The resistance is growing, as the list of decent people prepared to put their heads over the parapet to fight the AUT boycott lengthens. In the Evening Standard last night, Howard Jacobson wrote a brilliant and blistering piece in which he said he had finally come to acknowledge that anti-Zionism was antisemitism, a conflation he had hitherto resisted:

‘I don’t think Jews, by virtue of their victimisation in the past, have any right to expect exemption from the usual rough and tumble of opinion. And I don’t consider it a mark of ill-will towards Israel — indeed it might well denote the very opposite — to oppose its policies when they are inhumane. It is important to hammer in this nail. No, no and no again, I do not accuse all those who censure Israel of hating Jews. Which nail hammered, it is equally important to drive in another. In the boycott by the Association of University Teachers, what has been expressed is not criticism or censure but vilification.’

This is indeed the crucial distinction. As Jacobson goes on to say, it is the singling out of Israel for condemnation while ignoring those countries where racism and infringements of human rights are endemic which gives the game away:

‘One thing is clear: in the case of Israel, as in countless instances in Jewish history, an exception has been made of Jews…the vilification of Israel of which the academic boycott is but the latest example rests upon contextlessness, Israel’s every act an unprovoked aggression, at every turn the doer and not the done to, all mention of war waged by the other side expunged. Here too I recognise the age-old strategies of antisemitism… Like the Jews who founded it in their image Israel — alone among nations — stands outside history. But then for Sue Blackwell the argument of history is only circular anyway. It is no defence of Israel that it has had to fight against being driven into the sea, because the sea, in her view, is where it belongs’.

Susan Bassnett, professor of comparative literature at Warwick University, writes in today’s Independent:

‘Last week's vote by the Association of University Teachers for an academic boycott of two Israeli universities was a long time coming. A small group of fanatical anti-Israeli lobbyists had been pressing for it for some time. When I heard the news, I found it hard to decide whether I was sad, angry or simply contemptuous. It is sad that supposedly intelligent people (one's academic colleagues) can be so closed-minded as to suppose that boycotting their fellows in another country is going to achieve anything. One feels contemptuous for the bigotry of these people and their refusal to understand that academic boycotts are discriminatory, racist and offensive to fair-minded individuals. I felt angry at the stupidity of it all, and at the boycotters' ignorance of history.’

However, a word of warning has been rightly sounded that some of the anti-boycotters on the left are in danger of recycling some of the very prejudices of those they are opposing. Harry’s Place has expressed support for a new web grouping called Engage which argues:

‘We should be making more links, not fewer, with the Israeli academics who are doing good work and who are resisting the racist culture of the Israeli right. Engage opposes Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. We are in favour of the foundation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. We do not believe that Israel is an ‘illegitimate state’. We are for reconciliation between Israeli Jews and Palestinians.’

This prompted a thoughtful response from Judy Keiner, who warns:

‘Engage sounds like a great response to the AUT boycott—till you start to think about what it actually stands for. Actually, it ends up buying into the same game as the boycotters.

‘Like the boycotters’ demand that Israeli academics who want to escape the boycott declare themselves against the racist policies of their universities/the Israeli state etc, Engage starts from a declaration of being against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Why should this be thought necessary in action against a boycott?

'Then there’s the declaration that they want to make more links with “the Israeli academics who are doing good work and who are resisting the racist culture of the Israeli right”. And it kindly agrees that Israel is not an illegitimate state. So that’s OK then. Instead of branding whole universities and a whole country racists, Engage confidently declares the whole of the Israeli right racists. And doesn’t tell us where the right starts and ends. Or how it is that there’s presumably a racism free space to the left of it.

‘Engage declares itself as standing against anti-semitism. How strange then that the statement by implication places all the opprobrium it cares to mention in the Israel-Palestinian conflict as resting on Israel-as-occupier and the Israeli right. It seems that Engage’s fight against anti-semitism is limited to the UK, and not for export to the Palestinian territories. No mention at all of the place of Hamas, which openly proclaims the validity of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion on its website, argues for the elimination of Israel and all Jews who emigrated there, and is a major political force in the Palestinian territories and especially in those
Palestinian universities calling for the boycott. No mention of the role of Palestinian terrorism, exterminism and rejectionism, underpinned by anti-semitism. No mention of the fact that Israeli universities offer academic freedom to Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims and everyone else. No mention of the lack of academic freedom in Palestinian universities for people to advocate the sort of pro-Israel activism corresponding to pro-Palestinian activism found in Israeli universities. Or do they honestly believe that the party line represents the thinking of all Palestinian intellectuals?

‘It seems to me that Engage wants to go on playing the old anti-semitic game of sorting Jews into "good" Jews and "bad" Jews. Only it doesn’t go as far as the boycotters in drawing the line round the bad Jews. And of course, it wants to demonstrate loud and clear that it stands with and amongst only the good Jews.’

A timely warning.

Posted by melanie at April 28, 2005