I am against any kind of boycott, but it's a bit rich for American zionists to start bleating about freedom of speech. Anyone in American public life - even if they happen to be Jewish - who dares to criticise Israel is immediately the subject of the most heinous vitriol. No Senator or Congressman dares do anything but kowtow to the "Lobby", although most of them hate it and its bullying ,methods.

Clive Collins, Gloucester,

It is irrelevant who is wrong and who is right, although I submit it takes two to tango and anyone supporting any organisation who justifies killing women and children needs to examine their value system.
Boycotting by academics is counter productive and goes against all the tenets of free speech and learning. Those academics supporting any boycott in my view are intellectually bereft of logic.
But they are arrogant are they not?
And to the anti-semitist, no I am not a Jew.

Richard, London,

I think it's really rather comic. Who do they think they are? Self-important, self-congratulatory ...yes, ultimately self-centred and silly. So often the case when my fellow-academics try to occupy the moral high ground. And do they really believe that their 'boycott' will make a blind bit of difference? Or is that an 'academic' question ?

Ian McMorran, Shanghai, china

Contrary to what David Barnett and other glib, but poorly informed commentators suggest, Israel's occupation is not illegal. Resolution 242 calls for Israel to enter into negotiations with "the parties to the recent conflict" (i.e. not the Palestinians) to negotiate land for peace in exchange for mutual recognition and a just solution to the refugee problem. In returning the Sinai to Egypt and achieving peace treaties with both Jordan and Egypt, Israel has complied.

242 explicitly does NOT call for the return of all the territories -- arguments at the time the resolution was compiled record that the US would not accept the term "the territories" but only "territories" in the definition of land to be returned.

Ian Posner, London, UK

Who craeted the mess in the Middle East, during its long occupation of the region, using the old Roman imperial practice "Divide et impera" (divide and conquer), doing their best to create conflict between the Arab and Jewish liberation movements?

Who did it also in India/Pakistan, several African states and indeed all over their empire (in which the Sun never sets)?

Who is occupying parts of Iraq these days?

Would a boycott of Oxford, Cambridge etc. Univerities be effective against all this?

What a disgusting hypocrisy! Or is it actually something much worse than that?

Oded Regev, New York, US

The point of the boycott is not that the academics are Israeli, The point is that they have taken a political stance in support of Israel against Palestinian academics and the Palestinian schools/univeristis.
The boycott shows that the academic community see themselves as a global community and anyone that harms a member of that community by siding with an opressive government should be suspended from the community.
I fully agree with their actions and am proud to have studied with the academics taking this stance.

uc, London,

This is an example of pure British Hypocracy...

No nation on earth occupied so many people and countries as Britian...

When British town were hit by German missiles whole cities in Germany were burned to the ground in response...

In 50 years British subjects mananged to murder and wipe out the entire population of Tansmania...

Britain invented the concept of Concentratoin Capms during the Bohr war leading to the death of an untold number of women and children...

The occupation of Northern Ireland is still ongoing...

England fought a war with Argentina to preserve a groups of rock island thousand of miles from home...

Israel, in comparison, has only occupied land that historically was hers, and since 1967 had already handed back the following territories:

1977 - pull out of Sinai
1994 - pull out of Jordan
2001- pull out of southern Lebanon
2005 - pull out of Gaza

only the west bank is still in our possesion... So the boycott is a disgrace...

Erez, Jerusalem,

The UCU should be charged with incitement to racial hatred.

Gladiatrix, London, England

I suppose the same sort of editorial would have greeted the decision to boycott German institutions in the 1930's.

Isreal has had plenty of time to accept that it must reach an accommodation with the Palestinians and if it has failed to take the opportunity that then the occupation of the West Bank and isolation of Gaza must be viewed as illegal - as it was declared in 1967 by the UN Security Council..

Everyone seems happy to trade and do business with a state that has ignored all reasonable discussion and dialogue on the Palestine issue and I applaud the University and College Union for making a principled stand.

And anyway they are grown-up people and free, unlike the Palestinians, to express their opinion.

David Barnett , Dubai, UAE