the anti-Israei boycott — Jul 2002 (08 Jul 2002 #21089)

It
might be thought that this
flagrant assault on academic
freedom would have triggered
outrage

London, Sunday, July 7, 2002

Editorial
Opinion

IT is deeply embarrassing for British academia that it has taken the intervention of an American scholar to draw attention to the disgraceful treatment of Dr Miriam Shlesinger
and Professor Gideon Toury.

As we report today, Stephen Greenblatt, a professor at Harvard University, is leading the protest against the dismissal of the Israeli academics from the board of two scholarly journals run by Mona
Baker, a teacher at the University of
Manchester Institute of Science and
Technology (UMIST). Dr Shlesinger and Prof
Toury have been dismissed solely because of their nationality.

The fact of the Israelis’ dismissal was noted in a short report in the Times
Higher Educational Supplement of June
28. It might be thought that the disclosure of this flagrant assault on academic freedom by a senior scholar at a British university – Ms Baker heads UMIST’s Centre for Translation and
Intercultural Studies – would have triggered outrage on redbrick campuses and in ivy-clad quads. Not so.

Even the authorities at UMIST have run for cover, saying only that they are “dealing internally” with Mrs Baker’s actions.

A few useful links to look at and pass on: pictures illustrating
Israeli military activities, as extolled by The Daily Telegraph, in the Middle East

• Israeli
  Defence Force (Wehrmacht)
  shoots a child
• Israeli
  settlers
  (10
  pictures)
• Droll
  female soldier
• School
  children and soldier

• href=”http://stcloudinvestor.netfirms.com/Skunk/israelisoldierholdsaboy.jpg&#8221>Soldier
  dragging little kid

• Israeli
  heroes with their trophy
  kills
  (5
  pictures)

It has been left, therefore, to Prof
Greenblatt, one of the world’s most eminent
Shakespearean scholars, to draw attention to this case. As Prof Greenblatt observes in his open letter to Mrs Baker, it is
“particularly grotesque, of course, that the journals you run concern translation and intercultural communication”. By excluding scholars simply because they are
Israeli, he continues, she has violated
“the essential spirit of scholarly freedom and the pursuit of truth”.

Mrs Baker’s actions are part of an organised “academic boycott” of Israeli academics and institutions, a campaign which is trying, among other things, to suspend European Union funding of Israeli universities (though not, of course, the
EU’s generous financing of Yasser
Arafat). She justifies her dismissal of Dr Shlesinger and Prof Toury on the grounds that the behaviour of “Israel has gone beyond just war crimes”.

As offensive as her remarks are, she enjoys the freedom to make them. But the action she has taken is morally repugnant and intellectually absurd. Does she propose that scholars from all countries that are judged to behave badly should be excluded from academic life? Should
Russian academics be sacked from scholarly journals if Russian troops make further incursions into Chechnya? And what about
African intellectuals from states engaged in torture and atrocities?

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that
Israel has been given special treatment.
There was a time when South Africa was the chosen enemy of the intellectual Left.
Today, it seems to have been replaced by the Jewish state, whose relations with the
Palestinian people are regarded by many academics as comparable to apartheid.
Israel also performs the useful role of proxy villain for America.

As much as
British academics tend to hate the United
States, many of them hope one day to work there for the higher salaries which
American universities pay – the so-called
“cash dash” across the Atlantic. How much easier to focus on the alleged wickedness of America’s “client state” in the Middle
East.

Certainly, few British academics took a stand against Tom Paulin, a lecturer in English at Oxford University, when he said in April that Jewish settlers in Israel “should be shot dead”.

Dons are entitled to their juvenile opinions. What is so depressing about the
UMIST case is the fact that those same opinions have been translated into action without a peep of protest from scholars in this country. It is not, perhaps, surprising that Pakistan brought such deplorable pressure to bear on its tennis player, Aisam Ul-Haq Qureshi, to end his doubles partnership at Wimbledon with the
Israeli Amir Hadad.

But it is nothing short of astonishing that the same criteria are now being applied by an academic employed by a respected British university. Dr
Shlesinger and Prof Toury are scholars who happen to be Israeli. But they have fallen victim to a sub-Marxian world view in which all consciousness is political, and identity is defined in terms of global political struggle, real or imagined.

Not all attacks on Israel and Israelis are necessarily anti-Semitic, although
Jewish people, with painful experience over the centuries of exclusion from academic institutions, are understandably anxious and angry about this case. But this is not a controversy specifically about anti-semitism.

What is at stake in this case – and Prof Greenblatt deserves praise for recognising this – is the principle of academic freedom which underpins the idea of a university and, as
Cardinal Newman wrote, enables such institutions to “educate the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth and to grasp it”.

The academics who have remained so silent during this case are the teachers of the nation’s youth, the custodians of the best and the brightest. That, more even than Mrs Baker’s original action, is a cause for the deepest shame.
Copyright of
Telegraph Group Limited 2002.

Related
items on this website:
Main news
report: Fury as academics are sacked
for being Israeli
Chronicle
of Higher Education: British Journals
Oust 2 Israeli Scholars From Their
Boards Lord
Janner gloats on hearing that Mr
Irving’s home and property were seized US
warns Texas businessman against
boycott of Israel
Jewish
academics threaten to boycott
Oxford over Irving speech

href=”https://fpp.co.uk/01/05/PA040501c.html&#8221>Boycott
threat threat to Oxford Union over
Irving
Daily
Express headline, March 24, 1933:
“Judea Declares War on Germany” (begin
of the Jewish boycott which
triggered German retaliation)
Miami
Jews call for boycott of
Poland

All our yesterdays. . .

Daily
Express headline, 24 Mar 1933