Gary Fitleberg, December 4, 2004

A decision by The London University School of Oriental and African Studies to host a conference at which academics will launch a campaign to break links with Israeli universities has raised a stir among Jewish groups, Army Radio and the Guardian reported.

The school's "Palestinian Society", which organized the event, called the conference Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles. Jewish groups are accusing the society of inciting hatred.

Organizers are calling on the academic community to avoid cooperating with Israeli research institutes, to shun Israeli researchers by barring them from international conferences and by not awarding them any prizes. The organizers promise, however, to support any Israeli researchers who support their Arab "Palestinian" counterparts in their struggle for self-determination and academic freedom.

Several Israeli and Jewish professors and students are also set to attend the conference.

Dr. Ilan Pappe of Haifa University will deliver a lecture on the significance and meaning of the academic ban. Ben Young, of the Jewish Students for "Justice for Palestinians" group will deliver a lecture titled The Students Role: Lessons from South Africa.

The President of Israel's National Academy of Sciences, Prof. Menahem Ya'ari said the conference was "a pathetic attempt to revive a failed academic boycott of Israeli researchers and institutions from two years ago - an effort which was condemned by academics in both the U.S. and Europe.

The university's Jewish Society has lodged a complaint with the school about its decision to allow Tom Paulin to deliver a keynote address.

Paulin, a poet and academic, was quoted in the Arab newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly in 2002 as saying that settlers "should be shot dead". He later claimed that he had been misquoted.

Gavin Gross, of the school's Jewish Society, said: "I see this conference as an out-and-out hate conference which is solely there to de-legitimize Israel and its people. It makes no pretence of balance. SOAS has a reputation for being the center of political extremism. In the past this has only meant the vilification of Israel; there's no attempt at all to achieve an understanding of the conflict."

Other speakers at the conference include Professors Steven and Hilary Rose, who began the call for an academic boycott of Israel more than two years ago in a letter to the Guardian, and the linguist Mona Baker, who was the subject of an official inquiry by the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology after she fired two Israeli contributors to a journal she edited.

Danny Stone, of the Union of Jewish Students, which is organizing a counter-meeting at SOAS Sunday, said he had attended a meeting with the university to ask for extra security to ensure the safety of Jewish students on campus.

But one of the conference organizers, Awad Joumaa, a coordinator of the "Palestinian Society" said: "We are promoting peace and equality for the `Palestinian' people.

"We are not the ones inciting hatred here. We are the ones under attack. If having an academic conference is inciting hatred, I don't know what their definition of it is."

The school released a statement distancing itself from the conference.

The Balfour Declaration gave the whole region of "Palestine" as a Jewish homeland. In an effort to appease Arabs, the British reneged on their promise to restore the Jews to their G-d given "Holy Land" or "Promised Land" which for thousands of years had been ruled by a series of "occupiers" last but not least the British themselves.

The British Mandate, or Palestine Mandate, allocated a portion of the land for the Arabs and a portion to the Jews, with the Arabs gaining the vast majority of the land. The British created an Arab "Palestine" in what is today Jordan, formerly Transjordan. The disputed territories of Gaza, Judea and Samaria (wrongfully called "West Bank” by most of the world today) belong to Israel and the Jewish people: biblically, historically, legally, morally, and politically. Succumbing and surrendering to terrorism to create a second Arab "Palestinian" state and twenty-third Arab/Islamist corrupt dictatorship, human rights violator, ruthless repressive regime, state supporter of terrorism and tyranny is not the answer to peace in the very bad neighborhood known as the Middle East.

Gary Fitleberg is a Political Analyst specializing in International Relations with emphasis on Middle East affairs.

Copyright © 2004 Gary Fitleberg