A senior Israeli education official has described the country’s scientists as “an army…facing attempts to boycott us”.
Speaking at a discussion on Israel’s participation in the EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme, chair of the Council for Higher Education’s planning and budget committee Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg called the scientists “ambassadors for Israel in Europe”.
Trajtenberg told his colleagues that scientists receiving EU grants were an essential bulwark against efforts to advance an academic boycott of Israel. The campaign, based on Israeli academic institutions’ complicity in human rights abuses, has recently seen pro-boycott votes in the likes of the American Studies Association and Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.
We have an army of 2,000 people facing attempts to boycott us. They have close, personal, unmediated interactions with their colleagues.
Israeli officials have long sought to use the likes of academics, cultural workers, and indeed just average citizens, in the services of propaganda. For example, shortly after the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in ‘Operation Cast Lead’, an Israeli diplomat announced a plan to:
send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theatre companies, exhibits. This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war
Trajtenberg’s remarks also chime with a strategy favoured by many of those fighting BDS and Palestine solidarity initiatives, who see it as vital to foster personal relationships with those in positions of perceived influence, whether on campuses, faith communities, trade unions, or other institutions.
Trajtenberg’s comments, coming from a senior figure in Israel’s Council for Higher Education, are yet further evidence that the Israeli academy is not, as is portrayed by boycott opponents, an ally of Palestinians in their struggle. Indeed, those seen as ‘left-wing’ are thought to be better placed to defend Israel internationally. As Ari Shavit put it in an article in 2011, “without left-wing scientists, left-wing intellectuals and left-wing high-tech entrepreneurs, Israel…would not be able to rule over Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank].”
Note: Image updated to Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg at 13:52 GMT on 12/02/2014
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