British professor confirms 'silent' boycott of Israel

A British academic has refused to write an article for a journal funded by Israeli universities stating:

"Alas, I am unable to accept your kind invitation, for reasons that you may not like. I have, along with many other British academics, signed the academic boycott of Israel, in the face of the brutal and illegal expansionism and the slow-motion ethnic cleansing being practiced by your government," wrote Professor Richard Seaford, from the University of Exeter in England.

Seaford wrote to Bar-Ilan University's Dr. Daniella Dueck, a member of the Scripta Classica Israelica editorial board who had requested that the British academic write a book review for the journal.

Seaford, the head of the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Exeter University, told Haaretz that the academic boycott "is just a small contribution to the long-term raising of international consciousness which represents the only hope for an eventual just peace in the Middle East. In this respect, there is a parallel with the academic boycott of apartheid South Africa."

It has only been Israel's highly successful campaign to brand all critics as anti-Semitic that has prevented more of this kind of action.

The intellectual community that lined up against Apartheid South Africa has been reticent to engage itself against a country that utilises Jewish only roads and restricted Arab rights to purchase land.

But now that Israel is seeking to impose a unilateral solution on a problem for which resolution 242 has already provided a clear answer, namely that Israel should withdraw from all land seized in 1967, it would appear that the intellectual community has at last found the courage to speak.

This is to be encouraged.

The moves Israel is proposing are to be welcomed. However, a unilateral solution - in which Israel remains in control of huge swathes of stolen Arab land - will only result in more bloodshed.

I personally have no difficulty with Israel holding on to some of her larger settlements, providing she is willing to offer a commensurate amount of Israeli land to the Palestinians in compensation.

By acting unilaterally, that is exactly the kind of sensible compromise that Israel is seeking to avoid. And they do so with American compliance.

Click title for Ha'aretz article.

Tags: Israel, Palestine, boycott, universities,