Mel Flips over new Israel boycott

Melanie Phillips has just heard about plans to promote an academic boycott of Israel at the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education. But then she knew about it before it was publicised because:

As was entirely predictable, there is to be another attempt this year at an academic boycott of Israel. This one is to come not as last year from the AUT but the rival higher education union, NATFHE. All this was predicted on this website – and elsewhere – last year when the AUT effort failed and NATFHE’s strategy became all too apparent.

She then berates the opponents of the AUT boycott because they opposed the boycott on the wrong grounds.

The argument last time, which led overwhelmingly to the defeat of the boycott, was the issue of academic freedom. Of course this is important. But it’s not the point. The reason the boycott is so evil is that it is based on a series of Big Lies – the lie of Israeli ‘apartheid’, of Israeli ‘oppression’, ‘aggression’, ‘occupation’ and all the rest of the demonology of delegitimisation, ignorance and prejudice. Running through last year’s resistance movement against the boycott was the argument that academic freedom was necessary in order to continue to demonise and delegitimise Israel (I paraphrase, but that essentially was the message). That aspect of the resistance was thus guilty of the same prejudice that was behind the boycott itself. It was thus not only wrong in itself but ultimately self-defeating because it meant that the inspiration for the boycott was not only not being addressed but would surely lead to the boycott springing to life once again.

So it has now proved. This time, the resistance must take on the actual cause of the boycott: the wellsprings of hatred of the Jewish state which course through our campuses. Freedom of speech is not the issue. It’s the bigotry, stupid.

Clearly Mel hasn't realised that the opponents of the boyvott had to pretend to be concerned about the occupation, sorry, the "occupation," in order to get the boycott overturned. Any NATFHE delegate who might be fooled by this should visit the Engage site to be disabused of that absurd notion.