Paving the way for a new boycott of Israeli universities

So there's a new drive for a boycott of Israeli academics  and universities by British academics coming up for a vote at the end of this month.

And this time, I'd say it's almost certain to get through. That's because NATFHE, the union concerned, which has members mainly in the less prestigious universities, has a long record of espousing ultra radical lines. It's long been one of the few unions which is affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which demands that:

official links between individuals and institutions in Israel and artistic, sporting and academic institutions in the rest of the world should be severed.

any contacts with Israelis which are not aimed at ending the occupation should be boycotted.

any cultural events that perpetuate the impression that Israel is a normal and acceptable member of the international community, distort history, or legitimise the occupation should be boycotted. This includes events organised by non-Israeli bodies, such as films, exhibitions etc.

Since the time I started this blog, I've repeatedly argued that the merger of the two UK university lecturers' unions, AUT and NATFHE, would be a disaster which would result in renewed and more comprehensive boycott action. I saw it as also leading to the loss of the much more democratic and politically mainstream approach of the AUT.

The original boycott resolution of 2005 was passed by the AUT and overturned only because a Special Council was called, which included people who weren't just the usual union core activists.

I commented that Engage, the leading activist group against the boycott, had limited the fightback to being one about how best to work for "solidarity with the Palestinians". It had helped to frame the struggle as one in which both the proponents of the boycott and the main group of opposers agreed that it was the supposedly racist policies of the Israeli government and the occupation that were the real problem. And unfortunately, the whole debate at the Special Council revolved round these two issues, and not around the issue of why a union of academics should be seeking to single out Israel as the one country subjected to a boycott of this kind.

Since last year's overturning of the AUT boycott, Engage regulars have tended to claim that thanks to their action, there would never be a serious boycott attempt in the union again. Here's John Pike, a leading Engage activist, writing less than a week before NATFHE published its Orwellian boycott and pro-Hamas Palestinian government motions:

  There is little or no prospect of any sort of formal boycott of Israeli academia on the horizon – which is good all round.

Yes, John Pike did acknowledge that there would be attempts to push boycotting through semi-formal mechanisms which would avoid the legal challenges which both NATFHE and AUT faced last year in relation to their boycott motions.

However, in that article he claimed that AUT, unlike NATFHE, was decisively clear of any boycott threat because of the policy document, drafted and agreed unanimously by a group of which he was a member, which he argues, is unlikely to result in any boycotts:

There will be discussion of a general paper outlining policy and procedures on boycotts at Scarborough. Council will vote on - and probably adopt – a paper drawn up by the investigative commission set up at the Special Council.

The paper to council doesn’t advocate an absolute anti-boycott position, but it does lay out, quite carefully, the circumstances in which a boycott might be adopted, and the context within which any boycott ought to be assessed. The guidelines in the paper make it clear that the Eastbourne fiasco should never take place again. They also make it clear that there is no space for a general boycott of Israeli academia within the policy of the AUT.

The guidelines on boycotting policy for the AUT extend the principles that should govern and constrain a domestic boycott onto the international terrain. They specify a trigger mechanism – that a boycott call needs to come from organisations that are representative within the institutions that are targeted for boycott. They must have achievable ends, and follow from a process of negotiation and consultation with those bodies. They must, too, be ratified and properly approved by the union’s council.

In the paper, AUT puts its policy on boycotts into a proper perspective as part of an international policy that is committed to the pursuit and defence of academic freedom and the implementation of labour standards in line with ILO recommendations. It also acknowledges the need to work in collaboration with Education International and the TUC in international work.

That may make the policy sound like a typically anodyne and worthy piece of trade union bureaucratese.

And if you look at the document on the AUT web site, you might find what it's saying difficult to untangle from its turgid prose.

What it actually does is to legitimate the approach of singling out Israel for boycotts, whilst ignoring the policies and practice of universities in brutal dictatorships with the most dismal track records of suppressing and murdering opponents. It's actually tailor made to facilitate the pursuit of the aims and methods of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. Which is not surprising, because both Sue Blackwell, the leading pro-boycott activist in the AUT, and her equally pro-boycott colleague Kamel Hawwash, were also elected members of the group which put the policy together. It's about as far as it could be from ensuring that no boycott will ever be voted in again.

This is how it works:

First, you have to have a "trigger", which turns out to be nothing like objective evidence of oppression. In fact, as this extract makes clear, it may well ignore much greater wrongs in other countries. And where might such a trigger come from?

The commission believes, after careful consideration, and noting that we are not capable of policing the academic world in a pro-active way, that triggers for actions leading to greylisting and boycott can only result from a request from a legitimate organisation within the state, or within the occupied territory or institution in question.  Legitimate organisations would include a trade union movement, a recognised higher education union or other representative organisation. Exceptionally, a decision to impose greylisting or boycotting might be taken following consultation with Education International in circumstances where legitimate organisations cannot be lawfully established within the state or institutions in question, or in circumstances where institutions or branches of institutions, are established in territories under unlawful occupation as defined by UN resolutions.

It is recognised that this is a difficult area. We are aware of great wrongs being committed throughout the world against colleagues in other countries.  But there is always a balance to be drawn between boycotting and damaging those colleagues in the hope that the state will address the harm that it is inflicting on academia, and the harm that the boycott itself inflicts on academia.

Throughout this process contact will be maintained with the triggering organisation so that a judgement can be made as to the appropriate time to end sanctions.

The proposed procedures involve repeatedly going back to the triggering organization, in other words, the Palestinian network comitted to these actions:

This is exactly the rationale that was used by last year's AUT boycotters, led by Sue Blackwell, when they were challenged about why they ignored academic repression and even systematic and unprovoked violence against academics in countries like China, Syria and Iran. Why, they said, we are responding to a call from 60 Palestinian organizations. And anyway, some of them argued, it's partly because we believe it will persuade Israel to respond, when common-or-garden dictatorships and terrorist regimes wouldn't take any notice. The number of the said organizations subsequently climbed to over 200, but what was remarkable was that each and every one of these organizations churned out identical resolutions.

Any proposal for a boycott has to be agreed by the AUT Council and its Executive. I don't agree with John Pike's sanguine view that the AUT Council and Executive would be sure to vote against it. It was after all the Council's vote that put two of the most vociferous pro-boycott activists onto the committee that turned out this policy.

One of the very curious things about this policy is that it repeatedly refers to an international organization called Education International as one of the key authorities or consultants on whether a boycott should be called. This is particularly puzzling in relation to a union of academics in prestigious universities like AUT. For Education International is primarily an international union of schoolteachers' unions, which vastly outnumber the university teachers' associations. Although two Israeli teacher unions are members, they are primarily schoolteacher unions.  And although the single teachers' union of the as yet unestablished state of Palestine is part of the African regional group, along with all the other Arab countries bordering the Mediterranean, Israel is assigned to the European region.

In any case, AUT will merge with NATFHE in the summer, and the track record of NATFHE, dominated by hard left activists, is that they have consistently voted for anti-Israel policies by huge majorities. Last year, they agreed a motion to support any AUT boycott that did get past by a majority of something like 200+ to 2.

This policy will no doubt serve to pave the way for a rationalization of why NATFHE and AUT think boycotting only Israel isn't really anti-semitic, because it's the Palestinian groups who've called for it.

It's good, if ironic to see that John Pike and Engage are now launching a campaign against the new boycott motions coming through NATFHE. Sadly, their insistent self-congratulation seems to have obscured for them their own acquiescence in the establishment of a supporting framework for such boycotts in the AUT. To say nothing of their consistently playing down the likelihood of future boycotts in the merger of the unions, which they supported.

And this, it appears, is what they say most British Jews think:

Most British Jews feel this, on one level or another. And so they grumble. They tell each other stories of what they heard somebody say; they feel unease when Ken Livingstone fetes the anti-Semitic Karadawi at City Hall; they feel the academic boycott campaign as an attack; they shake their heads in disbelief when they meet liberal anti-racists who think that George Galloway is a plucky little British hero.

And then they hit their foreheads in exasperation when they read that Israel has sent another missile into an apartment block or into a car full of people in what it calls targeted assassinations, or when they are confronted by Israeli plans to build a Jewish-only road network across the West Bank; or when a journalist is shot dead by an Israeli sniper or when an ISM peace activist is run over by an armored bulldozer or when a Palestinian is forced to play his violin at an Israeli checkpoint.

And if that farrago of half-truths about Israel and Israeli actions is what they think most British Jews believe, they need to get out and meet more British Jews.

What's really astonishing, though, has been the even greater complacency of Jewish community groups supporting academic freedom in our universities and the record of Israeli universities, who seem to have been delighted to leave the initiative, and the fatal framing of the campaign as one centred on the best way to oppose the occupation and establish solidarity with the Palestinians, to Engage:

The UK Jewish opposition was led by the Academic Friends of Israel (AFI), an organization that campaigns against the boycott and the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli polices of the academic labor unions; the Academic Study Group, which educates UK academics about Israel and brings them there on tours; and the Union of Jewish Students. All these worked closely with Pike and encouraged their members to support the Engage campaign. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which "expressed its concern at the wider implications of the AUT decision,"¹⁸ formed the Campaign Group for Academic Freedom (CGAF) to coordinate the Jewish response while also striving to overturn the AUT decision

Sadly, in response to the latest developments, they seem just as ready as ever to take their line from Engage on discounting any danger of more pro-boycott singling out of Israel from AUT, while recognising its presence in NATFHE.

UPDATE: More insights on what's been happening (and some responses) here.

Comments

[sam menzies]

frankly why even bother fighting it? don't try to be rational in your opposition; the poor blind left-wing brits simply don't care. why live in a country that doesn't want authentic jews, a country which celebrates only jews like those quislings, the roses and pinter? let the uk become another fascist islamic state in peace. and personally, i can't wait for sue blackwell to wear the hijab.

[Gharqad_Tree]

I'm ashamed of my country when I read this.

[Alf Green]

What a masterful analysis Judy. Israel never does anything wrong and Engage is responsible for the campaigns to boycott Israeli academics.

You certainly have a clear view of what is going on.

[chevalier de st george]

Clearly and sadly, there is infinitely more academic freedom at Haifa university than on the Birmingham Campus.
The demands of these so called "academics" bear strong similarity to the policy of the Nazis before WW2 in Germany when jews were expelled from academia.
Who said that the rotten apple falls from the tree?

[Neal]

Alf Green,

The issue is not whether Israel ever does anything wrong.

Rather, the issue relates to the analysis and conclusions reached regarding what Israel does and the tendency for Israel, in the British press and on campus, to be treated as local news - which ought to be a hint to any rational person that matters are being grossly distorted - and as pariah.

All countries and people do things wrong. However, some countries and people are treated as if they are pariahs. Others are not. And the treatment does not appear so much to depend on what countries or peoples do but, instead, on politics, economics and the ability to manipulate opinion and treatment.

In the world's current predicament, Israel has been cast into a demonic role, as if we were in a morality play, by many of those who belong to the anti-Imperialist, anti-racist school of thought.

However, were one to examine - rather than role-cast - Israel's actual behavior and compare it with that of other similarly situated countries, Israel's behavior not particularly bad. And, were one to compare Israel's behavior with that of any country in the Arab regions, Israel is, by comparison, saintly.

And, if Israel's behavior is compared with the behavior of European countries when they faced hostile surrounding countries and groups, Israel also comes out rather better than European countries. In this regard, consider how Britain, France and Germany have dealt, over the last hundred years, were their disagreements and about the treatment of people not from the ruling ethnicity under their rule. Again, Israel, considered analytically, comes out rather well. In fact, by comparison, Israel is a rather saintly country.

This is not to say that Israel is perfect. It is to say that the demonization of Israel is not remotely justified. Such exists because of the needs of certain people who espouse a particular political point of view.

[cubanbob]

I demand that the Arabs cease their oppression of the Copts and immediately cease their illegal occupation of Egypt.