Sunday 29 August 2010

Silencing the ‘anti-Zionist’ Israeli academe


Posted on August 28, 2010 by rehmat1|

“Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? I believe it is because the Zionist Lobby knows it cannot win based on facts,” – Dr. Joel Beinin (Jewish professor at Stanford University in his article “Silencing critics not way to Middle East peace”, San Francisco Chronicle, February 4, 2007).

After the success of the Zionist hatred of freedom of speech on the US and Canadian academics, ‘Mr. IslamoFacism’ Alan Dershwitz, Daniel Pipes and other Zionist organization, such as Im Tirtzu, Institute for Zionist Strategies, Christians United for Israel and Hudson Institute to name a few – have turned their attention to academe in Israeli Universities who have some problems with the Zionists’ narrative of the Palestinian history.

If Ben-Gurion University of the Negev doesn’t take steps “to put an end to the anti-Zionist tilt” in its politics and government department, Im Tirtzu will work to persuade donors in Israel and abroad to stop funding the university, the organization threatened in a letter to university president Prof. Rivka Carmi last month.

It should be remembered that the Board of Trustees atHudson Institute is a pro-Israel group campaigning for US military attack on the Islamic Republic.

Some of the Israeli intellectuals targeted of being ‘Self-Hating, Israel-Threatening (S.H.I.T.)’ Jews are Benedict Anderson, Eric Honsbawm, Rachel Giora, Anat Matar, Anat Biletzki and Neve Gordon.
Professor Neve Gordon (Ben-Gurion University) is also an author and critic of some of Zionist-regime’s policies towards the Native Palestinian Muslims and Christians. Recently, he posted an article on his personal website about his own experience of this Zionist academic fascism:
“On May 31, I joined some 50 students and faculty members who gathered outside Ben-Gurion University of the Negev to demonstrate against the Israeli military assault on the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid toward Gaza. In response, the next day a few hundred students marched toward the social-sciences building, Israeli flags in hand. Amid the nationalist songs and pro-government chants, there were also shouts demanding my resignation from the university faculty.

One student even proceeded to create a Facebook group whose sole goal is to have me sacked. So far over 2,100 people (many of them nonstudents) have joined. In addition to death wishes and declarations that I should be exiled, the site includes a call on students to spy on me during class. “We believe,” ends a message written to the group, “that if we conduct serious and profound work, we can, with the help of each and every one of you, gather enough material to influence … Neve Gordon’s status at the university, and maybe even bring about his dismissal.” Such personal attacks are part of a much broader assault on Israeli higher education and its professors.

They have chosen the universities as their prime target for two main reasons. First, even though Israeli universities as institutions have never condemned any government policy – not least the restrictions on Palestinian universities’ academic freedom – they are home to many vocal critics of Israel’s rights-abusive policies. Those voices are considered traitorous and consequently in need of being stifled….”

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

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