London school to host conference on 'Resisting Israeli Apartheid'

Haaretz ^ | 12/4/4 | Tamara Traubman

[SmithL]

A decision by The London University School of Oriental and African Studies to host a conference on Sunday at which academics will launch a campaign to break links with Israeli universities has raised a stir among Jewish groups, Army Radio and the Guardian reported.

The school's Palestinian Society which organized the event, called the conference Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles. Jewish groups are accusing the society of inciting hatred.

Organizers are calling on the academic community to avoid cooperating with Israeli research institutes, to shun Israeli researchers by barring them from international conferences and by not awarding them any prizes. The organizers promise, however, to support any Israeli researchers who support their Palestinian counterparts in their struggle for self determination and academic freedom.

Several Israeli and Jewish professors and students are also set to attend the conference.

Dr. Ilan Pappe of Haifa University will deliver a lecture on the significance and meaning of the academic ban. Ben Young, of the Jewish Students for Justice for Palestinians group will deliver a lecture titled The Students Role: Lessons from South Africa.

The President of Israel's National Academy of Sciences, Prof. Menahem Ya'ari said the conference was "a pathetic attempt to revive a failed academic boycott of Israeli researchers and institutions from two years ago - an effort which was condemned by academics in both the U.S. and Europe.

The university's Jewish Society has lodged a complaint with the school about its decision to allow Tom Paulin to deliver a keynote address.

Paulin, a poet and academic, was quoted in the Arab newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly in 2002 as saying that settlers "should be shot dead". He later claimed that he had been misquoted.

Gavin Gross, of the school's Jewish Society, said: "I see this conference as an out-and-out hate conference which is solely there to de-legitimize Israel and its people. It makes no pretence of balance. SOAS has a reputation for being the center of political extremism. In the past this has only meant the vilification of Israel; there's no attempt at all to achieve an understanding of the conflict."

Other speakers at the conference include Professors Steven and Hilary Rose, who began the call for an academic boycott of Israel more than two years ago in a letter to the Guardian, and the linguist Mona Baker, who was the subject of an official inquiry by the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology after she fired two Israeli contibutors to a journal she edited.

Danny Stone, of the Union of Jewish Students, which is organising a counter-meeting at SOAS Sunday, said he had attended a meeting with the university to ask for extra security to ensure the safety of Jewish students on campus.

But one of the conference organisers, Awad Joumaa, a coordinator of the Palestinian Society, said: "We are promoting peace and equality for the Palestinian people.

"We are not the ones inciting hatred here. We are the ones under attack. If having an academic conference is inciting hatred, I don't know what their definition of it is."

The school released a statement distancing itself from the conference.

[JoJo Gunn]

The Left is for tolerance and diversity, unless it's for whites and Jews....

[anniegetyourgun]

Ever wonder why the irrational hatred of Israel from so many quarters, and for so many millenia? There is an answer......

[the invisib1e hand]

ahh yes, Israeli Apartheid.

My father used to talk about "educated fools..."

[goldstategop]

The funny thing is Israel's Tenured Reds are the targets...

[Paperdoll]

>The school Palestinian Society, which organized the event, called the conference, Resisting Israeli Apartheid Strategies and Principles. Jewish groups are accusing the society of inciting hatred<

Well, of course they are! Antisemitism is as rampant in Germany and France as it has been for 60 years or more. Why not now Britain with its burgeoning muslim population?
Apartheid strategies, indeed! Just what do they call their 'strategies'?

[stevem]

Paulin, a poet and academic, was quoted in the Arab newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly in 2002 as saying that settlers "should be shot dead". He later claimed that he had been misquoted.

I wonder what was the correct quote.

[theFIRMbss]

>ahh yes, Israeli Apartheid. My father used to talk about "educated fools..."

These folks aren't fools.
They know the power of big lies
and the media.

[TopQuark]

has raised a stir among Jewish groups,

That's what happened in the 1930s in Europe, too: everybody thought that Hitler's treatment of Jews was... well, a Jewish problem. Europe ended up loosing tens of millions of its non-Jewish citizens.

This numbness to the issue will cost all of us a great deal.