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A Double Standard on Academic Freedom in The Middle East
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@uchastings.edu.
© 2007 The Baltimore Sun
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13 Comments so far
Show AllSo far, the only message to Israel from world governments and the UN is that it can invade, bomb, occupy, and murder with impunity. Israel is never held accountable for its human rights violations or war crimes. Clearly, major world governments and institutions are not going to be the solution to the problems that Israel has created with its land theft and 40-year illegal military occupation. That leaves only actors on the local level, and leaves the boycott as the single major effective tool for bringing some justice to the Middle East. For those who would scream "anti-semitic," just keep in mind that Arabs too are Semites, and that the violence perpetrated on them by the US and Israel is the most extreme form of anti-semitism.
Israel is in violation of 66 UN resolutions. Iraq was illegally invaded because it was in violation of 16.
Are we getting the picture yet?
Israel and America are the quintessential rogue states, and the UK, Canada, and Australia are accomplices in their crimes. The anti-war movement has to be an anti-imperialist movement and it has to be international. What's needed is international coalition building, and a delegation from the coalition needs to address the UN Security Council.
This is a long-term project but it needs to begin NOW.
"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."
Another reason why the Middle East continues to breed radicals against Israel and the United States. If the children are not in school studying text books, they'll be out in the back of the school learning to become militant resisters of the occupying and predatory forces around them.
One sentence:
Welcome to the United States of Israel.
that is the only way to sum up the situation. I wonder when the sheep in the US of A are going to question the potential president candidates as to why the travel to Tel Aviv to campaign more than to any other city in the US of A. Why this irrational fear of Israel and its lobbies?
Israel is a repetition of the "American experiment": the US did & does to the indigenes what Israel does to the Palestinians, and since the US can never withdraw, only expand, it can only find its current imperial project in the Middle East. The neocons are nothing knew; they are only the current version of the Manifest Destiny preachers of the 19th century.
The American political establishment has always had its justification, not in the Constitution nor the Declaration, but in the undeclared creed that America is the new Jerusalem and that Americans (well, white ones) are the new chosen people of the Old Testament divinity; it's from those sources that the religious reich has drawn its strength and why it backs the occupation of Palestine, the invasion of Iraq and the coming assault on Iran.
Dichterfreund comes close to the truth.
Israel receives more US dollars in assistance than any of the 50 states - and they do not pay taxes. It would of interest to check if Israel doesn't receive more net $ than the OTHER 50 states.
So again, look in the mirror, we as citizens are directly responsible since we have not elected officials that will call Israel to task over its actions.
Remember the USS Liberty !!!!
Without a doubt the most anti-semetic pretending to be "progressive" site I have ever seen. These little darlings, so yearning for knowledge, are the same human bombs that have killed and maimed so many innocents in Isreal. Get some shame!
Rusty Shackelford, do you have children of your own ? If you did, you would understand that the right to education is a fundamental human right for ALL children. Why do you think Palestinians are less entitled to this fundamental human right ?
Rusty you are the one who is shameful. Arabs are semites also and they are living under aparthied...that is the ones lucky enough not to be bulldozed in their homes or shot to death by the IDF or expelled as refugees. Since September 2000 4,228 Palestinians have been killed and of that amount 952 have been children. In contrast 1,024 Israelis have been killed and only 118 have been children according the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. Palestinian children are dying in droves and yes they are little darlings and yes they are very innocent.
Gaza Casualties
June 28 - October 27, 2006
Total Fatalities
247
Civilian Deaths
155
Deaths of Children
57
Total Wounded
996
Wounded Children
337 (34%)
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/deaths.html
Rusty Shackelford September 18th, 2007 7:36 pm
"These little darlings, so yearning for knowledge, are the same human bombs that have killed and maimed so many innocents in Isreal. Get some shame!"
These little darlings, who are also human beings, are the same human targets that have been killed and maimed by Israelis who display the same inhumane and dysfuntional mentality as their allies in the U.S. and their enemies in the Arab world.
The killing of innocent children by adults who hide behind distorted religious and cultural beliefs are the ones who should "get some shame".
The middle class in Israel is nearly nonexistent as a result of their militaristic status just like the USA:
http://www.tim.co.il/101/1696.htm
Rusty Shakelford
You have no right to call anyone a name like anti semite.
You are prejudice and your prejudice is directed at children.
Prejudice against children is particularly disgraceful.
You guys do realize that the Palestinians are the second most literate people in the entire middle east as a result of aid from the UNRWA, funded overwhelmingly by the USA, right? Israel has actually donated more to the UNRWA than the majority of Arab nations combined.
"Israel is in violation of 66 UN resolutions. Iraq was illegally invaded because it was in violation of 16.
Are we getting the picture yet?"
Apparently not. Iraq was in violation of section VII resolutions which allows for forceful enforcement. Israel is in violation of section VI resolutions which are primarily suggestive and not enforcable. The reason Israel has had more resolutions made against her has more to do with the politics of the GA than anything she has actually done. The UN is extremely biased against Israel by nature, look at the amount of Arab/Muslim states in the GA, (influential ones at that because of natural resources) and you will start to see the picture. When the UN's human rights committee ignores the worst abusers on earth in favor of focusing nearly exclusively on Israel it might be a hint that something isn't square at the UN.
And there is a tremendous amount of anti-semitism on this site. The fact that so many of you can't see that is frightening.