... Unlike
ordinary criticism of Israel, the delegitimization campaign is part of Soft
Asymmetrical Conflict (SAC). The Pentagon defines SAC as a campaign to
delegitimize the target country and to improve the image of the challenge group
and the causes it represents.
The anti -Israel SAC involved an
extensive, complex, multilayered, interlocking and well-financed network. Its
components include NGOs, UN-based forums, EU-sponsored entities, sovereign
governments, religious organizations, academic associations, scholars,
committees, conferences, symposia, journals and presses.
Michel Foucault developed the idea of
soft asymmetrical conflict by inverting the idea of famous dictum of Clausewitz
that “war is a continuation of politics by other means” to read "politics is
war by other means." Foucault and his disciplines considered the
“discursive arena” as a battlefield; using critical approaches,
intellectuals and scholars can delegitimize “hegemonic” narrative and
substitute it with the narrative of the of the powerless and suppressed strata
in the society.
The core of the delegimitzation is in
the academy, since it is the academic paradigms that structure our view of
social reality. There are two paradigms that are currently used in
liberal arts (humanities and social sciences)
Positivist: “Truth” is arrived at through a
discursive-pedagogical process with fixed rules, including objectivity and
neutrality. The liberal arts classroom becomes the “marketplace of
ideas.”
Neo-Marxist, Critical: There is no social “truth,” there are
“narratives,” critical scholars need to expose the “hegemonic” narrative” of
the dominant classes. The scholar is urged to use teaching and research
to advance social justice and other progressive issues.
...Predictably, Israel looks very
different in the two paradigms.
Israel in the positivist
paradigm:
Membership/territory: Jews are an authentic ethno-religious community
rooted in its ancestral Biblical home; Authority system: western-style
liberal democracy (as ranked by Freedom House); Distributive justice
system: Market economy.
Israel in the neo-Marxist, Critical
Paradigm:
Membership/territory: Jews are an “invented people” with no
legitimate right to an ancestral (Biblical) home; Authority system:
Israel is a “Herrenvolk” democracy limited to Jews, an apartheid state modeled
on South Africa; Distributive justice system: a capitalist system
that exploits workers, the Mizrahim, women and Palestinians.
There are a number of reasons why the
neo-Marxist, critical paradigm and its depiction of Israel has become so
successful in Israel. One of them is that Israeli scholars who operate within
this paradigm have been part of the anti-Israel SAC and have benefited from its
vast resources. For instance, the probability of publishing a book
or an article reflecting the neo-Marxist, critical paradigm is probably six
to seven times higher than a comparable work in the positivist
paradigm. Critical scholars have a much better chance
to spend sabbatical leave in Ivy League universities than positivist
scholars.
Another and arguably the most important
reason is the expansive academic freedom that Israeli faculty enjoys as opposed
to their peers in other countries. This relation makes sense since
today "Israel in the Middle East" has become the litmus test of freedom of
faculty, replacing such older test cases as IQ of African-American etc.
To test this proposition the study
compared Israel to three countries – Germany, Great Britain and the United
States (public universities). All three of them have
influenced the educational system of Israel and all three are academic leaders.
There are three factors that shape the
amount of academic freedom of a given country: 1) cultural-academic history; 2)
case law and the amount of government intervention; 3) transition to management
(corporate) university.
Academic freedom in Germany has
been rather restricted because of #1- the democratic reeducation campaign has
restricted certain topics such as denial of the Holocaust or denying the guilt
of Hitler and the Nazi Party in starting the war, the Constitutional Court is
in charge of overseeing academic expression, German professors are considered
government employees and thus not allowed to stray too far from their field of
expertise. The transition to Management University also meant that
economic and business considerations have to be taken into consideration,
business people have been appointed to the boards of governors of universities.
Academic Freedom in Great
Britain has been greatly constrained by the Education Reform Act
instituted by the Thatcher Government. Traditional tenure was
abolished, making faculty less likely to speak out on controversial issues;
stringent quality control of faculty and department makes is harder for faculty
to engage in politics.
In response to the growing
anti-Semitism in Europe, the European Union Monitoring Center has proposed a
“Working Definition of anti-Semitism:” which states that anti-Zionism is a form
of anti-Semitism. The definition was adopted by the European Union Agency
for Fundamental Rights. As a result, certain expressions such as
comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, known as “nazification of Israel” are
considered new anti-Semitism.
In the United States public
universities (known as state universities) have enjoyed more limited freedom
than private universities. The governor appoints the board of directors
and the board of directors appoints the president of the state
university. State legislatures demand accountability for the budgetary
allocation to the universities. Case law plays a large role in dictating
the limits of freedoms; for instance, a district court ruling decreed that a
faculty member cannot call for sanctions that would undermine his/her
institution and have an adverse impact on the higher education system.
Even at the height of the Vietnam War, there was no faculty call to boycott the
United States. Balanced view on the Middle East is required of all
public and private universities that receive Title IV federal grants.
In Israel, academic
freedom is very broad because of the unique historical circumstances
surrounding the founding of the Hebrew University. Judah Magnes, the
founder and president of HUJ and most of the influential professors, including
Martin Buber were anti-Zionists. The HUJ was financially supported by a
group of wealthy donors from the anti-Zionist Council for American
Judaism. Magnes and his professors did not consider themselves to
be accountable to the Jewish community in Palestine, but to a greater universal
ideal of pursuit of academic excellence. As a result, they refused the request
of Ben Gurion to add applied science and technology departments. Even
after the independent state was created that supported the higher education
budget, the attitude that the academy is not accountable to the state
persisted. The Maltz Report that suggested a transition to a Thatcher
style management university was only partially implemented due to fierce
resistance of faculty.
As a result, there is a very broad scope of
academic freedom in Israel in both the intramural (within the
classroom) dimension and the extramural (outside the campus dimension)
For instance: Israeli scholars can compare Israel to
Nazi Germany with impunity, something that they cannot do in EU or the United
States (public universities) without taking a serious professional
risk.
Before the Knesset law, Israeli
scholars could call (and some still do) for boycott of Israel, an action that
would not be tolerated in other countries. As a matter of fact, radical Israeli
scholars were among the architects of the boycott, divestment and sanction
movement (BDS) against Israel. Other faculty were involved in demanding
that IDF commanders be tried for war crimes.
Israeli scholars switch from research
in the field for which they were hired in order to “research” the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something that would not be tolerated in other
countries.
Liberal arts in Israel have paid a
heavy price for this state of affair.
v The frequently heard assertions that restriction on academic freedom
will lead to a lower quality of education is not born out empirically:
Israeli liberal arts, especially social sciences, are trending well below
average.
v Students are not well served by faculty using their classroom as a
platform for political indoctrination rather than a “marketplace of ideas.”
v Taxpayers and society are not well served by faculty who abandon their
field of research to engage in writings which support their political
agenda. It should be emphasized that this would not be tolerated in
the comparative cases.
The Case of the Department of Politics
and Government at BGU
The case of the Department of Politics
and Government at BGU has introduced a unique complication to the system of
higher education in Israel.
BGU appealed to the international
community of scholars to prevent the closing of the department.
The strategy was allegedly conceived by
the Dean David Newman (as revealed in a leaked e-mail published by Israel
Hayom.
The response of the international
community was swift and overwhelming; some 40 professional
associations and hundreds of individual scholars, including at least
one Nobel laureate , sent letters and petitions to the Minister of
Education and the Council of Higher Education (CHE, or Malag) to protest the
proposed closure. The fact that academic associations
which normally act at a glacial pace have responded so fast has been most
interesting.
Of course, it is difficult to
speculate on the final decision of the Malag- but there is a possibility that
it was influenced by this massive protest; if this is indeed the case, the BGU
affair created a unique precedent in annals of higher education in the sense
that Israel lost some sovereignty over its higher education
system. There is no comparable case of such massive intervention in the
educational system of another country.
Such massive intervention did not
happen in a vacuum; it is part and parcel of the campaign to delegitimize
Israel which as I noted, has originated on the campuses...
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