Well-placed concerns from academia have reached me that more than confirm my view (reported in my May 9 post) that the overturning of the AUT boycott was merely a temporary setback in the racist campaign that is now about to redouble and refine its efforts to vilify, libel and inflict harm upon Israel.

The AUT motion defeating the union’s boycott was carefully worded to provide the basis for a more devious but no less virulent second-wave attack. It stated:

‘Council therefore resolves: 1. that international policy must be based on consistent principle, openly debated and democratically confirmed 2 . that the European and international affairs sub-committee of the national executive update such a policy for debate at the next meeting of council 3. that in the light of this, existing policy relating to boycotts of Israeli universities should be set aside 4 to reiterate its long term position in regard to the occupation 5 to mandate the executive to work with NATFHE and the TUC to establish an investigative commission charged with examining how best to implement this policy and provide practical solidarity to Palestinian and Israeli trade unionists struggling to maintain academic freedom, undertake research and teach students whilst arguing for Israel's compliance with UN resolutions, with a view to reporting back to the next council’

(my emphasis).

This last paragraph is the significant one. The policy which this ‘investigative commission’ is now to work out how to arm with the most potent of weapons is a policy based on hatred of Israel and the virulently false view of its history and present circumstances, the viewpoint that characterises the majority of academics and the TUC. Significantly, the AUT is now committed to work with Palestinian trade unions, which support a boycott, as well as with NATFHE, its erstwhile rival but now the union that is about to swallow the AUT whole in the proposed merger between the two of them. NATFHE’s hatred of Israel is documented on my previous post, along with the colourful career of its leader Paul Mackney, the far-left rabble-rouser and poster-boy for the forthcoming workers’ revolution in Britain and who is poised to become the leader of Britain’s united unionised professoriat.

Over the bank holiday weekend, NATFHE’s conference was due to debate its own motions to join the AUT boycott. The boycott’s defeat caused NATFHE to rule these motions out of order. However, NATFHE is already signed up to a total boycott of Israel through its affiliation to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign which calls for such a move, as can be seen on this website.

Withdrawal of the NATFHE motions, like the AUT’s ‘investigative commission’, should therefore be recognised as merely a tactical regrouping in a continuing war. On that commission, NATFHE can now work out with the AUT and TUC how to inflict the maximum damage upon Israel — taking maximum advantage of the combination of naivety and malice that characterises the lamentable collection of the supine, the gullible and the fellow-travellers of anti-Israel hatred who comprise Britain’s academic elite. The result is likely to be something very much worse than the AUT’s limited boycott. And since — as I understand it — NATFHE’s internal regional structure does not give grass-roots members much opportunity to challenge the diktats of the union’s nomenklatura, there will be much less opportunity for the kind of revolt that consigned the AUT boycott to the bin.

What has not been recognised by those who have the interests of Israel at heart is that — as I have said before, and this cannot be emphasised enough — the AUT boycott was defeated on the wrong argument. Led by the Engage group, the campaign opposed the boycott merely on the grounds of free speech. It did not oppose it on the most important grounds, that the intellectual delegitimisation of Israel within the universities is based on racist calumnies, lies, libels and distortions.

The Engage crowd led the campaign because the mainstream Jewish community was, as ever, nowhere to be seen. But Engage are closely associated with the soft-Trotskyite groupuscule Workers Liberty, a successor of the Socialist Alliance (itself a former alliance of the old International Marxist Group and Socialist Workers’ Party) and whose attitude to Israel — as can be seen on its website — is summed up by this slogan:

‘Israel out of the Occupied Territories! For a Palestinian state with the same rights as Israel! For a socialist Israel and a socialist Palestine in a socialist federation of the Middle East!’

Workers Liberty wants two states, Israel and Palestine, but it does not campaign against the Palestinian calls for the ethnic cleansing or genocide of the Jews and the destruction of the Jewish state, or the 50-year Arab war of extermination against Israel. The only aggressor in its universe appears to be Israel; the Arabs merely play the role of hapless victims. As a result, as one participant observed, despite a passionate speech by an Engage member calling on the AUT actively to fight antisemitism, the range of views among the anti-boycotters at the AUT meeting merely ranged from Peace Now (Israel is the oppressor, end the occupation immediately, repudiate the settlements) to total boycott and end the state of Israel.

These are the people who the hopelessly passive Jewish community congratulated for their defeat of the AUT boycott. The Jewish community in Britain, and academics of integrity who may not have followed the politicking that is going on within their own ranks, need urgently to wake up from their lethally complacent torpor. This war is far from over.

Posted by melanie at May 30, 2005