land are more legitimate than and outweigh those of the Palestinians who have resided on that land for hundreds of years and this logic right has been used to justify um the ongoing Nakba the dispossession of Palestinians and the denial of basic civil and political rights and so I think it’s really important to understand that the struggle for Palestinian freedom is a crucial step in ending this logic of racialization and civilizational hierarchy because this logic itself in this very moment measures Palestinian life as less valuable than Israeli life and it makes Palestinians available to premature death as it often reminds us, which is really the material embodiment of racial regime when you become available to premature death as we see with Palestinians on a daily basis and so here I think that critiquing this logic of racialization of hierarchy is a moral responsibility for all of us.”

The Panel is part of a troubling trend to denigrate the 2016 definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Formulated by dozens of legal scholars and historians, a binding definition was urgently needed because of the huge increase in anti-Semitism and demonization of Israel, considered a collective embodiment of the Jews. As IAM pointed out, pro-Palestinian academic activists furiously rejected the IHRA definition, which was adopted by many countries and institutions on the grounds that it works against the interests of the Palestinians. In 2021 a group of pro-Palestinian activists gathered at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem to produce the so-called Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism (JDA). The Jerusalem Declaration fared very poorly compared to the IRHA, but it’s architects, Amos Goldberg among them, have not given up.  

But Raef Zreik’s speech is an attempt to distort history. He said, “as Palestinians, we’re not responsible for what happened to the Jews in Europe… it’s too much to ask for the Palestinians to pay the full price of the crimes that Europe committed against the Jews in Europe, so I think there must be sort of a distinction between the two and the fact that the Jews are victimized as in Palestine shouldn’t prevent us from seeing that they were victims in Europe, and the fact that they were the ultimate victims in Europe shouldn’t prevent us from seeing that they are victimizers now in Palestine.”

In her speech, Noura Erakat promoted BDS.

There is a reason why Palestinians launched a campaign to falsify history. The Palestinian Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini cooperated with the Nazis, and the Nazis instigated the 1936-9 riots. Jewish refugees who tried to escape the Holocaust were prevented from entering Palestine, which could have saved their lives. The Palestinian Arabs, with their Arab allied States, pressured Britain to block Jewish Holocaust refugees from entering Palestine. 

As for anti-Semitism, anyone, including Palestinians, who murders Jews because they are Jewish, is an anti-Semite. 

Not to mention Western campuses where numerous incidents were reported of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists intimidating Jewish students.

The Watson Institute panel, which distorts history and minimizes the scale of the Holocaust, is just one effort in this campaign.  

References:

https://watson.brown.edu/cmes/events/2022/panel-new-antisemitism

https://watson.brown.edu/events/2022/new-antisemitism-and-contemporary-middle-east

EVENTS

Webinar | Panel | The New Antisemitism and the Contemporary Middle East

Thursday, October 6, 2022

12:00 – 1:30 p.m.

Virtual

Registration Required 

Webcast

About The New Antisemitism and the Contemporary Middle East 

This panel will address the role of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the ongoing challenge of defining antisemitism. Coined in 1870 in an age of accelerating racialized mass politics, the term and its ideology metastasized in the mid-20th century as the motivators of Nazi genocide. In the 2020s, the problem of antisemitism has again intensified, with flashpoints of debate, violence, and confusion especially evident in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.  How are we to understand the so-called new antisemitism, as well as its alleged counter-discourse of anti-antisemitism? How is the scourge of antisemitism to be distinguished from its political uses? How are the realities of antisemitic violence to be distinguished from potentially tendentious accusations of antisemitism?

Palestine
Virtual Event

About the Panelists 

Noura Erakat, associate professor of Africana Studies and in the Program in Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, and non-resident fellow of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School.

Amos Goldberg, Jonah M. Machover Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, and the Head of the Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Sherene Seikaly, associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Raef Zreik, associate professor of Jurisprudence at Ono Academic College, Israel; and a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute.

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

The New Antisemitism and the Contemporary Middle East

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This panel will address the role of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the ongoing challenge of defining antisemitism. Coined in 1870 in an age of accelerating racialized mass politics, the term and its ideology metastasized in the mid-20th century as the motivators of Nazi genocide. In the 2020s, the problem of antisemitism has again intensified, with flashpoints of debate, violence, and confusion especially evident in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. How are we to understand the so-called new antisemitism, as well as its alleged counter-discourse of anti-antisemitism? How is the scourge of antisemitism to be distinguished from its political uses? How are the realities of antisemitic violence to be distinguished from potentially tendentious accusations of antisemitism? Noura Erakat, Africana Studies, Program in Criminal Justice at Rutgers University https://watson.brown.edu/cmes/people/… Amos Goldberg, Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem https://watson.brown.edu/cmes/people/… Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor of History at the University of California https://watson.brown.edu/cmes/people/… Raef Zreik, associate professor of Jurisprudence at Ono Academic College, Israel; and a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute. https://watson.brown.edu/cmes/people/…

Transcript by YouTube

0:00  [Music] welcome my name is Nadje Al-Ali I’m the director of 0:15 the center for Middle East studies here at Brown University and it’s my great pleasure to welcome 0:21 everyone to today’s event on anti-Semitism in the Middle East the new anti-Semitism so this event actually was 0:29 suggested by my colleague professor katigalor at Brown University 0:35 and when she suggested it I immediately felt that was important to organize an 0:41 event like many I’m very concerned about 0:46 anti-Semitism the rise anti-Semitism on campuses in the U.S internationally in 0:53 Europe but I’m also concerned about the way that the discussion around anti-Semitism 1:01 has often been instrumentalized and like many I see the links between 1:08 anti-Semitism and racism and islamophobia currently Kati who I’m going to 1:15 introduce in a moment Katie and myself jointly with the colleague at Humboldt University are working on the rise of 1:23 far-right movements and the way that anti-gender and anti-feminist positions 1:29 are Central to these far-right movements and we’re looking comparatively the 1:35 Middle East and Europe and as part of those movements anti-Semitism does pay a 1:41 role so does racism now while we see these links and parallels in today’s 1:46 event we do want to focus on anti-Semitism and the discourses around it 1:52 often or most of the time the conversation about anti-Semitism excludes Palestinians 2:00 but given the implications for Palestinians we felt it was really 2:05 really important to open this state to open this space and start what will 2:11 hopefully be the beginning of a series of constructive conversations we are not 2:17 the first they’re happening they have been happening in other campuses in the US that have been happening in European 2:24 contexts and in Israel but it’s still remains to be a very fraud and limited 2:30 space so let me introduce my co-panelist first 2:36 my co-organizer and colleague at Brown Professor Katarina Galor 2:42 Kati is the Hirschfeld senior lecturer in the program of Judaic studies at 2:47 Brown she’s an art historian and archaeologist working in Israel-Palestine 2:54 hi Kati 

 

Nadje:

I’m going to keep the BIOS to a minimum but we’re going to post them in 3:00 the chat so you can check them out if you are want to know more about 3:06 publications and so on of course everyone has a large list of Publications then I’d like to introduce Noura 3:13 Professor Noura Erakat is an associate professor at Rutgers University in the department of Africana studies and the 3:20 program in criminal justice she is also a non-resident fellow at the religious 3:25 literacy project at the Harvard Divinity School her research interests include human 3:32 rights law laws of armed conflict National Security Law as well as 3:37 critical race Theory is associate professor of history at the 3:44 University of California Santa Barbara she is a historian of capitalism 3:49 consumption and development in the modern Middle East focusing on how individuals groups and 3:57 governments deploy both Concepts and material practices to shape economy the 4:03 body the self and the other welcome Noura and Sherene 4:09 then I’d like to introduce to you Amos Goldberg Professor Amos Goldberg holds 4:14 the Jonah Mcmakova chair in Holocaust studies in the department of Jewish history and the Contemporary jury at the 4:21 Hebrew University of Jerusalem he is also a fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute 4:28 Amos is a cultural historian whose work is interdisciplinary in nature part of 4:34 which focuses on the history on the memory and on the historiography of the 4:39 Jews in the Holocaust welcome Amos 4:45 and then last but not least I’d like to introduce to you Professor Raef Zreik who is an associate professor of 4:51 jurisprudence at Ono academic College Israel the senior researcher at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute Dr Zreik 4:59 was a guest lecturer at Georgetown law and that the Cogut institute for the Humanities at Brown University 5:05 his main fields of research include legal and political philosophy his 5:10 research addresses questions pertaining to legal and political Theory and issues 5:16 of citizenship and identity Zionism and the Palestinian question so just to tell 5:23 you about the structure the format of the event today we will be in conversation 5:29 with our guest Katie and I will be in conversation we encourage you to post 5:36 your questions and comments in the Q A function and we will have some time towards the end to engage in discussion 5:43 with you so over to you Katie. 

 

Kati:

Thank you so much 5:52 so much for introduction, all you said at the beginning you were 5:59 immediately on board when when I approached you you shared with me the 6:05 view that there is really an urgency to engage the issue and understood of 6:12 course the highly sensitive and complicated nature of debating the 6:19 term and the phenomenon its various forms of Associated abuse verbal 6:26 physical intellectual and also political now 6:32 to me the subject has a very personal dimension as my parents and their 6:37 respective families have endorsed the most violent forms of anti-Semitism most 6:43 of them died in concentration camps only a few of them survived including my father 6:51 and I also have experienced myself verbal and physical forms of anti-Semitism as I was growing up in 6:59 Germany it is only more recently however that 7:05 I began conducting research on anti-Semitism and and writing about anti-Semitism is for example a key topic 7:13 in my co-authored book with Sa’ed Atshan the moral triangle Germans 7:20 Israelis Palestinians which was published in 2020 and then translated into German 7:27 last year and I’ve also written in the German press specifically 7:34 designed which is a national weekly newspaper 7:40 unfortunately what what I very often regret is when I hear individuals or or 7:49 groups who make sweeping statements about anti-Semitism they they very often lack 7:57 knowledge and and a true understanding of anti-Semitism of its history and it’s 8:04 really vastly different contexts and usages over time and and the the 8:12 frequent misunderstanding and and misuse of the term is such that even renowned 8:19 scholar David Engel who is the professor of Holocaust and Judaic 8:24 studies at NYU has explained why he actually has stopped to use the term 8:31 anti-Semitism altogether in his publications already some 30 years ago 8:38 including his work on the Holocaust. 8:44 The term anti-Semitism was first used in 8:50 print in Germany in 1879. 8:56 anti-Semitismos at the time was understood as a sort of Jew hatred 9:03 and I will actually not go into how it has taken on new forms of meaning how it 9:09 has been entangled with with various dimensions of religious cultural and 9:15 racial expressions of aversion and violence in different geopolitical and 9:22 historical contexts what we do want to focus on in in a very 9:28 short time frame we we have at our disposal today is to highlight some of the most 9:35 problematic misconceptions of anti-Semitism especially as relevant to the critique 9:42 of Israel and perhaps to start with with 9:47 relatively recent understandings of anti-Semitism my my suggestion would be 9:53 to begin with a 2016 IHRA in the 2021 9:59 JDA definitions IHRA being short for the International 10:05 Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and JDA being short for the Jerusalem 10:12 Declaration of anti-Semitism and I can really not think of anyone who 10:18 would be better suited to do so than Professor Arnos Goldberg 10:23 Amos could you please explain the the contexts of these two different 10:30 definitions and perhaps also your role in in this attempt to rethink redefine the 10:40 meaning of anti-Semitism and and perhaps also explain what your primary motivations were 

 

Amos:

10:49 thank you very much for holding this literally very important webinar and for 10:54 inviting me to talk I think it’s a very 10:59 unique position to be as an Israeli Jew on my note is a minority among the 11:05 speakers and it’s a very good setting so I congratulated congratulating for that 11:12 okay to a large extent what we call today the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism was born following the U1 11:20 Conference Against Racism that took place in Durban South Africa in September 2001. one year into the second 11:27 Durban conference expressed and symbolized the gradual penetration of 11:33 the harsh anti settler Colonial discourse on Israel and Zionism which until then was commonplace of course 11:40 among mostly among Palestinians radical activists and Marxists it penetrated 11:45 into mainstream International discussion on the highest level this I believe was one of the major 11:51 triggers that encourages the alien Jews of organizations 11:56 Scholars to articulate a definition of anti-Semitism that should counter what 12:02 they defined as the new anti-Israelian understanding that this radical critique 12:10 of Israel and Zionism is actually is is a is a Jewish entity 12:17 following years of discussion such a definition was launched by the American Jewish Committee in 2005. it was 12:24 promoted by very powerful Jewish and I I stress also non-Jewish actors on various 12:30 International Arenas benefiting from the change in global political tendencies that follows 9 11 which actually 12:37 happened three days after the closing of the Durban conference in its subsequent War Ontario and other upheavals that we 12:44 all know from the beginning of the 21st Century in 2016 an influential International 12:50 body called the international Holocaust remembrance alive or the IHRA adopted this definition with 12:58 some insignificant changes in order to fight Rising anti-Semitism particularly in you 13:03 this organization which was established in 1998 former president Swedish prime 13:09 minister going person defined its mission to promote Holocaust Education with them remembrance and research 13:17 this organization is one of the frequently mentioned examples what many see as the globalization of least 13:22 Americanization or westernization or Holocaust memory this body is currently comprised of 35 13:29 member states all except perhaps for Argentina belong to the global North I.E 13:35 European and western states to put it bluntly it’s a very wide Eurocentric 13:40 organization since its adoption by the IHRA many hundreds of organizations institutions 13:47 adopted it too from football clubs airliners and universities to the Trump and Biden administrations many European 13:54 States and the EU itself actually it is gradually becoming 13:59 the standard international accepted definition of anti-Semitism unfortunately without a significant 14:07 political pushback, the definition 14:12 is comprised perhaps you can post the the link to this definition I I sent you 14:21 the definition is comprised of a vague and clumsily articulated core what is 14:28 called core definition which actually says very little an 11 example which explain and concretize the definition 14:35 the core definition seven of the 11 examples refer to allegedly Israel 14:41 related anti-Semitism this mean even means even before looking at the content 14:46 of this example that the definition identifies the allegedly Israel related anti-Semitism is the core and the most 14:54 significant of contemporary anti-Semitism the second flow of this definition is 15:01 that it disconnects anti-Semitism from any other form of racism and the fight 15:06 against it from any larger emancipatory or even liberal and Democratic struggle 15:13 six years since its adoption one can assess its actual impact and oh my God 15:21 first let me say that there is not even one piece of evidence that it helped 15:26 fight anti-Semitism anywhere on the country it diverts attention from growing right-wing violent anti-Semitism 15:33 and particularly and practically legitimizes him it also makes it very 15:38 difficult to bond with other minority groups in order to fight anti-Semitism in other forms of racism 15:45 taken in practice what it actually does it delegitimizes the UN is anti-Semitic the 15:54 Palestinian historically well-founded Narrative of the conflict which receives Israel as a settler colonial state 16:02 as it states that claiming that Israel is a racist endeavor is anti-Semitic in 16:08 fact it equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism 16:15 third it makes any critical is when susceptible to being labeled as 16:21 anti-Semitic under the allegation of what is called double standard and here there are hundreds of 16:27 documented examples of that indeed Israel reached a point where it 16:33 cannot justify policies within liberal discourse of equality in human rights its last resort is the discourse of 16:39 anti-Semitism and this tactic extremely useful because it has a double impact first it has a frightening chilling 16:47 effect as any engagement with the issue of Israel-Palestine is suspected to become an issue of anti-Semitism and 16:54 second and this is even more severe it managed to transform the whole discourse 16:59 on Israel-Palestine from focusing on reality the occupation and 17:05 annexation apartheid settler colonialism etc to the endless to an endless debate 17:10 whether even talking about these issues is anti-Semitic in this discourse Israel 17:16 is not accused but the accuser who holds the higher moral grounds while the Palestinians are not victims anymore but 17:22 anti-Semitic villains I therefore perceive the eye of working definition as a direct assault on truth 17:30 and as such is part of contemporary troubling side guys but more than that I 17:36 see it as yet another manifestation of centuries-old European civilization civilizing mission in which the West 17:43 wishes to educate the East while in fact committing crimes and injustices and 17:48 causing great harm this campaign of anti-anti-Semitism has 17:54 become legitimate and become a legitimate and respectful way for many 17:59 in the west to express and enact the racism under the guise of fighting 18:04 against one of its most different forms anti-Semitism on March 2021 following an almost 18:11 year-long process of Zoom meeting and seminars an international group of some 18:17 20 Scholars of anti-Semitism and related topics launched the JDA the Jerusalem 18:23 Declaration on anti-Semitism the JDA was initiated as an opposition and fundamental alternative to the IHRA 18:29 definition which was perceived by all groups met group members as flawed and 18:34 harmful it was harmful to the fight against anti-Semitism and this was a major concern 18:41 for all it was a harmful to free speech and it was it was silencing a 18:49 Palestinians the Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian and I was among the initiators in draft by now 18:56 some 350 scholars the vast majority of whom specialize in anti-Semitism racism 19:02 Holocaust Jewish history and other related topics signed in support 19:07 [Music] unlike the narrow definition, the JDA is 19:13 not a Manifesto and does not set itself the Ten Commandments of the fight against anti-Semitism it is a political 19:20 intervention in specific time in history that aims to distinguish again between 19:27 or draw the border between anti-Semitism and Israel critique and anti-Zionism 19:32 that is not that is to raise the fight against anti-Semitism beyond the political fray 19:39 on Israel-Palestine it’s one of its in initiators and 19:44 drafters I’m well aware to the compromises and even flaws of the JDA as 19:49 it was a political intervention perhaps we can talk about it in the discussion but a year and a half after 19:57 the launch I still believe that it contributed tremendously to the fight against the IHRA and its spirit thank you 

 

Nadja:

20:08 thank you thank you very much Amos Kati if it’s okay I’m going to turn to 20:14 arrive now and really sort of following up on this introduction 20:22 Raef I know that you are amongst the initiators of a letter that was signed 20:27 by many Arab intellectuals that condemned the rise of anti-Semitism 20:33 while also challenging the IHRA definition and and you have argued that 20:38 this definition has been instrumentalized so I was wondering if you can tell us about this initiation 20:44 and explain how you think that the definition has been instrumentalized and 20:49 by whom 

 

Raef:

yeah I would like to thank you for 20:54 holding this event again especially in these days where it’s really becoming very difficult 21:01 to speak about these issues openly it’s even probably becoming more 21:07 difficult to be a Palestinian in this climate 21:12 let me say a few words about this idea I 21:17 don’t have to call it abuse because probably it was meant to be used this 21:23 way so the idea of abuse presumes that it was meant to do one thing and then it’s ended up doing 21:29 another thing I think the definition is doing what Israel intended at the first place to be doing 21:37 and here’s I I want to use sort of my legal expertise to explain something why 21:44 why this is something tricky about the definition first about the form of the 21:49 definition the definition is considered to be kind of a soft glow so it’s not a law so it doesn’t have to go through the 21:56 procedure that parliaments go through or the Congress so it’s a soft blow 22:01 and by saying that it’s a soft blow it gives the feeling that many people who are voting for it can send event okay 22:07 after all it’s soft law it’s it’s not really really binding and because of its soft glow also it 22:15 doesn’t have to stand in the sort of limits of constitutional laws 22:22 constitutional restriction because if you want to pass a load the law should meet sort of 22:28 a constitutional constraint regarding freedom of speech or other consideration 22:33 but when you say no no it’s just a declaration it’s not a soft law then it doesn’t have to go all these sort of 22:41 restriction and many people or money Congress or whatever money Parliament 22:47 members find it sort of easy to to accept the definition because it’s 22:52 just for educational purposes now we’ve noticed that and we’re witnessing 22:58 the last five years since its endorsement that actually what seems to 23:04 be solved it’s extremely harsh in reality so the softness shouldn’t be 23:09 actually delusional its impact is really really 23:14 is is filled in every corner all around the world in terms of 23:21 freedom of speech and limitation on Palestinian activities in and shaping 23:26 the discourse on on Palestine and putting restrictions on on several academics on self-citizenship sitting 23:34 the agenda etc so this is this is one thing 23:39 now the other thing it’s important to notice that probably one might say okay 23:44 but we have sort of legal guarantees we have the Constitution 23:49 probably in the America or the human rights regimes in Europe that actually we can still have some room for freedom 23:58 of speech and the courts can defend us and please look at the Court decisions in this regards 24:04 so probably one might say that actually don’t over exaggerate and here’s the 24:11 issue is not if the if the human rights court or 24:17 the American Constitution would allow more freedom of speech or less freedom of speech the issue is the climate 24:24 the environment that has been created in the last few years the chilling effects that it 24:32 creates the fact that you are as a university Professor all of the sudden comes a complaint against you that your 24:39 papers are having anti-Semitic flavor to them 24:45 and then a committee is being set in order to review your papers your ideas and your research and probably you spend 24:53 two years and then probably the committee would come up to the conclusion no you’re not anti-Semitic 24:58 wow I’m not anti-Semitic and you should go celebrate but clearly what’s we’re 25:03 witnessing here it’s a chilling effect that people would be far more reluctant to express their ideas to choose their 25:11 research and then the in in public now what we’ve been witnessing I I’ll say I 25:20 would just give a few examples from probably hundreds of examples there is 25:25 one side that gathers all these examples of of many pro-Palestinians group that 25:32 have been targeted but let me say one more thing about the definition and the distance between the definition 25:40 and its implication or its application actually to the point that today I think 25:46 it doesn’t make sense to speak about oh there is the definition in itself and it 25:52 should be sort of separated from its uses or its application the definition 25:57 is its application the definition is its effect the definition doesn’t stand on 26:03 its own but if we take for a moment just to to show the slippery nature of the 26:09 definition the definition is so vague it’s so open-ended and the question it’s not 26:17 what the definition mandates but what the definition allows 26:22 because it’s of its open texture it allows so many things in its 26:29 interpretation and who interpret the the Declaration those who have the power 26:36 those who have the power are mostly Israel U.S and the Western Government 26:42 and between the openness of the texture and the application lies all the story 26:50 I’ll give just one example I don’t want to go through deep analysis of of the 26:56 definition let me just give you one example just to show the fact that there is so much latitude 27:03 so much room for interpretation so what actually matters is the way it’s being 27:09 applied let’s say for example not the definition itself but the examples mentioned in the definition 27:16 one of them speaks that denying the Jewish people right of 27:22 determination is anti-Semitic now if I was sitting in a room and 27:28 there’s a discussion as a philosopher of international law and what I might say look 27:33 Jewish right for self-determination sometimes self-determination can mean 27:39 only cultural self-determination so if somebody really objects to Jews having 27:45 cultural self-determination that’s really he probably might be 27:51 anti-Semitic because to deny a group to live their cultural religious life and to celebrate their language 27:58 that’s really you must really have an attitude against the Jewish you have must have a Jewish sentiment so you 28:04 might vote for that actually because there is nothing in international law that says by definition international 28:10 law means statehood sovereignty and close borders now when it comes now you 28:18 have this definition and then you can work with it and I’m now the state of Israel and I 28:24 can work with this definition and see how things can go forward from here how it could be interpreted and applied 28:32 self-determination for most people resonate actually with the idea of 28:37 statehood that the right of the group to decide the way it want to conduct its political 28:43 life one of these things one of the issues that are connected with the idle of 28:50 self-determination is the right to close the borders that means that the state 28:56 can decide on the demographic nature of the country that 29:02 is taken for granted in the U.S for example it’s a prerogative for the set of the department to decide who’s in 29:08 who’s out and to put the regulation that decides who can 29:14 come in now that means in Israel that Israel has the right to close the border 29:19 now what does that mean that’s mean Israel can decide to say no to the right of the 29:26 return to the Palestinians now that means that if you’re a Palestinian demanding the 29:33 right of return then you’re questioning of the Jewish people right to self-determination then 29:41 you’re anti-Semitic now you see what’s going on here 29:47 the right to self-determination ends up legitimating calling those who asking 29:54 right of return anti-Semitic now what does that mean actually that that means 30:00 that you can do ethnic cleansing and get away with it that means that Israel has 30:05 the right to expel the Palestinians now does that how does that square with 30:11 any human rights discourse in international law you see houses 30:16 can I just ask you to come to close we’ll come back to you but in the 30:21 interest of time could you try to close that part now yeah yeah I can close that 30:27 part I said it all in this in in in this regard that how something that appears to be defending Jewish rights ending up 30:35 defending Israel right to do ethnic cleansing this is the distance that some 30:41 people find that they can sort of have sympathy for the for the definition but 30:48 when it comes to reality to application it could be completely flipped when it said yes do I stop here thank you

 

Nadje

 thank 30:56 you will come back to you but now over to you Katie yes I actually would like to 31:03 to ask the next question to Sherene in a 2016 New York Times opinion 31:12 piece with a title anti-Zionism can and should be 31:18 anti-racism you you wrote and let me quote from this article 31:24 to equate opposition to Zionism with anti-Semitism is to deny the history of 31:32 both Sherene could you 31:38 contextualize the quote and and perhaps elaborate a little bit on what 31:43 exactly you thought was important to stress when engaging anti-Semitism 31:52 thank you 

 

 

Sherene:

thank you Nadje and Katharina for bringing us together I’m gonna kind of step back and just 32:00 get a little bit more basic I think it’s really important for 32:06 all of us to engage with the history of anti-Semitism I think one of the ways 32:12 that anti-Semitism has been instrumentalized by 32:18 particular groups also by the state of Israel kind of obscures 32:25 the ways in which we have to really engage it as critical to our anti-racist work so anti-Semitism 32:35 is a 19th century outgrowth of Judeophobia which is has existed for as 32:41 long as there has been as there have been Jews and during the Middle Ages it 32:46 became this kind of constitutive underbelly of the Catholic Church’s claim to being a quote unquote 32:53 civilizing Force the precariousness of Jewish life began to recede in the 1700s 33:00 with the enlightenment as Jews began to gain equal legal rights at least in theory but the majority of the world’s 33:07 Jewish population lived in Russia where an autocratic monarchy not only 33:13 continued to deny them civic equality but incited deadly pilgrims against them 33:20 and even in the lands of the Enlightenment and political emancipation 33:25 Jewish people were one of a series of others groups to be transformed and 33:31 redeemed indeed much Enlightenment thought was premised on this hierarchical understanding of humanity 33:38 and during the 19th century with a shifting world order the category of 33:43 race became a dominant way to establish this hierarchy through exclusion and safe and 33:49 scapegoating Jews became a racialized understood as a quote-unquote 33:56 biologically irredeemable unassimbable other this racialization and I think 34:02 this is a really important point that I’ll come back to in the second portion uh the second question I’ll re I’ll 34:10 receive is that this racialization paralleled and built on the 34:15 racialization and violent exclusion of black brown and colonized bodies for 34:21 Jews it would lead to genocide that’s anti-Semitism what is Zionism Zionism is 34:28 a national political movement that began in the late 19th century as a response 34:34 to anti-Semitism Zionism was neither the only Jewish response to anti-Semitism 34:39 nor the most popular until the Nazi persecution of Jews began in the 1930s 34:45 and here I think it’s very important and linked to our discussion today that Zionism continued the enlightenment’s 34:53 idealization of the nation-state and its hierarchical understanding of humanity 34:59 it promised Jews that they could finally become European but only by leaving 35:05 Europe for Zionists Jews claimed to a piece of 35:10 land are more legitimate than and outweigh those of the Palestinians who 35:16 have resided on that land for hundreds of years and and this logic right has 35:23 been used to justify the ongoing Nakba the the the the the 35:29 dispossession of Palestinians and the denial of basic civil and political 35:35 rights and so I think it’s really important to understand that that the 35:42 struggle for Palestinian freedom is a crucial step in ending this logic of 35:49 racialization and civilizational hierarchy because this logic itself 35:55 in this very moment measures Palestinian life as less valuable than Israeli life 36:00 and it makes Palestinians available to premature death as our 36:08 often reminds us which is the really material embodiment of of racial uh 36:16 regime when you become available to premature death as we see with 36:22 Palestinians on a daily basis and so here I think that critiquing this logic 36:29 of of racialization of of hierarchy 36:35 is is a moral responsibility for all of us 36:40 

 

Kati:

Sherene thank you so much I think Nadje you will ask the next 36:47 question yeah yeah thank you Sherene so Noura I’d like to ask you I know 36:53 that you have been involved in and also have been a researcher of renewals of 37:00 black Palestinian solidarity and I I wonder what this involvement and 37:07 also the research has illuminated in regard of to how we understand both 37:13 anti-Semitism and anti-racist struggles today 

 

Noura:

37:18 thank you Nadje, Kati and all it’s exciting to go last in this 37:24 first series of questions especially because so much of this is scaffolding onto one another and will be resident so 37:31 let me answer the question directly about the relationship between anti-Semitism and other racial movements 37:36 and what’s been illuminated in my own research so let me start by saying that black uprisings more generally outside 37:42 of the solidarity framework have re-centered racism and as an analytic within academic circles as we are well 37:49 aware of as well as among movements who have have censored it once again to 37:55 move us forward the solidarity framework black Palestinian solidarity catalyzed in analytical renewal to understanding 38:02 racism and colonialism as co-constitutive in global structures of domination in a way that Shepherds or 38:09 Marshals and anti-imperial politics so one place that this happens is in 38:16 Durham North Carolina where a Jewish black and Palestinian 38:21 Coalition abolishes police exchanges the Durham Police Department’s police Exchange program in Israel now no this 38:29 is happening across over half a dozen states across the United States which 38:34 means we’re talking about who knows how many cities but Durham is the only 38:39 successful Municipal campaign in the United States to abolish such trainings although the program has existed 38:45 since 2001 across the U.S so part of my research was going into Durham to 38:51 interview the league organizers to reconstruct a chronology of the campaign from inception to Victory to understand 38:57 what made it successful I’ll spare you those details but here’s what it revealed about anti-Semitism and 39:03 anti-racism so firstly the campaign itself is iterative as most of our 39:08 thinking and our movements are it begins in 2014 when JVP ends a contract with 39:15 G4S but the organizers are unsatisfied with their Victory because one the media 39:20 completely erased Palestine in its discussion of all of g4s’s Nefarious 39:26 entanglements does not discuss its use in Israeli prisons surveillance and so 39:31 forth second the city ended up replacing G4S with another security form a firm in 39:38 the midst of black uprisings and the organizers in the midst of of those uprisings understood that replacement as 39:45 a reformist victory rather than an abolitionist Victory and so many of them had become abolitionists in the course 39:51 of black uprisings so they organized themselves Anew they Center their relationships with one another to create 39:57 this intersectional Coalition and Target the police training program in Israel the campaign ultimately passes in a 40:05 resolution a unanimous vote of 6-0 this is a big deal right and while th

37:18 thank you Nadje, Kati and all it’s exciting to go last in this 37:24 first series of questions especially because so much of this is scaffolding onto one another and will be resident so 37:31 let me answer the question directly about the relationship between anti-Semitism and other racial movements 37:36 and what’s been illuminated in my own research so let me start by saying that black uprisings more generally outside 37:42 of the solidarity framework have re-centered racism and as an analytic within academic circles as we are well 37:49 aware of as well as among movements who have have censored it once again to 37:55 move us forward the solidarity framework black Palestinian solidarity catalyzed in analytical renewal to understanding 38:02 racism and colonialism as co-constitutive in global structures of domination in a way that Shepherds or 38:09 Marshals and anti-imperial politics so one place that this happens is in 38:16 Durham North Carolina where a Jewish black and Palestinian 38:21 Coalition abolishes police exchanges the Durham Police Department’s police Exchange program in Israel now no this 38:29 is happening across over half a dozen states across the United States which 38:34 means we’re talking about who knows how many cities but Durham is the only 38:39 successful Municipal campaign in the United States to abolish such trainings although the program has existed 38:45 since 2001 across the U.S so part of my research was going into Durham to 38:51 interview the league organizers to reconstruct a chronology of the campaign from inception to Victory to understand 38:57 what made it successful I’ll spare you those details but here’s what it revealed about anti-Semitism and 39:03 anti-racism so firstly the campaign itself is iterative as most of our 39:08 thinking and our movements are it begins in 2014 when JVP ends a contract with 39:15 G4S but the organizers are unsatisfied with their Victory because one the media 39:20 completely erased Palestine in its discussion of all of g4s’s Nefarious 39:26 entanglements does not discuss its use in Israeli prisons surveillance and so 39:31 forth second the city ended up replacing G4S with another security form a firm in 39:38 the midst of black uprisings and the organizers in the midst of of those uprisings understood that replacement as 39:45 a reformist victory rather than an abolitionist Victory and so many of them had become abolitionists in the course 39:51 of black uprisings so they organized themselves Anew they Center their relationships with one another to create 39:57 this intersectional Coalition and Target the police training program in Israel the campaign ultimately passes in a 40:05 resolution a unanimous vote of 6-0 this is a big deal right and while the local 40:11 police the local fraternal police border opposed the resolution the greatest 40:16 opposition came from Jewish Zionist they accused the initiative of being anti-semitic on two grounds it singles 40:22 out Israel even though the Durham Police only trained in Israel and it suggests that the campaign is suggesting that the 40:29 U.S police are violent and anti-black because they trained in Israel which of course nobody ever said 40:36 this campaign this campaign is all sorry this 40:41 campaign is happening in the midst of anti-Semitic violence in the United States and abroad a lot of it incited by 40:47 the Trump Administration and encouragement of white supremacists to to be more bold even including in 40:53 Pittsburgh and in Charlottesville so in this context right the campaign Black uprisings targeting of the Durham Police 40:59 exchange Jewish activists across the Spectrum are eager to protect their communities and are figuring out how to 41:05 do that best what I found in Durham is that the Jewish Community seemed to 41:10 fracture along Zionist fault lines that corresponded to abolitionist ones Jewish 41:16 opponents to the city council statement were in fervent support of Israel a barricaded nuclear power and alignment 41:23 with global superpower as a necessary safe haven for Jews in contrast Jewish 41:28 Advocates of the resolution self-identified as anti-zionists and abolitionists and understood that their 41:36 safety and future is inextricable from that of other targeted communities for 41:41 the latter more policing higher walls greater violence were not the source of their survival instead they pursued an 41:47 abolitionist future where provisioned for their Collective well-being would create a safe haven for all so here let 41:53 me share with you one I don’t know what my time is so possibly two anecdotes that that share 41:59 some of this so Sandra corn is one of the jvp organizers and she in the you 42:06 know always like everybody else upon hearing neo-Nazis marching on Charlotte 42:11 chanting Jews will not replace us is in or is organizing with her synagogue of 42:16 how to respond in discussing appropriate responses with her fellow board members in the synagogue she found herself in a 42:23 minority that opposed greater law enforcement involvement the majority of her synagogues board members wanted to 42:29 get an armed officer to patrol their place of worship and enhance their collaboration with local and federal law 42:35 enforcement corn believed that they could only achieve safety through solidarity because abolition quote was 42:42 not something for black people but something for herself as a queer Jew and 42:47 made her transform from a solidarity activists for Palestine to understanding her own stake in the struggle similarly 42:54 Lara haft who is part of the campaign recalls the same moment when or a 42:59 similar moment when neo-Nazis were distributing pamphlets attacking blacks Muslims and Jews right so this is a 43:05 broad attack similar to what Amos is telling us the severing of anti-Semitism from other forms of racism is very 43:11 dangerous even though neo-Nazis are attacking everyone her rabbi’s response 43:17 was to grow stronger in his opposition to the city council statement to abolish the police training and in favor of 43:23 Greater FBI involvement to combat anti-Semitism have thought quote this was nuts because one third of the 43:29 campaign was Jewish and the neo-Nazis targeted all of us end quote more for 43:35 her greater safety meant getting police quote out of her Shoals in order to better protect Jews of color and to be 43:42 in community with black and Muslim folks were explicitly targeted by the FBI the 43:47 takeaway here is how those activists who understood anti-Semitism as flowing from a similar source of harm towards black 43:54 and Palestinian communities and other Brown and racialized communities 44:00 were flowing from white supremacist formations that these activists were committed to both abolition and 44:05 anti-Semitism it was both the understanding that anti-Semitism was not a sui generous form of racism or or 44:12 distinct unto its own and that their safety was not achieved with borders and police but in solidarity with one 44:18 another thank you well it’s so important to 44:25 actually you know delve in and we are aware of these issues often sort of macro but it really 44:32 I Feel Again a totally different level of understanding listening to 44:38 this very specific concrete example 

Nadje

thank you Noura well back over to you 44:45 Kati yes thank you so I would like to ask Amos 44:53 having followed quite closely how debates on anti-Semitism have been 44:59 approached very differently in different contexts there’s also of course differences in media coverage and 45:07 policies and sanctions depending really on the national or religious context 45:14 the the discourses in the US within Palestinian Israeli societies both in 45:21 the Middle East and in also in in various diasporas are are really 45:28 hugely distinct even just within the European context we 45:34 see significant variations from country to Country and I’m thinking of course of 45:40 Germany where where I conducted research comparing it to France or or 45:46 Poland and Hungary not to speak of course of the fact that no one context 45:52 produces a monolithic engagement with anti-Semitism I’m thinking of course not 46:00 of course I’m thinking for example just on the brown campus there’s so many 46:05 different views and positions and so Amos 46:11 I know you you won’t be able to lay out all the differences within three 46:17 minutes but I would appreciate if you could perhaps highlight some of the 46:23 differences you have observed and perhaps also experienced I mean you you know these Israeli context very well and 46:31 and have lived in the US and know Europe 

Amos:

46:37 thank you yeah I have five minutes so I would say that obviously 46:43 that the problem is that anti-Semitism is real and and 46:49 many places it’s on the rise so the whole discussion takes place in a 46:55 reality that does call for action and we heard the different ways how to confront it to either with 47:03 solidarity or with the aligning yourself to the power and 47:08 so first of all I think it became this issue became at least among Jews but not 47:13 only among Jews I would say a very divisive issue I would say broadly speaking in in 47:20 Jewish communities the some focus on like without proportion some focus on 47:28 the what they call left wing and the Islam islamist a Palestinian anti Israeli anti-Semitism and see it is it’s one of the most vicious and important one to 47:40 deal with and the other with right wing and this right-wing populist and and 47:46 regimes and this is a kind of a very divisive so but I think when we it comes to the 47:54 IHRA and its spirit is I as I this is objectively like looking from above and 48:00 saying something very general but I think if I think of the IHRA spirit that I’ve just spoken about I think three major 48:07 political forces are probably pushing it very forcefully for local and global scale and it’s interesting to see each 48:14 because each of them its own reasons and therefore is involved in slightly different discussion obviously Israel is pushing it for pure 48:22 political reasons I really don’t think Israel is that interested in issue of anti-Semitism per se unless it 48:28 becomes really well but it is yet another mean to push the Palestinian issue of the international 48:34 table but in fact it’s not a major issue in the Israeli public discourse at 48:41 all now Jewish Community now that the second stakeholder is if we can generalize the 48:47 Jewish communities and organizations in America and Europe most of them also push this definition 48:53 and its spirit because they tend to identify with Israel and are looking to protect it from criticism but actually 49:00 there’s much more to it in recent decades and that was proved and as Jewish emancipation in the west and 49:07 particularly in this moment the historical moment when Jewish emancipation in the west reached a point 49:12 it had never originally Jewish history Israel has become a dominant and essential part of Jewish identity in the 49:19 diaspora even among those who do not Define themselves as them so we’ve just 49:25 heard like Jewish voice for peace not everybody but it has become much more dominant than before 49:30 okay like 20 or 30 years ago and then any harsh assault on Zionism in Israel 49:36 is experienced by many Jews as attacked on I think falsely but this is how they experience 49:42 it on on Jewish identity therefore perceived as anti-Semitism moreover 49:48 sometimes a anti-Israel criticism in in demonstration indeed sleep to becoming 49:55 implicitly or explicitly anti-Semi anti-Semitic when chanting slogans in favor of Hitler or holding Jews all Jews 50:02 accountable for what Israel is doing so so and here there’s a big 50:09 difference between Europe and America whereas until some two decades ago Jewish American support of Israel was 50:14 very solid unconditional while European Jews were much more critical today they 50:20 switched sides till the big and very powerful Jewish American organizations such as the American Jewish committee 50:26 Simon Wiesenthal center, the IDL and other are promoting the IHRA and its Spirit on local and international levels 50:33 but there are very loud Progressive Jewish voices as we just heard and organization that are counterated in not 50:41 only the Jewish boys but also liberal Zionists the most successful one is the Canadian 50:48 group independent Jewish voices which reached huge successes in pushing back against the IHRA and now okay this makes 50:56 the entire discussion on the IHRA and its spirit and internal Jewish discussion in 51:02 Europe these voices are very weak and therefore the IHRA is perceived by the Europeans to represent all Jews this 51:09 bear this bears significant consequences the third actor which is currently the 51:14 strongest one pushing it most forcefully is the EU backed by most of 51:20 mainstream liberal conservative and right-wing politics in in Europe in some 51:25 different ways also in North America and this is why it’s so powerful and and devastating 51:32 I think different interests and ideologies are driving various actors in This broad spectrum to support the IHRA I 51:39 think it’s a combination of supporting Israel Israel has become very strong and desirable 51:45 implicit or explicit this is a way implicit or explicit many times 51:52 explicit islamophobia racism anti-immigrationism in some 51:58 quarters of population also grows or dislike to the Palestinian cause 52:03 but at least among some liberal Europeans there is something else playing out here this is this is the 52:09 tricky Palm the fight against anti-Semitism and fostering Jewish life after the 52:15 Holocaust became in the last two or three decades essential and dominant part of European identity 52:22 and since the major Jewish organization and communities in Europe of Zionism in Israel is a form of 52:29 anti-Semitism that makes them feel uncomfortable in their places of residence and EU and the EU 52:36 in most of the states adopt this perception in anti-Semitism they call it victims-based perspective now I think 52:43 it’s all wrong I suppose but this is part of the part of the motivation apart 52:49 from what I said before in supporting this on among liberal Europeans 52:55 obviously in Germany and for understandable reason the situation is a bit different and could but to my 53:02 opinion could only be explained with psychological and anthropological vocabulary such a moral panic exorcism 53:08 purification social paranoia and film contamination there is so much to talk 53:14 about to say about Germany on which category we’ve heard wrote extensively and beautifully but I will give just one 53:20 example to show how 53:26 the situation in Germany is off now a Palestinian artist was conceived 53:32 as anti-Semitism and anti-Semite because he worked in a cultural center in 53:37 Ramallah which is named after the Palestinian Progressive educator Khalil Sakakini who died already in 1953 and 53:46 who had very many Jewish friends in Jerusalem Olympic in a few lines in his diary expressed the hope that Roman in 53:53 the war in the second world war will liberate Palestine from British colonialism this was enough 54:00 to tag the artist with no connection to Sakakini whatsoever I mean of course 54:06 Nasaka King is also not Italian but if not and in 2022 as an anti-Semite I 54:13 think this tells it all indeed Germany holds today a real Witch Hunt get almost 54:18 any form of critique against Israel and Zionism and any Palestinian authentic View 

Nadje:

54:26 yeah thank you Amos and of course brings back so many 54:31 memories of the interviews we conducted for our ethnographic study on 54:37 on the questions of anti-Semitism and and contemporary Germany when when we did our field work 54:46 in 2016 and 17 with with my colleague said 54:51 and so one of the biggest ironies for me was 54:57 that there is this genuine enthusiasm about among Germans that 55:03 there is this very significant Revival of Jews through the relatively important 55:11 migration of of Israelis I mean so many there there was a real Jewish life you 55:16 hear Hebrew in the streets you see Hebrew signs they’re Hebrew business businesses and and and I mean it’s it’s 55:24 a real presence and part of of the Berlin community and so there is this 55:31 excitement ironically many of these intellectuals and artists who come to 55:38 Berlin are lefties and and and there as as most 55:47 people in in in the world dare to criticize their their government and and 55:53 so here Germans will call these Israelis not collectively but it it happens 55:59 over and over that Israelis Germans are not happy with the way 56:05 these Israelis engage with their own government with a critical voice and 56:10 and we’ll call them anti-Semites Germans will call Israelis in Germany anti-Semitic and and that’s really the 56:17 irony yes just another example of of these really 56:27 [Music] mind-boggling contradictions yeah and on the other side of the coin 56:34 so I’m I also grew up in Germany actually very close to where Katie grew 56:39 up and so I’ve just been to a conference a big conference in Berlin and I was really was struck by the fact 56:47 but maybe not surprised that a panel on Palestine didn’t even have one single 56:52 Palestinian speaker and when I spoke to my colleagues about 56:58 it and I said well you know we have to be very careful we can’t even invite Palestinians and that really 57:04 leads me to the question that I would like to ask if which is what in your view is the relationship 57:12 between anti-Semitism and the question of Palestine 57:18 yes I mean as Amos said 57:26 Israel is trying to turn into any conversation about Palestine as a conversation about anti-Semitism 57:35 and here we have to notice there are two conversation that is being running 57:42 around and both of them are important and both of them should be dealt accordingly one is a conversation about 57:49 anti-Semitism it causes etc and fighting it and there’s an other different 57:56 conversation about Palestine the parameters the entry point to the discussion about Palestine is different 58:04 from the parameters the historical condition speaking about anti-Semitism and it’s a mistake to collapse the two 58:10 question as if they’re just one question the entry to understanding to analyzing 58:19 to thinking about Palestine is that Palestine is a question of simpler colonialism of 58:26 occupation and of disposition so this is the entry point it’s part of 58:32 parcel of a whole discussions and the whole struggle of 58:38 the 20th century about decolonization now 58:43 probably the the Palestinians were in a bad situation or a lucky situation everyone can decide on that but the 58:51 Palestinians were victims of the Jews that were the ultimate victim probably in the 58:59 20th century and here the two compositions come into 59:04 dialogue with with each other because it’s different probably 59:10 historically it’s different when speaking about why is coming to 59:16 settle in Indiana in terms of the moral appeal to the 59:21 rest of the world and when those who are coming to settle in Palestine are coming as refugees now 59:30 most settler colonies there’s the element of refugeesness I mean most 59:35 people coming to the a new world to settle our refugees 59:40 that’s probably the case of the Jews is outstanding in that given the history of 59:46 the 20th century now what does that mean after all that means different thing that means 59:53 that the case for Palestinian to prove their case is always overshadowed by the 59:58 fact that the Jews are victims of the 20th century to make their case clear 1:00:04 they have to spend sort of it’s it’s more difficult to prove to prove their 1:00:12 case in in this regard but the Palestinians 1:00:18 what they see is different from what the European see or feel or configure 1:00:24 for the Europeans they see the backs of the refugee running for his life 1:00:30 following the Nazi regime and the Holocaust and this is the image that he 1:00:36 has in his mind when he speaks about Palestine this is the main image 1:00:41 and probably when when President 1:00:48 Biden says I’m a Zionist I don’t know exactly what he was thinking when he 1:00:53 said that or what he meant by that but I’m trying to think probably he means to say that I’m for the idea of the Jews 1:01:01 having a safe place to live in their own country 1:01:06 probably is not meantime he didn’t mean to say that I’m for the expulsion of the Palestinians or for the continuation of 1:01:14 the occupation but what you see in Europe it’s different what the Palestinians see 1:01:22 we the Palestinians see the soldier the face of the soldier not the back of the 1:01:27 refugee we see him not as victims but a victimizer not as a minority but as a 1:01:34 majority not as the persecuted but the one as Persecuting us not the one that’s 1:01:40 Refugee but the one that’s turning the Palestinians into into refugees 1:01:46 so in this sense one can think of different relations between between the two but the first thing to recognize 1:01:54 that the anti-Semitism as Sherene mentioned already is basically first and 1:02:00 foremost started as a European question the Jewish question is a European 1:02:06 questions but both the Zionists and the Europeans wanted to solve this problem 1:02:12 outside Europe the Jews should go outside Europe in order to join Europe 1:02:18 but by leaving Europe Zionism didn’t reject 1:02:23 the let’s say the logic of Europe the all the logic of ethnic racial pure state 1:02:31 actually they adopt this logic and in one sense they want to extend it outside 1:02:38 Europe so in this sense the establishment of Israel is not exactly the Triumph of 1:02:45 Enlightenment it’s not the Triumph of current it’s not the Triumph of liberal cosmopolitanism and the idea that we can 1:02:53 have a liberal state that is open for all and guarantees equality for all 1:02:59 actually the establishment of Israel is one way or another is conceding to the 1:03:05 idea and to the claim that there is no way that different people from different races can live peacefully together this 1:03:14 is at the end of the day the meaning of the established at least one meaning of the establishment of the state of Israel 1:03:21 so as Palestinians we’re not responsible for what happens to the Jews in Europe 1:03:27 now that doesn’t mean that we’re under no responsibility how to deal with this 1:03:32 victimhood but it’s clearly it’s too much to ask for the Palestinians to pay 1:03:37 the full price of the crimes that Europe committed against the Jews in Europe so 1:03:44 I think there must be sort of a distinction between the two and the fact that the Jews are victimized as in 1:03:51 Palestine shouldn’t prevent us from seeing that they were victims in Europe and the fact 1:03:58 that they were the ultimate victims in Europe shouldn’t prevent us from seeing 1:04:03 that they are victimizers now in Palestine 

Nadje

1:04:09 yeah thank you very much Raef we’re going to ask a couple more 1:04:15 questions before we’re going to turn to the audience questions I see they’re already a few I encourage everyone to 1:04:22 put their questions or comments in the Q A function but Kati I think you’re 1:04:27 going to ask Noura question at this point yes so it’s it’s a complicated question but 1:04:34 I think it touches upon something that I find highly relevant 1:04:40 to some of the confusions surrounding the the position of the BDS movement 1:04:47 would you be able to Enlighten us on how you personally navigate a political 1:04:55 landscape in which BDS activism is is very often equated with anti-Semitism 1:05:02 and and also Perhaps Perhaps in direct relation to this what do you think 1:05:10 is the connection between debates that take place on campuses within Civil 1:05:17 Society and also the media and government institutions and I’m thinking here specifically 1:05:25 within the U.S context 

Noura:

yeah that’s an excellent question also 1:05:31 that goes back into this you know what happens in as an advocate 1:05:36 in practice by its very nature this is going to be repetitive and echo much of what my 1:05:42 colleagues have said but let me start with the latter part of your question and say something about what is the what 1:05:48 is what is the circuit of ideas between campus government 1:05:53 media and so forth and what we can see is that there has been a concerted 1:05:59 attempt a top-down attempt in order to to squash debate that is otherwise 1:06:05 resolved on the ground so several universities had filed title six suits 1:06:11 within the Department of Education accusing student activists of harassing them on campus under previous 1:06:18 terms that exist under title VI based on discrimination race nationality religion 1:06:24 and so forth in investigations at Rutgers UC Berkeley and I heard get the 1:06:29 other campus the Department of Education unanimously found that yo it’s really uncomfortable to be a student in the 1:06:35 midst of a controversial issue but there’s no discrimination here right and then we see the redefinition 1:06:42 and the adoption by the doe of IHRA in order to now make a more expansive 1:06:49 definition to to do the work that the previous iteration was unable to achieve 1:06:55 similarly think about what you know are euphoria over the democratization of 1:07:00 media and social media and so here you have for the first time we’re able to 1:07:06 see what’s happening in Gaza during these aerial strikes so we’re not just getting these perverted cartoons from 1:07:12 the Israeli Army telling us what’s happening or you know just clouds of smoke we’re actually getting 1:07:18 Palestinians running away dying children’s screens you get these stories 1:07:23 well now we just get another report that Facebook and its audit of itself has 1:07:29 demonstrated for us that there is systematic censorship of Palestinian content and not just of Palestinians in 1:07:36 Gaza but all the way to the top we see Gigi Hadid and her father Muhammad Hadid have their own social media accounts 1:07:42 suspended for their intervention so we do see a very even when we’re winning at 1:07:48 the bottom that the top will come down in order to to squash these debates 1:07:53 now I’m going to take a little bit more time because I was asked the two-part question let me get to this question about well what about BDS so in this BDS 1:08:00 part I want to emphasize that no it’s very easy for us to say that all 1:08:05 criticism of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism or or so we’re accused and I’m sure that all of us can put together 1:08:12 anecdotes that would demonstrate that right Palestinian breathing anti-semitic but if we actually you know get into 1:08:18 some texture of it that’s not the way that it’s that it’s actually broken down especially in in the in the short 1:08:25 life of of the BDS call since 2005. so from its initial you know 1:08:32 publication BDS has been an anathema to a spectrum of Jewish Zionists on the 1:08:37 most supportive end of that Spectrum or the liberal Zionists who oppose it only because of one of its demand the demand 1:08:43 for the right of return the liberal Zionists are in line with ending the occupation right there’s three demands 1:08:49 and the occupation meaningful equality right of return they’re okay with the ending the occupation okay with meaning 1:08:54 equality within Israel and even okay with the mode of protest of boycott they’re not even they’re not opposed to 1:09:00 boycott they’re saying go ahead boycott right but only boycott the settlements or enterprises in the West 1:09:07 Bank and Gaza unlike the other pillars however the right of return for them is equated as as an 1:09:14 existential threat because of the racist conception that a Palestinian demographic majority would signal the 1:09:20 end of the Jewish State now the the opponents to this the Ardent Jewish Zionists 1:09:25 are far different for them boycott is problematic because it’s reminiscent of European racial exclusion the belief 1:09:32 there’s a belief that the critique of Israel is tantamount with singling out Israel unfairly and of course the demand 1:09:39 for the right of return is unequivocally anti-Semitic not merely for undermining a Jewish 1:09:45 demographic majority but for for opposing this is and this is also what 1:09:50 Sherene intimated already but for opposing 1:09:55 Jewish self-determination in the form of Zionist Settler’s sovereignty and this argument conflates that Jewish 1:10:01 peoplehood in the Jewish state are the same thing but they’re not if Jewish people want to identify as a people they 1:10:07 certainly can as Benedict Anderson reminds us all peoples are imagined communities but to insist that 1:10:13 self-determination of that people is based on a territorial framework necessitating the forest removal of a 1:10:19 whole other people it’s plainly immoral it’s plainly immoral now to get to that 1:10:25 and to reject it full stop we need to you know assert this bifurcation which takes you know a little bit more work 1:10:31 than a yes or no answer and certainly for Palestinians right accepting this logic is to participate in our own 1:10:38 self-annihilation and yet we’re expected to do that just that because racial and Colonial 1:10:45 Frameworks have primed Western audiences to accept Palestinian suffering is not natural and even necessary as somehow a 1:10:53 a a sacrifice for for these Western wrongs so how do you navigate this as an 1:11:00 advocate there’s many you know there’s there’s many ways to do it I would say that the primary way is to you know 1:11:06 address the controversy head on there’s such an attempt to either not say things 1:11:12 or to say them in a different way so that you can avert right but we then put ourselves we trap ourselves and and 1:11:19 you know traps of our own making and instead we should address things very 1:11:24 head-on and invite conversation and controversy so there’s three three 1:11:31 elements or three pillars of framing that I like to use one is to address the 1:11:37 violent logic that sets up Palestinian death as a predicate element of humanity this is an opportunity for us to turn 1:11:42 the tables to highlight the contradictions that even within liberal traditions especially those captured in 1:11:48 human rights principles and human rights law to highlight what contradictions is that bringing up to highlight the racism 1:11:54 that makes this logic possible another is to actually emphasize the Universal Character of the Palestinian experience 1:12:00 by showing that Israel is not unique it’s a lot like other settler colonies including the United States Canada 1:12:06 Australia South Africa and so on and of course there’s so many differences within and between these case studies 1:12:13 but as a structure of settler colonialism Palestine is one of many which undermines the whole argument that 1:12:19 BDS singles out Israel thirdly and more and very importantly is to demand a 1:12:25 more robust conversation on anti-Semitism gave us a clinic at the beginning of this talk in less 1:12:31 than five minutes we don’t even get that in our conversations we don’t talk about anti-Semitism we need more of it we need 1:12:38 it to be more meaningful why is anti-Semitism a more form of racism how has that conversation had in the early 1:12:44 1970s what are the distinctions between religious and secular anti-Semitism what’s the relationship between 1:12:50 orientalism and anti-Semitism in Europe how is it manifested in different parts of the world and why are those 1:12:56 distinctions materially significant and so on and so forth but this conversation 1:13:01 especially in the United States is so anemic that nobody has any idea how to navigate a conversation about 1:13:08 anti-Semitism much less the accusation so the response has been a practice of Silence which is actually to to submit 1:13:15 right is to surrender our own power so in some I would encourage more 1:13:20 confrontation more robust discussion to navigate the political terrain we need to create more space so as not to be 1:13:27 pushed into a corner which is incredibly hard given all the punishments Associated just this week the hill fired 1:13:33 Kitty Helper for defending Rashida Tlieb’s statement that support for apartheid Israel is not Progressive and 1:13:39 yesterday the New York Times fighter fired Sam Salim a photojournalist in Gaza because of tweets and supportive 1:13:45 Palestinian resistance so I so how do you do this we need to talk about it you can’t talk about it 1:13:52 one way one tactic to create more space is to use the liberal argument of free 1:13:58 speech and the legal argument defending free speech and constitutional law and 1:14:03 although that approach has been the primary argument against BDS legislation I would be very careful not to rely on a 1:14:10 free speech argument because of its trappings and limits which we can discuss later suffice it to say that 1:14:16 here using the law defensively and tactically to create more space in order 1:14:21 to have other conversations is very worthwhile 

1:14:28 yeah thank you so much Nora which leads me directly into the question that I 1:14:34 wanted to ask to read and it’s it’s really linked it’s what Sherene do you think is a potential 1:14:41 for political alliances to fight both anti-Semitism and stand up for 1:14:47 Palestinian rights within the U.S 

Sherene:

um I don’t I think that that is actually 1:14:54 ongoing it is actually happening it isn’t a potential I think one of the 1:14:59 things that we really have to understand about this particular moment while we can 1:15:07 really kind of see it as uh a 1:15:12 time of defeat perhaps I think in many ways this is a time 1:15:17 of immense potential when we see the broad-based celebration of stupidity 1:15:24 from Hungary to more recently Italy to 1:15:30 you know the the the theater that is the Israeli Knesset to the theater that is 1:15:37 the White House right this is actually the time to continue building these 1:15:44 alliances and to continue holding on to the momentum and the labor that we’ve 1:15:50 been doing for decades right which is opposing anti-Semitism opposing all 1:15:56 forms of racism and opposing a Zionist settler colonialism this didn’t start 1:16:01 with the IHRA the the the blacklisting the containment and the confinement of 1:16:08 anybody doing critical work on Palestine and critiquing Israel has a very long 1:16:15 durray and because of that long durray because we have been accustomed to that 1:16:21 fight I think that makes the struggle for 1:16:27 Palestine actually a really important site to navigate the kinds of ways that 1:16:34 critical thought and critical expression is being targeted 1:16:39 not just in the United States but also in France also in the United Kingdom and 1:16:44 here I’m talking about Critical Race Theory right we know what that looks like because we have been under that 1:16:50 pressure it is not new to us and I think here one of the things that is really really important and the way to be able 1:16:59 to recognize this ongoing labor right and here I’ll just step back and say you 1:17:05 know I cut my teeth in post-September 11 New York 1:17:11 you know as a graduate student with Jews against the occupation right I mean which started out as an 1:17:18 organization that was called queer Jews against the occupation we were the people that were in joint struggle back 1:17:25 then this doesn’t start with the IHRA right I think if we don’t really engage 1:17:30 those long historical traditions of political mobilizing we can feel 1:17:37 ourselves besieged in the moment that we’re in now and I think that 1:17:42 the two final things I want to say is number one I think that 1:17:48 the you know the the call for boycott divestment sanctions is frightening and 1:17:54 has mobilized this amount of block of of backlash because we are actually 1:18:03 standing up together in many ways you know I grew up in this country and when I was a student in in high school you 1:18:11 know it was really hard to stand up and say anything the environment is 1:18:17 completely different now and it is in part different because of American Jewish involvement and investment so I 1:18:25 really want to encourage us to think Beyond a kind of this both this present 1:18:30 this moment and a broader kind of defeatism around what is the political moment that we’re in and I think to do 1:18:38 that we have to refuse the kinds of unified home homogenized categories that 1:18:45 the enlightenment logic imposes on us what is Europe when we’re all talking 1:18:51 about Europe in fact what is Germany I mean Berlin is arguably like the Arab 1:18:56 capital of Europe right now okay so it it is actually way more complicated when 1:19:03 we talk about the Jews it’s like mother are Palestinian Jews right what do we 1:19:08 how do we categorize those people and so I think it is those erasures that we 1:19:14 have to confront as a part of the violence of this ongoing Enlightenment 1:19:19 logic and the problem you know of Europe like we talk about you know the the 1:19:26 Jewish question the Palestinian question the black question whatever like I want to talk about the problem of Europe the 1:19:33 Europe as a problem the imagined idea of this Europe as our problem right and I 1:19:40 think that you know in this moment of immense consolidation of the right wing and the 1:19:48 rise of self-defined Fascists we actually have no choice but to 1:19:56 intensify the ongoing organizing that we’re doing together in joint struggle thank you all I mean I 1:20:06 I think this was much needed discussion I mean we 1:20:11 we’re just starting to scratch the surface I am glad that we were able to come 1:20:17 together I hope that there will be other contexts in which we will be 1:20:22 able to continue that I’d like to thank all of you 

I’d like to thank Sherene, Noura, Raif and Amos I’d 1:20:31 like to thank Katie for suggesting this conversation in the first case 1:20:38 I like to say that the way that it came about 1:20:43 this this is then became like a joint venture in terms of you know thinking 1:20:48 about it how we could bring it together and I’d also like to thank the 1:20:53 audience I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to get to the questions but I think it was really 1:21:00 important and worthwhile discussion Kati would you like to say a few words 1:21:08 only thank you so much I think this was a very productive conversation and I hope we can 1:21:15 continue this informally okay thank you

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt

The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians

SA’ED ATSHAN

KATHARINA GALOR

Copyright Date: 2020

Published by: Duke University Press

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt

Pages: 256

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt

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1. Front Matter(pp. i-iv)Front Matter(pp. i-iv)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.1https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.1SaveCite
2. Table of Contents(pp. v-vi)Table of Contents(pp. v-vi)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.2https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.2SaveCite
3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS(pp. vii-viii)ACKNOWLEDGMENTS(pp. vii-viii)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.3https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.3SaveCite
4. PROLOGUE(pp. ix-xii)PROLOGUE(pp. ix-xii)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.4https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.4We were sitting at a table at Café Atlantic on Bergmannstraße in one of Berlin’s trendiest neighborhoods, Kreuzberg, known not so long ago for its large Turkish community but in recent years also as one of the areas in town that have attracted concentrations of Palestinians and Israelis. It was 9:00 PM, and we were both famished. We had just completed another day of interviews, running from one place to the next and barely finding the time to talk to each other and digest the reflections of the Germans, Israelis, and Palestinians we were interviewing.We were also full of…SaveCite
5. INTRODUCTION THE TRIANGLE(pp. 1-10)INTRODUCTION THE TRIANGLE(pp. 1-10)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.5https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.5Our study examines the triangular relationship among Germans, Israelis, and Palestinians in contemporary Berlin.¹ It poses the question of the moral responsibility of Germans with regard to Israelis and Palestinians residing in their capital city. While our temporal focus is the present, we recognize that past events such as the Holocaust and the Nakba continue to reverberate. Despite the fact that our geographic focus is Berlin, it is clear that our exploration has implications for Germany as a whole and its connections to Israel/Palestine.Germans, Israelis, and Palestinians seem to be divided among five patterns of thought on the question…SaveCite
6. 1 TRAUMA, HOLOCAUST, NAKBA(pp. 11-24)1 TRAUMA, HOLOCAUST, NAKBA(pp. 11-24)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.6https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.6The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as “Shoah” (meaning “calamity”) — a term that also entered German usage in the 1980s by way of a tv series and a film — refers to the Nazi genocide of approximately six million Jews and five million others in the context of the National Socialist regime of World War II, which began in 1933 and ended in 1945.¹ The Holocaust was implemented in several stages, starting with legal restrictions for Jews and other victimized populations, leading from the stripping of citizenship and civil rights to segregation within the country, and finally to removal from…SaveCite
7. 2 VICTIM AND PERPETRATOR(pp. 25-33)2 VICTIM AND PERPETRATOR(pp. 25-33)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.7https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.7Among the most commonly used characterizing nouns in literature and media that deal with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, as well as in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are “victim” and “perpetrator.” In the present, the Holocaust is invoked in contemporary Germany and Israel mostly in relation to memories and persistent experiences of second-, third-, and even fourth-generation descendants. The turmoil in Israel/Palestine, instead, is an ongoing process, with current events that continuously shape new realities.¹ Today, there is general agreement about the fact that, during World War II, Nazi Germans were the perpetrators, and the Jews, along with…SaveCite
8. 3 GERMANY AND ISRAEL/PALESTINE(pp. 34-40)3 GERMANY AND ISRAEL/PALESTINE(pp. 34-40)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.8https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.8Despite claims of evenhandedness, Germany’s policies and actions are largely shaped by their proclaimed raison d’état (reason of state, or Staatsraison), rooted in the historical obligation to compensate for the crimes of the Nazi regime.¹ In this regard, no significant differences in their attitude toward the conflict exist among the major German political parties.² In the long run, the deviations of individual politicians have not altered the status quo of the triangular interaction among Germans, Israelis, and Palestinians. This reality affects not only the recalcitrant peace process in the Middle East, but also, ultimately, policies with regard to Israelis and…SaveCite
9. 4 GERMANY AND MIGRATION(pp. 41-52)4 GERMANY AND MIGRATION(pp. 41-52)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.9https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.9Berlin, composed of twelve districts, or boroughs (Bezirke), is known as Germany’s most multicultural city. Among these, the vibrant boroughs of Kreuzberg and Neukölln are home to Israelis and Palestinians, in addition to many other ethnic communities (including Chinese, Kurdish, other Middle Eastern, North African, Polish, Russian, and Turkish residents). More than 40 percent of these populations come from an immigrant background, and the ethnic liveliness has turned the areas into popular hubs for young artists and intellectuals from around the world.¹ Alongside German, other dominant languages spoken in the streets and public spaces include Arabic, English, Turkish, and Hebrew….SaveCite
10. 5 ELUSIVE DEMOGRAPHY(pp. 53-58)5 ELUSIVE DEMOGRAPHY(pp. 53-58)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.10https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.10The exact number of Israelis and Palestinians in Berlin is difficult, if not impossible, to establish. Discrepancies among media estimates and official statistics are often significant, though none of these sources is necessarily accurate. Although most Israelis in Berlin are Jewish and the majority of Palestinians living in the capital are Muslim, determining exact numbers for those who claim these religious identities — like the numerical size of these communities more generally — is again impossible to determine.About 60 percent of Berlin’s population has no registered religious affiliation. In fact, the city is frequently referred to as Europe’s atheist…SaveCite
11. 6 NEUE HEIMAT BERLIN?(pp. 59-80)6 NEUE HEIMAT BERLIN?(pp. 59-80)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.11https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.11Germany’s commitment to Israel is clear. So are the country’s efforts to integrate and welcome Israelis in the capital. The question, though, of whether Israelis feel comfortable in Berlin, and even “at home,” is deeply complex and textured.Personal and psychological traumas between Germany and Israel have been slower to heal than the diplomatic ties between the two countries. These official ties were initiated some seven years after Israel was established in 1948, under the cloud of postwar crimes and irreparable human and physical losses. More Jews went into hiding and survived the war in Berlin than in any other…SaveCite
12. 7 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY(pp. 81-90)7 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY(pp. 81-90)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.12https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.12In The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, the American public intellectual Noam Chomsky explores the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States. He explicates how American state support for Israel historically has been diplomatic, material, and ideological in nature. He critiques the American mainstream perception that Israel is guided by “a high moral purpose.”¹ As Chomsky has emerged as one of the world’s most prominent Jewish intellectuals, he is equally known for his solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for human rights.Germany’s alliance with Israel (second only to the U.S. alliance with Israel) and Germany’s…SaveCite
13. 8 RACISM, ANTI-SEMITISM, ISLAMOPHOBIA(pp. 91-115)8 RACISM, ANTI-SEMITISM, ISLAMOPHOBIA(pp. 91-115)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.13https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.13In this chapter, we examine one of the most emotionally fraught issues in our study of Germans, Israelis, and Palestinians in Berlin: the often-debated phenomena of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism more generally. These issues are discussed separately — and in dialogue — by scholars, journalists, and politicians. The increasing number of reported attacks on religious minorities, the arrival of large numbers of refugees following the summer of 2015, and the entry of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party into the Bundestag are factors closely linked to these debates. Although German society is predominantly Christian, and Jews and Muslims are…SaveCite
14. 9 URBAN SPACES AND VOICES(pp. 116-137)9 URBAN SPACES AND VOICES(pp. 116-137)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.14https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.14In recent years, the Israeli presence in Berlin has become palpable. Hebrew can be heard in the streets, most strikingly in the central neighborhood of Mitte, in the trendy area of Prenzlauer Berg, and in the largely ethnic quarters of Kreuzberg and Neukölln, not to mention in the new border zone between the two neighborhoods popularly referred to as Kreuzkölln. Some of the Hebrew voices clearly belong to Israelis who have made Berlin their new home. Others come from Israeli tourists; Israelis who come to spend a few months or a couple of years in Berlin; or the so-called wandering…SaveCite
15. 10 POINTS OF INTERSECTION(pp. 138-148)10 POINTS OF INTERSECTION(pp. 138-148)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.15https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.15Many Palestinians in Berlin are secular or Christian, but the majority identify as Muslim or of a Muslim background, and a significant number practice Islam and consider themselves devout. While most Israelis who live in the city are secular, almost all regard their Jewish identity as having ethnic and cultural, if not religious, dimensions. Very few among those we interviewed questioned or rejected their Jewish identity. Groups such as the Salaam-Shalom Initiative, an interfaith effort that brings together Jews and Muslims from various national and ethnic backgrounds, also includes Israelis and Palestinians (figure 10.1). The initiative promotes campaigns against anti-Semitism…SaveCite
16. 11 BETWEEN GUILT AND CENSORSHIP(pp. 149-168)11 BETWEEN GUILT AND CENSORSHIP(pp. 149-168)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.16https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.16While not all Germans in contemporary Berlin feel universally guilty for the Holocaust and the repercussions of Germany’s atrocities during World War II, a pervasive sense of collective public guilt — and a related feeling of responsibility — is palpable across the city. This shared form of guilt affects how Germans relate to Jews; Israelis individually and as a collective; and Israel as a state. As an implicit or explicit consequence of this guilt, anyone or anything that could be perceived as critical of Israel risks subjection to moral condemnation. This public form of ethical policing is at times perceived…SaveCite
17. CONCLUSION RESTORATIVE JUSTICE(pp. 169-174)CONCLUSION RESTORATIVE JUSTICE(pp. 169-174)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.17https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.17In the prologue, we discussed the Israeli director Yael Ronen’s play Third Generation, which features Germans, Israelis, and Palestinians examining their relationship to one another in a critical manner. The fact that the play encountered so much resistance in Israel but took off so successfully in Berlin is revelatory: while touching on the traumas of the past in a contemporary context remains a sensitive endeavor in Germany, there is a stage for this kind of work in Berlin. Such discussions exist not only among artists but also in the private sphere and among civil society activists. We are hopeful that…SaveCite
18. POSTSCRIPT(pp. 175-186)POSTSCRIPT(pp. 175-186)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn7wt.18https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11sn7wt.18I was never going to return to Germany. I left when I was nineteen and had known for as long as I was able to think about the question of belonging that I would not stay in the country. Our parents — I have one sister, Agnes, who is three years older than I am — had raised us with a typical survivor and refugee mentality, teaching us about the uncertainties of life. We grew up knowing that Germany was most likely a temporary host country and that we should know multiple languages to prepare ourselves for potential moves and…

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Elad Lapidot | Jews Out of the Question: How Critical Theory Fights Anti-Semitism by Denying Judaism The talk will reflect on the role that opposition to anti-Semitism has played in shaping critical theory after the Holocaust, in authors such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou, and, most recently, Jean-Luc Nancy. My basic argument is that post-Holocaust critical theory diagnosed the fundamental evil of anti-Semitic thought not as thinking against Jews, but as thinking of Jews. In other words, what anti-anti-Semitic thought has been denounced as anti-Semitic is the figure of “the Jew” in thought. The talk will suggest that, paradoxically, the opposition to anti-Semitism generates in post-Holocaust philosophy a rejection of Jewish thought, which in some respects is more radical than previous historical forms of anti-Judaism. At work in this rejection, so will be the claim, is a problematic understanding of the relations between politics and thought—a troubling contemporary political epistemology. MORE INFORMATION Center for Middle East Studies Elad Lapidot is Professor and Chair for Jewish Studies at the University of Lille, France. Holding a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Paris Sorbonne university, he has taught philosophy, Jewish thought and Talmud at the University of Bern, Switzerland, as well as the Humboldt Universität and Freie Univeristät in Berlin. His work reflects on the relation between knowledge and politics, especially in modern and contemporary cultures. Among his publications: “Jews Out of the Question. A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism” (Albany: SUNY Press, 2020), Hebrew translation with introduction and commentary (with R. Bar) of Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes, Vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Resling Publishing, 2020); “Heidegger and Jewish Thought. Difficult Others, edited with M. Brumlik” (London/New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018); and “Etre sans mot dire: La logiqe de ‘Sein und Zeit’” (Bucarest: Zeta Books, 2010).

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0:00 [Music] 0:08 good afternoon everyone my name is Nadje Al-Ali I’m the director of 0:15 the center for Middle East studies at Brown it’s our great pleasure to host today’s 0:21 event and I should mention that today’s event is part of a series that our 0:27 colleague Professor Adi ophir is organizing a series on anti-semitism 0:35 and today uh we are very happy to welcome 0:40 Elad Lapidot who is Professor and chair of Jewish studies at the University of 0:48 Lille in France he’s holding a PhD in Philosophy from 0:54 the Paris sorbon University and he has taught philosophy 1:00 Jewish thought and talmud at the University of Bern in Switzerland as 1:06 well as at the Humboldt University and Fry University in Berlin and I 1:11 understand he’s joining us from Berlin now Professor Lapidot’s work reflects the 1:18 relation between knowledge and politics especially in modern and contemporary 1:24 cultures among his Publications Jews out of the 1:29 question a critique of anti-anti-semitism which was published in 2020 1:37 the Hebrew translation with introduction and commentary of Hegel’s phenomology 1:42 disguised us which was also published in 2020 Heidegger and joy thought difficult 1:50 others which was edited with um and broom Lake published in 2018 and 1:59 etrosom modir La logic de song design on site 2:05 which was published in 2010. so today the talk today is entitled Jews out of 2:13 the question how critical theory fights anti-Semitism by denying Judaism please 2:19 help me to welcome professor Lapidot 2:24 [Applause] um so you’re going to give a lecture for 2:30 about 40-45 minutes and then we’ll have time for a q a thank you 2:38 hello everyone I’m very happy to be here thank you very much for the invitation 2:45 Adi and Nadje I’m very honored to be 2:50 here at the university of Brown at the center of Middle East studies 2:58 um as uh is Nad already announced I will 3:04 present some ideas in the next 40 45 minutes and 3:10 then I will try to stop if I if I have difficulties help me 3:16 and and then and then we open discussion I’ll be happy to hear your questions 3:23 and we try to answer them as much as I can 3:35 that’s that’s the title very long title how critical theory fights 3:41 anti-semitism’s anti-Semitism by denying Judaism basically what I’m going to do 3:46 is just explain this title okay the next 40 minutes 3:53 so a shorter title if you wish is a critique of anti-anti semitism now I’m 4:00 quickly going to say what it is and what it’s not it’s not a defense of anti-Semitism okay I’m not calling 4:08 for you to become anti-semites that’s not the point it’s on the contrary it’s 4:13 in internal critique of um what I think is a dominant 4:20 strategy of countering fighting struggling against anti-semitism 4:27 uh after after the shoah, after Holocaust 4:32 mostly I’m focusing on attempts to counter anti-Semitism in theory in 4:38 people who are writing Theory philosophy political thought that’s that’s my focus 4:44 but I think it goes beyond that but this is what mainly what I will talk I’m talking about 4:50 now it’s an internal critique in the sense that I’m asking is this dominant strategy as I 4:56 diagnose it is it a good one uh is it a good way of countering anti-Semitism or 5:03 not and what I’m claiming that there are some problems with this strategy and to 5:08 some extent it’s uh it’s it’s even uh um counterproductive there are some 5:14 consequences of the way that has been chosen that uh that is not only 5:19 problematic but in some way even reproduces some patterns that you can 5:24 find in anti-Semitism itself so anti-anti-semitism reproduces some elements I will tell you exactly why 5:32 that you can find in anti-Semitism this is why it’s counterproductive this is why I say there is a problem we might 5:38 want to rethink how we handle with that so that’s that’s the basic idea the 5:44 structure of what I’m gonna do is first I’m gonna I’m gonna say what I’m not gonna do there are other critics of 5:50 anti-antisemitism of the way we try to fight in theory against anti-Semitism 5:56 I’m going to talk about other what other people are doing and uh and then I’m going to move to 6:02 um to talk about but I’m doing the essence of my critique that is encapsulated in this title Jews out of 6:08 the question I’m going to explain the title to you uh then I’m going to move to uh quickly try to articulate the 6:16 basic the core of my my argument uh I’m calling it The epistemicizing the Jew 6:23 I’m gonna explain to you what it means in my title it’s hidden in the words 6:28 denying Judaism then I’m gonna move uh and um I’m gonna 6:34 speak about a few consequences that follow from my core critique of anti-antisemitism I’m going to call it 6:41 um anti-anti-semitic epistemology namely I think there is a whole discourse that is built around this Theory uh theoretical 6:49 discourse of anti-anti-semitism and I’m going to talk about a few moments problematic moments of that this course 6:55 and I’m going to conclude by suggesting uh um a a an alternative a different way of 7:02 facing anti-Semitism that that is different than 7:07 anti-antisemitism that goes uh to a different direction that I’m gonna 7:14 signal using the keywords talmud okay that’s that’s the journey so I’m going 7:20 to start as I uh promised with telling you what I’m not going to do other 7:26 critics of anti-antisemitism there has been few people already discussing problematizing the the 7:33 discourse of anti-antisemitism when I’m saying anti-anti-semitism again to make 7:39 clear I’m talking about a dominant way of countering anti-Semitism okay so 7:44 there has been other critiques I think one of the most important ones uh uh has 7:50 been circling around the problem of obliterating the Muslim or the Arab so 7:56 uh fighting anti-artisemitism and forgetting the question the the figure 8:01 uh the set of phenomena that is associated with the with the Muslim and the Arab there is a a a a one way of 8:09 problematizing uh anti-antisemitism in this direction it’s under the title 8:14 instrumentalization namely how uh how the 8:19 um the outcry the struggle against anti-Semitism is used instrumentalized 8:26 politically by different uh voices different organizations to defend Israeli politics 8:35 anti-palestinian politics and delegitimize critiques or critiques against the politics of Israel are 8:42 stamped anti-semitic and this is a way of instrumentalizing anti-antisemitism another way of using 8:49 it is to justify hostility towards Muslim and Arab by saying there is a new kind 8:55 of anti-Semitism that’s coming from Arab and Muslim and this is a way of of creating and hostile discourse towards 9:01 Arabs and and Muslims this is under the title instrumentalization this is one 9:06 way of problematizing anti-antisemitism there is another level another discourse 9:12 that goes in this direction that is more theoretical uh one of the first to have perhaps 9:19 said something in this direction is Edward said in orientalism he already uh 9:24 he already indicated how anti-Semitism is conceptually linked to Oriental and 9:31 anti-islamism or anti-arabism or islamophobia he already pointed out that 9:36 we tend to forget that there is connection between them and someone who took it 9:42 forward this critique is a Gil Anijar in 9:47 few Publications he uh he spoke about how how Jewish and uh and Muslim or Arab 9:57 are two figures that we need to understand together as having been constructed uh as two enemies of Western 10:05 Christianity and we need to think about them together how they have been constructed by Western Christianity as 10:12 the enemies of Western Christianity and as enemies won against the other and uh 10:18 according to Gil gilanija by focusing on uh when we talk about anti-Semitism when 10:24 we focusing on the anti-jewish aspect of anti-Semitism and forgetting to think it 10:30 together with the anti-muslim anti-arab side of anti-Semitism we are 10:36 obliterating an important part and uh and we 10:42 reproducing reproducing the discourse of anti-Semitism itself and the even uh 10:50 more basic disorders of semitism that is based according to this critique about 10:56 an obliteration of the Muslim uh and and only focusing on the Jewish so this is 11:01 One Direction that I’m gonna not gonna talk about now you’re welcome to read Gill’s books very interesting uh I’m 11:09 gonna I’m gonna problematize anti-anti-semitism in a different way I’m not going to focus about the 11:16 question of the Arab and the Muslim I’m gonna look on the Jewish part so on the 11:24 anti-jewish aspect of anti-semitism and as I said my critique 11:31 of anti-disemitism the way I problematize anti-disemitism I encapsulated with the title Jews out of 11:39 the question book that I published and I’m gonna explain to you very 11:44 quickly what is the what is the point of my critique and why did I call it uh Jews out of the questions so if Gill uh 11:53 anija was talking about obliterating the the Muslim in the discourse of 11:58 anti-Semitism I’m talking about the obliteration of the Jewish okay so I’m 12:03 saying anti-anti-semitism is you know the dominant way of 12:09 anti-atosemitism risks and in a sense uh generate a certain obliteration of the 12:15 Jewish and Judaism and what I mean by that is that uh the 12:22 discourse of anti-antisemitism dissolves dissolves tries to uh tries to do away 12:28 remove uh abolish the Jewish question which is one of the tropes Central 12:34 tropes of uh historical anti-Semitism try to do away with the Jewish question 12:39 but excluding the Jewish Judaism from the 12:45 realm of questions of thought of what I call epistem namely the it’s it’s a word 12:53 that I use that some people use like Michelle Foucault and other people to talk about the realm of knowledge or 12:59 what we sometimes call philosophy thinking theory knowledge science I use this word epistem and what I’m saying is 13:08 by the strategy that anti-Semitism has been using to get over the Jewish 13:15 question is to say let’s not speak about Jews let’s just take the Jews out of the 13:21 question and this is the ambivalent uh uh title that I chose Jews out of the 13:28 question namely we should not ask uh talk about uh the Jewish question 13:34 anymore namely we should stop being anti-semites but at the same time uh Jews are not to be discussed at all out 13:42 of the question in the idiomatic sense of English out of the question this is not something that we’re gonna discuss 13:48 so this is the ambivalent uh movement that I’m trying to talk about in 13:53 anti-anti-semitism okay so enough with the Jewish question but also enough about Jews that’s the that’s the 14:00 ambivalence in the center uh there are two there are two contemporary debates let’s say that this kind of reflection 14:08 is connected to maybe you’ve heard about the term epistemicide 14:13 um it’s a it’s it was coined by uh boventura de Souza Santos with respect to 14:19 um uh what what is called today the knowledge of the global South so how 14:24 European civilization in different ways did not only commit genocides or killing 14:30 of peoples but also obliterated cultures of knowledge okay this is why 14:36 epistemicide the killing of knowledge so what I’m talking about is connected to that it’s a phenomena if you wish of 14:42 epistemicide that’s just one hint for you uh and a certain uh a different way 14:49 that I’m trying to generalize my reflection is also talking about what I 14:54 call negative political epistemology which is again a general phenomena of uh 15:00 of of dissociating Knowledge from politics or dissociating Knowledge from 15:06 uh the discourse about Collective subject about people Nations groups and 15:11 so forth I’m not going to go into that just give you a hint uh about the 15:16 horizons uh where I’m where I’m talking Okay so I’m going now to 15:23 tell you very quickly what is my basic argument when I’m talking about Jews out 15:30 of the question in the ambivalence of anti-anti-semitism you could uh 15:36 understand what I’m saying in the following way there is uh a very obvious way in which 15:44 anti-anti-semitic discourse functions and now I’m not talking only about theorem also actually talking about uh 15:51 operational um legal definitions of contemporary 15:57 definitions of anti-Semitism and uh the basic way if you wish of denouncing 16:05 anti-Semitism today is uh by um critiquing any kind of uh taking of a 16:15 negative position against Jews as Jews okay being hostile 16:20 against Jews as Jews Jews as such I quickly I I I gave you two uh two uh 16:29 quotes quotes from from the two uh today I think most uh prevalent definitions of 16:37 uh of anti-Semitism uh the IHRA one and the more recent one uh the Jerusalem uh 16:43 declaration and as you see uh it’s it’s only small parts of the definitions but I think it captures the core of what I’m 16:49 saying uh if you would just see it at the more recent one the Jerusalem declaration uh any any hostility 16:57 prejudice against Jews as Jews or Jewish institution as Jewish so that’s the the 17:05 idea is taking a negative uh position against uh Jews as such however and this 17:12 is why I’m coming to the problematization what I’m claiming is a 17:17 uh a certain catch or a danger or a problem in this uh in this strategy 17:23 precluding any negative evaluation as such for jewishness or Jews as Jews 17:31 precluding any evaluation of Jews as Jews leads or can lead or tends to lead to 17:39 precluding any value of jewishness 17:44 namely precluding any possibility that’s what I’m trying to think about of 17:52 giving any what I call epistemic content for Jews as Jews namely associating 17:58 jewishness or Judaism with any idea and now you could choose whatever word 18:04 you like idea world view concept ethics thought principles anything that you 18:11 could criticize that you could be against and anything that you could be 18:17 embracing okay if in principle you say there is nothing that you can be against it means 18:22 that there is also nothing that you can embrace that you could like 18:27 which means there is no content I call it epistemic content 18:33 this is this is the problematization the basic promotization of saying in principle you could not say could not 18:40 take a negative attitude position towards Jews as Jews what I’m saying then you could also not any positive 18:48 position towards uses Jews and basically what it means is that you preclude that there is any content that you can like 18:54 or not like in Judaism and the radical way that I’m formulating this problem is 19:02 denying or precluding the very existence of Judaism 19:08 namely as a world of knowledge that has some context some identifiable contents whatever that 19:16 may be that’s the basic argument the basic way I problematize 19:22 anti-anti-semitism and now I’m talking on the level of of operative definitions 19:28 not yet the theory now I wanna 19:34 go on the level of theory and I want to talk about a few 19:42 consequences a few manifestations of this problematic 19:48 that arise from the way in which anti-anti-semitism becomes a certain 19:54 discourse that has different aspects that I want to point out by looking at different 20:03 thinkers post Holocaust thinkers that were writing in a theoretical way 20:09 conceptual way about anti-semitism so I’m gonna quickly look at a few 20:16 elements What I Call Elements of anti-anti-semitic political epistemology these elements of is a 20:22 uh quote of adona and Hawkeye they talk about elements of anti-semitism so I’m 20:28 talking about elements of anti-anti-semitism so the first element that I want to 20:34 point at is what happens when you preclude 20:41 any epistemic value or content of Jewish 20:46 as Jewish jewishness or Judaism what it means is that 20:53 the only Collective subjectivity that you are 20:59 left with to talk about as a real Collective subjectivity that does have any kind of content are not Jews but 21:08 anti-semites so the anti-semite the anti-semitic Collective becomes the 21:15 real Collective that anti-anti-semitic discourse talks about this is the real Collective that is 21:24 being discussed and because anti-Semitism because there 21:29 is no real Jewish knowledge or content 21:35 anti-Semitism has no object when anti-semite speaks against Jews and 21:43 we preclude there is any content for Judaism or jewishness we preclude that 21:49 anti-semitic discourse talks about a real thing in the world 21:54 means an anti-Semitism has no real object there is no Jew as Jew there is no 22:01 jewishness or Judaism namely so goes the argument 22:07 anti-Semitism has no real object or has nothing to do with real 22:13 Jews that’s something that you will hear very often in the context of anti-Semitism or anti-anti-semitism 22:19 there is no connection between anti-Semitism and real Jews what it means and uh 22:27 very quickly I will point out a a language rule that is being produced 22:35 from this idea it means that you should not think about anti-Semitism as a kind 22:41 of knowledge that is a real anti against something and this means that even the word itself 22:48 anti-Semitism should not be understood as anti-something but should just be understood as one word anti-semitism 22:56 and there is in the last decade uh I don’t know if in brown you uh embraced 23:01 that or not but in different universities there is a a regulation that you should stop writing 23:07 anti-Semitism with a hyphen and you should write it dehyphenated 23:12 anti-Semitism because there is no object there is no real anti there is nothing 23:17 at the other side uh it’s a real thing um what it means 23:24 second is that the way that the people 23:29 who deal with anti-semitism the way that they perceive the phenomena 23:36 that they’re talking about is is basically not a knowledge 23:41 phenomena namely not as a certain position anti-Semitism is not a certain position towards something in the world 23:47 but it is a psychological State anti-Semitism is like a some kind of a 23:52 mental state it is a psychological condition 23:58 of the anti-semite as I said the anti-semite is the real subject we’re talking about and anti-Semitism is some 24:04 kind of psychological usual of course pathological condition and uh the first 24:11 who have um developed this kind of understanding of anti-Semitism uh or the most famous One 24:18 are adorno and horkheimer uh who are already in the 40s published one of the 24:25 first theoretical discussion of anti-Semitism in their book dialectic of of clerong of 24:32 Enlightenment and they described anti-cities anti-Semitism as a state of 24:37 paranoia and later adorno participated in a project that is called the authoritarian 24:44 personality where he uh used also Empirical research to try to 24:50 characterize the anti-semitic personality and I quote very quickly uh what he wrote in 1950 anti-Semitism is 24:58 not so much dependent upon the nature of the object semitism or Jews as upon the subject’s 25:06 own psychological wants and needs so you so to speak blare out there is no uh 25:14 Jews that anti-Semitism refers to it is some kind of an inner psychological 25:19 purpose and the anti-semite second element that I want to talk about 25:25 is what happens about uh Judaism what happened about Jewish thought what happens about any kind of discourse that 25:33 does try to identify an epistemic content of Judaism I I the key words I 25:39 use is Jewish thought what is Jewish thought what happens with Jewish thought namely with the idea that there is some 25:45 kind of a epistemic uh Jewish World it becomes in these this course anti-anti 25:53 this course is based on the premises that I was talking about Jewish thought becomes an anti-semitic 25:59 fantasy fantasy myth another word that is used 26:05 very often it goes like is conspiracy there is a conspiracy theory I mean if you talk about Jewish thought it means 26:11 that you speak about the conspiracy of different individuals and the uh the way that uh that 26:21 anti-antismatic theory the one that I’m talking about try to understand what the Jewish 26:27 thought is that it’s a creation a fantastic creation of anti-semites these 26:32 are the real subjects so to say very succinctly anti-Semitism creates Judaism 26:38 it’s Judaism is an idea a fantasy that is being created by anti-semites and 26:45 this is one of the basic ideas that you will find in a Dawn and horchheimer’s Analysis in their book that I mentioned 26:52 dialectic they’re off Club 44 the paranoid anti-semite creates everything 26:57 in his own image there is a psychological disturbance that is called anti-Semitism and this psychological 27:03 disturbance creates certain fantasies about Judaism about Jewish thought 27:10 this is uh what is very often um 27:16 articulated by the word projection it’s a projection Judaism or Jewish thought or Jewish knowledge or Jewish ethics and 27:23 so forth or Jewish philosophy it’s a projection of anti-semites so this is the second element the first 27:30 one that the actual subjectivity the actual subject the collective subject is anti-semites second one is that Jewish 27:38 thought is a projection fantasy of this Collective third element 27:45 is a consequence of the second namely if it is anti-Semitism that creates Judaism 27:54 if Jewish thought is a fantasy or the semites it means that any talk 28:02 any discourse any claim that there is Jewish thought 28:08 is akin to anti-Semitism is somehow already 28:14 tainted it’s already complicit with anti-Semitism speaking about Jewish 28:19 thought is in a way already somehow anti-semitic because 28:24 Judaism is a creation of anti-Semitism what this means and this is the difficult 28:31 move here and this is where I’m starting to talk about complicity or Affinity 28:37 between anti-anti semitism and anti-semitism is that even a self claim 28:45 by Jews themselves about when they speak about Judaism or Jewish thought or 28:51 Jewish ethics is becoming identified or problematized as 28:58 in a sense complicit with anti-Semitism namely 29:04 Judaism itself the discourse about Judaism about Jewish thought 29:10 Jews who speak about Jewish thought are being problematized as in a sense cooperating 29:16 with anti-Semitism that’s the difficult turn in this discourse and which is what 29:22 I call the anti-ju anti-jewish term of anti-anti-semitism so anti-anti-semitic 29:29 discourse becomes in a sense anti-jewish and the two the two um 29:38 thinkers that I think uh in the last 50 60 years have produced this kind of 29:45 problematic turn of anti-books of anti-anti-semitism toward anti-judaism 29:51 are Hannah Arend and alambaju I 29:58 for the sake of uh formulation I called it the position that they both in different 30:04 ways developed I call it Judaism creates anti-Semitism namely 30:10 Judaism is a real tradition but it is a problematic tradition pragmatic 30:15 tradition that precisely created this kind of myth about Jewish thought that 30:21 at certain point gave birth to anti-Semitism so this is a 30:27 problematic turn that I try to to talk about I will not go into the here the 30:34 specifics of how these two thinkers I think produced each in their way this 30:40 kind of a position where they were trying to criticize anti-antisemitism at a certain point their critique became a 30:48 critique against Judaism Hana aren’t in her origins of totalitarianism and 30:54 alambadu in his different books the books the book on Sample from 97 and 31:03 his collection of essays from 2005 about about basically Judaism 31:11 so this was this was the third element how anti-anti-semitism becomes anti-jewish 31:19 which is the problematic I think the most problematic aspect of this discourse now I want to turn to the last 31:28 uh the last element of what I call anti-anti-semitic discourse or 31:34 anti-industemitic epistemology what is happening here 31:42 is uh the um the phenomena that anti-anti semitism 31:51 does not of course explicitly want to abolish eradicate obliterate uh 32:01 jewishness or Jews obviously especially after the Holocaust 32:08 anti-antisemitism is a pro Jewish discourse in the most basic sense 32:16 now what it means is as anti-antisemitism does have 32:23 some kind of a notion an idea a figure a positive figure of jews as a collective 32:30 it’s not that there is a complete negation or denial that there is a 32:38 Jewish Collective that are Jews so the question is what kind of jewishness what kind of Jewish Collective is positive is 32:46 accepted admitted and in a sense produce or generate it by 32:53 anti-anti-semitic discourse so what I claim is that there is a certain Collective figure of Jews that is 33:00 identified and produced by anti-anti semitism 33:07 and this is precisely the figure of a collective subject that has 33:13 no Collective knowledge what I call succinctly the epistemized 33:20 collective a collective without knowledge I think the way that it is 33:25 usually this Collective is usually designated in the discourse I’m talking 33:32 about is through Notions such as living Jews 33:38 real Jews Jews flesh and blood and it’s usually 33:43 these terms are polemic terms they mean and not 33:49 Jews with knowledge not Jews with thought 33:55 this is the way that the de-epustomized collective of Judaism is being 34:01 designated now the question of course who are these Jews living Jews that don’t have Judaism 34:06 and of course here uh there are different candidates with what you can associate them you can 34:12 associate them with modern Jews Jews who indeed uh lost any connection with any 34:19 traditional knowledge practice of Judaism secular 34:24 Jews assimilated Jews non-jewish Jews there are different way we can identify 34:29 these Jews I wanna offer one very quickly uh 34:37 because they’re almost out of time very quickly I’m going to point out that one thinker Jean-Paul Sartre a French 34:44 philosopher who offered I think an interesting take on that on who are 34:49 these Jews without Judaism Jews without Jewish knowledge he wrote one of the 34:55 first texts on anti-Semitism after the Holocaust uh it’s called Reflections 35:02 in 1946 I think it was called it was translated to English as uh the Jew the 35:08 anti-semite and the Jew and his point was similarly to what a Dawn and hawkheimer 35:15 said that Judaism is created by anti-semites he said something very 35:23 similar he said it’s the anti-semite and quoting who makes the Jew but his Point 35:28 South was not that it’s a fantasy that the anti-semites creates who makes the Jew as a figure of fantasy what he 35:36 claimed and it’s connected to his entire philosophy is that the Gaze of the 35:41 anti-semite the way anti-semites look at Jews hate are being hostile or Jews 35:49 generates an actual consciousness within the people that are being exposed 35:56 to anti-Semitism generates a certain Jewish Consciousness so there is an actual creation of Jews through 36:04 anti-semites anti-Semitism actually creates Jews not only as a fantasy but in reality 36:13 now this is a very this was an interesting point that he made and it was actually uh it had a huge influence 36:20 in France after the war because many Jews actually felt that he said something true that this is was their 36:27 own experience mostly precisely assimilated Jews that did not have any 36:32 anything to do with Jose anymore and only through anti-Semitism so they discovered that they were uh they were 36:40 Jews so it was a very influential uh Theory 36:48 and South was able to actually describe a real phenomena of what I call 36:54 a de-epustomized Jewish Collective that was created so to speak through 37:00 anti-semitism now the problem is of course is that forsat 37:07 that is that is Judaism this is the uh 37:12 the model of Judaism the model of the Jewish subject this is the problem in 37:17 what he was saying although he was describing something that was actually true now I want to point out and and end 37:26 with that that 37:31 there is you could say there is actually a very Central 37:36 Collective phenomena of jewishness in modernity that you could say has been created in a 37:45 sense that uh has been described by South namely a 37:50 certain jewishness that was created as a response to 37:57 anti-semitism and was developed as an anti-anti-semitic subject a Jewish 38:04 subject who’s so Jewish knowledge is that they 38:09 are against anti-Semitism and this is what uh you owe 38:16 probably know under the title of Zionism so in many ways if you look at a Zionist 38:24 writings you see that the way that Zionist thinkers the 38:30 founder of Zionism described so to speak how they came to their project to their 38:35 understanding to their own self-understanding as Jews was as a reaction of their exposure to 38:42 anti-Semitism so I brought you a letter by uh Theodore Herzel uh one of the 38:49 great founders of of of Zionism writing to a friend in 1895 I was indifferent to 38:57 my jewishness but anti-Semitism forced my jewishness to the surface 39:04 and if you look at a healthy project you can see how precisely 39:10 anti-anti-semitism in a sense for him is the the force that moves Zionism 39:17 so that was the fourth element of what I call the anti-anti-semitic epistemology 39:22 which is the most uh I think um realistic in a sense in his actual creation of a real 39:28 political Collective Jewish subject I conclude 39:34 I conclude I promised that I will end by pointing Beyond anti-anti-semitism 39:42 and uh what I want to suggest is that there is 39:47 not only a theoretical way but an actual way of countering resisting fighting 39:52 anti-semitism by understanding anti-Semitism as a form 40:00 of anti-judaism that reacts to Something Real in the world to actual what I call 40:07 Jewish knowledge or Jewish epistem namely not as adult and hawkheimer and 40:13 South were thinking however 40:19 understanding this Jewish episteme not as a proto-anti-semitic one 40:24 namely not as the real model by which anti-Semitism was produced which is I think what is 40:30 has been done by arant and a lumba due 40:36 but as a tradition of knowledge that offers a different political 40:42 epistemology a different way of understanding politics a different way of understanding knowledge itself which 40:48 I’m not going to develop now what I will do quickly I will just point out that 40:54 this way of reacting to anti-Semitism namely by going back to a real tradition 41:00 of Jewish knowledge that is different from anti-semitism has been developed by different people 41:09 in the 20th century one of the most I think important uh person to do so is the French Jewish 41:17 French philosopher Emmanuel vinas I just sketched for you a few uh steps 41:24 of what he was doing I will not repeat them I would just say that if you trace his thought from the 41:31 mid-30s to the mid 60s you could see that he developed 41:38 from a position of a assimilated Jew who in fact had nothing to do really with 41:44 any Jewish knowledge he was studying philosophy in France but by encountering anti-Semitism in the 30s 41:50 he developed a certain movement of return to Jewish 41:56 traditions of knowledge that he at a certain point in the 60s 42:01 identified as uh tradition of thought and texts and this 42:10 is where if you know something about the Venus this is where his entire Corpus of talmudic readings is 42:17 coming from is a representative of a Beyond 42:23 anti-anti-semitism as I promised Beyond anti-anti-semitism lies talmud thank you 42:30 very much for your intention I’ll be very happy for any questions that you have 42:43 [Music] to set towards them okay well thank you 42:49 thank you very much for a very thought provoking and provocative talk 42:56 we have time for questions uh maybe I 43:02 will take the chance and ask a question and give you a chance to think about your comments or questions 43:09 so I guess the first thing that sort of comes to my mind or the first question 43:14 that comes to our mind as a feminist scholar is how if and how 43:21 this Jewish knowledge is contested and contested along for me the immediate 43:27 thing that comes to mind is long-gendered lines around racialized lines and I I know that 43:34 you’re speaking on the level of I made a much more kind of abstract philosophical religious 43:41 um but I guess also being an anthropologist I can’t help but think about I guess 43:47 the real Jews who are producing interpreting and contesting that 43:53 tradition and knowledge and I guess I was wondering if you have some Reflections on that yes thank you for 44:00 the question um [Music] I think one of the basic problems is 44:06 what I called political epistemology and I mean the association of knowledge with the collective subjects 44:15 there is a certain um resistance or 44:20 problem of of accepting uh so to speak that knowledge has a 44:25 can have a historical Collective subjectivity can be carried by groups that are defined by 44:33 knowledge and I think one of the paradigms for this kind of a political epistemology 44:40 has been Judaism has been Judaism and 44:46 um I think you can already find it in a theological pre-modern layers of 44:53 Christian universalism against any attempt to associate not knowledge but let’s say faith or 45:00 relation to God or whatever you want to call it with a specific uh ethno specific group and I think many of these 45:07 tensions has been secularized into uh to spec to the specific context of 45:12 anti-Semitism into racial uh uh racial discourse and I think this is what you can find in 45:20 the anti-semitic discourse and this is what you will find transferred into the anti-antimatic 45:26 discourse this figure of knowledge or certain tradition of thought recitation of text that Associated also with the 45:33 with the collective practice over history and I mean people is something that is over and over being uh posing a 45:40 problem and I think the the so to speak pre-h Holocaust strategy of doing of of 45:47 expressing this problem was being anti-jewish the post Holocaust way of 45:52 dealing with it was being so to speak denying 45:58 that’s more or less what I uh what I’m thinking about 46:04 thank you I’m going to take uh three questions uh yes 46:11 uh yes please sorry 46:20 thank you you mentioned liviness I wonder what you think of derida and the reason I ask is because it seems 46:27 to me that the whole um problem that you were you were outlining so beautifully is 46:34 um the the the problem with the dialectic so you have the turn of the 46:40 screw what you know you have the paranoia and then you have the return and so forth and so what Daddy does 46:46 doing it seems to me is doing a critique of the dialectical turn of the screw and 46:54 some of that has to do the talmud and so what would you I’m 46:59 curious why you mentioned living us and not derida sorry do you mind if it does take a few 47:05 questions are you okay do you need some paper are you okay you can yes um Michael 47:12 can you pass it up thanks so you may be aware of a pace of 47:18 a of a politician recently elected to a congress who turns out to have lied all 47:24 the way through his curriculum vitae and and one of his lies was that some of his 47:30 ancestors were Jews and Holocaust Survivors and when he was asked about this he said I never said they were Jews 47:36 I said they were Jewish uh so in a way my question which I attend seriously about the epistemology 47:44 of the Jewish because it seems to me uh that one understanding or perhaps 47:50 misunderstanding of the corrective uh you’re proposing is the creation of a 47:55 certain kind of essentialized jewishness which is built on value rather than on 48:01 history so I I would actually in a way defend the the Jewish as a construction at 48:09 least of the Enlightenment that is taken seriously and that is a kind of um critique of nationalism Zionism Etc in 48:18 other words various modern forms of the essentialization of an identity so I 48:23 wonder I’m sure you’ve considered this I wonder how that fits into your opening 48:28 thank you one more question Ariella 48:35 thank you a lot it was very uh interesting to listen to your talk and I 48:40 liked very much the way that you speak about that the anti-anti-semite these 48:45 are actually the community or the anti-semite becoming the community and there are no Jews but my question to you 48:52 would be about the Jews how come did the Jews continue to be the Jews when we 48:58 know that the history of the Jews with the not a capital letter but with a 49:04 meniscule letter is a history of diverse Jews so uh you started with gilani jar and 49:11 you started with the exclusion of the Arab or the Muslim but it seems like 49:16 it’s the exclusion of the hour of the Muslim as the others but what about the exclusion of the Arab and the Muslim 49:21 within the Jews and I’m speaking about Arab Jews or Muslim Jews or Berber Jews 49:27 so this would be my first question how do you deal in these the Jews out of the question with the diversity of Jews 49:33 diversity of community of Jews um my second question very brief is that 49:38 you spoke about Jews who lost connection to Judaism you spoke about assimilation and it seems like it happened by itself 49:46 but there is a very strong European project prior to the Holocaust which is 49:52 killing the Jews within the Jews in diverse communities in Europe and later 49:57 on in North Africa in the Middle East when they wanted to actually regenerate the Muslim Jews or Arab Jews and to make 50:04 them into European Jews which means Jews without Jews so where I know that you’re 50:10 you know you had only 40 minutes and you couldn’t give all the history but how do you deal with this history in order for 50:15 it not to sound like they lost their connection to Judaism and 50:21 um I add one last question yeah sorry okay uh you speak about knowledge uh 50:29 Collective without knowledge and you are very seriously showed us what happened 50:34 to this Collective without knowledge and he’s perceived without knowledge but knowledge doesn’t uh exist outside of a 50:40 worldliness and I think that when we uh take for example the Jews of North Africa knowledge is inseparable from 50:49 Craft and this is also true for Eastern Europe I don’t know about Western Europe but for Eastern Europe it’s also true so 50:57 how do you approach knowledge in its worldliness and not just as a body of knowledge that the talmud can now stand 51:04 for three became five but I will do my best 51:11 it was my base I hope I remember all the questions if I don’t just remind me I’ll start with the Ridah if I had UH 60 51:19 Minutes instead of 45 I would Edward uh that’s that’s that’s the uh so so thank 51:25 you for the question the I I completely agree with you that terida was uh very 51:31 much uh in reaction to the Venus was trying to problematize and warn about uh 51:36 uh what’s going to happen uh if we go with the political consequences of what 51:43 leaving us was doing going back to the talmud and so forth and are we not and that was this point are we not then 51:49 reproducing anti-Semitism uh that that was his basic problem and and concern 51:54 and uh and I think it’s uh it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s the next step and after we uh we we uh we we 52:03 reached the point of leaving us then we can understand what Delhi was doing I think however the Ridah was asking a 52:10 question Visa vilavinas namely he uh he uh he he did not uh want to and he 52:17 repeated it in the last two decades uh did not want to uh deny in any way any 52:22 kind of connection to a certain tradition of something that he was very careful by saying what but I think it’s 52:29 always important to see that he read the final very carefully and he saw that this is has to be the way to go namely 52:37 go to some kind of tradition of knowledge that I think uh uh Taj mood 52:42 would be one options of that and there are others uh and and and only then you 52:48 can work with the reader that that would be my my Direction with Elita is to um 52:55 as to um jewishness and essentialization 53:01 um I think what I was calling the the epistemized collective 53:07 is essentialization is precisely creating a collective that uh is in a 53:13 sense Essence it’s a certain entity that uh that uh exists somehow as is in 53:22 history and uh you either are or not that and this is this uh this 53:28 installation I think the only way of go of fighting against digitalization is to 53:33 re-epustomize namely to see in what way precisely there is a Ness ISM some kind of a tradition of 53:42 knowledge when I’m speaking about knowledge I’m speaking about not only about theoretical knowledge of course about some kind of practices mostly 53:48 social political practices and so forth uh so I would say if you start to 53:54 acknowledge a certain existence of social political practices that you could call Jewish or not then it starts 54:01 to make sense to say I am that or not and it’s not just a uh uh a declaration 54:07 of origins or of uh some kind of uh mysterious belongings but an actual 54:13 practice of are you doing that or not uh and and then it makes or starts to make 54:19 sense uh can you talk about being somehow Associated or connected to 54:25 jewishness without being associated with Judaism namely non-halahic Jews and so 54:30 forth but I think this would be the way of treating this and I think the problem precisely results from this 54:36 sensitization of an I would say it’s an entity without practice 54:42 as to the um as to the diversity 54:48 I um I don’t treat this really in my book because my book is kind of a trying 54:53 to deal with the very possibility of starting a intelligent discourse about uh about Jewish Jewish something Jewish 55:00 practice Jewish thought and so forth and so forth of course I agree with you that once we start the discussion yes uh we 55:08 need to see I I just throat and moods as a you know as a as a suggestion others 55:13 other others say Kabbalah other yes others say midrash okay we can debate 55:19 what exactly we’re talking about and then start talking about the different directions that there is an actual uh 55:26 intellectual history of that that has a geography and have uh temporality and so 55:31 forth and then it makes of course start making sense about talking about uh 55:36 about the about the diversity and also about the let’s say the European uh 55:41 Christian maybe German jewishness or Judaism vis-a-vis the Muslim Arab North 55:47 Africa or have a jewishness and I think this is what one of the projects that Derrida was was starting to talk about 55:56 um as to the Emancipation and prod European project 56:01 of uh of Jews without Judaism yes uh I 56:06 think this is when I when I asked in Nadje that uh what what I think is the 56:12 problem uh uh with Jewish knowledge and that the problem is associating a 56:19 knowledge or practice or thought with a historical Collective I think precisely this is the secularization of 56:25 theological critique again Judaism it that took place in the form of the 56:31 modern Republic in which the Jews are to become citizens that can be Jews at home 56:38 but uh but uh but human beings in the street and I think this is definitely 56:44 the process of assimilation connected to emancipation that eventually also and this is the 56:52 more provocative theories that did not talk about uh also gave rise to the suspicions of anti-semites if you read 56:59 the anti-semitic text from 19th century it’s all about the suspicion about where 57:05 are the Jews uh you tell us that they all become citizens but uh what does it 57:11 mean where is Judaism so uh I think uh in this sense the it is 57:16 a very complex problematic that you are absolutely right to point at at the 57:22 um at the emergence of let’s say modern European political epistemology that uh 57:28 it faces Judaism and by uh way of consequence also in a sense gave rise to 57:34 anti-semitism the third question about Praxis yes when 57:40 I say that mood I think this is precisely when I say that because talmud is uh is not only it’s it’s not a theory 57:46 uh talmud is definitely uh as text it’s all around taxes 57:52 and of course talmudi culture is artemudic of uh of uh of of of of social 57:58 political uh practice of building communities and so forth so I think this is one of the interesting things for me 58:05 specifically going to talmuda not for example to Kabbalah or to midrash because I think that precisely you have 58:11 a very important element of Praxis and connectivity 58:16 thank you okay so we have time for another round uh what do you want yes uh 58:22 can we have the microphone please 58:27 foreign thank you can you hear me yes thank you so much for this really incredibly 58:33 thought-provoking talk um I hesitated to actually ask my question because it will repeat or 58:40 reiterate but then I thought reiteration is maybe another Not a Bad Thing Elizabeth weed’s question and in a way 58:48 also ariela azul’s question so I was really struck as as Elizabeth by the the 58:55 very strong um dialectical thread that that runs 59:01 through your presentation um and I was also struck that’s where my 59:07 question is maybe more a footnote than reiteration also struck by the fact that 59:13 negative dialectics becomes included in the dialectic dialectical movement of 59:20 anti-antianti Etc um but then what I thought is that 59:26 um if this this dialectic of Jewish identity this dialectical identity let’s 59:32 say if it is hyper dialectical or negative dialectic identity still there 59:40 is some kind of of nucleus of identity that this whole dialectic circles around 59:47 or comes back to in in various complex ways and so I was wondering this is 59:53 where um I I thought both about the da as continuing leaving us while criticizing 1:00:00 him and and about ariela’s question too I was wondering what about 1:00:05 um let’s say radical plurality of of the very notion of to I I don’t mean only 1:00:13 the Jewish diaspora the empirical historical dissemination to take one of dareda’s 1:00:20 words but also what about a radical dissemination that would work or inhabit 1:00:27 or haunt the very notion of jewishness thank you Adi 1:00:38 thank you thank you so much I would like to take you back to the very beginning of your talk and and take the 1:00:46 conversation a little bit down from its lofty height uh you you excluded uh two 1:00:54 paths from the beginning in distance I’m not doing this I’m not doing that 1:01:01 instrumentalization and the exclusion of the Arab of the Muslim hmm 1:01:07 as if taking juice out of the question what 1:01:13 you are doing is is this independent separate route 1:01:19 I think that from your from the point of view that you propose to us 1:01:27 they’re very much related and that you actually uh 1:01:33 you uncovered a discursive structure that they inhabit together 1:01:40 because at the core of of the present at least instrumentalization of 1:01:45 anti-semitism there is a denial of questioning of Israel 1:01:51 Israel is out of the question so you you are not supposed to ask what 1:01:57 kind of regime is this um Jewish Collective 1:02:02 and and what kind of policies are they practicing and etc etc uh 1:02:08 instrumentalization is the practice of taking political Jews Sovereign Jews 1:02:15 out of the question and I think that this the the other is 1:02:20 is a little more complicated to show how the exclusion of the Arab is related to 1:02:25 the Christian actually basically Christian Universal universality and 1:02:32 universalization uh that all that is all in in operation in the exclusion of of 1:02:38 the um of real Jews from the anti-anti-semite critically 1:02:48 [Music] okay uh yes so I take two more questions the gentleman and then 1:02:56 uh um Mark Perlman from the music department thank you for this again very 1:03:03 thought-provoking uh talk I would like to try to put it in a maybe a different 1:03:08 framework and you can tell me if I’ve done so with if I’ve done Justice to it 1:03:14 um I’m thinking of the what in political theory is called the identity dilemma 1:03:19 which is that claiming an identity has you know it it makes you something 1:03:25 someone but it also limits you and normally the pros and cons correlate 1:03:32 with whether you are claiming the identity yourself or whether someone is projecting an identity upon you 1:03:38 and when you’re claiming it yourself it seems like Freedom when someone is projecting it upon you it seems like a 1:03:45 prison house and I suspect that this is what that what 1:03:52 you’re saying I’m not I’m not exactly sure about the the epistemalize the epistemizing uh issue I thought I 1:04:00 understood it but then in your answer I started to doubt but the other 1:04:07 big example that strikes me as analogous is the American discourse on Race which 1:04:15 in Progressive circles centers around the uh the statement that race does not 1:04:21 exist and racism is what exists 1:04:30 so it seems to me there might be an interesting comparison and contrast 1:04:36 between this idea that Jews do not exist only anti-Semitism exists and race does 1:04:43 not exist all the racists thank you 1:04:48 um yes so this last question and then we’ll have to uh well overtune 1:04:55 I think yes I want to go back to this question of negation as uh definitely this was 1:05:01 for adono one of the main impact of his own thinking and he shared it and 1:05:07 therefore I think it’s interesting that you made this difference to say your answer is a talmuda not the Kabbalah 1:05:13 about the answer would be strong why because there you know you would 1:05:19 have a kind of sort of a negation in the in the system and so on so and so I 1:05:24 think this is a important because this would be let’s say an integration of 1:05:31 Jewish knowledge as a practice of thinking a practice of thinking so I 1:05:36 would not go for uh for your argument um that by analyzing anti-Semitism they 1:05:46 were denying Judaism not at all not at all so I don’t know why you are so 1:05:51 insisting on this because I think you make a link between what is this kind of 1:05:57 you know implementation of Jewish thoughts and thinking and practices of life and so in 1:06:06 the critical series you mentioned and you say they have none and I think it’s just 1:06:12 only half of the reading so I wonder how you would bring this together and does 1:06:18 this is a cons is it let’s say as a consequence it’s a difference between you your point of view and the one in in 1:06:25 the series and believing us um indeed about uh negativity 1:06:31 I mean you cannot stand negativity so to say I mean what you know was actually adarno’s point in negative dialectics to 1:06:39 say one has to overcome negativity it was not negative dialectic as an end 1:06:44 state it was seen as and and that’s where he would go with uh 1:06:49 and so I I doubt a little bit your I mean very I mean it’s very convincing 1:06:55 when one hears it but I doubt it um more when I go back to the text themselves 1:07:01 thank you well over to you again I will try uh I will start from 1:07:08 the end the other side of the reading is the book uh you’re absolutely right that uh 1:07:15 not only I don’t know in hoga also Arlington but you are more complex than what I presented 1:07:22 here what I what I did is I tried to use them so to speak uh at certain moments in their text to show a certain 1:07:29 overarching uh broader narrative in the book I show how each of them also have 1:07:37 other moments in their readings that counter that so that’s not representative of what they were doing 1:07:42 and I agree with you when this is I’m trying to show it in the book that uh 1:07:49 that that Don and alkheimer there are also other moments precisely what you’re talking about this trying to going later 1:07:55 to Kabbalah or to uh specifically in the text about anti-Semitism they are going to uh 1:08:01 they’re trying to compare the negativity in Hegel to uh not to the Tsum but to 1:08:09 the building for about the uh the prohibition on images so so they are 1:08:15 trying to to negotiate that so I agree with you it’s it’s it’s it’s not a fair 1:08:20 position of I don’t know what I showed here I was really uh using them 1:08:27 that’s about uh I’ve done in Hawkeye about uh maybe I just took the reader 1:08:33 um uh continuing this yes I I I I completely agree that the 1:08:41 next step well how I see that the next step will be to uh uh go and problematize what we mean 1:08:49 by a collective a collective subjectivity uh in general and what we 1:08:55 mean by Jewish and I think that he dies definitely has done a lot to help us do precisely this 1:09:02 what I would suggest and what I think that doesn’t do himself but this is why I think it’s important to read him 1:09:09 together with leaving us is that terida left it as a as a more of 1:09:14 a kind of theoretical subjective understanding you know I’m the last two 1:09:19 I’m the last of the Jews and so forth but then of course the question is how does it become a uh a collective thing 1:09:26 how this become a politics even uh and I think with this question you 1:09:32 should go to the tablet and and and and and I think and it seems to me that many 1:09:38 also showed that he was thinking something similar that if there is any 1:09:44 way of making sense of uh some kind of a Jewish knowledge tradition which would 1:09:50 not just repetition of uh of uh Collective chauvinism it would have to be along these lines I I think he for 1:09:58 different reasons he never did it himself actually stepped into the talmudic or whatever other Jewish texts 1:10:04 and tried to show that I’m not sure why but I think one of the reasons because he was looking closely about leaving us 1:10:09 was doing by the way I think leaving us was not able to do that 1:10:15 that’s a different issue I I think that talmud is interestingly read as a kind 1:10:22 of a collective performance of what did I was answering and by the way the talmuda Arnold juice 1:10:29 the the the speaking subject in the mood doesn’t call themselves Jewish it’s a and there is a reason for that they knew 1:10:35 that that there is Jewish but they were not calling themselves this okay 1:10:40 so that about uh um about the race there 1:10:46 is no race there are only racist yes I think the analogies uh is is very strong 1:10:53 and I think it is precisely South who established this analogy textually uh 1:10:58 and also at the same moment uh precisely when he was writing uh uh the Jews in 1:11:04 anti-semite he was also writing uh black or foes and uh almost the same year and 1:11:10 this is exactly where he was making the point uh of what he called anti-racist racism finally the uh assertion of uh in 1:11:19 this context the black uh the black uh identity the Black Culture uh the 1:11:25 negative the entire discus of negritude that was the exactly uh and and I think 1:11:30 there is an analogy between his his suggestion you need to assert the Jewish 1:11:36 identity as a in in a political fight against Autism as as a Jewish and you 1:11:43 need to assert the black Consciousness and black culture in a kind of so to speak a counter uh an answer to European 1:11:51 colonialism I think and it was influential voice both sides the only 1:11:57 thing that I would add to that is that I I think I I don’t know enough about you 1:12:02 know African context and so forth I think other people made similar arguments that there is a way of 1:12:08 mobilizing politically uh Jewish identity and and history that is not 1:12:15 only in response to anti-Semitism but has its own resources this is this is 1:12:20 what I uh what I suggest and I think people who are talking about Africa and epistemology and also uh of the global 1:12:26 South try to do the same thing saying it’s not only a reaction there are only resources that have been uh obliterated 1:12:35 uh Israel yes I think there is an Israel out of 1:12:40 the question uh I think that this is precisely right this is precisely the 1:12:45 what I what I find still problematic in the in the Jerusalem declaration uh 1:12:51 Jewish institution as Jewish uh I mean there is a state that uh it’s 1:12:58 called itself Jewish and does politics explicitly as Jewish politics and uh if 1:13:05 you wanna deal with that effectively then you need to acknowledge there is a claim for uh Jewish politics that also 1:13:12 claims to realize some kind of uh Jewish history and tradition and so forth and if you uh 1:13:19 you cannot just ignore that so there is definitely a way that you should criticize uh Israeli Politics as Jewish 1:13:24 and not as anti-Jewish but so to speak as an inner 1:13:29 critic within Judaism itself and I think it is today uh something that should be 1:13:36 uh should be done which diverges from a traditional kind of liberal way of 1:13:42 dealing with politics of Israel only in the name so to speak of uh human rights 1:13:48 universality and so forth and obliterating the fact that there is an entire Jewish uh world of discourse and 1:13:53 thought that is a very essential part of that so I agree with you about that as 1:13:59 to how that then connects to the question of the Muslim and Arab okay politically we see that very clearly 1:14:05 um I still not sure what would it mean then if uh so to say we go beyond 1:14:11 anti-anti Semitism to Jewish knowledge how you then deal with that and how is 1:14:16 it connected I guess it goes probably to the direction that that really was 1:14:21 pointing about and uh showing you know uh precisely how within Jewish knowledge 1:14:27 itself there is uh precisely the Muslim Arab Jewish you know that Visa with a European one that and and inner so to 1:14:36 speak tension with it the Jewish epistem that needs to be uh problematized but okay that’s that’s maybe just a kind of 1:14:43 hunch idea that I have it’s not something that I can say much warm up now 1:14:49 I think I uh remembered everybody I didn’t forget any yeah you did an amazing job of 1:14:55 holding all the questions thank you so much please help me and thank you 1:15:04 and also many thanks to all of you who attended in person and those of you who 1:15:11 are attending online thank you thank you.

27.04.23

Editorial Note

On May 3, the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies [IHGMS] at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is holding a conference, “Encounters” Aftermaths annual series, on Zoom, together with the Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the event, a conversation with Adel Manna will take place, on his 2022 book, Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956. The event is organized by Prof. Alon Confino, the Director of IHGMS, and Prof. Amos Goldberg, the Jonah M. Machover Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry and the Head of the Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr. Adel Manna is a Palestinian specializing in the history of Palestine during the Ottoman period and Palestine in the 20th century. He has taught at The Hebrew University and Bir Zeit University since the early 1980’s. He is currently a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute.   

Manna would hold the conversation with Amos Goldberg. 

In his book Nakba and Survival, Manna “tells the story of the Palestinians in Haifa and Galilee during, and in the decade after, mass dispossession. Manna uses oral histories, diaries, memoirs, and archival sources to reconstruct the social history of the Palestinians who remained and returned to become Israeli citizens. Manna shows in his path-breaking book that remaining in Israel in the aftermath of the Nakba under the Israeli military government were acts of resilience in their own right.” 

What Manna neglects to inform his readers is that less than a decade before the “Nakba,” the Palestinians, under the influence of Nazi Germany, were rioting against the British and the Jews. 

A new book by Oren Kessler discusses the 1936-39 riots. A book review published last month states: “Describing the situation in 1936, just prior to the Great Revolt, Kessler reminds us that Hitler and the Nazis had been in power in Germany for three years, and that his intention to emasculate his Jewish population was already evident. In Palestine, the fanatical Izz al-Din al-Qassam, killed by the British police, had become the first Arab martyr and cult hero. Meanwhile, Jewish immigrants had been flooding into Palestine. By 1936 there were some 400,000. As Kessler puts it: ‘The Arabs of Palestine started to wonder…whether a world war was looming, one that might rid their country of Britain and the Jews for good.'”

Dina Porat, Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History at the Department of Jewish History, Head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, and holds the Alfred P. Slaner Chair for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, who, since 2011 served as Chief Historian of Yad Vashem, is an expert on the Holocaust. According to Porat, the Palestinian leader, Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, “was no lover of the Jewish people. He was an ardent antisemite… [He] had a specific agenda in meeting Hitler in 1941. The Protocol from this fateful meeting specifically states that ‘The Fuehrer replied that Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews and that naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine.’ Hitler promised that he would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the ‘Judeo-Communistic Empire’ in Europe.”

 Moreover, in 1946, the American Christian Palestine Committee published its 50 pages report titled “The Arab war effort, a documented account.” The report details the Palestinian Arabs, including the Mufti, liaising with Nazi Germany. 

At the very least, this evidence implies that the Palestinians had hopes that a Mediterranean-style Final Solution would solve their “Jewish Problem.” After the defeat of the Nazis, the Palestinian leadership put their faith in the Arab countries to wipe out Israel from the map. Needless to say, this mindset prevented them from accepting the 1947 UN Partition proposal. 

Manna, like many Palestinian and pro-Palestinian historians, tries to hide the nexus between the Nazis and the Palestinians. As a result, not enough research has been conducted on this topic.  

What is most troubling is the position of Goldberg, the chair of Holocaust Studies, who emerged as a major voice for those who push to equate the Holocaust with the Nakba – a fact IAM emphasized before. Goldberg was hired to teach and research the Holocaust, not to propagate his political agenda at the expense of the Israeli taxpayers.  

References:

https://m.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-733824/amp

A landmark book on the origin of the Arab-Israeli conflict

By NEVILLE TELLER 

Published: MARCH 10, 2023 21:49

Palestine 1936 is essentially the story of how two nationalist movements took root and developed, leading to the Great Arab Revolt and the start of today’s Arab-Israeli conflict.

Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict is an eminently readable account of how the State of Israel emerged from the flames of Mandate Palestine, but it is much more. It is the first scholarly, extensively researched, investigation into the formative events of 1936-39 in the Holy Land – events that its author, Oren Kessler, demonstrates to be the origin and model for the subsequent unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable, Arab-Israel conflict. He shows how, during what he calls “the Great Revolt,” the concept of Arab Palestinianism was born while, at the same time, the decades-long Zionist dream of a Jewish state – Jewish nationalism – began to solidify into reality.

The Arab Revolt of 1936–39 was the first sustained uprising of Palestinian Arabs in more than a century. Thousands of Arabs from all classes were mobilized, and nationalistic ideas were disseminated throughout Arab society. The British, mandated to govern Palestine and create a national home for the Jewish people, were taken aback by the extent and intensity of the revolt. They shipped more than 20,000 troops into Palestine, and by 1939 the Zionists had armed more than 15,000 Jews in their own nationalist movement.

Dealing with the period leading up to 1936, Kessler describes the short, but deadly, pre-Mandate attacks on Jews – 1920 in the Old City of Jerusalem, and May Day 1921 in Jaffa – but he categorizes much of the later 1920s as “the Mandate’s calmest chapter.” The number of Jewish immigrants reached 80,000; agricultural settlements doubled to over 100; the Hebrew University was founded; and it was a time of economic and trade growth and development. 

But it was the calm before the storm. In 1929, Tisha Be’av (the 9th of Av) – the day both First and Second Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed – marked the start of the deadliest clash so far between Jews and Arabs. British officialdom had promulgated new severe restrictions on Jewish access to the Western Wall. Mass protests by Jews generated counter protests by Arabs. The clashes between them got out of hand. Bloodthirsty Arab mobs embarked on a six-day killing spree which included lynching, rape and other unspeakable brutality. In addition to hundreds of wounded on both sides, 133 Jews died.

Britain set up a commission of inquiry. Its report, in the spring of 1930, concluded: “The outbreak…was from the beginning an attack by Arabs on Jews.”   

An explosion is seen in Jaffa in 1939 amid the Arab revolt. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

“The outbreak…was from the beginning an attack by Arabs on Jews.”   

Describing the situation in 1936, just prior to the Great Revolt, Kessler reminds us that Hitler and the Nazis had been in power in Germany for three years, and that his intention to emasculate his Jewish population was already evident. In Palestine, the fanatical Izz al-Din al-Qassam, killed by the British police, had become the first Arab martyr and cult hero. Meanwhile, Jewish immigrants had been flooding into Palestine. By 1936 there were some 400,000. As Kessler puts it: “The Arabs of Palestine started to wonder…whether a world war was looming, one that might rid their country of Britain and the Jews for good.”

The incident that sparked the Great Revolt occurred on April 15, 1936. A Jewish poultry dealer, ambushed by Arabs seeking money for weapons intended to avenge the death of Qassam, could not meet their demands and was shot. Kessler recounts, with the pin-point accuracy only achieved through assiduous research, the details, one after another, that built up to a full-scale riot in Jaffa, known as the Bloody Day, while the British police attempted, and failed, to control the situation. 

Shortly afterwards, an Arab National Committee was formed in Nablus, to be followed by local branches across the country, all urging the Arab public to withhold their taxes. Then came the establishment of an Arab Higher Committee (AHC), chaired by the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a visceral hater of the Jewish people. The AHC masterminded a general strike of Arab workers, demanding an end to Jewish immigration, an end of land sales by Arabs to Jews, and the establishment of a representative government to reflect the country’s Arab majority.

The Arabs’ anti-British action continued for months, with waves of armed rebellion, arson, bombings, and assassinations. Masterminded by the mufti, British soldiers and Jewish civilians were slaughtered indiscriminately, to say nothing of suspected Arab collaborators. In desperation, the government agreed to a step it had previously resisted – arming and training Jews for self-defense. The Jewish Supernumerary Police was founded.

Kessler describes how the mufti, alarmed at the effect the revolt was having on the Arab economy, maneuvered his way out of the uprising. The strike was called off in October and, with peace restored, Britain reverted to its time-honored device of a royal commission of inquiry.

Presided over by Lord Robert Peel, the commission was dispatched to investigate the volatile situation. The mufti, Hajj Amin, sent them a brief letter of welcome “to this holy Arab land” but declined to appear before them, given Britain’s efforts to “Judaize…this purely Arab country.”

Its star witness, Kessler tells us, was Chaim Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization. During the Peel Commission’s two months in Palestine, he testified five times. In July 1937, the commission reported. In their view, the revolt was caused by an Arab desire for independence and the fear of the Jewish national home. They declared the Mandate unworkable and also that separate undertakings given by Britain to the Arabs and the Jews were irreconcilable. Consequently, the commission recommended that the region be partitioned. For the first time, a British official body explicitly spoke of a Jewish state. The Arabs, horrified by the commission’s conclusions, increased the ferocity of the revolt during 1937 and 1938. 

Kessler charts how a change of direction within the British government led to the London conference of 1939, where the concept of limiting permitted Jewish immigration to Palestine and restrictions on Jewish land purchase surfaced. These concepts were later embodied in what is known in British parliamentary terms as a White Paper (the precursor to legislative action by the government), which was rejected by Arabs as inadequate and by Jews as oppressive. The Zionist opposition led to violent anti-government protests in Palestine and a flood of illegal immigration.

In an Epilogue, Kessler sketches the trajectory of the post-Second World War Arab-Israeli conflict. Its roots in the events of 1936-39 are obvious. 

One Arab figure features prominently throughout the book. Musa Alami was the very opposite of extremist in temperament. The son of a one-time mayor of Jerusalem, he was probably the first Arab from Palestine to attend Cambridge University, which he did in the years following WW I. Mature and generous in disposition, he studied law but read widely in philosophy. He is also known to have read History of Zionism by Nahum Sokolov, a future head of the Zionist Congress.

It was after the 1929 riots that David Ben-Gurion first met Musa Alami. He described him as “a nationalist and a man not to be bought by money or by office, but who was not a Jew-hater either.” He was, Ben-Gurion wrote, “extraordinarily intelligent,” judicious and trustworthy. Their discussions in the early 1930s were Ben-Gurion’s first attempt to find common ground with the Arabs of Palestine.

The two men maintained a life-long relationship. After the Six Day War, Ben-Gurion phoned him in London, urging him to return to the Middle East to help make a viable peace out of Israel’s extraordinary victory, but this was a step too far for Alami. Two years later, they met in London and, according to Alami, Ben-Gurion discussed how Israel’s territorial gains might be used to achieve a permanent accord between Israel and the Arab world: In return for peace, said Ben-Gurion, Israel should relinquish all the territories conquered in 1967, with the exception of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

According to Kessler, Ben-Gurion reported these discussion to the Foreign Ministry, but it is unclear whether any attention was paid to them. By then, Ben-Gurion was near the end of his active career. He died in 1973. His friend Musa Alami passed away in 1984.

Palestine 1936 is essentially the story of how two nationalist movements took root and developed. Oren Kessler tells us that he is no academic. He is, though, an accomplished journalist who, some years ago, became fascinated by the then under-recorded history of the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-39 and decided to research and write about it. The extent and depth of his research is evidenced in the 49 pages of references that he includes in his work. But it is his journalistic skills that make the book so absorbing a read for everyone – scholar and general public alike. This detailed account of a seminal period in the history of both Israel and the Arab world is highly recommended. ■

The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. Follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com

Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict Oren Kessler Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023 334 pages, $26.95 orenkessler.com

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.https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/12746552/ihgms-encounters-conversation-adel-manna-his-book-nakba-and

EVENT: [IHGMS] “Encounters”: A conversation with Adel Manna on his book “Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956” (University of California Press, 2022) via ZOOM Webinar (May 3)

by Alon Confino (IHGMS)

[The Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem present their “Encounters” annual series: Aftermaths]

In Nakba and Survival, Adel Manna tells the story of the Palestinians in Haifa and Galilee during, and in the decade after, mass dispossession. Manna uses oral histories, diaries, memoirs, and archival sources to reconstruct the social history of the Palestinians who remained and returned to become Israeli citizens. Manna shows in his path-breaking book that remaining in Israel in the aftermath of the Nakba under the Israeli military government were acts of resilience in their own right. In conversation with Manna will be Amos Goldberg.

Dr. Adel Manna is a Palestinian historian specializing in history of Palestine during the Ottoman period and Palestine in the 20^th century. He has taught since the early 1980’s at The Hebrew University and Bir Zeit University. Currently, he is a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute.

Prof. Amos Goldberg is the Jonah M. Machover Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry and the Head of the Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Register in advance for this event here:  https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OS_fY112QVCEA8jtmVtY7g#/registration

Related date: 

May 3, 2023

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https://www.yadvashem.org/blog/setting-the-record-straight.html

Setting the Record Straight

21 October 2015Prof. Dina Porat

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, reviewing a unit of Muslim Bosnians in the service of the Nazis

It is a well-documented and undisputable fact that many years before his rise to power, Adolf Hitler was already obsessed by the notion that the Jews constituted an existential danger to the humankind, and thus world Jewry needed to be eliminated at all costs.

This ideology began to be formed by Hilter when he was a solider during World War I.  Hitler believed that the war had not only been caused by the Jews, but also that the Jews had stabbed Germany in the back.  Hitler went on to develop his obsession with the Jewish problem in his infamous manifest, Mein Kampf, and later in other central documents of the Nazi Party that began to establish itself in the 1920s.  Finally, in a speech at the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, Hitler stated outright that if world Jewry would ‘once again drag the entire world into a World War’ then the only possible outcome would be the extermination of the Jewish people.

All of these facts clearly show that Adolf Hitler was determined to annihilate the Jews, and subsequent historical events demonstrate how this mania developed them into official Nazi policies.  Hitler didn’t need anyone else, including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseni, to come up with the idea to implement the “Final Solution.”

The Grand Mufti’s visit, over two years after the outbreak of WWII, came once many “Final Solution policies were already in full swing.  Almost immediately following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, Reinhard Heydrich received instructions from Berlin giving the orders to establish ghettos and Jewish Councils in the occupied Polish territories.  It was widely understood amongst the SS that the ghettoization process of the Jews in Europe was a stepping stone for the implementation of the “Final Solution.”  In addition, after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 the SS Einsatzgruppen began the mass murders of the 1.5 million Jews in Lithuania, Russia, and the Ukraine.  The first extermination camp, Chelmno, began operations at the beginning of December 1941 just days after the meeting with the Grand Mufti.  The building of the death camp had already been underway for several months when these two leaders met.

The Mufti had a specific agenda in meeting Hitler in 1941. The Protocol from this fateful meeting specifically states that “The Fuehrer replied that Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews and that naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine.”  Hitler promised that he would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the “Judeo-Communistic Empire” in Europe.  The Mufti of Jerusalem was no lover of the Jewish people.  He was an ardent antisemite, but the idea of the “Final Solution” was Hitler’s alone, as was the implementation of its appalling policies and actions.

Posted by Prof. Dina Porat

Dina Porat is Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History at the Department of Jewish History, Head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, and holds the Alfred P. Slaner Chair for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University. Since 2011 she has served as Chief Historian of Yad Vashem.

20.04.23

Editorial Note

Pitzer College, Claremont, California, is under attack by the BDS groups to suspend its Study Abroad Program with the University of Haifa. 

The University of Haifa Study Abroad Program at the International School, promises “an experience that you will never forget!” The courses are taught in English by faculty from various departments within the University. All classes are academically accredited per the standards and criteria of North American and European universities. The disciplines include Anthropology, Arabic Language and Culture, Communications, English Language and Literature, Economics and Business Management, Hebrew Language, History, Holocaust Studies, Law, Literature, Maritime Civilizations, Middle Eastern Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religious and Jewish Studies, and Sociology. 

The University of Haifa is considered the most diverse in Israel, boasting a 35 percent Arab student enrollment.

On March 30, the Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) relaunched their academic boycott campaign to suspend Pitzer College’s study abroad program with the University of Haifa. SJP held an event with over 40 students and community members. The event is part of a series of festivities SJP organized to celebrate Palestine Freedom Weeks. The call to suspend the program is based on “Israel’s discrimination.” SJP says the “University of Haifa’s systematic discrimination against Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students. Most Palestinian students are barred from entry into the program” which undermines Pitzer’s commitment to academic freedom. “Because of the violence and discrimination faced by Palestinians at the University of Haifa and in occupied Palestine, we believe that no student should study abroad at a university operating on occupied land — especially considering that many Palestinian students cannot attend this program.” SJP’s demands the program be suspended until “the Israeli state ends its restrictions on entry to Israel based on ancestry and/or political speech and the Israeli state adopts policies granting visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a fully equal basis as it does to Israeli universities.”  SJP organizer Miriam Farah told the press, “It’s important for us to target the institutions that we’re currently at and ask ourselves, ‘how does our current institution further perpetuate Israeli violence and Israeli apartheid?’” The Suspend Pitzer Haifa campaign circulated a petition in support of the demands for suspension. 

Daniel A. Segal, Jean M. Pitzer Professor of Anthropology and Professor of History, whose expertise areas are: The Caribbean; post-Columbian world history; the social construction of race, as the Pitzer website reveals, is among the leading voices calling to suspend the Pitzer-Haifa program. He posted on his website, “Recent Public Statements I Endorse (all issued by organizations within which I serve on the executive committee or equivalent),” which includes a letter by Jewish Voice for Peace, from June 9. 2022; and, a letter by USACBI, the U.S. campaign focused on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, from April 12, 2022.

However, the protest groups against the Pitzer study abroad with Haifa have a long history. 

In 2018, the Pitzer faculty voted to suspend the Study Abroad Israel program, which started in 2007, to suspend the collaboration because of a “violation of Palestinian rights.” 

Segal, who is Jewish spearheaded the motion. He declared that “the college should stand against Israel’s restrictions on academic exchange, including a 2017 law to bar entry to those who support BDS against the Jewish state.” The BDS supporters urged the study program to be resumed only after Israel ends its entry restrictions based on “ancestry and/or political speech,” and grants visas to Palestinian students on a “fully equal basis.” In 2017, the Pitzer Student Senate voted to bar the use of student funds by five firms, including Caterpillar and Hewlett-Packard, that were complicit in “suppressing Palestinian rights.” 

Segal said that the concerns about singling out Israel should not be used to impede social justice. While students and faculty members complainants of the statement “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” as an anti-Semitic threat, Segal dismissed this claim. He stated, “that claim about that expression is a common lie of Zionist propaganda, precisely to trick people like her into censoring pro-Palestinian speech… Some naïve people might even have been duped by this lie, this propaganda, and genuinely think that the phrase means that, but it’s nonsense — malicious nonsense.”  

The then-Pitzer President, Melvin L. Oliver condemned the vote and, together with the college trustees, nullified it. 

Interestingly, also in 2018, Segal was accepted to participate in the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) US Faculty Development Seminar on Palestine. PARC’s mission is to “promote and facilitate scholarly research on Palestine, build a broader and deeper knowledge base of scholarship on Palestine, initiate and encourage exchange between U.S. and Palestinian scholars and institutions, and widely disseminate scholarly research on Palestine.”

Segal was one of the dozen US faculty members participating in the ninth annual Faculty Development Seminar on Palestine which is Jerusalem-based, and includes visits to Palestinian universities, research institutes and cultural institution and roundtable discussions, tours of historic cities, and meetings with Palestinian colleagues. PARC states that seminar participants will “deepen their knowledge of their fields of interest in Palestine and build relationships with Palestinian colleagues and institutions.”

Segal’s courses at Pitzer College include a two-semester world history sequence and a seminar on Donald Trump’s America. 

Segal is an example of how Palestinians recruit Jewish or Israeli academics. For him, it doesn’t matter if the Palestinians are ruled by dictatorships that execute gays and dissidents and suffer the worse types of human rights abuses, as long as Israel is to be blamed.

IAM will report on this issue in due time.

References:

Pitzer Direct Enroll – Israel: Haifa

Study Abroad & International Programs » Approved Programs and Exchanges for Pitzer Students » Pitzer Direct Enroll – Israel: Haifa

Pitzer Direct Enroll – Israel: Haifa

Open to Pitzer students only.

Program Title: Semester at the University of Haifa

Location: Haifa, Israel

Host Website: University of Haifa International School – https://uhaifa.org

Eligibility
Students must be in good academic standing and have a 3.00 or higher GPA. Preference given to juniors and first semester seniors but sophomores are eligible if space is available.

Preparation
Suggested general preparation options include: Comparative Politics; Intercultural Communications; Language Culture and Society; Introduction to International/ Intercultural Studies; Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology; Engaging Difference.

Application
Students must first apply through Pitzer’s Office of Study Abroad and International Programs. If accepted by Pitzer, students will then be asked to complete the Haifa application.

Program Dates
Fall program: Early August to early January. Note: Students will take Intensive Hebrew Ulpan or Intensive Arabic from early August to late August. The actual semester program runs from mid October to early January.Spring program: Late January to early June – Intensive Hebrew Ulpan or Intensive Arabic winter program runs late January to mid February. Semester program runs late February to early June.

Required Courses
Pre-semester Intensive Hebrew Ulpan or Intensive Arabic, and the minimum full-time course-load equivalent to four PItzer course credits during the regular semester, and the Pitzer course MLLC110 Intercultural Learning: Portfolio Writing via Sakai.

Intensive Language
Students will take either an Intensive Hebrew Ulpan or Intensive Arabic prior to the semester program. Students may choose to continue their language study during the regular semester.

Independent Study
The university does not offer support for independent study projects.

Course Options
The semester program will consist of courses offered by the University of Haifa International School, which are taught in English. For course offerings, go the course catalog

The International School offers a variety of courses taught in English, an internship program, Arabic Language.Culture and Civilization: https://uhaifa.org/academics/study-abroad/semester-year-abroad/course-catalog. Green Technologies also available.

Students have course options outside the International School. If a student is proficient in Hebrew, he/she can select courses offered by other departments within the University of Haifa. The English Language and Literature Department as well as the Fine Arts Department are options for students who are not proficient in Hebrew but wish to take courses outside the International School. It should be noted that the University of Haifa and International School calendars differ. Students who take courses outside the International School should be prepared for a longer semester.

Credit Possible
Pre-semester Intensive Hebrew Ulpan or Intensive Arabic (5 credits), and 12 or 13  credits during the regular semester. Additionally, students will receive 0.5 Pitzer course credits for the writing course via Sakai. (See above under Required Courses.) In total, students should end up with 4.75 or 5.00 course credits.

Housing and Board Options
There are two types of dormitory accommodations available to international students:  modest apartments of three double rooms and a shared bathroom, kitchen, and living space or apartments of six single rooms, each room with its own bathroom, and a shared kitchen and living space. All international students will be sharing their suite with Israeli students, a diverse population of Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian, and Spanish speakers. There is no meal plan. Students receive a stipend to prepare meals in their suites.

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Click to access Approved-Study-Abroad-Programs-website.pdf

Approved Study Abroad Programs for Pitzer College Students 

Africa and Middle East GHANA – SIT Ghana Globalization and Afro-Chic ISRAEL – University of Haifa LEBANON – American University of Beirut MOROCCO – Al Akhawayn University RWANDA – SIT Rwanda SOUTH AFRICA – University of KwaZulu Natal MULTI-COUNTRY – *Pitzer in Southern Africa The Americas ARGENTINA – ISEP Universidad del Salvador; ISEP Universidad Católica de Córdoba BRAZIL – Pitzer in Brazil Summer Program CHILE – ISEP Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso COSTA RICA – *Pitzer in Costa Rica Semester Program; *Pitzer in Costa Rica Summer Health CUBA – Sarah Lawrence College in Cuba ECUADOR – *Pitzer in Ecuador MEXICO – Autonomous University of the Yucatan Asia and Oceania AUSTRALIA – University of Adelaide; ISEP Direct at La Trobe University; ISEP Direct at University of Technology in Sydney BHUTAN- Royal Thimphu College HONG KONG – Lingnan University JAPAN – Kwansei Gakuin University Semester and Summer Program KOREA – ISEP Ewha Womans University; ISEP Korea University; ISEP Yonsei University KYRGYZSTAN – Bard Abroad in Bishkek NEPAL – *Pitzer in Nepal NEW ZEALAND – ISEP Massey University in Palmerston North VIETNAM – *Pitzer in Vietnam Summer Program Europe DENMARK- ISEP University of Aalborg ENGLAND – Sarah Lawrence College with University of Oxford; Sarah Lawrence College London Theatre Program with the British American Drama Academy; University of Birmingham; University of Bristol; University of Essex FRANCE- Sarah Lawrence College in Paris; Sciences Po; University of Nantes GERMANY- Bard Abroad in Berlin; ISEP Justus-Liebig Universtät Giessen; Leuphana University of Lüneburg GREECE – College Year in Athens IRELAND – University College Cork ITALY – *Pitzer in Italy; The Centro: Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome NETHERLANDS – ISEP Tilburg University SCOTLAND – University of Aberdeen SPAIN – University of León; ISEP University of Murcia; Spanish Institute for Global Education with University of Sevilla, University of Pablo de Olavide or EUSA Centro Universitario SWEDEN – ISEP Mälardalen University; ISEP Södertörn University Domestic Exchanges Arizona Northern Arizona University – School of Indigenous Studies Maine Colby College New York Bard College – BGIA, New York City New York Sarah Lawrence College Pennsylvania Haverford College * Indicates a Pitzer College run program. Program options subject to change each year. Pitzer College Direct Run Programs Pitzer College embraces a unique set of educational objectives that encourage students from all majors to think about the world in ways that expand their understanding of other cultures. To further its educational objective of intercultural understanding, Pitzer has carefully developed its own study abroad programs. These programs employ a nationally recognized cultural immersion model integrating intensive language instruction, study trips, family stays, a core course on the host culture, community service, and the opportunity to pursue an independent study project. The Pitzer in Brazil Summer Program provides students with an unparalleled opportunity to engage with a city that has retained and celebrated its African roots and improve their Portuguese language skills. The program takes place over six weeks in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The city is an UNESCO World Heritage site, the first colonial capital of Brazil, and the center of Afro-Brazilian culture. During the Pitzer in Costa Rica Summer Health Program students explore important public health concepts, develop their Spanish language abilities, and have an opportunity to become immersed in the health care industry in Costa Rica. Through the Pitzer in Vietnam Summer Program students study Vietnamese language, history, culture, political structures, and environmental issues. The program is based in Hue, Vietnam which underwent significant damage during the war but recently many of its extraordinary historical monuments, including its Imperial (“Forbidden”) City have been extensively restored. The Pitzer in Costa Rica Semester Program is a great option for students who want to develop their Spanish language abilities and have an interest in ecology, environmental studies, chemistry, engineering, biology, ecotourism, and cultural studies. The Pitzer in Ecuador Semester Program provides a dynamic setting for studying the Ecuadorian economic, political, cultural, and environmental reality. The program is based in Quito, the one of the most beautiful cities in South America and is affiliated with Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). The Pitzer in Italy Semester Program goes beyond an acquaintance of Italian culture. The program is based in Parma which provides students with a high degree of integration into Italian family life and community. Students learn about the Emilia-Romagna region and how it has played a vital role in Italy’s economic, cultural, and political life. Pitzer in Nepal Semester Program is the college’s longest-running program and has gained recognition for its highly effective approach to language and cultural training. Through the program, students become acquainted with some of the main historical, social, and political issues fundamental to Nepal’s modern identity. Pitzer in Southern Africa Semester Program is a multi-country comparative studies semester program in Botswana and South Africa. It provides students with an opportunity to learn about the multiple ways governments, NGOs, and local communities choose to approach issues such as the colonial legacy, development, power, human rights, big game conservation, tourism, health care, education, and poverty alleviation.  

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Pitzer paints over pro-Palestinian artwork, messages on Free Wall

April 14, 2023 12:08 am

Pitzer paints over pro-Palestinian artwork, messages on Free Wall

By Jake Chang

On Wednesday, April 12, Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) announced an April 14 event to repaint the Pitzer College Free Wall. 

This followed an April 11 email from Pitzer’s Vice President of Student Affairs Sandra Vasquez to Pitzer students confirming that the Pitzer administration removed pro-Palestinian artwork and messages painted by Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on the wall. 

Prior to the administration’s repainting, the wall contained Palestinian symbols such as a keffiyeh pattern, an olive leaf and an outline of the state of Palestine with the Palestinian flag inside of it. It also featured statements like “Suspend Pitzer Haifa,” “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.” SJP initially spray-painted the messages on March 30, the day of their Suspend Pitzer Haifa campaign relaunch. 

Vasquez explained that she directed the removal following concerns from a Pitzer student and a faculty member. 

“[The] Office of Student Affairs leadership took immediate steps to share our acknowledgement of [the] error, an explanation of how it occurred, and an apology with a concerned faculty leader, both in-person and in writing via email,” Vasquez said in the email. “Our office made an honest error, and again, I sincerely apologize.”

Pitzer Professor of Anthropology and History and proponent of SJP’s campaign Dan Segal contacted Vasquez on Thursday, April 6, confirming the administration’s involvement after hearing about the issue. Segal shared that Vasquez explained that the student and faculty member complainants had interpreted the statement “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” as an anti-Semitic threat. 

“I told her the truth: that that claim about that expression is a common lie of Zionist propaganda, precisely to trick people like her into censoring pro-Palestinian speech,” Segal said. “Some naïve people might even have been duped by this lie, this propaganda, and genuinely think that the phrase means that, but it’s nonsense — malicious nonsense.”

He sent an email to Pitzer faculty later that day stating that the painted over wall constituted “a grievous violation of speech rights” and targeted Palestinian-identified students. 

“In wider U.S. society, anti-Palestinian bigotry —racism, to speak honestly — is normalized.  And rather than Pitzer being an exception to this wickedness, it is especially true at Pitzer,” Segal said in an email to TSL. “This new censorship by the Pitzer administration hardens that normalization of anti-Palestinian racism by this Pitzer administration.”

SJP was not consulted prior to their artwork and messages being painted over, Palestinian student and SJP member Jacob Brittain PZ ’23 explained. 

“It was a complete falling apart of the administration structure and their communication, since it was not even clearly communicated [that] when [they] do remove anything from the Free Wall, this is supposed to happen,” Brittain said. 

Brittain clarified that the “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” statement is a common phrase used in support of Palestinian freedom.

“Understanding the [intentions] of where [the statement] comes from is the key purpose,” Brittain said. “I think that’s something that allows me to feel like I have a voice when I hear it or when I say it.”

Segal criticized Vasquez’s email response, sharing that the administrative apology was too abstract in mentioning the censorship. 

“This so-called apology thus fails to acknowledge, and fails to accept responsibility for, the harms done by this administrative censorship to Palestinian and Palestinian-American students at Pitzer and at the 5Cs,” Segal said via email. 

According to Brittain, Pitzer administration has offered to reimburse the spray paint and materials needed to reinstate the mural. 

SJP member Evelyn Lillimoe PZ ‘25 stated that she was not completely surprised at Pitzer’s actions given their precedent of opposing student support for Palestinian liberation, referencing former Pitzer President Melvin Oliver using two vetoes during his tenure in response to resolutions in support of Palestine.

“Pitzer has a long history of silencing student voices that are for Palestinian immigration and specifically Palestinian student voices,” Lillimoe said. “I think this act of censorship was shocking but not necessarily unsurprising.”

In reparation for the act of censorship, Brittain and Lillimoe ask that Pitzer support their Suspend Haifa Pitzer campaign. 

“If Pitzer is truly dedicated to social responsibility and uplifting student voices, then what they need to do is support our campaign to conditionally suspend the study abroad program at the University of Haifa because that is a way that we can materially contribute to the fight for Palestinian Liberation,” Lillimoe said. 

The addition of the “inadequate” apology to the censorship and previous veto of the Suspend Pitzer Haifa resolution signals a broader anti-Palestinian trend, according to Segal. 

“My response to this administration is this: your anti-Palestinian racism is showing,” Segal said in his April 11 email.

Nhi Nguyen contributed reporting.

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SJP relaunches campaign to suspend Pitzer Haifa study abroad program

April 6, 2023 10:58 pm

SJP relaunches campaign to suspend Pitzer Haifa study abroad program

By Jake Chang and Sajah Ali

On Thursday, March 30, Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) relaunched their academic boycott campaign to suspend Pitzer College’s direct enrollment study abroad program with the University of Haifa in Israel.

SJP held the relaunch at Pitzer’s Grove House, where over 40 students and community members gathered to listen to a presentation held by club organizers. The event, which was announced on the club’s Instagram page, is part of a series of festivities SJP organized as part of Palestine Freedom Weeks.

The boycott campaign announced last Thursday models after its iteration in the 2018-2019 school year, when SJP addressed grievances with the Haifa program and called upon its conditional suspension based on their demands. The call to suspend the program based on Israel’s discrimination and its subsequent Pitzer College Council motion was a source of tension and controversy between students, faculty and Pitzer’s then-administration.

In their campaign statement published last Thursday, SJP emphasized the University of Haifa’s systematic discrimination against Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students. Most Palestinian students are barred from entry into the program, which they said undermines Pitzer’s commitment to academic freedom. 

“Because of the violence and discrimination faced by Palestinians at the University of Haifa and in occupied Palestine, we believe that no student should study abroad at a university operating on occupied land — especially considering that many Palestinian students cannot attend this program,” SJP said in their statement. 

Currently, SJP’s demands include that the program be suspended until “the Israeli state ends its restrictions on entry to Israel based on ancestry and/or political speech and the Israeli state adopts policies granting visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a fully equal basis as it does to Israeli universities,” SJP said in their campaign statement. 

If they were to suspend the Haifa program, Pitzer would become the first institution nationally to endorse the academic boycott, according to SJP. 

“It’s important for us to target the institutions that we’re currently at and ask ourselves, ‘how does our current institution further perpetuate Israeli violence and Israeli apartheid?’” SJP organizer Miriam Farah CM ‘23 told TSL. 

In 2019, the Pitzer College Council, which is composed of students, faculty and staff, voted 67 to 28 in favor of conditionally suspending the program, following more than a year of organizing. Pitzer became the first higher education institution to pass such a motion.  

However, former Pitzer President Melvin Oliver vetoed the vote less than three hours after it occurred, citing the political nature that would be implicated in the suspension, stating that “[i]t is rarely, if ever, the role of the college to be taking such positions” in a press release. 

Oliver has since retired from his role as president and Strom Thacker is set to take on his role this July. Farah added  that with this new campaign, SJP hopes to make the feelings of the Pitzer community clear to Thacker. 

“It’s very important for us to consider these shifting dynamics of concern and how students and faculty can have an active role in the new president’s agenda,” Farah said.

The campaign is part of a wider trend advocating for Palestinian liberation internationally, namely the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that was adopted by the National Students for Justice in Palestine in 2005. 

SJP cited the wave of support in academia, including the Middle East Studies Association vote to endorse the Palestinian call for BDS on March 23, 2022. However, SJP organizers like Anna Babboni SC ‘24 hope that the 5C community becomes more engaged in such conversations about BDS on campus.. 

“There’s been some loss of momentum about taking up BDS on these campuses, so even just talking about the academic boycott […] is a huge way to create a domino effect on our campuses to get people interested and committed to Palestinian liberation and freedom,” Babboni said. 

Pitzer Professor of Anthropology and History Dan Segal is a strong proponent for the Suspend Pitzer Haifa campaign and was previously involved in leading the initial faculty vote in 2018 that catalyzed the College Council motion the following year.

As a person of Jewish background, Segal has been active in Palestinian solidarity work in the United States for decades by showing support for Palestinian freedom and liberation. He said he cannot support Pitzer in facilitating the program. 

“We shouldn’t have an exchange relationship with a university, for instance, in which Palestinian students don’t have equal rights at those universities to Jewish students,” Segal said. 

Segal also called upon Haifa’s involvement with occupation forces as a reason that Pitzer should not maintain an exchange relationship with the university. In addition, he endorses the BDS movement in providing a nonviolent path for institutions to show that they are unwilling to support the Israeli state. 

“When that message gets across, that’s when Israel will come finally to the negotiating table and will negotiate an end to their atrocities [and] their human rights violations,” Segal said. 

Segal also called upon the next Pitzer president to act differently than his predecessor.

“We have to count on him […] not to support the denial of freedom to other people [and] not to support other people living under repression,” Segal said. “If he were to veto a successful suspension of the Pitzer Haifa program and show that he, like Melvin Oliver is a supporter of apartheid, is a supporter of murderous ethnic cleansing, then very clearly he’s unfit to serve.”

The launch of the boycott campaign is part of the Palestinian Freedom Weeks that SJP is currently hosting through March and April. According to Babboni, SJP aims to promote cultural events, conduct political education and advocate for the Claremont community to take up BDS.

On April 2, SJP and the 5C Prison Abolition co-hosted a talk titled “Policing in the US and Palestine.” Around 30 students attended the discussion with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, an organization that builds community power to abolish police surveillance and its deliberate harm toward Black and Brown people. 

During the talk, members of the Coalition spoke about abolitionist organizing and the connection between US and Israeli policing and human rights. 

Farah said the talk was important in drawing connections between the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Israeli Defense Fund (IDF).  

“What I found most interesting was how police organizations and forces in LA have close ties to Zionist and Israeli organizations,” Farah said. “I think oftentimes people forget how much funding the U.S. government gives to Israel, nearly 4 billion [dollars] per year, and most of it goes to military aid, so I think it’s important for us to draw these connections.” 

On Tuesday, March 28, SJP also held an Academic Boycott 101 event, along with a history of BDS at the 5Cs. Farah said she sees these events as a way for students from any background to participate in the BDS movement and provide feedback. 

The Suspend Pitzer Haifa campaign circulated a petition in support of the demands for the conditional suspension.

“We want to reiterate the point that the Pitzer community voted to suspend this program during the 2018-2019 school year and there is continued support for that resolution,” Farah said. 

Babboni emphasized the importance of the petition in guiding SJP’s future actions. 

“We want to show that this is a community ask, that this is what the Pitzer community wants,” Babboni said. “We want to pulse check where people are at with how committed they feel to taking up the academic boycott and what the boycott means to them and get the ball rolling for our future campaign strategy.”

Segal called upon the 5C community and administration to show continued support for the campaign and expand throughout the consortium. 

“The challenge ought to be to the faculty, students and staff at each of the other colleges which have not ended their exchange relations with Pomona [College], Scripps [College] and [Claremont McKenna College],” Segal said. “Every college and university in this consortium should ask itself, ‘Can they support a program that is bolstering apartheid, a program that denies academic freedom to Palestinians?’”

In an April 4 email to TSL, Assistant Vice President of College Communications Wendy Shattuck told TSL that Pitzer was aware of the campaign but had no further comments at the time.

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https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScmGIP8A1rAmilV2aUlCje_xnvEWurgZS_s1OMFeWW2Y6BxsQ/viewform

Suspend Pitzer Haifa 2023-2024

 We, Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine, call on Pitzer College to suspend its exchange with the University of Haifa until  

(a) Israel ends its discriminatory restrictions on entry based on ancestry and/or political speech and 

(b) Israel adopts policies granting visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a fully equal basis as it does to Israeli universities

BECAUSE

• In 2018, Pitzer College’s faculty voted to conditionally suspend the College’s exchange with University of Haifa until the above conditions were met. The resolution then moved to the College Council, where it passed again with ⅔ majority
  • This marked a historic win for the BDS movement and Palestinian freedom, making Pitzer the first institution of higher education in the country to cut ties with an Israeli study abroad program 
  • However, merely four hours after the bill passed, President Melvin Oliver nullified the vote and flew to the University of Haifa to affirm his support of Israeli apartheid, thus undermining the Pitzer community’s embrace of the academic boycott in support of Palestinian freedom 
• Throughout Pitzer’s 60-year history, the Pitzer administration and board of trustees have twice unilaterally rejected a democratic motion set by its College Council or the Student Senate. Both vetoes addressed bills that fought for Palestinian liberation, demonstrating the extent to which Pitzer College disregards community calls for justice in Palestine 
• Pitzer’s “core” values include “social responsibility,” “intercultural understanding,” and “student engagement.” We must hold the college to an ethical and democratic standard regarding their stance on Palestinian freedom, justice, and equality
• Between 1947 and 1948, more than 40,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes in Haifa alone, and refugees still, to this day, cannot return to their homes. Descendants of these refugees who study at the Claremont Colleges would likely be barred from this study abroad program. How can we have a program that some of our own students cannot participate in due to their ethnicity? 
• Prioritizing human rights, ethical considerations, and supporting the academic boycott is the pinnacle of academic freedom and a larger fight for justice internationally
• Palestinian and Arab students and faculty at the University of Haifa have urged us to take up this fight: “Since we the Palestinian students in Haifa University are banned from supporting or calling for the boycott of Israeli universities and Israeli academia in general, we thank the rallying students for rising the Palestinian cause in American universities.” 

Given President Oliver’s recent retirement and the reasons described above, it is time for President-Designate Strom Thacker to abide by the Pitzer community’s overwhelming support of Palestinian freedom by cutting its ties with the University of Haifa. One tangible way we can support Palestinian freedom in our campuses is by making sure we’re not supporting institutions that contribute to discrimination and oppression. As the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel asserts, “To enroll, or participate in any way, in a study abroad program at an Israeli institution means ignoring if not perpetuating the ongoing violation of the academic- and, indeed, human- freedoms of Palestinians.” Join us to demand the conditional suspension of Pitzer’s study abroad program at the University of Haifa by signing this petition. You can also access further resources at our website.

In solidarity and struggle, 

Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine

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Pitzer College Council votes on whether to suspend its Haifa study abroad program today. Here are the key players

March 14, 2019 1:22 pm

Pitzer College Council votes on whether to suspend its Haifa study abroad program today. Here are the key players

By Jaimie Ding and Patrick Liu

The Pitzer College Council will vote today on whether to suspend the school’s study abroad program with the University of Haifa in Israel. Advocates for suspending the program, including Pitzer College professor Dan Segal cite Israel’s “discrimination on the basis of ancestry and legitimate political speech” as motivation for bringing the motion forward.

Here are the key players on both sides of the debate and events which have occurred in the lead-up to the vote.

SUSPEND THE PROGRAM

Dan Segal

Dan Segal, a professor of anthropology and a faculty representative on Pitzer’s Study Abroad and International Programs Committee, brought forward the initial motion to suspend the Haifa program at the Nov. 8 faculty meeting. He has been the most vocal faculty member in support of suspending the program.

In comments to the Pitzer Board of Trustees, Segal wrote that participating in the study abroad program “exposes [Pitzer students] to discrimination on the basis of ancestry and legitimate political speech — specifically speech in favor of the nonviolent pursuit of social justice” and that the original motion passed by faculty “lends crucial support for academic freedom for Palestinian universities.”

On Tuesday, Segal co-sponsored an amended motion with Faculty Executive Committee Chair Claudia Strauss that lays out a uniform policy ending study abroad programs in countries that “restrict entry on the basis of either (a) legally protected political speech or (b) race or ancestry (as distinct from citizenship).”

Under the resolution, the FEC would initiate a case study of any program violating the aforementioned policies before having Pitzer College Council vote on its suspension.

This policy would be applied to all Pitzer study abroad programs.

After establishing this policy, the motion would apply it to Haifa — suspending the program.

This amended motion is a “direct response to the concern voiced by some faculty and students that absent such an initial statement of uniform policy, some outside audiences will misread and/or misrepresent the motion as somehow having a double-standard about the Israeli state,” Segal said via email.

Students for Justice in Palestine

Students for Justice in Palestine is a “grassroots student organization that is part of a national coalition of college chapters,” SJP chair Lea Kayali PO ’19 said via email. “SJP raises awareness about the situation in Palestine and advocates for an end to the Israeli occupation through educational initiatives, college motions … and student actions.”

In advance of the Haifa vote, the organization has focused on outreach to Pitzer faculty and student senators, and on building a coalition of other campus groups, according to SJP member Jorj Chisam-Majid PZ ’20. Several Pitzer affinity groups have provided statements of support for the Haifa motion.

SJP feels “very confident about the vote because we have received a lot of support and have had very successful outreach campaigns,” Chisam-Majid said. “What we are more worried out is a situation where [Pitzer] President [Melvin] Oliver and the Board of Trustees veto the vote — which would be another huge blow to the shared governance and Pitzer’s commitment to social justice.”

Added Kayali: “In the U.S., we have a unique obligation to be attentive to and act on Israeli human rights violations. The U.S. gives Israel $3.8 billion in military aid annually, and routinely defends Israel’s violations of international human rights.”

DON’T SUSPEND THE PROGRAM

Pitzer President Melvin Oliver

At a Pitzer College Council meeting last November, President Melvin Oliver opposed the faculty motion, questioning why the resolution targeted Israel only, and not other countries that have allegedly perpetrated human rights abuses, including China and Nepal.

After the College Council vote, Oliver will make a final decision on the Haifa program’s fate, taking into consideration the council decision. However, the president has historically honored College Council decisions, according to Pitzer Student Senate member Isaiah Kramer PZ ’20.

Claremont Jewish Organizations (Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance, Claremont Colleges Hillel, J Street U Claremont Colleges)

The Claremont Colleges Hillel, J Street U Claremont Colleges and Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance released a joint statement March 13 urging the Pitzer College Council to apply the same standards to all of Pitzer’s study abroad programs or “vote down the motion if it remains as-is.”

The statement mentions a Jewish student leader in opposition to the Haifa motion who was targeted by “menacing emails and had their name placed on a hate site,” and condemns Islamophobic rhetoric targeting Muslim and Arab students at Pitzer.

Zachary Freiman PO ’20, who is on the board of the Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance, said “the effort to delegitimize the State of Israel, whether through the anti-Semitic [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] campaign or other means, and scrub the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is a modern-day form of anti-Semitism.”

Claremont Colleges Hillel, a 5C Jewish student organization, posted a statement on its Facebook page.

“We have heard from many students, especially Jewish students, that they have felt ostracized and confused by the rhetoric surrounding the upcoming vote,” the post states. “We certainly empathize with this perspective as the movement to suspend the Haifa program seems to have been selectively chosen to single out Israel.”

The joint statement from Hillel, J Street and CPIA also acknowledged that “there is no question that Palestinians live under occupation and are subject to discrimination.”

EVENTS ON CAMPUS

Israel on Campus Coalition

The Israel on Campus Coalition posted a video on its Facebook page March 11 in opposition to suspending the Haifa program. The text in the video, which featured interviews with 5C students read, “How would you feel if your student exchange program was cancelled … Only because of where you come from?”

The ICC is an organization that “unite[s] and empower[s] pro-Israel campus organizations,” according to its website. It is unclear whether the organization is working with 5C students or groups.

Jessi Hjelle SC ’21 said her comments in the video were misconstrued to seem like she supported the Haifa program when she actually opposes it.

Hjelle said she was approached by a group of people who appeared to be students, asking her if she wanted to be in a study abroad video. They asked if she planned to study abroad and where, and what she would do if she was told she could not study abroad in her preferred country.

“At no point during this time did these people mention Israel or Haifa to me,” Hjelle said via message. “They took my answers and used them out of context for their own propaganda.”

When Hjelle reached out to ICC to ask if they would edit her out of the video, she said they ignored her.

SJP released a statement condemning the video as “unethical propaganda” and stating that they “denounce ICC’s disingenuous distortion of student opinion, designed to fabricate a false narrative.”

Posters on campus and other threats

Posters have appeared across Pitzer’s campus depicting a tweet from several years ago allegedly from the Palestinian Sunni-Islamist fundamentalist organization Hamas, which the U.S. State Department classifies as a terrorist organization, expressing support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, accompanied by a photo of masked Hamas militants carrying rifles.

The posters urge Pitzer to keep the Haifa program and have become a source of fear for some Muslim and Palestinian students on campus.

Chisam-Majid said they were “terrified” by the posters, which “clearly draw on old racist and Islamophobic tropes that insinuate any activism by us is similar to ‘terrorism’ and that the BDS movement is somehow violent.”

Posters like these often come before a round of doxxing and harassment — especially by outside actors, they said.

At the March 10 Pitzer Student Senate meeting, Kramer said he had filed a safety report. He also said there was security camera footage of someone putting up posters, and security will attempt to identify the responsible individual.

Pitzer’s Dean of Faculty Nigel Boyle said administrative offices have also received anonymous harassment via phone calls and emails. IT was able to trace some of the emails to Pennsylvania, he said.

“Obviously the fear is that that’s something that could escalate quite nastily,” Boyle said. “You always worry how certain individuals might react to inflammatory pieces they might read.”

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Pitzer Professor Daniel A. Segal Selected for Palestinian American Research Center Seminar

Pitzer Professor Daniel A. Segal Selected for Palestinian American Research Center Seminar

Claremont, Calif. (March 28, 2018)—Pitzer College Professor Daniel A. Segal has been accepted to participate in the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) US Faculty Development Seminar on Palestine this summer. The PARC 2018 Faculty Development Seminar will be held from June 20 to July 3, 2018, in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Segal, Jean Pitzer professor of anthropology and professor of history, will be one of approximately a dozen US faculty members participating in the ninth annual Faculty Development Seminar on Palestine. The seminar’s Jerusalem-based activities will include visits to Palestinian universities, research institutes and cultural institution as well as roundtable discussions, tours of historic cities and meetings with Palestinian colleagues. PARC says seminar participants will “deepen their knowledge of their fields of interest in Palestine and build relationships with Palestinian colleagues and institutions.”

Daniel A. Segal is an anthropologist and historian whose courses at Pitzer College include a two-semester world history sequence and a seminar on Donald Trump’s America. In 2017, he was awarded a Fulbright US Scholar research fellowship to examine the entry of the Brazilian state into the northern Amazon. He was the inaugural director of Pitzer’s Munroe Center for Social Inquiry and is a former fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, as well as the past secretary of the American Anthropological Association and past president of the Society for Cultural Anthropology. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University and earned his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago.

About Pitzer College

Pitzer College is a nationally top-ranked undergraduate liberal arts and sciences institution. A member of The Claremont Colleges, Pitzer offers a distinctive approach to a liberal arts education by linking intellectual inquiry with interdisciplinary studies, cultural immersion, social responsibility, and community involvement. For more information, please visit www.pitzer.edu.

Media Contact

Office of Communications
communications@pitzer.edu

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https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-praises-pitzer-college-president-olivers-decision-to-preserve-haifa-university-program
AJC Praises Pitzer College President Oliver’s Decision to Preserve Haifa University Program

March 15, 2019 — Los Angeles

American Jewish Committee (AJC) praised Pitzer College President Melvin L. Oliver for his principled stance in affirming that a study abroad partnership with the University of Haifa in Israel will continue despite a vote by the school’s College Council recommending that the program cease to operate.

“Some will say that I am taking my own position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in choosing not to implement the recommendation of the College Council. I am not. Instead, I am refusing to permit Pitzer College to take a position that I believe will only harm the College,” Oliver wrote in a strong statement issued soon after the vote.

The drive to end the Haifa University partnership was initiated by a Pitzer professor and other Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)-affiliated activists on campus.

“By singling out Israel, the recommendation itself is prejudiced,” wrote Oliver. “If implemented, the recommendation would unnecessarily alienate a large cross section of the College’s constituencies. The reputational harm to the College would be irreparable and as president of his institution, I cannot permit that to happen.”

Calling the College Council recommendation “an academic boycott of Israel,” Oliver wrote, “I categorically oppose any form of academic boycott of any country. We cannot allow our objections to the policies of any nation’s government to become a blanket indictment of the nation itself and, by extension, its citizens.”

AJC has advocated for months for a rejection of the proposed boycott of Haifa University.

“The College Council action was an outrageous attack on academic freedom,” said AJC Los Angeles Assistant Director Siamak Kordestani and AJC Director of Campus Affairs Zev Hurwitz. “The measure threatened to allow a dangerous precedent – that it is acceptable for outside political influence to limit student experiences.”

Oliver has been vigorously supportive of academic freedom since the fall semester, when the attempt to end relations with the Haifa campus began. At the time Oliver also spoke out strongly against ending this academic opportunity for Pitzer students.

“By preventing the implementation of an effort to sever ties with Israel’s most diverse campus, President Oliver demonstrates moral courage, support for true academic freedom, and the preservation of neutrality for Pitzer College on contentious conflicts,” said Kordestani and Hurwitz.

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https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-pitzer-faculty-israel-20181208-story.htmlPitzer College faculty moves to suspend Israel program in support of Palestinian rights

BY TERESA WATANABESTAFF WRITER
DEC. 8, 2018 5 AM PT

Pitzer College faculty have voted to suspend a study abroad program in Israel, sparking widespread controversy over what is believed to be the nation’s first such campus action in support of Palestinian rights.

The program with the University of Haifa is tiny — only 11 students have participated since it began in 2007 — but its potential suspension has sparked outsized response from those who hail it as a human rights breakthrough and others who say it unfairly singles out Israel and denies academic opportunities to Pitzer students.

Faculty and students on a college governing council will vote next semester on whether to support last month’s faculty decision at the small liberal arts college in Claremont. Last week, Pitzer President Melvin L. Oliver condemned the vote at the governing council meeting, saying it was a repudiation of the college’s educational mission to promote intercultural understanding.

But Daniel Segal, the anthropology and history professor who spearheaded the motion, said the college should stand against Israel’s restrictions on academic exchange, including a 2017 law to bar entry to those who support boycotts, divestment or sanctions against the Jewish state. The faculty motion calls for the study abroad program to be resumed only after Israel ends its entry restrictions based on “ancestry and/or political speech” and begins to grant visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a “fully equal basis”to those it grants for exchanges to Israeli ones.

Segal, who is Jewish, said his tradition’s ethics obliged him to support the human rights not only of Jews but of all people.

The recent faculty vote marked the latest controversy at Pitzer over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last year, the Pitzer Student Senate voted to bar the use of student funds for goods or services provided by five firms, including Caterpillar and Hewlett-Packard, that the students believed were complicit in suppressing Palestinian rights. But Oliver and college trustees nullified the vote in what they acknowledged was an unprecedented move against student autonomy.

The Pitzer faculty also voted last month to oppose that action by Oliver and the trustees.

Ron Robin, president of the University of Haifa, said it was particularly ironic that faculty chose to target the study abroad program on his campus because it is the most diverse in Israel, with the proportion of Arab students — 35% — higher than the Arab population in Israel at large. His said the university’s social mission is to create a broad middle class inclusive of all religions, races and ethnicities.

“We have Jews and Arab faculty and students coexisting and this seems to contradict the narrative about Israel as an apartheid state,” Robin said in an interview. “We hope we’re a crystal ball of what Israeli society could look like.”

Students at Pitzer haven’t made a lot of use of the program. None have participated in it since 2016, a college spokeswoman said.

Claire Wengrod, a senior majoring in political studies and member of the college Faculty Executive Committee, said the program should remain an option for students. She and other student senators are sponsoring a resolution to oppose suspension of the program, criticizing faculty for not consulting students first. The Student Senate is set to vote Sunday.

“I support students having the choice where they want to study,” Wengrod said. “I don’t think it’s right for the school or faculty to prevent students from doing it.”

But Lea Kayali, president of Students for Justice in Palestine at the Claremont Colleges consortium of Pitzer and four other undergraduate campuses, said her organization feels differently.

“We are really ecstatic to see the faculty supporting Palestinian students and all those effected by Israel’s atrocious border and visa policies,” she said in an email. “For us, it is time that the college stand in support of students denied educational experiences in occupied Palestine.”

In the past two years, Israel’s restrictions on visas have sharply decreased the number of international academics at Palestinian universities, jeopardizing their programs, according to the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Assn. of North America. But the Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that a student’s political views alone could not be used to deny entry for studying in Israel.

Advocates for Israel said they feared the Pitzer action could embolden faculty on other campuses to follow suit. AMCHA Initiative, a California-based nonprofit that fights anti-Semitism on college campuses, this week launched a national campaign with 100 other organizations to urge college leaders to condemn faculty who promote academic boycotts of Israel.

AMCHA organized a similar effort in 2013 after the American Studies Association endorsed an academic boycott of Israel.

“Curtailing student academic freedom and educational opportunities for political reasons is reprehensible and a very dangerous precedent,” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the nonprofit’s director.

Oliver, in his remarks to the college council, said that Pitzer continues exchanges with countries such as China and Nepal with “significant human rights abuses.”

“We need to reject this restriction and double down on our engagement with communities we disagree with, whose political systems we decry, and where discrimination and bias are endemic,” he said.

Segal said concerns about singling out Israel should not be used to impede social justice.  

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U.S. Faculty Development Seminar on Palestine

U.S. FACULTY DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR ON PALESTINE

2023 U.S. Faculty Development Seminar on Palestine Travel Fellowships

 

Two program dates: April 24 – May 7, 2023 or May 15 – May 28, 2023 in Jerusalem and the West Bank

EXTENDED DEADLINE: Applications due December 28, 2022
Awards announced January 30, 2023

The Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) announces its 14th annual Faculty Development Seminar (FDS) on Palestine competition for U.S. faculty members with a demonstrated interest in, but little travel experience to, Palestine. Applicants may come from any field of study. Each of our 2023 programs will host 12 U.S. faculty members to participate in roundtable discussions; visits to Palestinian universities, research institutes, and cultural institutions; tours of historic cities; as well as meetings with Palestinian colleagues. Through these activities, participants will learn about the region, deepen their knowledge about their fields of interest in Palestine, and build relationships with Palestinian colleagues and institutions.

Applicants must:

• Be U.S. citizens.
• Be full-time faculty members at recognized U.S. colleges or universities. Applicants may come from any academic discipline, including the arts, humanities, social sciences, economics, law, health, and sciences.
• Have a demonstrated interest in Palestine.
• Have little previous travel experience to Palestine.
• Be willing to integrate their experiences from the seminar into their own teaching, research and/or other projects.
• Be willing to use their skills and experience to benefit Palestinian colleagues and institutions.
• Be a member of PARC. Visit the PARC membership page for more information.

PARC will make all arrangements for the program, including hotel, site visits, tours, and meetings with Palestinian colleagues. PARC will cover all expenses for in-country, group ground travel, accommodations, and group meals. International travel and personal and free day expenses will be the responsibility of each faculty member and/or their university. In cases of demonstrated need, there is limited funding available to cover partial costs for international travel.

Professors from Minority Serving Institutions and Community Colleges are especially encouraged to apply. PARC will provide three travel stipends up to $1,000 each for airfare for professors from these institutions.

Funding for these three participants is provided by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs through an agreement with CAORC.