In terms of the kind of political platform those who oppose the AUT boycott
could take, I would suggest the following series of demands:
For consistent democracy
For the withdrawal of the Israeli state out of the Occupied Territories and
a return to 1967 borders
For the right to national self-determination of both Palestinians and
Israelis
Against Israeli chauvinism and Arab chauvinism
Against imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism
For Jewish-Arab working class unity and trade unionism
Now, Sue Blackwell (a key proponent of the boycott) would not agree with
all of these demands given that she considers Israel an "illegitimate
state" (Guardian, April 22) and suggests that "[m]ost Israeli academics
serve in the army's reserve forces" and [m]ost support the state's
suppression of the Palestinians or at least don't speak out against it"
(BBC, April 22). So when we unpack some of the motivations for such a
boycott, we should ask: Precisely who is blamed for Sharon’s right-wing
repressive government? Precisely what is advocated in the place of a
consistently democratic resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict? In
part, we are witnessing a politics that refuses to distinguish between
illegitimate Israeli state repression in the Occupied Territories and the
right of Israel to exist as a legitimate nation-state. Even the most well-
meaning of those advocating a boycott of Israeli academia can surely not
avoid the fact that such a boycott inevitably slips into, and fuels, a
wider politics that blames all Israeli Jews for the repression of
Palestinians. A concession is apparently offered to some Israeli Jews if
they are willing to publicly denounce Zionism. Yet herein lies a further
problem, how does one define the multiple forms of Zionism – as
(holistically) racist, or as a movement for a Jewish homeland (with both
reactionary right wing and ‘assimilationist’ Jewish socialist elements)
that gained resonance during the mass extermination of Jews during the
Second World War? The words of Trotsky on the Jewish question are useful in
this instance: “[i]n the epoch of its rise, capitalism took Jewish people
out of the ghetto and utilized them as instruments in its commercial
expansion. [In the wake of Nazism] decaying capitalist society [strove] to
squeeze the Jewish people from all its pores”. Do we smudge out particular
pages of history to achieve a convenient representation of Israeli Jews as
the epitome of imperialism (as has been the approach of the Stalinist left)?
In the debate leading up the vote at the AUT Council and since, there has
been much talk of ‘academic freedom’. Pro-boycotters have readily seized
upon this aspect of an anti-boycott argument by suggesting it is
preposterous to talk of the loss of academic freedom for Israeli academics
when Palestinians live under such brutally oppressive conditions. In part
such discourse on academic freedom distracts from the most pressing
political questions: Are boycotts actually effective in achieving their
aims? Do boycotts make for good precision tactics? To both in this
instance, I think the answer is no. The AUT boycott promises a ‘knee jerk’
reaction on the part of some British academics to offer solidarity with
Palestinian colleagues, yet in the plight for a two state solution to the
conflict - and for long-term Jewish-Arab working class unity - such a
political gesture cannot but harm the cause.
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