Academic
overreach
The Boston Globe
TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2005
The boycott of two Israeli universities approved in late April by
Britain's Association of University Teachers may have been motivated by
a genuine impulse to show solidarity with Palestinian victims of
Israeli occupation. Nevertheless, the boycott illustrates the perils of
impassioned academics indulging in politics by gesture.
Leaders of the boycott campaign have said they were responding to
requests from Palestinian organizations. At the conference where the
boycott motion passed in a close vote, delegates were told about
Israeli settlement expansion and the hardships of life for Palestinians
after 38 years of occupation and four and a half years of the
militarized Palestinian intifada that began in the autumn of 2000.
It is understandable that many delegates wished to make a gesture
of solidarity with Palestinians. The boycott of Bar-Ilan and Haifa
universities was just such a gesture. It could be rationalized with
reference to the asserted parallel between South Africa under apartheid
and the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Though this is a
purely polemical ploy that distorts both realities, it has long been a
goal of some Palestinians and Israelis opposed to the occupation. Their
aim is to use that emotion-laden comparison to make Israel the kind of
pariah that the apartheid regime in South Africa once was.
Unfortunately, some complaints against the boycott from Jewish
organizations have made equally flawed comparisons with the persecution
of Jewish scholars under Nazi rule in the 1930s. The British boycott is
directed against academics in Israel who often are as active as any
outsiders in opposing the occupation; and it is more likely to harm
rather than help the Israeli peace camp. Nonetheless, the boycott
should not be compared to Hitler's exclusionary race laws.
On May 26, the British university teachers' association will meet
to debate the boycott and vote on it again. They can end an
embarrassment if they abjure the boycott and instead work seriously
alongside Palestinians and Israelis who are trying to bring about
negotiations to end the occupation and make possible the creation of an
independent Palestinian state.
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