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Few Israelis and even fewer Americans know much about the Alternative Information Center (AIC) which is located both in the West Bank in Beit Sahour and also in downtown Jerusalem. The Alternative Information Center was set up by an Arab physics professor from Bir Zeit University named Ghassan Andoni. It was a precursor for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an extremist pro-terror anti-Israel group, previously going under the name Alternative Tourism. Andoni and his organization represent the Christian communist terrorist wing of the PLO, George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Andoni’s Center has become a major source for anti-Israel propaganda and disinformation.

The AIC has been allowed to grow and prosper as a belligerent Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). The Israeli government did close down the AIC down at one point because of its PFLP connections, but it was quickly reopened. Today, it enjoys massive cooperation with other communist-inspired anti-Israel groups that deign to pass themselves off as “peace groups.” One such group, B’tselem, can be seen featured prominently on the AIC website. For the Israeli-Arab members of these same organizations, the AIC provides cover as a seemingly cooperative venture of Israelis and Palestinians seeking to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But, make no mistake about it: the raison d’etre of the AIC is to abet Palestinian terror groups in their campaign to dismantle Israel.

To this end, assorted tenured and non-tenured radical leftists from Israeli universities collaborate with the AIC. Among these is the notorious anti-Israel extremist Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University, who recently spoke at the AIC about the “economy” of the “occupation.” [Gordon has no training whatsoever in economics.] Both Gordon and the AIC support world boycotts of Israel. They promote the so-called “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions program” against Israeli academic institutions and professors.

Another Israeli academic with intimate ties to the AIC is Shir Hever, who earned his PhD in Economics at the Israeli taxpayer-supported Tel Aviv University. His thesis was titled, “Competing Economic Theories of the Occupation,” and was supervised by the radical post-Zionist semi-Marxist advisers, Philosophy Professor Adi Ophir and Sociologist Yuval Yonay (from Haifa University). Both are anti-Israel radicals.

Hever, on completing his PhD, became a pseudo-academic staff member at the AIC. He now produces a monthly bulletin that he claims will provide “monthly accessible and regular analyses of the socio-economic interests behind the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” with the aim of enhancing “awareness and to contribute to a more informed struggle for social justice and a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis.” The AIC website says Hever’s reports are “a socioeconomic bulletin describing the economic reality of the occupation. The publications attempt to challenge the mainstream economic perspectives of the Israeli and Palestinian economy, and to provide an alternative analysis that can be understood by non-economists.” Translation, Hever is turning out Bash-Israel hate propaganda for the AIC.

Hever employs a staff of anti-Israeli radicals to write these “reports” for him. For the sake of brevity, this analysis will center on only one of Hever’s reports written by another Israeli, Yuri Yacobi Keller, for Hever and the AIC.

That report is little more than a call for the “Academic Boycott of Israel and the Complicity of Academic Institutions in Occupation of Palestinian Territories.” The “report” is a declaration of war against Israel and a pseudo-intellectual analysis to justify and bring pressure to bear to end the “occupation” of the “OPT,” or “occupied Palestinian territory.” It claims that an economic link between Israeli security services and Israeli universities is something that perpetuates the “occupation.” However, the real goal of the report is to demonize Israel’s universities and military.

Just as wars are fought not only directly on the battlefield between soldiers, but through economic warfare, this latest report from the AIC is designed to cut the line of supply to the IDF of educated personnel. Recall that the AIC itself grew out of the PFLP terrorist movement. It still has the destruction of Israel in mind.

It should be noted that the AIC’s activities are funded by the European Union. In addition, Irish, Spanish and Italian anarchist and communist groups provided the funding for Keller’s “research.” These are without exception pro-violence and anti-Semitic groups.

The report purports to “demonstrate that Israeli academic institutions have not opted to take a neutral, political position toward the Israeli occupation but to support the Israeli research forces and polices.” That is because “all Israeli academic institutions are involved in the occupation.” It should be noted that “occupation” does not just mean Judea and Samaria, but whatever the AIC and Keller want it to mean. We suspect they mean all of Israel.

“It should be noted Israeli security forces are prime proponents of the occupation. Therefore any aid given to them is considered here as support for the occupation. No support given to Israeli security agencies can be defined as neutral.”

The report then goes on to condemn any university program conducted in cooperation with the IDF. One might have expected the AIC to like the idea of making IDF officers more educated and exposing them to enlightened thinking. But no, they think this is a reason to boycott those schools.

Curiously, the AIC has nothing at all to say about the Arab colleges in the West Bank and Gaza, which do not admit Jews (and would murder any who wandered in), nor do those Arab schools permit students to write articles critical of the Palestinian “revolution.” The 64 page long AIC report accuses Israel’s institutions of violating academic freedom in the Arab colleges, all because the Israeli schools let soldiers take courses. Meanwhile, it claims that Arab-Israelis are discriminated against by the Israeli universities. In fact those schools discriminate against Jews and grant Arabs affirmative action preferences.

The AIC obsessively refers to Israeli Arabs as “Palestinians.” It complains that IDF veterans sometimes get scholarships and benefits from academic institutions, and forgets to mention that Arabs and Druse who serve in the military get the same things. No one is stopping other Arabs from volunteering to do military service to earn the same perks.

According to the study, “Being an important part of a militarized war-like society, in which any service is a fundamental mainstream consensus, Israeli universities and academic institutes tend to provide preferential treatment to current soldiers, ex-soldiers and reserve soldier students” allowing for “political interference in the academic sphere.” We wonder why they do not call for boycotting US, British and French universities, which similarly grant benefits to army vets.

The AIC report even faults Hebrew University for having a “military medical program,” where medical students can learn to care for wounded soldiers. As it turns out, these same medics also frequently attend wounded Palestinians.

The report argues that the boycott against South Africa in the 1980’s was largely ineffective because South Africa had a ready supply of natural resources. That is why they think a boycott of Israeli universities is a more promising way to bring about Israel’s disappearance. It goes on to rant about Israeli “war crimes.” The Palestinian terrorist groups, however, are guilty of nothing besides insufficient opposition to the Jews.

The report does cite a disparity between Israel’s Arabs being 20% of the population and their smaller percentage of educated Israelis with college degrees. But such disparities between Jews and non-Jews exist in every country in which Jews live.

Nor does this “study” acknowledge that Arab culture, at least Muslim culture, discourages women from attending university. A more pertinent question never asked by the AIC might be, “How many Israeli Jews are attending universities or colleges run by the Palestinian Authority?”

This report also attempts to link Israeli universities and their research and development with Elbit Systems security programs and the RAFAEL anti-missile program. The report justifies a boycott of Israeli universities because Elbit, a leading company in national security systems, has booths at university job fairs, funds certain R&D programs on Israeli campuses and even has some Elbit executives on university trustee boards. Similarly, the report condemns Israeli university involvement with the RAFAEL missile program and deems this a reason to urge an international boycott of the Israeli universities. AIC would much prefer Israel to be defenseless before Iranian and Syrian missiles, not to mention those from the Hamas and the Hezb’Allah.

The AIC report goes beyond that and engages in borderline incitement to violence. It contains the listings of the names of Elbit and RAFAEL executives and where they work on Israeli campuses, thus making these donors to the universities potential targets for terrorism. At the same time, each campus that houses offices or training programs for IDF soldiers, even if just for physical fitness, is identified. Israeli campuses have already been targets of terrorist bombs, a matter the AIC fails to mention.

Instead, the AIC hides its pro-terror sympathies behind the mantel of “academic freedom.” That is a term of which the AIC has no understanding: “Academic freedom was to protect academic institutions from attacks by the likes of non-democratic or totalitarian measures—usually within the state itself—activities much like the treatment of Palestinian universities in the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories) which are therefore the responsibility of Israel.”

The AIC maintains that “Palestinian universities close down because they were assaulted and bombed by aircraft by Israeli forces all throughout the years since 1967” and complains this violates “Palestinian academic freedom.” No mention of the academic freedom of Hebrew University students murdered by terrorist bombs.

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