Secondly, making Israeli academics complicit in the actions of their government ignores the reality that, as is the case on European, Canadian, and American campuses, many Israeli professors veer to the Left politically and many, incredibly, share the same virulent anti-Israel, anti-Zionism sentiments so proudly touted by the boycott supporters. The notion that Israeli academics should, or could, be held responsible for the actions of their own government was at best hypocritical, and at worst yet another example of how, where Israel is concerned, the standards applied in measuring its actions are impossibly high. It, first, exonerates academics in any country other than Israel for any misdeeds committed by their own governments, for which, by the same standard that the boycotters apply to Israel, they as concerned citizens and scholars should have to answer. and maintaining inequality in educational resources between Palestinians and Israelis.”īut MESA’s notion that Israeli universities are “imbricated in these systematic violations” is flawed in at least two respects. The sententious language of the MESA boycott resolution, which ironically purports to protect academic freedom, asserts that there is evidence of “successive Israeli governments’ systematic violations of the human rights of Palestinians living under Israeli direct or indirect control” and that these so-called “systemic violations include restricting freedom of movement for Palestinians isolating, undermining, or otherwise attacking Palestinian educational institutions harassing Palestinian professors, teachers, and students. Unsurprisingly for an organization whose membership has been perennially hostile to Israel, members of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) voted at their recent annual meeting to advance a resolution endorsing an academic boycott of Israeli academics to a full membership vote in 2022. Cravatts, Ph.D., a Freedom Center Journalism Fellow in Academic Free Speech and President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews.
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