It’s disturbing when British university professors spout foreign policy statements befitting someone screeching into a bullhorn with a dog-eared copy of Noam Chomsky dangling from his back pocket.
So, yes, the Association of University Teachers’ blacklisting of two Israeli schools was abhorrent and hypocritical, but, perhaps most of all, it was embarrassing. It was embarrassing that well-educated professors of the arts and sciences could turn a blind eye to reason and logic in such a simplistic attempt to demonize Israel.
Obviously we’re pleased that Great Britain’s 48,000-member teachers’ union aborted its Israeli ban in late May only one month after initiating it. But it’s troubling that the union ever felt that outlawing scholarly collaborations with Israeli professors was justified or even useful.
Frankly, we have a hard time believing in the intellectual honesty of the ban’s organizers, or, for that matter, the American proponents of cities and universities divesting from Israel.
What’s the real rationale behind the incessant drive to punish solely the Jewish state among all the world’s nations?
Do those people really buy the analogies they endlessly bandy about comparing Israel to Apartheid-era South Africa or, worse yet, the Third Reich?
And, finally, how is forbidding cooperation between British and Israeli professors working to eradicate diseases, develop microscopic robots or more fully understand the genius of Yehuda Amichai supposed to lead to a peaceful reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians?
But do the ban’s organizers even really care about that, or was it just another attempt to spit in Israel’s eye?
We’re guessing the latter; pro-Palestinian activists within the teachers’ union have long been pushing for a comprehensive ban. After their motion for a boycott of all Israeli universities was voted down handily in 2003, they’ve simply set their sights a little lower. It’d be foolish to think they’ll quit now.
J. gives a nod to Sari Nusseibeh, the president of al-Quds University, who criticized the AUT ban and issued a joint statement with the president of Hebrew University promoting academic collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian universities.
Perhaps it’s just a shrewd political move on Nusseibeh’s part, but it’s hard not to agree that academic cooperation will lead to greater things for both the Israelis and the Palestinians than the crude, bullying and farcical form of paternalism espoused by the Association of University Teachers.