Can Academics Change the World?: An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus by Moshe Shokeid

Author:Moshe Shokeid [Shokeid, Moshe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Middle Eastern, Social Science, Political Science, World, Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781789206982
Google: efOzygEACAAJ
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2020-05-01T06:53:31+00:00

12

Toward the Last Stage

During 1992 and 1993 six major public events—conferences and public protests—took place with the following titles: “The Settlements and the National Financial Balance”; “The Conquerors’ Silence” (with a film documenting an IDF soldier’s diary); “A Salute to Emile Habibi,” an Israeli Arab citizen who got the Israel Prize for literature; “AD KAN Calls on Rabin [now PM]—Instead of More Knives Cut off Now: Two States”; “Gaza and Alger,” at which the famous Alger film was screened in addition to a report by an Israeli journalist (Gideon Levi) informing from Gaza; and “Why Do the Right-Wingers Incite against the Arab Knesset Members?” The speakers included two representatives of the Knesset Arab parties. These are the last announcements and posters in the AD KAN box that date from before the Oslo Accords. Thus, the field of activity remained very similar, though with a detour into the reality of Jewish-Arab relations within Israeli society.

The event celebrating Emile Habibi, who had recently been honored with the Israel Prize for Arab literature, seemed unusual for the AD KAN agenda. Habibi, a Christian Arab who stayed on in Haifa after the 1948 war, was active in politics and served as Knesset member of communist parties before he became fully engaged in literary work. It was the first time an Israeli Arab citizen was honored at that major ceremony, conducted on the annual Day of Independence, and shown on television with the PM and other leading national figures. Acceptance of the prize signified his strong commitment to peaceful Arab-Jewish coexistence. AD KAN’s decision to honor him was triggered by Professor Yuval Ne’eman, the most visible right-wing academic on TAU campus, who demonstratively returned his own Israel Prize award (for physics) as protest against honoring Habibi, who was rumored to maintain contact with PLO members.

Defying all norms of civil conduct, the right-wingers stormed into the ceremony event hall and screamed insults in front of the PM, the minister of education, and other national dignitaries as Professor Ne’eman threw his own prize at Habibi. They were pushed away by the offended audience. Naturally, one wonders about the state of mind of an internationally renowned scientist and campus leader who orchestrated such a surreal political demonstration. However, in his speech on campus (5 June 1992), Habibi admitted that he would have visited PLO leader Arafat in the hospital following an operation had the Israeli authorities allowed him to.

Habibi’s appearance was also protested by a small, young, noisy group of members of the Kach movement, led by the same familiar figures observed in many other loudmouthed right-wing events around the country, who screamed “death to the Arabs.” The meeting was interrupted when the security personnel searched the hall after an anonymous phone call warned about a hidden bomb. At any rate, Habibi relayed these hateful events to Haaretz (6 June 1992), concluding that there was no alternative except a historical compromise between the two peoples sharing the same homeland. Professor Sasson Somekh, the keynote speaker at “A Salute

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