Boycott: It's the occupation, stupid
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=2302
Uri
Ram
April 26, 2005
The angry responses in Israel to the decision passed by
the Association
of University Lecturers in Britain to boycott two Israeli
universities,
Bar Ilan and Haifa, because of their acquiescence with the
Israeli
occupation of the Palestinian territories, have, as usual, succeeded
in
diverting attention from the main issue - the occupation, to
the
secondary issue of the boycott.
The deputy to the ambassador of Israel
in Britain is quoted as saying
that Jewish lecturers were not boycotted since
Nazi Germany.
Interesting; nobody mentioned a boycott of Jewish lecturers.
Moreover,
as far as there are `Jews` in this case, these are the
Palestinians.
Those who suffer daily from undifferentiating occupation,
killing,
destruction, confiscation and humiliation are the Palestinian
residents;
residents, not citizens, because the state dominating them does
not
grant them citizenship rights, barely human rights.
The President of
Haifa University declared that a certain lecturer who
supports the boycott
should depart the University, because one cannot
support boycotting it and
still `enjoy its delights`. Good to know what
the President is occupied with
- `enjoying the delights` of the
University. Maybe this is why he thinks that
the University is his own,
or of him and the colleagues to his position; a
`non-political` position
of course; just a simple banal acquiescence with the
occupation and its
horrors. I would have expected him to declare that this
decision is
mistaken because the university does oppose the occupation; or
to
declare that the university would start doing so. I would have
expected
him to take an unequivocal moral stand against the occupation,
rather
then condemning one pious lecturer in this Sodom. I would expect
this
also from the rest of the University Presidents in Israel, with
the
exception of Bar Ilan, which ideologically and actively supports
the
occupation. In the future Israeli University Presidents will not
be
judged by the number of graduates or by the number of articles
produced
in their time, but by the question `where were you when the
occupation
and oppression took place?!`
Israel must be reminded what it
tries to make everybody forget: the
occupation is unlawful; the settlements
are unlawful; any activity of
the occupying power which is not necessitated
by immediate security
considerations or the temporary upkeep of the area
until its return to
its local population is unlawful, and moreover
illegitimate and amoral.
This is what the British lecturers proclaim: the
Israeli occupation of
Palestinian areas is unlawful, illegitimate and amoral.
It`s not the
boycott, stupid, it`s the occupation.
And now one may also
consider the boycott. Why boycott on Israel and not
on Britain, which
occupies Iraq?! Why start with the universities, and
not, for instance, with
the official representatives of Israel or with
Israeli corporations?! What
about lecturers in the boycotted
universities who oppose the occupation,
Arab, Jews or others (will there
be selection committees; a horrible
thought)?! And does not every
Israeli tax-payer - including the writer of
this text - a complaisant
with the occupation?! I don't have unequivocal
answers to these
questions, but I know that the occupation and the occupiers
ought to be
unequivocally condemned and boycotted. The problem is not the
boycott,
stupid, it`s the occupation.
Dr. Uri Ram
Senior
Lecturer,
Department of Behavioral Sciences,
Ben Gurion University
Beer
Sheva,
Israel
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http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=2302
`And
they were silent, and answered him not a word` (Isaiah 36:21)
By: Nurit
Elhanan-Peled* Jerusalem 28.4.2005
The Hebrew Original: http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=2233
Translated
to English by Mark Marshall
`The looting will start immediately after the
evacuation. One will take
a window. Another will take a door.`
This racist
and wicked statement, that was published a few days ago from
the mouth of the
one who stands at the head of the State of Israel, was
intended purely as
incitement and was meant to foment hatred and
contempt towards those with
whom the State of Israel is supposed to make
real peace. To represent the
Palestinians, the blood of whose children
is splashed on every window and
door in the criminal and redundant
settlements that were set up on their
stolen lands, to represent those
victims as savages from the desert who will
come to dismantle houses and
loot windows and doors, just to make them into
firewood, for they do not
know the proper use of windows and doors - although
they were the
builders of all the Jewish settlements - is an expression of
pure,
benighted, dangerous racism, which the enlightened world cannot and
must
not tolerate any longer. In England a Member of Parliament who dared
to
say that the health system was collapsing under the burden of
immigrants
was dismissed, and the leader of the Tory party is being
severely
criticized because of racist statements against immigrants. However,
not
one of them dared to rise to the level of the racism and incitement
of
the Prime Minister of Israel. But this man, who has already floated
the
idea of a civil war that he evidently longs for, the man who has
been
stealing lands, looting property, ruining vineyards, uprooting
orchards,
who has killed and devastated and destroyed more than any other
leader
in the world today, has not been denounced for his words and
obviously
will not be brought to justice and will not be punished for
his
inflammatory words and many crimes.
In the wake of the boycott that is
hanging over the head of Israeli
academia, a boycott that will certainly harm
seekers of peace, but which
expresses the revulsion of the enlightened
academic world at what is
happening here, and especially at the fact that the
Israeli academia is
not rising up and crying out in the face of the
despicable racism of
their leaders; maybe the time has come to understand,
that if people of
letters and science in a State that is sunk up to its neck
in racist
discourse, in the blood of innocents, in injustice the likes of
which
have not been seen in years, do not condemn and do not call for
the
leader who incites and instigates to be brought to justice, if people
of
letters and science do not demand that he withdraw his racist words,
and
accept these words as a matter of course, and maybe as truth, then
these
people of letters and science deserve every condemnation and
every
boycott that the enlightened world can impose on them.
Dr. Nurit
Elhanan-Peled,
Jerusalem, is Lecturer in Language Education at the Hebrew
University,
Tel-Aviv University and the David Yellin Teachers
College
Laureate of the Sakharov prize (2001) for Human Rights and the
Freedon
of Speech, awarded by the European Parliament.
Member of the
Parents-Circle, the Israeli-Palestinians forum of Bereaved
Parents for
peace.
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