Free Radikal

Posts Tagged ‘israel’

Prof. Rivka Carmi
President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Office of the President
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
P.O. Box 653
Beer-Sheva  84105  ISRAEL
Tel:  +972-8-647-930
Cell:  +972-526-839-367
Fax:    +972-8-647-2991
Email:  board@bgu.ac.il
berkan@exchange.bgu.ac.il
justman@bgu.ac.il
ngordon@bgu.ac.il

23 January 2010

Cc.
Prof. Moshe Justman, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Dr. Neve Gordon, Chairman of the Department of Politics and Government
Staff
Ms Anne Berkeley, Liaison Officer to the Board of Governors

Dear Prof Carmi,

We, Israeli, Palestinian and British academics, are writing to express our deep concern at the treatment of Dr Ahmad Sa’di, a Senior Lecturer at Ben-Gurion University’s Department of Politics and Government, who was subjected to racist treatment on 3 January 2010 when he arrived at Ben-Gurion University train station, as he does every teaching week.  He was humiliatingly searched, yelled at and embarrassed by the security staff at Mexico Gate, which we find offensive and unacceptable.We believe that Dr Sa’di’s reaction on the date was exemplary; he did not block the entrance nor did he insult the security staff.

Following the incident Dr Sa’di complained to the university authorities on 3 January 2010 and again on 10 January 2010. Dr Sa’di strongly believes that his treatment at Mexico Gate on 3 January was only the last in a whole series of racist encounters and harassment he has faced in the past ten years of his employment at Ben-Gurion University. Other incidents included his car being stopped, his bags searched and security staff making calls to ascertain whether he should be allowed to enter the university.

We are extremely concerned that Dr Sa’di’s formal complaint about his treatment on 3 January has neither been looked into seriously by Ben-Gurion University nor been met with anything like a response that it requires from your institution’s senior management. Although Ben-Gurion University acknowledges that Dr Sa’di was insulted and humiliated on 3 January, no further disciplinary action were pursued.

Ben-Gurion University claims to be like other European universities. Yet the response by Ben-Gurion University is another indication of an entirely different sort of system where racism is accepted as routine.  Had a complaint of this nature been made in the UK, there would have been automatic suspension with pay of the individuals involved.  This would then be followed by an investigation by the university department of Human Resources. Yet the fact that Dr Sa’di complaint of racism was dismissed, almost instantly, by the Director of the Department of Security says volumes about your attitude to racism.  You simply are not taking this complaint of racism seriously and we emphatically object.
We also believe that Dr Sa’di’s treatment by Ben-Gurion University is very typical of a wide range of experiences of racist encounters made by Palestinian citizens of Israel, in their face to face, day in and day out confrontations with your security.  This makes life near impossible for many Palestinian academics teaching for Israeli institutions.  It also makes travel to international conferences difficult.  Academics moving in and out of other Israeli institutions have similar experiences to those of Dr Sa’di’s.  It is this that we find so appalling.  It dehumanises those who do some of the very best work.

We call on Ben-Gurion University to take measures preventing further harassment of Dr Sa’di and we hope you realise that such racist treatment and the lack of any serious redress by senior management at Ben-Gurion seriously damages the reputation of your institution and offends the international family of academics to the core.

Sincerely,

Signed by

Professor Avi Shlaim, Oxford University, UK
Professor Nur Masalha, St Mary’s University College, UK
Dr Ronit Lentin, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland
Dr Paul Kelemen, University of Manchester, UK
Keith Hammond, Glasgow University, Scotland
Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London, UK
Professor Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University, New York, US
Professor Gabriel Piterberg, UCLA, US
Dr Nadje Al-Ali, SOAS, University of London, UK
Professor Ilan Pappe, Exeter University, UK
Professor Elia Zureik, Queen’s University, Canada
Dr Laleh Khalili, SOAS, University of London, UK
Dr Stephanie Cronin, Oxford University, UK
Professor Mary Grey, St Mary’s University College, UK

Eli Aminov                        November 09

Shortly after the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted the Goldstone Report the Israeli Ambassadress to the United Nations started a whining, emotional blackmailing attack against the commission: “Israel is the only state in the world which is being discriminated against by the commission and criticized more than any other state in the world!” she complained.

Her Excellency the Ambassadress should be reminded of what really makes Israel so unique globally.

    Israel is the only state in the world that apparently was established based on a United Nations resolution but whereas the said resolution was about the establishment of two states, a Jewish one and a Palestinian one, the resolution was immediately breached by Israel which took over most of the territory designated for the Arab state.
    Israel is the only state in the world which was established during the 20th century on the ruins of another people, which expelled two thirds of an indigenous population out of the territory it had concurred turning them into refugees and refusing to allow their return in direct contradiction to a UN resolution on this matter.
    Israel is the only state in the world that defined the remains of the indigenous population over whose territory she had settled as “foreigners” and subjected them to its peculiar immigration laws as if they had just landed in the state from far and beyond.
    Israel is the only state in the world that had managed to annul a fully justified UN resolution that defined Zionism as racism.
    Israel is the only state in the world that invented a nation which can only be joined through a religious conversion.
    Israel is today the only state in the world sustaining an Apartheid regime which discriminates against its own non-Jewish citizens through a complete set of laws and legislations, including property rules, nationality laws and security regulations.
    Israel is in fact the only apparition in the developed world of an army which owns a state, an army whose commanders blatantly interfere to interrupt every move to end the conflict that might jeopardize the smooth run of their gravy train.
    Israel is the only state in the world that instead of adhering to human code of conduct during its self initiated wars tries to convince the world that it deserves a special, different and more convenient set of war rules, rules that will not define the killing non-Jews as crime.
And so while the Israeli ambassadress to the United Nations tries to present herself and her masters as the Little Dutch Boy from the fairy tales who tries to stop the flood by sticking his little finger to the hole in the dam, indeed the only fill Israel can offer the world as a solution to unsolved issues is a dynamite stick.

Eli Aminov is a peace activist living and Jerusalem and a member of the committee for secular and democratic state.

http://www.onesdstate.blogspot.com/

Israeli policemen beat and arrest women at a demonstration held by the feminist movement New Profile in support of six activists from the group who were arrested from their homes by the police, 30 April 2009. (Shachaf Polakow/ActiveStills)

Who is next?

On the eve of Israel’s 61th Independence Day last week, the Israeli police arrested six Israeli Jewish feminist political activists, members of New Profile, the Movement for the Civil-isation of Israeli society, including a 70-year-old woman, for assisting young Israelis to evade conscription.

The police entered the activists’ home, confiscated their computers and the computers of their partners, detained them for questioning because of their support for young people who declare themselves conscientious objectors, a status not recognized by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Indeed, many draft dodgers have served jail sentences.

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Just a day after the revelations about what Israeli soldiers really did in Gaza came the story about the Jaffa T shirt factory, where 500 T shirts per month with dead babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and a bombed-out mosque accompanies with slogans such as ‘better use Durex’ (next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby with his weeping mpther and a teddy bear beside him), ‘1 shot, 2 kills’, (beside a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull’s eye superimposed on her belly), and ‘no matter how it begins, we’ll put an end to it’ (Uri Blau, Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009 - Haaretz - Israel News). Haaretz reports plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages, such as a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, ‘Bet you got raped!’

A few of the images describe actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as ‘confirming the kill’ (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim’s head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.

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The elections in Israel make us certain of the victory of the Israeli racial state. Livni, Netanyahu or Lieberman - the result is the same even though one speaks about ‘dialogue’ towards a ‘two state solution’, one speaks of ‘no dialogue’ and one speaks of conditioning citizenship on an oath of loyalty… In a sense, I agree with Gideon Levi who wrote in Haaretz a couple of weeks ago ‘Let Netanyahu win’, arguing that only with an extreme right-wing government will the world understand Israel’s trajectory towards a ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian question - more land, fewer Arabs - and will start to put real pressure on Israel military regime. Only with a governmetn intent on no surrender, might the Un ited States (although I am not holding my breath) close the military aid tap. Only then might Israel be forced to recognise that the time for a two-state solution has long gone. As David Theo Goldberg writes: ‘Debates, such as they are, about a two-state solution are a distraction. Israel has given no indication beyond soft rhetoric that it has any intention (ever?) of enabling a viable, sovereign, economically and politically independent Palestinian state, centered either in the West Bank or Gaza, hostile or peaceful. Landlocked, the West Bank would have to depend either on foreign countries (including Israel) or on an increasingly distant Gaza for its lifeline to a world beyond Israeli constraint. The legacy of relying on foreign countries, of course, is one of dependence and economic control, not self-determination and political viability’ (’Final death blow to the two-state solution?’ www.threatofrace.org).
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