500+ US-based academics, authors & artists endorse the academic and cultural boycott of Israel

[grassfed]

by ADAM HOROWITZ

A year since the assault on Gaza, Israel continues to evade accountability. The failure of the international community to use the Goldstone Report to address the war crimes committed during the fighting has been a boon to the growing movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. This movement seeks to hold Israel accountable through non-violent means. From a United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel press release:

December 27, 2009 marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of “Operation Cast Lead,” Israel’s 22-day assault on the captive population of Gaza, which killed 1400 people, one third of them children, and injured more than 5300. During this war on an impoverished, mostly refugee population, Israel targeted civilians, using internationally-proscribed white phosphorous bombs, deprived them of power, water and other essentials, and sought to destroy the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society, including hospitals, administrative buildings and UN facilities. It targeted with peculiar consistency educational institutions of all kinds: the Islamic University of Gaza, the Ministry of Education, the American International School, at least ten UNRWA schools, one of which was sheltering internally displaced Palestinian civilians with nowhere to flee, and tens of other schools and educational facilities.

While world leaders have tragically failed to come to Gaza’s help, civilians everywhere are rallying to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people, with anniversary vigils taking place this week in New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, and many more cities and towns in the US and world-wide.

The United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was formed in the immediate aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, bringing together educators of conscience who were unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel’s indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions. Today, over 500 US-based academics, authors, artists, musicians, poets, and other arts professionals have endorsed our call. Our academic endorsers include postcolonial critics and transnational feminists Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Indigenous scholars J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Andrea Smith, philosopher Judith Butler , Black studies scholars Cedric Robinson, Fred Moten, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, and intellectual historian Joseph Massad.

“Cultural workers” who have endorsed our call include well known author Barbara Ehrenreich, Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah, poets Adrienne Rich and Lisa Suhair Majjaj, ISM co-founder and documentary film-maker Adam Shapiro, Jordan Flaherty of Left Turn Magazine, and Adrienne Maree Brown, of the Ruckus Society.

Among the 34 organizations supporting our mission are and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Green Party, Code Pink, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, .Artists Against Apartheid, and Teachers Against the Occupation.

The Advisory Board of the United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) has grown to include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Hamid Dabashi, Lawrence Davidson, Bill Fletcher Jr., Glen Ford, Mark Gonzales, Marilyn Hacker, Edward Herman, Annemarie Jacir, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Robin Kelley, Ilan Pappe, James Petras, Vijay Prashad, Andrenne Rich, Michel Shehadeh, and Lisa Taraki.

Israeli academics, listed among the organization’s International Endorsers, have also joined us, including Emmanuel Farjoun, Hebrew University; Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University; Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University; Kobi Snitz, Technion; and Ilan Pappe now at Exeter.

more http://mondoweiss.net/2009/12/another-legacy-of-operation-cast-lead-500-us-based-academics-authors-artists-endorse-the-academic-and-cultural-boycott-of-israel.html

[niyad]

1. would rec, but apparently cannot.

[unabelladonna]

2. what a joke

to ban some of the smartest, most innovative scientists and academicians on earth. if it wasn't so pathetic, it would be hilarious. why don't they refuse to take advantage of any medical breakthroughs that have occurred in israeli laboratories.

[Violet_Crumble]

3. That about sums up what you said in yr post...

Though I suspect it's more down to ignorance (that last strange sentence of yrs indicates that) of the concept of boycotting and what appears to be an unquestioning and unthinking knee-jerk defence of anything to do with Israel. You would have opposed boycotts of South Africa? Why? Or are you singling Israel out for special treatment?

[ConsAreLiars]

4. Sniff, sniiff. I scent a bit of that stinky supremacist odor here.

What a sick way to look at thie world. They slaughter thousands, and you say they get a pass because they have some above average citizens (like every place) with the infrastructure needed (being a welfare queen has it's plus side, but is quite less common).

Sucks to be you, but Hitler's Germany had and did use that same supremacist logic, using similar words, as it demonized and slaughtered those they regarded as both sub-human and a threat. like you and your type. And while you and your kind destroy schools for Palestinians, keep books out, deny them the right to attend universities or even rebuild a flattened elementary school you gloat over the fact that the oppressors have more in their favor than those they subjugate?

How sick is that?

Well, I know you don't have the faintest idea, so here's a clue

[EFerrari]

5. I posted about this effort when it first started. Wow, it has grown!

[bemildred]

6. Yep, coming right along now.

Gets harder and harder to call them all anti-semites.

[LeftishBrit]

7. It would be a bit more convincing for US-based academics to want to boycott Israel...

if their own country (and mine) weren't engaged in war, occupation and oppression of Arabs and Muslims on a massive scale. A bit of an irony.

In any case, I strongly believe that boycotting Israel would not even work; it would just make the Israelis more convinced that 'everyone is against us; we must defend ourselves', and rally around their xenophobic-isolationists of the Right. (Same goes for Palestinians, which makes it another irony that many opponents of boycotting Israel see nothing morally wrong or counterproductive in the blockade of Gaza).

www.linksnotboycott.org.uk

[ProgressiveMuslim]

8. This is the only non-violent way in which to change the status quo. Worked in South Africa!

Until Israel feels the pinch of their actions, there will never be change.

Tel Aviv is rightly becoming the Sun City of the 21st century!

[Violet_Crumble]

9. If they're already convinced everyone's against them, then no harm can be done...

And seeing as how Likud is full of xenophobes and RW extremists, I think the bus on not rallying round them has been missed a fair while ago.

I think this may be one of the few issues we disagree on, though I question how effective any boycott that isn't high level sanctions at the government level would be. I think all that needs to happen in that regard for Israel to start behaving is for the US to pull the plug on its funding....

[azurnoir]

10. I would have to disagree when it comes to plug pulling

IMO the first plug the US should pull is the on going protection the US provides Israel in the UN and especially within the UNSC, that move right there would go a very long way to opening doors for other measures such as sanctions, for this to work it will have to be a global effort

[Violet_Crumble]

11. Yeah, there's probably a few more steps first before cutting US funding...

I remember that Cali posted a really good article a fair while ago that listed the steps that should be taken and involved the big sticks being kept as a last resort.....

[delad]

12. i think you'v hit the nail on the head

there has been NO pressure applied so ideally it SHOULD start small and build up from there. but what are the chances of the US or the EU actually applying small amounts of pressure? I don't think anybody esle is capable of applying small amounts of pressure on Israel.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

13. Perhaps the gov'ts will follow the lead of the people on this issue! nt