Video Infoblog: Academic Boycott FAQ’s, with Omar Barghouti, Zoha Khalili, Maya Wind

Transcript

0:05

hello everyone welcome to this webinar on the boycott of Israeli academic institutions my name is Jessica winiger

0:12

and I teach anthropology and Middle East and North African studies at Northwestern University today I'm joined

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by three distinguished guests who I will introduce in a moment this is the third of a series of

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webinars designed to inform the American anthropological Association membership about the boycott divestment and

0:31

sanctions movement or BDS the goal of today's session is to answer some frequently asked questions about

0:38

the call to boycott Israeli academic institutions the American anthropological Association

0:44

is currently starting today voting on a boycott referendum the Voting is open

0:50

until July 14th and we urge all listeners to vote but first some

0:55

essential background on BDS BDS was inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement

1:02

when over 170 Palestinian Civil Society organizations launched a BDS movement in

1:09

2005 as a way to hold the Israeli government accountable for ongoing human

1:15

rights violations these violations at this time are widely recognized by human

1:20

rights organizations and social movements around the world as apartheid activists around the globe have

1:27

responded to this campaign with calls for economic divestment and the boycott of Israeli institutions including

1:34

academic institutions most recently the Middle East studies Association passed a similar resolution

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to the one before the AAA membership before it the British Society for Middle

1:47

East studies passed a boycott resolution so too have the American studies Association the association for Asian

1:54

American studies the national women's studies Association the Arab American studies Association the Native American

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and Indigenous studies Association and the National Association of takana and

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Chicano studies it is now time for anthropologists to join those associations and stand up for the rights

2:12

of Palestinians and Against Racism and apartheid so today we hope to clear up

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some misconceptions about the boycott including some that are circulating that are trafficking in really baseless

2:23

fear-mongering about what a boycott would mean for academic associations

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before I introduce the speakers let me just encourage you to visit our website

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anthroboycott.org we have a wealth of fact-based information and perspectives

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from Israelis and Palestinians uh on the boycott at that website you can also

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view prior webinars on this same YouTube channel including our first one which featured our academic colleagues in

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Palestine urging us telling us why we should support their call for solidarity

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the second webinar featured anthropologists from across the Spectrum who showed us how boycott connects and

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intersects with other movements for decolonization and demilitarization and abolition

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so now uh I would like to introduce our speakers we are honored today to have

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Omar barhuti with us Omar is a Palestinian human rights Defender and

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co-founder of the palestinian-led BDS movement for Palestinian rights he's a

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co-recipient of the 2017 Gandhi peace award he holds a BSC and MSC in

3:33

electrical engineering from Colombia and is currently pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the University of

3:38

Amsterdam as a Palestinian academic and activist he is the author of BDS the global

3:45

struggle for Palestinian rights and his commentaries have appeared in the New York Times the guardian The Washington

3:50

Post and on and he's also been on MSNBC and CNN he has an article coming out

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tomorrow on the in the nation on boycott so look out for that we're also delighted to have zoha

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khalili here zoha is a senior staff attorney at Palestine legal she provides

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legal advice and advocacy support to activists in the movement for Palestinian freedom on issues related to

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uh Free Speech violations discrimination disciplinary charges

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um to also doxing surveillance and threats we are also joined by Maya wind who is a

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kill and postdoctoral fellow in anthropology at the University of British Columbia her research on the

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reproduction and international export of Israeli security expertise has been

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founded by the national funded by the National Science Foundation and the social science research Council she is

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also a member of boycott from within Israelis in support of the BDS movement

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so thank you all of us for all of you for joining us um in this important conversation

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um I have a first round of questions uh first let's start with Omar you are a founder of the BDS mover for Palestinian

5:03

rights and the impact of that movement is being felt today not just on campuses and social justice struggles around the

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world but also in Hollywood on Capitol Hill and in City Halls across the country so not all AAA members are familiar with

5:17

the Palestinian civil society called to BDS and the call to boycott Israeli academic institutions specifically so

5:25

can you just speak to how the BDS call came about and why the campaign decided

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to include Israeli universities on the boycott list thanks a lot Jessica actually we did not

5:38

include Israeli universities we started with them some people might consider it irrational

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you know we brown people can be slightly irrational uh actually we knew what we were doing in 2004 after many months of

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debates and Community meetings and consultations with solidarity movement academics and artists and writers and so

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on Palestinian academics and cultural figures launched the Palestinian

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campaign for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel uh Pak me which specifically called to comprehensively

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and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a

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contribution to the struggle to end Israel's occupation colonization and system of apartheid end of quote so this

6:21

school for an Institutional targeted boycott was endorsed by the largest trade unions professional associations

6:27

the Palestinian Federation of unions of University professors and employees among others a year later the BDS called

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the general called academic and Military embargo economic came out endorsed by

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pretty much a consensus in Palestinian Society both in historic Palestine as

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well as in Exile so why did we start with academic institutions it might

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you know raise a question well there are two compelling reasons first Israeli

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universities are not simply complicit in Israel's regime of settler colonialism and apartheid they've consistently been

7:04

for decades at Pillar in the design implementation justification and

7:10

whitewash of almost every aspect of Oppression perpetrated by this regime

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and the second reason is that given their exceptionally potent role in whitewashing Israeli crimes those

7:24

universities wrote that is and effective academic boycott would irreversibly hurt

7:29

Israel's brand and feed the growing codes for economic boycotts and targeted

7:35

sanctions obviously so briefly Israeli universities systematically provide the

7:41

military intelligence establishment with indispensable research not just in weapons Technologies and Engineering but

7:47

also archeology demography geography hydrology psychology philosophy you name

7:53

it in every discipline they're very much part and parcel of this system and they

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even reward traces speech and theories and bogus scientific research that Echo

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19th century European biological race theories until now they're popular in

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Israeli universities dehumanizing or what I call relativizing the humanity of indigenous Palestinians

8:16

to justify killing us dispossessing us ethnically cleansing us so I'll just give one one shocking example basically

8:22

Tel Aviv universities Institute for National Security studies takes credit for developing the so-called dahia

8:28

Doctrine adopted by the Israeli Army which calls for quote the destruction of

8:34

the national civilian infrastructure and intense suffering among the civilian population end of quote as a means to

8:41

defeat irregular resistance forces the academic boycott also comes as a

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response to the complicity of Silence of Israeli universities in response to

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Israel's Relentless and uh deliberate attack on Palestinian education which

8:58

some Palestinian Scholars have turned scholasticide going back to the 1948

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during the nakaba of ethnic cleansing and and and soon after tens of thousands

9:10

of Palestinian books were plundered from Palestinian homes schools libraries in Jaffa Haifa suffered another Palestinian

9:17

cities by Zionist militias and later the Israeli Army destroyed or kept in

9:22

Israeli University libraries in the first few weeks of the Palestinian Uprising orientifada in 1987

9:29

Israel shut down old Palestinian universities then all schools and then all kindergartens prompting Palestinians

9:36

effectively to build an illegal Network for underground education so the complicity of Israeli

9:42

universities is not just doesn't just end there it also extends to students

9:48

and Scholars who are Palestinian citizens of present-day Israel structural racism in Israel's education

9:55

system it reaches not just universities but all the way down to kindergartens as

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early as 2001 humanoids watch for example concluded quote discrimination

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at every level of the Israeli education system winners out a progressively

10:11

larger proportion of Palestinian adult children as they progress through the school system or channels those who

10:18

persevered away from the opportunities of higher education the herd of Palestinian Arab students face from

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kindergarten to University functioned like a series of seeds with sequentially

10:31

finer holes end of quote so to sum it up is part of the BTS movement which calls

10:37

for ending occupation secular colonialism and apartheid by focusing on an Institutional boycott BDS does not

10:44

Target individuals it targets institutions it does not Target identity it targets complicity and it's fully

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anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and opposes all forms of racism including obviously anti-semitism

11:01

excellent thank you so much I hope that clarifies for viewers the the history of

11:06

the boycott movement and the continued uh scholasticide really that that is

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happening as a result of the Israeli occupation and the and the clear role that universities play Not only in

11:18

developing Technologies um and ideologies of occupation but also

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direct attacks on students academics and and the institutions of universities

11:29

themselves thank you also for talking about Israeli academic institutions as as a pillar of the occupation not just

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and and that boycotting them actually can have a um a tremendous effect on the

11:43

economic boycott because we do have people who say why not just do economic boycott and not also and not the

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institutional boycott and those things are very linked so thank you for for bringing that up

11:55

um so turning to zoha as the BDS movement gains traction the state of Israel and Zionist organizations have

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been increasingly turned to intimidation tactics and even criminalizing speech on

12:06

Palestinian and BDS campaigns in the United States and elsewhere we have seen a bit of this at the AAA in

12:14

a prior campaign in 2015 2016 to pass a BDS resolution which by the way only

12:20

failed by 39 votes so people should vote Palestine legal organization you work

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with has been at the Forefront of fighting back against this including you have successfully defended other

12:31

academic associations endorsing the academic boycott can you speak to the efforts to chill

12:36

student and faculty organizing for Palestinian rights and can you speak to why it's important for academics to

12:42

insist on our right to continue to organize for Palestinian rights

12:49

thanks so much for that question um so the reason why Palestine legal exists as an organization is this

12:56

understanding that as we we as a society learn about what's going on in Palestine and as people are able to organize and

13:03

build people power they're able to create change and you know end us funding to Israel and allow Palestinians

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to demand their freedom and to demand liberation um and there's been this huge effort

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across Society to try to restrict that activism um in order to prevent Israel from

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facing any kind of criticism any kind of like restrictions or questioning and so

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the the role that we play here is is to try to prevent people from using the law

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or for us to use the law to defend people against um efforts to silence them in a variety

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of ways um campuses in particular have long been at the heart of social justice movements

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as a place where young people are first encountering challenges to the their ways of presume Notions and their ways

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of thinking it's their first opportunity to develop their own understanding of their place in the world

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and because campuses are built around you know instilling knowledge and

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demanding critical thinking and because they're the place where we're trying to equip the Next Generation with the

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skills and information that they'll be able to use for the rest of their lives and because they're a space that's

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offering a sense of community that's often lacking in the modern world it's such a fertile ground for organizing

14:20

across a variety of social justice issues and particularly about Palestine and so if you're looking at the younger

14:27

generation in polling you see a big shift in their understanding of this situation and their support for

14:33

Palestinian rights and that is something that terrifies the Israeli government which has put a lot of funding into

14:39

preventing in particular boycott divestment and sanctions efforts um and so one thing that I just want to

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talk about is that these threats against campus organizing are coming from a variety of different reliables so there

14:52

is one sense where they're coming from government officials um and that's something that Israel advocacy groups have have

15:00

been focused on in trying to establish anti-boycott laws which we're going to

15:05

talk about a little bit and trying to adopt a particular definition of anti-semitism the international

15:11

Holocaust remembrance alliance definition which includes things like calling the state of Israel a racist

15:17

Endeavor even though there have been well-documented reports put out by international human rights organizations

15:23

that do document the state of apartheid in Israel the idea is that that is going

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to be classified as a form of anti-Semitism that allows governments and that allows universities to try to

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punish those organizing efforts and because of those because of that

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work you often see administrators um both at public and private institutions

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um concerned around for example their ability to get funding from the federal government um because they might face civil rights

15:53

investigations if they allow Palestine organizing on campus um we also see

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um attacks from within the the institution because of of the concerns around

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funding um at private institutions there might be a concern around whether the um

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university will continue to get donations from people who have an interest in protecting Israel

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um but we're also seeing that at public institutions where you would expect there to be a greater

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level of independence from those private funding interests but for example at the

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University of Washington last year there was a five million dollar endowment that I mean a five million dollar gift that

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was made to their Israel studies program that was returned to the donor because the donor disagreed with the the in

16:41

doubt like the the chairs um positions uh criticizing Israel and support of a

16:46

petition that was recognizing Palestinian rights and so there is that

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that Financial um pressure on administrators and this effort to try to shut down anything that

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might be controversial that might hurt their funding streams um and then we're also seeing a lot of third-party attacks on professors and

17:06

faculty for example websites like stop anti-Semitism or Canary mission that are

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creating these profiles that are documenting Palestine activism and portraying it as a form of anti-Semitism

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or as something hateful or as something that is um supportive of terrorism for example

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and you can see that online and then you also see that come out in in the physical world where there's these

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posters being put up on campus targeting Palestine activists and branding them as

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terrorists and that is incredibly intimidating for both professors and students

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um for students you know they are in a more vulnerable position but we're seeing increasingly academics also being

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placed in a vulnerable position as we're seeing like tenure protections being weakened as we're seeing more adjuncts

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being relied upon who don't have that same job security as a tenured professor might have and so there is this effort

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to try to um Target you know both students and faculty in order to prevent this this

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place that is really a seed for activism that people carry with them throughout their lives I actually I haven't been

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keeping track of time I wanted to just use like one case example to talk about this but I don't know if I'd have time for that

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um yeah if you could do in a couple minutes that would be great um so one thing I want to talk about um right now is is something that's been in

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the media recently that just really describes those different levels of censorship it's not involving a

18:33

professor it's involving a student um which is the graduation speaker at the City University of New York law school

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um Fatima Muhammad who has been facing a lot of attacks particularly in the Zionist media but also from politicians

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so um Fatima Muhammad was elected by her peers as the graduation speaker and in

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Her speech she you know talked about the importance of their law school's commitment to social justice and

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Progressive values and so she criticized for example the New York police department and she also criticized the

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Israeli government and talked about the efforts on their campus to organize around this issue they had a BDS

19:11

resolution passed both by students and also by faculty at the CUNY law school

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and so the attacks that we saw on her first began before she even gave her speech so there was an expectation by

19:24

the end University that she run her um uh her prepared remarks um by them

19:30

before she was allowed to make that speech which is not um an expectation that we had heard of in the past it's this new requirement I don't know if it

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was enacted specifically because the students had elected her or if it was something that was already in place but

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there was that sense of needing to have that prior approval which was a new hurdle that we hadn't seen in the past

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um once her remarks were made uh we saw in reactionary newspapers like the New

19:55

York Post she was being portrayed as spreading hate speech and then that prompted the Board of Trustees at the

20:02

City University of New York to put out a message saying that her speech was not something that is protected by the First

20:09

Amendment so they were saying that there's hate speech that's not predicted by the First Amendment which is a total Distortion of the law she was not

20:15

engaging in hate speech I think she was engaging in a very loving speech there but there was

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um this effort to portray that as something that should have been prohibited even though the law doesn't allow that

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um and then at the same time we saw government officials not only condemning her so for example Richie Torres who

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gets um the largest amount of funding from aipac um who put out a message

20:38

condemning her we also saw that coming from Ted Cruz and then we saw APAC then in turn applauding them for their

20:43

remarks but then we're also seeing legislative efforts being introduced um to say for example the institutions that

20:50

allow um events that violate this ihra definition of anti-semitism to take

20:55

place would then lose their government funding and there's been demands that the city of University of New York System be defunded just because they

21:02

allowed the student to give this speech even though they're now piling on and then there's the personal attacks that

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she is facing um across the internet and I think it's very important for us to

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um understand that when these attacks take place if we back down from activism that isolates the people who are

21:19

choosing to stand up and so the more and more people are talking about Palestine the more protection that provides across

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the board because it makes people understand that this is an important issue and that if other people are able

21:30

to withstand these attacks that you will be too and that as a society will be in

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a better place to be able to talk about not only Palestine but other issues that then face similar types of censorship

21:42

that is modeled on the the targeting of Palestine activism thank you so much those are incredibly

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important points um I think that a lot of anthropologists may be concerned

21:54

about potential attacks um particularly certainly the AAA leadership is concerned with potential

22:00

attacks but there is safety in numbers and if we are going to answer this call to solidarity which is coming from you

22:07

know multiple uh pro-palestine activists around the globe we have to be aware

22:12

that we can we can stand together and we should stand with each other to withstand these attacks I also just want

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to highlight you know a very well-known Anthropologist many many years ago named Lila evalua anthropology listeners will

22:25

know her she wrote about resistance being a diagnostic of power it's a famous uh thing that gets quoted in

22:31

anthropology the fact that um these attacks are happening shows the

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power of the boycott movement the power of the pro-palestinian movement and its

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interconnected struggle with anti-racism around the world the fact that these attacks are escalating in the past 20

22:50

years along with the increasing support for Palestine shows that speaking out

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and boycott actually are working they are having an effect and I just want to

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connect this to draw the thread that Omar said you know the the original call came out nearly 25 years ago which by

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the way is like 40 years after the occupation started well 60 years after the founding of the state of Israel

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Palestinians were you know took a long time to and think about and make this call and decided that that was the time

23:22

when it should happen and and really urging us all to pay attention and wake up to this issue that was almost 25

23:29

years ago this is not a new radical issue and um thank you zoha for Ray

23:35

using this demographic ship younger Generations are starting to see this struggle for Palestinian Freedom as

23:41

connected to other Freedom struggles around the world including increasing numbers of young Jewish Americans

23:48

supporting this movement so thank you very much turning to Maya an argument we

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frequently hear from those who oppose the academic boycott is that the Israeli Academy is independent and should not be

24:00

held accountable for Israeli State violence you've been conducting research on the role of Israeli universities in settler

24:08

colonialism and apartheid can you share some of your findings um that illuminate why Israeli

24:13

universities are an appropriate Target for boycott

24:25

thank you Jessica and it's an honor to be in conversation with Alma renzoa so

24:30

thank you building on extensive research by Palestinian Scholars including pacby

24:36

I've been conducting Research into the complicity of Israeli universities in Israeli settler colonialism

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and I could share countless examples from this research that point to systematic and ongoing collaborations

24:47

between Israeli universities and the Israeli state that facilitate the daily violation of Palestinian rights

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but let me just share today three examples of epistemological complicity or of knowledge produced in the service

25:00

of colonization military occupation and apartheid so first and perhaps most directly

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relevant to many of us at the AAA the discipline of archeology in Israel is subordinated to Israeli colonialism

25:13

Departments of archeology across Israeli universities work closely with the Israeli Antiquities Authority the

25:18

Israeli military and Israeli settler organizations to conduct excavations and research in archaeological sites in the

25:25

occupied Palestinian territory this is an explicit violation of international law that strictly regulates the use of

25:30

archaeological research by occupying powers specifically the Hague convention for the protection of cultural property

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regulation 43 of the annex to the Hague convention and unesco's guidelines

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I urge you all to read nadiah's book facts on the ground that details the long history of Israeli archeology in

25:47

service of expropriating Palestinian lands and claiming historic Palestine as the Jewish National home

25:53

but crucially this collaboration of Israeli universities in the project is ongoing

25:59

so just as an example in 2021 Tel Aviv University and the Weitzman Institute collaborated with the Israeli

26:05

Antiquities authority to conduct research on Scrolls excavated and seized from the occupied West Bank the

26:10

department of land and of Israel studies and Archeology at Berlin University more recently in 2022 embarked on a new dig

26:17

in Philipp on the lands of Palestinian residents of three villages in the occupied West Bank including nabisala

26:25

faculty from the Departments of archeology at Hebrew University Tel Aviv University and the University of Haifa

26:30

have participated at Diggs in archaeological sites and across occupied East Jerusalem and this includes the

26:37

city of David which is an Antiquity site run by a Jewish settler organization ilad whose declared mission is to

26:43

judaai's Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhoods and expand Israeli sovereignty in the city elado oversees

26:49

ongoing excavations that have been repeatedly shown to be wholly unscientific destroying any remnants of

26:55

the Islamic period at the site they oversee to selectively curate a narrative about an exclusive Jewish

27:00

history of Jerusalem nevertheless Hebrew University Tel Aviv University and barilan University

27:06

maintain ongoing collaboration with David and these Israeli archaeologists it's

27:12

important to understand know exactly what they are doing in a 2019 case the Jerusalem District Court accepted a

27:19

request to withhold the names of archaeologists who receive permits to conduct excavations in the occupied West

27:24

Bank including the details of the permits and the exact locations and artifacts of the digs the grounds for

27:31

concealment were expressly to protect these archaeologists from the academic boycott and to Shield Israel from

27:37

accountability another example I want to highlight is Israeli Middle East studies a discipline

27:44

that for decades has trained members of the military and Security State and this is also an ongoing project as of 2019

27:51

Hebrew University's Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies is a tailored degree program offered to

27:57

Elite Israeli intelligence soldiers these soldiers complete a joint ba in Middle Eastern studies and another

28:02

selective field alongside military training for the intelligence Corps the university designated a space in one

28:09

of its very few campus dorms to create a closed military base complete with guards security cameras and Military

28:15

vetting required for entry soldiers train study and live together separate from civilian students but of

28:23

course using University infrastructure throughout the Academic Year the soldiers train in intelligence

28:28

methodologies philosophy and data collection at Hebrew University and during the summer the intern with the

28:34

intelligence directorate the shinbit and the musad military leaders consider this program crucial

28:40

soldiers Central nodes of intelligence work many soldiers serve in age 200 Israel's

28:47

leading intelligence Corps unit responsible for collecting data on Palestinian phone calls text messages

28:52

and emails whistleblowing soldiers from this unit corroborated what Palestinians

28:58

have long reported which is that the daily work of Unit 8 200 includes Gathering data used to try Palestinians

29:05

and Military courts without ever seeing the evidence against them and documenting personal information used to

29:12

extort Palestinians into collaborating with the Israeli military and shinbit including financial difficulties sexual

29:18

orientation serious illness or Medical Treatments needed by a loved one

29:24

in the last example I want to briefly share concerns weapons development established through collaborations with

29:31

the technion which is Israel's Institute of Technology and other Israeli universities Rafael Israeli Aerospace

29:37

Industries and elbeet are Israel's leading military corporations and Global exporters of Technologies of War

29:43

first developed as nationally owned Industries designed to supply domestically produced Technologies to

29:49

the Israeli State their main client is the Israeli military and their products routinely Target Palestinians

29:56

Albert and Israeli Aerospace Industries drones carrying Rafael missiles and F-16

30:01

fighter jets and Apache helicopters equipped by elbit systems were used in Israeli offensives on the besieged Gata

30:08

strip in 2008-2009 2012 2014 and 2021.

30:14

the UN Human Rights Council Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found Israel to have committed war crimes in

30:21

all of these offenses due to its inadequate protection of Palestinian civilians yet following these offensives

30:27

Israel has marketed field tested new technologies for international export through jointly run research programs

30:34

Laboratories scholarships and grants that thereon and other Israeli universities sustain this deadly

30:40

infrastructure so it's almost said that academic boycott targets Israeli institutions and

30:47

is directed at this institutional complicity but I think that we can and should also

30:52

ask where are Israeli scholars in all of this why is there no sustained campaign

30:57

by Israeli academics to protest the unscientific and overtly Colonial use of

31:02

the discipline of archeology to facilitate the theft of Palestinian artifacts and lands why was the Israeli

31:09

faculty opposition to lot and the recruitment of the foremost Israeli Middle Eastern studies Department by the

31:14

intelligence Corps so limited and short-lived leaving it to Palestinian students at Hebrew University to lead

31:20

the struggle against yet another encroachment of the Israeli military onto their campus why is there no

31:26

movement of Israeli academics to protest and interrupt the development of weapons and Technologies in the Laboratories and

31:33

science departments across their institutions technologies that are deployed against Palestinians and then

31:38

exported abroad to boost Israel's status as a global leader in arms sales the only way the only way to remake

31:46

Israeli universities of democratic institutions with academic freedom for all is through decolonization and that

31:52

begins with the academic boycott and so I urge all my fellow AAA members to vote Yes on the resolution and you can do

31:59

that today thank you thank you so much that was very powerful

32:04

and you really showed Omar's point that Israeli Academia is not just complicit

32:10

and it is certainly not independent but it is a pillar of settler colonialism and apartheid it sustains this deadly

32:18

infrastructure in your words for those anthropologists listening we will have a

32:24

special q a session for uh dealing with this issue of archeology's role in

32:31

um in the settler Colonial project that will be on July 7th sorry July 11th and

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for more information on that you can email anthro boycott gmail.com [Music]

32:43

so Omar in response to our resolution the Israeli anthropological Association came out in opposition and claimed that

32:50

Israeli academics are critical to the struggle for Palestinian rights and that they are currently resisting the new

32:56

far-right Israeli government I think Maya gave us some examples of how Israeli academics are silent on many of

33:03

these issues what would you say to those who claim that we are punishing

33:09

individual Israeli academics or violating their academic freedom what would you say to those who say that

33:16

boycotting Israeli universities would be counterproductive these are arguments we are hearing what would you say to those

33:23

thanks Jessica so I'll focus on the main two points you mentioned punishing Israeli academics being the first point

33:30

and then saving Israel's democracy you know we're busy saving Israel's democracy don't boycott us and bother us

33:36

with this nonsense basically so let's go to the first argument when Zionist Israeli academics first attacked

33:44

Acme and the academic boycott called in 2004 2005 they made that specious claim that the

33:52

boycott targets academics not just institutions and they thought for a good reason they could get away with it

33:58

despite the very clear language in the package Hall because they assumed Western academics

34:04

for the most part will not treat the Palestinian Corps and will trust their fellow white Israeli Scholars claim on

34:11

face value and many did unfortunately but academics eventually endured believe

34:17

it or not and then you have read the Practical and they saw clearly and later the

34:22

guidelines that back the issued that it was indeed vary consistently and institutional boycott

34:30

explained in in very clear language now it is beyond shocking that 19 years

34:37

later the Israeli anthropological Association and its anti-palestinian accomplices in the U.S would still

34:44

repeat the same lie this is beyond intellectual dishonesty

34:49

it's truly pathetically desperate the BTS movement upholds as I said

34:56

earlier the universal Declaration of Human Rights and therefore calls for boycotting institutions not individuals

35:01

targeting complicity not identity Pac be subscribes to the UN definition

35:07

of academic freedom which prohibits the infringement on the academic freedom of others as well as prohibits

35:13

discrimination and repression anchored in precepts of international law and Universal human rights the BDS

35:21

movement at large including taxi rejects on principled Annie McCarthy type

35:27

political testing or boycotts targeting individuals based on their opinion or

35:32

identity ethnicity race gender religion and so on

35:37

if however an individual is representing the state of Israel or a complicit trade

35:44

institution a Rector a Dean a president of the University they cannot claim I'm an individual

35:50

academic you're an official representing a complicit Association a complicit institution and therefore you will be

35:56

held accountable as a representative you're no longer an individual academic so there's really nothing in the

36:02

academic booklet that would Target research and travel and Joint collaborations with other academics and

36:08

visits and absolutely nothing we're just calling on all academics and all academic institutions to boycott Israeli

36:14

academic institutions period now the boycott conflicts with academic

36:22

freedom regardless argument also confuses academic privileges with

36:27

academic freedom and it fails accordingly to grasp that an Institutional academic boycott would

36:34

harm perks and privileges not rights so if an Tel Aviv University is

36:40

boycotted by many Western universities it will lose some resources and some of

36:46

the academics will have less money to travel and maybe less luxurious Laboratories those are not rights those

36:54

are not human rights those is not academic freedom those are privileges Colonial privileges at that at the

37:00

expense of oppressing Palestinians some critics May argue still that BDS

37:06

contraves academic freedom because it cannot but hurt individual Israeli academics no matter how much you avoid

37:13

it By ignoring the real systematic Israeli suppression of academic freedom of the

37:20

colonized indigenous Palestinians for decades and focusing solely on the

37:26

hypothetical infringement on some perks that Israeli academics might lose the

37:33

colonizers might lose this argument is patently racist and Colonial

37:40

in the past many academics supported a much more sweeping blanket academic boycott against South

37:48

Africa in the apartheid era which targeted universities as well as individual academics yet today some of

37:56

the same academics are reluctant to support a strictly institutional boycott of Israeli apartheid universities that

38:03

are violating our rights every day that's the definition of hypocrisy but this is not the worst part the worst

38:10

part is really the defending democracy you know we're busy defending democracy don't boycott us

38:15

by whitewashing the current conflict between two Israeli camps that equally

38:21

support the continuation of Israel's system of settler colonialism and apartheid against indigenous Palestinians while fighting over social

38:29

cultural judicial and economic policies and Visions for the settler Colony as

38:34

somehow pro-democracy the I double a the Israeli anthropological Association statement makes me think the acronym

38:41

better fits the name Israeli apartheid apologists i-a this I double a attitude

38:47

reeks of white saviorism horrible colonialism and deep-seated racism

38:53

against indigenous Palestinians what mainly troubles the IAA and its ilk

38:59

is not just the new Israeli government's radical policies which they are in the social cultural economic areas they are

39:06

but they're really really troubled that this government Israel's most far-right

39:12

racist authoritarian corrupt sexist and homophobic ever is completely dropping

39:18

the mask that has covered Israel's 75 year old regime of settler colonialism

39:24

and apartheid against indigenous Palestinians that's what's troubling them and everyone like them because they

39:30

don't want that mask dropped they want to maintain it and make Israel look like a nice liberal democracy while

39:37

maintaining its Savage extremely violent oppression of the Palestinians

39:44

thank you that was exceptionally eloquent and I want to tell all of our listeners that this this webinar will be

39:49

available for you to listen again and to share um the comments of our speakers including those beautiful comments by

39:56

well beautiful horrific really um great comments about a horrific uh situation

40:01

so it will be available on this YouTube channel um now turning to zoha

40:08

um we've heard a lot about anti-boycott laws and even some in the AAA leadership

40:13

have brought up the potential legal implications for the association if we endorse boycott

40:19

but there's less attention paid to how misunderstandings or distortions of

40:24

these problematic laws extend their chilling effect even further is this something you could address for

40:31

us today yeah I'm happy to do that um I think just like to to begin at a

40:37

really basic level I think it's important for us to think about um the arguments that that had been made

40:43

against the the boycott resolution so for example there's been an argument that the association is no longer going

40:49

to be able to hold its annual meetings in states that have adopted laws against BDS

40:56

um and so one thing to think about is what those laws are um and then also to think about how

41:01

those laws fit in with our legal framework um so the laws that are targeting the

41:07

BDS movement um either include laws that are targeting State contracts so they say

41:13

that the state is not going to contract with entities that boycott Israel or

41:18

that they'll require um entities to sign some kind of certification saying that they won't boycott Israel in order to enter into

41:24

contracts with them and then there's also a different set that is irrelevant here which is targeting uh State

41:31

Investments and entities and so for example Pension funds that are investing in companies will not invest in

41:37

companies that boycott Israel now if you look um at the you know the the fundamentals

41:44

of the US legal system um the supreme law of the land is going to be the Constitution and the first

41:49

amendment protects our right to speak without facing government restrictions and the courts have long recognized that

41:56

boycotts are a form of speech and so if the government is trying to pass a law

42:01

for example that says you can't boycott Israel that law would be clearly unconstitutional it would get struck

42:08

down and so the way that states have tried to work around that is by saying that we are entering into these

42:14

contracts for goods and services and these contracts we don't want to give the states money to entities that are

42:22

discriminatory and we also don't want to give the state's money to an entity that's not going to be able to provide the the best economic output for us

42:29

because they're restricting the market in which they are um able to make purchases of supplies that

42:35

they're using in these State contracts um so when these laws have been enforced

42:40

there have been legal challenges against them saying that actually even if you claim that this is just about the state

42:46

doing business what you are trying to do is silence people who have particular views and that's a violation of the

42:52

First Amendment even if though you're trying to work around it and again and again we saw courts strike down these

42:57

laws as being unconstitutional um and so what the states did in

43:03

response to these laws getting struck down is not to take the laws off the books but to change the nature of the

43:10

law so that they applied to a more restricted set of individuals so for example they put particular thresholds

43:18

saying that it only applies to contracts of a hundred thousand dollars or more or it only applies to a company with 10 or

43:23

more employees and what those restrictions did was they narrowed the group of people that the laws would

43:29

apply to to narrow the the group of people that could potentially um oppose those laws in court and so

43:36

they still had these laws on the book but they wanted not to actually apply the laws so that what the laws were

43:42

doing was telling people that the states oppose BDS and not actually having to

43:48

enforce it in a way that would allow someone then to go to court and to challenge laws there was one court that

43:54

has upheld um an anti-boycott law and that was in Arkansas where the newspaper the Arkansas times not did not actually

44:01

support BDS but what they said was that they didn't want to comment on this issue and as it worked its way through

44:07

the Arkansas courts and um through the the court of appeals that law was upheld because the court found

44:13

that that wasn't a form of expression that was being made and so it's possible that the analysis would be different if

44:19

it was someone who did actually support BDS um but it but that that case was appealed to the Supreme Court and the

44:25

Supreme Court did not weigh in and so there is this um this unique place in Arkansas where the state's anti-boycott

44:33

law has withstood judicial scrutiny just because the Supreme Court chose not to weigh in on that issue but ultimately if

44:40

you're thinking about the way these laws are getting applied these are contracts where people are trying to for example

44:45

build a building for the state or um to provide like janitorial services

44:51

for the state or things that the the state is Contracting for a particular set of services

44:56

these laws have never been applied as far as I know to anyone's ability to

45:01

book for example a state-owned convention center and if you really think about the way that that would

45:07

operate is that the state would be providing its space like a public venue uh based on

45:14

someone's particular views and that again gets back at the the very fundamentals of like what the first amendment is being made to protect it's

45:21

not it's meant to prevent the government from enacting a political limits test for access to things like venues or the

45:29

ability to speak um in these these public spaces and so I think that if there were an effort to

45:36

try to um use the laws in those ways it would have be a very easy challenge against those laws and would serve to reaffirm

45:43

the first amendment's protection of boycotts and so you know it's not something we've ever seen and if we did

45:49

see that I think it would be a very easy legal challenge compared to um the the more complicated approaches

45:56

that have been been taken by states to um Target contracts

46:01

the other thing that we see is you know with these states that are creating these like monetary thresholds or

46:07

numbers of employees to try to restrict the the direct application of these laws

46:13

um we see pro-israel groups cite to these laws as saying that the state has like a public policy against boycotts

46:20

that is meant to then scare people in situations that have absolutely nothing to do with

46:26

um the like State contracts or anything like that uh so for example in California there is an anti-bds law

46:33

nominally um what that law specifically says is that state agencies will not contract

46:39

with someone for um a contract of a hundred thousand dollars or more

46:44

um unless that entity certifies that any boycott it has that's you know targeting

46:49

a Sovereign Nation including Israel um does not violate its the state's

46:54

existing anti-discrimination laws so it doesn't actually create any new restrictions on what people are allowed

47:00

to do it just requires them to sign find this additional provision saying that they're not engaging in discrimination

47:05

and as we've discussed the institutional boycott is not something that is a violation of anti-discrimination laws

47:12

either at the the state level in California or even at the international level in the the UN Declaration of Human

47:19

Rights this is something that has been specifically crafted Not to cause individual

47:24

um harm it's meant to you know Express a political opinion and to you know not

47:32

allow us to provide you know financial support or a platform for entities that

47:37

disagree with us politically and so this um sorry I lost my transplant

47:44

um but uh so this this effort um this uh particular law in California has been

47:50

cited by Israeli government officials for example um the city of Alameda was trying to

47:56

enter into a sister city relationship with uh Palestinian Village that you know activists within that

48:03

um city had been very active and in going there and visiting and seeing what was going on and I think they helped

48:09

build a soccer field there and they had wanted to establish like a formal relationship between their small City

48:14

and this Palestinian Village which you know there's