Boycotting the Jews

WSJ - Europe - June 5, 2007

Palestinian rocket attacks against Israeli civilians are intensifying, Hamas leaders are calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and Gaza descends into chaos. For the British left that naturally calls for a boycott of, you've guessed it, Israel.

Britain's University and College Union last Wednesday urged its 120,000 members to shun Israeli academic institutions. The next day, Unison, representing 1.3 million public-service employees in the U.K., said it will discuss a boycott against Israeli goods at its annual conference starting June 19. This follows a call in April by 130 British doctors to expel Israel from the World Medical Association and a call that same month by the National Union of Journalists to boycott Israeli goods.

In the case of the university teachers, boycotts violate the very essence of academia, the free exchange of ideas and research. But the obsession with Israel has little to do with unbiased scientific inquiry; instead, it's a perversion of the truth. For the professors' union, Israel is supposedly an "apartheid state" uniquely deserving of punishment. The same holds for the other groups listed above.

Not every criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. But the inverse, that criticism of the Jewish state is never anti-Semitic, can't be true either. To judge Israel by standards different than those applied to any other nation is racist in effect if not intent. That racism has become the British left's not so new defining ideology.