Surprise, surprise: NATFHE passes boycott motion

NATFHE Council has voted to boycott and blacklist Israeli universities and academics by a majority of 106 votes to 71.

Paul Mackney, general secretary of NATFHE, had already contemptously dismissed the thousands of emails and petition signatures against the proposed NATFHE boycott and blacklist of Israeli universities and academics in a speech to one of the NATFHE conference meetings on Saturday:

"I have received literally thousands of emails seeking to 'educate' me on the foolishness of our stance in support of the rights of Palestinians," Paul Mackney, the secretary general of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), said at the association's annual national conference Saturday. "Many emails berate threats to deny academic freedom for Israeli professors but fail to mention that academic freedom in Palestine is a hollow joke. Even where staff and students are allowed freedom of movement to attend university, the material basis for a functioning academic life barely exists."

Mackney said that more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed since September 2000, the unemployment rate is higher among Palestinians and 185 Palestinian schools have been shelled or fired at, compared to one Israeli school.

Mackney also rejected charges that an academic boycott of Israel is anti-Semitic. "Criticizing the Israeli government does not make me anti-Semitic, any more than criticizing Bush and Blair makes me anti-Anglo-Saxon," he said.

The only surprise to me was that there was as large a vote against the boycott as 71 votes.

Last year's pro-boycott motion at the NATFHE conference was passed by a majority of something like over 200 to 2.

I've previously written about Mackney's role as a hard line agitator for extreme policies, including a major platform role in the Stop the War Campaign, which operates out of NATFHE premises, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which is the major UK organization promoting boycotts of all things Israeli. Mackney's track record in promoting political radicalism in NATFHE has also been highlighted here and here.

NATFHE is not in fact a union whose members actually have much academic contact with Israel, because it represents the academics in the less prestigious universities, those which are less likely to be involved in international conferences, refereering political journals and conducting internationally acclaimed research.

But because it is about to merge with AUT, which does represent the academics of the most prestigious universities, its new policy will undoubtedly set the agenda for the newly merged union. NATFHE anyway has far more members than the AUT, and it is dominated by very experienced hard line far left apparatchiks who see their union as a sphere for promoting political action for which they would never get popular support in the national and local political arenas.

And since the AUT has now unanimously adopted a policy on boycotts which supports "triggering" by calls from "representative organizations" in "occupied territories", I'd say the chance of a boycott and blacklist motion being adopted by the merged union next year is very high indeed.

This article by my friend Colin Shindler presents eloquently the way in which such a boycott as NATFHE has just voted for will impact on his research:

As an academic teaching Israeli studies, the implication for me now is that any research that I carry out must be predicated on Israeli institutions and individuals providing the "correct" answers to me. Moreover, since my area of expertise is the Israeli Right and its origins, I believe that I would have a good case in arguing that the union would be deliberately impeding me in my legitimate work as an academic.

This new McCarthyism clearly challenges the very basis of freedom of expression and imposes limits on academic discourse.

I think the policies by Israeli universities of getting concerned academics and other opposers of this boycott to bombard NATFHE and its officers with emails were mistaken. As Mackney's remarks show, this merely enables them to present themselves as being harassed and of course the victim of orchestrated threats.

I especially think the Jewish community in the UK, and many academics in Israel, have made a disastrous mistake in deferring to the anti-occupation, Trotskyist-influenced group Engage as "leaders" of the opposition to the boycott. Engage consistently glossed over the risk of the situation that has now come to pass when it supported the merger of the two unions. Engage activists argued throughout last year that there would be no further danger of any boycott after the original AUT boycott motion was overturned last May. Their website currently carries articles claiming that the AUT's current policy on boycotts is one that virtually rules out any future boycotts, when the opposite is the case. It has consistently sought to fight the boycotts by staging the response as being one that there are better ways to fight the occupation, as if that is the legitimate course for academics to be pursuing.

In my view, the way to fight this and future boycotts is threefold.

Firstly, academics, and those who support academic freedom, and especially freedom from political manipulation, can fight on those grounds alone.

Secondly, the track record of the leaderships of these unions, and their use of their positions to promote extreme political positions unrepresentative of their memberships needs to be constantly exposed and publicised, They need to exposed as discreditable and discriminatory, and as the manifestations of a profoundly undemocratic agenda which has its origins in the Stalinist campaigns of the past.

Thirdly, those of us in these unions need to campaign for genuine democracy in the unions, where decisions about political action are only taken with the agreement of the whole of the membership.

HAT TIP: AC

MAJOR UPDATE HERE

Comments

[JJM]

"Criticizing the Israeli government does not make me anti-Semitic, any more than criticizing Bush and Blair makes me anti-Anglo-Saxon,"

Maybe not, but making a silly statement like that does cause one to ponder how this fool ever gained the intellectual qualifications to be a teacher in the first place.

[Cynic]

I hope they are consistent and refuse to permit the latest Israeli invention to be used in Britain:
"Israeli breakthrough shortens the window of HIV detection"
http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Articles%5El1314&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Health&

"In addition, blood donated at blood banks during the 'window period' - and therefore test negative by current testing - can be transfused into patients, and may infect them. The extent of the problem increases with the rate of spread of the epidemic.
The only way to curtail the epidemic is to have earlier detection of the virus," says Jehuda-Cohen.
She has done just that. The SMARTube enables antibody production, in a small blood sample, within days from infection, without having to wait for the body to produce antibodies weeks or months later."

And just to rile those "anti-Zionists" even more, the good doctor is a religiously observant mother with seven children.

[Robin Stamler]

"Criticizing the Israeli government does not make me anti-Semitic, any more than criticizing Bush and Blair makes me anti-Anglo-Saxon,"

It is precisely because NATFHE has chosen to boycott only Israel and not the UK, USA and numerous odious regimes around the world, that the charge of antisemitism applies.

[Scopus]

Thanks for a good article. I've been keeping the academic bocyott resource center uptodate, I'll add a copy of this entry to it for others to see as well.

The resource center is here:
http://www.zionismontheweb.org/academic_boycott/

[Lynne]

Mackney is a thoroughly propagandized fool who clearly lacks the most modest tools of objectivity. The greater threat to academic freedom in Palestinian institutions comes not from Israel, but from Islamists, just as the greatest threat to Palestinian freedom of speech comes from the thugs in Fatah, Hamas and all the other usual suspects. It's true that deaths on the Palestinian side are four times greater than on Israel's, but that's because they count armed combatants, suicide bombers, Palestinians who are deemed collaborators, and the collatoral damage that occurs when their little bomb-making factories blow up in their own faces. The economic wreckage is also largely the result of Intifada II. Before then, the Palestinians enjoyed a standard of living that was double that of their Arab and Muslim brethren in oil-wealthy states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

JJM: over the years, I've learned not to be overly impressed by the number of degrees someone has. I've run into more than a few PHds I wouldn't pay to count paperclips, particularly those in the "soft sciences" and humanities.

[lisoosh]

So can we assume that they will stand by their convictions and refuse to participate in any international work/conferences/seminars that might be "tainted" by contact with Israelis? And with Israel at the forefront in science, mathematics, medicine and engineering, who really loses?

[JJM]

Lynne, I hear you.

Hmm, but you know, something Robin wrote back there made me think: if Mackney and NATFHE were serious about their silly political beliefs, why aren't prepared to boycott and blacklist all US universities and academics? After all, it's only because of the big, bad Americans that the "Zionists" are able to get away with their "occupation" of Palestine, isn't it?

[angua]

Lynne,

Mackney is a thoroughly propagandized fool who clearly lacks the most modest tools of objectivity.

I think there comes a point when the "fool" explaination no longer applies and (if interested) we need to turn to the other obvious explainations.

[chevalier de st george]

How very very sad.
In all seriousness one of the worst examples of British decadence.
Honestly -a return to the nazi thirties .
Years of propaganda bear fruit
Red Ken And Galloway are disgusting individuals who do not represent decent people.
But this is the hijacking action of the educators of Britain, the very people who will carry on the indoctrination of British youth and keep alive the idiocies that are destroying your country.
This is indeed a watershed in the decline of British civilisation.

[Joshua]

"I especially think the Jewish community in the UK, and many academics in Israel, have made a disastrous mistake in deferring to the anti-occupation, Trotskyist-influenced group Engage as "leaders" of the opposition to the boycott."

I post the occasional comment on the Engage forum and they are a very nice bunch of people, but you have it absolutely right here.

By the way, I really like your new pic. The only problem is that it makes you look as if you only have five decades' worth of accumulated opinions to offer.

[Joshua]

"This time, the resistance must take on the actual cause of the boycott: the wellsprings of hatred of the Jewish state which course through our campuses. Freedom of speech is not the issue. It’s the bigotry, stupid." -- Melanie Phillips, May 10, 2006

http://tinyurl.com/lh9w7

[Alex Bensky]

I think you're being unfair to Mackney and the other academics. No doubt they take just as strong a stand against the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. I bet there are many similar statements from Mackney and his friends regarding these outrages.

Be sure and post them for us, will you? Must be dozens...any number...several...

[Gordon Shifman]

I have written to Maariv suggesting that as an initial retaliatory measure to NAFTHE's boycott of Israel, the Border Police require that any British lecturer wishing to enter Israel undergo an enema - on the rather remote offchance that he may be hiding hs brains up his arse.(For some reason, Maariv did not publish my letter...)

[lisa]

What is the point of criticising Mackney and NATFHE, which you all seem to be doing here? This isn't really central to the issue. The issue is whether a boycott on Israeli academia is an appropriate way to bring political pressure on Israel... and I presume the pressure here would be to provide an environment conducive to allow Palestinian academia to similarly flourish.

I don't know if it's an appropriate boycott -- my gut reaction is that it's innappropriate because it is like gagging a certain group of voices who have every right to speak, but this is not so clear-cut, considering many Palestinian voices are effectively gagged.

Anyway, this is what I would like to see debated in comments on posts about the boycott.

[Judy]

Lisa, it is central to the issue in the UK context, because it is one of two sources where the main pressure for an academic boycott of Israel is coming from. NATFHE has during its history operated as a radical trade union rather than a disinterested association of academics. It's because its non-democratic structures have given space to radicals with Trotskyist agendas to control its policies that the issue of whether an academic boycott is in any circumstance an appropriate weapon to use does not get to be debated and voted on by its full membership.

You must let me know of any Palestinian academic voices which you know are being gagged by any action of Israel or its academics. It's richly ironic, for example, that the Palestinian leader of the current boycott campaign to boycott Israeli academia is Omar Barghouti, currently doing his PhD at...Tel Aviv University.

[Rojak]

You should have heard Blecky on his radio show yesdertay. If he could speak German, he would have sounded like a German, Mormon, Hitler! Seriously, the man wants Israel to burn to the ground so he can say, See? The world wants Israel to burn to the ground! . He's over there causing trouble, such as: HE AND HIS TEA BAG COHORTS SET OFF FIREWORKS FOR THEIR SHOW AND CAUSED THE ISRAELIS TO FREAK OUT! Yes, they love watching them freak out. He wasn't apologetic at all.