Boycott worries? Take a number

The phones began ringing late Friday afternoon - BBC, AFP, co-authors, family - everyone wanted to know if I was worried about the vote in Britain to boycott my university. There was no time to get into details, but as a Jew and Israel, my automatic answer to any question that contains the word "worry" is yes.

On the long list, the boycott comes close behind the dangers of Palestinian terror, the Iranian bomb, Hizbollah′s missiles, Osama Bin Laden, reality TV, Israeli taxi drivers, and the waves of locusts migrating from North Africa.

In truth, the direct impact of academic sanctions proposed by the AUT (Association of University Teachers) against the faculty at Bar Ilan and Haifa universities is likely to be minimal. The few viscerally anti-Israel academics are probably not participating in any joint research projects in any case, and its their loss. Two years ago, my colleague Prof. Miriam Shlesinger, was ousted from the board of a journal in translation studies by an Egyptian-born editor based in the University of Manchester.

And the politically correct anti-Israel atmosphere has probably led a few anonymous reviewers to reject research reports submitted to other journals - but this is hard to prove.

In any case, the quality of the Israeli academic research is generally very high, and good work still trumps bad politics, despite the nonsense of "post-colonialism", post-modernism, and post-Chomsky/Saidism.

In molecular biology, immunology, anti-terror methodologies, electro-optics, strategic deterrence, and other fields, a political ban on Israelis would be particularly costly for the banners, if not for the banned.

And efforts to understand the factors that distinguish between failure and success in arms control and peace efforts (my research focus) will be stillborn without the active participation of serious Israeli researchers in this field.

At the same time, this effort to impose a political litmus test on academic research has created a serious backlash. Since the recent revival of the boycott campaign, we have been deluged by emails from colleagues pledging to defy the policy, and to increase their contact with Israelis. Many also reject the medieval nature of such censorship, which contradicts the core principle of the marketplace of ideas.

However, the real threat from the boycott, as its authors realize, is not from the direct academic impact, but rather from its broader political objectives. Although the official terminology refers to "occupation" and "settlements", and singled out two universities for alleged complicity, the Israel-obsessed organizers of the AUT boycott (Susan Blackwell and Steven Rose), like their counterparts elsewhere, readily admit that this is simply a tactical decision. They have declared all Israelis who serve in the defense forces and support the government to be guilty.

Indeed, the boycott is only a small part of the broader political war against Israel′s legitimacy as a sovereign Jewish state, and the effort to label Israel as the next "apartheid regime" is designed to put an end to Zionism. The use of the apartheid label does a gross injustice to those who suffered under the real thing, and is a form of modern anti-Semitism, this time turning the Jewish state into the devil.

The grossly exaggerated condemnation of Israel, and the systematic removal of the environment of terror in the rhetoric of "war crimes" and "ethnic cleansing", is the political counterpart of the ongoing terrorism and military assaults.

Major battles of this political war have taken place in the UN (the 1975 "Zionism is racism" resolution; the infamous 2001 Durban conference, etc.), on campuses such as Columbia University in New York, in the newsrooms of the BBC and CNN, and via the non-governmental superpowers such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

After the death of Arafat and the relative calm on the ground, reflecting the exhaustion of both Israelis and Palestinians, this political war has heated up, particularly in Britain. Christian Aid, a very powerful group that uses its charitable status for promoting a blatant ideological agenda, ran its massive Christmas appeal around the theme of "Bethlehem′s Child". This campaign featured the stereotypes of Israeli aggression and Palestinian victimization, in which the context of terror had been erased.

Similarly, Amnesty International issued a barrage of such reports, including one purporting to focus on the status of Palestinian women, in which Israel was blamed for violent attacks by Arab men against their wives and daughters. And Human Rights Watch, another NGO that competes with Amnesty in exploiting human rights in the war against Israel, is also active in the boycott campaign. Together, they contributed to building the environment for adoption of the AUT boycott. So perhaps I am being too clever in dismissing the AUT′s effort to launch a boycott of my university. For decades, the propaganda war has always accompanied and served justified the shooting war. If the anti-Israel forces on campuses and in NGOs are gaining strength in Britain, Europe and the U.S., this will undermine the current efforts to expand the cease-fire and conflict management activities in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Gaza.

And this is the real tragedy of the AUT boycott decision - while talking about peace, its backers are actually contributing to war and hatred.

Professor Gerald M. Steinberg directs the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar Ilan University and is the editor of www.ngo-monitor.org