The debate as to whether boycotting Israel is a good tactic in support of the Palestinians
Activists in NATFHE are starting a campaign to commit the union to a clear policy of solidarity, not boycotts, on Israel/ Palestine, after a fudged emergency motion was carried at the union's conference in Eastbourne on 30 May. Read more .
The special conference of the Association of University Teachers today, 26 May, voted by an 80:20 majority to rescind the decision to boycott two Israeli universities adopted on a snap vote, without debate, at its regular conference on 22 April. Read a report here .
John Strawson is a law lecturer at the University of East London, and also teaches at Bir Zeit University, in the occupied West Bank. He spoke to Solidarity about the special council (conference) which the Association of University Teachers (AUT) has called for 26 May after protests from its members about the decision of its regular conference, on 22 April, to impose an academic boycott on two Israeli universities, Haifa and Bar-Ilan. What would you like to see come out of the AUT special council? That the council reverses the boycott and adopts a positive policy encouraging academic links...
On 26 May the Association of University Teachers (AUT) will hold a special conference to debate a recently-decided policy of academic boycott on two Israeli universities, Haifa and Bar-Ilan (at an ordinary conference on 22 April). The recall discussion is being held after protests from members. Below a supporter of the boycott and two opponents of the boycott present their different views. We need positive links Robert Fine, Warwick University I too would like to see the top brass of Israeli universities coming out more strongly against the occupation, but we don’t call for a boycott of...
On 22 April, the Association of University Teachers (AUT), at its conference, voted to impose an academic boycott on two Israeli universities. The decision has led to legal objections, on grounds of which the AUT has told its members to hold off from any action until they receive guidelines from the union; and to demands by some AUT members for a special conference to reconsider. Leading supporters of the 22 April decision have long argued for a complete academic boycott of all Israeli universities. David Hirsh , a sociology lecturer at Goldsmiths College London, coordinated a letter to the...
By John Strawson (John Strawson is a lecturer at the University of East London, and also teaches at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank) The AUT [Association of University Teachers] proposal to boycott Israel has raised a great many issues: the right to education in Palestine, academics’ role in ending the Israeli occupation, Zionism, anti-semitism and academic freedom. For the past ten years I have been associated with Birzeit University through the European Consortium that supports the Institute of Law. This involves some academics, mainly in Belgium and Britain, who have been...
As democrats, socialists, advocates of Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, and supporters of the right of the Palestinian people to an independent state of their own, alongside Israel, we call on British academics to reject the moves for a renewed academic boycott of Israel due to be debated at the council of the Association of University Teachers on 20 April. We urge them to consider the arguments against the boycott from Israeli academics who criticise and oppose Israeli government policy. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University, for example, has pointed out the inconsistent...
At its conference on 20-22 April, the Association of University Teachers (AUT) debated and adopted calls for an academic boycott of Israeli universities. Click here for a statement, "For Palestinian rights, against the proposed academic boycott of Israel", and other material on the proposed boycott.
Earlier this month Oxfam announced that it would sever its links with Starbucks. Starbucks had agreed to contribute £100,000 to Oxfam’s rural development programme in the East Harare coffee growing region of Ethiopia. Starbucks is well known for its anti-union activities. However, the campaign to get Oxfam to break its links was not about Starbucks’ hypocritical “concern” for human welfare, but had been co-ordinated by a coalition of Islamist groups and Palestinian Solidarity campaigners, with the Islamist-backed Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) in the lead. Their principal objection to...
By Bruce Robinson 'Victory to the Intifada', a campaign dominated by the Revolutionary Communist Group, has held a picket outside Marks & Spencer in Manchester for more than three years calling for a boycott of the store and more generally of Israeli goods. The picket has recently come under attack from two directions. Marks & Spencer management are reported by the Manchester Evening News to be seeking Anti-Social Behaviour Orders against pickets. Anyone breaching such an order, which can bar individuals from entering specified areas, can be jailed for up to five years. To get these orders...
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