Who are the anti-Israel Italian professors and what do they say?

13 November 20236 months ago babelfish

Around four thousand members of the Italian academic community have signed a "Request" to ask for the suspension of relations with Israeli universities. Here is who the signatories are (including emeritus professors) and the reply to a petition on Change.org

There are approximately four thousand signatories, including university professors and researchers, of the Request for urgent action for an immediate ceasefire and respect for international humanitarian law . The appeal – addressed to Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, University Minister Anna Maria Bernini and the Conference of Rectors of Italian Universities – intends to promote "an immediate end to the ongoing war against Gaza", but also calls for the suspension of relations between Italian universities and those of Israel.

“APARTHEID” IN ISRAEL AND THE “GENOCIDE” OF THE PALESTINIANS

The authors of the appeal define Israel as an "illegal regime of military oppression and Apartheid" and speak of the war in the Gaza Strip as a "genocide", that is, a "clear intent of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government" against of the Palestinian population. The offensive of 7 October by Hamas (a terrorist organisation) is spoken of as "brutal actions", but the previous "determining factors" should be "considered and understood": that is, according to the signatories, the "illegal occupation that Israel has imposed on the Palestinian population for over 75 years, through a form of racial [ sic ] and ethnic segregation."

The internal political situation in Israel, however, is very different from the apartheid practiced in the past by South Africa: in Israel, Arabs (about 20 percent of the total population) are formally guaranteed all fundamental rights, including the freedom to vote, election and business, and are not obliged to attend schools other than those reserved for Jews, for example. At the same time, however, there are important social and economic disparities between Israeli citizens of Jewish ethnicity and those of Arab ethnicity: among Arabs the poverty rate is approximately three times higher, and many of them live in overcrowded neighborhoods or cities, with poor infrastructure and lower quality schools.

Furthermore, Israel militarily controls territories belonging to the Palestinians, such as the West Bank.

THE DEMANDS OF THE CALL FOR CEASE FIRE IN GAZA

The document requests two: an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the provision of humanitarian aid to civilians; and “the immediate cessation of collaborations with Israeli university and research institutions until compliance with international and humanitarian law is restored.”

WHO ARE THE FIRST SIGNATORS

The full document, updated on November 5th, can be found here and already had 2677 signatures. The signature form is here , but as of this writing it is no longer accepting responses.

The first ten signatories of the Call for Urgent Action for an Immediate Ceasefire and Respect for International Humanitarian Law are:

Roberto Beneduce, Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin
Francesca Biancani, department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna
Simona Taliani, Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin
Pierluigi Musarò, Department of Sociology and Economic Law, University of Bologna
Guido Veronese, Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of MilanoBicocca
Vittorio Morfino, department of Human Sciences for Education, University of MilanoBicocca
Chiara Fiscone, Department of Education Sciences, University of Genoa
Federica Cavazzoni, department of Human Sciences for Education, University of
Milan-Bicocca
Cristiana Fiscone, Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of
Bologna
Didier Alessio Contadini, Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of
Milan-Bicocca

THE OTHER RELEVANT SIGNATURES

Corriere della Sera notes that, among the signatories of the Request , there are also Isabella Camera D'Afflitto della Sapienza (important scholar of the Arabic language, medal of the President of the Republic in 2017), the Africanist Itala Vivan (professor emerita of the University of Milan Studies), Chantal Meloni (professor of International Criminal Law at the University of Milan, who worked at the International Criminal Court and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza) and Paolo Matthiae (emeritus professor of Archeology at Sapienza , who received the gold medal from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the discovery of the Ebla site).

THE APPEAL AGAINST THE BOYCOTT OF ISRAELI UNIVERSITIES

On November 12, a petition entitled Appeal against the boycott of Israeli universities was launched on the Change.org platform, expressly addressed "to the colleagues who signed the Request " to criticize their most anti-Israeli positions and propose, on the contrary, a strengthening of the relationships between Italian and Israeli academia.

The text of the appeal states that the Request “does not represent the point of view of the entire university community. On the contrary, he expresses opinions that many colleagues at higher education institutions firmly reject. Disguised as a declaration in favor of the Palestinian victims of this conflict, the Urgent Request is an ideological jumble that denies historical and factual reality, as well as containing elements of anti-Semitic prejudice."

First of all, the description of Israel as a regime in which apartheid exists is "the result of a distorted and unambiguous reading and a hasty simplification: Israeli society is secular and strictly multi-ethnic". The reconstruction of the Hamas attack is then criticized as a reaction to Israeli policies towards the Palestinians: "Hamas' operation", we read in the Appeal , "is not the improvised gesture of a victim who has suffered harassment, but the result of years of planning and millionaire investments. Hamas gave it a name, as if it were a legitimate military operation: Al-Aqsa Flood.”

As for the request to interrupt relations with Israeli universities, the petition explains that "a similar request has never been formulated towards other academic communities following conflicts involving their countries, such as those of the United States when the United States they were involved in the Gulf War. Nor is there such a boycott against universities in countries with brutal and cynical policies, such as Iran and Syria. Criticizing Israel and the actions of its government is legitimate, painting it ideologically as a rogue state is not."

Among the first signatories of the Appeal against the boycott of Israeli universities are:

Lucia Corso, Kore University of Enna
Mathew Diamond, International School for Advanced Studies, SISSA, Trieste
Alessandro Silva, International School for Advanced Studies, SISSA, Trieste
Raffaella Rumiati, International School for Advanced Studies, SISSA, Trieste
Cosimo Nicolini Coen, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/richiesta-interruzione-rapporti-universita-israele/ on Mon, 13 Nov 2023 08:50:42 +0000.