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The Poverty of Boycotting Israel

(Ha'aretz) Qanta Ahmed - Boycotting Israel, whether academic or cultural, is not an act of moral indignation but an act of moral turpitude. Boycotting Israeli entities penalizes apolitical individuals, their institutions, their innovations and ultimately, stymies a global market of ideas which benefits humanity. I recently visited Israel to meet Israeli academia, and examined how a boycott particularly damages Israeli Arabs. I spoke to Arab Muslim undergraduates at Haifa's Technion University, whose Beatrice Weston Unit for the Advancement of Students tackled the high drop-out rate among Arab students, improving the retention rate by over 50% in less than a decade. Muslim undergraduate Maysoun Hindawi explained that Arab Muslim students are often the first in their families to enter higher education, and, in the case of women, may be breaking stereotypical gender roles in conservative families who may not approve of a female student living on campus. Arab Muslim students must also overcome a leadership gap created by the military service that their Jewish peers have gone through. Calls for an academic boycott would particularly imperil the future of these Arab Israeli students and the progressive opportunities they are offered. The major costs of an Israeli boycott will be born by Israel's own minority population, including Israeli Muslims of Palestinian heritage. This is a population which is for the first time becoming highly educated, advancing in the workplace, and collaborating with their fellow Israeli Jewish citizens. The writer is associate professor of medicine at the State University of New York.
2013-07-26 00:00:00
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