Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz-14/06/2007

Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz, (Times)

"The University College Union on May 30 passed two boycott resolutions. Resolution 30 endorsed the call for an academic boycott of Israel by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). It also committed union funds to promoting it on campuses. But it did not commit the union of university teachers itself to a boycott. Resolution 31 condemned the USA and EU boycott of the Palestinian Authority (that is, the "suspension of aid"). There is symmetry here. Thirty calls for a boycott; 31 calls for the ending of a boycott. Israel's universities, which are liberal institutions, are to be shunned; the government of the PA, which is governed by a party committed to the destruction of Israel, is to be embraced.

These resolutions are the successors to boycott resolutions passed by the predecessor academic unions, the AUT in 2005, and NATFHE in 2006. The AUT resolutions purported to justify a boycott of named Israeli universities by making specific - though false - allegations against them. The NATFHE resolution, which was much like UCU resolution 30, "invited members to consider their own responsibility for ensuring equity and non-discrimination in contacts with Israeli educational institutions or individuals and to consider the appropriateness of a boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such policies." The AUT resolutions were reversed following a special conference; the NATFHE resolution lapsed upon the union's dissolution only a few days later.

The UCU resolutions are in a 2007 series of boycott resolutions. They follow the National Union of Journalists resolution, and precede the UNISON resolutions. The NUJ resolution called for "a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa". One of the UNISON resolutions affirms the union's "right and desire to act in solidarity with the Palestinian people". These resolutions open with a very one-sided, hostile account of events in the Middle East. Britain has become the boycott nation of the world - but in relation to Israel alone. It is an ugly obsession.

There are two contexts relevant to the passing of the UCU resolutions.

First, the union context. The UCU and its predecessor unions have been failing for some time to defend the interests of their members. According to Shalom Lappin, a London University professor and longstanding Peace Now activist who has just resigned from the UCU, "the rise of the boycott campaign in British professional unions coincides with their precipitous decline as effective agents of collective bargaining and industrial democracy. The constituent predecessors of the UCU, the AUT and NATFHE, had consistently failed to address the long-term decline in academic salaries and deep under-investment in UK universities. They showed themselves to be largely impotent in their attempts to protect their members' wages and working conditions. While tuition fees have soared, the Government has made no serious attempt to correct the deterioration that threatens British institutions of higher education. It has also recently imposed deep cuts on research funding. The impresarios of the annual boycott hunt ? have substituted the campaign against Israel for serious union activity addressing these issues."

Second, the Middle East context. There are two aspects here. There is the character of the political opposition to Israel, and there is the condition of the Palestinian national movement. As for the former, the boycotters have aligned themselves with Hamas, a frankly anti-Semitic party, Hezbollah, another frankly anti-Semitic party, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a frankly anti-Semitic politician. All are unreconciled to Israel's existence, wish it harm and are committed to an account of its power and standing that is utterly dependent on classical anti-Semitic tropes and texts. As for the latter, the Palestinians have never been further from possessing the collective self-discipline, and the constructive engagement in building state institutions, that are necessary to achieving statehood. The collapse of Palestinian morale may prove irreversible. (We hope not - we remain committed to a two-state solution.) In combination, these two aspects explain the re-emergence of the "one-state solution" favoured by most boycotters - the destruction of Israel, and an implicit acknowledgment that the Palestinians are incapable of building their own state."

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