As my readers know, I like to expose the stupid things published about Israel in academic papers.
One recent publication was by Saad Amira, of the University of Basel, Switzerland, whose abstract for "
The slow violence of Israeli settler-colonialism and the political ecology of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank" in "Settler Colonial Studies" includes,
Here I focus on three aspects of the slow violence of settler colonialism and its relationship to political ecology: the unleashing of wild boars into Palestinian villages and the decimation of seasonal agriculture, the dumping of sewage waste of Israeli settlements onto Palestinian villages, and the curtailment of indigenous centered modes of production and mobility.
When he
proposed this research, he also added something about "reinforcing notions of Patriarchal development" but inexplicably that line of research did not make it into his final paper, perhaps because it would have softened his anti-Israel lies.
But the proposal included the "wild boars" theme.
Now think about this for a second. If someone proposes a doctoral thesis based on the truth of wild and false rumors about Israel, and it gets approved by their supervisor, what are the chances that this "academic researcher" will be objective when they write the paper itself? Indeed, the proposal and the abstract are very similar. The conclusions were drawn before the research.
Which is how 99% of "social science" works.
It turns out that this isn't the only academic fraud who mindlessly repeats the most insane antisemitic conspiracy theories, that religious Jewish settlers or the IDF are raising non-kosher and untamable wild boars to release them in Palestinian Arab farms.
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In DA Jaber's "
Settler colonialism and ecocide: case study of AlKhader, Palestine" - also in Settler Colonial Studies - we are told, "Qasim, an environmental activist, discussed the actions of settlers that cause the deterioration of agricultural lands. For example, the releasing of rabbits and gazelles, which are not native to the agricultural lands of Al-Khader, onto farmlands, ruining the crops, in particular grapevines and Armenian cucumber plants." The footnote says, ". For more on settlers releasing animals on Palestinian agriculture destroying crops and, at times, harming Palestinians, see Jared Eglan, Beasts of War: The Militarization of Animals (Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press, 2015), 99; Maāan News Agency ā10-year-old Palestinian Girl Attacked by Wild Boar Near Jeninā, May 2017."
Waziyatawin writes in "
Malice Enough in their Hearts and Courage Enough in Ours: Reflections on US Indigenous and Palestinian Experiences under Occupation," Settler Colonial Studies (2012) that "people of Awarta described the theft of their sheep and goat herds, the confiscation, theft or destruction of their olive trees and the introduction of destructive wild boars" by settlers.
I only saw skepticism in a 2019 book, "
Companions in Conflict: Animals in Occupied Palestine," by Penny Johnson, who realized immediately that the "settlers spread wild boar" story was insane:
If only most academics has any intellectual honesty as Johnson does.
I wonder if any academic press would allow this research into the bias of academic research to be published.
(full article online)
Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.
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