The disgraceful legacy of the Hebrew University and Israeli academia
Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian is not the only victim of the wartime witch hunt in academe. Any researcher who dares to assert that genocide is taking place in Gaza risks being attacked by their colleagues, not to mention summoned for interrogation and arrest. Holocaust researcher Professor Amos Goldberg detailed the arguments supporting this in a thoughtful and reasoned article. He, too, was met with hostile reactions and researchers have called for his removal from the Hebrew University. ■ The disgrace of moral turpitude, cowardice and abandonment will forever remain part of the legacy of the Hebrew University and of Israeli academia in general.
By Daniel Blatman* • Translated by Sol Salbe
Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian will no longer teach at the flagship institution of Israeli academia. The Hebrew University announced her retirement a week ago. She seems to have given up, and no wonder. Not many people would have been able to get through the ordeal of threats and abuse she endured. Shalhoub-Kevorkian may transfer her academic prestige to another university, but the disgrace of moral turpitude, cowardice and abandonment will forever remain part of the legacy of the Hebrew University and of Israeli academia in general.
A reminder: On 18 April 2024, police arrested Shalhoub-Kiburkian, 62, a tenured professor at the School of Social Work and the Department of Criminology at the Hebrew University. She was suspected of expressing support for terrorism and denying Hamas atrocities on October 7. This was six months after Israel embarked on a murderous vengeance war in Gaza following the horrific massacre. Shalhoub-Kevorkian described the conditions of her detention in an interview with Haaretz (April 22): “They shackled both my arms and legs, put me in a small room and left me standing there for an hour, and then a female prison officer came in, undressed me and examined my body again… then they put me in the room where I spent the night. They screamed at me and swore at me… They took me to a room and threw a mattress on the floor. I was all shivering feeling so cold, I asked for a blanket, and they brought me a blanket that reeked of garbage and urine and was wet. I sat on the bed until morning. My ears and nose started bleeding, I vomited, washed my face and went back to bed.” A day later, Shalhoub-Kevorkian was released by the Jerusalem court, which rejected the police’s request to extend her detention.
I know Nadera a little. We both belong to the academic staff of that institution. I have already retired, while she has continued to teach until now. We met more than a decade ago in the United States at a seminar on the Holocaust and genocide. Nadera spoke about her research, especially the book she had published about Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding — the methods by which the Israeli Occupation regime, she says, denies Palestinian children their normative childhood experience. She elaborated on the difficult-to-hear descriptions and provided testimonies. It wasn’t easy for me to hear this and I replied resolutely. I rejected the dogmatism of her claims about the crimes of Zionist colonialism, and told the researchers at the conference about my colonialist mother, who came to Israel in 1949 with a rucksack containing old clothes, less than a hundred dollars, and a shattered body and soul from that war. Even her colonial act never did fully restore her life — until her death at the age of 93. I saw that my words had stirred up a storm of emotions in Nadera.
Nevertheless, her remarks about the robbery of the childhood of Palestinian children, as well as what I read in her subsequent publications, reminded me of descriptions that can be read in almost any diary written in Eastern European ghettos during the Holocaust. The robbery of childhood was the main issue that educators fought in the ghettos — without defining it as such. It is enough to read the diaries written by Janusz Korczak and other educators to understand the depth of the breakage. They saw the robbery of childhood as the worst calamity that the German occupation inflicted on the Jewish child, on the future generation of the people. Nadera spoke from the perspective of a social researcher with a feminist and humanist orientation, but the political-topical context was obvious. Had she written the same things about the Armenian genocide, no one would have noticed. But when it comes to the Israeli Occupation such comments constitute a breaking a taboo.
The capitulation of the media, academic researchers, and the Hebrew University administration to the sanctity of this taboo is evidence of the depth of the spread of the cancer of fascism in Israel. Professor David Weisburd, a world-renowned criminologist, said that when Prof Shalhoub-Kevorkian cites the killing of Hassan Manasra from East Jerusalem by the security forces as an example, she does not emphasise that he had stabbed two people earlier. Prof Asher Ben-Arieh, dean of the School of Social Work, argued that her research on children does not meet the research requirements of the School of Social Work at the Hebrew University. Ben-Arieh was also one of those pushing for her suspension from teaching at the School of Social Work. But note: The researchers accepted Shalhoub-Kevorkian to the teaching staff, awarded her tenure and the title of full professor. In these processes of assessing a scholar’s work, every comma in the researcher’s publications is examined, the quality of the journals in which they had been published is weighed, and dozens of supporting opinions are required from the best researchers in the world in his fields of expertise.
Most problematic, however, was the reaction of the university administration. At the end of October 2023, both the president and the rector of the university called on Shalhoub-Kevorkian to resign, for her assertion that a genocide was taking place in Gaza: “We are sorry and ashamed that the Hebrew University includes a faculty member like you.” This is the university that was once headed by giants of scholarship and conscience such as Haim Yehuda Roth, Hugo Bergmann, Judah Leon Magnes, Nathan Rottenstreich and more.
Shalhoub-Kevorkian is not the only victim of the wartime witch hunt in academe. Any researcher who dares to assert that genocide is taking place in Gaza risks being attacked by their colleagues, not to mention summoned for interrogation and arrest. Of course, the discussion of the genocide issue cannot be explored here in detail, but it can be stated that some of the best researchers in the world believe that there is a basis for the contention that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The International Court of Justice in The Hague also seems to believe that there is such a basis. Such an argument therefore cannot be grounds for maltreatment and gagging, and certainly not when it relies on a comparative discussion, without which the event cannot be properly understood. Holocaust researcher Professor Amos Goldberg detailed the arguments supporting this in a thoughtful and reasoned article he published in Local Call (April 17). He, too, was met with hostile reactions and researchers have called for his removal from the Hebrew University.
Those who dare to speak out against this fascist chorus — especially if it is a Palestinian woman — are in for hell. They will be abandoned to attacks in the media by politicians and journalists, or by the university administration — at worst. In the more frightening case, they will be handed over to the Ben-Gvir police and undergo special treatment.
Prof Blatman is a historian of the Holocaust and genocide
Translated by Sol Salbe, Middle East News Service
Haaretz Hebrew original article:
