Knesset Ethics panel: MKs wrong to meet on university BDS
Committee rebukes lawmakers who alleged support for an Israel boycott at Ben-Gurion U, but rejects claim they were paid to hold the meeting
Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
The Knesset’s Ethics Committee last week reprimanded two lawmakers for convening a hearing in which they accused Ben-Gurion University of the Negev of supporting Israel boycott efforts, but forcefully dismissed allegations by the Beersheba-based institution that the MKs had been “bought” by a university board member to hold the session in Israel’s parliament.
On May 24, the Knesset’s Education, Culture, and Sport Committee held a meeting at the request of Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich, Likud MK Anat Berko, and Likud MK Amir Ohana. The hearing was headlined “Fears that Ben-Gurion University is continuing to support BDS,” a reference to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
In June, the university accused Knesset members of calling the hearing on false pretenses in a bid to obstruct purported attempts by the university to oust an outspoken university board of governors member — British businessman Michael Gross — who is a friend, and in one case a donor, of the lawmakers present.
At the time, the university suggested that lawmakers had been “bought” by Gross’s influence to convene the Knesset meeting in late May on trumped-up charges.
“First of all, the Ethics Committee would like to emphasize that no basis was found for [Ben-Gurion University President] Prof. Carmi’s serious accusation that the session was ‘bought,’ an accusation through which one might infer that Mr. Gross donated money to members of Knesset and in return they sought to advance his interests,” the Knesset panel wrote in its decision, issued Wednesday.
“Nevertheless, the Ethics Committee has found in favor of the allegation that the topic of BDS was used as a platform for a discussion about Mr. Gross’s issues and the disagreement between him and the university, as well as the university president’s allegation that the title of the discussion was intended to humiliate the university and attribute institutional support for the BDS movement to it, which has no basis in the materials presented at the session by the session’s organizers,” it said.
The committee found Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich and Likud MK Anat Berko in violation of Knesset codes in misrepresenting the topic of the meeting. The pair “planned all along to devote a significant portion of the session to the conflict between Mr. Gross and the university,” it noted in its decision.
However, since both lawmakers have no prior record, the panel decided not to sanction them. Had the lawmakers made it known the meeting was to focus on Gross, rather on the boycott allegations, it likely never would have been approved, the decision noted.
The panel also accepted the claim by the university that the meeting was designed to besmirch the institution, while rebuking Ben-Gurion University for raising its “serious accusation” with little evidence.
“It is also likely to cause damage to the Israeli fight against BDS supporters, when the title of an official session of the Knesset and members of Knesset allege that an Israeli university itself is a BDS supporter,” it concluded.
The university had originally noted that Berko and Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer stated on the record that they were acquainted with Gross, and that Zionist Union MK Yoel Hasson was a former recipient of a primaries donation from the British businessman, as he also stated on-record during the meeting. All expressed concern at the meeting about attempts to remove Gross from the board.
However, while the university said that Berko and Forer initiated the meeting, according to a statement from the Knesset committee, Berko, Smotrich, and Ohana were in fact the ones who requested it. The Ethics Committee noted this discrepancy in its decision. Smotrich was not acquainted with Gross.
According to the text of Smotrich’s original request to convene the hearing, that hearing — which coincided with Jerusalem Day — was called due to a report in the Israel Hayom tabloid that said a workshop on photographing arrests and political protests was advertised on the university’s student union page; because the institution was giving college credit to students volunteering at anti-Israel organizations; and over comments by various professors critical of the State of Israel.
But the university said the allegations raised in the hearing were disguising efforts by lawmakers to block the university board from voting on amendments to its policies that were seen as targeting Gross.
Gross — a controversial figure who in 2009 emailed a Ben-Gurion University professor expressing hte wish that he would “perish” — attended the Knesset hearing with his son. (That email came after the latter, Professor David Newman, took part in a UK documentary about the hidden influence of Britain’s “Israel lobby” that was later accused of anti-Semitic undertones.)
Earlier this year, Israeli media reports said Gross withdrew a $1 million donation to the university after learning it was hosting a conference featuring the controversial Breaking the Silence group, which documents alleged abuses by Israeli soldiers against the Palestinians. The university said, however, that no such pledge by Gross had been received. Last year, the university also refunded a $100,000 donation by Gross.
In a letter sent by chairman Alex Goren to the board of governors last month, a copy of which was obtained by The Times of Israel, the university condemned the “disgraceful, outrageous, and mainly absurd” allegations that it supported boycott efforts, noting that Shas MK Yaakov Margi, the committee chairman, backed them up unequivocally at the end of the session. The university is at the forefront of combating BDS, not supporting it, it said.
The Knesset meeting was originally scheduled to coincide with the university’s board of governors meeting, during which university officials were set to vote on an amendment to allow for the removal of members of the board. With some effort, the university managed to postpone that Knesset hearing to a later date, the letter said.
That amendment, seen as targeting Gross, was approved in May, but no further steps were taken against him since that time, according to a university official.
But the originally planned timing of the Knesset meeting by lawmakers — backed up by right-wing Im Tirzu activists who receive donations from Gross — was intentional, Goren alleged.
“There were two levels to the meeting: the overt level and the covert level. For the hidden agenda – ‘ensuring’ Michael Gross’s position in the BGU Board of Governors – empty claims were raised as part of the overt agenda, allowing for ‘the ends to justify the means.’ The elected officials’ precious time was enlisted to the matter without most of them even knowing that there was a hidden agenda in the discussion,” the letter charged.
“It is, therefore, difficult to ignore the feeling that a member of the Board of Governors allegedly ‘bought’ a meeting in the Israeli Knesset’s Education Committee on a baseless, political pretense, while degrading the university, in order to prevent what seemed to him as an attempt to remove him from the Board of Governors. My heart goes out to the Members of Knesset who came to a meeting supposedly with a certain topic (contrived though it may be), and were actually tools at the hand of a person with means, intending to promote his own personal interests,” the letter said.
Gross told The Times of Israel last month that while he is personally acquainted with the lawmakers, after decades of working with government figures to bring long-term social housing to Israel, the meeting was strictly about the boycott allegations.
“This specific meeting was called in response to the level of BDS at Ben-Gurion University. Im Tirzu are involved, and reserve soldiers were involved, and lots of people were involved,” he said. “Of course I was involved… These are issues of public concern,” he added.
“The truth to the matter is these people are encouraging and fostering the BDS at the university, and I’m the one person who is prepared to say [something], so they don’t like it,” he said. “I obviously can’t control the Knesset. Four Knesset members from four different parties decided to bring it there and these people are hard-left, self-hating anti-Zionists. And that’s what the university is under the control of at the moment. So what am I supposed to do?”
“One person stands up and of course these people attack him,” he maintained.
