Am I missing something here?
Since when did all of those supporting the
boycott call for the absolute dissolution of the
Israeli state?
This is misleading and unhelpful.
The other worrying thing in this message is the
suggestion that the brutal occupation of
Palestinian lands "should never have happened as
it did"..... Is the suggestion here that it
would have been alright if it was a little less
brutal?
I'm getting quite fed up with these posting
somehow inferring that those of us who supported
the boycott are somehow anti-semitic by
association. Anyone else feel the same way?
Ed Brown
>Versioning history (and forsaking its complexities)…
>
>“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 conspiracy theory from Mona Baker’s website referenced 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.
--
-
Dr. Ed Brown
Department of Geography,
Loughborough University,
Leicestershire,
LE11 3TU, UK.
E-Mail ([log in to unmask])
Direct Line +44 (0) 1509 222738
Fax +44 (0) 1509 223930
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