A group of US academics have called for a boycott of Israel, and specifically call upon US academics to participate in an academic and cultural boycott, which would revolve around cutting, or refusing to establish, ties with Israeli academics and cultural workers. JANIP opposes such a boycott.
Like the authors of the boycott call, we oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, an occupation which endangers a just two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We agree that Israel, as the stronger party to the conflict, must take the initiative in moving toward its resolution. Though we deplore attacks on Israel by Hamas and believe that Israel has the right to defend itself, we opposed the recent Israeli attack on Gaza, since in our view, not all diplomatic options were explored beforehand. This attack did great damage not only to its Palestinian victims but also to the prospects of peace in the region, and therefore to the real interests of Israel as well as Palestine. (more…)
As teachers, researchers, and others associated with academic pursuits, we believe that there is only one solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: two states for two peoples. Millions of decent, ordinary Israelis and Palestinians want to live in peace and raise their children in freedom without fear of death, injury, and the loss of quality of life which accompanies hot or cold warfare. But time and failed leadership on both sides have dealt these simple and unarguable values a profound blow. Both societies are now exhausted; some cynical, others frustrated, too many now indifferent to the possibility of peace.
A group of Israeli students currently studying abroad, or who have studied abroad in the past, have mobilized on behalf of Gaza’s students. Would-be university students from Gaza are being prevented by Israel from studying overseas. They are also not being allowed to attend university in the West Bank or Israel. The Israeli students have addressed a letter of protest to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, excerpts from which follow:
“Preventing students from Gaza from departing for academic study will bring about the collapse of Palestinian civil society.”
“As a community of students who employ their freedom of movement, we are appalled by the situation in which the State of Israel is imprisoning Palestinian students in their cities. An all-embracing restriction on the freedom of movement of students from the Gaza Strip constitutes collective punishment of a civilian population, which has nothing whatsoever to do with security considerations. (more…)
With the support of Meretz USA, the Jewish Academic Network for Israeli Palestinian Peace sponsored the First International Academic Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process: Pathways to Peace. The Conference took place on March 28-29 at CentralConnecticut State University and was co-sponsored by the American Task Force on Palestine and the Geneva Initiative North America. It featured top-level keynote speakers Herbert Kelman, Naomi Chazan, Stephen P. Cohen, Sami Adwan, Daniel Levy, Gaith al Omari, and Saliba Sarsar, as well as over 36 other presenters.
The conference concluded with a summary of some of the recurring ideas, and out-of-the-box suggestions for follow up: (more…)
JANIP is launching a sign-up campaign of Jewish academics who support our mission statement. Our goal is to demonstrate that the silent majority on university and college campuses is in favor of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and a two-state solution. JANIP will be the voice for this majority.
The JANIP mission statement appears below. If you support this statement and are willing to have your name appear on a list of JANIP supporters, please send your name and academic affiliation to info@janip.net.
Jewish Academic Network for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Mission Statement
The Jewish Academic Network for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (JANIP) is being created to bring together scholars, teachers, and administrators who reject the increasingly polarized debate surrounding the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Our goal is to bring a voice into the conversation – out of our identification with and commitment to Israel – that supports a negotiated two-state solution, an end to occupation, and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and bilaterally agreed-upon settlements in the West Bank.
Once again, as the end of the term of a U.S. President nears, the ether of peace negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors re-emerges, as a cyclical tide of intangible Jelly fish. So was with the elder Bush and the Madrid conference, with Clinton and Camp David, and now the young Bush and Annapolis. The challenge of this most intractable, protracted conflict seems to simultaneously draw and repulse American statesmen who have nothing more to worry about but their legacy, because without a doubt, solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be seen by history as one of the greatest diplomatic achievements of our time. And yet, time and time again they fail. This is specially puzzling given the fact that, according to most polls, not only the vast majority of both Israeli and Palestinians want an end to the conflict, they actually agree on the general lines of a two state solution, very much in line with what was proposed by Clinton in 2000. This enigma can be better understood if we take a look at a couple of polls conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. The first poll, in December 2006, showed that 68% of Israelis and 62% of Palestinians supported an end to the armed conflict. However, a second poll from July 2007 shows that in spite of their desire to end the conflict, 89% of Israelis and 76% of Palestinians still believed that the armed confrontation will continue, and only 31% of Palestinians believed it is possible to reach an agreement with the Olmert government, and 25% of Israelis believed it would be possible to compromise with a Palestinian national unity government. In other words, even though there is general agreement on the broad parameters to end the conflict, both sides are unwilling to yield because they do not trust the other side to be a sincere partner.
And therein lies the main obstacle to this problem, that neither of the Bushes nor Clinton ever focused on: The psychological obstacles to the conflict, such as hatred, mistrust, and prejudice, are not less critical than the political issues of borders, refugees and settlements. Yet, the social and psychological dimensions have been totally overlooked. The road to a negotiating table that does not include awareness of the core social, cultural and psychological issues, will be like the yellow brick road to Oz: A trek to an illusory destination that will not solve the underlying human problems that affect the parties.
Annapolis is indeed a positive and welcome development, if nothing else because it gives all sides in the conflict a platform to communicate. However, just as in any other conflict, getting the sides together to talk without addressing the underlying human factors fueling the conflict can quickly degenerate into a shouting match. To fully reach a solution to this long and bloody conflict, we can not overlook the psychological dimension. There can only be a true end to the conflict when this distant neighbors learn to see and talk to each other as human beings who only have a desire for a better life, a better future.
Moises Salinas is a professor of cross-cultural psychology at Central Connecticut State University. His latest book is Planting Hatred, Sowing Pain: The Psychology of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
Britain’s University and College Union (UCU) has announced that it is dropping its move to consider a boycott of Israeli universities, after it decided that the proposed boycott would be illegal under British law.
Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, suggests how to respond firmly and openly to anti-Israel and anti-Zionist remarks and language.
YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO FEEL OFFENDED
Judea Pearl
We, as Jews, have been grossly negligent in permitting the dehumanization of Israel to become socially acceptable in certain circles of society, especially on college campuses. Our silence, natural resilience to insults, and general reluctance to confront colleagues and friends have contributed significantly to the Orwellianization of campus vocabulary, and the legitimization of the unacceptable. Most of our assailants are even unaware of the shiver that goes down our spines with utterances such as “apartheid Israeli regime” or “brutal Israeli occupation.” … (more…)
A thoughtful and incisive analysis of the left’s support of the Israeli boycotts by a sociologist/ psychoanalyst.
Judith Lorber
Making Emotional Sense of the Proposed Boycotts against Israeli Academics and Intellectuals - Catherine B. Silver
ENGAGE Issue 4 - February 2007
This essay explores the signifying discourses used to support the ban on Israeli academics and intellectuals. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding the links between the political and the personal, through an exploration of the emotional basis for supporting the boycott and the power of language in splitting thoughts from affects. We look at this splitting mechanism in the context of the recent attempts to boycott Israeli researchers and academics which were initiated in England in 2002 by two Jewish professors (2), and followed in 2006 with both a proposal by an Irish group of academics and an attempted ban of Israel at this year’s International Architectural Biennial in Venice. The boycott attempts have created deep divisions within the left, each camp resorting to attacks, counter-attacks, and mutual condemnations.
Controversial research on Israel and the Palestinian territories has become the basis of yet another campaign to prevent a professor from winning tenure - this time at Barnard.
The Jewish Academic Network for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (JANIP), made up of North American academics who support an end to the occupation and a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, opposes the resolution recently endorsed by Britain’s University and College Union (UCU), which encourages the boycott of Israeli academic institutions by the UCU and its members. We see dialogue, negotiations, and positive support for joint Palestinian and Israeli NGO initiatives, not boycotts or other efforts to disrupt communication, as key to terminating the occupation and establishing a just peace between Israel and Palestine. (more…)
This article by Geoffrey Alderman doesn’t trivialize the anti-Israel UK boycott campaign, but gives a realistic view of how unions can get hijacked by a small, vocal group of political fanatics.
Prof. Kenneth Mann, chairman of the advisory council of the Israeli organization Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, has stated that, alongside battling a proposed academic boycott of Israeli academe by their British counterparts, Israeli academics and university presidents should be protesting Israeli government policy, “that continues to sweepingly deny the right of education and academic freedom of Palestinian students”.
Read the full Jerusalem Post report here.
Click for the full statement at the Gisha website.
Haaretz reports that a group of Israeli academics has met with British academics who are proposing that the UK’s University and College Union adopt a boycott of Israeli academe. Read the full article here.
One of the Israeli academics is translator and translation scholar Miriam Shlesinger. In a separate interview, Prof. Shlesinger argues that an academic boycott is a type of unjust collective punishment, which actually weakens the Israeli Left.
Read the full interview here.
Haaretz reports that, “A delegation of Israeli academics will head to the U.K. later this month in a bid to fight a proposed boycott of Israeli universities by British academics,” belonging to the newly-formed University and College Union (UCU). The UCU is a merger of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE). Click here for the full report.
info@janip.net
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About JANIP
JANIP supports a negotiated two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, based on an end to occupation and the right of both peoples to self-determination within recognized, secure borders. As scholars and teachers who are committed to Israel, we seek to inject a voice of realism and moderation into the on-campus debate, which too often has been reduced to a choice between uncompromisingly pro-Israel vs. pro-Palestinian positions.
