Capitalists Finance Anti-Israel "Leftists"

The funds contributed to anti-Israel organizations by the Ford Foundation is old news. Indeed, at the monstruous Durban I conference in 2001, which was supposedly opposed to racism, Israel and Jews came under intense hatred. As researcher Edwin Black discovered, many of the so-called "civil society" bodies and  "non-governmental organizations" attending and voting against Israel at the conference turned out to have been financed by the Ford Foundation, which was founded with the wealth of automobile mogul Henry Ford, who was one of the most notable Judeophobes in American history and gave encouragement to Hitler.

Not to be outdone by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund turns out to be funding at least two noxious anti-Israel bodies, the campus-based "Jewish Voice for Peace" and the American Friends Service Committee, an offshoot of the Society of Friends, a religious group usually known as the Quaker church which ordinarily takes pride in preaching a pure pacifism in line with Jesus' supposed call on his followers to "turn the other cheek".

Some of the stunts performed by the "Jewish Voice for Peace"  cost a fairly large amount of money. Consider:

On February 2, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an anti-Israel organization that seeks to “drive a wedge” in the Jewish community over support for the Jewish State, distributed 10,000 copies of a propaganda pamphlet masquerading as The New York Times. Claiming to be a special edition of the paper, the publication featured “articles” praising BDS and blaming Israel for the latest round of Palestinian terrorism over the past four months.The high production value of the lookalike—described by the Times as “deliberately designed to trade on our name and mislead users”—should direct focus towards those that provided the funds required to make such a stunt possible. Aside from the cost of printing thousands of copies of the multi-page fake, JVP and its partners devoted resources towards launching a faux Times website and Twitter account to accompany the handouts.
While JVP does not publish information on its financial backers, some of their supporters proudly announce their bankrolling of this group. In 2015, JVP received a two-year, $140,000 grant from the New York-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF). The private fund made the allocation through its “Peacebuilding” program, which claims to “advance just and durable peace by supporting innovative and collaborative approaches and policies for conflict prevention, management, and transformation.” It is unclear how financing groups that demonize Israel, promote discriminatory boycotts, and aim to silence its advocates can be considered a “collaborative approach” that will advance peace.

Here is some info on the American Friends Service Committee and its tie to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF):

JVP is far from the only hostile and offensive group to receive RBF’s blessing. In 2015, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—a group that regularly refers to “Israeli apartheid” and Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians—received $50,000 for its “Israel Program.” The Quaker group is a close ally of JVP, andpromotes BDS initiatives throughout the United States, including on university campuses. AFSC’s Dalit Baum authored a 2014 divestment resolution at Loyola University and has spoken numerous times with the pro-BDS group Students for Justice in Palestine. Similarly, JVP and AFSC have partnered to host “BDS summer camps” to train college activists. [full article by Yona Schiffmiller here]

According to the article that I have quoted, the AFSC received only $50,000 from the RBF. But don't worry about the AFSC. It is a very well funded body and has many sources of funding, some of them government-connected. It maintains offices in Ramallah, Jerusalem and many other places throughout the world. All that takes money.

Now, getting away from the specific details, is it not curious that groups conventionally identified as "Left" enjoy generous funding from capitalist bodies, foundations representing super rich capitalist families and founded with money from the profits --in some cases-- of inhuman exploitation of poor working men and women? When the smug and self-righteous and "do-gooder" recipients of Ford Foundation funds receive their thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions, do they think of how the money was made upon which the Ford Foundation was founded?

Many of these "do-gooder" and pro-"peace" and pro-"human rights" bodies support Hamas, the branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that has established a statelet in Gaza. One addled mind who teaches, if you please, in an American university, one Judith Butler, informed the benighted world that Hamas, as well as Hizbullah, was part of what she called "the Global Left." Are these bien pensant "do-gooders" and "progressives" and "leftists" aware that the main financial support of their dear Hamas, their "leftist Hamas," is the super wealthy sheikdom of Qatar on the Persian Gulf? If they are so aware, does it bother them that slavery is practiced in Qatar under very cruel conditions which have led to the deaths of hundreds of foreign slave laborers in Qatar over the past few years as they build facilities for the 2022 world soccer championships, the Mondiale? And that Qatar contributed to the corruption of the highly corrupt FIFA, the international soccer/football/ body? If Qatar did not hand out huge bribes to FIFA board members to vote to award the sheikdom with the Mondiale for 2022, why would anybody have thought for a moment that the Persian Gulf sheikdom with its 50 degrees centigrade temperatures in the summer, would be suitable for hosting a soccer championship?
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UPDATES
3-27-2016 Ziva Dahl tells more on funding by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund [here] from New York Daily News.

Greece Opposes Labeling of Goods from Jewish Settlements

Greece has many reasons to resent the European Union, which has hardly treated Greece with brotherly and sisterly solidarity in the case of its debt crisis. In fact, the solutions to the Greek debt crisis, originating mainly in Germany at the German central bank, the Bundesbank, and adopted by the Eurozone, made Greece's debt crisis much worse than it had been before Greece turned to the Eurozone bodies for help, as we have shown in a number of previous posts.

Moreover, the Republic of Cyprus with its ethnic Greek majority that once aspired to join their island to Greece, has been occupied in part since 1974 by Turkey. That was 41 years ago. Some 200,000 Greek Cypriots were "ethnically cleansed" by  the Turkish invasion of the island, and fled to the south of the island as about 35 to 38% of the island was left occupied by Turkey. Or some would say that they were "displaced" in the euphemistic language generally used in the mainstream international press when writing about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Since then, the European Union to which both Greece and their brothers and sisters in Cyprus belong has had little to say in opposition to or criticism of the continued Turkish occupation. This contrasts with the constant EU criticism of Israel for allegedly "occupying" Judea and Samaria, the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland, called Ioudaia in Greek and IVDAEA (Judea) in Latin, both names pronounced about the same.

Furthermore, the international community had asssigned the Land of Israel, the former Roman province of Judea (roughly speaking), to the Jewish people as the Jewish National Home at the San Remo Conference, 1920, and the League of Nations, 1922. The Jewish National Home principle was supported by one of the leading Greek statesmen of the time, Eleftherios Venizelos.
As we know, the United Kingdom received a mandate from the League to foster development of the Jewish National Home. But the UK betrayed that commitment, most notably in the 1939 "Palestine White Paper."

Greece too was betrayed by its World War I allies, most notably France and the UK, who had promised Greece that it could take back Greek-populated territories in Anatolia, such as Smyrna and its hinterland, in return for supporting the Western Allies, the so-called Entente powers, in their war with Germany, Austria-Hungary (the Habsburg Empire) and the Ottoman Empire. The Supreme Allied Council dominated by the UK & France --two of the Principal Allied Powers-- hobbled Greece in its military operations in Anatolia so much that Ataturk's Turkish nationalists were able to defeat the Greeks after an intial Greek advantage and then drive out of Anatolia not only the Greek army but the ethnic Greek population of several million people [see "Smyrna" toward the bottom of the post] (1922). This was one of major instances of ethnic cleansing in the 20th century before WW2.

In another case of betrayal of promises, the EU claims that Judea-Samaria is "occupied" by Israel and constantly vilifies Israel's presence there. The EU also insists incorrectly that Geneva Convention IV 49:6 forbids Jews from moving into Judea-Samaria area because it is "occupied," as they allege. This racist, anti-Jewish policy has been most recently manifested in the call on EU member states to insist that products from Israeli/Jewish settlements in Judea-Samaria be labeled as such, that is, as products of an "occupied territory." This means that the EU wants to foreclose any need for Palestinian Arabs to negotiate with Israel what the future borders between Israel and a Palestinian Arab state will be. They want to force Israel to accept the PA/PLO's demands that Israel retreat to the 1949 armistice lines that were never borders, in order to have peace with the PA/PLO. And the EU wants to use the EU consumers to pressure Israel to submit, by not buying products from supposedly "illegal settlements". But no such pressure on Turkey is visible. Greece realizes that it cannot rely on the EU.

Greece set to oppose EU settlement labeling

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias has sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informing him of Athens’s opposition to the EU guidelines on the labeling of goods produced in Israeli settlements, The Times of Israel learns.

Kotzias’s message to Netanyahu came three day after Greek PM Alexis Tsipras visited Israel on Wednesday of last week.

Other than Greece, the only countries to break ranks on the measure are Hungary, which has declared its opposition; and Germany, which has yet to say whether it will implement it.

— Raphael Ahren Times of Israel
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More on the Greek position [here]. PM Tsipras also recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's "historic capital."

Hypocritical Euro Judeophobes Strike Israel Again

Israel has many friends in Europe, but they are not making policy for that monstruous, undemocratic and anti-democratic institution, the European Union, loathed by many of its own people, by perhaps a majority of those in countries where the insane Euro currency has been installed. This currency, a bad idea whose time had come, has caused economic suffering in countries like Italy, Greece, France, Portugal and Spain, in some cases ruining the local economy.

Back to Europe's traditional hatred of Jews. Judeophobic European elites have found a clever, exceedingly hypocritical way to continue to justify hating Jews after the Holocaust and to justify murderous attacks against them. They invented the never existent "palestinian people" presented as innocent of any prior offense against Jews and also presented as indigenous  to what Westerners choose to now call "palestine." However, the Romans who founded European civilization such as it is, called the country Judea --IVDAEA in proper Latin writing. The words Jew and Juif and Jude and judio etc derive from that name Judea.

The EU is now out of the closet of its Jew hatred. It is quite open now. The EU is imposing a trade sanction on Israel because Israel is supposedly occupying territory belonging to "Palestinians," this previously non-existent people [up till 1964 when the PLO was founded.] This group of Arabs live or formerly lived in the Land of Israel [called Judea by the Romans, you recall]. But occupying territory does not really bother the EU as a whole. After all, one of the smaller and less influential EU members, Cyprus, is suffering the occupation of about 38% of its land  mass by Turkey, which Turkey calls the The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

This occupation of part of an EU member state does not much bother the true blue Euros. If it did they would vociferously denounce this occupation and send enraged Scandinavian morality enforcers to tell the Turks that they are doing wrong things. Of course Cyprus and Greece make noise about the occupation of northern Cyprus from time to time. But the bulk of the EU could not care less. Indeed, the EU provides funds for northern Cyprus for the benefit of the Turkish Cypriots who collaborate and support the Turkish occupation and have taken over homes and lands formerly inhabited by Greek Cypriots. Likewise, the EU collaborates with the occupation of western Sahara by Morocco [& here & here & here].

Here are excerpts from an opinion column by Prof Avi Bell on the subject of this latest EU anti-Jewish attack:

At long last, the European Commission has published its long-threatened Interpretive Notice on labeling Israeli “settlement” products. Until its publication on November 11, Israeli sources had feared the anticipated Notice would impose trade sanctions and illegally discriminate against the Jewish state, but the Europeans jealously guarded the Notice’s secrecy.

The Notice is now out, and Israel’s worst fears have been realized. It does impose a form of trade sanction against the Jewish state—one that violates international law and discriminates against the Jewish state. It is also badly reasoned and badly drafted, and drips with condescension and contempt for Israel.

The Notice says that when products from the Golan Heights, “East” Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are sold in Europe, they must not be labeled as “products of Israel” because the EU believes that these areas are not sovereign parts of Israel under international law and, therefore, consumers would be misled if they were labeled “products of Israel.” However, the Notice states that it would be lawful to label products from the West Bank and Gaza as “products of Palestine” (and maybe from “East” Jerusalem as well, though the Notice is ambiguous on this point) even though the EU does not recognize the sovereignty of a state of Palestine. This is because presumably European consumers only care that product labels reflect EU views of sovereignty under international law when this works to the disadvantage of Israel.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Notice presents its position on the borders between Israel and a future state of Palestine as those of “international law” as if the EU had the authority under international law to establish Israeli-Palestinian borders. In fact, not only does the EU lack this authority under international law, the EU is signed as a witness on Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements that state that the borders are to be established only by agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Similarly, the Notice claims that the EU “will not recognise any changes to pre-1967 borders, other than those agreed by the parties to the Middle East Peace Process” even though there were no pre-1967 Israeli-Palestinian borders. In fact, by trying to establish the pre-1967 Israel-Jordan and Israel-Egypt armistice lines as the new Israeli-Palestinian borders, the EU is trying to force changes to the pre-1967 borders contrary to the agreement of the parties to the peace process. Ironically, the EU is trying to rewrite history as well, since there is no country in the EU that viewed the armistice lines as borders pre-1967.

. . . . . .   . . . . .

There is an important conclusion to draw from the European Notice.

Until it is forced to stop, the European Union will continue to violate international law as it concerns Israel. The European Notice is a clear violation of international trade law (for more analysis, see a report authored by Eugene Kontorovich and me). And this is not the only way the EU or European states violate international law to harm Israel. European states have long ignored their legal duties to combat terrorism under treaties like the International Convention to Suppress the Financing of Terrorism and Security Council resolutions like Resolution 1373 when it comes to terrorist organizations that target Israeli and other Jews. Most European states continue to contribute to the second-class treatment of the Jewish state in the UN system, in violation of article 2(1) of the UN Charter. More generally, the EU and European states have devoted enormous efforts to creating double standards under cover of international law that are uniquely harsh to the Jewish state.

Read it all here.

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see this excerpt from a paper by Profs Eugene Kontorovich and Avi Bell:

DRAFT FOR PRESENTATION AT

 ISRAELI ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2015

-         NOT FOR CITATION  -

THE EU’S DIFFERENTIATION OF ISRAEL FROM OTHER COUNTRIES IN TRADE AGREEMENTS[1]

Avi Bell & Eugene Kontorovich

Introduction

A series of recent and pending European Union decisions have led some to suggest the EU is developing a policy of “differentiation” between Israel and the territories that came under its control under 1967.[2] However, the EU’s actions must be seen in a broader perspective, which includes its treaty and trade relations with other countries that it regards as occupying territory, such as Morocco, Turkey, Armenia, and Russia.[3] As the same time that the EU has been “differentiating” Israeli settlements, it has failed to pursue “differentiation” anywhere else, and in some places even pursued the diametrically opposite policy, which we might call “homogenization.” Thus the EU’s “differentiation” of Israel may properly refer to differentiating its treatment of Israel from other relevant contexts.

            This paper will examine the differences in the EU’s treatment of Israel from other situations involving claims of occupation and illegal settlement.[4] It will then consider the implications of such differences under international trade law, which broadly discourages discriminatory measures.

---

[1] This conference paper draws heavily from Eugene Kontorovich Economic Dealings With Occupied Territories, 53 Col. J. Trans’ntl L. 584 (2015) and Avi Bell & Eugene Kontorovich, Challenging the EU’s Illegal Restrictions on Israeli Products in the World Trade Organization http://kohelet.org.il/en/All-Publications.aspx?id=122.

[2] Hugh Lovatt and Mattia Toaldo, EU Differentiation and Israeli settlements, EU Council on Foreign Relations Policy Brief, July 2015.

[3] For more background on EU practice up until 2010, see Guy Harpaz & Eyal Rubinson, The Interface between Trade, Law and Politics and the Erosion of Normative Power Europe: Comment on Brita, 35 European L. Rev. 551-571 (2010).

[4] The inconsistency between EU policy with regard the West Bank and Western Sahara has recently been noted in the EU’s own publications. See Pai Wrange, Occupation and Annexation of Territory: Respect for International humanitarian and human rights and consistent EU policy, Directorate for External Policy, Policy Department Study 44-45, 51 (2015).

Also see:

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/How-the-EU-directly-funds-settlements-in-occupied-territory-327329
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-the-eu-rules-are-about-and-what-they-are-not/

http://jtl.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/06/Kontorovich-Article_53-CJTL_584.pdf
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/7-28-2015-Natl-Security-Hearing-on-BDS-Kontorovich-Northwestern-Testimony.pdf

https://danielmeyerowitzkatz.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/ignoring-history-the-west-bank-bds-and-the-eus-cyprus-experience/
http://antisemitism-europe.blogspot.co.il/2015/07/for-european-union-officials-israeli.html

Hypocrisy in Higher Education

The moral corruption of the American academic world is well underway. We now have academic departments, especially those devoted to Middle Eastern, Arabic and Islamic studies, that are funded by oil-rich Arab governments. We also have today branches of once prestigious American universities that operate in the Persian Gulf sheikdoms. Yale, once highly prestigious as one of the top schools of the prestige-encrusted Ivy League, kowtowed  to real or anticipated pressure from wealthy Arab patrons. This became notorious in August 2009 when the Yale University Press was about to publish a book about the Muhammad Cartoons controversy. After the Yale administration "consulted with experts" (according to the NY Times), the Yale Press decided not to publish any of the Muhammad cartoons nor any of the old and classic artistic representations of Muhammad that were to be in the book.

Now, it just so happens that in April 2009, Yale had appointed a woman who served as an academic operative for Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to a prestigious, if temporary post.

"In April, Yale named Muna AbuSulayman a “Yale World Fellow” for 2009. This isn’t some honorific, and she’ll reside from August through December in New Haven. (Her Facebook fan page, August 16: “I need help locating a Town House/condo for short term leasing near Yale University… Anyone familiar with that area?”) Can you imagine a better way to set the stage for a major Alwaleed gift? Hosting for a semester the very person who structured the Harvard and Georgetown gifts, and who now directs Alwaleed’s charitable foundation? A stroke of genius." [Martin Kramer, emph. added]

Now, we see that  Madame Abu Sulayman had already been instrumental in bringing some of Prince Al-Waleed's generosity to Harvard and Georgetown. Could it be that Yale too was hoping to share in some of Prince Al-Walid's largesse? Maybe Yale was only acting  like those prestigious professors of mathematics who lent their names in exchange for money to the Mathematics Dept at King Abdulaziz University in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. Does this matter? Yes, it does, if academic integrity and honesty have any worth anymore. Yes, if the academic world is to have any more claim to the  respect of decent and informed people.

In this vein, Jonathan Marks has discovered another reason not to honor the academy. He tells a story involving the fanatical bds movement, the movement to boycott Israel which began with funding in part from the well-connected and well-established Ford Foundation.

. . . . this year’s award for higher education hypocrisy surely must go to eight signatories of the latest anti-Israel petition to emerge from our universities. The petition itself, signed by members of the faculty of New York University, is the standard call to punish corporations that can be connected in some way to Israel’s activities in the West Bank or Gaza. What’s striking about this one is that eight of the signatories, more than ten percent of the present total, are affiliated with NYU’s satellite campus in Abu Dhabi. NYU’s Abu Dhabi outpost, “wholly bankrolled by the oil-rich Abu Dhabi government,” opened in 2010, and its permanent campus, located alongside an “idyllic resort” under development on Saadiyat Island, was completed in 2014. So I wonder when these eight faculty members, who pompously stand on NYU’s “long and proud tradition of demanding that the university live up to its professed values,” will be renouncing their affiliation with the government of the United Arab Emirates. As Freedom House observes in its 2014 report, the UAE bans political parties, and “criticism of the government, allies [and] religion” is prohibited by law.
The UAE also has a labor problem. UAE’s mostly foreign workers do not have the right to organize, bargain collectively, or strike. Expatriate workers can be banned from working in the UAE if they try to leave their employer prior to at least two years of service. NYU responded to this difficulty by issuing a statement concerning labor values they expected to be adhered to in the building of the campus. Nonetheless, some of the workers who built the campus “lived in squalor, 15 men to a room.” Almost all had to pay a recruitment fee, consisting of about a year’s wages, for the privilege of getting the job, then worked 11 to 12 hours per day. Workers with the temerity to strike were arrested, beaten, and deported. But it’s a lovely campus, and I am sure the faculty members who want NYU to live up to its values are enjoying it. Who can begrudge brave and hardworking anti-Israeli petition signers their day at the beach? Besides as the signatories of this letter—who include three of the faculty members who signed the anti-Israel position—explain, “our partners are trying to do their best.” Moreover, many of the NYUAD faculty discuss “the complexities of labor in the Gulf” with their students, which is undoubtedly a comfort to the workers, who, because they were not allowed to hold onto their passports and sometimes not even to have their own bank cards, had little hope of escaping their employers, much less bettering their conditions.
It’s nice, though, that NYU’s Abu Dhabi faculty feels able to discuss labor “complexities” since, according to Freedom House, faculties at Western universities typically “take care to not criticize the UAE government or its policies out of fear of losing funding.” There are other incentives for silence as well: “in 2012, several academics critical of UAE government policies were dismissed from their positions and either arrested or expelled from the country.”
But it is commendable that these faculty members, busy enjoying a campus built by indentured servants, and the hospitality of a government that honors neither academic nor political freedom, have found time away from kayaking in Saadiyat Island’s lovely mangrove lagoons, to demand that NYU break with Israel and live up to its values. Some would call this breathtaking hypocrisy. I call it the quintessence of the academic anti-Israel movement.

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Talking about the conditions of indentured servitude in Abu Dhabi, reminds us that the working conditions and shameful treatment of workers in Abu Dhabi are similar to those in Qatar, although the situation in Qatar may actually be worse. The hypocrites and self-righteous Judeophobes who sign petitions to boycott Israel and who praise and justify Hamas, conveniently omit from their concerns the oppressed, exploited and humiliated foreign workers in Qatar who often die under the burden of their harsh working conditions. Qatar is of course a major funder of Hamas, which declares its genocidal goal regarding Jews in its Charter (Article 7).

While we're talking about the nefarious influence of Muslim money, of Islamic filthy lucre, on Western intellectual life, we may recall that more than 200 years ago the French playwright Beaumarchais put into his famous play, The Marriage of Figaro, how a play was censored because of the pressure of Muslim potentates on a European monarch. This was brought to light by the columnist Ivan Rioufol writing in Le Figaro, the newspaper precisely named after the hero of Beaumarchais' play.

More Hypocrisy of European Academic Institutions -- Proof of the New Nazism

There is a widespread hate-Israel movement that calls for boycotting Israel, not only products made on either side of the 1949 armistice line, The Green Line, but even Israeli academic institutions. Now this call to boycott got its first big impetus from the 2001 Durban "anti-racism" conference that turned out to be an anti-Israel, anti-Jewish hate fest. It later came to light, mainly thanks to Edwin Black, that many of the groups, so-called NGOs, taking part in the anti-Israel hate celebration were funded by the Ford Foundation which we have discussed before.

The claim was made in defense of boycotting Israel that Israel is "occupying" parts of the ancient Jewish homeland, to wit, Judea-Samaria, roughly speaking, also called "The West Bank." The boycott movement is especially strong in Britain where several universities and a number of academics are boycotting Israel and have been for about ten years.

Yet some of the same universities and university departments that boycott Israel are happy to cooperate and collaborate with universities established in the Turkish occupation zone of northern Cyprus. They claim that international law requires them to boycott Israel in general or to specifically products and persons living in or manufactured in or --in the case of fruit and produce-- grown in Judea-Samaria.

Eugene Kontorovich shows us what is going on behind the hypocritical rhetoric:

November 17, 2014 by Eugene Kontorovich                                

A Tale of Two Green Lines

         Efforts by academic groups to impose boycotts and other kinds of punitive measures on Israeli universities have gotten considerable attention lately. However, an opposite phenomenon has escaped notice: the widespread participation by mainstream universities in programs and collaborations with institutions located in occupied territories.

         This may surprise those who recall that Israel’s establishment of Ariel University in the West Bank drew earnest condemnation from academics and even foreign ministries  around the world. Yet it turns out that Ariel is not the only graduate-level institution established in what much of the international community considers occupied territory. And the others have gotten a very different reception.
        Turkey has established 10 universities and many colleges in Northern Cyprus since seizing the territory in an invasion in 1974. Half of the universities are public, state-run institutions, and several are campuses of major Turkish institutions on the mainland. Some of the universities were established in just the past few years.

The United Nations Security Council, the European Court of Human Rights, and most of the international community have condemned the Turkish takeover of one third of the island of Cyprus. As of this writing, no nation other than Turkey recognizes the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” regime by which Ankara controls the territory. Turkey maintains a major settlement program, and settlers from the mainland now account for half or more of the population of the TRNC.
Yet surprisingly, universities in Northern Cyprus have won wide cooperation from institutions and academics elsewhere. Indeed, the growing effort to boycott Israeli institutions often coincides with a welcoming embrace of universities not just in the lands of occupying powers (like Turkey and Russia) but also established in the territories those countries occupy.
A telling example involves a conference this fall at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. Professors from Ariel University were barred from mentioning their professional affiliations as a condition of participating, and instead were asked to come as independent scholars not representing Ariel—a deal that they refused. The conference organizers said they could not be seen as “recognizing” Ariel. The incident was incoherent on its own terms. One might think that Ariel is problematic and illegitimate—but there is no denying that it exists, and that it employs the scholars in question. Ironically, the conference was about Israel studies: Would scholarly papers about the Israeli presence in the West Bank that refer to Ariel U have to leave its name blank?
The exclusion of Ariel University from the SOAS conference stands in sharp contrast to the school’s policies regarding interactions with schools in other occupied territories. SOAS once provided a special undergraduate course at the European University of Lefke, one of the universities established by occupation authorities in Northern Cyprus. More recently, SOAS has had speakers from “Abkhazian state” institutions, an unrecognized de facto arm of Russia’s occupation government in part of Georgia. Similarly, SOAS has held events with speakers from Turkish universities that have branches in occupied Cyprus. All of those affiliations were openly acknowledged.
These dalliances are par for the course for European institutions. British institutions are particularly active in Northern Cyprus, because of Britain’s history with the island. The University of Warwick, for example, has an  “official overseas center” for master’s programs at Eastern Mediterranean University. The University of Wolverhampton and University of Sunderland have joint degree programs with Cyprus International University, in the occupied part of the divided city of Nicosia. The European University of Lefke has several partnerships with British institutions. While they stand out, French, Italian, and Spanish institutions also have numerous ties. And one Northern Cypriot institution even opened a program in Washington.
Those are just the direct, institutional relationships. In addition, many faculty members of universities in Northern Cyprus are invited to lecture at foreign universities or publish in foreign scholarly journals. Similarly, academics from elsewhere in Europe attend conferences in Northern Cyprus.
These relationships have taken on added meaning because the universities are a core aspect of the Turkish occupation regime on the island. Turkey has aggressively developed higher education in the territory as a magnet for both settlers and foreign money. The schools attract tens of thousands of settlers/students from the Turkish mainland, and they cater heavily to international students by offering classes in English. Indeed, education has become one of the bulwarks of the TRNC economy, according to a New York Times article this year. The universities boast an enrollment of 63,000 students in a territory with a population of only 300,000.
The Republic of Cyprus strenuously protests the operation of these universities. Cyprus claims that the universities are illegally established, often on private property belonging to Greek Cypriot refugees, and argues that any accreditation, degree recognition, or other dealings with them by the international academic community violates international law. But these calls by the legitimate government of a Western democracy to abjure dealings with the occupation academies fall on deaf ears in academe—while calls to boycott not just Ariel but all Israeli institutions find a growing number of supporters.
Another striking example of this incongruity occurred last year, when many European academics signed a letter to the European Union official Catherine Ashton supporting the European Commission’s restriction of funds to institutions across the Green Line (a common name for Israel’s 1949 armistice line with Jordan). Many of the signatories teach at universities that themselves have relationships across the other Green Line, as Cyprus’s de facto partition border is known.
The wide acceptance of relationships with mainland Turkish and even TRNC institutions suggests that academic boycotts of Israel cannot be reduced to principled opposition to occupation regimes or dutiful execution of international law.
Yet the attitude of international academics to TRNC schools is, in fact, the right one. Knowledge does not know creeds or boundaries.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Cypriot conflict, cooperation among institutions of learning should not be obstructed, just as in former centuries, even countries at war maintained academic exchanges. European institutions are right to not boycott universities in Northern Cyprus. But advocating boycotts of Israeli institutions without an awareness of the broad academic cooperation with institutions in Turkish and other occupied territories is hypocritical and dishonest.

Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law.
[The Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 November 2014]
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The hypocrisy deployed by various and sundry European universities and academic centers and departments also demonstrates a profound Judeophobia at work, since Judeophobia is --among other things-- applying different standards and rules to Jews than to non-Jews. The hatred and self-righteousness displayed by Europeans indicates a genocidal inclination towards Jews and the Jewish state of Israel on the part of the Europeans and others taking part in the boycotts.

Israel Anti-Boycott Law Misrepresented by Interested Parties, as Expected

Israel's new anti-boycott law does not "criminalize" speech --nor even pro-boycott speech or acts-- as was claimed in a rather overheated reaction by the New Israel Fund. Rather, the law defines pro-boycott agitation as a tort, a civil wrong [in Hebrew `avlah עוולה]. As such, parties injured by a boycott can sue for damages. Moreover, the Israeli government is to withhold state benefits and favors, grants, subsidies, guarantees, etc, from those who practice or advocate a boycott. Hence there is no criminal punishment in the law, no jail sentences; the State of Israel is not "criminalizing" boycotters, as the NIF claimed. It is denying state benefits which it has the right to do to protect the state and people of Israel. [See text of law at link below comments. See Hebrew text פה {pdf} or כאן] Maybe the NIF thought that they could get away with lying about the law, depending on the general ignorance of the Hebrew language.

The NIF has been charged by NGO Monitor with funding pro-boycott activities and advocacy. The NIF itself is funded by --among other bodies-- the Ford Foundation, which in its turn helped to organize and fund participating anti-Israel outfits that created an anti-Israeli hate atmosphere at the racist, Judeophobic Durban "anti-racism" conference which took place in early September 2001, just before the 9-11 tragedy. Among hateful things done at Durban in 2001 was to advocate the BDS strategy against Israel [BDS = boycott, divestment, sanctions].

What does the law do?
1) the law does not restrict free speech except insofar as injured persons or bodies may sue the boycott advocates for damages under the old damages law [neziqin]. Laws in civilized countries restrict free speech, of course, on the grounds of libel which can lead to imposing payment of damages on libellers, as well as on the grounds of incitement to violence, sedition, threats of violence, etc.
2) the law also allows the govt to withhold govt grants, subsidies, or other special state benefits and favors from advocates of the boycott, not including pensions, child allowances, etc.
3) BDS advocacy is treated as a civil offense perhaps warranting damages or withholding of state benefits. It is not treated as a criminal matter. The law does not forbid bds advocacy.

One member of Knesset explained why the law was needed. MK Tsipi Hotobeli said today --in a radio discussion with Uri Avneri, head of the pro-BDS "Gush Shalom" outfit, that it is hard for Israel to denounce and complain about BDS efforts abroad when they are allowed here at home.
Further, those who criticize the law should ask whether the govt should have to pay public money [state benefits-but this does not include pensions or regular social benefits enjoyed by citizens] to those who act against the public interest .

Ironically, those who defend boycott advocacy on the grounds of freedom of speech are themselves guilty of undermining the human rights of others, particularly but not only Jews who live or wish to live in Judea-Samaria. Uri Avneri and "Peace Now" advocate preventing Jews from peacefully migrating to live in Judea-Samaria and advocate boycotting products made by Jewish firms in those areas, firms which hire Arabs as well as Jews.

Those who boycott settlement products because they believe that Jews have no right to live or conduct businesses or manufacturing in Judea-Samaria are taking a racist, apartheid position against Jews. Although they typically justify this position on the grounds of international law, the interpretations of int'l law that they brandish about are false. They typically claim that Geneva Convention IV, article 49, forbids "transfer" of population to "occupied territory." It does. However, recall that Germany, Austria and Japan were avowedly occupied by US, USSR, UK, and France after WW2. Many civilians from the occupying powers voluntarily moved into those countries while they were occupied. Nobody complained that Geneva IV, article 49 [or whatever] forbid these civilians to move into occupied countries. Large parts of Japan are still occupied by Russia, that is, they were annexed in the Soviet Communist days by the USSR, although Japan never recognized that annexation and there is as yet no Russian-Japanese or Soviet-Japanese peace treaty as far as I know. Hundreds of thousands --if not millions-- of Soviets/Russians were moved into these formerly Japanese areas. Nobody gives a damn but the Japanese. Nor is the situation considered a threat to international peace.

Now many of us would argue that Judea-Samaria are not occupied, and this on various grounds [such as the Jewish National Home principle]. Further, "transfer" means compulsory migration, whereas the Jews living in Judea-Samaria were willing migrants. But even if J-S were occupied and even if Geneva IV, 49, applied to voluntary migrants [not persons subject to "transfer"] across the Green Line, the position demanding exclusion of Jews from Judea-Samaria would still be racist. Legal perhaps, but racist against Jews. Since when do advocates of liberty and human rights want to punish people who have flouted restrictive laws [if J-S were occupied and if Geneva IV, 49, applied legally]?? And BDS relies on these false interpretations of law and is a legalist-nativist argument as well, which humanitarians and human rights advocates should eschew. BDS falsely speaks in the name of human rights.

The bds campaign actively tries to prevent people --Jews-- from exercising human rights, the right to live where their long-time enemies don't want them to live. Hence it is BDS that is racist. Racist against Jews. This is the argument that should be made. Heretofore, the Yesha Council, Women in Green, and such groups have NOT been making the right arguments to the world.

Here is an interesting case in which a person who would likely be called "a progressive" sued someone who libelled him, thereby restricting the libeller's freedom of speech and press.

The so-called Association for Civil Rights in Israel [ACRI] issued a position paper against the new law, while NIF has so far just sent around a whining email [their position paper will likely follow soon]. The paper does not mention --probably due to the author's ignorance-- that in the United States a private person was allowed to sue for damages to his work and endeavors caused by libel of the group to which he belonged and in which he was named personally. Libel laws too have "a chilling effect" on freedom of speech. The ACRI paper decries the permission granted by the new law to private persons to sue for damages caused by boycott calls. But a trial was begun on such a matter in the USA. The defendant --who was promoting libel through his newspaper, eventually settled in the plaintiff's favor. This represented a restriction on the defendant's freedom of speech as well as on freedom of the press.

I refer to a suit against Henry Ford by a Jew. In the early 1920s, Ford's newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, worked out its own version of the forged and plagiarized Protocols of the Elders of Zion, also naming individual Jews.

"Aaron Sapiro, a lawyer who was organizing farmers' cooperatives [kind of like a community organizer], sued Mr Ford and his paper for a million dollars on the ground that his valuable work would be ruined by their lies. The trial was begun in Detroit in 1926 but it was never finished because Mr Ford apologized to Aaron Sapiro and to the Jewish people as a whole . . . [Ford] said: 'I deem it to be my duty . . . to make amends for the wrong done to the Jews. . . asking their forgiveness. . .'" [Rabbi Lee Levinger, A History of the Jews in the United States (NY: UAHC 1959), p 358].

Henry Ford to be sure was an intense Judeophobe and Nazi sympathizer. He had to produce his own version of the Protocols because --among other things-- the original version was --anti-Roman Catholic & anti-Protestant and sympathetic to the Russian Orthodox Church. The anti-Catholic hate in the original would not have gone down well in the United States.

So, although the libel trial against Ford did not conclude, Sapiro's claim --which restricted Ford's freedom of speech-- was accepted for trial as justiciable. Sapiro did not have to wait for governmental action. Of course the case is not identical. But I think it is rather close to the "private action" that the ACRI paper so deplores. Curiously, the Ford Foundation, founded with Henry Ford's money, works against the Jews as did its namesake, Henry Ford.

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NGO Monitor's comments and translation of the law [here]
Eli Hertz compares the present Israeli anti-boycott law with an American anti-boycott law [here]
Isi Leibler discusses anti-Israel boycotts and the anti-boycott law [here]
Eugene Kontorovich blasts hypocrisy of anti-boycott law defamers [here]
7-29-2011 Martin Sherman argues that those circles in Israel advocating boycotts against Israel and/or opposing the anti-boycott law have been undemocratic in their recent history and constitute the greatest threat to democracy in Israel [here]

More on "Apartheid" in Judea-Samaria -- Rami Levy Plots against the Arab Consumer with Low Prices

An official of the "palestinian authority" accuses officials of the Authority of shopping in the Rami Levy supermarkets in defiance of the boycott of those stores declared by the "Authority." Levy is plotting against the "palestinian" consumer with his low prices [Kalkalist 9-19-2010; here]. See below the original Hebrew article and my translation. We have dealt before with the boycott declared by the Palestinian Authority against the Rami Levy supermarkets as an implicit rejection of the "apartheid" charge made against Israel by Jimmy Carter and other professional slanderers of Israel.

The Palestinian Authority against The Rami Levy Chain

The head of the Consumer Society in the Hebron District claims that officials of the Authority are making purchases in the Rami Levy branch in Gush Etsiyon. Thereby they violate the law [of the PA] that forbids purchasing goods in the settlements. If the phenomenon does not stop, he will publish the names of the senior officials [who do that]

Doron Paskin 9-19-2010

The Palestinian Authority has put Rami Levy in its gunsight. `Azmi Shayukhi, head of the Consumer Society in the Hebron District, claims that officials of the Authority violate the law [of the PA] that forbids purchasing goods in the settlements, when they come to the Israeli chain to make purchases. Shayukhi called on the authorities to stop those people and stressed that it was very shameful that they arrive in Palestinian Authority vehicles with red license plates [denoting official vehicles] in order to make purchases at Rami Levy. He promised that if the phenomenon did not stop, he would publish the names of the senior officials who make purchases in the Israeli chain.

Shayukhi claims that the Rami Levy chain operates several branches on the West Bank, and that the branch preferred by Palestinians is in Gush `Etsiyon. According to him, the chain offers especially cheap prices in its branches on the West Bank in order to attract Palestinian customers. Shayukhi claims that a large part of these products are produced in the settlements and therefore purchasing them is forbidden in the context of the boycott on settlement products which the Palestinian Authority promulgated. Moreover, according to the same spokesman, a considerable part of the employees in the Rami Levy stores are Palestinians who "have lost their national conscience," as he defined it. He attacked them with harsh words like "agents of the settlement" and "traitors."
The author is director of the research department of the Info Prod Research Co. (Middle East). www.infoprod.co.il [Kalkalist is a business section published by Yedi`ot Ahronot]

הרשות הפלסטינית נגד רשת רמי לוי
דורון פסקין 9-19-2010 כלכליסט

ראש אגודת הצרכן במחוז חברון טוען כי פקידים ברשות עושים קניות בסניף של רמי לוי בגוש עציון ובכך מפירים את החוק האוסר לרכוש מוצרים בהתנחלויות. אם התופעה לא תיפסק הוא יפרסם את שמות הבכירים
דורון פסקין
14 תגובות

ברשות הפלסטינית שמו את רמי לוי על הכוונת. עזמי שיוחי, ראש אגודת הצרכן במחוז חברון טוען כי פקידים ברשות מפירים את החוק האוסר רכישת מוצרים בהתנחלויות כשהם מגיעים לעשות קניות ברשת הישראלית. שיוחי קרא לרשויות לעצור את אותם אנשים והדגיש כי למרבה הבושה הם מגיעים ברכבי הרשות הפלסטינית עם לוחיות זיהוי אדומות כדי לעשות קניות אצל רמי לוי. הוא הבטיח כי אם התופעה לא תיפסק הוא יפרסם את שמות הבכירים העושים קניות ברשת הישראלית.

שיוחי טוען כי רשת רמי לוי מפעילה מספר סניפים בגדה המערבית כשהסניף המועדף על ידי הפלסטינים נמצא בגוש עציון. לדבריו, הרשת מציעה בסניפים בגדה המערבית מחירים זולים במיוחד כדי למשוך את הלקוחות הפלסטינים. שיוחיי טוען כי חלק גדול ממוצרים אלה מיוצרים בהתנחלויות ולכן רכישתם אסורה במסגרת החרם על מוצרי ההתנחלויות שהכריזה הרשות הפלסטינית. יתרה מזאת, לפי אותו דובר, חלק ניכר מהמועסקים בחנויות רמי לוי הם פלסטינים ש"איבדו את המצפון הלאומי שלהם" כהגדרתו. הוא תקף אותם במילים קשות כמו "סוכני ההתנחלות" ו"בוגדים".
הכותב הוא מנהל אגף המחקר בחברת אינפו פרוד מחקרים (המזה"ת

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More on the Rami Levy supermarket in Gush Etsiyon [here]