The nutcases at Israel Academic Monitor are disseminating a hysterical rant by Uriel Reichman, president of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel’s largest private university. It accuses the BDS movement of being a slippery slope that will lead to international military attack against Israel. Now, you might wonder who this fellow is and whether this means anything. Unfortunately it does. Reichman is a leading Israeli secularist who supports the writing of an Israeli constitution. He was a founder of the Shinui party, served in the Knesset, and eventually left politics in a snit when he was not named minister of education.
One of the reasons he has gone apoplectic is that his school depends for many of its students on the Diaspora (you can see their ads in Haaretz regularly). If BDS is successful, IDC will be severely damaged financially. Here are some of his ravings:
The plan to terminate the Jewish state is no longer based on winning one major all-out war. The planned strategy is based on two long-term operations. One is continuous, low intensity, violent campaign. Such terror acts directed at civilians are aimed to break the citizens’ will-power and to cause internal debates and chaos.
The other part of the strategy is taking place abroad. Activities aimed at spreading hatred against Israel and arguing that the Jewish state has no right to exist are taking place daily. Such as, for example, the claims that Israel is an apartheid state, a colonial state, a racist entity, a society that faked its history to claim rights to a land that does not belong to it, and so on. By doing so, public opinion is built [sic] to demand boycotts against Israel, to start criminal proceedings against I.D.F. commanders, to move governments and several nations to impose sanctions on Israel and finally, perhaps, to call international military activity against us.
Paranoia strikes deep, into this Israeli’s heart is will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. Enough Buffalo Springfield. The fact that this otherwise distinguished university educator has practically taken leave of his senses over BDS is quite interesting.
But the real whopper comes in this passage when Reichman actually accuses Prof. Neve Gordon of supporting not only BDS, as he did in his L.A. Times op-ed, but “military action” against Israel. Do I even need to tell you how insane this comment is?
The most extreme allegations against Israel are often made by a small anti-Zionist group of Israeli university professors. Their ideas are widely circulated and are especially effective because they are made by Israelis. Recently, in an article published in the Los Angeles Times, an Israeli professor called his audience to boycott Israel on all levels, to “save that apartheid state from itself”…The professor who wrote the L.A. article would probably support the use of international military forces, in case the sanctions fail…
Daniel Levy has begun calling such attacks part of the pro-Israel smear industry. He is indeed correct and I’m sorry to say that Prof. Reichman has joined the fold. Not an ounce of truth in this statement. Pure utter garbage. And to think this fellow is actually the president of an Israeli institution of higher learning. It simply boggles the mind. He and Alan Dershowitz were made for each other.
To hear more on the BDS movement, watch this panel including Neve Gordon. Go to about 3:00 into the video for the beginning of the story.
“pro-Israeli” circles have asthonishing amount of the “watch” and “monitor” groups. Israeli Academia Monitor – hilarious. Who finances all this world wide and internal watching and monitoring?
Did those groups “monitor” this major BDS event?
http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=58198
If by “military activity” he means “stop supplying the IDF with free money and technology”, I’m all for it. Gotta admit that.
the Israeli-left continues to splinter with anti-Israel leftists like Gordon marginalized….. unless some Orwellian propagandist will somehow bloviate about how Gordon is pro-Israel but somehow believes “you need to destroy a country to save it”
Richard-
You simply don’t understand that there has been a seismic shift in “mainline” Israeli public opinion in the last few years, particularly since 2005. The policies that Rabin and Peres foisted on Israel by adopting the Oslo Agreements would have been anathema to “mainline” Israeli public opinion a few years earlier. The crucial thing that made Oslo possible was that “mainline” people like Reichman came around to accept the idea that importing Arafat and his FATAH gang to Israel and to give them the job of ensuring Israeli security against terrorism was a good idea, even though what you call “the wing-nut Right” was warning against it.
It had been, before Oslo, a cardinal principle of Israeli security policy, supported by both the Right and Left that only Israel could ensure its own security and that dealing with terrorist groups was folly and that recognizing the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian People” would not just supposedly solve the “problem of 1967” (i.e. the future of the “West Bank” and Gaza) but would also bring into question the results of 1948, i.e. the very legitimacy of the state. Peres, Beilin and the other brains behind Oslo managed to convince the entire political “mainstream” to throw out all these basic assumptions. This was a gigantic, although temporary success. The terrorist-suicide bomber onslaught which led to over 1000 Israeli deaths and thousands of wounded, in addition to the wars with HIZBULLAH in Lebanon and HAMAS in Gaza has FINALLY convinced the “mainstream” that the Oslo assumptions were wrong. For years, Israelis were told that the Palestinian demand for the “right of return” was merely a bargaining chip that would be given up for something “big”, like the Old City of Jerusalem, but now most realize that it is a serious demand on their part and they want Israel to admit that its founding was a historical criminal act (Shlomo Ben-Ami put it this way).
I am surprised that the fact that people like Benny Morris and Reichman who are NOT “Right-wingers” now feel that Arab opposition to Israel is existential and not just a result of the post-1967 “occupation” does not make an impression on you. Add to this the opposition of Uri Avnery to boycotts and divestment campaigns against Israel. This should lead to you realize that you are completely out of synch with what is going on here. Yes, I know that the last hope of the “progressives” in the US is that somehow “J-Street” will get Obama to force Israel to do what the “progressives” want but they can not operate in a vacuum, disconnected from the Israeli reality. The fact that Obama had to make a humiliating retreat from his public demand that settlement constuction be halted should be instructive.
If the above account were actually true, it would just show how deeply wrong about the view of this conflict not only by the Palestinians, but by basically most of the world, the Israeli “mainstream” is. Hints:
1.) It’s not all about you and your security.
2.) It’s not about placing chips on a table and playing poker for them.
You’ve spouted this nonsense at least 6 or 7 times here over the yrs. & I’m sick & tired of the repetition. So don’t bring up Oslo again. We’ve heard yr propaganda. It wasn’t credible the first, 3nd or 6th time. The next time either yr comment will be deleted or yr comment privileges suspended.
Besides, in Oslo you’re beating a dead horse. Oslo has no relevance to the current situation. You might as well bring up Munich (I know, Bibi does) or Balfour or any other piece of ancient history that has no bearing on contemporary reality. The truth of the matter is that either Obama will bash heads together & come up w. an agreement or he won’t have the balls to do it & Bibi will get away with murder & Israel will eventually be destroyed as we know it just as happened to Judea in the age of the Second Temple.
You are so full of it. Reichman’s views of Gordon & BDS are not just right wing, they’re hysterically so. Morris advocated bombing Iran in the NY Times, for God’s sake. I know you’re pro settler. But what would it take for you to admit someone is right wing? Do they have to dance over Meir Kahane’s grave?
You’ve tried to argue unsuccessfully that I’m out of synch with Israeli reality so many times I’ve lost count. I’m afraid it is you who is out of touch. Yes, you’re in touch with the pro-settler nationalist community. But that’s only 20% of Israeli opinion. There is simply no way for you to argue successfully that you represent the Israeli majority.
I am in favor of a Palestinian state, so are most Israelis. I’m in favor of sharing Jerusalem, so are most Israelis. I’m in favor of negotiating with Hamas, so are most Israelis. I’m in favor of withdrawal from most West Bank settlements, so are most Israelis. I’m in favor of the Geneva Accord parameters, so are most Israelis. The opinion polls proving these statements are all in this blog. You can argue till you’re blue in the face. But yr arguments will just be wind I’m afraid.
It’s not paranoid at all, but well earned. It could happen, if the toll of Israel’s retaliation to any form of resistance to the occupation continues to increase. Then the international community may decide to intervene, as happened in Serbia/Bosnia, for example.
Can anybody predict, what would be the scale of Israeli response to the next intifada?
I think we’re talking about two different things. You’re talking about military intervention as happened in Bosnia. Reichman is talking about an actual military attack on Israel.
With today’s news I think it’s more likely there will have to be some type of military or heavy peacekeeping operation to resolve this conflict. And it may be forced upon Israel. If this doesn’t happen then I fear Israel will simply refuse to cooperate & dare the world to intervene. If it doesn’t have the guts to do so, then it will be up to the Arab states to ratchet up their resistance until Israel either kills all the Arabs in the region or Israel ceases to be the State it currently is.
Today I’m full of despair.