The decision by the Association of University Teachers (AUT) to boycott two universities in Israel is a mockery of academic freedom, a biased and blinkered move that is as ill-timed as it is perverse. The vote at the AUT annual conference to forbid its 40,000 members to visit Haifa and Bar Ilan universities in protest at the alleged ill-treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories not only comes at the very moment when official Israeli-Palestinian relations are improving, but it also targets the very institutions in Israel that have been havens of political and racial tolerance and beacons of academic freedom.

The sponsors of the boycott maintain that Haifa University is threatening to sack a lecturer for supporting a student’s thesis on an alleged Israeli massacre in 1948, and that Bar Ilan has links with a college based in a settlement in the West Bank. They say the academic boycott is a protest against discrimination, as valid as the widely supported ban by British universities on links with South African institutions during the apartheid years.

Such a claim is as laughable as it is inaccurate. Whereas many South African academics supported outside pressure on their government and almost all black students complained of discrimination, in Israel neither is true. In both universities, Jews and Arabs study together, and in Haifa especially there is a substantial number of Arab lecturers and students. Moreover, if Palestinian students themselves are not calling for a boycott, what is the point of such tokenism by the AUT?

In many British universities there are vocal critics of Israeli policies. Academics have expressed revulsion at the continued building of Israeli settlements and the occupation of Palestinian territories. They are fully entitled to the vigorous expression of their views. They can speak out in public, join protest marches and argue with pro-Israeli colleagues. What they are not entitled to do is to impose a trade union boycott that is inimical to academic freedom — a principle fundamental not only to civilised society but the very basis of their professional life. Their actions are an echo of the Nazi ban on Jewish academics, and the general discrimination so common three generations ago.

The second reason why this boycott — swiftly and rightly condemned by university vice-chancellors and principals — is so dangerous is that it can quickly become an excuse for anti-Semitism. Many people, including the Jewish co-sponsor of the motion, are able to draw a proper distinction between criticism of Israel and racism; an increasing number, however, are not — or, more despicably, choose not to see any difference. Many Jewish students at British universities are already suffering growing hostility, including intolerable abuse from extremists. The Union of Jewish Students argued that any of its members supporting Israel would not be equal in the classroom with an AUT member.

The issue of discrimination is more overtly political in the broader context of the Middle East. How much academic freedom exists in Syria? Or Saudi Arabia? Why does the AUT not call for a ban on contacts in dozens of other countries inimical to human rights? If the reply is that building bridges achieves far more, that is all the truer of Israel. AUT members should defeat this pernicious ban by cultivating every contact available as soon as possible with the two Israeli universities.

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