The UCT resolution targets researchers whose affiliation is directly with the Israeli Defence Force, and not with a university
26 August 2024 - 21:05
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A detailed exposé of Israel’s systematic global disinformation campaign by human rights group Al-Shabaka, “Israel’s Disinformation Apparatus: A Key Weapon in its Arsenal”, summarises the objective of such propaganda:
“During campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing, disinformation is a potent weapon — a tool to dehumanise victims, justify mass violence and, most importantly, sow seeds of doubt designed to muzzle calls for intervention. When information is weaponised, confusion and doubt no longer emerge from the ‘fog of war’as a symptom, but are purposefully cultivated with the explicit intention of creating it”.
Mandy Allen repeats false assertions regarding Palestine and the University of Cape Town (UCT) in her recent letter, and her muddled logic tanks with her views on Hong Kong (“UCT boycott of Israeli universities disingenuous”, August 22).
A simple reading of the resolution adopted by both the UCT senate and council debunks her claim of a “boycott by UCT of Israeli universities that are associated with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF)”.If such a resolution existed, Allen would be correct that every Israeli university would be in purview, as all of them have direct relations with the IDF and are complicit in Palestinian dispossession, occupation and repression. Maya Wind, an Israeli scholar, documents this academic complicity, both present and historically, in detail in her towering work Towers of Ivory and Steel — How Israeli Universities deny Palestinian Freedom.
However, the UCT resolution is very specific in targeting those researchers whose affiliation is directly with the IDF (not a university). Aside from the fact that the IDF has destroyed every educational institution in Gaza, and killed many faculty in what is termed “educide”, should UCT collaborate with the IDF in any way it may be complicit in such crimes. This places an obligation on UCT to not only consider the moral and ethical questions, but also its legal position. The latest ICJ ruling that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal, places further obligations on international parties to act against Israel.
As SA judge Dire Tladi reiterated in his ICJ opinion: “The policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory are, in many respects, alike to those of apartheid SA”. This places a further obligation on UCT to act, considering our own history.
Allen invokes a nonexistent “right” of Israel to self-defence, a mantra of Israeli propaganda. The fact is that an illegal occupier lacks any right of self-defence against those it occupies, oppresses and murders. Did the apartheid regime in SA have a right of self defence against the liberation movement? The answer is simple, the right of resistance exists for Palestinians, as for all colonised peoples.
In her dog-whistle letter she repeats the tropes about Iran, which despite its serious violations of civil and human rights has never committed a genocide or invaded another country. Israel has in its belligerence, supported by the US, UK and other European powers, attacked or invaded Lebanon (which gave birth to Hezbollah), Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt. It is Israel that is a grave threat to world peace, not Iran. The world would be a different and more peaceful space should Israel simply fulfil its legal obligations.
In a confused rant, Allen then paints a picture of a beleaguered Hong Kong under the repressive Chinese regime, and employing a bizarre leap of logic concludes that UCT should not support Hong Kong academics. In essence: boycott the beleaguered.
Thankfully, in my many decades of association with UCT there has not been a single sustained complaint of anti-Semitism lodged with the university, which has been a space of engagement, tolerance of diversity and commitment to values of universal justice and human rights.
Of course these don’t resonate with Allen, who would rather project her bigotry onto a fine institution and its world-class academics, many of them Jewish, who supported the resolutions.
Dr Shuaib Manjra Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: UCT has obligation to act
The UCT resolution targets researchers whose affiliation is directly with the Israeli Defence Force, and not with a university
A detailed exposé of Israel’s systematic global disinformation campaign by human rights group Al-Shabaka, “Israel’s Disinformation Apparatus: A Key Weapon in its Arsenal”, summarises the objective of such propaganda:
“During campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing, disinformation is a potent weapon — a tool to dehumanise victims, justify mass violence and, most importantly, sow seeds of doubt designed to muzzle calls for intervention. When information is weaponised, confusion and doubt no longer emerge from the ‘fog of war’as a symptom, but are purposefully cultivated with the explicit intention of creating it”.
Mandy Allen repeats false assertions regarding Palestine and the University of Cape Town (UCT) in her recent letter, and her muddled logic tanks with her views on Hong Kong (“UCT boycott of Israeli universities disingenuous”, August 22).
A simple reading of the resolution adopted by both the UCT senate and council debunks her claim of a “boycott by UCT of Israeli universities that are associated with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF)”. If such a resolution existed, Allen would be correct that every Israeli university would be in purview, as all of them have direct relations with the IDF and are complicit in Palestinian dispossession, occupation and repression. Maya Wind, an Israeli scholar, documents this academic complicity, both present and historically, in detail in her towering work Towers of Ivory and Steel — How Israeli Universities deny Palestinian Freedom.
However, the UCT resolution is very specific in targeting those researchers whose affiliation is directly with the IDF (not a university). Aside from the fact that the IDF has destroyed every educational institution in Gaza, and killed many faculty in what is termed “educide”, should UCT collaborate with the IDF in any way it may be complicit in such crimes. This places an obligation on UCT to not only consider the moral and ethical questions, but also its legal position. The latest ICJ ruling that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal, places further obligations on international parties to act against Israel.
As SA judge Dire Tladi reiterated in his ICJ opinion: “The policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory are, in many respects, alike to those of apartheid SA”. This places a further obligation on UCT to act, considering our own history.
Allen invokes a nonexistent “right” of Israel to self-defence, a mantra of Israeli propaganda. The fact is that an illegal occupier lacks any right of self-defence against those it occupies, oppresses and murders. Did the apartheid regime in SA have a right of self defence against the liberation movement? The answer is simple, the right of resistance exists for Palestinians, as for all colonised peoples.
In her dog-whistle letter she repeats the tropes about Iran, which despite its serious violations of civil and human rights has never committed a genocide or invaded another country. Israel has in its belligerence, supported by the US, UK and other European powers, attacked or invaded Lebanon (which gave birth to Hezbollah), Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt. It is Israel that is a grave threat to world peace, not Iran. The world would be a different and more peaceful space should Israel simply fulfil its legal obligations.
In a confused rant, Allen then paints a picture of a beleaguered Hong Kong under the repressive Chinese regime, and employing a bizarre leap of logic concludes that UCT should not support Hong Kong academics. In essence: boycott the beleaguered.
Thankfully, in my many decades of association with UCT there has not been a single sustained complaint of anti-Semitism lodged with the university, which has been a space of engagement, tolerance of diversity and commitment to values of universal justice and human rights.
Of course these don’t resonate with Allen, who would rather project her bigotry onto a fine institution and its world-class academics, many of them Jewish, who supported the resolutions.
Dr Shuaib Manjra
Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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