Sorry for the lame (lack of) formatting…

Begin forwarded message:

> Date:Tue, 8 Feb 2005 00:00:21 -0500
> To:"Undercurrents" <undercurrents@bbs.thing.net>
>>>

>>> This is Ilan Pappe's summary:
>
>>> The charge was lodged by the dean of
>>> social sciences at the University of Haifa. My
> dismissal was urged on
>>> account of my position in the Katz affair. I
> criticized the conduct
> of
>>> the university which disqualified our student
> Theodor Katz in 2000
>>> because of his Master's thesis. In his thesis, Katz
> documented a
>>> massacre of the Israeli army with the help of oral
> history. A Zionist
>>> military band, the "Alexandroni" brigade,
> slaughtered more than 200
> Arab
>>> civilians in the village of Tantura in 1948 when the
> Israeli state
> was
>>> founded. Unlike the university authorities and the
> media, I did not find
>>> that the study was "dangerous" or "purely invented".
> I took a stand for
>>> Katz and for academic freedom, published excerpts on
> a web site from
>>> interviews conducted by Katz with Israeli soldiers
> and Palestinian
>>> survivors and wrote a public letter.
>>>
>>>> —–Original Message—–
>>>>
>>>> Please find the letter herewith from Ilan Pappe
> of Haifa
> University
>>>> and the link to the petition in his defense at
> the end of the
> letter.
>>>>
>>>> Dear Friends,
>>>>
>>>> I have received today an invitation to stand for
> a trial in my
>>>> university, the university of Haifa. The
> prosecution, represented by
>>>> Haifa's Dean of Humanities demands my expulsion
> from the university
>>>> due to the positions I have taken on the Katz
> affair. It calls upon
>>>> the court "to judge Dr.Pappe on the offences he
> has committed and to
>>>> use to the full the court's legal authority to
> expel him from the
>>>> university." These offences are, in a nutshell,
> my past critique
> of
>>>> the university's conduct in the Katz affair, the
> MA student who
>>>> discovered the Tantura massacre in 1948 and was
> disqualified for
> that.
>>>
>>>> The reason the university waited so long is that
> now the time is ripe
>>> in Israel for any act of silencing academic freedom.
>>>>
>>>> My intent to teach a course on the Nakbah next
> year and my support for a
>
>>>> boycott on Israel has led the university to the
> conclusion that I can only be stopped by expulsion.
>>>>
>>>> Judging by past procedures this is not a request,
> but already a
>>>> verdict, given the position of the person in
> question in the
>>>> university and the way things had been done in
> the past. The
>>>> ostensible procedure of a 'fair trial' does not
> exist and hence I
> do
>>>> not even intend to participate in a McCarthyist
> charade.
>>>>
>>> I do not appeal to you for my own sake. I ask you
> at this stage before
>>>> a final decision has been taken to voice your
> opinion in whatever
> form
>>>> you can and to whatever stage you have access to,
> not in order to
>>>> prevent my expulsion (in many ways in the present
> atmosphere in
> Israel
>>>> it will come now, and if not now later on, as the
> Israeli academia
> has
>>>> decided almost unanimously to support the
> government and to help
>>> silence any criticism).
>>>>
>>>> I ask those who are willing to do so, to take
> this case as part of
>>> your overall appreciation of, and attitude to, the
> present
> situation in
>>>> Israel. This should shed light also on the debate
> whether or not to boycott Israeli academia.
>>>>
>>>> This is not, I stress, an appeal for personal
> help - my situation
>>>> is far better than that of my colleagues in the
> occupied
> territories
>>>> living under the daily harassment and brutal
> abuses of the Israeli
>>>> army. It is an opening gambit and many of
> colleagues, especially
> my
>>>> Palestinian Israeli colleagues, can be next. A
> testimony to the
> tragic
>>>> circumstances of my own university is that I know
> there is no use
> in
>>>> distributing this letter on its internal
> web-site, as all of my
>>>> colleagues in the past when it came to the
> crucial moment - for
>>>> understandable reasons - felt they could do very
> little to help
> me,
>>> without risking their own position in the
> university.
>>>>
>>>> I know many of you have access to world media and
> can help to
> expose
>>>> the already dismal picture and false pretense of
> Israel being the
>>>> 'only democracy in the Middle East.'
>>>>
>>>> Yours Ilan Pappe
>>>>
>>>>
> http://www.petitiononline.com/pappe/petition.html
>>>>
>>>> Visit http://academicsforjustice.org