The BDS Thread (Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions)

[RLENT]

Barghouti gets a standing O at U of M and then gets a 2 page write up in The Michigan Daily:

Palestinian activist urges University to divest from Israel

With a focus on universal human rights and activism, Omar Barghouti — a key member of the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel — received a standing ovation from those in attendance at his guest lecture in Hutchins Hall Friday night.

“The very basis of BDS is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in that, a very basic concept that has been forgotten to an extent: that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” Barghouti said.

Barghouti, a Palestinian activist and commentator, explained BDS’s mission by focusing on what he said were oppressive Israeli policies, including a lack of access to education for many Palestinians.

“BDS was launched by Palestinian civil society in 2005 specifically because the United Nations has been unable or unwilling to help Palestinians attain rights under the hegemony of the U.S. government and Congress,” he said.

Barghouti highlighted statements made by United Nations officials that he said deemed Israel, by international standards, an apartheid state, drawing comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa. In his lecture, he accused the Israeli government of being a racist regime, pointing to the lack of an official Israeli national identity as evidence of discrimination.

“If you recognize an Israeli nationality, that means equality for Arabs and Jews within Israel, and that cannot be allowed,” Barghouti said of the Israeli government’s motives.

Students Allied for Freedom and Equality sponsored Barghouti’s visit to the University. SAFE collaborated with the Jewish Voice for Peace and the Students for Justice in Palestine at University of Michigan, Dearborn to host his lecture.

The lecture followed last month’s controversy over #UMMockEviction, and a month after the American Studies Association and Association for Asian-American Studies endorsed an academic boycott of Israel.

(Article continues at link below)

Palestinian activist urges University to divest from Israel - The Michigan Daily

 

[muttly]

Some fairness to off set the unbalanced.
From article:
The American Studies Association's [ASA] vote to boycott Israeli universities exposes a seamy side of American academia where anti-Israel activists have siezed control of academic associations to promote their radical agendas. While opponents of the boycott were subsequently heartened by the vigorous reaction of university presidents and scholars against this attack on the free exchange of ideas, the vote, nevertheless, signals the weakening of core principles upon which universities were founded and the transformation of some disciplines into enclaves of radical group-think.

The ASA, along with several other academic associations that will soon vote on anti-Israel boycotts of their own, seek to exclude universities from a nation that ranks among the most free and vigilant in protecting intellectual freedom. Compounding the offense is that they have chosen to side with those who do not foster these freedoms.
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The hypocrisy of the boycott advocates was evident in the manner that they conducted the campaign against Israel. There was little debate or publicity prior to the vote and the discussion that did take place excluded boycott opponents. This ensured there would be no thorough consideration of the facts. Only about a quarter of the association's membership even voted. The boycotters demonstrated that they have no problem violating the very principles that they accuse Israeli universities of violating. As David Greenberg, a professor at Rutgers University observed, "A 'Town Hall' organized by Curtis Marez, the association’s president, featured six speakers echoing each other’s agitprop likening Israel to an apartheid state."
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It is notable that the boycott campaign garnered little support from past presidents of the association or from distinguished scholars. That is because the charges that the boycott advocates level against Israel do not stand up to serious scrutiny. Greenberg sums up the significance of the vote,
The anti-Israel activists within the American Studies Association may be patting themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on their effort to marginalize Israel. But there is reason to ask whether they, having squandered the good name of a once-proud organization, are in fact simply marginalizing themselves.
As Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors [one of the largest academic associations] noted in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed on Jan. 9, 2014, "A truer indication of the real goal is the boycott movement's success at increasing intolerance on American campuses."
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But few in the media or in academia seem willing to delve too deeply into who these anti-Israel academics are or assess the impact of their relentless anti-Israel activism on the academic quality of the institutions that pay their salaries, many of them tax-payer supported.
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The arguments advanced by the boycotters rest upon the repetition of distorted history, fables and slanderous accusations. Their writings feature outdated Marxist rhetoric and a tendency to equate the Palestinians with indigenous peoples overrun by European and American expansion. It is likely many do not even realize that the Arabs arrived in Palestine as colonizers and conquerors themselves. Comparisons to the American civil rights movement or South African apartheid fail to consider the distinct differences in the origins of the conflict and that Palestinian Arab intended outcome is entirely different from these civil rights movements. All significant Palestinian Arab political movements steadfastly reject Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and remain committed to its violent dissolution.
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For many radicals in academia, Israel has become the scapegoat of convenience on which they heap all the alleged sins of West: imperialism, colonialism, sexism, racism, apartheid and whatever else an offended group can dredge up. For some that is not enough. Several of the ASA boycott advocates deny that Israel is a democracy and even apply the term "totalitarian" to Israel, implicitly lumping it with other totalitarian states, like Nazi Germany. As Cary Nelson, concludes, "The fundamental goal of the boycott is not the peaceful coexistence of two states, one Jewish and one Palestinian, but rather the elimination of Israel." The academic boycott attempts to provide intellectual cover.
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An Academic Cult that Scapegoats Israel for the Alleged Sins of the West, While Giving Arab Society a Pass
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The boycott advocates are a clique of individuals afflicted with an unremitting hostility towards the Jewish state, paired with a willful blindness toward the deplorable conditions of academic freedom in the rest of the Middle East. In order to unravel what lies behind the ASA boycott it is helpful to look at the members of the ASA's Academic and Community Caucus that helped organize the vote.
It is ironic that the Caucus featured heavy representation from Gender and Sexuality and Queer Studies departments because Israel boasts a culture uniquely tolerant and accepting of the full participation of women at all levels of society and of individuals who openly express their alternative lifestyle. In most of the Middle East, women suffer from a degraded status, many are prisoners in their homes until they are married and for homosexuals, the prospect of harsh treatment, even death, awaits those who are exposed.

But to this undeniable reality, the boycott advocates have a response. It was given by Sara Schulman in an Op-Ed in the New York Times on Nov. 23, 2011, where she dismissed Israel's tolerant society as a clever deception, what she called pinkwashing," to conceal Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

Schulman's Op-Ed portrays Palestinian society, which is notoriously homophobic and where women still suffer the occasional "honor killing," as more tolerant than Israel. After the article was published many in the Gay community were outraged. But the agenda laid out by Shulman, a BDS advocate, serves as a blueprint for the boycott campaign.

When Jesse Ghannam, host of Arab Talk, a radio show in San Francisco, asked Neferti Tadiar, the Chair of Women's Studies at Barnard College and Caucus member, why she focused on Israel as opposed to other humanitarian problems, she asserted that the situation of the Palestinians was unique in that "the urgency is such that it is something that needs to be addressed now..."

Tadiar's assertion is no more believable than the response given by ASA boycott spokesman Curtis Marez of the University of San Diego when asked why they chose to boycott Israel instead of other nations whose human rights abuses were so evident and serious. Marez stated, "we had to start somewhere."

How does one conclude that the situation in "Palestine" is more urgent than the situation in Syria, just a few miles to the north and east, where thousands are slaughtered monthly, and where the government, in 2013, suffocated the residents of an entire city neighborhood with poison gas? What about Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, South Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Iran, or for that matter, even her native Philippines, where an Islamic insurgency wreaks havoc.

Tadiar's rhetoric about the Palestinians and Israel is detached from the reality of the Middle East. In Israel, all citizens - regardless of religion or ethnic affiliation - feel secure in criticizing their government and its national icons, even to the extent of openly questioning the right of their nation to exist. Only in Israel do those who flout societal norms of sexuality and behavior celebrate and flaunt their lifestyles without fear of retribution.

Moreover, Israel and the Palestinian administered West Bank has been an island of tranquility in a region engulfed by upheaval since 2011. Despite the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the West Bank has experienced several years of unbroken economic growth. Even in Gaza, a much more problematic situation because it is run by an Islamic group dedicated to violent confrontation with Israel, residents have fared better than many of their brethren in the region.

While the boycotters are fixated on what they allege are Israeli denials of Palestinian rights and privileges, hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians, trapped between Islamic radicals and an Iranian grab for regional hegemony, suffer and perish. The already dire circumstances faced by women in the region threatens to get worse with the rise of Islamic radicalism. Homosexuals live in abject fear.
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Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a visit to Tadiar's sister university, Columbia in 2007, actually told a disbelieving audience "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country... I don't know who's told you we have it." That didn't stop one of the ASA Caucus members, Charlotte Karem Albrecht, from signing a letter criticizing an Iranian Studies conference; not for Iran's denial of homosexuality or its harsh treatment of gays, but for allowing an Israeli university located in the West Bank to attend.
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For professor Tadiar, the calamities of the Arab and Muslim world fail to impinge upon her conscience sufficiently to spur action. Only Israel so inflames her moral indignation, because in her view it is "an egregious example of a state that has been consistently defying the most agreed upon principles of human rights and defying international law with impunity."
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Supporters of the ASA vote have reacted to the condemnation that followed. One of the most illuminating letters on the ASA web site was from Caucus member Cynthia Franklin of the University of Hawaii. Unlike most of the other letters, she divulges what she views as the infractions of an Israeli university that justify a boycott. She writes,
Tel Aviv University has chosen to remain silent while the entire population of Gaza has been excluded by the Israeli government from the possibility of enrolling and studying at the university Palestinian students from Gaza have a better chance of acceptance at a university in the United States than at Tel Aviv University.

The Tel Aviv University administration restricts the freedom of speech and protest of Palestinian students by honoring the “Nakba Bill,” discriminatory legislation meant to discourage academic discussion and public commemoration of a day of mourning, on the anniversary of the establishment of Israel, for the expulsion by Zionist and Israeli forces of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and land, and the massacre of thousands more, during 1947-49.

Tel Aviv University requires potential enrollees to take psychometric exams, a combined aptitude and personality test that has been criticized as culturally biased. The university likewise administers English language proficiency entrance exams that are structurally biased as a result of Israel’s “separate-but-equal” primary and secondary education system, which prioritizes and promotes Jewish Israeli advancement while under-funding and thus under-developing Palestinian-majority schools.

Like all Israeli universities, Tel Aviv University also adheres to an Israeli law which stipulates that universities must give special treatment to student military reservists... This evidences both Tel Aviv University’s complicity in the occupation and its discriminatory practices against Palestinian students, who are not required to serve in the Israeli military. The university likewise discriminates against the small but significant number of Jewish conscientious objectors who refuse to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Tel Aviv University is participating in a settler-run archaeological dig in the “City of David” national park located in the Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, in violation of international law.

Tel Aviv University, like most Israeli universities, is built on the land of a Palestinian Arab habitat, in this case, Shaykh Muwannis, a large village whose inhabitants were forcibly expelled by the IDF in early 1948...

The implications of her complaints might give pause to many here in the United States. Is it discriminatory for Tel Aviv university to block entrance of students from Gaza, a foreign entity ruled by a terrorist organization, or common sense security precautions? Is the reliance on aptitude exams because someone thinks they are "culturally biased" a violation of human rights? Are preferences to armed services veterans also a violation?
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It is telling that these concerns spelled out by Franklin justify a boycott of Israeli institutions, while in Iran, students are slaughtered on the streets by Revolutionary Guard simply for demanding the same freedoms that Israeli students of all religions already enjoy. Yet there are no calls by the ASA Caucus to boycott Iran or any of the other countries that curtail free speech or practice discrimination.
CAMERA: The Ideology and Rhetoric Behind the ASA Boycott
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[muttly]

Continued from article:
...., it is important to expose what academic disciplines they cluster around and what they espouse:
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Of the 35 people listed as members of the ASA Academic and Community Caucus no less than 11 are associated with departments of Women's, Feminist, Gender Studies, Sexuality or Queer Studies. As noted they isolate and target Israel, the one place in the region where such issues can be discussed safely and openly without fear of retribution. There are also a number of members of Ethnic and Cultural Studies departments. Several are English professors and a few are history professors. Some have backgrounds in Anthropology and the History of Consciousness, a relatively new area.
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Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi is Associate Professor of Ethnic studies at University of San Francisco. Abdulhadi also sits on the Advisory Board of USACBI. The university hosted a conference in 2009, Ethnic Studies 40 Years Later: Race Resistance and Relevance. The conference featured numerous talks and subsequent discussion in which Israel was accused of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and theft of Palestinian land, and the "Zionist lobby media" was charged with unwarranted attacks on Palestinian political activists.
An event on November 7, 2013 sponsored by Abdulhadi's department was so infused with hostility toward Israel and Jews that the university's President, Leslie Wong felt compelled to issue a statement*"There is no place at S.F. State for celebrating violence or promoting intolerance, bigotry, anti-Semitism or any other form of hate-mongering." An article, Identity Politics, the Pursuit of Social Justice, and the Rise of Campus Antisemitism:A Case Study provides more information on this event.

Professor Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder of the AMCHA initiative that publicized*the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic components of the event, reported that the Facebook site of the organization which Rabab Abdulhadi served as senior scholar posted a statement bearing the header: "Zionists: Hands off our San Francisco State University Students!"

Sunaina Maira, a professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, is currently a visiting fellow with MADA Al-Carmel: Arab Centre for Applied Social Research in Haifa, Israel. Yet that didn't stop her from signing on to the boycott. She also writes in her biography that she is a member of South Asians for the Liberation of Falastin (that's Palestine).
In an article appearing in an internet magazine called Mzine she wrote, "the war on Gaza is a continuation of genocidal activities against the indigenous population...Over 80% of the population cannot afford a balanced meal."

The charge of genocide is a lie, as is the implication that Gazans are going hungry. In 2010, Robert Serry, UN envoy to the Middle East stated that no humanitarian crisis exists in the Gaza strip. And numerous reports, even by Palestinian authorities, observe that there are not food shortages there.
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In the same article she irresponsibly accused former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright with proclaiming that the death of a half million Iraqi children was worth the price of U.S. national security. A review of the 60 Minutes show in which Albright allegedly made this statement reveals that it was the host, Lesley Stahl, who described the death of 500,000 Iraqi children in the context of whether America's sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq were justified. Albright's answer was clumsy, but clearly she was addressing the broader question of whether U.S. sanctions were justified, not about the children. That figure is also not substantiated.
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Neferti X. M. Tadiar, is the Chair of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College. In her interview with Jess Ghannam, Tadiar states, Israel is "a place that claims democracy... the gaps between the claims and the reality reveal the absurdity of the claims... " She denounces Israel as "a state that has been consistently defying the most agreed upon principles of human rights and defying international law with impunity... It is a blatant system of apartheid."
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Ghannam asks her, "Are you against human rights only for Palestinians", Tadiar answers that she sees the situation in Palestine "connected to other struggles" and more broadly to the issue of "racism." But when he presses "why Palestine?" Tadiar asserts, "it is an urgent situation... the difference is... people's lives are being strangulated in many ways... the urgency is such that it is something that needs to be addressed now." She claims the "everyday violence" against Palestinians "has no limits."
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When one contrasts the massive violence in Syria that has taken over 100,000 lives in less than three years, with the coordinated and targeted police actions against individual terrorist cells carried out by Israeli and Palestinian security forces in recent years, her distorted perspective is apparent. In "The Corrupt Academy" (Dec. 28, 2013), Rael Jean Isaac exposes Tadiar as an ideologue who spouts boilerplate Marxist rhetoric justifying the boycott because it "heralds a new era of anti-racist, anti-colonial solidarity. "
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Nikhil Pal Singh is a professor of social and cultural analysis and a member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. In February 2012, he published his Palestine diaries. In it he observes that "the road to Ramallah is characteristic of the geography of apartheid... the ever-present reminder of a manic dispossession that never ends."
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He then contends that eastern Jerusalem is undergoing a process of "Judaisation," via the systematic population transfer of Palestinians beyond the boundaries of what Israel now calls "Greater Jerusalem." It's a compelling story, but it is also false. The Arab population of Jerusalem has grown at a faster rate than the Jewish population of Jerusalem since 1967 and there is no "systematic" transfer of the Arab population out of Jerusalem. In fact, Israel offered the Arab residents of east Jerusalem citizenship and most refused. Singh continues,
After only a short time, it becomes avidly apparent that the settler colonial project constitutes the core logic of the Israeli state. Every type of space and resource is reserved and controlled in the interest of the privileged caste, from parking spaces to university places, to the most vital resources: land, air and water—in an effort to make Palestinian life less and less possible here.
He seems to project his own ethno-societal conflicts on to Israel. India has castes, not Israel. Contrary to Singh's ruminations of Arab disappearance, the Arab population in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza has maintained one of highest rates of increase the world since 1967. The United Nations human development index ranks the standard of living of Arabs residing in the West Bank and the Gaza strip as in the middle of the pack of the world's nations.
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He misrepresents the position of Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, stating
While, most Israeli Jewish politicians tend to avoid the rhetoric of "final solutions," prominent figures like Likud Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman have openly envisioned the large-scale forced transfer of millions of Palestinians from the land of "Greater Israel."
In reality, Lieberman supports land swaps in which certain small areas of Israel inhabited by Israeli-Arabs are transfered to a newly created Palestinian state in exchange for Jewish settlements in the West Bank being incorporated into Israel.

Bill Mullen, a Purdue University professor of English wrote on 27 January, 2012 on the internet site, Socialistworker.org that Israel's colonization of Palestine is a de facto totalitarianism meant to strangle decades of resistance by an entire people. But it has not succeeded. He demanded:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
Mullen doesn't define what he means by "Arab lands", or whether that includes all of Israel. But in the article he states, "Tel Aviv University sits in part on land belonging to Sheikh Muwannis, a Palestinian village whose residents were expelled by Jewish militias or fled in fear in March 1948."

His third demand requiring Israel to allow the descendants of Arabs who left what is now Israel be allowed to resettle is widely recognized as an implicit attempt to undermine the stability and integrity of the Jewish state.

Mullen possesses an active imagination that leads him to make a bizarre charge that "Technion is Israel's leader in "applied science" research and the development of killing machines like the unmanned armored tanks used in Israel's 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead that massacred more than 1,400 Gazans."

Putting Mullen's science fiction asperations*aside, Israel's tanks are upgraded models of its Merkava battle tank,they are manned by crews of 4 to 5, similar to tanks in every modern army. Most of the Palestinian deaths in Operation Cast Lead resulted from air strikes. The majority of those killed were Hamas or affiliated fighters as has been repeatedly demonstrated by reviews of published lists of the casualties.

Mullen pronounces Israel, "Guilty" because

Given the opportunity, the large majority of Israeli academics have shown little concern for supporting academic freedom for Palestinians. As Haim Bresheeth and Sherna Berger Gluck have pointed out, a few months before the Gaza incursion by the Israeli Army in December 2008, a petition for academic freedom in the occupied territories was circulated to more than 10,000 Israeli academics. The petition, requesting that the Israeli government allow Palestinians the same freedom enjoyed by Israeli academics, was signed by only 407 Israeli academics — 4 percent of the total.

Mullen implies that unless an Israeli academic agrees to sign on to a statement condemning his state for supposedly curtailing Palestinian academic freedom, he is the legitimate target of a boycott. Some of Mullen's colleagues label Israel*"totalitarian." Mullen should look in the mirror to see what a real "totalitarian" looks like. His methodology recalls the methods employed in the Soviet Union's show trials which required the accused to sign a statement confessing to the crime they were told they committed. If they refused they were shot. If they confessed they were tried, then shot. Similarly, Israeli academics are ****ed if they do and ****ed if they don't.
Mallini Schueller, University of Florida and David Lloyd of University of California, Riverside, both professors of English published in the Journal of Academic Freedom an article titled, "The Israeli State of Exception and the Case for Academic Boycott." In their article they write,


This is not to say that either South Africa was or that Israel is a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word: apartheid systems function precisely by claiming democratic rights for only a part of their population, and systematically denying those rights to the subordinated remainder.

Their argument ignores critical details. Israel's Arab population possesses full civic rights, but is not required to serve in the army. If they are referring to the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, these are not citizens of Israel, so they do not possess the same rights and privileges.

They continue to argue that
Indeed, it is because Israel is constantly distinguished or singled out from other nations, particularly here in the United States, that a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign is justified. US aid underwrites Israel's commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity
Indeed, Israel has violated more UN resolutions than any other state in the world, including twenty-eight Security Council resolutions ... Israel is singled out most clearly by being the only country that cannot be criticized openly in the United States and on university campuses without serious repercussions.

The United Nations is dominated by a 57 member Muslim bloc of countries and other mainly non-democratic nations aligned with it that vote as a bloc. They condemn Israel incessantly because most do not recognize its right to exist. So essentially the Schueller-Lloyd argument boils down to this: because Israel is repeatedly condemned by a bloc of states that are inimically hostile to it, it is appropriate to join in on this condemnation.
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When asked why they chose to boycott Israel and not other countries with far more egregious violations of human rights, Schueller responded:
I will repeat that the boycott of Israeli universities is in response to over a hundred Palestinian civil society organizations that have asked for the boycott in response to the violence of settler colonialism and the denial of academic and other freedoms to Palestinians. When there is a similar request from other civil society organizations in a country that is the recipient of major US funds, and when a boycott has a reasonable chance of having an effect on a government, such boycotts will not be ruled out.

So according to this logic, the merits of the alleged human rights violation do not matter, only how loud and often you shout. Following the logic to its conclusion, the regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would not warrant a boycott because no request came from any civil society inside Cambodia. That would have been most difficult during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror, since any members of civil societies inside Cambodia would be dead.
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Lloyd claims that the boycott "targets institutions on the basis of what they do not what they are: it does not target them because they are Jewish or Israeli, but because of their complicity in Israel's systemic and ongoing violations of human rights and international law." He doesn't spell out what exactly it is that he thinks Israeli academic institutions do that violates human rights and international law. Their position is hypocritical. Israeli institutions tolerate, even encourage, dissent, while such activities are proscribed in most Arab universities. Yet they choose only to boycott Israel.
Robin D. G. Kelley is the Gary Nash endowed professor of history at UCLA. He describes his most recent work on Grace Halsell, a granddaughter of Confederate slave owners who chemically darkened her skin to live as a black woman for a year. He then describes she traveled to Israel with Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority" and wrote a scathing critique of the Christian Right's uncritical support of Israel and what she regarded as the brutal treatment of Palestinians and Arab Jews. According to Nash, "As a result of her sharply critical stance against Israel, her jobs, lucrative book contracts, and other opportunities began to disappear."

In a book titled African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict. Kelley reveals some of his thinking on Jewish success in America. Despite the disproportionate role Jews played in the American civil rights movement, he writes, that for Jews "well-being and continued upward mobility often depended on their willingness to distance themselves from blacks."

David Naguib Pellow who holds the Don Martindale Endowed Chair University of Minnesota deals with Environmental Justice Studies; Racial and Ethnic Inequality; Transnational Social Movements" among other topics. He gained some publicity when a student he mentored, Scott DeMuth, was charged with conspiracy and terrorism related to participation to the activities of the Animal Liberation Front. Pellow wrote glowingly of DeMuth.

Curtis Marez is an associate professor of Ethnic studies at UC San Diego and is the ASA's outgoing president. He specializes in the "history of race and technology; film, television, and new media; and the political economy of culture." Marez was a participant in a conference entitled: "Between Life and Death: Necropolitics in the Era of Late Capitalism."
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Alex Lubin writes "Academic freedom means very little when it takes place in a context of segregation and apartheid." But would Lubin concede it still beats no academic freedom at all, which is what exists in many nations.
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Has Lubin ever supported the boycott of any nation that denies academic freedom? He also claims that "the boycott targets Israeli State institutions that violate Palestinian academic freedom." It would be helpful if he would provide actual evidence of this and also contrast the situation with universities in other Middle East countries which he chooses not to boycott.
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Charlotte Karem Albrecht as noted above, received her PhD in Feminist studies. She signed an ironic 2010 letter protesting the inclusion of an Israeli university located in the West Bank in a conference hosted by Iranian Studies group.
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Rachel Afi Quinn is a professor at the University of Houston in the department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is a member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel [USACBI].
Gina Velasco is a professor at Keene state in Women's and Gender Studies, previously in Anthropology department at Bryn Mawr.

Heather Turcotte, an assistant professor of Gender and Sexuality studies at the University of Connecticut, who studies institutionalized sexual violence recently came under fire for her involvement in a lawsuit alleging sexual assaults were ignored*by the university's president and chief of campus police, both of whom are women.
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Judy Rohrer, also in Feminist studies, left the University of Connecticut under disciplinary threat related to her role in this same lawsuit.
Aren Z. Aizura is a member of the Department of Gender and Women's Studies and Institute for Research on Gender at Rutgers University . His research focuses on "how biopolitical technologies of race, gender, transnationality, medicalization and political economy shape and are shaped by transgender and queer bodies."

Evelyn Al Sultany is an associate professor in the department of American Cu lture. She focuses on Arab Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging.

Jordana Rosenberg of the University of Massachusetts is an English professor, who coauthored a piece, titled, "Queerness, norms, utopia" in GLQ, a Journal of Lesbian and Gay studies. Her piece was replete with Marxist rhetoric.

Chandan Reddy, a professor at the University of Washington specializes in "Critical Race Theory, Sexuality and Queer Studies, Globalization Studies, and Asian American Cultural Studies."

Macarena Gomez-Barris is an Associate Professor of American Studies Ethnicity and Sociology at the University of Southern California. She lists her interests as a focus on memory, culture, and power.


Craig Willse, an assistant professor of Cultural Studies at George Mason University boasts that he organizes anti-Israel activities including a group called GMU Students Against Israeli Apartheid. He unsuccessfully harrassed Israeli businesswoman Shari Arrison in her visit to the university in 2013.
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Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ôpua is an associate professor of Indigenous and Hawaiian politics. In common with several members of the ASA committee, she received her PhD in the History of Consciousness.
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J Kehaulani Kauanui is an associate professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University. Anthropology is another academic discipline where anti-Israel activist congregate. She was introduced on an internet site "Struggle" as "an activist on Hawaiin, Palestinian and American indian rights."




© CAMERA • 2014 • All rights reserved
Media Analyses / Correction

 

[RLENT]

Further thoughts on the BDS movement from Nathan Goldwag, of Jewish Voice For Peace:

BDS: The best hope for a true peace
Nathan Goldwag on January 14, 2014

Unarguably, one of the most notable achievements of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress was that they were able to dismantle the apartheid structure of law in South Africa without the destruction of the colonial population. Though their dominance of the political system has ended, the white community, both British and Afrikaner, remains firmly ensconced within the cultural and economic life of the nation. It is hard to overstate how unusual this is.

During the course of the Decolonization movement, there were two other African countries that faced the problems of South Africa–democratic rule by a minority population of European settlers. Neither of those situations ended well. In Algeria, when the FLN achieved victory in 1962 and the French government agreed to independence, the entire community of French Algerians, many of whom had roots going back 130 years, departed en masse, destroying their infrastructure behind them. In Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, the 1979 agreement that ended the civil war and led to the fall of the Rhodesian apartheid government included provisions for the protection of the white minority. But by 1999, all but a handful of these citizens had fled. The question must be asked, why was South Africa so much more successful in its rapprochement than its contemporaries? Even more that than, why was rapprochement even a possibility?

Part of the answer, I am sure, rests with the skill and humility of Mr. Mandela and the leaders of the African National Congress, but there is another explanation as well. Algeria, Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, and South Africa all faced rule by white minorities. However, the manners in which those racist governments fell was very different. In Algeria, it was a combination of internal French war-weariness and the military pressure of the FLN insurgency. In Rhodesia, isolation from the international community played a part, but it was the white government’s inability to suppress the incessant guerrilla warfare tearing the country apart that forced them to the negotiating table. In both of these cases, armed insurgency along ethnic lines was the key to victory. Now, in South Africa, the violence of groups like Spear of the Nation certainly was an element in the collapse of the Apartheid Regime. But it was the mass array of sanctions, boycotts, and divestment aimed from nearly every nation on earth at South Africa until it was a totally isolated pariah state that truly brought down the Regime. While Algeria and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia were battles fought in the language of the anti-colonial independence movement, South Africa was fought in the language of justice and equality. In essence, the former were ethnic conflicts, and the latter was a human rights issue.

That statement may seem trite and over-simplistic, and in many ways it is. Obviously, those fighting against the tyranny of the French and Rhodesian governments were fighting for their human rights, even if they didn’t use those terms, and the struggles in South Africa were still fought along mostly ethnic and racial lines. But this is a matter of language and perception. And not just the perception of observers, but the perception of participants as well. Ethnic conflicts are bloody and brutal. They lead to feuds and lingering hatreds, atrocities and genocides, massacres and counter-massacres. Once people have been convinced that their group of people is inimically opposed to another group of people, the end result is inevitable. And even if the conflict has its roots in actual grievances, the reaction of most people is likely to be to throw up their hands, sigh, and say that while of course it’s tragic, there’s not much you can do if they just hate each other. In a conflict based around human rights issues, the perception is very different. In South Africa, the fact that the impetus of the movement was located internationally meant that it become much more than a simple Blacks vs. Whites ethnic conflict. It was instead about a specific entity, the government of South Africa, that was being held to account for it’s violations of objective human rights. This strategy focused the attention of the anti-Apartheid movement on ending a distinct set of laws and customs in South Africa, as opposed to a more general ethnic struggle between oppressors and oppressed. The use of international sanctions and the language of human rights meant that the victory conditions demanded by the ANC required only the deconstruction of the specific political regime targeted, while allowing reconciliation and rapprochement for the population at large.

I said earlier that there were there were two other countries facing the same problem as South Africa. In fact, there were three. The last one is Israel, which enjoys democratic governance by its Jewish population, while millions of Palestinians in the West Bank have spent 46 years under military occupation, watching as their land is steadily confiscated for the use of Israeli settlers. Right now, most people see the Israel-Palestine conflict as an ethnic one. Even people with sympathy for the Palestinian position all too often dismiss the whole situation by lamenting the fact that the two groups “just hate each other so much”. This is because, for all intents and purposes, it has been an ethnic conflict. The Palestinians have used the weapons of terrorism, of insurgency, of popular insurrection, all aimed at Israel (and often the Jewish people) in general. It has been, for all intents and purposes, a war fought between two ethnic groups. This has contributed greatly to the international perception that the whole thing is just an unsolvable mess. But this is starting to change. The Palestinian Civil Society call for a Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel utilizes the language of international justice and human rights. It calls for specific changes in Israeli policy and governance, and it does so on the basis of specific, quantifiable actions taken against the Palestinian people in violation of international law and basic human rights. In effect, it transforms the conflict from a war to the death like Algeria or Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, and into South Africa-style campaign to bring about the end of a government dedicated to racial dominance.

Some people may wonder, does it really matter the manner in which the struggle against Israeli oppression is fought? After all, all three of those countries did eventually gain victory. And to be honest, I agree. If the BDS movement collapsed tomorrow, Palestinian resistance would continue. And I believe it would eventually succeed. But let’s be clear. If the BDS movement collapsed tomorrow, the struggle would almost certainly return to the methods of violent insurrection and terrorism. And if and when they achieved victory, the results would look far too similar to the post-independence chaos and bloodshed of Algeria or Zimbabwe for comfort. This is why we must support BDS. Building a Palestinan freedom campaign built on the precepts on justice, human rights, and international coordination is the only way to ensure that when the Israeli Apartheid regime falls, what emerges truly will be a democracy of all its citizens, and not the ascendency of the blood-stained and vengeful victorious opposition.

BDS: The Best Hope for a True Peace

#whowillbeisraelsdeklerk

 

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Haim Bresheeth and Sherna Berger Gluck weigh in on the idea of that vaunted nation "that ranks among the most free and vigilant in protecting intellectual freedom" ...

(I'm not entirely sure, but judging from their names I don't think either of these individuals are Palestinians ... but I may be wrong ... )

On the Fallacy of 'Engaging' with the Israeli Academy
by HAIM BRESHEETH and SHERNA BERGER GLUCK

A standard argument against BDS – the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Israeli occupation – and especially the academic boycott- has been the "'need to engage" with Israelis. In fact, during the 46 years of the occupation, numerous efforts to 'engage' have been made repeatedly, all of which are warmly embraced by Israel and its academic institutions.

The most recent example is an "International Oral History" conference being organized by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, featuring renowned Italian oral historian Alessandro Portelli. The conference topics included trauma studies, holocaust studies and conflict studies and assiduously avoiding any reference to the Nakba.

Such typical elision has become an iconic political battle-zone between the supporters of Palestinian rights and pro-Israelis, who promote 'dialogue' and 'engagement'; Nor is it surprising that the Hebrew University avoids the topic, given its own complicity in the ongoing Palestinian trauma. The recently passed Nakba Law in Israel bans even the commemoration of the Nakba, so this avoidance is part of a larger project of Israeli denial.

Private efforts to dissuade the two scheduled speakers failed, and it became clear that they firmly subscribed to the value of 'engagement," even with an institution like Hebrew University whose complicity in the violation of Palestinian rights and international law we fully documented. Following this exchange, the original webpage for the conference was replaced, and an elliptical reference seemed to open the door for some discussion of the unmentioned Nakba.

The issues involved in this planned conference go beyond the ill-informed and misguided participation of the featured speakers; A public call to boycott the conference signed by 72 international academics was issued in August. Now, in just over a month, there are more than 250 signatories, of whom one third are oral historians from 19 countries, including South Africa, Brazil, Spain and India.

Because the further discussion of boycott was shut off on the US listserv where the conference was initially announced, a message posted by the conference organizer was the last substantive comment on the issue. In it, she claims boycotting the Hebrew University "only serves as a disservice to many individuals, organizations and communities who dedicate their professional and personal life to finding a just resolution to the conflict." http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/20/on-the-fallacy-of-engaging-with-the-israeli-academy/#_edn1 Thus, the argument for "engagement" was permissible, but the US academic community was denied access to the compelling evidence for boycott. In effect, they were given a response to a question not yet publicly debated.

The dispute playing out among academics, and the timidity of those in the US compared to other internationals, is not new. Furthermore, it represents a conflict that goes much deeper, touching on the very question of "engagement".

The Folly of Engagment

Academics have been going to conferences in Israel, especially in Jerusalem, for five long decades of occupation, engaging with their Israeli counterparts. It's bad enough that these engagements have resulted in nothing positive, but to make matters worse, they have become part and parcel of Israeli political strategy: more engagement, discussions, meetings, negotiations between the sides ad infinitum. The current phase of such fruitless exercises recently initiated by US Secretary of State John Kerry will likely join the others in the dustbin of history

Worse yet, under the guise of continuing discussions and negotiations – a delaying tactic developed by PM Shamir in the 1980s – Israel has managed to add 700,000 illegal settlers in the Occupied Territories of Palestine and Syria. This is almost the number of Palestinian refugees who were forcibly driven out of Palestine in 1948 by the Israeli forces and never allowed back, despite numerous UN resolutions.

In over six decades of its existence, Israel has defied the UN on the most crucial resolutions passed on the rights of the Palestinians; it illegally settled the territories it occupied; it defied the Geneva Convention on numerous counts, including its failure to look after the population under occupation. Among other things, it has refused to grant Palestinian universities a license to operate, and closed the exiting institutions for long periods. During this time, not once did Israeli faculty unions or the university senates call for reopening of Palestinian universities, or for the restitution of academic freedom in Palestine. Israeli universities have themselves been directly complicit in Israel's violation of Palestinian human rights and international laws, and all have collaborated in some way with the military occupation, including assisting the military-security-industrial complex.[ii] In the case of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, its Mt. Scopus campus was expanded onto illegally occupied and confiscated land.

Yet, in contrast to South African apartheid, most academics throughout the world remained silent for years, mounting little opposition to Israel's crimes. Only in 2005, following the PACBI call for an academic boycott, did the BDS and academic boycott campaign start in earnest in the UK. Since then, BRICUP (British Committee for Universities in Palestine) has been involved in numerous successful actions, including the recent withdrawal of leading physicist Stephen Hawking from the Presidential conference of 2013 – an action that galvanized scientists and academics elsewhere[iii].

Four years after the founding of BRICUP, and in response to Operation Cast Lead, campaigns in both the US (USACBI) and France (AURDIP) were initiated. [iv] While short of the success of Hawking's repudiation, both campaigns have been very active. In the US, perhaps the most significant success on the academic front was the passage of an academic boycott resolution at the Asian American Studies Conference in May 2013. AURDIP, while being severely hampered by the repressive policies initiated by Sarkozy, fully applied under Holland, remains an important clearinghouse on the academic boycott, regularly using public events showcasing cooperation between French and Israeli academic institutions as a platform to promote BDS.

Today, there are active boycott campaigns in Spain (PBAI), Berlin (BAB) and India (IncACBI), all of which were initiated in 2010[v], and in Ireland – AFP (Academics for Palestine) was created in 2012[vi]. Perhaps the most important development was the development of a BDS movement inside Israel – Boycott from Within. Recently, these boycott campaigns have garnered increasing support, often from some of the most notable scholars in their countries, like Josep Fontana, the prestigious Spanish (Catalan) historian. The boycott groups in Spain, India and the US are currently organizing against partnerships being forged with Israel's Technion. Even in Germany, where any criticism of Israel is highly suspect, the BAB is challenging a funded cooperation agreement between the Free University and the Hebrew University.

Quite obviously, the message is spreading, gradually penetrating academic institutions everywhere. In response, Israel and the Zionist movement have devoted tremendous efforts to counter the boycott campaign, funded by government Ministries. The long-term policy that was devised initially prioritized the UK. A number of Israeli task forces drawn from Israeli universities, arrived in Britain to 'explain' the need for 'engagement' and 'dialogue'. The same professors who for years disengaged from any support of the human and civic rights of Palestinians, including their right to education, were now globe-trotting in support of the 'real victim' – Israel – promoting 'engagement' with the occupation forces under the banner of dialogue. The latest, but surely not last iteration, is the government campaign to use Israel's students against the boycott. Recent revelations exposed the creation of covert units at Israeli universities, designed to work with the Israeli National Student Union, using social media.

Whatever else one might think about Israeli universities, they could never be accused of being liberal or supportive of human rights. A few months before the Gaza incursion in December 2008, a petition for academic freedom in the Occupied Territories was circulated to over 10,000 Israeli academics. This mild petition, merely requesting the government to allow Palestinians the same freedom enjoyed by Israeli academics, was signed by only 407 Israeli academics – 4% of the total. The Academic Staff unions in Israel never even discussed or acted on the matter. Although Tel Aviv University is by far the most 'liberal' of all, with 155 faculty signing the said petition, in 2012, Shlomo Sand felt compelled to castigate his colleagues in the history department for concealing the problematic history of their own university, built on the former Palestinian village of Sheikh Muwanis[vii].

Israeli academics continually ignore calls of Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel's agressive occupation, arguing instead for 'dialogue' with Israeli colleagues. In fact, the Hebrew University conference is promoted as a "participatory site in which 'difficult dialogues' on memory and perspectives will be discussed." As usual, instead of promoting dialogue with Palestinian academics, the best that the conference organizers can muster is a reference to "the issues that this country and region face." One wonders – is the occupation such an issue?

What could possibly be wrong with dialogue, you might ask? Instead, perhaps the appropriate question might be: "is it moral to collaborate with a militarized, racist, colonial state, in order to cleanse its crimes?" Doesn't this mean that crimes continue and newer ones are perpetrated? Indeed, evidence clearly demonstrates that continuing 'engagements' have not led to resolution, but instead served to numb the sensibilities of international academia to the realities of occupied Palestine. In the case of South Africa, it was clear to all academics that there was no way to 'engage' with apartheid by speaking to its representatives; the only way to deal with apartheid was to oppose it – to boycott, divest and apply sanctions; to deny South African institutions any support and dialogue; and to follow the advice of the ANC.

Though not yet on the same scale as the South African campaign, the BDS campaign has been successful. Many academics worldwide are now sensitized to becoming complicit in Israel's illegal occupation, its settler-colonial policies and its apartheid practices and have stopped participating with Israeli institutions. The campaign to boycott the Hebrew University "international" oral history conference is part of the growing world wide effort to honor the Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel.

Because so many oral historians view their work as a means of giving voice to the oppressed and silenced, boycotting this conference should be a no-brainer. Indeed, for the internationally-minded oral historians, it is just that, even as so many US practitioners have basically buried their heads in the sand, following their government's lead.

We wonder what the two advocates of engagement solicited for keynotes will do, and especially how the Hebrew University will respond. Will it, for instance, throw generous travel stipends to participants, rendering them party to the Israeli propaganda machine? We hope, instead, that oral historians around the world will heed the call not to cross the Palestinian picket line, thereby honoring the basic ethical/moral foundation of the historian's work. [viii]

Haim Bresheeth and Sherna Berger Gluck are part of an international group that initiated this boycott campaign and which includes Sami Hermez, Nur Masalha, Ilan Pappe, Rosemary Sayigh and Lisa Taraki, among others. Bresheeth is Professor of Film Studies at SOAS London and active in BRICUP; Gluck is Director Emerita of the Oral History Program at California University, Long Beach and one of the founders of the US Academic and Cultural Boycott Campaign of Israel

On the Fallacy of 'Engaging' with the Israeli Academy » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

 

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... will the sleeper ever awaken ?

Boycott goes prime-time in Israel

The country’s number-one news show runs lengthy piece on the growing movement – and blames it not on anti-Semitism or Israel-bashing, but on settlements.

On Saturday night the boycott of Israel gained an impressive new level of mainstream recognition in this country. Channel 2 News, easily the most watched, most influential news show here, ran a heavily-promoted, 16-minute piece on the boycott in its 8 p.m. prime-time program. The piece was remarkable not only for its length and prominence, but even more so because it did not demonize the boycott movement, it didn’t blame the boycott on anti-Semitism or Israel-bashing. Instead, top-drawer reporter Dana Weiss treated the boycott as an established, rapidly growing presence that sprang up because of Israel’s settlement policy and whose only remedy is that policy’s reversal.

In her narration, Weiss ridicules the settlers and the government’s head-in-the-sand reaction to the rising tide. The segment from the West Bank’s Barkan Industrial Park opens against a background of twangy guitar music like from a Western. “To the world it’s a black mark, a symbol of the occupation,” she reads. “But here they insist it’s actually a point of light in the area, an island of coexistence that continues to flourish despite efforts to erase it from the map.” A factory owner who moved his business to Barkan from the other side of the Green Line makes a fool of himself by saying, “If the state would only assist us by boycotting the Europeans and other countries causing us trouble …” The Barkan segment ends with the manager of Shamir Salads saying that between the European and Palestinian boycott, he’s losing about $115,000 to $143,000 a month in sales. “In my view,” he says, “it will spread from [the West Bank] to other places in Israel that have no connection to the territories.”

Weiss likewise ridicules Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, who runs the government’s “hasbara war,” as he puts it. Weiss: “Yes, in the Foreign Ministry they are for the time being sticking to the old conception: it’s all a question of hasbara. This week the campaign’s new weapon, developed with the contributions of world Jewry: (Pause) Another hasbara agency, this time with the original name ‘Face To Israel.’” She quotes the co-owner of Psagot Winery saying the boycott is “nothing to get excited about,” that people have been boycotting Jews for 2,000 years, and concluding, “If you ask me, in the last 2,000 years, our situation today is the best it’s ever been.” That final phrase, along with what Weiss describes as Elkin’s “conceptzia,” are the same infamous words that Israelis associate with the fatal complacency that preceded the surprise Yom Kippur War. ...

(Article continues at link below)

Boycott goes prime-time in Israel | +972 Magazine

 

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And then, on the other hand, you have the Israeli version of Rip Van Winkle, who appears to be getting settled in for a long snooze:

Warnings of economic boycott rile Israeli minister | Reuters

 

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But the noose tightens:

A hundred of Israel’s leading businessmen and businesswomen will fly to Davos next week, armed with a poignant message for the prime minister: Maintaining a growing and stable economy requires Israel to make peace with Palestinians, the sooner the better.

Leaders and businesspeople ranging from Strauss Group Chairwoman Ofra Strauss to Google Israel CEO Meir Bren and former UN ambassador Dan Gillerman will descend on the Davos Economic Forum to urge Israelis and Palestinians leaders to reach a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An a-political group of Palestinians and Israelis, which includes names such as Palestinian energy mogul Munib Masri, tech mogul Yossi Vardi, Amdocs founder Maurice Kahan, Bezeq CEO Avi Gabai, industrialist Gad Propper, Israeli low-cost supermarket magnate Rami Levy and former ambassador to the US Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, have signed on an initiative called Breaking the Impasse (BTI)….

(Article continues at link below)

As boycott pressure grows, Israeli business leaders plan to confront Netanyahu

 

[muttly]

An interesting speech from Canada's Prime Minister. This guy would definitely be an upgrade over what we have.


In his address to the Israeli Knesset on Jan. 20, 2014, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered moral clarity. To the anti-Israel cult that has taken root in academic circles and most recently passed a boycott resolution under the aegis of the American Studies Association, Harper provided an unequivocating response:

And so we have witnessed, in recent years, the mutation of the old disease of anti-Semitism and the emergence of a new strain... in much of the western world, the old hatred has been translated into more sophisticated language for use in polite society.
As once Jewish businesses were boycotted, some civil-society leaders today call for a boycott of Israel. On some campuses, intellectualized arguments against Israeli policies thinly mask the underlying realities, such as the shunning of Israeli academics and the harassment of Jewish students. Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state. Think about that. Think about the twisted logic and outright malice behind that: A state, based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law, that was founded so Jews can flourish, as Jews, and seek shelter from the shadow of the worst racist experiment in history, that is condemned, and that condemnation is masked in the language of anti-racism. It is nothing short of sickening.
Harper bluntly explains why so many nations endlessly chastise Israel:

One must look beyond Israel’s borders to find the causes of the relentless oppression, poverty and violence in much of the region, of the heartbreaking suffering of Syrian refugees, of sectarian violence and the fears of religious minorities, especially Christians, and of the current domestic turmoil in so many states.
It is easier to foster resentment and hatred of Israel’s democracy than it is to provide the same rights and freedoms to their own people.
He concludes with a statement of what Israel means to his own worldview:

I believe the story of Israel is a great example to the world. It is a story, essentially, of a people whose response to suffering has been to move beyond resentment and build a most extraordinary society, a vibrant democracy, a freedom-loving country with an independent and rights-affirming judiciary. An innovative, world-leading “start-up” nation...
CAMERA Snapshots: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Moral Clarity
Full speech:
Harper tells Israel: 'Through fire and water, Canada will stand with you' | The Times of Israel

 

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Continued from article:
...., it is important to expose what academic disciplines they cluster around and what they espouse:

Of the 35 people listed as members of the ASA Academic and Community Caucus no less than 11 are associated with departments of Women's, Feminist, Gender Studies, Sexuality or Queer Studies.

Israel does "pinkwashing" on the one hand ... while their tool - CAMERA - vilifies the same folks on the other ...

Absolutely no hypocrisy there ...

Just more proof that the hasbarats have no moral constraints as to the depths of depravity that they will sink to manipulate the ignorant and uninformed ... all while seeking to vilify those who work to expose Israel's ongoing crimes and who support human rights for all and not just the preferred ethnicity/religion:

Israel and ‘Pinkwashing’
By SARAH SCHULMAN
Published: November 22, 2011

“IN dreams begin responsibilities,” wrote Yeats in 1914. These words resonate with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who have witnessed dramatic shifts in our relationship to power. After generations of sacrifice and organization, gay people in parts of the world have won protection from discrimination and relationship recognition. But these changes have given rise to a nefarious phenomenon: the co-opting of white gay people by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political forces in Western Europe and Israel.

In the Netherlands, some Dutch gay people have been drawn to the messages of Geert Wilders, who inherited many followers of the assassinated anti-immigration gay leader Pim Fortuyn, and whose Party for Freedom is now the country’s third largest political party. In Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, the extremist who massacred 77 people in July, cited Bruce Bawer, a gay American writer critical of Muslim immigration, as an influence. The Guardian reported last year that the racist English Defense League had 115 members in its gay wing. The German Lesbian and Gay Federation has issued statements citing Muslim immigrants as enemies of gay people.

These depictions of immigrants — usually Muslims of Arab, South Asian, Turkish or African origin — as “homophobic fanatics” opportunistically ignore the existence of Muslim gays and their allies within their communities. They also render invisible the role that fundamentalist Christians, the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Jews play in perpetuating fear and even hatred of gays. And that cynical message has now spread from its roots in European xenophobia to become a potent tool in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 2005, with help from American marketing executives, the Israeli government began a marketing campaign, “Brand Israel,” aimed at men ages 18 to 34. The campaign, as reported by The Jewish Daily Forward, sought to depict Israel as “relevant and modern.” The government later expanded the marketing plan by harnessing the gay community to reposition its global image.

Last year, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that the Tel Aviv tourism board had begun a campaign of around $90 million to brand the city as “an international gay vacation destination.” The promotion, which received support from the Tourism Ministry and Israel’s overseas consulates, includes depictions of young same-sex couples and financing for pro-Israeli movie screenings at lesbian and gay film festivals in the United States. (The government isn’t alone; an Israeli pornography producer even shot a film, “Men of Israel,” on the site of a former Palestinian village.)

This message is being articulated at the highest levels. In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress that the Middle East was “a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted.”

The growing global gay movement against the Israeli occupation has named these tactics “pinkwashing”: a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life. Aeyal Gross, a professor of law at Tel Aviv University, argues that “gay rights have essentially become a public-relations tool,” even though “conservative and especially religious politicians remain fiercely homophobic.”

Pinkwashing not only manipulates the hard-won gains of Israel’s gay community, but it also ignores the existence of Palestinian gay-rights organizations. Homosexuality has been decriminalized in the West Bank since the 1950s, when anti-sodomy laws imposed under British colonial influence were removed from the Jordanian penal code, which Palestinians follow. More important is the emerging Palestinian gay movement with three major organizations: Aswat, Al Qaws and Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. These groups are clear that the oppression of Palestinians crosses the boundary of sexuality; as Haneen Maikay, the director of Al Qaws, has said, “When you go through a checkpoint it does not matter what the sexuality of the soldier is.”

(Article continues at link below)

‘Pinkwashing’ and Israel’s Use of Gays as a Messaging Tool - NYTimes.com

 

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As Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors [one of the largest academic associations] noted in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed on Jan. 9, 2014, "A truer indication of the real goal is the boycott movement's success at increasing intolerance on American campuses."

Phan Nguyen does a completely massive, and absolutely devastating, takedown of Cary Nelson (who is Jewish - a fact CAMERA fails to mention), exposing him for exactly what he is - complete and total hypocrite:

Cary Nelson, the AAUP, and the privilege of bestowing academic freedom

Phan Nguyen on January 17, 2014

One of the most prominent US voices against the academic boycott of Israel is Cary Nelson, professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 2006 to 2012, Nelson served as the president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the leading organization championing academic freedom and shared governance in US postsecondary schools.

In the name of academic freedom, the AAUP has spoken out against pro-Israel attempts at campus censorship, as in the high-profile cases of Norman Finkelstein, Joseph Massad, Nadia Abu El-Haj, and last year’s BDS talk at Brooklyn College. At the same time, the AAUP has taken a position against all academic boycotts, also citing academic freedom.

Nelson’s still-prominent role in the AAUP, along with his extensive writing and advocacy for academic freedom, has allowed him to speak authoritatively against the academic boycott of Israel in outlets such as Inside Higher Ed, Democracy Now!, and Aljazeera, while being quoted extensively elsewhere.

Until recently, his left-liberal activism and limited commentary on Palestine/Israel has distanced him from charges of bias toward Israel in his opposition to the boycott. It was in this context that I decided to examine his viewpoint further, initially believing that his was a stance based on a genuine commitment to academic freedom, and I wanted to explore those arguments.

What I found instead was a conception of academic freedom that was contradictory and self-serving. His defenses of Finkelstein, Massad, and Abu El-Haj were sprinkled with backhanded insults, passive aggressiveness, and condescension. His attempts at being neutral only slightly concealed his deference to Israel.

As this study demonstrates, Nelson wields his authority on academic freedom as a type of power with which he undermines those he disagrees, while pretending to defend their right to hold contrary viewpoints. In the process, I will also show that the AAUP itself, which has taken an absolutist position against academic boycotts, is not as principled or consistent on the issue as it may seem.

This study is broken into three parts and several sections, clickable below:

(Article continues at link below)

Cary Nelson, the AAUP, and the privilege of bestowing academic freedom

#boycottsformebutnotforthee

 

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The hot news on the BDS front this past week or so is the huge controversy that has erupted around Scarlett Johansson's decision to act as a "Global Ambassador" for the apartheid-enabling, occupation profiteer Israeli company SodaStream - including the wide play it's starting to get in the American Mainstream Media.

Before we get to the meat and potatoes, here's a little artistic setup for the coverage, from the Imagine Dragons ... featuring "Pinkie" as a proxy for the BDS'ers coming to the aid of the Palestinians ... in "Radioactive" ... something that Israel is rapidly getting to be:

 

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A piece published in the Twin Cities Daily Planet on SodaStream, written by Jordan Ash of St. Paul, who is a member of Mount Zion synagogue and on the national board of Jewish Voice for Peace:

SodaStream is outside the mainstream
By Jordan Ash, Free Speech Zone
September 11, 2012

SodaStream, a new product that turns tap water into seltzer water, has been showing up on the shelves of Twin Cities’ department stores. The circumstances under which SodaStream products are made is anything but refreshing.
SodaStream is an Israeli company with its main factory in the industrial park of Ma’aleh Adumim, the largest Israeli Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

According to research by the Israeli group Coalition of Women for Peace, being in the settlements provides SodaStream structural advantages – low rent, a labor force that is easily exploited, special tax incentives, and lax enforcement of regulations.

For over 40 years, Israel has occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. The Occupation means that the Israeli military has total authority over every aspect of Palestinian life in these areas.

Numerous human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have condemned the Occupation for violating international humanitarian law and Palestinians’ human rights through the construction of hundreds of settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli government offered substantial benefits to encourage hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews to relocate to these settlements.

Similarly, SodaStream built its factory in the settlement in order to receive financial incentives from the Israeli government, and like all businesses in the settlements’ industrial parks, SodaStream qualifies for ongoing tax deductions.
As with the Maquiladoras along the U.S.-Mexican border, the high unemployment rate means that many Palestinians are forced to try to earn a living through jobs in the settlements, despite the low pay and harsh working conditions.

Palestinian workers in the settlements do not enjoy the full protection of Israeli labor laws. They must get special permits and security clearance just to be able to enter these factories. Involvement in a labor dispute constitutes a security risk and can result in the loss of not only a worker’s current job but their ability to work in settlements in the future. Thus, many Palestinian workers do not demand their legal employment rights due to fear of losing their work permit.

At the SodaStream factory, when workers protested that they were being paid less than half of the minimum wage and were forced to work 12 hour days, they were fired. On another occasion, when workers who were fired and were still owed a month’s wages went to the factory to request their pay, SodaStream had them removed from the factory and banned from the entire industrial park.

As with all business in the illegal settlements, SodaStream pays taxes to Israel, not to the Palestinian Authority. The municipal taxes that SodaStream pays are used exclusively to support the growth and development of the settlement through things such as roads, education, and sewage treatment.

Many people view buying products such as SodaStream that are manufactured in the settlements as contributing to sustaining the illegal settlements. That is why a number of organizations, Meretz USA, Americans for Peace Now, and Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as the Presbyterian and Methodist churches, have endorsed a boycott of SodaStream and other products made in the illegal settlements.

Boycotts have long been used as a way for individuals and communities to act on their values and influence policies. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Farmworkers’ grape boycott to boycotts of companies doing business in apartheid South Africa to an Israeli boycott of cottage cheese in the summer of 2011 as a protest against the continuing rise in food prices.

The settlements are illegal. They are a major obstacle to a just peace and are an impediment to Palestinian economic and social development. Boycotting SodaStream and other settlement products is a way for us to stand up for human rights and say that we do not support the Occupation.


Jordan Ash of St. Paul is a member of Mount Zion synagogue and on the national board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

FREE SPEECH ZONE | SodaStream is outside the mainstream | Twin Cities Daily Planet

 

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Now let's get started on Johansson:

Scarlett Johansson for SodaStream: ‘Set the bubbles free’ but keep the Palestinians bottled in Area A

Annie Robbins on January 12, 2014

​

Sultry Scarlett Johansson is adding another image to her resume, as the new face of apartheid. She’s signed on with SodaStream, for its Super Bowl ad to be aired on February 2, launching off the corporation’s new worldwide advertising campaign with the sales pitch “better bubbles, made by you and Scarlett.”

The SodaStream factory is built in Mishor Adumim Industrial Zone, located in the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, one of the largest Israeli thefts of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. The chunk of land the settlement is built on separated Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jericho in violation of human rights and international law. At the announcement yesterday, Johansson appeared before a backdrop that bragged, “Set the bubbles free.” Her mother is Jewish, and the Times of Israel calls her a “Jewish actress.”

(Article continues at link below)

Scarlett Johansson reps Soda Stream: new face of Apartheid

 

[RLENT]

Ooopsies !

Scarlett Johansson watch: SodaStream plunges
Annie Robbins on January 15, 2014

​

SodaStream is the seltzer maker that produces its fizz-boxes in occupied territory in Palestine, and the other day starlet Scarlett Johansson signed a multi-year contract with the corporation that kicks off during the Superbowl. Monday was SodaStream's first day of trading since the announcement that Johansson was SodaStream's new face, and the stock took a beating, and it hasn't recovered in the two days of trading since.

"Even Star Johansson Can’t Help SodaStream as Stock Sinks 26%" was Bloomberg Business Week’s headline, while InvestorPlace contributor Lawrence Meyers cites SodaStream as "long-term business failure….a momentum fad stock."

Take a look at the bloodbath Monday:

​

In a press release, SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum chalked up the loss to a 'challenging holiday season,' among other factors, acknowledging the corporation "failed to deliver our profit targets and are disappointed in our fourth quarter performance". The stock has declined a whopping 40 percent since last fall.

The Wall Street Journal blog MoneyBeat says "SodaStream has gone flat", and features a photo of Scarlett Johansson with the line, "SodaStream’s newest pitchman already has her work cut out for her". WSJ:

[T]he Israeli company had a hot, hip product with good buzz; it even unveiled Scarlett Johanssen as its newest pitchman (the company called her a "brand ambassador") on Saturday.

"We expected some weakness in U.S. sales but are surprised by the magnitude of the company’s gross margin and earnings miss," analyst Jim Chartier at Monness Crespi Hardt wrote. He cut his rating to neutral from buy. "While we continue to believe in the story longer term, we are moving to the sidelines until we have greater clarity on the company’s gross margin issues."

(Article continules at link below)

Scarlett watch: Soda Stream shares dropped 25% yesterday

 

[RLENT]

Interesting piece from yesterday by contributing editor Jay Michaelson @ The Jewish Daily Forward:

There's a Good Reason for 'Singling Out' Israel

Usual Complaint from Pro-Israel Activists Doesn't Really Make
Sense

Double Standard!: The frequent accusation hurled against the United Nations for its focus on Israel.​

By Jay Michaelson

Published January 25, 2014.

In a recent letter to university officials, Hillel President Eric Fingerhut and Israel on Campus Coalition Executive Director Jacob Baime decried “efforts to hold Israel to a different standard than any other nation.”

Is that true? Is Israel being held to a different standard than other nations?

Here, I will argue first that the different standard is appropriate, and second that this whole claim undermines Israel’s legitimacy.

To begin with, yes, of course Israel is held to a different standard than China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and other countries with far worse human rights records.

But Israel is also situated differently. Unlike the countries listed above, Israel is the leading recipient of. foreign aid from the United States (briefly in second place to Afghanistan, but that will soon change). Moreover, Israel’s policies are, rightly or wrongly, defended against nearly global opposition by the United States government. One could argue that but for that support, those policies would not exist.

A “different standard” is appropriate when entities are situated differently. What’s appropriate for a 40- year-old isn’t appropriate for a 4-year-old. And the standard to which we hold our country’s enemies is different from the standard to which we hold our closest allies.

Moreover, boycotting Israel (in whatever form) is also a response very different from the severe economic sanctions against Iran, for example, or the threats of military action against North Korea. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement supports actions that make sense in the context of a highly subsidized American ally. Were the situation different, presumably the tactics would be different, too.

Different situations, different standards, different responses. Entirely consistent.

But the “different standard” charge is worse than misguided; it undermines the very cause its supporters hope to advance. The charge’s obvious subtext is that anti-Semitism is the real motivation. “Why don’t these student activists focus on North Korea? Why the focus on Israel? Hmmm…?” In the absence of any rational justification, an irrational one is supposed.

This accusation, overt or covert, is patently absurd to any college student who knows a BDS supporter (which, to remind readers, I am not). Sure, there are some genuine Jew haters, terrorist sympathizers and other baddies in the crowd. But most BDS supporters on campus are earnest progressives, and anyone not already in the American Israel Public Amen Corner can see that.

Now let’s see how this plays out. Suppose you’re a moderate, and moderately informed, college student. You go to Hillel, and the pro-Israel people there tell you that the BDS movement is “unfairly singling out” Israel or “holding it to a different standard.” They imply that the reasons for this are sinister. Then you walk down your dorm hallway, and chat with your friend who supports BDS.

What do you now think of the pro-Israel crowd?

Well, you think they’re idiots, or zealots, or both. You think, these people are so blinded by their tribal nationalism that they cry foul when anyone opposes them. You think that to be pro-Israel is to be biased, paranoid and ignorant.

(Article continues at link below)

There's a Good Reason for 'Singling Out' Israel - Forward.com

 

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Name Scarlett Johansson's favorite SodaStream flavor:

We'll Bomb You Berry

Pinkwashing Grapefruit

Settle-Mint Julip

Passionfruit Pricetag Attack

Mountain Settlement Dew

Racist Raspberry Fizzle

Ignorant Bliss Berry (Has no flavor, but it pays well)

The Only Ginger Ale in the Middle East

Rubber Bullet* Rhubarb (*plastic-coated steel bullet)

Lemon Lime Land Theft

Burnt Olive Tree

Oppression Fruit

Checkpoint Cherry

Doctor Pepper Spray

Settlement Citrus Squeeze

Gaza Lo Carb

Palestinian Punch

Checkpoint Cola

Bantustan Banana

White Phosphorus Cheesecake

Apartheid Apple

Gaza Flood

Segregation Wall Strawberry

Occupation Orange

Huckleberry Hasbara

Segregation Wall Watermelon

Two-faced Tomato

Zionist Gang Grape

and finally:

If-you-criticise-my-support-for-Sodastream-I'll-call-you-anti-Semitic Strawberry

More at:

https://twitter.com/search?q=#ScarJosFavoriteSodastreamFlavor&src=hash

 

[RLENT]

... Qalandia Cola ...

... set the bubbles free Dah-ling ...​

 

[muttly]

Scarlett Johansson & Soda Stream ? Peace vs. Apartheid?

1. Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky says the BDS campaign against SodaStream shows that the movement is less concerned with the Palestinians and more concerned with harming Israel.* “BDS claims it wants only what is good for Palestinians, no matter how many of them it has to hurt,” he writes, referring to the hundreds of Palestinians whose jobs would be in danger if economic sanctions against SodaStream took hold

Fighting BDS - Columnist Questions Motives of BDS | HonestReporting.

 

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Stu Bykofsky ... is that the genius that wrote:

... "one month from The Anniversary, I'm thinking another 9/11 would help America" in order to "quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail."