The 1948 War and the Iranian and Arab Nazi Propaganda


13.07.23

Editorial Note

IAM notes that Western scholarship has, by and large, avoided topics that could upset Arabs and Iranians. A substantial academic industry decries Islamophobia, the purported Western fear and loathing of Islam and Muslims. In this view, the 9/11 attacks and the war on terror dramatically increased hatred of all things Muslim in Western discourse. To avoid further inflaming Islamophobia, the famously self-censoring academic community has threaded very lightly on topics of Arab and Iranian antisemitism. Iran, in particular, has so far escaped close scrutiny of its long-standing antisemitic record and persistent denial of the Holocaust.     

To provide a more balanced view, IAM has taken the initiative to highlight scholars researching Middle East antisemitism. 

Arguably, Dr. Matthias Küntzel, a German historian and political scientist, should be considered a leading voice in this group. He was a non-resident research associate of the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University between 2004 to 2015. He is currently a member of the German Council on Foreign Relations and the German Historical Association. Kuntzel started his career some thirty years ago by exploring how Auschwitz could happen. He then moved on to investigate the impact of Nazi antisemitism on the Middle East. Küntzel’s earlier books include Germany and Iran; Jihad and Jew Hatred; Bonn & the Bomb, among others. His newest work is Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East: The 1948 Arab War against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II. 

By researching the Nazi archives, Kuntzel discovered that the Ministry of Propaganda of the Third Reich created an extensive propaganda network aimed at the Near and Middle East. Radio Berlin broadcasted daily programs in Arabic and Farsi, which were very popular among the public. As a young theology student, Ruhollah Khomeini listened to the Persian propaganda from Berlin and embraced it when he came to power in 1979. The leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were also influenced. It became clear in their foundational writings. In those days listening to the radio was a public occasion. People sat in cafes in the town square.

In May 1942, Louis Dreyfus, the American ambassador to Iran, wrote that German propaganda “made a deep impression on the masses. The daily radio broadcasts from Berlin had been particularly effective and a film audience in the poor section of Tehran had cheered wildly for Hitler and at decidedly the wrong places when a British war film was shown. At one point, the British pressured the Iranian police to remove all radios from public places, but they were quickly restored.”

In the Arab world, the first Arabic pamphlet, Islam and Judaism, was published in August 1937 in Cairo by the Director of the Palestinian-Arab Bureau of Information in Egypt, who is believed to have had many contacts with Nazi agents. In 1938 a German version of Islam and Judaism was published in Berlin under the title: “Islam – Judaism. Call of the Grand Mufti to the Islamic world in 1937”. Islam and Judaism derailed plans for a two-state solution for Palestine. 

Islam and Judaism is significant because it is possibly the very first document to construct a continuity between Muhammad’s confrontation with the Jews in Medina and the contemporary conflict in Palestine, thus linking the seventh to the twentieth century. It is the first written evidence of Islamic antisemitism and the forerunner of Sayyid Qutb’s 1950 pamphlet Our Struggle with the Jews. Islam and Judaism concludes that “the verses from the Qur’an and hadith prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest enemies of Islam and continue to try to destroy it. Do not believe them, they only know hypocrisy and cunning. Hold together, fight for the Islamic thought, fight for your religion and your existence! Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews.” 

According to Kuntzel, the Muslim Brotherhood was the largest antisemitic movement in the world, in 1948, with one million members, and it was determined to continue the war started by Hitler, with the help of the Mufti, to prevent a Jewish state. “Its campaign could draw on the lingering echoes of the antisemitic Nazi propaganda in which preventing the emergence of a Jewish state and wiping out the Jews living in Palestine had been constant themes.”

Kuntzel’s work provides insight into a topic that is hardly discussed. 

References:

http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/broadcasting-as-a-weapon-the-persian-language-nazi-propaganda-and-its-consequences

Broadcasting as a weapon: The Persian-language Nazi propaganda and its consequences

I delivered this speech on June 4, 2023 on the occasion of the Klangteppich V – Festival for Music of the Iranian Diaspora in Berlin

By Matthias Küntzel

Hamburg, 04.07.2023

As a German who doesn’t even read Farsi, why am I dealing with Iran? It is firstly because Iran is a particularly fascinating country with a particularly fascinating history and population. Secondly, it is because I have always followed the great uprisings of the Iranian people against Ali Khamenei and his regime and supported them in my essays: the Green Movement of 2009, the Movement of 2019, and now, of course, the Woman-Life-Freedom Uprising, which continues today while we are here in Berlin. Third, I am also particularly interested in Iran because one of my research interests is the ideology of Islamism and its connection to antisemitism.

In the beginning of my research, more than 30 years ago, I naturally wanted to know how Auschwitz could happen and why my parents were able to love Adolf Hitler as teenagers. To understand this, I focused on Nazi ideology, and specifically Nazi antisemitism.

Since the 9/11 attack in 2001, I began to study Jew-hatred in Islamic societies and especially the Muslim Brotherhood, that is, Sunni Islam. In 2005, the then Iranian President Ahmadinejad demanded that Israel be erased and disappear from the map. That same year, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, I was able to buy from Iranian booksellers an English written copy of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion: the most prominent antisemitic libel and Hitler’s textbook for the Holocaust.

I started to study the reasons and roots of the Iranian regime’s hatred of Israel and its antisemitism. I was especially interested in the influence that Nazi Germany had taken to create and strengthen this hatred also in Iran.

In doing so, I discovered that the Nazis used very well done radio broadcasts to spread their hate propaganda in the Near and Middle East not only in Arabic, but also in Persian language, day after day from 1939 to 1945. After all, Ruhollah Khomeini was one of the regular listeners to the Persian-language propaganda from Berlin. This brings us to our topic – the Persian-language radio propaganda of the Nazis and its after-effects.

German-Iranian cooperation during World War II

Let me start with a few basic facts about the the special relationship between Tehran and Berlin. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Germany and Persia have made a great team. Persia needed Germany because it distrusted all the other great powers but was dependent on foreign technical assistance. Germany needed Iran because it was the only raw material-rich country as yet unconquered in the nineteenth-century struggle for colonies. These mutual interests produced an unparalleled level of cooperation between a Christian and a Muslim country.

Already in the First World War most Iranians had supported the Germans, who were fighting their common enemies, the British and the Russians. Moreover, the Germans also enjoyed great prestige as technicians and engineers. Since the mid-1920s, Germany had not only laid the foundations of an Iranian industrial infrastructure, but also exported technical education to Iran.

With the start of the Second World War, cooperation became especially close. In 1940 47 percent of all Iranian exports went to Nazi Germany, while Germany’s share of Iranian imports had reached 43 percent. During those years, eighty percent of all machinery in the country came from Germany.

Iran was of strategic importance for the Nazis’ warfare. According to Adolf Hitler’s plan the Wehrmacht would after the assault on the Soviet Union occupy the Caucasus and in so doing, open the way to the Middle East. Then Iran and Iraq would be conquered and the British Empire destroyed from the south. According to the Nazi plan, a pro-German mass-movement in Iran reinforced by a concentrated propaganda effort would prepare for the German invasion of that country. Fortunately, however, the war took a different course. 

The Nazi radio at work

At the beginning of World War II German short-wave transmitters were broadcasting in 15 different foreign languages. However, of all the foreign-language broadcasting units, the “Orient Zone” was given “absolute priority”. It broadcast to Arabs and Persians, but also to Turks and Indians and employed about 80 people, including some 20 presenters and translators.

Editorial control was in the hands of the Foreign Office Radio Policy Department and the program content was determined in cooperation with the Propaganda Ministry and the Wehrmacht High Command’s Foreign Propaganda Department. The broadcasts were recorded in Berlin, Kaiserdamm no. 77 and then transferred by a special telephone line to Zeesen, a small village 40 kms south of Berlin.

The transmitter systems in Zeesen were equipped with state-of-the-art directional antennae. The American radio expert César Searchinger described the “huge” short-wave radio complex in Zeesen as “the biggest and most powerful propaganda machine in the world” and its “supremely cunning technology of mass influence” as “the most formidable institution for the dissemination of a political doctrine that the world has ever seen.”

While exaggerated, the assessment is not wholly false. While all the combatant powers in the Second World War used short-wave transmitters in different languages, the Zeesen radio had some special features.

Firstly, in 1936 the Olympics took place in Berlin. The overhaul of the Zeesen short wave equipment carried out in preparation for this event had greatly improved its long-range sound quality. No other station provided a better listening experience than Radio Zeesen.

Secondly, the Orient Zone editors succeeded in recruiting Bahram Shahrokh as their Persian announcer. He was an outstanding speaker with a good voice and excellent diction. A 1941 survey of German propaganda achievements in Iran boasted that “Sharokh [was] always praised as a brilliant speaker and was more popular than even others, including the enemy ones.”

Let me give you an example how Shahrokh’s antisemitic incitement in Berlin had at times a direct impact on the situation of the Jews in Iran. An Iranian Jewish woman, her name is Parvin, who was 17 years old at the time, remembers in particular a speech by Bahram Shahrokh on Radio Zeesen on the occasion of the Jewish Purim festival. Shahrokh urged the audience to exact revenge for the alleged massacre of Persians by Jews that the biblical Purim story mentions. Parvin recalls:

The next day some Muslim friends of my father came into his pharmacy and demanded an explanation. I was with him that day and heard them belittle and mock the Jews. When my father tried to explain the issue … they attacked him and grabbed his neck, whereupon my father told me to run home. I never asked, nor did I ever find out how he got rid of them.

At the same time Shahrokh presented himself as brave and cheeky. He repeatedly made barbed remarks about Reza Shah, the detested Iranian ruler. Following angry protests from Reza Shah, who was a regular listener of the German radio station, at the end of 1940 the German Foreign Office had to take Shahrokh off air, but only temporarily. In August 1941 Britain and the Soviet Union occupied Iran, ousted Reza Shah Pahlavi from his throne and installed his son, Mohammed Reza Shah, in his stead. Shortly thereafter, Shahrokh was back on air.

Thirdly, the Zeesen broadcasts employed a crude and folksy antisemitism. In 1940 Reader Bullard, the British Ambassador to Iran, complained that, “Even if we [the British] do broadcast in Persian, we cannot hope to rival the Germans in interest, as their more violent, abusive style, with exaggerated claims … appeals to the Persian public.”

And indeed: Radio Zeesen’s programs were rabble-rousing rather than factual. Their aim was not to inform, but to incite antisemitism and to boast of German successes. They were targeted at a mass audience rather than intellectuals. Thus, the United Nations was dubbed the “United Jewish Nations,” and the Jordanian king, Emir Abdullah, was mocked as “Rabbi Abdullah” for wanting to negotiate with the Zionists.

The fourth distinguishing feature of this radio propaganda was its adaptation to Islam.

Already during World War I, many Shi’ite clerics had demonstrated reverence for the German Emperor as a protector and a secret convert to Islam. Hitler, for as long as the Germans were winning, was an even better figure upon which to project such a myth. A report on this matter by the German Ambassador in Tehran, Erwin Ettel, of February 1941 is illuminating:

For months, reports have been reaching the Embassy from the most varied sources that throughout the country clerics are speaking out, telling the faithful about old, enigmatic prophesies and dreams which they interpret to mean that God has sent the Twelfth Imam into the world in the shape of Hitler. Wholly without Embassy involvement, an increasingly influential propaganda theme has come into being, in which the Führer and therefore Germany are seen as the deliverers from all evil.

The German short-wave radio station was happy to exploit these fantasies in its Farsi broadcasts. However, Erwin Ettel was not satisfied. The Imam-belief strengthened the love of Germany, but it contributed little to hatred of the Jews. Here was still work for him to do.

It was understood in Berlin that German-style antisemitism would have little resonance in Iran. “The broad masses lack a feeling for the race idea,” explained the propaganda expert of the German embassy in Tehran. He therefore laid “all the emphasis on the religious motif in our propaganda in the Islamic world. This is the only way to win over the Orientals.” But how exactly could Nazi Germany, of all countries, conduct a religious propaganda campaign? Ambassador Ettel had an idea:

“A way to foster this development would be to highlight Muhammad’s struggle against the Jews in ancient times and that of the Führer in modern times,” Ettel recommended to the Foreign Office. “Additionally, by identifying the British with the Jews, an exceptionally effective anti-English propaganda campaign can be conducted among the Shi’ite people.”

Ettel even picked out the appropriate Koranic passages: firstly, sura 5, verse 82: “Truly you will find that the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans”; and, secondly, the final sentence of chapter 2 of Mein Kampf: “In resisting the Jew, I do the work of the Lord.”

Ettel’s proposal demonstrates that the Nazis sought to use religion to create an implacable hostility to the Jews. Again and again the program makers of the Orient Zone repeated only those verses from the Koran that are suitable for presenting the Jews as “enemies of Islam.” Let me quote the historian David Motadel:

Berlin made explicit use of religious rhetoric, terminology, and imagery and sought to … reinterpret religious doctrine and concepts to manipulate Muslims for political and military purposes. … German propaganda combined Islam with anti-Jewish agitation to an extent that had not hitherto been known in the modern Muslim world.

These, then, were the four special characteristics of Radio Zeesen’s Iranian broadcasts: First, the excellent sound quality, second, its popular speaker, third, the populist agitation, and fourth, the use and abuse of religion.

What do we know about the resonance of this propaganda among the Iranian population?

We must keep in mind that during the 1930s short-wave radios offered a medium with a great power of attraction. In his memoirs, Grand Ayatollah Husain Ali Montazeri recalls the installation of a radio in an Isfahan coffee house at the end of the 1930s: “Thousands of people” had come to see and hear the radio including Montazeri himself, who was wondering, “what is a radio?”

In those days listening to the radio was a public occasion. People did so in coffee houses and bazaars. Sometimes the radio would be placed on a pedestal in the town square around which the information hungry would gather. For example, the population in the center of Tehran was regularly bombarded with German news at the Maidan-I-Sepah Square. What had been heard would immediately then be talked about, further extending the reach of the programs’ message. It has been estimated that by the start of the 1940s, “about a million people were regularly listening to the radio in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Obviously, Germany’s Farsi-language wartime broadcasts enjoyed great popularity. Let me quote Iranian writer Amir Hassan Sheheltan:

In many newspapers and private notes of the time we find reports of how in the late 1930s … during the broadcast of the Farsi-language news from Berlin people would gather together on the steps of the tea houses with a radio set in order to listen to the Germans’ reports of their territorial gains on the various fronts. The reports inspired the fantasy of the crowd on the street that every victory corresponded to a defeat for the colonial powers, the Soviet Union and Britain, which they cheered and applauded.

Moreover, after the deposition of Reza Shah in 1941 by Britain and the Soviet Union, many fervently awaited the German invasion of Iran, hoping that it would put an end to the hated British-Soviet occupation. Now the Nazis’ radio propaganda was more than just commentary on the war: it was an instrument in the service of the “liberation” of Iran by German forces.

“In those days”, according to an American journalist, “swastikas were painted on the walls of many houses in Tehran. Bazaar traders sold pictures of Hitler. The new Shah recalled that, ’… the German … propaganda was very effective. … The propagandists always depicted Hitler as a Muslim and descendant of the Prophet. He was said to have been born with a green band around his body’.”

In May 1942, also Louis Dreyfus, the American ambassador to Iran at the time, was alerted: 

German propaganda … made a deep impression on the masses. The daily radio broadcasts from Berlin had been particularly effective and a film audience in the poor section of Tehran had cheered wildly for Hitler and at decidedly the wrong places when a British war film was shown. At one point, the British pressured the Iranian police to remove all radios from public places, but they were quickly restored, again at British request, when it was found, strangely, that one could not tune in the British broadcasts either, without a radio.

Finally, in June 1942, the BBC reported: “Although action is been taken to make effective the ban on public listening to Axis broadcasts, it seems that listening in private houses is still widely practiced. As a result it appears that many people are still convinced that the Axis powers will win the war; Hitler, moreover, is said to enjoy great personal popularity.”

At the same time, after the fall of Reza Shah, who, despite his admiration for Hitler, did not share the latter’s antisemitism, Jew-hatred began to play a greater role in the Zeesen broadcasts. Among the regular listeners to this material was a man of whom the world was later to hear much more: Ruhollah Khomeini.

“Germany’s Persian service was, during the war, to enjoy the widest possible audience in Iran and Iraq”, writes Amir Taheri in his biography of Khomeini. When, in winter 1938 Khomeini, then aged thirty-six, returned from Iraq to Qum in Iran, he 

had brought with him a radio set made by the British company Pye which he had bought from an Indian Muslim pilgrim. The radio proved a good buy. … It also gave him a certain prestige. Many mullahs and talabehs would gather at his home, often on the terrace, in the evenings to listen to Radio Berlin [= Radio Zeesen] and the BBC.

Even though Khomeini opposed Hitler and National Socialism, it is reasonable to assume that there is a link between the eruption of his Jew-hatred in 1963 and the invective from Berlin that he had imbibed over the radio 20 years previously.

Did Radio Zeesen influence Ayatollah Khomeini?

Research on the impact of the Nazi’s radio propaganda in Iran has just begun and many additional discoveries can be expected. What we can conclude today is that this radio propaganda changed the generell perception of the so-called Jewish danger.

In 1963, the Nazi seeds may have bore fruits when Khomeini enriched his anti-Shah campaign with anti-Jewish slogans. Now his religious warning cry “Attack on Islam” was replaced by the antisemitic battle cry “Jews and foreigners wish to destroy Islam!”

Khomeini’s most important book, The Islamic State, published in 1971, is full of antisemitic invective. Let me quote just one sentence: ”[T]he Jews and their foreign backers are opposed to the very foundations of Islam and wish to establish Jewish domination throughout the world. Since they are a cunning and resourceful group of people, I fear that – God Forbid – they may one day achieve their goal.”

Such fantasies about Jewish world domination were never part of the Shiite tradition. Here Khomeini has adopted a key idea of European antisemitism and linked it to his religion-based anti-Judaism. Khomeini had been a regular listener to the Nazis’ wartime Farsi-language broadcasts and, although it cannot in retrospect be proven, it would seem obvious that his fantasy had at least partly been shaped by this six-year-long barrage of antisemitic Nazi propaganda.

In addition, Radio Zeesen propagated exactly the kind of genocidal anti-Zionism which became prevalent after the Islamic revolution.

We have to keep in mind that between 1906 and 1979 no other Muslim country had such an enlightened religious leadership as Iran; a religious leadership that also accepted Iran’s good relationship with Israel.

As early as 1967, however, Khomeini started to preach a genocidal hatred against Israel. It is the “duty” of all Muslims, he told his followers during that year, “to annihilate unbelieving and inhuman Zionism.”

After the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, three things happend: First, Khomeini ordered the execution of Iran’s most prominent Jew, Habib Elghanian, in a sustained effort to intimidate the Iranian Jewish community.

Second: He moderated his tone and promised to spare Iranian Jews, provided they accepted a subordinate status and radically distanced themselves from Israel.

Third: Iran’s new rulers began to concentrate their anti-Jewish hatred on Israel. They began to use the term “Zionist” the way Hitler used the word “Judas”: as a cipher for all evil in the world. “From the beginning,” Khomeini declared in 1981, “one of our main goals was the destruction of Israel.”

The real aim of Khomeini’s struggle with the Jews was, in my opinion, the wish to fight all aspects of modernity that could undermine his conservative concept of Islam. This connection between antisemitism and anti-modernism also explains the popularity of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which is of Russian origin, in the Islamic world. 

This text was conceived as a rallying cry against liberalism: in order to drive forward the struggle against individual freedom the latter is denounced as the main tool of a global Jewish conspiracy. Ideas originally disseminated a hundred years previously by Tsarist agents in order to save Tsarism are today being repeated by key leaders of Islam in order to secure the domination of a conservative Islam.

At the beginning of my talk I mentioned the Woman-Life-Freedom Uprising, which continues today while we are here in Berlin. The courage of the women of Iran and their persistent fight for freedom is for me still a bright beacon of hope for the future. 

But for this hope to be realized, it is – I think – essential to also look back and answer the question – What went wrong? – which I at least partly tried to do today. Thank you for your attention.

(The sources of the quotes can be found in my book Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East: The 1948 Arab War against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II, to be published by Routledge in August 2023. Please visit the Homepage of Berlin’s Klangteppich V – Festival for Music of the Iranian Diaspora here.)

Bild: Rundfunkempfänger Telefunken Super “Zeesen” T 875 WK. Quelle: Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin · Lizenz: CC0 – No rights reserved · Bild wurde beschnitten und farblich angepasst.

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The 1948 Arab war against Israel: An aftershock of World War II?

The 1948 Arab war against Israel: An aftershock of World War II?

In introduction to some discoveries and arguments of my new book: “Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East: The 1948 Arab War against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II”.

By Matthias Küntzel

FATHOM, JUNE 2023

Is there any connection between the Nazi war of extermination against the Jews that ended in May 1945 and the war of the Arab armies against Israel which started in May 1948? It’s an obvious question, but one that is rarely asked. Why?

The answer is because – at least this is my assumption – the provable existence of threads of continuity between 1945 and 1948 calls into question cherished certainties: for example, the conviction that the Arab movement against Zionism and Israel had nothing to do with the Nazi fantasies of the previous phase and that Israel, i.e. Jews, were mainly responsible for the 1948 war and antisemitism in the region.

My new book Nazism, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East(Routledge, August 2023) challenges this conventional wisdom. It offers a new interpretation of the origins of the Arab-Israel war of 1948.

The central role of Nazi antisemitism in the planning and implementation of the Shoah is well known. The impact of that same Nazi antisemitism on the Middle East, on the other hand, remains gravely under-researched.

My book aims to fill this gap to the extent currently possible. It sets forth the methods used by Nazi Germany from 1937 onwards to disseminate its antisemitism in the Middle East in the Arabic language and the role that this antisemitism would play 11 years later, when the Arab armies fell upon the newly founded Jewish state of Israel. This fateful war triggered the Palestinian refugee catastrophe that has marked the Middle East conflict ever since.

The spread of antisemitism in the Middle East did have something to do with the Zionist movement and the building of the Jewish state. There was, however, more than one way to respond to these developments. There were, for example, Egyptians who welcomed the “victory of the Zionist idea [as] the turning point for … the revival of the Orient”. Others, such as the ruler of Transjordan, Emir Abdullah, sought sometimes more, sometimes less cooperation with the Zionists. A third group may have opposed Zionism, but not Judaism, while initially it was only the supporters of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin El-Husseini, who adopted the antisemitic approach. 

The Nazis exclusively backed this last group. They saw the clashes in Palestine as an opportunity to promote their form of Jew-hatred and to impose an antisemitic interpretation on the local conflict.

Only in recent years has the significance of the Nazis’ Arabic-language propaganda in the Arab world been brought to light, notably through the pioneering work of Jeffrey Herf. In 2009 he introduced us to the content of the manuscripts of the Nazis’ Arabic-language broadcasts in his book Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. Five years later, David Motadel published further important findings in his study Islam And Nazi Germany’s War.

Building on these studies, the current book presents a series of new facts that have the potential to change our view of the past and present of the Middle East conflict.

1937: Islam and Judaism

Firstly, I set out what is currently known about the origin and dissemination of the pamphlet Islam and Judaism, which was first published in 1937 in Cairo in order to derail plans for a two-state solution for Palestine. It is a shocking text that uses religion for the sole purpose of inciting Jew-hatred.

Islam and Judaism is significant because it is, as far as we know, the very first document to construct a continuity between Muhammad’s confrontation with the Jews in Medina and the contemporary conflict in Palestine, thus linking the seventh to the twentieth century. It is the first written evidence for what I call Islamic antisemitism and the forerunner of Sayyid Qutb’s 1950 pamphlet Our struggle with the Jews.

Islam and Judaism concludes with the following words:

[T]he verses from the Qur’an and hadith prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest enemies of Islam and continue to try to destroy it. Do not believe them, they only know hypocrisy and cunning. Hold together, fight for the Islamic thought, fight for your religion and your existence! Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews. 

“Free of the Jews” – “Judenfrei” – is a typical Nazi expression which we do not find in early Islamic writing.

The first Arabic version of Islam and Judaism was published in August 1937 in Cairo by the Director of the Palestinian-Arab Bureau of Information in Egypt, who is believed to have had many contacts with Nazi agents. 

In 1938 a German version of Islam and Judaism was published in Berlin under the title: “Islam – Judaism. Call of the Grand Mufti to the Islamic world in 1937”. 

Finally, during the Second World War, this brochure was printed and distributed in large numbers by German forces and translated into several languages. A translation of this document appears as an appendix to my book.

The very date of the pamphlet’s publication and dissemination – 11 years before the foundation of Israel and 30 years before Israel’s assumption of control in Gaza and the West Bank – is important. It contradicts the widespread assumption that Islamic antisemitism developed as a response to alleged Israeli misdeeds.

It was not the behaviour of the Zionists that prompted the publication of this hostile text but rather the very first attempt to implement a two-state solution for Palestine. This fact suggests that Jew-hatred was a cause, not a consequence of the crises in the Middle East conflict.

1938/39: Goebbels and the Muslim Brotherhood

Secondly, I present new archival discoveries relating to the collaboration between German Nazi agents and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Documents from the British National Archive reveal that this collaboration was known about at the highest levels in Germany and that, according to one note, “GOEB. [Goebbels] has spoken about it with much praise.” 

Nazi agents not only transferred money to the Muslim Brotherhood, but also attended conferences of this organization, held common “Palestine meetings” with it and gave lectures to its members on “the Jewish question”. 

After 1945, this Nazi operation paid off when that very same Muslim Brotherhood, now grown into an influential mass movement, pushed the Arab rulers into war against Israel.

1939-1945: Arabic-language radio propaganda

Thirdly, I analyze the six years of antisemitic radio propaganda in Arabic that the Nazis broadcast from the small town of Zeesen near Berlin which – unlike the written text – could reach the Arab masses. Back then, listening to the radio was a public affair: The men listened to it at the bazaar, in marketplaces and in coffee houses. The content of the programs would become the dominant topic of conversation, multiplying their impact.

This is what the British secret service reported on the impact of Radio Zeesen: 

In general it may be said that the middle, lower middle and lower classes listen to the Arabic broadcasts from Berlin with a good deal of enjoyment. They like the racy, ‘juicy’ stuff which is put over. … What the average Palestine Arab does imbibe, however, is the anti-Jew material. This he wants to hear and to believe; and he does both. To that extent German propaganda is definitely effective.

The “anti-Jew material” was effective because the Nazis could build on the patterns of early Islamic anti-Judaism and instrumentalize the local conflict with the Zionists. In addition, the BBC and the other Allied broadcasters gave in to the Nazis by failing directly to challenge their anti-Jewish incitement. None of them wanted to be seen as defenders or even “accomplices” of the Jews – thus confirming aspects of the Nazi propaganda.

My book shows that in retrospect, those six years of daily radio propaganda marked a turning point dividing Middle Eastern history into a before and an after. These years worsened the image of the Jews in the Arab world. They fostered an exclusively anti-Jewish reading of the Qur’an. They popularized the European world-conspiracy myths. They shaped a genocidal rhetoric towards Zionism. A consequence of this propaganda was that by 1948 large swathes of the Arab public viewed a Jewish state as a mortal threat that had to be violently destroyed.

1944: weapons “for the battles to follow”

Fourthly, I describe certain measures taken by the Nazis in 1944/45 to prepare for the forthcoming war against Israel. With their own defeat looming, they wished to preserve their antisemitic legacy by taking steps to prevent the future establishment of a Jewish state. 

Thus, in his memoirs, Amin el-Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, relates that in October 1944 the Wehrmacht provided aircraft to store ammunition and weapons in Palestine as “preparations for the days after the end of World War II” and “for their preparation for the battles to follow”. 

On 6 October 1944 five Nazi parachutists did indeed fly out from Athens to land in the Jordan valley with the task of hiding crates of weapons that they had previously dropped from the plane. Ten days later they were captured by the British. While this may have been an isolated and ineffective action, it nonetheless provides a direct link between the Nazis’ world war and the “battles to follow” in Palestine.

1947/1948: Arab hesitation, Islamist mobilization

Fifth, my book shows that Arab attitudes toward Zionism were less monolithic than has often been assumed. Thus, already in 1937, there were many Arabs who supported the two-state solution for Palestine. Admittedly, in 1947 the Arab League unanimously opposed the two-state solution for Palestine advocated by the United Nations in November 1947. 

Even so, how to react to this decision was disputed until the last minute: on several occasions the Arab League ruled out the possibility of an attack by regular Arab forces on the Jewish state. Egypt, for example, questioned this war, which began on May 15, 1948, only a few days before it began: “We shall never even contemplate entering an official war”, declared General Muhammad Haidar, Egypt’s Defence Minister, at the beginning of May 1948. “We are not mad”.

Why did an “official war” against Israel nevertheless take place? My book provides evidence that it was primarily pressure from the “Arab street” and the antisemitic campaigns of the Muslim Brotherhood that led the Arab rulers to overcome all their doubts and attack Israel. 

In 1948 the Muslim Brotherhood was the largest antisemitic movement in the world, with one million members. It was determined to continue the war to prevent a Jewish state started by Hitler and the Mufti. Its campaign could draw on the lingering echoes of the antisemitic Nazi propaganda in which preventing the emergence of a Jewish state and wiping out the Jews living in Palestine had been constant themes.

This war was not inevitable. It took place despite many countervailing considerations because the Nazis’ antisemitic Arabic-language propaganda had shaped the postwar political climate. In this feverish atmosphere, no Arab leader felt able to successfully resist the Brotherhood’s warmongering. 

There are, therefore, good grounds for interpreting the Arab war against Israel as a kind of aftershock of the previous Nazi war against the Jews. Amin el-Husseini embodied the continuity of the two events. His religiously packaged antisemitism, which had cost thousands of Jews their lives in 1944, was four years later directed against Israel.

Why the ignorance?

So why then is the role of Nazi propaganda and Nazi policies largely ignored in debates on the roots of antisemitism in the Middle East? A plausible hypothesis is that this pattern of omission reflects a desire to protect a proposition that is accepted as dogma in many academic circles: the idea that Israel, i.e. Jews, bears sole responsibility not only for the war in 1948, but also the antisemitism in the region. Claims such as “The spread of antisemitism in the Arab-Islamic world is the consequence of the Palestine conflict” are widespread.

From this paradigm, numerous Middle East experts derive mitigating circumstances for Arab antisemitism. “Is the fantasy-based hatred of the Jews that was and still is typical of European racists … the equivalent of the hatred felt by Arabs enraged by the occupation and/or destruction of Arab lands?”, is the rhetorical question of the British-Lebanese anti-Zionist Gilbert Achcar. “Arab antisemitism, in contrast to European anti-Semitism, is at least based on a real problem, namely the marginalization of the Palestinians,” insists German Islam researcher Jochen Müller.

This paradigm, which distinguishes between a Nazi-like European antisemitism and an “at least” understandable hatred of Jews in the Middle East, hides the Nazi influence on the image of Jews held by many Muslims in the Middle East. And it has political consequences: The basic assumption that antisemitism in the Arab-Islamic world is merely a response to Israel and can therefore be downplayed as a kind of local custom is one of the foundations of German and European Middle East policy and may be one of the reasons why the latter refuses to decisively combat the Jew-hatred of, for example, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.

It is, however, necessary to understand how strongly modern Middle East history is shaped by the aftermath of National Socialism. Only then will we be able to properly understand and adequately counter the antisemitism in this region and its echo among Muslims in Europe and address the political realities of the Middle East realistically and effectively.

Please find the original Fathom publication here. 

Image: The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, greeting Bosnian Muslim Waffen-SS volunteers with a Nazi salute. November 1943. Source: Wikimedia Commons · Author: Mielke · License: CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Image is cropped and color graded.

The Anti-Israel Panel at the International Sociological Association 

06.07.22

Editorial note

IAM reported in January that Prof. Sari Hanafi, the President of the International Sociological Association (ISA), published a letter to members discussing “the intensification of the settler colonial Israeli project in the Occupied Palestinian territories.” 

IAM noted that Hanafi is a Syrian Palestinian who moved to France to pursue an academic career and returned to Lebanon as a Professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut. He was elected as President of the ISA in 2018. The office of ISA is based in the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology at the University Complutense, Madrid, Spain.

At the time, Hanafi discussed the planned ISA’s 20th conference in June 2023 in Australia. Hanafi explained that the conference would feature two presidential panels with “particular interest in connecting sociology to moral and political philosophy.” 

Indeed, last week, the ISA held its conference (June 25 to July 1, 2023) at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center.

One of the sessions was titled “Whither the Arab-Israel Conflict?” and took place on Thursday, June 29, 2023, from 12:30 – 13:50. This session was described as, “Some read the Arab-Israeli conflict as a continuous settler-colonial project since 1948 that has ended up establishing an apartheid system against the Palestinians, while others read it as conflicting nationalism between Arabs and Israeli Jews.” Still, “a creeping space-cede process in the Occupied Palestinian territories is obvious at all levels… Many among Israeli and Palestinian scholars argue that the two-state solution has collapsed with the failure of the Oslo process and that one should aim for one secular state for all its citizens.” 

The invitation stated clearly “one should aim for one secular state for all its citizens.”

The session organizer was Prof. Rhoda Reddock from the University of the West Indies, who also chaired the session.  

The first speaker was Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, titled “Decolonizing Epistemology: A Sociology of Persisting Crisis in Palestine/Israel.”

The second speaker was Prof. Ian S. Lustick, University of Pennsylvania, USA, titled “The Future of Israel-Palestine: Solutionism and the One-State Reality.”

The third speaker was Prof. Lev Grinberg, Ben Gurion University, Israel, “From Military Occupation to upgraded Apartheid, a path dependent eventful sociology of the Dynamic Zionist Colonizing Project.” 

Prof. Mohammed Bamyeh of the University of Pittsburgh, United States, spoke of “Death to Realism! Toward a Social Psychology of Palestinian Resistance.” 

Clearly, the panel was one-sided and biased against Israel, with the Israeli panelists recruited to serve the Palestinian narrative. Not a single academic presented the complex reality in the Middle East. In different ways, they all advocated “for one secular state for all its citizens.”

The panel was typical of the highly politized academic discourse on the Middle East in general and the Palestinian-Israeli discourse in particular. First, there was the ritualized bashing of Israel, accused of a panoply of sins such as colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, to mention a few. The charges are never contextualized; as IAM had repeatedly argued, there is hardly a mention of the poor decisions made by the Palestinians, such as the rejection of the 1947 U.N. Partition Proposal or the rejection of the Peace Agreement during the Camp David II meeting in 2001. Second, the solution to the conflict, a secular one-state for the Jews and the Palestinians – is a typical “pie-in-sky” solution. At the very least, they should have considered the religious ideology of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad that would never settle for a secular state with or without Jews. Considering that the ultra-orthodox Jews are growing exponentially, this would be a hard sale in Israel as well. 

Sadly, this is one more case in which liberal arts scholars use academic platforms to sell solutions that are removed from political reality. 

References:

https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2023/meetingapp.cgi/Session/18615

13 – Whither the Arab-Israel Conflict?

ORAL SESSION

Description

Some read the Arab-Israeli conflict as a continuous settler-colonial project since 1948 that has ended up establishing an apartheid system against the Palestinians, while others read it as conflicting nationalism between Arabs and Israeli Jews. No matter how this conflict is read, a creeping space-cede process in the Occupied Palestinian territories is obvious at all levels and the Peace Process (known as the Oslo process) did not stop it. Many among Israeli and Palestinian scholars argue that the two-state solution has collapsed with the failure of the Oslo process and that one should aim for one secular state for all its citizens. Panelists are invited to reflect on this topic.

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The Head of the Antisemitism Research Institute Tolerates Antisemitism

29.06.23

Editorial Note

Earlier this month, the book, The Pure Essence of Things”? Contingency, Controversy, and the Struggle to Define Antisemitism and Islamophobia was published by Prof. David Feldman, director of the Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck College, University of London, and Dr. Marc Volovici, lecturer at the Department of Jewish History, University of Haifa, and both co-edited the book. 

The book discusses definitions of antisemitism and Islamophobia, “two relatively recent terms conveying a lengthy history of animosity and violence.” According to the editors, both have been subjected to “controversy” over their meanings and, as a result, “function in political and legal efforts to combat the spread of bigoted prejudice in society.”  

The editors believe that the dynamic nature of the two definitions “stems not only from changing views of the phenomena, but also from the fact that definitions perform a rhetorical function, serving at times to discredit political opponents.” Therefore, the authors “propose three, interrelated, historical trajectories to understand the politics of definition: the long view, which situates the question of definition within a history of political engagements which have aimed to define Jews, Muslims, and the prejudice against them; the short view, focusing on how key events of the twentieth century affected the nature and political role of definitions of racist prejudice in different contexts; and a critical examination of present-day political efforts to advance definition as a purported key to suppress antisemitism and Islamophobia.” 

The editors conclude that capturing the “’essence’ of antisemitism and Islamophobia without reckoning with the concepts’ historical and political load neither promotes understanding of the phenomena nor does it effectively help to combat them.” 

The volume represents the newest round of advocacy writing popular among activist academics such as Feldman. This time around, the fight is against the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of antisemitism. 

 Actually, Feldman is not new to this field. In 2016, in an article in the Guardian, Feldman argued that the term antisemitism was first popularized in Germany, in the late 1870s. “It carries memories of discrimination, violence and genocide.” Yet, Feldman stresses, “now the term also operates in a context created both by the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the consequence of its military victory in 1967. Israeli Palestinians possess citizenship rights within the country’s internationally recognized boundaries. Nevertheless, Israel’s relations with the Palestinians have also been characterized by discrimination and occupation, annexation and expropriation.”  

Feldman is plainly worried about the IHRA Definition: “there is a danger that the overall effect will place the onus on Israel’s critics to demonstrate they are not antisemitic.” 

Feldman moves on to discuss politics and argues that because Amb David Friedman, President Trump’s ambassador to Israel, denounced the “two-state” solution, “The prospect of continued Israeli dominion over disenfranchised Palestinians, supported by a US president whose noisome electoral campaign was sustained by nods and winks to anti-Jewish prejudice, is changing the dynamic of Jewish politics in Israel and across the world. In this new context, the greatest flaw of the IHRA definition is its failure to make any ethical and political connections between the struggle against antisemitism and other sorts of prejudice. On behalf of Jews it dares to spurn solidarity with other groups who are the targets of bigotry and hatred. In the face of resurgent intolerance in the UK, in Europe, the United States and in Israel, this is a luxury none of us can afford.”

For Feldman, antisemitism and Islamophobia are similar, like two branches of the same tree. 

In 2020, Feldman published another article in the Guardian against the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. “We all know how the path to hell is paved,” he wrote, because in Britain, “the secretary of state for education intends to rid universities in England of antisemitism, but his intervention not only threatens to provoke strife and confusion – it also places academic freedom and free speech on campus at risk.”

Feldman argued that this was “misguided” because “structural racism in universities is profound, and racial harassment on campus is widespread. These are problems that universities must address. The imposed adoption of the IHRA working definition will not meet this challenge.” 

For Feldman, the IHRA Definition “privilege one group over others by giving them additional protections, and in doing so will divide minorities against each other.” 

For Feldman, “universities already have some tools to deal with antisemitism. Universities operate under the Equality Act; they also have internal policies and procedures designed to address discrimination, harassment and victimisation… instead of demanding that universities review and improve their toolkit to address racism in all its dimensions, the secretary of state insists they use a niche widget for antisemitism alone.” 

Feldman’s real concern about the IHRA Definition is revealed at the end of the article, “According to the working definition, one example of behavior that ‘could’ be antisemitic is ‘applying double standards’ to Israel… This is consequential for universities because a portion of students and staff support the boycott movement.” In other words, the extensive BDS movement in British universities would be hampered by IHRA.    

At the time of that writing, Feldman did not know that the British Government is now working on passing legislation against all forms of BDS. 

If Feldman’s strident pro-BDS advocacy is bad enough, the arguments in the co-edited book are worse because they misrepresent the history of antisemitism and Islamophobia. These terms are not “relatively recent,” as the book asserts. The formulation serves Feldman’s goal of producing an epistemic equivalent in the same way that the Nakba and the Holocaust are posited. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the ages, antisemitism was responsible for countless attacks on Jews, their legal and civic marginalization, and, of course, the murder of six million in the Holocaust. The term Islamophobia first appeared following the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaeda and the brutal terrorism of ISIS. Unlike antisemitism, Muslims in the West did not suffer legal and civic disabilities, nor were they murdered en masse. The anti-terror policies enacted aimed to protect the population from terror attacks, not to punish individual Muslims. Ironically, the number of attacks on Jews in the United States far exceeds the number of attacks on Muslims. 

In 2021, the Pears Foundation, which sponsored the Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, withdrew its name from the Institute because of Feldman’s writings.  

References:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-16266-4_1

“The Pure Essence of Things”? Contingency, Controversy, and the Struggle to Define Antisemitism and Islamophobia

Part of the Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism book series (PCSAR)

Abstract

This chapter examines the value and limits of definitions in addressing antisemitism and Islamophobia, two relatively recent terms conveying a lengthy history of animosity and violence. Both terms have been subject in recent decades to controversy over their meaning and function in political and legal efforts to combat the spread of bigoted prejudice in society. We trace the various, constantly shifting, meanings of the two terms and point to the contingent political contexts that propelled these shifts over time. The dynamic nature of definitions, we argue, stems not only from changing views of the phenomena, but also from the fact that definitions perform a rhetorical function, serving at times to discredit political opponents. Drawing on the chapters collected in this volume, we propose three, interrelated, historical trajectories to understand the politics of definition: the long view, which situates the question of definition within a history of political engagements which have aimed to define Jews, Muslims, and the prejudice against them; the short view, focusing on how key events of the twentieth century affected the nature and political role of definitions of racist prejudice in different contexts; and a critical examination of present-day political efforts to advance definition as a purported key to suppress antisemitism and Islamophobia. We argue that the wish to capture the “essence” of antisemitism and Islamophobia without reckoning with the concepts’ historical and political load neither promotes understanding of the phenomena nor does it effectively help to combat them.

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https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/pears-foundation-removes-name-from-antisemitism-institute/Pears Foundation removes name from antisemitism institute

Charitable trust confirmed the move in wake of an article by the Birkbeck institute’s director, Prof. David Feldman, which criticised the ‘confusing and divisive’ IHRA definition

By LEE HARPIN April 7, 2021, 3:34 pm

The Pears Foundation has withdrawn its name from the Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck.

A statement from the charitable trust confirmed that from May 4 the Institute will no longer bear the Foundation’s name – although it will continue to be one of its funders.

The decision follows the publication of article by the director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, Professor David Feldman in the Guardian which openly criticised what was described as the “confusing and divisive” IHRA definition of antisemitism.

While the Foundation’ statement did not directly refer to December’s article or name the Professor, it did reference “challenging and divisive issues.”

Amongst those to criticise Professor Feldman over the issue was Dave Rich, the Community Security Trust’s director of policy.

Mr Rich attacked the academic’s criticism of IHRA saying it was “the nuances in the definition’s language that make it so useful.”

In a further debate at the Limmud conference at the end of December Lord Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, launched an outspoken attack on Professor Feldman.

He said Professor Feldman had repeatedly said that IHRA “chills free speech”, which was “a myth”.

In 2010 Birkbeck, University of London and Pears Foundation had together established the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism.

It was the first academic institute of its kind in the UK.

But a March 23 statement from the Foundation confirmed: “As the Institute increasingly tackles challenging and divisive issues in the public sphere, the Foundation’s Trustees have decided that continuing to be so closely associated with the Institute is no longer in the Foundation’s best interests.

“The Trustees of Pears Foundation and Birkbeck have, therefore, agreed that going forward the Pears name will no longer be directly associated with the Institute. The Foundation will continue to support its work as one of several funders.”

The Goldsmiths academic and campaigner against antisemitism David Hirsh told the Jewish News: “The institute hosts an infinite debate between those who study antisemitism and those who confer academic legitimacy onto antisemitism.

“People who libel the IHRA definition as a dirty trick to silence criticism of Israel cite the institute’s director as an authority. He supports a wrecking declaration which explicitly legitimises what are in the real world the key elements of contemporary antisemitism, calling them ‘not in and of themselves’ antisemitic.

“If Pears wanted to support the scholarly study of antisemitism, they’ve been wasting their money.”

But Yair Wallach, lecturer in Israel studies at SOAS, accused the Foundation of a “sharp departure” from the principle of not intervening in academic decisions.

Mr Wallach added it was “all but obvious that the Foundation was displeased by a specific intervention of the Institute’s director, Prof David Feldman – his recent Guardian op-ed.”

The Jewish News has contacted the Pears Foundation for comment.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/02/the-government-should-not-impose-a-faulty-definition-of-antisemitism-on-universities

The government should not impose a faulty definition of antisemitism on universities

This article is more than 2 years old

David Feldman

The IHRA ‘working definition’ is confusing and divisive. Forcing its adoption will not help protect Jewish students and staff

 David Feldman is director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London

Wed 2 Dec 2020 06.00 GMT

We all know how the path to hell is paved. But it is a warning worth repeating for Gavin Williamson. The secretary of state for education intends to rid universities in England of antisemitism, but his intervention not only threatens to provoke strife and confusion – it also places academic freedom and free speech on campus at risk.

In October, Williamson wrote to all university vice-chancellors “requesting” they adopt a particular definition of antisemitism: the “working definition” promulgated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016. Williamson is not the first minister to write to universities on this matter, but he has been more forceful than his predecessors. His letter demands action by Christmas, and threatens swingeing measures against refusenik institutions that later suffer antisemitic incidents. He threatens to remove funding and the power to award degrees from universities that do not share his faith in the efficacy of the IHRA working definition.

This is misguided, for a number of reasons. First, it misconceives the task universities face. As shown in a report released last week by Universities UK – Tackling Racial Harassment in Higher Education – structural racism in universities is profound, and racial harassment on campus is widespread. These are problems that universities must address. The imposed adoption of the IHRA working definition will not meet this challenge. It will, however, privilege one group over others by giving them additional protections, and in doing so will divide minorities against each other. For this reason alone, Williamson should pause and consider how best to protect students and university staff from racism broadly as well as from antisemitism.

Williamson’s strategically ill-considered letter to vice-chancellors is based on two mistaken assumptions about the fight against antisemitism. First, it asserts the IHRA working definition provides a “straightforward” way for universities to show that they do not tolerate antisemitism. Second, it claims that universities that fail to adopt the definition reveal they are willing to tolerate antisemitism. Neither of these claims is true. The IHRA working definition is anything but straightforward, and universities already have some tools to deal with antisemitism.

Universities operate under the Equality Act; they also have internal policies and procedures designed to address discrimination, harassment and victimisation. The damning verdict of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s recent report on the Labour party provided a clear demonstration that the universalist principles gathered in the Equality Act can be used to hold powerful institutions to account. But instead of demanding that universities review and improve their toolkit to address racism in all its dimensions, the secretary of state insists they use a niche widget for antisemitism alone: one that even its friends concede is not a precision instrument.

It is a puzzling choice, but one that becomes comprehensible once we see that the IHRA working definition acquired symbolic importance in the struggle over antisemitism in the Labour party. Labour’s initial rejection of the definition has led many to regard the working definition as a symbol – a litmus test of whether or not an individual or an organisation really opposes antisemitism or just plays lip service to the goal. Symbols are important, but they are no substitute for carefully constructed measures to combat antisemitism and other racisms.

In fact, the IHRA working definition “was never intended to be a campus hate-speech code”, as one of its original authors has explained. It was drafted as a tool for data collectors, although it has rarely been used in this way. But it is one thing for monitoring agencies to adopt the working definition as a rule of thumb; imposing it on universities, which have a duty under law to uphold academic freedom and free speech within the law, is something altogether different.

The working definition chiefly consists of a woolly core statement – “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred of Jews” – and a list of examples that “could, taking into account the overall context”, be instances of antisemitism. The examples cover a range of topics, but six of the 11 deal with discourse on Israel. And it is the emphasis on Israel that is the focus of criticism from the definition’s critics and enthusiasm from its advocates.

The pros and cons of the working definition have been debated on many occasions. For some it provides helpful guidelines; for others it inhibits legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies and practices. But in the light of the secretary of state’s letter, the key point is that it is impossible to know which of these interpretations is correct. And in this context, uncertainty brings danger.

According to the working definition, one example of behaviour that “could” be antisemitic is “applying double standards” to Israel. Some prominent advocacy organisations and political figures accuse those who support a boycott against Israel of doing just this. This is consequential for universities because a portion of students and staff support the boycott movement. So, taking this as a case in point, are boycotts of Israel inherently antisemitic, according to the IHRA working definition?

Unfortunately, the working definition itself doesn’t provide us with a definite answer – and if we turn to the leading public bodies for guidance we find confusing and contradictory advice. The Antisemitism Policy Trust is one such organisation. Esteemed internationally and in the UK, among other functions it provides a special adviser to John Mann, the government’s antisemitism tsar. Earlier this year the trust issued a policy briefing in which it declared, “boycotts are not covered by IHRA”. Some will have been reassured by this, others alarmed.

But in its guide to the IHRA working definition, also published in 2020, the trust leans heavily in the opposite direction. Here, in cloudy prose, it suggests that either boycotts against Israel are antisemitic unless they also condemn all other states that commit similar misdeeds, or that boycott movements are under an obligation to “prove” they are not antisemitic – or both.

If the Antisemitism Policy Trust is in a muddle over the IHRA working definition, how can anyone else be certain what it means? Universities, like everyone else, are sorely in need of good and clear guidance on when speech on Israel or Zionism becomes antisemitic. Sadly, this is not what the working definition provides. In these circumstances, its imposition by the secretary of state appears reckless and brings real dangers.

The working definition’s indeterminacy will provide a standing invitation to individuals and organisations to bring allegations of antisemitism against students and lecturers. Not least because some individuals and advocacy groups genuinely and passionately believe that the movement to boycott Israel is inherently antisemitic.

In the absence of further aggravating factors, the individuals who are the subject of these complaints may not run afoul of university policies and procedures. But the chilling impact on students, on academic and professional staff and on institutions dedicated to debate and robust discussion, will be corrosive and long lasting.

Antisemitism does arise in Britain’s universities. On occasion driven by ideology, this largely reflects a reservoir of images and narratives accumulated over centuries and deeply embedded in our culture. Antisemitism on campus comprises one part of a mosaic of harms and harassment suffered by racial and religious minorities. Jewish students and staff deserve protection, but imposing the working definition will add nothing useful to secure it. The secretary of state’s intervention divides Jews from other minorities. In doing so, he helps neither but instead risks splitting the struggle against antisemitism from the liberal values that have provided its most secure home. Let us hope he will think again.

 David Feldman is director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London

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https://www.jmberlin.de/en/talk-relationship-between-antisemitism-and-islamophobiaWHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANTISEMITISM AND ISLAMOPHOBIA?

Lectures by David Feldman and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (video recording available, in German and English)

For several years now, scientists have been discussing the hypothesis of whether the roles of Antisemitism during the formation of nation states in the 19th century and racism against Muslims during the process of European integration can be compared.

The British historian David Feldman searches in his lecture for parallels past and present between Antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism. Against the backdrop of the current shift to the right in Europe, does it make sense to politically address these two phenomena together? Which opportunities for future Jewish-Muslim alliances does this give rise to? Stefanie Schüler-Springorum from the Center for Research on Antisemitism will comment on the lecture from a German perspective.

Moderation: Yasemin Shooman, Head of the Academy Programs.

recording available

Where

W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin (Opposite the Museum)

Where, when, what?

Video recording of the lectures What is the Relationship Between Antisemitism and Islamophobia?; 20 March 2018, in German and Englisch; Jewish Museum Berlin 2018

David Feldman

Prof. David Feldman teaches at the University of London Birkbeck College and is director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism. He researches the history of minorities from 1600 to the present day.

Google translate

May 24, 2018
Lecture by David Feldman and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (in German and English) on March 20, 2018

For several years, academics have been discussing whether the role of anti-Semitism in the formation of nation states in the 19th century can be compared with the role played by racism towards Muslims in the course of European integration.

In his lecture, the British historian David Feldman asks about historical and current parallels between anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism. Against the background of the current shift to the right in Europe, does it make sense to address both phenomena together politically? What opportunities for future Jewish-Muslim alliances arise from this? Stefanie Schüler-Springorum from the Center for Research on Antisemitism comments on the lecture from a German perspective. Moderator: Yasemin Shooman, Head of Academy Programs.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/28/britain-definition-antisemitism-british-jews-jewish-people

Will Britain’s new definition of antisemitism help Jewish people? I’m sceptical

This article is more than 6 years old

David Feldman

While some consensus is needed in this debate, I fear this definition is imprecise, and isolates antisemitism from other forms of bigotry

Wed 28 Dec 2016 11.26 GMT

385

Antisemitism is anathema. From Ken Livingstone to Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi, no one has a good word to say for it. For some there has been a crisis in 2016, for others there has been a witch-hunt. Everyone is against antisemitism: we just can’t agree on how to recognise it.

This year there have been no less than three inquiries and reports on antisemitism: Janet Royall’s presented in May, Shami Chakrabarti’s at the end of June (I served as one of the vice-chairs to this inquiry, although the resulting report was Chakrabarti’s alone) and the home affairs committee report published in October. All dealt exclusively or significantly with the issue of antisemitism in the Labour party.

Now, at year’s end, the prime minister has announced that the government has adopted the definition of antisemitism recommended by an inter-governmental body, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Theresa May heralded a single standard with which we can identify and call out antisemitism. The Labour party quickly fell into line and British Jewish leaders welcomed the initiative. Does this promise a new year in which the politics of antisemitism will be less divisive? Or are the issues bound up in antisemitism too complex to be solved by fiat?

The text carries dangers. It trails a list of eleven examples. Some of the points are sensible, some are not

Much of the rancorous debate around antisemitism this year has circulated around three disputed terms: antisemitism, Zionism and anti-racism.

The term antisemitism was first popularised in Germany in the late 1870s. It is closely bound up with the experiences of Jews as a minority group. It carries memories and knowledge of discrimination, violence and genocide. Yet now the term also operates in a context created both by the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the consequence of its military victory in 1967. Israeli Palestinians possess citizenship rights within the country’s internationally recognised boundaries. Nevertheless, Israel’s relations with the Palestinians have also been characterised by discrimination and occupation, annexation and expropriation. Those who make Israel the target of criticism for these actions are now denounced as antisemitic by Israel’s leaders and by their supporters around the world.

In this way antisemitism is a term that does service both as a defence of minority rights, and in the context of support for a discriminatory and illiberal state power. Little wonder the word provokes so much disagreement.

At times the debate over antisemitism has been a surrogate for another quarrel: whether the Labour party should be a comfortable place for Zionists. In parts of the left the terms “Zionism” and “Zio” have become part of the lexicon of invective. Zionism and anti-Zionism encompass a range of positions, but in debate they get defined by opponents according to their maximalist connotations: religious and ethnic privilege, occupation and settlement are ascribed to one side, refusal to assent to the legitimacy of the state of Israel by the other. The facts provide a different picture. Many people who think of themselves as Zionists are at the forefront of protest against Israel’s policies. Many who conceive of themselves as anti-Zionists accept the state’s right to exist while they oppose its objectionable laws and policies.

Anti-racism too has generated conflict, not least in the Labour party. Chakrabarti provided a cautious assessment of the extent of antisemitism within Labour. But it is not only the proven incidence of antisemitism that should concern us but also the well of support that exists for people who reveal prejudice or callous insensitivity towards Jews. The last year has been punctuated by a handful of headline-grabbing incidents of this sort.

These incidents provoke debate over individuals. However, the problem also lies in political culture. The commonplace idea that racism expresses relations of power too often leads to the belief that it expresses only that. But racism can inform acts of resistance and solidarity as well as domination. If we fail to recognise this we will be poorly equipped to identify racism when it is directed against a group that is relatively affluent, coded as “white”, and most of whose members feel attached to the strongest power in the Middle East. It will increase the chances that we are blind to bigotry and myth when it is directed against British Jews.

So does the IHRA definition that Britain has adopted provide the answer? I am sceptical. Here is the definition’s key passage: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.” This is bewilderingly imprecise.

The text also carries dangers. It trails a list of 11 examples. Seven deal with criticism of Israel. Some of the points are sensible, some are not. Crucially, there is a danger that the overall effect will place the onus on Israel’s critics to demonstrate they are not antisemitic. The home affairs committee advised that the definition required qualification “to ensure that freedom of speech is maintained in the context of discourse on Israel and Palestine”. It was ignored.

The IHRA definition has been circulating for over a decade and has already been buried once. It is almost identical to the European Union monitoring commission’s working definition, formulated in 2005 as part of the global response to the second intifada in the early 2000s. The definition was never accorded any official status by the EUMC and was finally dropped by its successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency.

The definition has been resurrected just as we are moving to new times. David Friedman, who will soon become President Trump’s ambassador to Israel, has denounced the “two-state” solution. The prospect of continued Israeli dominion over disenfranchised Palestinians, supported by a US president whose noisome electoral campaign was sustained by nods and winks to anti-Jewish prejudice, is changing the dynamic of Jewish politics in Israel and across the world.

In this new context, the greatest flaw of the IHRA definition is its failure to make any ethical and political connections between the struggle against antisemitism and other sorts of prejudice. On behalf of Jews it dares to spurn solidarity with other groups who are the targets of bigotry and hatred. In the face of resurgent intolerance in the UK, in Europe, the United States and in Israel, this is a luxury none of us can afford.

Campus Battle Against Zionism by Pro-Palestinian Activists

 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

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.” 

Nerdeen Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine: What You Need to Know

 •    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.  

Nerdeen Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine: What You Need to Know

 •    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].” 

Nerdeen Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine: What You Need to Know

 •    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.”

Nerdeen Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine: What You Need to Know

•    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.

Nerdeen Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine: What You Need to Know

•    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”

Nerdeen Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine: What You Need to Know

 •    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”

Nerdeen Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine: What You Need to Know

 •    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.”

Since the 1970s Uri Davis Bashes Israel

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 !!!

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

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

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

MEMO launches 'The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing' by Dr Uri Davis [Middle East Monitor]
MEMO launches 'The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing' by Dr Uri Davis [Middle East Monitor]
MEMO launches 'The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing' by Dr Uri Davis [Middle East Monitor]
MEMO launches 'The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing' by Dr Uri Davis [Middle East Monitor]
MEMO launches 'The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing' by Dr Uri Davis [Middle East Monitor]
MEMO launches 'The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing' by Dr Uri Davis [Middle East Monitor]
MEMO launches 'The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing' by Dr Uri Davis [Middle East Monitor]
MEMO launches 'The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing' by Dr Uri Davis [Middle East Monitor]
MEMO launches 'The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit With Ethnic Cleansing' by Dr Uri Davis [Middle East Monitor]

UK’s University and College Union Adopts anti-Israel Motions

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:

  1. 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:

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

CARRIED

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

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

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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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Petition to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions by the American Anthropological Association

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

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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.

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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.

“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.

 “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.

“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.”

“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.

 “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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

TAU Moshe Zuckermann Empowering the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network Samidoun

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

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 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”.

The Strange Career of Shlomo Sand: Polemicist Masquerading as Historian

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

₪89.00

–כמות של ישראל-פלסטין ושאלת הדו-לאומיות

+הוספה לסל

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.”

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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.

IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Boosted with New Two Clauses

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

Cover of the publication Understanding Holocaust Distortion: Contexts, Influences and Examples

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:

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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.