Professor Gilbert Achcar (R) and Shlomo Sand (L) at SOAS in Feb. 2011.
Dr. Amal Jamal is following the path of Omar Bhargouti. Both are academics who have hugely benefited from living in Israel but who then came to London at the first opportunity to question Israel’s existence.
Tel Aviv University must have a death wish because Bhargouti, who would like to boycott Israel out of existence, did his Masters and is now pursuing a PhD there, and Dr. Jamal, who thinks Israel is heading towards a “one state solution”, is senior lecturer in the Political Science Department there.
Dr. Jamal spoke last night at SOAS on The Jewish State and the Hollowing Out of Palestinian Citizenship. The talk was sponsored by the recently created Centre for Palestine Studies, which is based at SOAS and includes Ilan Pappe as one of its academics.
Another of the Centre’s academics is Professor Gilbert Achcar. Professor Achcar lectures in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS.
Last night’s chairperson, and another of the Centre’s academics, was Dr. Laleh Khalili. Dr. Khalili lectures in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS.
More on both Professor Achcar and Dr Khalili later on.
Dr Jamal introduced his talk by describing the “Zionist narrative” as Jews returning home to a land that was promised by God according to the Bible. But, he said, the Palestinians pose a heavy threat to that narrative.
This, he argued, has led to an Israeli policy of manufacturing “quiet Arabs” and “floating Arabs” who have no ability in Israel to influence what they want to be.
Israel, he said, is doing this by redefining the Jewish state and hollowing out Palestinian citizenship.
Part of this is a mechanism of “Control and Neglect”. “Neglect” means de-developing the Israeli Arabs so they become unequal to other citizens. And “citizenship” as a control mechanism is used to inhibit Israeli Arabs from integrating fully into Israeli life.
He said that in Israel “Jews live. Palestinians exist”.
He criticised the Knesset with its automatic majority that can enact any law. Other tools used included separation and “the racist Wall” and other walls being built in Lod and Caesarea. The citizenship law, the boycott law and the Nakba law were other examples as well as the limiting of resources for Israeli Arabs and the removal of citizenship in cases of treason.
Dr. Jamal concluded his talk by saying that the Jewish state is a hegemonic project that cannot tolerate contention and that this will eventually lead to its breakdown and that Israeli policies will close off any hope of a two state solution, eventually leading to a “one state solution”.
During the Q&A events took a turn for the worse.
I asked Dr Jamal why, if as he stated, Israeli Arabs could not influence their future in Israel then how had he become so successful there. I then went on to suggest that at least in Israel the Arabs had a chance to argue their case while in the surrounding Arab countries Arab citizens were either being slaughtered or undergoing the imposition of strict Islamic laws.
Dr Khalili thought this second point off-topic and tried to shout me down. Next someone shouted “This is Hasbarah. It is crap”. When I tried to defend my right to ask a question Professor Achcar, who was sat in the front row, referred to me as a “professional disruptor” to which Dr Khalili replied “I know, I remember”.
Then, quite incredibly, Professor Achcar announced to the room that I had left insults on his phone and that had he known I was coming he would not have allowed me in. He told me to get out.
I realised afterwards that this is the second time he has asked me to leave a talk. In February 2011 exactly the same happened when he didn’t like my questioning of Shlomo Sand (also of Tel Aviv University, incidentally) at SOAS.
Afterwards Professor Achcar told me that he still has the recordings of the insulting phone messages.
If he can prove that they are from me I will donate £1000 to a charity of his choice. Alternatively, he might have the decency to apologise.
I never got a proper answer from Dr Jamal as to why he had succeeded while other Israeli Arabs hadn’t. He just said that Israeli Jews must be saved from enacting policies of apartheid, expulsion and genocide. He said Jews can change but that the Jewish community in Britain has an important role to play as Israeli Jews can’t save themselves on their own.
He also said that he wanted the right of return but for it to be controlled at first both for Jews and Arabs. Eventually, he said, up to 20 million people must be somehow accommodated.
For the Palestinian “right of return” read Israel’s destruction. And this from someone being paid by Israel to teach Israeli students!
Meanwhile, I was proud to study at SOAS and I contributed financially when I was recently telephoned to help current students. It’s now very sad that some anti-Israel SOAS lecturers are using smear tactics when they don’t like what they hear.
RichardMillett's Blog 
Well this is all very interesting but I rather hoped you would be telling us about how you got your collar felt.
How disgusting that these biased co-called “academics” are indoctrinating students
Well Richard, a new blog at last! And what’s it about – yet another hate fest, the same old same old – speakers, chosen carefully for their resonance with the given Jew hatred, expound their replacement theory against everything Israeli including its biblical history, rope in the UK Jewish community as culpable in the crime of daring to exist, spot Richard as he asks a serious question they cannot answer and blame him for disrupting their hate filled gathering as they heist our state paid for universities as their personal fiefdom to indoctrinate young students in how to become them when they pass on! Now a new add on – accusing Richard of hate calls! Well yes, let’s see the evidence. In fact Richard, I recommend you get your lawyer to demand the evidence in a libel and slander suite. Happy to help you get it together. Proving them the liars they are will go some way to exposing the other lies they expound to the vulnerable youngsters who deserve better than these bigoted clowns as lecturers when they finally get to university.
a) what is Colin Shindler of SOAS Jewish and Israel studies doing about this?
b) Dr Stefan Sperl of SOAS Arabic studies was a key witness in whitewashing Salah’s Arabic, Islamic anti-Judaism and antisemitism into alleged insignificance.
Some might say that letting a SOAS senior lecturer in Arabic have the final word as to Arab, Islamic anti-Judaism and antisemitism was a bit like Kentucky professor of the Literature of the South defend the pronouncements of a Klansman from charges of racism, against a member of the African-American community.
I would have thought someone from SOAS Jewish and Israel studies might have had something to say about Arabic, Islamic anti-Judaism and antisemitism. Or might it affect there standing with the university?
c) it really is shocking that Achcar does this to an ex-SOAS student who was simply asking questions as any other member of the audience is entitled to.
Apologies for the typos
If you’re reading this, Richard, I strongly suggest you keep Colin Shindler appraised of all this, even letting him know in advance about it.
I am reading this. I think he reads Harrys Place, CIFWatch etc. He probably realises what goes on at SOAS but it’s all freedom of speech.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Richard, can you give me the number for your agency, ‘Apologists for Hire’? There is a pro Tibetan talk next week and I need to put China’s view across, the following week there’s meeting of pro democracy groups from Saudi Arabia, I think they could be useful here too.
And your point, Mostly, is?
‘Richard, can you give me the number for your agency, ‘Apologists for Hire’?’
Antisemitic creep.
Well done, Richard! You know you’ve won the argument when your opponent loses his temper and tells you to get out. The blatant and easily refutable lie about the phone messages is just the icing on the cake.
‘He also said that he wanted the right of return but for it to be controlled at first both for Jews and Arabs. Eventually, he said, up to 20 million people must be somehow accommodated.’
Well, that is obviously impossible. ‘Controlling’ Jewish immigration sounds to me code for ‘ultimately ending’ it. His ‘20 million’ sounds like incorporating all Palestinian Arab Muslim and Christian refugees, their descendants and those in the West Bank and Gaza (wikipedia give the total Palestinian Arab population as 11 000 000) i.e. reducing Israeli Jews to a minority in their own state fairly rapidly i.e. no more Israel in the none-too-distant future.
He sounds very much the kind of character of which Norman Finkelstein spoke.
The situation of Israeli Arab Muslims and Christians is unequal, but better than for Jews anywhere in the Arab, Islamic world.
It is an extremely hostile region, and Israeli Jews are unlikely to dissolve their state, even under compulsion. In fact compulsion may make them maintain their state, as, as they see it, their first and final defence.
So long as such as Achcar insist on, say, ror for Palestinian Arab Muslims and Christians, and dissolving the Jewish state, including ending any Jewish ror i.e. any kind of Israel shortly thereafter, I do not see how Israeli Jews will feel more secure in integrating Israeli Arab Muslims and Christians, especially is their Palestinian Arab Muslim and Christian nationalism is decidedly anti-Jewish.
Achcar’s position is profoundly anti-Israeli, and one wonders how Shindler of Israel studies can endure it, without response. He probably has little choice. But it is an extraordinary situation.
Given Achcar’s own role in whitewashing Arab antisemitism, one can see how Sperl of Arabic studies was called to whitewash that of Raed Salah.
Unpleasant, all round.
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