the movement for an academic boycott of israel - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

roachboy · 07-11-2010, 04:46 AM

i find this controversy to be kinda interesting and wonder what you make of it.

you may have heard of the move to create and maintain a boycott of israeli universities, so a shutting down of information and other forms of exchange, as a way to protest the occupation and bring pressure to bear on israel to end it. now it appears that the netanyahu government is considering making the boycott movement illegal.

but read on:

Quote:

Israeli academics hit back over bid to pass law that would criminalise them

Backlash over threat to outlaw supporters of boycott movement aimed at ending the continued occupation of the West Bank

An academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel has gained rapid international support since Israeli troops stormed a Gaza-bound flotilla of aid ships in May, killing nine activists. Israeli attention has focused on the small number of activists, particularly in the country's universities, who have openly supported an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

A protest petition has been signed by 500 academics, including two former education ministers, following recent comments by Israel's education minister, Gideon Saar, that the government intends to take action against the boycott's supporters. A proposed bill introduced into the Israeli parliament – the Knesset – would outlaw boycotts and penalise their supporters. Individuals who initiated, encouraged or provided support or information for any boycott or divestment action would be made to pay damages to the companies affected. Foreign nationals involved in boycott activity would be banned from entering Israel for 10 years, and any "foreign state entity" engaged in such activity would be liable to pay damages.

Saar last week described the petition as hysterical and an attempt to silence contrary opinions. While the vast majority of the signatories do not support an academic boycott of Israel, they have joined forces over what they regard as the latest assault on freedom of expression in Israel. The petition states: "We have different and varied opinions about solving the difficult problems facing Israel, but there is one thing we are agreed on – freedom of expression and academic freedom are the very lifeblood of the academic system."

Daniel Gutwein, a history professor at Haifa University who is one of the signatories, described the minister's intervention as an attempt "to make Israeli academia docile, frightened and silent".

Although the BDS campaign – in various forms – has been running for over half a decade, it has become an increasingly fraught issue inside Israel in the past year since a small number of academics publicly declared support for a boycott, including Neve Gordon, author of Israel's Occupation and a former paratrooper who was badly injured while serving with the Israeli Defence Force.

Speaking to the Observer last week, Gordon said that many Israelis saw support for the BDS as "crossing a red line". Adding that he had received recent death threats, he said: "I am worried about what is happening to the space for debate in Israel. I find that there is a proto-fascist mindset developing. One of the slogans you hear a lot now is no citizenship without loyalty. It is an inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen."

Israeli campaigners believe the Gaza flotilla incident represents a tipping point in raising support for boycotts. Musicians including Elvis Costello, Gil Scott Heron and the Pixies have cancelled shows in Israel. Hollywood actors also snubbed Jerusalem's international film festival and internationally acclaimed writers have supported the BDS movement, which is gaining support in dozens of countries.

"It's a different world to what it was even a month ago," says Kobi Snitz, member of an Israeli BDS group. "Suddenly, all sorts of people are supporting it – people that you wouldn't expect."

What is most interesting, however, has been the impact in Israel itself. Israeli journalist and blogger Noam Sheizaf wrote recently that such actions are now forcing Israelis "to think about the political issues and about their consequences… For a country in a constant state of denial regarding the occupation, this is no small thing." Sheizaf does not promote the boycott, but says: "I will gladly return concert tickets if that is the price for making Israelis understand that the occupation cannot go on."

Adi Oz, culture editor on the Tel Aviv weekly Ha'ir, appeared on Israeli national radio explaining her support for recent boycott activity. "When the Pixies cancelled their concert here I was disappointed," she says. "But I was not critical of the Pixies, I was critical of our government, because they are responsible for Israel's isolation." She adds that, post-flotilla, the cultural boycott is "something that everyone has a stand on – and some people are realising that they are in favour of it, without having thought about it before." There has also been a spate of boycott-related discussion in the financial press. The daily business newspaper Calcalist ran an uncritical profile of the Israeli campaigners behind Who Profits, an online database of Israeli and international companies involved in the occupation of the West Bank.

The project's co-ordinator, Dalit Baum, of the Coalition of Women for Peace, says: "Every day there is an article about this issue in the Israeli media, which creates a discussion about the economy of the occupation and raises the fact that there's a problem."

Israeli academics hit back over bid to pass law that would criminalise them | World news | The Observer

what do you think of this?
of the boycott?
of the discomfort its now causing the current rightwing government in israel?

personally i support the idea of the boycott. i figure any pressure is better than no pressure and it seems to me that the occupaton of the west bank and gaza are THE issues in the way of regional peace. in the latter at this point, that means the seige or blockade. in the former, that means the settlements and the entire colonial apparatus that's grown up around them.

what i wonder about is effects.

but i'm interested in what you folks think.

filtherton · 07-11-2010, 08:29 AM

My first response was to ask the question: "You know who else criminalized academic dissent?"

Perhaps I'll have more to say when I don't have a drooling baby on one of my arms.

guy44 · 07-11-2010, 04:19 PM

Ugh. Netanyahu: Never met a terrible idea he hasn't embraced.

aceventura3 · 07-12-2010, 10:00 AM

What is the underlying concept in play here?

First:
A person or persons want to take an action based on their beliefs that they think will influence events.
Another person or persons respond to actions, in a manner not to the liking of the person or persons above - and they get offended.
Actions have consequences. Occasionally the consequences are not what was expected, if true, can you live with those consequences - otherwise don't take the action.

Second:

BDS got renewed interest because of a blockade preventing the free flow of aid, people, information, supplies, etc., a blockade that they think is wrong in many ways. Yet they support a "blockade" (separating Israel, culturally, academically, and economically from the rest of the world), thinking the strategy as they employ it is going to deescalate conflict.

Wouldn't a better approach be one of using academia, culture and economics to positively influence the thinking of the people in Israel?

If I were paranoid or lived in fear of attack and destruction as is the case with Israel, isolation is not going to solve that problem it will make it worse. So depending on the goal, peace or the elimination of Israel through the escalation of tensions leading to war - the proper strategy becomes clear. Those who support BDS may not have thought through what their support actually means.

dippin · 07-12-2010, 03:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

What is the underlying concept in play here?

First:
A person or persons want to take an action based on their beliefs that they think will influence events.
Another person or persons respond to actions, in a manner not to the liking of the person or persons above - and they get offended.
Actions have consequences. Occasionally the consequences are not what was expected, if true, can you live with those consequences - otherwise don't take the action.

Except that the "consequence" comes in form of a criminal law. So voicing support to a voluntary boycott becomes a crime, which is a complete imbalance.

powerclown · 07-12-2010, 06:00 PM

Israel has always had a vocal (and still living) left-wing political voice, thats one of the reasons why its such a solid, vibrant democracy.

aceventura3 · 07-13-2010, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dippin

Except that the "consequence" comes in form of a criminal law. So voicing support to a voluntary boycott becomes a crime, which is a complete imbalance.

Civil disobedience:

Quote:

Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power, using no form of violence. It is one of the primary methods of nonviolent resistance.

Civil disobedience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

People with courage have no problem breaking unjust law. In fact some will purposefully break the law in order to bring injustice to light.

My feeling is that the cycle of escalating tension between Israel and others in the ME has to be stopped. Blockades, boycotts and laws restricting free speech don't help. At some point some party has to take a stand to end the cycle - it won't be easy, this stuff never is.

dippin · 07-13-2010, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Civil disobedience:

Civil disobedience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

People with courage have no problem breaking unjust law. In fact some will purposefully break the law in order to bring injustice to light.

My feeling is that the cycle of escalating tension between Israel and others in the ME has to be stopped. Blockades, boycotts and laws restricting free speech don't help. At some point some party has to take a stand to end the cycle - it won't be easy, this stuff never is.

This all ignores the point that this law shouldn't exist.

aceventura3 · 07-13-2010, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dippin

This all ignores the point that this law shouldn't exist.

Read what I wrote.

I don't support the law. I would break it.

I don't support the boycott, I think it increases tension.

I would rather there not be a blockade, I think it adds to tensions.

In the tradition of great leaders, someone has to step up and take a "peaceful" stand, to break the cycle. However, I am concerned that some want to perpetuate the cycle so that it leads to war and the ultimate destruction of Israel - this cycle may lead us into WWIII.

powerclown · 07-13-2010, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

this cycle may lead us into WWIII.

I hear this a lot...who do think would be the combatants for each side in such a war?

roachboy · 07-14-2010, 03:49 AM

israel has nukes. that should worry everyone.

the boycott is in significant measure about this:

Quote:

Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and ETHAN BRONNER

GAZA CITY — The women were bleary-eyed, their voices weak, their hands red and calloused. How could they be expected to cook and clean without water or electricity? What could they do in homes that were dark and hot all day? How could they cope with husbands who had not worked for years and children who were angry and aimless?

Sitting with eight other women at a stress clinic, Jamalat Wadi, 28, tried to listen to the mental health worker. But she could not contain herself. She has eight children, and her unemployed husband spends his days on sedatives.

“Our husbands don’t work, my kids are not in school, I get nervous, I yell at them, I cry, I fight with my husband,” she blurted. “My husband starts fighting with us and then he cries: ‘What am I going to do? What can I do?’ ”

The others knew exactly what she meant.

The Palestinians of Gaza, most of them descended from refugees of the 1948 war that created Israel, have lived through decades of conflict and confrontation. Their scars have accumulated like layers of sedimentary rock, each marking a different crisis — homelessness, occupation, war, dependency.

Today, however, two developments have conspired to turn a difficult life into a new torment: a three-year blockade by Israel and Egypt that has locked them in the small enclave and crushed what there was of a formal local economy; and the bitter rivalry between Palestinian factions, which has undermined identity and purpose, divided families and caused a severe shortage of electricity in the middle of summer.

There are plenty of things to buy in Gaza; goods are brought over the border or smuggled through the tunnels with Egypt. That is not the problem.

In fact, talk about food and people here get angry because it implies that their struggle is over subsistence rather than quality of life. The issue is not hunger. It is idleness, uncertainty and despair.

Any discussion of Gaza’s travails is part of a charged political debate. No humanitarian crisis? That is an Israeli talking point, people here will say, aimed at making the world forget Israel’s misdeeds. Palestinians trapped with no future? They are worse off in Lebanon, others respond, where their “Arab brothers” bar them from buying property and working in most professions.

But the situation is certainly dire. Scores of interviews and hours spent in people’s homes over a dozen consecutive days here produced a portrait of a fractured and despondent society unable to imagine a decent future for itself as it plunges into listless desperation and radicalization.

It seems most unlikely that either a Palestinian state or any kind of Middle East peace can emerge without substantial change here. Gaza, on almost every level, is stuck.

Disunity

A main road was blocked off and a stage set up for a rally protesting the electricity shortage. Speakers shook nearby windows with the anthems of Hamas, the Islamist party that has held power here for the past three years. Boys in military camouflage goose-stepped. Young men carried posters of a man with vampire teeth biting into a bloodied baby.

The vampire was not Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. It was Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

“We stand today in this furious night to express our intense anger toward this damned policy by the illegitimate so-called Fayyad government,” Ismail Radwan, a Hamas official, shouted.

As if the Palestinian people did not have enough trouble, they have not one government but two, the Fatah-dominated one in the West Bank city of Ramallah and the Hamas one here. The antagonism between them offers a depth of rivalry and rage that shows no sign of abating.

Its latest victim is electricity for Gaza, part of which is supplied by Israel and paid for by the West Bank government, which is partly reimbursed by Hamas. But the West Bank says that Hamas is not paying enough so it has held off paying Israel, which has halted delivery.

“They are lining their pockets and they are part of the siege,” asserted Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader and a surgeon, speaking of the West Bank government. “There will be no reconciliation.”

John Ging, who heads the Gaza office of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as U.N.R.W.A., says the latest electricity problem “is a sad reflection of the divide on the Palestinian side.”

He added, “They have no credibility in demanding anything from anybody if they show such disregard for the plight of their own people.”

Today Hamas has no rival here. It runs the schools, hospitals, courts, security services and — through smuggler tunnels from Egypt — the economy.

“We solved a lot of problems with the tunnels,” Dr. Zahar said with a satisfied smile.

Along with the leaders has come a new generation that has taken the reins of power. Momen al-Ghemri, 25, a nurse, and his wife, Iman, 24, an Arabic teacher, are members of it.

University educated, the grandchildren of refugees, still living in refugee camps, both of the Ghemris got their jobs when Hamas took over full control by force three years ago, a year after it won an election. Neither has ever left Gaza.

Mr. Ghemri works as a nurse for the security services, earning $500 a month, but is spending six months at the intensive care unit of Shifa Hospital.

Spare parts for equipment remain a problem because of the blockade. But on a recent shift, the I.C.U. was well staffed. In the office next door, there was a map on the wall of Palestine before Israel’s creation.

Mr. Ghemri’s grandparents’ village, Aqer, is up there, along with 400 other villages that no longer exist. A wall in another office offered instructions on the Muslim way to help a bedridden patient pray.

Mr. Ghemri’s wife greets visitors at home wearing the niqab, or face veil, only her eyes visible. She believes in Hamas and makes that clear to her pupils. But her husband sees the party more as a means toward an end.

“You can’t go on your own to apply for a job,” he said. “For me, Hamas is about employment.”

He does like the fact that, as he put it, Hamas “refuses to kneel down to the Jews,” but like most Gazans, he is worried about Palestinian disunity and blames both factions.

In fact, there is a paradox at work in Gaza: while Hamas has no competition for power, it also has a surprisingly small following.

Dozens of interviews with all sorts of people found few willing to praise their government or that of its competitor.

“They’re both liars,” Waleed Hassouna, a baker in Gaza City, said in a very common comment.

People here seem increasingly unable to imagine a political solution to their ills. Ask Gazans how to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — two states? One state? — and the answer is mostly a reflexive call to drive Israel out.

“Hamas and Fatah are two sides of the same coin,” Ramzi, a public school teacher from the city of Rafah, said in a widely expressed sentiment. “All the land is ours. We should turn the Jews into refugees and then let the international community take care of them.”

Dried-Up Fortunes

Hamza and Muhammad Ju’bas are brothers, ages 13 and 11. They sell chocolates and gum on the streets after school to add to their family income. Once they have pulled in 20 shekels, about $5, they go home and play.

On one steamy afternoon they were taking refuge in a cellphone service center. The center — where customers watch for their number on digital displays and smiling representatives wear ties, and the air-conditioning never quits — seems almost glamorous.

The boys were asked about their hopes.

“My dream is to be like these guys and work in a place that’s cool,” Muhammad said.

“My dream is to be a worker,” Hamza said. He hears stories about the “good times” in the 1990s, when his father worked in Israel, as a house painter, making $85 a day. Later, their father, Emad Ju’bas, 45, said, “My children don’t have much ambition.”

The family is typical. They live in Shujaiya, a packed eastern neighborhood of 70,000, a warren of narrow, winding alleys and main roads lined with small shops.

The air is heavy with dust and fumes from cars, scooters and horse-drawn carts. Every shop has a small generator chained down outside. Roaring generators and wailing children are the sounds of Shujaiya.

Families are big. From 1997 through 2007, the population increased almost 40 percent, to 1.5 million. Palestinians say that large families will help them cope as they age, and more children mean more fighters for their cause.

Mr. Ju’bas and his wife, Hiyam, have seven boys and three girls. Two of their children have cognitive disabilities. Since Israel’s three-week war 18 months ago here aimed at stopping Hamas rockets, their children frequently wet the bed. Their youngest, Taj, 4, is aggressive, randomly punching anyone around him.

For six years Mr. Ju’bas worked in Israel, and with the money he bought a house with six rooms and two bathrooms. In 2000, when the uprising called the second intifada broke out, Israel closed the gates.

After that, Mr. Ju’bas found small jobs around Gaza, but with the blockade that dried up. His only source of work is at the United Nations relief agency, where two months a year he is a security guard.

He admits that at times he lashes out at his family. Domestic violence is on the rise. The strain is acute for women. Men can go out and sit in parks, in chairs right on the sidewalk or visit friends. Women are expected to stay off the streets.

The women at the stress clinic gathered about 10 a.m. They entered silently, wearing the ubiquitous hijab head scarf and ankle-length button-down overcoat known as the jilbab. Two wore the niqab over their faces.

They spoke of sending their children to work just to get them out of the house and of husbands who grew morose and violent.

They blamed Hamas for their misery, for seizing the Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, which led to the blockade. But they also blamed Fatah for failing them.

“My own children tell me it is better to die,” Jamalat Wadi said to the group.

Ms. Wadi’s home was next door and she ran over to check on the family. She found her eight children wandering aimlessly in an open paved area, a courtyard filled with piles of clothes and plastic containers. The house had one unfurnished room and her husband, Bahjat, 28, was on the floor, unconscious, his arm over his head, his mouth open.

“He sleeps all the time,” Ms. Wadi said, motioning as though throwing a pill in her mouth.

The Wadis are refugees, so they receive flour, rice, oil and sugar from U.N.R.W.A. Tens of thousands of others here receive salaries from the Ramallah government to stay away from their jobs in protest over Hamas rule. They wait, part of a literate society with nothing to do.

Ms. Wadi said that when she visited her mother, her two brothers fought bitterly because one backs Hamas and the other backs Fatah. Recently they threw bottles at each other. Her mother kicked them out.

In another meeting, Mr. Ju’bas was unshaven and unwashed. The previous night he had hit his wife, one of his children said. The washing machine had broken and he had no money to fix it.

He told his wife to use the neighbors’. But she was embarrassed. She stayed up all night cleaning clothes and crying.

“My only dream,” Mr. Ju’bas said, “is to have patience.”

Inside Looking Out

The waves were lapping the beach. It was night. Mahmoud Mesalem, 20, and a few of his friends were sitting at a restaurant.

University students or recent graduates, they were raised in a world circumscribed by narrow boundaries drawn hard by politics and geography. They all despaired from the lack of a horizon.

“We’re here, we’re going to die here, we’re going to be buried here,” lamented Waleed Matar, 22.

Mr. Mesalem pointed at an Israeli ship on the horizon, then made his hand into a gun, pointed it at his head. “If we try to leave, they will shoot us,” he said.

There are posters around town with a drawing of a boot on an Israeli soldier, who is facedown, and the silhouette of a man hanging by his neck. The goal is to get alleged collaborators to turn themselves in. The campaign has put fear in the air.

Israel is never far from people’s minds here. Its ships control the waters, its planes control the skies. Its whims, Gazans feel, control their fate.

And while most here view Israel as the enemy, they want trade ties and to work there. In their lives the main source of income has been from and through Israel.

Economists here say what is most needed now is not more goods coming in, as the easing of the blockade has permitted, but people and exports getting out.

That is not going to happen soon.

“Our position against the movement of people is unchanged,” said Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, the Israeli in charge of policy to Gaza’s civilians. “As to exports, not now. Security is paramount, so that will have to wait.”

Direct contact between the peoples, common in the 1980s and ’90s when Palestinians worked daily in Israel, is nonexistent.

Jamil Mahsan, 62, is a member of a dying breed. He worked for 35 years in Israel and believes in two states.

“There are two peoples in Palestine, not just one, and each deserves its rights,” he said, sitting in his son’s house. He used to attend the weddings of his Israeli co-workers. He had friendships in Israel. Today nobody here does.

The young men sitting by the beach contemplating their lives were representative of the new Gaza. They have started a company to design advertisements, and they write and produce small plays.

Their first performance in front of several hundred people involved a recounting of the horrors of the last war with Israel, with children speaking about their own fears as video of the war played.

Their second play, which they are rehearsing, is a black comedy about the Palestinian plight. It assails the factions for fighting and the Arabs for selling out the Palestinians.

“Our play does not mean we hate Israel,” said Abdel Qader Ismail, 24, a former employee of the military intelligence service, with no trace of irony. “We believe in Israel’s right to exist, but not on the land of Palestine. In France or in Russia, but not in Palestine. This is our home.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/wo...ef=global-home

which even the ny times has noticed.

its also about the occupation of the west bank, so by extension the settlements.
these are significant national and international problems. they're also ethical and political problems.
the "vibrant democracy" doesn't seem to extend quite that far. actually it doesn't quite reach palestinians. it's a vibrant kind of apartheid democracy.

and there is a left in israel. one of the things the left opposes is the apartheid "vibrancy"--keep the latter, get rid of the former.

but even if you can manage to exclude the apartheid dimension, it's kinda hard to figure out how the netanyahu government can imagine itself advancing anything democratic at all by trying to make a boycott movement illegal.

how does that work?

powerclown · 07-14-2010, 09:09 AM

I could see Iran going rogue and trying to annex Iraq or Afghanistan, but China is not going to let that happen since it has major interests in Iraqi oil and Russia would be hard-pressed to take Iran's side, so who's left for a world war? India...an ally of the United States? Saudi Arabia...an ally of the United States? Israel...an ally of the United States? Who's going to take Iran's side...Turkey who wants to be a part of Europe and Syria? So we've got USA, Great Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Japan, Europe, South Korea, Pakistan vs. Iran and Syria? Doesn't seem like much of a world war to me.

roachboy · 07-14-2010, 09:25 AM

i've read through the op several times, even though i wrote it, trying to find the part where stupid theories about world war 3 were mentioned. can't do it. so fascinating as they are, how about you make another thread that you can use to figure out these important geopolitical matters?

aceventura3 · 07-14-2010, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

I hear this a lot...who do think would be the combatants for each side in such a war?

Starting with the obvious, Iran and Israel may become involved in a military altercation. The US would support Israel. Depending on how things occur many ME nations may side against Israel (some side with Iran, there is a subtle difference but the result is the same). There is already conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given further instability North Korea could turn aggressive. Russia and China are wild cards and could further add to the conflict or help bring it to a fast resolution. If there is any use of nuclear weapons, in my view there will be no turning back.

---------- Post added at 08:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:27 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i've read through the op several times, even though i wrote it, trying to find the part where stupid theories about world war 3 were mentioned. can't do it. so fascinating as they are, how about you make another thread that you can use to figure out these important geopolitical matters?

Perhaps a starting point is a definition of a world war. I define it as a war where the major nations are involved, fought on multiple fronts, involving major international issues or events that can not be ignored by the major nations. An aggressive nuclear event, in my view would force every major nation on this planet to get involved and respond one way or another. Let us not put or heads in the sand.

---------- Post added at 08:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:36 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

but even if you can manage to exclude the apartheid dimension, it's kinda hard to figure out how the netanyahu government can imagine itself advancing anything democratic at all by trying to make a boycott movement illegal.

how does that work?

Israel is not without fault, however...let me put it this way. I would not sit at a table and try to peacefully resolve an issue where those on the other side use terrorism as a tactic to accomplish their goals. On the other-hand I could not do anything other than reach a mutually beneficial agreement where the other side used pacifism or civil disobedience as a tactic to accomplish their goals. Palestinians could very easily have the support of every reasonable person in the world, but they don't and the reason is the use of terrorism.

Roach, please, there is no need to go through your views on terrorism, I know what those views are and I know what I wrote does not resonate with you in any way. - And that from your point of view, it is pure fantasy on my part. I did not write the above for you or for your response - I understand the difficulty you have with issues vs. ad-hominem arguments, just as I have a problem with responding to silliness with silliness. Let's choose to do things differently, if we can do it perhaps Israel and others can.

Baraka_Guru · 07-14-2010, 12:52 PM

I think the question remains as to how a discussion about an academic boycott of Israel has moved on to musings about who will take whose side in WWIII. How does a discussion move from the criminalization of dissent to WWIII? And in less than 10 posts at that.

At this point, I'm more concerned about oppressive right-wing entrenchment in Israel than I am about WWIII. Besides, amongst the risk factors for WWIII, I would list right-wing extremism in Israel as a big one.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

aceventura3 · 07-14-2010, 12:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

I think the question remains as to how a discussion about an academic boycott of Israel has moved on to musing on who will take whose side in WWIII. How does a discussion move from the criminalization of dissent to WWIII? And in less than 10 posts at that.

At this point, I'm more concerned about oppressive right-wing entrenchment in Israel than I am about WWIII. Besides, amongst the risk factors for WWIII, I would list right-wing extremism in Israel as a big one.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

Everything that is occurring is either adding or subtracting tension from a very volatile situation. The law in question is wrong, what came before it is wrong, what came before that is wrong. How do you think the cycle stops? Where do you think this leads? If it is just a start and stop inconveniencing a handful of people, I agree with you. Perhaps you can shed light on your own question about right-wing entrenchment - I have tried to shed some light on it from my point of view.

roachboy · 07-14-2010, 01:03 PM

situational volatility is a preferred excuse for fascisms of all kinds to clamp down on dissent. the ideal type goes: ultra-rightists govern from fear. they need it. it helps with the state of emergency, which allows for the suspension of civil liberties which provides a nice clear route by means of which the ultra right can try to rid itself of its political opponents.

what varies is the type of paranoia, the extent to which it does justify a state of emergency in fact (it doesn't always work out) and the degree to which the right in question is able to effectively silence its political opponents.

to wit:

Quote:

Israeli education minister wages witch-hunt against boycott supporters
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2010

Hundreds of Israeli college professors have signed a petition accusing the education minister of endangering academic freedoms after he threatened to "punish" any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of Israel.

The backlash against Gideon Saar, a member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, comes after a series of moves suggesting he is trying to stamp a more stridently right-wing agenda on the Israeli education system.

The education minister has outraged the 540 professors who signed the petition by his open backing of a nationalist youth movement, Im Tirtzu, which demands that teachers be required to prove their commitment to right-wing Zionism.

Two of Saar's predecessors, Yossi Sarid and Yuli Tamir, are among those who signed the petition, which calls on the minister to "come to your senses ... before it's too late to save higher education in Israel."

Saar's campaign to "re-Zionize" the education system, including introducing a new right-wing Jewish studies syllabus and bringing soldiers into classrooms, has heightened concerns that he is stoking an atmosphere increasingly hostile to left-wing academics and human rights activists.

Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva who called for an academic boycott of Israel last year, has reported receiving death threats, as has a school teacher who refused to participate in Saar's flagship program to encourage high-school recruitment to the Israeli military.

Daniel Gutwein, a professor of Jewish history at Haifa University, said: "A serious red flag is raised when the education minister joins in the delegitimization of the academic establishment. This is a method to castrate and abolish Israeli academia."

Saar's sympathies for Im Tirtzu were first revealed earlier this year when he addressed one of its conferences, telling delegates the organization would be "blessed" for its "hugely vital" work.

The youth movement emerged in 2006 among students demanding that the government rather than ordinary soldiers be held to account for what was seen as Israel's failure to crush Hizballah during that year's attack on Lebanon. It has rapidly evolved into a potent right-wing pressure group.

Its biggest success to date has been a campaign last year against Israeli human rights groups that assisted a United Nations inquiry led by Judge Richard Goldstone in investigating war crimes committed during Israel's assault on Gaza in winter 2008-09. The human rights organizations are now facing possible government legislation to restrict their activities.

Im Tirtzu's latest campaign, against what it calls "the reign of left-wing terror" in the education system, was backed by Saar during a parliamentary debate last month. He told MPs he took very seriously a report by the movement claiming that anti-Zionist professors have taken over university politics departments and are silencing right-wing colleagues and students.

Saar also warned that calls for boycotts against Israel were "impossible to accept" and that he was talking to higher education officials about taking "action" this summer, hinting that he would cut funds for the professors involved and their institutions.

Yossi Ben Artzi, the rector of Haifa University and the most senior university official to criticize Saar, warned him against "monitoring and denouncing" academics. He added that the Im Tirtzu report "smells of McCarthyism."

The universities are already disturbed by a bill submitted by 25 MPs last month that would make it a criminal offense for Israelis to "initiate, encourage, or aid" a boycott against Israel and require them to pay compensation to those harmed by it.

The bill is likely to be treated sympathetically by the government, which is worried about the growing momentum of boycott drives both internationally and in the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu has called the emergence of a boycott movement inside Israel a "national scandal."

Gordon, who wrote a commentary in the Los Angeles Times a year ago supporting a boycott, said Im Tirtzu had contributed to a growing "atmosphere of violence" in the country and on campuses.

Hundreds of students at his university have staged demonstrations demanding his dismissal. He was also recently sent a letter from someone signing himself "Im Tirtzu" calling the professor a "traitor" and warning: "I will reach Ben Gurion [University] to kill you."

Gordon said: "I have tenure and Im Tirtzu cannot easily get me fired. But they are trying to become the 'guards at the gate' to make sure other academics do not follow in my path."

Only three Israeli academics have so far openly endorsed a boycott, he added, with many others fearful that they will be punished if they do so. But Im Tirtzu and its supporters were using the issue as a pretext for cracking down on academics critical of right-wing policy. He called Israel an increasingly "proto-fascist" state.

Gordon cited the recent case of Assaf Oren, a statistics lecturer and peace activist who had been told he was the leading candidate for a post in Ben Gurion's industrial engineering department until right-wing groups launched a campaign against him.

In a further sign of what Prof. Gordon and others have labelled a McCarthyite climate, MPs in the parliamentary education committee -- which has come to closely reflect Saar's views -- summoned for questioning two head teachers of prestigious schools after they criticized official policies.

One, Ram Cohen, has condemned Israel's occupation of the Palestinians, while the other, Zeev Dagani, has spoken against the program to send army officers into classrooms to encourage pupils to enlist.

Dagani was the only head teacher in the 270 selected schools to reject the program, saying he opposed "the blurring of boundaries when officers come and teach the teachers how to educate." He subsequently received a flood of death threats.

The education ministry has announced a new core curriculum subject of Jewish studies in schools that concentrates on nationalist and religious themes and is likely to be taught by private right-wing and settler organizations.

Avi Sagi, a philosopher at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, warned in the liberal Haaretz newspaper that the syllabus offered "an opening for dangerous indoctrination."

A modern history curriculum published this month has been similarly criticized for leaving out study of the Oslo peace process and Palestinian politics.

Also in the sights of education officials are hundreds of Arab nursery schools, many of them established by the Islamic Movement. Zevulun Orlev, head of the education committee, has accused the schools of "poisoning the minds" of Arab children in Israel.

Saar appointed a special committee last month to inspect the schools and shut them down if they were found to be teaching "anti-Israel" material.

Arab MPs have called the claims "ridiculous," pointing out that the schools were set up after the education ministry failed to build nursery schools in Arab communities.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is Jonathan Cook's News Archive - Israel Palestine.

ei: Israeli education minister wages witch-hunt against boycott supporters

so it's much less discomforting to talk about an imaginary world war 3.

but if you want to talk about world war 3 in another thread, i know a great j.g. ballard story about it. much more fun that geo-political fever dreaming.

aceventura3 · 07-14-2010, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

situational volatility is a preferred excuse for fascisms of all kinds to clamp down on dissent. the ideal type goes: ultra-rightists govern from fear. they need it. it helps with the state of emergency, which allows for the suspension of civil liberties which provides a nice clear route by means of which the ultra right can try to rid itself of its political opponents.

Here illustrates the core communication issue. I agree that clamping down on dissent is wrong, I believe that people should be free to express dissent in a non-violent manner without imposing on the rights of others. I agree that "rightists" can govern from fear. I even state it explicitly. I describe the continuing cycle. I state Israel is not without fault in this cycle. So, I ask what are the differences in how the issue is perceived? I know the answer, do you? The answer is the reason the cycle won't end.

roachboy · 07-14-2010, 03:19 PM

ace, look. the thread is about the threats from the netanyahu government--which is a right/far right coalition government--to make the academic boycott of israel illegal. so to make voicing support for it a crime. that's the issue.

the boycott is directed at the israeli seige of gaza and the occupation of the west bank--which entails the settlements.

it's not about world war 3. that is a fantasy.
what you are trying with it is to defend the israeli right in general even as you disagree on this particular idea.
that's an argument.
the problem is that rather than defend the right, you tried to jack the thread.

talk from a conservative position all you want. just stop trying to derail the thread. there are other ways.

aceventura3 · 07-15-2010, 06:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

ace, look. the thread is about the threats from the netanyahu government--which is a right/far right coalition government--to make the academic boycott of israel illegal. so to make voicing support for it a crime. that's the issue.

the boycott is directed at the israeli seige of gaza and the occupation of the west bank--which entails the settlements.

it's not about world war 3. that is a fantasy.
what you are trying with it is to defend the israeli right in general even as you disagree on this particular idea.
that's an argument.
the problem is that rather than defend the right, you tried to jack the thread.

talk from a conservative position all you want. just stop trying to derail the thread. there are other ways.

Here is an idea, for your next thread - don;t ask open ended questions in you OP like - "what do you think of this?" You invite people to give their thoughts - WWIII is mine! Why do you play these idiotic games?

Also, perhaps you can send a note to your fellow posters - if you and others don't want me to elaborate on my views, don't fucking ask me questions about them- don't fucking engage my posts. It is that simple.

roachboy · 07-15-2010, 07:02 AM

Quote:

Israelis inciting anti-Israel boycotts could soon be forced to pay dearly

Knesset approves in initial reading bill that would allow targets of boycotts to sue boycotters for large sums.

The Knesset approved on Wednesday an initial reading of a bill calling for heavy fines to be imposed on Israeli citizens who initiate or incite boycotts against Israel. If approved into law, the fines would apply to anyone boycotting Israeli individuals, companies, factories, and organizations.

"In the U.S. there is are laws aimed at preventing Americans from boycotting U.S. allies, including Israel. It appears that in light of the reality in Israel, we need a similar law that applies to Israeli citizens," said the bill's sponsors - coalition chairman Zeev Elkin (Likud), MK Arieh Eldad (National Union) and MK Dalia Itzik (Kadima).

Under the new law, any group could sue damages of up to NIS 30,000 from anyone who launched a boycott against them, or incited a boycott, without having to prove that damage was indeed caused. An additional sum could then be demanded once damages were proven.

The bill comes in response to a wide range of boycotts – financial, academic, and others – that have recently been encountered in Israel. Elkin said Tuesday that "we mustn't accept boycotts against Israel, whether academic or economic. The state must protect itself from the increasing processes of delegitimization, and provide compensation to those harmed by it."

"The wall-to-wall support of this bill proves that members of Knesset recognize the need to maintain a balance between democratic rights and the premeditated targeting of Israeli bodies," Elkin went on to say.

Israelis inciting anti-Israel boycotts could soon be forced to pay dearly - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

so the knesset wants to adopt a very american-style suppression of dissent (you have the "right" to endorse a boycott, but the affected institutions can sue you for damages should anything---at all---come of it.) but you have to be able to pay (for a lawyer to move you through the interminable process of determining what is and is not caused by a boycott, say, and then through the counter-suit for damages)...

but you're "free" to dissent of course.

mixedmedia · 07-15-2010, 07:13 AM

Perhaps the implications of the articles cited are so boldly infected with a familiar foreboding that it's difficult to make the same 'poor old besieged Israel' arguments. (although, I do believe I heard one mention of 'the destruction of Israel' go creaking by). I always find that to be a little silly - the thought that Israel will be the one destroyed if'n there were to be some sort of cataclysmic hoedown to take place in the ME.

Anyway, I find the boycott controversy to be pretty disturbing, but for now am holding out hope that Israel, for all its current dreams of a Zionist utopia without the meddling and distraction of, um, others to muck things up for them, cannot in this day and age be so flagrantly fascistic with their own people and maintain a place with the 'cool kids,' internationally speaking. Of course, I could be wrong.

powerclown · 07-15-2010, 09:35 AM

Quote:

Behind the Boycott

Time was when a boycott demanded personal sacrifice as an expression of protest. That’s how the name first was coined, when Irish tenant farmers and tradesmen in the late-19th century refused to deal with the agent of an absentee landlord named Charles Boycott. And that’s how it has continued in the popular imagination: blacks in Montgomery, Ala., walking miles and miles to avoid the segregated city buses; consumers forgoing lettuce and grapes in solidarity with ill-treated farm workers. The boycotted faced economic consequences, and so did the boycotter, sacrificing something important in service of a higher goal.

But the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel will have none of that. Despite its well-honed and increasingly effective rhetoric, its adherents seem uninterested in performing any personal sacrifice, or even measuring their “success” by hard numbers. They are most intent on sullying Israel’s name and bullying anyone who might suggest another path toward peace in the troubled region.

They talk the talk, but sure don’t walk the walk. For just one example of rank hypocrisy, consider Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian leader of the BDS movement and one of the founders of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. And what does Barghouti do when he’s not a political activist? Why, he’s in a master’s degree program in philosophy at Tel Aviv University.

When our Gal Beckerman asked him last week to explain his affiliation with an institution he wants boycotted, Barghouti said he would not discuss his personal life. Huh?

But what he advocates is very personal and, ultimately, self-defeating. While the stated goal of the BDS movement is to isolate and discomfit Israel and support human rights for the Palestinians, it is clear that many followers are not trying to change Israel. They’re trying to eliminate it.

The argument that pushing Israel into economic, academic and cultural purgatory will somehow persuade its government to dismantle the security barrier, evacuate the West Bank and embrace its sworn enemy is misguided. And that’s being generous. Whatever the flaws of the Netanyahu administration — and there are many — it is clearly responding to (and, true, at times stoking) real fears and anxieties among the Israeli population.

The boycotters are either grossly ignorant about the Israeli psyche, or don’t care to understand it. The attempt to isolate and delegitimize “is counter productive because of the nature of who we are. It confirms our worst fears,” says the noted South African journalist Benjamin Pogrund, who now lives in Israel and writes extensively about boycotts, having lived through the apartheid era in his native land.

While the BDS movement hopes to do to Israel what a similar movement claims to have done in South Africa, the economies are not at all equivalent. South Africa’s exports during the apartheid regime were limited, while Israel is intimately connected to the global economy, especially in technology, medicine, finance and scientific research. A real boycott, of course, would eliminate more Israeli-born medicines and technological advances than there is room to recount here, but then, according to the BDS approach, one can still throw mud at those who save you.

A more fair, useful and indeed noble way for outsiders to influence the Israeli government and its people is to engage and encourage both them and the Palestinians to take meaningful steps towards reconciliation and support of human rights across the troubled landscape. Perhaps the first thing that these “boycotters” ought to sacrifice is their self-righteous belief that only one side of this conflict bears any responsibility for its continuance.

While I am for free speech and the right to assemble, I'm not a fan of boycotting Israel (why not buycott instead?) or the tactics of BDS as a means of constructively addressing the Israeli-Palestinean issue. It is counterproductive and does nothing but strengthen the Israeli right-wing. Im my opinion there needs to be more energy invested into an international discussion accounting for the complicity and duplicity of neighboring states towards Israel, and the deliberate decision taken by those states to keeping the refugee issue festering in perpetuity.

roachboy · 07-15-2010, 10:00 AM

what a strange and scattershot editorial. first off it equates criticism of israeli policy with a desire to eradicate the place, which is both tedious and wrong. i think most everyone at this point accepts the factual being of a regional military superpower and member of the nuclear weapons club. and even if they don't, it hardly matters. israel isn't going anywhere. given that, it's hard to imagine what the point of continuing to work this line is beyond mobilizing the ultra-right--and even that for self-serving purposes.

second bizarre-o move: here's the website for the palestinian committe for the academic and cultural boycott of israel:

PACBI-ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN

have a look.
omar barghouti is a member of the founding committee of 8..whatever, you get the idea. it's a cheap and stupid move the edito makes. gee, he's a student at tel aviv university but is politically opposed to the occupation of the west bank, to the settlements, to israeli colonialism, to the routine brutalization of palestinians there, to the apartheid system within israel, to the seige of gaza...so he must be a hypocrite. please. idiocy, pure and simple.

more bizarre still is the argument that the boycotts of south africa did nothing to contribute to the fall of the apartheid regime. they even talk to benjamin pogrund, which is an interesting move. he's an interesting character:

Benjamin Pogrund - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

but i find his comments here to be curious. but maybe he's right that the boycotts of south africa contributed to a sense of solidarity amongst supporters of the racist regime there by giving it something to oppose itself to...but that seems a bizarre-o tack to take...particularly for a former opposition actor--if not activist---an editor for the only south african paper that actually covered what was happening amongst the african population. surely he did not mean to imply that therefore people should have done nothing. surely he did not mean to imply that things worked better for him under apartheid because he had something to oppose internally.

i don't know what he meant to imply because the edito only includes what's useful for it's purposes. you know, selective quotation. or maybe that was the quote. who can say?

what exactly is "the israeli psyche"? it seems like one of those silly nationalist fictions, like "the american mind" a phrase that appears to say something while really saying nothing at all.

besides, it continues, israel is an economic Playa, and not at all like south africa was in the 1970s so....so.....well what exactly?

anyway, it's not israel's fault, it concludes. neither the occuption nor the settlements nor colonialism nor the seige of gaza nor anything else. and to hold israel accountable is to want it to disappear.

so shut up. and stop boycotting.

o yeah, we don't like netanyahu so much.

it's not real persuasive to me, but at least its not about world war 3 and at least there's something to talk about in it. so thanks powerclown.

powerclown · 07-15-2010, 11:10 AM

How can Israel be an apartheid state when all of its citizens regardless of religious background are tolerated, have access to higher education, can open up their own businesses, and have a right to vote in national and local elections? Minorities living in Israel have one of the highest if not the highest standards of living in the entire middle east, comparable to europe or japan. Hardly an apartheid state.

But I like the idea of fining these jokers, if only for acting excessively foolish in public.

roachboy · 07-15-2010, 11:43 AM

think west bank.
think gaza.
it's ugly there.

and they're problems for israel politically both internally and internationally, the colonial thing that's happening, in different forms, in both these areas. it doesn't matter if the right doesn't like to look at it--except to the extent that the interests of the right coincide with those of the extreme right and the...um...ethically challenged elements in the idf who find it useful for whatever budgetary reasons to maintain a colonial presence in the west bank. but you know all this. it's just not fun to look at.

for a neat little summary of the sides to this israel=apartheid debate, which isn't new and isn't likely to go away & isn't without it's limitations/problems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_...rtheid_analogy

and talking hasn't helped--there seems to be no willingness to confront the settler-dominated far right in the west bank. conflict certainly hasn't helped. i don't think a boycott is going to do much either, personally---but it's something.

and it's obviously discomfiting enough that those fine retro-fellows in the netanyahu government feel the need to support suppressing the right to dissent as a way to limit the damage they think it could do them.

this is a really stupid move, even by the low standards the netanyahu regime has conditioned folk to apply to them.

powerclown · 07-15-2010, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

think west bank.
think gaza.
it's ugly there.

Its ugly and horrible here in downtown detroit but nobody - not even the naacp - has resorted to throwing around terms like 'apartheid' 'genocide' or 'colonial repression'. Its a ridiculous lefty buzzword that serious minded people should leave out of their vocabluary.

So in 1945 europe there were OVER A MILLION 'displaced persons' in the aftermath of ww2. By 1965, there were precisely ZERO. Think about that for a minute. The various governments concerned, along with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), had resettled them all, and by no means all or even many of them back into their countries of origin. However, the UN Refugee Relief & Work Administration (UNRRWA), set up to deal ONLY with the Palestinian refugee situation, has a major definitional difference from the UNHCR: unlike the latter, it defines anyone displaced AND THEIR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN AND GREAT GRANDCHILDREN, etc, as refugees – until the end of time. The UNHCR restricted the definition of 'refugee' strictly to those actually displaced. No wonder the 'problem' grew with time, instead of diminishng. Please tell me why the oil-rich Muslim states couldn't solve the refugee problem as easily as the much poorer (at the time) European countries managed.

roachboy · 07-15-2010, 05:58 PM

detroit's not being occupied is it? movements in detroit aren't restricted if you're the wrong religion, are they?

o wait: i get it. you are all for the zionist manifest destiny thing aren't you? i keep forgetting about that kahane quirk of yours. no matter.

btw--have a look at the wikipedia page above. i think we're tracking it almost exactly, don't you?

powerclown · 07-15-2010, 07:38 PM

Agree to disagree I suppose. I think roach has an inner helen thomas dying to get out. helen is that you??

dippin: no, it isn't.

dippin · 07-15-2010, 08:26 PM

Is "alleviating the refugee problem" a code phrase for "taking on the rest of the Palestinian population so that Gaza and the West Bank are wholly Israeli?"

aceventura3 · 07-19-2010, 08:15 AM

When I look at an issue involving people having the rights of free expression, it is pretty simple - is the result going to be more freedom or less freedom. There is a lot going on in Isreal, and given this thread I wonder are we concerned about the rights of free expression or something else. For example this issue, one of religious conversion being taken up by the Israeli will have a much broader impact than the focus on a handful of people expressing their views on a cultural boycott that has virtually no support.

Quote:

JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that he would oppose a conversion bill that has rekindled the age-old debate over who is a Jew and has provoked an angry response among liberal Jewish groups abroad whose support is critical to Israel.

Last week, an Israeli parliamentary committee gave preliminary approval to a draft legislation that would give Orthodox rabbis in Israel more control over conversions. The more liberal Reform and Conservative movements that represent the vast majority of Jews outside Israel contend the new legislation would be a dangerous blow to religious pluralism.

Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that he feared the bill would create a rift in the Jewish world and that if he couldn't find a compromise solution, he would ask his coalition partners to vote against it. The bill would have to pass three votes in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to become law.

Under the current practice, Israel only partially recognizes conversions performed by non-Orthodox rabbis inside Israel, while those converted by non-Orthodox rabbis outside the country are automatically eligible for Israeli citizenship like other Jews. The proposed legislation would give Israel's chief rabbinate the legal authority over all matters of conversion in Israel.

The group most likely to suffer from the change would be immigrants who converted to Judaism abroad and could now be denied Israeli citizenship.

The bill touches a nerve in the Reform and Conservative movements. Though they are strong abroad, their presence is marginal in Israel, where Orthodox rabbis have a near monopoly over religious practice.

While staunch backers of Israel, liberal Jewish movements abroad look worriedly at the prospect of the country's Orthodox religious establishment further entrenching its control. They say passage of the bill would also be a blow to the legitimacy of non-Orthodox rabbis the world over.

Rabbi David Saperstein, head of the Washington-based Religious Action Center of the Union of Reform Judaism, said the bill, if passed, would mark a "crisis of the first order."

"It would be an enormous blow to the unity of the Jewish people and the principle of religious freedom in Israel," said Saperstein, who is visiting the country to lobby lawmakers to drop the bill.

"The American Jewish community will remain strongly engaged in Israel, but the message will be sent that the government of Israel does not accept our rabbis and our movement as legitimate, and it would make all our work much more difficult."

Of the world's roughly 13 million Jews, half live in Israel and most of the rest are concentrated in North America.

Israeli religious authorities' skepticism about the legitimacy of overseas conversions has been cited as one of the main causes of a growing rift between Israel and world Jewry.

Seth Farber, an Orthodox rabbi and director of a body that helps Israelis navigate the rabbinical bureaucracy, said he was in favor of conversion reform but not at the price of damaging the delicate relations between Israel and the world Jewish community.

"We have to find a way to resolve this problem without paying too heavy a price, which is alienating 85 percent of American Jews," he said.

The bill has even provoked a group of Jewish U.S. senators to draft a rare letter of complaint to Israel's ambassador to Washington, The Jerusalem Post newspaper reported.

Caley Gray, communications director for signatory Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey), told the Jerusalem Post that "Senator Lautenberg hopes the Knesset does not pass this legislation, which he views as divisive."

The bill's sponsor, David Rotem, an Orthodox Jewish lawmaker from the largely secular Yisrael Beitenu party, has rejected the criticism, saying his goal was to make conversion easier for immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who make up most of his party's voters.

Rotem insists the bill would not affect North American Jews.

Roughly 1 million people immigrated to Israel after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many with tenuous ties to Judaism.

The bill is just the latest squabble between Netanyahu and the head of Rotem's party, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who have clashed on a number of policy matters in recent weeks. Its progress likely depends on whether the two resume their cooperation.

Netanyahu says he will oppose conversion bill - Yahoo! News

What is at the core of all of these issue is the very real and increasing threat Israel faces. Reducing these threats will do more to promote freedom, including freedoms of the Palestinian people, than anything else.

roachboy · 08-12-2010, 09:11 AM

Quote:

Besieging Israel's siege

In just a few years the Palestinian campaign to boycott Israeli goods has become truly global

Despite Israel's siege of Gaza, and the escalating displacement in the Negev and East Jerusalem, Palestinians have some reason to celebrate. In Washington a food co-op has passed a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli products, confirming that the boycott movement – five years old last month – has finally crossed the Atlantic. Support for the move came from prominent figures including Nobel peace laureates Desmond Tutu and Máiread Maguire, and Richard Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.

The movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was launched in 2005, a year after the international court of justice had found Israel's wall and colonies built on occupied Palestinian territory illegal. Over 170 Palestinian political parties, unions, mass movements and NGOs endorsed the movement, which is led by the BNC, a coalition of civil society organisations.

Rooted in a century of Palestinian civil resistance, and inspired by the anti-apartheid struggle, the campaign crowned earlier, partial boycotts to present a comprehensive approach to realising Palestinian self-determination: unifying Palestinians inside historic Palestine and in exile in the face of accelerating fragmentation.

BDS avoids the prescription of any particular political formula and insists, instead, on realising the basic, UN-sanctioned rights that correspond to the three main segments of the Palestinian people: ending Israel's occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands occupied since 1967; ending racial discrimination against its Palestinian citizens; and recognising the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Created and guided by Palestinians, BDS opposes all forms of racism, including antisemitism, and is anchored in the universal principles of freedom, justice and equal rights that motivated the anti-apartheid and US civil rights struggles.

Characterising Israel's legalised system of discrimination as apartheid – as was done by Tutu, Jimmy Carter and even a former Israeli attorney general – does not equate Israel with South Africa. No two oppressive regimes are identical. Rather, it asserts that Israel's bestowal of rights and privileges according to ethnic and religious criteria fits the UN-adopted definition of apartheid.

BDS has seen unprecedented growth after the war of aggression on Gaza and the flotilla attack. People of conscience round the world seem to have crossed a threshold, resorting to pressure, not appeasement or "constructive engagement", to end Israel's impunity and western collusion in maintaining its status as a state above the law.

"Besiege your siege" – the cry of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish – acquires a new meaning in this context. Since convincing a colonial power to heed moral pleas for justice is, at best, delusional, many now understand the need to "besiege" Israel though boycotts, raising the price of its oppression.

BDS campaigners have successfully lobbied financial institutions in Scandinavia, Germany and elsewhere to divest from companies that are complicit in Israel's violations of international law. Several international trade unions have endorsed the boycott. Following the attack on the flotilla, dockworkers' unions in Sweden, India, Turkey and the US heeded an appeal by Palestinian unions to block offloading Israeli ships.

Endorsements of BDS by cultural figures such as John Berger, Naomi Klein, Iain Banks and Alice Walker, and the spate of cancellations of events in Israel by artists including Meg Ryan, Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron and the Pixies have raised the movement's international profile, bringing it closer to the western mainstream. Scepticism about its potential has been put to rest.

Boycott from Within, a significant protest movement in Israel today, was formed in 2009 adopting the Palestinian BDS call.

A bill that would impose heavy fines on Israelis who initiate or incite boycotts against Israel has recently passed an initial reading at the Knesset. This underlines Israel's fears of the global reach and impact of BDS as a non-violent, morally consistent campaign for justice. In many ways, it confirms that the Palestinian "South Africa moment" has arrived.

Besieging Israel's siege | Omar Barghouti | Comment is free | The Guardian

the comments---which are extensive--are worth perusing.

here's an interview with barghouti from electronic intifada:
ei: "Boycotts work": An interview with Omar Barghouti

now, there's a second boycott happening--it's referenced above---being carried out by palestinians and directed against goods produced by colonists in the west bank and/or by companies that are either associated with or support the israeli colonial presence there. this one is apparently having rather more effect...enough that the israelis are asking that it stop.

Palestinians 'adamant about continuing boycott on settlement goods' - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

which is kinda interesting.

what do you make of this?

along the way, however, i wanted to point out this paragraph from the haaretz piece, which i think stunning:

Quote:

Ministry officials have already approached their Palestinian counterparts and international bodies to ask them to act to cancel the boycott, which they say violates international trade rules and policies.

so there are people who believe that the international flows of commodities operate in a domain that is entirely outside of political action.
such that a boycott becomes an illegal action.
so consumers, say, have no rights not to consume. they are required to consume. and if they choose not to consume, they can't tell others about it. because if they do, they could become an obstacle to the sovereign flow of commodities.

something is deeply deeply messed up in that.

07-11-2010, 04:19 PM	#3 (permalink)
guy44 Somnabulist Location: corner of No and Where	Ugh. Netanyahu: Never met a terrible idea he hasn't embraced. __________________ "You have reached Ritual Sacrifice. For goats press one, or say 'goats.'"

07-12-2010, 10:00 AM	#4 (permalink)
aceventura3 Junkie Location: Ventura County	What is the underlying concept in play here? First: A person or persons want to take an action based on their beliefs that they think will influence events. Another person or persons respond to actions, in a manner not to the liking of the person or persons above - and they get offended. Actions have consequences. Occasionally the consequences are not what was expected, if true, can you live with those consequences - otherwise don't take the action. Second: BDS got renewed interest because of a blockade preventing the free flow of aid, people, information, supplies, etc., a blockade that they think is wrong in many ways. Yet they support a "blockade" (separating Israel, culturally, academically, and economically from the rest of the world), thinking the strategy as they employ it is going to deescalate conflict. Wouldn't a better approach be one of using academia, culture and economics to positively influence the thinking of the people in Israel? If I were paranoid or lived in fear of attack and destruction as is the case with Israel, isolation is not going to solve that problem it will make it worse. So depending on the goal, peace or the elimination of Israel through the escalation of tensions leading to war - the proper strategy becomes clear. Those who support BDS may not have thought through what their support actually means. __________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch." "It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion." "If you live among wolves you have to act like one." "A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

07-14-2010, 09:25 AM	#13 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i've read through the op several times, even though i wrote it, trying to find the part where stupid theories about world war 3 were mentioned. can't do it. so fascinating as they are, how about you make another thread that you can use to figure out these important geopolitical matters? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

07-14-2010, 12:52 PM	#15 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	I think the question remains as to how a discussion about an academic boycott of Israel has moved on to musings about who will take whose side in WWIII. How does a discussion move from the criminalization of dissent to WWIII? And in less than 10 posts at that. At this point, I'm more concerned about oppressive right-wing entrenchment in Israel than I am about WWIII. Besides, amongst the risk factors for WWIII, I would list right-wing extremism in Israel as a big one. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 07-14-2010 at 12:54 PM..

07-14-2010, 03:19 PM	#19 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	ace, look. the thread is about the threats from the netanyahu government--which is a right/far right coalition government--to make the academic boycott of israel illegal. so to make voicing support for it a crime. that's the issue. the boycott is directed at the israeli seige of gaza and the occupation of the west bank--which entails the settlements. it's not about world war 3. that is a fantasy. what you are trying with it is to defend the israeli right in general even as you disagree on this particular idea. that's an argument. the problem is that rather than defend the right, you tried to jack the thread. talk from a conservative position all you want. just stop trying to derail the thread. there are other ways. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 07-14-2010 at 03:26 PM..

07-11-2010, 08:29 AM	#2 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	My first response was to ask the question: "You know who else criminalized academic dissent?" Perhaps I'll have more to say when I don't have a drooling baby on one of my arms.

07-12-2010, 06:00 PM	#6 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	Israel has always had a vocal (and still living) left-wing political voice, thats one of the reasons why its such a solid, vibrant democracy.

07-14-2010, 09:09 AM	#12 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	I could see Iran going rogue and trying to annex Iraq or Afghanistan, but China is not going to let that happen since it has major interests in Iraqi oil and Russia would be hard-pressed to take Iran's side, so who's left for a world war? India...an ally of the United States? Saudi Arabia...an ally of the United States? Israel...an ally of the United States? Who's going to take Iran's side...Turkey who wants to be a part of Europe and Syria? So we've got USA, Great Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Japan, Europe, South Korea, Pakistan vs. Iran and Syria? Doesn't seem like much of a world war to me.

07-15-2010, 07:13 AM	#22 (permalink)
mixedmedia has all her shots. Location: Florida	Perhaps the implications of the articles cited are so boldly infected with a familiar foreboding that it's difficult to make the same 'poor old besieged Israel' arguments. (although, I do believe I heard one mention of 'the destruction of Israel' go creaking by). I always find that to be a little silly - the thought that Israel will be the one destroyed if'n there were to be some sort of cataclysmic hoedown to take place in the ME. Anyway, I find the boycott controversy to be pretty disturbing, but for now am holding out hope that Israel, for all its current dreams of a Zionist utopia without the meddling and distraction of, um, others to muck things up for them, cannot in this day and age be so flagrantly fascistic with their own people and maintain a place with the 'cool kids,' internationally speaking. Of course, I could be wrong. __________________ Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

07-15-2010, 10:00 AM	#24 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	what a strange and scattershot editorial. first off it equates criticism of israeli policy with a desire to eradicate the place, which is both tedious and wrong. i think most everyone at this point accepts the factual being of a regional military superpower and member of the nuclear weapons club. and even if they don't, it hardly matters. israel isn't going anywhere. given that, it's hard to imagine what the point of continuing to work this line is beyond mobilizing the ultra-right--and even that for self-serving purposes. second bizarre-o move: here's the website for the palestinian committe for the academic and cultural boycott of israel: PACBI-ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN have a look. omar barghouti is a member of the founding committee of 8..whatever, you get the idea. it's a cheap and stupid move the edito makes. gee, he's a student at tel aviv university but is politically opposed to the occupation of the west bank, to the settlements, to israeli colonialism, to the routine brutalization of palestinians there, to the apartheid system within israel, to the seige of gaza...so he must be a hypocrite. please. idiocy, pure and simple. more bizarre still is the argument that the boycotts of south africa did nothing to contribute to the fall of the apartheid regime. they even talk to benjamin pogrund, which is an interesting move. he's an interesting character: Benjamin Pogrund - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but i find his comments here to be curious. but maybe he's right that the boycotts of south africa contributed to a sense of solidarity amongst supporters of the racist regime there by giving it something to oppose itself to...but that seems a bizarre-o tack to take...particularly for a former opposition actor--if not activist---an editor for the only south african paper that actually covered what was happening amongst the african population. surely he did not mean to imply that therefore people should have done nothing. surely he did not mean to imply that things worked better for him under apartheid because he had something to oppose internally. i don't know what he meant to imply because the edito only includes what's useful for it's purposes. you know, selective quotation. or maybe that was the quote. who can say? what exactly is "the israeli psyche"? it seems like one of those silly nationalist fictions, like "the american mind" a phrase that appears to say something while really saying nothing at all. besides, it continues, israel is an economic Playa, and not at all like south africa was in the 1970s so....so.....well what exactly? anyway, it's not israel's fault, it concludes. neither the occuption nor the settlements nor colonialism nor the seige of gaza nor anything else. and to hold israel accountable is to want it to disappear. so shut up. and stop boycotting. o yeah, we don't like netanyahu so much. it's not real persuasive to me, but at least its not about world war 3 and at least there's something to talk about in it. so thanks powerclown. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

07-15-2010, 11:10 AM	#25 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	How can Israel be an apartheid state when all of its citizens regardless of religious background are tolerated, have access to higher education, can open up their own businesses, and have a right to vote in national and local elections? Minorities living in Israel have one of the highest if not the highest standards of living in the entire middle east, comparable to europe or japan. Hardly an apartheid state. But I like the idea of fining these jokers, if only for acting excessively foolish in public.

07-15-2010, 11:43 AM	#26 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	think west bank. think gaza. it's ugly there. and they're problems for israel politically both internally and internationally, the colonial thing that's happening, in different forms, in both these areas. it doesn't matter if the right doesn't like to look at it--except to the extent that the interests of the right coincide with those of the extreme right and the...um...ethically challenged elements in the idf who find it useful for whatever budgetary reasons to maintain a colonial presence in the west bank. but you know all this. it's just not fun to look at. for a neat little summary of the sides to this israel=apartheid debate, which isn't new and isn't likely to go away & isn't without it's limitations/problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_...rtheid_analogy and talking hasn't helped--there seems to be no willingness to confront the settler-dominated far right in the west bank. conflict certainly hasn't helped. i don't think a boycott is going to do much either, personally---but it's something. and it's obviously discomfiting enough that those fine retro-fellows in the netanyahu government feel the need to support suppressing the right to dissent as a way to limit the damage they think it could do them. this is a really stupid move, even by the low standards the netanyahu regime has conditioned folk to apply to them. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 07-15-2010 at 11:52 AM..

07-15-2010, 05:58 PM	#28 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	detroit's not being occupied is it? movements in detroit aren't restricted if you're the wrong religion, are they? o wait: i get it. you are all for the zionist manifest destiny thing aren't you? i keep forgetting about that kahane quirk of yours. no matter. btw--have a look at the wikipedia page above. i think we're tracking it almost exactly, don't you? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

07-15-2010, 07:38 PM	#29 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	Agree to disagree I suppose. I think roach has an inner helen thomas dying to get out. helen is that you?? dippin: no, it isn't. Last edited by powerclown; 07-15-2010 at 11:25 PM.. Reason: the horse; she is dead

07-15-2010, 08:26 PM	#30 (permalink)
dippin Crazy, indeed Location: the ether	Is "alleviating the refugee problem" a code phrase for "taking on the rest of the Palestinian population so that Gaza and the West Bank are wholly Israeli?"