2018-10-12_Juan_Cole_Informed_Comment_On_not_Writing_Recommendation_Letters_for_the_Occupiers_in_Palestinian_Territories.pdf
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FEATURED
On not Writing
Recommendation Letters for
the Occupiers in Palestinian
Territories
JUAN COLE
10/12/2018
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j
503
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An Open Letter to the University of Michigan on Palestine |
–
My colleague John Cheney-Lippold in the American Culture
Department of the University of Michigan has been
disciplined by the Colleges of Letters, Sciences and Arts for
declining to write a recommendation letter for a student to do
summer study at Tel Aviv University. He took this position
because of his support for the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions movement in civil society, which is an attempt to
pressure Israel to cease its illegal colonization of the West
Bank and its illegal collective punishment of Palestinian
civilians in Gaza via a Draconian blockade.
Cheney-Lippold also went into his classroom after the social
media furor broke out and found his undergraduates puzzled
and confused, so opened up some time to discuss the issues.
He is also being sanctioned for that.
Since any of us who teach Middle East or social movements
might have occasion to discuss BDS in the classroom, this
seems to me a key First Amendment issue.
Cheney-Lippold had a sabbatical for next winter taken away,
was denied a merit pay increase, and was threatened with
being fired entirely if he declined to write another such letter.
I understand the desire to uphold students’ right of conscience
and to treat them fairly. But I think this decision by my
College was wrong-headed in going too far toward
disregarding faculty rights of conscience and I would be
surprised (and depressed) if it stands in the medium term.
His position is one adopted by the Democratic Socialists of
America, an increasingly significant caucus in the Democratic
Party, and is not an outlier ethically.
Here I would like to reflect on whether it is ever all right to
decline to write a recommendation letter for a student.
Without in any way wishing to criticize or undermine CheneyLippold, I have to be honest that I practice a much more
limited version of BDS than he does. I wouldn’t boycott an
institution in Israel proper, since it is a United Nations
member and a legitimate state, despite its current government
pursuing policies that contravene international law.
I do, however, boycott Israeli institutions in the Occupied
West Bank. Indeed, I believe I have a legal obligation to do so
and might be liable to legal action when visiting other
countries if I did not. (I might even be liable for legal action in
the US if its political culture weren’t such an outlier on this
issue).
My position in this regard is the same as that of the European
Union and its courts.
I therefore would not write a recommendation letter for a
student to study at Ariel University, which is a squatter
institution on illegally acquired Palestinian land in the
Occupied West Bank. Severe questions have been raised about
its own adherence to basic canons of freedom of speech, but
those considerations might not be decisive for me. Being an
occupation institution is.
I also would not write a letter of recommendation for a
student to work at an Israeli firm located in the West Bank.
The political atmosphere of the United States is powerfully
shaped by persons who are essentially honorary members of
the proto-fascist and colonial Likud Party in Israel, whether
Evangelical Christians, or Jewish magnates like Sheldon
Adelson, or erratic opportunists like Lindsay Graham.
Indeed, when former New Jersey governor and presidential
aspirant Chris Christie auditioned in 2016 for Mr. Adelson,
who is dogged by corruption charges linked to the Chinese
Communist Party and permissions for his casino in Macau,
Christie called the Occupied Territories just that and was
immediately barred from funding by Adelson because he
holds the untenable position that Israel owns the Palestinian
territories by God-given right.
Money increasingly sets the terms for debate in the Trump
era, not law or ethics.
Israel occupied the Palestinian West Bank and Palestinian
Gaza in 1967. No international body had ever awarded these
territories to Israel, and the UN General Assembly partition
plan of 1947, which Israelis claim for legitimacy, explicitly
denied this territory to them. (The plan did not have the force
of law, admittedly, since only the UN Security Council has
that authority, but the UN Security Council has repeatedly
denied these territories to Israel as well).
The glib Bill Maher argument that you get to keep what you
conquer is explicitly denied by the United Nations Charter, to
which Israel is signatory, and which forbids the acquisition of
a neighbor’s territory by military conquest. The shyster
lawyer argument that the West Bank and Gaza did not belong
formally to another state and therefore are fair game is
morally and ethically odious and legally without foundation,
since the UN Charter does not mention anything about
conquest of stateless people being just peachy keen.
Countries are allowed to occupy enemy territory in war time.
The decades of occupation however, have now put Israeli
actions beyond the pale of law. From the Hague Regulations
of 1907 to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, the
international law of occupation forbids any extensive
alteration in the lifeways of the occupied population by the
Occupier until the war ends. Israel in contrast has left almost
no aspect of the lives of the occupied Palestinians untouched,
and universally for the worse. Moreover, the Fourth Geneva
Convention of 1949 on the treatment of populations in
occupied territories contains these prohibitions:
Art. 31 Prohibition of coercion
Art. 32 Prohibition of corporal punishment, torture, etc.
Art. 33 Individual responsibility, collective penalties, pillage,
reprisals
Art. 34 Hostages
Israel is in extensive violation of all of these provisions.
Not only has the Israeli occupation become criminal by virtue
of its length and intensity, it is criminal because the Israeli
government has flooded hundreds of thousands of its own
citizens into the Occupied Palestinian West Bank, stealing
massive amounts of Palestinian land from its rightful owners,
building on it, and stealing resources such as water, as well.
Article 49, Fourth Geneva Convention, says, “The Occupying
Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian
population in the territory it occupies.”
Israel has violated this provision about 800,000 times, and has
been reprimanded for it repeatedly by the United Nations
Security Council whenever the Neocolonial US government
has not vetoed the other 14 members.
Sometimes the press asks me whether I am being invidious in
taking this position, since I don’t boycott Morocco (the
Western Sahara), e.g.
But Morocco has not deprived the people of the Western
Sahara of citizenship in a state. It has bestowed on them a
citizenship they do not want. That is an issue for the two
parties to work out in history.
What makes the situation in Gaza and the West Bank so
egregious is that people are being kept stateless. They cannot
be sure they own the property they think they do, since Israeli
squatters can take it at will. They are akin to slaves in being
deprived of the basic dignities and rights adumbrated in
contemporary human rights law.
It might be said that my position differs from that of my good
colleague inasmuch as he boycotts Israel proper. But the
Israeli government would see no difference between the two of
us and the question is whether our difference is one of kind or
of degree. If of degree, then my stance should attract the same
sanctions.
Ironically, although I do not currently boycott Israel proper,
and have spoken there and had fruitful interactions with
academic colleagues there in the past, its current authorities
would almost certainly boycott me, just as they are holding an
American student at the Tel Aviv airport without charges for
having belonged to an organization that supports BDS.
(Perhaps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should avoid visiting).
There is another wrinkle, which is that what Professor Rashid
Khalidi at Columbia University calls the “settler-industrial
complex” is growing and invading Israel proper. How long
will it be before most Israeli universities and companies have
West Bank outposts? How long will my distinction remain
tenable?
And then there is the question of American companies and
institutions with squatter connections.
Moreover, since it is now the Israeli government’s position
that its Arab citizens do not share in national sovereignty, and
since that government has a formal policy of shooting down
unarmed civilian Palestinian protesters in Gaza, my position
about its legitimacy is increasingly hard to maintain.
But for now I stand where I do. I am helpless to do anything
about the Apartheid oppression of the stateless Palestinian
people, who are deliberately kept stateless and without basic
human rights by the Likud government of Israel and by the
Trump administration.
But in any case I will not personally cooperate with the evil
and criminality that is this occupation. And it seems likely to
me that I will at some point be talking about BDS in the
classroom. I don’t think it is the place of a university
administration to coerce faculty or other instructors’
conscience on these issues, which are much more complex
than they seem to realize.
Dear friends in the press: I’m not going to be giving interviews on this
issue. I’ve had my say here.
——Bonus video:
Robert Martin: “Issa Amro explains the realities of living in
Hebron”
Filed Under: Featured, Israel/ Palestine
About the Author
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of
Informed Comment and Richard P. Mitchell
Professor of History at the University of
Michigan. Follow him at @jricole. He is author
of, among many other books, Muhammad:
Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.
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