Make no mistake, I love Nick Goldberg, editor of the LA Times Op-Ed page. He runs the best pieces in the American press on the issue. He’s a smart guy, and a strong one, he’s obviously stood up to a lot of incoming. But today he runs a piece by Rivka Carmi, the president of Ben Gurion University, attacking Neve Gordon’s groundbreaking call for boycott that the LA Times bravely ran two weeks back. Carmi’s article includes this repulsive attack on academic freedom, and hint to Neve Gordon to resign:
Like it or not, Gordon cannot be readily dismissed. The law in Israel is very clear, and the university is a law-abiding institution.
At the same time, by calling on other entities, including academic institutions, to boycott Israel — and effectively, to boycott his own university — Gordon has forfeited his ability to work effectively within the academic setting, with his colleagues in Israel and around the world. After his very public, personal soul-searching in his Op-Ed article, leading to his extreme description of Israel as an "apartheid" state, how can he, in good faith, create the collaborative atmosphere necessary for true academic research and teaching?
The issue is, Why does the LA Times give Carmi a platform for this outrageous attack on a liberal faculty member standing up for Palestinian freedom? Why give this woman any air time outside of a news story on the issue? Because the LA Times has to. Because it has no choice. Because it is under incredible pressure from the Israel lobby for "balance." Remember what Carmi said in her equally-ugly but more nakedly-honest letter to faculty at Ben Gurion U: Neve Gordon has hurt us in the Jewish fundraising community in the U.S., his piece is a "dire" blow. This is the character of the new American establishment. When Abraham Lincoln talked about the slave power "conspiracy" inside the American political establishment of 1858, he meant just this nexus of newspapers, political parties, and players. We can change that constellation. New York Review of Books, where are you?
There’s nothing more banal or ordinary that calling Israel an apartheid state. It’s no more extreme than calling South Africa an apartheid state.
Everything is beyond the pale of academic freedom when something is said that a power elite disagrees with – or, you never know the truth until its officially denied.
They try to set up the same adversarial situation between administration and professors that works so well in the USA, well it does not work so well in Israel. They (the USA lobby mobsters) must be pulling their hair out…lol I guess they will have to officially kick off the boycott.
Neve Gordon’s call for a worldwide boycott is world class education, but apparently the President of the university does not think so. He has recognized that something terrible is happening in Israel, that will ultimately destroy it, this is not a case of being unpatriotic but being patriotic in the highest matter of dissent. He recognizes that this destructive course will not stop from internal reform, it cannot, because it has become the twisted reason for the nations existence. In this sense it skews every institution, it colors all acts, and makes a mockery of the reason for the very existence of the country. IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND PROVIDES EXTRAORDINARY EFFORT TO STOP A COUNTRY FROM ITS OWN SELF-INFLICTED DEMISE.
“Gordon, however, used his pulpit as a university faculty member to advocate a personal opinion…” no, he agrees and admits what the world at large only knows too well. What is recognized every year in the UN, and in its rhetorical vote condemns Israel’s flaunting and fying in the face of all the conventions and international law.
“But the empirical facts show that it would destroy the very fabric of the society that he claims to want to protect….” No, it would only discipline a country so it would not destroy itself. Indeed, the very fabric of society is already rent by how this nations acts, and that with impunity – up until this point.
“…a proudly Zionist institution that embodies the dream of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion…” It is that proud Zionism that is the destructive force, and if the institution represents it, than it is an ideological destructive twin. Throughout Ben-Gurion’s work is the implicit destruction of the Palestinian people, and it has carried its course to this day – it is unacceptable.
“…how can he, in good faith, create the collaborative atmosphere necessary for true academic research and teaching?” This assumes that Neve’s position is false, but it is not. Therefore, he can enlighten the collaborative atmosphere by helping to lead his country out of this abyss, halt the occupation, adhere to law, and support the sorely oppressed Palestinian people in real time.
“Today, the laboratory that I founded at Ben-Gurion University is working with Bedouin, Palestinian and Jordanian doctors and researchers to improve the health of Arab children across the region.” When will this be done? Before or after they are ethnically cleansed or killed? Oh, I see, you are trying to make a disticntion between your poorly treated “Arab Israeli citizens” and those “terrible terrorists and outliers” who are not citizens. In other words, you are proposing the two faced Janus approach – help the token last place citizenry and wipe out the rest? Heal with the right hand and smite with the left? What, is it different people who give the orders to kill the innocent outside of Israel and your own Arab Citizens? I think not. Well, if you are going to help your poor last class Arab citizens you better hurry up, because inside Israel the fascist rhetoric is building against them, better do it before they are also cleansed.
“There are many more hopeful and pragmatic voices to be heard at our institution than Gordon’s, and they are the ones who will ultimately guide us, and Israel, to a brighter future.” So is this is an admission that you choose death rather than life? There is nothing so dark as the blind leading the blind, they both fall into the hole – choose life.
DON’T BE WILLINGLY BLIND