[log in to unmask] wrote:
> 
> In a message dated Mon, 13 May 2002  2:16:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes:
> 
> <<There are many Jewish professors and students, and forgive me here for "generalizing," but I just don't believe that Jewish professors or students would harbor views against Israel or allow anyone else to do so in their presence.
> >
> >
> >Regards,
> >
> >Kate
> >
> 
> I will not forgive you for generalizing because you are doing so wrongly and dangerously.
> 
> You are saying that Jews in academia stifle viewpoints critical of Israel and, implicitly, that they do so because they are Jewish.  If you weren't saying that you considered it a *good* thing, your assertion would fit well in an anti-semitic rant.
> 
> It is, in any case, an offensive generalization.
> 
> Tom K

As a matter of fact there are many many Jewish professors and students
who are vigorously opposing Israeli crimes. Professor Noam Chomsky of
M.I.T. is only the best known. The following forwarded post might be of
interest to some on this list. Tom is of course correct: Kate has now
(perhaps more through simple ignorance than malice) succeeded in being
anti-semitic.

Carrol Cox

Forwarded Post:

Subject:      Israeli dissident faces firing from Haifa University
     Date:    Mon, 13 May 2002 11:15:19 -0400 

Dear colleagues, if you are interested in details on the Katz
dissertation affair at the University of Haifa, there was an article
published, written by Pappe, in the quarterly _Journal of Palestine
Studies_ (I don't have the issue at my fingertips, but it was published
in 2000 or 2001).  Pappe is a wonderful scholar in the genre of the
revisionist Israeli historians.  I hope we can support him.  If I
remember correctly, following his persecution, Katz the M.A. student
"rescinded" his research findings, based on Hebrew language Israeli
military documents, of a previously undiscovered massacre of
Palestinians at Tantura in 1948.  PLEASE PASS ON TO ACADEMIC LISTSERVES.
fh

 Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 10:13:06 +0100
 From: Ilan Pappe
 Subject: The expulsion of Pappe
 Dear Friends,

 I have received today an invitation to stand for a trial in my 
university, the university of Haifa. The prosecution, represented by 
Haifa Deans of humanities demands my expulsion from the university due
to  the positions I have taken on the Katz affair. It calls upon the
court to  judge Dr. Pappe on the offences he has committed and to use to
the full  the courts legal authority to expel him from the university.
These  offences are in a nutshell my past critique of the universitys
conduct in  the Katz affair, the MA student who discovered the Tantura
massacre in  1948 and was disqualified for that. The reason the
university waited so  long is that now the time is ripe in Israel for
any act of silencing  academic freedom. My intent to teach a course on
the Nakbah next year and  my support for boycott on Israel has led the
university to the conclusion  that I can only be stopped by expulsion.

 Judging by past procedures this is not a request, but already a
verdict,  given the position of the person in question in the university
and the  way things had been done in the past. The ostensible procedure
of a fair  trial does not exist and hence I do not even intend to
participate in a  McCarthyist charade.

 I do not appeal to you for my own sake. I ask you at this stage before
a  final decision has been taken to voice your opinion in whatever form
you  can and to whatever stage you have access to, not in order to
prevent my  expulsion (in many ways in the present atmosphere in Israel
it will come  now, and if not now later on, as the Israeli academia has
decided almost  unanimously to support the government and to help
silence any criticism).  I ask those who are willing to do so, to take
this case as part of your  overall appreciation of, and attitude to, the
preset situation in Israel.  This should shed light also on the debate
whether or not to boycott  Israeli academia.

 This is not, I stress, and an appeal for personal help my situation is 
far better than that of my colleagues in the occupied territories
living  under the daily harassment and brutal abuses of the Israeli
army. It is  an opening gambit and many of colleagues, especially my
Palestinian  Israeli colleagues, can be next. A testimony to the tragic
circumstances  of my own university is that I know there is no use in
distributing this  letter on its internal web-site, as all of my
colleagues in the past when  it came to the crucial moment - for
understandable reasons - felt they  could do very little to help me,
without risking their own position in  the university.

 I know many of you have access to world media and can help to expose
the  already dismal picture and false pretense of Israel of being the
only  democracy in the Middle East.

 Yours

 Ilan Pappe

******************** 
Frances S. Hasso Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Sociology 
Oberlin College 10 North Professor St. Oberlin, 
OH 44074 (440) 775-6783 (office) 
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