Reply #18: I don't understand this.

[Shaktimaan]

"...It is undeniable that the Israeli academy as a whole--that is, institutionally--has been complicit in the occupation. The movement back and forth of mid-level and senior military and intelligence personnel from active duty service to academic institutions, which I've witnessed first hand during my affiliations with Isareli universities, is a major contributor to the normalization of the occupation within Israeli society

Pretty much every male Israeli serves in the IDF reserves. It is not something you can exactly choose to opt out of. So following LeVine's logic here, the universities are complicit in the occupation because... Many of the students and professors are reservists. Since these reservists spend several weeks every year in the IDF being soldiers or intelligence personnel, they are always moving back and forth, from university to army and back again. And since the universities do their best to accomodate this practice, and do not take active political stands against the IDF, the occupation and the reservists, the universities are complicit in the occupation. Am I wrong that this is pretty much what he's going for here?

It sounds pretty much as though Mr. LeVine considers them complicit in much the same way that we could hold Apple Computers as complicit in the Iraq war. You see, Apple has a policy of paying taxes to the US Federal Government, even though they know that much of this money is being used to fund the Iraq war. Of course all the educated people in Israel belong to the reserves, EVERYONE BELONGS TO THE RESERVES! And yes, the higher ranking officers, etc. are the ones GOING TO THE UNIVERSITY.

This guy mostly seems to be holding Israeli Academia guilty of the crime of not agreeing with his point of view. "a major contributor to the normalization of the occupation within Israeli society," he says? So the universities are guilty of... not being active enough in broadcasting the view through Israeli society that the occupation is NOT normal. OK. It's weird, he doesn't seem to be angry at Israel's academics because of anything they did. Rather he's mad because they HAVEN'T done anything. Namely, they haven't done what he wants them to do.