As the proposed academic boycott of Israel continues to reverberate, it is important to grasp that the appalling animus behind it goes far deeper than a protest at Israel’s behaviour in the disputed territories. It is an attempt to delegitimise Israel altogether in order to pave the way for its destruction. The Engage website has posted a video of key boycott organiser John Rose explaining why Israel should be disbanded or toppled. And on Normblog, Shalom Lappin has pointed out that the Palestinian boycott call that the UCU has voted to circulate to all its branches is the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) statement.

This statement justifies its boycott call by characterizing Israel as a colonial and apartheid state from its creation in 1948, and by virtue of its ‘Zionist ideology’. The motions adopted at the UCU conference do not propose an open debate of a possible boycott of Israel. They commit the union to promoting PACBI’s proposal throughout its branches in the UK during the coming academic year, with a view to implementing it at the end of this process. The UCU has, then, voted to sponsor the PACBI campaign on British university campuses.

It is important to understand precisely what the PACBI boycott call entails. It is not an instrument for criticizing Israeli government policy or an effort to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory beyond its 1967 borders. This movement does not seek a peace between Israelis and Palestinians within the framework of a two-state solution. It is an integral part of a rejectionist programme to dismantle Israel as a country. The architects of the campaign to support the PACBI boycott call within the UCU are perfectly aware of its nature, and have never concealed its objectives.

The executive of the UCU, and its predecessors within the AUT, have been systematically diffident and disingenuous in dealing with this campaign. While claiming to reject it, they have carefully avoided robust opposition and refrained from acknowledging its intent. This is characteristic of the consistently weak and incompetent leadership that they have provided on this issue.

The supporters of the boycott are fond of comparing it to the boycott of apartheid South Africa. It has been shown on many occasions that the analogy does not hold. Apartheid was a legal system designed to exclude a large majority of citizens from equal participation in the institutions of their own country, on racial grounds. The objective of the boycott, and the anti-apartheid campaign of which it was an element, was not to eliminate South Africa as a country, but to enfranchise all of its citizens. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a conflict between two national groups, clearly distinguished by language, history, and culture. In the course of this dispute, each national group has sought to subordinate the other. Neither wishes to share sovereignty with its adversary, nor do they see themselves as citizens of a common polity. The wars that this conflict has produced have resulted in the dispossession and occupation of the Palestinians. A just and rational solution requires that these effects be corrected within a framework that secures the right of both peoples to independence, peace, and security. The PACBI boycott campaign regards such a resolution of the conflict as unacceptable. Instead it seeks to reverse the current situation by subjecting the Israelis to the occupation and dispossession that the Palestinians have suffered.

The deeply dishonest comparison between the PACBI boycott campaign and the anti-apartheid movement conceals a fact that should be obvious. This campaign is a direct extension of the long-standing Arab League boycott of Israel. The latter was, interestingly, first declared in 1945 as a boycott of the Jewish businesses, goods, and services of the Yishuv (the Jewish community) in Palestine. That it was instituted several years prior to the creation of Israel and the 1948 war, which generated the Palestinian refugee problem, clearly demonstrates that this boycott was directed at a politically autonomous Jewish collectivity in Palestine, rather than against any particular government policy or action.

After Israel came into being, the Arab League boycott was administered by the Central Boycott Office in Damascus. It was pursued as a technique of economic warfare that formed part of the Arab League’s general effort to delegitimize Israel and bring about its demise. It was rigorously applied, but with limited success, until the 1980s, when it started to dissipate. In 1977 the United States Congress adopted anti-boycott sanctions proposed by President Carter. These imposed fines and tax penalties on companies collaborating with the boycott - measures that played a significant role in undermining the boycott’s effectiveness.

It is indeed vital that people understand that the boycott is a direct descendant of the century-old Arab attempt to drive the Jews out of their ancestral homeland altogether. It is thus an accessory to ethnic cleansing. But what hope is there of Britain grasping this when popular ignorance about Israel and the history of the Middle East and the Jewish people is fuelled daily by the BBC, whose venomous distortions and misrepresentations of Israel are now running totally out of control. To tune into the BBC on Israel is to be inundated by a tsunami of sheer hatred. And once again it is an American organisation, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which is so appalled it has made a public protest at some of the BBC’s distortions which falsely represent Israel as the aggressor and illegitimate coloniser when it is the historic victim of injustice, dispossession and ethnic cleansing:

The BBC News Web site has posted ‘a series of articles about the attempts to achieve peace in the Middle East and the main obstacles.’ The many cliched distortions, errors and critical omissions in the five-part series by Martin Asser, which includes sections on water, refugees, Jerusalem, borders and settlements, and the history of peace talks, renders the feature itself an obstacle to understanding. Tellingly, BBC does not deem ‘terrorism’ or ‘incitement to genocide” as main obstacles to peace worthy of discussion. Instead, in each section, Asser heaps blame on Israel and exonerates the Palestinian side. The cumulative impression is that Israel is the obstacle to peace. Period.

Right from the beginning, BBC’s section on Jerusalem amplifies Islamic history and minimizes the more ancient Jewish ties to the city. Thus, the section begins vaguely: ‘Ancient Jerusalem has changed hands many times, its religious significance exerting a powerful pull on Jewish, Christian and Muslim conquerors.’ Were Asser to provide more details, such as dates of each group’s reign, it would be clear that the Jewish kingdom was established 1600 years before Muslim Arabs arrived.

… Thus, while Israel relinquished its most holy site to Muslims, despite the systematic Muslim desecration of Jewish sacred places for 19 years, Palestinian leaders deny that Israel has any historic connection to that site. Just whose policy is an obstacle to peace?

Thanks to the internet, the BBC – along with other British media – is now a major player in American public debate. What Americans need to know is that, far from its reputation as an international kitemark of accuracy and fairness, its journalism embodies a totally closed thought system which filters events through a prism of hatred – of Israel, of America and of western values. The BBC is simply the single greatest cultural weapon in the armoury of those who intend to bring the west down.