LONDON (EJP)---Members of the University and College Union (UCU) will debate Wednesday a motion which calls again for an academic boycott of Israeli universities in the light of the "humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza."
It also demands Jewish and Israeli academics that they explain their politics as a pre-condition to normal academic contact.
A similar motion passed at the union's annual conference last year provoked outrage from academics and politicians in Britain and overseas.
UCU represents 120,000 lecturers over Britain.
The motion, to be discussed at the union’s conference in Manchester, asks colleagues "to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating".
If Jewish and Israeli academics support the Palestinian point of view they will be protected from further action, if they are against it or non-committal then they maybe considered unsuitable for continued association.
The motion states that "criticism of Israel or Israeli policy are not, as such, anti-Semitic".
It notes the "continuation of illegal settlement, killing of civilians and the impossibility of civil life, including education as a result of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land."
And the motion criticises previous attempts to stop UCU members "debating a boycott of Israeli academic institutions".
Sally Hunt, the UCU general secretary, said: "There is no call for a boycott: the motions to congress call for a wider debate about what is happening over there. I have made it quite clear on a number of occasions that my personal view is that a boycott of all Israeli academic institutions is not the best way to promote a just peace."
Last year, Jewish organizations worldwide condemned the motion - which was passed by three votes to two - as a "frightening" assault on academic freedom.
Before the vote, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg cancelled a planned visit to the UK in protest at the boycott calls.
But last year, the proposals for an academic boycott of Israeli universities were dealt a blow as lawyers warned the UCU that the action would be 'unlawful and discriminatory' and cannot be implemented.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the elected body which represents the 280,000 Jews in the UK, has decided to obtain an opinion on the legality of a boycott call and how it would affect Jewish academics working in this country as 15% of the Jewish community work in education.
In a statement, the “Academic Friends of Israel” said Tuesday that it “fully supports the right of the UCU to debate the issues surrounding the Israel/Palestine conflict and how they can support Palestinian academics as long as it does not include calls for the destruction, demonization or delegitimization of the State of Israel which is the European Union Monitoring Centre definition of anti-Semitism.”
It added: “The problem is that many of the UCU delegates as well as the union itself do not accept this definition of anti-Semitism or that the UCU has become institutionally racist by creating a discriminatory atmosphere towards Jewish academics many of whom are members of the UCU.”