Enough on Jenna Delich. The significant problem is not with her, it is with the union and the boycott campaign.

Delich has a record of writing demonizing material on Israel and she linked to an antisemitic piece on David Duke's website. But she is not an important player in the campaign for a boycott of Israel within the union.

Her Google profile is now very bad and that will be a real problem for her. Personally, I feel sorry for her. But there you go, she brought that on herself.

The point is not Jenna Delich. The point is:

(1) the UCU is a place where the kind of ignorant racism that she forwarded is considered normal - except for the fact that it was to be found on Duke's site. Linking to that fascist website is considered by some activists to have been an unfortunate error which could happen to anybody. But those people have failed to ask themselves why they might find themselves in agreement with a piece of conspiracy theory on David Duke's website. They fail to be astonished or worried by that fact.

(2) The UCU has a problem with institutional racism which needs sorting out. The UCU needs serious criticism in order to make it again into a union for all its members.

(3) The leaders of the boycott campaign are rallying round to try to close the breach in the "criticism of Israel is not antisemitic" brick wall. The Delich case is important to the boycotters and they are defending the purveyor of antisemitic conspiracy theory against the antiracists. The fact that Sue Blackwell and Mike Cushman have failed to see the significance of the incident in terms of what it demonstrates about the relationship between antisemitism and the boycott campaign is remarkable.

But enough already about Delich. She got caught up in something she didn't understand. She needs to be left alone to do some serious thinking about what has happened to her in peace.

David Hirsh
Goldsmiths UCU