06.07.07

Critics of separate decisions by Britain's National Union of Journalists and University and College Union to boycott Israel often take similar rhetorical attacks:

• The votes are obscenely selective, singling Israel out for ridicule and censure in a world with no shortage of oppressive governments and suffering populations.
• The boycotts are one-sided in that they presume total guilt on Israel's part and complete innocence on the Palestinians'. For such critics, Exhibit A is Jimmy Carter's preposterous statement, "Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law." Only?
• The odious "apartheid" comparison distorts the true diversity of Israeli society as well as the peculiar and tragic contrast between Israel's Arab citizens and the Palestinians living under an occupation Israel has shown a willingness to slough off.
• The boycotts isolate the very kinds of Israelis — academics, scholars, researchers, and writers — who are most prepared to challenge the status quo and provide the moral and intellectual energy that will change the reality for millions of Israelis and Palestinians.

But all these arguments seem to fall on deaf ears. So critics might want to appeal to that most base of human attributes: self-interest. British journalists and academics need to be reminded that they are dragging their professions into the gutter. At the very least, the university was long thought of as a sort of global cease-fire zone, in the belief that the free exchange of ideas spreads freedom in so many other ways. The academic boycott, like the journalists', will do nothing to better the lives of Palestinians or Israelis. But it will do untold damage to intellectual life in the global village.