You brought the boycott upon yourselves : Gush Shalom letter to Bar Ilan University
Ruqayya
GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033
http://www.gush-shalom.org/www.gush-shalom.org
You brought the boycott upon yourselves
Gush Shalom letter to Bar Ilan University
Tel-Aviv, April 26, 2005
To
Professor Moshe Kaveh
President
Bar Ilan University
Dear Sir
In various media interviews today you expressed anger at the decision
of British university lecturers to declare a boycott against the
Bar-Ilan University, calling it "an unacceptable mixing of politics
into academic life". When asked about the "Judea and Samaria College"
which your university maintains at the settlement of Ariel, you stated
that this was "an entirely non-political issue" and that said college
was nothing more than "the largest of five colleges which Bar Ilan
maintains at different locations in Israel". Indeed, you declared
yourself and your colleagues to be proud of the decision to establish
the Ariel college, and you felt no contradiction between continuing to
maintain that college, at the investment of a considerable part of Bar
Ilan's total resources, and the maintenance of extensive ties with
universities worldwide, including in Britain.
As an example you mentioned your own ties as a physicist with Cambridge
University and your plans to spend some time at Cambridge this summer -
plans which, as you stated, remain unchanged also in the wake of the
British lecturers' decision.
Surely, a person of your intelligence and experience can be expected to
note the obvious contradictions in the above position. As you well
know, Ariel is not "a location in Israel". Rather, Ariel is a location
in a territory under military occupation, a territory which is not and
has never been part of the state of Israel. Moreover, Ariel is a
special kind of location: it is an armed enclave, created by armed
force and dependent for its continued existence on force, and force
alone.
The creation of Ariel is a severe violation of international law,
specifically of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which specifically
forbids an occupying power from transferring and settling its own
citizens in the occupied territory. On the ground, the creation and
maintenance of Ariel entailed and continues to entail untold hardships
to the Palestinians who happen to live in the nearby town of Salfit and
in numerous villages a long distance all around. Palestinian
inhabitants are exposed to ongoing confiscation of their land so as to
feed the land hunger of the ever-expending Ariel settlement, and their
daily life are subjected to increasingly stringent travel limitations
in the name of "preserving the settlers' security".
The government-approved plans to extend the "Separation Fence" so as to
create a corridor linking Ariel to the Israeli border necessitate the
confiscation of yet more vast tracts of Palestinian land, depriving
thousands of villagers of their sole source of livelihood. Moreover,
should the Ariel corridor be completed, it would cut deeply through the
territory which the international community earmarked for creation of a
Palestinian state, depriving that state of territorial continuity and
viability. For that reason, the plan aroused widespread international
opposition, not least from the United States, our main ally on the
international arena.
In all of this the Bar Ilan University, of which you are president,
made itself a major partner - indeed,since a violation of international
law is involved, the term "accomplice" may well be used. The "Judea and
Samaria College" which you and your colleagues established and nurtured
has a central role in the settlement of Ariel, increasing its
population and its economic clout. The college's faculty and students
are prime users of the "Trans-Samaria Road", the four-lane highway
which was created on confiscated Palestinian land in order to provide
quick transportation to Ariel. The Palestinian villagers on whose land
this highway was built are excluded from using it. They are relegated
to a rugged, bumpy mountain trail.
It is you and your colleagues, Professor Kaveh, who started mixing
academics with politics. A very heavy mixture, such as few universities
anywhere ever engaged in. You cannot really complain when people in
Britain, who have different standards for what is the proper moral
behavior of academics (or for human beings in general) take action
which you do not like. In fact, if you are truly proud of establishing
and maintaining the "Judea and Samaria College", you must have the
courage of your convictions and take the consequences. Much better, of
course, would be for you and your colleagues to sever your connection
with the ill-conceived settlement project - and than you can quite
rightly demand that the boycott be removed from your university.
Yours
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom (The Israeli Peace Bloc