To the Honorable President of Baylor University Judge Kenneth Starr
To the Honorable Members of the Board of Regents of Baylor University

Re: Professor Marc Ellis

"The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom."
--William Orville Douglas

"The whole idea of equal justice under law means that you've got to play by the rules. It has nothing to do with the underlying subject matter. You just tell the truth."
--Kenneth Starr

Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen:

In our nation freedom of speech much like freedom of the press is defined, implemented, and censored by those in power in direct contradiction to the words and spirit of our First Amendment.

Such is the current outrageous, dishonorable, and unconstitutional actions taken by Judge Starr against one of the country's leading and most distinguished scholars on Jewish Studies, tenured Professor Marc Ellis, by eliminating his upcoming courses, shutting down his department, and launching an investigation on whether Professor Ellis' writing against ISRAELI policies is anathema to the Jewish Christian Zionist's standard of "thou shall not speak against Israel."

The Baylor Lariat, November 30, 2011, highlighted Professor Ellis' dissident voice against Israel's policies as a major factor in his unwarranted persecution by Ken Starr:

"Dr. Marc Ellis, director of the university's Center for Jewish Studies, said Baylor President Ken Starr approved charges against him in June at least in part because of his outspoken criticism of the state of ISRAEL"

It is a shameful stain on Baylor University, a Christian University that espouses to teach the life and moral values of Jesus ("Judge not lest you be judged") should resort to such illegal and unconstitutional persecution of Professor Ellis simply for his right as an American citizen to speak and write freely in an environment that should respect academic freedom and free speech.

As a former Judge President Starr is fully aware of the Supreme Court's decision cited below.

In a 1989 case before the Supreme Court on the freedom to burn the American flag, the Supreme Court ruled that such action is freedom of speech: Justice William J. Brennan asserted that:

"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable."

What deemed heresy will next be on Baylor's Christian chopping block? Ethnic cleansing of Non-Christians, expulsion of women unless they bow down in total obedience to man, the handicapped and poor students on scholarship, or anyone who is not born again nor blindly accepts Ken Starr's and the University's ultimatums.

Is this not hypocritical when compared to the statement below on Baylor's mission and values?

"Baylor encourages all of its students to cultivate their capacity to think critically..to arrive at informed and reasoned conclusions."

Starr and Baylor are creating a dangerous precedent of a new inquisition against those who espouse dissident opinions than the accepted conformity for Israel that it can do no wrong.

Is there a financial threat to Baylor that it will lose funds should it continue to keep Professor Marc Ellis' as a tenured academician much like what happened at Harvard with Professor Stephen Walt? Even the founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, the very country Ken Starr is stealthily protecting would've respected Professor Ellis' right to free speech and his dissidence from the overwhelming blind support Israel receives in this country, not out of love or strategic need, but out of sheer fear of its powerful lobbies.

David Ben Gurion said:

"The test of democracy is freedom of criticism."

American ignorance on Israel is its best weapon of mass destruction against America's national interests and the humanity of its occupied populations.

Baylor's Board of Regents has a responsibility and obligation to uphold the University's mission to its students, its faculty, and its national and international outreach to uphold Professor Marc Ellis' absolute right as a tenured Professor and American citizen to exercise his constitutionally guaranteed free speech and his academic responsibility to provide his students and society at large with opposing and dissenting views on Israel or any other issue.

As Ronald Reagan said:

"There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect."

Baylor can solidify the principle that universities are truly the foundation of reason, rationality, critical thought based on knowledge of all sides of an issue, an environment of freedom for the mind and soul, a bastion for free flowing ideas, debates, and research, a pathway to graduate free thinkers who will enter a world challenged by and challenging of competing ideas.

Without such principles there is neither an educational institution nor true learning.

To avoid a historical mistake and shame upon Baylor, the renowned and distinguished Professor Marc Ellis must not face any politically motivated investigation of his academic freedom that might incredibly lead to his dismissal.

Board of Regents, this is not only the right thing to do but the only intellectually honest and sound decision worthy of Baylor University.

With utmost respect;

Mohamed Khodr

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

Video link: http://youtu.be/pWKPRC-_oSg

Alternate Focus interviews Nurit Peled-Elhanan, author of the forthcoming book Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education. Nurit Peled-Elhanan argues that the textbooks used in the school system are laced with a pro-Israel ideology, and that they play a part in priming Israeli children for military service. She analyzes the presentation of images, maps, layouts and use of language in History, Geography and Civic Studies textbooks, and reveals how the books might be seen to marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity.

NOTE: Nurit Peled-Elhanan is a Professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an Israeli peace activist, and one of the founders of the Bereaved Families for Peace. After the death of Elhanan's 13 year-old daughter in a 1997 suicide bombing, she became an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Free to learn... free to train... free to excel... free to plan... free to travel... free to trade... free to govern...

And free at last from Israel's reign of thuggery

By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The last thing Israel wants is masses of bright and clever young Palestinians next door in the shredded remains of the occupied territories. But that's exactly what Palestinian youngsters are – bright and clever, given half a chance. So they need repressing. They need humiliating constantly. They need to be discouraged. They need to have their education disrupted big-time, so that they become a broken, dispirited, docile mass without ambition, utterly dependent on a few crumbs of comfort and easy to control.

So the Israelis make spiteful war on students especially, as well as women and children generally.

Last week's report from Bethlehem University about the brutal attacks by Israeli squatters, in one case under the indulgent eye of Israeli soldiers, on a professor and a student reminds me that I have written on three earlier occasions about intimidation and obstruction by the Israeli authorities. At this moment in the long struggle for decency and freedom it is worth recalling these incidents, which vividly illustrate why Palestinian independence is so vitally important.

To get to Bethlehem University, or any other, many students have to run the gauntlet of Israeli checkpoints. "Sometimes they take our ID cards and they spend ages writing down all the details, just to make us late," said one. Students are often made to remove shoes, belt and bags. "It's like an airport. Many times we are kept waiting outside for up to an hour, rain or shine, they don't care." The soldiers attempt to forcibly remove students' clothes or they swear and shout sexual slurs at female students.

Some tell how they are sexually harassed and spend the rest of the day worrying what the Israelis will do to them on their way home.

The daily abuse undermines student motivation and concentration. Many other obstacles are put in their way by the occupation. Here are just three cases that are representative of thousands of others. They will, I think, make you angry – spitting-blood furious, in fact.

Merna – "turning the tables on adversity"

Merna was an honours student in her final year majoring in English. Israeli soldiers frequently rampaged through her Bethlehem refugee camp in the middle of the night, ransacking homes and arbitrarily arresting residents. They took away her family one by one. First her 14-year-old cousin and best friend was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while she sat outside her family home during a curfew.

Next the Israelis arrested her eldest brother, a 22-year-old artist, and imprisoned him for four years. Then they came back for Merna's 18-year-old brother. Not content with that, the military came again, this time to take her youngest brother – the "baby" of the family – just 16. These were the circumstances under which Merna had to study.

"As he was being taken away, he told us to take care of ourselves," said Merna, her eyes brimming with tears. "He's my little brother! He is the one who needs taking care of. What is he doing in an awful prison cell and how are his spirits?"

Israeli military law treats Palestinians as adults as soon as they reach 16, a flagrant violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Israeli youngsters are regarded as children until 18. Palestinians are dealt with by Israeli military courts, even when it's a civil matter. These courts ignore international laws and conventions, so there's no legal protection for individuals under Israeli military occupation.

As detention is based on secret information, which neither the detainee nor his lawyer is allowed to see, it is impossible to mount a proper defence. Besides, the security service always finds a bogus excuse to keep detainees locked up "in the greater interest of the security of Israel". Although detainees have the right to review and appeal, they are unable to challenge the evidence and check facts as all information presented to the court is classified.

Faced with this great mental stress, Merna nevertheless determined to carry on with her studies. The "most moral army in the world", as the Israelis call their uniformed thugs, may have robbed her brothers of an education, but she would still fight for hers. Sleepless and tearful, Merna went to university next day as usual.

A fellow student recalls than when chatting to Merna online in the evenings, she often had to leave the computer because the military had barged into her home. But even if she'd been up all night while Israeli soldiers trashed her house and questioned her family, she always came to school the next day.

"Coming to school is a way of getting away from what is happening in the refugee camp," says Merna. "It's like an oasis here for me." But her thoughts are never far from her cousin and brothers. "I only wish they were allowed this opportunity."

She became a senior member of the Bethlehem University Student Ambassadors Programme and an example to fellow classmates. She hopes to pursue postgraduate studies abroad and return to the university to give back to the community some of the support it has offered her.

Young minds like Merna's must continue to persevere against the odds. Though greatly distracted by the cruel fate of her close family, the ordeal forged a steely resolve. The purposeful way she lived her university life, say the brothers, gave her added strength and confidence. Merna managed to turn the tables on adversity. Her loss was actually her gain.

What a remarkable young lady.

Berlanty – deported "for trying to complete her studies at Bethlehem University"

This Christian girl, a fouth-year Business Administration student, was originally from Gaza but had lived in the West Bank since 2005 after receiving a travel permit from the Israeli military to cross from Gaza to the West Bank. She was snatched by the Israeli military while returning from a job interview in Ramallah. The 21-year-old, due to graduate in a few weeks' time, was suddenly deported to Gaza "for trying to complete her studies at Bethlehem University".

She too was about to be robbed of her degree at the last minute. The most moral army in the world blindfolded and handcuffed her, loaded her into a military jeep and drove her from Bethlehem to Gaza, despite assurances by the Israeli Military Legal Advisor's Office that she would not be deported before an attorney from Gisha, an Israeli non-governmental organization working to protect Palestinians' freedom of movement, had the opportunity to petition the Israeli court for her return to classes in Bethlehem.

When they'd crossed the border the world's most moral army dumped Berlanty in the darkness late at night and told her: "You are in Gaza."

"Since 2005, I refrained from visiting my family in Gaza for fear that I would not be permitted to return to my studies in the West Bank," she told Gisha on her mobile phone before the soldiers confiscated it. "Now, just two months before graduation, I was arrested and taken to Gaza in the middle of the night, with no way to finish my degree."

The Israeli embassy in London, when asked for an explanation, said that Berlanty held a permit that had expired and she'd been living in the West Bank illegally. "As you probably know, every Gaza resident who stays in the West Bank requires a permit, failing to do so is a breach of the law."

The embassy spokesperson added that if she wished to complete her studies at Bethlehem she should apply for a permit to the relevant authorities. However, Bethlehem University told me that 12 students from Gaza had applied to attend the university and not one had received permission from the relevant Israeli authorities.

Her appeal, handled by Gisha, was turned down. It was a classic example of how Israel's administrative "laws" are framed to ride rough-shod over citizens' rights enshrined in international law. For example, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are internationally recognized as one integral territory and under international law everyone has the right to freely choose their place of residence within a single territory. The state of Israel also has an obligation under the Oslo Agreements to "respect and preserve without obstacles, normal and smooth movement of people, vehicles and goods within the West Bank, and between the West Bank and Gaza Strip".

While Israel's embassy here was issuing its despicable ruling on Berlanty's fate, the ambassador was whining about a warrant issued in London for the arrest of ex-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes. Livni had overseen the murderous assault on Gaza the previous December/January, which killed 1,400, including a large number of women and children, maimed thousands more and left countless families homeless.

If Berlanty, who has committed no crime, could not come and go as she pleased in her own country – the Holy Land – what made Israel's ambassador think that the blood-soaked Livni, and others like her, should be allowed to come and go as they please in the UK? But that's another shameful story.

Samer – imprisoned, tortured and held in solitary confinement for engaging in student politics

A few months before he was due to graduate, in 2003, the Israeli military arrested Samer and threw him in jail – for six long years. Then at 27 he returned to campus to finish what he started. "I feel like a regular student again," he said with a wide grin. "I have a university notebook and textbooks. I can ask and answer questions freely. I can communicate openly with students, professors and staff. It's a real life, an authentic life."

When imprisoned he was denied access to a lawyer for 55 days then moved from one Israeli prison to another for more than six years. He was tortured on numerous occasions, he says, and regularly interrogated eight hours a day for four to five days, in just a T-shirt, squatting on the cold ground with his hands tied and an air conditioner blowing on his back. He was held in solitary confinement for more than a year.

Membership of a student group in Palestine is outlawed under Israeli military law, and students who engage in campus politics risk arrest by Israel's uniformed gangs who barge into Palestinian society and academic life to abduct them. Many Western leaders began their political careers making a name for themselves at the Oxford Union and similar student debating groups or taking part in demos. How would they have reacted to being clapped in irons for it?

A good many of them are now firm "Friends of Israel", although the regime stamps on the sort of student activities they enjoyed. Members of the Israeli cabinet presumably went to university. Are we to believe that they never engaged in student politics?

Samer's experience is similar to that of hundreds of Palestinian students who find themselves political prisoners. Many are left to rot in jail indefinitely, denied their basic right to due process, a fair trial and legal representation. Some wait up to two years to be charged. Others are charged under Israeli military law, which falls a long way short of the justice standards required under international law.

The Palestinian Prisoner's Society reckoned that seven Bethlehem University students were at that time in Israeli prisons for taking part in "student activities". In Samer's case, he was abducted for joining Fatah's resistance movement after the 2000 Intifada (uprising). It is, of course, perfectly legitimate to resist an illegal occupier.

But coming back to university after prison is no easy thing, as Samer discovered. He was suffering the cruel effects of six years' incarceration and was often tired, depressed, stressed and jumpy. But he knew that the university was his anchor, the main hope in his young life.

At first he had problems communicating with other students, many of whom were younger than him. But the English professor who taught Samer earlier and received letters and messages from prison, said: "I see him as a success story in the sense that he hasn't lost hope. He so much wanted to continue his education and he came back. Prison was tough for him but he came through it. He's doing well, all things considered."

Another professor remembered him from six years earlier. "There is a definite measure of maturity in Samer now," she observed. "He's proud of being at Bethlehem University and he knows the value of education. Samer doesn't miss any classes. A six-year gap in his education – and six rather difficult years – is not something that everyone can overcome. But he is doing it because he wants to improve himself, and his classmates see and admire it."

Samer was determined to make the most of this second chance. Full marks to him for enduring and overcoming the cruelty of the occupation.

"The moral test of a country is how it treats the young and the elderly"

A UN Human Rights Council report (A/HRC/WG.6/3/ISR/3) of December 2008 highlighted some unpalatable facts:

• DCI/PS (Defence for Children International, Palestine Section) expressed concern about coercive techniques used by the Israeli authorities to extract confessions; the provision of typed confessions to Palestinian child detainees; the use of confessional evidence, most of which is obtained illegally, in the Israeli military courts in order to obtain convictions, and the lack of effective mechanisms for investigating complaints of torture.

• Referring to Israel's policy of administrative detention, ICJ (International Commission of Jurists) said that arrests and detentions are often based on secret evidence to which neither the detainees nor their counsels have access. The Israeli authorities can repeatedly extend the initial detention without evidential justification.

• The International Complaints Commission (ICC) noted that there were about 800 Palestinian administrative detainees at the Israeli detention centres. The Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association reported that all are detained without any charges or any trial procedures. Administrative detention is ordered by a military commander and grounded on "security reasons". Detainees must be brought before a military judge within eight days but hearings are not open to the public. Addameer further reported that administrative detention has regularly been used against Palestinian children.

• AI (Amnesty International) confirmed that some 800 Palestinians were held without charge or trial in administrative detention, and although they have the right to appeal to a military court and ultimately to the Supreme Court, neither they nor their lawyers have the right to see the evidence against them.

• The Mandela Institute reported serious deterioration in all Israeli detention facilities, including over-crowdedness; forbidding family visits; arbitrary transfers; violence against prisoners by prison officials; torture and ill treatment by the Israeli General Security Services (GSS or Shin Bet), Israeli soldiers and prison guards against Palestinians; deterioration of health conditions, and deaths in custody.

So there you have it. The evil of Israel's "snatch squads" that prey on Palestine's students and other young people, and the regime's cynical disregard for their wellbeing while in its clutches, are laid bare for everyone to see.

It is clear that Israel still hasn't emerged from the swamp, and probably never will.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

and here's perhaps the most important

By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The following report from Bethlehem University that academic staff had been attacked yet again, this time by Israeli squatters, reminds me of how the Israelis apparently resent the Palestinians' fine education tradition. They have seen to it that Palestinian universities suffer the severest restrictions in delivering knowledge.

Bethlehem University, which includes many Muslims among its students, has been closed a dozen times by Israeli storm-troopers. In 2002 it sustained 4 Israeli missile hits, three to the Millennium Hall and one to the Heritage Centre in the Library. 100 soldiers later stormed into the buildings and did further damage.

In January 2003 the university's president pleaded: "Can anyone do anything to change this systematic strangulation?" Nevertheless staff succeed and students continue to flourish against all odds.

On one of my visits I spoke with Brother Cyril, a kindly, mild-mannered American from Minnesota, who ran the University. He was about to go on leave. "What do your friends back home say when you tell them what's happened here?" I asked.

He shrugged. "They listen for ten minutes then switch off."

It is unclear whether the British government intends joining the US and Israel in their spoiling tactics when the Palestinians' bid for independence is put to the United Nations later this month. I have asked my MP about that and I hope UK readers will press their own MPs on the subject.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Education and behaviour in Israel and Palestine

By Lawrence Davidson * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Education as indoctrination

Over the last 10 years there have been periodic outbursts of rage over the alleged anti-Semitic nature of Palestinian textbooks. Most of these episodes have been instigated by an Israeli based organization called the Centre for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (also known as the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education).

According to Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar, the centre does sloppy work. It "routinely feeds the media with excerpts from 'Palestinian' textbooks that call for Israel's annihilation ... [without] bothering to point out that the texts quoted in fact come from Egypt and Jordan". The centre's conclusions have been corroborated only by other Israeli institutions such as Palestinian Media Watch.

Not surprisingly, almost all independent investigations of the same issue have come up with very different conclusions. Non-Zionist sources such as The Nation magazine, which published a report on Palestinian textbooks in 2001, the George Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, reporting in 2002, the Israel/Palestine Centre for Research and Information, reporting in 2004, and the US State Department Report of 2009 all found that Palestinian textbooks did not preach anti-Semitism. Nathan Brown, a professor of Political Science at George Washington University, who did his own study on the subject in 2000, set out the situation this way: Palestinian textbooks now in use, and which replaced older ones published in Egypt and Jordan, do not teach anti-Semitism. However, "they tell history from a Palestinian point of view". It might very well be this fact that the Zionists cannot abide and purposefully mistake for anti-Semitism.

Here is another not very surprising fact. When it comes to choosing which set of reports to support, which set to take a public stand on, American politicians will almost always go with the Zionist versions. Take then Senator Hilary Clinton who, in 2007, denounced Palestinian textbooks. They "don't give Palestinian children an education, they give them an indoctrination". How did she know? Well, Israel's Palestinian Media Watch told her so, and she did not have the foresight to fact-check the assertion before going public. How typical. And, how analytically shallow. While the Palestinian textbooks don't teach hatred of Jewish Israelis, the reality of daily life under occupation surely does. Those "facts on the ground",and not the textbooks, supply the most powerful form of education for Palestinian youth.

Although in 2009 the US State Department found that Palestinian textbooks were not the products of anti-Semites, there will be yet another State Department-sponsored "comprehensive and independent" study in 2011. This time around the investigation will look at "incitement caused by bias in both Israeli and Palestinian textbooks. When this happens, one can only hope the investigators take a look at the work of the Israeli scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan. She is a professor of language and education at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and also the daughter of the famous Israeli general-turned-peace-activist, Matti Peled.

Peled-Elhanan has recently written a book titled Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education. The book will be published this month (August) in the United Kingdom. The work covers the content of Israeli textbooks over the past five years and concludes that Palestinians are never referred to as such "unless the context is terrorism". Otherwise, they are referred to as Arabs. And Arabs are collectively presented as "vile and deviant and criminal, people who do not pay taxes, people who live off the state, who don't want to develop ... you never see [in the textbooks] a Palestinian child or doctor or teacher or engineer or modern farmer".

In contrast she finds that Palestinian textbooks, even while telling history from a Palestinian point of view, "distinguish between Zionists and Jews". They tend to take a stand "against Zionists, not against Jews".

Peled-Elhanan makes a link between what Israeli children are taught and how they later behave when drafted into the country's military services. "One question that bothers many people is how do you explain the cruel behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering... I think the major reason for that is education." Historically, the mistreatment of Palestinians and even their periodic massacre is taught to Israelis as something that is "unfortunate" but ultimately necessary and "good" for the survival of state. On the other hand, this behaviour of Israelis toward Palestinians must also have its consequences. In Peled-Elhanan's opinion, Palestinian terrorist attacks are "the direct consequence of the oppression, slavery, humiliation and the state of siege imposed on the Palestinians".

This Israeli process of educating children to hate and prejudice is, of course, exactly what the Zionists accuse the Palestinians of doing. It turns out that all this time, while levelling charges of incitement at the Palestinian educational process, they themselves have been practising the same sort of indoctrination on their own children. This revelation fills Peled-Elhanan with despair – "I only see the path to fascism" for Israel.

Education and making choices

Keeping our theme of education in mind, let us shift attention to the unprecedented protests now going on in Israel. For the last two weeks massive demonstrations have hit all of Israel's major cities. "Tent cities" have sprung up in some 40 locations. All of these protests are demanding "social justice". What, in this case, does social justice mean? It means addressing all the legitimate, standard of living problems that beset most of the demonstrators: soaring costs of food and housing, declining social services and the like. All the predictable consequences of unregulated capitalism and neo-liberal governments.

A significant number of Israelis have decided that this lack of social justice has gone far enough. A recent poll shows that 88 per cent of the citizenry supports the protests. However, this is not entirely a good thing. In order to maintain such support, coming as it does from almost all sections of Israeli political life, the protest leaders now endeavour to remain "non-political" and "rooted squarely in the mainstream consensus". This is, of course, naive. They live in an albeit skewed "democratic" political environment. The government, which is a right-wing affair, is not going to acquiesce to their demands, except to throw them an occasional bone, unless they can command the votes to shape the outcome of elections. Like it or not, that is the way their system works.

There are other problems. Also in order to be "rooted in the mainstream consensus" the protest leaders are staying away from the issue of social justice for the Palestinians. In Israel proper, that means turning their backs on the plight of over 20 per cent of the population. What sort of social justice is that? Well, it is social justice as defined by people educated in the system described by Nurit Peled-Elhanan. That is why the protest leaders can happily solicit the support of Naftali Bennett, the thoroughly despicable leader of the colonial/settler movement, but not any of the leaders of the Arab-Israeli community.

By not taking a social justice for all stand the protest movement leaders have registered their acceptance of the "justice for Jews only" system to which they were educated. This in itself is a political act which will make them vulnerable to being picked apart with pseudo solutions that offer some of them a little while denying others a lot. Already, as reported by Haaretz, "dozens of MKs [Members of the Knesset]' have petitioned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to "solve the housing crisis by building in the West Bank". Soon thereafter the government announced approval for "1,600 more settler homes" in East Jerusalem, with 2,700 more to come later. That is the sort of solution this protest movement will get unless their leaders can overcome their education/indoctrination and go into politics in a way that applies social justice to all citizens.

Conclusion

In all societies there are two major goals for education: one is vocational and the other is acculturation. So, one important reason for education is to prepare young people for the job market. The other is to educate them to be "good citizens". What this latter goal means depends on the society one is raised in. In the old Soviet Union becoming a good citizen meant being acculturated to a nationalist brand of communism, as is still the case today in China. In the United States it means becoming a believer in the American version of freedom, both political and economic. And, in Israel, being a good citizen means becoming a believing Zionist.

The objective of acculturation means that education always has, and probably always will have, a strong dose of indoctrination attached to it. That the Zionists should find it shocking that the Palestinians want to use education for their version of indoctrination and acculturation is sheer double standards. And, finally, that the leaders of the on-going protest movement in Israel so pointedly exclude the plight of the Palestinians, is testimony to the success of their own education/indoctrination within the apartheid model.

You see, most of us really are what we are educated to be.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

By Lauren Indvik

A State Department official warned students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs this week that discussing WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger their employment prospects.

The official, a former student of the school, called the career services office of his alma mater to advise students not to post links to WikiLeaks documents, nor to make comments on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, as “engaging in these activities would call into question [a student's] ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government,” he was quoted as saying in an e-mail sent to students by the career services office on Tuesday.

The warning coincided with WikiLeaks’s release of thousands of secret U.S. embassy cables on Sunday, November 28. The site has since been plagued by multiple DDoS attacks, and termination of service notifications from its DNS provider, EveryDNS.net, its temporary website host, Amazon, and PayPal, which handled many of the donations the organization received.

Student Issandr El Amrani posted a copy of the e-mail on his blog on Thursday, the same day Senator Joseph Lieberman and other lawmakers proposed legislation that would hold those who publish the names of any U.S. intelligence sources “criminally accountable.” A full copy of the e-mail, which the career services office has since confirmed sending, is pasted below:

From: “Office of Career Services”

Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 EST:

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,

Office of Career Services

According to an e-mail sent by spokesperson Phillip J. Crowley to The Huffington Post, the warning does not, however, represent a formal policy position. “We have instructed State Department employees not to access the WikiLeaks site and download posted documents using an unclassified network since these documents are still classified. We condemn what Mr. Assange is doing, but have given no advice to anyone beyond the State Department to my knowledge,” he wrote.

Employees in the State Department are among the many government workers who were told by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget not to view the leaked documents without the required security clearance on Friday.

Although you may not be going for a job at the State Department any time soon, does the warning nevertheless make you wary of discussing WikiLeaks on public forums such as Facebook and Twitter?

[Mashable]

The University of Johannesburg's Senate will next week meet to decide whether to end its relationship with an Israeli institution, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, on the grounds of that university's active support for and involvement in the Israeli military. Archbishop Desmond Tutu supports the move. He explains why.

By Archbishop Desmond Tutu | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Photo: ROBYN BECK / AFP)

"The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own.

We can easily be enticed to read reconciliation and fairness as meaning parity between justice and injustice. Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less than human if we did so. It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support, to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice." - Nelson Mandela, December 4 1997

Struggles for freedom and justices are fraught with huge moral dilemmas. How can we commit ourselves to virtue - before its political triumph - when such commitment may lead to ostracism from our political allies and even our closest partners and friends? Are we willing to speak out for justice when the moral choice that we make for an oppressed community may invite phone calls from the powerful or when possible research funding will be withdrawn from us? When we say "Never again!" do we mean "Never again!", or do we mean "Never again to us!"?

Our responses to these questions are an indication of whether we are really interested in human rights and justice or whether our commitment is simply to secure a few deals for ourselves, our communities and our institutions - but in the process walking over our ideals even while we claim we are on our way to achieving them?

The issue of a principled commitment to justice lies at the heart of responses to the suffering of the Palestinian people and it is the absence of such a commitment that enables many to turn a blind eye to it.

Consider for a moment the numerous honorary doctorates that Nelson Mandela and I have received from universities across the globe. During the years of apartheid many of these same universities denied tenure to faculty who were "too political" because of their commitment to the struggle against apartheid. They refused to divest from South Africa because "it will hurt the blacks" (investing in apartheid South Africa was not seen as a political act; divesting was).

Let this inconsistency please not be the case with support for the Palestinians in their struggle against occupation.

I never tire of speaking about the very deep distress in my visits to the Holy Land; they remind me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like we did when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. My heart aches. I say, "Why are our memories so short?" Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their own previous humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?

Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about all the downtrodden?

Together with the peace-loving peoples of this Earth, I condemn any form of violence - but surely we must recognise that people caged in, starved and stripped of their essential material and political rights must resist their Pharaoh? Surely resistance also makes us human? Palestinians have chosen, like we did, the nonviolent tools of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

South African universities with their own long and complex histories of both support for apartheid and resistance to it should know something about the value of this nonviolent option.

The University of Johannesburg has a chance to do the right thing, at a time when it is unsexy. I have time and time again said that we do not want to hurt the Jewish people gratuitously and, despite our deep responsibility to honour the memory of the Holocaust and to ensure it never happens again (to anyone), this must not allow us to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians today.

I support the petition by some of the most prominent South African academics who call on the University of Johannesburg to terminate its agreement with Ben-Gurion University in Israel (BGU). These petitioners note that: "All scholarly work takes place within larger social contexts - particularly in institutions committed to social transformation. South African institutions are under an obligation to revisit relationships forged during the apartheid era with other institutions that turned a blind eye to racial oppression in the name of 'purely scholarly' or 'scientific work'." It can never be business as usual.

Israeli Universities are an intimate part of the Israeli regime, by active choice. While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation. BGU is no exception. By maintaining links to both the Israeli defence forces and the arms industry, BGU structurally supports and facilitates the Israeli occupation. For example, BGU offers a fast-tracked programme of training to Israeli Air Force pilots.

In the past few years, we have been watching with delight UJ's transformation from the Rand Afrikaans University, with all its scientific achievements but also ugly ideological commitments. We look forward to an ongoing principled transformation. We don't want UJ to wait until others' victories have been achieved before offering honorary doctorates to the Palestinian Mandelas or Tutus in 20 years' time.

(Times Live - South Africa)

By Lawrence Davidson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A letter from Gaza appeared on the Web dated September 24, 2010. It was from a group of Gaza academics and students and sought to publicize the fact that eight American universities have recently signed agreements with various Israeli universities to offer U.S. students free semester long programs in Israel. Among the American universities participating in this venture are Harvard, Columbia and Michigan.

The Gaza academics and students expressed shock at this turn of events. And so they might given the fact that they are sitting in an outdoor prison of Israeli making and have seen their educational institutions both starved of resources by an Israeli blockade and literally bombed to rubble by Israeli warplanes. The situation in Gaza is but the worst of a bad situation for all Palestinians, including those in the West Bank and Israel proper. When it comes to education in all of these locales apartheid policies are in place to interfere with Palestinian students and teachers and minimize the educational experience. Actually, this is part of an unspoken strategy of cultural genocide. Such policies are directly or indirectly supported by the Israeli academic institutions to which the participating American universities now want to send their students.

How can these U.S. universities do this? This is certainly a legitimate question in an age when discrimination and racism are, supposedly, no longer socially or politically acceptable. After all Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, etc. are institutions of higher learning housed in a country that prides itself on broad civil rights laws and all of them adhere to social equity rules. Yet here they are climbing into academic bed, so to speak, with a state that practices apartheid against its non-Jewish minority and is attempting to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population of the Occupied Territories.

Well, there are any number of scenarios that might lead them to this sort of hellish arrangement and here I offer only one possibility. It assumes an "Adolf Eichmann context."

1. The realm of the bureaucrat

The people in control of American universities (and perhaps all universities) are mostly bureaucrats. Some of them are trained in the specialty field of higher education administration, some are professors who have crossed over to an administrative career line, and some are just folks hired from the general population pool to run sub-departments such as public relations and accounting. They are all trained to pay lip service to various sorts of mission statements and assessment markers, however their lives are really very insular and their goals narrow and short term. For instance, even at the highest level, say the office of the university president, there are usually but a few major goals, and the main one in this case is to raise money.

Somewhere in the organizational chart is an office of overseas programs (or some similar title). It is usually a small operation with a director and a secretary. Their job is to set up exchange programs. What they are looking for are programs at overseas schools that are roughly similar in quality to the courses their own institution offers. That way the credits can be legitimately transferred back home and stand in for some of their student's degree requirements. The people who are arranging these exchanges usually know little or nothing of the social or political situation in the overseas institution's country. And, they are not likely to educate themselves on these subjects beyond some assurance that the place is relatively safe for the students that will be participating in the exchange. It may be hard for those of us who are so focused on Israeli apartheid to accept this, but for most of the folks in these little offices, Israel has about the same cachet as the Czech Republic or maybe Ireland. There is a lot of ignorance at his level.

2. What else is going on?

Of course, that is not the end of the story. There are other folks out there, most of whom are indirectly associated with the university in question. These people know that there is a war going on against apartheid Israel, and they are not on our side. They want to counter the increasingly effective process of "chipping away at Israel's legitimacy." They also have deep pockets and lots of influence. These folks may be big donors to these universities and some of them may well sit on the institution's board of governors/regents.

When the president or his representative goes out to raise money these donors have what appears to be innocuous conditions for their gifts. So they say to president x or y, "sure we will give you half a million dollars for that new sports complex you so covet, but in return we want you to create this exchange program with Hebrew and Haifa U." The president thinks that this is little enough to ask for such a generous gift, and his friend on the board of governors/regents seconds the motion. A telephone call is made to the director of overseas programs who is given a contact name and number at the Israeli embassy to get things rolling. And that is how it happens.

3. What comes next?

Soon enough this arrangement becomes public. You have to figure if they know about it in Gaza, they know about in Cambridge, Ann Arbor and upper Manhattan. Given the times there will probably be some sort of public protest, but the ensuing struggle will not be easy for the following reasons:

a. The university position will almost certainly be that to shun Israel is a violation of academic freedom, free inquiry, and the essential non-political status of learning. This sort of argument is age old. The U.S. universities were making it when they were asked to divest from apartheid South Africa and stop research funded by the "Defense" Department during the Vietnam war. One can never lay this argument to rest in any final way because it represents a cherished, if somewhat unreal, ideal.

So you point out for the one thousandth time that there is an inherent contradiction when you take this position relative to Israeli universities just because they do not promote these academic ideals. They are destroyers of free thought and free inquiry as far as Palestinian rights (and particularly the right of education) are concerned. And so if the ideal of a non-political status for learning exists anywhere in the real world, it ain't in Israel. The whole Zionist academic setup has been criticized by international as well as Israeli human rights organizations for these anti-educational activities. And finally, you try to tell the university decision makers that there is precedent for universities taking a stand against apartheid practices. At this point you notice that they have, figuratively, clicked on their I-pods and are no longer listening.

b. Next you go to the professors of the institution and try to explain the same thing. That is when you come to the stomach wrenching realization that most of them do not care. Most academics are as specialized as the bureaucrats, and live their lives in just as insular a world. They know a lot about their sub-field and very little beyond it. They are dedicated to their families and their local communities and are, on the whole, decent people, but they are not interested, nor are they going to hit the street, for oppressed people far away. This is particularly true when their local news sources have been systematically libeling those people for sixty plus years. They too will hide behind the idea of academic freedom.

It should be noted that this is not quite the same thing as Julien Benda's "treason of the intellectuals." There is very little spouting of national chauvinism or the racism of Islamophobia (except for the Zionists professors among them). No, it is just co-option into the system. It is just natural localism-I really just want to live my life and work in my lab or library cubicle, etc. I am reluctant to get too annoyed at my fellow academics for this attitude, because theirs is the immemorial stance of all ordinary folks everywhere.

c. So that leaves the students, and here there is a much better chance to gather a crowd and take a stand. There is always a socially conscious group among the youth who are willing to fight for a good cause and risk defying the powers that be. This is because they have yet to become ensconced in the system, bogged down with career, family, mortgage and the like. In other words, some of them have not yet shrunk into an insular world of very local interests and goals. And those are the people who will protest, if anyone will, at the ivy towers of Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and the five other schools which have willed their own corruption.

4. What are the odds of victory?

Whether anyone will listen to the protesters depends on how many there are, how loud they protest and how far they are willing to go with it. Are they willing to go into the dormitories and spread the word? Are they willing to picket not only the ordinary centers of power on campus, but also the admissions office when prospective students come to visit, or demonstrate on home-coming day and at all the football games? Are they willing to hunt for donors who might say they will not give if their institution partners with Israel? Are they willing to occupy the president's office and thereby risk arrest? Are they willing to keep all of this up for weeks on end? It might take all of these sorts of activities to even have a chance at winning this contest.

And even so the odds are not good. Essentially, you have to create such a cost to the institution in trouble and bad publicity that it outweighs that donor's half a million dollars and/or the anger of the fellow on the board/regents. If in the end you do not win, you have to understand that it is not wholly a defeat. After all, you have certainly raised consciousness. In other words, you have set the stage for the next battle and made that one a little easier to win. So you have to have the energy to fight again and again. It is a scenario wherein youth is a definite plus.

There is another way in which the mounting a serious protest at any of these schools must constitute a victory. And that is the fact that such a protest will demonstrate to the academics and students in Gaza and the rest of Palestine that the world has not abandoned them, that they have allies and their struggle is now a worldwide one. In the short run, that might be the most important victory of all.

In Conclusion

Here is quote from the American academic Richard Hofstadter, "A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism-a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else." If this so (and all the leaders of the institutions involved in these exchanges will undoubtedly agree) then why are these eight universities sending their students off to Israeli schools that cooperate with state policies that deny just these sacrosanct pursuits to persecuted Palestinians? Why are they sending their students to a country that seeks to silence, at all levels of society, any free inquiry and criticism of its racist and oppressive national ideology? Why are they cooperating with institutions that have state dictated policies (for instance, admissions policies) that would be illegal in the United States? Do they condone such behaviors? If they go through with these exchange programs the answer is, for all intents and purposes, yes, they do. Essentially, they now lend themselves to the destruction of the very educational virtues they claim to cherish.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

By Neve Gordon* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

On 31 May, I joined some 50 students and faculty members who gathered outside Ben-Gurion University of the Negev to demonstrate against the Israeli military assault on the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. In response, the next day a few hundred students marched towards the social sciences building, Israeli flags in hand. Amid nationalist songs and pro-government chants, there were also shouts demanding my resignation from the university faculty.

One student even proceeded to create a Facebook group whose sole goal is to have me sacked. So far over 2,100 people (many of them non-students) have joined. In addition to death wishes and declarations that I should be exiled, the site includes a call on students to spy on me during class. "We believe," ends a message written to the group, "that if we conduct serious and profound work, we can, with the help of each and every one of you, gather enough material to influence ... Neve Gordon's status at the university, and maybe even bring about his dismissal."

Such personal attacks are part of a much broader assault on Israeli higher education and its professors. Two recent incidents exemplify the proto-fascist logic that is being deployed to undermine the pillars of academic freedom in Israel, while also revealing that the assault on Israeli academe is being backed by neo-conservative forces in the United States.

The first incident involves a report published by the Institute for Zionist Strategies, in Israel, which analysed course syllabi in Israeli sociology departments and accused professors of a "post-Zionist" bias. The institute defines post-Zionism as "the pretence to undermine the foundations of the Zionist ethos and an affinity with the radical leftist stream". In addition to the usual Israeli leftist suspects, intellectuals like Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm also figure in as post-Zionists in the report.

The institute sent the report to the Israel Council for Higher Education, which is the statutory body responsible for Israeli universities, and the council, in turn, sent it to all of the university presidents. Joseph Klafter, President of Tel-Aviv University, actually asked several professors to hand over their syllabi for his perusal, though he later asserted that he had no intention of policing faculty members and was appalled by the report.

A few days later, the top headline of the Israeli daily Ha'aretz revealed that another right-wing organization, Im Tirtzu (If You Will It), had threatened Ben-Gurion University, where I am a professor and a former chair of the government and politics department. Im Tirtzu told the university's president, Rivka Carmi, that it would persuade donors to place funds in escrow unless the university took steps "to put an end to the anti-Zionist tilt" in its politics and government department. The organization demanded a change "in the makeup of the department's faculty and the content of its syllabi", giving the president a month to meet its ultimatum. This time my head was not the only one it wanted.

President Carmi immediately asserted that Im Tirtzu's demands were a serious threat to academic freedom. However, Minister of Education Gideon Sa'ar, who is also chairman of the Council for Higher Education, restricted his response to a cursory statement that any move aimed at harming donations to universities must be stopped. Mr Sa'ar's response was disturbingly predictable. Only a few months earlier, he had spoken at an Im Tirtzu gathering, following its publication of a report about the so-called leftist slant of syllabi in Israeli political-science departments. At the gathering, he asserted that even though he had not read the report, its conclusions would be taken very seriously.

Although the recent scuffle seems to be about academic freedom, the assault on the Israeli academe is actually part of a much wider offensive against liberal values. Numerous forces in Israel are mobilizing in order to press forward an extreme-right political agenda.

Alan M. Dershowitz

Second, all Israeli universities depend on public funds for about 90 per cent of their budget. This has been identified as an Achilles heel. The idea is to exploit the firm alliance those right-wing organizations have with government members and provide the ammunition necessary to make financial support for universities conditional on the dissemination of nationalist thought and the suppression of "subversive ideas". Thus, in the eyes of those right-wing Israeli organizations, the universities are merely arms of the government.

And, yet, Im Tirtzu and other such organizations would not have been effective on their own; they depend on financial support from backers in the United States. As it turns out, some of their ideological allies are willing to dig deep into their pockets to support the cause.

John C. Hagee

The Hudson Institute, for example, has neo-imperialist objectives in the Middle East, and a member of its Board of Trustees is in favour of attacking Iran. Christian United's eschatological position (whereby the "Second Coming" is dependent on the gathering of all Jews in Israel), includes support for such an attack. The scary partnership between such Israeli and American organizations helps reveal the true aims of this current assault on academic freedom: to influence Israeli policy and eliminate the few liberal forces that are still active in the country. The atmosphere within Israel is conducive to such intervention.

Nonetheless, Im Tirtzu's latest threat backfired, as did that of the Institute for Zionist Strategies' report; the assaults have been foiled for now. The presidents of all the universities in Israel condemned the reports and promised never to bow down to this version of McCarthyism.

Despite those declarations, the rightist organizations have actually made considerable headway. Judging from comments on numerous online news sites, the populist claim that the public's tax money is being used to criticize Israel has convinced many readers that the universities should be more closely monitored by the government and that "dissident" professors must be fired. Moreover, the fact that the structure of Israeli universities has changed significantly over the past five years, and that now most of the power lies in the hands of presidents rather than the faculty, will no doubt be exploited to continue the assault on academic freedom. Top university administrators are already stating that if the Israeli Knesset approves a law against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement for Palestine, the law will be used to fire faculty members who support the movement.

More importantly, there is now the sense among many faculty members that a thought police has been formed - and that many of its officers are actually members of the academic community. The fact that students are turning themselves into spies and that syllabi are being collected sends a chilling message to faculty members across the country. I, for one, have decided to include in my syllabi a notice restricting the use of recording devices during class without my prior consent. And many of my friends are now using Gmail instead of the university email accounts for fear that their correspondence will in some way upset administrators.

Israeli academe, which was once considered a bastion of free speech, has become the testing ground for the success of the assault on liberal values. And although it is still extremely difficult to hurt those who have managed to enter the academic gates, those who have not yet passed the threshold are clearly being monitored.

I know of one case in which a young academic was not hired due to his membership in Courage to Refuse, an organization of reserve soldiers who refuse to do military duty in the West Bank. In the age of Google and Facebook, the thought police can easily disqualify a candidate based on petitions signed and even online "friends" one has. Israeli graduate students are following such developments, and for them the message is clear.

While in politics nothing is predetermined, Israel is heading down a slippery slope. Israeli academe is now an arena where some of the most fundamental struggles of a society are being played out. The problem is that instead of struggling over basic human rights, we are now struggling over the right to struggle.

* Neve Gordon is the author of Israel's Occupation and can be contacted through his website www.israelsoccupation.info A version of this article was originally published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The version here is published by permission of Neve Gordon.

Supporters before and during the epic all-night hearing on divesting from Israel's occupation at UC Berkeley.

By Debbie Menon* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Disappointing, but this shows the immense power that "the Organization" has to overturn popular demand against amazing majority numbers in the face of all reason and "democratic" principle.

And, it also illustrates the cupidity, weakness, and failures of moral principles of elected representatives worldwide to stand up for principle and the will of their constituency when confronted with, promises, offers, influence, coercion, intimidation and probably blackmail, as well as greed and ambition.

The Administration of the University may have the power to veto student propositions, but they certainly do not have a moral right to do so on propositions such as this one. If the voice of the students are not to be heard, they should shout louder and every one of them go on strike, and picket the entire University until it comes to a standstill.

Large amounts of grant money which supports the University, most of which comes from AIPAC, ADL and American-Jewish controlled foundations in America, is important, but students and American student satisfaction are ESSENTIAL to its survival!

Every student at UCB has the option of transferring to UCLA, UCSD or any UC elsewhere.

Berkeley has always been the leader among US Campuses in leading revolutionary and reactionary social and cultural movements. Without the voice of its students it would become just another California cow college.
I am sure that this vote cost someone a lot of money, power and promises, as well as a lot of arm-twisting!
Yes, there is a victory here of sorts; a victory in disclosing the face and the might of the enemy, and how he works. "Know thine enemy," is a prerequisite to achieving victory over him. And as long as they have learned from this defeat, then they have profited in a small way.

At least, they now have the names of seven enemies who sit in the same room with them. There will be more elections in the future.

I have no doubt that the students at Berkeley will remember who voted for, and who voted against.

Read full report by Cecillie Surasky, Jewish Voice for Peace, from Berkeley California.

UC Berkeley vote: a small loss, an enormous win

I have been an activist since I was a teenager, and yet, the night of April 28 in the Pauley Ballroom of UC Berkeley will surely stand out as one of the most remarkable activist achievements I have ever witnessed.
And I am grateful that you were there, represented by thousand of green stickers: each with a name, a place, an identity.

While the senate at UC San Diego sent a similar proposal to a committee for further study, divestment proponents at Berkeley failed by just one vote to reverse a presidential veto of their original overwhelming vote to divest. The members of Berkeley's Students for Justice in Palestine wanted UC to divest from 2 companies that profit from killing and harming of civilians as part of Israel's occupation. Yes, companies that make money from death. From control. From destruction. They needed 14 votes out of 20 to overturn the veto. Despite truly heroic efforts on the part of countless students, including such impressive student senators, in the end they had 13 votes. The 14th abstained.

And yet, if you ask the question, after weeks of multiple hearings and votes, Who really won here?, the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 30 hours of hearings and testimony with standing room only audiences and in some cases, people flying in from other parts of the country to testify, others sending video or being Skyped in from Palestine and Gaza. The support of some 100 professors, over 40 student groups, 5 Nobel Laureates, 9 Israeli peace groups, 263 community Jews in one ad plus 40 pages and growing of notable Jewish endorsements, some 8,000 JVP supporters like you from around the globe who in just 5 days created a sea of visible support.

At this last and final hearing alone, there were 500 people, standing room only. A speaker asked the supporters of divestment to stand up: nearly 80% stood. A senator announced that 62% of that night's registered speakers were pro-divest, while 38% were against. After everything, 13 of 20 senators at one of the United States' leading academic institutions stood clearly on the side of divestment.

And that's why so many left with a feeling of both anger and jubilation. But more than anything, determination. If the theme of the all-night hearing in mid April-at which a final vote was tabled- was that there was every bit as much, if not more Jewish support for divestment as against it on the UC campus, the narrative running through April 28th's all-night session was that this is about the Palestinian story, Palestinian resilience, Palestinian humanity and one day, in their quest for justice and full equality, Palestinian victory.

Imagine hours and hours of testimony from Palestinian and Arab student after student, each standing in front of a microphone and hundreds to tell their story- stories of broken bones, destroyed homes, arbitrary imprisonment and torture. Stories of bombs through living room windows, and strips searches at checkpoints. Stories of not being able to learn because schools are closed down for years at a time. Stories that until now seemed to have been banished from the public square because the mere fact of their telling, and in so doing asserting the full beauty and humanity of the teller, has been taken as a threat.

But not on this night. Not for these hours. Not in this room.

Unless they physically plugged their ears and closed their eyes, there was not one person in that room who was not forever changed by hearing those students. Not the 80% who supported divestment. And not the 20% who didn't.

Many of you personally helped make the room a sea of green of support. In just 5 days, over 8,000 people from all over the country, many from all over the world, said, "we stand with you." We printed out thousands of stickers and they became like trading cards as people poured over your names and statements. "Oh look, David is a rabbinical student from Philadelphia. Dina is a Muslim teacher from New York. Let me wear Izak, a Quaker from Boston. No, wait, I'm wearing the Zeyde (grandfather) from Atlanta." I saw more than one Palestinian student wearing a green sticker on her heart as she stood at the microphone, showing the most remarkable kind of courage. The kind required to tell your most painful family story, a story of death and heartbreak, without knowing it would actually be heard by those in front of you. But I know she was supported in telling her story by the massive visible support you showed her. We all felt it.

There are so many lessons to be learned from these past weeks, from what started as a nonviolent call for Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) from Palestinians in 2005, moved to US campuses like Hampshire and University of Michigan at Dearborn, and is now just beginning to spread across the country.

Divestment is a tactic meant to build a movement for justice and equality, not an end unto itself. The outcome of the vote became far less important than the way the fight for the bill electrified the campus, the community, and thousands of people all over the world. It's impossible to convey the life changing and movement-building impact of this experience.

Take Emily Carlton, an ASUC senator who sponsored the bill. She spoke eloquently of starting out as a "privileged white, mainstream" sorority member who first became educated about the issue when SJP students came to lobby her, but who then found an entirely new community of friends in a world she never before knew existed. One in which Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Christian, and other students blend easily as classmates, as friends, as activists. Her life, she said, will never be the same- and she is just one person.

In the coming weeks, we will share the lessons learned, some in our own words, many in the words of UC students, staff and alum.

But first let me tell you how the night ended.

By the final vote, it was close to 5am. Still dark out.

When the vote was announced, the room silently received the news. Supporters placed the green stickers on our mouths to protest the fact that in the end, just a few votes had blocked the will of the majority of students. A student senator stood up and told everyone to put one hand on their heart on the other in the air, symbolically holding seeds in their fist with which we would all spread the movement outside and across the community, the country, the world.

So here is one seed.

The supporters silently filed out to Sproul Plaza, where the original Free Speech movement began.

Hundred remained outside, talking, chanting, singing, laughing, hugging, crying.

Yes, students were angry, but they were exhilarated. They understood they had done something remarkable. That in so many ways, life would never be the same.

It was the end of a long year, but the beginning of a new stage of the movement.

And I am so grateful that you were all there in the room with us.

It's clear now. It is only a matter of time until we are all able to recognize each other's full humanity, and thereby reclaim our own.

Video: 4:30 AM Rally After UC Berkeley Senate Upholds Veto

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGQU9z5Lg_g

Special thanks to Cecillie Surasky

* Debbie Menon is a freelance writer based in Dubai. She can be reached at: debbiemenon@gmail.com. For more go to her website : My Catbird Seat

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFv7h_gfAfU

April 16, 2010 - Almost one month after the UC Berkeley Student Senate voted 16-4 to divest from General Electric and United technologies because of their complicity in Israeli war crimes the Student Senate meets again to attempt to override a veto by President Will Smelko. The Meeting ended with the senate tabling the bill to be voted on next week.

April 13, 2010

To the Senate of the Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley (ASUC):

I am writing to encourage renewed support for Senate Bill 118A ("A Bill in Support of ASUC Divestment from War Crimes"), including the override of ASUC President Will Smelko's veto on March 24, 2010. The earlier passage of the bill by a 16-4 vote in the Senate has been widely hailed as a major step forward in the growing global campaign of divestment and boycott as a means of holding Israeli accountable for flagrant and persistent patterns of violating fundamental rules of international criminal law, as well as those portions of international humanitarian law applicable to military occupation. We have reached a stage in world history where citizens of conscience have a crucial role to play in the implementation of a global rule of law, and this initiative by Berkeley students, if implemented, will be both a memorable instance of global citizenship and an inspiration to others in this country and throughout the world.

I would agree that recourse to divestment and boycott tactics should be reserved for exceptional and appropriate circumstances. Such initiatives by their very nature deliberately interfere with the freedom of the global marketplace and the normally desirable free interplay of cultures, nations, persons, and ideas. There are several reasons why the circumstances of prolonged Israeli criminality resulting in acute suffering for several million Palestinians living under occupation since 1967 present such a strong case for reliance on the tactics of divestment and boycott.

First of all, it has become painfully clear that neither the United Nations, the United States, the actions of other governments, nor world public opinion are willing or able to persuade or pressure Israel to terminate policies that are both violations of Geneva Convention IV, governing occupation, and international criminal law, relating to both war crimes and crimes against humanity. At the same time, there is reason to believe that efforts by Palestinians to wage what might be called the Legitimacy War, are having a strong impact on Israel and elsewhere. It should be remembered that many of the conflicts of the last 75 years have been resolved by reliance on soft power superiority, which has more than compensated for hard power inferiority. In this respect the anti-apartheid movement, waged on a symbolic global battlefield, created a political climate that achieved victory in the legitimacy war that was translated, nonviolently, into a totally unexpected political outcome—the peaceful transformation of South Africa into a multi-racial constitutional democracy. The Palestinian solidarity movement has become the successor to the anti-apartheid movement as the primary legitimacy war of this historical moment. Berkeley’s participation by way of this divestment initiative thus takes account of the failure of governments and the international community to protect Palestinian victims of ongoing criminality, but also joins in a movement of solidarity that contains some hope of an eventual peaceful and just resolution of the underlying conflict allowing both peoples to resume a secure and normal life.

Secondly, we in the United States face a special challenge as our tax dollars, economic and military assistance, and unconditionally supportive diplomacy have shielded Israel from mechanisms of accountability for criminal behavior. Most recently, the U.S. Government repudiated the Goldstone Report, a highly respected fact-finding mission conducted under UN auspices, that had carried out a scrupulously fair and comprehensive investigation of allegations of war crimes attributable to Israel and Hamas during the Israeli offensive in Gaza that started on December 27, 2008, and lasted for 22 days. The Goldstone Report’s main findings confirmed earlier respected investigations, concluding that the evidence supported overall allegations of criminal tactics, including intentional efforts to target in Gaza civilians and the civilian infrastructure in flagrant violation of the provisions of the law of war, which should have been particularly upheld in a situation of such one-sided military operations conducted against an essentially defenseless Gaza, an unprecedented situation In which the entire civilian population of 1.5 million were locked into the combat zone, and denied even the option to become refugees.

It should be also noted that the people of Gaza have been subjected to an unlawful Israeli blockade that has for more than 32 months limited the entry of food, medicine, and fuel to subsistence levels, with widely reported drastic harm to physical and mental health of the entire population. There are two related points here: the allegations of criminality are abundantly documented, including by a range of respected human rights organization in Israel and occupied Palestine; and the U.S. Government has done its best to ensure the continuation of Israeli impunity and it has been complicit as arms supplier and as a country deferential to the blockade despite its gross and clear violation of the prohibition against collective punishment contained in Article 33 of Geneva IV. In this respect, as Americans we have an extra duty beyond that of those living elsewhere to support the global divestment campaign, thereby showing that our government does not speak for the whole society when it comes to the application of the rule of law to Israel and its political leadership.

Thirdly, by targeting General Electric and United Technologies for divestment, the Senate shows that it is not acting arbitrarily or punitively, but seeking to take action against corporations that are supplying precisely the weaponry used by Israel to impose its unlawful will on occupied Palestinian territories. Israel in legally dubious ways has relied on Apache and Sikorsky Helicopters and F-16 fighter bombers to mount periodic attacks against a variety of Palestinian targets, thereby abandoning its primary duty as an occupying power to protect the civilian population of an occupied territory.

Although most emphasis on criminality has been placed on Israeli policies toward the Gaza Strip, it is also relevant to note that Israeli policies on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem have consistently ignored the obligations imposed on an occupying power by Geneva IV, and have done so in a manner that has consistently undermined hopes for peace. Israel has continued to build and expand settlements, unlawful by Article 49(6) of Geneva IV prohibiting transfers of population of the occupying power to an occupied territory; the scale of these unlawful settlements, with some 121 settlements established on the West Bank alone and over 200,000 Israel settlers now living in East Jerusalem, has produced an aggregate settler population of about 450,000. Such a massive violation of international humanitarian law is serious on its own, but also creates a situation on the ground that has greatly diminished prospects for a viable Palestinian state or for the sort of withdrawal from occupied Palestine that had been unanimously decreed by the UN Scecurity Council in its famous Resolution 242 way back in 1967.

A final expression of Israeli lawlessness can be noted in its continued construction of a separation wall on occupied Palestine land despite a 14-1 judgment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the wall was unlawful, should be dismantled, and Palestinians compensated for the harm done. It is notable that the ICJ is a diverse and respected international institution that rarely reaches such a level of unanimity on controversial issues. Unfortunately, less notable is the fact that the sole dissenting judge was the American judge, and that the U.S. rejected the judicial authority of the ICJ in relation to the wall without even bothering to refute its legal reasoning. Although the judgment was in the form of an ‘Advisory Opinion’ it represented a detailed and authoritative assessment of applicable international law that was endorsed by an overwhelming vote of the UN General Assembly. Consistent with its attitude toward international law, Israel immediately expressed its unwillingness to abide by this ICJ ruling, and has continued to build segments of the wall, using excessive force to quell nonviolent weekly demonstrations by Palestinians, Israelis, and international activists at construction sites. To give perspective, if the Soviet Union had constructed the Berlin Wall in such a way as to encroach on West Berlin by even a yard, it would have almost certainly have caused the outbreak of World War III.

I hope that I have demonstrated that divestment is justified in light of these realities. Israel has consistently defied international law. The United States Government has been unrelenting in reinforcing this defiance, and is a major facilitator through its overall diplomatic, economic, and military support. The international community, via the UN or otherwise, has been unable to induce Israel to respect international humanitarian law and international criminal law. With such a background, and in light of an increasingly robust worldwide movement supportive of divestment, it seems both symbolically and substantively appropriate for Berkeley to divest from corporations supplying weaponry used in conjunction with Israeli criminality. Such a decision taken at the behest of students at one of the world’s leading universities would send a message around the world that needs to be heard, not only in Israel but in this country as well. It also shows that when our government cynically refuses to uphold the most fundamental norms of international law there is an opportunity and responsibility for citizens to do so. I salute the members of the Senate (and their supporters in the Berkeley community) who vote to override this ill-considered veto of Senate Bill 118A.

Sincerely,

Richard Falk
Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law & Practice Emeritus, Princeton University
(since 2002) Visiting and Research Professor, Global Studies, UCSB
Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories, UN Human Rights Council

Editors Note:
On March 18, UC Berkeley's student senate voted 16 to 4 to divest from General Electric and United Technologies as part of a Divestment campaign against Israel's illegal occupation and the attack on Gaza.

The Senate president vetoed the bill despite the massive support for divestment.

Join Hon. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Naiomi Klein, Jeffrey Blankfort, Prof. Richard Falk and others in supporting the divestment. The final decision will be made tomorrow, Wednesday April 14 at 7pm PST, when the veto can be overturned with just 14 votes.

Email the UC Berkeley Senators to let them know why you support divestment and why they should overturn the veto.
Senate@asuc.org, chancellor@berkeley.edu, president@ucop.edu

Sent from Emily Schaeffer, human right lawyer in Israel/Palestine, who asked Archbishop Tutu to write the letter.

Just like they take over DC!

Why bother with moral persuasion when you can just threaten to take U.S. government . . . everywhere?

On March 18, UC Berkeley's student senate voted 16 to 4 in favor of divesting from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation. A week later, in a move oddly predicted by AIPAC's Jonathan Kessler at AIPAC's policy conference, the vote was vetoed by the student senate president. (Students hope the senate will overturn the veto next Wednesday.)

When asked about fighting the Berkeley pro-divest initiative, Kessler said, "We're going to make sure that pro-Israel students take over the student government and reverse the vote. . . . This is how AIPAC operates in our nation's capital. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation's campuses." Kessler is at 3:58 in video below. Student elections are happening now at UC Berkeley and you can bet everyone's looking for the AIPAC-Manchurian candidate, if such a thing exists.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jDIfFEUrcQ

Source: MRZine

Besieged Gaza,
Palestine
April.4.2010

Dear Ms. Atwood,

We are students from Gaza representing more than 10 academic institutions therein. Our grandparents are refugees who were expelled from their homes in the 1948 Nakba. They still have their keys locked up in their closets and will pass them on to their children, our parents. Many of us have lost our fathers, some of us have lost our mothers, and some of us lost both in the last Israeli aggression against civilians in Gaza. Others still lost a body part from the flesh-burning white phosphorous that Israel used, and are now permanently physically challenged. Most of us lost our homes, and are now living in tents, as Israel refuses to allow basic construction materials into Gaza. And most of all, we are all still living in what has come to be a festering sore on humanity's conscience-the brutal, hermetic, medieval siege that Israel is perpetrating against us, the 1.5 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.

Many of us have encountered your writing during our university studies. Although your books are not available in Gaza-because Israel does not allow books, paper, and other stationary in-we are familiar with your leftist, feminist, overtly political writing. And most of all, we are aware of your strong stance against apartheid. You admirably supported sanctions against apartheid South Africa and called for resistance against all forms of oppression.

Now, we have heard that you are to receive a prize this spring at Tel Aviv University. We, the students of besieged Gaza, urge you not to go. As our professors, teachers and anti-apartheid comrades used to tell us, there was no negotiation with the brutal racist regime of South Africa. Nor was there much communication. Just one word: BOYCOTT. You must be aware that Israel was a sister state to the apartheid regime before 1994. Many South African anti-apartheid heroes, including Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have described Israel's oppression as apartheid. Some describe Israeli settler-colonialism and occupation as surpassing apartheid's evil. F-16s, F-15s, F-35s, Apache helicopters, Merkava tanks, and white phosphorous were not used against black townships.

Ms. Atwood, in the Gaza concentration camp, students who have been awarded scholarships to universities abroad are prevented, every year, from pursuing their hard-earned opportunity for academic achievement. Within the Gaza Strip, those seeking an education are limited by increasing poverty rates and a scarcity of fuel for transportation, both of which are direct results of Israel's medieval siege. What is TAU's position vis-à-vis this form of illegal collective punishment, described by Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, as a "prelude to genocide?" Not a single word of condemnation has been heard from any Israeli academic institution!

Participating in normal relations with Tel Aviv University is giving tacit approval to its racially exclusive policy towards Palestinian citizens of Israel. We are certain you would hate to support an institution that upholds so faithfully the apartheid system of its state.

Tel Aviv University has a long and well-documented history of collaboration with the Israeli military and intelligence services. This is particularly shameful after Israel's bloody military assault against the occupied Gaza Strip, which, according to leading international and local human rights organizations, left over 1,440 Palestinians dead and 5380 injured. We are certain you would hate to support an institution that supports a military apparatus that murdered over 430 children.

By accepting the prize at Tel Aviv University, you will be indirectly giving a slight and inadvertent nod to Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide. This university has refused to commemorate the destroyed Palestinian village on which it was built. That village is called Sheikh Muwanis, and it no longer exists as a result of Israel's confiscation. Its people have been expelled.

Let us remember the words of Archbishop Desmund Tutu: "if you choose to be neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." As such, we call upon you to say no to neutrality, no to being on the fence, no to normalization with apartheid Israel, not after the blood of more than 400 children has been spilt! No to occupation, repression, settler colonialism, settlement expansion, home demolition, land expropriation and the system of discrimination against the indigenous population of Palestine, and no to the formation of Bantustans in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip!

Just as every citizen knew that s/he had a moral responsibility to boycott apartheid in South Africa after the Sharpeville massacre, Gaza 2009 was the world's wake-up call. All of Israel's academic institutions are state-run and state-funded. To partake of any of their prizes or to accept any of their blandishments is to uphold their heinous political actions. Israel has continually violated international law in defiance of the world. It is illegally occupying Palestinian land. It continues its aggression against the Palestinian people. Israel denies Palestinians all of the democratic liberties it so proudly, fictitiously flaunts. Israel is an apartheid regime that denies Palestinian refugees their right of return as sanctioned by UN resolution 194.

Attending the symposium would violate the unanimously endorsed Palestinian civil society call for Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This call is also directed towards international activists, artists, and academics of conscience, such as you. We are certain that you would love to be a part of the noble struggle against the apartheid, colonization and occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to for the past 61 years, a struggle that is ongoing.

Ms. Atwood, we consider you to be what the late Edward Said called an "oppositional intellectual." As such, and given our veneration of your work, we would be both emotionally and psychologically wounded to see you attend the symposium. You are a great woman of words, of that we have no doubt. But we think you would agree, too, that actions speak louder than words. We all await your decision.

Besieged Gaza
The Palestinian Students' Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI)

Endorsed by The University Teachers' Association in Palestine