Former MK Eldad: The Boycotts Are Our Own Fault

By Elad Benari, INN

Professor Aryeh Eldad

Professor Aryeh Eldad

Former MK Professor Aryeh Eldad, head of the Professors for a Strong Israel organization, said Wednesday that if the Israeli government wants to blame someone for the constant boycotts of the Jewish state, it should look in the mirror.

Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Eldad said the Israeli government, by agreeing to participate in the European Union’s “Horizon 2020” scientific project despite its guidelines boycotting Judea and Samaria, was creating a snowball effect that encouraged others to boycott Israel as well.

According to Eldad, the compromise reached between Israel and the EU, which stipulates that the EU will note that it does not recognize Israeli activities over the 1949 Armistice line, led to other boycotts such as the one by the American Studies Association (ASA) that was announced this week.

The American boycott is “in part the fruit of the Israeli surrender and the signing of the Horizon 2020 agreement with the European Union, in which Israel actually recognized the demand of the EU not to support settlement activity,” said Eldad, adding, “From there the way to continued boycotts against Israel was very short.”

He proceeded to slam the opposition for its failure to speak out against the Horizon 2020 agreement.

“The government should have been called to order over this disgraceful surrender, even the Knesset’s Land of Israel lobby kept quiet,” charged Eldad. “We’ve seen other examples of surrendering to pressure, such as Magen David Adom surrendering to the Red Cross. Do they expect that if we continue to give in, then the boycotts will stop?”

However, noted Eldad, it is not just the government that contributed to these boycotts, but also leftist Israeli professors. “There are enemies of Israel, including Israeli academics, who have for years called on the academic community worldwide to boycott Israel. Those traitors came from among us and grew here at our universities,” he said.

“Israel has been negligent up until now and dragged its feet when the first signs of a boycott of products from Judea and Samaria emerged. It declined to indict those factors who called for the boycotts, and now we are paying the price,” concluded Eldad.

 

December 19, 2013 | 16 Comments »

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16 Comments / 16 Comments

  1. What is Eldad going to do about this?
    The left (of the world) is full of stupid illusion. Their dream is about universalism. This would be the ultimate nightmare. For much less, “Islam” is willing to kill!!!

  2. @ bernard ross:

    I tend to agree but there is financial funding for many projects some stand to lose. There are roughly 2000 scientists and academics involved with EU projects and funding. They have a vested interests in maintaining status quo. I assume no less is true in the States. In a perfect world Israel should be doing the financing of our own academics but a country willing to forgo essential manufacturing and creating unemployment to save a few million dollars by dumping those concerns and giving it to the Americans is so short sighted that in my opinion the whole area of military procurement should be separated from the IDF budget. They are not only wasteful in the extreme they are stupid as well.

    The media support the academics funded by foreigners and ignores the poor working stiff and single mothers put out of work due to budget constraints and short sighted decision making. This is why we should divest from America it is a very unhealthy relationship for us.

  3. Israel and the Disparity Between Academia and Commerce
    http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/12/20/israel-and-the-disparity-between-academia-and-commerce/
    Any further isolation of Israeli academics will strengthen the bond between Israeli academia and commerce. Israeli academia will likely increase the success of Israeli commerce and Israeli technology. Those mired in a world unrelated to reality will fall off, thankfully so, to chatter among themselves irrelevant to those in the world of achievement as they are already doing. Groups who allow a small minority to speak for them are composed of uninterested or ineffectual members. They are even irrelevant to their own reality. In the world of technolgy, medicine and arms I doubt that anyone of importance will boycott interfacing with Israel. As far as language “scholars” who gives a crap. Some Israeli academics in the liberal arts might be hurt.

  4. Universities quit US academic body over Israel boycott
    Brandeis and Penn State Harrisburg withdraw their membership in the American Studies Association, citing its politicization

    American Studies Association’s Marez admitted that the ASA has never before called for a boycott of any other nation’s universities and did not dispute that many other countries, including some of those in Israel’s region, are considered to have a comparable — if not worse — human-rights record than Israel.

    “One has to start somewhere,” he said according to a New York Times report,

    The “boycott is the best way to protect and expand academic freedom and access to education,” ASA president Curtis Marez said in a press release on December 4.

    In the resolution passed unanimously by the association’s national council, the group justified its decision with the assertions that Palestinian students and scholars enjoy “no effective or substantive academic freedom” under Israeli rule and that “Israeli institutions of higher learning are a party to Israeli state policies that violate human rights and negatively impact the working conditions of Palestinian scholars and students.”

    Two-thirds of the 1,252 members of the ASA who then voted on the measure approved the boycott, according to an ASA announcement Monday, a day after the deadline for voting.

    At the time of the vote, there were 3,853 eligible voters, meaning one-third of the membership participated.

    The membership-wide canvas was unprecedented and was undertaken in part at the behest of boycott opponents, who said at a session during the ASA annual conference in Washington last month that the matter was too sensitive to leave up to the 20-member national council, which unanimously endorsed the boycott.

    “The National Council engaged and addressed questions and concerns of the membership throughout the process,” the ASA statement said.

    “During the open discussion at the recent convention, members asked us to draft a resolution that was relevant to the ASA in particular and so the Council’s final resolution acknowledged that the US plays a significant role in enabling the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

  5. A people are not “settlers” in their own land
    http://unitycoalitionforisrael.org/news/?p=10203
    I blame not only the GOI but the entire religious sector of Israel. Those who can send 750,000 to the funeral of a rabbi cannot conjure up a protest against the ceding of the religious homeland or the Temple Mount. if the religious sector cannot show leadership on this issue then why would we expect the secular Israelis to show it? If a 100,000 marched every week to the Mount, to the Knesset and to BB’s home we would quickly see results. They can protest a female soldier on a bus, their perks and benefits, and on avoiding the army but they can conjure nothing for YS and the Mount. If they don’t want to ascend the Mount then protest at the gate to shut it down and keep it from the Muslims. I blame the religious sector.

  14. Eldad is one of the few voices of sanity in Israel or elsewhere for that matter. What a few hundred like him could accomplish?