Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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There has been much said and written about political and economic boycotts, but academic boycotts remained in the brewing stages. The 48 000- member British Association of University Teachers (AUT) adopted last Friday a resolution to boycott and sever relations with two Israeli universities, Haifa and Bar Ilan. The two universities were accused of "colluding in a system of 'apartheid' that victimised Palestinians and anyone who opposed the Israeli state". According to The Independent there were cheers as the two motions were passed.

According to Sarah Cassidy, education correspondent of The Independent, the members voted for "a decision to be postponed to allow for an investigation" into a third motion calling for a boycott of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is accused of "demolishing Palestinian homes in order to expand its campus".

The boycott motion was originally proposed by a group of university lecturers headed by Sue Blackwell, an English lecturer at Birmingham University and member of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine. She is quoted as saying "you cannot shake hands and say 'let's be friends': we cannot appeal equally to the oppressor and the oppressed, the occupier and the occupied. Palestinian academics are repeatedly prevented from doing their work. Israeli forces have welded shut the gates of one Palestinian university and dug a trench around another." She then adds "Jewish students should not be intimidated in Britain, but it's not anti-Semitic to criticise what the state of Israel is doing."

Sue Blackwell goes on to give examples of the oppression Palestinian students are subjected to. She says that some first-year students from Gaza pursuing degrees in the West Bank have been "illegally deported back to Gaza and could not complete their degrees". The Independent publishes opinions of some academics on the matter. Gargi Bhattacharya, lecturer in cultural politics and religion at the University of Birmingham said: "I will be supporting the call for the boycott...There's a huge concern that the Palestinian education structure has been destroyed. People opposing the boycott like to talk about academic freedom, but how can our Palestinian colleagues enjoy academic freedom when they don't even have freedom of movement...There can be no freedom under military occupation."

Unsurprisingly, voices are heard from Jewish quarters attacking the motion. The chairman of the Academic Friends of Israel has tried to persuade members that "the motion," as he wrote in a letter addressed to the AUT, "would lead to McCarthyite-style commissions being set up within the AUT to examine the political views of Israeli academics before reviewing their work or considering collaboration."

The deputy chairman of the Israeli Council for Higher Education claims that, as quoted in The Independent, "The accusations levelled against Israeli universities are based on biased and misleading information." The paper adds, "A boycott has been a long- running and contentious issue. A petition urging non- cooperation with Israeli universities has been signed by hundred of academics worldwide."

"We are very upset," said a member of the Union of Jewish Students, adding that the motion "will create tension and make it even more difficult for Jews on the campus. It is the academics who are legitimising that. It is a betrayal of everything academia stands for."

In her article in The Independent, Deborah Orr, after analysing the situation of the Palestinians -- "who are struggling through their sixth decade as a stateless Diaspora, some of them living under a brutal occupation, some of them in refugee camps, some of them living as exiles" -- comes to the conclusion that "if a boycott of Israel is ever to work, it must broaden its appeal, not narrow its ambitions." Academics, she concludes, should "do better to strengthen academic links with Israel, to support Palestinian universities more vigourously and to take their Palestinian arguments to places around the world where it still has to win over support."