It has been made clear by UCU that if discussion on the issue of the boycott campaign on the UCU activist email list is made public without the consent of the author, then those who made it public will be excluded from further discussion. Stephen Duke asked Engage to reproduce his email to the UCU activist list. Engage will protect the identity of the person to whom he is responding - for obvious reasons - DH

Dear XXXXXXX,

The arguments you use are embarrassing:

1) To use US aid as a pretext is scraping the barrel; the idea that the receipt of US aid is the clinching criteria by which to select a country to boycott is pathetic and in any case you offer no grounds for why this might be an appropriate criteria.

Do you really think that if Israel didn't receive US aid a boycott would be unjustified? Or that if tomorrow Israel were no longer the largest recipient you would oppose the boycott? This is what you seem to be saying and its a complete nonsense of an argument; primarily because there is no ethical content to it and a boycott could only be justified on ethical grounds. Its also a nonsense because nobody believes for a moment that this is your position. This can't be the only criterion by which you select Israel for boycott and so its nothing more than a red herring.

Pro-boycott campaigners speak of Israeli human rights abuses being the justification for boycott and Israel's record, although far from perfect, is also much better than many countries. So we're back to the original question of why Israel alone? Many other countries with a poor record on human rights also receive sizeable sums of US aid - notable examples being Egypt and Jordan - yet there is no proposed boycott of these countries. You can only 'justify' singling out Israel by selectively applying the criterion, which is hypocrisy, or by doing what you do here; listing criteria which only Israel meets. In doing so rather than explaining or rationalising why Israel is selected for boycott you simply demonstrate that she is, and both approaches fail to answer the question of why Israel is singled out.

Ultimately, there are no objective criteria for boycotting Israel alone. When individuals or groups of individuals receive differential treatment and the only plausible grounds one can find for explaing this is the ethnicity of those affected we call it racism. Racism directed against Jews is called Antisemitism; the boycott of Israeli academics alone is Antisemitic.

2) The same applies for the historical responsibility of Britain - this is more straw clutching. Britain's historic role in many parts of the world means the UK can be linked to far greater problems and much greater human suffering (Sudan for one springs to mind). This 'reason' absolutely fails to answer the question of why only Israel.

3) Points two and three read like a rather convoluted way of placing the blame for a myriad of economic, social and political problems at the feet of the Jews - hardly an original idea!

Do you mean to say that 'widely seen as' is your criteria for truth? That so many are prone to believing these ideas - for which there is no evidence whatsoever - is meaningless in terms of assessing their accuracy. However, believing ideas about Jews for which there is no evidence and then acting upon these beliefs is undoubtedly Antisemitic.

4) If you are having problems seeing what types of pressure might be applied to China, one wonders how you failed to spot that a large part of China's economy is based exports of consumer goods to the west. Any new ideas spring to mind?

In any case, if you want to say that the absence of extensive academic links means there is already a de facto academic boycott this is no argument against formalising one.

5) "Finally, Israel might have been chosen because of widespread anti-Semitism amongst the members of the Union"

Given the absence of any coherent logic for selectng Israel alone, coupled with the clearly Antisemitic language that you and others employ with regularity; it seems perfectly reasonable to conclude that widespread Antisemitism is the motivation. Indeed, you have yourself stated that you buy into certain Antisemitic stereotypes and that this affects how you treat Jews (you said you think Jews lie out of a loyalty to Israel and on this basis you ignore Jews when they say that Jews are being discriminated against). Do you want to say that this doesn't amount to Antisemitism or that you are wholly unique? You say you want proof of Antisemitism but what would constitute proof- a signed confession?

Stephen