UK university could nix debate on Israel’s right to exist

A British university intends to block a controversial debate on Israel’s right to exist from being held on the campus, organizers said on Tuesday, lamenting the decision as a blow to freedom of speech.

University of Southampton officials told organizers there were health and safety concerns over possible clashes between for and against protesters at the venue where the event was to take place.

“It is with extreme astonishment and sadness that we have to inform you that the University of Southampton has told us earlier yesterday (Monday 30 March 2015) that it intends to withdraw its permission to hold the academic conference on International Law and the State of Israel,” the organizers said in a statement. “We were told that the decision was taken on the grounds of health and safety.”

The three-day symposium, which drew sharp criticism from pro-Israel groups and was scheduled to take place in April, was intended to shift the debate away from “Israeli actions in the 1967 Occupied Territories” and onto “themes of legitimacy… posed by Israel’s very nature.”

Those behind the debate charged that the university had given in to political pressure and in so doing had muzzled freedom of speech.

“It is very clear that the health and safety issue was not serious, it’s a way of creating bogus reasoning,” the Israeli-born organizer of the event, Oren Ben-Dor, a professor of law and philosophy at the university, told The Guardian newspaper. “The real reason was political pressure. The controversial nature of the conference is precisely where [the principle of] freedom of speech leads – that’s where the commitment to freedom of speech is tested.

“The notion of offense is not enough to consider something to be censored,” he added. “Living in a free society means you should be able to hear something unpalatable to you.”

One hundred and fifty people had signed up for the event and Ben-Dor claimed he expected up to 300 to attend.

A final decision banning the event has yet to be taken, the university said.

“The University of Southampton is in discussion with the organizers of the conference International Law and the State of Israel about the possibility of withdrawing permission for the event to be held on campus,” a university spokesman said. “However, this review process is still ongoing. Any decision will be judged purely on considerations around the health and safety of our staff, students and for the general public.”

The Zionist Federation said that it hoped the cancellation would be finalized.

“We would welcome the cancellation,” a spokesman said. “We don’t think that it was a valid academic discussion.”

Organizers noted they were considering taking legal action to force the university to permit the debate but were also looking at finding another location to hold the event.

The forum was to examine the manner in which “injustice in historic Palestine” was shaped by Israel’s creation, as well as constitutional bases in international law that may rectify the transgression inherent in the establishment of the Jewish state, according to the university’s website.

However, it was criticized by those opposing it for being too one-sided.

Anti-Israel resolutions on university campuses and in academia have gained traction in the West in recent months, in what critics have linked to rising levels of anti-Semitism in Europe.

Avi Lewis contributed to this report.