Professional Documents
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One of the most enjoyable things that has happened since I wrote a book on Israel's relations
with Europe is that I have been asked to speak at various universities. So when an invitation
appeared in my email inbox to visit King's College London (KCL), I immediately accepted.
Big mistake.
The request came from the International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR), a
partnership between King's College and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel.
I only became aware of the partnership one day before I was scheduled to address an ICSR
seminar in January. Following a hasty consultation with some friends in the Palestine
solidarity movement, I withdrew from the event, informing the organizers that I fully
supported the campaign to boycott Israeli goods and institutions.
In hindsight, I am relieved to have taken that decision. Set up in 2008, the ICSR boasts on its
website that it is the first initiative of this kind in which Arab and Israeli academic institutions
can work together. This appears to be a reference to how the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy is
also involved in its research on political violence. However, the participation of an academic
body from an Arab state does not exonerate the ICSR for embracing the Herzliya center,
which has long tried to cloak Israeli apartheid with intellectual gravitas.
Each year the IDC hosts the Herzliya security conference, attracting Israel's political, military
and business elite, as well as illustrious foreign guests. Speakers at this conference can spout
racist invective without fear of being challenged; in 2003, Yitzhak Ravid, a senior researcher
with Israel's weapons development authority Rafael, called for coercive measures to curb the
birthrate among Palestinians. The delivery rooms in Soroka Hospital in Beersheba have
turned into "a factory for the production of a backward population," he said, alluding to an
area with a considerable number of Bedouin inhabitants.
Furthermore, the IDC expresses pride in its links with the Israeli army, despite the army's role
in enforcing the occupation, which includes the brutal siege on the Gaza Strip.
Representatives of Israel's most profitable arms manufacturers frequently sit on the IDC's
management committee, while 10 percent of its student places are reserved for veterans of
elite combat units in the Israeli army.
John Bew, director of the ICSR, told me there is no "financial relationship between ourselves
and Herzilya." He added "You will see that we also have contacts with universities across the
world, including Jordan. This is not an expression of support for any political position on any
state -- Israel, Pakistan, India, wherever. It is part of our belief that academic institutions
should be a source of dialogue and discussion and the first port of call for discussion between
divided peoples. Having grown up in Belfast, I am personally committed to that sort of
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dialogue. I don't think demonizing or boycotting one side or another has any constructive
impact."
Bew's flawed analysis chimes with the stance from chief administrators in King's College. In
November 2008, KCL awarded an honorary doctorate to then Israeli president Shimon Peres,
an inveterate warmonger (his status as a Nobel Peace laureate notwithstanding). The award
sparked protests from student activists sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Along with his post with the ICSR, Bew is listed as a vice president of the Henry Jackson
Society, a think tank that defends America's imperial machinations. The society's founding
principles commit it to advocating that the US and Britain maintain a strong military with
global expeditionary outreach.
A Palestine solidarity campaigner studying in KCL, who asked not to be named, said "The
idea that the International Center for the Study of Radicalization is there to combat
radicalization is quite absurd. If it wanted to follow the Northern Ireland model [to conflict
resolution], it wouldn't be covertly pressing to exclude Hamas from the so-called peace
process."
The case for an academic boycott of Israel was bolstered by a 2009 paper from the Alternative
Information Center (AIC), a group combining Israeli and Palestinian researchers and activists.
All major Israeli academic institutions, certainly the ones with the strongest international
connections, were found to provide unquestionable support to Israel's occupation, the paper
stated. Such support ranged from how the Technion in Haifa developed a remote-controlled
bulldozer for the demolition of Palestinian homes to how Tel Aviv University has welcomed
arms manufacturers to symposia on robotics and electro-optics.
Uri Yacobi Keller, an author of the AIC paper, said the Palestine solidarity movement is not
seeking that European academics cease talking to their Israeli counterparts. Rather, the
movement is urging a boycott of Israeli universities as institutions and that the flow of finance
to them be cut off until they sever their links with the occupation. "This would make Israeli
universities understand that these [international] contacts are in danger if they continue to
cooperate with the Israeli security establishment and the settlement project [in the occupied
territories]," he said.
Academic cooperation between Europe and Israel has been encouraged by governments on
both sides. In July 2008, the Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership
(BIRAX) was launched by the two prime ministers then in office, Gordon Brown and Ehud
Olmert. This $1.6 million scheme, which involves the allocation of grants to science
researchers, is mainly funded by the Pears Foundation, which presents itself as a philanthropic
body. All of the Israeli universities taking part have links to the Israeli military, according to
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the aforementioned AIC paper.
Mike Cushman from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP),
which has called for an academic boycott of Israel, noted that some of the activities sponsored
by BIRAX exclude Palestinian institutes. "BIRAX funds research on the Dead Sea ecology
without the involvement of Palestinian universities but the Dead Sea is a vital resource for
Palestinians," he said.
"Israeli universities develop the arms and control technologies that directly support the
occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza," Cushman added. "Their alumni
magazines proudly boast of their links with the Israeli military and security services. Israelis
who have done military service get privileged entry into universities -- one of a number of
ways the universities directly and indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of
Israel."
Contrary to Israel's claims that it is the only democracy in the Middle East, its university
authorities are actively seeking to quell dissent. After Israel attacked the Gaza Freedom
Flotilla, killing nine activists, in May 2010, Haifa University banned its students from
protesting. Ben Gurion University of the Negev has also begun disciplinary proceedings
against students who demonstrated against the flotilla massacre and for improved conditions
for workers hired to clean the campus.
With deep cuts imposed on education spending in many countries, it is understandable that
student unions and academics are preoccupied with domestic economic issues at the moment.
But those cuts are being taken as part of a greater ideological effort to make universities more
subservient to the private sector and restrict third-level education to people from wealthy
families. Cooperation with Israeli universities needs to be viewed in that context.
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Indeed, Israel's experience should be a wake-up call for everyone concerned about social
justice. Whereas most industrialized countries spend around $8,000 on each student attending
school or university per year, Israel spends $6,000. By contrast, Israel devotes eight percent of
its gross domestic product to military expenditure, almost six times the average for
industrialized countries (see "Reforming education and raising unemployment key ...,"
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 20 January 2010).
Israel's political elite is clearly more concerned with prime-pumping its arms industry and
tightening its grip on Palestinian land than in ensuring that education helps people realize
their potential. That is one of many reasons why an academic boycott of Israel is so vital.
David Cronin's book Europes Alliance With Israel: Aiding the Occupation is published by
Pluto Press (www.plutobooks.com).