Czarny rynek izraelskich adopcji

KATARZYNA ANDERSZ

Shoshana Yihaya Tawelli straciła dwóch synów urodzonych w 1951 i 1952 roku. Obaj rzekomo umarli tuż po porodzie, Shoshana nie zdążyła im nawet nadać imion. Urodziła jeszcze córkę. Wciąż wierzy, że uda jej się ich odnaleźć. /fot. edut-amram.org

OD UZYSKANIA NIEPODLEGŁOŚCI W 1948 ROKU IZRAEL MUSIAŁ PORADZIĆ SOBIE Z NAPŁYWAJĄCYMI ZE WZMOŻONĄ SIŁĄ FALAMI EMIGRANTÓW. NOWO POWSTAŁE PAŃSTWO NIE BYŁO NA TO DOSTATECZNIE PRZYGOTOWANE, NIC WIĘC DZIWNEGO, ŻE EMIGRANCI NIE WZBUDZALI ENTUZJAZMU WŚRÓD STARYCH, PRZEDWOJENNYCH OBYWATELI. BYŁA JEDNAK GRUPA, KTÓREJ OBAWIANO SIĘ NAJBARDZIEJ – ŻYDZI MIZRACHIJSCY.

Jak w swojej książce „1949: Pierwsi Izraelczycy” przytacza historyk Tom Segev, izraelskie MSZ prosiło swoich urzędników za granicą o pomoc w zwiększeniu napływu Żydów europejskich, obawiając się, że wzrost populacji Żydów z biednych krajów Lewantu spowoduje spadek „poziomu kulturalnego kraju”. Icchak Rafael, pracownik Agencji Żydowskiej notował z kolei, że „materiał ludzki” w obozach dla osób przemieszczonych w Niemczech nie satysfakcjonuje go ze względu na typową w diasporze mentalność, ale i tak jest o wiele lepszy od tego z Północnej Afryki. Przyjęcie postrzeganych jako prymitywnych i zacofanych Żydów z krajów takich jak Jemen, Irak, Libia, Tunezja, czy Maroko było jednak koniecznością. W takich właśnie okolicznościach i przy takich nastrojach społecznych narodził się proceder, będący jednym z największych i do tej pory niewyjaśnionych skandali w Izraelu. Od 1948 roku do mniej więcej połowy lat 50. tysiące dzieci nowych emigrantów zaginęło w tajemniczych okolicznościach, w większości przypadków tuż po urodzeniu. O tym, jak doszło do tego procederu i jaką rolę odegrały władze Izraela w tuszowaniu afery, opowiada Shlomi Hatuka, działacz organizacji Amram, zajmującej się m.in. zbieraniem i dokumentacją historii rodziców i dzieci wtedy rozdzielonych.

Shlomi Hatuka – pochodzi z żydowskiej rodziny z Jemenu. Poeta, jeden z założycieli organizacji Amram oraz wydawnictwa Tangier

KATARZYNA ANDERSZ: PRZEŁOM LAT 40. I 50. W IZRAELU. KOBIETA PRZYCHODZI DO SZPITALA, RODZI DZIECKO.

Shlomi Hatuka: I wszystko wydaje się być w porządku, nie ma żadnych komplikacji, dziecko jest zdrowe. Następnego dnia, kiedy chce je zobaczyć, słyszy, że zmarło. Oczywiście nie pokazuje się jej ciała, nie wystawia aktu zgonu. Część z takich przypadków ma miejsce w obozach przejściowych. Kobiety oddają noworodki do domu dla dzieci i codziennie przychodzą je karmić. Bywa, że rano jeszcze zajmują się dzieckiem, a wieczorem dostają informację o jego śmierci. Mówi się im, że zachorowało. Jak to zachorowało – dziwią się – przecież kilka godzin temu było zupełnie zdrowe?

GDZIE DOCHODZI DO TAKICH SYTUACJI?

W całym kraju.

LICZBY?

Szacujemy, że sprawa dotyczy około pięciu tysięcy rodzin. Oficjalnie około 1200 rodziców wystąpiło przed komisjami śledczymi, ale wiemy, że wiele z nich w ogóle się na to nie odważyło. Być może nawet liczba pięciu tysięcy jest znacznie zaniżona.

MÓWIMY GŁÓWNIE O DZIECIACH ŻYDÓWEK JEMEŃSKICH.

Większość kobiet pochodziła z Jemenu, ale wiele było też z Iraku, Maroka. Generalnie prawie wszystkie były Żydówkami mizrachijskimi, czyli pochodziły z krajów Bliskiego Wschodu i Północnej Afryki, w większości zamieszkanych przez muzułmanów.

PRAWIE WSZYSTKIE? TO ZNACZY, ŻE DZIECI ODBIERANO TAKŻE ŻYDÓWKOM ASZKENAZYJSKIM?

Było kilka takich przypadków wśród kobiet przybyłych z Rumunii, z Polski. Te wszystkie historie łączy jednak to, że dotyczyły nowych imigrantów, którzy ledwo co osiedlili się w Izraelu.

CO WIEDZIELI RODZICE ADOPCYJNI? MIELI ŚWIADOMOŚĆ TEGO PROCEDERU, CZY MYŚLELI, ŻE WSZYSTKO ODBYWA SIĘ LEGALNIE?

Większość z nich musiała się czegoś domyślać, przede wszystkim dlatego, że na dokumentach adopcyjnych nie było podpisów biologicznych rodziców. Wiedzieli, że to podejrzana sprawa. Czy nie jest podejrzane, jeśli ktoś zaprasza do instytucji, gdzie umieszczone są same małe dzieci i pozwala ci wybrać którekolwiek chcesz? Byli na pewno tacy, którzy mieli świadomość tego, że biorą udział w handlu dziećmi.

CZY ZDARZAŁY SIĘ PRZYPADKI, GDY RODZICOM UDAŁO SIĘ ODZYSKAĆ DZIECKO? NIE WSZYSCY CHYBA WIERZYLI W TE NIEPRAWDOPODOBNE HISTORIE O ŚMIERCI.

Bywało, że szybka interwencja przynosiła skutek. Dlatego pozostali rodzice często żyli w poczuciu winy. Wyrzucali sobie, że byli zbyt słabi, że nie zrobili wszystkiego, żeby odnaleźć dziecko, dociec prawdy. Byli też tacy, kórzy nigdy nie przestali szukać i udało im się odzyskać dzieci.

AŻ TRUDNO UWIERZYĆ, ŻE MOŻNA DAĆ SOBIE WMÓWIĆ, ŻE PRZYSZŁA POWÓDŹ I DZIECKO UTONĘŁO. A TAKA JEST JEDNA Z HISTORII, KTÓRYMI SIĘ DZIELISZ. BRZMI NIEDORZECZNIE.

Tak, jest to zupełnie niedorzeczne, ale pamiętaj, że w latach 50. Żydzi mizrachijscy byli – i w pewnym stopniu dalej są – bardzo słabą grupą społeczną. Mieli status podobny do uchodźców. Pielęgniarki, lekarze – wszyscy byli Aszkenazyjczykami. Ludzie władzy byli Aszkenazyjczykami. A rodziców, którzy domagali się, żeby pokazano im zwłoki ich dzieci, często aresztowano, bo zakłócali porządek i byli głośni.

A MOŻE DZIECI ODBIERANO PROSTYM, NIEWYKSZTAŁCONYM PAROM, BO WYDAWAŁY SIĘ BARDZIEJ NAIWNE?

Mit, że Żydzi aszkenazyjscy byli lepiej wykształceni od Żydów mizrachijskich pokutuje w Izraelu od wielu lat. Na początku istnienia państwa nie było znacznych różnic w poziomie edukacji. Statystyki z lat 50. pokazują, że największy odsetek wykształconych nowych emigrantów pochodził z Iraku. Niestety, dziesięć lat później zaczęło się to różnicować i wykształconych Mizrachijczyków było już znacznie mniej. Kultura mizrachijska, wartość jej przedstawicieli, była deprecjonowana.

NASTAWIENIE ASZKENAZYJCZYKÓW SPRAWIŁO, ŻE PROCEDER NA TAK SZEROKĄ SKALĘ BYŁ W OGÓLE MOŻLIWY? PRZECIEŻ TO NIE BYŁA ZMOWA KILKU LEKARZY I PIELĘGNIAREK W JEDNYM MIEŚCIE.

Przypomnijmy sobie, o jakich czasach mówimy. Państwo Izrael powstało dzięki organizacjom założonych w latach 20. i 30. przez Żydów aszkenazyjskich. Po wojnie zaczęli napływać ocalali z Zagłady. Okaleczeni fizycznie i psychicznie, często nie mogli mieć własnych dzieci, zapotrzebowanie na adopcje było więc olbrzymie. Zorientowano się więc, że skoro popyt jest tak wielki, pojawia się świetna okazja na zarobek. W tym samym czasie do Izraela zaczęli napływać Żydzi afrykańscy, którzy z reguły mieli wiele dzieci, a poza tym byli traktowani w sposób bardzo pogardliwy. Ludzie mówili: „tyle dzieci, pewnie nawet nie mają ich z czego wykarmić”. Takie było usprawiedliwienie. W ten proceder było zaangażowanych wiele organizacji.

Mali opowiada historię swojej matki, która w 1949 r., w Pardesiji urodziła córkę Zionę. Zapamiętała jej piękne zielone oczy. Po trzech dniach zupełnie zdrowa Ziona zachorowała i zmarła. „Bóg daje, Bóg zabiera” – powiedziała zapłakana matka. Przed śmiercią poleciła pozostałym swoim dzieciom, żeby nigdy nie przestały szukać siostry. Wszystkie urodziły się już w domu, bo matka bała się ponownie iść do szpitala. /fot. edut-amram.org

czytaj dalej: Czarny rynek izraelskich adopcji

TRUMP’S JEWS AND OBAMA’S JEWS

Daniel Greenfield

The Left is losing the culture war within the Jewish community.

Seen from above, the 2016 electoral map of New York City is blue with dots of red. Trump’s home district is blue, but across the water a red wedge slices into Brooklyn. Around that red wedge are districts where Hillary won 90 percent of the vote and Trump was lucky to get 5 percent. Inside it, he beat her in district after district.

The voters who handed him that victory are the Chassidic Jews of Williamsburg who dress in fur hats and black caftans. Their districts, crammed in by hipsters and minorities, are a world away from the progressive activist temples whose clergy went into mourning at Hillary’s loss.

East of Prospect Park, in a vast sea of blue, is what looks like a red sofa. Trump won here with the Chabad Chassidim of Crown Heights. He won in the more mainstream Orthodox Jewish communities of Flatbush. He won by huge margins among the Russian Jewish immigrants of Brighton Beach who listen to a man dubbed the “Russian Rush Limbaugh.”

As the left-wing Forward put it, “Nearly every election district that Trump won in Brooklyn was in a Jewish neighborhood.” But it was a certain type of Jewish neighborhood. The wrong type.

“You can compare them to Rust Belt voters,” a Forward source states. “They are hardworking people, not college educated.”

And then in Far Rockaway where the housing projects by the beach give way to the red Orthodox Jewish communities that extend into Long Island.

There’s a line that recurs again and again in the attacks on David Friedman; the man picked by President-elect Trump to serve as the ambassador to Israel. It’s not stated openly. It’s implied.

“David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island,” is the sneering summary.

Remnick, the New Yorker’s left-wing editor, took the sneering to a new level, titling his smear as “Trump’s Daily Bankruptcy.” Jewish identity, he declares, has never been a matter of “bankruptcy law.”

To a certain class of elites, it is self-evidently absurd that a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island be appointed to anything or be listened to about anything. David Remnick is a Washington Post man married to a New York Times woman who went on to inherit the editorship of the New Yorker and turn it into a left-wing echo chamber. He lives in a $3.25 million four-bedroom Manhattan apartment with a wood-burning fireplace.

And David Friedman is the Orthodox son of a Rabbi from Woodmere who still lives there. His father was a Republican who hosted President Reagan. He might occasionally be allowed to read the New Yorker.

And that’s about it.

Yet it’s hard to think of anything that might recommend Friedman more to Trump.

Over at New York Magazine, Frank Rich and Fran Leibowitz famously chuckled over Trump being “a poor person’s idea of a rich person.” David Brooks, the token slightly right of the left voice at the New York Times, full of contempt for Trump, in an infamous moment, studied Obama’s “perfectly creased pant” and came to the conclusion that, “he’ll be a very good president.”

“I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us,” Brooks has said.

Obama spoke like one of the collective “us”. Trump and Friedman don’t talk like “us”. Their voices are distinctly working class. Their New York values are those of a grittier and grimier country.

Trump’s calling card was, “Make America Great Again”. Obama’s was a memoir about race and identity that was a hit on college campuses. Two cultures could hardly be further apart.

The internal war in America and among Jews over Trump is not just about politics, it’s also about class. Trump’s victory was the uprising of a cultural underclass. That is equally true among Jews.

The same divide exists between the slick branding of J Street’s conferences stocked with self-appointed thought leaders who have never worked for a living and the hard-working Jewish communities who loathe the New York Times for its hostility to Israel. These are the Jews who have never been represented in national politics. Whom most of the left didn’t even know existed.

Friedman’s appointment led leftists like Remnick to undertake a baffled archeological survey of Arutz Sheva: a popular pro-Israel news site that no one at the New Yorker had ever heard of. The elites of the left have suddenly had to grapple with the existence of people who don’t talk like “us” or think like “us”.

And that for many voters, non-Jewish and Jewish, encompassed the thrill of Trump. Voting for Trump forced the elites that had ignored them out to acknowledge their existence for the very first time.

The split is as real among Jews as it is in the rest of America. Trump’s victory allowed Jewish communities that had been shut out of the national dialogue to have a voice. The divide over Israel is not only about policy, but about culture and class. The divide between readers of the Jewish Press and the Forward is as real as the yawning gap between country music listeners and the NPR audiences.

Trump and Obama both have inner circles filled with Jews. But they are as different as David Remnick is from David Friedman, as Jan Schakowsky is from Boris Epshteyn, or as J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami is from Jason Greenblatt, a Trump advisor who performed armed guard duty while studying in Israel.

Obama is legitimately baffled by accusations of anti-Semitism. His inner circle of left-wing Jews agree with him that the Jewish State is the problem and aiding Islamic terrorists is the solution. His echo chamber elevated marginal left-wing organizations like J Street or Yeshivat Chovevei Torah into representatives of American Jews. Meanwhile his people, like ADL boss Jonathan Greenblatt, took over already liberal Jewish organizations and turned them into lobbies for his anti-Israel agenda.

Now suddenly the President-elect is surrounded by a very different breed of Jews. Instead of tenured academics, progressive journalists and irreligious clergy for whom Jewish values, like American values, mean appeasement and surrender to terrorists, a very different kind of Trump Jew is now on the rise.

Trump’s Jews are scrappy businessmen and tough lawyers. They live in traditional suburban communities instead of hip urban neighborhoods. They are more likely to be religiously devout and have large families. And they don’t look or sound like the “us” of the leftist elites. They don’t have the “perfectly creased pant”. Instead they look like the suburban dads and granddads that they are.

They believe that you have to work hard to get ahead. They know that you have to be tough to succeed. And they’ve learned to get ahead without caring what the liberal elites think of their manners and style.

In that they’re a whole lot like Trump. And a whole lot like the stereotypical Israeli.

It’s not just the substance of their message, pro-American, pro-Israel and pro-work, that horrifies the Remnicks of the left. It’s the conviction that they’re part of a social underclass that doesn’t belong on stage. The Remnicks have worked hard to ape the manners and attitudes of their progressive betters. There was a time when his ilk dared to be pro-Israel. But when the liberals went left, they went with them. They justified their betrayal by blaming Israel for “moving to the right” and alienating them.

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Leon Rozenbaum

But Trump’s Jews, whether it’s his advisers, who look like every other professional or small businessman in Long Island or Teaneck, or the Chassidic and Haredi Jews of Brooklyn who voted for him, make no apologies for who they are. They pray toward Jerusalem, not Martha’s Vineyard. They do not cringe inwardly when Israel takes out a terrorist. They are not politically correct. They are Biblically correct.

They are not ashamed of their Jewishness. And now their voice is being heard.

In the fall of ’84, President Ronald Reagan showed up at the home of a Long Island Rabbi for a Sabbath meal. David Friedman’s mother spent three days shopping and prepared stuffed chicken cutlets, apricot noodle pudding and an apple crumb cake. Reagan toasted her as “a woman who makes a meal better than a state dinner.” Meanwhile outside, left-wingers protested hysterically against the visit.

At Rabbi Friedman’s synagogue, President Reagan declared, “the so-called anti-Zionists that we hear in the United Nations is just another mask in some quarters for vicious anti-Semitism. And that’s something the United States will not tolerate wherever it is, no matter how subtle it may be.”

The United States has tolerated it for far too long from Barack Hussein Obama.

When Rabbi Friedman passed away, Donald J. Trump, a future Republican president, drove to Long Island through a snowstorm to pay a condolence call to his son. Trump has chosen the man who sat at the table with President Reagan, that “bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island” as ambassador to Israel.

The left is so angry because it senses that it is losing the culture war within the Jewish community. The future does not belong to David Remnick. It belongs to David Friedman.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

UnCorked: Ireland’s Pseudo-Academic Anti-Israel Hate-Fest

Denis MacEoin

• This will not be an academic conference in any real sense of the word. It is, from the outset, a hate-fest of international anti-Zionist, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric and distortion. It is totally without balance.
• Some of those 45 participants will be more vehement in their criticism of Israel, but none, so far as is known, is wholly without some degree of association with bias. How do we know this? First, because a significant majority of the participants have made no secret of their support for the boycott of Israeli academics.
• For more than 3,000 years, the “original ‘aboriginal’ inhabitants” were the Jews – along with Ethiopians, Nubians, Carthaginians, Phoeneicians, and eventually the Romans, Christians and eventually several Arab Muslim imperialists, culminating in the Ottoman Turks. The Jews were the people who inhabited Canaan; the Jews are why Judaea is named Judaea. An Arab “Palestine”, bluntly, never existed. If the Jews do not belong in Israel, then the Europeans do not belong in New Zealand, Australia or North and South America.
• Prominent at Southampton, and again planning to address the conference, were some of the leading academic activists working both in the universities and outside for the destruction of Israel, regardless of whether that means the expulsion or genocide of the country’s Jewish population.
• In “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” Richard Falk compared some Israeli policies with regard to the Palestinians to the Nazi record of collective punishment, warning (unbelievably) that Israel may be planning a Holocaust in the same way Nazi Germany did. It is arguable that he has done more than any other figure to inspire loathing for Israel worldwide.
• This conference is an outright attack on everything academic work is about. Many are already protesting in the hope that UCC can be persuaded to recognize the threat to scholarship that such a conference poses for academic teachers and researchers everywhere.

The passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 on December 23 2016 has upset more than one apple cart.[1] By declaring that Israeli settlements have no legal validity and are a “Flagrant Violation of International Law”, the resolution has handed the Palestinians a weapon as powerful as any they have used against the Jewish state in their many physical attacks upon it for more than a century. Lawfare has for many years now replaced warfare (although not terror) as the Palestinian method of choice for the long-term elimination of Israel; this new resolution, even if only advisory, is a major step along the way to declare, not just the settlements but the entirety of Israel itself as illegal.

Almost all countries in the world, along with the UN, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Arab League and the Socialist “Left” now consider the Zionist project to create a living space for Jews to be a colonialist conspiracy against the “aboriginal” inhabitants of a legendary state of “Palestine”. They are conveniently “forgetting” – with a significant dose of anti-Semitism – that for more than 3,000 years, the “original ‘aboriginal’ inhabitants” were the Jews – along with Ethiopians, Nubians, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, and eventually the Romans, Christians and eventually several Arab Muslim imperialists, culminating in the Ottoman Turks. The Jews were the people who inhabited Canaan; the Jews are why Judaea is named Judaea.

An Arab “Palestine”, bluntly, never existed. If the Jews do not belong in Israel, then the Europeans do not belong in New Zealand, Australia or North and South America.

It seems that US President Barack Obama, along with the UN, the OIC and much of Europe – especially France – would like to destroy Israel, and in its place create yet another mangled Syria out of whatever is left, fought over by a mixture of sects, terrorist organizations and political factions.

The truth is that the resolution is itself a violation of international law as it has existed since 1920, when a resolution of the League of Nations conferred on the Jewish people the right to establish a permanent homeland in the southern portion of the former Ottoman province of Syria, temporarily re-named “Palestine”. Since then, numerous agreements and UN resolutions have confirmed that Israel has rights to territory in the West Bank and that far from all of its settlements are illegitimate at all – as this new resolution pretends.

There can be no doubt, however, that this malicious and legally questionable resolution takes lawfare to a new level and that it will form the basis of all future attempts to cancel out the very right of Israel to exist or for the Jewish people to hold on to their ancestral homeland – a direct and inflammatory contradiction of the right to self-determination for the world’s peoples since the late eighteenth century and enshrined in international law within the Charter of the United Nations.

Israel’s legality as a sovereign state is now threatened by a deep misapprehension and distortion of the law as much as it was challenged by the wars and intifadas waged against it since 1947/1948. This means that the peace process, through direct negotiations between the chief parties, will be consigned to the dustbin of history. Resolution 2334 has handed the Palestinians all they want without their having to lift a finger. Instead of balanced negotiations, they will now entrust their case to the international lawyers and academics at a biased United Nations.

A major impetus for this spawning debate within international legal circles, a debate that will be deeply informed by Resolution 2334, will be given early in 2017 over three days at a conference at University College Cork in the Republic of Ireland – a country already well known for the strength of its anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic sentiment.[2]

University College Cork, in Ireland. (Image source: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/Wikimedia Commons)

This upcoming conference is not a tiny affair in a minor college in a little-known university.[3] Titled, “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism”, it is a thoroughly international gathering of, for the greatest part, academics who are also anti-Israel activists. Speakers will come from around the world: 18 from the United Kingdom, 8 from the United States, 8 from Israel and the West Bank, one each from Qatar, Lebanon, Austria, the Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, and Canada, and just two from Ireland itself.

This will not be an academic conference in any real sense of the word. It is, from the outset, a hate-fest of international anti-Zionist, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric and distortion. It is totally without balance. Out of a list of 47 participants, only two (Professors Alan Johnson and Geoffrey Alderman from the UK) have a record of support for Israel and the Jewish people. That makes 45 to two. Some of those 45 will be more vehement than others in their criticism of Israel, but none, so far as is known, is wholly without some degree of association with bias. How do we know this? First, because a significant majority of the participants have made no secret of their support for the boycott of Israeli academics. A boycott that in itself strips from the conference any semblance of academic neutrality.

The three-day conference (March 31 to April 2) is, in fact, an attempt to bring back to life an earlier conference bearing the same name that was planned to take in Southampton University in the UK in April 2015. Despite protests from many academics and Jewish organizations, the Southampton conference would have gone ahead; but it was argued that Zionists might descend in large numbers and create havoc (even though no such physical protest had been planned). This led to concerns about security, leaving the conference organizers to foot a high bill for private security measures. The conference was then cancelled by the university on security grounds, and not on concerns about anti-Semitic prejudice or academic balance.

Here is the purpose of the conference as set out in 2015. Its one-sidedness is visible in every word:

This conference will be the first of its kind and constitutes a ground-breaking historical event on the road towards justice and enduring peace in historic Palestine. It is unique because it concerns the legitimacy in International Law of the Jewish state of Israel. Rather than focusing on Israeli actions in the 1967 Occupied Territories, the conference will focus on exploring themes of Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism; all of which are posed by Israel’s very nature.

Speakers and panels:

The conference aims to explore the relatedness of the suffering and injustice in Palestine to the foundation and protection of a state of such nature and asks what role International Law should play in the situation.

It is clear that speakers intended to question the very right of Israel to exist, meaning that they would question the very right to self-determination of the Jewish people. As David Collier, author of the “Beyond the Great Divide” blog and one of Britain’s outstanding researchers and commentators, put it: “the conference is likely to be a disgusting, pre-written, anti-Semitic diatribe”. Collier himself put in an inordinate amount of work investigating the conference itself and its proposed speakers, work that revealed the true nature of the enterprise and the anti-Israel careers of most of those listed for the panels. Everyone involved in the response to the conference remains deeply grateful to his endeavours.

Prominent at Southampton, and again planning to address the conference, were some of the leading academic activists working both in the universities and outside for the destruction of Israel, regardless of whether that means the expulsion or genocide of the country’s Jewish population. Most readers will recognize at least a few of the names, each one being notorious internationally for their role in harrying Israel and Israelis.

The first name on the program for the Cork conference is none other than Richard Falk of Princeton and the University of California. Here is David Collier’s assessment: “[Falk] has compared Israel’s policies to the Nazis’ and wrote an article called ‘Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust’. Actively supports the boycott, calling it a ‘civic duty’.”

In “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust” (2007), Falk compared some Israeli policies with regard to the Palestinians to the Nazi record of collective punishment, warning (unbelievably) that Israel may be planning a Holocaust in the same way Nazi Germany did.

Collier provides a link to a very detailed and well-sourced article about Falk on Wikipedia. Here we may find information on Falk’s repeated influence on the UN Human Rights Council (for whom he acted as a Special Rapporteur), accusing Israel of apartheid, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. It is arguable that he has done more than any other figure to inspire loathing for Israel worldwide.

After Falk on the Cork program comes Ilan Pappé, notorious for his writings on Palestinian refugees and the wrongdoings of Israel. Based in Britain’s University of Exeter, he has taken serial advantage of the academic freedom he enjoys there to promulgate his one-sided accounts. According to Collier, Pappé “Hardly needs an introduction, also described as an activist. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006). Firmly believes Israel is racist, apartheid, an ethnically cleansing state and so on. Actively supports the boycott.”

Another participant with extreme views is Dr. Anthony Löwstedt of Webster University, Vienna. Collier describes him thus:

Lowestedt claims that 98% of all gross human rights violations so far committed in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are sole responsibilities of the Israeli Jews, and talks of Israeli apartheid. In that piece Lowestedt claims that “the Israel lobby does not take it well that students are still to some extent being told and taught the truth about Israel and Palestine”. He references “The Israeli state death squads” and claims that “In many cases, it is enough for a Palestinian to get killed if s/he even looks at a military installation or a soldier the wrong way”. He claims “the supreme goal is to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Palestine” although while in Israel he “did not get to discuss this matter in detail with Israelis”. Riddled with inaccuracies such as “you must be a Jew to serve in the Israeli army and if you are not a Jew you cannot serve in the army”, distortions and statistical headstands, these pieces show that Lowstedt’s opinion is driven fiercely by his internal clock rather than through some academic process of research.

Professor George Bisharat of the Law University of California is on much the same level. Collier describes him as follows:

Bisharat is a Palestinian-American professor of law who clearly supports a one state solution. He believes Israel is committing war crimes and calls for a boycott of Israeli apartheid. Bisharat continually uses Nazi references, talks of massacres and master plans and frequently addresses complex historic events with simple sound bites, one sided propaganda, and outright distortions.

One of the key organizers of the event, Professor Oren Ben-Dror of Southampton University, is described by sources cited in Wikipedia as follows:

Ben-Dor is a former Israeli, born in Nahariya in northern Israel. He has supported academic boycotts of Israel universities, writing that those on the Israeli “left” who oppose it are “sophisticated accomplices to the smothering of debate.” He has written about alleged apartheid in Israel, bias in Israel’s education system, the ethical and legal challenges facing Palestine, and the use of violence by the Israeli state.

As a contributor to the newsletter CounterPunch, he has written against Israel’s role in the 2006 Lebanon War and in the Gaza War of December 2008 to January 2009. Criticizing Israel’s tactics against Hamas, Ben-Dor wrote that “assassinating individual members of Hamas, even toppling the organisation, destroying its infrastructure and buildings, will not destroy the legitimate opposition to the arrogant and self-righteous Zionist entity.” In 2007 he joined a number of intellectuals and activists in signing a “One State Declaration” which calls for one democratic state in the whole of Israel and Palestine. He has supported that alternative in public debate. Ben-Dor has engaged in academic debate with Oren Yiftachel in the journal Holy Land Studies regarding the one-state solution.

A full list of participants from Southampton, most of whom will reappear in Cork, is provided by Collier here, along with comments on their political views and actions.

The conference that is planned for University College Cork can by no description be called an academic conference. Its gross imbalance, the presence of an overwhelming number of outright political activists, its association with organizations like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the participation of so many academics who support the boycott of Israeli academics (itself a direct rejection of genuine academic values including academic freedom), and its creation of a highly-charged atmosphere into which many bona fide academics, the present writer included, would fear to enter – all these are clear indications of the event’s total lack of credentials for academic standing. This conference is an outright attack on everything academic work is about. Many are already protesting in the hope that UCC can be persuaded to recognize the threat to scholarship that such a conference poses for academic teachers and researchers everywhere. Like its predecessor, the Southampton Conference of 2015, it deserves to be cancelled.

Dr. Denis MacEoin is an Irish academic specializing in Middle East and Islamic studies and pro-Israel advocacy, and is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Gatestone Institute. He lives in the North of England.

[1] For a thorough, learned, and precise refutation of the resolution, see UN Watch’s long letter to US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power.

[2] By “anti-Semitic” I mean the setting of double and unfair standards for the State of Israel as defined in the U.S. State Department’s Definition of Anti-Semitism and the similar Definition by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, recently adopted by the United Kingdom.

[3] The National University of Ireland (Ollscoil na hÉireann) has four constituent universities and three constituent colleges. UCC is the five-star constituent university.