fao dee

Herbie von Smalls · May 30, 2007

thought this might interest you (from thursday's FT)

..TX.-

Gesture politics are rarely edifying. At times, though, they are

downright stupid. Yesterday's decision by Britain's University and

College Union (UCU) of academics, to boycott their counterparts in

Israel because of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, is a good

example.

..TX.-

No reader of these columns would be in any doubt about the Financial

Times' view of the occupation and the continuing and expanding

colonisation of Palestinian land: illegal, immoral, self-defeating

for Israel and incendiary for the Middle East.

..TX.-

Yet there are five solid reasons why this is a fatuous move, of no

use to Palestinians struggling for an independent state or to

Israelis opposing the occupation, fighting the moral corrosion it

causes their society and - against all odds - hold-ing out for a

resolution to the conflict offering security to Israel and justice to

the Palestinians.

..TX.-

First, the very notion of an academic boycott is intrinsically

absurd. The academy is, by definition, the arena for debate and

enquiry, indeed for controversy. The sharper that is, the more likely

that truth is what will emerge.

..TX.-

Second, Israeli academics have, on the whole, an honourable record of

opposing the occupation. It is from the universities that army

conscripts have campaigned against serving in the occupied

territories.

..TX.-

Only yesterday leading academics demanded the government allow

students from Gaza to travel to study in West Bank universities.

..TX.-

Third, there is an issue of selective double standards: why not

target Russian academics over Chechnya, Chinese lecturers over Tibet,

Indian academics over Kashmir?

..TX.-

Fourth, the timing of this ill-thought through initiative could

hardly be worse. For the first time in more than a generation, the

pro-Israel lobby in the US, where informed debate on the Middle East

is far less vigorous than it is in Israel, is being openly challenged

and can no longer rely on bullying Americans into a consensus that is

bad for Israel and makes it impossible for the US to articulate its

own national interest in the region.

..TX.-

Fifth, and directly related to that, this meaningless boycott is a

political gift to Israel's irredentist right, which can now resume

its facile equation of criticism of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism

- and pin the blame for both on Europe.

..TX.-

For this futile gesture reinforces the sense of siege and existential

threat that has been the essential tool of the Israeli right going

back a century to Ze'ev Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Zionists.

Benjamin Netanyahu, their modern paladin who is already well set to

return to power, must be positively ecstatic.

Herbie von Smalls · June 1, 2007

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