Dear Friends: Our campaign has already been successful as we are receiving respectful responses by the Hotel. I want to highlight and clarify some points, and even correct one mistake. 1. I start by correcting my mistake: The hotel was not to be closed to Israelis, but rather the actual conference was to be closed to Israelis. This is still outrageous. I mis-spoke and am sorry, but the campaign would still have been launched for the outrageous act of agreeing to host a conference where Israelis are barred from entering because of their national origin. 2. The American Studies Association has already started backing away from its boycott because of the wide pressure on it. It has now sent out a statement saying Israelis are actually invited to join the conference, just not as official representatives of Israeli universities. Netanyahu himself, they claim, can join the conference, as long as he does so as an individual. This is an important and positive step since this means the boycott has become, for practical purposes, completely meaningless. Still, symbolically, discrimination still exists. How come Israeli professors have to hide their identity and not come as official representatives, while professors from real human rights violators are left free to identify publicly? Why is Israel being singled out? 3. This brings us to the response we got from Westin: The American Studies Association (ASA) has publicly affirmed that anyone can register and will be welcomed at their upcoming conference. As we said, it is now true. ASA has now changed its policy thanks to the strong pressure put on it. The choice as to whether you should keep on pressuring Westin to allow Israelis to register AND identify as Israeli scholars of Israeli institutions is of course your own. Here is a great analysis from Prof. Eugene Kontorovich explaining why pressure is still important: washingtonpost/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/10/18/asa-pretends-to-partially-drop-israel-boycott/ . However, it is true that Westin has now helped correct a horrible wrong. We will keep our eyes open to make sure that the ASA is not allowed to further discriminate against Israelis. If they do, we will make more campaigns that will ensure they will be unwelcomed everywhere for the hateful group that they are. Good job to everyone who helped put the pressure!
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 08:17:07 +0000
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