Regev tweet ignites campus fury

The troubled director of one of the most prestigious university colleges in the world has become mired in controversy since it emerged that she invited the new Israeli ambassador in London for tea. Controversial Mark Regev had been in the job less than two days when he sent out a tweet boasting about his invitation to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) from his old friend Baroness Valerie Amos.

Within hours of the news breaking, students, academics and leading student societies showed their displeasure by signing letters and issuing condemnatory statements; demands for an apology were also made as a demonstration took place on the steps of the prestigious central London institution. Graffiti is now being seen around the SOAS campus accusing the director of being “complicit”.

Tea with Amos was probably more of a “friends reunited” affair for Australian-born Regev; the baroness played a key role ahead of the Iraq war for another mutual friend, Tony Blair. The three have met on overseas trips, including at least one organised by Labour Friends of Israel when Blair was Middle East Peace Envoy.

Apart from the smug tweet from Regev, the full content of his conversation with Amos has yet to be revealed. There can be little doubt, though, that the activities of the powerful boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement at SOAS were touched upon.

Baroness Amos has so far claimed that she summoned the Israeli ambassador to her office to explain the poor treatment of a SOAS student by Israel, but a source on the campus said that this was a weak excuse that no one is buying. “A university director does not have the power or influence to bring an ambassador to heel like that,” I was told, “never mind ‘summons’ him to her office. This was tea with an old friend.”

It is an open secret that Regev, once the mouthpiece and apologist of the Israeli war machine as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman, is under orders to smash the BDS movement in Britain because it is proving to be among the most troublesome in the global campaign against Israel. MEMO revealed recently that the media department at the Israel Embassy in London has a military-style wall chart and map of the UK pinpointing the most active campus BDS movements and Palestinian societies.

Amos first came to prominence in 2003 when she was appointed as international development secretary by Blair when he was prime minister; she got the job after the resignation of Clare Short over the Iraq war. As a foreign office minister, she had a key role ahead of that conflict when she was pressed into action to canvas African leaders in the run-up to the disastrous invasion and its aftermath, travelling to Cameroon, Angola and Guinea to urge their governments to support the United States and Britain in the UN Security Council.

Her appointment as director of SOAS raised eyebrows last year, and within four weeks the baroness was forced to write to staff and students denying that she had backed proposals to slash a third of the institution’s courses. The row, which saw students staging a sit-in and the Students’ Union passing a vote of no confidence in the executive board, was described as a “misunderstanding” by a spokesperson at the university.

Now it appears that there has been another “misunderstanding” over tea in her office with Regev. There are widespread and growing calls for her to apologise over the meeting, as well as accusations that Amos has violated the principles of the BDS movement, which SOAS students, academics and staff voted to support in a campus referendum in March 2015. Almost three-quarters voted in support of a boycott of Israeli universities.

So far more than a dozen student societies have written to Baroness Amos to condemn the Regev meeting, which they called “an act of normalisation with Israel”. These include the Palestine, Yemen, Kurdish, Iraqi, Feminist, Labour, MENA and Syria societies at the college. MEMO has been given sight of a letter signed by scores of academics expressing to Amos their “dismay” after reading Mark Regev’s Twitter feed boasting that he’d had “a good meeting” with her.

A good meeting with @ValerieAmos @SOAS today pic.twitter.com/gS0wdvQxdJ

— Mark Regev (@AmbMarkRegev) April 6, 2016

“We are alarmed by this meeting because Mark Regev is not an ordinary ambassador paying you a courtesy visit,” they wrote. “He is not only the ambassador of the world’s longest military occupation since World War II. He is also the man who, in front of world media, including UK media, justified Israel’s 2006 war-criminal aggression on Lebanon and its repeated war-criminal onslaughts on Gaza, including those of 2008-9, 2012 and 2014. He did so in his capacity as spokesman for the Israeli government, and thus is indelibly connected to these war crimes in public perception.”

Although Amos responded to critics by saying that she was merely following up on the detention of a SOAS research student by Israel, the academics were not impressed. “Indeed,” they added, “we can provide you with a list of SOAS community members who were maltreated by the Israeli authorities for the purpose of follow up.”

Furthermore they expressed their “regret” that such a meeting with a person like Regev could take place in the director’s office, given the fact that it came against the backdrop of the Israeli media’s vilification of SOAS students and staff. “The Israeli media have published misleading reports of our events that were critical of Israel’s oppressive practices. This is primarily due to the vast majority of 73 per cent of staff and students at SOAS who voted for a boycott of occupation-related Israeli institutions.”

The academics said that they felt that the meeting exposed a lack of understanding and respect for staff and students at the university who “have consistently taken a stance against Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.”

Before signing-off the letter, the SOAS academics reinforced the understanding that Regev is, based on his past record, not “welcome at SOAS, and we are sure that, had his visit been announced, a vast mobilisation would have occurred to block him from entering our premises. We hope that such an affront to the SOAS community will never be repeated.”

One gets the feeling that the next time Regev and Amos are reunited it will be at Israel’s London Embassy, without announcements being made on Twitter or selfies taken by the BDS map. It will, by default, become part of the shadowy world of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain.

Read: A new phase in Israel’s ‘lawfare’ strategy in Britain

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.