David Landy, Trinity College Dublin, Explains Irish Academic’s “Moratorium” Letter: Tries unsuccessfully to explain it is not a boycott action- claims Israel boycotts Palestinian scholars

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Sir –
As a signatory of the academic call for a moratorium on EU support of Israel, I’d like to reply to Eoghan Harris’s article attacking the call.
Firstly the meaning of the words ‘moratorium on aid’ – Mr Harris thinks this is a fancy way of saying ‘total boycott’. It isn’t. It means that we are asking the EU to stop giving grants to Israeli academia until Israel ends the occupation of Palestine.
Huge amounts of EU funds are given to Israeli universities. It’s incredible that EU money – our money – is going to the institutions of a state that has broken more UN resolutions than any other. A state that invades its neighbours and commits daily war crimes against Palestinians.
When Israel starts obeying international law, then the EU can fund them all it likes. This seems like a reasonable stand. It won’t endanger academic freedom but it will give the Israeli government a slap across their wrists. Without people standing up to Israel, and furthermore standing up in a non-violent way, they are going to continue occupying Palestinian lands.
The success of the sanctions against South Africa, and the success that the partial measures have already had in moderating the practical support Israeli academia gives the occupation, indicates that this is not
simply a reasonable stand, but an effective one.
As the letter does not call for a comprehensive boycott, it does not boycott or isolate individual Israeli academics – either Jewish, Christian or Muslim. Our letter does not mention individuals, precisely because such proposed sanctions do not confuse the state with its citizens. Several signatories, including myself, have ongoing academic links with Israeli-based academics.
I also have links with Palestinian academics. I know that Israel is conducting an effective boycott of Palestinian academics, one that prevents them from meeting each other, let alone going abroad. Universities around the world have to think twice before inviting their Palestinian counterparts, because of the high chances that the Israeli won‘t let them leave, or worse, won’tlet them return.
This Israeli boycott campaign regularly closes down universities. It uses soldiers to occupy and attack academic institutions. It prevents students from enrolling in courses and imprisons Palestinian academics. This is a boycott campaign which Mr Harris – in common with all the institutions of Israeli academia – stays silent about. No wonder Palestinian academics and all their professional bodies have lost their faith in Israeli academia being able to reform itself without international pressure, and thus support sanctions against Israel.
It is not just through their silence that Israeli academia is part and parcel of a brutal 40 year long occupation. They provide the professionals to maintain this occupation and play an important role in both executing and legitimising it.
This ranges from small but revealing examples – such as the fast-tracking of training programmes for the Israeli KGB, called the Shin Bet – to the more long-term. For example, the sinister proliferation of papers and conferences on the ‘demographic problem’, code for ‘non-Jews outbreeding Jews’ – a constant worry for those who want to maintain a racially pure state. ‘Dealing with the demographic problem’ is, in similar manner, a codeword for conducting ethnic cleansing.
We believe universities who promote these practices, and institutions which are part of such a corrupt system, should not receive our active support. It seems that Mr Harris wants to blacklist us for our opinions. McCarthyite initiatives such as ‘Campuswatch’ in American universities are unfortunately quite successful in closing down academic debate in the USA. It is a measure of the robustness of Irish academia that Mr Harris’s statement that I and my fellow academics ‘will remain on his radar’, arouses none of the fear he obviously hopes for. At most, derision.
David Landy,
TrinityCollege
Dublin, 2.
Columnist, Eoghan Harris comments:
Shame, not fear, was the emotion I hoped to evoke.

David Landy, Trinity College Dublin, Explains Irish Academic’s “Moratorium” Letter: Tries unsuccessfully to explain it is not a boycott action- claims Israel boycotts Palestinian scholars

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