The Warped Mirror: 'Boycott Israel' bigotry

It may seem quite unusual that union members would want to boycott their colleagues in another country, but some members of Britain's largest academic trade union, the University and College Union (UCU), are apparently resolved to make it something of a venerable tradition to call for a boycott of their colleagues in Israel at their annual conference. As The Jerusalem Post reported last week, the UCU once again presented and passed a motion that urges union members "to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating." Since it is "Israeli colleagues" who will have to prove to their British counterparts that they are "morally kosher", presumably British academics will be equally suspicious about Israeli Jewish academics and Israeli Arab academics - perhaps the whole exercise is about something like "non-discriminatory discrimination"?

Unfortunately, Israeli universities, as the targets of the boycott initiatives, have largely failed to respond adequately to the potential threat they are facing;  instead, the strongest opposition to the British boycott enthusiasts actually comes from the ranks of British academics. Indeed, last year, the UCU's own lawyers argued that a boycott against Israeli academics would be unlawful and that therefore a motion calling for such a boycott that was passed at last year’s conference could not be implemented.

In addition, the most powerful arguments against initiatives to boycott Israel have been made available by Engage, a British website specifically "created to arm people with arguments and facts that they could use to counter the propaganda of the boycott campaign". Importantly, Engage is a left-wing website and can therefore counter the boycott enthusiasts on their own political turf. One of the central convictions motivating the people behind Engage is the belief that "the demonization of Israel weakens the Israeli peace movement and pushes Israelis who are for peace into the arms of the Israeli right. It is obvious that a boycott of Israeli Jews, and only Israeli Jews, will be understood by Israelis as a racist attack on them - and boycotts therefore strengthen Israeli hawks at the expense of the peace movement."

The advocates of a boycott against Israeli academics have reacted to the sharp criticism leveled against them by claiming that "we have passed a motion to provide solidarity with the Palestinians, not to boycott Israel." But one union member who was present when the motion in question was passed came away with a distinctly different impression:

Motion 25 was passed, by a huge majority. There was a real, palpable desire in the meeting to take some action against Israel. An otherwise rather somnolent audience woke up at the first mention of Palestine, and applauded every suggestion that action should be taken against Israel. A congress which had just passed very moderate motions on Burma and Zimbabwe and Sudan, about solidarity with trade unions and asylum seekers, and putting pressure on governments, quite clearly felt that these measures weren't sufficient for Israel's crimes: that for Israeli academics, nothing but punishment would do ... I now belong to a union which is trying to discriminate against those of its Jewish members who don't think it's right to single the Jewish state out for punishment over and above far worse polities, or that it’s right to hold it, and it alone, wholly responsible for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I spent yesterday afternoon sitting in a room with a large group of otherwise unobjectionable people, knowing that the great majority of them want in practice to discriminate against their Jewish colleagues. It wasn't a pleasant experience."

One might ask if the "boycott Israel" enthusiasts really deserve to be described as "a group of otherwise unobjectionable people": isn’t it plain anti-Semitism if they "want in practice to discriminate against their Jewish colleagues"?

The advocates of boycotts against Israel would of course reject any accusations of anti-Semitism and argue that they are only "pro-Palestinian" - and apparently they feel that their cause justifies almost any means. A very interesting explanation for the infatuation of the far-left with the Palestinian "cause" is offered in a just published essay by Robin Shepherd at Z Word. Shepherd dismisses the popular explanation that unquestioning solidarity with the Palestinians reflects the left's quasi "natural" inclination to side with the perceived "underdog" - a role that, ever since Israel's victory in 1967, is firmly assigned to the Palestinians. Instead, he argues:

A better explanation is to be found in an understanding of the way leftist ideology itself was reinvented in response to its own internal failings. During the latter half of the 1960s, it was becoming painfully clear to the extreme left that traditional Marxist explanations of historical development were evaporating before their very eyes. The European (let alone American) proletariat was becoming richer rather than poorer; it was more, not less, committed to liberal democratic capitalism. A new vehicle for revolutionary change had to be discovered. Third World "liberation" movements were the obvious place to go. Since the western proletariat would not function as a meaningful mass movement against capitalism, resistance movements in the Third World, such as the PLO, would take their place. ... by the early 1990s the only serious challenge being mounted against western hegemony would come from a militant Islamist ideology for which the Palestinian struggle against Israel was a powerful energizing factor. It is therefore eminently arguable that the European far left, quickly joined by more mainstream elements, took up the cause against Israel because there was nowhere else to go. In other words, a collapsing ideological edifice, rather than a universalist concern with human rights, was the trigger."

Shepherd's argument sounds all the more convincing given the fact that, while the British boycott enthusiasts claim to be motivated not by anti-Israel sentiment, but rather by a desire to show solidarity with the Palestinians, they apparently have little to say when asked what benefit will accrue to the Palestinians from a British boycott of Israeli academics. It's a too simple and indeed, a too simplistic, equation: being anti-Israel = being pro-Palestinian. Academics should be able to realize that it doesn't work that way.