The battle was won, but the war is still being lost -- and the way the battle was won is the reason why the war is still being lost. Yes, overturning the AUT boycott was a significant victory. But without wishing to detract from the huge effort made by all in the anti-boycott campaign, only some of them were campaigning on the right grounds. The reason why the boycott was defeated by such a large majority was because most academics were outraged by one thing alone -- the palpable threat to academic freedom of speech and the McCarthyite nature of the exercise. This is certainly a worthy cause for which to go into battle, and the boycott was indeed wholly objectionable for this reason alone.

But this should not have been the only argument. The boycott was monstrous for an even more important reason -- that the viewpoint on which it was based was untrue, consisting of lies, libels and historical ignorance of the first order, racially prejudiced to a venomous degree and part of the campaign of hatred, delegitimisation and incitement against the Jews of Israel which is lending succour to those who wish to destroy them. The problem -- no, the obscenity -- is that many if not most of those academics voting against the boycott probably agree with these lies about Israel. They share the view that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians. They subscribe to the moral inversion which views genocidal aspirations more sympathetically than Israel's self-defence. They go along with the lie that this self-defence is actually unprovoked aggression. They parrot the fiction that the 'occupation' and the settlements are illegal. In short, these academics are the problem no less than the bocotters. They have helped foster the climate of hatred, bigotry and lies towards Israel that is now the default position on British campuses. They have created the swamp from which the pestilence of the boycott has sprung.

To repeat -- by no means all the academics who overturned the boycott fall into this camp. But given the poisonous climate on campus, and the arguments that have actually been made, it's a fair bet that many if not most of them do. Take the altercation last night on BBC TV's Newsnight between the original begetter of the boycott, Steven Rose, (who unfortunately is my colleague on Radio Four's The Moral Maze, but that's a whole different headache) and the leader of the anti-boycott postion Jon Pike. Rose did his usual thing -- the man really believes that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is worse than apartheid South Africa, just about the only one of his wild assertions that was in fact rebutted by Pike (Rose even managed to make Kirsty Wark appear sympathetic to Israel, a truly notable achievement). But Pike also said he would personally refuse to visit the college in Ariel at the centre of the boycott call, and left viewers in no doubt about his general distatse for Israel's behaviour. In other words, the argument was not about the vicious anti-Jewish hatred behind the boycott but boiled down merely to an argument about the proper tactics to be employed in bringing noxious Israel to heel.

This deeply distasteful position was on display today in the Financial Times's editorial (the FT has become the Guardian for capitalists). This welcomed the ovberturning of the boycott on the grounds that it was the wrong way to opose Israel, and went on to say:

'There are plenty of other countries also accused of heinous oppression of their peoples - including genocide - such as Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burma. Yet the union has no boycotts for them: Israel is its only target other than Colombia. Meanwhile it bizarrely supports the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, defending a country not noted for its upholding of academic freedom.'

So to the FT, Israel is in the same genocidal league as the tyrannies of the world. It regards Israel as abhorrent, and more or less said so. Thus the climate of hatred is still being whipped up even by those who were apparently on the side of the angels over the Steven Rose/Sue Blackwell putsch. After the vote, Blackwell declared with predictable melodrama and appropriately totalitarian resonance that 'the struggle would continue'. Indeed; the forces of darkness may have had a setback, but they will regroup and redouble their campaign of hatred and lies, doubtless with the full support of some at least who opposed them on tactical grounds. This horror has a long way still to go.