Anti-Israel agitation has produced a number of attempts to boycott Israel or Israeli academics. The UK seems to be the home of such attacks. The union behind them is now the UCU, the result of a merger of two previous unions, AUT and NATFHE, which both aproved boycott motion in the years proceeding the merger.

The union boycotts followed individual action such as that of Steven and Hilary Rose, academics who organised a letter in the Guardian proposing a moratorium on scientific and cultural cooperation with Israel in 2002. That year there was also the Mona Baker scandal where two academics were fired from a journal for being Israeli. Then in 203 we had Prof Wilkie at Oxford University who refused to give a student a place in his lab because he was Israeli and had completed his national service there. Wilkie was sanctioned by the university.

The first serious union boycott of Israel was that of the AUT in 2005. The union vote provoked a storm of protest both from supporters of Israel and fair pro-Palestinians. Al-Quds university and the Hebrew University (both in Jerusalem) signed a cooperation agreement between Israeli and Palestinian academics in direct opposition to the boycott proposals. (The president of Al-Quds university recieved death threats as a result, but remained firm in his support for cooperation). The UCU boycott was over turned by an emergency meeting of the union a few months later as rank and file members showed their opposition to the action of the political elite who had aproved the proposal at annual conference.

Later boycott efforts at NATFHE in 2006 attempted to black list Israeli academics... a form of silent boycott that is hard to prove. This was an underhanded attempt to get around anti-discrimination law in the UK. The proposals passed but then lapsed (as intended) as the AUT and NATFHE merged to become the UCU.

The UCU passed it's own boycott proposals in 2007, but legal advice warned the union that their proposed actions would be outside the law. In particular membership dues could not be used in anyway to promote a boycott. The UCU executive shelved the proposals but never released the legal advice.

The call initiated in the UK for an academic boycott of Israel spread via Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaza to Canada in 2009. The new call for a boycott came from the Ontario region of the CUPE (nationally this union has about half a million members). The call was rejected by both the national President of the union, and by some local branch executives. As occured in the UK, the boycott is an attempt by a very small number of radicals to misuse the union to promote their own political agendas. Canadians its seems (unlike the British) will not stand for this.

Unions need to decide who control their agenda and whether they truely wants to be a home to radicals and division. Academics need to decide what their union is worth to them. In Canada there have been calls for government to consider new laws limiting the user of members money for political campaigning on international issues. A number of leading union members have picked up on this point.

Perhaps in Canada the union members and the public will take a strong stand against this misuse of power by union leaders. If so, perhaps, just perhaps, some the sentiments will filter back to the UK and the whole sorry business can come to an end.

Please refer other people interested in academic freedom to this address: www.zionismontheweb.org/academic_boycott/