Israel | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 177
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Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 10, 2014 8 Comments
I have obtained a copy of a letter circulating in Congress denouncing the academic boycott of Israel by the American Studies Association. The authors of the letter hope to have at least 50 co-signers (maybe more), split roughly evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Here is the text of the letter, with the initiating four Members of Congress inticated:
Mr. Curtis Marez President American Studies Association 1120 19th St NW, Suite 301 Washington, DC 20036 Dear Mr. Marez: We write in strong opposition to the American Studies Association’s (ASA) recent decision to boycott Israeli universities and academic institutions. While ASA has every right to express its views on policies pursued by any nation or government, we believe that the decision to blacklist Israeli academic institutions for Israeli government policies with which ASA disagrees demonstrates a blatant disregard for academic freedom. The ASA claims that the boycott “is in solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and it aspires to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians.” We believe that this boycott accomplishes just the opposite. The university is an institution intended to foster, encourage, and inspire constructive dialogue and original thought. However, this boycott undermines academic freedom by prohibiting educational and cultural exchanges with Israeli universities and academic institutions.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 09, 2014 7 Comments
Shurat HaDin, The Israel Law Center (ILC), founded by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, has had great success in suing on behalf of terror victims, and otherwise confronting anti-Semitism through the legal process. Among other things, ILC is suing an Australian academic for discriminating against an Israeli researcher as part of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement. (We featured that suit in our prior post, Academic boycotters don’t want done unto them what they did unto Israelis).
Some of the points raised with regard to the difference between expressing an opinion as opposed to imposing a discriminatory boycott are similar to point made in my challenege to the tax-exempt status of the American Studies Association, although in a different context. ILC has taken note of the ASA academic boycott of Israel, and is representing several Israeli academics. ILC today sent a demand letter to the the incoming President of ASA (embedded at bottom of post), demanding that ASA cease and desist from discriminatory practices, or ILC will commence suit on behalf of a group of Israeli professors. (h/t Times of Israel) The letter reads in part:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 09, 2014 15 Comments
Several of most prominent promoters of the American Studies Association academic boycott of Israel attended a bizarre "redwashing" panel discussion in Beirut, at which they tried to delegitimize the Jewish people's indigenous history in Israel and connection to other indigenous peoples. I'll have much more on that insidious conference in another post, but for now you can read the posts by Jeffrey Goldberg and Prof. Jonathan Marks. These academic boycotters gave an interview to The Daily Star of Lebanon that is very revealing. They played upon classic anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish money controlling the press in trying to minimize the overwhelming rejection of the academic boycott throughout most of academia. ASA scholars stand firm by Israel boycott (emphasis added):
Since then, the organization has been forced to defend itself from a barrage of highly vocal critics who have accused the ASA of everything from anti-Semitism to threatening academic freedom. At the conference this week, however, many ASA members reiterated their strong support for the motion. “The boycott is also about the vision of a right to education for people; it’s about a right to democratic participation of all people and it’s about the right to land,” said Alex Lubin, a professor at AUB [American University in Beirut, on leave from University of New Mexico] and ASA member. Despite efforts to publish op-ed pieces explaining the ASA’s position, Lubin said the organization had “effectively been blocked out of [the] U.S. press.” The reason, he said, was “donor dollars that come to them [the publications] from the Israel lobby.” Lubin also said many Americans took issue with the comparison between the treatment of Palestinians and Native Americans.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 08, 2014 1 Comment
The President of Middlebury College issued one of the most stinging rebukes to the American Studies Association anti-Israel academic boycott: “the vote is a sad reflection of an extreme and hateful ideology of some members of the academy …. I urge others in the academic community to condemn the ASA boycott and reaffirm their support for academic freedom.” Now the American Studies Program at Middlebury College has followed suit by issuing an Open Letter to ASA's President and Executive Committee. (H/t Inside Higher Ed) The Middlebury professors made one of the points I made in the challenge to ASA's tax-exempt status, that the ASA mission as expressed in its Constitution does not include the anti-Isrel political activism which now dominates ASA.  The Open Letter reads, in part (emphasis added):
Below is an open letter to the President and Executive Committee of the American Studies Association. Though written by faculty at Middlebury College, we hope that many other institutional members of the ASA, American Studies programs, individual members, and present and former officers of the organization will support the letter’s call for discussion of the ASA’s mission statement.... To the President and Executive Committee of the American Studies Association: .... The American Studies Program at Middlebury does not support, and will not honor, the American Studies Association’s resolution to boycott academic institutions in Israel.... Beyond our concerns about the merits of academic boycotts in general (and this one in particular), we are concerned that the ASA resolution is inconsistent with the stated mission of the organization. The ASA seems to be neglecting, or at the very least interpreting in a particularly tendentious way, the language of its own constitution. Effectively a mission statement, Article I, Section 2 of the ASA constitution reads:
Sec. 2. The object of the association shall be the promotion of the study of American culture through the encouragement of research, teaching, publication, the strengthening of relations among persons and institutions in this country and abroad devoted to such studies, and the broadening of knowledge among the general public about American culture in all its diversity and complexity.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 07, 2014 17 Comments
George Mason University apparently has an active anti-Israel group.  It has proclaimed the achievement of boycotting Israeli hummus, and staged a walkout on a commencement speaker with close ties to Israel. The propaganda-named Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) now is playing the race card against GMU's President, who tweeted his opposition to the academic boycott of Israel: https://twitter.com/CabreraAngel/statuses/420266494463717376 https://twitter.com/CabreraAngel/statuses/420311957200060416 There's no racism in those tweets. Except that the SAIA say that the reference to "blowing up" relationships is a racist referral to all Palestinians as bombers, GMU President Cabrera’s Racist Tweet Opposing Academic Boycott:
His line that “Universities exist to build bridges of understanding, not to blow them up” insinuates that being in solidarity with Palestinians is on par with terrorism. Not only is this metaphor racist and distasteful, but it was also irresponsible. Supporters of the academic boycott are endangered when their activity is distorted through fear mongering. Cabrera’s use of damaging language is a blatant response to the support GMU SAIA received from faculty as a result of the NO HONOR IN APARTHEID campaign. His response is only a small part of the national “McCarthyite” campaign to destroy the positive learning environments student organizations have created regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on campuses. While academic integrity is often cited as a value of the administration, Cabrera’s rhetoric serves to limit discussion, exploration, and academic freedom around critical issues. While President Cabrera’s support for Israeli apartheid is no secret, his allegiance, to the best of our knowledge, is linked to position and profits.
Why does the anti-Israel group assume that referring to blowing up relations among universities is a reference to Palestinians blowing themselves up in cafes, buses, pizza shops and Passover Sedars?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 07, 2014 6 Comments

Most universities which were listed as Institutional Members of the American Studies Association have left it up to particular departments which took out the membership to decide whether to continue. Of the 83 Institutional Members listed by ASA, at least 11 deny being members, as detailed...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 06, 2014 30 Comments
When the National Council of the American Studies Association endorsed the academic boycott of Israel in early December, and put the boycott Resolution to a quick membership vote, I wondered how the ASA National Council could do such a thing not just on the merits, but because the boycott put ASA's tax-exempt status at risk. I stated my intention of filing a challenge to that tax-exempt status should the Resolution pass and the academic boycott go into effect. The ASA membership approved the boycott Resolution with less than a quarter of the total membership voting for it (there was such low turnout, that was enough). The reaction to ASA's boycott has been overwhelmingly negative.  At least 125 universities and leading academic organizations have spoken out against the boycott and issued strong statements as to the damage to higher education such boycotts inflict. Earlier today my attorneys filed with the IRS a whistleblower complaint challenging ASA's 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in light of the academic boycott. The Complaint without Exhibits is embedded below. The Complaint with Exhibits is available here. Here is the Introduction, which summarizes the reasons why ASA no longer is organized and operating exclusively in accordance with its educational exempt purpose, and no longer is entitled to its 501(c)(3) status under the IRS Code and Regulations.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 03, 2014 7 Comments
Via The Times of Israel, Thwarted Israeli bus blast similar to Boston bombings:
The bomb that tore through a Dan No. 240 bus in the central Israeli city of Bat Yam on December 22 was assembled in a pressure cooker and activated by cellphone, much like the devices that killed three people and wounded hundreds more during the Boston Marathon in April 2013, the Shin Bet investigation has revealed.... The bomb, which exploded at the corner of Mivtza Sinai and Katzenelson streets in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam, caused no injuries because an alert passenger had noticed the bag containing the device left unattended by the bus’s rear door. The driver evacuated the bus, and the device was detonated as an Israeli sapper attempted to defuse it. The bus was wrecked, but there were no injuries.... According to information released by the Shin Bet, the bomb, consisted of two kilograms of improvised explosives surrounded by nails and screws and stuffed into a pressure cooker. This was a method akin to the one used by Boston murderers, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It was made popular by an al-Qaeda manual placed online.
More on the plot, via Haaretz:
Israeli security forces carried out a series of arrests in the West Bank city of Bethlehem following the attack, detaining members of the Islamic Jihad militant group. The Shin Bet believes that two of the central suspects in the plot to bomb the bus are former security prisoners in Israel: Shahada Ta'amri, 24, and his 21-year-old brother Hamdi Ta'amri, a former cadet in the Jericho Police officers' course. Another central suspect was named as Yousef Salame, 22.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 03, 2014 3 Comments
When I was almost fifty four, it was a very good year It was a very good year for kindly faced clerics Whose Justice Minister was an executioner And Defense Minister waged an anti-American war When I was almost fifty four.
Nearly two years ago Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed President Obama about how he would deal with the threat from Iran. Given Goldberg's support for Israel, the interview was part of an administration campaign to tell Israel and Israel's supporters in the United States that "we've got Israel's back." It's unsettling now, that Goldberg has declared that For Iran, 2013 Was a Very Good Year.
Remember that interim Iranian nuclear agreement forged in Geneva on Nov. 24, the one accompanied by blaring trumpets and soaring doves? Would it surprise you to know that the agreement -- a deal that doesn’t, by the way, neutralize the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, just freezes the program, more or less, in place -- has not yet been implemented? Would it surprise you to learn that this deal might not be implemented for another month, or more? Or that in this long period of non-implementation, Iran is free to do with its nuclear program whatever it wishes? And that one of the things it is doing is building and testing new generations of centrifuges? Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, recently said , “We have two types of second-generation centrifuges. We also have future generations which are going through their tests.” Happy New Year, everyone.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 02, 2014 18 Comments
Via Times of Israel, Israelis doubt Palestinians’ intentions, PM tells Kerry:
Speaking with Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint press conference before the first of several planned meetings between the two, Kerry said leaders on both sides of the tables already knew what would be included in a US-drafted framework agreement, but added that an agreement was “not mission impossible.” “We know what the issues are and the parameters,” he said of a potential agreement. “The time is soon arriving when leaders will have to make tough decisions,” he added, and said that he would “work with both sides to narrow differences on a framework that will set guidelines for negotiations.” However, Netanyahu, recalling Palestinian celebrations over a prisoner release earlier in the week, said he was skeptical over Ramallah’s commitment to peace. “I know that you are committed to peace; I know that I am committed to peace; but, unfortunately, given the actions and words of Palestinian leaders, there’s growing doubt in Israel that the Palestinians are committed to peace,” Netanyahu said.
From the transcript:
PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: Welcome back to Jerusalem, John. I want to use this opportunity to express once again my personal appreciation and the appreciation of the people of Israel for your unremitting personal efforts to advance peace between us and the Palestinians. I know that you’re committed to peace, I know that I’m committed to peace, but unfortunately, given the actions and words of Palestinian leaders, there’s growing doubt in Israel that the Palestinians are committed to peace.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 02, 2014 6 Comments
John Kerry is returning to the Middle East to present his peace plan. Two recent articles show the way the peace process is misrepresented in the media. The AP reports Israel, Palestinians Face Hard Choices.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely have to recognize Israel's pre-1967 war frontier as the starting point for border talks with the Palestinians, an ideological reversal that would put him on a collision course with his hardline base. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas fears he'll be pressured to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, a step he believes would abrogate the rights of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
The parallelism here is bogus. In the first place the idea that having the "pre-1967 war frontier" (more correctly they should be called "the 1949 armistice lines") as a basis for any peace deal is a departure from the original intent of Resolution 242. After the 1967, Six Day War, there was an international consensus that an Israeli return to its pre-war borders was a "prescription for renewed hostilities."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 29, 2013 7 Comments
Several dozen universities have issued rejections of the academic boycott of Israel passed by the American Studies Association, many with forceful statements. Among the most forceful was Trinity College in Connecticut, whose President and Dean of Faculty issued a stinging rebuke in a letter to the ASA President (emphasis added):
To The Immediate Attention of the President of the American Studies Association: Our Dean of the Faculty, Thomas Mitzel, and I wish to go on record renouncing the boycott of Israel on the part of the ASA. Trinity once years back was an institutional member (we were then advertising for an open position), and apparently some members of our faculty are individual members. Were we still an institutional member, we would not be any longer after the misguided and unprincipled announcement of the boycott of the only democracy in the Middle East. The Dean and I oppose academic boycotts in general because they can so easily encroach upon academic freedom. In this strange case, why the ASA would propose an academic boycott of Israel and not, for example, of Syria, the Sudan, North Korea, China, Iran, Iraq, or Russia escapes rational thought. Trinity has participated in the Rescue Scholar program since its inception; we have welcomed scholars from some of the most repressive countries on the planet, and it is inconceivable to us that we would ever be welcoming a Rescue Scholar fleeing Israel for political reasons. As President of the ASA, you have tarnished a once distinguished association.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 29, 2013 13 Comments
So that the Palestinians would agree to talk.  That's the deal Israel had to agree to just to start the talks. Why agree to it? Because Bibi couldn't afford to piss off Obama any more than he already had, so he had to cave in on the precondition (which no one wants to call a precondition, just a good will gesture). From The Times of Israel, Israel publishes list of Palestinian inmates to be freed:
A panel of Israeli cabinet ministers on Saturday night approved a list of 26 Palestinian prisoners to be released on Monday in the third phase of a four-stage series of releases agreed on when peace talks with the Palestinians were resumed earlier in 2013. All of the prisoners on the list (Hebrew PDF), save three, were convicted of murdering Israeli civilians or soldiers, as well as Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. In a press release Saturday night, the Prime Minister’s Office said all of the inmates had been convicted of offenses committed prior to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994....
Among the victims was a Hebrew University Professor:
•Muammar Ata Mahmoud Mahmoud and Salah Khalil Ahmad Ibrahim, convicted of murdering Menahem Stern, a history professor at Hebrew University. Stern, 64, a winner of the prestigious Israel Prize, was stabbed to death while walking to work at the university’s Givat Ram campus on June 22, 1989. A monument in his memory figures in a scene from the prize-winning Israeli film “Footnote.” Ibrahim was also convicted in the murder of Eli Amsalem. In addition, the two murdered a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel, Hassin Zaid.
More on Professor Stern here. This image, according to Wikipedia, is of Professor Stern in 1988, the year before he was stabbed to death. [caption id="attachment_74564" align="alignnone" width="288"](Menahem Stern, 1988) (Menahem Stern, 1988)[/caption] There will be celebrations to welcome home these "heroes." As more information becomes available as to the victims, we will update this post. Update: Israel National News (via Carl in Jerusalem) has more details:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 27, 2013 10 Comments

The President of Trinity College in Connecticut is one of over 50 University Presidents who have issued a very strong statement rejecting the academic boycott of Israel. The Trinity statement consisted of a letter to the President of the American Studies Association, and reads (emphasis added): To The Immediate Attention...