Soccer Dad

Not an academic question

The Washington Post carried an Associated Press article Educators In Britain Debate Israel Ties. There's a point in the article explaining the vote to boycott Israeli academic institutions

That union said it targeted Bar-Ilan for its links to the College of Judea and Samaria in the West Bank settlement of Ariel. It accused Haifa University of threatening to fire a political science lecturer for supporting a student's research into allegations of killings by Israeli troops.

I'm not going to take issue with the first charge, as it is predicated on the absurd belief that there is no greater evil in the world than Jewish occupation of Muslim lands. This isn't something that can be argued; it is catechism.

But in terms of the second item, the reporter had an obligation to set things straight. Ilan Pappe wasn't threatened with firing for supporting the research because of the subject matter of the research. Pappe was not threatened with firing by the University, but rather a colleague lodged a complaint against him asking that he be fired. The matter, however, was dropped.
Pappe was the subject of that complaint after the research was shown by an independent inquiry to be fraudulent and Pappe rejected the results.

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.

These findings, it is important to note, matched a court decision issued on the same matter. As Dr. Pappe did not approve of the committee's decision, despite the undeniable discrepancies between the text and the taped interviews, he reacted by calling on the academic community to boycott the members of this committee and the University of Haifa.

Since the advent of the new historians (Morris, Schlaim and Pappe) Israel's founding legends haven't merely been questioned, they've been reversed. Instead of assuming a nobility to Israel's founders, malevolence is charged. Gratutitously.

Thus any charge of wrongdoing, especially murder, levelled against Israel in the days of its founding is treated uncritically as fact.

So in this news story, it is the University of Haifa that was trying to prevent the truth from coming out. In actuality, though, the problem was that the charge was bogus.

The reporter was either too lazy to check the facts. Or he was unquestioning in his belief of Israel's culpability. Neither possibility reflects well on the AP.

Proving as reliable as a stopped watch, stark raving moonbat, Tikkun Olam can't get around his fixation with the occupation, but still finds the blanket boycott of Israeli academic institutions troubling. Having looked at the text of the boycott he also wonders if the language may be antisemitic.

Secular Blasphemy uncovers an interesting item about a past boycott organizer's associations

It's no surprise the teaching unions are dominated not only by militant leftists, but extreme anti-Semites as well. Last year, the British Teacher's Union (BTU) decided to boycott two Israeli universities. A driving force behind that was the lecturer Sue Blackwell, who had links to Neo-Nazi sites on her personal web pages.

Arkopolo asks where is the outrage and finds a claim that it's more urgent to work against the Zionist occupation than any other outrage to be rather dubious. Might we expect a boycott of Al Najah University due to its support of terrorism?

Abracadabrah quotes Adoloyadah (how many syllables in thowse two names?) to give some background of the politics involved in the British academic unions.

Outside the Beltway criticizes the move as a blow to academic freedom.

Head Heeb points to a possible unintended consequence of the boycott.

UPDATE: Tikkun Olam points out in the comments

"Having looked at the text of the boycott he also wonders if the language may be antisemitic."

I wondered no such thing & no such language is in my post. Careful, careful.

He is correct. This is what he wrote

Reading the portions of the resolution quoted by the Times, resolution supporters’ rhetoric smacks too much of political correctness. It also has the ring of anti-Zionism in it.

He does not make the obvious connection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Apparently I gave him too much credit.

Technorati tags: Media Bias, Boycott of Israel