Open Letter to the International Geographical
Union (IGU)
As geographers, faculty, students, and people of
conscience, we are profoundly dismayed by IGU’s decision to hold its
July 2010 regional conference in Tel Aviv, in violation of the widely
endorsed Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestments, and
Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. We are equally troubled by IGU’s
response [1] to the open letter issued by the Palestinian Campaign for
the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which urged the
Executive Committee to relocate the upcoming regional conference out of
Israel [2].
PACBI’s letter was a compelling reminder that
Israel’s academic establishment (and geography in particular) is
implicitly and explicitly complicit with the Israeli state’s colonial,
discriminatory, and oppressive policies towards Palestinians. As
important social institutions they advance, sustain, and provide the
intellectual and moral justification for Israeli actions against
Palestinian people and their representatives both within Israel and in
the occupied Palestinian territories. It is noteworthy that “no Israeli
university or academic union has ever taken a public position against
the occupation, let alone against Israel‘s system of apartheid or the
denial of Palestinian refugee rights.”[3] PACBI underlines the
prevailing, and deeply disturbing role of Israeli Universities in
developing the very weapons and military doctrines used against
Palestinians. Moreover, they highlight the tragic irony of geographers
holding a conference about “Bridging Diversity in a Globalizing World”
in a country built on urban destruction and gradual ethnic cleansing, a
state which defines itself as an exclusively Jewish state, not a state
of all its citizens, one that continues to violate human rights with
total impunity and stands accused of war crimes for its latest offensive
in Gaza [4].
The IGU Executive’s response claims that they are
“morally and possibly financially bound to honor the commitment the IGU
made to its colleagues in Israel” in 2000. Pragmatic impediments to
relocate such an event are understandable yet solvable. It is however
far less clear what the executive means by the ‘moral’ standard that
binds them to ignore the widespread international outcry against
Israel’s longstanding mistreatment of the Palestinian people as well as
the open calls for support by Palestinians in their quest for basic
justice. Against these concrete ethical imperatives the Executive
Committee invokes its statutes, which proscribe boycotts, along with the
guidelines of ICSU (International Council for Science) on the free
circulation of scientists. Yet, we know that statutes are open to
amendment in the face of critical circumstances and geographers have,
over the last five decades, debunked positivist reductionism and
struggled successfully to free our discipline from the false
‘objectivity’ of traditional science. The fact of Israel’s colonial and
apartheid system, the oppression of the Palestinian people, including
the denial of their inalienable rights, the irrational violence against
and enclosure of the people of Gaza along with widespread international
condemnation are ample and pressing reasons for cancelling or relocating
the Tel Aviv conference.
The IGU Executive says they are
concerned that the Boycott forecloses the possibility of debate and feel
“the most effective way to resolve policy and political differences
allegedly justified by science is through direct and open confrontation
of the conflicting ideas and their proponents”. These arguments are
based on three crucial misconceptions. First, the assumption that the
relationship between Israel and Palestine is a symmetrical one ignores
the overwhelming economic, social, military and political power of
Israel relative to the poverty-stricken, war-ravaged state of the
Palestinian people, their state and its institutions. A historical
colonizer-colonized relationship along with the constant threat of
military assault robs Palestinians of their basic livelihoods let alone
the privilege and right to disagree politically or otherwise. Secondly,
the intimation that the Israeli-Palestinian question is about “policy
and political differences” and therefore not the concern of geographers
since politics and science are two pure and separate spheres is an
anachronistic vision of the discipline, and an insult to the very many
geographers around the world whose work does not adhere to that simple
binary and is ethical, policy-oriented and/ or politically engaged. And
thirdly, the suggestion that Boycotts are not effective or legitimate is
decisively invalidated by the example of South African anti-apartheid
movement, which shows it to be among the most useful and least violent
tactics in resisting oppression and injustice at an international level.
A rising tide of International support for the Palestinian boycott,
divestment and sanctions campaign calls on us to take a similar stance
in the case of Israel.
To date all other forms of international
intervention have failed to convince or force Israel to comply with
international law and to end its repression of the Palestinians. As
educators and intellectuals we must take exception to the impunity with
which Israel has targeted Palestinian educational rights. Since its
establishment Israel’s policies have been aimed at the destruction of
Palestinian historical manuscripts, journals and books [5], suppression
of academic freedom and closure of Palestinian universities [6],
mobility restrictions on staff and students [7], destruction of
educational infrastructure [8], systematic discrimination against
Palestinian students [9], as well as arrest and deportation of local
academic and international staff [10]. The latest example of these
policies in our field is the travel ban imposed by Israel on geographer
Khalil Tafakji, Director of the Cartographic Section of the Arab Studies
Society in Jerusalem, and regular lecturer in international forums
about Israel discrimination and ethnic cleansing policies in East
Jerusalem [11].
In light of the above, and in the tradition of
engaged geographical scholars such as the well-respected late James M.
Blaut whose intellectual efforts were guided by solidarity with
oppressed people including the Palestinian people and South African
anti-apartheid groups, we the undersigned, believe that it is our moral
responsibility as scholars, intellectuals and activists to talk truth to
power against injustice. In this spirit of international solidarity and
resistance to oppression we stand in support of Palestinians’
non-violent anti-colonial struggle through a public campaign of boycott
divestments and sanctions.
Historically, geography as a science
was established and consolidated in direct service of European imperial
and colonial expansion. The discipline's critical turn in the latter
20th century has worked to expose and repudiate this history and its
militaristic and colonial tradition. It is in this spirit that we, the
undersigned, collectively petition the IGU Executive Committee to take
immediate steps to relocate the July 12 – 16, 2010 regional conference
outside Israel. Given the circumstances if the conference goes ahead
inside Israel we will not attend or otherwise participate in any manner.
We urge you to act promptly and ethically in this matter.
[1]
http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1126
(see below)
[2]
http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1126[3]
http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1175
[4]
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf[5]
http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=36[6]
http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/downloads/pdfs/AcademicFreedomPaper.pdf[7]
http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/news/catindex31[8]
http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/news/catindex32[9]
http://www.adalah.org/features/education/New_Data_on_Education_August_2009.pdf[10]
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/443.shtml[11]
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11058.shtml
SIGN HERE!
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEw0OUVnekhuNW9SYV93WHN1OXJfUFE6MA
View the up-to-date list of endorsers:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tL49EgzHn5oRa_wXsu9r_PQ&single=true&gid=0&output=html