Friday 14 December 2012

Antony Loewenstin et al!!!!

NOT APPROVED!
GS

December 13th, 2012 in Israel

Anybody else like to speak out against a courageous academic challenging Israeli apartheid?

There’s been so much media cov­er­age of Dr Jake Lynch at Syd­ney Uni­ver­sity tak­ing a prin­ci­pled stance against an Is­raeli aca­d­e­mic that it’s vital to just have all the sto­ries on the record. I’ve been pub­lish­ing all the in­for­ma­tion I can find about it on a daily basis (here’s the piece from yes­ter­day).
Higher Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Chris Evans has of­fered an un­equiv­o­cal re­buff to aca­d­e­mic sup­port­ers of the anti-Is­raeli Boy­cott, Di­vest­ment and Sanc­tions move­ment.
And Syd­ney Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor Suzanne Rut­land, a mem­ber of the Cen­tre for Peace and Con­flict Stud­ies coun­cil, crit­i­cised the cen­tre’s sup­port of the BDS move­ment.
“The Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment has re­peat­edly made clear that we strongly and un­equiv­o­cally op­pose the Boy­cott, Di­vest­ment and Sanc­tions cam­paign,” Sen­a­tor Evans told The Aus­tralian. “This is on the pub­lic record and re­flects my own po­si­tion.”
The Aus­tralian re­vealed last week the cen­tre re­jected a re­quest for as­sis­tance from an Is­raeli aca­d­e­mic, Dan Avnon, cred­ited with de­vel­op­ing the coun­try’s only civics cur­ricu­lum de­signed for both Jew­ish and Arab school stu­dents.
Sen­a­tor Evans said he had sought as­sur­ance from the Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney that it does not sup­port the BDS cam­paign.
“The uni­ver­sity ad­vised the cen­tre’s di­rec­tor, as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor Jake Lynch, was speak­ing on his own be­half and his views were not those of the cen­tre, the fac­ulty or the uni­ver­sity,” he said.
“It con­firmed the uni­ver­sity does not sup­port the anti-Is­raeli BDS move­ment. I un­der­stand that other Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney fac­ul­ties and schools have made of­fers to as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor Dan Avnon and I hope he will se­ri­ously con­sider them.”
Pro­fes­sor Rut­land said the cen­tre’s stand on BDS was “coun­ter­pro­duc­tive”. “For a peace agree­ment to occur be­tween Is­rael and the Pales­tini­ans di­a­logue is cru­cial so that trust-build­ing can take place,” she told The Aus­tralian.
Pro­fes­sor Rut­land, a mem­ber of the uni­ver­sity’s De­part­ment of He­brew, Bib­li­cal and Jew­ish Stud­ies, warned of the im­pact of re­li­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism and ex­trem­ism on both sides of the con­flict in the Mid­dle East.
“Since BDS only tar­gets Is­raeli uni­ver­si­ties and other prod­ucts, I be­lieve this cre­ates an asym­met­ric view of the con­flict,” she said.
Pro­fes­sor Rut­land said she had been con­cerned by the cen­tre’s po­si­tion on BDS for a num­ber of years, while sup­port­ing the cen­tre’s other work.
She said she had writ­ten to the head of the cen­tre’s coun­cil, Ken­neth Mcnab, after Pro­fes­sor Lynch’s de­ci­sion over Pro­fes­sor Avnon, say­ing: “It seems to me that his area of re­search and work in Is­rael, in try­ing to bridge the Jew­ish/Pales­tin­ian Arab di­vide in Is­raeli so­ci­ety, is ex­actly the type of ac­tiv­ity which CPACS should sup­port and en­cour­age.”
It is rather disin­gen­u­ous of the di­rec­tor of Syd­ney Uni­ver­sity’s Cen­tre for Peace and Con­flict Stud­ies, Jake Lynch, to trot out four anti-Is­raeli Jews who had been in­vited to his peace cen­tre as ev­i­dence that he is even-minded (Let­ters, 12/12).
One of them, Noam Chom­sky, who was sin­gled out for the cen­tre’s peace prize, has been feted by Hezbol­lah on a visit to Lebanon.
He had also at one stage de­fended writ­ing a pref­ace for a Holo­caust de­nier’s book on the spu­ri­ous grounds that one can­not au­to­mat­i­cally as­sume that a Holo­caust de­nier is an anti-Semite.
An­other, Ilan Pappe, has been thor­oughly dis­cred­ited for fab­ri­cat­ing the his­tory of the Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict.
The third, Michael Lerner, pro­motes anti-Is­rael big­otry and the fourth, Jeff Halper, favours the Pales­tin­ian his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive as op­posed to that of his own peo­ple and coun­try.
Lynch would have had more cre­dence had he in­vited a well-known pro-Is­raeli aca­d­e­mic to ad­dress his cen­tre as a means of pro­vid­ing its au­di­ences with a point of view at vari­ance with an anti-Is­rael one. On the other hand, that might be con­trary to the cen­tre’s ethos.
Leslie Stein, West Pym­ble, NSW
It is im­por­tant to keep sep­a­rate a num­ber of points about the Cen­tre for Peace and Con­flict Stud­ies and its sup­port for the Boy­cott, Di­vest­ment and Sanc­tions move­ment. The cen­tre’s di­rec­tor Jake Lynch has every right to argue for, de­fend and try to per­suade oth­ers of his rea­sons for sup­port­ing the BDS cam­paign.
Aca­d­e­mic free­dom is not a prin­ci­ple one can sim­ply choose when it pleases you. It ap­plies as much to is­sues about which there is deep dis­agree­ment as it does when there is broad con­sen­sus. Uni­ver­si­ties are the place where dif­fi­cult is­sues should be de­bated re­spect­fully but also in a rig­or­ous and search­ing way. I de­fend Lynch’s right to do so.
How­ever, it is not the pol­icy of the school in which the cen­tre sits, nor the fac­ulty of arts and so­cial sci­ences, nor the Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney to sup­port the BDS cam­paign.
In­deed, I be­lieve the cam­paign, as it ap­plies to uni­ver­si­ties, cuts against one of the fun­da­men­tal roles a uni­ver­sity should play in a free so­ci­ety. But I re­spect the fact that there are dif­fer­ent views about the cam­paign and re­main will­ing to de­bate with those who think dif­fer­ently.
Dun­can Ivi­son, pro­fes­sor, fac­ulty of arts, Syd­ney Uni­ver­sity, NSW
The ar­gu­ments put for­ward by Jake Lynch in his let­ters can be con­densed: “I’m not racist, some of my best friends are Jew­ish”. Lynch should un­der­stand that his sup­port of the BDS move­ment means he will be judged by the com­pany he keeps.
Bill Lyn­don, North Syd­ney, NSW
Jake Lynch’s let­ter sim­ply adds fuel to the fire. He gives as ex­am­ples of vis­i­tors hosted by his cen­tre, Ilan Pappe, Jeff Halper and Noam Chom­sky, all of whom are vir­u­lent op­po­nents of al­most every­thing the state of Is­rael does.
How­ever, his cen­tre is not pre­pared to host aca­d­e­mics who might iden­tify any pos­i­tive poli­cies im­ple­mented by Is­rael, Dan Avnon being the re­cent ex­am­ple.
Lynch is not a pro­po­nent of free­dom of ex­pres­sion. His cen­tre acts as a pro­po­nent of par­ti­san grand­stand­ing.
David D. Knoll, Coogee, NSW
Jake Lynch tries hard to hide his bi­ases be­hind a wall of seem­ingly harm­less and pompous spin. His let­ter (11/12) was a won­der­ful ex­am­ple.
“The Boy­cott, Di­vest­ment and Sanc­tions move­ment is con­ceived as part of a re­me­dial strat­egy in the face of in­ad­e­quate gov­ern­ment re­sponses to Is­raeli pol­icy.” You don’t have to be an as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor in read­ing-be­tween-the-lines to see where this move­ment is head­ing.
T. Grif­fin, Ade­laide, SA
It seems safe to say that He­brew Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor Dan Avnon thinks of him­self as one of the good guys—and rightly so. He’s spent a con­sid­er­able part of his ca­reer pro­mot­ing co­ex­is­tence be­tween Jew­ish and Arab Is­raelis. In 2001, he even cre­ated a high school pro­gram that en­ables re­li­gious and sec­u­lar Jews to study to­gether with Arabs—no small feat in Is­rael, where the three pop­u­la­tions gen­er­ally study apart.
So it came as a rude awak­en­ing when Syd­ney Uni­ver­sity’s Cen­ter for Peace and Con­flict Stud­ies re­fused his re­quest to work to­gether, sim­ply on the grounds that he’s Is­raeli. The Cen­ter’s As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor Jake Lynch wrote in an email: “I and the Cen­ter have noth­ing against you per­son­ally, and your re­search sounds in­ter­est­ing and worth­while. But we sup­port the boy­cott cam­paign against Is­rael, and that in­cludes the call for an aca­d­e­mic boy­cott of Is­raeli uni­ver­si­ties.”
For some­one with a track record as sym­pa­thetic as Avnon’s to be boy­cotted seems galling. But be­cause it’s a fact that boy­cotts al­ways harm in­no­cent peo­ple—con­sider the South Africa boy­cott, which put black South Africans out of work—it may be tempt­ing to just chalk this all up to a re­gret­table in­evitabil­ity. Boy­cotting, one might argue, means some sym­pa­thetic peo­ple will get caught in the cross­fire—that’s an un­for­tu­nate but nec­es­sary corol­lary.
And yet Avnon’s case is so pro­foundly ironic that it ac­tu­ally casts doubt on that ar­gu­ment. It points up the major pit­fall of aca­d­e­mic boy­cotts, a pit­fall so se­ri­ous as to make them coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.
…
After all, who is bet­ter po­si­tioned than Avnon to change Is­raeli so­ci­ety from within? To do the painstak­ing, in­dis­pens­able work of con­vinc­ing fel­low cit­i­zens and pol­i­cy­mak­ers that, for ex­am­ple, en­cour­ag­ing Is­raeli Jews and Arabs to learn with and from each other might ac­tu­ally be worth­while? And who, if not Avnon or some­one like him, does Lynch imag­ine will suc­cess­fully do that work?
That Avnon got painted with the broad brush of aca­d­e­mic boy­cotts shows just how coun­ter­pro­duc­tive such boy­cotts can be. Of course, Lynch and his sup­port­ers would prob­a­bly argue that, on the whole, the ben­e­fits out­weigh the costs. But Avnon’s case should, at the very least, make that camp think twice. Be­cause aca­d­e­mic boy­cotts lack the gran­u­lar­ity to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween sym­pa­thetic and un­sym­pa­thetic in­di­vid­u­als, they often end up lock­ing out pre­cisely those peo­ple who would be their great­est al­lies.
Se­nior Jew­ish lead­ers have slated a Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney aca­d­e­mic and sup­porter of the Boy­cott, Di­vest­ment and Sanc­tions (BDS) cam­paign for “bul­ly­ing” an Is­raeli coun­ter­part.
Last week, Pro­fes­sor Dan Avnon of the He­brew Uni­ver­sity of Jerusalem, who de­signed the first high school civics pro­gram for both Is­raelis and Pales­tini­ans, wrote to sev­eral con­tacts, in­clud­ing As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor Jake Lynch at the Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney’s Cen­tre for Peace and Con­flict Stud­ies (CPACs), ask­ing if he could in­clude them as ref­er­ences on an ap­pli­ca­tion for a Sir Zel­man Cowen fel­low­ship.
“Pro­fes­sor Lynch seized the mo­ment, wrote to me that he can­not spon­sor my stay due to his prin­ci­pled sup­port of the boy­cott, and then – with­out fur­ther ado – sent his re­sponse to me to a mail­ing list,” Avnon told The AJN.
Avnon said he at­tempted to en­gage Lynch in di­a­logue on the issue, but re­ceived no reply.
B’nai B’rith Anti-Defama­tion Com­mis­sion (ADC) chair Dvir Abramovich con­demned Lynch’s ac­tions as a “gross vi­o­la­tion of aca­d­e­mic free­dom” and “an ex­treme, par­ti­san bul­ly­ing tac­tic”.
“The pol­i­tics of prej­u­dice have no place in acad­e­mia where the com­mon pur­suit is the cham­pi­oning of truth and dis­cov­ery,” he said.
The Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jewry’s Peter Wertheim la­belled CPACs “a con­tin­ual em­bar­rass­ment to the Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney”.
“To the uni­ver­sity’s credit, I un­der­stand that arrange­ments have been made for Pro­fes­sor Avnon to work with an­other de­part­ment which has much higher in­ter­na­tional recog­ni­tion for its re­search and teach­ing,” he said.
Lynch also drew crit­i­cism from the dean of the Fac­ulty of Arts and So­cial Sci­ences, Pro­fes­sor Dun­can Ivi­son, who said he “can­not make de­ci­sions about who comes here”, while a spokesper­son for uni­ver­sity vice-chan­cel­lor Michael Spence made it clear that he “does not speak for the school, the Fac­ulty of Arts and So­cial Sci­ences or for the uni­ver­sity”.
When con­tacted by The AJN, Lynch main­tained CPACs’s sup­port of BDS was not in any way “racist, anti-Jew­ish or anti-Is­raeli”.
He said he had not been able to reply to Avnon’s fol­low-up email due to being in the mid­dle of a “per­fect storm” of other com­mit­ments. He also said that he had sent his reply to Avnon only to CPACs’s gov­ern­ing coun­cil of “be­tween 15 and 20 peo­ple”
It’s worth pub­lish­ing the com­plete an­swers Lynch sent to the Aus­tralian Jew­ish News as it shows the typ­i­cal dis­hon­esty that the paper dis­plays when cov­er­ing Is­rael and Pales­tine. These days it is lit­tle more than a pro­pa­ganda sheet for the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment:
Hi Prof Lynch,
I was hop­ing you could an­swer a few ques­tions for an ar­ti­cle I am writ­ing [in the Aus­tralian Jew­ish News] about your re­fusal to as­sist Dan Avnon due to CPACs sup­port for BDS. Specif­i­cally:
Has the re­ac­tion from media, politi­cians and in­deed some of your col­leagues been fair?
Why did you de­cide to for­ward your reply to Prof Avnon to a mail­ing list?
When Prof Avnon emailed you again, at­tempt­ing to en­gage in di­a­logue on the issue, why did you not reply?
Prof Avnon works for peace be­tween Is­raelis and Pales­tini­ans. How is the Pales­tin­ian cause helped by boy­cotting him?
By your own ad­mis­sion Prof Avnon’s work sounded in­ter­est­ing and worth­while. Given that BDS blan­ket bans you from even con­sid­er­ing what he has to say – is there surely not a bet­ter way than BDS to help the Pales­tin­ian cause?
Your as­sis­tance in an­swer­ing these is greatly ap­pre­ci­ated. We go to press to­mor­row mid-morn­ing, I’d ap­pre­ci­ate any reply.
Thanks and Kind Re­gards,
Hi Gareth,
Thanks for your ques­tions.
I am sat­is­fied that I have had the op­por­tu­nity, through the news cov­er­age in the Aus­tralian, to set out at least a small por­tion of the ra­tio­nale for the BDS cam­paign. From Fri­day’s edi­tion of the paper:
‘In a sting­ing cri­tique of Aus­tralia’s for­eign pol­icy, Jake Lynch said the cen­tre boy­cotted Is­raeli in­sti­tu­tions “be­cause of the de­fi­cien­cies of of­fi­cial for­eign pol­icy and diplo­macy by Aus­tralia and other in­flu­en­tial states”.
He said sup­port­ing the Boy­cott, Di­vest­ment and Sanc­tions move­ment against Is­rael sent a “mes­sage of un­ac­cept­abil­ity for Is­rael’s ex­pan­sion­ist poli­cies and mil­i­tarism”. “The mes­sage has not been clear enough from many gov­ern­ments, in­clud­ing Aus­tralia’s, and that has con­tributed to the prob­lem,” Mr Lynch said.
“By with­hold­ing our co-op­er­a­tion on an in­sti­tu­tional level, we are doing our bit to make up for that”.’
How­ever, it is most un­fair for the Aus­tralian to in­sin­u­ate, as it has in more re­cent edi­tions, that our pol­icy on BDS is in any way racist, anti-Jew­ish or anti-Is­raeli. In re­cent years, and under my di­rec­tion, CPACS has hosted talks by promi­nent Jew­ish speak­ers – Is­raeli and non-Is­raeli – who have ap­peared in a per­sonal ca­pac­ity. They in­clude Pro­fes­sor Ilan Pappe; Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor Jeff Halper of ICAHD, and Rabbi Michael Lerner. Last year’s Syd­ney Peace Prize, given by our sis­ter or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Syd­ney Peace Foun­da­tion (on whose Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil I also serve) was awarded to Pro­fes­sor Noam Chom­sky, a promi­nent Jew­ish in­tel­lec­tual (both he and Rabbi Lerner dis­agree with me on BDS, by the way, and I had an in­ter­est­ing dis­cus­sion with Michael about that when he was here).
The only fair and re­spon­si­ble state­ment for the Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney to give was the one quoted in the Aus­tralian’s Fri­day’s edi­tion:
‘Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney vice-chan­cel­lor Michael Spence re­jected a call from As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor Lynch in 2009 to cut links with the He­brew Uni­ver­sity and a sec­ond Is­raeli in­sti­tu­tion, the Tech­nion, in the city of Haifa. “I do not con­sider it ap­pro­pri­ate for the uni­ver­sity to boy­cott aca­d­e­mic in­sti­tu­tions in a coun­try with which Aus­tralia has diplo­matic re­la­tions,” he wrote in re­sponse at the time’.
A spokesman for Dr Spence said his po­si­tion had not changed. The spokesman said As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor Lynch was “en­ti­tled to ex­press a pub­lic opin­ion where it falls under his area of ex­per­tise”, but added, “on this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter he does not speak for the school, the fac­ulty or for the uni­ver­sity”.’
Un­for­tu­nately a Uni­ver­sity spokesman then in­formed the paper on Fri­day – for Sat­ur­day’s edi­tion – that I had been told by ‘uni­ver­sity lead­ers’ in the past that my re­marks were ‘in­ap­pro­pri­ate’. This is fac­tu­ally in­cor­rect – I have never been told my re­marks are in­ap­pro­pri­ate, and nei­ther is it within the rights of the Uni­ver­sity to deem them to be so. The Uni­ver­sity’s re­sponse, I be­lieve, con­tra­venes my right to free ex­pres­sion as pro­vided for in Clause 209 of the Uni­ver­sity’s En­ter­prise Agree­ment:
IN­TEL­LEC­TUAL FREE­DOM
209 The Par­ties are com­mit­ted to the pro­tec­tion and pro­mo­tion of in­tel­lec­tual free­dom within the Uni­ver­sity, in­clud­ing
the rights of:
(a) Aca­d­e­mic staff to:
en­gage in the free and re­spon­si­ble pur­suit of all as­pects of knowl­edge and cul­ture through in­de­pen­dent
re­search, and to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of the out­comes of re­search in dis­cus­sion, in teach­ing, as pub­li­ca­tions
and cre­ative works and in pub­lic de­bate; and
(b) Aca­d­e­mic, Gen­eral and Eng­lish lan­guage teach­ing staff to:
(i) par­tic­i­pate in the rep­re­sen­ta­tive in­sti­tu­tions of gov­er­nance within the Uni­ver­sity in ac­cor­dance with
the statutes, rules and terms of ref­er­ence of the in­sti­tu­tions;
(ii) ex­press opin­ions about the op­er­a­tion of the Uni­ver­sity and higher ed­u­ca­tion pol­icy in gen­eral;
(iii) par­tic­i­pate in pro­fes­sional and rep­re­sen­ta­tive bod­ies, in­clud­ing Unions, and to en­gage in com­mu­nity
ser­vice with­out fear of ha­rass­ment, in­tim­i­da­tion or un­fair treat­ment in their em­ploy­ment; and
(iv) ex­press un­pop­u­lar or con­tro­ver­sial views, pro­vided that in doing so staff must not en­gage in
ha­rass­ment, vil­i­fi­ca­tion or in­tim­i­da­tion.
The quotes from Op­po­si­tion front-benchers, Christo­pher Pyne and Julie Bishop, also risk con­strain­ing free ex­pres­sion – though I be­lieve they may have made them with­out the Aus­tralian hav­ing fully ex­plained the facts on which they were being asked to com­ment.
In­for­ma­tion pro­vided by the Uni­ver­sity to the paper has also in­ad­ver­tently lent cre­dence to the non se­quitur that I was ap­pear­ing to speak for the uni­ver­sity as a whole, in de­clin­ing Pro­fes­sor Avnon’s re­quest. This is not true – in fact, in my reply to him, I at­tached both sides of the cor­re­spon­dence with Dr Spence from 2009, quoted above, and stated that my and the Cen­tre’s pol­icy was not the pol­icy of the Uni­ver­sity as a whole. Nei­ther could such an ap­pear­ance ever have arisen – Pro­fes­sor Avnon’s re­quest was to me per­son­ally, sim­ply ask­ing per­mis­sion to put my name down on his ap­pli­ca­tion for a fel­low­ship. It was al­ways clear that he was at lib­erty to ap­proach oth­ers at the Uni­ver­sity, and in­deed in his own in­ter­view with the Aus­tralian’s John Lyons, on Sat­ur­day, he said that he had ap­proached as many as six of us al­to­gether.
It’s po­ten­tially mis­lead­ing to say I for­warded my reply to Pro­fes­sor Avnon to a ‘mail­ing list’. The Cen­tre’s pol­icy on BDS was adopted, and has been af­firmed, by its gov­ern­ing Coun­cil, and I thought CPACS Coun­cil mem­bers should be made aware that I had taken this ac­tion under the pol­icy – so I asked our Admin As­sis­tant to for­ward it to Coun­cil mem­bers (be­tween 15 and 20 peo­ple).
I do owe Pro­fes­sor Avnon an apol­ogy for not hav­ing replied to his fol­low-up email, which con­tained some good points. I’m afraid it came in dur­ing a ‘per­fect storm’ of dead­lines for mark­ing, re­search grant ap­pli­ca­tions and so on. Then, I had to take an ex­ec­u­tive role in the con­fer­ence, in the last week of No­vem­ber, of the In­ter­na­tional Peace Re­search As­so­ci­a­tion, of which I was, at the time, Sec­re­tary Gen­eral. I’m afraid it’s just one of those oc­ca­sions when the ur­gent crowded out the im­por­tant.
As to your last two ques­tions, I can do no bet­ter than to pass on a mes­sage from Ofer Neiman, who sent it to the Uni­ver­sity Vice Chan­cel­lor, Dr Michael Spence, with a copy to me. He ac­ceded to my re­quest for per­mis­sion to cir­cu­late it:
Dr Michael Spence,
Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Prin­ci­pal,
Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney
Dear Pro­fes­sor Spence,
I am an Is­raeli cit­i­zen, and an alum­nus of the He­brew Uni­ver­sity’s math and com­puter sci­ence de­part­ment. I have been ac­tive for sev­eral years against my gov­ern­ment’s poli­cies of racism, apartheid and oc­cu­pa­tion. I strongly sup­port the boy­cott, di­vest­ment and sanc­tions (BDS) cam­paign against Is­raeli in­sti­tu­tions, called for by Pales­tin­ian civil so­ci­ety.
Un­for­tu­nately, the He­brew Uni­ver­sity, my Alma Mater, has been com­plicit in nu­mer­ous vi­o­la­tions of human rights (http://​www.​pacbi.​org/​etemplate.​php?​id=1852), in­clud­ing Is­rael’s crim­i­nal and il­le­gal land grab pol­icy in the oc­cu­pied Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries.
I would like to thank and sup­port those mem­bers of the Cen­tre for Peace and Con­flict Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of Syd­ney who have de­cided to re­frain from in­sti­tu­tional co­op­er­a­tion with the He­brew Uni­ver­sity, and other Is­raeli in­sti­tu­tions. It should be em­pha­sized that such ac­tion does not amount to a per­sonal boy­cott of Is­raeli in­di­vid­u­als.
Is­raeli human rights ac­tivists are too few in num­ber to change re­al­ity from within. Fur­ther­more, mil­lions of Pales­tini­ans liv­ing under an ap­palling apartheid sys­tem, in­clud­ing stu­dents and uni­ver­sity teach­ers whose aca­d­e­mic lives are dis­rupted on a daily basis, are look­ing up to cit­i­zens of the world for sol­i­dar­ity through ac­tion!
Sin­cerely
Ofer Neiman
West Jerusalem
This has al­ways been the other key com­po­nent of the ra­tio­nale for BDS.
Best re­gards,
Jake
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