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Dear friend,

On April 20 2005, the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) will debate a motion which calls for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. This motion is the latest attempt in a long standing campaign by a group of academics to institute a boycott of Israeli universities.

The organisers of the motion say they are "standing up for justice in the Middle East," and characterise Israel as "racist," "colonialist," an "apartheid state."

The individuals calling for a boycott against Israel have chosen to target the only parliamentary democracy of its kind in the Middle East. It is one of the most open societies in the world, with 1.3 million Israeli citizens — 20 percent of the population - being Arab Israelis, with equal citizenship rights. In fact, Israel is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote. Arabs currently hold 8 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Israeli Arabs have also held various government posts, from ambassadorships to cabinet ministerial posts.

The nefarious motives behind the drive to boycott Israel become transparent through the double standards that define it. A brief look at other states in the Middle East, all of which have not been targeted for a boycott, will quickly reveal this. The state of Israel is surrounded by police states and totalitarian theocracies, which have enshrined laws and constitutions that guarantee actual apartheid conditions for women (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran), and massive discrimination against homosexuals (Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia).

Many of these states persecute religious, ethnic, and national minorities (Sudan, Syria, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran). Some of them have murdered millions of people in the last three decades alone, through war, mass executions, torture, and state sponsored terror. The Arab Human Development Report, published by Arab researchers for the UN Development Program, concluded that out of the seven regions of the world, Arab countries had the lowest freedom score.

In Sudan, the northern Arab-Muslim government has unleashed a religious and ethnic war against the non-Arab, non-Muslim black African southern population. Sudan's treatment of its black population has led to more than 2 million deaths and over 4 million people displaced. Those who survive are often enslaved.

Yet, not a single call to boycott Sudan, or any other tyrannical country, has been voiced by those academics.

With this in mind, human rights and principles of justice are surely not the real causes that drive calls for an exclusive boycott of Israel.

Sue Blackwell, a Birmingham English professor and a key figure in the movement to boycott Israel, recently supported a campaign aimed at trying to get Irish fans to boycott a football match between Ireland and Israel. The campaign was entitled: "Irish soccer should show Israeli Apartheid the Red Card." The outright lies behind Blackwell's campaign were shattered in the game itself; an Israeli-Arab player, Abbas Swan, scored a goal for the Israeli team.

The organisers of the boycott often cite their opposition to Israel's anti-terrorism operations in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet they remain silent about the murderous terrorism directed against Israel that prompt such operations, and the systematic incitement in Palestinian schools and media, which has filled children with hatred and caused them to aspire towards "martyrdom" and mass murder of Israelis.

Ironically, the boycotters say that Israel is in violation of international law. Yet, the same academics do not wish to boycott Britain or the United States for their leading roles in the Iraq war and ensuing occupation, which has been deemed illegal by the United Nations.

China's illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of Tibet have not caused these individuals to call for a boycott of Chinese universities, and Russia's illegal carpet bombing of Grozhny, Chechnya, resulting in the death of 200,000 Chechens, have also failed to prompt calls for a boycott of Russian institutions.
The timing of renewed efforts to boycott Israeli universities is equally dubious. As Israeli and Palestinian leaders begin to talk about peace and cooperation, after many years of hardship and bloodshed, a group of British academics intensify efforts to demonise and isolate Israel; This is an obvious betrayal of their rejectionist stance towards a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In light of the falsehoods, double standards, and glaring hypocrisy that surround the arguments given by academics calling for a boycott against Israel, it can and must be concluded that they are not acting out of the principles they falsely cite.

We are therefore left with little option but to conclude that the calls to boycott Israel are motivated by a desire to harm Israel, solely because it is a Jewish nation-state, although the organisers of the boycott are unwilling and unable to say so publicly. This reason, and it alone, accounts for why Israel only, out of all the countries in the world, would be singled out and targeted for sanctions by the academic boycotters.

The academics involved in the boycott attempt should therefore themselves be boycotted. Join us in protesting this attempt to masquerade prejudice and bigotry as a progressive cause.

Add your name to this letter, and take a stand against a most modern manifestation of anti-Semitic prejudice.

Thank you.