Academic
Freedom?
Not For Arabs In Israel
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth
03 March,
2008
Countercurrents.org
In the strange world of Israeli
academia, an Arab college lecturer is being dismissed from his job
because he refused to declare his “respect for the uniform of
the Israeli army”. The bizarre demand was made of Nizar Hassan,
director of several award-winning films, after he criticised a Jewish
student who arrived in his film studies class at Sapir College in
the Negev for wearing his uniform and carrying a gun.
The incident raises disturbing questions about the freedom of Israeli
academics, sheds light on the veneration of the military in Israeli
public life, and exposes the close, verging on incestuous, ties between
the army and Israeli academia.
Meanwhile, for many of Israel’s 1.2 million Palestinian citizens,
who are nearly a fifth of the country’s population, Hassan’s
treatment confirms their fears that decades of discrimination, especially
in higher education, are far from over.
Hassan has faced a storm of criticism, including claims that he is
anti-Semitic, since the Israeli media mistakenly reported back in
November that he had thrown out of class one of his students, Eyal
Cohen, over the way he was dressed. Hassan and most of the students
present say Cohen was simply warned not to attend class in future
wearing his uniform.
The story soon gained a life of its own, becoming the subject of incensed
talk shows and newspaper columns. A group of rightwing college staff
and students lobbied for Hassan, the only Arab lecturer in the film
school, to be dismissed, and the Knesset’s Education Committee
denounced him.
Critics claim, apparently without irony, that Hassan humiliated the
student, abused the concept of academic freedom and impugned the reputation
of the Israeli army.
Condemnation has come from surprising quarters, including the journalist
Gideon Levy, better known for his articles attacking the the army’s
treatment of the Palestinians under occupation.
But more predictable has been outrage from the right. Last month two
leaders of extremist Jewish settlers in Hebron, Baruch Marzel and
Itimar Ben Gvir, announced that they had enrolled on Hassan’s
course. “I would love for him to ask me about my army service,”
said Marzel. “I can only assure you that he will be the one
walking out of the classroom.”
The army added its voice too, with senior officers, including the
Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, putting pressure on Sapir College
to publicly rebuke the film-maker and punish him.
A letter from the head of army personnel, General Elazar Stern, accused
the college of failing to act with “proper determination”
and urged that Hassan face “sharp, public, official condemnation”.
Stern added that Hassan must be made to apologise or be sacked, otherwise
the army would end its funding of places for hundreds of soldiers
who attend courses at Sapir.
Most academic institutions in Israel not only depend on such funding
but receive special grants and endowments for research in security-related
subjects. The Israeli revisionist historian Ilan Pappe, who was forced
out of Haifa University last year, estimates that half of lecturers
in Israeli universities have ties to the security services.
In Sapir College’s case, links to the army have been reinforced
by its location in Sderot, a poor development town close to Gaza that
is the target of most of the Qassam rockets fired into Israel.
Under growing pressure, the college’s Academic Council suspended
Hassan without offering him a hearing. It also appointed for the first
time in the college’s history an academic committee to investigate
the incident and report on what disciplinary action should be taken.
The committee published its report late last month, conceding that
he is an “outstanding teacher” but offering only a cursory
examination the events at the centre of the controversy. Instead the
members harshly criticised Hassan’s behaviour and personality
and recommended that he apologise to Cohen or face dismissal.
The college’s president, Zeev Tzahor, intervened by contributing
his own condition. He wrote to Hassan telling him that in his apology
“you must refer to your obligation to be respectful to the IDF
uniform and the full right of every student to enter your classroom
in uniform.”
Hassan refused and, according to reports last week, the college has
begun proceedings to dismiss him.
“The whole reaction has been hysterical,” Hassan, who
lives in Nazareth, said. “It really surprised me, as did the
lies that were told about what had happened.”
His students say the issue has been blown out proportion and that
Hassan has never hidden his opposition to militarism, wherever it
exists.
Enass Masri, one of two Arab students in Hassan’s film class,
said: “When he saw Cohen wearing his uniform, he explained that
all military uniforms -- of the Israeli army, of Fatah or of Hamas
-- are symbols of violence and that he does not allow them into his
classroom.
“His concerns about the blurring in Israeli society of the boundaries
between the civil and military are well known.”
She added that the mistaken reports about Cohen being thrown out of
class may have been part of a long-standing campaign to oust Hassan
from his job. He had made himself unpopular with some staff and students
by speaking his mind, she said. “Some people at the college
are not prepared to accept the kind of things he says from an Arab.”
Sapir College calls itself “a lighthouse in the Negev”,
and its film school once had a reputaton for encouraging dissenting
social and political opinions.
In other Israeli colleges, discussion of “politics” --
a euphemism for views not officially sanctioned -- is rarely allowed.
For example, at Haifa University, which has the largest Arab student
body in the country, all protests on campus are banned unless licensed
by the vice-chancellor. Unofficial demonstrations, however peaceful,
are broken up and usually filmed by security staff. Video evidence
is used as grounds for suspending or expelling students.
Sapir’s president, Tzahor, recently told the Haaretz newspaper
that his motto is: “Politics -- only as far as the classroom
door.”
However, the college’s definition of “politics”
appears selective. In another recent incident at Sapir, lecturer Shlomit
Tamari told a Bedouin student to remove her head-covering, telling
her it was a sign of her oppression. No disciplinary action was taken
against Tamari, who is unrepentant: “I told the college that
I have academic freedom, and I can talk about that subject and I am
continuing to do so.”
Enass Masri said she was also shocked that the college committee did
not question the students in Hassan’s class about what took
place. “We thought we would be able to put the record straight,
but we were never invited to testify.
“Almost all of the students are on Hassan’s side, and
we wrote a letter to the college authorities in protest at his treatment.”
Instead, she says, the committee interpreted the “meaning”
of what happened, accordng to their own view of Hassan. “They
looked at him not as a human being but as an Arab, and Arabs are not
allowed to have an opinion on Israeli militarism.”
Hassan takes a slightly different view. Describing his questioning
by the committee, he said: ”They wanted me to be the Palestinian
in the room, and I refused to oblige. They wanted to believe that
I object to the army uniform because I am Palestinian. But I reject
the uniform because it is opposed to my universal and human values.
I acted as I did because I am a teacher and a human being.
“What shocked me was that the committee refused to believe that
could be my motivation.”
Certainly the committee’s report dismisses Hassan’s arguments,
claiming: “Nizar abused his status and his authority as a teacher
to flaunt his opinions, feelings and frustrations as a member of the
Arab national minority in Israel, cloaking himself in a ‘humane’
and ‘universal’ garb, whereas in fact he demonstrated
a stance of brute force bearing a distinctly nationalist character.”
Haim Bresheeth, an Israeli film-maker who was dean of Sapir’s
film school between 1996 and 2002, until he was hounded out over his
anti-Zionist views, wrote to Tzahor, the college president, arguing
that he was making an “irrational and immoral demand”
in expecting Hassan to respect the army’s uniform.
Bresheeth, referring to the reserve duty that most Israeli Jewish
men perform well into their forties, added: “You are a soldier
first, and only then an academic … I call on the historian Zeev
Tzahor to refuse the orders of Major Zeev Tzahor.”
As in most other areas of Israeli life, the country’s Palestinian
minority faces systematic discrimination in higher education. No public
university is located in an Arab community or teaches in Arabic, and,
though the minority is a fifth of the population, fewer than 1 per
cent of lecturers are Arab.
In addition, the number of Arab students is third of their proportion
in the population -- an under-representation that is apparently intentional.
In 2003, psychometric tests biased towards Western culture were scrapped
in an effort to help “weaker sections” of society gain
acceptance to university. However, when the Committee of University
Heads learnt that the number of Arabs entering university had risen
sharply as a result, the tests were immediately reinstated.
Several leading Israeli academics are outspoken racists, including
David Bukay and Arnon Sofer at Haifa University and Raphael Israeli
at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The latter was called as an “expert”
witness by the state at a trial in 2004 in which he stated that the
Arab mentality was composed of “a sense of victimization”,
“pathological anti-Semitism” and “a tendency to
live in a world of illusions”.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His new book, “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations:
Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” is published
by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net