Panic as universities debate Israeli policies
Southampton university
University’s ‘antisemitic’ Israel conference condemned
Southampton University’s decision to organise a conference questioning Israel’s right to exist has been condemned as ‘legitimising antisemitism‘
By Patrick Sawyer and and Jonny Paul, The Telegraph
March 21, 2015
A leading British university has been condemned for hosting a conference questioning Israel’s right to exist which critics say will legitimise antisemitism.
Pressure is growing on Southampton University to cancel the three day event, planned for next month, or face growing anger from academics, politicians and its own fund-raisers.
One prominent lawyer has already said he would think twice before hiring someone from the south coast university.
Mark Lewis, who has represented a string of celebrity clients, said he would look “unfavourably” at CVs sent by graduates of Southampton.
And one of its most respected former alumni has returned his degree in protest and at least one major patron of the university is said to be considering withdrawing funding.
Critics have said the conference – International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism – would be a ‘one-sided’ exercise in Israel-bashing and provide a platform for antisemitic views.
Nearly 4,500 people have signed a petition calling on the university to cancel the conference.
Organisers describe the conference as “the first of its kind and constitutes a ground-breaking historical event … it is unique because it concerns the legitimacy in international law of the Jewish State of Israel.”
The university’s own website advertising the conference makes no secret of the fact that the event will question both the legal and moral right of the state of Israel to exist, stating:
It concerns the legitimacy in International Law of the Jewish state of Israel. Rather than focusing on Israeli actions in the 1967 Occupied Territories, the conference will focus on exploring themes of Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism; all of which are posed by Israel’s very nature.
The event, set to take place from April 17 to 19, will be addressed by academics from universities around the world, including the US, Britain, Australia and Israel.
Organisers – who include Southampton law professor Oren Ben-Dor; George Bisharat, professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law; Juman Asmail, a Southampton law graduate and Palestinian rights activist; and Southampton engineering professor Suleiman Sharkh – said the conference will “engage controversial questions concerning the manner of Israel’s foundation and its nature, including ongoing forced displacements of Palestinians and associated injustices.”
But critics of the conference, which include the Board of Deputies of British Jews, say many of the speakers are known anti-Israel activists who have called for a boycott of Israel.
They include Richard Falk, the former United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, anti-Zionist Israeli academic Ilan Pappe and Palestinian activist Ghada Karmi.
Also due to speak is Dr Elias Khoury, a Lebanese novelist, who during the 1970s enlisted in Fatah, the largest armed group in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), and fought in the Lebanese civil war.
Mr Lewis, who represented the family of murdered Surrey teenager Milly Dowler and Gordon Taylor, the Professional Footballer’s Association chief executive, during the hacking scandal and subsequent Leveson inquiry, said Southampton university’s decision to host the conference raised disturbing questions about its attitude to Jews and the state of Israel.
In a comment on the social media site Twitter he said: “University of Southampton Law School that will stand out on CVs. Well thought out.”
Mr Lewis, a partner with London law firm Seddons, told The Sunday Telegraph: “This is a one-sided conference, not a debate and I would want to raise serious questions about what students at this university are being taught and what the university believes.
“If Southampton allows teaching which does not present both sides of a case it would raise doubts in my mind about the suitability of a candidate from its School of Law. I would not look so favourably on those CVs.”
Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, will be among the speakers at the conference.
Mr Lewis added that to his knowledge at least two major patrons of the university were considering withdrawing their financial support. One is a charitable foundation, the other a wealthy family.
He said: “Southampton university is hosting a debate about Israel’s right to exist that would not be permissible about any other country. And by doing so it gives credence to antisemitic views.”
Mr Lewis’s comments came as one of the country’s leading paediatricians returned his degree to Southampton, saying he no longer wanted to be associated with the university.
Andrew Sawczenko, one of the few consultants accredited in both General Paediatrics and Paediatric Gastroenterology, last week returned the Bachelor of Medicine he received in 1987 to vice chancellor Professor Don Nutbeam.
The university said it was “extremely saddened” by his decision.
Vivian Wineman, president of the Board of Deputies, and its Vice-President Jonathan Arkush, met Prof. Nutbeam last week in a bid to persuade Southampton to withdraw its support for the event.
The planned conference has also been criticised at Westminster.
Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities, called it a “one-sided diatribe”.
He said: “There is a careful line between legitimate academic debate on international law and the actions of governments, and the far-left’s bashing of Israel which often descends into naked antisemitism.
“Given the taxpayer-funded university has a legal duty to uphold freedom of speech, I would hope that they are taking steps to give a platform to all sides.”
Mark Hoban, the Conservative MP for Fareham, described it a “provocative, hard-line, one-sided forum that would question and delegitimize the existence of a democratic state.”
Tim Sluckin, professor of mathematics at the university and secretary of Southampton Hebrew Congregation, denounced the event.
In a letter to the university’s Vice Chancellor, he said: “Whatever one’s thoughts on the actions of its government, Israel stands as the only democracy in a region blighted by political, religious and social persecution.”
Caroline Nokes, MP for Romsey and Southampton North, said the university risked bringing itself into disrepute by hosting what she described as “such an apparently one-sided event”.
The conference has led to fierce arguments between colleagues at the university.
Tim Sluckin, professor of mathematics at the university and secretary of Southampton Hebrew Congregation, denounced the event, describing it as “a political meeting masquerading as academic activity”.
Prof. Sluckin said: “Their purpose is to delegitimize Israel. This is not appropriate for a university. It makes me feel uncomfortable as a Jew, with Israeli family, that I have to take a public as opposed to a private position on Middle Eastern politics.
“The university management has mishandled it, and failed to understand the political issues involved.”
The Parkes Institute, a respected centre for the study of Jewish history based at Southampton University, has added its voice to the chorus of critics.
In a statement distancing itself from the decision to host the conference, Joachim Schlör, director of the institute, said: “This event could potentially damage the spirit of dialogue and co-operation to which we are all committed. A conference that singles out Israel and invites the questioning of its very existence cannot be supported by a group of academics dedicated to the study of Jewish history and culture.”
At the same time, however, over 700 academics from universities around the world have signed a statement in support of the university’s stance, saying that the themes of conference “are entirely legitimate subjects for debate and inquiry” and that to call for it to be scrapped is an attack on free speech and academic freedom.
It adds: “We are very concerned that partisan attempts are being made to silence dissenting analyses of the topic in question. For external pressure and interference, especially from political lobby groups and a government minister, to censor lawful academic discussion would set a worrying precedent.”
Prof Ben-Dor, however, described critics’ concerns as rejected the concerns, “ludicrous”.
Southampton university said it “very much values its relationships with students, staff, visitors and invited speakers from Israel and the Jewish community” adding that it will do “all we can within our statutes and ordinances to ensure that any distress or upset is addressed”.
A university spokesman added: “We are committed to academic freedom, free speech and opportunities for staff and students to engage with a wide range of opinions.”
Southampton University defends anti-Israel conference set for next month
By Jerry Lewis, JPost
March 11, 2015
LONDON – The University of Southampton, which has organized a three-day conference in mid-April expected to be vehemently critical of Israel, has been accused of hiding behind the cloak of academic freedom to justify ignoring all concerns about the contents of the event.
Jewish communal leaders are becoming increasingly angered by what say is a “head in the sand” approach since news of the conference emerged toward the end of last year to legitimate representations calling for it to be canceled.
The conference, “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism,” is, according to the university’s law school, “the first of its kind and constitutes a ground-breaking historical event on the road towards justice and enduring peace in historic Palestine.”
Claiming to be unique because it concerns the legitimacy in international law of the Jewish State of Israel, its organizers stated that rather than focusing on Israeli actions in the territories occupied in 1967, the conference will focus on exploring themes of “Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism;” all of which – they maintain – “are posed by Israel’s very nature.”
A better indication of the agenda emerges in the literature for the gathering, claiming it aims to “explore the relatedness of the suffering and injustice in Palestine to the foundation and protection of a state of such nature and asks what role international law should play in the situation.”
Southampton law and philosophy professor Oren Ben-Dor is behind the event.
The Nahariya-born Ben-Dor has supported academic boycotts of Israel universities, once claiming that those on the Israeli Left who oppose them are “sophisticated accomplices to the smothering of debate.”
He has written about alleged apartheid in Israel and bias in its education system, and examined the “ethical and legal challenges facing Palestine.”
“The occupation that should be debated, but is not, is the occupation of the whole of Palestine,” not just the territories conquered in 1967, he once wrote.
A letter written late last year by leaders of the Jewish community, including representatives of the Jewish Leadership Council, Board of Deputies and the Union of Jewish Students, extracts of which have been exclusively seen by The Jerusalem Post, left Prof. Hazel Biggs, head of the University of Southampton’s Law School, in no doubt of the strength of feelings about the conference.
They wrote that normally, all would defend – unreservedly – the right of any university group to express critical and dissenting views. The proposed conference appeared, however, “to surpass the acceptable,” and that based on title and advertised speakers “it sets out explicitly to question the very legitimacy of a member state of the UN.”
Doing so, would be “a perverse, existential attack on a state” they wrote, and they accused Southampton’s Law School of “being used as an academic platform to advance not just legitimate Palestinian national rights, to which we have no objection, but rather to blacken, demonize and delegitimize the very right of existence of the State of Israel.
“What other state in the global community of nations – democratic or tyrannical – is ever subjected to such a critique? The Conference causes us great concern and distress. It will undoubtedly trouble greatly the members of the UK Jewish community,” they wrote.
Hosting of such an unbalanced conference, the Jewish leaders warned, would have “damaging consequences for student welfare and community relations on campus,” and might well affect the attractiveness of the School of Law for future UK and international students.
They concluded by saying they could not believe that the university and the law school wished to be party to “such a notorious campaign of denigration,” and asked the university to reconsider holding the event as the participants could have spent their time more constructively “addressing legal aspects of peace-building and reconciliation than engaging in such adult ‘agit-prop’ which advances merely a sectional and wholly partisan viewpoint.”
Biggs, according to sources, pointedly turned down their appeal, claiming that while the title of the conference raised an important question, the conference itself would “take no explicit perspective.”
She added that while the program was in the final stages of preparation, if the Jewish Leadership Council or the Board of Deputies of British Jews wanted to recommend suitable academic speakers, “the conference organizers were happy to receive their nominations.”
This reply was far from acceptable to the Jewish community and the Post can now disclose that Southampton’s unhelpful stance was cited at a private meeting held last month between top communal leaders and four vice chancellors from Universities UK, an umbrella group representing all UK university heads.
In their discussions the Jewish representatives – who included Britain’s ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould – tried to frame a debate as to where the line is crossed between freedom of speech and discourse which affects Jewish academics and students on UK campuses.
The point was made that while some vice chancellors can and do try to intervene when there are specific difficulties raised with them, others tend to resort to the “freedom of speech” mode which effectively bars them from considering valid representations on behalf of the Jewish community.
It is understood that in Southampton’s case (its vice chancellor was not among the four in the Universities UK delegation), the university’s authorities have received around a dozen letters from Jewish organizations and correspondence from several members of Parliament asking the law school to cancel the event.
But a source close to the Jewish delegation told the Post on Tuesday that it was clear that Southampton was “not going to budge” and possibly that other factors may have intervened, not least of the revenue from a three-day event held during a vacation.
Israel lobby pressure on Southampton shows signs of desperation
By Ben White, MEMO
March 25, 2015
Israel lobby groups in Britain continue to pressure the University of Southampton to cancel an upcoming conference. The desperation is starting to show.
Earlier this week, The Academic Friends of Israel claimed that conference co-ordinator Professor Oren Ben-Dor had “been removed from the Board” of The Parkes Institute, based at Southampton.
The Academic Friends of Israel is run by Ronnie Fraser, who in 2013 saw his high-profile case against University College Union dismissed entirely by an employment tribunal. In the aftermath, more circumspect Israel supporters described Fraser’s action as a “legal and public relations disaster.”
Ben-Dor’s ‘removal’ was repeated as fact in The Jewish Chronicle under the headline: ‘Professor dropped from university institute over controversial Israel conference’, and also triumphed by groups urging the cancellation of the event.
Today, however, The Parkes Institute confirmed to me that the Israel lobbyists had got it wrong.
Responding by email, Professor Joachim Schlör, Director of The Parkes Institute, clarified that Ben-Dor had indeed once been a member of the institute’s Advisory Committee “several years ago”, a position he occupied as “a representative of our Law School.”
While The Academic Friends of Israel claimed that “as a result of the conference going ahead [The Parkes Institute] removed [Ben-Dor] from their Board”, Schlör told me that there was simply a different “current delegate for the Faculty of Social Sciences” on their committee.
While The Parkes Institute is critical of the conference, it has also made clear that it “fully support[s] freedom of speech within the law.” Indeed, two honorary fellows of the institute are among more than 800 academics who have backed the University of Southampton and academic freedom.
Signatories for the statement of support include chairs, professors, researchers and lecturers from leading universities, including 27 Oxbridge academics, 16 from Ivy League schools in the USA, and more than 160 scholars from Russell Group universities in the UK.
Those seeking to cancel the scholarly gathering have been getting increasingly desperate. Seddons law practice was forced to distance themselves from partner Mark Lewis, after the latter told the Telegraph that he would look less favourably at CVs of Southampton law graduates.
The Board of Deputies’ Jonathan Arkush, meanwhile, has openly called the conference “antisemitic”, an accusation ridiculed by Israeli journalist Seth Frantzman, who wrote about how “many of [the speakers] are Israelis, or former Israelis and more than half the academics at the conference are Jewish, some of them long-time activists.”
Professor dropped from university institute over controversial Israel conference
By Naomi Firsht, Jewish Chronicle
March 23, 2015
An academic institute has removed from its board the organiser of a conference questioning Israel’s right to exist.
According to the Academic Friends of Israel blog The Parkes Institute, a study centre for Jewish – non-Jewish relations at Southampton University, has dropped Professor Oren Ben-Dor over his role in arranging the conference at the university.
The blog post stated: “The Parkes Institute, which originally raised their concerns about the aims of the conference last year with the Vice-Chancellor of the University, has made it clear to Professor Oren Ben-Dor that they would not have anything to do with his conference and it would appear that as a result of the conference going ahead they removed him from their Board.”
The conference, titled ”International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism” and to be held under the auspices of the university, has met with mounting criticism from MPs and Israel activists.
Academic Friends of Israel have launched a petition to go alongside a Zionist Federation petition that has garnered more than 5,000 signatures.
This is no debate but a rally of hate directed at Israel
EARLIER this month we once again saw what hotbeds of extremism and hatred some of our university campuses have become.
By Douglas Murray, Daily Express
March 13, 2015
The fact that Mohammed Emwazi (aka “Jihadi John”) had been a student at Westminster university could have surprised no one.Nor could the discovery that on the very night Emwazi was unmasked his university was due to host a radical preacher who preaches the most hardline versions of sharia.
In the same week as a new video revealed commonplace anti-Jewish hatred on Britain’s streets, the Cambridge University Union Society once again chose to debate the motion “Israel is a rogue state”.
The Cambridge Union – the oldest in the country – enjoys debating that motion more than any other. It is a fixture in its termly schedules.
And once again last week the students of Cambridge decided to hold Israel guilty among the nations. Needless to say there is no record of Cambridge students debating whether Pakistan (created in the same year as Israel) is a rogue state. Despite there being far more reasons to do so.
Nor does the Cambridge Union annually denigrate any of Israel’s neighbours in the Middle East. During last week’s Cambridge debate the notorious anti-Israeli activist and discredited academic Norman Finkelstein explained to the students that Israel is worse than North Korea.
The students agreed with him. Next month the University of Southampton will become the latest university to fix its position on this bandwagon of hate.
As reported in the Daily Express earlier this week, on 17-19 April Southampton University will host a three day conference titled “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism.”
The organisers claim that the conference is “the first of its kind and constitutes a ground-breaking historical event on the road towards justice and enduring peace in historic Palestine”. Of course this is purest academic claptrap.The idea that one of the world’s most intractable political problems could be solved by a group of a gaggle of academics sitting in Southampton is laughable. Or it would be if the whole set up weren’t such a hate-fest from start to finish.
The University of Southampton’s Vice Chancellor, the beautifully named Professor Nutbeam, claims that this is a matter of free speech. It isn’t. Free speech is a precious British tradition which most of us would do everything to defend. But true free speech includes hearing different viewpoints.
And that is not what Southampton is organising. They are organising a one-sided anti-Israel rally. Anyone in any doubt about that simply needs to look at their speaker line up.
Every single panel is stuffed full of lowgrade academics and selfdescribed activists drawn from near and far but from a single political direction.
They are people like Dr Ghada Karmi who tours this country’s universities whipping up hatred of Israel. She was at Cambridge last week arguing that Israel is a “rogue state”. She describes herself as an “activist” and well she might. There is little recognisably “academic” in her routine.
She routinely andrepeatedly calls not for peace in the Middle East but for the end of the world’s only Jewish state.
I shall think of Dr Handmaker next time I buy a flat pack lamp and meatballs. But it is the same thing on panel after panel. Speaker after speaker has a track record of calling for the same things: boycotts of Israel, demonization of Israel and indeed the end of Israel.
It is a conference dedicated to annihilation. So how appropriate that as the delegates finish their tax-payer subsidised lunch on the first day their “after lunch speaker” will be the disgraced academic Richard Falk who claims that Israel behaves like the Nazis.
This is one of the common themes among many of the participants, and is worth reflecting on. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a very complex matter. But none of Israe actions bear any resemblance whatsoever to the genocidal inferno of Nazism.
So why do figures like those heading to Southampton next month so commonly compare Israeli security policies to those of the Nazis? The answer is simple.
They compare the security policies of the State of Israel to the crimes of Nazism because they wish to taunt the first victims of Nazism. They wish to hurt Jews. This is what passes for academic debate in Southampton in 2015: vile and routine Jew baiting.
You do have to put some effort into putting together such a one-sided hate-fest. The number of people in Britain so utterly and weirdly obsessed by Israel is really quite small. Most ordinary, fair-minded people looking at the Middle East can see that Israel is the only liberal and free society like ours in the region.
People are not being beheaded and brutalised, hanged from cranes and thrown off buildings. These anti-Israel obsessives are fringe weirdos in wider society.
One of the only places where they are not is university campuses. It is high time that non-Jews stood with Jews against this rising hatred.
Let’s start by demanding that the Government stops giving our money to universities like Southampton if they cannot stop themselves transforming from centres of learning into epicentres of hate.
Notes and Links
Oran Ben-Dor, Southampton law professor.
The Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations is a unique centre of study across the ages. We are a community of scholars, archivists, librarians, students, and activists. The Institute is based on the life work of the Reverend Dr James Parkes (1896-1981), one of the most remarkable figures within twentieth century Christianity. Ordained by the Church of England in 1926, through his work with the International Student Service and the Student Christian Movement as early as the 1920s he campaigned against the rise of racist nationalism in Europe.”
“International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility, and Exceptionalism”
University of Southampton
The conference “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility, and Exceptionalism” at the University of Southampton on April 17-19th will engage controversial questions concerning the manner of Israel’s foundation and its nature, including ongoing forced displacements of Palestinians and associated injustices. The conference will examine how international law could be deployed, expanded, even re-imagined, in order to achieve regional peace and reconciliation based on justice. The conference is intended to broaden debates and legal arguments concerning historic Palestine and the nature, role, and potentialities of international law itself.
Participants will be a part of a multidisciplinary debate reflecting diverse perspectives, and thus genuine disagreements, on the central themes of the conference. Diligent efforts, including face-to-face meetings with leading intellectuals in Israel, were made to ensure the widest range of opinions possible. Those who chose to abstain, however, cannot derail the legitimate, if challenging, academic discussion the conference will inspire.
The conference organizers are grateful to the University of Southampton for ensuring academic freedom within the law and for taking steps to secure freedom of speech within the law. The conference organizers accept that the granting of permission for this event does not imply support or endorsement by the University of any of the opinions to be expressed at the conference.
*************************************************************
About the conference:
This conference will be the first of its kind and constitutes a ground-breaking historical event on the road towards justice and enduring peace in historic Palestine. It is unique because it concerns the legitimacy in International Law of the Jewish state of Israel. Rather than focusing on Israeli actions in the 1967 Occupied Territories, the conference will focus on exploring themes of Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism; all of which are posed by Israel’s very nature.
Speakers and panels:
The conference aims to explore the relatedness of the suffering and injustice in Palestine to the foundation and protection of a state of such nature and asks what role International Law should play in the situation. It will take place over a whole weekend and will involve leading thinkers: scholars from law, politics, philosophy, theology, anthropology, cultural studies history and other connected disciplines.
Key speakers and various panels will diagnose the legal position with regard to the nature of Israel thus enabling a much needed platform for scholarly debate and disagreement.
Getting involved:
If you wish to attend the conference, please register online.
Academic organisation:
Professor Oren Ben-Dor (University of Southampton, E: O.Ben-Dor@soton.ac.uk), Professor George Bisharat (University of California, Hastings College of Law, E: bisharat@uchastings.edu).
Southampton organising committee:
Professor Oren Ben-Dor, Professor Suleiman Sharkh, Ms. Juman
ill engage controversial questions concerning the manner of Israel’s foundation and its nature, including ongoing forced displacements of Palestinians and associated injustices. The conference will examine how international law could be deployed, expanded, even re-imagined, in order to achieve regional peace and reconciliation based on justice. The conference is intended to broaden debates and legal arguments concerning historic Palestine and the nature, role, and potentialities of international law itself.
Participants will be a part of a multidisciplinary debate reflecting diverse perspectives, and thus genuine disagreements, on the central themes of the conference. Diligent efforts, including face-to-face meetings with leading intellectuals in Israel, were made to ensure the widest range of opinions possible. Those who chose to abstain, however, cannot derail the legitimate, if challenging, academic discussion the conference will inspire.
The conference organizers are grateful to the University of Southampton for ensuring academic freedom within the law and for taking steps to secure freedom of speech within the law. The conference organizers accept that the granting of permission for this event does not imply support or endorsement by the University of any of the opinions to be expressed at the conference.
*************************************************************