Boycott facts
Time for me to weigh in on the UK Association of University Teachers (AUT) boycott of Israeli universities. I’ve objected to these proposed boycotts in the national press and in a BBC Newsnight feature in the past, when an earlier and more contentious version of the motion was proposed. This time, most of my earlier objections were in fact specifically addressed — and yes, for those wondering about blogging/hosting policies, it’s OK to discuss this political issue on this university-hosted blog/site, since the issue is well-and-truly on the academic table already, as will be self-evident from the AUT motion and the history behind it, discussed at length on many sites and forums. Moreover, these are my own personal opinions and in no way reflect nor imply any official policy of The Open University [especially important to note given that it was an Open University AUT motion proposed from the floor, also not official policy of The Open University... further details at the very end].
But I want to do something slightly different in this posting, namely to talk about how I get to the bottom of what’s really happening, and provide you with a few links so you can get to the bottom with me. Of course there are no ‘facts’ in a simplistic sense, as any historiographer can tell you: it’s all about interpretation. Hence the loose play on words in the title of this posting (boycott could be a noun, as in ‘the boycott’ or an imperative verb, as in ‘boycott this company’): I sometimes feel like whatever ‘facts’ actually exist are themselves being boycotted!!
The sections below describe in turn
1. Report of the boycott in the mainstream press
2. Basic pro/con arguments
3. The end game: when would the boycott end?
4. The actual AUT wording
5. Wording of the Palestinian call
6. The Tantura/Katz/Pappé premises behind the first AUT motion
OK, here goes: a step-by-step listing, along with key quotes, from key sources that can help you do your own detective work.
1. Report of the boycott in mainstream press:
The Guardian is the home of many discussions, articles, letters about the boycott, so this is the natural place to break the news of the vote.
Guardian UK, 22nd April: Lecturers vote for Israeli boycott
The Association of University Teachers today voted to boycott two Israeli universities over their failure to speak out against their government. Delegates at a conference in Eastbourne voted, against the wishes of the executive, for an immediate boycott of Haifa University, which they accuse of restricting the academic freedom of staff members who are critical of the government … [read full article]
I only quote the above in order to provide the gist; scores of similar reports are available on the web (see search totals below).
2. Basic pro/con arguments
Searching news.google.com (mostly the press) for ‘israeli universities’ +boycott yields 136 results
Searching www.technorati.com (mostly the blogosphere) for ‘israeli universities’ +boycott yields 113 results
Lots of pro and con argumentation in all quarters, but let me indicate 4 of interest:
- David Aaronovitch in the Observer argues against the boycott
- Detailed rationale behind the boycott call, including counter-arguments and rebuttals to those counter-arguments, by Omar Bhargouti in ZNet, 20th December 2004, “Why Boycott Israel”
- Representative blog commentary and counter-commentaries the boycott, the goodness/badness of the analogy with South African apartheid, the sinister implications of allowing a judgement of who is a “good Israeli” to be exempt from the boycott, in Chris Brooke’s blog at the Virtual Stoa
- Guardian letters page, 21st April 2005, “The pros and cons of boycotts”
- [UPDATE: a 5th entry of interest, about the lack of debate during the AUT meeting]
The crux of the argument is about (in the view of the pro-boycott group) oppressive Israeli policies, complicity of the academic community directly/indirectly and ineffectiveness of prior actions over many decades vs (in the view of the anti-boycott group) better ways to influence Israel including through academic dialogue, the anti-oppression track record of many liberal Israeli academics, the risk of boycott-induced backlash, and the sanctity of academic freedom generally.
I of course fall in the latter camp, and have also become interested in the nature of the argument itself (though this is somewhat pedantic and perhaps even a digression from the real issues, don’t worry: you’ll see some real issues coming up in a moment).
Barghouti’s article, mentioned above, is one of the few that includes argument, counter-argument, and rebuttal of counter-argument. But in his rebuttals Barghouti tends to play his ‘don’t patronize us’ trump card — in fact most of the anti-boycott arguments, especially from the left, are not patronizing at all, but the trump card tends to end the discussion right there.
3. The end game: when would the boycott end?
In the eyes of the pro-boycott camp, the most fundamental premise of all, i.e. oppressive Israeli policies, is taken to go straight to the core: 1948 and the very creation of Israel. True, there are documented and alleged injustices that have taken place from 1948 to the present day, but I cannot support Barghouti’s prime directive for a ’single secular state of Palestine’ (Jews and Palestinians together, not a two-state solution) which is, in Barghouti’s own words, the end game that all this is really about. This end game vision is equally true for the other key players involved in the conception, wording, and lobbying for the boycott, e.g. Susan Blackwell who is quoted by the Guardian as proposing the boycott to increase pressure on the ‘illegitimate state of Israel’.
So although there is an exclusion clause in the boycott, to ‘Exclude from the above actions against Israeli institutions any conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state’s colonial and racist policies’, not only is the judge of these exceptions rather vaguely specified — and it looks like every academic paper would now get filtered by some committee of approved judges — but more significantly, the end game itself is only very thinly disguised (as a brief read of any of numerous documents and interviews by any of the boycott’s prime-movers indicates): ’state’s colonial and racist policies’ is synonymous in the minds of Barghouti, Blackwell, Taraki, and the other boycott thought-leaders, according to their own writings on the subject, with the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state, so by implication the boycott would continue until the state no longer exists, or at least until all concerned Israeli academics express (to the satisfaction of some vaguely specified judge) their opposition to the existence of their own country.
4. The actual AUT wording
This is not obvious at all from the press reports, nor from the many blog postings I looked at, so I need to see the wording for myself (yes, it has been emailed to AUT members). Here’s the first, filed rather obtusely under AUT Policies, page ‘H’: Haifa University, Israel
AUT – Haifa University, Israel
The AUT has noted:
* That on May 15, 2002 Dr. Ilan Pappe, senior lecturer in Political Science at Haifa University, was sent a letter notifying him that he faced trial and possible dismissal from his position. The charge was that he had violated ‘the duties of an academic member of staff’, that he had ’slandered departments and members in the humanities faculty, damaged their professional reputation and endangered the possible promotion of some of them.’
* That these accusations related to Dr. Pappe’s efforts to defend a 55 year old graduate student, Teddy Katz, whose Master’s thesis was under attack by an Israeli veteran’s organization because it documented a massacre of 200 unarmed civilians by the Haganah (the pre-state army of Israel) at a village called Tantura, near Haifa.
* That the recriminations are still continuing and Dr. Pappe’s job is still being threatened.
The AUT has therefore resolved:
* To call on all AUT members to boycott Haifa University until it commits itself to upholding academic freedom, and in particular ceases its victimisation of academic staff and students who seek to research and discuss the history of the founding of the state of Israel.
* That the boycott should take the form described in the Palestinian call for academic boycott of Israeli institutions.
The three ‘noted’ points which are the fundamental premise behind the motion are themselves something I check out further below. (Here’s the link to the second motion from the AUT site: AUT Policies, page ‘B’, Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
5. Wording of the Palestinian call
I’m now several layers removed from the mainstream press, but once again I need to see the wording for myself, so I follow the link in the AUT motion above to the Palestinian call for academic boycott…
…which includes an unprecedented (who is the judge?) ‘exclusion’ clause (4):
We, Palestinian academics and intellectuals, call upon our colleagues in the international community to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid, by applying the following:
1.Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions;
2.Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;
3.Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions;
4.Exclude from the above actions against Israeli institutions any conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state’s colonial and racist policies;
5.Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;
6.Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.
My earlier remarks about ‘The end game: when would the boycott end?’ apply precisely to the phrase ‘end Israel’s occupation, colonization’, (i.e. when Israel as a Jewish state no longer exists at all) because the authors of the boycott, particularly Taraki, Barghouti, and Blackwell have themselves said so in their nuerous other articles and interviews on the matter!
6. The Tantura/Katz/Pappé premises
The first AUT motion itself hinges upon (a) an alleged massacre at Tantura, (b) Teddy Katz’s thesis, and (c) the threats to Pappé. So in the upcoming paragraphs I’m going to find out some more about these. My personal observation is that, having followed most of the boycott argument, counter-argument, debates and meta-debates, I was somewhat dismayed to find that papers like the Guardian did not do any mainstream reporting about items (a), (b) and (c) just listed. This is unbelievable, given the importance of the premises to the motion that was being voted upon. How could anyone vote on this without knowing more? There was no opportunity to defend against these claims during the AUT meeting itself.
Let’s look at the claims made by what seems to me to be a fairly representative ‘premise-busting’ article arguing that ‘Tantura was a myth’, namely Palestinianfacts.org: Israeli atrocities against Arabs?
For example, Tantura. A Haifa University revisionist historian, Theodor Katz, claimed in his M.A. thesis (released January 2000) that an IDF unit had massacred over 200 Arab residents of the village of Tantura in the 1948 War of Independence. He was brought to court in 2001 by surviving officers and men of the unit who presented contrary evidence including review of Katz’s tape recordings showing how he had manipulated the testimony of survivors. Katz admitted finally that he had selectively used reports from Arab sources, taking only those that supported his thesis. The lawsuit was dropped after Katz signed a renunciation of his own work and Haifa University pulled the thesis from library shelves. [It was revealed in September 2002 that tormer Palestinian Authority minister Feisal Husseini paid $8,000 for the legal defense of Teddy Katz.] The University conducted its own review of the evidence. After six months of work, the committee had managed to review only a little more than one-fourth of Katz’s tapes, mostly in Arabic, which bore direct relation to the question of whether any massacre took place. Yet even in that limited selection, 14 major discrepancies – in which the tapes didn’t accord with the written text – came to light.
No pro-Palestinian Arab source had ever pointed to a massacre at Tantura before Katz’s thesis appeared in 2000. The thesis has been completely debunked. Nonetheless, there are now hundreds of web sites that cite the “Tantura massacre” as historical fact. And while Arab sources rushed into print to trumpet the news of Katz’s thesis, none has mentioned the retraction save a few who cite it as an example of a massive coverup.
There are stronger anti-Katz (hence anti-AUT-premise, hence undermining the boycott) claims, as you can imagine, including outright accusations of total fraud, but the above quote is indicative of the position. For the pro-Katz (hence pro-AUT-premise, hence endorsing the boycott) position, let’s go right to the horse’s mouth, so to speak — here’s what Pappe himself says in “Mechanisms of Denial”, Justin Podur interviews Ilan Pappé, ZMag, 20th February 2005:
I started voicing a strong critique of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians through my academic work in 2000. After the Second Intifada began in September 2000, people doing so started to be treated like traitors. After 2002, with the Jenin massacre, I felt I had to do even more. My own increase in activity coincided with a case of a student, Teddy Katz, who was doing his MA thesis at Haifa University in December 2000. He exposed a hitherto unknown massacre in 1948 at Tantura. His dissertation got the highest possible grade. The veterans of the military unit involved in the massacre actually sued Katz for the content of his thesis. The trial did not materialize. The Israeli courts did not want to go down that road. If they didn’t want to decide whether a massacre had happened in 2002 with Jenin, they surely were not going to want to make that decision about 1948 Tantura. And I do not have too many complaints about the way the court handled the case. But the University found a pretext to disqualify him. They found that his transcription of some of the interviews he conducted as part of the thesis were inaccurate. In no way did this impact the conclusions, but it was a small error, and he was made to rewrite the thesis and resubmit it. He did so. Then the University flunked him. I started a campaign to try to get him reinstated. He hasn’t been reinstated.
Pappé’s definitive account of the Katz thesis and the Tantura case is here:Journal of Palestine Studies, Issue 119 (Spring 2001) | The Tantura Case in Israel: The Katz Research and Trial by Ilan Pappé
The crux of the prosecution’s case rested on six references–out of 230–in which Katz either misquoted or interpreted too freely what the witnesses said. In Ambar’s testimony, Katz substituted the word “Germans” for “Nazis.” In another, he summarized the testimony of a Tantura survivor, Abu Fihmi, as describing a killing, where the witness did not say this directly (though in fact, this is clearly what he meant). In four other instances, Katz wrote something that does not appear in the tapes but only in his written summaries of the conversations. No discrepancies were found in any of the remaining 224 references concerning Tantura.
…
That night, however, for reasons Katz himself cannot explain even today, he signed an agreement that in essence repudiated his own academic research. Weakened by a stroke several weeks earlier and subjected to enormous pressures by his family, friends, and neighbors in the kibbutz where he lived, he acquiesced on the advice of one of his lawyers (a cousin of his) to bring an end to the whole affair; he was likewise assured by the university lawyer, an unofficial member of his legal team, that signing the agreement would be for his own good, appearing to hint that it would enable him to continue his studies at Haifa University.
The agreement Katz signed took his other two lawyers totally by surprise. Titled “An Apology,” the agreement is so sweeping as to bear an uncomfortable resemblance to a police “confession” extracted under dubious conditions. The section relating to his research reads as follows:
“I wish to clarify that, after checking and re-checking the evidence, it is clear to me now, beyond any doubt, that there is no basis whatsoever for the allegation that the Alexandroni Brigade, or any other fighting unit of the Jewish forces, committed killings of people in Tantura after the village surrendered. Furthermore, I wish to say that the things I have written must have been misunderstood [by the press] as I had never intended to tell a tale of a massacre in Tantura. . . . I accept as truth [only] the testimonies of those among the Alexandroni people who denied categorically the massacre, and I disassociate myself from any conclusion which can be derived from my thesis that could point to the occurrence of a massacre or the killing of defenseless or unarmed people.”
Twelve hours later, Katz formally regretted his retraction and wanted to continue the trial, but the judge refused.
This gets curioser and curioser! In Pappé’s full article pointed to above, the historical evidence and cross-validation from multiple witnesses, Jewish and Palestinian, certainly seems strong, yet Haifa University essentially makes out Pappé to be less than sound. Here’s what Haifa University says in a main commentary dated 24th April 2005, and linked directly from their home page:
…In actual fact, during the past few years, Dr. Pappe has transgressed all common ethical standards of academic life. Yet, despite his conduct, the University of Haifa has demonstrated extraordinary tolerance. One of his colleagues did indeed lodge a complaint with the internal faculty disciplinary committee. The complaint focused on Dr. Pappe’s unethical behavior towards his peers and his efforts to disbar them from international forums for daring to contradict his views. Contrary to Dr. Pappe’s claim, the university made no attempt to expel him. [Emphasis as in the original]
As to the now too famous thesis that provoked this altercation, an independent committee was asked to examine the validity of the quotes that were used as the “scientific basis” for the highly controversial charges proffered in this thesis, authored by Mr. Teddy Katz. After a thorough examination, the committee members concluded that, in fact, the quotes in the written text did not match the taped comments of the interviews and that the text was grossly distorted. Therefore, they disqualified this MA thesis. This decision, it is important to note, matched a court decision given on the same matter. As Dr. Pappe did not like the committee decision, despite the undeniable discrepancies between the text and the taped interviews, he reacted by calling the academic community to boycott the members of this committee and the University of Haifa. Despite these violations of academic collegiality and ethics, Dr. Pappe was never summoned by the disciplinary committee as the committee’s chairperson decided not to pursue the complaint that had been filed against him. [Emphasis as in the original]
Although there is always more work to do, the University of Haifa is proud of its record of Arab-Jewish cooperation and reconciliation, both on campus and in the community. Twenty percent of our student body are Arab citizens of the State of Israel, and the many Arab faculty members at Haifa include departmental chairs and a Dean. We will continue our efforts to further Jewish-Arab reconciliation, despite politically motivated initiatives to muzzle free speech and the academic discourse.
We are puzzled by the fact that despite the deluge of abuses of academic freedom throughout the world, the AUT has chosen to focus upon a politically spurious charge and, on the basis of false allegations, single out the University of Haifa for condemnation. The University of Haifa calls upon the AUT to rescind its resolution, one that represents a complete distortion of facts far more embarrassing to the AUT than to the University. We call upon the academic community throughout the free world to reject this politically motivated abuse of academic discourse.
Here’s an interesting ‘homeginized’ view, which actually looks pretty accurate, according to my readings of arguments on both sides of the issue, from the ultimate ‘homeginzer’, Wikipedia (from ‘New Historians, Major Debates‘, last edited at 22:08, 13 Mar 2005):
In 1998, Teddy Katz received an A+ grade from Haifa University for a master’s thesis which claimed that the Alexandroni Brigade commited a massacre in the Arab village of Tantura during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The veterans of the brigade sued Katz for libel. During the court hearing Katz conceded by issuing a statement retracting his own work. He then tried to retract his retraction, but the court disallowed it and ruled against him. He appealed to the Supreme Court and lost again. The Palestinian Authority paid $8000 towards Katz’s legal expenses. Meanwhile a committee at Haifa University found serious problems with the thesis, including “quotations” that were contradicted by Katz’s records of interview. The university suspended his degree and asked him to resubmit his thesis. The new thesis was given a “second-class” pass. The Tantura debate remains heated, largely due to the efforts of historian Ilan Pappé who supports the allegations of a massacre.
Out of interest, consider a more strongly-worded but apparently less accurate entry at the same location, time-stamped a few weeks earlier, 04:13, 26 Feb 2005:
In 1998, Teddy Katz, a Meretz activist and a student of Ilan Pappe, presented a master’s thesis which claimed that the Alexandroni Brigade commited a massacre in the Arab village of Tantura during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The veterans of the brigade sued Katz for libel and won in court. In 2002, the court found that Katz fabricated testimonies and twisted quotations, and ruled that Katz must publish an apology and retract the allegation of massacre. Following the trial, Haifa University disqualified his work. It was later revealed that the Palestinian Authority had funded Katz’s lawyer in the trial.
The Tantura/Katz/Pappé story will run and run, and I have to say I’ve learned a huge amount already just from doing the background research for this blog posting. Whether you are pro-boycott or anti-boycott, it’s clear that there is a lot of history that needs to be explored and understood by all parties. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam certainly fuelled the protests that, directly or indirectly, led to the end of the Vietnam war. It didn’t matter how ‘representative’ it was as an event – it was one of the straws that broke the camel’s back (and boycotting American academics back then would have made about as much sense as the AUT boycott). Tantura is different, and in many ways more fundamental, because no matter what the truth or extent of the events described in Katz’s thesis, it has opened a discussion about the events of 1948 that needs to be had, and that in turn is of profound importance to how Israel thinks about itself and its possibilities for co-existence with Palestinians. But to me, ‘discussion’ and ‘academic boycott’ are mutually exclusive.
[UPDATE: I am aware that I have only dealt with a small proportion of the overall AUT boycott landscape... I wanted to 'drill down' in some detail in this posting, and I hope to have more in due course]
Some other links of interest
Jerusalem Post: Haifa, Bar Ilan slam academic boycott
Jonathan Derbyshire on the AUT boycott
David Hirsh writes about the lack of debate during the AUT meeting, including a letter from John Pike at the Open University, which begins,
The AUT council at Eastbourne voted to boycott two Israeli Universities without a proper debate: no speakers were taken against the resolutions for a boycott moved by Birmingham or against the resolution calling for the circulation of the call for a boycott, proposed by the OU. Lack of time prevented any debate on this matter, which divided the Council down the middle. This should offend all AUT members, regardless of their position on the substantive issue. For this reason we want there to be a special council of the AUT properly to discuss this issue.
[UPDATE: See Engage for very detailed pro/con argumentation about the boycott, and why it is fundamentally wrong, from a left-ish "Pro-Palestine and Pro-Israel" perspective]
Technorati Tags: AUT, boycott, Palestinian, Israeli, universities, Israel
