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.
The abduction and murder of three Jewish teenage rabbinical seminary students – Gil-Ad Sha’ar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Frankel – in the occupied West Bank three weeks ago put Israeli society on fire. The Israeli government had seemingly known they were murdered from the start but kept insisting they were abducted and might still be alive, leading to an unprecedented terror campaign against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. Media photographs of ransacked houses and seemingly useless searches, among other things, in children bedrooms, stoked Israeli Jewish rage. It meant nothing that the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas condemned the abduction; as far as the most right wing Israeli government since the establishment of the state was concerned, Abbas and his political partners Hammas were to blame and there was no point in continuing the farcical ‘peace process’. Yet, even though many Israelis do not support the settlers, the abduction made headline news, focusing on ‘our boys’ who had to be released at all costs. When the dead bodies of the three young men were found, Israel was awash with a wave of grief, rage and hatred. Gangs of young right wing Israelis poured onto the streets of Jerusalem and other cities chanting ‘death to the Arabs’; a Facebook page calling to ‘kill all Arabs’ had thousands of ‘likes’ within minutes of being posted. And very soon after the bodies were discovered, a young Palestinian boy Mohammad Abu Khdeir was abducted and burnt alive in the Jerusalem suburb of Shuafat by a group of settlers.
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