Arens Disinvited From Israeli Academic Conference « Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Arens Disinvited From Israeli Academic Conference

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 12:35 AM and is filed under Mideast Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Arens Disinvited From Israeli Academic Conference”

imjudy says:

May 29, 2007 at 5:06 AM

I don’t think it is Arens’ political views that bothered the BGU people. Arens’s position is considered quite radical in Israel, but BGU has numerous people on its staff who are no less controversial (e.g. Neve Gordon) and no one muzzles them, so I would think there is so other reason for it.

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Richard Silverstein says:

May 29, 2007 at 10:37 AM

I would think there is so other reason for it.

No. There is one critical diff. bet. Gordon & Arens. Arens is an expert in the extremely sensitive field of computer security & terrorism. At the conference, he would rub shoulders with Mosad & IDF intelligence analysts who are known for their extremely close-minded & intolerant views both regarding free expression of ideas & the Palestinian “menace” to Israel. In their close-minded universe, contact w. Arens would somehow lead to compromising of Israeli security.

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imjudy says:

May 29, 2007 at 1:25 PM

Can you clarify how he would be perceived as being a danger to Israeli security, in this case?

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Richard Silverstein says:

May 29, 2007 at 4:52 PM

You might want to inquire of the conference organizers at Ben Gurion, the Mosad & IDF as to why they refused to attend if Arens would be there. I’m not the one who made that decision.

There are 2 reasons he might be considered persona non grata by the government. First, his views are extremely critical of the Occupation & the intelligence services are notoriously unwilling to engage w. ideas they consider anathema. Second, since Arens is an expert in computer security related to terrorism issues they might feel that sharing information w. him might compromise Israeli security. This is just a surmise on my part since, thank God, I’m not an Israeli spook. But if the Shin Bet can consider Azmi Bishara an Arab spy, then I have no doubt the Mosad could easily consider Arens a security risk. It would be a preposterous supposition, but one I’m fully confident the Mosad might make given their past history.

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