Hateful anti-Israel Discrimination by European Academics
June 1, 2003

Here's a powerful piece about the horrible discrimination against Israeli academics. It includes the amazing story of a Palestinian man who boasted on TV about his son's suicide bombing, only to have a heart attack and be treated in the same hospital and by the same doctors that were then treating the victims of his son's attack.

The most famous and repugnant example of discrimination was the recent decision by Mona Baker, an academic at the University of Manchester, to fire two Israelis from editorial boards of publications she administered. It was widely criticized -- including by the eminent Modern Language Association and the American Association of University Professors.

It’s always a delicate distinction between being anti-Semitic and being anti-Israel. Mona Baker's decision to fire Israelis simply because they were Israeli is clearly discriminatory and runs counter to all standards of academic freedom and non-discrimination, including those held by the United Nations.

Mona Baker might not be anti-Semitic, but she has a problem with the Jewish state (she said, "It is not Israelis per se but the Israeli state that I deplore"). What to make of this? Leon Wieseltier put it best in remarks to a recent New York conference on anti-Semitism:

"It is not the case, of course, that every criticism of the Jewish state is an instance of anti-Semitism; but it is certainly the case that every instance of anti-Semitism is a criticism of the Jewish state, a fundamental criticism, since it denies the legitimacy of the ideal of a normal life for Jews, who are consigned by anti-Semites of one kind or another to an endless abnormality of one kind or another. If Israel cannot be above criticism, neither can Israel’s critics be above criticism; and the anxiety that many critics of Israeli policy are at bottom critics of Israeli reality..."


Dr. Benjamin Sachs on European Academic Discrimination against Israeli Academics
Sunday, January 26, 2003

It's bad enough that Israeli doctors are spending their lives in emergency rooms treating Jewish and Arab victims of suicide bombers. What really makes them heartsick these days, however, is that they also have to fend off mindless attacks from their scientific colleagues, particularly in Europe.

That was the most gut-wrenching impression I returned with after a recent trip to Israel along with 70 other senior physicians from across America. We had gone to bolster the spirits of our Israeli colleagues, exhausted and bewildered from two years of the relentless experience of treating victims of terror.

We arrived at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where some 2,000 victims have been treated, less than 24 hours after a particularly horrific bus bombing in Jerusalem. Hours earlier, teams of Jewish-Arab doctors had done what they've done for the past two years: jumped into action to save the lives of the critically injured.

On Israeli television the night before, the father of the homicidal bomber bragged that he was proud of his son who had attacked a busload of schoolchildren and senior citizens. On the day we arrived, that same father suffered chest pains and was brought to Hadassah. He was seen by the same doctors who were still treating the victims of his son's madness.

The humanitarian approach to medicine of our colleagues in Israel stands in stark contrast to actions recently taken by our European colleagues. In Britain and Norway, countries we Americans generally feel are kindred to our way of life, university professors and scientific researchers have recently refused to share research information with Israel's academics and physicians because they oppose Israel's policy toward the Palestinians.

The head of Hadassah's gene therapy institute, Dr. Eitan Galun, an Israeli Jew, has been engaged in research to cure a blood disease prevalent in the Palestinian community. He recently requested assistance from a Norwegian scientist and was refused.

"Due to the present situation in the Middle East, I will not deliver any material to an Israeli university," she responded by e-mail.

By her actions, which confuse science with politics, the Palestinian population will needlessly continue to suffer from a disease that could be cured through scientific cooperation.

Also recently, two Israeli academics were dismissed from the boards of scholarly linguistics journals. The first, Miriam Shlesinger, a senior lecturer in translation studies at Bar-Ilan University, was removed from the editorial board of the Translator Studies in Intercultural Communication.

The second, Gideon Toury, a professor at Tel Aviv University's School of Cultural Studies, was dismissed from the international advisory board of Translation Studies Abstracts. Mona Baker, a University of Manchester academic who has circulated a petition calling for a moratorium on grants and contracts with research institutions in Israel, owns both publications.

These examples dramatically demonstrate an unacceptable breakdown in the international norms of intellectual freedom and collaboration. Our colleagues in Israel do not mix science and politics; our colleagues in Europe should know better than to do so. Using Israel's political situation as a reason to withhold collaborative information is a smokescreen. Moreover, it is a symptom of that chronic European disease, anti-Semitism, which now hides behind anti-Israel rhetoric.

Israel is criticized for human rights violations as it tries to protect its citizens. Yet it is the only country in the Middle East with a free press and an independent judiciary, and all its citizens -- men and women, whether Jew, Muslim or Christian -- have the right to vote.

It's high time for the courageous and intellectually honest among our European colleagues to make a stand against their region's particular brand of bigotry. It is past time for doctors and scientists to first heal themselves and then immunize Europe against this centuries-old scourge.

The medical community in Israel truly reflects the words of the prophet Malachi 2:10: "Have we not one father hath not one God created us, wherefore shall we deal treacherously with each other. Profaning the covenant of our fathers."

It's time for our colleagues in Europe to recognize this and act accordingly.

Dr. Benjamin Sachs is the Harold H. Rosenfield Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproduction Biology at the Harvard Medical School. He recently led a medical mission to Israel, sponsored by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston and the Hadassah Medical Organization and Hadassah.