by Giulio Meotti
Insidious, but more and more pervasive and lethal, is the academic boycott.
The case of Orange, the French mobile phone company that is
considering abandoning the Israeli market, was on the front pages of all
major newspapers. But there is a silent boycott of the Jewish State
which is more insidious, latent and even more dangerous because it
undermines Israel's cultural superiority and cuts Israel's link with the
rest of the world.
"The academic boycott is
illegal according to all academic organizations in the world," says
Professor Zvi Ziegler, a mathematician at the Technion (Institute of
Technology in Haifa) and head of the main scientific forum fighting the
boycott. "It is against progress, so you will not find universities or
European academics who officially boycott Israel. But many do silently,
behind the scenes".
This happened to Oren Yiftachel, a leftist Ben Gurion University scholar, whose publication, sent to the magazine Political Geography, was refused by their saying that they did not accept anything that came from the state of the Jews.
Seaford
did it by sending the following motivation: "Alas, I am unable to
accept your kind invitation, for reasons that you may not like. I have,
along with many other British academics, signed the academic boycott of
Israel, in the face of the brutal and illegal expansionism and the
ethnic cleansing being practiced by your government".
This case
is reminiscent of the Oxford pathologist, Andrew Wilkie, who declined a
doctoral application from a student of the Faculty of Medicine of the
University of Tel Aviv, Amit Duvshani, with these words: "Thank you for
contacting me, but I don't think this would work. I have a huge problem
with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their
appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human
rights abuses on the Palestinians because the (the Palestinians) wish to
live in their own country. I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a
personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in
the Israeli army. As you may be aware, I am not the only UK scientist
with these views but I'm sure you will find another suitable lab if you
look around".
In 2002, the year of the beginning of the
academic campaign against Israel, Paul Zinger, the head of the
Scientific Association of Israel, revealed that more than seven thousand
scientific research projects are sent from Israel abroad every year.
Dozens of scientific papers were returned that year, with the terse
explanation: "We refuse to examine any document from Israel". That
phenomenon now seems out of control.
Among the silent measures taken by the
boycotters is refusing to participate in conferences held in Israel,
ignoring requests to write letters of recommendation for Israeli
scholars looking for promotions, and refusing contributions from Israeli
scholars.
The
publishing house of St. Jerome in Manchester, specializing in
translation and linguistic research, has refused to send academic
volumes to Bar Ilan University in Israel. The English magazine, Dance Europe,
refused to publish an article about Israeli choreographer Sally-Anne
Friedland, Richard Seaford of the University of Exeter refused to review
a book for the Israeli magazine Scripta Classica Israelica.
Chilling
is the case of Ingrid Harbitz, researcher of the School of Veterinary
Medicine, Oslo, who refused to send blood samples to the Goldyne Savad
Institute of Jerusalem. "Due to the present situation in the Middle
East, I will not deliver any material to an Israelitic university", was
the response of the Norwegian scientist.
Students and teachers are banned from European universities just because they are Israeli Jews. Ring a bell?
Giulio Meotti
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/17067#.VXxzakazd-9
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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