Does a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions Help in Ending Israel's Military Occupation of Palestinian Territories?

Abstract

In fact, the defenders of Israel on campus are in deep trouble, not because student well-being is at risk but because the rickety assemblage of distortions and myths used to justify support for Israeli policies can't withstand scholarly scrutiny. Having lost the actual arguments, Israel's defenders have now declared war on argument itself.--Saree Makdisi, 2015 I begin below with a brief personal anecdote that seeks to answer the title's question in the strong affirmative. Ominously, there are efforts currently afoot in the Israeli Knesset and stateside in the U.S. (Salita 2014) to pass a specific law designed to punish any form of boycott by individuals or institutions against Israel. If this materializes, it will place freedom of expression in the public sphere in Israel in severe jeopardy. It also will blacklist many academics outside the country, preventing them from entering Israel, as was the exemplary case with Professor Noam Chomsky, scheduled to lecture at Birzeit University in Ramallah in May 2010, but denied entry. Although Chomsky calls for end of Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands, he does not believe that a boycott is practical, and urges that efforts must focused more directly on ending the military occupation. In March 2013, I landed at Tel Aviv airport to attend the Diaspora Conference at An-Najah University, Nablus, West Bank. I was told by the conference organizers that transportation for me and other participants had been arranged. I could not rent a car from the airport and drive it through the Palestinian territories due to restrictions by the Israeli rental car companies related to lack of insurance coverage. After waiting for almost two hours at the airport, I was approached by a taxi driver of an Israeli firm who had been hired to drive me to an entry point to the West Bank, near the city of Qalqilya. As we approached the West Bank, he started coordinating my continuing trip to Nablus with another taxi driver coming from opposite direction to meet us on the western side of the Green Line boundary. I crossed the Green Line, entering the West Bank without inspection. Significantly, if I had come from the West Bank, seeking to enter Israel, I would have faced a regimen of strict inspection and questioning by Israeli border guards at the crossing point into Israel. From that point of entry to the West Bank, I continued my trip with the other taxi driver to Nablus. This second taxi had a Palestinian plate number. It would not have been allowed entry into Israel in any case. The grueling trip took almost four hours, crossing less than thirty miles. I am somehow privileged to be able to attend conferences on both sides of the Green Line, due to my Israeli citizenship along with my Canadian passport. The same is true for all Israeli scholars. This is not the case for Palestinian scholars residing in the West Bank or in Gaza Strip. For them, they cannot enter Israel without Israeli military permission, and entry is seldom granted without an exacting intelligent check. Israeli scholars enjoy the privilege of movement across the Israeli-imposed boundary lines inside Palestine/Israel and are able to drive through boundary crossing points smoothly. While Israeli academics have the luxury of organizing conferences inside their universities and do not experience any hassle along their path of producing knowledge, their counterparts in the Palestinian territories continue to endure the nightmare of the Israeli military occupation and in the case of Gaza, horrendous siege. Of course, many Israeli academics wish that Palestinians could come and participate in the Israeli university conferences and academic endeavors, but for their own political reasons and benefit. They expect the Palestinian participant to shut one eye to Israel's occupation of their lands and institutions while keeping the other eye open on what the conference entails. Such views are rarely openly expressed by Israeli academics. …