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For those who missed it, Alan Dershowitz and Effraim Karsh had effective rebuttals to the decision of the British Association for University Teachers to advocate a boycott of two Israeli universities, Haifa and Bar-Ilan, and support a moratorium on EU and European Science Foundation funding of Israeli cultural and research institutions.
The organization has resolved"to give all possible support to members of AUT who are unjustly accused of anti-semitism because of their political opposition to Israeli government policy." But, of course, the AUT has gone well beyond"political opposition to Israeli government policy": it has advocated a boycott of Israeli scholars and two Israeli universities. As Karsh notes in TNR, the"academic boycott resonates of darker periods in European history in which Jews were ostracized and denied free access to institutions of higher learning. Only now it is the Jewish State of Israel, rather than individual Jews, that is singled out for ostracism."
British academics who can't get enough of their dose of anti-Israel sentiment at the AUT convention can attend a showing of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, which opened this month at London's Royal Court Theatre. As reviewer Tom Gross notes,"It is ironic to reflect that there have been several real victims of the intifada called Rachel – and hard to believe that these critics have ever heard of them. All these other Rachels died within a few months of Corrie but – unlike her – in circumstances that weren't disputed. They were deliberately murdered:
Rachel Levy (17, blown up in a grocery store); Rachel Levi (19, shot while waiting for the bus); Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband, son and father while at home celebrating a Pessah meal); Rachel Charhi (blown up while sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe, leaving three young children); Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three sons aged 16, 13 and five, while at home)." There are no plays about any of these Rachels.
I completely disagree with you. When I posted the Uri Avnery material on the boycott to Crooked Timber, it helped to clarify the discussion. Chris Bertram even thanked me for making it available. If it is considered inappropriate to post an entire article, I will not do so here in the future. Since I get complaints on my own mailing list about only posting a link, there are obviously two schools of thought. I didn't add my own comments because they would seem superfluous. Why should I add a comment to the effect that an Israeli university sits on occupied territories and is thus fair game for a boycott? In any case, I am more than happy to keep people mollified here over secondary issues since my main goal is to articulate radical left perspectives on a forum that is heavily tilted to the right. As I told PROFESSOR Luker earlier, I had no idea that Cliopatria existed until I accidentally discovered that I was being trashed here.
Jonathan Dresner -
4/30/2005
Mr. Proyect,
Some of us just don't bother responding to irrelevancies. In my experience, on these boards and elsewhere, reposting material from elsewhere without comment, unless it is short and to the point, is likely to be ignored, at best.
Louis N Proyect -
4/30/2005
Professor Luker, I sincerely apologize for calling you Ralph. If I knew that this was aggravating you, I surely would have never done that. I honestly don't regard calling professors by their first name as an offense. I have been on mailing lists with Immanuel Wallerstein and people always referred to him as Manny. I guess I took liberties with you that I shouldn't have. I apologize once again. As far as doing research is concerned, I am quite sure that I never referred to anybody as a fascist here since I have a Trotskyist aversion to sloppy use of this term as an epithet. I do seem to recall describing the outfit that the Zebra killing article referred to as a harbinger of fascism in the USA. I apologize on bended knees if you took that the wrong way. Finally, I am deeply grateful that you have decided not to expel me from Cliopatria but instead will ignore me. I am not aware of anybody else having such a deep aversion to me as you do. I will try not to antagonize anybody else in the future but you have to accept the possibility that my ideas are what at issue, not my way of expressing them. Thank you.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/30/2005
Mr. Proyect, You do not know me well enough or civilly enough to refer to me by my first name. I have no obligation to do your research for you. I will henceforth refuse to respond to anything you post at Cliopatria. If you are abusive to others, you will be barred from posting here. Behave yourself. Being obnoxious is not a revolutionary act nor does it bring relief to the oppressed.
Louis N Proyect -
4/30/2005
Ralph, I have never once referred to anybody here as a fascist. This is a false charge. I would appreciate it if you would not put words in my mouth. As far as charging somebody with Zionism is concerned, I have no memory of that either. If I did, I would appreciate it if you showed me where and when I described somebody in those terms. Thank you in advance.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/30/2005
Since you don't regard your dismissals of people as Fascist or Zionist as abusive, this is not a productive conversation.
Louis N Proyect -
4/30/2005
Ralph, don't you realize that you are setting a bad example as a moderator of this forum by continuing to call me "Professor Proyect"? You know that I am not an academic. This is just your way of sneering at me. You would be taken more seriously if you avoided this sort of baiting. I have never baited you *once*. It is you who are being obnoxious, not me. You find my opinions obnoxious. I can understand that. But I have not been abusive to you or to anybody else here. If you want to exclude my ideas, go ahead and do it right now. Just don't use the excuse that I have been uncivil since that is a lie.
E. Simon -
4/30/2005
Amen to that.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/30/2005
Prof, You didn't "best" anyone in debate. Has it occurred to you that being obnoxious is no revolutionary act and that it brings no relief to the oppressed. Case closed. Behave.
Louis N Proyect -
4/30/2005
Intruding myself into other people's conversations? Antagonizing? This is purely your subjective interpretation. I think you want to have your cake and eat it too, Ralph. A blog is intended to facilitate debate. If you want to silence the extreme left, you should change the discussion board rules so that they would exclude people to the left of Michael Harrington. But I think that you are merely upset because I have bested you in debate. You are not capable of saying anything except that I am some kind of totalitarian who wants to put a gag on other peoples' mouths. This is what Freud called projection.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/30/2005
Professor Proyect, Repeatedly, insistently, intruding yourself in other people's conversations and attempting to dominate them with remarks that are intended to antagonize and distract is the behavior of a troll. You are behaving like a troll. If you persist in it, I will not hesitate to seek administrative relief from your destructive behavior.
Louis N Proyect -
4/30/2005
If you want to know what I think about anti-Semitism, Zionism, etc., go here:
It reflects badly on someone to require that others do the arguing and thinking for them. Avnery might have some interesting or provocative (or heaven help us, _relevant_!) things to say or he might not. Your disinterest in providing the context of your own interpretation or reason for slavishly copying them here indicates that the latter is more likely the case.
Louis N Proyect -
4/30/2005
Ralph, I really wonder why you bother to post such one-line baits. Considering your long involvement with the academy, they are singularly lacking in intellectual content. I understand your pique at having to put up with contrary views, but this forum would be better served if you rolled up your sleeves and addressed the question of Zionism. I posted some revealing material from Uri Avnery, one of Israel's leading critics of Zionism, who had fought at one time in the Zionist militias. Instead of trying to deal with his critique, you invited me to piss off. This reflects badly on you, not me.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/30/2005
Professor Proyect, You're the advocate of administrative silencing.
Louis N Proyect -
4/30/2005
Ralph, sorry to disappoint you but I had no intention of continuing a discussion with you about Confederate flags. I was not announcing my departure from this blog. Furthermore, if it is against the rules to post excerpts of articles here (with a link), please direct my attention to it. Finally, I am not very surprised that a free speech absolutist like you is now blustering that I should go away. Frankly, it is your fault that I am here to begin with since it was you who trashed me for having the temerity to participate on Crooked Timber. You called me a troll. I am not a troll. I am a leftist and plan to challenge rightist ideology until you choose administrative means to silence me.
E. Simon -
4/30/2005
...was already addressed in the post, the clause was just not yet edited out!
E. Simon -
4/30/2005
Well, if I am confused, it certainly didn't originate from misreading what you wrote, since in post #59603, you clearly make reference to "state sanctioned murder," and then deny such a claim in post #59617.
Your response however - post #59682 - clearly indicates that you did not read what I wrote. Your reiteration of my arguments there fail to make a point. You acknowledge that Palestinian groups have the capacity to be moral actors, but then leave the point (of whether or not they should act or are obligated to act in such a way that exemplifies that capacity) unfinished and revert back to obsessing on Israel. Whether or not Palestinian groups have the capacity to behave as rational moral actors has zilch to do with Israel's "power." How is Israel preventing anyone from realizing their potential as a rational moral actor? If you have a worldview that says there is a political excuse for any responsibility over one's personal behavior I must admit here that it is one which I (and many others) do not share.
Thanks also for utterly missing this same point in your second paragraph example of post hoc ergo propter hoc. If you want to argue that because terrorism was involved in Israel's history pre-independence (post hoc), then it was therefore necessary for independence to take place (ergo propter hoc), you have to provide evidence, rather than merely the fallacy of logical thought in which it is framed. As much as I've looked into the history of the region, I see no evidence that terrorism would be or would have been a prerequisite for statehood or independence on the part of either Israel or the Palestinians. Surely I would hope that I am not having a disagreement in cyberspace with someone who would put himself above such a basic standard as providing evidence for what they say. At least not on this site.
And your second paragraph
Ralph E. Luker -
4/30/2005
Anthony, The holy spirit just spoke to me and recommends that you and Adam invite Louis Proyect to become a member of the group at The Weblog. He's suitably on the Left, sufficiently dogmatic, and guaranteed to produce blog-text.
Anthony Paul Smith -
4/30/2005
It wasn't all that long really.
E. Simon,
You are very confused. Do you really want to argue that the Palestinians have just as much power at the table as the Israelis do? No offense, but that's just stupid. Even more stupid, in a technical sense, is your equating the relationship between criminals and the state. For one criminals are citizens of the state so of course they have to answer to the state's power, this is nothing at all like the situation in the middle east. Furthermore, I never said that the Palestinians didn't have the capability of being moral actors, but that they are less of a unified subject than Israel by nature of the world order. This isn't a simplistic dichotomy, and that catch phrase is so tired so don't try to use it as a smokescreen to cover over the inherent problems in your position. Israel empirically has the most power here, by virtue of their status as an American ally and their status as a nation-state in a global world order that priveleges nation-states over governing authorities.
You and I both know that terrorism was involved in the formation of Israel. God, even Jewish folks recognize this to be true (Elie Weisel's Dawn is about such an act). One man's war for independence is another man's terrorist act.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/30/2005
Mr. Proyect, Didn't you promise to go away once you vanquished me. Please do not use Cliopatria's comments function to publish long diatribes over here that no one is interested in reading. You have your own site. Please keep these things to yourself.
Louis N Proyect -
4/30/2005
'God Wills It!'
by Uri Avnery
Two shocking manifestos were published this week. Both call for comment.
One of them declares that dismantling the settlements in the Gaza Strip is a “crime against humanity.” It does not mention that they were set up on the land reserves of a million Palestinians crowded in the tiny strip, and rob them of their scarce water. Their removal, it says, is an “expression of tyranny, evil and arbitrariness.” Officers and soldiers are called upon not to take part in this “ethnic cleansing.”
This manifesto is signed by the father and brother of Binyamin Netanyahu, as well as Meir Har-Zion, the favorite pupil of Ariel Sharon, who became famous in the 1950s for slitting the throats of several innocent Beduins with his own hands in revenge for the killing of his sister. Two former Directors General of the Prime Minister’s office also signed. Most of the signatories are not religious.
The second manifesto declares that the Halakha (Jewish religious law) commands the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians if this helps to save Jews. It is signed by the heads of the “Arrangement Yeshivot,” the West Bank settlement rabbis and other religious leaders. They were later joined by one of the two Chief Rabbis (the Sephardic one).
I was not unduly upset by the first manifesto. People of this kind can be found all over the world. In other countries, they are called fascists (but, because of the Holocaust, we do not like to use this term in our country). What unites them is a primitive, atavistic morality that says that “we” are a superior race, God’s chosen people, a master race etc., while “they” are inferior races, untermenschen. We may do to them whatever we please, with a clear conscience; they are not allowed to do to us anything at all. (In the manifesto, the settlers are requested not to bodily harm “their own people” – leaving them free to harm all others.)
In the course of the 20th century, such people have wrought destruction on many nations, including their own. But healthy nations overcame them in the end. I hope that we shall manage to do the same.
You apparently have a lot to say and I have not had the opportunity to follow your thread with Prof. Luker until just now.
I don't know if Mr. Johnson is saying that Israel is on the verge of being destroyed by the left wing. At least not in Israel. The relationship between movements on the far left in other countries and internationally and the lack of perspective within which they would weigh issues regarding Israel, however, is apparent and something you seem to emulate here.
I will not give into your attempt to turn this into an oversimplistic dichotomy of how having a government but not a state absolves one of an opportunity to behave as a rational moral actor, or how a conflict between two with unequal "power" - which is subjectively defined, BTW - connotes an a priori equation of how to assign moral culpability in a conflict. Common criminals have less "power" than the state which tries them their crimes, but I do not assign the state greater responsibility for the existence of crime due to that perceived inequality of power.
If you believe Abbas is being denied a way to fight terrorists I suggest you read a newspaper.
And the main actions taken by the Zionists in obtaining a state were purchasing private land, accepting a U.N. resolution to partition it between them and a hostile population and successfully fending off five armies bent on launching a war of annihilation against the "aggressive" act of creating a state out of the ashes of Hitler's ovens. I see no moral or rational equivalent between that and the courses of action to which the Palestinians have heretofore committed themselves under Arafat's leadership. Implying that the Jews wouldn't have attained statehood absent terrorism is not so much a well-founded argument as it is window-dressing.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/29/2005
Of course, there was pervasive polarization throughout the 20th century, but it didn't divide American politics so bitterly as it is now. I suppose my great disappointment has been that the collapse of the Soviet Union didn't lead to some era of good feeling. Instead, we found a new enemy in Islamic terrorism -- which we of course had earlier subsidized.
Anthony Paul Smith -
4/29/2005
Yeah, I agree that is a huge problem right now. I haven't been around long enough on the planet to know if it hasn't always been this way, but as long as I've noticed it has.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/29/2005
Anthony, I apologize for over-reacting. I do get frustrated and irritated with the polarizations that cause us to think that other people are locked into one of two fight-to-the-death camps.
Anthony Paul Smith -
4/29/2005
Ralph, I apologize to you for attributing those views to you. I was assuming too much from past conversations here.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/29/2005
Anthony, I continue to be amazed by your ungraciousness, to say nothing of your contempt for the truth and your willingness to attribute to me loyalties and sympathies which I don't have. In fact, I had one commenter at Cliopatria barred from further commenting here because of his vile and obscene joking about the death of Rachel Corrie. I have no strongly held pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian position. I don't get into arguments with other people about those issues. Why would you impute to me attitudes when you don't know what I believe about an issue? Wtf is wrong with you?
Anthony Paul Smith -
4/29/2005
E Simon,
Let's look at what I said next time, ok? I said killed, not murdered; and I said state, not government. Unlike KC and Ralph, I think the palestinians deserve a home as well. Do I think they engage in criminal acts to that end? Yes. Did the Zionist do the same thing when they were attempting to gain Palestine for their homeland? By God, yes! The issue here is that Israel is a state that can be held accountable for its actions and should be, the Palestians are a government within an occupied territory. This new government appears to be taking steps towards curbing some of the more idiotic ways of achieving their goals, but ultimately there is not a system to hold them accountable. They are the powerless people here. Rachel Corrie was killed by the state, it is sick and it is even sicker that KC Johnson can't see past his ideology to condemn that killing. If you want an official statement of me condenming sucide bombers I'll happily type that up, but Johnson lives in a fantasy land where Israel is on the verge of being destroyed by the Left wing. It's not.
E. Simon -
4/28/2005
If your standards for what constitutes culpability, even to the point of what you would call "murder," are that low, then certainly a governmental entity such as the P.A. under Arafat was breaking deals by awarding financial recompensation for "martyrdom operations," and encouraging an educational curriculum inclusive of instruction in the manufacture of suicide bomb vests. As negligent as the Israeli government might have been with regards to curbing actions by settlers or abuses by the military, I don't think it ever reached the level of complicity illustrated above.
Anthony Paul Smith -
4/28/2005
Maybe, and I could be wrong here, but maybe that's because those Rachel's weren't killed by the state. State sanctioned murder is usually considered to be a bit of a bigger deal than terrorist acts. Unless you want to start calling them the same thing (which I think would be great, but then you'd have to admit that Israel participates in terror and it seems that your skewed view won't allow for that).
Rob D. Priest -
4/28/2005
You don't need to be pro-boycott (I'm not--as I've said elsewhere: "Who else are they gonna boycott, I wonder? Themselves because of the Iraq war?") to see that this is not necessarily such an offensive and pointless move as you and others seem to imply.
1. It isn't just British academics, so it shouldn't be taken as representative of academic opinion. The AUT also incorporates many non-academic employees. It should also be taken into account that much of the perceived problem in AUT circles themselves since the decision has been about how this issue managed to get through, rather than about defending it. There is an institutional politics here, and the decision is not necessarily representative of AUT members, since it is fairly easy for single-issue issues to thrive.
2. There is a fairly good rebuttal of the suggestion that the AUT has "gone well beyond "political opposition"" in a letter from Gush Shalom posted on Crooked Timber, which makes clear why this is a legitimate political issue.
3. Frankly, I find yours/TNR's blurring of anti-semitism and anti-Israeli criticism a continuance of a rather disturbing turn that's really not gonna help anyone. Obviously this will spark a 900-comment thread treading the same tired ground, so I'll simply defer to Judith Butler's excellent LRB article, which has once again become particularly relevant, and run back to exam revision.
