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Against the Israeli Academic Boycott
by Neve Gordon 2:26pm Sat Feb 22 '03

"Among the Judenrat wannabes is your old friend and mine, Neve Gordon," wrote a Haifa University professor in one of his articles. "Gordon," the professor continued, "is a fanatic anti-Semite from the monochromatic (Red) Department of Politics at Ben-Gurion University." The contemptuous adjectives did not, however, satisfy the angry professor, so in another commentary he urged his readers to harass me. Some obediently complied.
This type of assault is not altogether exceptional.
print article

During a casual encounter with a university official, I learned that the administration has been receiving incensed letters from abroad by people who have read newspaper articles in which I criticize Israel's neoliberal monetary policies, the ongoing discrimination of its Palestinian citizenry and, most important, the government's draconian policies in the occupied territories. Some of the letter writers were unhappy with the fact that an Israeli academic institute continues to employ me, and they are even considering stopping their annual donations to the university.
Ironically, intolerant reactions of this kind--whether articulated within Israel or abroad--are a reminder that in Israel, academic freedom still exists, much more so than in many other countries. They also suggest, however, that this freedom should never be taken for granted and that it is currently being challenged.

Unwittingly, American and European supporters of the academic boycott against Israeli universities are aiding this attack. They certainly have not taken into account some of the realities inside Israel, particularly the internal offensive against the universities as well as the anti-intellectual atmosphere that has colonized the Israeli public sphere.

Among the many reasons why one should reject the academic boycott, critics have highlighted the boycotter's double standard. It is not only that some of the boycotters come from countries that are also responsible for much oppression and suffering, but, perhaps more important, Israel could not carry out its policies without the ongoing support of the United States, which has, for example, recently promised Sharon $12 billion in direct aid and loan guarantees.

While this line of argument exposes some of the biases informing the academic boycott movement, there are two other important reasons why a boycott of Israeli universities is misdirected.

The first argument is the one already alluded to: Israeli universities continue to be an island of freedom surrounded by a stifling and threatening environment. In the past two years the Israeli media, which was once known for its critical edge, has been suppressing critical voices, and in a number of electronic media outlets specific regulations have been issued, such as restrictions on live interviews with Palestinians. This dangerous trend is likely to become even more pronounced now that the right wing has garnered a considerable majority in the Israeli Knesset.

The second argument, the one most often ignored by outsiders, has to do with the fact that in the past year and a half Israeli universities have been under an unprecedented assault by the Sharon government. The Minister of Education, Limor Livnat, is trying to radically change the structure of higher education, including the way universities are governed and managed. She would like to strip power from the faculty senates and transfer it to boards of trustees in which professors are barred from membership. An academic boycott will only strengthen Livnat, and in this way assist the destruction of academic freedom in Israel.

When I explained these points to pro-boycott colleagues in Britain, they replied, "It isn't you, but rather your institute that will be punished for not taking an institutional stand on the illegality of the occupation." Yet it is precisely the institute that enables Israeli professors--regardless of their political affiliation--to voice their views, suggesting that an assault on the university is in fact an assault on its faculty.

To fight the anti-intellectual atmosphere within Israel, local academics need as much support as they can get from their colleagues abroad. A boycott will only weaken the elements within Israeli society that are struggling against the assault on the universities, and in this way will inadvertently help those who want to gain control over one of the last havens of free speech in the country.

Editor's Note: In April 2002, following Israel's military operation in the occupied territories called Defensive Shield, the first calls for institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities appeared in England and in France. A British petition called for a freeze on European Union contracts with Israeli universities as long as Israel continues its present policies in the territories. What started as an initiative of a few academics has recently become a formal resolution of a French university--Paris VI. Simultaneously, a number of Israeli professors have encountered trouble publishing articles in certain academic journals, a few have been asked to step down from editorial boards and others from international doctoral committees.

www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030303&s...;

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Yes to Absolut Boycott Immidietly
by AVI 9:50am Mon Feb 24 '03

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You write: "Livnat would like to strip power from
the faculty senates and transfer it to boards of
trustees in which professors are barred from
membership. An academic boycott will only
strengthen Livnat, and in this way assist the
destruction of academic freedom in Israel."

Let Livnat do that exactly.

You are entirely blinded by your ethnicity and
privilage: there is no academic freedom in Israel
and there never has been been one.

Israeli univesities and senates are fortresses of
white European colonialism -- as 95% of the
Israeli faculty are white Ashkenazim (either
Zionist, non-Zionist, post-Zionist or
anti-Zionist).

The colonial structure of Israel is maintained by
Ashkenazim who benefit from Zionist colonialism
and exclude the majority of indigeneous
inhabitants, i.e. Palestinians and Mizrahim.

Memorize: you and the Haifa professor are both
equal beneficiaries of the Israeli system.

Unlike both of you, the Mizrahi/Palestinian
absolute majority in Israel HAVE NO VOICEN AT ALL
WHETHER inside and outside the academia.

THIS IS WHY ISRAELI UNIVERSITIES MUST BE
BOYCOTTED until they allow entry for the natives.

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Confused
by Szamuel 5:34pm Mon Feb 24 '03

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Is not Gordon the very same person who ran off to
be a "human shield" for Arafat when Israel had
Arafat under siege after the Netanya Passover
massacre? So what is Gordon complaining about,
when people denounce him? And is not he the guy
who has been acting as apologist for Norman
Finkelstein? Does he really believe that freedom
and democracy mean that others must be denied the
possibility of denouncing his behavior?

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Left & Right Bigots Fuse Against Freedom
by Rowan Berkeley 5:38pm Thu Feb 27 '03

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First, the well-worn right-wing cliche insult "judenrat", used to describe anyone who (in the mind of the speaker) is colluding in what he imagines to be the creeping genocide of the Jews of Eretz Israel. Most users of this site would agree with Professor Leibowitz that it is these same right-wing Jews (or rather their followers in the army and the militant settler movement), who are acting like Nazis-- it was Professor Leibowitz, an observant Orthodox Religious Jew, who coined the term "judeo-nazis" to describe them, thereby adding himself to the long tradition of anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox objectors. But never mind, these Greater Israel boys and girls will call anyone who criticises them a "Judenrat wannabee".
Second, Ashkenazim have no rights because they are racists by birth. This is the Israeli equivalent of Louis Farrakhan, of course.
Third, our academic defended Finkelstein. Well, Finkelstein didn't deny his academic opponents the right of reply. Nor should you, you intellectual thugs.

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The Finkelstein
by Jacob 10:57am Fri Feb 28 '03

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THE DREAM-JEW OF THE ANTISEMITES
Edward S. Alexander
June 4, 2002


Local Arab sponsors of this week's UW lecture by
Norman Finkelstein describe him as "a Jew but...a
life-long anti-Zionist; and though very much a
Leftist...often praised by far Right
revisionists." And they are correct in their
description. "Revisionists" is the current term
for those who deny that the Holocaust happened.
Most Revisionists are neo-Nazis like the British
David Irving or the Frenchman Robert Faurisson,
with whom Finkelstein's mentor Noam Chomsky has
made common cause. Finkelstein, though indeed
"very much a Leftist" and supporter of Hizbollah
among other "leftist" causes, has written a book
called THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY which has made him
a hero in extreme right-wing circles in Europe
and also America and a best-selling author in
Germany. This is partly because he blames Jews
for antisemitism, but also because his look
depicts German industrialists and Swiss bankers
and wealthy East European owners of looted Jewish
property not as beneficiaries of the enslavement
and destruction of European Jewry but as the
helpless victims of Holocaust survivors, whom
Finkelstein usually refers to in quotation marks
as "survivors" of "The Holocaust," which he
calls, with typical understatement, "the greatest
robbery in the history of mankind." (His mother,
a person Finkelstein exploits endlessly and
shamelessly as virtually the only genuine
survivor of the Holocaust, told him that Jewish
"survivors" were the cause of much of the world's
present misery, and that "If everyone who claims
to be a survivor actually is one...whom did
Hitler kill?"

Finkelstein's view of the Holocaust is but a
micromillimetre away from that of the Nazi
Revisionists. They deny it ever happened; he
claims that if it had not happened the worldwide
multibillion dollar Jewish ring of "Holocaust"
extortionists would have invented it in order to
"justify criminal policies of the Israeli state"
(which Finkelstein would like to dismantle as
quickly as possible).

At no point does Finkelstein allow that anybody
might have legitimate moral or religious or
ethical or historical reasons to remember the
Holocaust. Memory, which (again) he renders as
"memory," is "the most impoverished concept to
come down the academic pike," yet another
instrument of the worldwide Judeo-Zionist
conspiracy. In the Finkelsteinian ethical system,
Jews--alone among the peoples of the earth--are
prohibited from remembering their martyrs; for
them compulsory amnesia is the rule.

Finkelstein's HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY may be, as the
review in the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW called
it, "juvenile, self-contradictory, arrogant and
stupid," but its author is nevertheless the
antisemites' dream come true: a Jew who
regurgitates all of their most demented and evil
fantasies. Arabs who think Finkelstein is their
dream-Jew too may one day discover that people
who encourage the Arab world's all-consuming
obsession with Israel and Jews--an obsession that
has retarded its progress, poisoned its life and
given its autocratic leaders a handy explanation
for all that is wrong in their countries--are not
in fact their true friends.

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The PLO is a Nazi Organization
by mark 11:42am Mon Mar 3 '03

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" All Lies... No Dachau, No Auschwitz, These
Were Disinfection Sites" Senior Palestinian
Historian, Palestinian Television, (NOVEMBER. 29,
2000)

The exploitation of the Holocaust for Palestinian
purposes is widespread in the Palestinian
Authority. This exploitation includes Holocaust
denial, equating Israel and Zionism to Nazism,
claims that it was the Palestinians who suffered
a holocaust, and others. This week is a
educational broadcast on PA TV, a senior
Palestinian historian in a talk with Arafat's
Education Advisor said the Holocaust was a lie
and Auschwitz a place for disinfecting Jews.
Noteworthy also is Arafat's Advisor's denial of
Israel's existence and the defining of Israel as
a "cancer".

The Program:

"Pages From Our History" - November 29
Special Broadcast lamenting the UN partition of
Mandatory Palestine and recognizing a Jewish
State.

Participants: Dr. Jareer Al-Kidwah, advisor to
"President" Arafat Dr. Issam Sissalem, history
lecturer, Islamic University Gaza, portrayed
frequently by the Palestinian press as an expert
on Jews and Judaism,

The Discussion:

Al-Kidwah (asked regarding the UN partition):

"I want to say that this is our Palestine, from
Metulla [Israel's northernmost city] to Rafiah
[Southern border] and to Aqaba [Israel's
southernmost point], from the [Jordan] River to
the [Mediterranean] Sea; whether they want it or
not."

Sissalem:

"...Lies surfaced about Jews being murdered here
and there, and the Holocaust. And, of course,
they are all lies and unfounded claims. No
Chelmno, no Dachau, no Auschwitz! [They] were
disinfection sites... They began to publicize in
their propaganda that they were persecuted,
murdered and exterminated... Committees acted
here and there to establish this entity
[Israel-Ed.], this foreign entity, implanted as a
cancer in our country, where our fathers lived,
where we live, and where our children after us
will live. They always portrayed themselves as
victims, and they made a Center for Heroism and
Holocaust. Whose heroism? Whose Holocaust?
Heroism is our nation's, the holocaust was
against our people... We were the victims, but
we shall not remain victims forever..."
[PATV 29-NOV-00] |Back to top|



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...
by my FEELINGS 3:37pm Mon Mar 3 '03

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THE DREAM-JEW OF PALESTINIANS IS SOMEONE WHO WON`T USE THEM AS A TARGET PRACTICE.

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Israeli Academic Nazis
by Bernice 7:00pm Mon Mar 3 '03

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ASSISTED SUICIDE, ISRAELI ACADEMIC STYLE
posted by Bernice Lipkin
January 20, 2003





Late in 2000, soon after the start of the Second
Intifada, some Israeli
academics became very excited -- they had at last
found peace partners among
the Palestinians. They claimed these Palestinians
were a "secular, civic,
sane Palestinian peace movement". Danny
Rabinowitz, a professor of
anthropology at Tel Aviv University, described it
this way:

" Last Friday, a group of 110 Palestinian
academics and public figures from
the territories published a petition that was, in
effect, an urgent appeal
to the Israeli public (Ha'aretz, Nov. 10, 2000).
A settlement capable of
bringing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to an
end once and for all, they
argue, must be based on four principles: an
Israeli withdrawal to the June
4, 1967 lines; the establishment of East
Jerusalem as the capital of
Palestine alongside West Jerusalem as the capital
of Israel; Israel's
recognition of its responsibility for the
creation of the Palestinian
refugee problem in 1948 as a precondition for the
formulation of a just
solution to the plight of those refugees; and
mutual recognition that each
side has a connection to the holy sites that are
under its jurisdiction."
The Israeli Leftists thought this was great. They
conceded that Arafat's
rejection of Barak's concessions was popular
among the Palestinians and
could lead to war, but they felt that subscribing
to the Palestinian Peace
Group's demands would work towards a peaceful
solution:

" .... a broad-based Israeli response to this
direct appeal is vital because
it could promote an important component in
Palestinian society that aspires
to a peace that will not force the Palestinians
to concede fundamental
national principles. Furthermore, such an Israeli
response could also
eventually create a wide foundation for dialogue
between two solid secular,
sane, leftist blocs."
In other words, peace meant the Palestinians
could take whatever they
regarded as theirs. Israel -- apparently not
having any fundamental national
principles -- would give up Yesha and East
Jerusalem and, abiding by a
one-sided interpretation of various UN
resolutions, would let the 1948 Arab
refugees flood into Israel. I don't understand
the fourth principle of
peace; but I suspect that these sane secularists
didn't much care about the
religious aspects anyways.

Actually, Israel's agreement would not make for
immediate peace. Israel
would also have to make unstated concessions to
the Palestinian Arabs who
were Israeli citizens.

"We [the Palestinian Peace Group] contend that
peace between the two peoples
is also contingent on achieving full equality
between Palestinian-Arab and
Jewish citizens in a democratic Israeli state."
Oren Yiftachel, Head of the Department of
Geography at Ben Gurion University
was one of the Israeli organizers who solicited
support from the Israeli
public. Nothing happened. The Palestinian version
of a peace-seeking group
faded into the background. Yiftachel blamed the
Americans and Israelis when
the Arabs intensified doing what they do best:
bombing, shooting, maiming.

Yiftachel's subsequent history is unremarkable --
he did what those on the
Israeli Academic Left do. He signed a letter
encouraging Israeli academics
to refuse to "serve as soldiers in the occupied
territories." He and Asad
Ghanem, an Arab political scientist, wrote "an
op-ed piece in Haaretz
proposing that Jews join Palestinians in
celebrating 'Land Day', a day at
the end of March when Israeli Arabs march against
Israel and denounce
Zionism" (Solomon Socrates, Israel's Academic
Extremists,
soc.culture.israel, December 26, 2001). He
denounced a proposal that Jews
move to the Galilee as racist, even though the
Galilee is an undisputed part
of Israel. With his Siamese twin, Professor of
Women's Studies Rema Hammami
of Birzeit University, he lectured on Israel and
Palestine at the University
of California Berkeley, Tufts, Boston College,
Stanford University, the
University of Southern California and the
University of Chicago. He
continued to insist that "[t]he past few months
of violent
Israeli-Palestinian clashes were triggered by a
poorly timed visit by
hard-line Lukid party member Ariel Sharon to a
contested Jerusalem site"
(www.csls.org.za). He urged that an international
force come into Israel,
specifically to protect the Palestinian people.
(Nothing was said about
protecting Israelis from Arab suicide bombers and
shooters.) Clearly, his
credentials as a worthy member of the
pro-Palestinian Academic Left can not
be denied.

Meantimes, Marxists and Arab sympathizers in
Europe, but especially in
England, were busy, busy, busy helping the
hapless Palestinians. As I
described in The Unenviable Fate of Israeli
Leftists in the July-August 2002
Think-Israel: Steven Rose sparked a campaign to
deny Israeli academics
travel funds and access to their European
colleagues. One academic who
declared herself inspired by this crusade was
Mona Baker of the University
of Manchester, who promptly fired two Israelis
who served on the editorial
boards of journals she controlled. In a move that
outsiders who don't
understand the dedication of the Israeli academic
leftists to the Arab cause
might think was stupid, some Israeli academics
signed the petition to
isolate Israeli academics. I speculated that the
selfless efforts of these
Israelis might work to their own detriment.

This has happened to that tireless worker for the
Arabs, Oren Yiftachel.

The two interlinked groups -- Israeli leftists
and their British buddies --
collided when Yiftachel and Ghanem coauthored an
article and submitted it to
David Slater, editor of an appropriate British
journal. As Steven E. Plaut
of the University of Haifa describes it:

" .. Yifatchel himself got hoisted on his own
petard. You see, he was trying
to place one of his Israel-bashing `academic'
articles in a periodical named
`Political Geography', a piece devoted to proving
that Israel was a worse
country than South Africa under white apartheid.
But the article got
rejected by the British journal, despite its
favorable position on Israel's
destruction, because the journal is boycotting
Israeli academics in total."
Edward Alexander of the University of Washington
in Seattle ("The Academic
Rejection of Israel", J. Post, 3 jan 2003)
explains what makes the rejection
so ludicrous:

"Here was a case to test the mettle of a
boycotter - a mischling article,
half-Jewish, half-Arab, wholly the product of
people carrying Israeli
passports and working for Israeli institutions,
yet expressing opinions on
Israel as the devil's own experiment station
indistinguishable from
Slater's. Poor Slater, apparently unable to
amputate the Jewish part of the
article from the Arab part and (to quote him)
`not sure to what extent [the
authors] had been critical of Israel,' rejected
the submission in its
entirety. Or so it seemed - for after half a year
of wrangling, it emerged
that Slater might accept the paper if only its
authors would insert some
more paragraphs likening Israel to apartheid
South Africa. In other words,
the Englishman might relax his boycotting
principles if his ideological
prejudices could be satisfied.
Exactly what happened at this point is not easy
to discover. Since Yiftachel
is one of those academics who adheres to the
motto `the other country, right
or wrong,' it is hard to believe he would balk at
describing Israel as an
apartheid state. He had in the past denounced
Israeli governments as racist
or dictatorial and had co-authored with Ghanem a
piece in Ha'aretz urging
Jews to participate in `Land Day.' But now he had
become the classic
instance of somebody `hoist with his own petard,'
caught in his own trap. At
one point he complained to Slater `that rejecting
a person because of his
[national] origin, from an academic point of
view, is very problematic.' Not
only did it interfere with the progress of
Yiftachel's career, it hurt the
anti-Israel cause.

`From a political and practical point of view,
the boycott actually weakens
the sources of opposition to the Israeli
occupation in universities,' he
admitted."

In an article in the Jerusalem Post, 16 December
2002, Amnon Lord labeled
those academic Leftists around the world -- and
their collaborators in
Israeli universities -- who libel Israel
spiritually and intellectually as
"spiritual marauders". "These people are
responsible for the spread of the
terrorism war against the Jews to every city in
the world ..." He used
Yiftachel's story to illustrate how Israeli
academics were toadying up to
British academic institutions.

"I admit there was something ironic about the
story that caused a lot of
gloating, because Yiftachel is a researcher who
has advanced his career
through slanted anti-Zionist research.
But the main question here is how Israeli-born
intellectuals -- sabras --
have become so morally spineless that they are
willing to turn their backs
on their society and their people.

If this were a unique story, we could not
generalize from it. But knowing
Israeli intellectuals, this story tells us about
both British academe and
its Israeli clients."
Too true.
THE UNENVIABLE FATE OF ISRAELI LEFTISTS
posted by Bernice Lipkin.
July 20, 2002
Peace Now, B'Tselem and a host of other Jewish
organizations that see the
Palestinians as victims of Israeli brutality have
long drawn on the
commitment and efforts of a group of Israeli
academics, who for the most
part view themselves as secularists and
globalists. They are willing to give
the extra dunam of land for peaceful relations
with their neighbors. They
retain a optimism, last seen in America during
the Vietnam War that, with
just another concession, Israel will see peace at
the end of the tunnel.
Since the Second Intifada began, their ranks have
thinned, but the hard-core
of Israeli leftists have remained true to their
principles.

Arabs and Arab-sympathizers who are fighting
Israel find these folk useful
in many ways. There is, for example, a downside
to boycotting Israeli goods:
someone might think you are anti-Jewish. What to
do? Simple. Just point to
the dozen or so Jewish organizations that act as
if Israel is always in the
wrong. So your boycott isn't anti-Jewish; it's
anti-Israel.

The Jews that support Arab activities say they
don't hate Israel. If fact,
often they claim they are doing this for her own
good, to stop her from
continuing in her evil ways. The urgency of the
task is such that, in
comparison, what the Arabs are doing is small
potatoes.

These Jews often serve as mouthpieces for views
others want expressed. When
Dan Ephron of Newsweek a few weeks ago did a
number on the settlements in
the Territories, who did he quote as Mr. Average
Israeli? Professor Arie
Arnon of Ben Gurion University. He didn't mention
that Professor Arnon is a
leading member of Peace Now and has signed a
letter urging IDF reservists
not to serve on the West Bank.

Sometimes they go in for street theatre
demonstrating for peace or they
monitor what other Jews were doing. Peace Now
members are always on the
alert for illegal building on the West Bank.
Illegal Jewish settlements,
that is. Illegal Arab settlements don't matter.
They take pictures. They
report new building activity. They send this
information to interested
parties, who condemn the new growth. Rumor has it
that photos showing weak
spots in settlement defenses have found their way
into the hands of
terrorists, who infiltrate the town a short time
later. Certainty has it
that the condemnation is always because UN
Resolution this and Oslo
Agreement that have been violated. There usually
isn't a violation, but
repetition of the charges has convinced many
people that the Jews are in the
wrong.

In recent months, these academics have found
themselves the targets of
attack by the very people they regard as their
partners for peace:
like-minded colleagues around the world and Arabs
who are pro-Arab (Is there
an Arab group that's pro-Israel?). It has caused
many on the Left to
actually look at what's going on. But there are
some who cling even more
firmly to the rightness of their beliefs.

On April 6, 2002, a letter in the English
newspaper, the Guardian, announced
an action, already in progress, to deny Israeli
academics travel funds and
access to their European colleagues. The letter
pointed out that:

"...many national and European cultural and
research institutions, including
especially those funded from the EU and the
European Science Foundation,
regard Israel as a European state for the
purposes of awarding grants and
contracts."
The letter mentioned in passing that no other
Middle Eastern country was so
favored -- but they clearly didn't want to get
into a comparison of science
in Israel vis a vis its neighbors. "Would it
not," the letter continued,

"therefore be timely if at both national and
European level a moratorium was
called upon any further such support unless and
until Israel abide by UN
resolutions and open serious peace negotiations
with the Palestinians, along
the lines proposed in many peace plans including
most recently that
sponsored by the Saudis and the Arab League."
Steven Rose, who helped instigate the petition,
modestly designated himself
as "Coordinator" (There's a sketch about him in
Two Academics and A Rabbi
in this issue.)

The appended list of some 120 signers included a
large number from the UK,
as well as signers from Eire, Denmark, Finland,
France, Germany, Iceland,
Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and
Switzerland.

What was incredible was that the list of signers
included academics from
Israel, the very people who would be adversely
affected. This is the list of
Israelis who signed the English petition:

Amit, Professor Daniel, Hebrew University
Bar, Iris, Haifa University
Giora, Professor Rachel, Tel-Aviv University
Katriel, Dr Haggai, Haifa University
Lavie, Professor Smadar, Tel-Aviv
Pappe, Dr Ilan, Haifa University
Razi, Professor Zvi, Tel-Aviv University
Reinhart, Professor Tanya, Tel-Aviv University
Shlonsky, Dr Tuvia, Hebrew University, Jerusalem


By May 22nd, the petition was answered by a
counter petition, initiated by a
group of mathematicians at the University of
Chicago. The group, Scientists
and Scholars in Support of Israel, called the
boycott "immoral, misguided
and dangerous." Their petition, also published in
the Guardian, was soon
signed by some 2500 academics.

Like brush fires in a dry forest, boycott
petitions have flared up around
the world, followed by anti-boycott petitions.
International groups,
institutes and universities have become involved.
It's hard to be accurate
about the chronology, because often a petition
has been signed by the time
it is announced.

The Isolate Israeli Scientists theme of the
petitions is, of course, roughly
the same, and, were the boycotts successful, the
results would be highly
damaging, not just to Israelis, but to their many
collaborative efforts
around the globe.

There are surface differences. Some of the
petitions, like the one in
England, sound as if they were merely trying to
get Israeli academics to do
the right thing. Others, like the Australian one,
initiated by Ghassan Hage,
an Arab-Australian professor from Sydney
University's Anthropology
Department, and John Docker, a visiting fellow at
the Australian National
University's Humanities Research Center, are
intemperate. The Australian one
had this to say (italics added):

"Our moratorium is based on the position that the
majority of Israeli
academics and academic institutions, by their
silence or active support for
their government, have been complicit with the
destruction of the
Palestinian people."
Mark Schulman, writing about the petition in the
Jerusalem Post, 23 May
2002, pointed out that only some 90 teachers and
researchers out of some
40,000 nationwide signed the petition. More to
the point, there was strong
reaction against it.

It's hard to know where a boycott petition is a
local affair and spontaneous
and where it has been centrally choreographed. In
the United States,
Associate Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh of Yale
University appears to have a
major role in coordinating boycott petitions. (It
is a wonder the man has
time to teach: he is also running a boycott of
Israeli goods and services.
And a boycott of businesses that do business with
Israel. He heads the
Palestine Right To Return Coalition's Media
Committee. And he writes letters
blasting articles he doesn't like.)

The French petition, on the other hand, may be
self-generated. Few of the
names are on the English petition. The French
petition illustrates another
problem in comparing the boycott petitions:
figuring out what they are
objecting to. Sometimes it's the IDF entry into a
West Bank city. Sometimes
it's their killing a terrorist. Sometimes it's
Israel winning the 1967 War.
Sometimes, it's Israel winning the 1948 War.

Drawn up by a group calling itself Coordination
des Scientifiques pour une
Paix Juste au Proche-Orient, the French petition
called for a boycott of
Israeli scientific institutions. In the English
translation, the petition
reads: "Because the campaign against the
Palestinian people and the
Palestinian Authority launched at the end of
March 2002. . ." A signer
pledges that

"Under these circumstances, I can no longer in
good conscience continue to
cooperate with official Israeli institutions,
including universities. I will
attend no scientific conferences in Israel, and I
will not participate as
referee in hiring or promotion decisions by
Israeli universities, or in the
decisions of Israeli funding agencies. I will
continue to collaborate with,
and host, Israeli scientific colleagues on an
individual basis."
The last sentence is interesting -- you can show
your indignation but
continue a collaboration that benefits you. There
are some French Jewish
signers but no Israeli signers. In the USA
contingent, Richard Lewontin's
name stands out among the predominantly Arab
names. Lewontin wrote a book
with Steven Rose of the English petition (See:
Two Academics and a Rabbi .)
The boys from Australia, Docker and Hage, signed
on for this one, too.

While statements by some groups, such as the one
by a Polish group against
the boycott, were strongly supportive of Israel,
it says something about the
dominant mindset in the academic communities that
many of the rebuttals are
hand-wringers and defensive -- complaining that
the precipitating boycott is
one-sided in assigning blame. But in general, the
response of scientists and
academicians has been overwhelmingly against
boycotting Israelis. The
EuroIsrael website has some 13,000 signers to
date.

Activist academics promoting the boycott are
often linked to noisier groups
seeking to have universities divest themselves of
their Israeli holdings. In
June there was a flurry of publicity at Harvard
when a faculty member,
Richard Hunt, actively encouraged Zayed Yasin, a
senior, to apply to give
one of the undergraduate commencement speeches,
and then, in his role as
Chairman of the selection committee, helped
select him. Yasin had raised
funds for the Holy Land Foundation, a group tied
to Hamas. And several trade
journals -- Nature and Lancet come to mind --
have made gratuitous
anti-Israel statements. But the continuing
campaigns for and against
boycott, had been waged largely by petition and
persuasion in the academic
community.

All in all, it pretty much stayed out of the eye
of the general public.
Until Mona -- Mona Baker -- an Egyptian academic
at the University of
Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
(UMIST), who did not restrict
her activities to signing the French and English
petitions. Thanks to her,
the campaign to humiliate Israeli scholars became
direct, nasty and
attracted the attention of the general public.

She is the editor and owner (!) of two journals:
The Translator and
Translation Studies Abstracts. They are published
by St. Jerome Press, which
is run by her husband, Ken. She announced she
would no longer accept papers
from Israelis. And she fired the two Israeli
scholars who served on the
Editorial/Advisory Boards of these journals
because they were Israeli. This
provoked an indignant response from the Israeli
government and academics
mostly outside of England.

English academics reacted after Baker pleaded
nobility and bravery in an
interview she gave to the Telegraph, a London
newspaper. David Tell of the
Weekly Standard describes her interview this way
in an article entitled
Boycotting the Juden:

"There is a large intimidation machine out
there," organized by
international bankers one supposes. And this
machine means to silence all
critical commentary on Israeli government policy.
And "the Americans are the
worst offenders." But "I'm damned if I'm going to
be intimidated." And as if
to prove it, Baker went on to liken Israel to
Nazi Germany: "Israel has gone
beyond just war crimes. It is horrific what is
going on there. Many of us
would like to talk about it as some kind of
Holocaust which the world will
eventually wake up to, much too late, of course,
as they did with the last
one."
Her interview received world-wide attention and
she received much unwelcome
email. A letter by Richard Cassel in the
Jerusalem Post reported what he had
written her:

"The article in the Jerusalem Post quotes you as
saying that 'Israel has
gone beyond just war crimes. It is horrific what
is going on there.' I was
curious though. Just what horrific act do you
find so appalling? Could it be
the Israeli suicide bombers who target any
innocent Palestinian they can
find? Or perhaps it's all the Arab buses they've
blown up. Of course it
could be all the Arab Pizza Parlors, Malls, and
Restaurants that they
attacked. Or maybe the Israeli textbooks which
claim that Arabs poison
wells, use Christian blood to bake pita, control
world finance, and meet
secretly to plot the takeover of the world?"
The two Israelis got less attention.

Ironically, one of them, Miriam Shlesinger, a
lecturer in translation
studies at Bar-Ilan University, is a former
chairman of the Amnesty
International's Israeli chapter, a longtime
member of Peace Now and a critic
of Israel's policies in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. She has been active
during the Second Intifada as part of an
ethnically-mixed group that defies
Israeli army blockades to deliver supplies to
Palestinian towns in the West
Bank. She signed a petition complaining about
Israel's closing of
Palestinian universities. She participated in the
peace rally in January,
2001 to make Jerusalem the capital of both Israel
and a Palestinian state.
The rally also called for "a just solution for
the Palestinian refugee
problem."

Dr. Shlesinger's son-in-law died last year, shot
in the face by a Hamas
terrorist. Now this. She has condemned Baker's
actions as
"counter-productive, discriminatory, and based on
misinformation", but she
doesn't seem to take her dismissal personally.

Professor Eva Jablonka of the Cohn Institute for
the History and Philosophy
of Science, Tel-Aviv University signed the
English boycott petition. She has
been quoted as saying: "I received very emotional
reactions [from my
colleagues], as though I am betraying them and
personally working against
them." (Fancy that!)

She went on to say:

"None of the people who signed this manifesto are
in favor of a sweeping
academic boycott, canceling all relations; all
the people I know who signed
are people who care and want the State of Israel
to survive, as an ethical
country, as a country of peace."
Judging from their published writings, she's
wrong that all the signers want
Israel to survive. Unless she means that Israel
has her blessings to survive
if and only if it is an ethical country -- as the
signers define ethical.

Professor Tanya Reinhart, a linguist from
Tel-Aviv University, is one of the
more interesting of this group. She did her Ph.D.
at MIT in linguistics,
where she was Noam Chomsky's student. (See the
sketch of Chomsky, this
issue.) They continue to see eye to eye. And
though Chomsky drops theories
like a cat drops litters, this one has survived.
Well, maybe others have
abandoned it, but Reinhart continues to talk
about Binding and Anaphora, her
dissertation topic.

She has been a fervent fighter for Palestinian
rights, and has often
published in Yediot Aharonot, a Hebrew daily.
These articles, as do those
written by Chomsky, find their way to many an
anti-Israel website. She
signed both the English petition and the MIT
divestiture petition. She
continues to defend the boycott petition.

Surprisingly, Baruch Kimmerling, in the
Department of Sociology at Hebrew
University, did not sign the petition, though he
agreed with the reasons
given for having the boycott. He too felt Israel
had "committed
unforgettable crimes against the Palestinian
people." But "[i]n this
repressive climate, the Israeli academy remains
the last bastion of free
thought and free speech." He called upon the
"international academic
community to strengthen its connections with the
Israeli and Palestinian
academic communities, in order to empower their
autonomy and freedom."

Reinhart reacted strongly. A dedicated purist,
she wants a full-scale
boycott. Israel should be shunned, because, in
her view, it practices
apartheid.

Last November, she, together with Rachel Giora,
another Israeli linguist,
started an action advocating that the city of Ann
Arbor divest itself of
Israeli investments (palestine-pmc website,
18-11-2001). The Michigan group
also advocates economic sanctions against Israel
because

After six months of relentless military
oppression of Palestinians in the
Israeli-occupied territories, the government of
Israel has made daily life
even more intolerable for the Palestinians by
imposing a physical siege on
their villages and towns.
Actions by Jews against Israel have intensified.
The campaigns on the campus
and the boycott against academics continue. But
the language has changed. It
is becoming clear that the objective is no longer
to purify Israel, to
maintain her ethics; it's not even to punish her
for doing wrong. Now it is
unabashedly to show Solidarity with Palestine.
What started years ago as an
intellectual argument between nationalism versus
universalism -- with most
of the Israeli academics dedicated to
universalism -- has become a simpler
issue: are you for Israeli nationalism or for
Palestinian Arab nationalism?
It is as if Superman has stripped off the
coverings of his mild-mannered
alter ego and emerged for all to see.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) was
started in 1982 in England; they
organize protests, lobby and raise consciousness.
A new campaign started on
July 4th, again in England, and concurrently,
campaigns have blossomed in
several countries. They are frankly committed to
the Arab cause, acting to
nullify the last 50 years since Israel became a
state. And Jews are a big
part of the campaign.

In England, they call it the BIG Campaign, a new
campaign to boycott Israeli
products and tourism, perhaps modelled after the
Michigan effort. Lots of
Arabs signed. Steven Rose signed. Tanya Reinhart
signed. They also want to
embargo arms to Israel. The Scottish Palestine
Solidarity Campaign has
joined forces. "Jews who want to disassociate
themselves from Israel's war
crimes against the Palestinians and to campaign
for a solution to the crisis
based on human rights for all" were invited to
contact Donnie Gluckstein of
Edinburgh, who helps run the campaign. In this
country, the Palestine
Solidarity Committee of the University of Texas
at Austin "affirmed that
every Palestinian has a legitimate, individual
right to return to his or her
original home and to absolute restitution of his
or her property." Most of
the signatures were Arab. Noam Chomsky signed.
And so did Norman Finklestein
and Ilan Pappe.

Pappe, a professor of political science at Haifa
University and a member of
the Jewish-Arab Democratic Front for Peace and
Equality, is facing a hearing
at his University to decide whether or not to
expel him. Pappe claims the
University wants to punish him for political
reasons, for defending Teddy
Katz, a Master's candidate and peace activist.
When the Alexandroni Brigade,
who had fought in Tantura, sued him for libel,
Katz admitted to falsifying
evidence to make it appear as if a massacre was
committed by Israeli forces
in the coastal village of Tantura during the 1948
War. Later, an internal
Committee of Inquiry at the University found Katz
had systematically
misquoted the Arab witnesses he interviewed and
taped. But damage has been
done. Many pro-Arab websites are now convinced
there was a massacre.

The Israeli academics probably accept the present
harm they do Israeli
because it will bring about a future of peace and
justice. But what of their
own future?

If the Arabs were to succeed in destroying
Israel, would they let their
Jewish helpers live a minute longer than any
other Jew? Unlikely. Even now,
the terrorists are notorious for their
indiscriminate attacks; they don't
seem to be trying very hard to avoid injuring any
particular group. So
wearing some kind of ID badge won't help these
Jewish Arab-aiders.

Their European and American colleagues may
appreciate the selfless efforts
of this group of Israeli academics and may even
be inspired to work harder
for the Palestinian cause. But the more their
buddies emulate them, the
worse off these Israelis will be -- they will be
without intellectual
communications and will have less money to do
research.

They can't turn to the majority of the Israelis.
They may see their freedom
of expression as the central concern. They may
see it as their right to
muzzle Israeli scientists and scholars. They may
feel good keeping Israeli
products off the market. Less ideological
Israelis know they do Israel
damage. They jeopardize jobs. They are not worthy
of respect.

So what is the future for these universalists?
What will become of these
benighted academics? Does anyone really care?




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To jakob
by ofra. 8:34pm Mon Mar 3 '03

print comment

"Holocaust" extortionists Sit on Billions of dollars that belong to Legitimate Holocaust survivors who get 5OO to 2,OOO dollars Max- if they are deemed genuine... In many Cases these Survivors are deemed fake.

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Aw Cmon Now
by Harvey 10:25am Tue Mar 4 '03

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Every good Indymedia member knows there was never
any Holocaust, it was all a Zionist plot to
defame the poor innocent German nationalists, who
were as innocent and oppressed by the Jews as are
th Palestinians today!

Heil Indymedia!

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attacking the Jews again eh motherfucker?
by Harvey is a cunt! 4:57am Wed Mar 5 '03

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Fuck you bitch with your Hitler rhetoric! Heil Indymedia? what the fuck are you, the 3rd reich re-incarnated?

get stuffed asshole!

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I think Harvey was being sarcastic
by Hymie 7:09pm Wed Mar 5 '03

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about the fascists who run Indymedia.

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Question for Velduis
by Herzl 2:58pm Thu Mar 6 '03

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Ok Veldhuis. Can you name a single point or give
us a single example in which your own position
regarding Israel and Jews differs one iota from
that of the Dutch fascists, the Islamic fascists,
the skinheads, the neonazis, or the Hamas?

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A New Holocaust Denier for Neve to Defend?
by Eli 9:33am Tue Mar 11 '03

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Since Gordon has a history of defending and
promoting Holocaust Deniers, perhaps he will now
defend and promote THIS one in Nation?

Palestinians get a Holocaust denier as
1st prime minister

by Rafael Medoff

While European Union
officials praised
Yasser Arafat's decision to
appoint his
first-ever prime minister,
historians of the
Holocaust winced at the news
that a leading
candidate for the job is the
author of a book
denying that the Nazis
murdered 6 million
Jews.

The candidate is Mahmoud
Abbas (also known as Abu
Mazen), Arafat's second in command, and
his book, published in Arabic
in 1983, translates as
"The Other Side: The Secret Relations Between
Nazism and the Leadership of
the Zionist Movement." It
was originally his doctoral dissertation,
completed at Moscow Oriental
College.

The book repeatedly attempts
to cast doubt on the fact
that the Nazis slaughtered 6 million Jews,
according to a translation
provided by the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

"Following the war," he
writes, "word was spread that
six million Jews were amongst the victims and
that a war of extermination
was aimed primarily at the
Jews...The truth is that no one can either
confirm or deny this figure.
In other words, it is
possible that the number of Jewish victims
reached
six million, but at the same
time it is possible that
the figure is much smaller -- below one
million."

Abbas denies that the gas
chambers were used to murder
Jews, quoting a "scientific study" to that
effect by French
Holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson.

Abbas' book then asserts:
"The historian and author
Raoul Hilberg thinks that the figure does not
exceed 890,000."

That is, of course, utterly
false. Hilberg, a
distinguished historian and author of the classic
study "The
Destruction of the European
Jews," has never said or
written any such thing.

Abbas believes the 6 million
figure is the product of
a Zionist conspiracy: "It seems that the interest
of
the Zionist movement...is to
inflate this figure so
that their gains will be greater," he writes.
"This led
them to emphasize this figure
in order to gain the
solidarity of international public opinion with
Zionism. Many scholars have
debated the figure of six
million and reached stunning conclusions --
fixing the number of Jewish
victims at only a few
hundred thousand."

Another falsehood. In fact,
no serious scholar
proposes such a figure.

After reducing the magnitude
of the Nazi slaughter so
that it no longer seems to have been a
full-scale
Holocaust, Abbas seeks to
absolve the Nazis by blaming
the Zionist leadership for whatever killings
did take place. According to
Abbas, "A partnership was
established between Hitler's Nazis and the
leadership of the Zionist
movement...[the Zionists
gave] permission to every racist in the world,
led
by Hitler and the Nazis, to
treat Jews as they wish,
so long as it guarantees immigration to
Palestine."

In addition to encouraging
the persecution of Jews so
they would immigrate to the Holy Land, the
Zionist leaders actually
wanted Jews to be murdered,
because -- in Abbas' words -- "having more
victims meant greater rights
and stronger privilege to
join the negotiation table for dividing the
spoils
of war once it was over.
However, since Zionism was
not a fighting partner -- suffering victims in a
battle -- it had no escape
but to offer up human
beings, under any name, to raise the number of

victims, which they could
then boast of at the moment
of accounting."

Perhaps sentiments of this
sort were common within
Abbas' circle of graduate students in the Soviet
Union in the 1970s. But in
the free world, such
propaganda has never been accepted as serious
scholarship.

In most Western countries,
Holocaust-deniers have been
treated as pariahs. In Canada and many
European countries,
Holocaust-denial is a criminal
offense. In New Zealand, Canterbury University
recently issued an apology
for having accepting a
master's thesis denying the Holocaust, while the
French minister of education
revoked a doctoral degree
that was awarded to a Holocaust-denier by
the University of Nantes. A
Polish university
professor who denied the Holocaust was suspended
from his position. The
Japanese publisher Bungei
Shunju shut down one of its magazines for
printing
an article denying the
Holocaust.

International pressure
compelled Croatian President
Franjo Tudjman to publicly retract statements in
his book doubting that the
Holocaust had taken place.
Austrian Freedom Party leader Jorg Haider
was ostracized by the
international community for his
remarks praising members of the SS, as was
French politician Jean Marie
Le Pen, for questioning
the existence of the gas chambers and belittling
the significance of the
Holocaust. A recent poll found
64 percent of Americans believe world leaders
should likewise refuse to
meet with Abbas.

Yet some in the media have
treated Abbas with kid
gloves, to say the least. The official BCC News
Profile of Abbas reports: "A
highly intellectual man,
Abbas studied law in Egypt before doing a Ph.D.
in Moscow. He is the author
of several books." The New
York Times recently characterized Abbas
as "a lawyer and
historian...He holds a doctorate in
history from the Moscow Oriental College; his
topic was Zionism." Neither
the BBC nor the Times
offered any further explanation as to the
contents
of Abbas' writings.

Bestowing the title
"historian" upon Mahmoud Abbas
awards his writings a stature they do not
deserve, and deals a grievous
insult to every genuine
historian.

If Abbas is elevated to the
post of prime minister of
the Palestinian Authority, not only the media
but
the entire international
community will be confronted
with the question of whether Abbas deserves to
be treated any differently
from Tudjman, Haider and Le
Pen.


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DEFENSING OF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS!
by LARA 9:18pm Tue Mar 11 '03

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I AM FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF THE ENDLESS RHETORIC DIRECTED AGAINST JOHN VELDUIS AND OTHERS WHO DARE TO CRITICIZE ISRHELL.
READING MOST OF JOHNS' COMMENTS , I AM STRUCK BY HOW GENUINE HE IS IN PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS AND THOSE WHO ARE ITS PERPETUAL VICTIMS.
HIS RHETORIC DOES NOT HAVE 1 AYOTA OF JEW HATRED AND TO SAY THAT IT DOES IS A COMMON SCAPEGOATING TECHNIQ OF JEWS WHO CANT STAND THE STENCH OF TRUTH.
THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE IS A JEW AND TO ACCUSE HER OF SELF HATRED WILL GET YOU NOWHERE.

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Comrade Gordon Needs to Make up His Mind
by Iris 5:26pm Thu Mar 13 '03

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http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-news-0167.html

Gordon endorses boycotts of Israel

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All of your comments are confusing
by Aysha 12:26am Tue Apr 22 '03

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I do not understand how any of you can call yourself activist fighting for justice. None of you (academics included) speak of a real peace for the Middle East.
I am born a Muslim and the wife of a Jew . It hurts me to my soul to read the hate you all feel towards Jews. All Jews in Israel do not hate Arabs. All Arabs do not hate Jews. You are fanning the flame of hate. I have come to realize that for us and many like us we will never see peace and justice between our people with the "help" of the right-wing political party. Please seek the ideal of how people of two different religious beliefs can come together and live in harmony like God has intended.

As I have followed this site I have not heard any one speak of this concept. Everyday I pray for peace for the world and ALL of life on it. (from worms to people).
I imagen peace, justice, and understanding for ALL people. Not only for people who I think are right.

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A tale of another Aisha :
by :, 1:34am Tue Apr 22 '03

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The moaning of Aisha Ahmed, eight, fills the hospital's emergency ward.

One of hundreds of child victims in the 15-day-old U.S.-led war in Iraq, she lost one eye and her face and body are peppered with wounds from what must have been a storm of shrapnel.

"Mummy! I want my mummy. Where is my mummy?" Aisha kept muttering. Yet neither the nurse nor the neighbor trying to comfort her dared to answer.

Her four-year-old brother Mohammad died and her mother and other brother were in critical condition undergoing surgery for head and chest injuries. Her father and two sisters were all badly injured and in another hospital.

A neighbor said he saw missiles crash into Radwaniyeh, a remote area near Baghdad's airport on Wednesday morning.

To their misfortune, they live in an area that -- apart from their farm -- has a presidential palace complex and military positions. A total of 12 children and six adults were struck.

U.S. war headquarters in Qatar said that a farm at Radwaniyeh doubled as a military "command and control facility." Washington says it seeks to minimize civilian casualties in its war to oust President Saddam Hussein.

Aisha was with her cousin and neighbors playing in the garden during a lull in the fighting when a missile struck, the neighbor said.

"We heard the planes and then the big explosion. We saw these houses in flames, and ran to rescue them and get them out from under the rubble. We did not expect them to hit civilians during a lull," the neighbor said.

MANY VICTIMS CHILDREN

Aisha lay with dry blood on her clothes and her moans turned to screams when nurses tried to lift her to the operating theater for head surgery.

Doctor Ahmed Abdel Amir said children were bound to make up a large number of casualties because they are such a big proportion of Iraq's 26 million population.

Another child, Mohammad Kazem, seven, lay in the next bed with serum tubes strapped to him. He was hit by shrapnel in the stomach when a missile crashed near his home west of Baghdad.

"He is so terrified now. He trembles when he hears explosions. I keep on trying to calm him down. I keep telling him that nothing will happen to him any more.

"Whenever he hears the thud of explosions he grabs me. I stay hugging him and patting him until the bombings stop," said his mother, Madiha Mohsen Ali, 40.

"He does not sleep or eat. The only question he keeps asking is: 'mummy when will this banging stop?" she added.

Such scenes have become part of daily life in Iraq since the U.S.-led war started with a fierce air attack and a ground invasion on March 20.

Since then, U.S. planes have flown thousands of sorties, destroying Iraq's military buildings, infrastructure and ministries and sometimes civilian homes.

Most said the war, in which Iraq said 1,250 civilians were killed and 5,000 wounded, was particularly hard on children.

Mohammad al-Jammal, six, was also screaming from his wounds. He too had been standing outside his house when a missile struck, killing two people and sending shrapnel into his stomach, opening it to the intestines.

He lay with his father and mother reading Koranic prayers for him. They said he would be all right because "God is looking after him."

Mothers at the hospital compare notes on their children's traumas. Many speak of their terrified children crying relentlessly, trembling when they hear the bombings. They say their children refuse to eat or sleep.

They say their children are bewildered and depressed

www.davidicke.com/icke/index1c.html

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