the big chill

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

The British teachers’ union vote to encourage a boycott of Israeli academicians has been followed in quick order by a similar vote by Britain’s largest trade union, Unisom, which has threatened an economic and cultural boycott of Israel.

In a preamble, the motion “notes that, during 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon and Gaza, withheld tax revenues form the Palestine Authority and refused dialogue with the elected Authority following the democratic elections of January 2006, resealed the borders of Gaza, expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank, and continued the construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall.”

It accused the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair of adopting “a consistent stand in support of the Israeli government throughout the shameful events of 2006, even joining the U.S. in failing to call for a cease-fire amidst worldwide condemnation of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.”

Now the Israeli parliament is debating a consumer boycott of all British goods, according to The Times (London):

The proposed Bill is aimed at punishing Britain for recent threats from its largest trade union and UCU, the university lecturers’ union, to boycott Israel for occupying Palestinian land. The prospect of a boycott has prompted concern among the Israeli public. Leading commentators denounced the moves as anti-Semitic. Now a group of politicians has promised a harsh response, calling for Israel to begin its own boycott against Britain.

According to some Israeli critics, the government hasn’t done enough to counter the growing threats, says the Jerusalem Post:

The scheduled governmental meeting comes as some in the Foreign Ministry have said privately that Israel has not done enough over the last few months - as various groups in Britain debated boycott and divesture - to protest these moves, and to persuade the British government to register its opposition loudly and publicly as well.

Livni spoke to British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett about the matter on Friday and said that Israel viewed these steps “gravely” and that they stood in complete opposition to the good relations that exist between the two countries.

That’s the drama that’s taking place on the world stage. Via Normblog, Shalom Lappin gives a preview of what will happen behind the closed doors of academia as a result of the boycott vote, which requires follow-up votes—not to Israelis but to British Jews [e.a.]:

Several people have suggested that the boycott resolutions of the UCU and other unions are ineffective, and so need not be taken seriously. It is true that these resolutions have not interfered with institutional scientific cooperation between Israel and Britain. However, it would be foolishly insouciant to treat them as unimportant. The primary purpose of the boycott campaign is not to change Israeli government policy but to undermine the legitimacy of Israel as a country. It aims to isolate, not its political leaders and policy makers, but its people as a whole. It is, then, a form of branding which seeks to mark a group of people as social outcasts. The main damage that it does is to provide cover for acts of blatant discrimination against Israeli academics, committed by individual researchers acting as journal editors, conference organizers, tenure or appointment consultants, and in similar roles. We have seen several high profile cases of such individual boycott actions within the UK over the past seven years. This trend is likely to gather momentum if the boycott campaign continues unchecked.

In the end, the boycott is a far greater threat to the Jewish community in Britain than it is to Israeli academics. The latter will sustain robust research and teaching careers through a multitude of international connections that do not involve British institutions. Boycott actions constitute, at most, an unpleasant inconvenience for them. Alternative venues for publication and joint research can, in most cases, be easily arranged. However, British Jewish academics (and British Jews in general) will increasingly find themselves facing a stark choice. Either they endorse the boycott campaign and dance to its tune (as a number of prominent Jewish public figures have noisily done), or they face the prospect of being identified as Israel’s supporters, with the public exclusion that this entails. Cowering in fearful silence will offer increasingly limited protection against a movement determined to make the Israel-Palestine conflict the defining issue on which one’s claim to moral and political decency depends. In a polarizing environment of this sort, the fabric of normal collegial relations and academic life begins to unravel. This emerging dilemma is a reflection of the increasing isolation into which the British Jewish community at large is being forced.

Thus does anti-Zionism become politically correct—the only right way to think and behave. And via this soft totalitarianism hysterical, terrified, cowardly British leftists try to appease the Muslim masses at home in Britain. Brilliant strategy!