Academics against apartheid

Two Palestinians respond to yesterday's call by several zionist academics to oppose the boycott of Israeli academia:

Israeli academic institutions are all implicated in their state's racist and colonial policies by providing the practical and ideological support necessary for the maintenance of the occupation. For example, they provide consultancy services to the military and security establishment and sponsor research that justifies ethnic cleansing, extra-judicial killings, racial segregation and land expropriation. No Israeli university body has publicly censured academics producing racist work under the guise of scholarship.
Omar Barghouti
Lisa Taraki
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Bir Zeit

While the Guardian itself produces one of its more disingenuous editorial comments opposing the boycott:

Singling out Israel raises other questions. AUT members are not proposing, after all, to boycott universities in North Korea, Zimbabwe or Sudan, where the government has been accused of perpetrating genocide against its own people. None of which is to deny that Israel is responsible for ongoing human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an abiding feature of a 37-year occupation which has distorted Israel's life and stained its reputation.

The Guardian knows that without apartheid Israel wouldn't exist, in fact, look at their 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.

Zionists are fond of the word "delegitimise", or in the Guardian's case, "delegitimating". It suggests that a state based on colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid laws had some legitimacy to start with. It didn't and liberal opinion should support the boycott.