The Middle East Studies Association Boycotts the Middle East

Last week, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA)—the leading professional organization for American academics in the field—announced that its members had voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution to impose a boycott on Israeli universities, on the ground that they are “imbricated” in “systematic violations” of Palestinian rights. Asaf Romirowsky and Alex Joffe comment:

The MESA resolution . . . calls for American academics to punish the most liberal sector of Israeli society, indeed, the one that has done the most for Palestinian integration and education. It [articulates for its members a] political framework [for understanding] the Israel-Palestinian conflict in which Israel is vilified, and implies that members should create a system of exclusion on American campuses, ostracizing Israelis and supporters of Israel, not a few of whom are Jews.

Boycotting Israel encapsulates everything wrong with academia, namely its close-minded censoriousness, aloof cruelty, and eagerness to play politics. It also goes without saying that MESA and its members boycotting Israel will do nothing for the Palestinians, except empower their leaders’ rejectionism further into the 21st century.

The irony is that MESA’s move comes as Israel’s relations with Arab states are expanding still further. The Abraham Accords brought decades of informal political and economic cooperation into the light. These relationships have expanded to include Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain, and the UAE, and perhaps soon, Saudi Arabia.

MESA is thus out of step with the region it purports to study.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Academic Boycotts, Anti-Semitism, BDS, Middle East Studies Association

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF