Here we publish a letter that has been sent to Communist Student from comrade Charlie Pottins. The issue of an academic boycott is certainly one that has not been debated fully or seriously by most of the left, so we hope that this letter can stimulate some debate here on our blog…

Dear Comrades,

After hearing that British students had become “depoliticised” – not surprising when so many have had their time occupied with the drudgery of dead-end jobs, and their minds with the prospect of never-ending debt – it is refreshing to see new shoots comning up like ‘Communist Student’, and encouraging to find fresh thought rather than mindless claptrap.

I’d agree with the broad thrust of Ken Crisp’s article (End the blockade! For Arab working class unity!, CS5), and particularly his criticisms of the SWP, AWL etc. But his comments on the academic boycott need correcting. The proposals put before the former Association of University Teachers(AUT) and subsequently the Universities and Colleges Union(UCU) were not for a boycott of Israeli academics (several of whom were among those initiating the call for boycott) but of Israeli academic institutions, and specifically those implicated in the occupation. Why single out Israel? For the same reason there was a boycott of South Africa.
Because organisations of the oppressed, in this case Palestinian academics and unions, despairing of pious resolutions but turning away from the blind alley of terror, were looking for ways in which they and their international allies could make their opposition felt by the Israeli society and state.

I don’t go along with those who simply say “like we did South Africa”, and over-use the word “apartheid” to avoid the necessity for analysing the specific form of oppression we are fighting against. Besides, the anti-apartheid boycott was not as effective as people make out, and nor was it always wisely applied. I recall at least one case where a visiting South African speaker was barred from a college on the grounds of the “cultural boycott ” and when it was pointed out that the person concerned was anti-racist, and helping African trades unionists fight the Apartheid regime, the lame excuse offered was “yes, but he wasn’t approved by the ANC”. Fortunately, from my experiences with the PLO and solidarity activists I don’t expect such heavy-handed absurdity. (though there were disgraceful cases on the Continent of people boycotting Juliano Mer-Khamis, a son of mixed Israeli-Palestinian communist parents working to raise support for the children’s Freedom Theatre in Jenin. Since the theatre had already been trashed by Israeli solidiers once, one wonders what the boycotters were really about, and if they knew who was pulling their strings).

The boycott is a tactic, and that’s how it should be evaluated, and applied, intelligently and with care. This tactical turn may have been misinterpreted by some, like the Manchester academic Mona Baker who removed the names of two blameless Israeli academics from the honorary board of her magazine, as a gesture against the institutions that employed them. But it was deliberately distorted by Zionist propaganda, here and in the United States, to pretend that Israelis would be the victims of discrimination on account of nationality, or academic freedom would suffer, if the boycott was pursued. True, some British academics might have feared for their freedom to earn extra money or attend expense-paid conferences, but meanwhile Palestinian students and schoolchidren were facing roadblocks in the path of their academic freedom, and anyway the UCU resolution only called for education on the issue, and for academics to consult their consciences (what a dreadful idea!).

While the Zionist propagandists kept up their distortion and lies, neither the media nor the union leadership went out of their way to publicise the text of what had been passed. In the end the union backed down to pressure and ‘legal advice’, cancelled an invitation to Palestinian academics, and accepted that even a discussion on boycott might be unlawful. Some academic freedom, then!

I’m not sure where the SWP currently stands, and nor I suspect are they, as they have swung between calling for an all-out cultural boycott which would hit nobody but ourselves on the Left, and deciding to ditch the academic boycott as “unworkable” , or on “tactical” grounds. See Alex Calinicos, “Israel Boycott Plan Has Potential Pitfalls,” Socialist Worker, 25 September 2007, www.socialistworker .co.uk/art. php?id=13103.

As an example of the former; when the writer China Mieville was approached by an Israeli publisher who wanted to bring out a Hebrew edition of one of his books, he was going to agree on condition they included a notice that all royalties would support a Palestinian cause.
But as John Rose boasted to a meeting of the Joint Committee for Palestine (back when they used to take part), he’d advised Mieville to refuse to allow his book to be published in Israel, under any circumstances. I bet that really hit the Israeli war machine. “What’s the news?”
“It’s not looking good, General. Our tanks have plenty of fuel, and we’ve no shortage of ammunition. But the men are complaining we’ve no new paperbacks to read”.

Comedian Ivor Dembina was given similar advice by people close to the SWP when he was unsure whether to accept an invitation to perform in Israel. But not being so susceptible, he asked me for a second opinion. I said he should find out who the invitation was from, and if it was not connected with the government or army, accept, but use his visit to make contacts and ask questions about how Palestinian artists and culture was faring (we’d just heard about Israeli soldiers trashing a children’s theatre in the West Bank). Anyway, to cut a long story short, Ivor came back with a whole new hard-hitting routine about the Occupation (“This is not a subject for comedy!”), he has performed in New York, Edinburgh, Tel Aviv and Ramallah, met with Mordechai Vanunu, and next month is compering a show called “60 -What a state!”, a stand-up benefit for Israeli and Palestinian rights groups. I don’t know whether this gives the glow of satisfaction or easy round of applause some have obtained simply by announcing to Trafalgar Square rallies that they “won’t go to Israel”. But if the boycott is a legitimate tactic, then it needs to be applied intelligently, not just used to save us the trouble of applying our intelligence.

Again, raising positive support for Palestinian education – books, money, visiting lecturers – may seem less macho than shouting for boycott. Likewise, volunteers going to join villagers planting olive trees, and sometimes facing bulldozers and snipers bullets. So much braver I’m sure to shout “We are Hizbollah”, “Victory to …etc” and put up posters of youths throwing Molotov cocktails, while staying in London. Certainly more conveniant for whichever left group is “party building” here. I’m not singling out the SWP here, there are worse in some respects.
But whether in calling for a blanket boycott, or as we’ve seen them do in UCU, deciding to call it off, what we see in the SWP approach is a tactical consideration, – not for how best to assist the Palestinian struggle, but for how the Palestine issue, like any other, can be used or dropped according to whether it suits the SWP, and whoever it is trying to impress.

Even the first big Stop the War demo only decided to include the Palestine issue to persuade the Muslim Association of Britain, MAB, to merge its own march in. I don’t know whether that says anything about the MAB’s priorities and Iraq. But once committed to that alliance, SWP hacks in Stop the War have kept looking over their shoulder before opposing anything that might upset an Islamicist agenda, sometimes more nervously than the Muslim groups might.
Mind you, if some of the Muslim groups had been given their way, there would not have been an Israeli speaker at last year’s Palestine end the occupation rally in Trafalgar Square. It is vital for the Palestinian liberation struggle to have Israeli allies, but that is not necessarily the same struggle some of the Islamicists have in mind. Have you noticed you hear people arguing about two-states or one, but don’t hear much these days about a “secular democratic state”?

It was also noticeable at first that in STWC as in the Socialist Alliance, Iraqis and Kurds attended but rarely got to speak. As we know from HOPI’s experience, and before, left-wing Iranian comrades have been treated with hostility. The SWP may pay lip service to internationalism (not least when using it as a cover for refusing solidarity), but behind its cultural relativism stands a belief that workers in poorer, less developed countries, are not ready for the rights and social advances we expect here, and their struggles are certainly not important enough to interfere with alliances and manouvres the Party is pursuing in Britain.
(Tempted though I am to wish the SWP might boycott a certain Israeli saxophone player, I don’t suppose they will, regardless of how he winds up people with his reactionary views, so long as he helps put bums on seats for their benefits).

The AWL is the other side of the coin, using a spurious ‘solidarity’ with workers struggles to avoid the national and anti-imperialist struggle which may be the most important they face.
This group withdrew from Iraq Occupation Focus to set up an Iraq Trade Union Solidarity Campaign which avoids the occupation issue, and complements the line of the TUC.
They stayed clear of HOPI – seemingly unwilling even to oppose imperialist war. As for supporting the European Union definition of “antisemitism” , characterising it as opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state, this would place the AWL squarely to the right not only of the Jewish Socialists’ Group but of many democratic-minded Jewish people, such Professor Brian Klug, of Independent Jewish Voices, or Tony Lerman, former head of the Institute for Jewish Policy, who advised and argued against this acceptance of the Zionist Lobby. The AWL’s Sean Matgamna has argued by sleight of hand logic that “most Jews support Israel, therefore if you attack Zionism you must be attacking Jews”. Applied in other contexts this equation of an entire people or community with a particular ideology and political movement would be rightly seen as racist; and in fact it is precisely the equation made by antisemites when they try to infiltrate anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian causes. They should thank Matgamna and the AWL for helping provide a smokescreen! (And of course the SWP hacks are always ready to evoke the AWL bogy whenever anyone suggests they scrutionise their line and the characters with whom they associate). But of course, all the AWL is doing is providing a “left”-sounding cover for the Israeli government and Zionist lie machine, and in siding with it against left-wing and Jewish opponents, would if it could assist the EU and US powers-that- be to censor opposition, providing Israel with something within the labour and student movements that it has not yet managed at home, a thought-police! Fortunately, the AWL is unlikely to become that strong, and even its own members may be starting to have their doubts and think for themselves.

Good luck to Communist Students! I don’t know how far we’d agree on things, but at least now when intelligent students look from the SWP to the AWL and back, before they shake their heads in dismay, there is someone offering a different alternative!

Charlie Pottins