Opposition to U.K. boycott of Israeli universities increasing

[Colorado Blue]

At least three British universities will oppose the boycott imposed by the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) on Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities in April, according to sources at the schools.

Representatives of the AUT branches at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Warwick will object to the boycott in the AUT's special council meeting scheduled to reconsider the boycott next week.

Dr. Jon Pike, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the Open University who organized the anti-boycott campaign and special conference, told The Guardian newspaper that he was convinced the ban would be canceled.

"I hope and expect that we will be able to overturn the boycott decision at the special council. Already, the Oxford, Cambridge and Warwick branches have come out in support," Pike said.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/575877.html

[bennywhale]

1. Common sense prevails

Some behind the boycott may have been meaning to do something constructive, but really as academics you would have thought they would have realised how misplaced this was.

To Boycott ideas, and concepts, and debate was really not the path to follow. I also understand that one or more of the universities is very critical of Isreali occupation tactics, not that it if it wasn't a boycott would have been justified.

If they wanted to boycott something why not organise something related to the occupation.

Furthermore, if peace is going to come from somewhere, i have confidence it will come from somewhere imaginative and inclusive. A university for examle.

[Coastie for Truth]

2. Will Brit Academic Oncologists Boycott All 178 Sessions

of the where the work was done in Israel. Some of the Israeli papers describe how - doesn't cancer have the same biology and etiology in Brits and Palestinians as in Israelis?

If you're going to boycott - can't be a "cafeteria boycotter."

As a matter of fact - if you're going to boycott sessions based on the nationality (or race, religion, creed, gender, gender orientation, physical disability, or age) of the presenter -- don't bother coming to Orlando. Stay home. This is an academic conference not a political freak show.

[number6]

3. the boycott is a political statement

the practical application of it doesn't work well..

[Coastie for Truth]

4. See my append #2

Is it ethical and moral to subject your oncology patients to more pain and suffering, an increased probability of cancer death, and an increased probability of premature death just to make a "political" statement.

Any "doctor" who wants to make a "political statement" should join "Physicians Without Borders" or volunteer in a West Bank or Gaza Hospital instead of putting her patients at risk by boycotting Israeli presenters at the Orlando Oncology Conference.

[Coastie for Truth]

5. Foxman, Britain's Jewish Problem, New York Sun (5/18/2005)

http://www.nysun.com/article/14020

by Abraham Foxman, New York Sun, May 18, 2005

Britain has a Jewish problem. More specifically, Britain has a problem with Jews. Few Britons will admit to that, fewer still would accept the proposition, and many will doubtless be offended by it. But what other explanation is there for a country where barely a week goes by without some form of opprobrium being visited upon Jews? Whether manifested as anti-Zionism or as anti-Americanism or in classic form - exemplified by the louts who shouted hateful slurs at a ceremony on April 10 commemorating Jewish war dead in East London - in the last 12 months Britain has witnessed the full spectrum of anti-Semitism, from brutish insensitivity through to a record number of physical attacks.

Naturally, there is resistance to speaking of smashed Jewish gravestones in the same breath as an academic boycott of Israeli universities. But it is legitimate to do so, because both examples reveal an unhealthy fixation with a miniscule percentage of the British - not to mention global - population and a disproportionate emphasis on supposed Jewish misdeeds. The litany, by now, is a familiar one. Highlights include: London Mayor Ken Livingstone comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard; Lord Ahmed hosting a lecture by a virulent anti-Semite who railed against Jewish media barons; and the resignations of Jewish members of the National Union of Students Executive Committee because of their anger and frustration at unchecked anti-Semitism on campus.

Much of this hostility is camouflaged as criticism of Israel. It is often expressed by eminently reasonable, educated people who would hotly deny the charge of anti-Semitism. For the record, Orla Guerin, the BBC reporter who was recently made a Member of the Order of the British Empire, despite overwhelming evidence of bias in her reporting from Israel, should not be accused of hating Jews. Neither should that charge be made against the actor Alan Rickman, who has brought the story of Rachel Corrie, the American activist killed in Gaza in 2003, to the London stage.

Even so, Britain's liberal milieu has yet to face up to some uncomfortable questions: are Jewish sensitivities about Israel-bashing given the same consideration as, say, Muslim concerns about associations with terrorism? Are Jews being held to a unique standard? Are these negative portrayals and abuse of the facts - particularly the canard that Israel resembles apartheid-era South Africa - fueling dislike, distrust, hatred of the Jews? To the first question, the answer is no; to the second, yes; to the third, absolutely.


<snip><<

Foxman makes the point that hostility to Jewish national aspirations, and those who identify with those aspirations, runs deep in the UK. He notes that when politicians or academics or celebrities argue not just against Israeli policy, but against Israel's very legitimacy, that increases the feelings of vulnerability among many British Jews.

Going beyond proper questioning policy
to questioning very legitimacy
leads to feelings of vulnerability
is this somehow unusal or unjustified.
Foxman thinks not.

Of course, Brits, like liberals and progressives everywhere conflate Israel (and Zionists and ultimately and illogically and incorrectly all Jews) with (neocons and PNAC and US foreign policy and American Jews) Foxman aregues that enmity toward Israel is a natural bedfellow of the anti-Americanism which is now an established feature of British political life. Foxman argues that one would have to be myopic to deny that all the talk of "neoconservative cabals" and "conspiracies" has a distinctly anti-Semitic flavor.

But there is another important factor: While Britain was spared the Holocaust that accompanied Nazi occupation, there is a misguided sense of responsibility for the Palestinians' fate, given Britain's historic role in the Middle East. (I have posted citations to William Engdahl's book "A Century Of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order" and to Sir Mark Sykes of Sykes-Picot Agrrement infamy that I hesitate to refer to them again).

Those in Britain who regard the Palestinian narrative as an unassailable truth will point to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 as proof of their country's complicity in the Zionist enterprise, while totally ignoring the Sykes-Picot Agreemenet as methodically dissected by Engdahl.

The problem with selective history is just that, selective.

1. Foxman correctly asks when was the White Paper of 1939 - which led the British authorities to virtually close Palestine to Jewish immigrants at a time when this escape route was never more needed - last mentioned in public debate?

2. Foxman asks how widely known is it that Britain threatened to intervene on the side of Egypt during Israel's 1948-49 war of independence, when five Arab armies simultaneously attacked the new Jewish state?

Foxman asks, why is there such a willingness to embrace the Palestinian version of events when respected historians of the region - including Benny Morris, whose work is often cited by Palestinian sympathizers - state clearly that there was no Zionist grand plan to drive out the Arab population?

Is it somehow just remotely possible that Israel emerged in spite of, and not because of, the policies adopted by the British Foreign Office in implementing the Sykes-Picot Agreement or the British Mandate authorities in Palestine in implementing the 1939 White Paper.

While Palestinians may blame the British, as well as the Zionists, for their fate, it is indisputable that Britain's actions also cost thousands of Jewish lives. That was the tragic consequence of a policy based on the idea that Jews are different and, therefore, not deserving of their own country. As long as that idea remains in play, Britain's Jewish problem will persist.