Editorial Article
Ben Gurion University’s Disloyalty Pledge
by Anne Horowitz
Back in the 1950s, the United States was in the
midst of the Cold War. McCarthyism was operating and some American
campuses and other institutions instituted "Loyalty Pledges" as a
precondition for employment. These have long since disappeared,
although some recent US campus developments lead us to wonder
whether their restoration might be a good thing.
Be that as it may, those old "Loyalty Pledges"
are nothing compared with recent developments at Ben Gurion
University in Beer Sheba. Ben Gurion University has long been the
very worst campus in Israel in terms of proliferation by its faculty
members of far-leftist anti-Zionism. It is a bastion of "New
Historians" (which means anti-Israel pseudo-historians), and even
has some anti-Semites on its faculty. Ben Gurion himself is no doubt
rolling about in his grave at the disgrace of turning the campus
named after him into Israel's bastion of self-hatred.
While it should be remembered that there are
also some serious scholars at work at BGU in some departments,
anti-Zionism is the prevailing ideology on campus. Large numbers of
faculty members there routinely sign anti-Israel petitions,
including the now-famous petition of Israeli academic anti-Semites
containing the blood libel invented by them in which they claimed
that Israel was planning human rights atrocities and even genocide
against Palestinians when the Iraq war would begin. The Iraq war is
long over, but no apology has come from these pseudo-academic
fabricators of the blood libel!
Several faculty members at BGU openly call for
Israel to be eliminated and replaced by a Rwanda-style bi-national
state run by the PLO with an Arab majority, including Prof. Amnon
Raz-Krakotzkin. BGU sociologist Lev Grinberg made headlines last
year for claiming that Israel was engaging in "symbolic genocide
against Palestinians" when it assassinates arch-terrorists and mass
murderers like the Hamas' Sheikh Yassin. This led the past Minister
of Education in BGU to boycott BGU's Board of Governors meeting.
BGU geographer Oren Yitachel routinely
denounces Israel as an apartheid state. BGU political science
lecturer Neve Gordon (who was featured in an earlier article at
the following link) routinely denounces Israel as a fascist,
apartheid, terrorist state comparable to Nazi Germany. Gordon is so
extreme that his anti-Israel articles are carried on the Nazi web
site "The Zundelsite," run by Ernst Zundel. Michael Dahan, a
lecturer in political science at BGU, claims Israel is conducting
genocide. Tamar Gozansky, a Stalinist ex-politician, has taught
"education" courses at BGU. BGU political scientist David Newman is
on the board of editors of the anti-Israel pro-LSD magazine, Tikkun.
Many BGU leftist faculty are involved in spreading anti-Israel
smears around the world. Others have endorsed international boycotts
of Israel. These are Israel's versions of Ward Churchill, the
recently-dismissed Colorado professor who cheers bin Laden and calls
all American citizens Nazis.
BGU radical faculty members are also involved
in open law breaking. Many are involved in organizing Israeli
leftist soldiers to mutiny and engage in insubordination and refuse
to obey orders. Gordon was arrested for entering Ramallah illegally
to interfere with Israeli anti-terror military operations. Gordon
also was photographed embracing Arafat after he illegally entered
Arafat’s headquarters to show his solidarity with the terrorists and
murderers being hidden in the building at the time by Arafat in
violation of the Oslo Accord. Gordon has praised American lunatic
Norman Finkelstein, widely considered to be a Neo-Nazi and
Anti-Semite (Finkelstein is an admirer of David Irving), and Gordon
even compared Finkelstein ethically to the Prophets of the Bible.
Now left-wing anti-Zionists and anti-Semites
are to be found at other Israeli universities as well. What is
unique at Ben Gurion University is the "Disloyalty Pledge" policy
and the open support for the extremists by campus officials. At all
other Israeli universities, the extremists are considered little
more than an embarrassment and an unfortunate price to be paid for
academic freedom. But at Ben-Gurion university several departments,
including political science, geography, and history, have
effectively instituted the "Disloyalty Pledge," by which only people
disloyal to Israel and loyal to the PLO may teach in the
departments. The political science department is the worst, where
every single faculty member in the department is an anti-Zionist or
anti-Israel far leftist. Academic standards have been junked in some
cases when hiring and promoting the extremists. Some of the radicals
retained are little more than parodies of academic scholarship.
A couple of years ago, a new lecturer in
political science was hired by BGU from the University of London, a
scholar who had studied under the world-famous Efraim Karsh. But
soon his colleagues discovered that he was actually pro-Israel and
unwilling to take any "Disloyalty Pledge" nor denounce Israel. He
was recently dismissed. The official fig leaf of the extremists for
his dismissal was that he was "disloyal to the department," by which
they meant he was unwilling to join the extremists in their
anti-Israel propagandizing; he was not willing to support the PLO
publicly nor call for Israel's demise. At the same time, the above
mentioned anti-Zionist Neve Gordon, who holds a PhD from Notre Dame
University in Indiana (a degree that might not even be recognized as
bona fide by many major universities) and whose "academic record"
consists largely of anti-Israel diatribes misrepresented as
scholarly work, was promoted and granted tenure by the same
department. (An example of Gordon's scholarship is an article
financed by the Kroc Institute, the same institute that finances
anti-Semitic terrorist Tariq Ramadan, in which Gordon "proves"
Israel is a terrorist state no better than the Hamas.) The dismissed
Zionist scholar is now looking for a new position. A retired
military officer who became a historian at BGU was dismissed under
similar circumstances.
Ben Gurion University officials have backed the
campus extremists implementing the policies of "No Non-Leftist
Opinion Allowed," or at least failed to prevent it. The past
president of the University, Avishai Braverman, and the current
President Rivka Carmi, have done nothing to stop it.
In an age when "diversity" is supposed to be
the banner of academic life, Ben Gurion University has promoted the
suppression of political diversity in parts of its campus life,
while declaring that anti-Israel leftist extremism is the only
permissible position. At least three departments operate in which
there is essentially only one set of permissible opinions, only one
"correct" set of ideas, and that set is radical anti-Zionist
extremism.
American Jews have traditionally been important
supporters and contributors to Israeli academic institutions,
believing these to be enterprises playing a Zionist role in building
the Jewish state. But it behooves them to refuse to finance
anti-Zionism and academic sedition in Israel. In recent days, a new
web site has opened, devoted to bringing to the attention of
prospective donors to Israeli universities information about the
anti-Israel radicals operating on Israeli campuses, an Israeli
parallel to Campus Watch, the important web site run by Dr. Daniel
Pipes in the US. It is called
Isracampus.org.il.
We American and Canadian Jews have the moral
responsibility to using their influence and make donations wisely
and selectively. We should make it crystal clear to Israeli
university officials that American and Canadian Jews are interested
in helping build the Jewish state, not in financing academic
radicals and traitors seeking to tear it down!
In the 21st century American Jews should adopt
as their guiding principle in helping Israel, "Not a Dime for
Academic Anti-Zionism!!"
Anne Horowitz is a librarian and an
archivist in Northern New Jersey preparing a book about war crimes
and totalitarian atrocities
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Op-Ed articles appearing on IsraCampus.Org.il are those of the writer and
do not necessarily represent the opinion of IsraCampus.Org.il
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