[A-List] BMJ: Should We Consider a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions? (Vote!)

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

If nothing else, at least the idea of academic boycott of the Israeli
occupation has taken off.  The BMJ (British Medical Journal) is
sponsoring a debate in its current issue, having two British academics
make their respective cases for and against the boycott (see below).
The BMJ is also conducting an online survey of public opinion on the
question of academic boycott (all, not just those in the medical
profession, are invited to vote).

You can vote at
<http://www.surveymk.com//s.aspx?sm=zrDgLYed7wn_2fe_2bcR2lC4Pw_3d_3d>.

<http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7611/124>
BMJ  2007;335:124 (21 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.39266.495567.AD
Feature
Head to head
Should we consider a boycott of Israeli academic institutions? Yes

Tom Hickey, chair of the University and Colleges Union

Faculty of Arts and Architecture, University of Brighton, Brighton BN2 1RA

T.Hickey@xxxxxxxxxx

Tony Blair's appointment as Middle East peace envoy is intended to
invigorate the peace process. Tom Hickey thinks boycotting
universities might encourage the Israeli government to reach a
settlement, but Michael Baum believes collaboration is a more
effective way forward

The proposal adopted by the University and Colleges Union congress to
discuss whether it should boycott Israeli academic institutions has
caused a furore. The House of Lords set aside time for a full debate,
and the British government dispatched a minister to reassure its
Israeli counterparts. Whole page advertisements rapidly appeared in
national newspapers condemning the decision. The great and the good
were mobilised. Irrational, one sided, anti-semitic, and
counterproductive were some of the accusations levelled against us for
deciding to debate.

As the motion's mover, I have been subjected to sustained
vilification. Eminent American professors, and supporters of Israel,
have threatened to bankrupt and to destroy the careers of any union
members who support a boycott. The conflation of a boycott proposal
and a proposal to debate the appropriateness of a boycott clearly
serves the purpose of those who wish to deflect attention from the
substantive issue: the plight of people suffering under occupation.

So why has the union brought this predictable condemnation down on its
head? Delegates decided that we could not ignore what is being done in
the Occupied Territories, or the systematic denial of educational
opportunities and academic freedom to Palestinian students and
scholars. Some BMA members have also expressed concern about the
complicity of the Israeli Medical Association in the occupation.1

Occupation

The territories, occupied since 1967, have been colonised by Israeli
settlements built on illegally confiscated land. The area has been
disaggregated and rendered ungovernable by road networks for Israeli
use only. Houses are demolished as collective punishments, and there
is regular shooting and shelling. Farmers are separated from their
land, and the supply of water sharply discriminates between the needs
of Palestinians and those of Israeli settlers.

In these circumstances, there can be no normal educational provision.
Tutors and students face delays, harassment, and humiliation at
checkpoints, visa and travel restrictions, and enormous problems of
infrastructural decay and underfunding. Work for most inhabitants is
all but non-existent, and 46% of the population is suffering from or
vulnerable to food insecurity.2

Academic institutions

In all of this, there is strong evidence of the complicity of Israeli
academic institutions.3 No Israeli college or university has publicly
condemned what is being done in the Occupied Territories in the name
of every Israeli citizen. Some Israeli educational institutions have
established campuses for settlers on illegally confiscated land;
others conduct archaeological digs on land from which Palestinian
farmers have been expelled.

Some Israeli colleagues have spoken out against the occupation. But
these are the heroic few. They risk their professional careers and
being ostracised.

Our boycott debate is accused of infringing academic freedom. It does
so, and that is to be regretted. The pursuit of scientific and
artistic advance without hindrance is indeed crucial for human
improvement. But academic freedom is not an absolute value taking
precedence over all else. The values of human life and dignity are the
ultimate objectives, and sometimes these may not be entirely
compatible with the principle of untrammelled academic freedom.

We are also accused, hypocritically, of interfering with free speech.
But it is our opponents who are trying to prevent such a debate from
taking place.

Unfair to Israel?

We are accused of unfairly singling out Israel—the Jewish state—and
hence of being anti-semites. We are asked why we do not propose a
boycott of other states whose policies are barbaric and inhuman, such
as China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Zimbabwe.

But whether a boycott is appropriate in such places depends on the
merits of each individual case. In the case of Israel, we are speaking
about a society whose dominant self image is one of a bastion of
civilisation in a sea of medieval reaction. And we are speaking of a
culture, both in Israel and in the long history of the Jewish
diaspora, in which education and scholarship are held in high regard.
That is why an academic boycott might have a desirable political
effect in Israel, an effect that might not be expected elsewhere.

Anti-semitism?

The accusation of anti-semitism is both absurd and offensive. Accusing
those who criticise Israel of being anti-semites presumes an identity
of interests between Israel and all Jewish people, wherever they may
be. This is illogical and contrary to the facts. Most people who spoke
in favour of the motion at the our congress are Jewish, as are the
members of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine.
The response of Israel's defenders is to say that such people are not
proper Jews—that they are "self-hating Jews." Jewishness thus becomes
transformed from a cultural or religious identity into an ideological
position.

Boycott

The result of the debate in our union may not be a decision to
boycott. If that is the outcome, however, it will not be because most
members are unconcerned about the plight of the Palestinians. It would
be because an alternative, and equally effective, proposal for their
aid and support, and for opposition to the policies of the Israeli
state, had emerged.

Moreover, the boycott would be of Israeli academic institutions only.
We would not sever links with our Israeli colleagues, which would be
counterproductive. Individual and group collaboration and publication
on joint projects could continue, as long as such projects were not
formally sponsored by Israeli institutions.

The fundamental issue is not a boycott as an end in itself. It is how
to raise the current outrages to national and international
prominence. Whether an institutional boycott is the most appropriate
tactic will remain an open question. What is not, and cannot be, open
is whether it is appropriate to debate and discuss the pros and cons
of the tactic.

If Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the inhuman and
dehumanising treatment of the Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories, doing nothing (or nothing effective), would also make us
complicit, if only by default. We cannot turn away and say, "Business
as usual."

Competing interests: None declared.

Where do you stand on the issue? Vote in our poll at
www.surveymk.com//s.aspx?sm=zrDgLYed7wn_2fe_2bcR2lC4Pw_3d_3d

References

1. Summerfield D, Green C, Karmi G, Halpin D, Cutting P, et al .
Israeli boycotts: gesture politics or a moral imperative? Guardian
2007 Apr 21. www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,,2062435,00.html
2. World Food Programme. Projected 2007 needs for WFP projects and
operations. Occupied Palestinian Territory.
www.wfp.org/appeals/projected_needs/documents/2007/ODC.pdf
3. British Committee for the Universities of Palestine. Why boycott
Israeli universities? London: BRICUP, 2007.

<http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7611/125>
BMJ  2007;335:125 (21 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.39266.509016.AD
Feature
Head to head
Should we consider a boycott of Israeli academic institutions? No

Michael Baum, professor emeritus of surgery

University College London, London WC1E 6AU

michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tony Blair's appointment as Middle East peace envoy is intended to
invigorate the peace process. Tom Hickey thinks boycotting
universities might encourage the Israeli government to reach a
settlement, but Michael Baum believes collaboration is a more
effective way forward

First of all I should declare a conflict of interest. I am a Jew and a
Zionist. However, before anyone issues a Fatwa, let me explain. I
consider myself a secular Jew who abhors the fanaticism among West
Bank settlers. I support a two state solution. The Palestinians must
have self determination; 60 years of statelessness after the British
mandate is enough. This position is held by all my Israeli academic
friends and colleagues. These academics are the very constituency the
boycotters are targeting and are disproportionately represented in the
peace camp. How can alienating this group enhance the peace process?

The Israeli universities and research institutes are no more agents of
Israel than Oxford or Cambridge are of the United Kingdom. And they
are not responsible for repression of Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories—a policy which is universally unpopular. Furthermore, it
is nonsense to suggest that you can target the institution without
damaging the individual.

Multicultural society

Let me also dismiss the big lie that Israel is an apartheid state.
Israel is a multicultural mosaic with Jews, Muslims, Christians, and
other faiths. Druze, Bahá'í, and Armenian Christians chose to live
there after persecution in Muslim countries. Only malign commentators
can be blind to the Arabs who form 20% of Israeli citizens. They are
free to vote and express their views (including the right to campaign
against the state itself) and serve in the cabinet. Arab judges hold
high office and Arab newspapers argue the Palestinian cause. Mosques
are respected: if only such sensitivity for Jewish values was shown by
the Palestinian gangs who destroyed all the synagogues when Israel
withdrew its occupation forces from Gaza.

My first hand experience of Israel started as a young surgeon in
1963-4. I worked in northern Israel in a hospital serving Arab
villages, kibbutzim, new immigrant townships, and ancient communities
of Arabs and Jews in Nazareth, Afula, and Tiberias. A fifth of the
doctors and nurses were Arabs, trained at the expense of the Israeli
government. Arab and Jewish patients were treated with the same
respect in adjacent beds. This is still true in all Israeli hospitals.
It is also a lie to suggest that the Israel Medical Association is
complicit in the ill treatment of prisoners.1

I would go even further and state that Israel provides more academic
freedom for Arab scholars than anywhere else in the Middle East. There
are numerous examples of Palestinian and Israeli collaborations. For
example, the Israel Cancer Association funds initiatives that benefit
both Israeli and Palestinian patients and their families. These
include the Breast Care Centre at the Holy Family Hospital in
Nazareth, which holds joint sessions with Israeli Jewish and Arab
women and Palestinians who share common experience as survivors of
breast cancer. Hadassah Hospital and the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem provide outreach programmes for the Occupied Palestinian
Territory. Poor children from the territory get free, state of the art
treatment, often supported by the Peres Foundation. Ben Gurion
University of the Negev has launched the joint Israel-Jordan-Palestine
project for improvement of motor skills in children with cerebral
palsy and also funds the work of Ohad Birk (Israeli Jewish), Izzedelin
Abuelaish (Gaza Palestinian), and Khalil Elbedour (Israeli Bedouin),
who have unravelled rare genetic disorders among Negev Bedouin, where
consanguineous marriages are not uncommon.

Universities must encourage a spirit of inquiry, where members join in
dialogue, with freedom of expression, learning from each other's
narratives. As Malcolm Grant, provost of University College London put
it: the boycott "betrays a misunderstanding of the academic mission
which is founded squarely on academic freedom of inquiry and freedom
of speech" Lord Adonis went further in the House of Lords2:

Not only would a boycott be inconsistent with the spirit of openness
and tolerance that should inform public life. It would also be
counterproductive. Education plays a vital role in developing and
aiding understanding between different people. It is therefore all the
more important to keep open channels of communication with academic
and educational institutions in the Middle East during these difficult
times.

Finally, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this call for a
boycott damages the reputation of British academia in the eyes of the
wider world.3

Balance and cooperation

There are two narratives concerning the tragic history of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both have verity, yet they are recounted
as if one had the monopoly of truth. To accept one side only and
delegitimise Israel shows either ignorance or malice. For a balanced
account interweaving the competing narratives I commend City of
Oranges, which tries to look at the history of Jaffa, a microcosm of
the wider conflict, from both sides.4

Instead of boycott, might I suggest a more constructive approach,
emulating my late brother, David? David died eight years ago while
president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. His
last act was to establish a sick children's clinic in Gaza. His family
continue this legacy through the David Baum International Foundation
at the college. Like David, I believe passionately that we can all do
our bit for peace by building bridges between British, Israeli, and
Palestinian academics and physicians. Through this collaboration and
dialogue the health and welfare of all will improve, leading to
increasing mutual respect and trust; sowing seeds for a peaceful
solution ahead of any "road map."

However, if you still support the boycott, remember to stop using
laptops with Pentium processors, and do not transfer files using USB
hub drives, both of which are the fruits of Israeli academic
inventions.

Competing interests: As stated at the start of this article.

Where do you stand on the issue? Vote in our poll at
www.surveymk.com//s.aspx?sm=zrDgLYed7wn_2fe_2bcR2lC4Pw_3d_3d

References

1. Blachar Y. Medical ethics, the Israel Medical Association, and the
state of the World Medical Association; IMA president's response to
the open letter in the BMA. BMJ 2003;327:1107.[Free Full Text]
2. Lord Adonis. House of Lords Official Report (Hansard) 2007;Jun 18:col 10.
3. Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.
.www.spme.net/cgi-bin/display_petitions.cgi?ID=9
4. LeBor A. City of oranges; Arabs and Jews in Jaffa. London: Bloomsbury, 2006

--
Yoshie