Neve Gordon changed his mind on the boycott

Only an idiot never changes his mind.

Neve Gordon has changed his mind on the campaign to boycott Israel.  In 2003 he wrote a compelling piece under the headline: “Against the israeli Academic Boycott” in the The Nation in which he puts forward some of the central reasons why a boycott of Israeli academia would be both unjust and also counterproductive.

In 2003 Neve Gordon argued that in Israel ‘academic freedom still exists, much more so than in many other countries’ but he said that unwittingly, ‘American and European supporters of the academic boycott against Israeli universities are aiding’ the right wing attack on academic freedom. Gordon goes on:

“Among the many reasons why one should reject the academic boycott, critics have highlighted the boycotter’s double standard. It is not only that some of the boycotters come from countries that are also responsible for much oppression and suffering, but, perhaps more important, Israel could not carry out its policies without the ongoing support of the United States, which has, for example, recently promised Sharon $12 billion in direct aid and loan guarantees.”

“While this line of argument exposes some of the biases informing the academic boycott movement, there are two other important reasons why a boycott of Israeli universities is misdirected.”

“The first argument is the one already alluded to: Israeli universities continue to be an island of freedom surrounded by a stifling and threatening environment. In the past two years the Israeli media, which was once known for its critical edge, has been suppressing critical voices, and in a number of electronic media outlets specific regulations have been issued, such as restrictions on live interviews with Palestinians. This dangerous trend is likely to become even more pronounced now that the right wing has garnered a considerable majority in the Israeli Knesset.”

“The second argument, the one most often ignored by outsiders, has to do with the fact that in the past year and a half Israeli universities have been under an unprecedented assault by the Sharon government. The Minister of Education, Limor Livnat, is trying to radically change the structure of higher education, including the way universities are governed and managed. She would like to strip power from the faculty senates and transfer it to boards of trustees in which professors are barred from membership. An academic boycott will only strengthen Livnat, and in this way assist the destruction of academic freedom in Israel.”

Neve Gordon goes on to explain precisely why the boycotters’ claim to be targetting only institutions and not individuals makes no sense:

When I explained these points to pro-boycott colleagues in Britain, they replied, “It isn’t you, but rather your institute that will be punished for not taking an institutional stand on the illegality of the occupation.” Yet it is precisely the institute that enables Israeli professors – regardless of their political affiliation – to voice their views, suggesting that an assault on the university is in fact an assault on its faculty.

Neve Gordon finishes with an important point:

To fight the anti-intellectual atmosphere within Israel, local academics need as much support as they can get from their colleagues abroad. A boycott will only weaken the elements within Israeli society that are struggling against the assault on the universities, and in this way will inadvertently help those who want to gain control over one of the last havens of free speech in the country.

Some of us, who later founded Engage, were so impressed by Neve Gordon’s position that we quoted him in a letter that was published in the Times Higher in April 2005 and which was signed by, amongst others, David Hirsh and Robert Fine.

In August 2009 Neve Gordon raised perhaps the most fundamental reason why a boycott of Israel would be counterproductive: “A global boycott can’t help but contain echoes of anti-Semitism.”  This, as UCU activists have discovered for themselves over the last five years, is certainly true.   In the same piece Neve Gordon also argues that:

“It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one’s own nation.”

Yet it is this same editorial in the LA Times where Neve Gordon says that he now supports the campaign for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.  This followed on from a piece he had published in the Guardian also offering support to the BDS campaign.

Only an idiot never changes his mind.  There is no disgrace in changing your mind.  But if you do so then you ought to say why.  This is the reasoning that he offers in the LA Times:

But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country’s future.

The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews — whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel — are citizens of the state of Israel.

The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbors do not grow up in an apartheid regime.

The reason seems to be that things are now so bad in Israel that ‘something must be done’.  But what Neve Gordon is unable to do is to show what is wrong with his previous arguments about doing this particular ‘something’.  He offers nothing.

No reason why the boycott campaign no longer contains echoes of antisemitism.

No reason why he singles out Israel, and only Israel, for boycott.

No reason why he is willing to overlook the ‘biases’ of the boycott movement.

No reason why BDS would no longer bolster the right and harm the left in Israel.

Neve Gordon evidently understands the reasons why BDS is both wrong and also counterproductive.  He is therefore very well placed to explain to us why these reasons are no longer important.  He should do so.

Engage offered Neve Gordon a right of reply to this piece which I wrote in response to another article of his.  Neve wrote back and denied that, as it said in that article, he is ‘a supporter of the campaign to exclude Israeli scholars from the international academic community’.  He wrote that ‘the BDS campaign itself does not support such exclusion.  Indeed, the academic boycott is aimed at institutions and not individual scholars’.

As to what the BDS campaign supports, that was clear long ago.  It supported Mona Baker and Andrew Wilkie in their ‘individual boycotts’ of Israelis.  At some times it has supported a political test for individuals from Israel, and offered an amnesty to individuals like Neve Gordon who show willingness to jump through their hoops.  And at other times the BDS campaign has tried to hide behind the fiction of the ‘institutional boycott’.

This old piece by Jon Pike deals with this sophistry: http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=231

This old piece of mine responded to Sue Blackwell’s protestations and threats on the issue:  http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1197

But for the best critique of the ‘institutional boycott’ I would refer you to Neve Gordon himself (above): “it is precisely the institute that enables Israeli professors – regardless of their political affiliation – to voice their views, suggesting that an assault on the university is in fact an assault on its faculty.”

Neve Gordon has written op eds in the Guardian and in the LA Times in which he offers unambiguous support for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.  Nowhere does he mention any nuances of position regarding an academic boycott.

There is a transcript of an interview that he gave on Public Radio International in which the interviewer suggests that Gordon is not for an academic boycott.  Neve Gordon replies as follows:

“ There is no doubt tension, if not a contradiction, to support a boycott of one’s self in a sense. What I’m trying to say is that we all live in contradictions and we have to choose the contradictions we live in. The contradiction I am living with is a contradiction that I hope will bring change here for my children. And I don’t want them, or the children of our Palestinian neighbors, to live in an apartheid regime.”

Neve Gordon does not take this opportunity to say that he is for BDS except for academics.  He does not say he is against an academic boycott either of individuals or of institutions.  Given that he publicly and internatioanlly supports “BDS” and given that he has not argued for an exception for academics, I think it is fair to say that he supports the boycott campaign.

The boycott campaign is fronted by “PACBI” – the Palestinian campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.  It is a campaign for an academic boycott of Israel.  Neve Gordon supports it.  But he does not say why he has rejected all the good reasons for opposing it.

David Hirsh

Goldsmiths, University of London

Engage invites Neve Gordon to respond

On the English Defence League

In June, Ben Gidley’s Dissent blog post characterised the aggressively pro-Western, anti-Islamic, anti-multicultural English Defence League as currently ideologically diverse and unstable, but capable of becoming a politically sustainable movement under certain circumstances.

Conditions now seem conducive to this. Dagenham MP Jon Cruddas observes that the English Defence League is coalescing into a movement with more purpose, and now constitutes a bigger threat than the BNP.

Ben’s post gives consideration to how to respond to the EDL:

“I genuinely have no suggestions then about the best way to respond to the EDL in the short term, but the nature of the EDL seems to me to have clear implications about how to defeat them in the long term.  In the long term, we need a politics that mounts a robust defense of the best elements of the Western enlightenment tradition against the genuine threat posed by Islamism. If we leave this defense to arch-reactionaries, we’ve failed in advance. One aspect of this is surely to engage with those forces within the communities targeted by the EDL who also care about Western democratic values, which is why campaigns like One Law for All and grassroots organizations like Southall Black Sisters are so important.

Second, we need to foster an ethics of hospitality and solidarity, so that the communities which the EDL seeks to inflame and divide are immunized against their provocations. This means we need to actually make the arguments for the value of immigration, cultural diversity, and religious tolerance. Since 2001 we have generally failed in this. Within Guardian-reading enclaves these values are just taken for granted, while in local and national politics the mainstream Left has been reticent about defending them to the point of silence. The absence of a debate has enabled the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim Right to dominate the discourse while claiming an underdog status in relation to the liberal elite. People who are concerned about the impact of migration in their areas or about the threat Islam might pose are made to feel vaguely ashamed (as with Gillian Duffy, confronted with the prime minister calling her a bigot), but the counter-arguments are simply not articulated. The moment to articulate them is now long overdue.”

Jon Cruddas ends his piece with intent:

“The threat of the EDL and the wider cultural war must be taken seriously. That is why we will soon be establishing a broad-based group to formulate a response. The right has become very organised; it is time for those of us who believe in a decent progressive society to do the same.”

Robert Fine responds to Desmond Tutu’s call for a boycott of Israel in the South African Mail & Guardian

This piece is from the South African Mail & Guardian

Blame game won’t lead us to peace

Robert Fine appeals to his colleagues in South Africa, arguing against the academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions

Archbishop Desmond Tutu shines a torch of social justice in places where many politicians fear to tread. He was one of the leaders of the fight against apartheid and remains a critical voice in the new South Africa. On the Israel-Palestine question, however. I should like the opportunity to express my disagreement with him.

In support of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Tutu asks:”Are we willing to speak out for justice when the moral choice that we make for an oppressed community may invite phone calls from the powerful or when possible research funding will be withdrawn from us?”

He asks: “Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their own previous humiliation?  Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about all the downtrodden?”

Now there is every reason for Tutu to shine the torch of justice on injustices in other nations as well as his own and every reason to explore injustices taking place in Israel and Palestine. I have no argument with him on this. However, his formulation of the problem is to my mind ill considered.

First, the “they” Tutu refers to — those who threaten to withdraw research funding from those who speak out for justice, those who have forgotten their own experience of humiliation, those who do not care about the downtrodden – are refered to as  “our Jewish sisters and brothers”. If he reflects about what he has written, he may share the discomfort I have in reading this characterisation of Jews.

Second, the question of why he singles out Israel and Israeli academic institutions is not explained. Why not a host of other countries that repress their own inhabitants or occupy foreign lands, or a host of other universities that are equally implicated in policies of state? My own country, Britain, has after all been engaged in two bloody wars with casualties that far outnumber anything that has involved Israel. Why not boycott British academics?

The academic boycott campaign he supports looks to the exclusion of Israeli Jews — and only Israeli Jews — from the scholarly life of humanity. This seems to me discriminatory.

Third, Tutu corrodes a fundamental distinction in political thought, that between civil society and the state, when he asserts without qualification that “Israeli universities are an intimate part of the Israeli regime”. This is a half truth. Universities are also an important forum of dissent. The relation between civil society and the state needs, to be addressed more seriously if we are not to hold a people responsible for the human rights abuses of their government. In other cases of international solidarity we support democratic forces in societies that are suffering under or struggling against oppressive states or movements.

Fourth, Tutu is careful not to demonise Israel but he does not take responsibility for the possible consequences of his support for an academic boycott of Israel. This campaign opens the door to the deployment of ever wilder claims to justify the special treatment of Israeli Jewish academics — for example, that Israel is inherently ethnic cleansing, genocidal or akin to Nazism. To justify discrimination against certain academics by virtue of their nationality, there is a tangible risk of slippage from political criticism to the vilification of a whole people.

Fifth, Tutu offers one particular account of the Israel-Palestine conflict in which Palestinians exist mainly as victims and Israelis mainly as victimisers. His boycott proposal, however, does not afford recognition of the fact that there is a plurality of discourses concerning the complex origins and responsibilities of this conflict. One of the ill effects of an academic boycott would be to reduce this plurality of narratives to just one hegemonic version of events. Surely Tutu would agree that no understanding can come from refusing to
hear alternative points of view.

The problem is that we no longer quite hear even our own words. It has become almost common sense to say Israel is a uniquely illegitimate state, Zionism a uniquely noxious ideology, supporters of Israel a uniquely powerful lobby, and memory of the Holocaust a uniquely self-serving reference to the past. This discourse is shared by a range of parties — not only sections of liberal and radical political opinion committed to universal moral values, but also fundamentalist and ultra-nationalist parties with no such commitments. The liberal left continues to avow universal anti-racist principles but does not expect the same of the victims of racism. For the victims it accepts and sometimes advocates nationalist or fundamentalist forms of resistance that are anything but universal. The nightmare scenario is that otherwise conflicting political forces might unite around hatred of Israel, just as in the past opposing political forces united around hatred of Jews.

Just a few years ago the basic left-liberal commitment was to see itself bound together by signs and symbols of a terrible past It was to teach afresh to each passing generation what crimes were committed in the name of enlightenment against black people in the non-Western world and Jews within Europe. Today, by contrast we find a more chauvinistic narrative, one that recreates a moral division of the world between us and them — “we” in the West who are civilised, postnationalist and anti’racist; “they” who believe in the purity of their nation and act with corresponding barbarity.

Israel plays a symbolic role in this new consciousness. It is cast as the incarnation of the negative properties the West is alleged to have thrown off. “Israel” in this narrative serves not as a real country embroiled in real conflicts but as a vessel into which we can project all that is wrong in our own history and preserve the good for ourselves- I wonder if something similar is occurring both in the new Europe and the new South Africa that impels us to find our demons in this resonant receptacle.

We must resist the temptation to commit a mere reversal of terms. If ultra-nationalists in Israel racialise Arabs and turn them into a unitary “otherised” category, as they do, one response is to treat “Zionists” as an equally “otherised” category and place Palestinians in a single identity script as victims of Israel. The deeper the compassion for the victims, the more passionate can become the hatred of the victimisers. We trap ourselves in a cycle of despair.

The projection on to “Israel” of the subterranean streams of Western civilisation does nothing to address the growth of ultra-nationalism more globally — including in our own societies. In Israel it does nothing to challenge the power of the right wing that has no interest in peace; in Palestine nothing to challenge the grip of fundamentalist leaderships that threaten basic freedoms of Palestinians from within as well as the existence of Israel from without; in regional Arab states nothing to challenge reactionary rulers who know well how to divert social and political opposition on to blaming Israel.

In short, the danger of a boycotting response is to heap on “Israel” absolute culpability. It does not meet our real political need, which is to understand a conflict, to help find a peace between the parties, and support those in each nation who oppose bigotry, racism, violence and despair. Justice should be viewed in a more relative, interactive and comparative way.

Robert Fine is professor of sociology at the University of Warwick

Robert Fine is author of Beyond Apartheid: Labour and Liberation in South Africa

Click here for Robert Fine’s paper: ‘Fighting with phantoms: a contribution to the debate on antisemitism in Europe.’

Click here for David Hirsh’s piece in the Mail and Guardian on the Israel-apartheid trope.

A reply to Neve Gordon by David Hirsh

As part of a series entitled ‘Universities in Crisis’ on the website of the International Sociological Association, Neve Gordon, a supporter of the campaign to exclude Israeli scholars from the international academic community, writes a report on the state of academic freedom in Israel.

Gordon, N, (2010) ‘An assault on israeli academic freedom – and liberal values’ Blog of the International Sociological Association (ISA), http://www.isa-sociology.org/universities-in-crisis/?p=559, downloaded 6 october 2010.

He describes a demonstration in which he took part on his campus at Ben-Gurion University  in May 2010, which protested against the Israeli assault on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship which was heading towards Gaza.  He then describes a counter-protest the next day in which students demonstrated their support for the Israeli forces.  ‘There were … shouts demanding my resignation’,

 

Neve Gordon

 

writes Gordon, and ‘one student even proceeded to create a Facebook group whose sole goal is to have me sacked.’  The Facebook page carried personal denunciations and death threats.

A right wing political group published a ‘report’ accusing sociology departments of being unpatriotic and left wing.  The President of Tel Aviv University asked to see syllabi being taught at Tel Aviv University.  A newspaper article reported that another right wing organisation had tried to persuade donors to Ben-Gurion University to make their giving conditional on an end to ‘anti-Zionist’teaching.  The President of Ben-Gurion University publicly opposed this campaign as a threat to academic freedom but the Education Minister, a member of the right wing Likud party, writes Gordon, simply opposed this campaign on the basis that it was aimed at harming donations.  ‘The problem is’, he concludes, ‘that instead of struggling over basic human rights, we are now struggling over the right to struggle.’

As is clear from the reports from other countries, these kinds of right wing campaigns against academic freedom, against the intellectual left and against disciplines such as sociology are far from unique to Israel.  But antizionism as a political framework is always tempted to treat things which are done by the right in Israel as though they were manifestations of the essential racism and the essential illiberality of the ‘Zionist’ state.

Neve Gordon’s argument is that the phenomena he describes are manifestations of a much broader ‘protofascist’ asault against Higher Education and liberal values in Israel.  He writes that this assault is being mobilized by ‘numerous forces in Israel’ and also by

 

David Hirsh

 

‘neoconservative forces in the United States’.  He writes that this assault is targetted first against the universities because ‘they are home to many vocal critics of Israel’s rights-abusive policies’, voices which are considered ‘traitorous and consequently in need of being stifled’.

He writes that the right wing organisations see universities as ‘merely arms of the government’ and so politically controllable.  He characterizes right wing colleagues as ‘a thought police’ and right wing students as ‘spies’.  The ordinary but nevertheless worrying mobilisation of a right wing and anti-liberal political current is presented in the language and in the framework of Israeli exceptionalim.

This text exemplifies two tendencies which characterise much discussion of the Palestine-Israel conflict, of the campaign to boycott Israel and of contemporary antisemitism.

Firstly it is once removed from a discussion of the issues themselves.  It is ‘struggling for the right to struggle’.  In this text there is no discussion of the substantial issues themselves.  Rather they are mobilized as weapons in the struggle over the boundaries of legitimate discourse.  Issues which are raised but not discussed: Israeli human rights abuses; the assault on the ‘flotilla’; ‘anti-Zionism’, ‘post-Zionism’, ‘Zionism’; Israeli patriotism and unpatriotism; the proposed boycott of Israel and antisemitism; the connections between ‘protofascism’, the Israeli right, the American neocon right and the American Christian right.  The issues are raised and mobilized rhetorically but not analysed.

The right wing groups of which Neve Gordon is correctly, in my view, wary, aim to define the left as being outside of the legitimate boundaries of Israeli discourse.  Neve Gordon, on the other hand, aims to define those right wingers as being outside of the boundaries of liberal and antiracist discourse.  Neither argues why the other is wrong on the substantial issues.  Instead, both are ‘struggling’ to have the discourse of the other recognized as illegitimate.

This is not necessarily as bad as it sounds.  For example it is normal that racism or homphobia or misogyny is recognized as being outside of the legitimate boundaries of sociolgoical discourse.  Sociologists would not try to debate with a colleague who claimed that black people were inferior to white people.  Historians would not try to debate with a colleague who said that the Atlantic slave trade never happened.  We would argue, rather, that the questions were illegitimate.

We do not want to get into an apparently rational discussion with racists over racist questions.  We do not want to treat racists as though they were one side of a legitimate debate.  If there were serious people who began to ask these questions, if the questions became legitimate in the public sphere, in spite of our efforts to prevent that, then we might still have to debate, to mobilise the reasoning and the evidence against racism.

The second tendency which Gordon’s text exemplifies is that towards the conflation of, and the slippage between distinct phenomena.  For example he mentions that Alan Dershowitz argued that Israeli professors who support the campaign for their Israeli colleagues to be excluded from the global academic community should themselves resign from Israeli academic institutions as part of this ‘boycott’.  He also mentions that some students at the protest were calling for his resignation.  And he conflates these calls for resignation, made by people with no power to fire anybody, with a call upon universities to carry out a purge of ‘leftist’ faculty.  In a discussion of academic freedom this distinction may be thought to be important, yet one phenomenon is piled on top of the other in order to give the whole greater rhetorical weight.

Gordon says that people want to sack him because he is critical of Israeli human rights abuses.  Some of his opponents say they want him to resign because he agitates for a boycott of his colleagues in Israel academia.  Sacking is not the same as a call for resignation.  Criticism is not the same as a call for boycott.

Instead of rebutting Dershowitz’s argument about the academic boycott Neve Gordon characterizes it as being outside of the boundaries of what is legitimate in a university.  In return, Dershowitz characterizes Gordon’s pro-boycott stance as being outside of what is legitimate in a university.  Either position may be right or wrong, but Gordon doesn’t make an argument here.  Instead he relies on the conflation of criticism with boycott and on the conflation of a call for resignation with a sacking.  In both cases speech acts are conflated with acts of exclusion by power.  It may be his case that the speech acts feed into a discourse whose logic is then concrete exclusion.  But then again, the case has to be argued and the mechanisms analysed.

There is another more subtle conflation here.  The very name ‘Alan M. Dershowitz’ has become a synecdoche for something bigger than the flesh and blood individual who is its apparent referent.  The name ‘Alan M. Dershowitz’ connotes the fearsome power of the ‘Israel lobby’ (was he not the man who single-handedly prevented Norman Finkelstein from winning tenure?), it connotes all that is threatening about the neocon agenda (has he not written a lawyerly defence of torture?), it connotes all the lies of the ‘Zionists’ (has he not written ‘the case for Israel?’).  The name ‘Dershowitz’ stands symbolically amongst Gordon’s imagined audience, for the whole of ‘Zionism’, which itself is understood as a racist and totalitarian movement of global influence and notoriety.

Neve Gordon’s political project is to have Israel recognized as an apartheid state, to make it into a pariah, to position Israel itself outside of the boundaries of legitimate countries.  The terminology he employs in this piece, ‘protofascist’, ‘thought police’, ‘spies’ is not justified by the evidence he presents.

What he presents is bad enough and it is familiar to academics all over the world.  He shows that there are right wing individuals and groups who wish to position sociology outside of the boundaries of legitimate scholarly inquiry.  He is aware that right wing parties sometimes win elections and form governments.  These are real threats to academic freedom which we should take seriously and which we should oppose.  But Gordon is also clear that for the moment at least, the university sector in Israel is bravely and successfully defending itself, and the institutions are not bending to the pressure.

But for Israel-boycotters, Israel comes first, it is the one state whose academics should be excluded, it is the state moving towards fascism.  And it may or may not be.  But his anecdotes do not make the case.  This is less a debate and more a struggle over what is, and what is not to be legitimately debated.  There is a tendency for reason and evidence to take second place to rhetoric, conflation and keywords which communicate unspoken and emotional connotation.

Neve Gordon’s position tends to mirror that against which he is struggling.  He is against those who would have him silenced but he is for his Israeli colleagues being silenced in the global scholarly community.  He is for his own right to free speech and academic freedom but he refers to his right wing colleagues as ‘thought police’ when they use their free speech to criticize him and their academic freedom to oppose his views.  He opposes the right wing tendency to see Israeli universities as ‘merely arms of the government’ and he shows how the universities are successfully defending their own independence from government.  Yet then how can he argue that Israeli universities should be boycotted because they are complicit with the crimes of the Israeli government?

Neve Gordon says that things are so bad in Israeli universities that he receives death threats and calls for his sacking.  He says that things are so bad that he and his colleagues are using g-mail instead of university email addresses for fear that a hostile university administration might open their emails and take action against them.  Interestingly anti boycott academics in Britain have received death threats too, have been faced with rhetoric which questions their fitness to be recognized as academics too, and many are afraid to use university email addresses too, since there have been examples of pro-boycott academics in authority gaining access to colleagues’ inboxes.  Ironically, it is the global corporation Google which we all appear to trust more than our own university administrations.

There is nothing wrong with arguing that certain kinds of question ought not to be considered to be legitimate questions.  But if arguments concerning the positioning of the boundaries of legitimate discourse are not made with careful clarity, avoiding conflation, avoiding rhetorical tricks and demonization, then there is a possibility that the struggle itself will slip off the terrain of rational discourse.  If one side is tempted to shout ‘antisemite!’ at all who oppose Israel’s actions and the other is ready to shout ‘Zionist!’ at all who raise the issue of antisemitism then the space for political or academic discussion, debate, analysis and research will be closed off.  If argument and evidence are replaced by ad hominem attack, with accusations and counter-accusations of bad faith replacing communicative action, then knowledge becomes, more definitively than ever, power.

David Hirsh

Goldsmiths, University of London

See this further discussion by David Hirsh of Neve Gordon’s shifting position on the campaign to boycott Israel

 

UPDATE : Richard Gold adds:  As well as the link to Neve Gordon’s piece provided by David, here’s Neve Gordon’s complete piece :

An Assault on Israeli Academic Freedom—and Liberal Values[1]

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

Robert Fine – Fighting with phantoms: a contribution to the debate on antisemitism in Europe

Fine, R  (2009) ‘Fighting with phantoms: a contribution to the debate on antisemitism in Europe’, Patterns of Prejudice vol 43 issue 5, London: Taylor and Francis.

Author: Robert Fine  is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. He is co-convenor of the European Sociological Network on Racism and Antisemitism. He has published widely on Marxism and critical social theory, as well as on human rights and class struggles against racism, and his most recent book is Cosmopolitanism (Routledge 2007). His current research interests include European antisemitism and the sociology of human rights

Abstract

The point of departure of this paper is the polarization of ways of thinking about antisemitism in Europe, between those who see its recent resurgence and those that affirm its empirical marginalization and normative delegitimation. The historical question raised by this polarization of discourses is this: what has happened to the antisemitism that once haunted Europe? Both the current camps—’alarmists’ and ‘deniers’, as they are sometimes known, or, perhaps more accurately, new antisemitism theorists and their critics—have the strength to challenge celebratory views of European civilization. One camp sees the return to Europe of an old antisemitism in a new and mediated guise. The other sees the return to Europe of a rhetoric of antisemitism that is not only anachronistic but also delusory and deceptive. Overshadowing this debate is the memory of the Holocaust and the continuing presence of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The aim of this paper is to get inside these discourses and deconstruct the dualism that generates homogenizing and stigmatizing typifications on either side. The spirit of Hannah Arendt hovers over this work and the question of the meaning of her legacy runs through the text.

Unfortunately we are unable at the moment to link to the full text of this article from the Engage website but it can be downloaded from most university computers via the journal’s website, here.

David Hirsh: The Livingstone Formulation

David Hirsh

David Hirsh (2010) ‘Accusations of malicious intent in debates about the Palestine-Israel conflict and about antisemitism‘ Transversal 1/2010, Graz, Austria

The Livingstone Formulation, ‘playing the antisemitism card’ and contesting the boundaries of antiracist discourse

To download the whole paper as a pdf file, click here

Author:  David Hirsh is a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.  He is co-convenor of the European Sociological Network on Racism and Antisemitism.  He has published on crimes against humanity, international humanitarian law and antisemitism.  He is the founding editor of the Engage journal and website and has written on the Guardian’s Comment is Free.

This paper, publised in Transversal, the journal of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Graz, describes how the Livingstone Formulation operates as a way of de-legitmizing questions about contemporary antisemitism by means of ad hominem attack.  It is possible to relate seriously and rationally to charges of antisemitism but it is interesting how often people refuse to take the charges seriously and instead resort to this counter-accusation of malicious ‘Zionist’ intent. This mirrors the operation against which the Livingstone Formulation originally sets itself – which is the raising of the issue of antisemitism maliciously in order to de-legitimise criticism of Israeli human rights abuses.

The paper describes and analyses more than twenty documented examples of the Livingstone Formulation from public discourse.

This paper is concerned with a rhetorical formulation which is sometimes deployed in response to an accusation of antisemitism, particularly when it relates to discourse which is of the form of criticism of Israel. This formulation is a defensive response which deploys a counter-accusation that the person raising the issue of antisemitism is doing so in bad faith and dishonestly. I have called it The Livingstone Formulation.  It is defined by the presence of two elements. Firstly the conflation of legitimate criticism of Israel with what are alleged to be demonizing, exclusionary or antisemitic discourses or actions; secondly, the presence of the counteraccusation that the raisers of the issue of antisemitism do so with dishonest intent, in order to de-legitimize criticism of Israel. The allegation is that the accuser chooses to ‘play the antisemitism card’ rather than to relate seriously to, or to refute, the criticisms of Israel. While the issue of antisemitism is certainly sometimes raised in an unjustified way, and may even be raised in bad faith, the Livingstone Formulation may appear as a response to any discussion of contemporary antisemitism.

This paper is not concerned directly with those who are accused of employing antisemitic discourse and who respond in a measured and rational way to such accusations in a good faith effort to relate to the concern, and to refute it. Rather it is concerned with modes of refusal to engage with the issue of antisemitism. Those who argue that certain kinds of arguments, tropes, analogies and ideas are antisemitic are trying to have them recognized as being outside of the boundaries of legitimate antiracist discourse. The Livingstone Formulation as a response tries to have the raising itself of the issue of antisemitism recognized as being outside of the boundaries of legitimate discourse.  In this paper I describe and analyse a number of examples of the formulation which come from a number of profoundly different sources, including antiracist, openly antisemitic, antizionist, and mainstream ones.

I focus on the accusations and the counter accusations of malicious intent which are made in public debates around the issues of the Israel-Palestine conflict and antisemitism. It is widely accepted in the sociological literature on racism, and also in the practice of antiracist movements, that racism is often unintended and that social actors who are involved are often unconscious of the racism with which they are perhaps complicit or of which they are unconscious ‘carriers’. Antiracists are generally comfortable with the concepts of institutional, structural and discursive racism and they are comfortable with the idea that discourses, structures and institutions can be racist in effect, objectively, even in the absence of any subjective racist intent on the part of social actors. Yet a common response to the raising of the issue of antisemitism in relation to discourses concerning criticism of Israel is that if there is no antisemitic intent then there can be no antisemitism. Antisemitism is implicitly, then, often defined differently from other racisms as requiring an element of intent.

One thing that follows from this is that the raising of the issue of antisemitism is often conflated with the accusation of antisemitic intent. So the raising of the issue of antisemitism is often claimed to be an ad hominem attack, an accusation of antisemitic intent on the part of the ‘critic of Israel’. Yet while there is fierce resistance to the possibility of unintended antisemitism, those who employ the Livingstone Formulation accuse those who raise the issue of antisemitism of doing so with malicious intent and of knowing that their concerns are not justified, and of doing so for instrumental reasons.

It seems to follow that the use of the Livingstone Formulation is intended to make sure that the raising of the issue of antisemitism, when related to ‘criticism of Israel’ remains or becomes a commonsense indicator of ‘Zionist’ bad faith and a faux pas in polite antiracist company. A commonsense bundling of positions leads to a binary opposition in which either you remain within the bounds of rational and antiracist discourse, and so you are on the left, and a supporter of the Palestinians against Israeli human rights abuses, or, on the other hand, you are thought of as being on the right, a supporter of Israel against the Palestinians, and a person who instrumentalizes the issue of antisemitism. To raise the issue of antisemitism is to put yourself in the wrong camp. Having already indicated the complexities relating to accusations of intent, it is necessary to examine carefully to what extent this charge of intent may be justified.

In the 1990s Gillian Rose identified a phenomenon which she called ‘Holocaust piety’. It was common, she argued, to be unsympathetic to attempts to analyse the Holocaust using the normal tools of understanding, of social
science and of historiography. Instead, people tended to think about the Holocaust as a radically unique event which was in some sense outside of human history or ‘ineffable’ and so unreachable by social theory and by various forms of artistic and scholarly representation.  One of the consequences of Holocaust piety has been the construction of antisemitism itself as being an unimaginably huge and threatening phenomenon, beyond all other ordinary, worldly, threats and phenomena. A by-product of this is that the charge itself of antisemitism is in danger of being thought of as a nuclear bomb, a weapon, so terrible that it destroys not only its target but also the whole field of battle, the whole discursive space in which discussion proceeds. If to raise the issue of antisemitism is to unleash a nuclear bomb, then the issue is unraisable, as nuclear weapons are unusable. Under the conditions of Holocaust piety, it becomes difficult to relate in a measured and serious way to the issue of antisemitism. Either antisemitism is thought of as something radically different from ordinary ‘normal’ racism and then there is a temptation to be less vigilant against those other racisms than one is against antisemitism. Or the discussion of antisemitism is thought of as a weapon instead of an analytic or political question, which may be deployed to destroy ‘critics of Israel’ but which cannot be a serious question in itself. The weapon, instrumentally used, also destroys the very possibility of rational debate and analysis. The standard response to piety is blasphemy. The cartoon of Anna Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, President Ahmadinejad’s exhibition of Holocaust denial and normalization in Tehran and the increasingly common phenomenon of characterising Israeli Jews as the new Nazis are examples of Holocaust blasphemy.

To download the whole paper as a pdf file, click here

David Hirsh: ‘Accusations of malicious intent in debates about the Palestine-Israel conrflict and about antisemitism

NB some more examples of the Livingstone Formulation and some interesting discussion in the comments box here

NB an article about the Livingstone Formulation from z-word is here

NB there was discussion of the Livingstone Formulation in Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections

David Newman on the ultimatum set by the University of Johannesburg for Ben Gurion University

This piece, by David Newman, is from the Jerusalem Post.  David Newman is dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion University in Israel

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of writing about the successful BIRAX scientific cooperation between Israeli and UK universities. The context was not only the promotion of intellectual cooperation, but also the response to those who would boycott scientific ties because of the political situation as it relates to Israel, the West Bank and the status of the Palestinians.

This week, we have another story of scientific cooperation threatened with boycott. The University of Johannesburg in South Africa threatened to cancel a scientific cooperation program with Ben-Gurion University – an agreement which was signed only one year ago, and which focuses on areas of cooperation in biotechnology and water purification, to the benefit of all.

At last week’s meeting of the university senate in Johannesburg, a sort of compromise agreement was reached. An immediate boycott proposal was not passed, but the university made further cooperation and the renewal of the agreement dependent on the expansion of cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian universities.

The past 15 years have witnessed a great deal of scientific cooperation in diverse areas. I could spend the rest of this column outlining some of the joint projects which take place between Ben-Gurion faculty and both their Palestinian and Jordanian counterparts – be it in medicine, environmental protection and even overtly political issues such as human rights. But in doing so, I would be in danger of harming many of these programs.

In most cases, it is the Palestinian side which prefers to keep the project out of sight of the media. Important groups within Palestinian civil society, such as trade unions and academics, are highly critical of those who want to cooperate on a basis of equality when, in reality, there is no equality – political or economic. They are uncomfortable with the thought that through cooperation they are, de facto, legitimizing the occupation. Palestinian academics who work with Israelis find the political pressure to bow to the anti-intellectual logic of the boycott campaign difficult to deal with.

By declaring a long list of cooperative projects, I also fall into the trap of trying to prove myself (or the institution I represent) a “good Jew,” one that can be legitimized for no other reason than the fact that I work and sympathize with the “other” side, am opposed to occupation and promote the universality of human rights and independence for all.

As much as I hold these positions, they are not, for me, a litmus test through which Israeli universities should, or should not, be made legitimate. Joint research is carried out for the intrinsic reason of producing knowledge, not so the researchers can be seen to be ideologically correct.

BOYCOTTS do nothing to promote the interests of peace, human rights or – in the case of Israel – the end of occupation. The “good Jew” response by BGU would accept the logic of the academic boycott, but would argue for an exception for BGU on the basis that it passed the political test – one which is only applied to Israel. In reality, last week’s decision has given the pro-boycotters a sixmonth period to win additional supporters, legitimizing the idea that academic boycotts are justifiable.

And what about the countless attacks on Ben-Gurion University faculty from right-wing groups such as Im Tirtzu and IsraCampus, accusing us of dealing too much with Palestine- and occupation-related issues? These groups would like nothing better than to prevent Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.

The University of Johannesburg is, unwittingly, strengthening the hand of these ultranationalist groups and, ironically, making it even more difficult for cross-border dialogue and cooperation to take place. The boycott campaign strengthens the rejectionists on both sides, and weakens those building practical or political foundations for peace.

But even when there is a willingness to participate in joint ventures, it is not easy. Israeli academics enjoy working conditions which can only be dreamed of by their Palestinian colleagues. Meetings are never easy to arrange – Israelis are forbidden to enter Area “A” where most of the Palestinian universities are, and many are fearful of venturing into these areas even if they were allowed.

Palestinians coming to meetings in Israeli institutions have to apply for transit permits weeks in advance, and are often refused or left waiting until the last moment, when it is too late to make complex travel arrangements.

Those of us who believe it is important to advance scientific cooperation and build grassroots trust between the two scholarly communities should not fool ourselves into thinking that the conditions faced by the two groups are equal or symmetrical. They are not.

Israeli academics are all too often silent on the issue of access to higher education for Palestinian students. As Israeli academics who believe in cooperation, we should be the first to demand freedom of access for all Palestinian faculty and students to their own institutions and to institutions elsewhere in the world – with no more restrictions than those faced by us.

As in the case of BIRAX and the British universities, our international colleagues should be doing everything possible to expand the conditions under which Israeli- Palestinian cooperation can take place.

I invite my colleague Adam Habib, vice chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, to make good on his statement of last week, when he said: “We believe in reconciliation…We’d like to bring BGU and Palestinian universities together to produce a collective engagement that benefits everyone.”

I can show him examples of where universities around the world are hosting groups of Israeli and Palestinian scholars who find it difficult to meet under local conditions.

Take, for example, the Olive Tree program at City University in London, where Israeli and Palestinian students receive scholarships to spend three years studying for undergraduate degrees and understanding each other. Or the Daniel Turnberg Travel Fellowship Fund, which supports young medical researchers from Israel, the West Bank, Jordan and Egypt who travel to the UK and spend a month in a university or hospital, where they meet experts in their field and plan future research collaborations.

Or next month’s human rights workshop organized by the Crucible Center at the University of Roehampton, where Israeli and Palestinian scholars will discuss issues of common interest, beyond the boundaries of the conflict which prevents them from doing this at home.

Habib is welcome to choose the topic, the cooperating institutions and the relevant scholars. This would be a truly positive contribution by the University of Johannesburg to promoting the values it touted last week. And considering its own country, which was transformed into a new and equal society during the past two decades, who better to lead the world’s academic community in trying to bring Israeli and Palestinian scholars together?

This piece, by David Newman, is from the Jerusalem Post.  David Newman is dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion University in Israel

Mainstream antisemitism

The Prime Minister of Italy:

“Days after Berlusconi told a youth rally an apparent joke about Adolf Hitler, he emerged from his Rome residence on 29 September to regale supporters with a joke about a Jew who charges fellow Jews money to hide in his basement from the Nazis, without telling them the war is over.”  more in the Guardian

A CNN news anchor:

Rick Sanchez: I don’t think it’s a conscious thing. I just think it’s important that people who are not minorities understand that those of us who are – and very few of us will say the things that I just said – are actually more complex than they think we are.

Pete Dominick: [Jon] Stewart’s a minority as much as you are. He’s Jewish.

Sanchez: Yeah. Yeah. Very powerless people. Please. What are you, kidding?

Dominick: You’re telling me that….

Sanchez: I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they – the people in this country who are Jewish – are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

more in the Guardian