Rod Such The Electronic Intifada 12 July 2023

Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation by Nick Riemer, Rowman & Littlefield (2023)

Australian scholar Nick Riemer explains the focus of his new in-depth study of the academic boycott of Israel by saying that “almost everything in the politics and culture of higher education works against academics boycotting Israel.”

Indeed, the obstacles presented by that culture are what’s mainly addressed in Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation as he delves into the history of the academic boycott.

Academics, especially in the United States, have been denied work or tenure because of their advocacy for Palestine, a story presented in We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of Israel’s Critics – an anthology of testimonials from repressed scholars published in 2017 but still relevant today.

Riemer describes the origins and early successes of the academic boycott, predating the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for BDS with the formation of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) a year earlier.

Even earlier, in 2002, Riemer notes, “several hundred European academics and researchers called for a moratorium on European funding of Israeli cultural and research institutions.” By year’s end, the University of Paris 6, now part of the Sorbonne, called for cutting off the European Union’s research agreement with Israel.

Other victories followed, including the University of Johannesburg in South Africa severing ties with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University in 2011. Numerous academic associations adopted pro-BDS resolutions in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Ideology of the academy

But unlike the BDS movement against apartheid South Africa, which resulted in many US universities actually divesting from companies doing business with the country, nearly all Western universities and colleges have resisted calls from faculty and students to cut ties with Israel.

Riemer locates many of the reasons why, including university links to the military-industrial complex. But he reserves most of his critique for the dominant ideological narrative of “academic freedom” and the “civility” and “collegiality” reasons given for maintaining ties with Israeli academic institutions.

Riemer notes that from its beginning, PACBI called for the boycott of Israeli institutions, not individual Israeli scholars.

This provision, recognizing Israeli academics who oppose the occupation, differed from the academic boycott call issued in 1958 by the African National Congress – a blanket boycott of both institutions and individuals. Objections were rarely raised about the issue of “academic freedom” when it came to boycotting apartheid South Africa.

Riemer documents numerous examples of academic freedom being denied to Palestinian scholars, rarely acknowledged by hypocritical Western academic institutions.

Israeli troops routinely impose checkpoints outside university entrances, raid Palestinian campuses and arrest and imprison students. Movement restrictions prevent many Palestinian students from studying or teaching abroad or even in other parts of Palestine, and international scholars are restricted from teaching in the West Bank and Gaza.

As of 2022, Israel announced that it would vet all applications from foreign academics to teach at West Bank universities after a long history of limiting the number of foreign academics and refusing entry and re-entry. Israel’s numerous bombing campaigns in Gaza have not only disrupted education for long periods but have often targeted university campuses and buildings.

Outside Palestine, examples abound of “academic freedom” being denied to scholars who lost their positions due to their advocacy for Palestinian rights, such as Norman Finkelstein, Steven Salaita and Cornel West, to name only a few.

More recently, the effort by Israel and its proxies to impose the highly flawed IHRA definition of anti-Semitism on campuses – conflating criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Jewish bigotry – has resulted in numerous cancellations of scheduled talks, courses and film screenings in direct contradiction to most notions of academic freedom.

Riemer goes beyond the issue of censorship by asking why academic culture values not just civility and collegiality but actually negates the boycott by elevating thinking above acting. In contrast to the famous quote from Karl Marx, Riemer seems to be saying that for most academics, the point is to just interpret the world, not to change it.

The later chapters of Boycott Theory delve into this and related questions, such as those related to free speech and the right, both morally and politically, to disrupt hate speech aimed at reinforcing “the murderous practices of Israeli apartheid.” Riemer also discusses the role of intellectuals, asking can there be theory without practice, and what are the differences between solitary and collective intelligence.

Riemer couches some of these ideas in provocative phrases, such as the need for “groupthink” and “anti-intellectualism.”

Unfortunately, as intriguing as some of his ideas are, the author fails to convey them in an expository way by explaining the concept in detail, presenting the evidence for it and disrupting contrary claims. As a result, the reader is left unconvinced.

Tactic vs. strategy

Is there a need for a “theory of boycott,” as implied by the book’s title?

There is, but the author’s frequent description of the boycott as a tactic neglects its chief importance as a strategy.

The African National Congress regarded boycott, divestment and sanctions as one of the “four pillars” of South Africa’s liberation struggle, giving it a place of importance equal to its other strategic methods: armed struggle, political mass struggle and clandestine underground struggle.

The BDS movement has become a strategic component of the Palestinian liberation struggle not only because it has united Palestinians (polls show that more than 80 percent of Palestinians support BDS), but also because it has given people around the world a way to support that liberation struggle on a global scale.

It has also been the chief vehicle for changing the once-dominant belief that Israel is a democracy deserving of support, to an insurgent narrative that Israel is an apartheid state and that apartheid must end.

It is an idea that has become a material force. After all, ideas – once they’re grasped by a mass of people – can become a force in their own right.

Rod Such is a former editor for World Book and Encarta encyclopedias. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is active in the Demilitarize Portland2Palestine campaign.

The Judge chats with former CIA Intel Officer, Ray McGovern as we remember 9/11.

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ABC News reports that the US is likely to arm Ukraine with ATACMS, which have a range of up to 190 miles

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, September 11, 2023

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that it was up to Ukraine whether or not to target Russian territory with US-provided weapons, a policy that brings the US and Russia closer to a direct clash.

Blinken made the comments after ABC News reported that it’s likely the Biden administration will soon arm Ukraine with Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles.

While appearing on ABC’s ‘This Week,’ Blinken was asked if he was OK with Ukraine using ATACMS to hit targets deep inside Russian territory. “In terms of their targeting decisions, it’s their decision, not ours,” Blinken replied.

When asked about the increasing Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russia, Blinken claimed the US does not “encourage” or “enable” the operations. However, The Economist recently reported that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia frequently use intelligence gathered by Kyiv’s Western backers.

As the war has dragged on, the Biden administration has been less and less concerned about the risk of Ukrainian attacks inside Russia escalating the war. The administration previously feared that Russia could respond to such attacks by targeting a NATO country.

The US has also brushed off Russian warnings against providing Ukraine with longer-range missiles, as Moscow has previously called them a “red line.” According to a US official speaking to ABC, the ATACMS “are coming.”

Destructive US efforts to control its ‘back yard’ continue to this day.

• John Kirk. John Kirk is Professor Emeritus of Latin American Studies at Dalhousie University, Canada
• Stephen Kimber. Professor of journalism at the University of King’s College

ALJAZEERA, 11 Sep 2023

Today is the 50th anniversary of a devastating military coup in Chile which gave way to one of the most brutal dictatorships in Latin American history.

On September 11, 1973, a military junta, led by General Augusto Pinochet, overthrew the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende. What followed was a 17-year dictatorship which tortured 40,000, killed more than 3000 and “disappeared” more than a thousand others. Hundreds of thousands were forced into exile.

The Nixon administration in the United States encouraged and supported the coup that paved the way for these atrocities.

Since former US President James Monroe effectively announced a protectorate over the Western Hemisphere in December 1823, known as the Monroe Doctrine, the US has been interfering in nations across Latin America, often in pursuit of its own interests, but always under the guise of protecting democracy and human rights in its “backyard”.

The 1973 coup in Chile was one such intervention.

Official documents and telephone call transcripts that were declassified and made public over the years paint a clear picture of how Washington worked to ensure Allende’s downfall ever since he scored a narrow victory in the September 8, 1970, presidential election.

According to handwritten notes of then CIA Director Richard Helms, just more than a week after Allende’s victory, on September 15, 1970, President Richard Nixon ordered him to “make the economy scream” in Chile to “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him”. Three days earlier, in a phone call to Helms that he recorded, Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, had already confirmed the administration’s intention to overthrow Allende, noting “We will not let Chile go down the drain.”

And on September 16, 1973, just six days after Pinochet’s bloody putsch, Nixon called his national security adviser to ask whether the US “hand” in the coup would show. According to declassified call transcripts, Kissinger admitted that “we helped them” and that “[deleted reference] created conditions as great as possible.”

The US did not end its destructive meddling in Chile’s affairs after successfully instigating a coup against its democratically elected leader either.

Three years into Pinochet’s murderous rule, in June 1976, Kissinger personally visited the Chilean capital, Santiago, to reaffirm Washington’s support for the dictator. According to a declassified transcript of their one-on-one conversation, Kissinger advised Pinochet on how to improve his image in the international arena and dismissed all criticism of his regime’s human rights record as “leftist propaganda”. “In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,” Kissinger told Pinochet, who had by then already killed and disappeared thousands of his regime’s detractors “We want to help, not undermine you,” he added.  “You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”

—Nasir Khan

The Afghan Mujahideen (Islamist fighters) of the 1980s who took power in Afghanistan as Taliban in the 1990s were the creation of the United States and some of the US allies in the Middle East and Pakistan. That’s history. No need for me to repeat what has happened since the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. We know how the Afghans after taking Kabul on August 15, 2021 showed human decency to allow the defeated US army to get out of Afghanistan safely.

by Ted Galen Carpenter, FFF, August 31, 2023

 Western leaders have long fostered the self-serving myth that NATO is an organization solely for the mutual defense of its members. The corollary is that other nations therefore have no legitimate reason to fear the most powerful military alliance in history. After all, it is an association of peace-loving democracies.NATO is not a purely defensive alliance, and its members are not peace-loving democracies.
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The operational expression of the myth is most evident regarding relations with Russia.  According to the dominant narrative (that a sycophantic news media obediently circulate) is that NATO’s addition of new members in Eastern Europe during the post-Cold War era posed no threat to Russia’s security. Even the extensive efforts to turn Ukraine into an alliance military asset supposedly did not constitute dangerous provocations. Those actions included multiple weapons sales to Kyiv, the training of Ukrainian military forces, joint NATO-Ukraine war games, and apparently joint cyberwarfare operations against Russian targets.

All of these moves occurred against the background of Washington’s withdrawal from both the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the Open Skies Agreement, even though the preservation of both measures was a high priority for the Kremlin. Despite that long pattern of belligerent behavior, Western officials continued to insist not only that Ukraine has every right under international law to join NATO, but that Moscow would have no reason to consider such a move a menace to Russia’s security.

Washington is trying to foster a similar narrative with respect to policy toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC). During the last two NATO summits, much of the discussion has focused on how to deal with China. That orientation might seem a bit odd for an alliance whose official name is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. However, the United States clearly is pushing its European allies to enlist in an increasingly hardline policy toward Beijing. It is a transparent effort to include NATO as a player in an anti-PRC containment policy, including a willingness to help defend Taiwan.

Even if one ignores those most recent moves, the assertion that NATO is a defensive alliance is absurd. NATO conducted an air war against Bosnian Serbs in 1995 and against Serbia itself in 1999, even though neither entity had attacked or even threatened any NATO member.  The alliance similarly launched air and missile strikes against Libya in 2011 to help oust Muammar Qaddafi from power. Even though NATO justified using military force in Afghanistan as a response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks on an alliance member, it was a great stretch of logic to justify the subsequent two-decade-long occupation of Afghanistan as a defensive mission.

In addition to NATO’s official missions that clearly were not defensive in nature, there have been other warlike actions involving some or most members of the Alliance. Both the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War fit that description.  In both conflicts, the vast majority of the anti-Iraqi forces came from NATO countries, mostly from the United States and Great Britain. Those offensive operations were Alliance missions under U.S. control in all but name.

Most foreign governments and populations also are unlikely to believe the related mythology that NATO members are peace-loving democracies. Indeed, even the alliance’s democratic credentials have failed to live up to that standard on several occasions. Portugal, one of NATO’s founding members in 1949, was a fascistic dictatorship. The military junta that took power in Greece in 1967 ruled that country for seven years. Turkey has maintained a democratic façade throughout most of NATO’s history, but the military and other authoritarian players have held sway most of the time. That is certainly the case with respect to the current government.

Finally, there have been the acts of flagrant aggression that individual NATO members have committed over the decades. Washington’s war in Vietnam may be the largest and best-known example, but it is hardly the only one. The U.S. military interventions in Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Panama also belong in that category.

Nor is the United States the only NATO member to engage in flagrant aggression. France has intervened in Chad and its other former colonies in Africa on several occasions. Indeed, Paris is threatening to support a new mission to overthrow the junta now ruling Niger. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and seized nearly 40 percent of the island. Ankara’s forces routinely operate in both Iraq and Syria despite the objections of the governments in those countries.

The West’s twin propaganda images should be greeted with derisive laughter. NATO is not a purely defensive alliance, and its members are not peace-loving democracies. NATO is an aggressively offensive alliance looking for new opportunities around the world.

Category: Foreign Policy & War

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This post was written by: Ted Galen Carpenter

Ted Galen Carpenter is a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is also a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute and served in various policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,200 articles on international affairs. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).

by Connor Freeman, The Libertarian Institute,  Sep 5, 2023

As the proxy war in Ukraine continues raging, people are being killed and wounded by cluster bombs at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world including Syria, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition.

The coalition – which is a network of non-governmental organizations that support banning the controversial weapons – released an annual report showing 2022 was the deadliest year on record globally for cluster bomb related killings.

Cluster bombs open up in the air and scatter scores of small bomblets and submunitions across large target areas, these often kill non-combatants for decades prior to the conclusion of conflicts where the arms are used. More than 120 countries have signed on to a United Nations convention prohibiting the munitions which kill indiscriminately. However, Washington, Kiev, and Moscow are not signatories.

Both Kiev and Moscow have been firing the weapons during the war. In July, the White House announced the US would be providing Ukrainian forces with cluster bombs, even though evidence already existed that Kiev had used the munitions to kill civilians before and after the Kremlin launched its invasion.

Alex Hiniker, an independent expert with the Forum on the Arms Trade, complained that he and other researchers are “baffled by the fact that [Washington] is sending totally outdated weapons that the majority of the world has banned because they disproportionately kill civilians.”

Over 300 people were killed, and in excess of 600 were wounded, by these bombs in Ukraine last year per the coalition’s report. In Syria, which was until recently the site of the most yearly cluster bomb casualties, saw 15 people killed and 75 wounded. In Iraq, where the US military has used cluster bombs during the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion, 15 people were killed and 25 were wounded.

In Yemen, where Riyadh has used US provided cluster bombs to kill civilians during its genocidal war against northern Yemen’s Houthis, there were five deaths and 90 people wounded by the bomblets last year. In 2022, there were no cluster bomb attacks reported in either Iraq or Yemen.

The primary victims of the unexploded, so-called duds – bomblets which look like metal balls – are children who pick them up to play with them unaware of what they actually are. The submunitions also often shepherds and scrap metal collectors – a not uncommon post-war source of income –  explains Laura Persi, an editor of the coalition’s annual report.

During the Vietnam War, US forces dropped hundreds of millions of cluster bomblets on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. People still die in Laos on a yearly basis as a result of the tens of millions of unexploded ordinances left behind after US bombing campaigns.

Sen. Romney recently called the proxy war the ‘the best national defense spending’ the US has ever done

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, August 30, 2023

Fresh from a trip to Kyiv, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is arguing that the US is getting its “money’s worth” in Ukraine because Russia is taking losses and no Americans are dying, showing a lack of concern for Ukrainian lives.

“Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment,” Blumenthal wrote in the Connecticut Post.

“For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half … All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” he added.

The argument has become a common talking point among hawks in Washington who want the US to keep fueling the proxy war against Russia. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) recently called the conflict “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”

“We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”

The hawkish senators’ comments came amid Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive. Despite the lack of success on the battlefield, the Biden administration and most members of Congress want to keep funding the war, which they acknowledge would not continue without US support.

“As Zelensky is frank and forthcoming to say, Ukraine could not have survived without America and our allies,” Blumenthal said. “But his counteroffensive is far from an assured success. In the end, the only way he loses is if America pulls the plug.”

The US left Afghanistan in July 2021 after a 20-year war and defeat. I wrote the following text at that time.

–Nasir Khan

Every single soldier from the US and the NATO allies who died in Afghanistan died merely to comply with the orders of the US rulers, like G W Bush, Dick Cheney and their neo-conservative secretaries and associates to start with, who were the frontmen to serve corporate interests of the military-industrial complex and the war profiteers from their safe and secure places in the United States. None of them took any risks because that task was reserved only for the ‘men and women in uniform’!

But none of the ordinary soldiers, dead or alive, saw or would ever know or see the war profits in billions the war profiteers made and pocketed. Any shares and dividends for the fighting ‘patriots’? No, no place for such questions! In any case, no one would respond to such questions.

However, what is certain the men and women in uniform who survived the long war soldiers will get a pat on their backs, as always, some rhetorical thanks for their ‘heroic’ deeds in Afghanistan to serve America and when the time comes they could do the same for their country. What awaits these heroes is not a hidden secret. Many will take their own lives, and many will complain they are forgotten. That has happened to the war veterans of Iraq and of other imperial wars.

We should keep in mind that these soldiers of the invading army were not sent there as ‘good Samaritans’ only, but to kill and crush those who resisted the American occupation. They killed and destroyed many thousands of innocent Afghans. Finally, the invaders have been forced to vacate Afghanistan after their 20-year-long war.

Which country will the US rulers and the military planners choose next? They have their sights set on some. One thing we can rule out is that they will take a long vacation after their humiliating defeat in Afghanistan. They will, instead, start or help some ally start a war somewhere to serve the same interests — military-industrial complex and its deep pockets. That is a lesson from the history of US wars when Washington bosses decide to intervene for some ‘noble’ cause, that soon becomes a brutal war by the mightiest military power in human history. The US army may lose, as its record after World War II shows. In contrast, there are always some who never lose, and they are the major American weapon manufacturers, their merchants, contractors and war profiteers.

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑆 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼𝑠𝑟𝑎𝑒𝑙 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑠𝑡-𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑒𝑥𝑒𝑟𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, posted on August 31, 2023

The US and Israel will simulate striking Iranian nuclear facilities as part of a series of joint military exercises that will be held in the coming months, The Times of Israel reported Wednesday, citing Israeli TV.

Back in January, the US and Israel conducted the Juniper Oak exercises, which were the largest-ever joint drills between the two nations. The Israeli military said Juniper Oak was just the first of a series of drills that the US and Israel will hold this year.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported one of the upcoming drills would simulate Israel facing a multi-front missile attack that will involve the US deployment of Patriot missile systems. Another drill will rehearse a joint US-Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The plan to simulate attacks on Iran has not been publicly confirmed by the US or Israel, but the two nations have previously rehearsed bombing Iran, including during drills that were held over the Mediterranean Sea in November 2022.