BOYCOTT WORRIES? TAKE A NUMBER
GERALD M. STEINBERG

The phones began ringing late Friday afternoon - BBC, AFP, co-authors,
family - everyone wanted to know if I was worried about the vote in Britain
to boycott my university. There was no time to get into details, but as a
Jew and Israel, my automatic answer to any question that contains the word
"worry" is yes. On the long list, the boycott comes close behind the dangers
of Palestinian terror, the Iranian bomb, Hizbollah's missiles, Osama Bin
Laden, reality TV, Israeli taxi drivers, and the waves of locusts migrating
from North Africa.

In truth, the direct impact of academic sanctions proposed by the AUT
(Association of University Teachers) against the faculty at Bar Ilan and
Haifa universities is likely to be minimal. The few viscerally anti-Israel
academics are probably not participating in any joint research projects in
any case, and its their loss. Two years ago, my colleague Prof. Miriam
Shlesinger, was ousted from the board of a journal in translation studies by
an Egyptian-born editor based in the University of Manchester. And the
politically correct anti-Israel atmosphere has probably led a few anonymous
reviewers to reject research reports submitted to other journals - but this
is hard to prove.

In any case, the quality of the Israeli academic research is generally very
high, and good work still trumps bad politics, despite the nonsense of
"post-colonialism", post-modernism, and post-Chomsky/Saidism. In molecular
biology, immunology, anti-terror methodologies, electro-optics, strategic
deterrence, and other fields, a political ban on Israelis would be
particularly costly for the banners, if not for the banned. And efforts to
understand the factors that distinguish between failure and success in arms
control and peace efforts (my research focus) will be stillborn without the
active participation of serious Israeli researchers in this field.

At the same time, this effort to impose a political litmus test on academic
research has created a serious backlash. Since the recent revival of the
boycott campaign, we have been deluged by emails from colleagues pledging to
defy the policy, and to increase their contact with Israelis. Many also
reject the medieval nature of such censorship, which contradicts the core
principle of the marketplace of ideas.

However, the real threat from the boycott, as its authors realize, is not
from the direct academic impact, but rather from its broader political
objectives. Although the official terminology refers to "occupation" and
"settlements", and singled out two universities for alleged complicity, the
Israel-obsessed organizers of the AUT boycott (Susan Blackwell and Steven
Rose), like their counterparts elsewhere, readily admit that this is simply
a tactical decision. They have declared all Israelis who serve in the
defense forces and support the government to be guilty.

Indeed, the boycott is only a small part of the broader political war
against Israel's legitimacy as a sovereign Jewish state, and the effort to
label Israel as the next "apartheid regime" is designed to put an end to
Zionism. The use of the apartheid label does a gross injustice to those who
suffered under the real thing, and is a form of modern anti-Semitism, this
time turning the Jewish state into the devil. The grossly exaggerated
condemnation of Israel, and the systematic removal of the environment of
terror in the rhetoric of "war crimes" and "ethnic cleansing", is the
political counterpart of the ongoing terrorism and military assaults. Major
battles of this political war have taken place in the UN (the 1975 "Zionism
is racism" resolution; the infamous 2001 Durban conference, etc.), on
campuses such as Columbia University in New York, in the newsrooms of the
BBC and CNN, and via the non-governmental superpowers such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch.

After the death of Arafat and the relative calm on the ground, reflecting
the exhaustion of both Israelis and Palestinians, this political war has
heated up, particularly in Britain. Christian Aid, a very powerful group
that uses its charitable status for promoting a blatant ideological agenda,
ran its massive Christmas appeal around the theme of "Bethlehem's Child".
This campaign featured the stereotypes of Israeli aggression and Palestinian
victimization, in which the context of terror had been erased. Similarly,
Amnesty International issued a barrage of such reports, including one
purporting to focus on the status of Palestinian women, in which Israel was
blamed for violent attacks by Arab men against their wives and daughters.
And Human Rights Watch, another NGO that competes with Amnesty in exploiting
human rights in the war against Israel, is also active in the boycott
campaign. Together, they contributed to building the environment for
adoption of the AUT boycott.

So perhaps I am being too clever in dismissing the AUT's effort to launch a
boycott of my university. For decades, the propaganda war has always
accompanied and served justified the shooting war. If the anti-Israel forces
on campuses and in NGOs are gaining strength in Britain, Europe and the
U.S., this will undermine the current efforts to expand the cease-fire and
conflict management activities in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Gaza.
And this is the real tragedy of the AUT boycott decision - while talking
about peace, its backers are actually contributing to war and hatred.

Professor Gerald M. Steinberg directs the Program on Conflict Management and
Negotiation at Bar Ilan University and is the editor of www.ngo-monitor.org