On November 12 Academics for Palestine (AfP) organised a public debate asking ‘should academics boycott Israel?’ with renowned Israeli historian Prof Ilan Pappe, Palestinian academic and writer Dr Ghada Karmi, and British political scientist Prof Alan Johnson. People often ask why boycott Israeli academics who might be partners to a fruitful academic dialogue, so let me propose that the academic boycott is justified because Israeli universities collaborate with the occupation and the discrimination of Palestinian citizens and subjects, and are also pivotal to Israel’s multi-billion dollar armament industry.
Long before the 1967 occupation, Israeli universities were steeped in Zionist ideology, and helped the state to uphold Jewish existence in Palestine in what they saw as a hostile environment. More recently, declining resources led neo-liberal Israel to rely on the universities to bring in much needed revenue by developing military equipment. A 2009 report for the Alternative Information Centre shows that in order to maintain the occupation, Israel’s security forces are heavily dependent on technological means and developments that facilitate the continuation of the occupation with reduced manpower and government funding. For which they need the universities. Continue reading “Why Should Irish academics boycott Israel?”
On 9 August I spoke at the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign National demonstration for Palestine. As an Israeli Jew, born in Palestine prior to the birth of the State of Israel, I am aching for Gaza and for the ease with which many Israelis and their supporters throughout the world excuse the killing of so many Gazans. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 2,100 people were killed, while the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem had put the figure at 1,767, of whom 431 are minors and 200 women. Both agree that 70-80 per cent of the killed are non-combatants, all in full view of the world.
Last December some 200 African asylum seekers started a march from the open detention centre Holot in the south of the country towards the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem. ‘We are not afraid to march, sun, rain or snow. We’ll march to Jerusalem to ask the government for our rights. We can no longer stay in this prison’, said Masala, a young Eritrean marcher. After two days of marching in rough weather conditions, supported by Israeli human rights groups, they were all arrested and returned to the Saharonim jail, where the conditions are harsher.
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