Israel: Boycotts and academic complicity with occupation

June 3rd, 2006 at 19:21 Björn Hallberg

The British National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) voted to boycott (”Lecturers back boycott of Israeli academics”) “Israeli lecturers and academic institutions who do not publicly dissociate themselves from Israel’s ‘apartheid policies’.” That seems reasonable and a good, nonviolent, measured response that may get people’s attention. But what is the rationale for the boycott? And why target academics? Guardian mentions complicity but offers nothing conclusive. Thankfully, the Electronic Intifada (”Shin Bet training program highlights academic complicity with occupation”) clears up that one.

There were some remarkable admissions in a piece by the distinguished Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling in the immediate wake of the British teaching union NATFHE’s vote this week to offer members moral backing if they boycott Israeli universities. British academics opposed to Israeli colleagues’ complicity in the lengthy and continuing occupation of the Palestinians are now advised to boycott them and their institutions.

The next day, and quite incidentally, Kimmerling wrote in Israel’s daily Haaretz newspaper of a decision taken by his own institution, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to offer a special fast-track degree programme to members of the General Security Service, or the Shin Bet, which has used its fearsome intelligence gathering abilties to maintain the occupation of the Palestinians for nearly four decades.

The Shin Bet is possibly best known for its interrogation methods when extracting confessions from detainees. Although torture was banned by the country’s Supreme Court in 1999, the Shin Bet has continued with its notorious practices during the second intifada, according to the Israeli human rights group the Public Committee against Torture.

According to Kimmerling, Shin Bet staff will not only be encouraged to further their education with government grants (maybe no bad thing), but the Shin Bet itself will be able to devise the study course. As Kimmerling notes, the most likely result will be a “professional studies” programme relating to the Shin Bet’s work.

Kimmerling rightly observes that such a programme clashes with the very values of free speech and free thought supposedly embodied by his university: “Although both institutions [the Shin Bet and Hebrew University] conduct ‘research’, the objects of the research and the methodologies are day and night.”

Entry 562 filed under: Middle East. This entry was posted 2 years, 7 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.