Nick Rimmer is a senior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Sydney, Australia (social networking sites)
The academic boycott of the Israeli occupation is a branch of the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement (BDS), which defends the rights of Palestinians, but it has not gained sufficient fame compared to the fame gained by other forms of boycott, despite its importance and danger because it challenges hegemony and encroachment. Israeli universities and academic spaces, which Israel seeks to penetrate through its “soft power” represented by enticing Western academics to organize joint activities and finance academic events in order to gain the sympathy of a broad segment of Western university professors.
This expansion of Israeli “soft power” appeared to a large extent recently after Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, when the cultural world was surprised by the immoral statements issued by a number of academics and thinkers such as the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas, as well as the pressure of the Israeli lobby on a group of presidents of prestigious universities to resign. As a result of their positions rejecting the Israeli aggression on Gaza.
The book “The Theory of Boycott and the Struggle for Palestine... Universities, Culture and Liberation” (Al Jazeera)
Among the pens that anticipated what we are witnessing today in the cultural arena of Israeli incursion into the academic body, Professor Nick Rimmer - a senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Sydney in Australia and one of the activists and academics supporting the Palestinian cause - worked on writing a group of important academic papers, most notably his latest book entitled With “the theory of boycott and the struggle for Palestine... universities, culture and liberation.”
In light of this book in which Remer calls for the academic boycott of Israel, Al Jazeera Net conducted this interview:
You are one of the few academic voices that did not stop at the academic boycott of Israeli universities, but also presented a thesis in support of this boycott. Can you explain the reasons for writing this book?
Thank you for your kind invitation to do this interview with Al Jazeera Net. In fact, I wrote the book to do two things. The first is to explain the reasons for the boycott campaign against Israel, especially in universities, and the second is to defend academics who have chosen the path of boycotting Israel.
I wrote the book a year ago, and what is happening today in Gaza has confirmed the importance of such a book, which calls for the necessity of supporting the boycott campaign against Israel, due to the unprecedented crime scenes we are witnessing led by the Western-backed Israeli occupation.
The boycott thesis challenges Israeli claims. As everyone knows, Israel uses various forms of “soft power” to maintain its influence in Western circles and the United States. Universities are one of the most important circles in which Israel is making great efforts. My book lays the foundation for challenging this Israeli hegemony within Western universities. It aims to support Israel’s thesis, and answers the question: Why should universities and academics sever their ties with Israeli universities?
In your book, you pointed out that academics who boycott Israel are exposed to harassment. How can this harassment be overcome in order to make the academic boycott successful?
Israel uses the claim that the culture of the academic world is based on not boycotting any opinion or societal segment, regardless of its type or cultural or political intellectual position, by virtue of the fact that the scientific community enjoys freedom of thought and is an incubator for all ideas, and the scientific community sees that what it produces is separate. About the process of events in the outside world, which makes them believe that their boycott of Israel will not have any impact on the reality of external events in the world of politics and international relations, as they believe that the academic field is politically separate from the outside world, and they see that the academic world revolves only around scientific and academic values, It has nothing to do with the world of politics and international relations, so a broad segment of academics does not see a moral responsibility for them whether, for example, there was a “genocide” in Gaza or not, which is an obstacle to the boycott within universities.
On the other hand, severing relations with Israel is not as difficult as many academics imagine, because it does not impose difficult tasks on them, because the “boycott” process is very precise and targeted, and is represented by academics not participating in lectures and conferences organized or funded by Israeli universities or cultural institutions. And lack of cooperation with Israeli universities at the official level.
There is no problem if a scientific article is written with an Israeli colleague. We do not boycott Israeli academics because of their work in Israeli universities. They are not the targets of the “boycott campaign.” What should be boycotted are the Israeli universities themselves, because they represent the Israeli authority that legitimizes the occupation against the Palestinians. It is also in direct contact with the Israeli authority, which commits war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians in Palestine, whether in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
Therefore, what we aim with the “boycott campaign” is to boycott the official activities carried out by Israeli universities, whether collective books, seminars, or programs for the exchange of students or researchers. These are important matters and have a greater impact than the scientific community itself imagines, despite their simplicity.
The challenge facing the “Boycott Israel Campaign” academically stems from the fears of the intellectual who believes that his boycott of Israel may cause him many inconveniences in his academic or professional path due to the pressures that will be caused by the Israeli lobby penetrating Western universities. However, what I am trying to show in the book is that the academic may deceive This is done by applying some practices that he always applies in his academic life, without calling it a “boycott”, as any academic has the right to refuse to deal with any institution or academic body, without explaining the reasons for not dealing with it.
An example of what I mentioned is what happened between Russia and Ukraine when the Western academic world cut off its relations with Russian universities, without anyone wondering at the time whether this process was the result of a specific “cultural boycott”, especially towards Russian universities that have a direct relationship with the Russian regime, or Contributed to military research or supported Russia's occupation of Ukraine. No one questioned the feasibility of a "cultural boycott" of Russian universities at the time.
But when we talk about Israeli universities that are involved with the Israeli occupying state in crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Palestinians, and support war, aggression, occupation, and the Israeli apartheid regime against the Palestinians, then the “cultural boycott” against Israel turns into an obstacle and a challenge that is difficult to overcome to urge academics to engage in the cultural boycott. Against Israel, because of their knowledge of the extent of the Israeli lobby’s penetration into the fabric of Western universities and because of the possibility of facing many academic harassments. In short, the problem of the academic boycott of Israel is not that it is a “boycott,” but that it targets “Israel.”
In your book, you indicated that the boycott campaign does not target Israeli academics as much as it targets those in power within universities, such as university presidents, deans, and others. Can it not be said that the Israeli academic who works in Israeli universities supports his regime by being in universities that support the Israeli regime, especially since the universities are one of the The colonial tools that Israel uses to legitimize its occupation?
An important question. It is important to separate the two matters. In general, universities contain great cultural and political diversity. Therefore, there are Israeli academics within Israeli universities who support the cultural boycott against their universities, because they are supporters of Palestinian rights, despite their presence in the Israeli academic body. These academics should not Boycotting them because they are on our side. On the other hand, institutionally, Israeli universities have taken positions and decisions that support the occupation, the apartheid regime, and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli occupation state against the Palestinians in Israel, as well as the continuation of the occupation and war crimes against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
According to the above, university presidents and deans - because they agreed to put themselves in a position of responsibility, thus making themselves accountable for the university’s decisions that support the Israeli war machine - are human faces who represent the responsibility of the Israeli universities involved and in collusion with the Israeli occupation regime.
If the deans and university presidents were not sympathetic to the crimes committed by Israel, they would not have placed themselves in these positions that make them represent Israeli policy in the academic space. Therefore, the “boycott campaign” considers the deans and university presidents as officials who must be boycotted, and here I am interested to add that there are academics alike. In Israeli or non-Israeli universities, those who support the Israeli proposal or have previously been involved in any action in support of the occupying Israeli authority must also be boycotted, just as any researcher in Israeli universities who develops research that may be used militarily against civilians in Palestine must also be boycotted, because they are in some way involved in research. “Immoral” will harm the lives of innocent civilians, so they must be boycotted. However, there are Israeli researchers who support the Palestinian cause and should not be boycotted. Therefore, the individual responsibility of researchers must be separated from the institutional and administrative responsibility of universities and their representatives.
In your book, you point out the importance of the academic boycott, but you did not overlook the importance of the economic boycott because of the damage it could cause to Israeli hegemony economically. How so?
The academic boycott exists to challenge the soft power imposed by Israel in the body of higher education in the world. As is known, universities have a major role in reproducing the cultural elite, and also preparing future generations of students who will transform into the workforce and become leaders of society in various disciplines, and because Israeli soft power is penetrating the fabric of universities in the world. It must be challenged academically with the boycott machine, especially since Israel uses universities as one of the soft power machines through which it imposes high degrees of influence, because it understands the importance of universities and their role in building and re-engineering societies, so the boycott Academics for Israel in universities are very important.
Since not everyone goes to universities or interacts with them, the class of academics and intellectuals are concerned with the academic boycott. On the other hand, there is the “consumer boycott,” available to everyone, and it puts pressure on the economic forces that support Israel through the power that individuals possess as a result of their individual consumer decisions by urging them to Not to consume products or services manufactured or produced by the Israeli side or those who support Israel. This boycott is led by the “Palestinian National Committee for the Boycott of Israel,” which has made a great effort in identifying the goods and services that must be boycotted because of their association with the Israeli occupation.
We recently saw the impact of the boycott of the sportswear company “Puma” because of its partnership with the Israeli Football Association, which owns teams in the occupied “settlements.” Therefore, this company was targeted by boycotting it, because by its behavior it supports the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the establishment of illegal settlements there, and most importantly in This boycott is a “campaign” initiated by the Palestinians against the “Puma” company, and here let us open a bracket. The consumer boycott is in essence an “individual decision” represented by a personal choice not to spend money on the products of a particular company. What some ignore is the importance of this transformation that transforms Individual work turns into collective work that regulates the will of many, which gives it real power, making major capitalist companies submit to the will of the boycotts, which is what happened with “Puma,” which withdrew from its agreement with the Israeli football side.
Therefore, the “Palestinian National Committee for the Boycott of Israel” targets specific companies such as “Puma,” the computer company “HP,” or “McDonald’s” and other companies, and engaging in such boycotts is very important to challenge the economic dominance of Israeli power. The consumer boycott is a transformation of the traditional protest. It turns into an economic act that transforms individual economic decisions into a collective will that moves a collective protest that affects the will of the political actor.
How do we know whether the boycott movement succeeded or not?
Don't you see that the problem is in Israel and not the ruling regime there and the extent of its interaction with boycott demands, whether right-wing or left-wing?
The boycott movement seeks certain goals, the most prominent of which is ending all types of discrimination against Palestinians inside Israel, by ending the Basic Law that considers Israel as the national state of the Jewish people, and all forms of apartheid existing in Israel against the Palestinians. The boycott also aims to end the occupation to which it is subjected. Both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the demolition of the occupation wall that restricts Gaza. The third goal of the boycott is to give the right of return to the Palestinians who were displaced from their lands in the Nakba in 1948 and turned into forced immigrants, and began to live in refugee camps whether in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, such as Jabalia camp, which is being subjected to Israeli bombing. Everyone who was displaced must be given the “right of return” to return to their homes that were looted from them when Israel occupied Palestine in 1948.
These aforementioned demands are linked to the existing regime in Israel today, and the influencing political factor is that the State of Israel is turning more and more into a fascist state due to the leadership of the extreme right headed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has shown that he is ready to do anything that can guarantee his survival in the pyramid. The Authority, including its leadership, is a fascist government that believes in Jewish superiority and is involved in committing “genocide” against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
But it must be pointed out at the same time that the nature of the political system that leads power in Israel does not greatly affect the response to the demands of the boycott campaign. By not responding to the aforementioned boycott demands, the boycott campaign will remain in place, no matter how different the prevailing regime in Israel is. Let us not forget that David Ben-Gurion The first prime minister of Israel was a leftist, so the nature of the party that leads the government in Israel does not matter much as long as it does not interact with the boycott’s goals of ending all forms of racial discrimination, ending the occupation, and giving the Palestinians their right to return. The problem is not with the ruling party in Israel.
Rather, the problem is whether Israel has the right to seize Palestinian homes, violate their rights, slaughter their women and children, and commit all kinds of war crimes against them, like what we see today in Gaza. This is the dilemma. The problem is “Israel” and not the problem of what is the flavor of the ruling party in Israel, and this will continue as long as there is an absence of a real democratic political solution to the issue. Everyone has the right to live in peace, freedom, justice and democracy.
We recently witnessed a group of intellectuals, thinkers and philosophers interacting with what happened in a biased manner towards Israel, despite the violations carried out by the Israeli side against civilians, similar to what was made by the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas. Do you think that the boycott theory should be applied to them as well?
This is an important question. Should we boycott intellectuals who support Israel? What I am certain of is that such actions deserve to be protested against. A thinker and sociologist like Habermas is a legitimate target for this protest due to his unjustified and immoral stance towards what is happening in Gaza today, and his refusal to acknowledge With the right of the Palestinian people to enjoy the human rights and justice they demand for Israelis, public figures like Habermas should be protested against, but should they be boycotted?
Perhaps it should be boycotted, but in reality it is difficult to give a satisfactory answer to such a question. Perhaps the situation requires that we answer it on a case-by-case basis, in order to determine the potential benefits and harms of boycotting anyone. As everyone knows, Habermas is old and does not I believe that he is able to come to Australia, where I work, to give a lecture, but I also do not think that I will invite him in the name of the university where I work (the University of Sydney) one day to give a lecture because of his recent positions in support of the Israeli occupation state after the seventh of last October, and what may What I do remains an individual decision only, but for the boycott process to remain effective we must adhere only to what the Palestinians themselves ask of us.
After the events of last October 7, Palestinian academics from Birzeit University in Ramallah, located in the occupied West Bank, wrote to academics around the world, asking us to boycott Israel academically. What they mean by boycotting Israel academically is not boycotting Habermas, but rather boycotting Israeli universities, because they are a tool. For Israeli soft power, as a minimum we must do what Palestinian academics demand of us, and then we can strive to develop new forms and tactics of boycott that we may find effective against those who support Israel.
You discussed an important issue in your book, that defenders of Israel resort to the trick of “complication” in order to empty the discussion aimed at boycott of its meaning. Could you explain your point of view further?
One of the important things I argue in the book is that when Palestinians are subjected to high levels of violence over a long period of time just for the sake of demanding justice, we must not allow Israel to “smart wash” its actions in Palestine, and by “smart washing” I mean the style of Israel and its supporters. To absolve themselves of the crimes they commit by describing the Palestinian scene as very complex, more than the average person can imagine, when they say that what is happening in Gaza is not “genocide” and what is happening to Palestine is not occupation or apartheid, but rather the situation is much more complicated than that, and they say This is to give the impression that they have an exceptional understanding of the situation, as if they are smarter than everyone else.
They use the weapon of “complication” by showing the Palestinian scene to be more complex than we imagine in order to hide what we all see in terms of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel and its supporters deny the occurrence of these crimes by using the trick of “complication” in order to make the debate Difficult, as they ask intellectuals and academics to step back and think about the complexity of the scene.
Therefore, academics must reject this Israeli approach, which seeks to mislead public opinion, and say that the situation is very clear, and that Israel is committing genocide and war crimes against the Palestinians. Academics must show solidarity in a positive manner, represented by rejection and boycott, and if they are required to engage in analysis and deconstruction, they must It is already attached, and one of the tools for action against what is happening in Gaza is to boycott Israeli universities.
Source: Al Jazeera