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| By Israel Insider staff September 28, 2007 |
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The British University and College Union (UCU) announced Friday that, after receiving legal advice, it had reached the conclusion that its recommended academic boycott of Israel would be illegal. In a statement, the UCU said that "legal advice made it clear that making a call to boycott Israeli institutions would run a serious risk of infringing discrimination legislation" and is "considered to be outside the aims and objects of the UCU." Therefore it could not "spend members' resources ... to test opinion on something which is in itself unlawful and cannot be implemented."
"The union will now explore the best ways to implement the non-boycott elements of the motion passed at the congress."
The UCU's general secretary, Sally Hunt, said that "since congress our first priority has always been to keep the union, and its members, safe during what has been a very difficult time. I hope this decision will allow all to move forward and focus on what is our primary objective, the representation of our members."
"I believe that if we do this we may also, where possible, play a positive role in supporting Palestinian and Israeli educators and in promoting a just peace in the Middle East."
Israeli scholars may not be out of the woods yet. There remains a danger of a "silent boycott" in Britain against Israeli institutions of higher education.
The International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom has said that Israeli researchers wishing to publish articles in the UK have been requested to removes of their Israeli academic institutes as a condition for publication of their articles.
Israeli academics were not without their defenders. In response to the UCU decision in May, more than 10,000 academics, including 32 Nobel laureates, signed a petition declaring themselves 'Israeli academics' for purposes of UCU boycott.
Ofir Frankel, Executive Director of the International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom (IAB), welcomed UCU?s decision and said that "the UCU has realized at last that an academic boycott is not a legitimate means of political protest."
The IAB believes, as Dr. Sari Nusseibah, President of Al-Quds University, stated at IAB's first conference, "that an international academic boycott of Israel, on pro-Palestinian grounds, is self-defeating as it would only succeed in weakening that strategically important bridge through which the state of war between Israelis and Palestinians could be ended, and Palestinian rights could there for be restored."
"Although we congratulate this decision, we have much work ahead of us?", said Frankel. "We plan to significantly expand the scientific cooperation between the two countries; and between the UCU and their Israeli and Palestinian counterparts, in order to harness cooperation and engagement as academicians were always the vanguard of change and bringing about of peace."
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