Yishay Mor is an Israeli peace activist and academic. He works as an educational researcher at the Institute of Education where he is completing his doctorate. Among other projects, he is active in The Abraham Fund Initiatives for co-existence and equality among Israeli Jews and Arabs. After years of front-line combat in the Israeli Defence Force he refused to serve in the Occupied Territories, a decision for which he served a 28-day prison sentence. I spoke with Yishay in early April 2008.

When and how did you learn about the proposed British boycott of Israeli academia?

Quite a few years ago, shortly after I arrived - say five years ago. General talk about boycott - it wasn't specific actions yet. Now that I think about it I came across it in various left wing circles I was involved with here. I was asked to give a few talks about my experiences as a refuesnik and I think that's when I first heard about it. In the media and also occasionally some people from israel would call me and ask me whether the boycott influences me, whether I pull away or people treat me differently because of the boycott. To be fair I've never had any trouble participating in activities in the UK so far but I am worried that things might change and its not just my work here but I worry about my contacts in Israel, that things might be affected.

Can you remember your first responses on finding out about the boycott idea?

Maybe you'll be surprised to hear this but my first reaction was maybe there is something to it - a naive reaction because I've been involved in counter-government organisations and peace movements and so on for many years, so my initial reaction was that maybe this is a way to put pressure on the Israeli government and maybe it's not such a bad idea. But then pretty quickly I sort of thought again and pretty quickly realised how bad an idea it is, and how many reasons there are to oppose it, and how irrelevant the analogies people use to justify the boycott are.

And what triggered this revision?

The first thing I came to realise was that the boycott was promoting exactly the kind of thing it claimed to oppose. It's a collective discrimininative action, a form of collective punishment if you like which is exactly the kind of action which should be stopped. I've been working in the peace movement to stop Israel taking collective action against Palestinians. I've been campaigning against that, and here is a group applying collective punishment to Israel. So, idealistically and pragmatically it's wrong.

Something that happened quite recently I was visiting York and walking down the street and there was a Palestinian stand with, among other things, leaflets promoting boycott. And I got into an argument with people standing there and I found myself getting emotional. And I reflected on this and thought "Hang on, why am I getting so emotional? There's a lot of good rational reactions against boycott but my reaction was emotional. And I realised that I feel personally hurt by boycott because it puts me in the same lump as Lieberman, Elyakim Haetzni and all those evil Israelis I've been fighting all my life because the boycott doesn't discriminate between me and them. Suddenly I've become one of them, in the same bag with all their lot.

Why isn't that emotion a positive thing? What about empathy?

I don't need anything to remind me about the injustice being done to the Palestinians. In fact I find it insulting that people who don't know a fraction of what I know and haven't done a fraction of what I've done would come and lecture me about the West Bank. I don't need somebody to try to educate me about how Palestinians feel. What I need is their support and their help to enable me and other people in the peace camp to work towards positive change.

There's a point that boycotters make that people like you are good Jews and not the intended target of this boycott - this boycott is only supposed to target the bad majority Zionist ones.

I don't have to tell you how horrible that sounds. As a Jew (I know you shouldn't ever start a sentence like that) that line of argument just brings out the deepest darkest collective memories. The fact that somebody has the authority to classify me as a good Jew or bad Jew, one who has the stamp of approval - "I've been accepted into humanity and the guy next to me hasn't..." But the point is, who exactly has this authority to classify who is a good Jew and who is a bad Jew? And some in the boycott movement say that if you support two states then you're not good enough. A proud Muslim Palestinian [Mohammad Darawshe of The Abraham Fund] was boycotted who spent most of his adult life promoting equality and campaigning for equal rights - if he doesn't qualify then I wouldn't by those standards either. There can't be a committee who sits down and decides who qualifies as decent and who doesn't - it's just unacceptable. Ilan Pappe would love to be on the selection committee and draw the white-list and black-list. But it doesn't work in any society that truly values freedom of speech. In all examples in history where somebody took the authority of drawing black and white-list the result was silencing of anybody who doesn't agree with their personal opinions.

If the boycott comes into effect what would your reaction be?

I've never believed it was possible that the boycott could come into effect. I've never thought about it. I'm shooting from the hip but if the boycott comes into effect then I cannot operate within British academia. For me personally it would mean that British academia had become politicised and had become an institution that silences people on ethnic grounds, and for me personally I don't see how I could operate in such an institution. I think that if the boycott comes into effect, to put it quite strongly, that would put British academia in the same state or position as South African academia during apartheid. Because South African academia wasn't open to blacks - it denied participation on the basis of skin colour. Likewise British academia would be denying the right to participate on an ethnic or national basis. That's the parallel I see.

Do you believe in academic boycott at all?

I can understand a boycott of South Africa on grounds that if you violate the rules of the academic community then the global academic community sanctions you. I still think it's problematic but in such terms - maybe there are other places in the world which exclude participation on political or ethnic grounds, and then boycott could be considered. But surprisingly it isn't. Nobody thinks of boycotting China. I don't say I would support any notion of boycott - I haven't thought of it fully. But there are places where there are much stronger grounds for considering boycott which haven't been considered.

How has the boycott idea affected you?

Well, the boycott itself hasn't affected me. The kind of debate that goes on around the boycott has definitely made me feel very insecure as a Jew and as an Israeli in the UK. It exposes kind of attitudes which I didn't believe existed - I thought that when I came to the UK I was coming to a society which is much more humane or humanistic than what I've since discovered. I won't deny that I've come across a lot of racism in Israel between Jews and Arabs and even within the Jewish community and so on, but I thought that I was coming to a society which set a better example. A lot of the discourse around the boycott surprised me in a bad way.

Can you remember an instance?

It's hard to come up with a specific example. Intolerable ease and casualness - people are so quick to judge and pass a sentence - "Israel is doing is wrong therefore we should boycott, period" - nothing much to think about, without even considering the facts. It's such a cheap way out. And I was really struck by how easily people are willing to pass such severe - take such a severe action without really studying the issues. I'm not sayng there shouldn't be a debate about boycott. I think everything should be open to debate. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a debate about what is the right solution in Israel and Palestine but I think it should be an informed and responsible debate. What we have now is maybe a matter of fashion. It's cool to be pro this or anti this.

Do you know of any other person, Israeli, British, or other nationality, who has been affected by the boycott?

We talked about Mohammad. I don't know anybody else - sometimes there are pople who have felt a cold shoulder but they never knew on what the grounds, so it's hard to pinpoint these things. Personally, I never disguised or hid the fact that I'm Israeli and I never sensed any rejection or reaction to me on these grounds. People might be curious and ask questions about Israel and Palestine which is something that I value. I know of groups of Israeli and Palestinian academics who work in Britain, meet in London and discuss openly the hardest issues and of course if there were a boycott which would stop Israelis coming to London, this dialogue wouldn't take place. It's an emergent initiative from both sides who identified an opportunity to meet and get to know each other. If I'm here for an academic job and I lose that job then I lose my visa and I have to go home. I couldn't participate. Nobody has said anything of the sort, and I don't expect the boycott to hold legally but if it did and if it did hold up legally then definitely I would lose my job and my career would be harmed. And I think the people within British academia who would be harmed the most are those who are engaged in coexistence and peacebuilding because they are the peope who are naturally in contact with Israel.

Since you first heard about the boycott, has anything changed in how you feel about it, or how it has affected you?

I became aware of the racist undertones because I think the boycott encapsulates racism in two ways. It's easy to find examples of how it's racist towards Jews, but it's also racist towards Palestinians. Because it applies a double standard that if Israel takes violent action then it's held accountable but when Palestinians commit violence they're not held accountable. When you don't hold someone accountable to the same standards then you're saying they're not on equal grounds with you. So you're saying it's like if somebody is mentally disabled, then you don't expect them to comprehend reality in the same way. It's saying we can't expect Palestinians to adhere to the same moral standards. It's a condescension to Palestinians and in that sense it's as racist to the Palestinians as to the Israelis.

In the same breath UCU boycotters insist on the complicity of Israeli academics while claiming that the boycott doesn't target those individual complicit academics, but Israeli institutions. There are many examples of individuals who have been boycotted because of their nationality since this boycott campaign began - do you think this idea that you can boycott institutions and not individuals holds up?

When to make a moral judgment of this sort, I find it helpful to apply the 'shoe on the other foot' test: translate the statement to an equivalent one that your opposition would make, and see how it sounds. For instance, when my friends in Israel casually make generalizations about Arabs, I ask them to replace "Arab" with "Jew" in the sentence they just said. I suggest the same test here. For example: "Israel closure on Gaza is not aimed at individuals, but at the Hamas regime as an institute".

Is there anything boycott campaign can clean up its act?

In theory it could. It could install powerful mechanism to ensure that its discourse remain fixed on the actual issues. But on second thought I don't think it could because the idea of boycott is based on broad generalisation - so where do you draw the line? If you say you're boycotting all Israelis then why not say you're boycotting all jews or all redheads? That's the difference from when Dan Halutz wanted to visit UK and British threatened legal action because of war crimes - that's holding people personally accountable for their actions and that's a way of putting pressure where it's due. So this specific person or institute has done something wrong, so you sanction them. The boycott is the complete inverse of this. It's based on making crude generalisations and therefore its innate nature drives it towards racism.

Anything more to say?

On a personal note since the age of 16 I've been fighting for peace and justice and equality and a dignified viable resolution of the conflict. I've walked in demonstrations where I had beer cans htrown at me and been beaten with sticks and I can't recall the amount of spit I've collected on me for fighting for a peaceful resolution. And I really would appreciate a bit of support and solidarity. There is so much that people could do that would have a poisitive effect and it just saddens me to see all the energy going on the negative action rather than positive action.

There's a lot of talk of a single state solution. I might even agree with you in the longterm but this question, first and foremost, need to be debated by Israelis and Palestinians living in Israel and Palestine and our role is to enable that dialogue - to create the conditions for democractic dialogue in Israel and Palestine. Boycotting is like a father who if his kids misbehave beats them up - if you beat them up then what does that teach them?