[lbo-talk] FT on Israel boycott

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

"Lenin's Tomb":

The union has *no* influence whatsoever on the Quartet boycott, and
can do next to zilch about it.  By contrast, there is a massive
Palestinian campaign to obtain the boycott of Israeli academia and
culture, and it is supported by Israeli academics.  It has the support
of sixty Palestinian unions and civil society organisations.  The
union was asked, like the NUJ was recently, to support the
Palestinians in this, and it would have been ridiculous for the union
to brush it aside or try and cover it up.


[WS:] I do not get it.  If the boycott is successful it will vastly reduce
the visibility of those of oppose the current Israeli policies in the
academia, since it is them who are most likely to do the boycott.  This will
give more prominence to those who support those policies and thus will not
boycott Israeli institutions.  So if "Israeli academia" supports the boycott
- it must be its right wing, since they stand to benefit from it.  It is
usually the right-wingers and supporters of authoritarian governments who
want to limit international academic exchanges - as the critical thinkers
and the challengers of the status quo generally benefit from it.

Academic boycott is equivalent to book burning - a meaningless gesture to
appease the anti-intellectual impulses of the uneducated riff-raff.  

Wojtek