A journalist from Haaretz daily newspaper was ejected last week from a pro-Palestinian conference at Birzeit University near Ramallah, because she is Jewish.
Amira Hass, a veteran leftist reporter who serves as correspondent on Palestinian affairs for Haaretz and lives in Ramallah, has attempted to attend the "Alternatives to Neo-Liberal Development in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – Critical Perspectives" conference at the university but she was ejected from the hall by the organizers after students at the admission desk noted she worked for the Israeli publication and alerted security authorities to intervene.
Birzeit University has had a policy of barring Israeli Jews from the campus for over 20 years, administrators said, and ejected her for fear that she would be attacked by an unruly mob of students.
Hass was not assaulted by Palestinian Arab students at the conference, she noted, but rumors did surface shortly afterwards of such a confrontation.
Her colleagues and professors told her that she was being ejected on the one hand "for her own protection" and also to give the students "a safe space" free of Jews.
Meanwhile, the University has officially denied that there was a problem.
"The administration has no objection to the presence of the journalist [Amira] Hass," it insisted, in an official statement. "The University distinguishes between friends of the Palestinian people and its enemies ... and works with every person and institution who opposes the occupation."
But Hass angrily noted that she was "not told" about the policy and that "Palestinian citizens of Israel [i.e. Israeli Arabs - ed.] who teach at Israeli universities are not subject to the same policy."
Even the conference's organizers were offended, Hass added, noting that keynote speaker Katja Herrmann - the regional head of the pro-Palestinian NGO the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation - stated after the incident that she would not have agreed to attend the event had she known about the discrimination policy.
Hass’s experience will bolster the view that the Palestinian boycott campaign doesn’t distinguish between Israelis of different political stripes. Commenting on the mild unease expressed by Hass that the exclusion applies only to Jewish, and not Arab, citizens of Israel, the influential political blog Harry’s Place asked rhetorically, “If Hass is correct in still asserting she has been subjected to double standards – will anyone be calling for a boycott of Birzeit?”