Criticism of Israeli academia is not anti-Semitism

In a recent University World News article, Professor Gabriel Noah Brahm takes issue with my commentary a month ago on the abolition of personal freedom in Israeli academia, and says: “Hetsroni’s concerns for academic freedom in Israel are as overwrought, unrealistic and misplaced as his ‘examples’ of supposed censorship are exaggerated nonsense.”

He adds that the calls to place sanctions on Israeli institutes of higher education stem from anti-Semitism and not from sincere concern about academic democracy.

Here are some of the examples outlined in my article. Judge for yourselves whether they are ‘exaggerated nonsense’ or not.

Nonsense or not?

Nonsense No 1: Rinat Zolek, a student of mine at Ariel University, wrote on her Facebook page that studying in Ariel was a bad decision and that given the political circumstances that she became aware of during her studies, she would have preferred to spend her time in a Syrian prison and not in Ariel.

She was suspended. The court issued a warrant that made her the first student in Israel to be reinstated by court order.

Nonsense No 2: An Israeli student of Arab origin published a social media status after the kidnapping of three settlers – what became a preamble to the latest war in Gaza – that was supposedly “not condemning enough of the kidnappers”.

She was summoned to disciplinary hearings by her university which was, again, Ariel; however, similar incidents have occurred in smaller colleges: Hadassah College in Jerusalem fined an Arab student who declared support for Hamas, and Western Galilee College in Acre suspended an Arab student on a similar basis.

Nonsense No 3: Ariel University invited Chabad and other orthodox missionary organisations to run pseudo-academic programmes, and allowed them to tempt students to take part by granting academic credits in exchange for attendance – which was, by the way, checked by fingerprints.

Nonsense No 4: Gabi Weinrot, a teaching assistant at Tel-Hai College, was invited to a pre-dismissal hearing after writing that Israel's militaristic activities in Gaza seem like “psychic Nazism”. Eventually, he was only given a warning.

Nonsense No 5 (and most personal): In response to a series of articles and Facebook posts where I expressed individualistic, nihilistic, anti-religious non-Zionist views – Ariel University decided to terminate on the spot my valid work contract as an associate professor of communication.

The reason? My statements are not in keeping with the spirit of the university.

My case is still under negotiation in legal conduits, but I am willing to admit that at a university whose chancellor proudly declares that people who hold anti-Zionist views are not welcome on campus – neither as students nor faculty – I can be considered persona non grata.

The problem with such a declaration, however, is that it sounds very much like a charter of a social club in the Deep South back in the days when membership rights were restricted by ethnicity. I remind anyone who does not recognise the similarity that the anti-Zionist public in Israel consists more or less of 99% Arabs.

Academic boycott

In contrast with Brahm's contention that the rejection of Israeli academia is total, the truth is that most of the criticism targets specific institutes and their deeds. It happens in cases where the level of ‘nonsense’ passes the threshold of tolerance.

For instance, while the number of Israeli professors who support a complete boycott of Israeli academia is in the single digit realm, nearly one fifth of the senior faculty in my country signed a petition that calls for Ariel University not to be recognised.

The presidents of all Israeli universities with the exception of Bar-Ilan – an Orthodox school – appealed to the Supreme Court to annul this recognition.

The campaign was unsuccessful partly because this university, which is located in a conquered land that was never annexed to Israel and that according to any reasonable geographic consideration is reserved for a future Palestinian state, is not supervised by the Council of Higher Education or the Ministry of Education, but instead controlled by a military general who is not subjected to ordinary Israeli civil law.

When academic freedom is in the hands of a military commander, it is not surprising that a campus nestled in the historic Palestinian homeland has not so far hired a single Palestinian.

Still, many academics like me, who fiercely object to Israel's occupation of the West Bank, believe that a decision to boycott academic institutes is a personal-moral one and not a political-collective one, and that it should have a profound academic basis.

A decision to boycott Ariel or any other Israeli university just to protest against Israel's attitude toward the peace process, for instance, cannot be easily justified.

On the other hand, it is difficult to object to sanctions placed on any college that prohibits students from taking part in political protest and any university that refuses to accept anti-Zionist professors or students because such institutes show a lack of respect for the basic principles of science and democracy.

For this reason, I favourably relate to the campaign against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which cancelled a binding job offer to Professor Steven Salaita after he had expressed hostile views toward Israel.

But I do not sympathise with initiatives to boycott the whole gamut of academe in any country.

Brahm's article lacks evidence of the linkage that, according to him, exists between anti-Semitism and the campaign against some Israeli higher education institutions.

He puts the blame on objections to Israel's recent war in Gaza and ignores the fact that the reasoned campaign was launched before the war because problems had surfaced before the war.

Actually, the war only sharpened personal freedom violations in Israeli higher education, particularly in Ariel University.

I approached Brahm and asked whether he would like to respond to this article. His answer was: "I do not boycott academics, and do not consider boycotting them in principle because often academics are among the most vocal and interesting dissenters in a society."

In my view, this reasoning may hold when academics are free to express their views. Unfortunately, this is not the case at some Israeli institutions of tertiary education.

* Amir Hetsroni is a professor of communication at Ariel University, an Israeli university located in the West Bank. He is in a legal dispute with the university. Email: amirhetsroni@gmail.com.