A lecturer who has openly supported the Academic Boycott receives a threat on his life.
Report by Or Kashti [report loosely translated from the Hebrew, Dorothy]
Professor Neve Gordon, chair of the Politics and Government department at Ben Gurion University, who in the past openly supported the academic boycott against Israel, last week received a death threat by mail:
“Gordon, you are a traitor! I’ll get to Ben Gurion to kill you!” the writer threatened. The anonymous writer signed “Im Tirtzu” [a far right-wing organization; see Gideon Levy
According to Professor Gordon, by contrast to former death threats that came through electronic mail, this letter came to mail to the University and was sent via the postal service. “Someone bought a stamp and went to the post office.
That individual has already expanded effort on the project.” Today Gordon and those at the University responsible for security will make a complaint at the police station. “There is an atmosphere of violence against everyone who complains about government policy,” Prof. Gordon said yesterday to Haaretz, “and within this framework there is a concerted attack on academia.
“Is Gideon Saar [current Israeli Min. of Education] intending to introduce regulations that anyone who disagrees with policy won’t be allowed to work in public institutions? Such things were done in South Africa during Apartheid.
Professor Gordon is a left-wing activist who in the past visited the Muqata in Ramallah during Israel’s attack on Jenin, and met with the then head of the PA, Yassar Arafat. In an article that the Los Angeles Times published last year, Gordon called for an economic, cultural, and academic boycott [bds] of Israel due to its being an “apartheid state.”
“The words and censure of Obama’s government and the European Union have not brought results,” Gordon wrote, “the only way to insure that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians will not grow up under an apartheid regime is through massive international pressure on Israel.”
