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| Israel-Palestine |
| On the Effects of Boycotting the Jews |
| 2005-04-29 |
| This is especially for Rantburg's own professor, Atomic Conspiracy, who has been so rightously angered by the whole thing. Fortunately for my confidence in the goodness of the generality of Mankind, he is not alone. From the Wall Street Journal, registration required, so given here uncut. JERUSALEM -- The phones began ringing late last Friday afternoon. The BBC, AFP, co-authors, my mother: everyone wanted to know if I was worried about the vote by British academics to boycott my university. As a Jew and an Israeli, my automatic answer to any question that contains the word "worry" is yes. On the long list, the boycott comes close behind the dangers of Palestinian terror, the Iranian bomb, Hezbollah's missiles, Osama bin Laden, reality TV, Israeli taxi drivers, and the waves of locusts migrating from North Africa. In truth, the direct impact of unspecified academic sanctions adopted by the Association of University Teachers (AUT), Britain's largest teachers' union, against the faculty at Bar Ilan and Haifa universities is likely to be minimal. The few viscerally anti-Israel academics are probably not participating in any joint research projects in any case, to their loss. Two years ago, my colleague Prof. Miriam Shlesinger, an internationally prominent linguist, was ousted from the board of a journal in translation studies by an Egyptian-born editor based at the University of Manchester. And the politically correct anti-Israel atmosphere has probably led a few anonymous reviewers to reject research reports submitted to other academic journals -- but this is hard to prove. In any case, the quality of the Israeli academic research is generally very high, and good work still trumps bad politics, even in the nonsense of "post-colonial," post-modern and post-Chomsky/Said theory. In molecular biology, immunology, antiterror methodologies, strategic deterrence and other fields, a political ban on Israelis would be particularly costly for the banners -- not for the banned. Efforts to understand the factors that distinguish between failure and success in arms control and peace efforts (my research focus) will be stillborn without the active participation of serious Israeli researchers in this field. At the same time, this effort to impose a political litmus test on academic research has created a serious backlash. Since the recent revival of the boycott campaign, we have been deluged by emails from colleagues pledging to defy the policy, and to increase their contact with Israelis. Many also reject the medieval nature of such censorship, which contradicts the core principle of the marketplace of ideas. The real threat, as its authors realize, is not from the direct academic impact, but rather from its broader political objectives. Although the resolution refers to "occupation" and "settlements," and singles out two universities for their alleged complicity with that policy, the Israel-obsessed organizers of the AUT boycott -- Susan Blackwell and Steven Rose, like their counterparts elsewhere -- readily admit that this is simply a tactical decision. They have declared all Israelis who serve in the defense forces and support the government to be guilty. My university, Bar Ilan, was sanctioned for its alleged links to the College of Judea and Samaria, located in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. If examined closely, all the "charges" are inaccurate and transparently intended to serve a different goal -- in Mr. Blackwell's words, to condemn the "illegitimate state of Israel" and to send a "message of support" to Palestinians. * * * The boycott is only a small part of the broader political war against Israel's legitimacy as a sovereign Jewish state, and the effort to label Israel as the next "apartheid regime" is designed to put an end to Zionism. The use of the apartheid label does a gross injustice to those who suffered under the real thing, and is a form of modern anti-Semitism, this time turning the Jewish state into the devil. The absurdly exaggerated condemnation of Israel, and the systematic removal of the environment of terror in the rhetoric of "war crimes" and "ethnic cleansing," is the political counterpart of the ongoing terrorism and military assaults. Major battles of this political war have taken place in the U.N. -- the 1975 "Zionism is racism" resolution, for example, or the 2001 Durban conference on racism where that claim was repeated -- on campuses such as Columbia University in New York, in the newsrooms of the BBC and CNN, and via the nongovernmental superpowers such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. After the death of Yasser Arafat and the relative calm on the ground, reflecting the exhaustion of both Israelis and Palestinians, this political war has heated up, particularly in Britain. Perhaps I'm being too nonchalant about AUT's effort to launch a boycott of my university. For decades, the propaganda war has always accompanied and served to justify the shooting war. If the anti-Israel forces on campuses and in NGOs are gaining strength in Britain, Europe and the U.S., this will undermine the current efforts to expand the cease-fire and conflict management activities in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Gaza. And this is the real tragedy of the AUT boycott decision -- while talking about peace, its backers are actually contributing to war and hatred. Mr. Steinberg directs the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar Ilan University and is the editor of www.ngo-monitor.org1. |
| Posted by: trailing wife |