[Reader-list] "Ghosh: Do not undermine the Palestinian struggle for freedom!"

[Sanjay Kak]

At the risk of cross-posting...
For those who have been following the issue of Amitava Ghosh receiving the
Dan David prize.
This from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of
Israel.
best
Sanjay Kak


PACBI | 25 April 2010

Ghosh: Do not undermine the Palestinian struggle for freedom!

Occupied Ramallah, 25 April 2010

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
(PACBI) was extremely disappointed by the recent statement you issued in
response to pleas from individuals and groups around the world urging you
not to associate your name with Israel’s efforts to white-wash its crimes.
Your acceptance of the Dan David Prize comes at a time when the
international movement to boycott Israel is gaining ground in response to
Israel’s flagrant violation of Palestinian human and political rights; we
appeal to you to reflect upon the implication of your acceptance of this
prize.

You titled your statement 'It is not awarded by the state of Israel’, yet
the prize is administered by a university that is funded by the state and,
more crucially, is a leading academic partner of the state in developing
weapons and justifying war crimes. The prize ceremony is presided over by
the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, the architect of Israel's nuclear
weapons program, whose record boasts a series of war crimes and grave
violations of human rights. Only to cite one: on April 18, the Israeli army
shelled the UN shelter in Qana, killing 102 civilians, mainly women,
children and the elderly. Many more were injured. Human Rights Watch, the UN
and Amnesty International subsequently established that Israel's attack on
the UN base was deliberate, disproving Israeli propaganda to the contrary.
Shimon Peres said at the time, "In my opinion, everything was done according
to clear logic and in a responsible way. I am at peace." The Qana massacre
led to Shimon Peres being denied the job he coveted at the time: that of UN
Secretary-General.

You will be receiving this prize from the head of a state that has for more
than six decades imposed a colonial and apartheid regime on the people of
Palestine and has for the last 43 years militarily occupied the West Bank,
including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Despite the “peace process”
which began 17 years ago, Israel routinely violates the Palestinians’ most
fundamental human rights with impunity. Israel extra-judicially kills
Palestinian leaders and activists; keeps over 8,000 Palestinians imprisoned,
including numerous members of parliament. As we write, Israel continues to
build illegal Jewish-only colonies on occupied Palestinian land and an
apartheid infrastructure of roads, blockades and the Apartheid Wall,
declared illegal by the International Court of Justice at the Hague in 2004.
Israel denies millions of Palestinian refugees their internationally
recognized right to return to their lands, as stipulated in UN resolutions.
Moreover, Israel maintains a system of racial discrimination against its own
Palestinian citizens that largely conforms to the definition of apartheid in
the UN Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of
Apartheid and that is reminiscent of key elements of apartheid South Africa.
In the latest Israeli war of aggression on the occupied Gaza Strip,
Palestinian civilians were massacred by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing,
condemned by UN experts and leading human rights organizations, particular
in the Goldstone report, as war crimes. This assault left over 1,440
Palestinians dead, predominantly civilians, of whom 431 were children, and
injured another 5380. [1]

Since much of your work considers how human beings survived dislocations and
colonialism, you may be interested to know that Tel Aviv University (TAU)
has conspicuously refused to recognize and commemorate the Palestinian
village of Sheikh Muwannis and its ethnically cleansed population on whose
land the university was partially built. Despite sustained activists’
campaigning, TAU has so far rejected even mounting a plaque referencing and
commemorating the village and its history, and has failed to acknowledge the
moral debt for injustices caused to the indigenous Palestinian people during
the establishment of the state of Israel. [2]

Last year’s comprehensive report by the Palestine Society at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) presents strong evidence of intensive,
purposive and open institutional cooperation of TAU with the Israeli
military establishment. TAU Professor Avraham Katzir observed:

One of the things which helps the State of Israel […] is the fact that each
one of us is both an Israeli citizen and working in these fields […] I’m an
academic at university and I’ve also done my [military] service, and I was
also at [state arms manufacturer] RAFAEL for some years. All of those things
come together; we’re helping one another – something which doesn’t happen
[elsewhere]; I’ve been in the US and Europe, and there is a disconnect
between the workshops and the army; they hate the army! [With us], I think
that we succeed by virtue of the fact that we help one another so much. [3]


Additionally, studies by the Alternative Information Center (2009), Adalah
(2003), and Human Rights Watch (2001), among others, corroborate and
document accusations that Israeli educational institutions, including TAU,
pursue discriminatory racial policies that are meant to prevent Palestinians
in Israel from enrolling. [4] These policies make it yet more difficult for
Palestinian citizens of Israel to obtain faculty positions. Any encounter at
an Israeli university thus nearly always excludes or marginalizes
Palestinian voices.

You note in your statement that you object to boycotts and embargoes when
they concern matters of culture and learning. Aside from the crucial fact
that the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel
targets institutions, not individuals, [5] why should cultural and learning
institutions be exempt from boycotts if they are implicated in the
atrocities as any other sector? Culture and learning were not exempt in the
South African case. The Palestinian civil society campaign for Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which is a strategy endorsed by an
overwhelming majority of Palestinian unions, NGOs, cultural organizations,
among others, as a legitimate non-violent and effective means of struggle
against Israel’s oppression, has been largely inspired by the South African
struggle against apartheid. When you reject our call for the academic and
cultural boycott of Israel, you undermine our struggle for freedom and
ignore the voices of almost all prominent Palestinian artists, writers and
other cultural workers [6] and the many international intellectuals who have
joined our boycott [7].

If you have any doubts that the situation of Palestinians is similar to that
of black South African’s under apartheid, we urge you to read the words of
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who in a recent letter to Berkeley students wrote:

“I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the
racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the
conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of
Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and
children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when
trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school
or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South
Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of
the Apartheid government. In South Africa, we could not have achieved our
freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who
through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment,
encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse
decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.” [8]

As was the case in South Africa, where international solidarity played a
crucial role in bringing down apartheid by boycotting the economic,
educational and cultural institutions of the apartheid regime, we sincerely
hope you will not accept any prizes offered by complicit Israeli
institutions, until Israel fulfils its obligations under international law
and fully recognizes the Palestinian people’s right to live in full equality
and freedom in their homeland.

We call upon you not just to be 'appalled’ by Israel’s actions, but to show
real solidarity with us in our struggle for freedom by refusing to associate
your name with Israel’s atrocities.



PACBI

www.PACBI.org <http://www.pacbi.org/>

pacbi at pacbi.org



 [1] http://www.ochaopt.org/gazacrisis/index.php?section=3

[2] Tel Aviv University is asked to acknowledge its past and to commemorate
the Palestinian village on which grounds the university was built,
www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=143

[3] SOAS Palestine Society Report: "Tel Aviv University part and parcel of
the Israeli Occupation,"
http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090708-soas-palestine-society.pdf

[4] Tel Aviv University’s Age Restrictions Discriminate against Arab
Students in Admission to its Medical School,
www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/jan08/4.php ;
Reference Material in Support of Palestinian and International Academic
Boycott Campaigns (2006) compiled by the Alternative Information Center,
www.alternativenews.org;

Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Education
rights—Palestinian citizens of Israel, (2003), Shafa’amr, Israel;
Human Rights Watch. Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab
Children in Israel’s Schools (2001), www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2/

[5] See the PACBI Call for Boycott at:
http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869 and the Guidelines for the
International Cultural Boycott of Israel at:
http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1047

[6] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=315<http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=315&key=filmmakers>

[7] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=415&key=filmmakers
[8] *
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html
*<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html>

Posted on 25-04-2010