Barack Obama is being hailed for renewing the Middle East ‘peace process’. A process it is, yet peace it certainly isn’t. If they ever get around to it, negotiations are set to open between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah – but they won’t be including the democratically elected Hamas, seen as ‘terrorists’ even as the Israeli military continues to kill Palestinians in Gaza eight months after the ceasefire.
When The New York Times recently published an article by Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of political science, arguing that boycotting Israel is the only way to make any progress towards justice for Palestine, Israelis and Jews all over the world called for his dismissal. Their excuse for opposing such a boycott is ‘academic freedom’.
Yet as philosophy professor Anat Matar of Tel Aviv University reminded Ha’aretz readers, only when well-heeled Israeli academics begin to pay a real price for the continuous occupation of Palestine will they take genuine steps towards ending the occupation.
Academic freedom is relative. On the one side of the fence, we have Gaza’s children beginning the school year in shattered classrooms, with no building materials allowed by Israel to reconstruct their bombed schools. They must go without school books, notebooks or writing utensils that cannot be brought into Gaza because of the Israeli embargo. Israel can boycott Gaza’s schools, yet no one protests.
In the West Bank, hundreds of students are under arrest in Israeli jails, and the ‘separation fence’ (otherwise known as the ‘apartheid wall’) prevents students and lecturers from reaching classes, libraries and research labs, while attending conferences abroad is impossible Israel can boycott Palestinian universities, and no one protests.
On the other side of the fence, Israeli academics guard their freedom to research what the regime wants them to research, appointing former army officers to university positions. Tel Aviv University prides itself on having 55 of its research projects funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defence; the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Defence Department is funding nine other projects. All Israeli universities offer special study programmes for the military.
Yes, Israel can conduct military research and no one protests, and only a small number of academics speak against the occupation. But when brave ones like Gordon and Matar call for a boycott, they are accused of opposing ‘academic freedom’.
When Obama, Mitchell, Netanyahu and Abbas eventually get together to rekindle the ‘peace process’, let’s spare a thought for freedom. What is the meaning of freedom when you cannot send your child to study in a school building rather than rubble? What is the meaning of freedom when you never know whether you will reach your university lecture on time, due to the interminable checkpoint regime?
What is the meaning of freedom if, as a Palestinian Israeli citizen, you can be detained (as has happened to a number of my Palestinian colleagues) for hours at the airport before you can reach the conference where you were invited to give a keynote lecture abroad? What is the meaning of freedom if brave Israeli academics who call for boycotting the occupation regime are met with international calls for dismissal, as happened in Gordon’s case?
I am an Israeli citizen, and I believe that boycotting Israel is the first step towards freedom.
Dr Ronit Lentin is head of the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies at the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. Her column appears fortnightly in Metro Éireann
