Wednesday, June 08, 2005


 

For and Against the Academic Boycott of Israel: a debate

Saturday 11 June, 2005 - 11:00. Senate House, University of London.

The UK Association for Legal and Social Philosophy presents a roundtable debate and open discussion.

Speakers include:

Bob Brecher, Reader in Moral Philosophy, University of Brighton
Norman Geras, Emeritus Professor of Government, University of Manchester
Saladin Meckled-Garcia, Director of Human Rights Programme, University College London
Jon Pike, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Open University

All welcome. Admission free. Tea/coffee available from 10:30. Places are limited, and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.
For further information, please contact:
Gideon Calder, University of Wales, Newport: gideon.calder@newport.ac.uk
or Jonathan Seglow, Royal Holloway, University of London: j.seglow@rhul.ac.uk.


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Friday, June 03, 2005


 

Sign this letter to the Natfhe leadership!

"Links-not-boycott" supporters in Nafthe - the union which organises lecturers in Further Education and the "new" universities, and is due to merge with AUT soon - are calling on Natfhe members to sign this open letter to the Natfhe leadership. To sign the letter, email Mark Osborn.

The AUT made a bad mistake in April when it decided to boycott two Israeli universities. AUT members rebelled and overturned that decision by a big majority at a special conference on 26 May.
The AUT's 26 May decision meant that two emergency motions put to our 28-30 May conference, committing Natfhe to a boycott, could no longer credibly claim to be "emergencies", and were not debated. However, the conference did pass a slippery motion committing Natfhe to proclaiming the "right" of AUT to boycott Israel. And, between the two AUT conferences, Natfhe Executive passed policy that a boycott of selected Israeli institutions should be an option.
We call on the Executive to reverse this decision and to lead a full debate in Natfhe which, we are sure, will lead to Natfhe to adopting a similar stance to the AUT - solidarity with the Palestinian people, implemented through positive links rather than by the negative, counterproductive, and implicitly anti-semitic policy of boycott.
Those who led the opposition to the boycott in the AUT were not right-wingers. They were socialists committed to Palestinian rights.
Natfhe has already adopted a "two states" policy for Israel/ Palestine - for Israel withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and a Palestinian state with the same rights as Israel. That is, our union recognises the right of Israel to exist, and campaigns specifically against the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (and against anti-Arab discrimination within Israel), rather than blanket-fashion against the very existence of Israel.
We call on you to advocate this stance openly, and to recognise that it contradicts a boycott policy.
Boycotts of particular institutions in Israel will not work as a precision instrument to further a two-states settlement. Boycotting of universities is especially implausible as a precision instrument. And in any case, all the main pro-boycott campaigners are open about seeing selective boycotts as only the thin end of the wedge to a total academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
Inside AUT – and at a large fringe meeting at our own conference – some people, appalled by the situation of the Palestinians, looked to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and advocated a boycott for lack of a better idea.
But, as the anti-boycotters in AUT pointed out, it is absurd and counterproductive to blame Israeli academia for Israeli state policy.
The boycott is positively harmful because it feeds into the anti-semitic (often "left" anti-semitic) idea that Israel is a uniquely evil state which must be destroyed.
Boycotting Israel is not the same as boycotting apartheid. Solidarising with the people of South Africa against a particular regime - in the name of demanding one person, one vote there - is not the same as demonising the whole Israeli Jewish nation and its ordinary, mainstream institutions. Solidarity with the Palestinians against the Occupation does not exclude sympathy with the Israeli Jews and respect for their right, also, to have their own state. For a workable democratic settlement it cannot exclude that sympathy and respect.
Natfhe must reject policies which apply criteria to Israeli academics applied to no other academics in the world. We don’t demand the "smashing" of Australia or Argentina for what happened to the indigenous populations. We don’t demand a boycott of US academics because of the Iraq war.
We should explicitly reject the demonisation of "Zionism" which leads to any Jew with an ordinary instinctive (though maybe critical) identification with Israel being stigmatised as a racist or similar. Our union should have nothing to do with the placards often seen on left-organised marches which equate Zionism with Nazism and Sharon with Hitler.
We need respect for the democratic rights of both Palestinians and Jews. The pro-boycott current must be taken on, isolated and politically defeated in Natfhe.


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Letter to NATFHE's journal

This letter has been sent to NATFHE's journal by Mark Osborn of Lewisham NATFHE.

The AUT made a bad mistake in April when it decided to boycott two Israeli universities. AUT members rebelled and overturned that decision by a big majority at a special conference on 26 May.
Had the AUT not rescinded its policy on 26 May, I suspect our recent conference would have passed emergency motions that committed Natfhe to boycott. As it was, it passed a slippery motion committing Natfhe to nothing but proclaiming the “right” of AUT to boycott Israel. Our Executive has passed policy saying a boycott of selected Israeli institutions should be an option.
Those who led the opposition to the boycott in the AUT were not right-wingers. They were socialists committed to Palestinian rights and a state alongside Israel.
Inside AUT – and at a large fringe meeting at our own conference – some people, appalled by the situation of the Palestinians, looked to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and advocated a boycott for lack of a better idea.
But, as the anti-boycotters in AUT pointed out, it is absurd and counterproductive to blame Israeli academia for Israeli state policy.
The boycott is positively harmful because it feeds into the anti-semitic (often “left” anti-semitic) idea that Israel is a uniquely evil state which must be destroyed.
Boycotting Israel is not the same as boycotting apartheid. For South Africa it was a matter of solidarising with the people of the country against a particular regime, not of demonising a whole nation. Solidarity with the Palestinians against the Occupation does not, and for a workable democratic settlement cannot, exclude sympathy with the Israeli Jews and respect for their right, also, to have their own state.
The boycotters apply criteria to Israeli academics which they apply to no other academics in the world. They don’t demand the “smashing” of Australia or Argentina for what happened to the indigenous populations. They don’t demand a boycott of US academics because of the Iraq war.
And they demonise Zionism. It is unfortunately common to see placards of left-organised marches which equate Zionism with Nazism and Sharon with Hitler.
We need respect for the democratic rights of both Palestinians and Jews. The pro-boycott current must be taken on, isolated and politically defeated in Natfhe.

Mark Osborn, Lewisham


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Wednesday, June 01, 2005


 

Versioning history (and forsaking its complexities)…

A comment from Camila Bassi

"Zionism and Nazism were twins in their narrow nationalism and even collaborated against the public. The Zionists thus found no reason not collaborate with the Nazis in the mid-thirties to rid Europe of its Jews." (Taken from Professor Mona Baker’s homepage against the occupation of Palestine and for an academic boycott)

"The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can now be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of the Jewish people. Interested in winning the sympathy of the Arabs who are more numerous than the Jews, the British government has sharply altered its policy toward the Jews, and has actually renounced its promise to help them find their ‘own home’ in a foreign land. The future development of military events may well transform Palestine into a bloody trap." (Leon Trotsky, writing a month prior to his death in August 1940, on the Jewish question)

For a long-term two nation-states solution and the workers’ unity it depends on…

How will a workers’ alliance between Palestinians and Israelis be achieved that is both against the despotic Israeli state and for a two nation-states solution (involving a withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from the Occupied Territories and a return to pre-1967 borders)?

Deliberation of such a question steers me to holding a position against an academic boycott of Israel; after all, any long-term solution to the conflict in the Middle East is dependent (amongst many other things) on the principle that Palestinian and Israeli academics must forge some kind of political unity.

It is by no means an exclusive stance on the part of those who support the idea of an academic boycott to claim that the Israeli state is illegitimate and to call for a one secular Palestinian state solution, but this is a position that does underpin the most vocal calls for a boycott. With this in mind, has there been any other case in history in which self-declared Marxists, socialists or leftists advocated a forced reversal of history to strip a group of people of their rights to national self-determination? The actions of the Israeli state in its repression of Palestinians and its brutal occupation of Palestinian land must be vehemently condemned (and, indeed, it should never have happened as it did), but it cannot be ‘made right’ by the absolute dissolution of Israel as a nation-state. Any such calls for dissolution would be anti-… well, you decide.

Returning to the quote from Mona Baker’s website at the beginning, it would be fair to say that being anti-Zionist is not (in and of itself) an anti-Semitic act, although all anti-Semitics are anti-Zionist. The Jewish question, which Leon Trotsky astutely considered and urgently wrote about in the 1930s and 1940s, took on a "utopian and reactionary character" in Zionism. Nevertheless, to now advocate any political gesture that might threaten the prospect of workers’ unity between Palestinians and Israelis, and the prospect for a long-term two nation-states solution, should be seriously challenged.




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Fightback starts in NATFHE

On 30 May, the conference of NATFHE - a union which organises lecturers in Further Education colleges and the "new" universities (ex-polytechnics), and which is due to merge with AUT soon - carried an emergency motion semi- or quarter-endorsing a boycott policy.

Emergency motion 25 on "AUT Israeli University Boycott" was moved by Tom Hickey from the South-East region, and carried:
"Conference notes:
* the AUT Council's previous decision to boycott two Israeli universities and the resulting attacks on, and misleading and insulting claims about, the AUT;
* a number of NATFHE Branches' and CoComs' declarations expressing solidarity with AUT's opposition to oppression in the Middle east, and affirming AUT's right to act.
"Conference affirms that:
* to criticise Israel policy or institutions is not anti-Semitic;
* it is the duty of educationalists and their organisations, to speak out and act against oppression and discrimination;
* it supports the AUT's right to make this decision".
The motion's backers did not feel confident enough to come straight out with their views and argue for NATFHE to support an academic boycott of Israel. Instead they compiled a text full of slippery phrases and unspelled-out implications.
It boosts the AUT boycott decision on 22 April, taken on a snap vote without debate, but dismisses the four-to-one AUT vote against boycott on 26 May, taken after large debate both in AUT branches and at the AUT special conference.
It refers darkly to "attacks on" and "misleading and insulting claims about" the AUT, without specifying, whereas in fact the main consequence of the AUT's 22 April decision was a democratic revolt against it by the AUT's membership.
It suggests that all the AUT was wanting to do on 22 April was "oppose oppression", "speak out against discrimination", or "criticise Israeli policy", whereas in fact the main drive of the anti-boycott revolt in the AUT was to oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but to argue for solidarity and links rather than the ineffective, counter-productive, and by inescapable implication anti-semitic policy of boycott.
It "supports the AUT's right" to make the decision it made by a snap vote on 22 April, but says nothing of the right of the broader AUT membership to rebel against that decision, to force a democratic debate, and to overturn it.
NATFHE states: "Following this motion, general secretary Paul Mackney made a brief statement clarifying the meaning of 'Israel policy' in the motion as referring to Israeli government policy, drawing delegates' attention to NATFHE's existing policy on Israel/Palestine, and to speeches he had made based on that policy, and committing NATFHE to work with the AUT and the TUC to develop this based on a debate involving all of the union's membership".
A motion was passed on anti-semitism.
Below is NATFHE exec policy on Israel/ Palestine, as referred to in the statement above. It is a slippery text, opening the door to a boycott policy if and when the NATFHE leadership think that politic (they probably do not think it politic right now). It sustains that view by the illusory implied argument that boycotts can be a precision instrument for selective pressure, ignoring the facts that the pro-boycotters are perfectly candid that they see selective boycotts as only the thin end of the wedge to a selective boycott of Israel and that nobody thinks that selective boycotts of universities in, say, the USA or Britain, with for example special links to military projects, would be an effective precision tactic against US or British imperialism.
In the light of AUT Council decisions on Palestine and Israel, the NEC confirms its policy of working to support the building of civil society in Palestine, including cooperation with AUT where appropriate, to build positive relations with Palestinian and Israeli institutions and organisations which share our goals, and the consideration of sanctions where they are targeted and deliverable in respect of institutions which are creating obstacles to a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Palestine.
On the Sunday of the conference, 29 May, a fringe meeting was held to debate the academic boycott, with Hilary Rose speaking for the boycott and Mary Davis speaking against.
We were there to distribute "Links not boycott" leaflets to the delegates. A drive is now getting underway to get proper debate in NATFHE branches and regions, and motions through them clearly rejecting boycott and arguing for positive solidarity.


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