Is this the way to stop a boycott?

OK, that's the good news.

There's a whole series of these powerful and punchy posters/web ads here at the ADL site.

They seem to show up starkly the hollow selectivity of the UCU's proposed boycott; the blatant ignoring of huge massacres and attacks on freedom across the world, whilst calling for Israeli universities and academics to be boycotted. 

So that's the leading US Jewish organization which exists to fight anti-semitism.

And how is the organized UK Jewish community responding to the proposed boycott?

After two years of primarily outsourcing the campaign against the previous proposed AUT boycott to the Engage, something I've repeatedly argued, produced a degree of complacency and self-delusion that helped to smooth the path of the disastrous merger of the two unions which has resulted in the UCU. And, as I've been predicting since 2005, it's now dominated by the SWP-led would-be revolutionaries who did so much to make NATFHE into a byword for ineptitude, unsuccessful pay campaigning and absurd radical political gesture politics.

Well, the latest effort in the organized Jewish community's efforts to combat the UCU's pro-boycott resolutions is a Stop the Boycott campaign.

That's going to involve expensive ads in The Times and The Guardian and the like, aimed at getting people to sign a petition includes this:

We call on UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt to fulfill her manifesto commitment to take this decision to a full membership ballot. Indeed, this boycott is damaging for the union itself and is not representative of the union.

There's one very big problem with this. Sally Hunt never committed herself in her election manifesto or anywhere else to taking any boycott decision to a full ballot. And with very good reason. Because the General Secretary of UCU has no powers to implement a ballot. Only a decision of the UCU Executive can do that. And 43% of the UCU Executive are members of UCU Left, the SWP-led caucus of assorted hard lefters, consisting mainly of the old hard left of NATFHE (pro-boycott vote 2005: 252-2) plus a good chunk of the most notorious pro-boycott activists in the former AUT, such as Sue Blackwell, Gargi Bhattacharya and Malcolm Povey, who before the merger never got anywhere near making the national Executive of AUT> So what on earth is the organized Jewish community doing putting its weight and a great deal of money behind an unreasonable demand based on a non-existent commitment made by a General Secretary who anyway couldn't deliver on the commitment even if she'd made it in the first place? Here, taken from Sally Hunt's own election campaign blog site is what she actually said:

As general secretary of UCU, I will put forward proposals that: UCU’s first congress should adopt the former AUT policy of a staged and cautious approach to international academic boycotts rather than the policy passed at NATFHE’s last conference Our international policy should be firmly focused on defending academic freedom and the rights of educators and students to live and work unharmed and unthreatened rather than on a wider political analysis which distracts from our main message Any future proposal for an international academic boycott of any institution or country that is agreed by UCU Congress should go to a full ballot of the members affected before any action is taken The union work with Education International to protect educators worldwide against threats to their person, their family or their work We consider a fund to support the promotion of academic projects that enhance cooperation and dialogue between communities in areas of conflict

Note to BICOM and the brilliant minds behind the "Stop the Boycott" campaign: a promise to make a proposal is not at all the same thing as a commitment to hold a membership ballot. Especially in a situation where no General Secretary has the powers to make such a commitment anyway. If I was Sally Hunt, I would be hopping livid at this campaign for misrepresenting my manifesto pledges and whipping up a national and international campaign to call for me to do something I have no powers to do. But it just gets worse and worse than that. I have to close down for Shabbos now. But tomorrow night, I'll be back to spell out some more about just how wrong-footed, misguided and counter productive this whole UK Jewish community campaign is. And I so wish it wasn't.

Comments

[Soft Trot]

Judy. The Greylisting motion passed at UCU conference means that the decision to boycott would go to a members' ballot.

Judy. I'm afraid you're just a like a management consultant of the Jewish community. You crticise other people , you seem to always know what's right and what should be done - but you never actualy do anything yourself.

[Neal]

Judy,

People on your side of the Atlantic might learn from the US. As I have repeatedly argued - and I believe you also believe -, one does not fight a movement by publicly conceding half of its position. Rather, one opposes a movement by challenging its underlying premises, as, for example, the ADL suggests with its posters.

If people on your side of the Atlantic want to get serious about dealing with the boycott bigots who hate Israel while loving Sudan, Iran and Arabia, the way to do so is to show the bigots for what they are: hypocrites and hate mongers.

[Judy]

Soft Trot, it seems you consider running a blog which may well have a bigger readership than most Trotskyist "newspapers" "doing nothing". That seems to coincide with a Trot way of thinking.

Here is the reference to the decisions taken by UCU congress, on the UCU web site, which shows what the motion passed says-- that the motion will be considered by all branches. Not the same as a ballot of all members. The updated former AUT policy, also endorsed by UCU Congress, nowhere contains any reference to the necessity for a members' ballot before action on either greylisting or straightforward boycotting.

If you can show evidence, as opposed to assertion, which backs up your views, please do so.

[Soft Trot]

Judy. You carry on with your blog and leave everybody else to fight. Keep commenting from the sidelines. Having more readers than a Trot newspaper isn't exaclty hard.

[Soft Trot]

Woops sorry for my typo.

'Today's motion on boycott means all branches now have a responsibility to consult all of their members on the issue and I believe that every member should have the opportunity to have their say. The earlier motion means that any future calls for a boycott must pass key tests before a boycott can implemented.'

Judy "Soft Trot, it seems you consider running a blog which may well have a bigger readership than most Trotskyist "newspapers" "doing nothing".

Do you realy think your blog has helped against the boycott ? I presume (maybe i'm wrong but i doubt it) that the majority of people who read your blog are against the boycott anyway. So it isn't much of a contribution to the fight against boycotts. Just somewhere for you to snipe at people who are actualy doing something instead of just blogging.

[Judy]

Soft Trot, you are clearly having difficulty in understanding the fairly straightforward and simple statement made by UCU. The motion will be discussed in ordinary branch meetings by members. Of course, that means the members who will actually turn up to branch meetings.

We know that only the tiniest fraction of the membership actually turns up to group meetings. And that's maybe because they're so dominated by Soft and not so Soft Trotskyists like yourself. It is absolutely not the same as putting the motion to a whole-membership ballot, which would certainly overturn the motion. I've dealt with that point pretty comprehensively here, when dealing with the equally tendentious and false claims of David Hirsh of Engage, which seem very close to your own.

You clearly think you know who my readership are. If your insights match your capacity to understand basic press releases, I wouldn't rely on them.

Meanwhile, as this is my blog, if you can't express your opinions with something like basic courtesy towards me, I'll have to ask you to post your views elsewhere.

[Ruth]

I have been following with interest your posts on union business in the UK. The situation is very similar here in Toronto.
CUPE voted to boycott Israel last year. It was received with outrage by the Jewish community. Sid Ryan, the head of CUPE is from the UK I believe. Many union bosses here have their roots in the UK. What kind of pseudo marxist indoctrination is going on over there? CUPE represents college lecturers, civil servants, as well as school janitors and secretaries. A motley crew, as you can see. Teachers have 2 unions. One for elementary school teachers and one for secondary. There was an attempt to put the boycott issue on the agenda of the secondary school teachers annual meeting, but the president rejected it. It was initiated by a Jewsih delegate, but what else is new. The rank and file could not care less about the I/P issue. It is all very remote. Jewish organizations and some Jewish workers were really upset about the CUPE boycott which was ridculed by the media, but at the end of the day, when the dust clerared, it meant nothing on a practical level. CUPE members are not going to listen to Sid Ryan!
Ordinary workers will only get involved when their benefits & wages are threatened. They leave political action to the Executive. Most of them ridicule union activists. North Americans are anti-union intellectually but being practical people, they know they need to be represented. Besides union membership is compulsory.
Judy, just like in the UK, most of those initiating the boycotts are antizionists leftist Jews supported by muslim activists.
Aren't the Roses, with some ex-Israelis, the prime instigators of the boycott in the UK?

[Judy]

Ruth, your experiences are interesting and confirm that the trots and their allies have the same delusional modes of operating world wide.
The real instigators of the boycott are the various pro-Palestinian pressure groups, who drew and continue to draw their strategy from the big UN conference of NGOs in Durban in 2001. That was dominated by them, in alliance with their also Soviet-trained ANC allies, with a strategy to brand Israel as an apartheid state. All the current campaigns with their identical base in n hundred Palestinian NGOs' identical resolutions demanding a boycott of Israel developed from then. In 2004, a conference was held in London on methods of applying the strategy in the UK. Jewish anti-zionists like Rose et al took a leading part, but they were not the prime instigators.Sometimes, even those of us who are devoted to fighting anti-semitism can too readily fall into the trap of blaming Jews of one sort or another for....anti-semitism.

[lisoosh]

Judy, thanks for your continuing coverage, as an expat Brit, it is interesting to follow what is going on there from a local perspective.

I should point out thought that (contary to Neals declaration) American groups aren't that effective either. Their tendancy to overdramatize has led to a backlash against them and the SWP and the like claim that the focus placed by Jewish groups on Darfur is a cynical effort to deflect attention from Israel.
The Americans aren't changing any minds either, they just exist in an environment that focusses more on Israel.