Key arguments against the campaign for an academic boycott of Israel – Engage

Alan Johnson: The case against Boycott of Israel.  VIDEO. (2014)

David Hirsh on The American Studies Association boycott resolution, academic freedom and the myth of the institutional boycott. (2014)

Michael Yudkin’s argument against the academic boycott campaign.  click here.  (2007)

Stephen Hawking

David Hirsh on the antisemitism which comes with the boycott campaign. Experiences from UCU  (2013)

Cure worse than the disease: academic boycott of Israel in the light of the academic boycott of South Africa – Mira Vogel (2007)

Mira Vogel on PACBI (2008)

Engage response to BRICUP [PDF] (2007)

Ben Gidley on the antisemitism which comes in the wake of the boycott campaign:  The Case of Anti-Semitism in the University and College Union (2011)

Robert Fine responds to Desmond Tutu’s call for a boycott of Israel in the South African Mail & Guardian  (2010)

Robert Fine in debate about boycotting Israel, “the apartheid state”. (2008)

Antisemitism, Boycotts and Freedom of Speech – Robert Fine (2007)

Hirsh, David. 2012. Portia, Shylock and the exclusion of Israeli actors from the global cultural community. Engage, [Article]

Hirsh, David. 2011. No such thing as victimless boycott. Mail and Guardian, South Africa, p. 14. [Article]

Hirsh, David. 2007. Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections. Working Paper. Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) Occasional Papers, New Haven, CT

Resignations from UCU over the issue of the academic boycott of Israel.

Raphael Cohen-Almagor (2013)

Norman Finkelstein’s Attack on the BDS Movement

For an Engage archive on the Israel / Apartheid analogy click here.

Boycott Israel? Desmond Tutu, David Newman, Neve Gordon, David Hirsh, Robert Fine, Ran Greenstein, Uri Avnery, Farid Essack.  here.  (Oct 2010)

The University of Johannesburg Boycott, here.  (May 2011)

Colin Schindler shows how a boycott hinders his ability to do his job to teach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Read it here. (June 07)

Eric Lee argues a boycott is no way to help the Palestinians here. (June 07)

Anthony Julius and Simon Schama’s argument against John Berger’s boycott call. Here. (Dec 06)

Paul Frosh’s contrast between boycott and joint work. Here. (Nov 06)

A detailed critique of PACBI‘s (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) call for “BDS” – “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions”. Here. (Sep 06, David Hirsh)

Jon Pike’s arguments for voting against the Natfhe 2006 motion. Here. (May 06)

David Hirsh’s arguments for voting against the 2006 Natfhe motion. Here.  (May 06)

David Hirsh’s response to the passing of the Natfhe motion: Don’t get mad, get even. Here. (May 06)

Jon Pike’s discussion of boycotts. The distinction between ‘boycott as solidarity and boycott as punishment’. Critique of Jaqueline Rose’s case for boycott. Here|. (Sep 05)

The myth of the institutional boycott. The boycott campaign pretends that it is boycotting institutions when really it proposes a boycott of individuals. Read Jon Pike’s analysis. Here. (February 06)

Making Emotional Sense of the Proposed Boycotts against Israeli Academics and Intellectuals – Catherine B. Silver (2007)

Steve Cohen’s response to the McCarthyite political test that Natfhe voted to apply to Israeli academics. Here. (May 05)

Live Dangerous – Shop at Marks and Spencers.  (2006)

Hirsh’s speech and reports from his debate with Ilan Pappe, pro-boycott professor at Haifa University, on the issue of the boycott. At Birmingham AUT. Here.  (Nov 05)

David Hirsh responds to a supporter of the boycott. Here. (Sep 06)

David Hirsh looks closely at what Steven Rose says on Radio 4’s Today programme. Here. (September 06)

John Strawson’s 2005 argument against the boycott campaign.

Engage’s original founding statement.  2005.

Another version of who we are. 

David Cesarani

I learned today with sadness that David Cesarani, public historian, researcher and educator on the Holocaust, has died. Although we were at several meetings together I did not know David, but first encountered his work in his biography of Koestler.  Later I noticed him on BBC Radio 4 where he was a frequent contributor on Holocaust topics and also argued against the BDS campaign to exclude Israelis from UK academic life. At Engage we followed his enlightening pieces on the boycott and antisemitism with appreciation. He was a haven of objective, scholarly impartiality in a blizzard of misinformation about Israel. He recognised the boycott’s antisemitic associations and in the mood about Israel he perceived, as he put it, “British self-exculpation” about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Some prime Cesarani – from 2006, The left’s anti-semitism can’t go unchallenged; from 2009 on the Tories’ problematic relationship with European right-wing parties; from 2008 on Britain’s historical role in the Israel-Palestine conflict; from 2011, taking a dim view of Kosminksy’s The Promise; from 2013 for Holocaust Memorial day.  A contributor to the Holocaust Educational Trust, There are plenty more links to be found by searching Engage, and via his Guardian page. His more formally academic work also features heavily in Engage’s bibliography.

His wisdom is still with us.

Seaumas Milne in debate with David Hirsh. 2008. Hamas, antisemitism and the politics of peace

Seumas Milne is Jeremy Corbyn’s new director of strategy and communications. Corbyn is well known for having referred to Hamas as ‘friends’ and for supporting them politically. He has said that Hamas is “dedicated to the good of the Palestinian people” and to social and political justice; he has been hosted by them in Gaza.

Milne also has a long record of offering political support to Hamas.

He wrote an op-ed in the Guardian in March 2008 about the conflict which was raging at that time between Israel and Hamas in Gaza: “To blame the victims for this killing spree defies both morality and sense”

David Hirsh responded on the Guardian’s Comment is Free Website with: “Half-truths cannot aid peace”

Seaumas Milne responded on Comment is Free, reproduced here on Engage.

Hirsh responds here on Engage.

Milne replies again here, reproduced on Engage.

Hirsh responds yet again, here on Engage.

Hirsh writes this a couple of weeks later on Engage.

Norm Geras also had a go here, on normblog.