You’ve read in many places by now the decision by a British teacher’s union to boycott Israeli scientists unless they sign some McCarthy-like statement saying they don’t agree with Israeli government policies (“Are you now or have you ever been a member of Likud?”). Something leaps out at me in every single article that gives the Israeli viewpoint of British academics.
The Israel Science Foundation, the largest funder of basic research in Israel, sends out some 10,000 letters a year asking scientists to examine research proposals by Israeli researchers and decide whether they deserve funding. According to Professor Joseph Klafter, the ISF’s chairman, about 10 scientists have refused to participate in the review process this year. He said that the foundation first began encountering such refusals following Operation Defensive Shield in March-April 2002. Such refusals typically say something like “I respect my Israeli colleagues, but until Israeli policy changes, I will be compelled to refuse your requests.”
What was Operation Defensive Shield? Why was it instituted?
After two months of intensive suicide bomber attacks inside Israel culminating in the attack on the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover eve, killing 30 people including entire families, the government authorized the IDF to enter Palestinian controlled areas (Area A) with full force.
Over 30,000 reservists were called into duty for the operation that included incursions into most of the major Palestinian cities on the West Bank.
The goal of the operation was fourfold: to destroy as much of the terrorist infrastructure as possible; to re-establish Israeli deterrence; to place the terrorist organizations on the defensive, and to isolate Arafat and weaken his authority.
An important byproduct of Operation Defensive Shield was utterly overlooked by most of the world at large: The IDF discovered documents directly linking Yasser Arafat to terrorist attacks on Israel while he was supposedly working for “peace.” The world issued a collective yawn, and denials that this proved Arafat was behind terror. The usual accusations of the Mossad manufacturing evidence occurred, in spite of incidents like the Karine A, in which 50 tons of weapons were prevented from reaching Israel, and Arafat’s complicity was again proven — and again ignored.
In March alone, more than 135 Israeli civilians were murdered in terrorist attacks.
That was the reason for Operation Defensive Shield.
The spring of 2002 is when world opinion, never very fond of Israel, turned vehemently against the Jewish state. The constant terror attacks were ignored, or excused as an expected response to the “crimes” of “occupation” (this, in spite of the fact that the PA ran the terrortories [sic] under the corrupt Jew-hater, Yasser Arafat (may his name be erased). Jews blown up on buses? Well, hell, that’s what they get for not letting the palestinians have their own state. Jews gunned down at a Bat Mitzvah celebration? It’s their own damned fault for occupying the indigenous people’s territory. Jews fight back to destroy the terrorist infrastructure? Hey! Hey! YOU CAN’T DO THAT TO THE POOR LITTLE UNARMED, UNDERFED, UNEMPLOYED, INNOCENT PALESTINIANS!!! YOU HAVE TANKS! THEY DON’T! YOU HAVE HELICOPTERS! THEY DON’T! YOU HAVE AIRPLANES! THEY DON’T!
That is essentially the attitude and the argument that came out of Israel’s actions of self-defense. You will still hear that argument today, as well as the accusations of massacres, war crimes, etc., etc. You will never hear a peep from the world about palesitnian atrocities. They have pretty much ignored the murder two days ago of a couple who were accused of “collaboration.”
This is the turning point for British academia. In the spring of 2002, when Israeli children on their way to school were being blown to pieces on buses, and the Israelis finally said “Enough!” and began to clamp down on the palestinian terror infrastructure, the world rose up in indignation against — Israel. Not against the murderers of children. Not against the murderers of Holocaust survivors at a Passover seder. Not against the corrupt, murderous, lying regime of Yasser Arafat.
Against Israel.
The British academic boycott has nothing to do with academic freedom. It has nothing to do with ending “apartheid” policies. It has everything to do with the British intellectual elite being unable to get over its centuries of Jew-hatred, or to allow the Jews full citizenship in the world.
If the British academics truly believed that it is wrong to take over a country, displace the indigenous population, colonize and settle it with your own, and force your rule on it — they’d be boycotting themselves, because that is what Great Britain did to Ireland.
I say again: Thank you, Great-grandfather, for emigrating from Scotland to America. Thank you for not making me a citizen of the U.K.
There is a reason why the capital of the Untied Kingdom is referred to by people in the know as “Londonistan.”
“United” not “Untied.”
Now, Meryl, these British academics are consistent–they don’t deal with Chinese academics who refuse to disavow the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and although there aren’t that many Syrian academics active internationally, they don’t deal with them unless they disavow Syria’s occupation of Lebanon.
Oh, wait,they don’t. Well, I’m sure there’s something about Israel that makes its sins unique…OK, there’s that.
By the way, I have noticed here and there the academic and other anti-Israel trope of being “against Likud policies,” pretending that their opposition isn’t to israel per se but just to that nasty party that runs the country.
However, Likud doesn’t run the country any more; the governing coalition is led by Kadima. Yet strangely, I don’t see any change.
Hi! I followed you over from Feministe. I agree with this. What is up with this “boycott” and what is up with this whole craziness of Israeli action automatically being called terror, and Palestinian action automatically being called revolutionary AKA awesome? What the heck ever. I can take this from your normal guy on the street (“I’m just anti-Zionist! I’m not anti-Jew! Really! It has nothing to do with anything! Ever! Really! Really!”) who doth protest too much about such things. But I feel weirded out that so-called “academics” can’t see beyond this black/white, good/evil construct either.
I’m thanking my great-grandfather for leaving London. High fives to him. An email kaddish.
Two posts above from “Anonymous” were from me. I was at the public library and didn’t realize they came across that way. I don’t care for anonymous posting generally.
Edith,
They can see beyond the black/white construct. Just not when it concerns the Jews. Funny thing, that. There’s nuance when it comes to the Chinese occupation of Tibet. There’s nuance when it comes to the Turkish occupation of Cyprus. There’s nuance when it comes to the British occupation of Northern Ireland.
But there’s no nuance about Israel and the territories. Occupation! Evil! Bad!
Say hello to The Exception Clause: “Except for Jews.”
I agree with your points, and would add another one: for college professors to engage in boycotts of this kind is an abuse of authority and is, at least in a moral sense, theft.
A college professor is not an independent entrepreneur; he is an employee, hired to do teaching and research. If he refuses to work with Israeli researchers who could add value to his work, he is deliberately failing to do his job to the best of his ability, based on his personal political opinions. Thus, he is converting resources that don’t belong to him to his own personal use.
A professor who engages in such behavior is no more engaging in “academic freedom” than an executive who rips off his company is engaging in “free enterprise.”