Open Letter to American Federation of Teachers |
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By Stanley Heller My union, the American Federation of Teachers has joined the throng of U.S. unions denouncing British unions that are threatening to boycott Israeli institutions that cooperate in their country's apartheid system. So I wrote my president (via an aide ) a letter of complaint. Dear Brother McElroy: I'm a classroom teacher for 37 years and a former AFT local president. I read recently that the AFT had joined in a statement created by the Jewish Labor Committee blasting several of the largest unions in the United Kingdom for calling for economic, cultural and academic boycotts of Israel. The statement claims the only motive for the boycott was to "demonize" and "bash" Israel. I went back and read an AFT press statement from May of this year criticizing any academic boycott of Israel which included your statement that "boycotting universities and their faculty restricts the flow of ideas and it is anathema to academic freedom". Is that all there is to it? What about millions of Palestinians who are denied basic human rights including the right to education? I've just recently returned from a tour of the West Bank and met with members of the "Right to Education Campaign" at Birzeit University and with Israelis knowledgeable about conditions in Israeli "Arab" schools. They list a long string of abuses: - - From 1987 to 1992 schools from universities to kindergartens were closed by Israeli military order - - Since 2000 tens of schools have been closed by the Israeli Army and turned into military barracks, while hundreds more have been forced to close periodically due to prolonged curfew and obstructed access - - Israeli soldiers frequently arrest or interrogate college students. Under the military laws of the Israeli Occupation, membership to any student branch of a political party is illegal, automatically making thousands of students subject to arbitrary arrest. - - Israeli law requires Gazans to have a special permit to study in the West Bank and since 2000 the Israeli army has obstructed the issuing of such permits. By 2002, no new permits were issued. At Birzeit University the number of Gazans has dropped from 350 to 15 all of who are living "illegally". - - 75% of university-age Gazans have no access to higher education. - - A teacher training college was completely demolished in Gaza in 2004. Helicopter gunships fired at university buildings in Gaza in 2006. - - The Israeli Supreme Court denied permission for 10 Gazans students to study Occupational Therapy at Bethlehem University. There is no such training in Gaza. There are 24,000 registered disabled persons in Gaza. - - University faculty members and staff with foreign passports face have to renew their Israeli 'tourist' visas every three months despite having built their professional and family lives in the West Bank or Gaza. - - Two years ago the wall that is fast surrounding Jerusalem cut off 700 teachers from their employment in East Jerusalem. - - The wall and harassment at checkpoints make travel for college students in some areas a near impossibility. I talked to students as An-Najah University in Nablus who say they never leave the city. - - Inside Israel the curriculum in Arab schools is carefully designed to exclude Palestinian history and culture. Security services officials decide if a Palestinian citizen of Israel may be allowed to be a teacher. Any teaching about Palestinian political issues results in dismissal. Students are actively encouraged to spy on teachers by security personnel. These are all basic and fundamental abuses of the right to education. I don't recall the AFT ever having spoken out about them. Nor has the AFT spoken out against general conditions of life for Palestinians that have been likened to apartheid by many knowledgeable persons including Israeli Jews and South Africans like Bishop Desmond Tutu. Instead the AFT criticizes other unions that propose boycotts of Israeli institutions that cooperate in oppression of Palestinians. Boycotts are a peaceful tactic that has been used repeatedly by members of the US labor movement and civil rights movements. From the grape boycott, to the Stevens boycott, to the Montgomery bus boycott to the 2005 Coke boycott endorsed by our New York affiliate NYSUT this tool has an admirable history in both educating the public and in causing economic loss to abusers of human rights. I think the AFT should do a complete about-face on this issue of boycotts of institutions that cooperate with apartheid, that it drop its criticism of British unions and that it strongly condemn the many many Israeli government practices that deny Palestinian a free education. In solidarity, Stanley Heller Member West Haven (Connecticut) Federation of Teachers, AFT #1547 Member AFT Peace and Justice Caucus (speaking on behalf of myself) Postscript Amira Hass, columnist for Haaretz, recently wrote a column expanding on the news about the the denial of training for the Occupational Therapists. She points out that there is only one occupational therapist working in the Gaza Strip, one therapist for 24,000 disabled people. The reasoning behind the denial of travel permission should be breathtaking to anyone not befuddled by Zionist humbug. According to the state the students "belong to the risk group of those who seek to destroy Israel". What is the group? Everyone of ages 16 to 34. The state also adds that such travel would assist Hamas in attempts to export warfare "from the Gaza Strip to Judea and Samaria" [what the rest of creation calls the West Bank]. Presumably Israel is now safer since the Occupational Therapists will never finish their deadly training. These students with their careers wrecked can remain in Gaza, pursue the many other opportunities open to them in that booming job market and improve their minds with reading and philosophy. Perhaps President McElroy can send them books on academic freedom. |
