12 Nov 2007 | Magazine, Middle East and North Africa
Iranian intelligence is using new interrogation tactics on journalists reports Maziar Bahari who received an invitation to tea at an upmarket hotel
I’m not supposed to tell you this but I met Mr Mohammadi. In fact I met three Mr Mohammadis in four days.
Mohammadi is the nickname of choice for the agents of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence — Iran’s equivalent of the CIA. They have other nicknames as well, most of which are variations of the names of Shia imams such as Alavi, Hassani and Hosseini. I guess the names don’t indicate a rank or anything (I have to guess because Mr Mohammadi doesn’t tell you much. He asks the questions).
Mr Mohammadi is responsible for the security of Iran. That includes protecting the values of its government. It’s a tough job. It’s like being in charge of Britney Spears’s public image. Well, not exactly, but you get my point. The values change so often that the officials who put former colleagues on trial today are careful not to be incarcerated by the same people tomorrow (who may very well have jailed them in the past). Mr Mohammadi’s job description is to keep the integrity of the regime intact and to stop those who plan to undermine the holy system of the Islamic Republic. But what does undermining mean? And what if it is actually the government of Iran that is doing the under- mining (as it does constantly)? These questions seem to puzzle Mr Mohammadi. So he is more than a little bit paranoid and edgy these days. When he calls you for questioning, you don’t know if he’s going to charge you with something or if he’s seeking advice.
These days, Mr Mohammadi’s main concern is that the American fifth column, disguised as civil rights activists, as well as scholars and journalists, is destabilising the Islamic Republic. The American government has, after all, allocated US$75m to promote ‘democracy’ in Iran. To put it in layman’s terms, it means undermining the Islamic government through the media and civil society groups. The American government is also giving US$63 billion in military aid to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel to ‘counter Iran’. The US would love to have agents in the country to take the money and spend it wisely. There are so many social and economic problems in Iran, that if someone wanted to exploit them to create dissent it wouldn’t be difficult to do so. But most activists I know inside Iran wouldn’t touch the money with a bargepole and resent the American government much more than their own. In the meantime, the Iranian government tries to find foreign perpetrators and domestic accomplices instead of solving the root causes of dissent, such as mismanagement of the country’s economy, poverty, internal migration and drug addiction.
In the 1980s and 1990s, intelligence agents were rough and scary. You were guilty until proven otherwise. But nowadays, they politely call you for tea at some fancy hotel or other to question you. I never understood their fascination with hotels. Why can’t you just meet them in their offices? Or why don’t they come to your office? Why not a restaurant, a park or a cinema? Anyway, when you enter the hotel room you are offered a range of non-alcoholic drinks. Mr Mohammadi is very generous with his beverages. As soon as you finish your tea you are offered Nescafe , then some kind of juice, then Fanta, Pepsi etc. But he never offers anything solid. Why can you drink tea while being asked about plots against the government but not have a biscuit? Does an interrogation over a kebab lunch make it less trustworthy?
These questions of course pop into your head while you’re enjoying the comfort of not being in Mr Mohammadi’s presence. He has killed many people in the past. And you know that he is well capable of violence again if he thinks it necessary Mr Mohammadi’s counterparts in numerous parallel security apparatuses (intelligence units of the judiciary, Revolutionary Guards and the police) still have not caught up with his methods. Recently a number of students and labour activists were arrested and instead of being offered tea or Nescafe in an upscale hotel they spent days in solitary confinement and were beaten up with electric cables and batons. I met the three different Mr Mohammadis while on assignment for Newsweek magazine. I was writing an article about the suppression of civil society and civil rights activists in Iran.
Day one: I’ve set up an appointment with a teachers’ union leader at a cafe . I am supposed to meet him after an exam at the high school where he teaches. The teacher doesn’t show up on time. I wait for an hour. Even by Iranian standards he is late. I call him on his mobile but it is off. Strange. He was so keen to talk the day before, so what has happened? I then get a call from his mobile.
‘Who is that?’ the caller asks. It is not the teacher. ‘I’m Bahari from Newsweek.’ ‘News what?’ ‘Week.’
‘So you’re a journalist. Will call later.’ I learn that the teacher was arrested during the exam and sent to prison. An hour later I get a call from a ‘private number’. It is a new voice. He is much more pleasant. There are several intelligence apparatuses in Iran. The judiciary, Revolutionary Guards and the police – each has its own intelligence arm. But Mr Mohammadi’s Ministry of Intelligence is supposed to be the main one.
It certainly is the most professional, and polite, one. ‘Could you come to … Hotel at three this afternoon’ asks Mr Mohammadi. It’s been a while since I’ve been summoned. Naturally I oblige.
Mr Mohammadi has become more polite, cordial and strangely reassuring. He sneaks a smile when I ask him, ‘Why am I summoned here?’ He used to give me an angry look that would mean he is the one in charge, not me. He begins by asking really simple questions about me and my work: who am I? How long have I worked for Newsweek? Why did I want to meet the teacher? Have I ever met him before? What is the angle of my story? Easy questions to answer. Mr Mohammadi is quite relaxed. He scribbles in his notebook while I talk and every now and then exchanges a smile with me. There’s nothing remotely amusing about what I’m saying, but Mr Mohammadi keeps on smiling. That makes me think: what is so interesting about the banality I’m spewing here? Is he really taking notes or is he doodling a fish? Is it a dead fish? Maybe it’s a fish in the belly of another one. When is he going to let me out of here? Is he going to let me out of here?
I get tired of talking after a while. Then, like Mohammad Ali in the seventh round of his fight with George Foreman, Mr Mohammadi snaps and starts to challenge me. He keeps on smiling. I wish he wouldn’t. Why do I think an American publication is interested in talking to Iranian dissidents? Was I given a list of questions by American paymasters to ask the dissidents? Have I ever been to any conferences in the US or in Europe? Have I ever met any dissidents in Europe or the US? How did I come to be chosen as Newsweek’s correspondent in Iran and not someone else? Mr Mohammadi is now targeting my integrity as a journalist, explicitly trying to make a connection between me and a dissident, suggesting that we both work as agents of the Great Satan and that we are part of a bigger plot to topple the Islamic government.
If this session had been with previous Mr Mohammadis a few years ago, I would be scared of a pending trial and imprisonment for something I had never done – a destiny that befell many of my friends and colleagues. But what makes this Mr Mohammadi tolerable, is his half-hearted approach to the whole thing. His expression is not a grin or a smirk. You can see that he’s been down this road before and really doesn’t think that it works. He almost feels sorry for himself and asks for your sympathy. He looks genuinely confused and somehow out of his depth. His bosses have come up with a conspiracy theory and asked Mr Mohammadi to validate it. He is a smart man and has been down this road many times since the 1979 Islamic revolution. It’s never worked in the past and it doesn’t work now. Mr Mohammadi knows that he’s wasting his time and mine. He knows that his government should reform itself if it wants to survive. As former Minister of Intelligence Ali Yunessi (who was removed from office
Mr Mohammadi says that he is sorry for the trouble. He then gives me a modified farewell spiel in the style of the other Mr Mohammadi and the others before him. The conclusion remains the same: we know where you live.
Day four: I’ve been meeting feminist activists to find out why 15 of them were sent to jail and how they were treated in Tehran’s Evin prison. Apparently, their Mr Mohammadi was not that different from mine. He smiled and tried to find a connection between them and the government of the United States. Less than an hour after I leave the house of my last interviewee, I’m invited to have tea at a hotel. This time it’s a different, more upscale one.
I decide that if Mr Mohammadi’s job is to scare people like me into censoring ourselves or leaving Iran then my job is to tell him and his bosses to wake up and change. You can’t lead a country by scaring people all the time. The Islamic Republic of Iran is at the height of its power. The US has gotten rid of your two great enemies, Saddam in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. For you, there is no viable opposition to your government and you’re selling oil at 70 dollars a barrel. But with power comes responsibility. Isn’t it time to grow up and feel confident? Why does the government spend its time and money on people like me while the country is being gnawed at from the inside by pollution, unemployment, drug addiction and prostitution? Doesn’t Mr Mohammadi see all the drug addicts in the parks and on the street corners all over Iran? Doesn’t he find it strange that in a country that calls itself the motherland of all Muslims of the world, the average age of the prostitutes is 16?
Finally, Mr Mohammadi’s smile is gone. ‘There is one thing that you forget in your mature government theory.’ I feel that he is finally coming out of his bureaucratic intelligence shell. ‘I’ve heard that you’ve studied in Canada.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Now imagine if Iran has 250,000 soldiers in Canada and Mexico [about the same number of American soldiers in Iran’s neighbours Iraq and Afghanistan] and then allocates a budget to help civil rights movements in the United States, let’s say to the Black Panthers or a native Indian movement, wouldn’t Americans be paranoid? We know our internal problems much better than anyone and we definitely do our best to tell those who are responsible about the social maladies you just talked about. But this is Iran. It takes ages for anything to happen. In the meantime we have a vicious enemy to deal with: the United States. It’s determined to topple our government by any means necessary. As Tom Clancy says, the United States is [Mr Mohammadi’s exact words]: A Clear and Present Danger.’
I don’t know how Mr Mohammadi will react to my writing about these encounters. Not too happily, I guess. He strongly advised me not to talk about these meetings with anyone. But it’s important to know that Mr Mohammadi has changed. And if he can change, the Islamic regime can change. I’m still not too convinced about his point about the American threat. Throughout its history, the Islamic Republic has looked for foreign enemies and has usually found them around the world in abundance. Yet on many occasions it has undermined its own legitimacy by linking the genuine domestic opposition to its foreign ene- mies. It’s time for the international community, especially the United States, to accept that the Islamic Republic is a force to be reckoned with and deserves respect as much any other sovereign nation. But it is equally important for the Islamic Republic to realise its own maturity and act responsibly. Maybe instead of a conference on the myth of the Holocaust, our president could organise a conference entitled ‘Islamic Republic of Iran: 28 Years of Trials and Tribulations’.
On a more personal note, the change can start with the government treating its citizens with respect. I know Mr Mohammadi knows where I live. He doesn’t have to brag about it.
Maziar Bahari is a journalist and documentary filmmaker, he was imprisoned in Tehran from June to October 2009.
This article first appeared in Index on Censorship magazine, Volume 36 Number 3. Click here to subscribe.
5 Oct 2007 | Comment, News and features
September is a resonant time in Egyptian politics. It was then, 26 years ago, that an angry Anwar al Sadat – Egypt’s then president – sent over 1,500 journalists, intellectuals and politicians from across the political spectrum to jail without trial, and fired a host of others from their jobs, for what he believed was their plotting to overthrow his regime. Less than a month later – 6 October, 1981- senior military officers assassinated Sadat during a military parade. His deputy, Hosni Mubarak, took office in a peaceful and constitutional process and has remained in power since then.
More than a quarter of a century later, the shadow of 1981 is not as distant as it should be with 11 journalists given custodial sentences for offending the president and his son.
Of the 11, five are chief editors, including the fiery and outspoken Ibrahim Eissa of Al Dostour, Wael el Ibrashi of Sawt Al Umma, Adel Hammouda of Al Fagr and Abdel Halim Qandil, the former editor of Al Karam. All were sentenced on 13 September to one year in prison, fined LE20,000 ($3,636) and granted bail for a further LE10,000 ($1,818) pending appeal. Their crime? ‘Libelling’ senior figures in the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), including President Hosni Mubarak, his son Assistant Secretary-General Gamal Mubarak and Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif. Less than two weeks later, on 24 September, Anwar al Hawari, editor of the opposition party mouthpiece Al Wafd, and two other journalists were sentenced to two years in jail for misquoting the justice minister.
The five editors were sentenced under Article 188 of the Egyptian Penal Code which stipulates that anyone who ‘publishes false news, statements or rumours likely to disturb public order’ can face a one-year prison sentence and a fine that does not exceed $3,636.
As the press community was absorbing the shockwaves triggered by these sentences, the state security prosecutor announced that Al Dostour’s Ibrahim Eissa will face yet another trial on 1 October on charges of publishing false information concerning Mubarak’s health and – therefore – undermining national security. A few days ahead of that trial, the government news agency MENA reported that Eissa was to face a state security emergency court, whose sentences are final and cannot be appealed. While outrage was the common sentiment amongst the vast majority of journalists who assembled at the Press Syndicate to discuss ways to respond to these developments, pro-government newspapers pursued their scathing attack on the independent press’s ‘insolence’ for daring to criticize the president and his son. On his part, the president was quoted as saying he is ‘all for a free press’ but that journalists should abide by ‘a code of ethics’.
What Mubarak actually meant was he is all for a free press as long as it does not refer to him, his family, and controversial issues such as the presidential succession, among a long list of ‘red lines’.
It is this kind of conditional freedom that governs every aspect of political life in this country. On the surface, Egypt appears to enjoy a level of democracy unmatched in other Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Libya. We have 24 licensed political parties (including some opposition), independent and opposition newspapers, parliamentary and presidential elections, workers strikes and street demonstrations.
But since Sadat’s assassination in 1981, Egypt has lived under a strict Emergency Law which, over the years, cauterised the security apparatus and expanded its mandate beyond its executive role.
There are currently at least 16,000 political detainees in Egyptian prisons being held without trial, cases of police torture in prisons and police stations are common news, hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members – the largest parliamentary opposition bloc – have been detained and 40 of their leaders – including university professors and businessmen – are now being tried before a military court for charges of money laundering and terrorism. On 4 September, the authorities shut down a human rights organisation for receiving foreign funding without government approval. And on 1 July, an administrative court dismissed the appeals of 12 unlicensed parties seeking legal recognition. Last March, the authorities held a referendum on constitutional amendments that entrenched Mubarak’s ruling party’s grip on power and was tailored to exclude the largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, from legal political participation. The amendments also made legal to hold elections without independent judicial supervision.
It is in such a climate that Egyptian journalists operate. Both the penal code and the press law are rife with articles that jail journalists for expressing their views under vague phrases such as ‘undermining national security’ or ‘spreading false rumours’. So while the number of privately owned and independent newspapers increased significantly over the past three years, allowing for a freer press, custodial sentences for publishing offences rendered such freedom meaningless.
Before the government adopted a ‘reformist’ and ‘democratised’ discourse over the past three years –in response to US pressure at that time – press censorship was the norm and newspapers were shut down. Ibrahim Eissa’s Al Dostour had first published in the late 1990s and was shut down in 1998. The man himself was banned from writing for many years and all his attempts to publish other newspapers in Egypt failed. Similarly, the opposition Labour party’s mouthpiece Al Shaab was shut down in 2000 for its fearless anti-corruption campaigns and the party itself was frozen altogether.
When the authorities allowed Al Dostour’s comeback in 2005, among other private-owned newspapers, they weren’t prepared for what these papers were ready to publish. Thirsty for meaningful democracy and change, resentful of government-condoned (or sponsored) corruption and damaging economic and political policies, much of the private press became a main platform for dissent and a reflection of the public’s discontent. On the other side of the divide stood the state-owned or backed press which rapidly disengaged from the street and addressed the ruling elite instead. Reading these two types of newspapers eventually became an exercise in reading about two different Egypts.
The problem now is that the authorities seem convinced that the private press, especially Al Dostour, has more power than the state media machine in influencing public opinion. Otherwise, why would it drag its editor to court every few months in cases that always relate to the president? And why did the official news agency report plans to try him before an emergency court? The authorities later reversed that decision and referred him to a criminal court on 1 October under tight security measures, which adjourned the case to 24 October. Officially, Eissa’s crime is reporting on nation-wide rumours on the president’s health, or even death, in August. And in many ways what we’re witnessing is a crackdown on the independent press and an attempt to muzzle freedom of expression. This is why 18 independent newspapers have agreed not to publish on 7 October in protest.
But this isn’t solely about curbing freedom of expression. A quick glance at the bigger picture shows an insecure and aged regime battling for survival through a series of procedures that include silencing the press. If Eissa and his colleagues who face prison sentences end up in jail, they shouldn’t be viewed as only victims of a press massacre, but of a police state consolidating its position.
26 Jun 2007 | Digital Freedom, Politics and Society, United Kingdom
While British newspapers were harrumphing about the Australian government banning Aboriginals from accessing pornography, they signally failed to notice that one of the 19 new offences announced in New Labour’s 54th criminal justice bill since it came to power will be the possession of what it calls ‘extreme pornographic images’. Those found guilty risk three years in gaol, or a hefty fine, or both. They will also be put on the Sex Offenders Register, and thus have their lives wrecked.
Anybody who vainly hoped that this measure, which has been looming for the past three years, would slink away and find a quiet place to die in the face of a campaign of sustained and well-informed opposition will be sorely disappointed. (For an account of this campaign see here and here) Indeed, quite the reverse is the case. The measures unveiled in the Criminal Justice Bill are actually even more draconian and ill-conceived than the original proposals. These can only be regarded as a direct smack in the faces of those who had the temerity to object in the first place, and a clear warning that the government intends to intimidate and criminalise not only the entire BDSM (Bondage-Domination-Sadism-Masochism) community but very considerable portions of the DVD/video-owning and website-visiting communities as well.
The bill defines an ‘extreme pornographic image’ as one which both ‘appears to have been produced solely or principally for the purposes of sexual arousal’ (duh!) and ‘which is an image of any of the following –
(a) an act which threatens or appears to threaten a person’s life,
(b) an act which results in or appears to result in (or be likely to result in) serious injury to a person’s anus, breast or genitals,
(c) an act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse,
(d) a person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal,
where (in each case) any such act, person or animal depicted in the image is or appears to be real’.
Now, you don’t have to be a media studies graduate to realise immediately that the key word here is, of course, ‘appears’. This, unequivocally and indubitably, brings within the bill’s ambit both images of consenting BDSM activity and films not classified by the British Board of Film Classification which involve, and not necessarily simultaneously, scenes of unsimulated sexual activity and scenes of simulated violence, necrophilia or bestiality. Thus, for example, collectors of the work of Jess Franco, Joe d’Amato and other Euro sleaze-meisters, all of whose works are readily available from that sink of pornographic depravity, Amazon.com, could soon find themselves locked up for a considerable period of time. This is a crucial point – the government, abetted by sections of the media is currently engaged on a campaign of disinformation aimed at persuading people that this measure should concern only those possessing a very limited range of pornographic images. The truth is very different indeed.
Furthermore, it needs to be stressed that although works classified by the BBFC are exempt from the new prohibition, extracts from BBFC-classified films (even single images) come within its ambit ‘if it appears that the image was extracted (whether with or without other images) solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal’. Desiccated and deathly the prose may be, but yes, you read this right: if you put together a montage of favourite moments from BBFC-certificated films, and if these contain representations of sex and violence, you may well end up having your motives probed in court and, if they don’t pass muster, you’ll be sent to prison.
In terms of BDSM images, the bill is quite clearly yet another malign consequence of the Spanner case (http://www.spannertrust.org/). As a result of this truly shocking affair, people taking part in entirely consensual sado-masochistic activity have had to come to terms with the fact that their consent is not in fact valid at law, a point which the notes attached to this bill is at pains to rub in, stating that ‘the material to be covered by this new offence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum of pornographic material which is likely to be thought abhorrent by most people. It is not possible at law to give consent to the type of activity covered by the offence, so it is therefore likely that a criminal offence is being committed where the activity which appears to be taking place is actually taking place’. And in the case of purely staged activities, ‘the Government believes that banning possession is justified in order to meet the legitimate aim of protecting the individuals involved from participating in degrading activities’. Thus is revealed the mark of the true authoritarian: promoting oppressive legislation on the grounds of protecting people from themselves.
‘Degrading’, ‘abhorrent’ – this is the over-heated language of the moral crusader, not the dispassionate prose of the legislator. But frightening people into behaving ‘properly’ and appeasing the moral authoritarians has always been at the root of this measure. Indeed, the accompanying notes are remarkably upfront about this, stating that ‘the Government considers that the new offence is a proportionate measure with the legitimate aim of breaking the demand and supply cycle of this material which may be harmful to those who view it. Irrespective of how these images were made, banning their possession can be justified as sending a signal that such behaviour is not considered acceptable. Viewing such images voluntarily can desensitise the viewer to such degrading acts, and can reinforce the message that such behaviour is unacceptable’.
However, the vainglorious idea that this measure will break the ‘demand and supply cycle of this material’ shows that the government knows absolutely nothing about the Internet, and still less about the global pornography market. Even if the entire UK population could be completely and instantaneously cut off from the entire supply of Internet porn, it would register barely a blip in the global economics of the industry. To seriously believe that international porn barons give a damn about what the British government does or doesn’t do betrays a quite stupefyingly over-inflated sense of this country’s importance in the scheme of things. Furthermore, the ‘message’ which this measure sends out is not the one which is so portentously intended. Rather, it says that, for all its eulogising of modernisation, New Labour is actually profoundly ignorant of and ill at ease with the modern media, and, as far as attitudes to the Internet are concerned, is quite happy to place itself in the same camp as not simply Australia, but also Saudi Arabia, China and North Korea.
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19 Jun 2007 | Comment
Lord knows, I’ve had my differences with Ken Livingstone, especially when it comes to the politics of the Middle East – but there’s one issue he’s got absolutely right. Last week, to the enormous surprise of much of London’s Jewish community, the mayor agreed with them – and came out against an academic boycott of Israel.
Unfortunately, his intervention came too late. The very next day, Britain’s University and College Union voted to promote the call for a boycott. Now, I was raised to be respectful of teachers and positively reverential towards academics. Which is why it pains me to say that this decision is almost laughably stupid. But it is. If a student had come up with it, he would find it daubed with a thick red line, from top to bottom.
First, it lacks all logical consistency. Let’s say you accept, as I do, that Israel is wrong to be occupying the territories it won in the Six Day war, whose 40th anniversary is being marked this week. Let’s say that that is your reason for boycotting Israel. Then why no boycott of China for its occupation of Tibet? Or of Russia for its brutal war against the Chechens? Or of Sudan, for its killing of hundreds of thousands in Darfur, a murderous persecution described by the US as genocide?
If it’s the ill-treatment of Palestinians in particular that concerns you, then why no boycott of Lebanon, whose army continues to pound the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, killing civilians daily? True, the Lebanese government is not a military occupier. But if occupation is the crime that warrants international ostracism, then why no boycott of American universities? After all, the US is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. So, for that matter, is Britain. Why do the good men and women of UCU not speak out, by boycotting, say, Oxford, Cambridge and London universities? Why do they not boycott themselves?
Maybe academic freedom is their chief concern. That would make sense, given that they’re academics. But if that was the issue, there would surely be boycotts of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to name just a few places where intellectual freedom remains a fond dream. (The awkward truth is that the freest place in the Middle East for an Arab scholar is Israel.) Yet the UCU sees no “moral implications,” to use the language of last week’s resolution, in institutional ties with Damascus, Cairo or Tehran. Only Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
For some reason, the activists pushing for this move believe Israelis should be placed in a unique category of untouchability. Never mind the 655,000 the US and Britain have, on one estimate, killed in Iraq. Never mind the two million displaced in Darfur. Never mind the closed, repressive societies of the Middle East. The Israelis are a people apart, one that must be shunned.
But let’s be charitable and forgive the boycotters their inconsistency. Surely any tactic, even an inconsistent one, is forgivable if it does some good. This, though, is where the combined geniuses of the UCU have really blundered. For a boycott will be hugely counter-productive.
For one thing, Israeli academics are disproportionately represented in Israel’s “peace camp.” The UCU will be boycotting the very people who have done most to draw the Israeli public’s attention to the folly of the occupation, to the very people working to bring an end to this desperate conflict. By their actions, the UCU will embolden the Israeli right who will be able to say, ‘Look, the world hates and isolates us: this is exactly why we have to be militarily strong.’
The second error is more subtle. One of the few things that might make Israel change course would be a shift in diaspora Jewish opinion: those campaigning for Palestinian rights and an end to the occupation need to win over Jewish allies. Yet no tactic is more likely to alienate Jews than a boycott. That’s because the very word has deep and painful resonances for Jews: a boycott of Jewish business was one of the Nazis’ opening moves. No one is equating the current plan with that. But of all the tactics to have chosen, a boycott is the very dumbest one.
Advocates say there’s nothing to worry about, this will be a boycott of institutions, not individuals – a necessary move because no Israeli institution has ever taken a stand against the occupation. This, too, is numb-skulled. When do academic institutions ever take a collective stand against anything? Did Imperial College declare itself against the Iraq war? What was the British Museum’s view of UK policy in Northern Ireland? Of course there was no such thing. Institutions of learning don’t take a stand; individuals do.
Which is why it will be individuals who are ostracised by this action. When you boycott the Hebrew University, you’re not boycotting bricks and mortar but the men and women who teach there. The “institutional” talk is just a ruse designed to make this boycott more palatable. It will still end in the shunning of individuals.
And why? Simply because they are citizens of the wrong country, born with the wrong nationality. In 2003 the Linguistic Society of America declared itself against blacklisting scholars simply because of the actions of their governments. “Such boycotts violate the principle of free scientific interaction and cooperation, and they constitute arbitrary and selective applications of collective punishment.” They also amount to a pretty crass form or discrimination: you can’t come to this conference, because you’ve got the wrong colour passport.
Oh, but none of these arguments stopped the boycott of South Africa, say the pro-blacklisters. Except these situations are completely different. In South Africa, the majority of the people were denied a vote in the state in which they lived. Israelis and Palestinians are, by contrast, two peoples locked in a national conflict which will be resolved only when each has its own, secure state.
Ken Livingstone is right: to launch a boycott of Israel now would hurt, not help the search for the peace that might end this Middle East tragedy. And that, when all the posturing is put to one side, is all that should matter.
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