Hundreds of Israeli college professors have signed a petition
accusing the education minister of endangering academic freedoms after he
threatened to “punish” any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of
Israel.
The backlash against Gideon Saar, a member of the prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, comes after a series of moves suggesting he is
trying to stamp a more stridently right-wing agenda on the Israeli education
system.
The education minister has outraged the 540 professors who signed
the petition by his open backing of a nationalist youth movement, Im Tirtzu,
which demands that teachers be required to prove their commitment to right-wing
Zionism.
Two of Mr Saar’s predecessors, Yossi Sarid and Yuli Tamir, are
among those who signed the petition, which calls on the minister to “come to
your senses … before it’s too late to save higher education in Israel”.
Mr Saar’s campaign to “re-Zionise” the education system,
including introducing a new right-wing Jewish studies syllabus and bringing
soldiers into classrooms, has heightened concerns that he is stoking an
atmosphere increasingly hostile to left-wing academics and human-rights
activists.
Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben
Gurion University in Beersheva who called for an academic boycott of Israel last
year, has reported receiving death threats, as has a school teacher who refused
to participate in Mr Saar’s flagship programme to encourage high-school
recruitment to the Israeli military.
Daniel Gutwein, a professor of Jewish history at Haifa
University, said: “A serious red flag is raised when the education minister
joins in the de-legitimisation of the academic establishment. This is a method
to castrate and abolish Israeli academia.”
Mr Saar’s sympathies for Im Tirtzu were first revealed earlier
this year when he addressed one of its conferences, telling delegates the
organisation would be “blessed” for its “hugely vital” work.
The youth movement emerged in 2006 among students demanding that
the government rather than ordinary soldiers be held to account for what was
seen as Israel’s failure to crush Hizbollah during that year’s attack on
Lebanon. It has rapidly evolved into a potent right-wing pressure group.
Its biggest success to date has been a campaign last year against
Israeli human rights groups that assisted a United Nations inquiry led by Judge
Richard Goldstone in investigating war crimes committed during Israel’s assault
on Gaza in 2008. The human rights organisations are now facing possible
government legislation to restrict their activities.
Im Tirtzu’s latest campaign, against what
it calls “the reign of left-wing terror” in the education system, was backed by
Mr Saar during a parliamentary debate last month. He told MPs he took very
seriously a report by the movement claiming that anti-Zionist professors have
taken over university politics departments and are silencing right-wing
colleagues and students.
Mr Saar also warned that calls for boycotts against Israel were
“impossible to accept” and that he was talking to higher education officials
about taking “action” this summer, hinting that he would cut funds for the
professors involved and their institutions.
Yossi Ben Artzi, the rector of Haifa
University and the most senior university official to criticise Mr Saar, warned
him against “monitoring and denouncing” academics. He added that the Im Tirtzu
report “smells of McCarthyism”.
The universities are already disturbed by a bill submitted by 25
MPs last month that would make it a criminal offence for Israelis to “initiate,
encourage, or aid” a boycott against Israel and require them to pay compensation
to those harmed by it.
The bill is likely to be treated sympathetically by the
government, which is worried about the growing momentum of boycott drives both
internationally and in the occupied West Bank. Mr Netanyahu has called the
emergence of a boycott movement inside Israel a “national scandal”.
Prof Gordon, who wrote a commentary in the Los Angeles Times a
year ago supporting a boycott, said Im Tirtzu had contributed to a growing
“atmosphere of violence” in the country and on campuses.
Hundreds of students at his university have staged demonstrations
demanding his dismissal. He was also recently sent a letter from someone signing
himself “Im Tirtzu” calling the professor a “traitor” and warning: “I will reach
Ben Gurion [University] to kill you.”
Prof Gordon said: “I have tenure and Im Tirtzu cannot easily get
me fired. But they are trying to become the ‘guards at the gate’ to make sure
other academics do not follow in my path.”
Only three Israeli acadmics have so far openly endorsed a
boycott, he added, with many others fearful that they will be punished if they
do so. But Im Tirtzu and its supporters were using the issue as a pretext for
cracking down on academics critical of rightwing policy. He called Israel an
increasingly “proto-fascist” state.
Prof Gordon cited the recent case of Assaf Oren, a statistics
lecturer and peace activist who had been told he was the leading candidate for a
post in Ben Gurion’s industrial engineering department until right-wing groups
launched a campaign against him.
In a further sign of what Prof Gordon and others have labelled a
McCarthyite climate, MPs in the parliamentary education committee — which has
come to closely reflect Mr Saar’s views — summoned for questioning two head
teachers of prestigious schools after they criticised official policies.
One, Ram Cohen, has condemned Israel’s occupation of the
Palestinians, while the other, Zeev Dagani, has spoken against the programme to
send army officers into classrooms to encourage pupils to enlist.
Mr Dagani was the only head teacher in the 270 selected schools
to reject the programme, saying he opposed “the blurring of boundaries when
officers come and teach the teachers how to educate”. He subsequently received a
flood of death threats.
The education ministry has announced a new core curriculum
subject of Jewish studies in schools that concentrates on nationalist and
religious themes and is likely to be taught by private rightwing and settler
organisations.
Avi Sagi, a philosopher at Bar Ilan
University in Tel Aviv, warned in the liberal Haaretz newspaper that the
syllabus offered “an opening for dangerous indoctrination”.
A modern history curriculum published this month has been
similarly criticised for leaving out study of the Oslo peace process and
Palestinian politics.
Also in the sights of education officials are hundreds of Arab
nursery schools, many of them established by the Islamic Movement. Zevulun Orlev,
head of the education committee, has accused the schools of “poisoning the
minds” of Arab children in Israel.
Mr Saar appointed a special committee last month to inspect the
schools and shut them down if they were found to be teaching “anti-Israel”
material.
Arab MPs have called the claims “ridiculous”, pointing out that
the schools were set up after the education ministry failed to build nursery
schools in Arab communities.
A
shorter version of this article originally appeared in The National, published
in Abu Dhabi.
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