History-making website aims to beat BDS with facts

[shira]

Called by creators the largest clearinghouse of its type, Israel and the Academy site offers info to combat anti-Israel campaigns on college campuses

WASHINGTON — Founders of a new and exhaustive informational website hope that their project will provide a powerful tool to beat back the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement’s inroads on college campuses — and it may just break some records along the way. Offering a deluge of information on Jewish identity, Israeli studies and –yes — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the professors behind the project hope that it will provide a key to stemming the tide of BDS arguments in higher education, and even help to forward their goal of a two-state solution.

The website, Israel and the Academy, debuted Thursday as the latest initiative by a group of senior American academics, mostly affiliated with the anti-boycott MLA Members for Scholars’ Rights. The faculty members, many of whom have been on the front lines of the struggle against the academic boycott of Israel for the better part of a decade, envisioned a website that would provide all of the informational resources necessary to counterbalance — and at times challenge — BDS activity on campuses.

The idea of a clearinghouse website was first floated in May 2015, when a group of some 15 faculty members met to determine their next course of action.

“BDS over the past few years has ramped up its activities so much more aggressively, that many more associations — I think a dozen of them — have been involved in those debates. It kind of became clear that we should be talking to one another,” explained Professor Cary Nelson, one of the leading voices against BDS in US academic circles. “The group was unanimous in feeling that the thing we really most needed was a rich website that people from communities, universities, government offices and anywhere else could go to for a repository of information that they would need to engage in these struggles,” he explained.

At the same time, Nelson said, the scholars also wanted “to do something significant around pedagogy over Jewish culture, history, Israeli culture and history, so it kind of dawned on us that the BDS stuff and the pedagogy stuff could be accomplished through the same website, so we could get two of our goals done that way.”

The website’s advisory board constitutes about two dozen academics, who reached out to friends and colleagues asking for essays and especially syllabi to be shared on the new platform. Although the initial process was slow, the results were massive. The website now will include over 450 syllabi, making it the largest resource of its type — offering free-access syllabi — in the world, according to the founders.

more...
http://www.timesofisrael.com/history-making-website-aims-to-beat-bds-with-facts/

[procon]

1. So, essentially this just another pro-Israel propaganda effort.

If the BDS efforts are so unimportant and ineffective, as we are told often and repeatedly, then why is this group trying so hard to "beat back the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement"? BDS must be having a much bigger impact than we've been led to believe. Evidently consumers aren't as naive and credulous about world events as the pro-Israel folks might hope, and this suggests that BDS efforts will continue to grow and advance in coming years.

Clearly this pro-Israel group is rattled by the new generation of young people who are not willing to accept the excuses for Israel's entrenched military occupation and the continuing abuses of basic Palestinian rights. More and more people are realizing that BDS is the only effective means of criticizing Israel's official policies of oppressing people on the basis of their ethnicity, religion and nationality.

The group in the article is rightfully worried. Public opinion on Israel is changing, in no small part do to their own policies. Targeting college campuses is not going to prevent the BDS movement from attracting more students who want to sanction Israel over the opposition to their occupation, discrimination and inequality of Palestinian people. The students and faculty who support the growing BDS efforts are representative of the future, but predictably, the website cited above does not address any of these critical issues.

[shira]

2. BDS is a failure with boycotts, but successful in poisoning minds, demonizing Jews....

Any attempt to demonize, marginalize, and endanger Jews - which is what BDS does - is a threat. The rise of BDS has happened concurrently with a sharp spike in antisemitic violence throughout Europe. This is no coincidence, as it's one of the goals (or nice side benefits) of BDS.

Also, BDS isn't about criticizing Israel or working for Palestinian rights. It's about ending Israel altogether, taking away Jewish rights, & therefore making life for Jews intolerable worldwide, so try being honest next time around. If BDS cared about Palestinian rights, there'd be at least some concern over the rights of Palestinian women, children, gays, & christians under Hamas rule or within Syria, for example.

[procon]

3. I don't agree with anything you've said.

Outside of the self limited pro-Israel rhetoric, the world is taking an dim view the decades long occupation of Palestine as it is not a successful foreign policy. Public attitudes are shifting to the plight of those oppressed people. This is particularly true in young people who are fully engaged in supporting BDS, and they will be the ones who will be setting public policies in the future.

You've include many other complaints that are beyond the subject of the cited article, but I am heartened that you, too, express some concern for groups of people that you believe to be oppressed. Surely, if that same criticism also extends to include Israel's discrimination against other people, then there is common ground for demanding an end to all human rights abuses.

[shira]

4. BDS is dishonest, wants Israel destroyed. As Norm Finkelstein stated...

I’ve earned my right to speak my mind, and I’m not going to tolerate what I think is silliness, childishness, and a lot of leftist posturing.

I mean we have to be honest, and I loathe the disingenuous. They don’t want Israel. They think they are being very clever; they call it their three-tier. We want the end of the occupation, the right of return, and we want equal rights for Arabs in Israel. And they think they are very clever because they know the result of implementing all three is what, what is the result?

You know and I know what the result is. There’s no Israel!

. . .

It’s not an accidental and unwitting omission that BDS does not mention Israel. You know that and I know that. It’s not like they’re “oh we forgot to mention it.” They won’t mention it because they know it will split the movement. ‘Cause there’s a large segment of the movement that wants to eliminate Israel.

. . .

Are you going to reach a broad public which is going to hear the Israeli side ‘they want to destroy us?’ No you’re not. And frankly you know what you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t reach a broad public because you’re dishonest. And I wouldn’t trust those people if I had to live in this state. I wouldn’t. It’s dishonesty.

[procon]

5. So the only response you have is to cut & paste more propaganda?

Sorry to see it end like that.

[shira]

6. So be honest. Is BDS about destroying Israel or not? n/t

[aranthus]

9. Norman Finkelsteen is pro-Israel propaganda?

If there is a more outrageous way you could have destroyed your own capability, I can't imagine it.

[King_David]

8. The world has always taken a dim view of Israel

It IS the JEWISH STATE. That's why.....

[Little Tich]

7. I'm actually impressed.

In total, I have a favorable impression of the material found on the website, in particular (for me) the syllabi about Israeli history (http://israelandtheacademy.org/syllabi-category/topic/). There's of course an emphasis on resources that are positive towards Israel, but anyone with a critical mindset won't have any problems. This is a compilation of the works of serious scholars.

Now, the bad part, which isn't really that bad: I found some fliers that are more or less 100% hasbara, but as they don't really conform to the reality based approach of the rest of the website, it's no biggie: http://israelandtheacademy.org/organizing-category/fliers/

And I found this syllabi from a course led by Gerald M. Steinberg. I would say that taking his course would cause you to know less about human rights and civil society than before you took it. He's a clown.

Gerald M. Steinberg (Political Science—Bar Ilan University—Israel):
Politics, Human Rights, and Civil Society
http://israelandtheacademy.org/syllabi-category/topic/