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Backing Down

Threat of litigation averts British boycott menace.

Daphna Vardi
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

London

W

hen the threat of a new
boycott against Israeli
academics emerged from
the annual conference of the British
University and College Union of lectur-
ers' conference in May, Israel support-
ers turned to London attorney Anthony
Julius.
Well known for his hard line against
anti-Semitism disguised as criticism
of Israel, Julius went on the attack. He
promised free legal assistance to any
academic affected by the threatened
boycott, and wrote the union's gen-
eral secretary that he considered the
union's motion — to "consider the
moral and political implications of
educational links with Israeli institu-
tions, and to discuss the occupation
with individuals and institutions con-
cerned, including Israeli colleagues"
— to be both a boycott motion and
anti-Semitic.
Last week when the union, known by
the acronym UCU, altered its motion to
drop the latest boycott call, the victory
was cheered by Israel supporters and
came as a relief to government officials
and university heads in Britain who
saw the repeated attempts to organize
anti-Israel boycotts as an embarrass-
ment.
"The U.K. government is wholly
opposed to any academic boycott of
Israel," said British Foreign Minister
Bill Rammell, who visited Israel last
week. "The problem with boycotts is
that they make the job of progressives
more difficult and they reinforce the
arguments of hard-liners."
Shortly before the latest threat was
aborted, boycott opponents published
a legal opinion by two prominent law-
yers, Michael Beloff and Pushpinder
Saini, which argued that boycotting
Israeli academics is a violation of the
British anti-discrimination law and
the union's own rules. The UCU con-
sulted its own lawyers, who apparently
warned the union against boycott.
The latest boycott call originated
at the conference in May when the
union voted for a motion to consider

the boycott and to "disseminate the
testimonies" of a UCU delegation to
the Palestinian-populated territories
and use the testimonies to "promote a
wide discussion of the appropriateness
of continued educational links with
Israeli academic institutions."
The general secretary of the union,
Sally Hunt, insisted that the motion
was not a call to boycott Israeli aca-
demic institutions but one in support
of Palestinian colleagues.
Following the UCU conference,
12 academics, led by OxforcEpstfmsing
sors Michael Yudkin and Denis Noble
— both members of the UCU for
more than 40 years — wrote that "any
academic boycott would violate a core
principle that has been accepted in the
profession for nearly a century — that
academics do not discriminate against
colleagues on grounds of race, sex, reli-
gion, national or ethnic origin, or other
personal characteristics."
Then they turned to Julius, who
wrote Hunt a detailed letter character-
izing the union's motion as a boycott
— and as anti-Semitic. The motion
comprises "the opening stages of a
campaign of boycott," Julius wrote. "It
would be dishonest to suggest other-
wise."
Proposed boycotts of Jews have
"been a staple of anti-Semitic pro-
grams for at least 800 years:' he wrote.
"Indeed, the history of anti-Semitism
is in substantial part the history of
boycotts of Jews."
Julius threatened that if the motion
was not "rescinded or otherwise treat-
ed as defunct by the national executive
committee, litigation may well follow."
The attorney, who gained renown for
representing the late Princess Diana
in her divorce from Prince Charles
and successfully defending Deborah
Lipstadt against a libel suit brought
by Holocaust denier David Irving,
also threatened to pursue other inci-
dents involving Jewish union mem-
bers, including the union's "failure
to respond adequately to the steady
stream of resignations by Jewish union
members from the union."
Last week, the UCU's director of
legal services, Michael Scott, wrote to
Julius that the revised motion did not
include a call to boycott Israel. Instead,

Anthony Julius

the union will issue guidelines to
branches about twinning with univer-
sities in the Gaza Strip and the West
Bank, as well as Zimbabwe and Burma,
and commissioning an independent
report on academic freedom.
Julius said he accepted the revised
motion as a repudiation of the boycott
threat but warned that he would sue
"in the event of a fresh boycott, or
otherwise unlawfully discriminatory
motion."
For several years, a small but ardent
group of UCU members, with the
backing and support of the Socialist
Workers, a small Trotskyite party, have
promoted the call by the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign to boycott Israel.
The UCU is one of the largest trade
unions in Britain, a result of the merg-
er of two university unions.
Before the merger, the same coali-
tion of individuals managed to pass
motions in both unions calling for
boycotting Israeli academics and/or
their institutions. One such a motion
was struck down after union branches
at the various universities voted over-
whelmingly against it. On the advice
of legal counsel, the other motion was
not implemented once the merger took
place.
Earlier this decade, thousand of
academics from around the world,
including many in the United States,
signed a call led by Alan Dershowitz
and a group of Nobel Prize winners to
be considered as Israelis when it came
to implementing a boycott against
Israelis.

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January 1 2009

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