MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 8--REVISED AND UPDATED WITH THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Legal scholar and theorist Alon Harel (Hebrew U, Jerusalem) writes:
The Israeli academic community has so far been detached from the political disputes over the territories. This is because the Council for Higher Education (Malag Israel) was in charge of Israeli institutions alone (institutions within the green line). The institutions in the Occupied Territories were supervised and managed by a separate entity (Malag Yosh). This institution was political in nature. Its primary purpose was to strengthen and promote the settlement in the territories and consequently the academic credentials of the institutions under its supervision (primarily Ariel University) are much inferior to those of the institutions in Israel.
In a proposed bill, two members of the extreme rightwing party Jewish Home propose to subject the institutions in the territories to the Israeli Council of Higher Education and abolish Malag Yosh. Further using the other urgent political issues facing Israel such as the declaration of President Trump concerning Jerusalem, they wish to pass this bill in a speedy process.
They submitted the bill on Thursday and on Sunday the bill already got the support of the government and will therefore be submitted to the Knesset. A bill that changes the structure of the Israeli Council for Higher Education and is practically a form of annexation of the Occupied Territories is passed in the government few days after the bill was first submitted with no public discussion.
The practical symbolic effect is political, but the practical effect is to politicize the main body which is in charge of supervising the academic standards of the Israeli institutions. Further the law also dictates that the institutions that have been approved by the Malag Yosh will be recognized automatically by Malag Israel. This provision strips the Israeli Council of Higher Education of its main power namely to enforce academic standards. It implies that the inferior academic standards prevalent in the territories will be legitimized and entrenched. Last while the Israeli government claims it conducts a struggle against the BDS movement, such a statute clearly strengthens the BDS movement. We need the help of the global academic community to guarantee that this proposed bill will not pass.
I urge every person to write to people in academia and/or politics he/she knows and also to the Minister of Education Naftali Bennett
nbenet@knesset.gov.il
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