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The Academic Boycott Of Israel
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I must explain why I can not view this campaign as
"destructive," "ugly" or supportive of "terrorist murderers".
by M. Shahid Alam
In early April 2002, moved by the massacres in Jenin and the
wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure in West Bank
cities by invading Israeli forces, two British academics,
Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, circulated a call -- posted at
www.pjpo.org
-- for an academic boycott of Israel.
This campaign was directed mostly at European academics, and
so when it reached me nearly two months later, in the first
week of July, there were only six American academics among
the signatories. I carefully read the boycott statement,
which entailed non-cooperation with "official Israeli
institutions, including universities", and decided to sign on
to the list. I also forwarded the call to academics on my
mailing list.
Most of the friends on my mailing list just ignored the call.
Only two responded, and both were more than a bit troubled
that I should support such a thing. One described this
campaign as "destructive", another objected that this was an
"attack" on academic freedom. And once my name was on the
list of signatories, I promptly received two pieces of hate
mail. One of the two, from India.
A few days later I came across a counter petition initiated
by Leonid Ryzhik, a mathematics lecturer at University of
Chicago. In an interview published in The Guardian, May 27,
he said that the boycott campaign was "immoral, dangerous and
misguided, and indirectly encourages the terrorist murderers
in their deadly deeds." And this week, in The Nation, August
5-12, Martha Nussbaum, an eminent ethical philosopher, wrote
that she felt "relaxed" to be in Israel, where she had gone
to receive an honorary degree from the University of Haifa,
"determined to affirm the worth of scholarly cooperation in
the face of the ugly campaign."
Having declared my support for the academic boycott of
Israel, I believe I must now explain why I can not view this
campaign as "destructive", "ugly" or supportive of "terrorist
murderers". On the contrary, I see this as a moral gesture,
part of a growing campaign by international civil society to
use its moral force to nudge Israelis, to awaken them to the
ugly and destructive reality of their Occupation, which has
now lasted for more than thirty-five years and shows no sign
of ending any time soon. At last, the cumulative weight of
Palestinian suffering has begun to break through the crust of
Israeli protestations of innocence. Although tardy, world
conscience is now preparing to engage Israeli intransigence.
Increasingly, the world outside United States understands
that Israel is not a 'normal' country. The Zionist movement
sought to establish an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine,
a land inhabited almost entirely by Palestinian Arabs in
1900. Since no people yet has been known to commit collective
suicide, this could only be accomplished by conquest and
ethnic cleansing. This is how Israel emerged in 1948, through
conquest and ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Palestinians.
Yet this was not enough. Although Israel now sat on 78
percent of historic Palestine, this fell short of Zionist
goals. In 1967 this shortfall was corrected when Israel,
after defeating Egypt, Syria and Jordan, occupied the West
Bank and Gaza. Another, smaller campaign of ethnic cleansing
was rolled into this second round of conquests.
Although the Security Council promptly passed a resolution,
calling for Israeli withdrawal from the territories it had
occupied in 1967, this never had any teeth. Impressed by
Israeli rout of Arab nationalist forces, United States
deepened its partnership with Israel and promptly rewarded
Israel by doubling its military and economic assistance.
As a result, thirty-five years later, Israel still remains in
'Occupation' of West Bank and Gaza. In reality, this
Occupation is merely a fiction, a farcical cover under which
Israel buys time, time which it uses to insert armed Israeli
settlers, to increase Israeli control and ownership of
Palestinian lands, to push the Palestinians into ever
shrinking enclaves, to escalate the violence against
Palestinian resistance, and to deepen the misery of
Palestinian lives till they can be forced to flee their
homes.
The logic of the Occupation is brutal, and it should be
transparent to all but the purblind. If Palestinian
demography prevents annexation, and if Palestinians cannot be
expelled in one fell swoop -- as they had been in 1948 --
then the same results can still be achieved by forcing the
Palestinians into Bantustans. If a million Palestinians can
live in Gaza, a strip of 100 square miles, the two million in
West Bank can be pushed into similar enclaves, freeing 90
percent of the West Bank for Jewish settlers. It is about
time that we gave up the fiction of the Occupation, and
describe this oppressive regime by its proper name. This is
Aparthied: one country with two systems of laws, one for the
colonizers and one for the colonized.
I have two objectives in rehearsing, though ever so briefly,
this narrative of Palestinian dispossession. First, it is a
narrative that has been denied repeatedly and falsified
massively by Zionists. It therefore needs to be affirmed,
simply and forcefully, again and again, in the expectation
that world conscience will bear witness to the Zionist
project of wiping out the Arab presence from Palestine to
make room for Jewish settlers.
Once this narrative is affirmed; once it becomes clear that
the destruction of Palestinians was necessary -- and always
known to be necessary and accepted as necessary -- for Israel
to emerge as an exclusive Jewish state; once it is admitted
that the dispossession of Palestinians has involved wars,
ethnic cleansing, massacres, villages destroyed, cities
besieged, homes demolished, children maimed and killed,
prisoners tortured, ambulances bombed, journalists targeted,
municipal records destroyed, and trees uprooted; once all
this destructiveness -- already accomplished, and more of it
unfolding everyday -- is recognized the protestations about
the "destructiveness" or "ugliness" of an academic boycott of
Israel become insupportable, indeed unconscionable.
Mr. Leonid Ryzhik, of the University of Chicago, argues that
academic boycott "indirectly encourages the [Palestinian]
terrorist murderers in their deadly deeds". Does he mean to
say that this boycott "indirectly encourages" the Palestinian
resistance; and anything that questions, delays or weakens
the extension of the Zionist project to the West Bank and
Gaza must be challenged, and neutralized. It must be affirmed
in the face of such posturing that resistance is a right of
the Palestinians, as it was of all colonized peoples who
faced dispossession. Of necessity, dispossession is
implemented by force -- unless this project is aided by
pathogens; and, it follows, that resistance to the colonizer
must be violent.
The question is not, why do the Palestinians resist, or why
do they resist by violent means? There is a different
question before world conscience.
Why have we for fifty years abandoned the Palestinians to
fight their battles alone, beleaguered by a colonizer whom
they cannot fight alone? Why have we allowed the Palestinians
to be battered, exiled from their lands, herded into camps --
in villages and towns that have been turned into
concentration camps -- exposed to the mercy of a colonizer
who freely draws upon the finances, political support and
military arsenal of the world's greatest power? In despair,
marginalized, pauperized, facing extinction as a people, if
the Palestinians now use the only defense they have-to
weaponize their death-who is to blame?
And if now world conscience shows the first signs of acting
on behalf of the Palestinians, we can hope that this will
mitigate the Palestinian's deep despair. When the young
Palestinians learn that academics the world over, that young
people on campuses in Britain, France, Canada, and United
States are stirring on their behalf, this will convince them
that they are not alone; and once they are so convinced, they
may be persuaded to renounce their acts of desperation. The
academic boycott of Israel uses non-violent means, it
leverages moral suasion, to reduce the violence of the
colonizer as well as the colonized.
There are people who are shouting "Foul" at the academic
boycott on the plea that this curtails the academic freedom
of Israelis. I will readily admit that it does; this boycott
is expected to work by shrinking some of the international
avenues available to Israeli scientists for pursuing their
work. Still it must be emphasized that this curtailment is
temporary; it will end the moment Israel ends its Occupation.
It is also limited in its scope. It only seeks to limit some
of the advantages Israeli scientists derive from their
interactions with the global scientific community. It does
not threaten any fundamental academic freedoms.
This infringement of academic freedom -- temporary and
limited as it is -- must be seen in a broader framework. I
will readily concede that academic freedom is an important
value, a value that all humane societies should cherish. But
there are other values that we cherish, other values that may
even be more important, more fundamental than the right to
academic freedom. I believe it is reasonable and moral to
impose temporary and partial limits on the academic freedom
of a few Israelis if this can help to restore the fundamental
rights of millions of Palestinians -- their right to life, to
their property, to their lands, to freedom of movement within
their own country, to sovereign control over their destiny,
and to equal treatment under the law. This can only be denied
if we confess to a disproportion in the value we accord to
Israeli and Palestinian rights.
One might, of course, argue that this boycott is wasted
effort, since it can have no appreciable impact on Israeli
society and policies. This is a question about the efficacy
of the boycott. There can be little question that Israeli
scientists value the esteem and cooperation of the world's
scientific community as well as access to international
funding. It can therefore be expected that if the boycott
spreads, this can begin to reduce the effectiveness of
Israeli scientists. Perhaps more important, it is unlikely
that Israeli polity can ignore the message that the boycott
sends to them: that Israeli violations of Palestinian rights
are repugnant, and will not be allowed to stand.
At the same time, I refuse to be cowed by invocations about
the 'sanctity' of academia. More than ever before,
universities help to reproduce the power structures of their
societies; they are a potent source of ideologies of
imperialism, race and class exploitation. Israeli
universities are no exception. Through their links with the
military, the political parties, the media and the economy,
they have helped to construct, sustain, and justify the
Apartheid. I might have hesitated in adding my name to the
boycott if I knew that Israeli academics had taken the lead
in organizing rallies, in organizing sit-ins, and passing
resolutions protesting the Occupation, or that they had
refused to work on projects that serve the Occupation. To the
contrary, Israeli academia, on the whole, has shown that it
is a party to the Occupation.
The academic boycott offers one of the few handles available
to international civil society for seeking to end the
Occupation. Israel has pursued policies in the Occupied
Territories that would have invited economic sanctions, and
even military intervention, against another country.
America's capitulation to the Israeli lobby has meant that
Israel can wage war against a civilian population -- using
bombs, rockets, tank shells, and artillery fire -- with
impunity. Abandoned, isolated, beleaguered and unarmed, a few
Palestinian men and women have responded to this massive
force by weaponizing their own death, provoking still greater
violence against themselves. But, paradoxically, this has
also pushed world conscience into taking notice of the
affront to humanity that is the Israeli Occupation. The
academic boycott is one small step the detribalized world is
now taking the stop this affront, a step that all men and
women who have risen above tribalism should welcome.
M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern
University, Boston. His second book, Poverty from the Wealth
of Nations was published by Palgrave (2000).
Copyright: M. Shahid Alam
source : islamic_foundation
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