> [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.
This is drivel, and the excuse that it "won't work" has been tried and discarded repeatedly.
1) You haven't understood the policy: the intention by the union is to boycott Israeli academic institutions because they are complicit in the occupation, such that links with those institutions that presently persist will be broken off by the union if the branches agree with that policy. Links with Palestinian trade unions and institutions will be created or augmented.
2) It is not being promulgated by 'uneducated riff-raff'. It is being promulgated by unionised academics and educators in solidarity with a call by Palestinian trade unionists, among them the Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities' Professors and Employees
3) The Israeli academics who support the policy are leftists, not right-wingers. They are conscientious foes of their own institutions' policies with respect to the occupied territories. One of the most elegant and articulate supporters of a generalised boycott was Tanya Reinhardt.
4) If it is a 'meaningless gesture', then you have to explain this to the Zionist lobby who are going nuts over it, not least Dershowitz, who is threatening to sue and destroy every single academic who boycotts an Israeli institution. It is not, in fact, a 'meaningless gesture': it is part of a wide-ranging solidarity campaign, that ranges from the fields of architecture to education to culture to media and so on. The boycott will end tacit support for the occupation that exists through the current links with Israeli institutions that are co-responsible for the occupation.
If the American labour movement could do something substantial for the Palestinians, you'd be entitled to your smug, contemptuous, know-nothing attitude.