Ehud Barak, Israel war criminal of a ‘Defence’ Minister, is now moving into education… Having presided over the murder of over 400 Palestinian children in Gaza, why should we be surprised? Yesterday, he pronounced an illegal college in Ariel, a “university’. Read all about the democracy, in which war criminals make universities overnight:
Barak under fire for granting university status to West Bank college: Haaretz
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday ordered a college in the West Bank town of Ariel to be recognized as a “university center,” thereby winning praise from the right but an outraged response from both the political left and many academics.
The move is also likely to grant new momentum to overseas supporters of an academic boycott of Israel, leaders of the campaign against the boycott said. However, they added, it will not change the legal realities that have so far prevented any such boycott from taking effect.
The decision was vehemently opposed by the Council for Higher Education, which oversees all colleges and universities inside the Green Line. But because the Ariel University Center of Samaria is located in the West Bank, it is subordinate to a different, parallel, body, the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria – which, like all Israeli institutions in the West Bank, is formally subordinate to the Israel Defense Forces’ GOC Central Command, who in turn answers to the defense minister. The CHE-JS approved Ariel’s status upgrade back in 2007, and yesterday, Barak – who is also the Labor chairman – ordered GOC Avi Mizrahi to confirm this.
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Recognition as a university center moves the college closer to full recognition as Israel’s eighth university, and Barak’s approval of this step had been part of the coalition agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and a third coalition member, Yisrael Beiteinu.
Aside from prestige, the main advantage that comes from being a university rather than a college is substantially higher funding. But the CHE, in keeping with its protest over the move, announced that Ariel would continue to receive the same amount from the state that it does now. And since the CHE controls the distribution of state funds to all academic institutions, it has the power to make this decision stick.
Last year, Ariel received NIS 75 million from the state, just under a third of its total budget of NIS 240 million. That, due to its unusually large student body, is more than most colleges get.
Prof. Itzhak Galnoor, a former deputy chairman of the CHE, slammed Barak’s decision. “The term ‘university center’ doesn’t exist in Israel’s law books,” he said. “We’re in an anomalous situation, where a college outside the state’s borders thinks it’s possible to write its own rules. The defense minister would have done better to consult the CHE before exercising his authority over educational matters, about which he understands even less than CHE members understand about security issues.”
Former education minister Prof. Yuli Tamir was also up in arms, saying the CHE should have been given the final word, and its opposition was well-known. Moreover, she charged, the upgrade will allow Ariel to take funding away from existing universities.
Ariel’s president, Prof. Dan Meyerstein, said the college never accepted the argument that the CHE-JS decision to upgrade its status required confirmation by the GOC Central Command, “but now, it seems, that’s happened, too.”
He also stressed that all of Ariel’s study programs are approved first by the CHE-JS, and then by the CHE, and the latter has never yet rejected any program approved by the former. However, he readily agreed that the term “university center” – and how it differs from an ordinary college – is unclear.
Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who chairs the CHE, said he “hoped and expected” that Ariel would receive full university status in the next few years. Other CHE members, however, were less enthusiastic – adding that the council had been promised no such thing would happen without it being consulted.
The upgrade process effectively began in 2005, when the cabinet, led by then prime minister Ariel Sharon, passed a resolution saying it “saw national importance” in converting the college to a university. In late 2006, a subcommittee of the CHE-JS concluded that the college “is effectively functioning as a university in every respect” and recommended giving it the temporary status of a “university center” for three years. In summer 2007, the CHE-JS adopted this recommendation.
The subcommittee was comprised of six senior professors from other universities, including Nobel Prize laureate Yisrael (Robert) Aumann and Israel Prize laureates Daniel Sperber and Yuval Ne’eman. The latter is also a former MK, from the now-defunct Tehiya party. At the time, a member of the CHE said, “They’re all people of the first rank in research, and they’re also all right-wing in their views.”
The CHE, however, flatly refused to recognize the CHE-JS decision, because it “contradicts our decision that as of today, and for the next five years, there is no academic need for another university,” in the words of the council’s powerful Planning and Budgeting Committee.
Yossi Sarid / Barak legitimizes the evils of Israeli occupation: Haaretz
The settlers and their allies should be thanking their God for their good fortune. Ehud Barak, of all people, was appointed defense minister and is doing their dirty work. Anyone else – Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, or even Avigdor Lieberman wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. They wouldn’t have dared.
But Labor’s chairman – the moderate, balanced man in the cabinet – has no inhibitions about what people will say. Everything, it seems, has already been said about him and his flip-flops and deceit. His skin has grown so tough that arrows of criticism slip off his oily complacency. What difference would another arrow, more or less, make?
Barak is following in the footsteps of Golda, Galili, Dayan and Peres. Begin and Sharon found the work had been done. Labor has always been the great legitimizer of the occupation’s evils. This is the historical mission it has taken on, and no other party could have done it better.
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Now Labor is legitimizing another evil. Having once served as chairman of the Council for Higher Education, I can assert: There is no academic justification for recognizing Ariel College as a university. Nor as a “university center” – a smart-aleck term trying to bypass the rules.
Barak always believes he can build a new career with tricks and ruses but ends up tripping himself with his ploys.
This college, soon to become a university, has not scored any impressive achievement. It is far inferior to other Israeli colleges. Had it not established itself in occupied territory, it wouldn’t have had the slightest chance of upgrading its status. The defense minister’s decision is evidently political. It is taking advantage of a breach in the law. Instead of having the issue examined and determined by an academic authority, as is customary, the military commander of the occupied territory is making the decision. After receiving instructions from the politician in charge of him.
Barak will be remembered – among other things – for his unique contribution to degrading higher education in Israel. Thanks to him, we will have the only university in the free world whose founders and owners are uniformed officers. Now those boycotting Israeli universities have a case – proof of the tightening knot between the occupation, military administration and academe.
No doubt, Barak’s move will raise more calls to boycott Israeli universities and academics.
We can only hope the Council for Higher Education will not cooperate with this outrageous move. Otherwise, it would betray the public’s trust and do irreparable damage to all the universities and colleges under its charge.
TA university scholar to advocate Israel boycott: Jerusalem Post
A Tel Aviv University academic will call for a boycott of Israel, speaking at a London university event next month to commemorate “one year since Israel’s attack” on Gaza.
Dr. Anat Matar of TAU’s Philosophy Department will be speaking on February 17 at London University’s School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – a campus renowned for anti-Israel activity.
Matar’s talk is to be titled “Supporting the Boycott on Israel: A View from Within.”
She is taking part in a series of events over the coming weeks organized by the Palestinian societies at five University of London campuses – University College London, SOAS, Imperial College, Kings College and Goldsmiths – as well as at the University of Westminster.
In an article in Haaretz in August, Matar accused her own university of being complicit with the “occupation” and questioned Israel’s stance on Palestinian academic freedom and basic education.
A mother of a conscientious objector, on her profile page on the university’s Web site Matar lists her main nonacademic activities as “movements against military service” and the “Israeli Committee for Palestinian Prisoners.”
Dr. David Hirsh, a sociology lecturer at University of London’s Goldsmiths College and editor of Engage, a campaign against the academic boycott call against Israel, strongly criticized such moves, saying they were “delusional” and “dangerous.”
“Israeli anti-Zionists boast that their country carries out the most important and horrific genocides in the world,” he said. “The delusions of grandeur of Israeli anti-Zionists are as puerile as those of the most naive and proud nationalists. But it is dangerous to tell Europeans that the Israelis are a unique evil on the planet, because this lie finds a resonance in the collective memory and it feels plausible to some contemporary Europeans.”
The series of events is titled, “Gaza: Our Guernica,” in reference to the bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War. The 1937 attack caused widespread destruction and civilian deaths, with 1,650 reportedly killed.
“In April 1937, on a market day, the Nazis attacked Guernica from the air, first with bombs and then with incendiaries. Fighter planes followed the bombers to machine-gun survivors. It was the first time anybody had launched an attack from the air to kill a civilian population. A third of the population was killed or seriously injured in an afternoon,” Hirsh said.
The series of events opened last Thursday with a candlelight vigil at University College London, recently in the headlines after it was discovered that failed Detroit airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a former president of the Islamic Society there.
Two other Israelis are taking part in the series. On Monday, journalist Daphna Baram spoke at SOAS in a talk titled, “Besieged in Self-Righteousness: Israeli public discourse after the last invasion of Gaza.”
Next Wednesday, Israeli academic Avi Shlaim, professor of International Relations at Oxford University, will speak about “Gaza: Past and Present” at Goldsmiths.
BOYCOTT! Supporting the Cairo Declaration
To the Initiators of the Cairo Declaration,
We, members of BOYCOTT!, would like to express our vote of support for the “Cairo Declaration”, issued by the Gaza Freedom Marchers on January 1st, 2010. We are proud to stand together with fellow responsible citizens of the world and reiterate our shared commitment to demanding human rights for all and respect for International Law.
As citizens and residents of Israel, we understand that acting from within Israel itself to end the criminal policy which is carried out in our name, is not enough. It is vital at this juncture that the international community and its civil society undertake the needed complementary actions of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. It is time to suspend ongoing international normalization with Israeli institutions until they end their complicity in the brutal military occupation of Palestine, in the crime of Apartheid and in daily violations of International Law and basic human rights.
In light of previous baseless attacks on supporters of BDS, it is important to stress that the Palestinian campaign, which we fully support, is neither anti-Semitic nor is it targeting individual Israelis. Rather, it calls on all of us to stop glossing over Israel’s crimes, to cease lending a hand to normalization with those responsible, and instead to actively insist on the promotion of true democracy, equality and respect for human rights in this land, for the benefit of all.
Like the Cairo signers, we, too, believe that the BDS campaign can evolve into a growing international awareness movement, as evidenced by the diversity of the Cairo delegations and their courageous joint declaration. We strongly endorse that declaration along with its goals and methods, and append our signatures as a group and as individuals.
On behalf of
BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within
Neta Golan
Yana Ziferblat
Prof. Yoram Bar-Haim
Yael Lerer
Iris Hefets
Matan Cohen
Dr. David Nir
Ronnen Ben-Arie
Michal Zak
Merav Amir
Elian Weizman
Dr. Dorothy Naor
Yonatan Shapira
Haggai Matar
Marcelo Svirsky
Dr. Anat Matar
Dr. Dalit Baum
Yoav Beirach Barak
Rela Mazali
Ayala Shani
Ofer Neiman
Prof. Rachel Giora
Tirtza Tauber
Nitzan Aviv
Ronnie Barkan
Tal Shapira
Edo Medicks
Kerstin Sodergren
Prof. Uri Davis
Reuven Abergel
Inbar Shimsho
Deb Reich