Attorney Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, a colonel in the IDF, will teach a course in international law, despite protests by extremist lecturers and criticism voiced by the Ha'aretz newspaper. The opposition to Sharvit-Baruch stems from the fact that she heads the IDF's International Law Department.
Ha'aretz published a report according to which Sharvit-Baruch and her legal department's staff gave the stamp of approval to the IDF's operations in Gaza, including a bombing of a Hamas police course graduation ceremony on the first day of Operation 'Cast Lead.'
Several lecturers wrote letters to the Dean of the Law Faculty, Prof. Hanoch Dagan, in which they demanded that Sharvit-Baruch's appointment be canceled. Ha'aretz's editorial also said the appointment was an unworthy one.
'McCarthyist'
Other opinion pieces – including one by Prof. Shlomo Avineri in Ha'aretz – criticized the attempts to prevent Sharvit-Baruch from teaching at TAU as “McCarthyist.” Avineri cited famous cases of ultra-leftist utterances by Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz – who coined the phrase “Judeo-Nazis” to describe IDF soldiers, and another lecturer who compared Jewish youths in Judea and Samaria to the Hitler Youth. He also noted that a senior professor at Yale University determined, when he worked for the Justice Department, that the Geneva Convention does not apply to the U.S. actions in Afghanistan – “yet no one is calling for him to be fired.”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak also came out in Sharvit-Baruch's defense, and told the university that he regards the attempts to remove Sharvit-Baruch “very seriously”. He said that responsibility for the IDF's actions in Gaza rests with him as Defense Minister.
The university decided Sunday to ignore the demands to keep Sharvit-Baruch from teaching, and explained that “pluralism is the heart and soul of TA University, part of its raison d'etre and its important social role. The university has a clear policy and it will not surrender to pressure from any side.”
The university said it does not intend to examine or assess its lecturers' legal, political and moral stands as long as they are legal and within the accepted bounds of democratic societies.