Letter from top oncologist

Letter to the AUT director

Dear Ms Hunt,

Re; the AUT boycott of Israeli Universities

I write to you more in sorrow than in anger. For the last three years I have felt the need to unburden myself of the accumulation of anger from constantly seeing Israel demonised by the Western liberal establishment and media and the recent AUT boycott has made me spill my tears of frustration on to this page.

Early in my career I worked as a young surgeon in Israel and learnt first hand about the tragedy of the Israel/ Palestinian conflict, often repairing the physical trauma of victims from both sides. Since then I've enjoyed an academic career in this country serving as Professor of Surgery at three of London's great academic institutions: Initially at Kings College London (1980-1990) then at the Royal Marsden Hospital and ICR (1990-1995) and finally at University College London (1995-2005). In every post I’ve held I've done my best to contribute to academic freedom and made it my business to recruit post-graduate students from Israel and the Arab Nations. In this way friendships based on mutual respect flowered whatever the initial suspicions. Wisdom and love will always conquer ignorance and hate. I have recently retired but continue my academic links with UCL and some Israeli University. Of course I am a Jew, if you haven't guessed already, but I hope that won't deter you from reading this letter.

I am British by accident of birth thanks to the fact that both my sets of grandparents escaped the pogroms in Russia and Poland, by fleeing to London early in the last century. This country has been good to our family, providing us with free health care and a free education that allowed my three brothers and I to reach the highest levels of academia.

My youngest brother David, three years behind me in medical school, went on to become Professor of Paediatrics at Bristol University and then President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH).

He died tragically; four years ago whilst leading a charity bike ride for the children of Kosovo, and is buried in Rosh Pinah overlooking the Sea of Galilee in Northern Israel. His family’s choice of this burial site reflects the spiritual pull of Israel for many Western Jews. His last act was to establish a children's clinic in Gaza for the training of Palestinian doctors. This project amongst others is continued by the RCPCH in the name of the David Baum International Fund (DBIF). This act also reflects the Jewish angst about the suffering of the Palestinians.

In May last year I was a guest of the University in Haifa, along with a small faculty from the USA, for a workshop on the prevention of cancer. Cancer epidemiology is one of the strengths in Israeli medical research. Haifa is a beautiful city dominated by the Bahai temple and gardens occupying the slopes of Mount Carmel. I’m sure you would approve of the Bahai belief system because of its tolerance and universal appeal. The Bahai's elected to set up their HQ there because, as a breakaway sect of Islam they were persecuted in all Islamic countries. For hundreds of years the Arab and Jewish population have got on well in Haifa, with many joint projects and an Arab Mayor quite recently. This peaceful co-existence has been shattered by the second intifada.

From Haifa we were driven down the axis of the country just to the West of the new barrier that separates the disputed territories (vide infra), from Israel proper. 95% of its length it is a wire fence with electronic surveillance devises, the remainder is made up of ugly concrete walls that are shown on TV. No one mentions that this is to stop the snipers firing on traffic on the A6 motorway from high-rise apartments that abut the road.

No doubt some sections of the wall have caused hardship and a recent appeal by Palestinians to the Israeli high court was successful and sections of the wall will be re-routed. If there were any Jews left in Arab lands I can't imagine the reverse holding true, but then they were all expelled after the 1948 war, a silent 800,000 that the world press never acknowledges. The fence works and the terrorist atrocities in Northern Israel have been stifled. Compare the speed with which the UN condemned the building of this fence that keeps out the Arab suicide bombers with their ineffectual posturing over the genocide of the black African minority by murderous Arab militia sponsored by Sudan in the Darfur region.

Having reached Beer-Sheba we turned east to the Dead Sea. Along the way we saw many new villages housing the Bedouin tribes. Their romantic nomadic life was in fact brutal and short and although they maintain all their traditions of hospitality in their black tents, their health and quality of life has been improved by settling them on pasture- land with free schooling and health care. The Bedu are loyal Israeli citizens and even serve in the Israel Defence Force (IDF).

The ride down to the Dead Sea never fails to strike awe in my heart but the effect is then spoiled when you arrive at the luxury hotels at Ein Bokkek close to the biblical site of Sodom. Here the visiting faculty spoke to a conference of about 200 Israeli and Arab doctors. My role was to discuss the pros and cons of screening for breast and prostate cancer.

After the meeting a group of us travelled 20 Km North to Massada, the famous archaeological site that marks Herod’s winter Palace and the last stand of the Jewish resistance to the Roman occupation after the destruction of the second Temple in 70CE. On this barren plateau 1,000 meters above the Dead Sea the view looking east to the mountains of Edom is breathtaking. You can still see the Roman siege wall and pray in the oldest synagogue in the world. You may know the story of how after a three year siege, the 900 survivors committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans who persecuted them because of their faith. For this reason Massada has become a symbol of resistance in Israel and the graduation ceremony for certain brigades of the IDF takes place on Massada, where they pledge, 'Shaynit M'zada Lo Tipol', Massada will not fall a second time. For the likes of you and I, this kind of heroic militarism is embarrassing, after all I never let my kids and grandchildren play with guns and toy tanks, but we enjoy security apart from the odd threat of an IRA bomb. In Israel though this pledge to self-defence is not paranoia, because for more than 50 years the combined armies of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Egypt have had various goes at taking Massada a second time. Fortunately Egypt and Jordan have negotiated peace whilst Iraq has other problems on its mind at the moment.

At the base of the mountain is a beautiful new museum that describes the archaeological history of the area and the history of its excavation. In the latter section I was almost moved to tears to see a picture of myself aged 27, resplendent in a chequered keffiya and a red beard, at the time I was acting as deputy medical officer on the dig during the winter season 1963/64.

Shortly after gaining my primary FRCS whilst working in the A & E department of the Birmingham General Hospital, I went to work in Israel. I was motivated by a lust for adventure, a need for surgical experience in the field and as a visionary Zionist. Amongst the chattering classes Zionism is a dirty word stigmatised by the infamous resolution in the UN that equated Zionism with Racism in 1971. To the disgust of the Arab lobby the UN has now rescinded that declaration. Zionism is simply an expression of a people's yearning to find security in a land they can call their own, after two millennia of persecution. There are secular and religious Zionists who may be right wing or left wing. I would classify myself as of the left leaning secular variety. The accusation of racism can be refuted, simply by noting the treatment of the Bedu described above. I was posted to a large community hospital in Afula serving the Jezreal valley and caring for the needs of a mixed bunch of secular Jewish Kibbutzniks, Religious Jews from S’fad, Moslem Arabs from the local villages and Christian Arabs from Nazareth; an exotic brew of folk who were all treated with equal respect or occasionally equal rudeness! Many of the doctors were Arabs trained in Israel and there was some intermarriage on the campus. During one Easter holiday I was seconded to the Scottish Mission Hospital in Nazareth to allow the only surgeon on the staff a chance to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. I also witnessed first hand the trauma inflicted on the local farming community by snipers firing from the Golan Heights of Syria and the occasional fedayin raid.

I was even called upon once to give evidence to a UN monitoring group.

So what did this experience teach me, apart from some unique experience with trauma surgery? Firstly Israel has always been under attack from its foundation. Secondly this was nothing to do with the plight of the Palestinians under Israeli “occupation”, because in those days Gaza was controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan. We never heard of 'the occupied territories' until after 1967 and any attempt at self-determination by the Palestinians, was crushed by the Jordanian army with not a whimper from the UN, an adumbration of the Darfur situation today. Thirdly Arabs and Jews can live together in harmony with universal suffrage and equal access to education, health provision and the law.

To this day there are Arab MKs (MPs). Of course some citizens are more equal than others as in all countries, but this was nothing to do with racism but more to do with political affiliation. Like Tony's cronies in the UK today I learnt about the advantages of belonging to old Labour in Israel 40 years ago. In contrast all Arab countries wish to be judenrhein, just like Nazi Germany. Although I hate the ideology of some of the west bank Jewish settlers, what’s wrong with Jewish villages in a future Palestine?

Three years after I returned home, Israel won a spectacular victory over the combined might of four Arab armies (the 6 day war). In so doing they found themselves occupying the Gaza strip and the west bank. The victors, Israel, sued for peace, offering back these disputed territories, in exchange for recognition of the existence of the State of Israel; the defeated would not accept these terms and Israel ever since has been lumbered with a population who hates them and whose schools teach hatred and glorify the suicide bombers. Their grievance? : they want back all the disputed territories that from the 12thC belonged to the Ottoman Empire, from 1918-1948 belonged to the British Mandate and from 1948-1967 were occupied by Jordan and Egypt. At the time of the Oslo accord 3 years ago, Israel was prepared to offer them 95% of their demands.

Returning to the present. At the end of my meeting, my wife and I travelled north again along the shores of the Dead Sea and past the oasis of Ein Gedi, before turning east to begin the long assent to Jerusalem. One wrong turning on this route and we could have ended up in Jericho or Hebron, not safe venues for a middle aged Jewish couple. There still is a Jewish enclave in Hebron referred to as 'settlers' who live in a state of siege.

Yet there has been a Jewish community here since biblical times as this is the burial site of the Patriarchs. The defensive shield around this 'outpost' is again not a sign of paranoia, as Hebron has been the site of massacres in the recent past.

Our last night in Israel was spent with friends in a lovely suburb of the new city. I defy anyone not to get a frisson of excitement on entering Jerusalem; a spiritual experience for those of a religious frame of mind and a sense of history on visiting the crucible of the main monotheistic faith systems for the secular.

From their balcony we could view a magnificent modern shopping mall with a high tech industrial zone nearby. Straight ahead is a mosque and a group of Arab houses built illegally i.e. without planning permission. The local authority would be within their right to pull them down but the risk of world condemnation wouldn’t make it worth the effort. Further off to the southeast is the suburb of Jerusalem Gilo, just seen through the refraction of the sun through the dust blowing up from the desert. This is described as an 'illegal settlement' yet it has planning permission and no one is quite sure what particular point of law has been infringed. We watched the sun set over our gin and tonics our hearts leaping whenever we heard the siren of a speeding ambulance. Fortunately on that day the suicide bombers had missed their buses because of the inconvenience of a wall they could not scale. Such is the world we live in!

I speak of that which I know and I describe that which I have seen.

If you have read this far I will be pleased although somewhat surprised but if nothing else it's been a catharsis and I feel a lot better now.

Yours Sincerely,

Mike Baum

p.s. I would greatly appreciate it if you added me to your black list as someone who co-operates with the University in Haifa, I would consider this a badge of honour.

See alsohttp://www.nationalreview.com/comment/ottolenghi200505020806.asp