Ariel University's great legal victory and the important message it sends

...The most important part of winning...is the message it sends -- one cannot bar via illegal or immoral pretexts Israeli universities, including those located in Judea and Samaria, from participating in international contests and conferences.

Yigal Cohen-Orgad..
Israel Haym..
07 January '16..

The most important part of winning the five-year legal battle over the exclusion of Ariel University from participating in the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe competition is the message it sends -- one cannot bar via illegal or immoral pretexts Israeli universities, including those located in Judea and Samaria, from participating in international contests and conferences.

Generally, it is not difficult to create academic cooperation between Israeli researchers and their international colleagues. This is true at Ariel University, where researchers academically collaborate with colleagues from dozens of universities worldwide, including in the U.S., Europe and the Far East.

The problems stem from the pressure certain governments put on universities and other academic institutions to avoid becoming involved in cooperative academic projects with Ariel University and other Israeli institutions. This pressure is often the result of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which seeks to boycott Israeli activities in the realms of science, industry and agriculture, among others.

The danger here is that BDS pressure will prompt universities and academic institutions that initially had no reservations cooperating with Israeli bodies to be deterred from pursuing joint academic efforts with them.

The event in Spain demonstrated the danger Israel faces. The Technical University of Madrid, which organized the 2010 Solar Decathlon competition, had invited Ariel University to enter the contest, knowing the university was located in Samaria and having no reservations about it.

It was only after the Israeli project was selected as one of 21 finalist universities that the Spanish government and the University of Madrid succumbed to BDS pressure and expelled Ariel University from the competition.

Arlene Kushner from Israel - A Mixed Bag

Arlene Kushner..
26 December '12..

Today we'll start with the good news.

Ariel University has been an institution of higher learning, situated in Ariel -- a major city in Samaria, 25 miles east of Tel Aviv -- since 2005. At that time it was Ariel College and had the highest student enrollment of any public college in Israel. But the school's intention was to seek full university status -- which would provide it with the ability to grant doctoral degrees, as well as increase its funding for research and its prestige.

In 2010, it was granted the title Ariel University Center of Samaria, but was not yet accorded official university status. In July of this year, the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria granted it this status. In September, the Cabinet approved it.

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But it wasn't yet a done deal. Since Judea and Samaria are governed by a civil administration under the umbrella of the Ministry of Defense, yet another approval was needed. And this was not forthcoming.

It was politics. Ariel College had met all criteria for becoming a university. But, shock, horrors: A full Israeli university in Samaria? That suggests permanency and will lead to expansion of a "settlement." British Foreign Secretary William Hague actually had the gall to say in September that Israel should reconsider its decision on this school.

His attitude was not new. In 2009, for example, the Spanish Housing Ministry disqualified the university center from participation in an international architectural competition because it was located in "occupied territories."

At any rate, this week Defense Minister Barak instructed Major General Nitzan Alon, the Head of the IDF's Central Command, to grant the school final approval. This was after the attorney general had said there was no legal obstacle to doing so. General Alon signed the appropriate document yesterday, and it's a done deal.

I have been advised by someone directly involved in Ariel that this did not represent a softening of Barak's heart on this issue: a great deal of hard work behind the scenes went into achieving this.

However it was achieved, this is a cause for celebration. And I think it's good to know that with hard work nationalists can hold sway at least part of the time.

Making Ariel University Center a reality

Marc Zell..
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost..
23 July '12..

There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university, a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.”

The words penned by the late English poet laureate, John Masefield, give expression to the best of what has come to be known as the modern university. One would think, therefore, that last week’s near-unanimous decision by the Council of Higher Education-Judea and Samaria to grant accreditation to the Ariel University Center of Samaria as Israel’s eighth university would have been welcomed with open arms by the academic community and public alike. Such, however, is not the case.

AUC’s recognition as a university was and is being vigorously opposed by the Presidents’ Committee representing the country’s seven other universities. To add insult to injury, the head of the allpowerful Budget Allocation Committee of the Israel Council of Higher Education, Dr. Emmanuel Trajtenberg, a leading figure in framing the government’s response to last year’s social justice protests, not only lobbied strenuously to thwart AUC’s accreditation, but attempted to “persuade” the AUC administration to forgo formal university status by offering a so-called compromise whereby AUC would retain its temporary university center status (as yet undefined in law) in exchange for generous financial allocations and other privileges heretofore accorded to institutions of higher learning having university status in Israel. He is still urging the powers that be to delay or deny accreditation on non-academic grounds.

Fortunately, the AUC Executive Committee rejected any such compromise on the grounds that the Council of Higher Education-Judea and Samaria) had laid down clear and unequivocal academic criteria in 2007 for AUC’s accreditation after a five-year period ending in July 2012.

As part of the accreditation process, in February 2012 a blueribbon panel composed of leading academicians from Israeli’s leading universities, including Nobel Prize laureate Prof. Robert Aumann of the Hebrew University, recommended unanimously that AUC be given full and permanent university status, lavishing praise upon the institution not only for having met the council’s stringent criteria, but surpassing them in most every respect.

Kushner - From Israel: The Balance

Arlene Kushner..
19 July '12..





Today I'm going to start with the good stuff I never wrote about yesterday, because I was too heavy-hearted about the terror attack. What we must keep in mind -- why my sharing that good stuff is important -- is that in spite of the obscenities and the horrors, we are also making progress in some very positive ways.

Those who are devoted to Jewish rights in the Land saw this as a significant victory this week:

The Judea and Samaria Council for Higher Education voted on Tuesday that Ariel University Center be accorded full accredited status as a university. It will be the first institute of higher learning to be accorded this status beyond the Green Line.

Credit:Israelnationalnews

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Certain criteria had to be met before this status could be achieved and the institute has been working towards this goal since the 2004-2005 academic year. It boasts 26 departments in three schools, and serves over 14,000 students -- many of whom live within the Green Line and a percentage of whom are Arab. All of the degrees it confers are recognized by the Council for Higher Education.

Stop the Solar Decathlon Boycott! Promote Education & Peace

StandWithUs.com
January '10

Israeli Jewish and Arab students make their case, in Hebrew, Arabic and Spanish. Energy conservation and sustainability is one of the major issues facing the planet. Students worldwide are competing in The Solar Decathlon, to be held in Spain in June 2010, to try and find solutions to our common problem. Israeli students in the competition found an ingenious way of making homes more efficient so why have these students been kicked out of the competition?



Please sign the petition at www.shameonspain.com
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Giving accreditation where it's due

Amiel Ungar
Haaretz
31 January '10

Defense Minister Ehud Barak's announcement of his intention to implement a five-year-old government decision to recognize Ariel College as a university unfortunately elicited the usual "Judea and Samaria delenda est" (the settlements must be destroyed) invective from the left. Such polemics unfortunately only divert us from addressing the need to reevaluate higher education priorities and policies.

It is difficult to respect the intellectual honesty of critics such as Hebrew University Prof. Yaron Ezrahi (quoted in a report by Or Kashti in Haaretz, Jan. 24), who called Barak's move "a dangerous precedent in which a general is establishing a university," adding that "such a thing only exists in totalitarian countries."

Ezrahi and others who resort to such cheap shots know full well that the army's status as legislator is a byproduct of the unresolved status of Judea and Samaria. If the settlement of Ariel were to be annexed today, Barak would be out of the picture in terms of both higher education and housing freezes there. And if Israel had not legally reunified Jerusalem, the roads to Ezrahi's campus would also be governed by a general.

Ezrahi charges that Ariel College was established to promote the ideology of right-wing settlers. In all the years I taught there, I encountered colleagues from all colors of the political spectrum. However, even the most ideological rightist would never have dared to present a right-wing equivalent to an M.A. thesis branding Israeli soldiers as racist because they don't rape Arab women - a thesis sponsored by the former head of the Hebrew University's Truman Peace Center.

(Read full article)
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Breaking Israel’s Academic Stranglehold

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Comentary
22 January '10

This week’s recognition of Ariel College as a “university center” — a step toward full-fledged university status — outraged Israel’s academic establishment.

For some, the objection is political: the institution is located in Ariel, a West Bank settlement, so hard-core leftists want it dismantled, not upgraded — though all Israeli governments have sought to retain Ariel under any peace agreement.

But for most, the objection is ostensibly professional: academically, they claim, Ariel is no better than other colleges that haven’t been upgraded; the Council for Higher Education, an independent professional body that oversees Israeli academia, opposes the upgrade; and the final approval was ordered by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, constituting blatant political interference in higher education.

The actual facts are these: because Israel never annexed the West Bank, formal legal authority there lies with the army — specifically, the GOC Central Command — rather than civilian bodies. Thus Ariel isn’t formally subject to the CHE. But since the army clearly can’t oversee universities, a CHE clone, the Council for Higher Education-Judea and Samaria, was created to do the job.

In 2006, a CHE-JS subcommittee recommended the upgrade, and in 2007 the full CHE-JS adopted this recommendation. All six subcommittee members admittedly lean politically right; most leftists wouldn’t serve on the CHE-JS. But as one member of the regular CHE acknowledged, all were also “people of the first rank in research” — including Nobel Prize laureate Robert Aumann, Israel Prize laureate Yuval Ne’eman (the father of Israel’s space program), and Israel Prize laureate Daniel Sperber.

(Read full article)

An Alternative to a 'Palestinian' State

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
21 Tevet, 5770
07 January '10

At a recent lecture in Los Angeles, I was asked about my alternative to a 'Palestinian State'. The solution that I propose, promotion of Arab emigration, is predicated on the following points:

A. The Land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish Nation.

B. There is no "Palestinian nation" and aspirations for a "Palestinian State" are strictly for Arab propaganda purposes. The Arabs of Israel and their terror organizations are being offered a state on a silver platter – something that has never happened to any other group in history. Nevertheless, they have repeatedly rejected this gift. The reason that they reject this more-than-generous offer is because their real and exclusive goal is not Arab sovereignty, but the destruction of Jewish sovereignty. Thus, any plan that relies on a third side, and particularly on the good will and cooperation of the Arab countries, is unrealistic.

C. The solution for the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza must be based on the facts on the ground and not on the fantasies of Oslo.

There are three facts on the ground that support this position:

(Read full article)
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Overturn Spain's Boycott of Israeli University

StandWithUs.com

Background

Spain’s Boycott of Ariel University Center in the 2010 Solar Decathlon

The Solar Decathlon was founded in 2002 by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The biannual competition selects 20 teams from universities around the world who design and build the most attractive, energy-efficient home powered solely by the sun. Universities from several countries, including Spain, entered the competitions held in Washington DC in 2002, 2005, 2007, and 2009.1

On Sept. 18, 2007, Spain also got the right to hold a Solar Decathlon. The U.S. Department of Energy [DoE] signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Spain’s Undersecretary of Housing Fernando Magro Fernández, for Spain to host a European Decathlon with the assistance of the DoE in years alternating with the U.S. Solar Decathlon.2

Spain will hold its first Solar Decathlon, co-sponsored by the U.S. DoE, in Madrid in June 2010. The first stage of the Decathlon ended on October 30, 2008, when 20 University teams from around the world were chosen as finalists in the stiff competition. Each team was awarded 100,000 Euros from the Spanish government to begin building the model house.

Israel’s Ariel University Center (AUC), located in the West Bank and known for its leadership in the field, was one of the 20 finalists. There was no indication that political animosity would taint the event or pose problems for AUC, which was the only team chosen from the Middle East. The team began building the solar house, met the design deadlines, and met with Spanish event officials in May, 2009, including Beatriz Corredo, Spanish Minister of Housing; Esperanza Aguirre, Madrid Regional President; Sergio Vega Sánchez, Head Project Manager of the European Solar Decathlon; and Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, Mayor of Madrid.

Suddenly, on 9/11/09, Spain informed the AUC team that it had been expelled from the competition. AUC was not expelled for technical or scientific reasons, but solely out of political animosity. The letter from Spanish Minister of Housing, Javier Ramos Guallart, informed AUC that because it is located in the “occupied territories,” its inclusion violated EU positions. Sergio Vega, project manager of the Solar Decathlon, wrote in a communiqué to the college, "The decision was made by the Spanish government based on the fact that the university is located in occupied territory in the West Bank. The Spanish government is committed to uphold the international agreement under the framework of the European Union and the United Nations regarding this geographical area."3

But Ariel’s location in the West Bank does not violate any EU policy on cooperative projects. Israel has extensive economic, cultural and scientific programs with the EU. Between 2007 and 2009, there were 428 joint scientific projects, some of which were located over the Green Line, the 1949 Armistice lines.4 Furthermore, under a recent agreement, the EU and Israel "committed themselves to establishing a partnership which provides for close political and mutually beneficial trade and investment relations together with economic, social, financial, civil scientific, technological and cultural cooperation.”5 There was no stipulation about geographic boundaries in this agreement.

Spain clearly knew where AUC was located when it chose AUC as a finalist, and when it cooperated with AUC over the following year, and never mentioned a problem about EU policies precisely because such policies do not exist.

Spain’s sudden decision was caused by the Palestinian academic boycott campaign against Israel. Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine lobbied for AUC’s exclusion as a part of the larger academic boycott against Israel that the BNC—the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaign National Committee—has tried to impose for several years.6 BNC’s extremist demands are that boycotts must be imposed until Israel “ends the occupation,” and permits millions of Palestinians refugees the “right of return to their original homes.” 7 The right of return is code for destroying Israel demographically by flooding it with the 4.6 million Palestinians currently on UNRWA’s rolls.8

No other teams were excluded from the Decathlon on any political grounds, including Tianjin University, located in China, perhaps one of the world's foremost human rights violators, was not disqualified from the Decathlon.

(Read full article)

Overturn Spain's Boycott of Israeli University Sign Petition

Related Article: Spain boycotts Ariel University Center for being on 'occupied territory'

Spain boycotts Ariel University Center for being on 'occupied territory'

Spanish government, sponsor of Solar Decathalon, disqualifies architecture department of Ariel University Center of Samaria from finals. '10,000 students hurt by fight that is against international law,' claims college

Yaheli Moran Zelikovich
Ynet/Israel News
22 September 09

The Spanish Housing Ministry disqualified Ariel University Center of Samaria from competing in the finals of the international competition between university architecture departments to design and build a self-sufficient house using solar power.

Sergio Vega, project manager of the Solar Decathlon, wrote in a communiqué to the college, "The decision was made by the Spanish government based on the fact that the university is located in occupied territory in the West Bank. The Spanish government is committed to uphold the international agreement under the framework of the European Union and the United Nations regarding this geographical area."

The Solar Decathlon was first held as a European initiative and run by the Spanish Housing Ministry.

The Ariel University Center reached the finals together with 20 other universities from around the world after two years of collaboration with the competition's management and the Spanish government.

In this framework, the college was even awarded a 100,000 Euro grant by the competition's organizers to build a model house for the final competition slated to be held in Madrid in June 2010.

The cancellation of the Israeli team's participation in the competition was urged by an initiative put out by the group, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine as a continuation of the academic boycott against Israel being led for quite some time by BNC - The Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaign National Committee.

Surprising support from France

The BNC said of the decision that the boycott will be stepped up against the State of Israel and its institutions, including all the universities in Israel, until the "occupation" is ended and Israel allows the Palestinians refugees to return to their original homes.

The Ariel University Center responded: "We scornfully reject the one-sided announcement we received from the Spanish Housing Ministry. The anti-academic decision harms 10,000 students in the university center, including 500 Arab students who study at the institution, in particular the Jewish and Arab students studying together in the school of architecture."

The college added, "This is an expression of the political, illegitimate war (being waged) that is against international law and international charters on academic freedom, which are grossly and one-sidedly being violated by this decision. The Ariel University Center, together with the Foreign Ministry and the organization of universities against the academic boycott, will use all means to eliminate this phenomenon."

The college's struggle received surprising support from Prof. Pascal Rollet of France's Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Architecture de Grenoble. She sent a letter to the college: "I do not agree with the Spanish decision because the Ariel University's activities are directed towards academic excellence for peace. Kindly receive my utmost support in this difficult situation."

Those who are interested in learning more about Ariel University's many excellent programs can click here for further information.

Related: Anti-Semitism in Spain
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Ariel University Center of Samaria

ATZil offers overseas students and new olim an opportunity to begin their academic studies in English while enjoying a meaningful Israel experience.

The program includes Hebrew language ulpan, adventurous tiyulim, Shabbat seminars, Jewish studies volunteering opportunities, and social and recreational programming.

Ariel University Center is home to over ten thousand students located in the picturesque city of Ariel. Accomodations are provided in modern facilities on the Ariel University Center campus.

ATZil is recognized by the Israel Government Masa program offering grants to qualified candidates.
Meet, study, and live with young Israelis from all walks of life.
Earn a degree while experiencing Israel and learning Hebrew.
Benefit from an accessible faculty that cares for its students.
For Further Information: http://www.arielu.com/
Contact: Yaakov Frohlich
Director of Programs for Overseas Students, Ariel University Center
Tel: +972 52 678 4706