Teachers to boycott Israel?

Should be an interesting week -- anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian motions will be submitted for debate at the annual conference of the 48,000-strong Association of University Teachers (AUT) in the UK.

Sue Blackwell, a lecturer in English at Birmingham and a leading member of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine, said it was not possible to have links with both Israel and the Palestinians.

“We cannot appeal equally to the oppressor and the oppressed, the occupier and the occupied,” she said. “Palestinian academics are repeatedly prevented from doing their work. Israeli forces have welded shut the gates to one Palestine university and dug a trench around another. Jewish students should not be intimidated in Britain, but it’s not anti-semitic to criticise what the state of Israel is doing.”

One of her allies is Mona Baker, professor of translation studies at Manchester University, who was the subject of an inquiry in 2002 after she dismissed two Israeli academics she had employed from the journals she published.

The sackings were part of a boycott in protest at Israeli policies in the occupied territories.

Lots of examples of anti-semitism in the article, including this one:

Danny Stone, campaigns director of the Union of Jewish Students, said academics were increasingly upsetting Jewish undergraduates. He claimed lecturers at London, Sussex and Nottingham had refused to give students leave from exams scheduled for the Jewish sabbath. One allegedly told a student: “We can all think of silly religions if we want.”