I think President Obama has been better to Israel than his critics acknowledge, and has been very pro-Israel by any standard except perhaps that of the prior two presidents, who were the most pro-Israel of any American presidents. But it’s hard to imagine him giving a speech like this: “It is a Canadian tradition to […]
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CWRU President and Provost Reject Academic Boycott of Israel
By Jonathan H. Adler on December 27, 2013 8:55 am in Academia, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities, Israel
In a statement e-mailed to faculty and other members of the university community, Case Western Reserve University President Barbara Snyder and Provost Bud Baeslack forcefully rejected calls for an academic boycott of Israel. As they note, academic boycotts of this sort run contrary to principles of academic freedom and “seek to subvert one of higher […]
Northwestern Can’t Quit ASA Over Boycott Because it is Not a Member
By Eugene Kontorovich on December 22, 2013 11:58 am in Academia, Anti-Semitism, Freedom of Speech, Israel
Northwestern University recently condemned the American Studies Association boycott of Israel. Unlike some other schools that quit their institutional membership in the ASA over the boycott, Northwestern has not. Many of my Northwestern colleagues were about to start urging a similar withdrawal. Then we learned from our administration that despite being listed as in institutional […]
Northwestern University Rejects Israel Boycotts
I am proud to say Northwestern University has strongly rejected the American Studies Association and other proposed boycotts of Israel, and reaffirmed its ties to Israel institutions. The following statement was released Friday by Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro and Provost Dan Linzer (emphasis mine): Recently the membership of the American Studies Association approved a […]
American Studies Association Faces Consequences from its Boycott
I previously posted about the proposed boycott of Israeli institutions by the American Studies Association, which was approved by a vote of its membership over the weekend. The boycott is pretty lame; it’s supposed to be in solidarity with the international boycott movement advocated by Palestinian “civil society” organizations, which calls for a complete cultural […]
Israel, Palestine, and Democracy
At Commentary, I have a new piece on the common argument that Israel must make a deal with the Palestinians to save itself as a democracy. Here is an excerpt: The “democracy” argument has become the central justification of the diplomatic process, incessantly invoked by Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli peace envoy Tzipi […]
BDS Advocate Roger Waters Holds Some Strange Views about Jews
Last week I wrote about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel and the tenuous foothold it is getting in the American academy. I also happened to read an article that led me to think about how some individuals are so convinced that Israel is obviously evil that he believes that something must be […]
Interesting Essay on Jews who Oppose Israel
Shlomo Fischer in the Times of Israel: I suggest that in fact, they [ultra-Orthodox and leftists who are hostile to the existence of Israel] do share a common Jewish theme. This theme was articulated by the great Israeli scholar of the Jewish religion, Gershom Scholem, who argued that the price that the Jewish people paid […]
The American Studies Association and the Pending, Watered Down, Israel Boycott
I wrote this for the Manhattan Institute’s excellent Minding the Campus site, and figured I’d repost it here. From the bowels of academia comes news that the National Council of the American Studies Association has voted in favor of boycotting Israeli institutions. The boycott resolution goes to the full membership for an up or down […]
New Paper on International Criminal Court’s Jurisdiction over Israeli Settlements
By Eugene Kontorovich on December 1, 2013 3:00 pm in Global Governance/World Government, International Law, Israel, National Security, War and Armed Conflict
My paper, Israel/Palestine — The ICC’s Uncharted Territory, has just been published in the Journal of International Criminal Justice. It explains that the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction over the oft-threatened and much-discussed Palestinian referral of Israeli settlements, despite the General Assembly’s recognition of Palestine as a non-member state. In brief, the relevant […]
The EU Supports Exploitation of Resources in the Occupied Territories
The Occupied Sawahari Territories that is (aka Western Sahara). Global Post runs my commentary today on the European Union’s new treaty with Morocco, which does everything the EU has been claiming in its increasingly hostile recent dealings with Israel that international law forbids. The EU’s position regarding Western Sahara is consistent with its practice in […]
Forgetting the Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries
My wife and I just attended a tour at the National Archives of the exhibit of Iraqi-Jewish documents that were rescued and preserved from the flooded basement of the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in 2003. My Iraqi-Jewish wife, along with many others, is very upset that these documents, having been stolen from the Jewish community, are […]
Australia Anti-Discrimination Law and BDS at the University of Sydney Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (UPDATED)
[I’ve rewritten this post to eliminate unwieldy updates and improve it–I relied too much on an incomplete account from Ha’aretz–but I’ve preserved the original at the end for anyone who’s interested.] An Israeli NGO, Shurat Ha’din, is suing an Australian academic, Jake Lynch, director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University […]
New Report on EU’s “Settlement Guidelines” for Israel
The Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem think tank, has released a legal and policy analysis, by Prof. Avi Bell and myself, of the European Commission’s recent “settlement guidelines” – a ban on funding Israeli entities located across, or, more importantly, conducting any “activities” in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and Gaza. I’ve […]
How the EU Continues to Fund Settlements in Occupied Territory
The EU recently issued guidelines blocking research and other grants to Israeli institutions with activities (archeological digs, etc.) across the Green Line. In the yesterday’s Jerusalem Post I reveal that the EU continues to actively fund settlements in occupied territory, against their own understanding of international law: Under guidelines prepared earlier this summer, euros would […]