IsraCampus.Org

Dr. Neve Gordon has turned David Ben Gurion in his grave one more time, but who is really to blame for the fiasco in Beer-Sheba? The answer is obvious. The University president who helped to create in her midst the mafia that is called "the department of Politics and Government.” For the last few years Prof. Carmi ignored all the writing on the wall, but now she is panicking as American Jewish donors refuse to take her telephone calls.

By A. Ben Shaul
4/9/2009

The head of Ben Gurion University's politics department had a sudden vision. He was watching his two boys playing in the yard and zoomed out all the way to the American west coast to publish an article in LA Times. His enlightenment by the sight in the yard made him reach the original conclusion that only an international boycott would save Israel from itself. The reason is simple: In his learned opinion Israel is an apartheid state.

But it was a typical manipulative and hypocritical argument. Time and again, Gordon has voiced these opinions. Our records are full of them. The white minority rule in South Africa was always his favorite equation and boycott was always his mantra. The only difference this time is that his preferred choice of publication was not an obscured loony leftist website, or an Iranian governmental newspaper, but a respectable American newspaper that happens to be read by many Californian Jews, some of them regular donors to that same university in Beer-Sheba.

The written rant, titled simply "Boycott Israel,” triggered a huge protest, so much so that the president of BGU was shaking in her stockings. It was left to Israel's Consul-General in Los Angeles, Yaakov Dayan, to express the community's outrage in a letter to Professor Rivka Carmi: "Since the article was published I have been contacted by people who care for Israel; some of them are benefactors of Ben-Gurion University. They were unanimous in threatening to withhold their donations to your institution. My attempt to explain that one bad apple would affect hundreds of researchers turned out to be futile.”

Ironically, Dayan was borrowing a term that titled an article published on this website last year when it became known that Gordon has been chosen by his colleagues to lead the politics department. Under the headline "The Negev's Rotten Apple,” we alerted the university to his past activities and statements described by the eminent Professor Alan Dershowitz as "anti-Israeli propaganda designed to 'prove' that the Jewish state is fascist''. The Harvard's law scholar went on to say that "Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust justice deniers and anti-Semites,” or in short "a despicable example of a self-hating Jew and self-hating Israeli.”

Carmi or Kermit?

Gordon elevation to his present job is not accidental. He is the toast of other post- and anti-Zionist lecturers, who saw nothing wrong in his C.V. That includes embracing and hugging Yassar Arafat at his compound in Ramallah in the height of the suicide bombing wave against Israeli citizens. Gordon proudly clasped his hands with his mentor and even had the audacity to clear his beloved "old man" of any responsibility to the terrorist attacks that gripped the nation during the first years of the present decade. Lamenting Arafat's death he even Accused Israel of his demise by destroying "his persona" and creating the "false myth" that he was not a partner for peace.

Professor Carmi was certainly aware of this Gordon-terrorism encounter, which was splashed on many Israeli newspapers, and yet she did not register any "outrage" at the time, nor protest, needless to say, in the name of "academic freedom.” But if the horror show in the Mukata'a might have been dismissed by her as a one-off display of collaboration with Arafat, she could have taken a note of more of Gordon’s other recent "misdemeanors" that made similar headlines. Not in the very distant past Gordon campaigned for and endorsed the views of the notorious anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein. He also published articles on Holocaust denials website, declared that Israel is not a democracy, celebrated Palestinian bulldozer-murders, defended Azmi Bishara, the fugitive former MK and Hezbollah agent, labeled IDF officers as war criminals, called on his students to “resists” military service and - maybe worst of all - tried to gag his critics by taking them to court demanding financial compensation.

But hang on. The list is not ended here. While on a sabbatical year at the University of Michigan, before returning to BGU to be at the helm of his department, he participated in "Palestinian Awareness Week" and delivered a public talk titled ''From Colonization to Occupation''. In that talk he expressed support for a ''one state solution'' since a ''two state solution'' will supposedly perpetuate Israel as an apartheid state. So branding Israel as an Apartheid state was always Gordon's agenda. He did not have to wait for his children to play in his yard to do so.

But neither in Michigan, while visiting at Berkeley, nor in Beer Sheba, did this catalogue of defamations and lies activate the alarm bells at the Ben Gurion University president's office. She preferred to turn a blind eye, while defending Gordon’s scholarly credentials and his propagandizing as his “right to academic freedom.” There are many reasons to suspect that she actually supports and identifies with the opinions of Gordon and the hordes of other Ben Gurion University anti-Israel leftist extremists about the future of the Middle East.

California's patience runs out

So why Ms. Carmi is suddenly horrified now, to the point of suggesting that Gordon may be better off finding employment elsewhere? Because at long last the Jewish American community sent her a loud and clear message of "enough is enough.” Carmi's university is about to be hit in its pockets, and its president can not afford such a luxury in a time of financial crisis, unable as yet to recover from the Madoff ripples. The L.A. Times article was a wake-up call for her and she was caught napping. The genie is out of the bottle. The monster she helped to create is pulling his mistress all the way down with him.

So the public outrage should not be really directed only at “Dr. Gordon.” He simply published what he had been saying all along to a chorus of approval by his fellow self-hating anti-Israel BGU academics. Carmi might think that by pretending to be trying to nudge him out, she can restore calm on her campus, but she is wrong. Almost the entire department of Politics and Government at BGU consists of extreme leftists who make their colleagues in Tel-Aviv look like ardent Likudniks. That department is infested by die-hard anti Zionists who made a profession out of putting the onus on Israel come what may. It maintains a policy under which neither Zionists nor non-leftists may teach in the department.

Yet, it should be noted that by writing this article Gordon also makes a mockery of himself, thus raising questions not only about his integrity, but also about his wisdom. In his opinion, "the only way to encounter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure" in the shape of a comprehensive boycott. And why? Because the democratically elected government of Israel ignored American and European pleas to freeze settlements in the territories, and did not end the occupation under terms Gordon demands.

But now the current government has agreed to such a freeze, so will Gordon retract his claims? Of course not. After all, he and his ilk never admitted they had been wrong when they insisted, at the time, that Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan was nothing but a ploy. Similarly, these leftists never apologized for writing that Israel had a secret plan to expel the Palestinians once the war against Iraq were to break out.

Instead, Gordon is trying to draw sympathy by writing that "it is not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen" to call on the international community to outcast Israel. Poor baby. Not simple, but he has been doing it nonstop for decades.

L.A. Times readers learn from Gordon that this “apartheid state” keeps the poor fellow with the PhD from Notre Dame up at night, "both as a parent and a citizen.” And what does he offer his "two boys"? A so-called “one state solution,” in which Israel will be eliminated altogether, a "right of return" to Israeli lands for anyone pretending to be a Palestinian, and a massive boycott that may bring Israelis to submission. Only then, he maintains, by bringing Israel to her knees, will the country start to behave itself according to Gordon’s high ethical standards.

Mind you, to show how much he cares for the future of his family, one should point out here that in the past he even justified Iran's nuclear program. Maybe we should ask him to have another look at his own back yard and think of his children's wellbeing once the Ayatollahs lay their hands on the bomb.

========================================

Op-Ed articles appearing on IsraCampus.Org.il are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the opinion of IsraCampus.Org.il