Racist U.K. University Union Boycotts Israeli Academia

The nefarious racists of Britian’s academic world have once again banded together to censure Israeli academia for the crime of being a particular nationality. The University and College Union (UCU) of Britain voted tonight (30.5.07) in favour of an academic boycott of Israel. Discrimination along lines of nationality is known formerly as racism so I hope they wear this tag proudly.

This boycott is not only racist but obviously rabidly anti-Semitic since Israeli academics and institutions are the only ones the British union boycotts. There are no boycotts of Russian academia for the killing of 200,000 civilians and other atrocities in Chechnya since 1994, no boycotts of Chinese academia for the deaths of an estimated 800,000 Tibetans since the Chinese occupation of the country in 1950 and the “cultural genocide” they have committed there. How about a boycott of Sudanese academia, if such a thing exists, due to the genocide in Darfur of perhaps 400,000 people and the mass atrocities there? Nope, no boycott for the war criminals of Khartoum either. Israel’s ‘crimes’ against the Palestinians are hundreds of times less serious than the aforementioned catastrophes and the UCU boycott illustrates a vile and, as noted, anti-Semitic double standard towards Israel.

Besides all this, boycotting academia is utterly unreasonable. Academics don’t decide government policy and demanding that all Israeli academics denounce government policy is plain and simple McCarthyism.

It’s hard to put into words the outrage I feel about this issue so I’ll just conclude by saying that once again, British academia has decided to compromise the exchange of knowledge and ideas in favour of their blinkered, anti-Semitic witch hunt. I seem to be saying this a lot recently, but shame on them, shame!