AUT overturns boycott in re-vote

Britain's Association of University Teachers (AUT) voted to rescind boycott motions against Haifa and Bar-Ilan Universities on Thursday, in an emergency session called by AUT members opposed to the targeting of Israeli institutions for sanctions.

AUT members leaving the conference expressed their pleasure with the outcome, and said that the decision to overturn the boycotts represented the will of the majority of union members. Scott Styles, an AUT member from Aberdeen, said: "It was a passionate but measured debate."

David Hirsch, a lecturer at Goldsmith College, was one of the leading academics of Engage, an organization set up by left-wing AUT members determined to overturn the boycott. "This is a victory for the Israeli campuses, where debate and discussion takes place and not bloodshed, where Arab and Jewish students learn side by side, where there are liberal and academic values. The AUT has voted not to boycott, but to make links with those people."

Israel's ambassador in Britain, Zvi Hefetz, said, "I welcome the AUT's decision to overturn a deeply flawed and biased vote to boycott Israeli academics. The academic world must play a constructive role in building bridges and cooperation, rather than taking retrograde steps that can only sabotage progress.

"Let this decision today send an unequivocal message that baseless and overtly discriminatory boycotts do not further steps to peace and in our region," he added.

Wendy Miller and Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, both lecturers at Haifa University, were outside the conference center when news came in that the boycott had been cancelled. The two Israeli academics had arrived in Britain on a visit to protest the boycott of their universities.

Miller told The Jerusalem Post: "I think it's very important that when the grassroots of the AUT got involved, they reclaimed the organization from the hands of the few fanatics who attempted to subvert academia for the purposes of their political agenda."

Erdinast-Vulcan noted that the "war was not over." "It's just the tip of the iceberg," she said. "Something very fundamental has got to change in the climate in the UK."

Bar-Ilan University described the decision as "a model of how democratic organizations can overcome anti-democratic manipulation by listening to their members, and reviewing and repealing mistaken decisions."

"The AUT's vote is a triumph for democracy and academic freedom worldwide, and a victory for the universal principle of academic freedom," said Prof. Yosef Yeshurun, rector of Bar-Ilan University. He expressed hope that "this unfortunate and anti-democratic tendency in Britain and elsewhere will come to an end."

Yeshurun also saluted Al Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh for his uncompromising stand against the AUT boycott. "The unfortunate reaction to Prof. Nusseibeh's principled stand by some Palestinian organizations shows that the concept of academic independence and freedom is still not fully understood in our region," said Yeshurun.

The University of Haifa announced that it "accepts with satisfaction the removal of the British University Teachers' boycott from academic Institutions in Israel." The university also said that it had claimed from the start of the boycott process that the decision was based on false information, and that it regretted that the AUT chose to ignore the damage caused by their immoral decision for an entire month, and that it has not apologized to the university for the arbitrary damage to its reputation.

Even though we have won the battle over this specific boycott decision, I estimate that the battle in this context is not over, and that we will have to keep confronting such deplorable instances in the future," said University of Haifa President Aaron Ben-Zeev. "The university has called a conference for next Wednesday in which the heads of the country's academic institutions will all participate in discussing ways to continue battling similar boycott attempts. The keynote speaker at the conference will be Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Luciana Berger of the Union of Jewish Students was elated at the outcome. "This is fantastic news. It's a good result today. But it is disappointing that we had to be here in the first place," said Berger. "The feeling here is not one of being triumphant, but that the right decision was made."

Prior to the vote, around 150 Jewish students held a vigil against the boycott outside the conference center.

Sue Blackwell, an initiator of the boycott, emerged from the meeting to tell reporters: "The struggle goes on, and this clearly isn't the end. We knew what the outcome was going to be. We won the moral argument, they just won the vote."

She added: "We were up against a very well-organized, well-funded pro-Israel lobby.

"You can see them, they've all got the t-shirts," Blackwell said, referring to Jewish students who had come to protest the boycott.

Steven Rose, an architect of the anti-Israel boycott movement, compared Israel to Nazi Germany. "I regard Israeli academics as shameful and silent, just as ordinary decent Germans were silent their Jewish colleagues were kicked out of universities. In the 1930s Jewish academics in Nazi Germany were being expelled from their universities and fleeing the country. Of course, many German academics disapproved, but they were silent. And British academics continued to deal normally with them. Do you not see the parallels? We have no right to treat Israel as if it were a normal state," said Rose.

Scott Styles, an AUT member from Aberdeen, said: "When boycott motions were passed during the AUT's conference in April, there was no proper debate, which upset many members," said Styles. He added: "This time, a lot of people were motivated."

Talya Halkin contributed to this report.