May 4, 2005

British Teachers' Boycott of Israeli Academics Makes Anti-Semitism Official

Dear Friend of FLAME:

You may be aware that the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) has declared an "academic boycott" against two Israeli universities and its academic staff. The Association has not seen fit to condemn Palestinian terrorism---or terrorism of any sort in any part of the world---nor has it chastised repressive dictatorships, such as Syria or North Korea, nor those responsible for the genocide in Darfur. One can only conclude that Israel was singled out because it is a Jewish state.

Even the staid London Times decried the AUT resolution in an April 25 editorial: "The decision ... is a mockery of academic freedom, a biased and blinkered move that is as ill-timed as it is perverse ...[It] can quickly become an excuse for anti-Semitism ... Why does the AUT not call for a ban on contacts in dozens of other countries inimical to human rights? ... AUT members should defeat this pernicious ban by cultivating every contact available as soon as possible with the two Israeli universities."

The following article, written by Douglas Davis before the resolution was passed, throws a somewhat humorous, but ultimately dead-serious light on this important subject. At the same time the article makes clear what enormous contributions Israel has made and continues to make to science, to technology and to the welfare of the world. Obviously, the examples given in the articles are only the tip of the iceberg of Israeli accomplishments in so many fields. Israel's achievements are the more admirable since they were reached despite almost incessant war and terror since the birth of the state and despite the ingathering and absorption into its society of millions of people.

Best regards,

Gerardo Joffe
President, FLAME

P.S.	The mean-spirited, anti-Semitic resolution of the AUT must be fought by all available and possible means, because if it is not, such hateful action may spread to other universities and institutions. Immediately following this article is information about how you can protest this outrageous action. I urge you to take just 30 seconds to make your voice heard on this important issue.

Unplug Your Computer, Throw Away Your Mobile Phone.
By Douglas Davis, The Spectator, April 16, 2005

Pay attention, Professor. If you support the proposed academic boycott of Israel — and if you are to remain intellectually honest — prepare for a radical lifestyle change. Firstly, unplug your computer. Good. Now switch off your interactive digital television set. Well done. And now throw away your mobile phone. Excellent. You see, Professor, these machines are not only the engine of the globalised, capitalist world but they also depend on technologies that have been produced by Israeli academics in the Zionist entity.

Stop playing with your detached mouse, Professor, and concentrate. I’m afraid you may not use the British Library because it has been computerised by Ex Libris, a Zionist company that was spawned by the odious Hebrew University of Jerusalem. And if, God forbid, you develop problems of the small intestine, you may not pop the Zionist-invented ‘video capsule’, which passes naturally through your body as it monitors this delicate piece of your anatomy. You will, sadly, have to take it up the derrière, Professor. As a matter of principle, of course. But remember: your principle allows your proctologist to keep his hand in.

All this boycotting, you see, is the logical extension of proposed academic sanctions against Israel by some members of your Association of University Teachers (AUT) . . .. Just visit the website of Egyptian-born Mona Baker of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. She set the standard by firing two Israeli scholars from the boards of her translation journals as a matter of high academic principle.

You will see that Ms Baker’s ambitions do not end with the academic boycott. Her website also includes a section entitled ‘Boycott Israeli Products & Services’, which features dozens of global brands that, inconveniently, are not Israeli at all. The offenders presumably have earned their place in infamy by dealing with the Zionist entity, by being owned by Jews or by having Jews on their boards. They range from Coca-Cola and Nescafé to Johnson & Johnson and Estée Lauder, from Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren to Selfridges and Marks & Spencer, from Kleenex and Wonderbra to Lancôme and.... All marked for boycott.

Absent from Ms Baker’s list — and here I think I can help — is a set of global companies which are arguably even more culpable because they not only operate in Israel but also do most of their R&D there. IBM and Intel each have three R&D centres in Israel; Microsoft established its first non-American facility there, and Cisco Systems has built its only non-American R&D centre in Israel. Then there is Motorola, which has its largest R&D site in Israel, and News Corp, whose company NDS develops those neat interactive technologies for digital television. There are many more.

The AUT boycott brigade has cause for concern. It knows that these companies are attracted not only by the innate brutality of the expansionist regime but also by the cunning of its university graduates (most of the R&D centres are located on or near Israeli university campuses). Proportionally, the Zionist entity has more university graduates than any other country, while its scientists, engineers and agriculturists publish more professional papers per capita than do their counterparts anywhere else on earth. The result is that Israel has the largest concentration of high-tech companies outside Silicon Valley. But the ultimate sin is that Israel, which came to independence in the process of post-war decolonisation, stubbornly refuses to become a failed state.

So dangerous has the situation become, dear Professor, that when you meet in Eastbourne you will set aside the small matter of your pay deal (which many universities have failed to implement). Instead, you and your fellow intellectual heavyweights will ponder far worthier matters. Like foreign affairs. Of course, you will not have to bother your turbo-charged minds with this week’s Unicef report which shows that half of the women in the Arab world are illiterate and more than ten million children in the region don’t attend school.

The issue that will preoccupy you will be the aggressive imperialist apartheid state: a state that has nurtured the Palestinian universities and colleges in the West Bank; one that offers equal rights — and access to its universities — to all its citizens, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or sex; and which has educated tens of thousands of Palestinians at Israeli universities (several hundred a year still opt for an Israeli education). It is significant that Omar Barghouti, the Palestinian who is encouraging you and your British comrades to boycott Israel, is a doctoral student at none other than Tel Aviv University.

No, Professor, not all Israeli universities and not all Israeli academics will be boycotted if the AUT motion is passed. Such a proposition was defeated 3–1 at the association’s conference two years ago, and the boycotters are too smart to repeat past mistakes. The new motion, says one of its authors, has been ‘tactically’ amended to get it passed. ‘We’ve got to be a bit more sophisticated,’ she says. And sophisticated they are. They even had a dry run last December, when they met to rehearse their presentations and develop killer responses to potential critics.

Their sleek new motion — which does not involve a single book-burning — envisages sanctions against only the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University and Haifa University. And there’s more: the boycotters generously offer Israeli academics the opportunity to buy themselves immunity if they are prepared to denounce their country, specifically, ‘conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state’s colonial and racist policies’. Who could seriously question the integrity of your fellow academic freedom fighters?

But there are, of course, small obstinate obstacles in the way of you visionaries, Professor. Britain’s academic institutions, for example, have not endorsed boycotting Israel’s academic community. Indeed, when the Oxford don Andrew Wilkie told an Israeli PhD applicant that there was ‘no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army’, he was hauled before the university’s disciplinary body and suspended without pay for two months.

Cambridge University’s Professor Sir Aaron Klug, Nobel laureate and former president of the Royal Society, put me right when I asked him about the possible impact — on Britain no less than on Israel — of such a boycott: ‘How important is the AUT? That’s the question you have to ask.’ He is no supporter of Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and his policies but he does consider that the proposed boycott is ‘ill considered and doesn’t promote anything at all’. The AUT, he says, is out to attack Israel ‘but this is no way to proceed’. Sir Aaron is ‘not one who looks for anti-Semitism around every corner,’ he says, ‘but I do think there’s an element of that here. It does give people who are anti-Semitic the opportunity to express themselves.’

But relax, Professor. The AUT has solemnly concluded that there is a clear distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. They don’t mind Jews. They just detest the Jewish state.

Raise Your Voice Against the Anti-Semitic, Anti-Israel Resolution of the British AUT

Dear Friend of Israel, Friend of FLAME:

This is not the time to be silent.

Please write to the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) and tell them to REVERSE THEIR DECISION, made Friday April 22, 2005 to boycott Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities .

Consider a writing and sending a variation on this simple message:

Here are the suggested AUT people to write to:

press@aut.org.uk,
president@aut.org.uk,
sally.hunt@aut.org.uk,
paul.cottrell@aut.org.uk,
brian.everett@aut.org.uk,
catherine.wilkinson@aut.org.uk,

In addition, we urge you to send a copy of your letter to the British press—suggested addresses follow:

letters@the-sun.co.uk,
stletters@telegraph.co.uk,
info@ap.org,
oneclick@bbc.co.uk,
newsbeat@bbc.co.uk,
psdalexander@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk,
info@standwithus.com,
editor@thisislondon.co.uk,
help@ft.com,
newsdesk@news-of-the-world.co.uk,
politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk,
foreigneditor@independent.co.uk,
newseditor@independent.co.uk,
expressletters@express.co.uk,
editorial@dailymailonline.co.uk,
dtletters@telegraph.co.uk,
online.editor@timesonline.co.uk