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No nuance from American Studies Association

The American Studies Assn. (ASA) has officially joined the BDS movement — Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions — against Israel.

ASA has heeded the Palestinian call, joining the many Europeans already boycotting Israel.

For American intellectuals to stand opposed to Israel in this way is unprecedented.

To fight injustice, oppression and suffering is crucial. To pick and choose who you will take a stand against based on your prejudices versus realities on the ground is a different story.

Only a few kilometers from Israel, helpless children are starved or being murdered, slaughtered by their own regime, in Syria. Where is the outrage?

What about human rights abusers such as China and Iran? Where is the academic boycott there?

There is none. Because, while Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East that actually promotes freedom of expression as it nurtures and develos academia, the obsession against Israel continues.

You might say, people get to pick the causes of injustice that bother them the most. Perhaps the Israel- Palestinian conflict strikes the academics more offensively than the slaughter of innocents in Syria, which is mostly being ignored.

Perhaps the academics feel that stifling the remarkable academic achievements of Israel that contribute to making the world a better place — in ideas, technology, science, and clinical medicine — is the way to go.

If so, this boycott was beyond not thought through.

Aside from the fact that the ASA is trying to muzzle academic freedom in Israel with language that conveys blatant hatred for the state — “Israeli academic institutions are part of the ideological and institutional scaffolding of the Zionist settler-colonial project” — there is an irony here that reflects a lack of knowledge of the realities of Israel’s academic institutions.

ASA is basically boycotting the very places where the Israelis and Palestinians intersect probably more than in any other arena of Israeli life.

ASA is boycotting the place where conversation and dialogue about the fate of an Israeli homeland and a Palestinian state thrives among both peoples.

ASA is boycotting the place where many Arabs, both men and women, have the opportunity to receive top notch educations — an opportunity denied them in much of the Middle East.

ASA is punishing their allies, so to speak, with the hope of dividing Israelis against themselves.

But what they might not expect is that this shameful and malevolent move will actually serve to unite Isralis and to buttress the Israeli cause.

What the ASA has accomplished is to remove all nuance and boundaries between the liberal, more academic Israelis who distance themselves from post-1967 lines of Israeli life, and to lump everyone together.

ASA is an academic association that prides itself on thought. Leave aside for the moment the ethical issues and double standards involved in this decision. Simply put, the ASA boycott seems like a pretty stupid move that ultimately speaks of conformity more than of independent, academic thought.

Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News


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Tehilla Goldberg

IJN columnist | View from Central Park


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