Letter from America

I just got this email from a zionist in America.

"So the boycott campaign is over, or is it? The campaign will be revisited in future AUT conferences, many academics are instituting their own personal boycotts, and the notion that Israel is an apartheid state is now in front of many people as never before. As, an unintended consequence of, an Israel Insider headline has it "the stain remains."

Admit it. You guys lost this one bigtime. All you proved was that your policy of attempting brainwashing of British students couldn't stand the test of debate in a country that is more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis in a community that perhaps the most pro-Palestinian part of society. [to translate - the British public is more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel and the AUT membership is more pro-Palestinian than the British public - my problem here is that surely the boycott motion would have been retained if this were the case, or is the correspondent suggesting that the zionists got their way against the beliefs of the majority of both British society and ther academic community in particular?]

The Guardian and the Independent have been publishing articles calling Israel an apartheid state for years. The AUT "boycott" didn't gain you any more supporters.

Leaving aside the sheer paranoia of saying that a union resolution amounts to "attempting brainwashing" perhaps the correspondent could send some online links to all these Guardian and Independent articles "calling Israel an apartheid state for years." Meanwhile, reality based (I hate that expression) readers might want to ponder the Guardian's editorial on the boycott, published, I think, the morning of the first resolution. In it the Guardian pays lip service to abuses of Palestinians' rights but here's the final paragraph:

Supporters of boycotts often argue that Israel should be treated like apartheid South Africa. That is a controversial parallel which many Israelis see as delegitimating their state. Friends of the Palestinians should question whether this kind of boycott is not a blunt instrument that is unlikely to serve their cause well.

In fairness to my American correspondent, the Guardian can't quite bring itself to say that Israel is not an apartheid state; it is after all a newspaper of record. But this is hardly a ringing endorsement of the pro-boycott anti-apartheid camp.