This foolish boycott will solve nothing

19 Jun 2007 | Comment

Lord knows, I’ve had my differences with Ken Livingstone, especially when it comes to the politics of the Middle East – but there’s one issue he’s got absolutely right. Last week, to the enormous surprise of much of London’s Jewish community, the mayor agreed with them – and came out against an academic boycott of Israel.

Unfortunately, his intervention came too late. The very next day, Britain’s University and College Union voted to promote the call for a boycott. Now, I was raised to be respectful of teachers and positively reverential towards academics. Which is why it pains me to say that this decision is almost laughably stupid. But it is. If a student had come up with it, he would find it daubed with a thick red line, from top to bottom.

First, it lacks all logical consistency. Let’s say you accept, as I do, that Israel is wrong to be occupying the territories it won in the Six Day war, whose 40th anniversary is being marked this week. Let’s say that that is your reason for boycotting Israel. Then why no boycott of China for its occupation of Tibet? Or of Russia for its brutal war against the Chechens? Or of Sudan, for its killing of hundreds of thousands in Darfur, a murderous persecution described by the US as genocide?

If it’s the ill-treatment of Palestinians in particular that concerns you, then why no boycott of Lebanon, whose army continues to pound the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, killing civilians daily? True, the Lebanese government is not a military occupier. But if occupation is the crime that warrants international ostracism, then why no boycott of American universities? After all, the US is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. So, for that matter, is Britain. Why do the good men and women of UCU not speak out, by boycotting, say, Oxford, Cambridge and London universities? Why do they not boycott themselves?

Maybe academic freedom is their chief concern. That would make sense, given that they’re academics. But if that was the issue, there would surely be boycotts of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to name just a few places where intellectual freedom remains a fond dream. (The awkward truth is that the freest place in the Middle East for an Arab scholar is Israel.) Yet the UCU sees no “moral implications,” to use the language of last week’s resolution, in institutional ties with Damascus, Cairo or Tehran. Only Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

For some reason, the activists pushing for this move believe Israelis should be placed in a unique category of untouchability. Never mind the 655,000 the US and Britain have, on one estimate, killed in Iraq. Never mind the two million displaced in Darfur. Never mind the closed, repressive societies of the Middle East. The Israelis are a people apart, one that must be shunned.

But let’s be charitable and forgive the boycotters their inconsistency. Surely any tactic, even an inconsistent one, is forgivable if it does some good. This, though, is where the combined geniuses of the UCU have really blundered. For a boycott will be hugely counter-productive.

For one thing, Israeli academics are disproportionately represented in Israel’s “peace camp.” The UCU will be boycotting the very people who have done most to draw the Israeli public’s attention to the folly of the occupation, to the very people working to bring an end to this desperate conflict. By their actions, the UCU will embolden the Israeli right who will be able to say, ‘Look, the world hates and isolates us: this is exactly why we have to be militarily strong.’

The second error is more subtle. One of the few things that might make Israel change course would be a shift in diaspora Jewish opinion: those campaigning for Palestinian rights and an end to the occupation need to win over Jewish allies. Yet no tactic is more likely to alienate Jews than a boycott. That’s because the very word has deep and painful resonances for Jews: a boycott of Jewish business was one of the Nazis’ opening moves. No one is equating the current plan with that. But of all the tactics to have chosen, a boycott is the very dumbest one.

Advocates say there’s nothing to worry about, this will be a boycott of institutions, not individuals – a necessary move because no Israeli institution has ever taken a stand against the occupation. This, too, is numb-skulled. When do academic institutions ever take a collective stand against anything? Did Imperial College declare itself against the Iraq war? What was the British Museum’s view of UK policy in Northern Ireland? Of course there was no such thing. Institutions of learning don’t take a stand; individuals do.

Which is why it will be individuals who are ostracised by this action. When you boycott the Hebrew University, you’re not boycotting bricks and mortar but the men and women who teach there. The “institutional” talk is just a ruse designed to make this boycott more palatable. It will still end in the shunning of individuals.

And why? Simply because they are citizens of the wrong country, born with the wrong nationality. In 2003 the Linguistic Society of America declared itself against blacklisting scholars simply because of the actions of their governments. “Such boycotts violate the principle of free scientific interaction and cooperation, and they constitute arbitrary and selective applications of collective punishment.” They also amount to a pretty crass form or discrimination: you can’t come to this conference, because you’ve got the wrong colour passport.

Oh, but none of these arguments stopped the boycott of South Africa, say the pro-blacklisters. Except these situations are completely different. In South Africa, the majority of the people were denied a vote in the state in which they lived. Israelis and Palestinians are, by contrast, two peoples locked in a national conflict which will be resolved only when each has its own, secure state.

Ken Livingstone is right: to launch a boycott of Israel now would hurt, not help the search for the peace that might end this Middle East tragedy. And that, when all the posturing is put to one side, is all that should matter.

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The danger of gestures

25 Apr 2007 | Comment

Last week, Germany, in its capacity as president of the EU, attempted to outlaw Holocaust denial in the EU. In the end, the resolution that emerged was the classic result of hard-fought compromise – that is to say, nobody got what they wanted. States that already had a Holocaust-denial law, such as Germany, Austria and France, did not manage to foist one on countries such as the UK and Ireland, who claimed to be worried about freedom of speech and inquiry. Meanwhile, those countries that did not have laws concerning the Holocaust now find themselves having to pay lip service, as members of the Union, to the watered down proposal – criminalising “trivialisation” of the Holocaust.

Even if the majority of nations in the EU do not sign up to this (and they have every right not to), damage has been done to the EU’s self-image as protector of human rights and free speech, and it is unsurprising who was among the first to point this out.

Step forward the man in the beige anorak.

Speaking to Spanish TV earlier this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran did not hesitate to pick up on the EU’s stance. Of course, Mr Ahmadinejad has form on this: he is the man who responded to the Mohammed cartoons controversy by sanctioning an exhibition of viciously anti-semitic Holocaust denial cartoons, with the expressed attempt at exposing the west’s “hypocrisy” on the portrayal of taboos.

We can agree or disagree on whether he had a point at the time. Personally, I don’t think he did: In terms of taste and offence there’s a difference, not least of historical distance, between mocking a centuries-dead religious leader and an abysmal event from which many still literally bear the scars.

But when one looks at events in Luxembourg over the past week, and Mr Ahmadinejad’s response, one cannot help but see he has a certain logic on his side when he asks: “Does [the] EU consider questions as a crime? Today, anywhere in the world, one can raise questions about God, prophets, existence and any other issue. Why historical events should not be clarified [sic]?”

We all, of course, can imagine where these questions lead (if you can’t, ask David Irving). But how many of us can bring ourselves to disagree with Mr Ahmadinejad’s words above, however much we may be suspicious of the sentiment? If the EU can allow people to raise questions about one thing, then why not another?

We may write off the resolution as a gesture (though, again, David Irving might have something to tell us about that), but even in the gesture, the damage is done. The EU is seen to be the superpower that protects the sensitivities of Jews, but not those of Muslims.

And Ahmadinejad has been quick to take advantage. At a time when already too many in the Middle East see the EU as in the pocket of Israel, this at best pointless resolution will only serve to drive yet more into the arms of the Iranians, who, after the propaganda victories of the second Lebanon war and the hostage crisis, are more and more managing to portray themselves as the champions of the Middle East’s Muslims.

Originally posted on Comment is Free