AUT-NATFHE merger disaster: a very slanted solidarity

With the new university term getting underway in the UK, it seems there's new vigour in renewing discussion about what is going to happen about the merger, and about the aftermath of last term's AUT boycott debate.

Engage has now expanded its campaigning presence. Today, there is a new Engage web site, which will include a journal. The previous Engage blog is now called a Forum.

I have quite a lot to say about Engage, and it will run into several posts. But in this post, I want to take up one of Jon Pike's proposals for developing what gets called "solidarity with the Palestinians". This particular concept looms large in both AUT and NATFHE discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both unions are currently committed to it. It is usually treated as an unproblematic, self-evident concept. Jon does acknowledge that "solidarity with the Palestinians" can be problematic.

I have already demonstrated that in the case of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, to which NATFHE is affiliated, it involves advocating and enforcing a total boycott on all contacts with Israeli goods and services, including cultural services. It allows only for contacts with Israeli organizations (such as trade unions) and individuals (any individual Israeli academic, student or just plain Yosef Average) for the purpose of opposing the occupation.

Jon Pike has a number of suggestions for solidarity-with-the-Palestinians. One which looms large in the article I've linked to on the Engage Forum, is to affiliate to the Friends of Al Quds Medical School.

It seems at first sight utterly anodyne and worthy. Then I read the "news" section of the Friends of Al Quds Medical School web site

Not only does it (and as far as I can see) the rest of the web site make no acknowledgement of the existence of Israel other than a reference to "this has to be appreciated considering the dire and despicable circumstances that all of us at the faculty are enduring under the brutal and oppressive Israeli occupation", or the fact that "Palestine" is not an existing state, or that Jerusalem is a city with many hospitals whose existence this site doesn't acknowledge, it seems to be in denial of any Palestinian agency or responsibility for the situation it finds itself in.

Here's some examples of that:

"New check-points are suddenly constructed overnight and the cross roads in Abu Dies are extremely difficult; both teachers and students are faced by armed soldiers and frequently increasing barriers. It takes great resourcefulness to get through to classes. Some of the students have been harassed and arrested going to their work at Makassed hospital and warned of future imprisonment if they continue. Taxis are fined heavily if found carrying anyone under 25 and walking presents a constant danger. "

This makes it sound as if it was a purely arbitrary piece of persecution by the Israelis, and as if there is a complete absence of active terrorism and intimidation by the gangs of Hamas, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad etc. There is of course no reason given as to why the fines are imposed on taxis. You may think it's perfectly reasonable to present information this way on a web site for a medical charity. I don't

"It is FQMS funding of these teachers that helps them to survive in their harshly occupied country where survival is now a great challenge for all. "

Really? All Palestinians find it a challenge to survive? What evidence is there of this? It again makes it sound as if Israeli "harshness" is a purely gratuitous characteristic applied against victims who are just trying to stay alive. And that's in the city of Jerusalem. I wonder what the death rates are of Palestinians failing to survive when not involved in either direct "action" by Palestinian terrorists or Israeli responses to it?

Last time I was in the Old City of Jerusalem, where this hospital is, (December 04/January 05), the Muslim and other non Jewish quarters seemed to me to be calm and living their lives much as the people in the poorer districts of Jewish Jerusalem.

"Unfortunately one flat in Hebron was destroyed by soldiers a few weeks ago, as a wanted man had been living in a lower apartment in the block. Our students had a few minutes to leave the building in the night. We are told a new refuge will be available for them very soon. Now, with curfews imposed in Abu Dies, and the students being constantly threatened or arrested in the area..."

Once again, this medical charity presents Israeli soldiers as apparently gratuitous destroyers, acting against a "wanted man". Oddly enough, there's no hint about exactly what this man is wanted for or why a flat might have had to be "destroyed" in order to apprehend him. What view should we take on on that? I can certainly imagine London Islamists presenting similar pictures of the mayhem caused by police in certain flats in the Bowes Park area as a result of their pursuit of "wanted men following the July bombings in London".

This charity, and, I presume, its associated hospital appears to be dedicated to "the dream---training of Palestinian doctors in Palestine by Palestinians". In other words, it seems to reject any involvement of medical co-operation with Israelis, even to the extent of seeking to raise funds to pay for hugely expensive overseas placements rather than support its students building towards peace by working with Israeli medics. And that's money that could be spent directly on patients.

Does this hospital also refuse donations of "Jewish " blood from Magen David Adom or other Israeli medical facilities? Does their political stance take precedence over the saving of Palestinian lives?

Meanwhile, in the very same Jerusalem is Shaare Zedek hospital, a religious Jewish hospital that has as its founding principle a commitment to giving equally high care to all patients including Arab and Jewish ones. It welcomes co-operation with the Jordanian Red Cross, whose representative is reported as saying that his East Jerusalem driver told him it was known to be the best hospital in Jerusalem for all its residents.

This is a hospital I have donated money to for that reason.

But it seems that the Friends of Al Quds Medical School doesn't want any mention of this Israeli medical co-operation with the international Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations. It's strange that we get a very different picture from the "brutal harshness" and "oppression" we get from the medical charity Friends of Al Quds Medical School.

So, yes, if this is what "solidarity with the Palestinians" means, I think it means partisan, wholly slanted and blatant misrepresentation of the situation. If "Engage" were also willing to canvas support for Shaare Zedek, I'd be more impressed. Especially as the Shaare Zedek medics themselves have been promptly and publicly ready to denounce anything they see as Israeli police malpractice:

I wonder if we'll ever see any evidence from the Friends of Al Quds Medical School of any sort of Palestinian malpractice-- medical, political or otherwise?

Comments

[Solomon]

Great post.

Unfortunately, Al Quds, even as lead by 'moderate' Sari Nusseibeh is fully on board with the "Palestinian National Narrative." Take, for instance, this page which questions the Jewish links with Jerusalem -- including the Temple Mount. http://www.alquds.edu/gen_info/index.php?page=jerusalem_history (Also linked in my post here http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/006385.shtml.) I'm given to understand by knowledgable people that this is not serious scholarship. It's pure politics, but where are the voices of the academics who would hold Al Quds to the same standard we would hold any Western University, or University which aspires to some measure of respect?

[Huldah]

Thanks for this link Solomon.

That page contains the sort of revisionism that Hitler would have loved, ignoring the wealth of archaeological evidence confirming Jewish life and culture in Israel and in Jerusalem in particular.

This is racism masked as scholarship and you can be sure that the leaders at AUT and NATFHE know it.

So why do they go along with it? Well personally, I reckon they've worked out that the existence of a restored State of Israel might just be evidence of the existence of the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And we can't have that, can we?

Psalm 2!

[Inna]

Solomon, I think you hit the nail on the head when you used the term "national narrative". Al Quds most certainly does "buy into" and "propagate" this national narrative.

And, as you also rightly point out, this national narrative is largely (perhaps even mostly) fictional.

However, if this (fictional) national narrative were not being used as a justification for heinous acts would you have any more issue with it (really) than you do with the also (fictional) British, French, German, or Jewish national narratives?

The issue (it seems to me) is how that narrative is used. That it will be as historially accurate as The Lord of the Rings can (I think) be taken more or less for granted.

Regards,

Inna

[Ichabod]

Inna, accepting for a moment the term "narrative" (which I don't like myself -- I seem to have an allergy to the fashionable), why do you call the "national narratives" you list fictional? Do you mean that there is no such thing as a French national identity, or a German national identity? Unless I am misunderstanding you (which I well may be), that seems an extremely unusual, if not unique, reading of history. Of the ones you list, the Palestinian national narrative is by far the youngest (having begun, by some accounts, no earlier than the Twentieth Century), but that still does not make it fictional. As you may have read in my comment over at Engage, I agree with Judea Pearl who writes: "Palestinians have earned nationhood status by virtue of thinking like a nation." I think this recognition ought to stand as a matter of principle. But in addition to the principle (which ought to be sufficient in itself) there is in fact, for supporters of Israel (like myself), a pragmatic reason for recognising it as well: if Jews want their claim to nationhood, and hence their right to a Jewish state, recognised as legitimate, then they cannot deny the same claims and rights to the Palestinians. Fair is fair.