I found there was, within me, an invincible summer

thearcanetheory:

Academic boycotts are bullshit.

You are holding academic institutions — which are hotbeds of left-wing activism, political change, and education — hostage to the decisions of the state’s government. Academic institutions aren’t able to influence government policy, but they are able to influence young minds.

If you want to see people protesting their own governments, if you want to see civic society holding their government accountable for horrific acts done in their name, then you don’t boycott the sectors that fall within your political alignment.

Stick to actual boycotting of goods and services, if you choose to boycott. This hits the state and the economy, but does not alienate the people who actively fight for the same things you claim to, and at a hell lot more of a greater personal risk than anyone living in the West, I might add.

Where the fuck do you all think Israeli anti-Zionists even come from anyway?!

Israeli academics aren’t the self-appointed licensers of the anti-occupation struggle. If they really stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people, they would realise, and you would realise, that someone’s right not to live under military occupation, not to be displaced, not to be held under siege, not to be indiscriminately bombed, is more important than someone’s academic freedom… Israeli academic freedom is not more important than Palestinian basic freedoms. Let us be honest, what you oppose here is the shaking-up of privilege of Israeli academics – you’re a reactionary, an Israeli-academic supremacist.

Academic freedom is not even at stake here, at least not for Israeli academics. They can write and research whatever they want, and they do write and research whatever they want, on campuses built on ethnically cleansed land. Palestinian’s can’t. Some can’t even get an education because some Israeli academics devised the bombs that destroyed their schools. Oh boo hoo – “I can’t cooperate with someone half way across the world.” Boo hoo. Children can’t go to school, if indeed they have a school to go to, without mourning the death of their classmates, and you are whinging about not being able to cooperate with Israeli academics. It makes me sick how callous you can be about this.

Intellectuals aren’t just intellectuals when they are participating and engaging with a colonialist regime, as many Israeli academics, even those on the left, do. The funding for Israeli universities is, as you know, from the Israeli government. That means these academics are paid by the Israeli government, the same government guilty of countless war crimes. The intelligentsia doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but as a product of society and societal history, and Israeli societal history is one of on-going colonialism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. The occupation and displacement of Palestinians in Israeli is entrenched, as Israel exists only as a result of this, so what makes you think academics are beyond this?

Let’s just use get some examples of Israeli academic’s complicity in war crime, without mentioning their enrolment in the IDF reserve, etc.:  Arnon Sofer of Haifa University devised the plans for the apartheid wall, which is declared illegal by the International Court of Justice, Sofer also advocates openly ethnic cleansing in the form of the euphemism “voluntary transfer.” This Sofer is the same Sofer who said of Palestinian deaths: “We will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”  What about Avraham Dor, who worked with Sofer on projects that were aimed to “drive wedges between the blocs of Arab settlements”? Haifa University, in 2005, hosted a conference, blessed by the rector of the entire university, entitled: “The Demographic Problem and Demographic Policy in Israel,” in which many academics took part – we all know the way in which this conference swung: anti-Palestinian. What about Hebrew University? It’s built on confiscated land, which to do so, and work on it, is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. I can’t be bothered going through what Hebrew University academics have done to facilitate the government, nor other universities – hopefully you get the point that they ARE complicit in deep ways.

You don’t even understand the academic boycott. It isn’t about individual Israeli’s, it’s an institutional boycott. There are plenty of Israeli academics who have cooperated with academics all across the globe, including with Palestinians, Ilan Pappe comes to mind as one.

If these individuals you speak to highly of were really a catalyst for change, which they aren’t, they wouldn’t be whining and moaning because they’ve been “betrayed.” You don’t get a cookie for not being a reactionary, and you don’t get to moan when that cookie is taken away so someone else can have a crumb of it.

I’ve had enough of oppressors whining when the oppressed starts resisting.

Fact: In the past six months, more than 2,000 rocks were hurled at Israelis in Judea and Samaria. Rocks can kill.

In response to EretzYisrael’s newest (failed) propaganda attempt, I conjured this little bad boy.

(Source: in-the-midst-of-winter)

Israeli forces uproot 700 olive trees near Jenin

NABLUS (Ma’an) — Israeli forces on Thursday uprooted over 700 olive trees near Arraba village in the northern West Bank, Palestinian Legislative Council member Najah Abu Bakr said.

The trees belonged to Palestinians in Arraba, south of Jenin, close to the Israeli settlement Mevo Dotan, the MP said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces destroyed over 1,300 olive trees in the south Hebron hills of the southern West Bank.

The names Jewish National Fund and Israeli Defence Force are both deceitful. The former is a so called “private” organisation which however had the exclusive right to acquire private land which was abandoned by its owners who fled from the atrocities by the IDF in 1948. Another aspect of this exclusive right of a private organisation is that government activities are camouflaged as activity of a private organisation. Via the collection of money in JEWISH FAMILIES over the world, under the pretence that the JNF is a peaceful private organisation the Zionists try to implicate all Jews, wherever they live, in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people performed by the JNF, the settlers or the government.

Furthermore, the very name “Israeli Defence Force” tries to conceal the Israeli Army’s involvement in human rights violations, including crimes against humanity. Characteristic example of the violations of human rights by the “IDF” is the time and again occurring fact, that if settlers attack with rifles peaceful Palestinians who are at work in their fields, the IDF will NOT protect the Palestinians but the aggressive settlers!

As a young man in Nazi-occupied Europe I witnessed the efforts of that inhuman regime to progressively dehumanise Jews in the eyes of the public. As a very liberal Jew, I was raised to value the equality of human beings and I identify with Palestinians struggling to assert their humanity and gain their freedom against the efforts of the recipients of funds if this event on Friday goes on.

From my personal experience I see many similarities between the treatment I was subjected to as a Jewish youth under Nazi regime in Germany and under occupation in the Netherlands and the experience of Palestinian youths today. An important example being that also I had no easy access to education, in fact I was expelled from it, until I found tricks to circumvent it. I also could not travel freely.

I strongly urge the Golf Hotel to cancel this atrocious event on Friday since it is a provocation to all who support human rights. If I could, I would be with you to join your protest in support of universal values of freedom and justice and freedom from racist occupation but I am afraid, I am a bit too old, 88 years. With my best wishes for success with your beautiful activities,

Yours truly, Dr Hajo G. Meyer


Dr Hajo Meyer, who spent 10 months in Auschwitz as a Jew and a member of the resistance, wrote to the Golf Hotel in St Andrews asking them not to host the JNF and Friends of the IDF.

What a guy… I’m amazed at this man.

Tomorrow there is/was a fundraising event in St Andrews, Scotland, for the Jewish National Fund and Friends of the IDF.

The lobbying by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and We Are All Hana Shalabi (pro-Palestinian student network) has resulted in the event being cancelled by the hotel hosting the “charities.”

Organisations that have a history and continual practice of displacing Palestinians from their homes (JNF) and organisations which support the occupation forces (Friends of the IDF) aren’t “charities,” nor are they welcome in Scotland.

So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.
Amon Soffer - Geopolitical strategist and professor at University of Haifa.

I see your tokenist, racist tripe and raise you:

It must really suck to have to resort to tokenism and know that the propaganda you spout is fallacious.

This is a new campaign for Samer Issawi. It’s started all over the world and I hope you can help too to spread it on your page. People have to write his name on every bill so when they buy something the bills will travel everywhere and everybody will know about this hero. We must try it.

Samer Issawi is a Palestinian hunger striker who has been on hunger strike intermittently for roughly 270 days.

I’m going to do this, I hope some of you guys will do too.

Taken from: https://www.facebook.com/activists.palestine

When Israeli F16s drop bombs on Gaza and kill civilians, that’s collateral damage; when activists employ BDS and some Israeli businesses are affected, that’s racism.

If you oppose BDS because it indirectly harms Israeli business which is not involved in the occupation, continued displacement of Palestinians and the discrimination against Palestinians living in Israel, then what you’re essentially saying is that the right of Israelis to have international business connections trumps the Palestinian rights from to live under military occupation, not to be discriminated against and not to be displaced from their own land.

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