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Editorial Article
Ben Gurion University - Rivka Carmi, President of Ben
Gurion University, hails anti-Israel activity on her campus
By Lee Kaplan
www.isracampus.org.il
It is ironic that Rivka Carmi, the new
president of Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev was born in
1948, the same year the Jewish state was created. Having spent her
entire life during the same time line as the Jewish state, one would
expect her to have a perspective of what a miracle it has been for
Israel to be created and survived despite incredible odds, lo these
60 years. A physician and geneticist with a medical degree, Carmi’s
position within the University system reached a pinnacle when she
became president of the campus that was named after Israel’s first
Prime Minister, an ardent Zionist. Israeli media went nuts when it
reported she was the
first woman President of a major university in Israel. She was
to be a pioneer and bring good things to BGU.
Her predecessor was Dr. Avishai Braverman, an
economist and post-Zionist who is is now a Labor Party Knesset
member. Prof. Braverman was
rumored to have gotten his job there as president because he was a
crony of Shimon Peres. Braverman has no academic publications in
academic journals and and so would ordinarily have trouble getting
hired for an academic job. He later
left to try for election as a leftist in the Knesset. As an
economist he usually sought simple bromides by promoting economic
illiteracy in Israel’s government such as demanding a higher minimum
wage and other entitlements. Carmi was at least a physician with
bona fide academic credentials as a dean of the medical school, so
only good be hoped for at BGU.
But Carmi’s behavior as head of BGU is anything
but pro-Israel or merely just critical of the Jewish state. She
encourages and endorses the propaganda programs of radical
anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic professors instead. BGU has become one
of the worst campuses in Israel, noted for its anti-Israel,
anti-Zionist, faculty members and students who openly support the
PLO in its goals against the Jewish state.
Revisionist history that is decidedly anti-Israel and
“post-Zionism” are the continual messages emanating from the
humanities and social studies departments there. Meanwhile, Carmi
herself, and sometimes through her campus PR flack, Faye Bittker,
continues to praise as being good for the University some of BGU’s
poorest academic scholars or those with an axe to grind against
Israel.
All this anti-Israelism can be considered as
continuing with Rivka Carmi’s blessing, since as president of her
college she could steer the University toward responsible academic
study, but prefers the path letting BGU be a source of anti-Israel
activism worldwide that is disguised as scholasticism. Ben Gurion
University is central headquarters for some of the most anti-Semitic
and anti-Israel professors on the international scene, such as
Neve Gordon, Oren Yifchatel,
Lev Grinberg and
Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin among many others.
Benny Morris, once Israel’s most famous post-Zionist (now
supporting Israel because he recognizes that Israel’s destruction by
those who like to quote Morris’ work will murder him as much as his
fellow Jews), also hails from BGU.
Carmi’s predecessor as President of the
University,
Dr. Avishay Braverman, helped get the ball rolling with anti and
post-Zionism on campus by appointing the likes of Benny Morris to
the history department when Morris was considered a pseudo-historian
whose writings are still nevertheless extensively used by Arab
irredentists and groups like the International Solidarity Movement
to demonize the creation of Israel as a nakba or
“catastrophe” for the Arabs.
Middle East historian Martin Kramer has openly
described Columbia University as “Bir-Zeit -on- the –Hudson” because
of the American university’s “Palestinian” curriculum and
anti-Israel inspired faculty. Bir Zeit University is actually a
University in the West Bank where the student political parties are
Hamas, Fatah and the PFLP and is a source for promoting terrorism.
Since Carmi took over at BGU, the University has come to be called
“Bir-Zeit in the Negev,” and rightly so; faculty in the humanities
and social sciences almost consistently have an anti-Israel bent and
encourage the same among new hires and students. Former BGU
anthropology professor-turned-ISM-radical Jeff Halper and Koby Snitz
of Anarchists Against the Wall, an ISM affiliate, in the Mathematics
department both call the Negev campus home as well even if they are
no longer involved as faculty.
Anti-Israel politics, particularly
anti-Zionism, pass for scholarship at many world famous universities
today, and that appears to be just fine with Rivka Carmi for BGU to
emulate. Declaring herself a “socialist”, Carmi aligns herself with
many of the goals of Israel’s communist party that also sides with
Arab irredentists and she has received praise
from ardent Stalinist Israeli academic Jacob Katriel for her
being the only Israeli university president to agree to a plan by
Katriel to allow any Arabs in Gaza to attend colleges in the West
Bank, and even recommend Tali Fahima for an alternative Nobel Peace
Prize (Fahima was arrested for helping her Arab boyfriend smuggle
weapons to kill Jews). Point of fact, the colleges in the
Palestinian Authority are recruiting and organizational centers for
terrorist groups, but to Carmi it’s all just academic and the poor
little Palestinian dears should not be interfered with if they only
say they are studying really, really hard. Tali Fahima, of course,
placed Israeli lives at risk and would gladly do so again. Carmi has
also stated that she would endorse international boycotts of Israeli
universities.
Carmi makes no bones about her opinion about
the disputed territories, calling them a “conquest” by Israel in
spite of the fact that much of the land was the property of Jews
prior to 1948 that was taken back from Jordan and Egypt in 1967. She
makes it a point to visit with students protesting against Israel’s
presence in the territories on her campus, even shaking their hands
(she says she won’t do the same handshake for pro-Israel activists
on campus, thus, so much for academic discussion.) Rivka Carmi
accuses Israel of denying education to Gazan students in the West
Bank and even signed on to
a petition over the matter, yet this woman must know the number
of terrorists coming out of Palestinian universities. Recently, at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem one
terror cell supporting al Qaeda was found among Arab students.
It is highly unlikely that Rivka Carmi is unaware of such things
within Israel’s college system. Yet her insistence that Israel allow
free rein of Arab students to traverse Israel from Hamastan in Gaza
to the West Bank only shows the incongruity of thought of Rivka
Carmi as an educational administrator.
Most other university administrators in Israel
only tolerate the anti-Zionist anti-Israel crowds of academics and
students at their schools who call for boycotts of their own
campuses or who cheer on the terrorist groups. But Rivka Carmi
openly identifies with her anti-Israel faculty members and puts the
weight of her position behind her in doing so. Carmi has even
praised
Neve Gordon, one of BGU’s most anti-Israel and anti-Semitic
academics on campus, a man who produces regular anti-Israel
diatribes in all his work and was a human shield for Yasser Arafat
after the Passover Massacre. Rivka Carmi “understands” them, you
see.
BGU has traditionally depended on donations
from American Jews to fund the University, but when contributors got
wind of what was going on, donors began to object. Rivka Carmi,
instead of helping to clean up the University’s act as its
president, complained that such actions violated “academic freedom”.
But let’s face it: “academic freedom” does not mean anything written
or fabricated about or against the Jewish state has a right to be
heard, while dissenting views supporting the Jewish state do not,
and Ben Gurion’s faculty is noted for opposing the Jewish state.
That is an educational system like those of
totalitarian and communist countries, countries where radical
socialism rules what everyone thinks. Whereas, some faculty at BGU
without protest from Rivka Carmi have called for the annihilation of
Israel and even served as human shields for Arafat in his compound
after the Passover Massacre, or objected to Israel’s controlling
overseas Arab academics from entering the West Bank out of security
concerns, Rivka Carmi has stated that she considers American donors
objecting to funding of such anti-Israel “faculty” at BGU
constitutes “trying to dictate the agenda of the University.” She
considers donors speaking up as
outside interference, but the boycotting her own university by
outside interests inspired by overseas radicals as perfectly
justifiable.
But isn’t that exactly what Rivka Carmi is
doing as President of Ben Gurion University of the Negev? That is,
catering to Israel’s enemies and outside interests rather than the
people of Israel who pay her salary?
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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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