The Dubai Affair

BY AMOS

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Dubai's police chief, Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, has been indefatigably reporting his new discoveries in the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh case to international media, turning him into the darling of Arab and European media. He now claims to have evidence of the involvement of nearly 30 agents in the killing of the Hamas operative. What's more, Tamim has announced new plans to train UAE security officials in recognizing Israelis trying to enter the country with foreign passports by their appearance and manner of speaking. This should be a lot of fun. Meanwhile, Britain and Australia have dispatched investigators to Israel to question those dual nationals whose identities were allegedly used by the suspects. Of course, everything is based on the release of their photos by Tamim, who probably could have saved these people a great deal of grief by being more circumspect. But both he and the Dubai police seem to be enjoying the attention, judging by the agency's web site.

Photo Source: Dubai Police

It's hard to take seriously the outrage of the British about the use of their passports. Do MI-6 agents on sensitive missions routinely travel with the Queen's documents? Prime Minister Brown is certainly aware of the hypocrisy of his position. But once Tamim publicized the origins of the passports used by the alleged assassins, those governments could not but react.

For all of Tamim's crowing about a "99% certainty" that the Mossad assassinated al-Mabhou, no evidence has yet come to light that conclusively links Israel to the killing. Interestingly enough, the U.S. has refused to comment at all on the matter. It is hard to believe that if this was indeed a Mossad operation that American intelligence officials were not apprised of it beforehand or actually involved in it.

There are many commentators who have judged the operation a failure, due to the negative publicity. But condemnations of Israel in the international media come and go - one cannot base policy on them. The more relevant yardstick for an intelligence agency and a country's leaders is whether the investment in resources can be justified by the return. If Israel was behind the operation, one would hope that the disruption to Hamas's weapons smuggling networks will actually prove significant enough to affects the organization's usual functioning. Perhaps the killing will sow more fear among Hamas cadres about internal leaks. But Tamim may ultimately be replaced by someone equally or even more capable than him.

Another British Boycott

Israeli universities are under attack
(Photo: Ben Gurion University, June 2006)

UPDATE: I highly recommend Judy's blog, Adloyada, for her coverage of the boycott. She predicted that a boycott motion would be passed, and has some background on the union personalities pro and contra the resolution. She also notes some of the obfuscatory statements by anti-boycott groups, who claim that the motion will be subjected to balloting by all members, hence preventing it from being adopted as policy. On the other hand, she argues that no respectable universities will actually implement such a boycott, and that we should all take a pill. Check out these links - you are unlikely to get this kind of scoop anywhere else.

On Wednesday, delegates at a congress of the University and College Union (UCU) in Britain passed a motion that calls for the circulation, among the trade union's branches, of a Palestinian appeal to impose an academic boycott on Israel. As far as I can tell from the union's rather opaque press release, the branches will eventually have to approve the boycott for it go into effect.

This appears to be the text of the resolution passed at the congress:

In3 Composite: Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (University of Brighton, Grand Parade; University of East London, Docklands)

Congress notes that Israel's 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement.

Congress deplores the denial of educational rights for Palestinians by invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests of teachers, lecturers and students.

Congress condemns the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation, which has provoked a call from Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.

Congress believes that in these circumstances passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic.

Congress instructs the NEC to

• circulate the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches/LAs for information and discussion;
• encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions;
• organise a UK-wide campus tour for Palestinian academic/educational trade unionists;
• issue guidance to members on appropriate forms of action.

Clearly, something is rotten in the state of British academia for such a motion to have passed once again. I do not intend here to demonstrate why Israel should merit not be boycotted by British academics, as the onus really ought to be on those behind this vile measure to prove their case. Perhaps most galling is the obvious injustice of singling out Israel, among all the nations of the world, as the one target deserving of this kind. But the simplistic, one-sided, and self-exculpatory nature of this resolution is also striking.

The first two paragraphs pin all the blame for the hardships suffered by Palestinian civilians, including the "denial of educational rights," on Israel. This is a willful and immoral distortion of the truth. The shootings, closures, and curfews to which the bill refers do not take place in a vacuum; they are responses to acts of terror against Israeli civilians. One may argue about whether specific measures are justified or not, but this resolution assumes from the start that all of Israel's actions are illegitimate. In other words, according to the framers of this motion, Israel's attempts to protect and defend its citizens from murderous attacks - designed specifically to kill Israeli civilians - are a priori immoral. Surely, this is perverse and itself worthy of moral condemnation.

The third paragraph then goes on to make all of Israeli academia complicit in Israel's alleged crimes. This, of course, is charge on which the call for an academic boycott hangs. Many people have made counter-arguments to the effect that a significant number of Israeli academics actually oppose "the occupation." While this happens to be true, such a counter-argument concedes far too much to a position that ought to be resisted with outrage and moral fortitude, rather than feeble apologetics.

As I have suggested above, blanket condemnation of Israeli actions in the territories is itself morally suspect, as it enjoins the state from protecting its citizens. However, even more dubious is the charge that Israeli universities and colleges as a whole are complicit "in the occupation." Israeli universities do not determine government policy. Even if a professor in the department of molecular biology at Hebrew University reports to reserve duty at a checkpoint in the West Bank, that scholar's research and teaching are not complicit in oppression. I was flabbergasted to read the statements of a certain Michael Cushman from LSE, which were reprinted in the Guardian:

During the debate, which lasted well over an hour, Michael Cushman, from the London School of Economics, said: "Universities are to Israel what the springboks were to South Africa: the symbol of their national identity."

Israel wanted to claim it was a normal democratic state and universities were integral to that, Mr Cushman said. "[But] it is not a normal state. They are not normal universities.

"Senior academics move from universities into ministries and back again," he said.

"Regularly, lecturers take up their commissions in the Israeli Defence Force as reserve officers to go into the West Bank to dominate, control and shoot the population."

By Cushman's logic Israeli hospitals, synagogues, and elementary schools are also "complicit" in the occupation. Indeed, as the allusion to the South African rugby team (the Springboks), banned from competition in the 1980s and until 1995, makes clear, this is the logic of the UCU motion: Israel, just like apartheid South Africa, has no legitimacy. Its entire society is criminal. Hence, all of its institutions are somehow involved in that rather abstract entity of "the occupation." In other words, no citizen of Israel is immune from the collective punishment meted out by the UCU or other unions.

The single-minded ascription of all evil in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Israel - indeed, the projection of this evil onto Israeli citizens, whether civilians or combatants - makes one wonder about the preemptive self-defense clause in the last paragraph of the motion. Is there any other people in the world today that this British union would choose to punish in this manner?

The dream of political Zionism was to turn the Jews into a nation with a state like all other nations, not only in order to provide Jews with a haven from antisemitism, but also to end antisemitism tout court, precisely by "normalizing" the Jews. This project has clearly failed. Israel has become the Jew of the nations - on its punishment (or, preferably, destruction), in the minds of today's redeemers of the world, hangs the restoration of cosmic justice.

Interestingly, the following motion did not make it onto the agenda of the congress, because it was received after a March 21, 2007 deadline:

VV Supporting cooperation between the UCU, Palestine, and Israel (Kingston University)

Congress calls for an end to the 40-year Occupation of Palestinian territory, and supports a free and viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Preferring cooperation and rapprochement to hostility and exclusion, Congress believes that a boycott of Israeli academics would be counter-productive and harm voices for dialogue.

Reaffirming UCU's commitment to academic freedom and equality, Congress opposes punishing an entire academic sector for the actions of its country’s government – whether Israeli, Palestinian or any other nationality.

Congress resolves that that UCU support cooperative projects that bring together Israeli and Palestinian academia to work towards a peaceful settlement, and to work with Palestinian and Israeli Trade Unions to defend the right of Palestinian students and academics to study free from harassment or unfair restrictions.

I have seen no coverage of the boycott vote in the European press - if someone finds German, French, Italian, or Spanish reports on it, please post the links here. The New York Times has a slightly facetious article about the vote.

The American Jewish Committee is spearheading action against the boycott.

Olmert Pitches Convergence Plan to the Europeans

An honor guard for Olmert in France (Channel 1)

It is not clear what Israeli PM Ehud Olmert hoped to get out of his trip to Europe other than crumpets and croissants. So far, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac have reacted almost identically to Olmert's declarations about the great concessions he is prepared to make as part of his "convergence" plan: with tired indifference. Contrary to Le Monde, which imagined another instance of Anglo-American perfidy, speculating that

son plan dit de "regroupement" ("convergence" en anglais) ... aurait reçu les soutiens de MM. Bush et Blair [Olmert's "regroupement," or "convergence" plan in English, has received the support of Bush and Blair]

Blair actually did not endorse the convergence plan at all (see Aluf Benn's column in Ha'aretz for an analysis of the British position).

Olmert's plan envisions the "realignment" or bringing into Israel of most West Bank settlements, as well as the inclusion of some land beyond the 1967 borders to make the large, nearby settlement blocs continguous with the pre-1967 lines. It represents the second stage of the withdrawal from the territories acquired by Israel as part of the Six-Day War.

While Blair and Chirac did not express enthusiasm for convergence, they also have not expressed overt opposition to Olmert's plan. Rather, they have chosen to chant the old mantra of negotiated settlements, which Olmert has been clever enough to make a central part of his addresses as well. A unilateral solution, he emphasized several times, would only result if no partner could be found. Along the way, he repeated Israel's desire to work with Abbas, while stressing his opposition to dealing with Hamas, which still has not recognized the Jewish state's right to exist. This latter position too went unopposed by the Europeans. Here it is relevant to note the "overwhelmingly negative" perception of Hamas among Europeans reported in a recent poll by The Israel Project.

The withdrawal from the West Bank will be far more complicated than the "disengagement" from the Gaza strip. This is obviously true with respect to the number of people and settlements that will be evacuated, as well as with regard to the issue of final borders. But on the international front too, certain difficulties loom ominously. The Europeans will balk at recognizing the convergence as a withdrawal "from territories occupied in 1967" without serious efforts at negotiations with the Palestinians. And there is the rub. There is, as of yet, no partner on the Palestinian side who would accept Olmert's plan. Thus, if Israel hopes to attain international recognition of its new borders through another series of unilateral moves, it had better think again.

Why the Academic Boycott of Israel is Lunacy

A Product of Affirmative Action: The Education Revolution in the Israeli Bedouin Community
Source: Newsletter, Vol. 5(2004-5), Center for Bedouin Studies and Development, Ben-Gurion University, Israel

One of the things that infuriates me most about the decision by the British National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) to favour a boycott of Israeli universities is that they are actually hubs of social change. I truly wonder how many of NATFHE's members who supported the boycott have ever visited an Israeli university. Anyone who comes to Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva will be struck by the considerable number of Arab students on campus, be they Bedouin from the surrounding area or students from the centre and north of Israel. To someone who has been brainwashed to consider Israel an "apartheid" state, the fact that there are large numbers of Arab students at Israeli universities and colleges is difficult to digest.

Boycott supporters would do well to read a recent Ha'aretz article ("First Israeli Bedouin Woman gets Medical Degree" - May 31, 2006), which mentions an impressive affirmative action program operating at Ben-Gurion University. The program, called "Cultivating Medicine in the Desert", grants big scholarships to bright Bedouin high school students and puts them on a track to medical school, even if they did not attain the high psychometric exam scores (similar to the SAT)required to gain admission. All students accepted to this special program then go through a special "prep year" where they are given intense tutoring as a group. From what I recall, all those who pass the first or second year of the program then join the general stream. Throughout, they retain their scholarships. Recently, a young woman by the name of Rania al-'Uqbi, who was admitted to Ben-Gurion U in the framework of this program, attained her medical degree - she was the first Bedouin woman to do so.

This program and several others like it are all administered by Ben-Gurion University's Center for Bedouin Studies and Development. Basically, this center's main function is to act as a second student services department for Bedouin students and to hand out scholarships to qualified applicants. I've talked to one of the heads of the Center and found out that there are a number of special programs for Bedouin students in Engineering and the Health Sciences. We're talking here about some very aggressive affirmative action for very needy students. What made me really proud is that a very significant share of the funding for these programs comes from North American Jewish donors! The scholarship funds set up by various Jewish donors, a number of which favour Bedouin female students, are one of the reasons for an impressive increase in the number of young Bedouin women studying at the university. At a meeting that I attended in late April at Ben-Gurion U with several groups of Bedouin high school students whom I taught throughout the year, I heard the head of the Center for Bedouin Studies and Development declare that the biggest challenge facing them now is to encourage more Bedouin guys to study and to find enough qualified students for the scholarships.

A group of my students in Kseife, Israel
At the high school level, there are also a number of special after-school tutoring programs for students in the Bedouin sector, funded by private (Jewish) foundations, the Ministry of Education and even the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation. I myself taught a group of advanced level students in a special program that funded after-school English classes for 10th and 11th graders to prepare them for their high school matriculation exams (Bagrut). A number of these students will also get full scholarships throughout university and even job placements after they graduate. Contrary to popular perception, the problem in Bedouin schools, in general, from my experience as a teacher in the system, is not so much a lack of funding, but how money is allocated and used.