Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) expresses its astonishment at the American Studies Association’s harsh criticism of Israel’s action during Operation Protective Edge and the organization’s demand that the United States “withdraw political, financial, and military support from the state of Israel. As long as government support continues,” the release read, “the U.S. is complicit in the ongoing siege of Gaza, Israeli war crimes, and Palestinian suffering.”
This is the second time in this calendar year that the ASA has singled out Israel for censure and opprobrium, their membership having voted for an academic boycott of Israeli scholars in December of 2013. That ASA resolution was approved unanimously by the 20-member council.
In the wake of the Gaza incursion currently underway, the ASA once again chose to ignore any complicity on the part of the Palestinians or—more specifically, the terrorist organization Hamas—for the state of chaos in which both sides find themselves, nor have they ever recognized that Israel has a recognized legal right to self-defense or the ability to protect its citizens from being murdered in the name of jihad or “resistance.” The ASA’s press release condemns Israel’s targeting of Gaza’s Islamic University, asserting that there is no justification for targeted strikes against the university, and that “Israel’s continued attacks on identifiable academic institutions are part of its campaign of collective punishment that has already claimed more than 1,650 lives. This goes well beyond the denial of academic freedom to further escalate Israel’s long-standing practice of denying an entire people the basic necessitates of life and freedom.”
But just as the ASA leadership overlooks any complicity for the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict on the part of the Palestinians themselves, they are also either ignorant of or choose to overlook the fact that Islamic University, specifically, has been a tactical arm of Hamas and has been used regularly to design and build weaponry to be used against Israeli civilians. In fact, the university is part and parcel of the machinery of Hamas-sponsored terror in the Gaza Strip, not separate from the terror state or the politics of a radical ideology. In fact, it has been clear for years that the University functions as a technical arm of Hamas, and its faculty and students are regularly recruited as militants in the continuing jihad against Israel and its citizens.
When in 2012 UNESCO announce it was establishing a Chair at the Islamic University, for example, the Foreign Ministry of the State of Israel reported at the time that, “The Islamic University of Gaza is a known greenhouse and breeding ground for Hamas terrorists . . . Scientists and Academics at the University double as Hamas technocrats. The Islamic University serves as an employment program and intellectual retreat for Hamas leaders. The University conducts lectures on Hamas’ radical ideology and concentrates on hostility to Israel; Hamas uses Gaza University laboratories to develop and produce explosives and rockets and has even run a course on explosive making. The university is a warehouse for weapons and a venue for secret meetings of military leaders.”
In fact, when Hamas formed its cabinet after being voted into office, 13 of its ministers had been teachers at either at the Islamic University in Gaza or at the Al-Najah National University in Nablus, and virtually every leading figure of Hamas has taught or studied at Islamic University. The research labs of the university were also being used to refine the lethality and range of the Qassam rockets that have been terrorizing southern Israeli towns. A professor there, Jameela El Shanty, was quoted in 2006 as admitting that “Hamas built this institution. The university presents the philosophy of Hamas. If you want to know what Hamas is, you can know it from the university.” And, as Jeffrey Herf has only recently reminded us, Hamas is a genocidal organization. It is bad enough that they hide behind false facades of scholarship; it is even worse that Western scholars who should know better have been taken in because of their hatred of Israel.
The call to boycott Israeli universities is part of the larger, and more destructive, boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign, and is based on its supporters’ desire, not merely to chastise Israel economically and culturally, but to weaken the Jewish state’s moral standing and work, not towards rectifying a number of political faults, but eventually dismantling Israel completely. By joining in this world-wide campaign of the demonization and delegitimation of Israel, the ASA continues to facilitate the weakening of a sovereign democratic state, while at the same time violating fundamental precepts of academic freedom, and, indeed, the call for the United States to withdraw all political, military, and financial support from the Jewish state would be a fatal blow for our democratic ally in a sea of despotic regimes.
As a group of academics, SPME, of course, would condemn any type of random military assault on any university, anywhere. But that is clearly not the case here, where Islamic University, as one example, has become a legitimate military target once its facilities and faculty became part of Hamas’s tactical efforts to murder Israelis in the name of jihad. SPME condemns the ASA boycott and its role in a campaign to use academia to promote boycotts, divestiture, and sanctions against Israel, including the calls for academic boycotts directed towards Israeli scholars and institutions, as they represent an abandonment of scholarly principles, a degradation of campus civility, and a violation of the precepts of unbiased, rational academic inquiry.
For further information please contact:
Asaf Romirowsky, Executive Director
(215) 866-8811
