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Anat Matar was one of the first Israeli citizens to publicly promote a boycott. A professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University and the mother of prominent left-wing journalist Hagai Matar, Anat quickly became a hate figure for Knesset right-wingers, who demanded that she be ousted from her tenured academic post. In a speech before Tel Aviv University's 2010 graduation ceremony, the super-hasbara super-lawyer Alan Dershowitz accused Matar and two other pro-BDS Israeli academics, Rachel Giora and Shlomo Sand, of "impos[ing] their ideology on students," and urged "patriotic" students and faculty members to "stand up to propagandizing professors" in appropriate forums outside of the classroom where different rules govern." Matar told me that 250 of her academic colleagues were inspired by Dershowitz to sign a public letter condemning her in vitriolic terms.
Matar told me that despite the mounting intimidation, she was not the real target of the anti-boycott legislation. "If the law passes, it's not only me who gets hurt," she said. "And if I'm fired, that's actually the least important thing. The most important is what will happen with the NGOs like Adalah [the legal center for Arab minority rights], with [the occupation monitoring group] Yesh Din, with B'Tselem. If I'm fired, it's a personal inconvenience -- but if that happens, it's much more than a sweeping attack on a lunatic from academia. I really don't know what's going to happen, and I don't see any way out of this."
Eric Alterman explains why he doesn't think much of Max Blumenthal's new book.
*This article is adapted from Max Blumenthal's Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel published in October by Nation Books.
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