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Israel Needs Sanctions Not Appeasement
a Statement By BRICUP
ccun.org, July 29, 2008
The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), the main
organisation in the UK promoting the academic and cultural boycott of
Israel, condemned the academic initiative announced by Gordon Brown in
yesterday’s Knesset speech as “abject hypocrisy”. BRICUP called on British
academics to refuse the “blood money” promised for Israeli-British
collaboration through the Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange
Partnership (BIRAX) which Brown announced will provide grants for joint
scientific research and exchanges between Israel and Britain.
BRICUP notes that Brown had nothing to say about the systematic sabotage of
Palestinian centres of learning and research by the Israeli separation wall,
by military incursions and checkpoints, and by the detention of tutors and
students. Mr. Brown spoke of peace and collaborative endeavour; he
turned his eyes away from the cultural and educational deprivation, imposed
as a matter of policy, on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and
from the Palestinians discriminated against in education and research inside
Israel itself. This Brown-Olmert initiative attempts to draw a veil
over that reality. It is shameful that the representatives of a
British Government should take such a selective view of historical
oppressions.
“It is abject hypocrisy for Brown to praise Israeli achievements in the face
of ‘war, terror, violence, threats, intimidation and insecurity’” said Sue
Blackwell, a BRICUP activist at Birmingham University. “Why did he
have nothing to say about Palestinian achievements in the face of decades of
ethnic cleansing, illegal occupation, political detentions and
assassinations of civilians, an illegal apartheid wall through the West Bank
and the siege of Gaza? He has completely swallowed the Zionist
narrative in his grovelings to Olmert: a case of one failing Prime Minister
trying to prop up another.”
“The University and College Union has not even voted for a boycott" said Tom
Hickey, a lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK, and mover of the
recent motion on links with Israeli institutions at the UCU Congress.
“We have merely suggested that members reflect on their moral consciences,
and ask themselves whether they can, with equanimity, continue links with
Israeli institutions that are complicit in the attempted extirpation of the
Palestinian people, and the colonisation of the West Bank. But clearly
we have hit a raw nerve, to judge from the hysteria in both governments.
BRICUP sees this as a mark of its achievement. We have drawn national
and international attention to this barbarism, and we are receiving an
increasingly sympathetic response from our Israeli colleagues.”
BRICUP is less than impressed by Brown’s frequent references in his speech
to his Christian background, as the son of a Minister of the Church who had
learned Hebrew. “He had the chutzpah to quote the prophet Amos, who
never failed to speak truth to power about social injustice” said Professor
Jonathan Rosenhead. “Brown has never managed to speak truth to power
about anything, unlike Archbishop Desmond Tutu who has called Israel’s siege
of Gaza an ‘abomination’.”
In his speech, Brown drew attention to Israeli achievements in medicine,
academia, the arts, sport, music, science and technology. BRICUP is
currently campaigning for boycotts of Israel in each of these spheres. It
does so because of the complicity of Israeli universities and colleges, and
of its medical and cultural establishment, in the barbaric occupation of the
Occupied Territories. The Israeli Medical Association is in the dock for
failing to investigate the participation by some of its members in the
torture of Palestinian detainees. Appearances by the Israeli football team
have been picketed because Israel has repeatedly prevented the Palestinian
team from travelling inside the area or overseas, and has destroyed
Palestinian football pitches. Musicians, artists and writers intending
to appear in Israel are being urged to treat Tel Aviv like Sun City in the
days of South African apartheid.
The partnership initiative announced yesterday is clearly a response to the
decision of the University and College Union (UCU) in the UK, and other
teaching and scholarly organisations internationally, to reflect on the
appropriateness of continued contact with Israeli institutions in these
circumstances. This was made clear by the comment by Bill Rammell, a
British education Minister. It is remarkable that an invitation to
ethical reflection by a small but influential educational trade union should
provoke such an exorbitant reaction. BRICUP takes the UK and Israeli
governments' reaction as testimony both to the sensitivity of the question
and to the effectiveness of the debate about boycott and sanctions.
BRICUP urges British and Israeli academics of conscience not to participate
in the academic collaborations touted by the Prime Minister. “Much of
the finance for these partnerships is clearly coming from parts of the
private and voluntary sectors that are allied to Israel, irrespective of its
actions or policies as a state” said Mike Cushman of the London School of
Economics, and a member of BRICUP. “But whatever the source, we are
urging our colleagues not to touch any of this funding with a bargepole: it
is blood money and they should recognise it as such.”
"As a Palestinian and an academic, I am horrified at Gordon Brown's
insouciance in the face of ongoing Israeli violations of Palestinian
academic freedom, in the Occupied Territories and in Israel itself" said Dr
Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian doctor and BRICUP member from Exeter University.
"He is either ignorant of or indifferent to the facts. Israel needs
sanctions, not appeasement."
Notes
1. For further information
contact:
Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead 07969 961775
Dr. Sue
Blackwell 0792 995 3893
2. The campaign against the
Israeli Medical Association can be found at:
www.boycottima.org
3. BRICUP can be contacted
at info@bricup.org.uk.
Its website is at www.bricup.org.uk.
4. The Palestinian Campaign
for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel can be found at
www.pacbi.org.
Its own press release responding to Brown’s announcement is here:
http://www.pacbi.org/press_releases_more.php?id=788_0_4_0_C
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