[Nettime-bold] Confession of an Israeli leftist

[Chaim <cog@slackworks.com>]

------------------ (Forwarded) ------------------

Professor Richard Dawkins
Oxford University

Dear Professor Dawkins:

You do not know me, but I have been an admirer of yours for many years,
and many of my students are familiar with the elegant statement of
Ockham's razor on p. xi of River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life. It
is thus with great sadness that I discover that you have lent your name to
the shameful, one-sided, unprecedented, and academically disgraceful call
to withhold European grants from Israeli scholars.

I write to you as a person who has for years been identified with the
"peace camp" in this country, who had (and took) many opportunities to
work for the improvement of the status of Arab students at the University
of Haifa, and who was subject to not a little personal and social pressure
and vilification because of his views and activities. I further belong to
that group of Israelis who -two years ago- would have been willing, even
happy, to withdraw from the land we occupied after the late King Hussein
attacked us in 1967, redivide Jerusalem, and aid in the establishment of a
Palestinian state. I am also confident that I have invested more in
promoting peace in the Middle East than European academics who feel sure
they hold the moral high ground, and by signing that disgraceful letter,
take cheap shots at Israel in general and their Israeli colleagues in
particular.

Two years of endless murder of Jews by Palestinians, two years of virulent
anti-semitic propaganda being churned out by the Arab world generally and
the Palestinian Authority in particular, two years of watching the BBC
report from the Middle East in a fashion which makes a mockery of any
standard of journalistic objectivity, two years of watching European
leaders condemn Israel time and time again while expressing sympathetic
understanding for a regime which tolerates no dissent, operates like a
particularly violent mafia (as General Zinni reportedly said), lends
spiritual support (at the very least) to the purposeful murderers of
children, of mothers, of grandmothers, two years of this have led me to
the reluctant conclusions that the Palestinian nation apparently has the
leadership it deserves and that those Europeans who lend that leadership
their support are either stupid, or immoral, or simply hate Jews.

The letter you signed speaks of the Israeli "policy of violent repression
against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories" as if this
"repression" takes place in a moral and political vacuum. Need I remind
you that Yasir Arafat, the head of a profoundly corrupt thugocracy, made
Ariel Sharon Prime Minister of Israel? Were it not for the Arafat-inspired
and orchestrated Palestinian war on Israeli children, women, men, and only
incidentally soldiers, Ehud Barak (an Israeli leader more to your taste, I
assume -- certainly he used to be more to my taste) would be Prime
Minister of Israel. Need I further remind you that at Camp David and at
Taba, Arafat had the option of saying to Barak: "No, but." Instead, he
simply slammed the door, went home, and started killing Jews, hoping, it
appears pretty clear, also to get lots of Palestinians killed, so as to
score points against us, and stimulate the sympathy of well-intentioned if
easily duped people.

Many things puzzle me about the behavior of European "intellectuals" but I
want to raise only one of them now. Let me grant for the sake of argument
something which is clearly and indubitably false, namely, that Israeli
behavior in the West Bank and Gaza is every bit as cruel, violent, and
despicable as alleged by the hordes of polished Palestinian liars who
appear regularly on international TV and radio and in the international
press. Is Israeli behavior, even if these absurd claims are true, worse
than that of Iraq? (Not that I take much comfort in being compared to
Iraq, believe me.) Is the suffering of Palestinians in the West Bank that
much worse than the suffering of Palestinians in Kuwait after the Gulf
War? Why go so far afield? A good case can be made that your own country,
Great Britain, has inflicted greater injustice and greater suffering on
the Irish than a hundred Israels have inflicted upon the Palestinians.
Where are and were you and your colleagues? Were you organizing protests,
calling for academic boycotts?

Perfidious Albion, or at least deeply hypocritical Albion, seems to be an
appropriate commentary on the behavior of you and your colleagues.

In great disappointment,


(Prof.) Menachem Kellner

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Professor Menachem Kellner
Wolfson Professor of Jewish Thought
University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
email: kellner@research.haifa.ac.il
http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/Chairs/Wolfson/
home telephone: 972 4 822 7647
office telephone: 972 4 824 9494
fax: 972 4 825 2037
######################################
For a special treat, visit the "Be-Zavta" website:
http://research.haifa.ac.il/~bezavta
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