British university teachers’ union votes for boycott of Israeli academics
Barry Grey | 21.06.2007 17:16 | Anti-racism | Education | Social Struggles
Delegates at the first conference of the newly formed University and College Union (UCU) of Britain voted May 30 to recommend a boycott of Israeli universities and academics. In a 158 to 99 vote, the delegates passed a motion condemning the “complicity of Israeli academia” in the 40-year occupation of Palestinian land and backing a call by Palestinian unions for a “comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli institutions.”
The resolution called on the union, recently formed by a merger of the Association of University Teachers and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, to circulate the boycott proposal to all union branches for “information and discussion.” The head of the UCU, Sally Hunt, who had opposed the measure, said she could not “at this time” call for a vote of the membership, but would hold such a vote at some point in the future.
The boycott recommendation is the culmination of five years of agitation for a boycott of Israeli academics within the British university lecturers’ unions. At various points similar resolutions were passed in the two unions that merged to form the UCU.
A similar boycott resolution is under consideration by the National Union of Journalists and Britain’s largest union, UNISON, a public service union with over 1.3 million members. Boycott initiatives have also been taken by the Irish Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union; the Ontario region of the Canadian Union of Public Employees; and the Congress of South African Unions (COSATU).
The World Socialist Web Site has strongly opposed calls for a boycott of Israeli academics in the past and continues to do so. While such measures are undoubtedly motivated by legitimate outrage over the brutal and illegal repression of the Palestinians by Israel, they are misguided and can only obstruct the development of opposition to the Israeli government and Zionism among Israeli academics, intellectuals and working people.
Instead, they play into the hands of the Israeli state and its backers in Washington and London, sowing political confusion, reinforcing nationalist sentiments among both Palestinians and Jews, and impeding the development of a common struggle for democratic rights and social equality for all the peoples of the Middle East.
By singling out Israeli professors and universities for quarantine and blaming the Israeli people for the crimes of their government—crimes that are no greater than those of the US and British governments in Iraq and elsewhere—the proponents of the boycott inevitably provide cannon fodder for defenders of Israeli policies to level the charge of anti-Semitism. That is precisely the accusation that has been taken up by Israeli officials and their political allies in the US and Britain.
Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs commentator for the New York Times, in a column published July 17 branded the UCU resolution as “rank anti-Semitism.” To the extent that he attempted to justify this smear, his arguments amounted to pointing the finger at Syria’s alleged murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the Sudanese government’s role in Darfur, and asking why the union was not calling for academic boycotts against these countries.
One of those leading the offensive against the British union is Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz. He is calling for a counter-boycott of British academics if the union’s proposal is implemented and threatening to “devastate and bankrupt” those responsible for the measure. “We will isolate [British academia] from the rest of the world,” he declared.
Dershowitz, who previously achieved notoriety for defending the use of torture, led a witch-hunt against professor and author Norman Finkelstein, a critic of Zionism and the misuse of the charge of anti-Semitism against opponents of Israeli policies. As a result of Dershowitz’s efforts, Finkelstein was denied tenure earlier this month at DePaul University in Chicago.
As the London Jewish Chronicle pointed out in a recent article, many of the most prominent figures in the British campaign to boycott Israel are Jewish or Israeli. The newspaper quoted Haim Bresheeth, an Israeli professor of media and culture at the University of East London, who said, “I am Jewish and an Israeli, and I don’t wish harm on either side. But how long can this occupation go on?” He added, “What we are asking for is not violent. It is civil action against a military occupation.”
But Uri Avnery, a founding member of the Gush Shalom peace movement in Israel, warned of the politically detrimental impact of the proposal, saying a general boycott “drives people in Israel into the hands of right-wing demagogues and stigmatizes everybody.”
Avnery’s statement points to the false and reactionary content of the notion that Israeli academics, and by implication the entire Israeli people, are collectively responsible for the crimes of their government.
Like all nations, Israel is riven with deep class antagonisms and social contradictions. They do not find organized political expression due to the absence of a genuinely independent party of the working class. It is this absence of an alternative leadership and program to that of Zionism that explains Israel’s ability to pursue its offensive against the Palestinians despite substantial support amongst Israelis for an end to the conflict.
The political dangers of the boycott campaign’s underlying premises were demonstrated in 2002 when two Israeli academics were removed as contributors to linguistic journals published by Manchester University’s Professor Mona Baker. This decision was made solely on the nationality of the two scholars; one of whom had been chairperson of Amnesty International in Israel and was active in the Peace Now organization.
On all political issues, it is necessary to make a distinction between a government and the broad mass of the population. Boycotts and protest actions against the Israeli government and its backers in Washington and London, such as calls to block the movement of military equipment and isolate the Israeli government, are entirely legitimate. But action against the Israeli people, many of whom oppose the right wing Kadima-Labour coalition headed by Ehud Olmert and are themselves the victims of its economic and social policies, are not.
As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in a statement published in July of 2002: “Measures targeting ordinary Israeli citizens serve to reinforce Zionism’s efforts to inculcate the fatalistic and deeply pessimistic idea that the entire world is against the Jewish people and that the state of Israel offers their only sanctuary.
“A correct course of action for academics opposed to Israeli aggression against the Palestinians would be the very opposite of such a boycott: to strive for maximum engagement with their Israeli and Arab counterparts, to encourage a serious dialogue on the issues posed that cuts across national divisions rather than reinforces them.”
The boycott, by banning collaboration with Israeli academics, some of whom are of world stature, would prevent the kind of international work that is the hallmark of science today. It is impossible to carry out serious scientific work, be it for a cancer cure or space research, on a national basis, as the international character, composition and activities of those universities at the forefront of scientific and intellectual research demonstrate.
Nor can the struggle of the Palestinian people be advanced by excluding Israeli scholars, some of whom have made important contributions to the understanding of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their work should be critically addressed and debated, not subject to censorship that would push scholars closer to the Zionist state rather than encourage independent thought.
Underlying the academic boycott campaign is a demoralized outlook—a form of outraged liberalism that sees no way of convincing the Israeli people to break from the policies of their ruling elite and take an independent road. Having written off the Israeli working class, the boycott proponents seek to vent their political frustration by lashing out at ordinary Israeli citizens.
This outlook is bound up with support for a nationalist program, in the form of the so-called “two-state” policy, i.e., a Palestinian state in the occupied territories alongside Israel. Recent events in Gaza have underscored the unviable and futile character of this program, and, indeed, any policy that starts from an acceptance of the imperialist set-up in the Middle East and the permanence of bourgeois regimes, Israeli and Arab alike.
The World Socialist Web Site is implacably opposed to Zionism. But we do so based on the program of socialist internationalism and through the methods of the class struggle.
We seek to convince Israeli workers and intellectuals that the interests of the Jewish people lie not in the militaristic policies of the Israeli ruling elite, but in the creation of a society based on full democratic rights and social equality for Arabs and Jews alike, in the form of the United Socialist States of the Middle East.
In the struggle against Zionism, only those methods are permissible that contribute to the development of socialist consciousness and facilitate the independent political mobilization and unity of Arab and Jewish workers against their common enemy.
The boycott recommendation is the culmination of five years of agitation for a boycott of Israeli academics within the British university lecturers’ unions. At various points similar resolutions were passed in the two unions that merged to form the UCU.
A similar boycott resolution is under consideration by the National Union of Journalists and Britain’s largest union, UNISON, a public service union with over 1.3 million members. Boycott initiatives have also been taken by the Irish Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union; the Ontario region of the Canadian Union of Public Employees; and the Congress of South African Unions (COSATU).
The World Socialist Web Site has strongly opposed calls for a boycott of Israeli academics in the past and continues to do so. While such measures are undoubtedly motivated by legitimate outrage over the brutal and illegal repression of the Palestinians by Israel, they are misguided and can only obstruct the development of opposition to the Israeli government and Zionism among Israeli academics, intellectuals and working people.
Instead, they play into the hands of the Israeli state and its backers in Washington and London, sowing political confusion, reinforcing nationalist sentiments among both Palestinians and Jews, and impeding the development of a common struggle for democratic rights and social equality for all the peoples of the Middle East.
By singling out Israeli professors and universities for quarantine and blaming the Israeli people for the crimes of their government—crimes that are no greater than those of the US and British governments in Iraq and elsewhere—the proponents of the boycott inevitably provide cannon fodder for defenders of Israeli policies to level the charge of anti-Semitism. That is precisely the accusation that has been taken up by Israeli officials and their political allies in the US and Britain.
Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs commentator for the New York Times, in a column published July 17 branded the UCU resolution as “rank anti-Semitism.” To the extent that he attempted to justify this smear, his arguments amounted to pointing the finger at Syria’s alleged murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the Sudanese government’s role in Darfur, and asking why the union was not calling for academic boycotts against these countries.
One of those leading the offensive against the British union is Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz. He is calling for a counter-boycott of British academics if the union’s proposal is implemented and threatening to “devastate and bankrupt” those responsible for the measure. “We will isolate [British academia] from the rest of the world,” he declared.
Dershowitz, who previously achieved notoriety for defending the use of torture, led a witch-hunt against professor and author Norman Finkelstein, a critic of Zionism and the misuse of the charge of anti-Semitism against opponents of Israeli policies. As a result of Dershowitz’s efforts, Finkelstein was denied tenure earlier this month at DePaul University in Chicago.
As the London Jewish Chronicle pointed out in a recent article, many of the most prominent figures in the British campaign to boycott Israel are Jewish or Israeli. The newspaper quoted Haim Bresheeth, an Israeli professor of media and culture at the University of East London, who said, “I am Jewish and an Israeli, and I don’t wish harm on either side. But how long can this occupation go on?” He added, “What we are asking for is not violent. It is civil action against a military occupation.”
But Uri Avnery, a founding member of the Gush Shalom peace movement in Israel, warned of the politically detrimental impact of the proposal, saying a general boycott “drives people in Israel into the hands of right-wing demagogues and stigmatizes everybody.”
Avnery’s statement points to the false and reactionary content of the notion that Israeli academics, and by implication the entire Israeli people, are collectively responsible for the crimes of their government.
Like all nations, Israel is riven with deep class antagonisms and social contradictions. They do not find organized political expression due to the absence of a genuinely independent party of the working class. It is this absence of an alternative leadership and program to that of Zionism that explains Israel’s ability to pursue its offensive against the Palestinians despite substantial support amongst Israelis for an end to the conflict.
The political dangers of the boycott campaign’s underlying premises were demonstrated in 2002 when two Israeli academics were removed as contributors to linguistic journals published by Manchester University’s Professor Mona Baker. This decision was made solely on the nationality of the two scholars; one of whom had been chairperson of Amnesty International in Israel and was active in the Peace Now organization.
On all political issues, it is necessary to make a distinction between a government and the broad mass of the population. Boycotts and protest actions against the Israeli government and its backers in Washington and London, such as calls to block the movement of military equipment and isolate the Israeli government, are entirely legitimate. But action against the Israeli people, many of whom oppose the right wing Kadima-Labour coalition headed by Ehud Olmert and are themselves the victims of its economic and social policies, are not.
As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in a statement published in July of 2002: “Measures targeting ordinary Israeli citizens serve to reinforce Zionism’s efforts to inculcate the fatalistic and deeply pessimistic idea that the entire world is against the Jewish people and that the state of Israel offers their only sanctuary.
“A correct course of action for academics opposed to Israeli aggression against the Palestinians would be the very opposite of such a boycott: to strive for maximum engagement with their Israeli and Arab counterparts, to encourage a serious dialogue on the issues posed that cuts across national divisions rather than reinforces them.”
The boycott, by banning collaboration with Israeli academics, some of whom are of world stature, would prevent the kind of international work that is the hallmark of science today. It is impossible to carry out serious scientific work, be it for a cancer cure or space research, on a national basis, as the international character, composition and activities of those universities at the forefront of scientific and intellectual research demonstrate.
Nor can the struggle of the Palestinian people be advanced by excluding Israeli scholars, some of whom have made important contributions to the understanding of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their work should be critically addressed and debated, not subject to censorship that would push scholars closer to the Zionist state rather than encourage independent thought.
Underlying the academic boycott campaign is a demoralized outlook—a form of outraged liberalism that sees no way of convincing the Israeli people to break from the policies of their ruling elite and take an independent road. Having written off the Israeli working class, the boycott proponents seek to vent their political frustration by lashing out at ordinary Israeli citizens.
This outlook is bound up with support for a nationalist program, in the form of the so-called “two-state” policy, i.e., a Palestinian state in the occupied territories alongside Israel. Recent events in Gaza have underscored the unviable and futile character of this program, and, indeed, any policy that starts from an acceptance of the imperialist set-up in the Middle East and the permanence of bourgeois regimes, Israeli and Arab alike.
The World Socialist Web Site is implacably opposed to Zionism. But we do so based on the program of socialist internationalism and through the methods of the class struggle.
We seek to convince Israeli workers and intellectuals that the interests of the Jewish people lie not in the militaristic policies of the Israeli ruling elite, but in the creation of a society based on full democratic rights and social equality for Arabs and Jews alike, in the form of the United Socialist States of the Middle East.
In the struggle against Zionism, only those methods are permissible that contribute to the development of socialist consciousness and facilitate the independent political mobilization and unity of Arab and Jewish workers against their common enemy.
Barry Grey
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Go ahead, Brits: throw away your Israeli products and innovations
21.06.2007 19:50
Over 51 Nobel Prize laureates have signed a petition presented by Israel Professor Aaron Ciechanover, which directly confronts the British plan to boycott Israel academia. The petition protesting the British boycott against Israel will have more signatures added as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel and the Israel Foreign Ministry aid the process.
"We, Nobel Prize laureates, condemn the UCU's shameful decision to boycott contact and exchange of information with Israeli educators and academic institutions," stated the petition.
The petition condemns Britain's University and College Union's proposed academic boycott against Israel. The petition also confronts a boycott against buying Israel goods proposed by the British National Union of Journalists and UNISON, the largest trade union in the UK.
If the British truly take their boycott against Israel seriously, it could wreak havoc on England's economy.
Most of the Windows operating systems on British computers were developed by Microsoft - Israel. The Pentium NMX Chip technology was designed at Intel in Israel. Both the Pentium 4 microprocessor and the Centrum processor were entirely designed, developed, and produced in Israel. C'mon you brave Brits, throw away those "Israel Inside" computers!
Writing in the June 17 issue of the New York Times, respected columnist Tom Friedman, labeled the British boycott action against Israel universities as ?anti-Semitism.?
Friedman?s views were written in the context of his participation in the annual conferral of doctoral and honorary doctoral degrees at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. In that ceremony, held on June 3, Friedman was one of eight distinguished figures to receive an honorary Ph.D.
Among the 305 students who received the regular Ph.D.?s, wrote Friedman, were a number of Arab students. One of those female students was wearing an Islamic veil, something she could do at the Hebrew University in Israel but not in France, he noted.
"Arab families cheered unabashedly when their sons and daughters received their Hebrew U. Ph.D. diplomas, just like the Jewish parents," wrote Friedman.
Yet, while this was happening, he noted, the University and College Union in Britain was calling on its members to consider a boycott of Israel universities, accusing them of being complicit in Israel?s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
"How crazy is this, Friedman wondered. "Israel?s premier university is giving Ph.D.s to Arab students, two of whom were from East Jerusalem while some far-left British academics are calling for a boycott of Israel universities."
If these academics really cared about Palestinians they would call for other steps, such as enabling more Palestinian students to study on full scholarships in Britain or sending British visiting professors to Palestinians universities. "That?s what people who actually care about Palestinians would do. But just singling out Israel universities for a boycott, in the face of all the other madness in the Middle East -- that?s what anti-Semites would do," concluded Friedman.
In a related statement regarding the boycott issue, Hebrew University President Prof. Menachem Magidor said that "there is no place for an academic boycott. The Hebrew University is an example of a pluralistic institution that accepts students exclusively on the basis of academic excellence, without any distinctions of religion or race."
"Hundreds of Arab students study at the Hebrew University, ranging from undergraduates to advanced students. The University also has ties in many areas with Palestinian researchers and with academics from neighboring and other states, and it will continue to do so," Magidor said.
Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard Law School professor who has been called one of the "most distinguished defenders of individual rights," comments on the British boycott against Israel:
"The utter hypocrisy of the British National Union of Journalists, which recently voted to boycott only Israel, has now become evident in the face of the silence over the recent move by Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez to suppress dissent by the media in his leftist regime. General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan too has now imposed massive press censorship. In many other of the hard left favored countries -- Cuba, China, Iran, North Korea and Zimbabwe - suppression of the press is routine and imprisonment of journalist is common. But there is not a peep about these countries from the British National Union of Journalists who seem to admire tyranny and condemn democracy and openness."
"Only Israel, which has among the freest presses of the world, is being targeted for sanctions. Even Arab and Muslim journalists have more freedom of the press in Israel than in any Arab or Muslim nation. While Palestinian terrorist groups murder, kidnap and threaten journalists, the British Union exempts the Palestinian authority, run by the censorious Hamas from its journalistic sanctions. The reason is obvious. The British Union cares less about journalists or freedom of the press than it does about blindly condemning the Jewish state."
Dershowitz adds: "The same can be said about the British University and College Union which has voted to move forward with the boycott against only Israel academics. Israel has more academic freedom -- for Jews and Muslims alike -- than any Arab or Muslim nation and than the vast majority of countries in the world. Israeli scientists have developed, on a per capita basis, more life-saving medical technologies than any nation in the world. Yet the British Union has singled out Israel alone for boycott. Again, this has nothing to do with protecting academic freedom or scientific inquiry. It has everything to do with anti-Israel bigotry. Now academics around the world are fighting back against this British bigotry. Led by more than a dozen Nobel Prize winners, thousands of American academics have signed a petition declaring themselves to be honorary Israelis for purposes of any academic boycott. They have pledged to refuse to participate in any events from which Israeli academics are boycotted. Any academic who wishes to join this moral response to an immoral boycott can email
OK. So we in Israel understand that some British leftists are ticked off at Israel, and in love with the Palestinians. That's fine with us in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. But if you're going to boycott Israel, at least do it properly!
Check all your medications. Make sure that you do not have tablets, drops lotions, etc., made by Abic or Teva in Israel. It may mean that you will suffer from colds and flu this winter but, hey, that's a small price for you to pay in your righteous campaign against Israel, isn't it?
An Israel company has developed a simple blood test that distinguishes between mild and more severe cases of Multiple Sclerosis. So, if you know anyone suffering from MS, tell them to ignore the Israel patent that may, more accurately, diagnose their symptoms.
An Israel-made device helps restore the use of paralyzed hands. This device electrically stimulates the hand muscles, providing hope to millions of stroke sufferers and victims of spinal injuries. If you wish to remove this hope of a better quality of life to these people, go boycott Israel.
Young children with breathing problems will soon be sleeping more soundly, thanks to a new Israel device called the Child Hood. This innovation replaces the inhalation mask with an improved drug delivery system that provides relief for child and parent Please tell anxious mothers that they shouldn't use this device because of your passionate cause.
These are just a few examples of how people have benefited medically from the Israel know-how you wish to block. Boycotts often affect research. A new research center in Israel hopes to throw light on brain disorders such as depression and Alzheimer's disease. The Joseph Sangol Neuroscience Centre in the Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer Hospital, aims to bring thousands of scientists and doctors to focus on brain research.
A researcher at Israel 's Ben Gurion University has succeeded in creating human monoclonal antibodies which can neutralize the highly contagious smallpox virus without inducing the dangerous side effects of the existing vaccine.
Two Israelis received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Doctors Ciechanover and Hershko's research and discovery of one of the human cells most important cyclical processes will lead the way to DNA repair, control of newly produced proteins, and immune defence systems.
The Movement Disorder Surgery program at Israel's Hadassah Medical Centre has successfully eliminated the physical manifestations of Parkinson's disease in a select group of patients with a deep brain stimulation technique.
For women who undergo hysterectomies each year for the treatment of uterine fibroids, the development in Israel of the Ex Ablate 2000 System is a welcome breakthrough, offering a non-invasive alternative to surgery.
Israel is developing a nose drop that will provide a five year flu vaccine.
These are just a few of the projects that you can help stop with the British boycott of Israel. But let's not get too obsessed with ducal research, there are other ways you can make a personal sacrifice with your anti-Israel boycott.
And you must get rid of your cellular phone. Cell phone technology was also developed in Israel by Motorola, which has its biggest development center here. Most of the latest technology in your mobile phone was developed by scientists in Israel.
Feeling unsettled? You should be. Part of your personal security rests with Israel inventiveness, borne out of our urgent necessity to protect and defend our lives from the terrorists you support.
British citizens should be aware that Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.
Israel produces more scientific and academic papers per capita - 109 per 10,000 - than any other nation.
Israel has more museums per capita. Israel has the second highest publication of new books per capita.
Relative to population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. These immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom or expression, economic opportunity, and quality of life. They get it.
Israel is the only country in the world which had a net gain in the number of trees last year.
While the British academic union's boycott policy forges ahead, the covert campaign to secretly carry out acts of discrimination against Jews in UK universities is also gathering pace.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called on leaders of labor unions from around the world to speak out against a move by UNISON, Britain's largest public services union with 1.3 million employees, to support a cultural and economic boycott of Israel.
ADL called the boycott resolution, approved today at the union's National Delegate Conference, a "biased and bigoted" attempt to unfairly punish Israel while ignoring Palestinian terrorism, rejectionism and civil strife.
So go ahead, take an example from your fellow Brit, Borat. Spit at the next Israeli you meet. Be sure not to get too close to the horns coming out of his or her head. Or the claws. Take the British boycott against Israel seriously and turn off your computer. Throw away your mobile phones. Do without Israeli medicines health innovations.
The Palestinians are suffering, mostly at their own hands, so why shouldn't you?
After all, you can replace all of these items with technology from Palestine. If you call rocks, guns, suicide bomber vests, Katusha and Kassam rockets technology, that is.
Joel Leyden2
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