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First published 2005
In April 2001, six months into the second intifada, a small ad-hoc group,
most of them Israeli citizens, published a call launching a campaign to
boycott Israeli exports and leisure tourism in Israel. As far as I know, we
were the first to publish such a call (see URL
http://www.middleeastuk.com/com/features/boycott.htm ). You can still
find it, with hundreds of additional signatures of supporters from many
countries. (If you have not added your signature, please do so now).
The justification for this campaign should be obvious even to liberals, let
alone socialists. Since the demise of South-African apartheid, Israel is the
last remaining active colonial settler state. Its treatment of the
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is, if anything, more brutal than
that meted to non-whites by the apartheid regime. As Israel enjoys the full
support and protection of the US (which it serves as chief regional partner
and enforcer), other governments dare not take any effective measure to
restrain the armoured monster bulldozers of Israeli expansionism that
trample over the Palestinians, demolish their homes, steal their land and
uproot their ancient olive trees. It is left to world public opinion and
civil society to act in defence of the victims. The same arguments that
justified the boycotting of the South-African apartheid regime - accepted by
all progressive people - surely apply in the present case.
Let me add one general point: the boycott tactic has the great double merit
of being non-violent and a way in which every individual can express a moral
commitment. This immediate mobilizing effect on those who join the boycott
is no less important than its real effect on the target (in this case,
Israel), which will take long to gain force.
Shortly after we issued our call, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the
UK launched its BIG (Boycott Israeli Goods) campaign (URL:
http://www.bigcampaign.org.uk/
).
Dos and don'ts
At about that time, I was involved in private discussion among some radical
academics about extending the economic boycott to the academic sphere. My
position was - and remains - that a boycott directed against Israeli
academic institutions is wholly justified, but a boycott of Israeli
academics, as individuals, is unacceptable.
The arguments justifying economic boycott apply also to an institutional
academic boycott. Israel's universities are part of institutional structure
of the Zionist colonial settler state and help to manufacture its
ideological superstructure. True, a small minority of radical dissident
academics are - barely - tolerated within these institutions; but surely the
institutions as such cannot be judged by these rare exceptions.
On the other hand, being an Israeli, and in particular an Israeli academic,
is not per se a punishable offence; so no one should be penalized merely for
being an Israeli academic.
Moreover, an individual academic boycott would be impaled on the horns of a
nasty dilemma: either it is a blanket boycott directed indiscriminately at
all Israeli academics, or some exemptions are to be made.
In the first case, the boycott would target the righteous along with the
wicked, punishing the small minority of beleaguered courageous academic
dissidents, as well as the few Arabs who, against great odds, have achieved
positions in Israel's academe.
But if exemptions are to be allowed, then a thicket of thorny questions must
be faced: Are Israeli Arab academics to be exempt, on purely ethnic grounds?
What would be the rules and procedures for exempting any individual? Who
would be authorized to grant exemptions? What evidence of righteousness
would need to be submitted by an individual wishing to be exempted? If an
individual felt that s/he was unjustly denied exemption, how and to whom
would s/he appeal against the decision? These and similar questions have no
satisfactory answer. Begin to consider them, and you are reminded of loyalty
oaths and totalitarian policing of thought. Any system of individual
penalties is inherently iniquitous unless it is accompanied by a fair and
transparent mechanism of adjudication.
On these grounds, I believe that sanctions such as the following are
justified:
+ Refusing to participate in academic conferences co-sponsored by the
Israeli authorities or by Israeli universities.
+ Acting within international scientific organizations so as to oppose them
holding conferences in Israel.
+ Acting against cooperation at the institutional level with Israeli
universities.
+ Opposing the award of grants by the EU and other international agencies to
Israeli universities; refusing to act in any way (for example, as referees)
to facilitate such grants.
+ Refusing to collaborate with a person acting as representative or on
behalf of an Israeli university.
On the other hand, acts such as the following, targeting an individual
merely on the ground that s/he is Israeli, are unjustified:
+ Withholding scientific collaboration with an Israeli scientist who acts in
an individual capacity.
+ Hampering the publication of academic work by an Israeli.
+ Refusing to act as a referee of a paper submitted to an academic journal
by an Israeli.
+ Dismissing an Israeli from the editorial or advisory board of an academic
journal to which s/he had been appointed in an individual capacity.
[1]
Let me add three remarks. First, if you have some evidence that an
individual academic is guilty of a war crime, or even of propagating racist
poison, then you may well wish to have nothing to do with that person. But
this applies whether or not the guilty person is Israeli. No general
academic boycott of Israel need be invoked.
Second, clearly even an institutional academic boycott is bound to have some
adverse side effects on individual Israeli academics, including the
righteous minority. This kind of thing is unfortunately inevitable in any
boycott. Even disinvesting in firms, such as Caterpillar, that supply Israel
with instruments of oppression, may well hurt some innocent people. This
cannot be a valid objection to the boycott. Would we oppose a campaign for
disarmament on the grounds that it would deprive some workers of employment?
But deliberately aiming punitive measures at individuals irrespective of
their personal guilt is quite a different matter: it is morally repugnant.
Third, there are bound to be some borderline cases, where it is not quite
obvious whether an Israeli academic is acting on behalf of an institution
(in which case applying the boycott is justified) or in an individual
capacity (in which case no sanction ought to be imposed). Most real-life
demarcations are somewhat fuzzy. Such doubtful cases should be resolved as
best we can, applying sound judgment and good common sense. But, most
importantly, they must be resolved ad causam, on the merit of the case - not
ad hominem, on the merit of the individual.
AUT resolution lacked clarity
On 6 April 2002, a campaign for an academic boycott of Israel was launched
by a letter to the Guardian signed by 120 academics, headed by Hilary and
Steven Rose. The steps proposed in the letter were clearly aimed at
institutions rather than individuals. Moreover, they were of very limited
scope,[2] which is perhaps reasonable as a first step.
From then on, the academic boycott campaign gathered momentum. Several
branches of the AUT adopted resolutions supporting it. It peaked on 22 April
2005, when the AUT conference adopted as union policy the boycott of two
Israeli universities, Bar-Ilan and Haifa, and a more limited action against
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. However, a vehement backlash
counter-campaign, orchestrated by the pro-Israel lobby, led to the overturn
of this resolution on 26 May.
In my opinion, insufficient clarity in the April resolution may have
contributed to its subsequent revocation. Although the main text of the
resolution speaks in general terms of boycotting institutions rather than
individuals, it relies for detail on an earlier Palestinian call for
boycott. The resolution says:
'Council resolves: … That the boycott should take the form described in the
Palestinian call for academic boycott of Israeli institutions.'
This Palestinian 'call', quoted in the AUT resolution, also seems to intend
a purely institutional boycott. The specific boycotting measures it demands
are:
(a) Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural
cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions;
Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and
international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and
subsidies to these institutions;
(b) Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international
academic institutions.
Note the repetitive emphasis on 'institutions'. However, the Palestinian
text immediately muddies the water by making the following proviso:
(c) Exclude from the above actions against Israeli institutions any
conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's
colonial and racist policies.
This proviso is clearly well meant, but it negates the institutional nature
of the proposed boycott. If the boycott is to be truly purely institutional,
as seems to be demanded by clauses (a) and (b), then the exemption of
'conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals' is totally irrelevant.
And of course it raises all those unanswerable questions as to what would
constitute sufficient proof of 'conscientiousness', what degree of
'opposition' is being demanded, who would be authorized to judge this, and
what procedures would be used in the adjudication.
So the Palestinian text ends up being highly ambiguous as between calling
for institutional and individual boycott. And the AUT 22 April resolution
inherited this ambiguity from the Palestinian text, which it incorporated
and endorsed.
This made the resolution harder to defend than would otherwise have been the
case.
Most damaging was the opposition to the AUT boycott resolution expressed by
some of the Israeli academics who are known to be opposed to the occupation
and active in defence of Palestinian rights. Although - as befits academics
- they produced all sorts of sophisticated theoretical arguments in support
of their position, I am pretty sure that at the back of their minds was the
shocking feeling that the proposed boycott might face them with the
unenviable choice between the sad irony of being wholly innocent victims of
'friendly fire' and the humiliation of having to prove (how and to whom?)
their righteousness.
Of course, the overturning of the AUT resolution is by no means the end of
the story. The struggle will go on, and it will no doubt have many ups and
downs. I can only hope that the lessons of the past will have been learnt by
the advocates of boycott.
Footnotes:
[1] According to press reports, this actually happened in June 2002. If so, I
find it inexcusable. A person penalizing an Israeli academic on the mere
grounds that s/he is Israeli cannot be regarded as progressive: it is
reactionary to categorize and treat individuals according to their
nationality. If, as reported, the person dismissed was in fact an opponent
of Israeli policies, this only adds irony to the affair.
[2] The letter said: "Odd though it may appear, many national and European
cultural and research institutions, including especially those funded from
the EU and the European Science Foundation, regard Israel as a European
state for the purposes of awarding grants and contracts. (No other Middle
Eastern state is so regarded). Would it not therefore be timely if at both
national and European level a moratorium was called upon any further such
support unless and until Israel abide by UN resolutions and open serious
peace negotiations with the Palestinians, along the lines proposed in many
peace plans including most recently that sponsored by the Saudis and the
Arab League." This clearly calls for reassessing the status of Israel as a
state for academic purposes. The letter does not call for any other action.
* Israeli dissident, a socialist and (therefore) anti-Zionist. Founding
member in 1962 of the Socialist Organization in Israel (Matzpen). Now living
in London. Mathematician, emeritus professor at London University. | 
