Interview with Professor Yisrael Aumann on BDS
This is an interview with Professor Yisrael Aumann, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics a few years ago for his contributions to game theory. The main subject of the interview is the attempt by various academic groups to boycott Israeli institutions, but toward the end (starting at about 6:20) he also relates - hilariously - to the recent decision by the U of Haifa to not award him an honorary doctorate because of his political views.
Sorry - Hebrew only.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip:
Dan F).
Labels: academic boycott, BDS, Israeli Nobel prizes, liberal academia, University of Haifa, Yisrael Aumann
University of Haifa reacts to Aumann scandal
The University of Haifa has reacted to the scandal over its decision not to grant an honorary degree to Nobel Prize winner Professor Yisrael Aumann.
They're just inciting against us. We have plenty of respect for people with beards and skullcaps.
And for those who don't get it.... Pictured is the leader of the
northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Raed Sallah.Labels: Islamic Movement in Israel, Israel's suicidal Left, Israeli Left, Israeli Nobel prizes, leftists, Raed Sallah, Robert Aumann, University of Haifa, Yisrael Aumann
Nobel Prize winner laughs at University of Haifa
Nobel Prize winner Yisrael (Robert) Aumann reacted on Saturday night to
reports that the University of Haifa considered granting him an honorary degree and decided not to
because of his politics.
Speaking to Channel 1’s program Roim Olam, Aumann joked : “I’ve prayed and aspired to getting an honorary doctorate from Haifa University for my whole life.”
“I’m very disappointed,” he added, sarcastically.
Aumann linked the issue to academic boycotts against Israeli schools.
“I have to say that we create this issue of boycotts ourselves,” he
said.
There were also reactions from the political sphere.
Former Member of Knesset and professor Aryeh Eldad, head of the
Professors for a Strong Israel forum, responded to Haifa University’s
decision with a warning that the university is hurting itself, not
Aumann.
“The ‘blow’ to Professor Aumann does not actually exist,” Eldad said.
“The only party that could be hurt by this is the university. The
idiots sitting there are so dumb that they forgot that universities give
honorary degrees in order to honor themselves, not in order to honor
the recipient.”
“When Tel Aviv University gives a degree like this to Bill Clinton,
we can assume that he would have managed to get through the month
without the degree. But the university is honored by his honor,” Eldad
explained.
It is “excellent” that Haifa University allowed its decision to be
made public, Eldad continued. “It reveals the university’s true face,
which varies between five shades of anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism,
between simply recognizing the Arab right to the land of Israel and
establishing legal clinics for terrorists as an exercise for law students,” he said.
...
Minister Naftali Bennett made similar remarks
Saturday night on Facebook. "Haifa University’s refusal to grant an
honorary degree to Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Aumann for his right-wing
views is like a minor league in Alaska choosing not to grant an honorary
degree in basketball to Michael Jordan. We'll get over it,” he wrote.
The real issue here is why state-financed universities like Haifa are allowed to play politics in this manner. One would hope - but don't hold your breath - that the Knesset's Education Committee will take up the issue.
By the way, for a taste of why the Left hates Professor Aumann, please read
this post - one of the most important among the nearly 34,000 posts on this blog.
Labels: Arieh Eldad, Naftali Bennett, Robert Aumann, University of Haifa, Yisrael Aumann
Haifa U decides against doctorate for Nobel Prize winner whose politics they don't like
Haifa University considered and decided against granting an honorary doctorate to game theoretician and Nobel Prize winner Professor Yisrael Aumann according to a report in the
Hebrew Haaretz on Friday. The reason:
They don't like his Right-wing politics.
At a hearing to discuss the candidacy last week, the director, Ami
Ayalon, agreed with other board members not to award the title, citing
concerns that "the Professor's politics are not in line with the University's values."
Among the board's concerns were remarks by Aumann in 2010 stating
that "the most sensible solution" to the Israeli-Arab conflict is "a
Jewish state and an Arab state, where the Jewish state is settled by
Jews and the Arab state is settled by Arabs."
Aumann also insisted on other religious-Zionist principles, including
that "Jerusalem needs to remain Jewish" and citing the importance of
religiosity in maintaining a Jewish state. Aumann has reiterated these
principles several times before, stressing the importance of maintaining Israel's Jewish heritage.
Adi Arbel, a colleague of the Professor and Projects Manager of the
Institute for Zionist Strategies, responded to the move with force.
"There is no doubt that for the Nobel Laureate, Professor Israel Aumann,
this does not make any difference," he noted.
However, he emphasized that "the illegitimate phenomenon raises
questions about how decisions in the past, present and future will be
made" and notes that the current board "will be subject to less respect"
as a result.
The University of Haifa, for its part, claims that the decision is not yet final.
Note that Haifa's board is chaired by that great example of character Ami Ayalon,
whose lies caused a 19-year old girl to sit in jail for six months for a non-existent crime that she didn't commit.
Last night, at a campaign rally for his candidacy for the Labor party
leadership, Ami Ayalon, who was appointed chief of the General Security
Service after Rabin was assassinated, made what would be a shocking admission in any other Western country: He admitted that Margalit Har Shefi was falsely charged and falsely convicted. And that the GSS knew it all along:
Former
chief of intelligence (Shabak) Ami Ayalon, now a Knesset Member,
revealed Thursday night that Margalit Har-Shefi did not realize that
Yigal Amir intended to assassinate Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. She
was convicted in 1998 of failing to prevent the murder. In 2001, she
began a serving a nine-month prison term, which was terminated by
President Moshe Katzav after six months.
Ayalon made the
disclosure at a meeting with Labor party supporters in Ashkelon, but he
did not explain why he kept silent until now. "Har-Shefi did not
know that Yigal Amir wanted to murder the Prime Minister," MK Ayalon
said. "I know this from intelligence and was head of the intelligence
agency.
"She was part of the crazy reality [at that time]."
How's that for an excuse? 'Part of the crazy reality.'
I don't know which is (ought to be) a greater embarrassment to Haifa: The academic dishonesty of denying a degree to Professor Aumann (who obviously doesn't care about it) or the dishonesty of having its Board of Trustees headed by a perjurer. In any event, the University of Haifa ought to be ashamed, and you should not donate a red (the only type they will accept) cent to them.
Labels: Ami Ayalon, liberal academia, University of Haifa, Yisrael Aumann
The 'settler violence' canard
The government has already started inciting against the revenants, issuing a statement today claiming they 'fear violence' and 'price tag attacks' in response to the government's intent to expel 30 Jewish families from their homes in Beit El, which were built with government approval and funding.
If that purported violence were coming from the revenants who are being expelled from their homes, the public might actually sympathize. After all, it would be understandable if people who were about to be expelled from their homes and left homeless reacted violently. Look what being nice got the revenants of Gush Katif -
seven years homeless and counting for many of them, not to mention that the land they vacated became a terror base. So the government needs a different straw man to whom they can attribute violence in advance, and
the residents of Yitzhar are convenient whipping boys for that purpose.
Particular concern is with the settlement of Yitzhar which has seen an increase in violence in recent months between settlers and Palestinians. As a result, the Judea and Samaria Division has beefed up the number of troops stationed in the area to prevent future acts of violence.
“The pending evacuations could lead to an increase in settler violence,” a defense official said.
The IDF fears that radical right-wing activists will embark on a series of so-called “price tag” attacks against Palestinians in an effort to derail the government’s plans to evacuate the Ulpana as well as two other outposts – Amona and Givat Assaf.
How's that for a straw man? Oh yes, there's one other thing the government did: They invited a terror attack on Yitzhar.
Last week, the IDF confiscated a number of weapons from members of the Yitzhar settlement's rapid response team following two incidents during which they opened fire at Palestinians in violation of military regulations.
That's great. The people of Yitzhar are unprotected, and the government is advertising it. Brilliant.
In the meantime, YNet is horrified to discover that at least one of Israel's Nobel Prize winners believes that the revenants should 'lie on the ground and let the government
evacuate expel [I'm sure they misquoted him. CiJ] you one by one. That would be
Yisrael Aumann, our
straight shooting Nobel Prize winner. This comes from the first link in the previous paragraph, but the second link is a nearly-six-year-old must read.
Professor Israel Oman visited Israeli hunger strikers in Jerusalem who are protesting the decision to evacuate the Ulpana neighborhood and advised the residents not to forcefully oppose the eviction. "You need to lie on the ground and let them evacuate one by one. If there are thousands it will take them a long time," he said.
Oman, recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics, criticized the decision. He said it not only jeopardizes "the Judea and Samaria settlement but the entire country. The real Jewish settlement has always been in Judea and Samaria, not Tel Aviv and Gedera.
"It jeopardizes our entire presence here." Oman added that this eviction will effect generations to come.
Indeed it does.
Labels: Beit El, Binyamin Netanyahu, outposts, Supreme Court, Yisrael Aumann
Game theory (liveblog)
Sitting all the way in the back (where I found a plug) listening to Nobel Prize winner Yisrael Aumann talking about game theory. This is a liveblog.
I want to add something about the previous session. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough about what a job Danny Dayan did on Jeremy Ben Ami. He listed many of J Street's actions - without using J Street's name - and suggested that an organization that did each of those things had placed itself outside the pro-Israel community. The critique was devastating and all Ben Ami could do was smirk like President Obama did when he sat next to Prime Minister Netanyahu last month during that White House press availability.
Aumann says that war can be rational. We take all the ills of the world and dismiss them by calling them irrational. If they are rational, once we understand that they are, we can try to address the problem. If we dismiss them as irrational, we can't address the problem.
Economics and game theory in one word: Incentives. For example, taxes. You can lose revenue by raising taxes.
How do you apply this to peace? What brings peace? Concessions don't bring peace. Look at Munich 1938. 'Peace in our time.' No, it didn't work (Aumann says this is what Peres is promoting). Chamberlain brought war from Munich in 1938. Why didn't the concessions to Hitler work? Because Chamberlain was saying to Hitler, "We are weak. We will not respond." That was a lie but Hitler believed it. When you're strong and signal weakness, that's what brings war.
Is disarmament an incentive for peace? What made the cold war stay cold was nuclear weapons without nuclear explosions. What prevented the nuclear explosions was the presence of nuclear weapons. There were bombers in the air 365 days a year for 40 years. That's what prevented the cold war from becoming hot.
Does the Pax Romana bring peace? The Roman peace lasted for 400 years. Their motto was if you want peace, prepare for war. They were the first game theorists.
No one put it as succinctly as President Obama in his Nobel acceptance speech: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Aumann says he deserves the prize for that sentence alone.
Aumann is viewed as a hawk but he truly wants peace. How do you get peace? Not by shouting peace, not by concessions, not by gestures and not by expelling 10,000 people from their homes like Gaza 2005. These things bring war. Hitler did not want war in 1939 - he thought the allies did not want war. The Gaza expulsion brought the Lebanon War of 2006, the bombardment of southern Israel, Operation Cast Lead and the Mavi Marmara disaster. So what should we do now? How do we get peace? You can't glue together the pieces of the Gaza expulsion.
The important thing is to convince the Arabs that we are here to stay. We have signaled that we are not here to stay and we must change that. The Arabs still think of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa as Arab territory. We have to convince them that won't happen. We must be patient. We must sit tight and expel nobody. We must avoid collective measures - they hit the wrong people. The people have no say there - we have to focus on the leadership.
We should improve life so that people are satisfied. We should respond to provocations in a predictable way.
Most important: Insist on Oslo provision calling for education for peace and tolerance. No one remembers this provision anymore and our government does not insist on it. The kids who were educated in the PA 15 years ago are now the leaders. We must try and change those goals so that their goals are not to wipe us off the map.
We are doing none of these things.
(From question and answer session) Professor Aumann is trying to discuss how we give a rational partner an incentive to make peace. He does not believe there is a rational partner today.
Our problem is that we want peace NOW. We have to start NOW, but we can't get peace now. Our problem is the way that children are taught in the territories. We have to get used to the fact that nothing is going to happen now. We made too many mistakes in the past.
Helen Thomas did us a favor by saying what everyone was thinking. Trying concessions is just making things worse. Netanyahu in Congress was great.
Would love to get a copy of Professor Aumann's slides....
Recall that Nasrallah said that if he had known how Israel would respond in 2006, he would not have started the war.
Key departments in Israeli universities overrun with people who don't agree with Obama. They think peace being desirable is enough to achieve it. Problems: These people have tenure and appoint other people like them to their departments.
Aumann complains about lack of provocative questions. Says everyone here agrees with him. Asks for provocative question.
Questioner says we shouldn't be negotiating with 'Palestinians' but with their funders: Saudis, Iraqis, Iranians - we need to hold them responsible. We have to hold the people who put Oslo together responsible. Aumann agrees. Oh well - no provocative question. Aumann says that the real people we have to address is ourselves.
End of session.
I got a ticket for the plenary session with Shimon Peres and Dennis Ross so stay tuned.
Labels: Gaza expulsion, President's Conference, Yisrael Aumann
