While discussions of the United Kingdom's University and College Union's boycott continues to dominate the English-language Israeli news Web sites, the British media stays eerily silent.

Although much has been made of the boycott, none was actually passed. Instead, the union delegates were asked to consider the "moral implications" of links with Israeli universities and simultaneously condemned Israel "for its denial of educational rights" for the Palestinian people.

The delegates will consider these weighty issues for a year, after which they will vote on an actual boycott. While the union engaged in what a Ha'aretz editorial aptly coined an act of moral masturbation, Kassam rockets continued to leave Israel's southwestern educational institutions, from nurseries to colleges, under threat of random rocket fire. The concept of collateral damage is foreign to Hamas-led Gazans; their stated goal is damage, collateral or otherwise. While bombs rained down on Israel and her citizens, UK academicians rushed to the rescue with a wrongheaded attack on Israel's professoriate. Tragic irony is always prevalent in analyzing the Middle East.

The nature of the union's debate and its practical impact on other unions and countries should be of great concern to Israel and her supporters. After all, Israel lives on an island of isolation in the Middle East and cannot afford to be further isolated due to boycotts, divestment, or other tools being recklessly bandied about by her chief detractors.

The issue, however, is larger than Israel. What has failed to garner much attention is the fact that the union's vote should be of great concern to the English, who do not seem to have reacted particularly strongly to the scandalous act of a union representing educators of its youths. Naturally, UK Education Minister Bill Rammell expressed the disappointment of Her Majesty's Government with the vote and the fact that it would not help achieve a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its ostensible purpose. Beyond the formulaic press releases and muted, by comparison to American standards, voices in the Jewish community, no one seems to care what the union does or does not do with its spare time.

The question, of course, is, should they care?

Recognizing Britain's political tradition of "small c" conservatism, it is possible that the muted reactions and reasonably limited discussion of the vote are a reflection of a broader worldview that treats resolutions and bold political programs with a healthy dose of skepticism. The stiff upper lip that survived the Blitz did so through stoic determination. While this tradition is still prevalent, it is only part of the answer. The other part of the answer is far more ominous and reflects the retreat of the "small c" conservative political view from the landscape. It has been replaced with a European orthodoxy on a whole host of public policy issues ranging from climate change to business regulation, immigration, and, of course, Israel, the cause celebre of the enlightened world.

The union vote and the muted response are indicative of a retreat of the tradition of carefully thought-out policy and the ascendancy of bold and simplistic answers to very complicated questions. This episode is undoubtedly a badge of shame on the union and its nefarious bedfellows, the Palestine Solidarity Movement, for no other reason than the vote is a self-congratulatory act that does nothing to advance the cause of peace.

The larger concern is that the town square and editorial pages have been ceded to those who seek to shape common belief and popular opinion in a fashion that is bad not only for Israel but also for those who care about the future vitality of open societies such as the United Kingdom.

Perhaps the philosophy professors who cast their votes chose to forget Plato's critique of Athenian democracy: a place where common belief and opinion were often manipulated into a prevailing orthodoxy that was not only untruthful but also corrosive to the development of a healthy political society. Anyone, including forgetful philosophy professors, should be free to advocate for the rights of Palestinians, but if those are the rights you are advocating for, you are not advancing the cause by removing Israelis and their universities from the debate.