At last someone has understood what the academic boycott actually means. As Ha’aretz reports, Benjamin Netanyahu has undertaken to fight not just the boycott but what lies behind it:

‘The attempt to boycott Israeli academia isn't a boycott of academia at all," Netanyahu said Tuesday. "It is an attempt to boycott the entire State of Israel… The repeal of the boycott last week is only a small victory in a battle that is not yet over. Everything must be done to foil any attempt to harm Israel and the Jewish people," Netanyahu said. "The campaign against the academic boycott is not only the concern of the academic community. This is an attempt to damage the State of Israel and its democratic character. Therefore, I have decided to stand by the institutions of higher learning and contribute whatever I can to the campaign," he added.’

Netanyahu should be urged to make this the start of an educational charm offensive by Israeli academics, politicians, writers and others, who should be brought to Britain to hold public meetings, lectures, discussions, lunches, dinners and so forth on campus in order to start tackling the root cause of the boycott poison — the astounding ignorance among academics and students of the history and present reality of the Middle East, the creation of Israel and the 50-year Arab war of extermination against it.

One of the problems is that Israel’s banana-politics culture of rampant cronyism, titanic ego-wars and general crass amateurishness — plus its head-in-the-sand fatalism that Britain and Europe are endemically and permanently prejudiced against the Jews and so it’s a waste of time even trying to put its case to them — has meant that for years it has simply abandoned the all-important European battlefield of ideas and allowed it to be sown instead with the dragons’ teeth of hatred. Israel’s Foreign Ministry in particular is worse then useless. Despite the fact that Netanyahu is the country’s finance minister, he should insist on taking personal charge of a far wider campaign to educate Britain and make ignorance history.

Posted by melanie at June 1, 2005