Academic boycott of Israel is misguided

A group of academics has proclaimed in your paper (Advertisement, 27 October) that they intend to boycott Israeli universities. They know that the large majority of scholars and scientists around the world reject any discrimination on grounds of nationality and don’t believe in holding academics in other countries responsible for the actions of their governments. To placate this large majority, the signatories say that they will “continue to work with [their] Israeli colleagues in their individual capacities”. Refusing to attend conferences organised by their Israeli colleagues, and refusing to visit their universities, are acts of discrimination that are excluded by universally accepted norms of scholarship. How have these academics contrived to persuade themselves that they can “continue to work with” their Israeli colleagues but, at the same time, discriminate against them by refusing to take part in a central aspect of their academic lives?
Michael Yudkin and Denis Noble
Oxford

• Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is intolerable but the academic boycott by the page of signatories is disturbing in its selectivity. China occupies Tibet, India occupies Kashmir, Turkey occupies Northern Cyprus and Russia occupies Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Moreover, many countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have the most extreme abuses of human rights. In boycotting only the Jewish state those signatories evoke frightening memories of past boycotts of Jewish institutions.
Paul Miller
London

• We, organisations and individuals that make up the majority of the Palestinian cultural sector; musicians, circus artists, actors, and dancers, call upon our fellow cultural workers and organisations around the world to condemn Israel’s deliberate and systematic policies of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid against the Palestinian people. Despite all the hardships, Palestinian arts and cultural institutions continue to work in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, using the arts to mobilise and educate.

In recent weeks, the occupying Israeli military and armed Israeli settlers have killed innocent children and youth, burned farming lands, homes, mosques and churches, and instituted policies of attacking and dividing Palestinian holy sites. These policies of provocation, collective punishment and deep-rooted racism require now more than ever voices of support for the Palestinian people

•Having become angry and disillusioned with the bitter politics of the Middle East, unchanged it seems from biblical times, I was about to turn the page, paused and read the article “A frightful glimpse into Netanyahu’s mind” (27 October). Then I wept for the citizens of Israel and Palestine.We call upon our fellow artists and cultural workers and organisations to: discredit and oppose mainstream manipulation of news and facts; continue their solidarity, advocacy and lobbying with regards to the injustice that Palestinian people have witnessed; pressure their governments to insist on the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the dismantling of Israeli settlements and separation wall and barriers, and to support international protection for Palestinians; support and endorse the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), thereby refusing to be complicit in the ongoing occupation, and boycotting Israel until it fully abides by international humanitarian laws.
Yousef Nazzal Palestinian Performing Arts Network
Marina Barham Al-Harah Theatre, Bethlehem
Suhail Khouri Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, Ramallah and Gaza
Ramzi Abu Redwan Al Kamandjati Association, Ramallah
Jihad Shoumali Theatre Day Productions, Gaza
Mohammad Issa Yes Theatre, Hebron
Shadi Zomrrod Palestinian Circus School, Ramallah
Jonatan Stanczak Freedom Theatre, Jenin refugee camp
Iman Hammouri Popular Art Centre, El Bireh
Khaled Katamish El Funoun Dance Troupe, El Bireh
Edward Muallam Ashtar Theatre, Ramallah
Rania Elias Yabous Cultural Centre, Jerusalem
Amer Khalil Palestinian National Theatre, El Hakawati, Jerusalem
Khaled Ellayan First Ramallah Group (Sareyyet Ramallah), Ramallah

Jack Redfern
Congresbury, North Somerset

 When academics call for a boycott of only one country and it happens to be the only Jewish country in the world, you do have to wonder how they face themselves in the mirror every day. I’m sure they would be horrified to think they were being antisemitic. China oppressing Tibetans – no boycott. Russians in Ukraine – no boycott. Executions of gay people across the Middle East (except Israel) – no boycott. Mugabe – no boycott. US and UK bombing Afghanistan, Iraq or Waziristan – no boycott. No, let’s all pile into Israel. After all, that tiny nation of 8 million people can’t fight back – they’re too busy protecting themselves against 500 million Arabs and Iranians.
Judy Weleminsky
London

In my interactions with academic colleagues in Israel I have found them among the most critical of the treatment of Palestinians, and I would not want to close down discussions with those members of the Israeli society who are likely to have (some) impact on the views and attitudes of the next generation of (academically educated) Israelis. The open letter might have been more convincing if it had called for action with regard to entities operating in the (indeed, illegally-settled) occupied territories.

In addition, as a historian of the Holocaust and a German national, I would find it deeply disturbing, if not to say intolerable or morally impossible, for me to refuse any cooperation with Israeli academics or their institutions. This cooperation does not make me an uncritical supporter of Israeli policies, nor has it ever prevented me from voicing my concerns for the Palestinian people clearly and unambiguously towards my Israeli partners. In fact, I am convinced that my critical words were taken much more seriously because I had these interactions with Israeli colleagues.
Rainer Schulze
Professor of Modern European History, University of Essex

• The signatories of the “cultural bridges” letter (23 October) have chosen to ignore the occupation of Palestine. So-called “open dialogue” has been going on for 25 years and has achieved nothing. The international community love to fantasise that dialogue alone will solve the problem. This view, which is either naive or downright conceited, overlooks the fact that Palestine and Israel are not equal in status. Palestine has an atrophied and corrupt political system, concerned primarily with maintaining its dominant status over Hamas. Israel is a nation with a highly developed economy and military, and unswerving backing from the US. It also has 400,000 of its own citizens living in illegal settlements, and thousands of troops in the West Bank. These two nations are hardly holding the same number of cards at the negotiating table.

As a man recently told me in the West Bank city of Nablus, where I live: “How can we negotiate a border with Israel when they are still taking land? Imagine trying to divide a pizza between two people while one has already started eating it!”

The current Israeli government has no interest in pursuing a two-state solution, despite the lip-service it occasionally pays to the idea.

A cultural boycott against Israel would force Israelis to confront the reality of the occupation: it is illegal, unacceptable and morally outrageous, and has to be ended. It would mobilise those who oppose Zionism to directly and rigorously challenge their government over the injustices that they systematically impose on the Palestinian people. Palestinians are human beings who have a right to exist, same as Israelis.The situation in Israel and Palestine is indeed complicated, but there is one central self-evident truth: the military occupation of the West Bank cannot and will not solve anything. It is dangerous for both sides. Palestinians are killed by soldiers on a regular basis, and the enmity that the occupation generates towards Israel threatens the safety and security of the Israeli state. The occupation must end if any peace deal is to be reached. The only way the occupation can end is through political pressure from Israel’s own population.

John Coleman
Nablus, Palestine

• I am completing a multi-country comparative study of torture. In one country our local researcher had to drop out because of threats from the military. In another, a researcher has fled abroad, while a third has had his university contract terminated. In Israel, by contrast, our local counterpart has completed a highly critical study of torture by security forces in the occupied territories, with no adverse consequences.

The wisdom of the academic boycotters has come too late to influence the choice of countries in this research. Do they suggest I should omit the chapter by my Israeli colleague from the forthcoming book, as a gesture of support for the rights of the Palestinians?

Every country that tortures is in violation of international law. Why do we single out Israel for boycott? Is it because it has a flourishing academic community? Or is there some other reason?
Richard Carver 
Senior lecturer in human rights and governance, Oxford Brookes University

• If at Britain’s top scientific institution, a minority with 20.7% of the population had 50% of the places at the country’s top medical school and 22% of the overall students we would be congratulating ourselves for diversity and inclusion.

However, if the country is Israel, the minority is Arab and the university is the world acclaimed Technion (ranked 77th in the World ahead of UK universities such as Warwick, the LSE etc), Israel is accused of apartheid.

This is an absurdity and the writers of the letter should look at the facts before promoting a cultural boycott.
Laurence Julius
London

• I read with delight the letter from Culture for Coexistence. I read with dismay the advert for academic boycott. My personal experience is in Israel of the campus at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where Arabs and Jews are studying side by side; in the Galil at Shlomi College where all are learning together; listening to lecturers from various academic institutions in Jerusalem speaking to each other about how hard they work to keep their Israeli Arab students and Israeli Jewish students working together successfully in harmony; hearing about the cooperation of doctors working with Palestinians and Israelis; seeing Palestinians working together with Israelis.

Surely even more cooperation is the way forward, not boycott. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with academic freedom and free speech for all women and men. A call for boycott is misogynistic.
Elizabeth Shapiro
Wilmslow, Cheshire

 The campaign to single out Israelis for exclusion from the global academic community is highly menacing. It seeks to punish Israeli scholars for the crimes, both real and imagined, of their government in a way that is quite inconsistent with our usual attitude to fellow scholars and with our relationships to our own governments.

The boycott campaign sets up a presumption that Jews are in some sense collaborators, a presumption that pressures Jewish academics here to keep quiet, to put on displays of political cleanliness or to stand in the dock for Israel.

The boycott campaign rejects the politics of peace, a politics in which Israeli academics have always been central. Instead it embraces the politics of silencing, war by other means and waving one national flag against the other. We ought to build links between UK universities and Palestinian and Israeli ones, not try to smash them; we ought to communicate more, not less; we ought to be for peace, not for war.

We ought to support Israelis and Palestinians who stand up against racism and antisemitism, not throw them to the wolves of Hamas and the Israeli settler right.

My fear for what will happen on campus is heightened by the fact that the current Labour leader supports this kind of exclusionary politics. This will intensify the sense that many Jewish academics have, that the culture on our campuses is still deteriorating.
David Hirsh
Goldsmiths, University of London

• I read the advert calling for a complete academic boycott of Israel with incredulity and concern. I fail to understand how UK academics can boycott the very institutions in Israel that are among the biggest critics of the present Israel government and, like their counterparts in the UK, are liberal institutions where all students and staff are at liberty to speak freely.

This is in stark contrast to the academic institutions in neighbouring Middle Eastern countries where there is no freedom of speech and human rights abuses are rife.

Why is there no similar academic boycott of Syrian or Saudi institutions?

The cause of peace and understanding would be better served by support of the organisation Culture for Coexistence, which is endeavouring to build bridges rather than destroy them.
Janet Davidson
Cheadle, Cheshire

• Efforts to boycott Israeli universities fly in the face of the evidence that these universities are hot beds of antipathy to Israeli government policies. Boycotting them simply impedes those whose aim is to improve the lot of Palestinians.

The signatories to Monday’s advertisement ignore the many positive interactions that already occur and that are of such value to both Israel and the UK. The many examples include the Birax scheme (partly funded by Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation), which brings researchers from both countries together; Olive Tree supports equal numbers of Palestinians and Israelis to study at City University; the Arava Institute in the Negev similarly has equal numbers of Palestinians and Israelis students working on the environment; and the Daniel Turnberg Middle East Fellowship programme has brought over 170 medical researchers from the West Bank, Gaza and Israel to work in UK universities on such important topics as childhood cancers, motor neurone disease, stroke and autism. It should also not be ignored that Israeli hospitals treat large numbers of West Bank and Gazan patients in their wards.

• Israeli universities are at the forefront of scientific research in countless fields.These are the sorts of endeavour that support the aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis in ways that academic boycotts can never achieve.
Leslie Turnberg, Meta Ramsay and Paul Bew
House of Lords

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Palestine, how can the signatories of this advertisement square their proposed boycott with the academic’s obligation to examine new ideas and discoveries?

And how can students and British taxpayers trust professors and lecturers who proudly proclaim that they will avoid all contact with some of the most highly regarded institutions in the world?
Selwyn Dorfman
Cuddington, Cheshire

• It is with great sadness that I read of the campaign, “A Commitment by UK Scholars to Human Rights in Palestine”, an advert for which was published in the Guardian.

The campaign calls for academics and representatives from leading scientific institutes to effectively cease activity in and with Israeli institutes. This call is in defiance of the whole ethos of academia. As learned people, we should know that our hypotheses have to be based on past experiences and our resultant actions should be based on the foundations this reflection. There are several recent examples, including one reported on in this newspaper, that have shown that boycotts and passionate, but kneejerk, accusations have only led to those in Israel feeling at best wounded and at worst entrenched.

Our job as academics is not to stifle partnerships and learning. Our duty to our fellow humans is to work together to find ways in which we can all live longer, healthy, peaceable lives.

The Israel and Palestine situation is too complex for most academics to solve. Any solution to ongoing conflicts in the area will take in-depth knowledge of the issues, political will, and an awful lot of collaboration. As intelligent people, to whom leaders and lay people alike look towards for guidance, we, as academics, should lead the charge to collaborate with both academics in Palestinian and Israeli institutions. We are in a unique position to be able to do this and in doing so, sew the seeds of collaboration across the region. Adding a name to a boycott is an easy action which no doubt comes with a great feeling of satisfaction. But in agreeing to the boycott, signatories are losing a unique opportunity to act to shape the future. The latter course may be harder work, and the feeling of reward longer in attainment, but, as all true academics know, a good result is well worth the years of effort.
Dr Justine Davies
Editor in chief, The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology

• Does this proposed academic boycott extend to the thousands of Israeli Arabs who study freely and openly in Israeli colleges and universities? If so, then who are they trying to help? And if not, then why do it?
Paul Charney
Chairman, Zionist Federation UK and Ireland