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Great Britain is bypassing its own arms embargo on Israel by the planned sale of components for the F-16 fighter jets through American intermediaries.
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| By Ellis Shuman July 7, 2002 |
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British supermarkets have been instructed to clearly identify imports from the West Bank and Gaza as not being "produce of Israel." A University of Manchester professor dismissed two colleagues because they were Israeli citizens. But despite its ongoing arms embargo against Israel, Britain's Ministry of Defense plans to sell F-16 components to Israel through intermediaries in the United States.
Great Britain is bypassing its own arms embargo on Israel by the planned sale of components for the F-16 fighter jets through American intermediaries, The Observer reported today. Britain's Ministry of Defense has been pushing for the Israel deal to go through, despite opposition from Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt, who fears the negative message such a deal would send to Arab countries and the rest of the European Union.
The F-16 parts include sophisticated navigation and targeting equipment, allowing pilots to see positional and weapons information displayed in front of each eye without having to look at separate dials, the paper said. Hewitt will back the deal as long as the rules on future contracts to third countries are clear.
Ministry of Defense (MoD) officials admit that the deal is part of their attempts to get U.S. military business. "We have to get as much of that business as possible and we cannot be prescriptive on what we will and won't sell them," one MoD source told The Observer. "The British defense industry employs tens of thousands of people. We have to show we are a reliable supplier of high-tech defense equipment."
Guidelines issued by the British government in 1997 stated that the country would "not issue an export license if there is a clearly identifiable risk that the intended recipient would use the proposed export aggressively against another country."
In May, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw demanded an explanation from Israel about the use of British military equipment in tanks and attack helicopters targeting the "occupied territories." In June, Britain's Department of Trade and Industry refused to grant an export license for sporting ammunition needed by Israel's national shooting team.
West Bank exports not 'produce of Israel'
British supermarkets were instructed last week to clearly identify produce from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. "Produce from these occupied territories ought not to be labeled 'Produce of Israel,' because the territories are not recognized as part of Israel," said a statement issued by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The directive was largely symbolic, The Guardian reported, as the value of annual exports from the settlements to the whole of the EU amounts to $30 million.
The European Union recently stiffened its rules of origin, making goods from West Bank and Gaza settlements subject to customs duty, unlike exports from Israel proper.
Israeli academics sacked because of their nationality
Mona Baker, a professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, admitted on Saturday that she had dismissed Dr. Miriam Shlesinger and Prof. Gideon Toury because they were Israeli citizens.
"I deplore the Israeli state," Baker told The Telegraph. "Miriam knew that was how I felt and that they would have to go because of the current situation."
Baker asked Shlesinger and Toury to resign from the boards of two academic journals she owns - "The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication" and "Translation Studies Abstracts." The two had worked for the periodicals for three years.
Shlesinger, a respected American-born senior lecturer in translation studies at Bar-Ilan University, is also a former chairman of Amnesty International in Israel and has criticized her country's policies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But because she lives and works in Israel, Baker dismissed her.
"I am not against Israeli nationals per se; it is Israeli institutions as part of the Israeli state which I absolutely deplore," Baker said.
The dismissals raised no public opposition from within British universities, The Telegraph reported. But Prof. Stephen Greenblatt, a world-renowned Shakespeare scholar at Harvard University, has led international criticism of Baker's actions. "An attack on cultural co-operation, with a particular group singled out for collective punishment violates the essential spirit of scholarly freedom and the pursuit of truth," he wrote in an open letter to Baker.
"The pursuit of knowledge does not suddenly come to a halt at national borders. This does not mean that serious scholars must be indifferent to the world's murderous struggles, but it does mean that they are committed to an ongoing, frank conversation... [that] often includes passionate disagreement," Greenblatt wrote.
Editor's note: Professor Mona Baker, from the University of Manchester, is a native of Egypt who has lived in England for 20 years. She can be contacted at: mona.baker@umist.ac.uk.
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