THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 244, November 11, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
HATEM BAZIAN: BERKELEY'S ISRAEL BOYCOTT ADVOCATE
By Cinnamon Stillwell & Rima Green
THE STATE OF ISRAEL VERSUS AMERICAN, CANADIAN, & EUROPEAN ACADEMIA: THE BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT,
SANCTIONS MOVEMENT LED BY RADICAL LEFTISTS & ANTI-SEMITES ON THE FACULTIES OF NORTH AMERICAN &
EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES -- A MOVEMENT SEEKING TO PRESSURE AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES TO CUT OFF ALL TIES WITH
ISRAELI INSTITUTIONS & ADVOCATING A FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY RELATING TO THE MIDDLE
EAST & THE ISRAELI-ARAB CONFLICT -- SEEKING AN ANTI-ISRAEL & PRO-PALESTINIAN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY -- PROMOTING
A POLITICALLY ACTIVE ROLE FOR UNIVERSITY FACULTY MEMBERS & STUDENTS IN ACHIEVING THESE GOALS
FULL STORY:
Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley,
provided the introduction at a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) event at Berkeley on October 26, 2010, called
"What Can American Academia Do to Realize Justice for Palestinians?" Bazian is an endorser of the Israel Divestment
Campaign and a signatory to the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He is a committed
anti-Israel propagandist and activist.
In his introduction, Bazian was unabashed about promoting a politically active role for academia:
"In academia, are two narratives: academia produces
embedded intellectuals in bed with power, and there's
an academia that challenges power, who say [sic] that
the role of the intellectual is to speak truth to power."
Accordingly, his remarks were peppered with exultant references to Berkeley's glory days:
This is a place that gave major contributions: the women's movement, the anti-war movement, the labor movement,
ethnic studies. This is a place where ideas were possible; this is a place where people wrote history.
Bazian urged "the same students who stopped the war in Vietnam, who stopped the levers of the machine" to "stop the
normalization of Israel and the silence of the U.S." by pressuring American academia to cut off all ties with Israeli
institutions. He was proud of the accomplishments of the BDS movement, boasting:
"I am comforted at a national level with the conferences
I have just been to. We activists from North America and
activists from Europe met recently in Montreal and
Chicago to discuss boycott, divestment, and sanctions
against Israel. People are committed to planning and
organizing from college campuses."
He went on to outline his expansive view of the BDS movement, one in which common cause can be made with various
other struggles, no matter how disconnected:
"Specifically for here on campus, it requires us to be
highly organized. The apartheid movement was very
strategic with alliances [and] a large coalition — but
across the board so that the bombs on Palestinians
in refugee camps connect to the inner cities of the
U.S.A. . . . We have to think of it as a continuum. We
need an agenda that seeks change across the board."
Bazian's reference to apartheid in South Africa is a staple of the BDS movement. But it is an inaccurate comparison, as
is that of the "inner cities" of the U.S.A. to Palestinian "refugee camps." Such decontexualized verbal borrowings
cannot be the work of an unbiased intellectual, as they confuse and blur meaning in order to incite passions.
Lisa Taraki, a sociologist at Birzeit University near Ramallah on the West Bank and Co-Founder of the Palestinian
Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, was the main speaker. Like Bazian, she relied heavily upon
inflammatory language, labeling Israel a "colonial, settler, Zionist enterprise" that maintains power through "colonial
rule, apartheid, and military occupation." She also invoked Berkeley's anti-war movement, likening it to the Arab-Israeli
conflict:
"I used to mingle with the anti-war crowd when I was
a student at Mills College [in Oakland, California]. I
tasted the tear gas on Telegraph Avenue, yes, and
later tasted the same tear gas by the same
manufacturer in Palestine."
She then outlined her vision for the BDS movement:
"What Palestinians are beginning to realize now, with
the failure of the political process and dialog, is a new
logic of BDS; not a logic of persuasion but of pressure.
There is a great deal the academic community can do
to express solidarity and effectively work for change.
In the U.S., no one would have dreamed there would
be a campaign like this; now they have 500
endorsements from American academics. . . . It's not a
boycott of individual Israelis, but of institutions, and
the major cultural institutions are complicit in the
domination of oppression. . . . The problem is the
Israeli state and what upholds its power . . . virtually
all Israeli institutions are complicit."
Although both speakers claimed they were not boycotting individuals, it is impossible to boycott institutions in the
abstract. Real people are harmed. The academic boycott would, in effect, discriminate against students and faculty
on the basis of national origin and religious and/or ethnic identity. Activists, for example, were urged to pressure
universities to end study abroad programs in Israel, student exchanges between American and Israeli universities,
and foundation grants to Israelis or Israeli institutions. The campaign calls for a thorough shunning of every element
of Israeli society. Thirty-eight Nobel scholars have already condemned this move as "antithetical to principles of
academic and scientific freedom, and antithetical to principles of freedom of expression and inquiry."
The UC Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was the primary sponsor for the BDS event, while the
Muslim Identities and Cultures — a working group of the University's Townsend Center for the Humanities — was a
co-sponsor. As noted in a letter of protest sent by California academics Leila Beckwith, Roberta Seid, and Tammi
Rossman-Benjamin to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, this "establishes an official association of the
University of California at Berkeley with the promotion of a boycott against Israel." In response, the Townsend
Center claimed that it "would not fund any group that does not act in the spirit of intellectual openness," nor was it
"endorsing any position that could be construed as hateful of any religious or ethnic group." But under its aegis,
Bazian and Taraki promoted a mean-spirited discourse, replete with phrases extracted from other contexts in order to
legitimize a campaign of discrimination.
Is this really a campaign with which UC Berkeley wishes to be officially associated?
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Jews & Anti-Semitism
Israel & the Arabs -- The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Berkeley resident Rima Greene co-wrote this article with Cinnamon Stillwell, the West Coast Representative for
Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
The foregoing article by Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Green was originally published in Front Page Magazine,
November 11, 2010, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(URL: http://www.meforum.org/ 2776/hatem-bazian-berkeley-israel-boycott)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
November 10, 2010
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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