Harry Browne, and the Hypocrisy of the Irish ‘Academics for Palestine’ Boycott

a patsy ‘for a system of imperial exploitation’. Browne also took issue with Bono’s low-level association with Israel.

Browne on Boycotting

Browne opens his pro-boycott apologia by citing a rift between Oxfam and Scarlett Johansson, to suggest an:

characterised as anti-Israel. In 2003, Oxfam notoriously produced anti-Israel propaganda, featuring blood-libel imagery. Last year, it was discovered that Oxfam was funding an Arab-Palestinian NGO that published anti-Semitic material. Oxfam is also associated with groups closely linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

economic boycotting.

Browne states:

That campaign, far from being a creature of western do-gooders, originated nine years ago with a call from a broad coalition of Palestinian civil-society groups.

anti-Israel alliance at the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban I conference, and boycott campaigns emerged soon afterward.

cessation of the Jewish State’s existence. BDS is very much part of the pan-Arab/USSR move at the UN to isolate Israel diplomatically, after the Yom Kippur War defeat. Browne states:

But even people who avoid Israeli avocados may feel uncomfortable about academic and cultural boycotts, of the sort recently endorsed by the 5,000-member American Studies Association in the US. What about dialogue and the free exchange of ideas? Well, try explaining those concepts to Palestinian artists, students, lecturers and researchers under Israeli occupation.

campaign with little debate prior to the ballot. Indeed, the move has even been deemed akin to the 1930’s Nazi boycott by a surprising source.

advocating an Israeli boycott.

This week saw the launch of a new group, Academics for Palestine, which has gathered about 140 signatures from people who teach in universities and ITs throughout Ireland, north and south.

College Tribune, ‘Academics for Palestine’ (AFP) was officially launched on February 20^th, and the head of the organisation is Jim Roche, a long-time anti-Israel activist.

Teachers’ Union of Ireland boycott, notable for being the first European trade union involved with academia to adopt a resolution calling on its members to ‘cease all cultural and academic collaboration with Israel’. Interestingly, both Jim Roche and David Landy played a leading role in achieving the boycott.

indiscriminate since it includes students and academics who support self-determination for the Palestinians. Thus, this defence should be seen as duplicitous.

An IPSC front?

member of the IPSC leads ‘Academics for Palestine’. The group’s founder, David Landy, is also a senior IPSC figure.

at least a decade. They largely featured the same old names, and didn’t achieve any particular success. Thus, ‘Academics for Palestine’ is a useful way to lend new boycott crusades some credibility, by avoiding the controversial baggage surrounding the IPSC’s activities over the years.

does not mention any prior IPSC connections in its ‘About Us’ website page. Similarly, the IPSC’s gushing piece, heralding the organisation’s achievement, failed to mention its links to ‘Academics for Palestine’.

It is unclear whether Browne is himself a member of the IPSC. He has written heading articles for IPSC journals, and defended the rather shocking tactics the IPSC adopted against Irish folk group Dervish, to prevent them performing in Israel.

I am not a member of the IPSC but have supported and advised it on media matters, including the case discussed in this article.

two-week petition drive’ to ‘enlist Dunnes customers in Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Limerick,…’ etc. The authors of the text are identified as belonging to the IPSC: ‘Freda H and Harry Browne – IPSC’, ‘Freda H’ abbreviating ‘Freda Hughes’, a leading member.

promotional press material for the purposes of contacting the group. If he is indeed a member, it would represent a further possible journalistic non-disclosure in the well-publicised Journal.ie article.

A moderate, with a change of heart?

Subsequently, Harry Browne portrays himself as the wholesome ingenue:

to lessen Gaza’s fuel crisis by increasing power transfers.

I recently returned from Gaza, where comparative death-tolls are frequently wielded to highlight the brutality of the 2008-09 war (roughly 1,400 dead Palestinians versus 13 Israelis) and the one last November (160 versus six).

those killed in 2012’s Pillar of Defense were militants. However, Browne, like so many others, conveniently conflate militant combatants, with civilians. Evidence of vast massacres would be more easily found next-door in Syria.

Most puzzling of all, Browne claims to have only objected to some supposed preferential treatment of Israeli academia in the past. Is this the same Harry Browne who for years has been one of the harsher critics of Israel, in a nation where criticism of the Jewish State can almost be described as a past-time?

this letter does not call for a comprehensive boycott, it does demand that European academic institutions cease funding collaborative projects with Israeli institutions. It also calls for academics to refrain, where possible, from institutional collaboration with Israel. Such actions are to continue until Israel abides by international law, part of which is ending the occupation.

Therefore, it would seem Browne has lent his support to considerably more than just a lessening of EU funding. Browne put his name to another letter in January 2009, which attacked Israel for defending itself during a November 2008 Hamas border incursion. To quote a description of the text by an anti-Israel website:

The letter was organised in response to the Israeli attack on Gaza and the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott. The letter demands that the EU cease funding collaborative projects with Israeli institutions.

And in Gaza I met Miko Peled. Son of a famed Israeli general, he told an audience of Palestinian students that BDS was the only message his society would understand. He firmly and finally convinced me.

claiming Israel is to blame for the Six Day War.

overt untruths, which have defamed Israel over the years. He is one of the most sustained and prolific pro-boycott advocates in the world, where his speaking events helped generate toxic environments on university campuses.

fabrication of Ben Gurion quotes is a worthy move for historians. He advocates a one-state solution so is hardly representative of Israeli academia.

visited Ireland on several occasions to promote this agenda so Pappé’s ‘message’ is hardly a major development.

advocated a witch-hunt against Israeli academics whilst taking considerable sums for projects from the Jewish state. He, of course, advocates for the elimination of Israel.

The Free Gaza Movement’, has inverted the truth of the Durban I anti-Semitic hate-fest. Klein, like many others, seems to have a real issue with Jewish people possessing conservative opinions. She even finds Jewish people blameworthy for economic conditions that may, in time, give rise to Fascism!

Miscellaneous expressions of extremism

biased pro-Israel stance:

This is a staggeringly counter-factual belief to possess, particularly for one involved with the Irish media itself. It is typical for Irish coverage of Arab-Israeli controversies to give little space to the Israeli perspective, whilst dwelling on Arab-Palestinian complaints. Elements of the Irish media are linked with anti-Israel posturing amongst Irish political elites, as Rory Miller noted.

Reading between the lines however, Browne is clearly suggesting that any response from Arab-Palestinian sources should be treated with absolute credulity. This is a disturbing deviation from the basic premise of journalistic impartiality, one that a mentor should be wise enough not to advocate.

Indeed, Browne asked his readers

Such a sentiment should of course be seen as a moral legitimisation of Arab-Palestinian terrorism.

suggested that Browne was a shill for the programme-makes, working for the government etc. Such conspiracists commonly support the Arab-Palestinian cause, and deem Israel to have colluded in 9/11, as well being as a central part of Zionist-World-Government.

detailed comment (November 9^th, 2006) on the extreme-left site Indymedia? His views provide an insight into the moral wiggle-room those possessing nigh-on indefensible political stances seek to create. When the Irish Anti-War Movement invited Ibrahim Mousawi, a known anti-Semite, to Ireland, Browne stated:

expressed strong support for Hizbullah itself.

annihilate the Jewish State, despite its complete withdrawal from Lebanon? Al Manar, the propagandistic Hizbullah channel that Mousawi ran, glories in the violent deeds of Hizbullah’s jihadists, those jihadists that Browne vocally supports. Al Manar is not an independent agent – it is a mere tool assisting in generating the hate that reinforces Hizbullah’s belligerency, in which Jewish civilians are seen as a legitimate target.

leftist anti-Israel site ‘CounterPunch’. It is noted for possessing a very disturbing attitude toward the Jewish race and its history. Browne asks those of his ‘anti-imperialist’ persuasion to keep their ‘critical faculties intact’. If his concern about anti-Semitism is sincere, then he should consider taking some of his own advice.

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eirael.blogspot.com and lives in Ireland.

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