A very important site: israel-academia-monitor.com

[חיים יטיב]

http://www.israel-academia-monitor.com


ACADEMICS AGAINST ‘POST-ZIONIST' PROFESSORS, YNET NEWS, OCTOBER19, 2006

BY ANAT BERESHKOVSKY,



Published in: Ynet News October 22, 2006

'Israel Academia Monitor' website acts as ‘Big Brother’, warns students of anti-Israel professors and courses at Israeli universities

Many history and sociology professors and researchers with the common goal of showing "the other" less popular side of Zionism, earned the handle "post-Zionists" for their participation in Palestinian propaganda against government policies and efforts against Israel’s definition as a Jewish state.

These "post-Zionist" professors don’t hesitate to weave comments about Israel’s injustices against the Palestinians, the lack of equality for Israel’s Arab citizens, and democracy’s limitations in a Jewish state, into their lectures.

Israel’s senior professors do not approve of this growing trend of younger professors politicizing academia by inserting anti-Israel agendas into Israeli institutions. Consequently, the "Israeli Academia Monitor" website was launched in order to warn student of such professors.

Posted on the "Israeli Academia Monitor" homepage was a message saying, "Israeli Universities are crawling with extremist staff members, many of whom hate their country, encourage their country’s enemies, and collaborate with international anti-Israel organizations, sometimes even with declared anti-Semites."

Dana Brent, who runs the website along with Professor Steven Plaut, said that their goal was to expose what was going at universities with the publics funding.

"We noticed a lot of Israeli academics, who receive their salary from the state, use it for their own private ideology," Brent explained, "They spread lies about Israel and there are many people in the world who would be happy to hear about it."

Brent claims that beneath the plethora of courses on civil rights, human rights, feminism, and social justice supposedly working to expose students to "other ways of looking at the Israeli reality" actually lays anti-Israeli propaganda.

One of the many professors listed on the "Monitor" is Dr. Ilan Pappe, a social sciences professor at Haifa University. Pappe is one of Israel’s leading spokesmen against the definition of Israel as a Jewish State, and promoter of the "country for all its citizens" stance.

Pappe dismissed calls for professors to remain objective saying, "I am one of the few professors that openly voices my opinions. I don’t like academic members who say they are objective."

He views the courses he gives as no less than a mission. He said, "Where, if not in academia, would I promote my political agenda?"

According to the "Monitor" website, there is a long line of Israeli professors that share Pappe’s views. A study conducted by Dr. Udi Label, a political psychology professor at the Ben Gurion Institute, showed that the trend was picking up speed.

The study revealed that syllabi of the social sciences departments in Israel’s universities included increasing numbers of courses supporting the ‘post Zionist’ ideas.