| advertisement |
|
|
| advertisement |
|
|
|
| Petition launched against UK Academic boycott of Israel
|
|
|
|
| Page tools |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
JERUSALEM (EJP) --- Israeli and English campaigners have launched a series of campaigns and protests against the motion calling for an academic boycott of Israel to be discussed by the largest university lecturer's union at its annual conference this week.
The National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (Natfhe) has already seen opposition through an online petition organised by the Israel-based International Advisory Board on Academic Freedom, which has attracted more than 69,000 names.
And on Saturday, a letter in the English Guardian newspaper opposing the boycott was signed by some 600 academics from around the world.
The Guardian letter said "We oppose the inconsistency of blacklisting Israelis but adopting a different attitude to academics in the ... long list of other states that are responsible for equal or worse human rights abuses ...
“Natfhe and AUT are currently involved in a bitter dispute with university managements over pay. This boycott proposal degrades our unity at a moment when academics need to stand together."
The letter also added that the signitaries condemn “Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza",
Boycott supporters
However, another letter printed in the newspaper from the Federation of Unions of Palestinian University Professors and Employee said: “Israeli academic institutions are implicated in various forms of oppression against the Palestinians. Israeli research institutes, think tanks, and academic departments have granted legitimacy to the work of academics who advocate ethnic cleansing, apartheid, denial of refugee rights, and other discriminatory policies against the Palestinians.”
The Natfhe motion, to be debated on Monday, claims that Israel has "apartheid policies, including construction of the exclusion wall, and discriminatory educational practices", and "invites members to consider their responsibility for ensuring equity and non-discrimination in contacts with Israeli institutions or individuals."
According to sources within the union it is likely to be passed. However, Natfhe is to merge with another union, the AUT within a week of the conference and any motion passed is only expected to be kept as an advisory rather than policy.
Previous controversy
The AUT is no stranger to controversy in this issue. Last year the union passed a similar motion condemning Israel and calling for an academic boycott, before it was rescinded just a few weeks later.
Despite the likelihood of the policy not being kept by the union, the Israeli academics are taking the situation seriously.
“The idea is mass action," Haifa Technion professor and chairman of the Inter-Senate Committee of the Universities for the Protection of Academic Independence (ISC), Zvi Zigler, said.
Emanuele Ottolenghi of Oxford University's Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies told the Guardian that a boycott would violate basic academic freedoms. "Asking academics to state their political opinion on a specific matter as a precondition to being accepted ... is in the best tradition of Stalinism."
|
|
 |
|