[NYTr] A double standard on academic freedom in the Middle East

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l)

Baltimore Sun - Sep 17, 2007
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.boycott17sep17,0,4476313.story


A double standard on academic freedom in the Middle East

By George Bisharat

Two hundred thousand Palestinian children began school in the Gaza
Strip this month without a full complement of textbooks. Why? Because
Israel, which maintains a stranglehold over this small strip of
land along the Mediterranean even after withdrawing its settlers
from there in 2005, considers paper, ink and binding materials not
to be "fundamental humanitarian needs."

Israel, attempting to throttle the democratically elected Hamas
government, generally permits only food, medicine and fuel to enter
Gaza, and allows virtually no Palestinian exports to leave. Lately,
it held up delivery of materials needed for printing textbooks. As
a result, Gaza students began the year facing a 30 percent shortage
of texts.

No full-page advertisements in major American newspapers have
publicized Israel's violations of Palestinian children's right to
an education. No editors, syndicated columnists or presidents of
major universities in this country have denounced this callous
measure. Our politicians have demanded no remedial action. Instead,
they continue, verbally and materially, to support Israel in its
near-total blockade of 1.5 million Palestinians, kids and all.

Israel's trampling of Palestinian students' right to education -
the key to a lifetime of opportunity - has rarely evoked official
protest from American leaders. The Israeli army has closed Palestinian
universities for years at a time. Israeli military authorities have
barred Palestinian occupational therapy students from traveling
from Gaza to the West Bank to obtain vital clinical training.

Hundreds of Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks can turn a routine
trip to a local school into a harrowing ordeal. Israeli gunfire has
even killed Palestinian schoolchildren sitting in their classrooms.
None of these offenses has merited so much as a congressional
resolution, let alone more serious efforts to curb Israeli behavior,
such as government-imposed sanctions.

In response to this policy double standard - complete indulgence
of Israel on the one hand, and indifference to violations of
Palestinian rights on the other hand - a movement has emerged for
a citizens' boycott of Israel.

Churches, unions and professional associations in the United States,
Canada, Europe and South Africa have urged a variety of nonviolent
measures to compel Israel's compliance with international law.

American Presbyterians have studied divesting church funds from
firms that profit from continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian
lands. Unison, the United Kingdom's 1.3 million-member union of
public servants, voted in June to boycott Israeli goods. In May, a
British union of professors opened a yearlong debate over a possible
boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

The latter action provoked particularly indignant protest by Israel's
U.S.

supporters as an offense against "academic freedom." Yet many Israeli
academic institutions either benefit from or participate in Israeli
government actions that violate Palestinian rights.

Tel Aviv University sits in part over land belonging to Sheikh
Muwannis, a Palestinian village whose residents were expelled by
Jewish militias or fled in fear in March 1948. These and other
Palestinian refugees have been denied their right to return to their
homes or to receive compensation for their seized properties.

Hebrew University in Jerusalem uses more than 800 acres of land
illegally expropriated from Palestinian private owners in the West
Bank after the 1967 war. Bar-Ilan University has established a
branch in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

The threatened boycott would target Israeli institutions, not
individuals.

Thus, formal research and other agreements with Israeli universities
would be suspended. But invitations to Israeli professors to join
conferences or to publish in foreign journals would continue.

Nonetheless, it is likely that the boycott would impose limitations
on freedom for some Israeli academics. Is this fair?

Boycotts are always somewhat blunt tools, and they inevitably impose
costs on some who are undeserving of them. That was true of the
boycott of apartheid South Africa, which applied to all academics
- as well as athletes, businesspeople, artists and others. At the
time, the international community weighed the cost to academic
freedom against the advancement of justice and equal rights for
black South Africans, and the choice was clear.

Two hundred thousand Palestinian schoolchildren are wondering how
the world will respond faced with a similar choice today.

[George Bisharat, a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law
in San Francisco, writes frequently on the Middle East. His e-mail
is bisharat at uchastings.edu.]