The British academic publishing company, St. Jerome (SJ) is engaging in its second political and academic boycott related to Israel’s Bar Ilan University (BIU), in political solidarity with the Palestinian cause, and as a statement against Israeli military operations in disputed territories.
SJ, a Manchester-based publisher specializing in translation studies and cross-cultural communications, was recently in the news for firing two of their translation researchers who teach at BIU – specifically because these researchers are Israeli citizens and teach in Israeli schools.
This time, SJ is refusing to sell books and periodicals to the school.
In a Media Line (TML) interview, one of the translation experts fired by St. Jerome, Dr. Miriam Shlesinger, commented on this new development.
“Mona Baker, co-founder of SJ is punishing our students at Bar Ilan. They are the victims of the collective. The students aren’t accountable for what the Israeli government is doing now,” Shlesinger said.
“Bar Ilan specifically developed an Arabic track to open up the ability to mediate between the two cultures. We have 10 Palestinian Students in the program who would have used the text St. Jerome won’t sell to us,” Shlesinger said.
“In my opinion they aren’t going to achieve anything. Sharon isn’t going to lose sleep over a boycott by St. Jerome; if anything it will achieve the opposite. People who are in Israel, who are already stressed out, just get more defensive,” said Shlesinger.
Shlesinger said she has no problems with the goals of the boycott unless they are to destroy the State of Israel, but thinks the boycott is morally wrong.
“The Israeli government is already punishing academia. We have a populist government, which is not encouraging science and research. St. Jerome is punishing people who are already being punished. If you withhold books from us, you’re telling us to stop doing research,” Shlesinger said.
Shlesinger said that Mona Baker is a brilliant professor of translation studies. She described Baker as very nice and a good person but having a blind spot.
“Mona Baker was Egyptian and is British now. She is not familiar with the intricacies and complexities of what Israel is all about. Unfortunately she sees everything in black and white,” Shlesinger said.
The Media Line attempted to get a response from Mona Baker, but did not succeed.
The Media Line conversation with SJ co-founder Ken Baker follows:
TML: Why are you boycotting Bar Ilan University?
Baker: That would be pretty obvious, wouldn’t it?
TML: Well, I’m giving you the chance to make a statement about it right now.
Baker:
TML: What do you think about the fact that there are 9 or 10 Palestinians taking the Arabic track in the translation department where your book would have been used?
Baker: It doesn’t make a bloody bit of difference to me. Now…that’s the typical Zionist argument isn’t it?
Baker: The only thing we’re interested in is Israel’s military activity against the Palestinians. Are you aware of the academic boycotts against Israel? Do you happen to cover those issues?
TML: Well, Mr. Baker, that’s precisely why I’m calling you, to get a balanced report.
Baker: Well, it doesn’t matter. Everything I say gets twisted anyway. I have nothing further to say to you.
In April, before Shlesinger was asked to resign and ultimately dismissed from SJ, Mona Baker made an e-mail request to her staff for signatories on a European academic boycott of Israel.
Part of Shlesinger’s response to Mona Baker’s e-mail request follows:
“Some of the most important forces – the ones which, I believe, will ultimately be the catalyst for a turnabout in the current impasse – come from the academic community. It is Israeli academics, among others, and not the UN etc., that can ultimately influence the Israeli public to ‘see the light’.”
“All in all, Israeli academics and the universities are a stronghold of ideological opposition.”
“Nothing will be gained either for science or for the Palestinians by withholding support from Israeli cancer research, biotechnological research, or – more to the point – research in the social sciences where much work is being done at Israeli universities to study (and publish) information about ways in which the occupation is undermining a “healthy”, “democratic” society, warping the psyche of our young people, violating human rights etc…”
“As someone whose immediate relative was killed by a Hamas terrorist, I can assure you that it is all too tempting to see things in black and white/ good and evil. (Of course I would also like to see European – and Palestinian – academics denounce the wanton killing of Israeli civilians, but that’s beside the point.) In any case, a boycott on the Israeli scientific community is a very misguided way of fighting evil…I cannot sign it.”
Part of Shlesinger’s reaction to Baker’s request to resign from St. Jerome’s editorial board follows:
From Thursday, May 23, 2002.
“I find the one-sidedness of your portrayal too tormenting…. Maybe I have seen too many dead, bleeding, suffering Israeli babies. I think they at least deserve to be mentioned in your list of atrocities. Innocent babies are innocent babies no matter what their nationality.
“I will not resign from the editorial board…. I consider this mixture of politics and academia morally insupportable in every way.”
Shlesinger said that her colleague, Professor Gideon Toury, who was also dismissed from St. Jerome, is world renown in translation.
“It’s horrible that they fired such a leading figure in translation,” Shlesinger said.
Part of Toury’s response to Baker’s resignation request follows:
“I am writing this letter at home, some 150 yards from the point where the daily human bomb has just exploded. It was in Herzliyya, not anywhere near the occupied territories, and in a diner, not even remotely resembling a military camp, a government office or any other building of a similar nature. This may well affect the tone I will be using, but not the content of my reaction.”
Toury refused to resign but requested that upon his dismissal, SJ would make a statement that “he was appointed as a scholar and un-appointed as an Israeli.”
“I have always refrained from mixing science and politics myself and I am not going to change my ways at this point in time; not even for fear of being marked as a “collaborator”.
“The only reason why I am alive in the first place is that my parents, each one of them separately, managed to leave Germany in the mid-late-1930’s, the only ones of their immediate families, and go to Palestine (“Eretz Yisrael”), which was the official name of the place in those days. As a result, I have got a Palestinian birth certificate, but I have never had Grandparents, Uncles or Aunts. Try to think about THAT once!”