Well, very briefly:
I fully understood your sincere wish "to do something" in the field we are
all acting in order to protest against the criminal behavior of Israel
during the past 35 years and especially *now*. I'm doing that all these
years and so are many of my colleagues in the Israeli academy. Of course
the Israeli academy is not homogeneous and a lot of my colleagues strongly
support the occupation and even the politicide of the Palestinian
people. Other colleagues simply kept quiet all these years.
But up today the Israeli academy remained almost the last public space
(the media not anymore) of free speech and free thinking. We are under a
constant assault of the authorities to "shut up our mouths". Just today the
Ministry of Education appealed to the Attorney General to charge a long
list of professors of my university because their support of conscience
objectors.
The situation here is that the Israeli academic community more need the
support and the protection of the international academic community than
its sanctions.
An other issue is the attempt to differentiate between institutional
sanctions and ("good"?) individuals. This distinction doesn't make any
sense. We are not free lancer academics. Research funds, publications,
participations in conferences, trans-national research cooperations are
all done trough our institutional affiliations.
And lastly one more general but not less valid idea: I'm convinced that
any academic boycott contradict the very idea of the fundamental academic
freedom and our vocations.
I call to all the signatories of the original petition to reconsider they
position.
Best,
Baruch Kimmerling
George S. Wise Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology Office phone: +972 2 5883041
The Hebrew University Home phone: +972 2 5333583
91905 Jerusalem, Israel Fax: +972 2 5828247
Home Page - http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~mskimmer
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