Sir, The motion about Israel that was overwhelmingly passed at the recent University and College Union (UCU) congress (letters, June 2) very deliberately did not call for a boycott but a 12-month debate across all UK campuses to weigh up the pros and cons of such a move. Even those delegates opposed to boycotts acknowledged the need to protest against the 40-year-long occupation of Palestine and the terrible consequences for the indigenous people whose only crime is to have lived there for many hundreds of years.

I suggest that, given the urgency of the situation in which greater Israel is already an established fact, and the only question facing Israel, the US and the UK is what to do with the near four million Arabs imprisoned within its borders, the motion was mild and benign. Debate is called for by the UCU and is surely therefore in the best traditions of the academic ethos and free speech.

Far from being a road show, we will be inviting Israeli and Palestinian academics to join us in open debates over the next year. We will ignore hate mail, threats of legal action or worse and concentrate on a resolution. Can academic boycotts be effective in forming public opinion and resolving conflicts? Reasoned discussion is great so long as it is not used as a smoke screen for creation of wicked facts on the ground in Palestine. We want an honest, robust debate and an entirely democratic decision in a year’s time.

PROFESSOR COLIN GREEN Harrow, Middx

Sir, What is remarkable about your editorial (“Drop the Boycott ”, June 7) is not merely the lack of sympathy for the problems that Palestinian students face in gaining a university education, but the total failure to recognise that there is even a problem.

Palestinian students in Gaza are unable to access West Bank universities. There is one Islamic university in Gaza, dating from the time when the Israeli military was best friends with Hamas, as it sought to undermine secular Palestinian nationalism. What is this if not an imposed boycott?

Palestinian students in the West Bank find it almost impossible to travel to their classes unless they are prepared to spend most of the day waiting at the 500-plus checkpoints that are dotted around the territories. What is this if not an imposed boycott? Palestinian universities find it almost impossible to obtain the most basic equipment or funding because of administrative barriers that no Israeli university would face.

There is close liaison and cooperation between Israeli academics and the military at every level. Only this week the Hebrew University in Jerusalem appointed as its Vice-President a former head of the Shin Bet security police, Carmi Gillon.

Boycotts are peaceful in intent and are designed to draw attention to a particular evil. From the boycott of slave-grown sugar in the 19th century to the Jewish-led boycott of Nazi Germany in the 1930s to the cultural, academic and sporting boycott of apartheid, boycotts have been chosen when all else has failed.

Contrary to your assertion, Israeli universities have not been in the forefront of opposition to the evils of occupation. Israeli academics such as Professor Ilan Pappe have chosen exile precisely because of the hostile attitude of their colleagues to solidarity with the Palestinians.

TONY GREENSTEIN Brighton

Explore Letters

• Feedback